by Jon Saboe
On his return, when they had approached his room, a swathe of pale-green light from his doorway splashed into the room across from his. The flute-player was playing inside, but had stopped suddenly when they drew near. Peleg had looked inside and saw a young man holding a bone—probably a femur—of a young bear or large cat. They had locked eyes as the boy slowly returned the bone to his lips—but instead of playing, the boy had flashed a smile at Peleg which sent chills down into his lower back.
It wasn’t that the smile was unfriendly—it was very warm and relaxed. What had troubled him were the man’s teeth! The front ones were pointed—and looked very sharp! But the lips had quickly closed around the bone flute, and soon the rich, grainy notes had refilled the cavern.
That was almost two weeks ago—or the best approximation Peleg could determine. He hadn’t bothered to keep track of the meal count—he was sure it was at least thirty-six. He was finishing the very tough, over-cooked (or dried) mystery meat which apparently was the only food here. His jaw ached as he chewed, and he reached over to the wall to collect a handful of water.
He laughed quietly at a sudden, stupid joke. At least these cave-people have running water!
He hoped the Founder—whoever he was—would get here soon. This ‘Founder’ might be his only hope of getting out of here.
He was dreaming about when he first met young Serug. The ten-year-old boy had just been admitted to the Citadel, and the seventy-four-year-old Peleg had just become a Master Cartographer. He had taken an instant liking to the precocious, inquisitive kid, and later—as Serug became an adult—they had become fast friends.
“Fasten your feet!”
Peleg awoke, instantly alert. Since his return, they had not demanded that his feet be stockaded. Even when his light-panel was replaced, someone had simply stood guard outside of the door.
He dutifully placed his feet in position, and waited for the familiar ‘clack’ of stone. The door opened, and again he was asked to place his wrists into a noose. His feet were loosed, and he was led away—flanked again by two guards—into the pitch black of the outside corridors.
They walked for what seemed like half an hour, traveling ever downward. Sometimes the smooth flooring pitched at a steep decline, and other times they made their way down stone staircases—both straight and winding.
The temperature grew warmer the farther they walked, and something in the air reminded Peleg of bathhouse steam—with a slight aroma of sulfur mixed in.
They entered into a large, circular room where a large, clean-shaven man with short, curly black hair and very large ears (and obviously a Mentor) was sitting behind a small stone table. A wide stone platform scattered with a large number of small stones stood to the man’s right, and several light panels filled the room with dim blue-green light—much brighter that anything Peleg had experienced since his capture. Peleg winced slightly, squinting as his eyes adjusted. Under normal lighting, this man would probably have a dark olive complexion, but everything appeared bluish pale-green in this room.
The man said something to Peleg’s escorts, and immediately his wrist-rope was removed. The three men left through the doorway they had just entered, leaving Peleg alone with the seated man. A stone slab slid into the opening, giving the impression that they were both trapped.
The man beckoned, and Peleg approached. Upon closer inspection the first thing Peleg noticed was that the man had a very heavy and even sad look about him. But the second thing he saw jolted him like nothing else. The man had a reddish-brown teardrop-shaped tattoo on his left cheek! Just like the one marking Mentor Thaxad—and the one he had seen briefly on the rancher Dōgon!
The third thing he noticed was the incredible maturity in the man’s eyes. Even though the man appeared younger than Peleg, they looked as if they held a thousand mysteries, and their depth was enhanced as they peered out from under his large, Mentor brow.
Peleg suddenly realized he had been staring—quite impolitely—at the man’s large, smooth face and big ears, and was about to turn away apologetically when he realized that he was being scrutinized in the same manner.
He looked downward and relaxed, allowing this man (whom he now hoped was the aforementioned Founder) to continue studying him.
Finally the man spoke. It was a strong, melodic voice which resonated around the curved walls of this room.
“And you are quite certain that your name is not Eber?”
Peleg was taken aback by the question, but recovered quickly.
“Yes,” he said. “I am quite sure. I was born about four years before the Great Awakening, and was raised in an orphanage in…”
The man looked up abruptly and stopped him with a wave. His eyes were shining with an excitement that Peleg would have sworn was impossible when he first met him.
“I understand now,” the man spoke, rambling. “No, I see now that you are not Eber, but you are the answer to all of my desires.”
Peleg squirmed in discomfort, unsure of the man’s intentions. But the man continued talking without pauses.
“I had completely abandoned all hope of achieving my mission. For more than one-hundred years we have been attacked, exiled, and despised, while our task became more and more hopeless.”
The gleaming eyes which had been focused inward now widened and flashed a piercing beam up into Peleg’s face, who was still standing.
“And now you have been delivered directly to our home!” He ended with a huge smile—which twisted into a loud laugh and an upward wave of his hand.
The man was obviously quite mad, Peleg decided. He’s been living here, underground, for far too long.
Peleg took a step back, and tried to speak, but was interrupted.
“I apologize,” the man said as his eyes began to calm down. “I’m sure it is quite a shock to hear such things. Please, sit down.”
