"We roost here for the night," Cheerpt announced when all but the slowest stragglers had gathered around.
The late afternoon stillness was shattered by the cries and caws of the warriors as they set about arranging the roost. A few of them tethered the riding eeookks together, while the rest pulled the packs off the captured ones. The captured eeookks gobbled in protest as the Cheereek herded them into a tight knot, drew riding beasts into a circle around them, and tied off the last tether to complete the circle. The gobbling increased in volume and intensity when the warriors fed their mounts, increased again when the warriors tossed food into the captured eeookk mass to feed them. It ceased by the time the warriors had staked out small ground hollows or built small circles of stones and brush to serve as their individual nests.
Once their nests were ready, the Cheereek built fires and tore into the captured stores for food to cook. Meat was cut into small chunks, seared in the flames, then mixed in bowls with seeds and grain to be pecked at. Long throats rippled as food descended their length. As Aaaah sent his last rays slanting across the landscape, the warriors screeched their evening pleas for the god to return again then settled into their temporary nests. Aaaah hopped onto his nest, and everything became silent save for the hoos of early rising night hunters.
Aaaah's morning appearance woke the Cheereek, and they cawed and cried the dawn greetings to the god of life. The eeookks added their gobbles to the dawn cacophony. Prayers done, the warriors scattered to gloop their ablutions onto the sere ground. Then, in a frenzy of activity, the Cheereek pecked down the remnants of the evening's meal, fed scraps to the eeookks, broke apart the living fence, and reburdened the pack beasts.
Cheerpt, the first of the raiders to mount, looked again at the captured eeookks, piled high with booty, and cawed out in glee. Surely that proved his prowess as a raider. Surely that overcautious Graakaak would hear out his plans to find and raid the Clumsy Ones' roost. He screeched a command and his warriors bounded onto their mounts. Cheerpt led the happy raiding party at an easy trot. He calculated they would reach the shade of the High Tree before the great heat of early afternoon and rest from the heat in their own nests.
Less than halfway from the night roost to the High Tree, however, Cheerpt stopped the column to study unexpected markings on the rocky ground. Except for its width, it looked like the lines a fledgling with a straw might draw in sand. But no fledgling, not even the greatest warrior ever, was big enough to blow lines that wide. Cheerpt craned his neck high and looked at the length of the lines in one direction and then the other. He did not see what made the lines, but he knew what had made them: the strange mount of the Clumsy Ones. Only the topmost line was fresh. Others alongside or hidden, save for their edges below it, were older. Some were much older. Cheerpt's neck coiled as he scanned. Nothing moved in the distance other than a few sky-hunters drifting on thermals. Close by, the eeookks pecked at the ground. The warriors sat easy on their mounts, some wondering what their leader thought was significant about the Clumsy Ones' track.
What was significant to Cheerpt was that the track was there, not the direction from which the Clumsy Ones came with their marvelous weapons. It was not the direction in which they went when they took the gut-stones.
Cheerpt looked at the horizon and considered. The Clumsy Ones' mount could speed faster than the fleetest eeookk, and maintain that speed far longer than an eeookk could galumph. Yes, if the Clumsy Ones sped beyond sight when they left the Cheereek roost and then made a wide circle when they were on the Frying Rocks to leave them in another direction, this is where they would go. He cackled. They might be ugly, but the Clumsy Ones were clever. He remembered one time losing their trail in the Frying Rocks. He had not been able to find it again on the far side. Now he no longer had to wait on the far side of the Frying Rocks to see where they left it. Now when he confronted Graakaak with his demand that they find the Clumsy Ones' roost and take all their weapons instead of getting only a few at a time, he could tell him exactly where the roost was.
"Cheereek," he ordered his warriors, "go to the High Tree. Tell the High Chief I will come later, I have found something to investigate, something he will want to know. Say nothing about this track."
The fifty warriors stretched their necks and pointed their faces at the dome of the heavens. They would do as he said.
Guard Captain Cheerpt watched the warriors until they dwindled and he could no longer distinguish where Cheereek ended and eeookk began. Then he began following the track.
