The Days of Peleg

by Jon Saboe

  “People tend to reconsider killing their fellow man if they are in such a society.”

  There was a pause until Peleg was forced to ask, “And the fourth?”

  “The forth requirement was for humanity to spread out into the world and establish themselves into nations—separate entities where varieties of cultures, arts, and methods of government could be developed. It was this command which humanity most resolutely refused to obey as they cowered in fear of the vast, unknown world around them. They obstinately chose, instead, to build one singular city-state, refusing to venture into the world, and refusing to trust the Creator to protect them.”

  Peleg caught himself starting to think that this Creator was real, and shook his head to clear it. They were now walking in a narrow corridor which seemed to curve slightly to the right. At Shem’s pause, Peleg gathered his courage and jumped in with a question.

  “What is so wrong with people choosing to live together?”

  They stopped walking again, and the ensuing silence made Peleg hope he had struck a nerve.

  “Imagine,” Shem began slowly, “a society where great exploitation, oppression, and corruption are normal, yet the entire culture embraces it. What chance does that society have to change, unless there is an outside influence that challenges it?”

  They resumed walking, slowly.

  “You are aware, I’m sure, that local governments need checks and balances to maintain accountability. In this same manner, different nations and cultures constantly challenge each other. If one nation is attacked or subjugated, others can come to their aid. If there exists only one powerful state, who will come to their aid when they are oppressed?”

  “It sounds like a good recipe for war,” commented Peleg.

  “Yes, it can be,” admitted Shem. “But the alternative could be one super-culture which becomes so wicked that nothing could ever counter it. This is the condition your city of Babel had attained.”

  He stopped and turned to Peleg in the darkness.

  “Imagine a society which believes that human sacrifice is a beautiful, noble activity. You’re a linguist. You understand that such beliefs can be controlled through language, and unless an alternative thinking arrives, it will never change. And of course, by their very nature, multiple languages assure multiple ways of thinking.”

  His hand gripped Peleg’s elbow more tightly, and Peleg felt his face move closer.

  “You recall your travels in the land of Manco Chavin? That government (as are most) was artificially constructed for the sole purpose of controlling the population. The perpetuation of sun worship, and their willingness to kill dissenters was forever affected by your arrival. Manco Chavin survives, and their belief systems will never again be safe from challenges.”

  Peleg twisted his arm to relax Shem’s grip.

  “I understand what you are saying,” he said, “but it seems that if the right people and right culture are established, then all of that would be unnecessary. For example, in Ur, the Citadel, with the emphasis on reason and Knowledge, has created a society of complete peace, harmony, and prosperity.”

  Peleg was totally unprepared for Shem’s response.

  The Founder was laughing so hard that he began to choke. Finally, he managed to speak between gasps.

  “I think,” he said, heaving, “that you will find things quite different if you were to return home.” He took another deep breath. “A great deal can happen in twelve years.”

  This last sentence disturbed Peleg in a strange way he would not soon forget. His heart raced in a mixture of concern and fear. Concern that some unknown crisis had occurred in his home city—and a fear (based on the subjunctive voice in Shem’s previous sentence) that he would never return home.

  Shem was breathing more regularly now.

  “The culture of your Citadel was based on nothing but vapid human speculation,” he continued. “It was an emptiness that could not be sustained. Now every form of philosophical whim and ego-driven fantasy is expounded there, and the only beneficiaries are the merchants who sell them.”

  Peleg felt as if he had been punched in the stomach, and a seething rage began to build. And what did Shem mean by ‘was’?

  He jerked his arm away from Shem’s grasp.

  “The Citadel is founded firmly on the principles of Knowledge!”he said angrily. “I’m not sure what rumors you have been listening to, but if you actually lived in the real world instead of this cave, you might discover the great progress that mankind has made in the last one hundred years!”

  Shem was silent for a brief moment, but not intimidated. He snapped back at Peleg.

  “If only you knew how far mankind has regressed in the last three hundred!”

  He reached out and regained Peleg’s elbow.

