Whatever Gods May Be

by George P. Saunders

  As he had nothing immediately better to do, Zolan sorted through the various linguistic libraries for a word that correlated to the one he presumed his subconscious had formed awhile earlier. He had no reason to doubt that his dream had probably taken place in his own language, though he could recall many instances when he was asleep on Earth where his dream cycle took place in any one of a hundred different languages of that now-deceased planet. He had always amused himself thinking how versatile his imagination had become in structuring his subconscious multi-lingual.

  Not terribly alarmed when no translation of Resistor appeared in his own language, Zolan proceeded logically and opened up all other tape banks, including those he had accumulated over the past century on Earth. Curiously, the word bleeped into a frozen symbol of red on his panel, and a translation fed over a small screen.

  Zolan raised an eyebrow after he had read the computer printout. He chuckled, bemused, though he did feel a certain chill race down his spine.

  Resistor was indeed an Earth word, originating from one of the more obscure languages called Hebrew. Zolan had never versed himself completely in this particular idiom, partly because populations that utilized the language comprised a relatively small part of the planet, and in regions he had never planned to remain in for extensive periods of time. However, Resistor itself was formed from a root word he had seen many times before and its definition was very clear to him.

  Zolan recycled the data bank, and input the word once again for verification. He couldn't help but notice a tingle of apprehension tickle his insides as the same word and transliteration appeared once again on the screen.

  You're giving yourself nightmares, not dreams, Zolan old boy, he thought roguishly. He punched the disengage button to make the words on his panel blink out of existence, deciding that this minor distraction was no longer that enjoyable.

  The words did not go away. Zolan punched at the button again without success. Zolan frowned at the panel then tore his gaze away.

  Frozen circuit, he concluded rationally. But his eyes again turned to look at the printout.

  In red, the word Resistor stood alongside its root origin... Satan.

  When the dragon saw that he had been cast down to the earth, he pursued the woman...

  He took up his position by the shore of the sea...

  Revelations Chapter 12:13-17

  THIRTY-ONE

  For too long, He had been denied complete victory.

  In the beginning, it had seemed deceptively simple; the planet was in ruin and the pigs called Men were ready to be routed for the last time. The bombs had roasted the surface thoroughly, and the Dark-thing that had unlocked his prison door had squeezed the Earth for a million years with a passion that rivaled His own.

  The scene had been set, the circumstances were perfect -- and the final act should have taken place eons ago.

  But it had not.

  And He...was not pleased.

  For too long, the battle had been unnecessarily protracted; though the men continued to die, they did so slowly. Even with the power of his legions chopping away at their ranks for ten thousand millennia, still they refused to conveniently perish all at once. Their end, of course, would still be certain, but the process of elimination had been a gross, epic failure from the start -- and He was to blame! Too soon, He had counted himself victorious. He had made similar mistakes in the past, not anticipating the impossible, or even the extreme unlikely, and it appeared that history was again repeating itself. Always He had been thwarted at some point in the past, or at least deterred; why shouldn't he have expected resistance this time as well?

  The King howled with madness.

  The prize would be his regardless, but the indignity - nay, the sacrilegious audacity of it all, galled him mercilessly. The excrement Man, and his foul allies from the stars had defied His will successfully for ages, robbing him of the gratification he had waited for since the dawn of creation. The men would surely die, but even in these moments of penultimate triumph, He would see to it that those who dared to help that pathetic spawn, would pay dearly for the effort. He was not sure how to dispense such punishment, but after Man was exterminated, He would devote Himself full-time to the glorious task.

  The inadvertent appearance of the Stingers had been one of the surprise monkey wrenches thrown into His dynastic claims to Earth. They had been outstandingly troublesome to His armies, displaying a fanatical devotion to humanity that was incomprehensible -- and a little frightening. Unbelievably, the Stingers had been impervious to every weapon He had launched their way; neither the slave-rats nor His voracious little soldiers could harm the aliens, and frequently, great numbers of his armies had been crushed effortlessly in past skirmishes. Unable to immediately dispense with the clawed vermin, He chose to ignore them until the greater task of eliminating the bulk of Mankind not under their protection was completed.

  Now, the Stinger problem could no longer be so easily dismissed. Across the face of the globe, Man had been hunted down and devoured. The King's unholy census pointed to one remaining aggregate of humanity, sticking out like a cancer to be burned, and it was this isolated colony of Man that was under the protective domain of the enemy Stingers. For a thousand years, the King employed his vast empire to pursue and destroy the Stinger tribe. For a thousand years, the wars that ensued were horrible and bloody. Unfortunately for Him, though, they were far from decisive, and though Man continued to dwindle in number from sickness or Redeye purge, tens of thousands of His followers were wasted away by Stinger reprisals. Efficient, almost mechanically perfect destroyers, the great scorpions not only defended the tribe industriously but were also capable of inflicting insurmountable damage to those that would bring harm to it. The trouble-free days of slaughter for the Redeyes had suddenly disappeared, and what they were confronted with was a foe that was willing and able to wipe out as many of them as it could.

