Could it be? Was Zack looking at a forgotten prehistoric ocean? Was Limbo once like Earth, and had God changed it? Perhaps by moving it closer to that vast sun that seemed to take up more and more of the sky each day? Or was it the Devil?
Later that day, the soldiers gave the Makains their first taste of Sorkian prisoner food – moldy cacti. Zack de-needled it with the speed of a Limbean native and wolfed it down even quicker. At least for a little while, one of his maladies would be in remission.
The march continued. That night, Zack lay awake, staring at the strange Limbean stars, feeling his blood coarse through his tired veins. “Hey Klatu, are you up?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“In Hawaii, we look for patterns in the stars and give them names. Do you do that here too?”
“Yes, take a look there.” He pointed to a large, snowy cluster directly above them. “That’s the Crystal City.”
“Crystal City?”
“Yes. According to ancient legend, that’s where King Crysetheus lived. They say that in those times, golligans, the desert-loving children of the Devil, and humans, the water-loving children of God, were equal in intelligence and strength and warred ceaselessly for control of the world. That is, until Crysetheus, with the help of the goddess Athena, stole the golligan’s intelligence and drove them underground, where the noxious fumes dwarfed their stature.”
“Athena? We have her in our myths in Hawaii too. I wonder if Makaio told the villagers about her.”
“I don’t know, but I thought that the legend was hundreds or even thousands of years old. They tell it in other villages too.”
“Do you believe it?”
“No, it’s just a story. It doesn’t have facts and miracles to back it up like Makaism does.”
“Right… right.”
“Anyway, move your eyes just a little to the right, and you’ll see Crysetheus, immortalized on his starry throne.”
“Uhhhh… ok.” There were seven or eight intense points of light, but Zack could not discern a king or a throne.
“And then back over to the left of the Crystal City, you’ll see Golthnor, the Great Golligan King, whom Crysetheus vanquished.”
“Oh yes, I think I can make him out,” Zack lied.
“And then way up there,” Klatu said, pointing, “is the Coyote Shaman, who lives at the very northernmost tip of Limbo and possesses more healing power than all the human medicine men in the world combined.”
“Uhhhh…”
“Can’t you see any of them?”
“To be honest, not really. Just like in Hawaii, they don’t look anything like their names!”
They laughed.
On the fourth morning, Kerberus rode up and down the line, looking the prisoners over, and Zack, emboldened by the small reserve of cactus mush sitting in his abdomen from the day before, decided that he would try to work on him. He summoned all of his remaining strength and heaved the words out of his leathery throat and cottony mouth. “How can you do this to women and children?”
Kerberus laughed. “Are you so new to the world that you have not seen war?”
“I know of war. Killing men is one thing, but hurting women and children? Only someone with no honor at all would do that.”
“Ha. Oh, my naïve little captive, you truly do know nothing of war. Tell me, do not your women aid your soldiers? Do not they give birth to the little babies that will someday grow to be your future soldiers? And when those soldiers take the field of battle and kill my soldiers, do not they harm my soldiers’ women and babies, who will no longer have husbands and fathers to provide for them? In war, my dear little slave, every last citizen of one nation is in conflict with every last citizen of the other. Soldier against soldier, woman against woman, baby against baby. To claim otherwise is nothing more than a cheap, self-serving political trick.”
Zack wondered what Stan would think of this argument. “General, you’re right, that is the way that things are, but it is not the way that things have to be! In Hawaii, we learned a long time ago that certain things are always wrong, even in war.”
Kerberus snickered. “Hawaii? No thank you. You keep your religion. I will keep the spoils of war!”
“Kerberus, there is an entire world beyond this one for those that chose to do good.”
“Oh really? I am enchanted.”
“You should be. Makaism, not war, is the path to true happiness.”
“True happiness? I am not convinced. Do you know what brings me the most happiness?”
“What?”
“Taking my enemies’ wives.”
“That can never compare to the eternal happiness of Heaven or to the happiness of doing good in this life… not to mention the happiness that comes from finding just one special woman and building a real relationship with her.”
“A real relationship? You talk like a woman!”
“There’s nothing feminine about wanting to be a good husband and father.”
“Well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste. Do pray tell though, was that your wife that you sat with in the circle before the Church?”
“Absolutely not, she… she was just a fellow Makain!”
Kerberus chuckled. “Your inelegance betrays you! You are very young to the ways of the world indeed. I think that when we get to Sorkium, I shall put you in a prison cell across from your wife’s so that you can watch me with her.”
“That will never happen Kerberus.”
“We shall see.”
“Do you want to know something General?”
“I already know many things. A truly great general educates himself on all subjects – not just the art of war. But by all means, proceed.”
“I think that out of all the people that I have met here on Limbo, you are the first one that truly deserves to be here.”
“Where?”
“On Limbo, suffering, as opposed to being in Hawaii.”
“Oh? And would you act any differently if the roles were reversed and you were the general and I was the prisoner?”
Zack thought about the sunnies that he had killed as a boy, flopping in the weeds.