He pointed to a bench across from himself, and Peleg sat. Before the man could start again, Peleg spoke, trying to gain some control of the situation.
“So, since I am not this Eber person, who is it that you believe me to be?”
If Peleg hoped this would focus this strange man and yield some answers, he was mistaken.
“Young Alapar spent the last several weeks training me in your tongue,” the man said suddenly frowning. “I hope I am doing satisfactorily.”
Peleg nodded encouragingly. He had noticed the unusual word order which betrayed a prior tongue (but did not affect the meaning), and an occasional mismatched verb and tense, but his case endings were flawless and his pronunciation was nearly so. The man had obviously learned very quickly.
The man suddenly began to speak quietly.
“My name is Shem, and I am the Founder of these people,” he stated as if it needed no explanation. “I had resigned myself to failure, so you must forgive my excitement. When I first heard that Eber had been found, I suspended my doubts until I could see you. Now, however, I see that you are too young, but I can’t help but feeling a new hope.”
He ended with an instant huge smile.
Peleg tried again. “Who is it that you believe me to be?”
“First I need to hear who you say you are,” Shem responded, as his smile vanished as instantly as it had appeared. “I can’t afford to be wrong about something this vital. You must tell me about your life, and especially about the travels that brought you here.”
Peleg nodded, realizing he would not get any answers until he had done as Shem requested. Uneasiness gripped him as he prepared to overcome his inhibitions about discussing the past—especially his past. Fortunately, this was a stranger, and they were alone. Besides, this was not the time to be concerned about decorum.
He began by sharing some of his faint memories in the orphanage, followed by his help in establishing the settlement with Ur-Nammu. He spoke of the thirty years they had spent building the foundations and walls of their city, and how many other settlers had come to join them when they discovered those that shared their language.
Over the next forty years he had helped build the first phase of the great Citadel, which his friend Reu-Nathor (along with his politically-minded mother) had desired to establish, and he told Shem of his great excitement when, at the age of seventy-six, he had matriculated into that great monument to Knowledge.
There was the period of resistance when Reu-Nathor announced that new students to the Citadel must remove all family ties to allow full immersion into their studies. But soon parents were eager for the honor of having their child accepted; and knowing that their offspring would have the best possible future while, at the same time, building a superior society was more than enough compensation.
Peleg had discovered he had a keen ear for linguistics when visitors from other settlements came to the Citadel. He told Shem how he had acquired his Chief status in Linguistics and Cartography, and how this had led to him being selected for the Great Discovery mission.
He paused briefly, hoping that a small amount of guilt might strike this man, as Shem must surely realize what an important undertaking his people had destroyed.
Shem gave no reaction, however, and motioned for him to continue.
Peleg then began telling Shem about the details of their voyage. As he spoke, he suddenly realized that he would be able to give Shem a much better account if he had his charts and maps, and asked about them.
Shem rose, and Peleg was astonished to realize that this man was not nearly as tall as one would expect of a Mentor. Although his height surpassed Peleg’s by at least a third of a meter, he was still shorter than Thaxad.
Shem approached the stone platform, and Peleg suddenly realized that the surface was not loose stones as he had previously thought, but rather a very ornate and elaborate “garden” of smooth, multi-colored pebbles arranged in very intricate, geometric patterns. Peleg had a sudden impulse to play with the pebbles and create his own designs.
Shem reached down behind the platform a retrieved a small package which Peleg instantly recognized as his chest-pack! He returned to the table, opened the drawstring, and carefully slid the contents onto the table.
Peleg’s heart leaped as he saw his maps, notes, and charts tumble out along with his protractor/cross-staff and compass! Shem spread them out silently on the tabletop, returned to his own bench, and simply said, “Continue”.
Peleg began arranging his maps and logs in some sort of chronological order and spoke—newly energized by this recovery and also now able to use them as a point of reference.
He mentioned Thaxad by name as he described the small planetarium calculator the chemist had made—and which now was most certainly at the bottom of the sea. He hoped that Shem might react to the name, but was disappointed when he received no response. He would try later. Somehow that blood-drop tattoo they shared must mean something.
He spoke of Kupé and the islanders—refugees from the settlement on the continent further east where they had escaped first from the water tower, and then later by air from the artist colony.
Recounting earthquakes and storms elicited little response from Shem, but his interest suddenly grew as Peleg described the magnetic reversal which had affected his compass—and sent them to the large, cold landmass in the south polar regions. Shem asked if they had discovered anything of interest there, but Peleg only reported the passage they found—and of course the šeg which had intrigued everyone.
In the last months of their voyage, Peleg had managed to adjust his maps of those regions and make them much more accurate as he backtracked his calculations. Now Shem was staring silently at the partial coastlines, apparently lost in thought, and Peleg stopped speaking and waited with him.
Finally Shem muttered something, and then quickly translated himself.
“The world is getting colder, much as I had feared.” He broke off with a sigh, and his choked tone-of-voice made Peleg think for one horrified second that this strange Mentor was about to break into tears.
