Zardoz Read Free Page A

ground corn into flour, the flour was mixed and cooked, all by some unseen hand. Zed tasted food for the first time in many days.
    Only a bite, a taste. The bread was green. Bread—a slave food; green-magic! He touched the floury surface. He scanned the room as a hunter, detached and quick. The next moment he left the bakery to continue its automatic way. Almost soundlessly, he left as he had entered.
    Zed was once again in a courtyard. The head had come to rest outside, the bakery was behind him. To his right, another building seemed to call him. It was a cottage, with two distended transparent domes in front of it, bulging breast-like, filled with plants.
    Intrigued, Zed approached cautiously. On the roof were delicate silver vanes, turning into the sun, following its rays like a flower. Inside the cottage Zed gently prodded the dome doorways; they parted like lips.
    Zed was within a womb of foliage, that itself contained many other transparent buds and growth points for infant plants. They lived in membranes that swelled and grew from floor to ceiling, each attached by tubings to other plants and sources of nourishment.
    The wet earth in troughs crawled with life, teeming with worms and soft many-legged insects. A rotting sweet stench of decomposition pervaded all. The moist air seemed to close around him condensing on his body. Vivid blossoms hung before him. He brushed against thick leaves that seemed fashioned by a demon’s hand rather than grown from the soil. Spiky thorns clutched at him as he passed. Spheres within spheres contained other, greener growths wreathed in moist fogs.
    Slime begat gases and nutrients for plants which in turn fed larger, stranger breeds, fulfilling some subtle biological plan. Seasons stretched on or speeded by in other tanks and casks.
    Familiar wheat plants basked in unearthly violet lights while their naked roots floated in clear liquid. Some grain plants were monstrously tall, others fat and sleek with grass stems. The whole, a green menagerie of the exotic and half real, a universe in which he was the alien. All this was in step with a purpose. He was a lone mammal, adrift in their land. Notwithstanding this, there was human presence overall. The fine-tuned tubing, the delicately calibrated vessels, the scales, the bright bags of colored dusts, the clean and neat arrangement of the place—it all be-spoke a planner. All was complex and interwoven, yet it had been conceived and ordered. The lush vegetation was the result of countless plans and progresses—where was the creator of all this life?
    Zed was enfolded and lost within the slippery midget forest of glass and plants. Its humid air oppressive, he groped for a door—an exit into air. He felt the walls, sniffing like a dog for its prey. He sensed his quarry lurked here. In some seclusion deeper than this, beyond these walls yet near at hand, was the man who had made all that.
    His hands ran over the walls, searching. His cunning fingers found a crack. He pushed and a door creaked open, revealing a flight of steps. His hunter’s skill was bearing fruit.
    The new room was quite different from the first. It was a jumble of strange bits and pieces, yet it seemed to have a life, a happier purpose than the places below. Drawings, plans, and toys were cluttered and crammed into the attic of the cottage. Zed picked up one box, and opening it, jumped back as a tiny toy popped out at him, then hung, limply suspended. Was it all a complex joke? Were they all in one vast game? He walked through a beaded curtain into another room, velvet curtains enclosed a painting – Zardoz! Zed leaped back as if discovered. Could Zardoz still see him? Was the God alive?
    “Attention, attention, attention!”
    Zed felt that he was not yet discovered, but knew the voice was near. It came from a mirrored box. Opening it, he saw a ring with a crystal stone. It was glowing with an inner light and the voice issued from it.
    “Harvest produce report, submit