“Did you know that I, General Kerberus, was born into slavery? When I was a very small child, I swore to myself that someday, I would be free… that I would never be the slave again. And I did it. Not by begging, or by trying to teach my masters about morality, oh no. I took my freedom!”
“How?”
“With a little desert flower – peyote!”
“Peyote? We have that in Hawaii too. It’s a drug.”
“Indeed, and I am the peyote king! I sold it to the other slaves in the old capital, right under King Karnak’s nose, and eventually saved enough money to purchase my freedom. Then I assembled a small army and murdered the peyote farmers and stole their land.”
“King Karnak?”
“Yes, he was the King before Sork dethroned him. He was weak and foolish. Although he was a mighty warrior, he knew nothing of politics and failed to grasp the intricacies of the peyote trade and the importance of turning them to his advantage.”
“Why should he?”
“Because peyote is silver, and silver is power! Sork always understood that, and together, we have built a great empire!”
“Yes, at the expense of your soul.”
“Again you try to convert me? Do you learn nothing?”
“Ok, forget religion. I think building your empire on peyote is reckless purely from a tactical point of view. How strong can an empire be if its subjects spend all of their time wandering around in a drug-induced stupor?”
“Stupor? Oh pious one, have you never partaken in peyote’s pleasures but once? Shall I be forced to kill you before you ever know such happiness?”
“Happiness? Drugs don’t give you real happiness. I might not know much about being high, but I know that.”
“Of course they bring real happiness. Perhaps not permanent happiness, but while one is under peyote’s sweet spe
ll, there is nothing more real. Like your feet, stomach, or the voice-boxes with which we are having this conversation, the human brain is a physical object. I know, I have cracked open the heads of my enemies and seen it slide out. Using a plant to make it sing produces music no less real in quality.”
“You are wrong Kerberus. Real happiness, like music, doesn’t come from a physical object, it comes from the soul.”
“The soul? I don’t entertain such frivolous notions.” Kerberus paused and looked toward the front of the line. “And while this has been amusing, I tire of your idiocy… and have far more interesting toys to play with.” Kerberus stared, waiting for Zack’s reaction, but Zack refused to give him the satisfaction.
Kerberus looked disappointed, then he continued. “Peyote use does not weaken our empire because we do not make it available to all of our subjects. It is outlawed, and we only sell it to the ruling class, slaves, and enemy cities and villages. And as far as morality is concerned, there is only one lesson that one need learn, and that is the lesson of the hrash and the og. You see my dear prisoner, in this world, you are either the hrash or the og, and right now, I am the hrash, and you, you are the og. When we reach Sorkium, you will find out just how much the og – you and your wife both.”
Zack was silent.
“Ah! What’s wrong? Have you no more teachings to bestow on me? You see young Makain? It is I who am teaching you about morality, not the other way around.”
The march continued. Zack’s entire body was submerged in pain, and his sandals were falling apart. Soon, his bare feet would be striking the hot red sand. Would he be able to bear this additional torture? Zack did not know, but by the end of the day, his back began to feel as if it would literally break in two, and the feeling drove this and all other questions from his consciousness until but one remained: did God really need to give him a weak back on Limbo too? Zack looked to the sky again and again, but no answer came. He was alone.
The next morning, which was the fifth morning, the vultures returned overhead, hungry for the meal that they had been denied back at the village. They had good timing. Zack’s bodily vehicle was breaking down past repair, and his was not the only one – several people throughout the line died that morning. Each time, the soldiers halted the Caravan so that they could unchain the former traveler and redistribute the water from the corpse to the soon to be corpses. Then the dogs would take their share, and the march would resume, leaving the vultures to clean up the rest.
Zack had no idea how he lived to see noon, but he was happy that he did. The soldiers gave the Makains more cactus rations, and Klatu, who was holding up better than Zack, thanks to his larger body and the fat deposits that it concealed under its skin, offered Zack some of his.
“Klatu, I can’t accept that. You have so much to live for here on Limbo.”
“Zack, take it, your body is eating itself.”
“But I’m supposed to be helping you.”
“You are helping me… by letting me give you this.”
Zack reluctantly took the food. “Thank you Klatu, I am sure God sees you.”
The march continued. Klatu’s cactus ration brought Zack additional strength, and the sixth night brought something even better: an impossible chance, an incredible prospect – delivered from the oddest of sources. It was the witching hour, and Zack, again unable to sleep, was staring into the blackness beyond, when the line guard unexpectedly halted his boots directly in front of Zack’s face. Zack looked up, and the soldier slowly and purposefully moved his raised index finger to his lips. Zack remained still. Then, just as slowly, and even more carefully, the soldier descended into a crouch and gently woke Santanodis and Klatu.
The soldier was old and grizzled with long white hair and a dirty, disordered white beard. His breath was rancid, and he whispered in an ugly, raspy voice past dead black teeth. “Listen closely. If you do exactly as I say, you will have your freedom. There is a hidden peyote field not more than a day’s march from where we be marching tomorrow afternoon, in the northwest, and indeed, I’ll be damned if the good General has any inkling that it lie there. I and two others are going to make a break for it, and we could use some extra hands for carrying the bounty. If you assist, we will gladly set you free at the nearest village, with enough provisions to get home. What say you?”
