No man has ever climbed this mountain. It is deemed unclimbable. Even its foothills are a formidable challenge. Nevertheless, legend has it that once long ago a holy man, elevated to a state of godhood through his many years of one-pointed concentration, rose, through his own self-created power, to the ultimate heights of the unscalable mountain.
The god, who had been known locally as Shelmo before his ascension, carved a cave for himself out of the solid rock of Sanito’s summit. He made himself a pallet of ice, and a meditation cushion of lichen. These were more than sufficient for a deity who could generate his own internal heat.
Shelmo had decided to spend some æons here on the top of Sanito practicing his one-pointed concentration. Although it had been good enough to win him godhood, he wasn’t really satisfied with it. He thought he could still refine it some.
Centuries passed. Civilizations rose and fell, and Shelmo paid no attention to them: it takes a lot of time to get one-pointed. Shelmo knew that it was perhaps a little selfish of him, devoting all his time to this, since gods were, after all, supposed to look after the humans in their vicinity. But Shelmo figured that the gods made their own rules. Besides, there was plenty of time to become an ethical deity after he had solved the one-pointed concentration problem.
For a god who wants to get away from it all, Mount Sanito was an ideal place. Windstorms and avalanches filled the air continually, producing a monotonous roaring background. The whipping clouds of white and gray were excellent meditation objects. So high up was Shelmo’s cave that even the prayers of the people rarely reached him. Battered by hailstorms, choked by snowfalls, the prayers became mere dolorous sounds, plaintive and without moral significance.
However, even a god can’t be spared all hassles all of the time. It may take a while, but the world finally gets through.
One day, Shelmo was surprised to find that a human being had made his way up the unscalable mountain and into his cave. (Shelmo wasn’t really surprised, of course; gods are never surprised. But he hadn’t expected it.)
The human fell on his knees and began to recite a lengthy prayer.
“Yes, thank you very much,” Shelmo said, interrupting him. “But how did you get up here? The mountain is supposed to be impassable except to gods. You wouldn’t be a god disguised as a human, by any chance?”
“No,” the human said. “I am a human being. My name is Dan. I was able to ascend to this height partially due to my own virtue and piety, and partially by the combined prayer-power of the people below, who worship you.”
“I see,” Shelmo said. “Won’t you have a seat? There’s a block of ice over there. I suppose you can regulate your own body heat?”
“Of course, Lord,” Dan said. “It’s one of the easier steps on the path to spirituality.”
“Yes, quite so,” Shelmo said. “Now, what brings you here?”
Dan sat down upon the block of ice and arranged his robes. “Oh Lord, your people pray to you for divine assistance. Without your help we will be overwhelmed and perish from the face of the Earth.”
“Well, what’s gone wrong?” Shelmo asked. “It had better be important. I don’t like being disturbed for trifles.”
“It’s the steel crabs,” Dan said. “The self-programming mechanical vampire bats are also a great problem. And of course, there are the copper scorpions with explosive tails, but mainly it’s the crabs. They’re machines, but they’ve learned how to reproduce themselves. For each crab factory we destroy, ten more spring up. The crabs infest our homes, our streets, even our places of worship. They’re killers, and we’re losing the battle against them.”
“There was nothing like that when I was on Earth,” Shelmo said. “Where did they come from?”
“Well,” Dan said, “as perhaps you know, the various countries are at peace now. But in the recent past several were in a state of belligerency. The steel crabs were one of the weapons invented.”
“And they launched them at some other country?”
“Oh, no, Lord, nothing like that,” Dan said. “It was an accident. The steel crabs escaped. They spread, first over the country where they were invented, then over the whole world. The crabs multiplied faster than we could wipe them out. It was all a silly accident, but now we perish, Lord, unless you step in and do something.”
Despite his self-imposed isolation, Shelmo did feel he owed these people—his people, as they said—something.
“If I handle this,” he said to Dan, “can you humans take care of yourselves after that and leave me alone?”
“I’m sure of it,” Dan said. “We humans believe in ruling ourselves. We want to create our own destiny. We believe in the separation of church and state. It’s just that this crab thing has gotten out of hand.”
Shelmo looked into the crab thing there and then, using his omniscience. Yes, it was a mess down there.
He could have simply made all the crabs disappear by a miracle—gods can do that—but the Council on Ethics for Deities didn’t approve of direct intervention. That sort of thing tended to make people superstitious. So Shelmo created a bacterium—nobody knows where they come from, anyhow—which attacked the microcircuits, not only of the steel crabs, but also of the copper scorpions and mechanical vampire bats. By clever genetic manipulation, Shelmo was able to cause the bacteria to destroy only what it was supposed to destroy and then destroy itself.
When the job was done, Shelmo cut short Dan’s hosannas and praisegivings. “I don’t mind doing it once,” he said. “After all, I was a human once myself. But now I’d really like a little peace and quiet so I can get on with my one-pointed concentration.”
Dan made his way down the mountain back to the lands of men, and Shelmo settled down to some good, solid meditating.
Years came and went. But to Shelmo it seemed like no time at all before Dan was in his cave once again.
