Jitterbug Perfume Part 10

"Our children are in peril."

Rumor by rumor, suspicion of them intensified, until-"Did you hear? A small boy disappeared yesterday at play on the Bosporus-one night they found themselves fleeing Constantinople just ahead of a mob. Alobar bribed a Greek captain to hide them among the stacks of ivory tusks lashed to his deck, and it was from that vantage that they witnessed their home of nearly thirty years burning to the ground.

"Hold back your sobs," Alobar consoled, squeezing one of Kudra's dolphin thighs. "We have learned from this experience two important things. First of all, our Bandaloop experiment is successful; we have slowed, if not turned away, the wrinkle-carving, silver-sowing herald of death. About that we can rejoice. Second, we now are aware that a display of undue longevity creates problems in a community conditioned to age and die. In the future, we must take that cautiously into account."

He pointed to their burning house, which by then was but a glowing ember on the horizon. "We have lost a roof over our heads, a fine teapot, an overrated bath, and some carpets stained by our love. Let them go. We have aliveness, instead. And on this entire world, which I know for fact to be as round as a beet, there is no other pair like you and me."

Through her tears Kudra grinned. "I'm certain that we shall find other rugs to stain," said she. "But even you will miss our bath, wait and see. As for the teapot ..." With a flourish, she produced it from beneath her cloak.

Gathering her to him, teapot and all, Alobar pretended to search under her wraps. "For what I know, you may have hid our bath in there, as well. Ah, I thought so! I feel something hot and wet."

"You may well wish it were a bath, before too long. Oh, what is my poor large nose going to think of a people who neither bathe nor wear perfumes?"

"Well," said Alobar, "my scheme is to condition you straightaway by introducing you to Pan. Of all who stink in the western lands, none stinks in such grand capacity as he. Pan is a G.o.d and is my friend."

"Only you, Alobar. Only you among men could claim a G.o.d for a friend. And naturally it would be a G.o.d unwashed and smelly."

She embraced him, swabbing his beard with kisses at the same moment that the s.h.i.+p plunged its black, wooden tongue into the murmuring mouth of the outer waters, knocking salt teeth loose in every direction; and as the lash lines shuddered from the recoil of that ancient kiss, as the mast pole tilted its neck like a voyeur for a better view, and the mainsail, with a raucous, swift gesture, shook a skyful of stars out of its folds and creases, Kudra and Alobar were carried off to Greece- uncertain, intrepid, possibly immortal, decidedly in love. . . .

Pan remembered the breezy way they had crossed his pasture, fairly skipping as they walked, although that pasture, like all pastures in Arkadia, was weighted down with toe-stubbing rocks; and she had said, "It is so quiet out here I can hear my ears," and he had shot back, "If your nose were your ears, the noise would be deafening." Vaudeville was not dead. It wasn't born yet.

Spying on them from a bushy crag, Pan had to admit that they were as agreeable a pair of homers as he'd ever laid eyes upon ("homers" was what the surviving Greek G.o.ds secretly called mortals, a disparaging term taken from the name of the so-called bard who had spread so many lies about them). Pan admired the bounce in their step, the fun in their voice, the way they paused every fifty yards or so to fondle one another; Pan was curious about the silver pot that the female homer cradled against her round mooey b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if it were a babe, and Pan was amused when the male homer, when invited to inspect one of the woman's silk slippers (meant for padding about upon carpets and now ripped and frazzled by stones), had rolled it up and smoked it.

Oh, there was an air about them, all right, but it wasn't until they were directly beneath his perch that Pan, whose gaze had become fixed upon the prosperous sweep of the woman's hips-if ever a t.w.a.t were a cornucopia, spilling forth meat puddings, hot wines, and sweets of every description: unending (sh.e.l.lfish) inexhaustible (peaches) infinite (mush- rooms) feta feta feta forever, surely it was hers-it wasn't until her companion suddenly pinched his nostrils together and cried, "He's close by! I have got a whiffi", that Pan made the identification. Why, it was ex-King Whatsizname, that brash upstart from the north, the mad fellow who had gone off-was it fifty, sixty homer years ago?-to spike a pet.i.tion on death's door. From the looks of him, death had considered his complaint. Well, well . . .

