by Joe Derkacht
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What they were doing inside their ship was talking, something I would learn in the course of time is one of their favorite preoccupations. As counter-intuitive as it might seem, among those who stutter and stammer the M’hah-hu-uuu are wonderful conversationalists, their speech marked by great eloquence and poetry, and along with all that entails, they display a great desire among themselves for consensus. That was why they were holed up in their ship, that and the fear which had eventually driven them, one-by-one, from the forest. They missed, also, the familiarity of a place that had been their home for long ages and a sanctuary for prayer.
What finally drove them out was a distinct feeling that their prayers were bouncing off the ceiling, something I knew had been arranged by neither their angelic escorts nor any intention of my own. If their prayers seemed to be going unheard, it was because God meant it to be so.
In addition, they discovered their food stores were not what they should be and food production had taken an inexplicable drop in the ship’s hydroponics. It came down either to leaving the ship or to starving. Already beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, it was another week before they again ventured down to the ground.
To their surprise, they found fruit and vegetables heaped beside one leg of the ship. A trail of alien produce led to the edge of the clearing, where they found great heaps of more of the same and a wide variety of grasses, nuts, and fungi, enough food for weeks, if they wished and if they dared to sample it. Wherever they looked, too, understandably cautiously, in consideration of their frightening encounter with the sky creatures, none of the planet’s inhabitants could be found. Other than insects, it seemed to them as though all other life had simply disappeared, vanished into thin air.
The M’hah-hu-uuu couldn’t know it at the time, but the centii and millii, and the birds (plus nearly every other creature of Ranar), kept their distance because of my orders, just as the provision of food was also my order. Except for the occasional snatch of birdsong wafting to them upon the wind, and obvious tracks in the wilderness, they saw no other indication of life in the new world in which they found themselves.
What they would do next, what they would do with their circumstances, was entirely up to them. They ate their fill, they gathered up more of everything close at hand, and they retreated to the safety of their ship, where they stayed in self-imposed confinement for another week. When they reemerged, their circumstances were once again changed—I had ordered the removal of everything edible for miles around. This time they would have to begin exploration of the planet in earnest if they wished to survive.
In the old life, I never knew what it was like to be a father. Though I had supposedly fathered a child, the woman I married had, for her own dark, twisted reasons, denied me that honor and privilege. Neither had most other people ever wanted me around their children. Who knew what the crazy person might do, what the idiot stutterer and stammerer would say that they shouldn’t hear? And in fact, perhaps some of their fears were justified, since my stuttering did frighten some children, while providing glee for others. If I thought about it hard enough, I could still hear their gales of laughter, remember them even if I no longer remembered the pain. But father was what I actually felt like, now, as I kept track of the M’hah-hu-uuu and their progress. Like an earthly father, or like the Heavenly Father, I watched them, hoping to see in them those things I wanted to see. Most of all, I wanted to see if they would be like me, if Ranar evoked in them what it evoked in me, if Ranar fit them and they were fit for Ranar. I did not want their epic journey to have been a waste for them, nor did I want my old vision to end in regret.
The weeks passed. The Mah, as Leanhar and I took to calling them, began to splinter off into smaller groups, having until then explored Ranar as one large, extended family of 500. On old earth, even a handful of unredeemed men would have begun cutting down trees, would have trampled the flowers, muddied the waters, polluted the skies, hunted the wildlife... The Mah did none of that; like felines, which I seemed ever more reminded of, they were easy on whatever path they took, never forcing their way, always careful of where they trod, and in general (though it certainly was not feline-like from my experience), they were respectful, whether to each other or to Ranar.
Regardless of their individual grace or their comportment as a whole, 500 quickly proved too unwieldy. They could travel both farther and faster in smaller groups and learn vastly more in a shorter time. From listening to their conversations, I knew they believed Ranar was special, that in fact they had been directed to it even while on P’nar. Finding a world laid out on a perfect grid, with the various tree species limited to their own territories, had not disabused them of the notion: neither had discovering a perfectly suitable landing place where it did not seem reason existed for one, unless their arrival had somehow been planned for...
All of which presented them with the greater question: Who and where was the Designer of this world? Why had they found boundless habitat for the various species they’d seen that first day, yet no signs of habitation for Someone or Something greater?
They had, then, decided on searching the planet for none other than—me. The mystery behind the mystery had become more important to them than Ranar itself.
“It was to be expected,” Leanhar remarked.
He should know. He had been in the business of secretly observing earthlings for long centuries before I ever appeared on the scene. I thought back to old earth, to the first Adam in Eden’s garden and to the second Adam in Gethsemane’s garden. I, too, would have sought the Gardener. While it had not been my intent, why should it be any different for the Mah?
It did not take me long to decide.
“Then we will have to let them find me.”
Leanhar mulled my words.
“Where?” He asked.
“Mt. Fe. Where else?”
