The Day of the Burning

by Barry N. Malzberg

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

It was a sultry summer day in 1981, and the 3 billion or so inhabitants of the world went about their daily routine unaware that, possibly, the fate of the human race lay in the shaking hands of one George Mercer, an insignificant and slightly neurotic employee of the New York City Department of Welfare. For George had been informed, by an accredited emissary of the Galactic Overlords, that he had 12 hours in which to prove the people of the Earth worthy of admission into the Galactic Federation. George, and George alone, would represent all of mankind. If he failed the entire planet would be destroyed. Was this all a nightmare of delusions dredged up by his tortured subconscious? Or a very real nightmare that would end in the Day of the Burning . . .

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 162

Sample

1981: Do what I will, at the most intimate and terrible moments of my life, Lucas is always there. I call him Lucas. This is the name I have given him, since he appears to be of Lukine dimension and personality and came with no credentials of his own. He accepts what I call him as he accepts everything: blandly and with a whimsical overtone.

I cannot know his name, he explains to me. Lucas is the name we have settled upon, but it bears no more upon his objective reality than “Richard” or “Elizabeth” or “X234”. We agree upon this with an aspect of self-congratulation, fewer and fewer still are the misunderstandings between us. I have always yearned for a friend such as Lucas; now that he is mine, do I have the right to find him a burden?

I will stop this. I really will, I will learn to come directly to the point, lean and hard, sustaining the narrative elements and leaving the question of idiosyncrasy entirely out of it. The Lords prefer a tightly knit prose with a minimum of exposition and many fast-moving action scenes in which the character can be shown in pursuit of an objective. How can I quarrel with their literary taste? I know almost nothing of literature myself.

Lucas has told me of the Lords’ preferences, along with much else. Always, always he is beside me, in or under the seat of purposes.

He is beside me during contemplative moments at the Center when, with case records open before me, coffee in hand, I try to work out the ethos of past histories for the sake of certification. He is in the field to whisper a hasty confidence or two during one or another of the crises which erupt in this deranged and muddled occupation to which I have been tenured. Lying casually in my bed at odd hours of the evening, legs crossed and at ease to continue his dialogue, Lucas continues to coach me, even should I have someone else in that bed. There is a great deal of information to impart, he keeps on hinting, our time is limited, he (and we) must therefore use the moment.

I am trying to say that even when I am having sexual intercourse, that ritual and astonishing act which I have been able to piece out with certain girls at the Center (I make my opportunities close to home) through luck, fortune, circumstance or boredom, even then when I am engaging in my spiteful but necessary acts of lust, Lucas is there to observe and comment. The creature has no sense of shame. He does not even possess a common if bemused decency.

Dolores, the key to this tragic history, and who would have ever known this? I am hovering over Dolores in the dim and light-spotted surfaces of my bed, huddled under various religious motifs on the walls fortunately shrouded by the darkness, wedging myself into her at last with power and authority, small birdlike cries, either hers or mine floating wingless. It is a consummation, an ending; one nurtured through months of hurried conversations at the Center, hundreds of drinks or sandwiches taken bit by bit in neighborhood restaurants, five or six evenings of more calculated concentration and rage during which I have worked on this girl, this girl investigator, this twenty-three-year old idiot possessor of two enormous breasts (Lucas tells me I am quite mad) which I want, with all the cunning at reach, to manipulate. (It turns out, however, that she hates to be touched there and so I have not Had My Way after all; the Lords may appreciate this irony for I do not.)

It will be good for you, I have pointed out to the scatterbrained but intent Dolores, it will take our relationship to a newer and more important level. Resistance to sex is an anachronism, a bit of culture lag; here in 1981 it is impossible to take the old codes seriously. Toss away those restraints and let us, unprotected by superstition, carve out a relationship of our own, which in terms of your breasts could hardly fail to be stunning. Etc. And onward (I am not a cold or a calculating man but it is my best estimate that it has cost me upwards of three hundred investigator’s dollars and hours to bring Dolores to the position she at last occupies) and now Lucas, that bastard, sitting tailor-fashion at the far corner of my bed, his fingers poised against his chin for thoughtful contemplation—he is very slight, not dwarfish, perfectly-formed in fact but very nubile and thus—to my discomfort, able to tenant almost any space near me, is ruining the whole thing as he has disrupted so many others.

“Think about this, George Mercer,” he says, (he still insists upon addressing me in a formal way although one would think that our relationship, by this time, would have arrived at horrid intimacy), “and think well, do you really want to do this?” No one hears him when he is speaking, of course, except me. This is a common aspect of demons and Lucas, I suppose, is a demon, or at least that is one word for it.