Hours later, when the distant Bower Curtain had grown from a smudge hovering above the horizon to a towering massif that marked the end of the world, Cheerpt admitted to himself that he felt something akin to fear. The line drawn by the Clumsy Ones' mount was as strong and wide now as it had been when he first found it. There was no sign that the mount tired or slowed its pace. Yet the distance traveled was great enough that he found it necessary to dismount several times and walk his tiring eeookk. Once, he had even stopped to rest it. Cheerpt knew the Clumsy Ones' mount was not a beast, that it was some kind of magically driven wagon. To make a wagon that not only could go as fast as that one, but go that fast as far as it went, told the Guard captain the Clumsy Ones were more powerful than he might have guessed based on just the marvelous weapons they gave to the Cheereek.
Now he knew much more, though he hadn't yet found their roost. Perhaps Graakaak was right, perhaps it was best to go slow with the Clumsy Ones.
No! Slow wasn't best. It could not be. The Cheereek were the strongest people in the world. Soon they would be the most powerful. No one, not even the Clumsy Ones, could be greater than the Cheereek. Not if the Cheereek had a sufficiently bold and strong High Chief.
He urged his eeookk on.
Not long after, he found the Clumsy Ones' roost. It was nestled in a curve of one of the many ridges that flowed from the side of the massif like the buttress roots of tall trees. Not that Cheerpt had any idea of what a buttress root was, and he had never seen a tall tree. Still, the ridges looked to him like they propped up the Bower Curtain. The plains nomads called them the Bower Boughs.
It didn't look like any tree or nest Cheerpt had ever seen. It was wider than it was tall, and longer than it was wide. It had no openings in it for the wind to blow away the heat. It was made of metal.
Metal. More metal than he imagined there was in the entire world. Cheerpt gaped at the Clumsy Ones' tree in awe, but only for a moment. He dismounted and hobbled his eeookk behind a ripple of rock that radiated from the side of the ridge, then crept forward, using as much concealment as he could find. He climbed a scree-fall to gain a better vantage and eased his head above the rock barrier he hid behind. There was no sign of nests on the ground around the Clumsy Ones' High Tree. It was so big and held so much metal he had to think of it as a High Tree, and only someone as powerful as a High Chief could possibly live in such a place. Did all of the Clumsy Ones live in the High Tree? It was certainly big enough. If he knew how many Clumsy Ones there were... He had only seen three—Heerk-kloock, Gun-chelk, and Chun-Oleeon. But they would need females and slaves, and there must be warriors, or at least guards—certainly they would not leave so wondrous a High Tree unattended in their absence. There had to be many more than three Clumsy Ones.
Cheerpt waited patiently and watched.
Aaaah was more than halfway down the sky when an opening growled into existence on the side of the High Tree and a branch grew downward out of it to the ground below. A Clumsy One appeared in the opening and walked agilely down the branch. Three more followed the first. They carried things in their hands, things that Cheerpt thought must be Clumsy Ones' weapons, but not the same as the weapons they traded to the Cheereek. The four Clumsy Ones came in his direction. He studied their faces; they were not the three he knew. They looked menacing. Somehow, they must have discovered that someone was watching their High Tree.
Cheerpt slid down the scree and, keeping behind concealment, ran to his eeookk and
galumphed away.
Graakaak, High Chief of the Cheereek, sat in council with his chief advisers to discuss the matter brought to him by Guard Captain Cheerpt. The High Chief squatted, his feet wrapped around his stone-studded perch. In front of him, on a lower perch with merely a bowl of stones in front of them, were ancient Tschaah, chief councilor to the High Chief; the mighty warrior Oouhoouh, his Chief of Staff; and young Kkaacgh, Captain of Scouts. Guard Captain Cheerpt, as the one who'd brought up the matter, perched to the side facing between them. The bowl of stones in front of him was the same size as the bowl the other three shared.
"Tell them," Graakaak commanded.
