Deus Irae

Suddenly the three lizards whipped about, peering into the darkness, their bodies straining against or toward something invisible.

“What is it?” Tibor said; again he clutched at the pistol concealed on his person.

“Bugs,” Potter said laconically.

“The dumb bastards,” Jackson said.

Bugs, Tibor thought. How horrible. He had heard of them many tunes, them and their multifaceted eyes, their gleaming shells—a weird conglomeration of unhuman parts. And to think that they bred their way out of mammals, he thought, and in such a few short years. Speeded up frantically by the radiation. We’re related to them and they stink. They offend the world. And surely they offend God.

“What are you doing there?” a metallic voice buzzed. Tibor saw them moving, upright; they lurched toward the.light. “Lizzys,” the bug said scathingly. “And—Frebis forbid!—an inc.”

Five bugs stood by the light now, warming their—Christ, Tibor thought. Warming their brittle bodies; if a bug was hit directly in the breadbasket, it broke in half. So much for bugs: they depended mainly on their facile tongues to get them what they wanted. Bugs talked their way out of a good deal of trouble; they were the lie-spi

These were unarmed. As near as he could make out. And, standing by his cart, the three lizards relaxed; their fear had departed.

“Hey, bug,” Jackson said, nodding toward one of the chitin-shelled creatures. “How come you have lungs? Where’d you get them? Vermin shouldn’t have lungs. It’s against nature.”

Potter said, “We ought to cook us up a little bug soup.”

Incredulous, Tibor said, “You mean you eat them?”

“Right,” the third lizard said, his arms folded, leaning against Tiber’s cart. “When times are tough… they taste awful.”

“You rotting obnoxious freak,” one bug said. They did not seem frightened; they made no move in the direction of escape.

“Does your tail come off?” another bug said to the three lizards.

“What tail?” another bug said. “That’s its pecker hanging down behind it. Lizards’ peckers stick out behind, not in front.”

The bugs laughed coarsely.

“I saw this lizard once,” a bug declared, “who had an erection—and he got scared off, I guess her husband came back, and he tried to run, and all the husband had to do was tromp down with his foot on that great hard pecker sticking out behind.” All the bugs laughed; they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“What happened after he tromped down on it?” a bug asked. “Did it come off then?”

“It came off,” the other bug continued, “and it lay there twitching and flopping in the dirt until sundown.”

Potter said, “Let’s take these insects down a peg or two. Listen to them—they’re uppity.” He glanced around him, apparently seeking something to use as a weapon. He took his tune and the bugs did not move; they seemed relaxed and confident.

And now Tibor saw why. The bugs had not ventured out alone. A score of ru

Nine

This was not his first encounter with ru

The good-natured little faces peered up at Tibor. The creatures were not over four feet high. Fat and round, covered with thick pelts… beady eyes, quivering noses—and great kangaroo legs.

Amazing, these swift evolutionary entelechies, cast forth from what were essentially poisons. So many and so fast; so many immediate kinds. Nature, striving to overcome the filth of the war: the toxins.

“Clearness be with you,” the ru

“The war,” Tibor said vaguely, resenting the pushiness of the ru

“Did you know your cart is malfunctioning?” the ru

“No,” he said, taken by surprise. “Doesn’t it run? It got me this far; I mean—” Panic flew up inside him.

“There is an autofac near here that still works a little,” the largest of the ru

“Oh yes,” Tiber said. “The wheel bearings. They probably are ru

“A few miles north of here,” the smallest of the ru

“Sure,” the body of ru

To Potter and Jackson, Tibor said, “Can I trust them?” He held in his mind, at this moment, a nebulous fear: Suppose the ru

Potter said, “You can trust them. They’re harmless. Which is more than you can say for these damn bugs.” He kicked at a cluster of bugs; they scuttled away, avoiding his scaly foot.

“An autofac, an autofac,” the ru

“Catch you coming back,” Jackson yelled after Tibor. “Make sure you get a written guarantee, just to be safe.”

“You mean,” Tibor said, “that I can expect tarrididdle from an autofac?” It must be a Russian one, he thought. The Russian autofacs were Byzantine in their convolutions of intellect. They seemed for the most part to be excellently built, however. If this one still functioned at all, it could undoubtedly repair his dry-ru

He wondered how much it would charge.

They reached the autofac at dawn. Brilliantly colored clouds, like the fingerpaintings of a baby, stretched across the sky. Birds or quasi-birds chirped in the weedy bushes growing on all sides of the ru

“It’s around here somewhere,” Earl, the leader of the ru

“How about a bite to eat?” a ru

“We can get something from the autofac,” Earl said, nodding his shaggy head wisely. “Come on, inc.” He jerked an abrupt arm motion at Tibor. During the night, the click-clacking of the dry wheel bearings had become hideously loud; the assembly would not function much longer. “We make a right turn here,” Earl said, advancing toward a yarrow thicket, “then a sharp left.” Only his tail could be seen as he struggled into the stiff brush of the thicket. “Here’s the entrance!” he called presently, and waved Tibor to follow him.

“Will it cost very much?” Tibor said apprehensively.

“Won’t cost,” Earl said, thrashing about in the shrubbery a short distance ahead of Tibor. “Nobody comes this way anymore; it’s perishing. It’ll be glad to see us. These things, they have emotions, too. Of sorts.”

An opening appeared ahead of Tibor as he floundered about in his unwieldy cart. A weedless place, as free of grass as if it had been shaved. In the center of the open place he could make out a flat, large disc, evidently metal; clamped shut, it greeted him soundlessly, confronting him with its meaningful presence. Yes, he thought, it’s a Russian autofac that landed here in seed form from an orbiting satellite. Probably in the last days of the war, during which the enemy tried everything.