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The Deathbird
1
This is a test. Take notes. This will count as ¾ of your final grade. Hints: remember, in chess, kings
cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally
powerless, cannot affect one another, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect
of Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, “Thou art God.” Provisos of
equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media access to two hundred million people in
prime time while opposing viewpoints are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells
the truth. Operational note: these sections may be taken out of numerical sequence: rearrange to suit
yourself for optimum clarity. Turn over your test papers and begin.
2
Uncounted layers of rock pressed down on the magma pool. White-hot with the bubbling
ferocity of the molten nickel-iron core, the pool spat and shuddered, yet did not pit or char or smoke
or damage in the slightest, the smooth and reflective surfaces of the strange crypt.
Nathan Stack lay in the crypt-silent, sleeping.
A shadow passed through rock. Through shale, through coal, through marble, through mica
schist, through quartzite; through miles-thick deposits of phosphates, through diatomaceous earth,
through feldspars, through diorite; through faults and folds, through anticlines and monoclines,
through dips and synclines; through hellfire; and came to the ceiling of the great cavern and passed
through; and saw the magma pool and dropped down; and came to the crypt. The shadow.
A triangular face with a single eye peered into the crypt, saw Stack; four-fingered hands
were placed on the crypt’s cool surface. Nathan Stack woke at the touch, and the crypt became
transparent; he woke though the touch had not been upon his body. His soul felt the shadowy
pressure and he opened his eyes to see the leaping brilliance of the worldcore around him, to see the
shadow with its single eye staring in at him.
The serpentine shadow enfolded the crypt; its darkness flowed upward again, through the
Earth’s mantle, toward the crust, toward the surface of the cinder, the broken toy that was the Earth.
When they reached the surface, the shadow bore the crypt to a place where the poison winds
did not reach, and caused it to open.
Nathan Stack tried to move, and moved only with difficulty. Memories rushed through his
head of other lives, many other lives, as many other men; then the memories slowed and melted into
a background tone that could be ignored.
The shadow thing reached down a hand and touched Stack’s naked flesh. Gently, but firmly,
the thing helped him to stand, and gave him garments, and a neck-pouch that contained a short knife
and a warming-stone and other things. He offered his hand, and Stack took it, and after two hundred
and fifty thousand years sleeping in the crypt, Nathan Stack stepped out on the face of the sick
planet Earth.
Then the thing bent low against the poison winds and began walking away. Nathan Stack,
having no other choice, bent forward and followed the shadow creature.
3
A messenger had been sent for Dira and he had come as quickly as the meditations would
