Far-Seer

Afsan was amused by the dances of the individuals, how each changed course to give everyone else wide clearance as they passed. He had never seen it from this perspective before. The smaller—and therefore younger—Quintaglios always started to veer out of the way first, but even the oldest would also make at least a token effort to move aside as well. The pattern wasn’t as smooth as that drawn by objects in the sky, but it seemed to be nearly as predictable.

Looking out to the horizon, there was nothing but water, an endless liquid vista, waves moving from east to west. There was something soothing about the unembellished vastness.

Afsan rotated slowly in the bucket, scanning the horizon through a complete circle. Nothing broke the waves anywhere. So simple, so uncomplicated.

And yet, as he looked, it seemed, perhaps, that the horizon fell off to his left and right. It didn’t matter which direction he looked, the effect was the same. Perhaps, maybe, hard to say. But it looked like it curved away. Or is that just me seeing what I want to see? Afsan thought. Last night, he’d convinced himself of something new: that the world was round. Now he was even claiming that he could see the roundness.

And yet. And yet. The effect was persistent. No matter how hard he tried to force his eyes not to see the gentle sloping, it was always visible, always there just at the edge of certainty.

Overhead, though, was the most glorious sight of all. In the time it had taken Afsan to climb the mast, the Face of God had gone from almost half lit to a fat crescent, a vast sickle of orange and yellow and brown arcing across a fourth of the sky.

Afsan tilted his head back, his tail bowing under the shift in weight, and looked straight up. What are you? he wondered.

Are you God?

The Prophet Larsk had certainly thought so. When he’d been a child, Afsan, like all his age, had memorized Larsk’s original proclamations, the speeches the prophet had made in the central square of what is now Capital City. “I have gazed upon the Face of God,” Larsk had said. “I have seen the very countenance of our creator…”

But the Face of God did not look like a Quintaglio face. It was orange and yellow and brown, not green; it was round, not drawn-out; it had many eyes, not just two; its mouth had no teeth—if that great spot, oval and white, sometimes visible on the Face was indeed the mouth.

And yet, why should God look like a Quintaglio? God is perfection; a Quintaglio is not. God is immortal, requiring no food, no air. Quintaglios have muzzles lined with teeth and terminated with nostrils precisely because they are not immortal, because they need material sustenance to live. And Afsan knew that two eyes were better than one, for with two came depth perception. Surely the ten or so that wandered across the Face were that much better than just two?

Even as the crescent waned, Afsan found himself spellbound by the play of colors across it.

But no! No. It is not the Face of God. It cannot be. Afsan’s tail muscles twitched in frustration, there being too little room in the lookout’s bucket for a proper slap.

He’d worked it all out. He knew.

The Face of God is a planet.

A planet.

Nothing more.

But if that is true, where is God? What is God?

There is no God.

Afsan flinched. His pulse quickened; his claws jumped from their sheaths. The idea frightened him.

There is no God.

Could that be so? No, no, no, of course not. Madness to even think such a thing. There must be a God. There must be!

But where? If not here, where? If not the swirling object above his head, where? If not looking down upon the pilgrims from high above, where?

Where?

Afsan’s stomach knotted, and he knew it wasn’t just from the constant swaying of the bucket.

Quintaglios exist, he thought.

And if we exist, then someone made us.

And that someone must be God.

Well, that was simple enough. All right, then. God existed.

But who created God?

The mast moved to and fro. A stiff breeze played over Afsan’s features.

God just postpones the inevitable. If everything requires a creator, then God requires one, too.

He thought briefly of a children’s astrology class he’d taken kilodays ago. His teacher had been trying to explain the rudiments of the universe—Land being a huge island floating down the endless River. But one of the other youngsters—a visitor from a Pack that normally roamed farther north in Arj’toolar province—had said no. The way she’d heard it, Land balanced on an armorback, the sturdy four-footed animal holding everything up on its thick bony carapace.

“Ah!” the instructor had said. “But what does the armorback rest upon?”

The girl had replied immediately. “Why, another armorback, of course.”

The instructor’s tail had swished with delight. “And what does that armorback rest upon?”

“A third armorback,” said the girl.