Seed of the Gods

you've been in sub-space, as you call it, for thirty centuries, and if all those achievements you speak of were accomplished so very, very long ago, what are the advances of the past few hundred years?» She smiled. «I'd have guessed that you would have developed goodies like matter transmission or telepathy or eternal life.» «Blinking is somewhat like matter transmission,» he said. «But I see your point. Considering the fantastic progress you people have made in the past two thousand years, we seem rather static, don't we?» «Maybe you've gone as far as man needs to go,» she said. «There are many things we don't know,» Toby said, an entirely new avenue of thinking opened to him. «Our theories of the age and creation of the universe are amazingly like those developed by your scientists and not much more advanced. You know almost as much about the structure of the atom as we, but you've made a tragic detour into the destructive aspects of the science. In some fields you're even more advanced.» «Score one for our side,» Sooly teased. «Tell me so I can feel superior.» «I'm not sure it's an achievement,» Toby said, «but your scientists have done work in the field of what they call molecular biology which has never been duplicated on Ankan or any of the Ankani worlds.» He grinned. «Of course, I must admit that the reason is an ancient and severe taboo against such work, a taboo which is one of the foundation stones of Ankani morality. I was shocked, at first, when I learned of the experiments being conducted, but I admit that you have reason. Do you know that your lifespan is shortened drastically because of the harmful rays of your sun?» «No,» Sooly said, thinking of all the sun baths she'd taken. «If I were faced with such an early death,» Toby said, forgetting for the moment that he was, being an exile on Orton, «I suppose I would try everything to remedy the situation, down to and including messing around with the very foundations of life, sacred as they are.» He mused for a moment. «Then there's the theory, first proposed by my ancestor, Mari Wellti, that your sun's rays also contribute to what, apparently, is unique to Orton, evolution of species.» «If evolution is unique to us, how did your race get started?» He laughed. «In the old records there is a fable much like your Adam and Eve. That's another of the things we don't know. We Akanis can be stubborn people. We've been looking for the mystery of the Wasted Worlds for centuries, for example, but when we run into a problem which has no answer, even our stubbornness wears thin. I think people gave up speculating on the origin of the race thirty millennia ago. It's like you trying to answer the question who created God?» An amusing thought came to him. «And speaking of God, do you know who lit the burning bush in your Bible?» «Don't tell me,» Sooly said, slightly shocked. «And the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night?» «Bastard,» Sooly said, only half-joking. «Abraham came out of Ur,» Toby said. «When his people ended up enslaved by the Egyptians a few of the old tankermen didn't like it. After all, they were our people, in a way. They did something about it.» «The Egyptians were a native people?» Sooly asked. «I suppose there was some bleed-through from Sumer,» Toby said. «We haven't documented it. I'd say that the Egyptian civilization was largely Ortonian.» «Now who's so damned superior?» Sooly said. «You see, we'd have made it on our own.» «You might have, at that,» Toby admitted. «And that pleases me.» Sooly had drifted away from him, trying to find memories in that unexplored mystery. She wanted to see the pyramids under construction, to see the legends of Mentuhotep II rebuilding the lost grandeur of the old kingdom, to see if Nefertiti were as beautiful in life as in her statues. Once, as Jay and Toby slept, she brushed past the young man later called Abraham, but she could not follow him. She seemed bound to the area between the rivers and there was ample cause for staying there for the land was good and life, or lives, were filled with joy and sadness and she, half dozing, let her memories live in her. She was there. She lived in the walled cities and watched men fight and die and love and was a part of it, sometimes exalted, sometimes a woman of the villages. In a thousand years she could not hope to relive all of it and there seemed to be a barrier beyond which she could not go, the fall of Ur, the last, sad days, the slavery which followed. After that was blankness and before it was a dark tunnel which led back into time past the girl, Nipari, who ate half-raw meat with her hands and saw the first Ankani ore-gathering ship settle to the earth. The dark tunnel narrowed into frightening impressions of savagery and violence and cold and hunger and dimly-seen vistas of animal-studded plains and icy hills. It was more pleasant, for the moment, to see proud Ur rising, extending its influence over the land between the rivers. She lived as a servant girl and died, after thirteen summers, in childbirth. She wept in sadness and, exhausted, slept. Chapter Fifteen Cele Mantel's face went white when she saw the bruise on Babra's chin. Her fury, upon hearing the details, resounded throughout the entire ship and sent timid ratings scurrying to the safety of hiding places to avoid her wrath. Never