"I have found the roost of the Clumsy Ones." Cheerpt puffed his chest and held his head menacingly at half the height of his neck. "Give me the same warriors I took on my raid against the Koocaah-lice and I will bring back all of the Clumsy Ones' weapons. We will no longer have to wait for them to bring us a few at a time."
"How many Clumsy Ones are there?" asked Tschaah.
"At least seven."
"How many at most?" asked Oouhoouh.
"They are clumsy, it doesn't matter."
Oouhoouh snorted. "What are their weapons like?" he demanded.
"They have Clumsy Ones' weapons;" Cheerpt said derisively.
"Like these?" Oouhoouh waved a hand at the circle of guards and the Clumsy Ones' weapons they held.
Cheerpt twitched his head, a dismissive shrug.
"Even if they have the same weapons as we do," Tschaah said, "I have seen them fire the weapons. We all have. They work magic with them. They point the weapon and the bullet hits where they point it, not somewhere near, like when our warriors fire them."
Oouhoouh nodded agreement. "Even if there are only seven of them, and even if their weapons are the same as ours, they could kill the raiding party we sent against the Koocaah-lice."
Cheerpt glared at the Chief of Staff. His saying "we sent" rather than "you led" was a deliberate insult to the Guard captain.
Oouhoouh continued as though he hadn't noticed Cheerpt's reaction. "If we attack the Clumsy Ones' roost, we must send many warriors, not simply a small raiding party."
"And we risk losing many warriors," Tschaah added.
Like an old hen, Cheerpt thought.
"To what end would we lose so many warriors?" the ancient adviser went on. "Yes, we might get all of the weapons at once. But would we have enough warriors left to use them?"
"You have not yet spoken," Graakaak interrupted, speaking to Kkaacgh, Captain of Scouts, his newest adviser.
The Scout captain stretched his neck up and pointed his face at the ceiling. He was not yet used to the protocols of council meetings, therefore he behaved as he always had when speaking to the High Chief and exposed all of his soft parts. "High Chief," he said, a slight waver in his voice, "it is good that Guard Captain Cheerpt found the Clumsy Ones' roost. This is important for us to know. But Chief Councilor Tschaah and Chief of Staff Oouhoouh are right. We know so little about what the Clumsy Ones have at their roost that if we attack we risk greatly."
"No great gain is possible without great risk," Cheerpt snapped.
"You are on this council to give advice, Scout Captain," Graakaak said, ignoring Cheerpt's outburst. "What is your advice? And look at me when you give it so I can know you speak truth."
Kkaacgh lowered his face to look at the High Chief. It was difficult for the young Cheereek to speak his mind without exposing himself, but he managed. "High Chief, I can take scouts to the Clumsy Ones' roost. We can find out how many Clumsy Ones there are and how they are armed." He cast a quick, anxious glance at Cheerpt. "We can find the best approaches to their roost, approaches that will allow our warriors to get so close the Clumsy Ones cannot kill many before we are on them."
"I will think on it." Graakaak plucked four stones from his perch. He did not seem to examine them, but he tossed the best of the four to Kkaacgh and the least of them to Cheerpt.
Cheerpt left with the other councilors, but didn't speak to them. They were like Graakaak, old hens. If he were High Chief, he thought, he would have to replace all of them with proper Cheereek, aggressive warriors who wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of an opportunity.
The Philosopher
The honor at first seemed overwhelming to Waakakaa the Philosopher. The University of Rhaachtown was renowned not only throughout the realm of Rhaach, but in Gaagaahh as well, as the greatest of universities. Even Kcoock the Philosopher in Far Zheekeech knew of it with great respect. And Dean Ouoop was known throughout the world as a scholar of the highest perching. To think that Dean Ouoop would read his modest stickle about the New Glitterer, and then invite him to come to the University at Rhaach as a Visiting Philosopher!
Overwhelming as the honor might at first have seemed, Waakakaa quickly settled into the routine of university scholarship. In exchange for his honorarium, food, and lodging, he was required to teach one undergraduate course and conduct one graduate seminar per term.
