The Best of Lucius Shepard Read Online Free PDF Page B

side. It
looked as if the sunlight were an extension of the gleaming resins, as if the
thickness of the paint were becoming infinite. He let the major’s voice recede
to a buzz and followed the scatter and dazzle of the images; and then, with a
start, he realized the major was sounding him out about stopping the work.
     
    The idea
panicked him at first. He tried to interrupt, to raise objections; but the
major talked through him, and as Meric thought it over, he grew less and less
opposed. The painting would never be finished, and he was tired. Perhaps it was
time to have done with it, to accept a university post somewhere and enjoy life
for a while.
     
    “We’ve been
thinking about a temporary stoppage,” said Major Hauk. “Then if the winter
campaign goes well…” He smiled. “If we’re not visited by plague and pestilence,
we’ll assume things are in hand. Of course we’d like your opinion.”
     
    Meric felt a
surge of anger towards this smug little monster. “In my opinion, you people are
idiots,” he said. “You wear Griaule’s image on your shoulders, weave him on
your flags, and yet you don’t have the least comprehension of what that means.
You think it’s just a useful symbol…”
     
    “Excuse me,”
said the major stiffly.
     
    “The hell I
will!” Meric groped for his cane and heaved up to his feet. “You see yourselves
as conquerors. Shapers of destiny. But all your rapes and slaughters are
Griaule’s expressions. His will. You’re every bit as much his parasites
as the skizzers.”
     
    The major
sat, picked up a pen, and began to write.
     
    “It astounds
me,” Meric went on, “that you can live next to a miracle, a source of mystery,
and treat him as if he were an oddly shaped rock.”
     
    The major
kept writing.
     
    “What are
you doing?” asked Meric.
     
    “My
recommendation,” said the major without looking up.
     
    “Which is?”
     
    “That we
initiate stoppage at once.”
     
    They
exchanged hostile stares, and Meric turned to leave; but as he took hold of the
doorknob, the major spoke again.
     
    “We owe you
so much,” he said; he wore an expression of mingled pity and respect that
further irritated Meric.
     
    “How many
men have you killed, Major?” he asked, opening the door.
     
    “I’m not
sure. I was in the artillery. We were never able to be sure.”
     
    “Well, I’m
sure of my tally,” said Meric. “It’s taken me forty years to amass it. Fifteen
hundred and ninety-three men and women. Poisoned, scalded, broken by falls,
savaged by animals. Murdered. Why don’t we - you and I - just call it even.”
     
    Though it
was a sultry afternoon, he felt cold as he walked towards the tower - an
internal cold that left him light-headed and weak. He tried to think what he
would do. The idea of a university post seemed less appealing away from the
major’s office; he would soon grow weary of worshipful students and in-depth
dissections of his work by jealous academics. A man hailed him as he turned
into the market. Meric waved but did not stop, and heard another man say, “ That’s Cattanay?” (That ragged old ruin?)
     
    The colours
of the market were too bright, the smells of charcoal cookery too cloying, the
crowds too thick, and he made for the side streets, hobbling past one-room
stucco houses and tiny stores where they sold cooking oil by the ounce and cut
cigars in half if you could not afford a whole one. Garbage, tornados of dust
and flies, drunks with bloody mouths. Somebody had tied wires around a pariah
dog - a bitch with slack teats; the wires had sliced into her flesh, and she
lay panting in an alley mouth, gaunt ribs flecked with pink lather, gazing into
nowhere. She, thought Meric, and not Griaule, should be the symbol of their
flag.
     
    As he rode
the hoist up the side of the tower, he fell into his old habit of jotting down
notes for the next day. What’s that cord of wood doing on level five? Slow
leak of chrome yellow from pipes