Alobar was then one hundred and two, yet looked half his age, and the vigorous half at that. White hairs continued to populate his n.o.ble head, as if they were the familiars, the pale shadows of the chestnut filaments, which continued to dwell there, as well; but the phantoms, impotent, infertile in their ghost sheets, had failed to multiply and seemed content to just hang on, haunting the original inhabitants, who though they once might have quaked, had ceased to be afraid. Alobar had put on a few pounds and no longer carried himself like a warrior-Samye meditations had ma.s.saged the tension from his spine, Bandaloop transmissions had turned his spear-arm into a gaily waving thing-but pity the foolish young bully who noticed not the muscles turning and polis.h.i.+ng themselves inside the lapidary of his tunic. His beard was trimmed after the Byzantine fas.h.i.+on, his various flashes of scar tissue had taken on a plum's brilliance, his sleet blue eyes looked out upon the world with a cub's curiosity and a papa bear's cunning. He blew playful puffs of slipper smoke through his nose.

Speaking of noses, his consort sported a grandiose banana that was almost musical in the way it curved. Upon a more angular woman it might have been ridiculous, but this dark creature was such a walking barrage of burpy bulges and bending lines that her nose blended perfectly into her contours. From the thick parabolas of her eyelids to the p.r.o.nounced b.a.l.l.s of her now bare feet, she was nonstop curve, three nymphs' worth of curve, -a foreign contradiction to Greek geometry. The drool that rained from Pan's lips as he spied on her would have frozen in mid-drip had a reliable source informed him that she was as old as the grandmothers who milked the goats in nearby valleys, toothless skeletons (this one had a mouthful of pearly brights) whose only curves were in backs bent double over walking sticks. Kudra was sixty-six, Pan, and as you were to learn, as much a match for you as any homer girl you had ever piped into a pasture. Of course, you, yourself, Mr. h.o.r.n.y, were long past your prime. . . .

Yes, Mr. Goat Foot, despite the angry split between Rome and Constantinople, the tide of Christianity had not receded, but rather continued its slow, soupy flow into every nook and cranny of the land, until there was scarcely a pagan left whose heart and brain had not been lapped by it, lapped so long in many cases that old beliefs had been eroded, if not washed away, and you, Mr. Charmer, Mr. Irrational, Mr. Instinct, Mr. Gypsy Hoof, Mr. Clown; you, Mr. Body Odor, Mr. Animal Mystery, Mr. Nightmare, Mr. Lie in Wait, Mr. Panic, Mr. Bark at the Moon; yes, you, Mr. Rape, Mr. m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, Mr. Ewebangi, Mr. Internal Wilderness, Mr. Startle Reaction, Mr. Wayward Force, Mr. Insolence, Mr. Nature Knows Best, you had been steadily losing your hold on the peasants and were now even weaker in flesh and spirit than when Alobar had seen you last. You were fading, and it was not a pretty sight, for you were a G.o.d, after all, with a G.o.d's strength; born, laughing and prancing, in the high golden circle where great and terrifying decisions are made. It hurt you to experience your popularity waning, it might have driven you to the wineskin were not the wineskin already, Mr. Sensual License, your lifelong friend; and it added to your misery to observe the effects of estrangement upon your former followers. In losing you, they were losing their body wisdom, their moon wisdom, their mountain wisdom, they were trading the live wood of the maypole for the dead carpentry of the cross. They weren't as much fun, anymore, the poor homers^ they were straining so desperately for admission to paradise that they had forgotten that paradise had always been their address. That's why you were attracted to this unlikely couple that came skipping into your meadow, the woman in clear communion with the booming bells of her meat, the man unafraid of appearing frivolous in the eyes of Christ as he caressed a poppy while puffing on a shoe. You would have admired them even had they not been sniffing you out, which, of course, they were.