before in the history of the Ankani Fleet had an officer been struck by a male. There wasn't even a punishment for the offense, it was so unthinkable. That left the punishment up to the Garge and she entertained gory scenes of lungs rupturing in the emptiness of space or a slow broil on a spiraling orbit down into a sun. To ease her anger, she sent half a dozen ratings on punishment tours in steamy suits outside the ship on the angles and projections of the hull, demoted a Koptol who was one minute late for a change of watch and threw a cup and saucer smashing against a painted bulkhead. This last helped more than any of the others and she calmed long enough to discuss the situation with the Manto, who was still shaken by her unbelievable experience. Ankani women had faced the dangers of space and the pain of childbirth and other such inconveniences, but no Ankani woman had ever been called upon to endure being struck by a man. The Ortonian blink of the U.A.T. Entil would make history, but not the sort of history Cele had had in mind. She'd been determined to revolutionize tanker design and her statistics regarding incidence of smiles, completion quotient in optings and general morale had almost assured her success, and now those misbegotten men had spoiled it all. Since the Garge is ultimately responsible for all the actions of her crew, she was the bearer of the guilt, as much so as the Koptol with the bulging eyes and the handsome young Bakron. The offenses involved were as terrible as possible. Opting with an Ortonian female in spite of stern directives to the contrary, and, she thought with complete revulsion, forbidden experiments involving the life forces. Add to that desertion and the unheard of crime of striking an officer and her promotion became a remote possibility. But Cele Mantel, above all, was an officer of the Fleet. As such, personal considerations took second place to duty and her sense of responsibility. Her first impulse, to begin to sterilize the planet immediately, doing in the two rebels along with a few billion Ortonians, soon on lost its appeal. Her blink message to Fleet was still out going, making the tortuous, zig-zag journey along the 7,000-year-old route, pausing at the anchor stations waiting for the small power capsules to build for the next stage of the journey. The message would make the trip in less than half the time it would take the Entil, since the Entil's bulk made longer waits necessary while the engines built power. She was not concerned with the possibility of escape for the two culprits. The small scout ship was not equipped with exploratory gear. Its blinking ability was, therefore, limited to anchor station routes, and the only anchor station route from Orton led directly to Ankan, a place where the two ratings would not dare go. On the other hand, it would be next to impossible to capture the criminals, since, by using the planetary bulk as an anchor, a known point, they could blink endlessly around the area of space within half a light-year of Orton. They would be there when the directive came from Ankan. Cele almost hoped that the order would read, «Proceed with sterilization.» Above all, the two ratings were not to be allowed to go relatively unpunished for their crime. In a society as old as the Ankani, new ideas were rare and the pure novelty of a male striking a female was so revolutionary that it would, possibly, appeal to that personality fault in men which had proved so troublesome in the distant past, the longing for what the males thought of as adventure. Women were the stabilizing influence in Akani life. If it were left up to the males, change for the sake of change would be the order of the day. Of course, being left to die an early death under Orton's killer sun would be a certain kind of punishment, but there was, still, a sort, of romantic feeling among certain types about the old tanker crewmen who had learned to like Orton and its women so well that they chose to stay. Some would not consider a footloose life with a nubile Orton woman a punishment. And there was, too, the demonstrated fact that Koptol Gagi had allowed his advancing age to distort his reason. His notes on his experiments with animals and genetic manipulation were downright frightening. Even on Orton he would have a few more years in which to do damage. Meanwhile, a back-up crew had been sent to the base, for Cele was determined to return to Ankan with a full cargo hold. The transport rating had come up with a mild emanation which was being used as a guide point for blinking down. The mother of the Ortonian woman with whom the young Bakron had become involved was wakeful and concerned. Calmed slightly, Cele considered all possibilities and decided on one futile gesture. She swept into the communications room with her head regally high, her huge, soft eyes striking sparks. When she spoke on the emergency channel, a signal activated a receiver in the scout ship hidden in a waddi in the wastes of Iraq and Jay snorted in terror, while Toby and Sooly jerked awake, wide-eyed. «Bakron Toby Wellti. Koptol Jay Gagi. You will be given one opportunity to surrender. For five minutes, the Entil will broadcast a periodic blink beacon. If you approach with power off, you will be allowed to board. The Ortonian woman will be treated with kindness and her memories