Free Shiva and Other Stories by Catska Ench, Barry N. Malzberg, Cory Ench

a position and most felons got broken within the early months of their confinement. Then too there was Maria who had been given to inflame and console but with whom, instead, he had fallen into a difficult kind of love. It was not her corporeality but the electron impulses themselves, the cleverness and sophistication of the device, which had hooked him in. Someday, if he lived through this, he would try to explain it all to the technicians. He doubted if they would listen; creating their wonderful devices they had come only to hate themselves because they could not be part of them. If the twenty-fourth century was for accommodation, then it was also for paradox. It was a paradoxical age. The Broadway veered and the gray abscesses colored to flame; the King of the Universe materialized before him in holographic outline. “I thought this would be easier,” the King said. “Of course I am at a good distance from this image so don’t think of anything foolish.”
    Hawkins was thinking of nothing foolish, concentrating instead upon the holograph. The King was a wondrous creature; the form was avian but like no bird that Hawkins had ever seen, and the beak was set of fierce design. The King half-turned, seemed to preen, displayed feathers. “Do you like this?” he said. “I wanted an imposing design in which to appear.”
    “Then this isn’t how you look?”
    “This is exactly how I look,” the King said, “and this is no time for conundrums. Can you give me any reason why I should not sack and destroy the Inner Cluster?”
    “I have brought priceless gems,” Hawkins said; “if you sack and destroy there will be none of them left. Also, as a creature of some sensitivity you would not want to destroy ten trillion sentient and vulnerable souls, would you?”
    The King winked. “You don’t believe me,” he said. “You think that only a lunatic would address you over the light years, threaten destruction, call himself the King of the Universe.”
    “On the contrary,” Hawkins said, “we take you very seriously or why would I be here?”
    “I can’t answer that,” the King said. “I merely run things, not try to account for them; and I must tell you that I am sore displeased. I think I’ll appropriate your gems and dematerialize you.”
    “Don’t do it so quickly,” Hawkins said. It was impossible for him to tell whether the King was serious or capable of such action, but the entire mission had been predicated on the fact that he might be, and his own condition was humbling. “Don’t do it,” he said again, pleadingly. “We’re not without a history. There are elements of our tradition which are honorable. If not science, art; if not art a certain damaged religiosity.” Why am I defending us? he thought; this was the civilization, those were the technicians who first imprisoned me and then sent me out with the simulacrum of a woman to tantalize and to die. Truly, the situation is indefensible. Perceiving this, knowing that his thoughts were moving toward hopelessness and failure, Hawkins reached out and moved the volume switch. “Tell him,” he said. “Tell him the things that you tell me, Maria.”
    “He is a good man,” Maria said. “I love him desperately. We talk in the night; he tells me many things. When he returns to Titan I will dwell with him in holiness and fealty forever.”
    The King fluttered. “Who are you?” he said.
    “My name is Maria and I am the lover of this man, Hawkins. He is a good man.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I walk on this ship and to and fro upon it. Where are you?”
    The King said, “That is not the issue.” His speech had slurred; he seemed to have lost that edge of high confidence with which he had threatened destruction. “Show me yourself.”
    “That is not necessary,” Maria said. “I am faithful to this one man.”
    “Abandon him,” the King said, “and come to me instead. Perhaps we can work out something.”
    “I won’t do that.”
    “Maybe