Pan suspected, and rightly so, that the couple's gaiety, their c.o.c.kiness and elan, was somehow the result of Alobar's successful pet.i.tion against death, and, more than anyone else, the beleaguered G.o.d probably could have imagined the anguished expression minted into the other side of the immortalist coin.

To witness Kudra then, giggling and barefoot among the poppies, it would have been hard for anyone to picture her on her knees in a Constantinople pantry, weeping and wailing, shaking like the shuttle in an overachiever's loom, begging Shakti, s.h.i.+va, Kali, and Krishna to forgive her for rebelling against divine authority. (And it is divine authority, is it not, that insists that we must die? That grants us consciousness for a few decades, then, no matter how gloriously we have used it, s.n.a.t.c.hes it away? Surely, the human race committed some heinous atavistic crime for the G.o.ds to inflict it with mortality, as they have; and isn't it a worsening of our crime, a compounding of our guilt, to try to escape our just punishment?) Even after absorbing the Bandaloop legacy (or part of it, at least), Kudra could never quite overcome the feeling that, in defying death, she was doing something wrong and would be made to pay for it in some prolonged and unspeakably excruciating way. When in Alobar's company, when meditating or bathing, she could exult in a body that remained firm and juicy while thousands about her withered away, but alone in the frottage of twilight, awaiting Alobar's return from the spice docks, fear would ooze out of the brown pit of her chin dimple, and, whimpering, she would turn from one deity to another, even bizarre Ganesh, with his elephant head, pleading for mercy for not having submitted to a widow's death in the rope yard.

Now Alobar had grown up in a more intimate relations.h.i.+p with his G.o.ds. His snored in magic tree trunks and twinkled in the constellations, frequently emerging, mossy-haired or moon-burned, to fraternize with humanity, sharing human foibles and appet.i.tes. As a king in the forests of what would one day be called Bohemia, Alobar, himself, had been deemed half divine. Still, he, too, felt odd and uncomfortable at times, felt a gulf widening between himself and his fellows who went uncomplaining to the grave. "Am I clinging to my individual being only to have it grow inhuman and strange?" he would agonize. "Am I inviting a revenge worse than simple annihilation?"

On a day such as that one, however, a day popping its seams with suns.h.i.+ne, l.u.s.t, and adventure, it was difficult for him-or Kudra-to conceive of anything worse than annihilation. So, they advanced in the lavender mountain haze like chatty autograph-seekers closing in on a celebrity's hideaway, but in their secret hearts they wanted something other than your scrawl, Mr. s.h.a.ggy; they wanted you to reach into their secret hearts and remove the hard, k.n.o.bby doggy bone of doubt that their apparent victory over time had buried there.

"We have been living in Constantinople among the Christians," explained Alobar.

"The Christians doth be everywhere," said Pan.

"Not in my homeland," said Kudra.

"They will be," said Pan. A wave of faintness and nausea broke over him. He ignored it to concentrate on Kudra s mounds.

"Prior to that," said Alobar, "we lived in a cave far away in the East. Have you ever heard of the Bandaloop doctors?"

"No," said Pan. "Don't be stupid."

Alobar reddened. "You've been around a while. I thought someone might have mentioned Bandaloop to you."

"I am Pan," said Pan. "People do not mention things to me."

"Your point is well taken," said Kudra. Pan grinned at her lasciviously. Alobar glowered.

"I will play for thee," said Pan, producing his reeds.

"We wished to talk to you about immortality," protested Alobar.

"Thou art too late," said-Pan. He blew a few weak notes on his pipes.

"Too late for talk or too late for immortality?" asked Kudra.

Pan's instrument made a sound, high and thin.

'Too late for us or too late for you?" asked Alobar. He had noted the G.o.d's physical decline.

"Thou art interested in the immortal, this be immortal," said Pan, and he commenced to pipe in earnest.

"But-" objected Alobar.

"Your point is well taken," said Kudra.

Alobar glowered.