A quick look into Shem’s face removed such concerns as he met Peleg’s eyes and simply asked him, again, to continue.
There was very little else to tell, however. The death of Serug, their near starvation, and the subsequent salvation upon finding land, food, and supplies to re-outfit the Urbat.
He deliberately left out the encounter with Dōgon, and spoke only briefly about the large rainbow which had welcomed them to the Great Western Sea with the promise of a speedy arrival home, only to be broken by an attack which could never have been anticipated—and was certainly not provoked.
He looked directly into Shem’s eyes as he finished, and finally received the remorse he had been looking for.
“You can not conceive how greatly we regret our attack, or how much anguish it brought us when we realized your ship was not a warship or reconnaissance vessel.”
Peleg thought, What about our anguish? but said nothing.
Shem continued.
“Our people did the best they could to heal and provide food and shelter for your survivors without betraying our own existence.”
He nodded as if Peleg would certainly understand.
“Of course, we had to take you in for questioning, since you were obviously a spy. It was only after we recovered you that we realized our mistake, and dispatched a rescue team.”
Shem’s sad face instantly changed, replaced by an excited, frenetic gleam.
“But here you are!” he exploded, with a big, smile, displaying an array of large, healthy teeth.
Peleg recoiled slightly at the outburst. His earlier assessment of this large man solidified as this latest mood swing struck. Shem was definitely crazy.
Peleg recovered somewhat and then risked the question he had tried earlier. He was prepared to be both fearful and skeptical of the answer when it came.
“And who is it, again, that you say I am?”
Shem’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke in hushed, conspiratorial tones; yet somehow managing to maintain his frantic energy and excitement.
“I believe, but I can’t be sure, yet, that Eber is your father.”
Peleg noticed the word is not was—probably an error in this newly learned language—but Shem hurried on, not allowing any reaction.
“Eber joined our Order, those who foresee the coming Zeh-ra, before the time you call the ‘Great Awakening’.”
Shem hadn’t bothered to translate the unknown word, which probably meant it was a proper noun. The word ‘foresee’, however, implied that Peleg was about to be exposed to yet another mystical belief system. Best to be tolerant once again, until such time as he could leave this place.
“After the Great Calamity, the Creator decreed that all humanity should explore the new world and repopulate the entire earth. But because of fear, and a refusal to believe the promise that another Great Calamity would never happen again, the people chose to stay in one place, and, in defiance, they built a great city.”
Shem focused in on Peleg’s eyes.
“That city is where you were raised. Nimrod taught that through strength of numbers, humanity could survive anything, and he set out to build the Great Tower which, when finished, would rise high above any flood—should one happen again.
“We taught and pleaded with people to renounce this disobedience, give up their fears, and go out into the world. Exploration, science, and the study of the universe were those things which would please the Creator, but we were soon attacked for our anti-political views. We warned that a great punishment would surely befall us soon if we ignored the Creator’s commission, but we were imprisoned and forced into slave labor, working on the very buildings and tower we opposed. Our children were also made to work, except the very young who were taken from us and placed in ‘orphanages’.”
The significance of ‘orphanages’ began to dawn on Peleg, and he now realized that soon he would be told that his father was still alive. He was still waiting for a description of this ‘Creator’, however. In all of the myths he had ever heard—or encountered on his travels
—the creator was usually a natural phenomenon. Typically, the Sky, or the Sea, or some mystical Mud was responsible for injecting life into the world. In the land of Manco Chavin, the Sun and Great Serpent, Apu Inti and Viracocha had colluded to bring about life in its current form. So far, Shem had not mentioned any of his creator’s attributes.
“Eber was a man,” Shem continued, “who managed to escape from our work camp a few years before your ‘Great Awakening’. He fled with two of his three wives, who still ran the family textile business, along with their servants and a small gathering of secret believers into the eastern mountains to appease the Creator and demonstrate their obedience. One of Eber’s two sons, Joktan, and three of his daughters also went with them. They hoped, also, to avoid the punishment that was sure to come down on the city.”
Shem’s eyes bore down on Peleg with tense excitement.
“After their escape, conditions became much worse for us, and we expected the inevitable punishment to come at any time. But the Creator was patient and waited another five years before acting.”
His face moved close to Peleg as he lowered his voice to an intense whisper, his eyes unfocused.
“We had been commanded to spread out over the Earth. When the Creator confused our tongues, we were forced to spread out, just like we had been instructed! In an act of brilliant mercy, His desires were accomplished!”
Peleg tried to force himself to keep a straight face, but his eyes seemed to roll of their own accord. It never ceased to amaze him how people could adjust events to conform to their belief system.
But his mission was not to argue with this manic ‘Founder’, or correct and objectify his thinking. It was to leave and report home as best he could. He still needed more information. He tried to bring Shem down to a more rational tone.
“How is it, again,” Peleg asked, “That you feel I fit into all of this?”
Shem suddenly looked serious and sad.
“As a slave, Eber was sent to toil in a limestone quarry, cutting finishing stones for Nimrod’s Tower. While there, Eber met and married a slave girl.”