“It goes against your best instincts you know, and besides there is something wrong with this girl. I cannot put it into words but she fills me with fear and disgust, much as if I were repelled on the deepest level and my instincts, in any event, are excellent. Not only that, she is no good for you. She allows none of your peculiar sexual liberties and can only warp your own mind through the corrupt transference of her ruined blood.”

Lucas talks in this fashion. You hear not my rhetoric but his. I have been unable to introduce any changes at all in his manner of speech and will not be responsible for it.

“Please,” I say, “you must leave me alone now, Lucas.” I am still working my body in the motions of generation, being obsessed by the thought that Dolores might think something amiss. Also, I subvocalize my conversation but have not yet learned how to do this skillfully. “I’m entitled to some privacy,” I say. “I really am. There have got to be limits to everything; I’ve done all I can for you but this is impossible.”

“I am leaving you alone. I’m leaving you quite alone, George Mercer. Do you see me attempting to stop you from this madness? Although I could, I would think, if I tried. But I take no action. Think of me then as one functioning purely in an advisory capacity. It’s your problem.”

“No,” I murmur, “no, I’ve really got to be left alone.” I heave myself into a position of deeper penetration, the enjambment slightly painful to my abused organ but I am not going to alter positions now. Under no circumstances. “I’m entitled to some consideration myself, damn it. I work hard, I worked hard for this one.”

“You do not understand, George Mercer, or barely understand what it is to work hard. Not that you should take that as a personal insult.”

Too much. My subvocalizations have burst forth; the integrity of the dialogue has been ruptured. “What’s going on here?” Dolores wants to know. “What is this?” Her little eyes fluttered open against my wrist, not that those eyes would see much in the darkness or that she would be able, in any case, to see Lucas. He is, as has been proven to me on so many occasions that I no longer entertain hope of discovery, a private visitation without objective referent. It would be useless, then, to take my problem to the authorities.

“Nothing’s the matter,” I say, “really nothing at all.” I groan, simulate passion, try to indicate that I am completely absorbed in her and that my conversation, indeed, was only the sound of lust.

“You were talking to yourself, weren’t you? I heard it.”

“He isn’t,” Lucas says, picking up the conversation. This I suppose is the attempt to be lightly humorous. “This man is perfectly sane or at least as sane as you are which is to say by the standards of your planet, he is functioning adequately. He is talking to me; he calls me Lucas and I’ve been trying to give him knowledge in a few areas. He’s an intelligent man but still needs a great deal of advice which, of course, I am happy to yield. Advice is my function.”

Lucas is perfectly capable of such extended speeches and whimsicality; the fact that no one is witness to his dialogue gives him the leverage and freedom of the truly insane, not that I am in any position to contemplate him at length in this format. I feel Dolores’s awareness underneath me, she is winking into activity. Murmuring hopeless threats and imprecations against Lucas (who burrows into position as if it were a crevice and regards me with wicked delight) I will myself back to connection.

“This is some time,” Dolores says, “this is just some time to stop. That’s all I can say. What’s wrong with you?” and I realize that my organ, faithless in this extremity, has indeed become limpid and slipped at least partway from her interior to hover dangerously in the area of her thighs.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m truly sorry about this,” having no gift for such graces, and return my mind, not to say my organ, to the task at hand.

Usually, even in the face of Lucas’s dialogues (he has done this to me before but never with such insistence as with Dolores: is there something about her which interests him?) if I cultivate a fierce determination and single-mindedness, Lucas will desist. That is not to say that he will leave the area, he will not leave the area, he is stubborn, but he will, at least, become silent. It is hard to block him out entirely however should he decide to put the issue strongly. I dread this. I really do not quite know what would happen if Lucas should begin, one evening in company, to scream.

“Well, you ought to be sorry,” Dolores says, “I don’t think you know what sorry is,” and so on and so forth but her body, cooperating as her voice does not, still yielding and ingratiating under me, belies the harshness of this statement. “You know,” she says, running her hands up and down the sheets, talking, still inexhaustibly talking (most of my women do this), “I couldn’t stand to think that you were a nut. I mean, with what’s been going on now, there’s just too much stigma attached to fucking lunatics, I couldn’t live with myself if I were.” All of them sound like this. I seem to have an ability, maybe the very ability which attracted Lucas to me originally, to become involved with people who do not converse or think normally. “Well then,” Dolores says, sensing as well she may that I have again become somewhat abstract, her eyes focusing upon Lucas who is sitting with an air of civilized involvement, chin perched upon palm to regard Dolores who, I have been assured, cannot possibly see him, “well, what is this? Are you here or are you over there?”

“Here,” I say, “I’m right here.” I begin to roll and pummel upon her in that peculiar and individuated modus operandi which I have lately adopted for intercourse, not so much a fusion as conference or confrontation, exten. . .