Before she met him, before they flushed him from his thickets, Kudra had imagined Pan to be a giant, a winged monster with fire-blackened hooves and more arms than necessary for the discharge of polite duties; imagined him smoldering, hissing, uprooting trees and spitting hailstones, instructing humanity in a thunderous tone. She was frankly disappointed when he proved to be slighter in stature than her Alobar, and she could barely keep from sn.i.g.g.e.ring at his -foul tangles of wool and his silly tail. Even his stench failed to measure up to Alobar's description of it, striking her as more locally naughty than universally nasty. It wasn't until he began to pipe that Kudra got some sense of Who (or What) He Really Was.

At first, his playing, too, seemed slight; it was so simple, careless, and primitive that one had to sympathize with Timolus, who, judging the music contest between Pan and Apollo, had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the Apollonian lyre, thereby establis.h.i.+ng the tradition that critics must laud polish and restraint, attack what is quirky and disobedient, a tradition that endures to this day. Had Timolus not hooked Pan off the stage so quickly, had he possessed the-the what? the honesty? the humility? (Timolus, after all, couldn't play s.h.i.+t) the nerve? to actually listen to Pan, to respond with something more genuine than his preconceptions, he might have been affected, as Kudra began to be affected, once she stopped smirking at his obvious lack of formal training and quit comparing him unfavorably with the flutist, Lord Krishna. Pan's song, because it served no purpose, because, indeed, it transcended the human yoke of purposes, was, above all, liberating. It was music beyond the control of the player's will or the listener's will; the will, in fact, dissolved in it (which may explain why it was politically necessary for Apollo, with the compliance of Timolus, to drown it out). To Kudra it was the aural equivalent of the rope trick: a giddy ascent up a shaky coil, to arrive in a place of mystery, where the sense of all-encompa.s.sing oneness with the natural world and the sense of the absolute aloneness of the individual coexist and commingle. There was a sort of hippity-hoppity bunny rabbit quality to Pan's erratic melody, but also a roaming goatish quality, stubborn, rough, and lean. If at one instance it sounded tender and idyllic, at another, threatening and brutal, perhaps that was because Pan's song was the inner animal's songs, all of them, summed into one seemingly random epiphany. Kudra felt that at Pan's concert she was on less than solid ground, yet, as unsteady as that ground might be, she was driven to dance upon it. (Maybe there is no proper way to react to the inner animal's tunes but dance to them.) Kudra found herself swaying rhythmically and wiggling her gra.s.s-stained toes. She turned to Alobar to find him executing a little shuffle, snapping the fingers of his left hand while with the right he defined a tempo by shaking the charred remains of her half-smoked shoe. Kudra was amused by Alobar's tentative polka until her eyes fell upon the tumescent protrusion dancing with him. Disgusting, she thought. An erection is just inappropriate. Then she realized with a shock that she was so wet that children could have sailed toy boats in her underpants.

The next thing she knew, she and Alobar were dancing up the hillside, following the Charmer's pipes, through thistle bushes and over jagged rocks; and while panic fear erupted with a roar from her deepest places and while she overheard Alobar plaintively asking, "Doesn't it matter to you that she is my wife?" she was incapable of turning back.

The refined erotic engineering taught by the Kama Sutra had not prepared Kudra for that night of priapism, but the following morning, after she had sponged her chafed parts in the grotto pool and smeared them repeatedly with the aromatics that she lugged about in the teapot (even so, the goat smell was to cling to her for weeks), she found that she and Alobar could face one another without shame, and she nodded in total agreement when Alobar ventured, "I feel somehow that his lechery was secondary, although to what I cannot say."

For breakfast, Pan served them olives, tomatoes, and cheese, which they ate in the nude without a trace of self-consciousness. Throughout the meal, the sleepy-eyed G.o.d kept testing the air, more like a hare than a goat, until at last Alobar inquired what he might be sniffing.

"Flowers, methinks, but unlike any flowers that bloom in these parts. Most strange. Dost thou smell them, too?"

"You are smelling my perfumes," said Kudra, and when Pan looked puzzled, she thrust her shoulder under his nose. His bewilderment increased. "Thou didst not smell like that last night," he said.

