Zardoz Read Free Page B

surpluses and needs for inter-Vortex barter and exchange, year 2293, third harvest yield.”
    As Zed toyed with the ring, figures began to float in the air before him, in red and green and white.
    He reached out to touch them, remembering how he had tried to touch the gun of Zardoz in the same manner when a boy. The figures vanished and reappeared in ascending and descending order. Soap, leather, salt, barley, oats. The surplus of one Vortex could pass to another which had need of it. Numbers passed from one section to another. And all in midair, issuing from the ring. He moved his hand and caught the figures on his palm, compressing them down until one hand covered the other. He sent the images spiraling and shooting around the room. Then they vanished, and the air was still. Hunger pulled at him. His fast had been long.
    “Meat,” he mumbled.
    Meat appeared in midair,  transparent but real.  An image in thin air. He spoke again.
    He could look into the ring and see the image still. He could project it onto the walls. He could command it.
    “Who lives here?”
    The face of the man he had killed in the flying head’s mouth appeared before him.
    “I am Arthur Frayn – Vortex Four.”
    “No!” How could this man come back to haunt him, to betray him? The face grew huge, until only a single eye filled the wall. It cartwheeled across the ceiling as Zed’s hand shook.
    “I am Arthur Frayn, Vortex Four. I am Arthur Frayn, Vortex Four.”
    The accusing voice continued, unhindered, remorseless, in its calm insistence, a mocking denial of its own death. Zed shook with fear, there was no end to this repeating answer. Zed’s question had begun an endless comment on his murderous action. He shook the ring, stamped on it, shouted for it to stop, but the voice droned on as if to drive him mad. In desperation he stuffed the ring under a cushion, to suffocate the image. But soon the voice came from under there, muffled but distinct.
    “I am Arthur Frayn, Vortex Four…”
    Zed was startled by newer voices, from outside the walls. Moving to the window he looked down and saw people unloading the Zardoz head of its membrane-covered bodies. They were all young and lovely. They carelessly threw the bodies onto wooden carts. One girl counted them off.
    “Three from Vortex Eight. Four from Vortex Five.”
    “Did you ever see such mangled limbs?”
    “Some kind of rock fall in their quarry.”
    “Liver malfunction…Myopia, left eye…”
    Others helped unload the grain in which Zed had hidden. This they took into the bakery.
    They all spoke with familiarity and joked as they worked, but they were getting dangerously close to his hiding place.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The People

    Zed ran lightly, through lush greenery, over unfamiliar plants until he felt it safe to stop. The trees were green with leaf, rich with blossom. Ahead through the branches he saw a larger house. Built of old, carved, and yellowed stone it still had an added strangeness. Tall transparent domes clustered to form a huge roof above the older structure. Zed watched and wondered, the unfamiliarity of habitations in good order being new to him. How unlike the smoke-blackened gaping windows were those in front of him. Glass glistened in every pane. How unlike the smashed tiles and rafters was the magical roof on the house before him. So far from the ruined cities of the Outlands. Everything was in exquisite order, even the plants underfoot seemed constructed, and neatly painted.
    He picked one and held it to the ring.
    “What is it?”
    “Flower.”
    “For what?”
    “Decorative.”
    The object “so neat and richly colored fell from his fingers.
    There was a sound, high and hypnotic, that grew from the trees. A girl had appeared, like magic from the woods, bare-breasted, blonde, astride a white horse. She gazed at him, through him, her eyes penetrating his deepest places. She was one of the other people, yet she had not the disdain in her face, only infinite love and