The undergraduate course was a survey of the natural history of Aaaah and his cycles, a requirement for all first or second year students. Most Philosophers resented having to teach low-level survey courses, believing themselves to be above such mundanities which were best left to upper level students who were still so new to the arcana of Philosophy that they were not yet bored by constant investigation of the basics. But Waakakaa relished the time he spent with students so recently fledged. Their eagerness to learn and their ability to sop up knowledge astonished him and gave him great joy.
He tried to impart to those students his own enthusiasm to learn of the night sky. While most of the students seemed bored by that topic, and many looked at him with disbelief, there were a few whose crests flared and eyes glimmered when he told them of the wonders to be seen when Aaaah made his dark journey to dawn. Those few gave him encouragement that someday the puzzle of the New Glitterer might be solved—perhaps even within his own lifetime.
There were only four young seminarians in his seminar. But each of them had independently studied the night sky—and each had read his stickle on the New Glitterer even before they knew he was coming as a Visiting Philosopher. They had heard of his eyestretcher and greatly desired to see and try its wonders themselves. They were in his seminar because they wanted to learn, and they considered him to be the most knowledgeable Philosopher on matters that so intrigued them. Those four were Waakakaa's greatest pride. Every night at least one of them was with him in his study, peering through the eyestretcher.
Waakakaa the Philosopher took great pleasure in studying the night sky in his new surroundings. His lodging was far better than he was used to at home in Gaagaahh. So too was his food more nourishing. His pleasure in his lodging, his improved nutrition, the stimulating give and take with the barely fledged students, and the greater stimulation of his work with the seminarians, combined to improve his thinking. Early in his second year at the University at Rhaach he broached a new postulation to his seminarians.
The New Glitterer is not of the same nature as the other glitterers, he said. The New Glitterer is an artificial construct.
This postulation begged a question. Who sent it? Which was followed by more questions. Was it an eye, moved there by the gods to watch over the world? If so, to what purpose? Or might the glitterers be gods like Aaaah? If they were gods like Aaaah, there must then be other worlds with people of their own. If there were, when did they sleep? He told his seminarians about Kcoock the Philosopher and his belief that the world was a globe. If the glitterers were gods like Aaaah and, had worlds populated by people, then might not one of those peoples have discovered how to travel among the glitterers? Then the New Glitterer would be an eye sent to observe the world. Why?
In talking with his seminarians, Waakakaa asked and listened as well as postulated, and as many of the questions were theirs as were his. The questions kept mounting until there were so many, they were a morass into which even the greatest of Philosophers might s
ink.
Waakakaa spent long hours with his seminarians, puzzling on the questions. Before the end of the semester they winnowed them down to two: Was the New Glitterer sent by the gods for reasons unknown or unknowable? Was the New Glitterer sent by people from another world for reasons unknown or unknowable?
The second of the two questions was the more problematic, for it required knowledge of the nature of the glitterers, which no one had. Yet the slow drifting of the New Glitterer and the small flames that shot from its side to move it back to its place near the split in the bole of the High Tree argued against it being a construct of the gods. The occasional small, tailed glitterers that visited also seemed to imply a construct from another world.
At the end of the academic year, Waakakaa and his seminarians were no closer to definitive answers than when he first made his postulation. After Waakakaa bid his seminarians farewell, he pondered the questions by himself as he prowled the nearly depopulated halls of the university. The postulation and questions ate at him. He lost his appetite and became slovenly in his dress. He considered taking the questions to Dean Ouoop, but the dean's field of Philosophy was the Natural History of Lice and he was quite ignorant of the night sky. When Waakakaa considered the entire faculty of the University at Rhaachtown, he realized he was the only one with more than the most passing knowledge of the glitterers. No, there was no use in discussing the questions or their underlying postulation with any of the local scholars. He needed to go elsewhere for help in solving the puzzle. But where?
After pondering all of his options, he decided the only viable one was to publish and hope someone would read it who might have an answer, even a partial answer, or a new question that would make him think in a different direction. It was a small stickle, even smaller than his first stickle on the New Glitterer.
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