Alobar made a move to produce the perfume jars, but Kudra caught his wrist and bade him wait. "We puny homers, as you call us, have some magic of our own," she said. "Tell me, do you find the aroma unpleasant?"

"It be quite pleasing-from a blossom. A woman shouldst smell as thou didst last night."

"Bah! You Western males are all alike, whether you call yourselves G.o.ds or men. You've had your noses in too many battles and too many hunts. Alobar used to hate perfumes, but when he came home from the warehouse every evening accidentally smelling of nutmeg and cinnamon and tumeric, he grew accustomed to the idea that flesh is more appealing when not left to marinate in its own rank juices. Here. Close your eyes for a minute. Just for a minute. Go ahead. Trust me."

Reluctantly, Pan lowered his. big monkey lids, whereupon Kudra doused him with enough patchouli to stampede a herd of elephants. His eyes flew open like the hatch covers on an exploding s.h.i.+p, and he commenced to sniff at his extremities, as if he were wildly in love with himself. A kind of disorienta-tion seemed to seize him, causing him to walk in circles, repeatedly crossing his own path. The nymphs, who had entertained Alobar during the night while Kudra was being entertained by Pan, laughed nervously from their mossy lounge across the pool. One of the nymphs sidled up to the G.o.d and pulled his tail with a petal-picking gesture, only to be flung violently to the ground. At last, Pan sat down between Kudra and Alobar, still inhaling drafts of himself with expressions of disbelief, and began to speak in the most subdued tones Alobar had yet heard him employ.

" Tis true, thou homers do have magic of thine own, the G.o.ds have always known that, known it even better than thee. We G.o.ds know how to use our powers, but most men and women do not know how, that be the difference between us and thee. Sniff sniff."

"Forgive me," said Alobar, "but the important difference between men and G.o.ds is that G.o.ds are immortal and men are not. Is this a result of we men not knowing how to correctly use our powers?"

Pan ran his rather squashed nose along his patchouli-contaminated arm. "Once, a long time ago, when the earth had a flat dark face and a belly of fire, back before the hills had grown so tall that they pushed the moon away, mankind was given a choice between life and death and through trickery or misinformation or something else, made the wrong choice. That is all there is to it."

"But what if," asked Kudra, shooting Alobar a meaningful glance, "but what if we decided now to choose life?"

"Then choose it," said Pan.

Again, Kudra and Alobar exchanged glances. "But would not that anger the G.o.ds?" Kudra asked.

"Ha ha ha!" The laughter burst out of Pan like the barking of some obscene dog. "Anger the G.o.ds? The G.o.ds, those that art still around, wouldst congratulate thee for finally catching on."

"You mean . . . ?"

"I mean that the G.o.ds do not limit men. Men limit men."

"We are," asked Kudra, "as deserving of immortality as the G.o.ds?"

"Thou hast not deserved immortality because thou hast been too puny in thy mind and heart and soul. Sniff."

"But we can change that?" Kudra's voice was hopeful. "We can expand our minds, and enlarge our souls, and choose life over death?"

"Sniff sniff. Thou hast that potential."

Alobar was nodding his head excitedly, and Kudra wore a smile that you could mail a letter in. An eleventh-century letter, written on parchment, rolled into a cylinder and tied with thongs. The Charmer was still cruising the patchouli patches.

"Great Pan," said Alobar, with a degree of reverence, "I used to be king over a state, but now I am king over myself."

"Dearest Pan," said Kudra, with more than a degree of intimacy (in the preceding night, after all, she and the G.o.d had left no s.e.xual stone unturned), "I used to weave rope, but now 1 weave my world."

"Methinks thou doth speak from freedom not from vanity," said Pan, "and I lift my wineskin to thee, for thou art rare among humans. Sniff." He squirted a stream of wine into his ugly, yet sensual, mouth. Red rivulets ran into his beard to disappear there, sopped up, perhaps, by whorls of thirsty wool. "Ah, but Alobar, doth thou not recall my telling thee that G.o.ds art immortal for only so long as the world believes in them? Thou hast only to look at me to see how a G.o.d dwindles when belief in him dwindles. Immortality has its conditions. Immortality has its limits. And immortality has its dangers. Whatever thou hast learned about death from thy wise men in the East, thou wouldst do well to remember ..."