“Back so soon?” Shelmo asked. “What’s the matter? Didn’t I get all the crabs?”
“Oh, yes, Lord,” Dan said.
“Then what’s the matter?”
“Well, we did manage to live in peace for quite some time. But then there were troubles again.”
“Troubles? You fought each other?”
“No, we managed to avoid that. But we had a serious accident. There were many huge concrete lakes, where obsolete radioactive and chemical weapons were stored. Informed opinion said that they would be all right. But then something within those lakes began to change, to mutate, to become alive and malevolent.”
“So you created living things,” Shelmo said. “Accidentally, but still, you did. It takes a god to handle that sort of thing properly. I suppose it went badly?”
Dan nodded. “The living, semi-liquid substance in the lakes oozed out, feeding on everything it encountered, spreading over the countryside. It sent out spores and infected people in all countries. It is slowly covering the world, and we have no way of stopping it. Unless you help us, O Lord, we are doomed.”
Shelmo said, “You humans keep on making silly mistakes. Don’t you learn from what’s already happened?”
“I think we’ve learned our lesson this time,” Dan said. “At last there is a world-wide consciousness about these matters. If we are not destroyed by our past mistakes, if you can help us, I think we can go ahead now and build a better world.”
Shelmo inspected the situation through his omniscience. The chemical creature really was an ugly sight—orange and black blotches against the blue and green of the Earth.
There were many ways for a god to handle this situation. Shelmo caused the chemical creature to be sensitive to a lack of nobelium, an unstable radioactive isotope of the actinide series. Then, by a miracle, Shelmo extracted all the nobelium from the Earth. (He was not without a sense of humor. And he planned to replace it later.)
The chemical creature died. Dan said, “Thank you, Lord.” It was difficult to find an adequate means of thanking a being who had just saved his race from destruction for the second tim
e.
Dan returned to his people. Shelmo settled down again to his meditation.
It felt as though he had barely begun, when, lo and behold, Dan was standing in front of him again.
“Weren’t you just here?” said Shelmo.
“That was fifty years ago,” Dan said.
“But that’s hardly any time at all!”
“Yes, Lord,” Dan said. “And I do beg forgiveness for this intrusion. I come, not for myself, but for the people—your people, Lord, they are helpless and suffering.”
“What happened this time? Did another of your inventions get out of hand?”
Dan shook his head. “This time it’s the Paratids. I know you don’t bother to keep up on local politics, so permit me to fill you in. The Paratids are one of the major political parties in my country. They stand for liberty, equality, and a fair deal for everyone irrespective of race, gender, or religion. Or so we thought. When they came to power, however, we found that they had deceived us and were, in fact, unprincipled, authoritarian, fanatical, cynical—”
“I get the idea,” Shelmo said. “But why did you let such people come to power?”
“They deceived us with their propaganda. Perhaps they believed their own lies. I don’t know whether they are guilty of cynicism or fanaticism, or a mixture of the two. But I do know that they have canceled all future elections and declared themselves to be the perpetual guardians of the coming Utopia. Although they make up less than a third of the population, they have instituted a reign of terror.”
“Why don’t you fight back?” Shelmo asked.
“Because they have all the weapons. Their soldiers march up and down our streets. Terrible stories are told about their secret torture chambers. They’ve taken thousands of prisoners. All culture is banned except approved treatments on patriotic themes. We are helpless in their hands. Only you, O Lord, can save us.”
Shelmo mused for a while. “I suppose there is a precedent for a god meddling in political affairs?”
“Oh, yes, Lord, there are many accounts of it in the ancient annals of our major religions.”
“Do these annals tell us anything about a God’s procedure in these cases?”
“He struck down the unrighteous.”
“And how was it determined which were the righteous?”
Dan thought for a while. “Sometimes a prophet of the people would take the complaint direct to God, as I am doing.”
“That doesn’t strike me as equitable,” Shelmo said. “Not without hearing arguments for the other side.”
“You could discover the truth of the matter through your omniscience.”
“No,” Shelmo said. “Omniscience is only good for facts, not for matters of opinion.”
“Then you could do whatever you think is best,” Dan said.
“All right,” Shelmo said. “But remember, you asked me.”
“What better thing could I ask for than the judgment of the Lord?”
“Just so you remember,” Shelmo said. His body stiffened. His eyes narrowed with inner concentration. Unseen energies hummed in the air, causing Dan’s hair to stand on end. Suddenly, the cave was bathed in a lurid red light which slowly faded as though controlled by the devil’s rheostat. And then the cave returned to normal.
“Finished,” Shelmo said.
Dan heard a cry arise from the Earth, a cry of sorrow and rage, a cry of anger and grief so strong that it could reach Shelmo’s cave when prayers hadn’t been able to.
“What did you do?” Dan asked.
“A straightforward solution. I vanished the Paratids.”
“Vanished them? What does that mean?”
“You might call it killing,” Shelmo said. “I call it vanishing. It comes to much the same thing in that they are no longer around to cause you difficulties. Your problems are solved.”
It took Dan a moment to take it in. With growing horror he realized that Shelmo had disposed of almost a third of the planet’s population.