eradicated. As for you, Koptol, and you, Bakron, your crimes are serious, as you well know. I can promise only that your rights will be respected and that you will be accorded a hearing before a Fleet Board.» Toby looked at Jay. The older man was frightened. He opened, his pill case and popped a troleen. His face was a study in desperation as he looked at the nearly empty case. He fumbled hurriedly into the emergency kit of the scout vehicle and found a supply of a half dozen troleen tablets. «We'll have to go back,» he said, his voice almost inaudible. «You know what they'll do to you,» Toby said. «What's the difference?» Jay asked, holding out his meager supply of life-preserving troleen «I won't go,» Sooly said. «Let him go alone, Toby. Let him put us down somewhere in the United States.» «In five minutes?» Toby asked. «Then we'll stay here,» Sooly said. «Yes,» Toby said, with sudden decision. «It would be only fitting.» He put his hand on Jay's arm. «Are you sure? It's certain death.» «On an Ankani sun,» Jay said. «Not here on this miserable world.» They watched the scout blink away. It was early morning. The chill made Sooly huddle close, a mixture of fear and a warm glow of being at home causing her emotions to well up into her eyes. At a distance across the flat plain she could see the mound of a ruined city. «We'll have some explaining to do,» Toby said. «We can say we're survivors of an aircraft crash,» Sooly said. «Without passports or identification?» «Lost in the crash,» Sooly said. «It might work,» Toby said doubtfully. But it was not necessary to try. As the red sun lifted a swollen rim over the horizon, the scout vehicle lowered on visual control and settled into the waddi. Jay's face was red, his eyes wild. «They tried to kill me,» he gasped, «without warning. I blinked out within sight of the Entil and they fired two blasters.» «And missed?» Toby asked, although that was evident. He was stunned. «Thanks to the winds of Ankan, our Garge isn't one to believe in weapons practice,» Jay said. «So she'd decided on summary execution,» Toby mused. «That course was last followed forty millennia ago.» «What now?» Jay asked, on the verge of collapse. «What can we do now?» Toby frowned in worry. «Stay here during the day. We shouldn't be moving about when people can see.» «I don't care about these Ortonians,» Jay said. He slumped. «But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.» The scout was not constructed for comfort. And, with power off, the sun soon made them feel as if they were, indeed, being spiraled down into a star doing a slow broil. Toby and Sooly went outside, in spite of Toby's distaste for Orton's sun, and lay on the ground in the shadow formed by the vehicle. For the first time, Sooly had time to consider all the implications of the events of the past few hours. She thought of her parents, who would, most certainly, be frantic by now. She hadn't even told them where she was going, walking out of the house while her mother was helping her father write his weekly report. She wondered if they'd have the fuzz looking for her by now. They'd find her Volkswagen at the bridge. Would they drag the Waterway for her body? Here she was on the other side of the world, an incredible distance when one considered the usual forms of communications. Where, in this wasted land, would she find a mailbox? A telephone? She loved her parents and it pained her to think that they were worrying about her and would have to continue to worry until she found a means to contact them. And poor old Bem, lovingly named because of her most prominent feature, her eyes, Bug-Eyed Monster. It was that way on the registration papers, Sue Lee's Bug-Eyed Monster. Bem had refused to eat for days when she went away to school and had had to be taken to the vet for treatment when Sooly left once more, after being home only days, to spend her abortive short weeks in New York. Poor Bem. But wasn't it silly to be worried about the fat old dog when Toby faced permanent exile and poor Jay faced an early death without his life-giving medicine? «Toby,» she said, «if this is growing up, to hell with it.» «Hummm?» Toby asked sleepily. «Cool it,» Sooly said, not wanting to burden him with her petty problems. However, there was one good thing about the whole mess. Her love for Toby. At least they'd be together. It sounded inane to say that she'd make it up to him, but, God, wouldn't she try? But what if he came to resent her? What fantastic ego she had to think that her love, her body, would make up for everything, his losing his whole life to live for a terribly short time, among what to him must seem to be primitive people. It was all very confusing and she hadn't been able, as yet, to absorb all of it. Her entire concept of herself and of the world had been changed in a few short hours. All the old questions remained, but the answers were different as could be and just as inaccessible. However, looking at the big picture took her mind off her parents and poor Bem and even, although it stayed in the back of her mind, the larger problems. The nature of God and the universe was still too much for her, but she knew a bit about the history of mankind, thanks to the freaky thing which had happened in her brain under Jay's infernal machine. It was a bit belittling to think that her people had been savages living from