"Yes? Go on," urged Alobar.

"What, Pan? Remember what?" asked Kudra.

It was no use. Pan had finished speaking and would say no more. Nor would he sniff at himself again, for, incredibly, his native odor had peeled away the perfume that masked it; had slowly burned through the potent excess of patchouli like a sunray blazing its way through a purple fog, and now, after less than an hour of suppression, the goat gas-that chloride compound of barnyard and bedroom-was boiling again, filling the grotto with a sleazy vapor, a steam to press a rooster's pants.

With the return of Pan's stink, there came renewed mischief in his eyes. When he scampered to the cave to fetch his pipes, Kudra and Alobar began hastily to dress. "We have a long journey ahead of us," they explained, and with a curious mixture of relief and regret, they bade their divine host a fast farewell.

Neither of them spoke until they reached the pasture, where they stopped to catch their breath after the rigorous descent. There, sitting against the base of the cliff, sequins of sweat sewn to their brows, they regarded one another as pilgrims-or survivors-do. Kudra folded her hands over her uterus, where some very strange little swimmers had recently drowned. Alobar issued a sigh that was shaped like a funnel: a full quart of beet juice could have been poured through it.

"We shan't forget him for a, time," said Alobar.

"We shan't forget him, ever."

"Then you weren't disappointed?"

"You mean disappointed that he wasn't more like Krishna? Not in the end, I wasn't." If Kudra was aware of her pun, she failed to betray it. "The only disappointment I feel is in his reticence to advise us."

"He is Pan. He doth not give advice." At that, Kudra jumped, and so did Alobar, for it was a third party that had said it. The voice, which came from the bushes just above them, was soft and nonthreatening, and in a moment the branches parted, revealing a woman, as bare-a.s.sed as b.u.t.ter. Alobar recognized her as the elder-perhaps the leader-of the nymphs; the one who had addressed him on serious matters the last time he was in that neck of the woods.

"Pardon me, my lady, my gentleman, for following thee."

"Pardon granted," said Alobar, "although you did give us a start. Kudra, may I present ..."

"Lalo," she said, "sister of Echo whose voice, alas, thou nearest repeating thee in all hollow places. Lalo. I only wanted to thank thee for thy visit to Pan. It brought him cheer at a time when his cheer is in short supply."

"Really?" asked Kudra. "From the way he greeted us at the beginning and dismissed us at parting, he did not strike me as overjoyed by our presence."

"He is Pan," said Lalo rather sharply. "Didst thou expect him to bow and kiss thy hand?"

Kudra blushed. Alobar extended his arm to a.s.sist Lalo down onto flat ground. The nymph was not quite as nimble as she once had been. "How grave is Pan's condition?" asked Alobar. "Surely he shan't succ.u.mb. Pan is in this land, in its "crags, in its cataracts, its winds, its meadows, its hidden places, he can never go from the land, he will be here always, as long as the land is."

"Two things I wouldst say to thee on that account," responded Lalo. "First, the conclusion that a wise homer- forgive the expression, sir-wouldst draw from Pan's admission that he lives only so long as men believe in him, is that men control the destiny of their G.o.ds. Thou mightst even say that men create their G.o.ds, as much as G.o.ds create men, for as I, untutored oread that I be, understand it, it is a mutual thing. G.o.ds and men create one another, destroy one another, though by different means."

A whistle escaped Kudra's lips. "Could such a thing be? Yes, if lack of man's belief is what is ailing Pan, it must be true."

"A warning!" snapped Lalo, who at that moment sounded more like a Fury than a nymph. "Thou must never wax smug or arrogant about thy influence upon the divine. If thou didst create G.o.ds, it was because thou needest them. The need must have been very great indeed, to inspire such a complex, difficult, and magnificent undertaking. Now, many art the men who think they no longer needeth Pan. They have created new G.o.ds, this Jesus Christ and his alleged papa, and they think that their new creations will suffice, but let me a.s.surest thee that Christ and his father, as important as they may be, are no subst.i.tutes for Pan. The need for Pan is still great in humanity, and thou ignoreth it at thy peril.

