Read Online He Who Shapes by Roger Zelazny - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Roger Zelazny
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motif."
"Faugh!" said she.
"Shh!" said a sunburnt little woman nearby, whose face
seemed to crack and fall back together again as she pursed and
unpursed her lips.
Later, as they strolled back toward their hotel, Render said,
"Okay on Winchester?"
"Okay on Winchester."
"Happy?"
"Happy."
"Good, then we can leave this afternoon."
"All right."
"For Switzerland..."
She stopped and toyed with a button on his coat.
"Couldn't we just spend a day or two looking at some old
chateaux first? After all, they're just across the Channel, and
you could be sampling all the local wines while I looked. . ."
"Okay," he said.
She looked upa trifle surprised.
"What? No argument?" she smiled. "Where is your fighting
spirit?to let me push you around like this?"
She took his arm then and they walked on as he said,
"Yesterday, while we were galloping about in the innards of
that old castle, I heard a weak moan, and then a voice cried out,
'For the love of God, Montresor!' I think it was my fighting
spirit, because I'm certain it was my voice. I've given up der
geist der stets verneint. Pax vobiscumi Let us be gone to
France. Alors!"
"Dear Rendy, it'll only be another day or two . . ."
"Amen," he said, "though my skis that were waxed are
already waning."
So they did that, and on the morn of the third day, when she
spoke to him of castles in Spain, he reflected aloud that while
psychologists drink and only grow angry, psychiatrists have
been known to drink, grow angry, and break things. Construing
this as a veiled threat aimed at the Wedgwoods she had
collected, she acquiesced to his desire to go skiing.
Free! Render almost screamed it.
His heart was pounding inside his head. He leaned hard. He
cut to the left. The wind strapped at his face; a shower of ice
crystals, like bullets of emery, fired by him, scraped against his
cheek.
He was moving. Ayethe world had ended at Weissflujoch,
and Dorftali led down and away from this portal.
His feet were two gleaming rivers which raced across the
stark, curving plains; they could not be frozen in their course.
Downward. He flowed. Away from all the rooms of the world.
Away from the stifling lack of intensity, from the day's hundred
spoon-fed welfares, from the killing pace of the forced
amusements that hacked at the Hydra, leisure; away.
And as he fled down the run he felt a strong desire to look
back over his shoulder, as though to see whether the world he
had left behind and above had set one fearsome embodiment of
itself, like a shadow, to trail along after him, hunt him down,
and to drag him back to a warm and well-lit coffin in the sky,
there to be laid to rest with a spike of aluminum driven through
his will and a garland of alternating currents smothering his
spirit.
"I hate you," he breathed between clenched teeth, and the
wind carried the words back; and he laughed then, for he
always analyzed his emotions, as a matter of reflex; and be
added, "Exit Orestes, mad, pursued by the Furies . . ."
After a time the slope leveled out and he reached the bottom
of the run and had to stop.
He smoked one cigarette then and rode back up to the top so
that he could come down it again for non-therapeutic reasons.
That night he sat before a fire in the big lodge, feeling its
warmth soaking into his tired muscles. Jill massaged his
shoulders as he played Rorschach with the flames, and he came
upon a blazing goblet which was snatched away from him in
the same instant by the sound of his name being spoken
somewhere across the Hall of the Nine Hearths.
"Charles Render!" said the voice (only it sounded more like
"Shariz Runder"), and his head instantly jerked in that
direction, but his eyes danced with too many afterimages for
him to isolate the source of the calling.
"Maurice?" he queried after a moment, "Bartelmetz?"
"Aye," came the reply, and then Render saw the familiar
grizzled visage, set neckless and balding above the red and
blue shag
"Faugh!" said she.
"Shh!" said a sunburnt little woman nearby, whose face
seemed to crack and fall back together again as she pursed and
unpursed her lips.
Later, as they strolled back toward their hotel, Render said,
"Okay on Winchester?"
"Okay on Winchester."
"Happy?"
"Happy."
"Good, then we can leave this afternoon."
"All right."
"For Switzerland..."
She stopped and toyed with a button on his coat.
"Couldn't we just spend a day or two looking at some old
chateaux first? After all, they're just across the Channel, and
you could be sampling all the local wines while I looked. . ."
"Okay," he said.
She looked upa trifle surprised.
"What? No argument?" she smiled. "Where is your fighting
spirit?to let me push you around like this?"
She took his arm then and they walked on as he said,
"Yesterday, while we were galloping about in the innards of
that old castle, I heard a weak moan, and then a voice cried out,
'For the love of God, Montresor!' I think it was my fighting
spirit, because I'm certain it was my voice. I've given up der
geist der stets verneint. Pax vobiscumi Let us be gone to
France. Alors!"
"Dear Rendy, it'll only be another day or two . . ."
"Amen," he said, "though my skis that were waxed are
already waning."
So they did that, and on the morn of the third day, when she
spoke to him of castles in Spain, he reflected aloud that while
psychologists drink and only grow angry, psychiatrists have
been known to drink, grow angry, and break things. Construing
this as a veiled threat aimed at the Wedgwoods she had
collected, she acquiesced to his desire to go skiing.
Free! Render almost screamed it.
His heart was pounding inside his head. He leaned hard. He
cut to the left. The wind strapped at his face; a shower of ice
crystals, like bullets of emery, fired by him, scraped against his
cheek.
He was moving. Ayethe world had ended at Weissflujoch,
and Dorftali led down and away from this portal.
His feet were two gleaming rivers which raced across the
stark, curving plains; they could not be frozen in their course.
Downward. He flowed. Away from all the rooms of the world.
Away from the stifling lack of intensity, from the day's hundred
spoon-fed welfares, from the killing pace of the forced
amusements that hacked at the Hydra, leisure; away.
And as he fled down the run he felt a strong desire to look
back over his shoulder, as though to see whether the world he
had left behind and above had set one fearsome embodiment of
itself, like a shadow, to trail along after him, hunt him down,
and to drag him back to a warm and well-lit coffin in the sky,
there to be laid to rest with a spike of aluminum driven through
his will and a garland of alternating currents smothering his
spirit.
"I hate you," he breathed between clenched teeth, and the
wind carried the words back; and he laughed then, for he
always analyzed his emotions, as a matter of reflex; and be
added, "Exit Orestes, mad, pursued by the Furies . . ."
After a time the slope leveled out and he reached the bottom
of the run and had to stop.
He smoked one cigarette then and rode back up to the top so
that he could come down it again for non-therapeutic reasons.
That night he sat before a fire in the big lodge, feeling its
warmth soaking into his tired muscles. Jill massaged his
shoulders as he played Rorschach with the flames, and he came
upon a blazing goblet which was snatched away from him in
the same instant by the sound of his name being spoken
somewhere across the Hall of the Nine Hearths.
"Charles Render!" said the voice (only it sounded more like
"Shariz Runder"), and his head instantly jerked in that
direction, but his eyes danced with too many afterimages for
him to isolate the source of the calling.
"Maurice?" he queried after a moment, "Bartelmetz?"
"Aye," came the reply, and then Render saw the familiar
grizzled visage, set neckless and balding above the red and
blue shag
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