Zardoz Read Free

below merry, sparkling eyes. Like the people in the transparent sacs above, he had an awesome disdain that cut through the bearded grin. He wore his strange and colorful clothes as if for inspection by a lesser being; condescendingly, casually. He had the look of a man who might vanish, or turn into a mischievous spirit; alien, elaborate, and deadly. And, overall, the frightening and persistent look of one who is assured to a point of unnatural supremacy.
    Zed was unafraid; his gun floated up effortlessly to confront the smiling face. He fired. The body took the bullet well, barely moving as the metal passed clean through. It buckled slightly as the truth transmitted to its brain.
    The head turned back to Zed; to plead perhaps?
    “You! How foolish. I could have shown you…without me…you are nothing…so pointless.”
    He laughed and fell. Caught in the slipstream, he hung for a moment. “How pointless!” he cried again. He danced one moment longer on thin air and then was lost without a cry.
    Zed saw him fall like a brilliant dart into the clouds below, his cloak still fluttering gaily as if in mockery of his death.

CHAPTER THREE
    The Vortex As Heaven

    Zed still stood in the mouth, leaning against the upper teeth, mirroring the last position of his victim. Zed had taken the place of that body in more ways than one. He was the only aware being on the flying craft, all the rest were as dead, or about to be dead. He smiled at the thought.
    He looked down with something of the triumph the man had earlier showed to him.
    Zed allowed himself a faint smile. Things were progressing favorably. He still lived.
    He let the wind whip at his clothing and the light rain beat against him. It ran from his body as it ran from the surface of the flying vehicle.
    As it ran down Zed’s lips so it ran down the curved lips of Zardoz, and Zed looked out from that awful mouth-doorway, a minute figure. The gaping mouth, the glaring eyes floated serenely on, but they contained a new commander, Zed. Through the glowing orbs which had so frightened Zed as a boy, youth, and man, Zed looked down upon the cities of which he had been so afraid. Zed had pierced the God head. He was inside the hollow shell he had once so revered. From whence or how it moved, he knew not, but that it was false, he was certain. The love and reverence with which Zardoz had once filled him could no longer protect him, for he had found that his God was hollow as this ship. He was alone. His quest had begun.
    The head floated on, gradually descending through the clouds into a valley cradling a lake. A fertile, green oasis in a black land. He flew lower and lower over fields that pleased him with their verdant exactness. Carefully laid paths and canals crisscrossed the neatly tilled land. Rows of fruit-bearing trees led the way downward. A profusion of blossom and color rose up to greet the head. The head circled slowly as if searching for a gap in an invisible wall, as if the valley were protected by more than high cliffs and mountains.
    It sank down toward a cluster of dwellings, strange and elegant yet archaic. Zed did not look down on them; he had reburied himself in the grain at the center of the head.
    With a strange hiss like the sighs of a thousand voices the head came to rest. Zed waited a moment, then ran to the mouth, leaped through, tumbled down the stony beard, and ran for cover as fast as his lightning reflexes and strong muscles would take him. There was no moment to look and wonder. He just had time to run, leap, and hide. The head had come to rest in a cluster of farm buildings, its mouth facing inward on to a courtyard, its eyes glaring down at the rooftops.
    Gun first, he probed into the building in whose doorway he had sheltered. A strange and dusty interior. White dust everywhere. Long cones poured more dust into sacks. The smell of baking filled the air. Zed crept quietly along rows of freshly made loaves. He reached and picked one up, and as the mill