"That bringeth me to the second thing," Lalo continued. Her deep-set eyes were burning, her wine-red nipples were as erect as toy soldiers. "Thou art correct, Pan doth be in the land, he and the wildwoods art a part of one another, but thou art mistaken when thou implieth that the land doth last eternal. There be a time coming when the land itself be threatened with destruction; the groves, the streams, the very sky, not merely here in Arkadia but wildwoods the world over ..."

"Inconceivable," muttered Alobar.

"If Pan be alloweth to die, if belief in him totally decomposes, then the land, too, wilt die. It wilt be murdered by disrespect, just as Pan is murdered."

Alobar looked around him. In every direction as far as he could see, fierce outcroppings of gray stone, green curves of pasture, uncompromising slopes, spiny shrubs and delicate poppies (unlikely partners in a fling ordered by a reckless breeze), mountains teeming with invisible springs, clouds lying like oatcakes upon the blue tablecloth of sky, all of this seemed so inviolable that he could not entertain the notion of its vulnerability, and he said as much to Lalo.

"Just the same," the nymph answered, "shouldst thee continue to be successful in thy pursuit of long life, thou wilt see it transpire before thine eyes. Thus, I urge thee to protect Pan's dominions and reputations wherever thou mightst go. It be especially thy duty, not merely as a subject of Pan, but because thou, Alobar, art a prime pract.i.tioner of individualism, and it wilt be this new idea of individuality that leadeth many future men astray, causing them to feel superior to Pan, and thus to the land, which they wilt set upon to rape and spoil."

A ripple of annoyance like the shock wave from a splat of buzzard guano, zigzagged along Alobar's forehead. "Nymph," he said, puffing himself up like a pigeon, "I do not know if I enjoy you telling me what my duty is."

"Alobar ..." Kudra's tone was meant to be conciliatory.

"Nor would I describe myself as a subject of Pan's. As for your attack on individualism ..."

"Good sir, I do not attack thy philosophy. I only warn that it be a dangerous instrument in the unfeeling hands of the foolish and corrupt."

"Please inform me, then," said Alobar sarcastically, holding his stuffy pose, "by what authority a c.u.n.t-of-the-woods issues warnings concerning the future. Among your more obvious talents-"

"Alobar!" This time, Kudra's voice was p.r.i.c.kly with disapproval.

"--do you harbor the gift of prophecy?"

"Alas, I cannot make that claim for myself, sir, but ere I romped in Arkadia, I lived for years at Delphi, where I was intimate with the priests and priestesses who served the Oracle, and where I wast privy to much oracular prognosis. Now I can sense that the boldness of my speech hast ruffled thy feathers, nevertheless thou must hear yet another prophetic plea. Certainly thou dost recollect Pan's words to the effect that mankind hast been too puny in his mind and heart and soul to deserve immortality. Yea? And certainly, also, to have conquered age to the extent that thou hast, thou must have done good strengthening work in thine own mind and heart and soul. Someday, however, a thousand years from today, there wilt be men who seek to defeat death by intelligence alone. They wilt combat age and death with potions and the like, medical weapons that their minds have invented, and age and death will shrink back from them and their medicines. Alas, because they fight with reason only, making no advance in the area of soul and heart, true immortality wiltst be denied them. However, they must not be allowed to attain even the false immortality that their mental facility doth gain for them, for huge evil will be conducted if they shouldst. Thus, thou must vow upon this day that shouldst thou be living still when these events transpire, that thou willst battle them and refuseth prosperity to any immortalist thrust that doth not rise from man's soul and heart as well as his mind. Do promise me now."

"I am sorry," said Alobar, "but I cannot do that. Your intentions are good, so therefore 1 shall consider your request, but I do not make promises to just anyone about just anything."