“Of course we’ll do it,” Zack whispered.
Klatu and Santanodis nodded excitedly.
“Good, then I shall return tomorrow night with the key to those chains.”
“Wait,” Zack said, “can we take just a couple more prisoners? I know of some others who would be really useful.”
“No, we can only take three.”
“But –”
“You must do exactly as I say.”
“Ok.”
The next morning, Zack, Klatu, and Santanodis moved with renewed vigor, and Zack’s mind raced as he plotted out their next steps. First they would help move the peyote, then they would buy, beg, or steal weapons – perhaps find others sympathetic to their cause – and then finally, they would travel to Sorkium to free everyone else. This was it. This was what Zack had been waiting for, the reason he stayed in the game. He would parlay this opportunity into something much bigger, something monumental. He would prove his worth to Lilly. She would be so proud.
Truly, they were filled with hope, and as the day progressed, even Santanodis opened up, and the threesome discussed many things. Zack told Klatu and Santanodis all about his childhood and his rise to success on Wall Street, as well as the story of his time in Heaven/Hawaii, which was the story of Lilly. In turn, Klatu and Santanodis spoke briefly of their dry desert lives and the women that had been their only oases, before quickly steering the conversation to more manly topics, such as the Limbean kings of old, their vast empires, and pre-Makain religion. It turned out that in Limbean mythology, God and the Devil were actually brothers, who turned on one another when they both fell for Athena, who then left the universe in disgust.
They were having a breakthrough, and late in the afternoon, Zack and Santanodis finally got to talking about all of the living things that creep upon Earth and Limbo.
“There is a species of monkey in Hawaii, Santanodis, which does a very cruel thing.”
“What?”
“Well, when a male mates with a new female, he kills any babies that she has from a previous father, so that neither of them has to expend any energy or food on offspring that do not carry his genetic material. Can you believe that?”
“I could, if I believed that Hawaii was real, but I still have my doubts.”
“Still?”
“Still. But please continue. At the very least, your tales of Hawaii are always interesting.”
“Ok then, here’s another one. In Hawaii, there’s a certain type of alligator… uh… think of it as a big water lizard… that cooperates with a certain type of bird. The alligator will open up its jaws, and the bird will hop in and eat little scraps of food off of the alligator’s teeth. Now the alligator could easily crush the bird, but it doesn’t, because the bird helps the alligator by cleaning its teeth. You see? They work together for their mutual benefit. The law of the jungle doesn’t always mean fierce competition.”
“Wow Zack, you have quite an imagination!”
“No really, it’s true Santanodis. It’s all because of our genes.”
“Genes?”
“Yes. They’re extremely small, minuscule little strands of living material that contain the information that your body uses for building itself.”
“What information?”
“It’s kind of like a written set of instructions. And every animal has them, in every part of its body. It’s what makes a golligan small, a coyote big, and a person smart. And they’re unique for every person, except for twins. That’s why everyone, even in the same family, looks at least a little different from each other.”
Santanodis processed this for a moment. “Well where do these genes come from?”<
br />
“Your parents. Your mom’s genes mix with your dad’s, and you end up looking a little like each of them.”
“Hmmm.” A light seemed to turn on in Santanodis’s head. “That does kind of make sense.”
“Yes of course,” Zack said, the excitement in his brain spilling into his voice. “You see, genes control everything about us. They’re what make us hungry when we haven’t eaten, tired when we haven’t rested, bored when we’re wasting our time.” Zack was on a roll. “They make us jealous when our partners stray, loyal when someone has shown himself to be a friend, and loving when our children are born. It’s like they’re trying to help us survive, because if we do, then we make more of them in our children. Everything about us is somehow geared toward that goal. We are like their machines, and our brains… hmmm.” For just a second, Zack thought about what Kerberus had said to him about brains two days prior. “Our brains are like the control room. They’re like little pleasure and pain boxes, pushing and pulling us toward survival.”
Santanodis looked puzzled again; Zack was forgetting something.
Then he remembered. “But humans are capable of breaking free from all of that. You see, we got more and more intelligent over time because the people with genes for intelligence were better able to survive and reproduce those genes. See, it was all about the genes propagating themselves.” As he continued, Zack had to wonder if this was completely accurate, given that God had directed human evolution, but he kept going. “But eventually, our brains got so developed, that they became capable of making decisions that our genes never intended.”
Santanodis looked more confused than ever. “It’s like this…” Zack rummaged through his mind for an example, “… suppose that you hired someone to help you with your tool trade, like an apprentice.”
“Ok.”
“You teach him how to make the tools because a skilled worker helps you more than an unskilled one.”
“Ok.”
“You keep teaching him more and more because it benefits you. But one day, he’s so knowledgeable, that he decides to move to the other side of the village and open up his own tool trade. And now, he’s capable not only of making decisions that don’t help you, but ones that might actually hurt you.”
The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets Page 16