“You shouldn’t have killed them,” he said. “Most of them were not bad men. They were just mindless followers.”
“They followed the wrong leader this time,” Shelmo said.
“Some members of my own family were Paratids.”
“My condolences. But now, at least, your enemies are gone. There should be no obstacles now to your building an equitable society. But if there is, feel free to call on me again. Be sure to tell that to the people.”
“I will proclaim it to the nations,” Dan said.
“That’s the idea. Tell them that I’m available to them now. My judgments are swift. I will be glad to help those who can’t help themselves. In my own way, of course.”
Dan bowed deeply and departed. Shelmo made himself a glass of tea, the first he had permitted himself in centuries. He hummed a few bars of a song he had known when he was a human. Then he used his omniscience to peek into the future of the Earth. He scanned 150 years ahead. He noted that the humans still hadn’t reached utopia. But they were doing all right. Or at least no worse than was to be expected.
One thing was certain; nobody was praying to him for intervention.
He turned off his omniscience and settled down on his ice cushion for a really long spell of one-pointed meditation. He was determined to get it right this time.
THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS
Countless centuries ago, before the beginning of Egypt, before the continents had taken on their present shapes, before the oceans and mountains had settled into their present positions, there was a land and a civilization which has left no record. It has all been lost beneath the shift and upheaval of mountain ranges, beneath new ocean beds which once were fertile plains and may be again. The only knowledge we have of this land is a nearly universal memory of something which came before anything we have documented. It has been called Atlantis, but that is only a name for a civilization that we know once existed yet vanished without a trace.
In Atlantis one fine day succeeded another with a regularity that would be called monotonous only by the ungrateful. Indeed, the climate of Atlantis and of all the lands that adjoined it was much of present-day Miami. It was hot, steamy, enervating. All year around, Atlantis lived in a tropical dream, and this continued without change for many centuries.
A great king ruled Atlantis. His domain was cut through by many rivers, some small, others great. Interconnecting them were canals and waterways, their levels maintained by locks to which water was hoisted by means of great paddlewheels driven by slaves. The kingdom was vast, and all of it was connected by a network of waterways, lakes, canals, and channels.
Only the King’s navy and his merchant marine were allowed on the royal waters. Villagers were permitted, on payment of a fee, to fish from the banks. Swimming was allowed, or rather, paddling, since swimming itself was a monopoly of the royal commandos.
Beyond the outermost river stretched a vast desert, reaching to the limits of terra incognita. Strange, nameless tribes came out of the desert from time to time, sometimes in great armed hordes. But always they were turned back by the water barriers, for he who ailed the waterways and rivers ruled Atlantis. This was an axiom as old as time itself, a law of nature against which there was no recourse.
So the King was not too alarmed when he heard that new horde of barbarians was moving down from the north. They came from beyond the back of the world, from misty and fabled Hyperborea.
The King sent out his scouts and spies. He was relieved to hear that, as usual, the barbarians had no ships or rafts, and no materials with which to cross the rivers that shielded Atlantis.
Wide waters had always protected Atlantis from barbarian incursions. Even if the barbarians built boats of reed, or employed inflatable leather bladders—typical barbarian expedients—they were not to be feared. The King’s navy was vigilant, and included swift canoes, deadly triremes, ponderous beaked galleys—all armed and armored, and filled with the King’s superb marines.
So the King awaite
d this latest invasion with equanimity. But just to be on the safe side, he consulted the royal scientists.
The Chief Scientist reported, “Sire, we have examined all the factors. On the basis of centuries of observation of barbarians, their Fighting techniques, their resources, matched scientifically against our own resources, I can tell you that, barring the completely unforeseen, we have absolutely nothing to worry about.”
The King nodded. But something in the soothing formula disturbed him. He said, “This completely unforeseen that you are barring—what is that?”
“That, Sire, is the element of the unpredictable.”
“But since you know all the factors,” the King said, “why must you make an exception for the unpredictable, when your job is to predict everything of relevance to this situation?”
“That is the heart of scientific method, my Lord, in itself a recent discovery of ours of which we are very proud. To say that we know everything would be the superstitious stuff of the priests. By admitting the possibility of something unforeseen, we remain rigorous in our methodology.”
“What are the chances of this unforeseen occurring?” the King asked.
“So close to zero,” said the Chief Scientist, “that we are still awaiting the invention of a number small enough to express it.”
With this the King had to be content. It was not certainty, but as near to it as a man or even a monarch could get, life being what it was.
The King drew up his forces on the inner bank of the great river encircling Atlantis. Deep and broad, slow moving, brown and steely-gray, the river had sheltered the kingdom from time out of mind. On the far bank they could see their foe—shaggy barbarians clad in furs, which must have been extremely uncomfortable in the sweltering climate. Scouts reported that the barbarians were chanting and praying to their uncouth and outlandish deities, and making no attempt to build water craft.
The barbarian position seemed hopeless. Already food was reported to be running low in their camp. There were many of them, and they were heavily armed, but they could not cross. The King, his army well rested and provisioned, its morale high, awaited the inevitable outcome.
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