  The Stinger presence in the world had never evened up the odds; His legions totaled in the millions, while the mottled, primitive survivors of Holocaust Man were only a few thousand weak. But the fact that Man had persisted, and was even now, under Thelerick guidance, preparing for a final confrontation with His combined land and sea forces, was proof to the King that the Stingers would have to be exterminated as well before He could truly call Earth His own.

  But now, a new problem lay before Him. It appeared to be a small concern, but it was sufficient to make the King tremble where he stood. He had watched the Stingers come to Earth, as he had much later, the old man and his daughter, but these haphazard and accidental arrivals to his world had barely incurred a snarl of acknowledgement. Though they were sources of irritation, and in the case of Phillips and his child, occasional targets of amusement, both these out-of-place wayfarers had never given Him a reason to fear them.

  However, the gigantic, alien orb the king was staring at sent a distinctly unpleasant chill through his soul. He had watched it fall from the sky, and roll languidly onto the beach, and he knew that it was a potential danger. He had known such premonitions before; they were always the signal that preceded the advent of doomed enterprises.

  At his closest moment to ultimate victory, the King was more concerned than ever before. The ship from the sky he was now staring at from one of the high towers of the city, would be his downfall unless he could destroy it. He was not sure how it could threaten him, for the visions of his dark foreboding had not made themselves clear. But unless its destruction was assured, somehow He would fail in the end.

  He had acted quickly. Even now, a task force of Jumpers were on their way to kill the solitary pilot of the spaceship; a craft the King eerily understood to be a thing alive itself. Later that night, an army would be deployed in force.

  Even more important to the King was the tribe's arrival to the mountain valley only a short distance inland. He had been expecting it for months, and had gone so far to sacrifice a hundred thousand of his own to force the Stingers to cross the mid-con
tinental desert. His eastern army would perish, but they had served their purpose admirably. The tribe was now trapped, and very soon the greatest of his forces at his disposal would be thrown against the frail remnants of the Stinger following. And when this was accomplished, His kingdom would be secured forever.

  The storms from land and sea were about to join for a murderous conflagration of wind and heat, and as the King scowled over the beach and cliff-faces bordering the tumultuous shores, his eyes stopped at a point high above.

  A sudden surge of hate and rage filled his breast as he spotted the Stinger retreating away from the cliff edge. But it was quelled just as quickly, when he saw the girl on top of the loathsome alien.

  The King smiled. It did not concern him that the tribe would know of the city, for there was nothing to fear. But now a new hunger was stirring within the King that he knew would have to be sated. He had always been aware of it, growling uncertainly deep inside his fetid spirit, but he had successfully contained these passions and had channeled them through the infinitely more desirable pursuits of absolute power.

  The King recognized the daughter of the old man from Earth's past. He had tormented that crumbling fool for a very long time, and his vengeance would transcend previous tortures when he would make the young she pig his mate.

  The King raised his arms to the sky and beckoned to the angry clouds above. Around him, the great sea tornadoes formed and circulated fouling the waters below into a boiling spume. Waves formed far out from the shore hundreds of feet high, yet when they approached the solitary skeleton of the sunken building which the King stood upon, the wall of water divided harmlessly around it. All at once, the wind and rain were sucked up into the dark clouds above. The King kept his arms extended and they moved towards the shore with unnatural sense of purpose. A moment later, and the clouds dispersed over the edge of the cliff plateau.

  The King thought of the girl. And he smiled again.

  As he spread himself across the wind, moving in towards shore, he knew what he would do.

  She would be his.

  For a King would need a Queen to rule the kingdom of Hell on Earth.

  Though one were strong as seven,

  He too with death shall dwell,

  Nor wake with wings in heaven,

  Nor weep for pains in hell;

  Though one were fair as roses,

  His beauty clouds and closes;

  And well though love reposes,

  In the end it is not well.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Valry clung to Thalick's tail with all her strength, as the Stinger zigzagged across the crater floor. The ground was damp and mushy, offering little traction for his powerful legs, but he was fortunately still able to achieve a speed of about fifty miles per hour. He could not afford to slow down; the lacerating beams from the Light Storm above were increasing and accelerating with each passing second. Even at his presently impressive speed, Thalick, along with the girl, were still only barely escaping immediate incineration.

  Risking a coveted glace skywards, Valry tried to determine the magnitude of the forming funnel. The clouds had not yet blackened and the eerie hiss that usually heralded the arrival of the monstrous cyclone could not be heard. But the absence of these traditionally reliable earmarks to more dreadful things to come was little guarantee that the storm would settle for a threatening growl and then blow harmlessly out to sea. A Light Twister could form in seconds, snowballing into a convective column of destructive hell capable of ripping a small mountain apart.

  Valry cringed as the lightning bolts rained down around her, but at least their fiery presence was a good indication that the more dreaded tornado was not immediately forthcoming. Once the charring rain of bolts diminished, and if the clouds had not dissipated, it was a certain sign that the worst of the storm was about to begin. The cyclone would suck in residual and scattered electric currents and literally transform the polluted skies into a million-volt hot shroud, in which anything underneath would be thoroughly cooked. Anyone caught below a fully matured Light Storm stood a much better chance of being electrocuted rather than vaporized by the swirling madness offered by the actual twister.

