This Immortal by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online

and regards them with something like pleasure.
    Besides Phil, I took along a pretext-that I wanted to see how Hasan was feeling after the lamentable bash he'd received at the hounfor. Actually, what I wanted was a chance to talk to Hasan and find out how much, if anything, he'd be willing to tell me about his latest employment.
    THIS IMMORTAL 45
    So Phil and I walked it. It wasn't far from the Office compound to the Royal. About seven minutes, ambling-
    "Have you finished writing my elegy yet?" I asked.
    "I'm still working on it."
    "You've been saying that for the past twenty years. I wish you'd hurry up so I could read it."
    "I could show you some very fine ones . . .
    Lord's, George's, even one for DOS Santos. And I have all sorts of blank ones in my files-the fill-in kind-for lesser notables. Yours is a problem, though."
    "How so?"
    "I have to keep updating it. You go right on, quite blithely-living, doing things."
    "You disapprove?"
    "Most people have the decency to do things for half a century and then stay put. Their elegies present no problems. I have cabinets full. But I'm afraid yours is going to be a last-minute thing with a discord ending. I don't like to work that way. I prefer to deliberate over a span of many years, to evaluate a person's life carefully, and without pressure. You people who live your lives like folksongs trouble me. I think you're trying to force me to write you an epic, and I'm getting too old for that.
    I sometimes nod."
    "I think you're being unfair," I told him. "Other people get to read their elegies, and I'd even settle for a couple of good limericks."
    "Well, I have a feeling yours will be finished before too long," he noted. "Ill try to get a copy to you in time."
    "Oh? From whence springs this feeling?"

46 ROGER ZELAZNY
    "Who can isolate the source of an inspiration?"
    "You tell me."
    "It came upon me as I meditated. I was in the process of composing one for the Vegan-purely as an exercise, of course-and I found myself thinking:
    'Soon I will finish the Greek's."" After a moment, he continued, "Conceptualize this thing: yourself as two men, each taller than the other."
    "It could be done if I stood in front of a mirror and kept shifting my weight. I have this short leg.-
    So, I'm conceptualizing it. What now?'*
    "Nothing. You don't go at these things properly."
    "It's a cultural tradition against which I have never been successfully immunized. Like knots, horses-Gordia, Troy. You know. We're sneaky."
    He was silent for the next ten paces,
    "So feathers or lead?" I asked him.
    "Pardon?"
    "It is the riddle of the kallikanzaros. Pick one."
    "Feathers?"
    "You're wrong."
    "If I had said 'lead'.. . ?"
    "Uh-uh. You only have one chance. The correct answer is whatever the kallikanzaros wants it to be.
    You lose."
    "That sounds a bit arbitrary."
    "Kallikanzaroi are that way. It's Greek, rather than Oriental subtlety. Less inscrutable, too. Because your life often depends on the answer, and the kallikanzaros generally wants you to lose."
    "Why is that?"
    "Ask the next kallikanzaros you meet, if you get the chance-They're mean spirits."
    We struck the proper avenue and turned up it.
    THIS IMMORTAL 47
    "Why are you suddenly concerned with the Radpol again?" he asked. "It's been a long time since you left."
    "I left at the proper time, and all I'm concerned with is whether it's coming alive again-like in the old days. Hasan comes high because he always delivers, and I want to know what's in the package."
    "Are you worried they've found you out?"
    "No. It might be uncomfortable, but I doubt it would be incapacitating."
    The Royal loomed before us and we entered. We went directly to the suite. As we walked up the padded hallway, Phil, in a fit of perception, observed, "I'm running interference again."
    "That about says it."
    "Okay. One'11 get you ten you find out nothing."
    "I won't take you up on that. You're probably right."
    I knocked on the darkwood door.
    "Hi there," I said as it opened.
    "Come