hand to mouth when the first Ankani ship came to the land between the rivers. And yet, thinking of the girl, Nipari, she could feel a fierce pride, for alone in a land of terrible elements and great beasts, the people had survived and conquered the beasts. And even if they had been given a hand up by Ankani knowledge and an infusion of Ankani blood, she could not quite accept the premise that all of man's achievements were to be attributed to Ankani influence. No. There was that feeling of, something, humanness, earthliness, something. Curious, wanting to know more, she let her mind go as blank as possible and searched for the memories. She was bemused, at first, by the young Nipari and was tempted to reexperience the first coming of the «gods,» to know the fear and awe and the joy of knowing that the gods had noticed and were coming to earth to aid the people. But she wanted to know more and pushed herself back, back, dying at the hands of a raiding band of hunters, being clawed by a huge cat, living, loving in different bodies but always a woman, never able to penetrate the minds of the males around her. She went back through pain and lust and hunger and the joys of gluttony when the hunt was good, through winds and sand and ice and splashing in clean, clear water, with the memories becoming dim and misty and only areas of high emotional content coming through. Back into the slow, plodding, changing minds of heavy-limbed females, with her spirit sinking and her entire body being drained by the fierce emotions of the beds of natural lust, the killings, the birthings. Only the peaks now, never the quiet moments or the everyday life, and the land changing as the eons rolled back, back. Tortuous treks following changing climate, centuries compressed into moments, and the sun redder, more fierce, winds wet and torrential falls of rain and fierce beasts and it was all becoming so dim, so dim. Rudimentary language. Grunts of pain and anger and lust. Hulking, hairy males with huge, ugly heads and jutting jaws and the crunch of bone as a flint ax crushed her skull and she was so distant, so far that she despaired of ever coming back. Brutal, savage, bloody, dim-witted. Man. Roaring his challenge, taking his women with the strength of his hairy, massive arms. Knowing only the elemental flow of storm and sun and food and lust. Animals. Oh, God. Had she come from this? And yet so far, so far, such a vast sea of change and time and wonder from those upright apes and the joyful youth of the young Nipari. Nothing. A misty sea of nothing. Aware of being, but in a dull cloud with only hints of pain and hunger and, always, that force, that lust, that urge to perpetuate the race. And just before exhaustion made it necessary to stop the sad, humiliating probe, just before, tears flowing in sympathy for those first men, those animals who stood on their feet, a blinding, brilliant revelation of such force that it was engraved on the memory of the race, a point of light in the darkness. Shaken, experiencing the wonder through the eyes of a squat, powerful, hairy female, she could, at the same time, relate. It continued for days, weeks. Around her the people gaped, grunted, rolled their eyes in fear. And she could stand it no longer as it continued. Another answer but an incomplete one. Back once again to the basic question, who created God? Lying there, weak, full of questions, the hot sun baking the dry land around them, Toby dozing. It was utterly freaky. But she knew that they had been alone. Then came— She looked quickly at Toby to see if he had spoken. He was asleep. Jay was huddled miserably in the scout, ports open, his eyes closed. Again. Children «Toby! Toby!» She was shaking him, frantic. He sat up rubbing his eyes. «You weren't the first, Toby.» «Huh?» «They put it there. We, I, saw them. It was small and gleaming and they used machines and put it there—» «Are you all right?» Toby asked. «The sun—» «You weren't the first. They came long before you. So very long. And I saw them and—» Children «Toby, we've got to go there.» «Where?» Toby asked, thinking she must, surely, be suffering from the sun. «There,» she said, pointing. «Now.» «We can't move in daylight.» «Yes we can. We must. Now.» She was up, pulling on him. «Because I know, Toby. I know a lot now and I can hear them and I've got to go, because they left it there until we could hear it and—» It was difficult, almost impossible, for Toby to resist the will of a woman. Obeying was ingrained. And it would, at least, get them out of the infernal heat. What did it matter if the movement of the ship led to a few more flying saucer reports? A family of wandering Bedouins saw the ship rise and disappear and murmured in fear before the wise patriarch dismissed the sights as another mirage of the flat land. Flying high, avoiding the air space of the warring Middle Eastern powers, Toby followed Sooly's pointing hand across the Persian Gulf, over the brown hills of Africa, questioning her. «They came in huge ships from the sky,» Sooly explained, as the small voice repeated itself in her head, guiding her, leading her. «Thousands of them, herded out onto the floor of the valley and forced to disperse by a mere handful of tall beings in space suits. We watched from the shelter of the ridges and we saw them use the machinery to put it there and I think