  Both alternatives were completely unacceptable to Thalick. However, if he did not reach the relative safety of higher ground shortly, there would no longer be a choice in the matter. He hissed nastily as a light bolt screamed downward several yards ahead, forcing him to sharply turn and avoid the blast.

  Thalick was more afraid for his human passenger, who was completely vulnerable to a stray strike. Had the Stinger actually sustained a hit, he could suffer massive damage and extreme discomfort. But he would live to hiss about it later; a talent the little Valry did not possess. He cursed himself inwardly for allowing the girl to have persuaded him earlier that afternoon to descend into the crater at this time of year. Like Valry, had been deceived by the promising calm and perpetually bland overcast that assured a respectable margin of safety from the seasonal twisters. It was a mistake he hoped he was not going to permanently regret.

  The sky suddenly blazed. Valry closed her eyes, clutching on tighter to Thalick as the Stinger shifted to the right. When she opened them she had time to glimpse an enormous, smoking crater pass behind her -- the indelible trademark of a deadly light bolt.

  Scorched, sick earth filled her nostrils. Another blast flashed brilliant, and then another and another, until the bolts began hailing down at a rate of one per second. This impeded Thalick's speed considerably, as he was forced to dodge, stop and start again in order to gauge sensorially the points of impact. It was a rough ride for Valry, but she hung on fiercely, her concentration like that of the Stinger, focused on the slopes of the plateau directly ahead.

  Then they heard it. An eerie growl reverberated across the land, and through the raining death around her, she could see the descending funnel strike earthward.

  "It's starting," she screamed against the snarl of wind and mud that slammed into her face, making her cough and gag. She stamped her food against the hard armor of Thalick's back. "You've got to fly, Thalick. I know you don't want to, but it's the only way."

  Another explosion rattled the ground, sputtering wet rock and muck all over Valry.

  "I'll be okay," she continued yelling, keeping her head and face covered with her fur wrap. "Open your wings."

  The Stinger did not respond, though he was adamant at not following Valry's suggestion. Had he taken to the air, the chances would be excellent that the girl would be torn to pieces. The Stinger himself would probably finish severely injured. The light bolts were too haphazard in their offensive, and once airborne it would be much more difficult to accurately avoid being struck by them. Progress would be slower on the ground, but it insured more of a chance for survival for Valry.

  Abruptly, the hail of lightning ceased. The tornado had completely formed, and a moment later, Thalick understood why Valry had been so insistent that he take to the air.

  The twister was gargantuous, spanning half a mile in diameter. The air became suddenly very still, which allowed the Stinger to use his time greedily to hop and run where he could, but both he and the girl knew that only seconds remained before all hell broke loose.

  There was almost something alive about the funnel, Valry thought to herself, shivering in spite of the warm air. She had seen Light Twisters from a great distance before and even then she felt a cold slice of terror run through her. Even from twenty miles away, the power of the tornados could still shake the earth and moan across the skies like some horrible demon in its death throes. Now, only a few hundred yards from the thing, Valry thought that the twister was more than alive. It seemed more a creation of pure and conscious evil anxious to rape and destroy everything in its path.

  Thalick regarded the twister somewhat less metaphysically. For him, it was simply big and mean and ready to attack blindly at anything it could; yet another execrable byproduct of this damned planet that owed its entire existence to the nuclear folly of
a civilization that rightfully lay buried underneath several tons of fused rock.

  The shock wave from the twisters formation crashed into Thalick and the girl, followed by a blinding explosion. Valry found herself flying for what seemed an eternity, until she plowed roughly into a mud pool feet first. Shaken but uninjured, Valry clawed the slop out of her face and frantically searched for Thalick.

  The Stinger had also been thrown easily into the air, though his landing was not as smooth as Valry's had been. Crashing on his back, he was dimly aware of a sharp burning in his belly. He had been lucky; a few more inches and the single light bolt that had thrown both he and Valry so effortlessly skyward, would have just as easily vivisected him.

  A charred pit of black, smoldering ash received the brunt of the high-velocity bolt, and even as Thalick landed, burned rock and earth rained down on top of him from the fallout.

  Disoriented, Thalick rolled himself over, disgusted to discover one broken antennae. It was a painless casualty, but one which diminished his navigational effectiveness. More distracting, was the riveting pain on his underbelly, which he could not do anything immediately to correct. During a dormant period, any damage to his exterior could be rectified easily, and in fact be corrected in a matter of hours.

  Unfortunately, the growling twister now heading directly for him was not prepared to allow Thalick such luxuries.

  Valry spotted Thalick and the tornado dogging him. She was forced to squint now, because the twister was vacuuming up tons of topical sand and dirt around her, which made the air grow darker. But even with such poor visibility, the girl could still see that Thalick was in a deadly position. Though practically indestructible, she doubted whether even Thalick could hold together if sucked into the snarling vortex approaching him.