  “You must not be angry,” he said, not too condescendingly. “I’m sure we have much to learn from each other.”

  Shem steered him around the next corner.

  “Besides,” he said. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

  Shem pressed Peleg’s head down and maneuvered him into a low doorway. Peleg’s anger faded as his curiosity took over.

  As he stepped into the room, he realized the floor was covered with a thick mat of some kind of fur or woven hair. Faint bio-light panels hung from a high ceiling, and as his eyes refocused in the dim light, he heard muted thuds and saw a frenzy of motion throughout the room.

  It was a room full of children, and they seemed to be engaged in a complex but silent dance. Young girls were lifting boys into the air, and the boys, in turn, would drop gracefully onto the rugs, rolling and slapping the floor to an inaudible beat.

  Suddenly a signal from a flute sounded, and on cue, the roles were reversed with the girls now flipping through the air and rolling away, always slapping the floor together.

  Peleg looked across the room and saw a young man holding a flute who appeared to be in charge of this class. Like everyone else here, he had a heavy brow-ridge and was wearing a leather skullcap, much like those he saw on the men who delivered his meals. In the dim light, Peleg couldn’t be certain, but he thought this man might be the same as the flute player whom he had seen in the room across from his.

  The man raised the flute to his lips and sounded a different signal. Immediately the children lined up rank and file facing the man, who spoke a short command-like sentence.

  The children turned as one towards the doorway, bowed to Shem, and spoke something, probably a greeting, in unison.

  Shem smiled broadly at them, and most smiled back showing bright teeth in the dim light. A new signal sounded, and the children jumped down to their knees, grabbed a pre-determined partner by the shoulders, and began rocking back and forth.

  It finally dawned on Peleg what this class was. It was not any type of music or dance. It was unarmed combat training! He looked over at Shem who was beaming.

  “The next class of our defense force,” he said with pride.

  “Defense force?” asked Peleg.

  “Yes,” answered Shem. “The Gutian Defense Force, who disguise and guard our communities and protect us from Sargon and others who would destroy our destiny”.

  Gutians! Peleg’s stomach tightened at the word. Old angers began to surface as the identity of his hosts became clear. He was a prisoner of escaped outlaws and political criminals!

  Shem read his face.

  “Yes, we are the dreaded Gutians,” he said softly. “We’re the ones that kidnap babies and drink blood.”

  Peleg looked at Shem sharply, who was grinning.

  “I have heard everything that has been said about us,” Shem continued. “But are you capable of considering the possibility that you’ve been lied to?”

  He paused.

  “Most men cannot. We are criminals only because we choose to worship the Creator and await his coming Seed. Criminals, because most human authorities cannot accept the possibility that an authority higher than themselves exists.”

  H
e steered Peleg away from the training room and continued down the dark hall.

  “What was the name of your friend who bore the mark of the Seed?”

  “His name was Thaxad,” answered Peleg, still trying to recover from too much information. “He was our Chief Chemist and was also an Elder Castor of the Order of Buzur.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “However, I once heard another man who knew him call him Tarshish.”

  “Oh yes!” exclaimed Shem. “I knew Tarshish. I gave him his first lessons in metallurgy and chemurgy when he was a boy. He then traveled to study stonecasting by the Great Sea, and later, I heard, was instructing in Kemet.”

  His voice saddened suddenly.

  “He was aboard your ship?”

  “Yes, but Alapar did not mention if any Mentors were among the survivors.”

  Shem’s heaved a sigh of such anguish that Peleg quickly continued.

  “I thought I saw him with the Captain and his wife escaping on some floating timbers. There was a lot of smoke, and I was unable to see clearly, but if anyone could survive that, it was Thaxad.”

  He thought of the aspersions that Shem had cast on the Citadel and said, “Thaxad designed the tiles for the outer surface of the Citadel, and also designed the small planetarium calculator I told you about.”

  Shem nodded in silent appreciation.

  “Tarshish was one of the last to take the mark,” Shem said, then looked at Peleg. “After him, there were only a few, and soon it was so dangerous that the mark was no longer administered.”

  “So Thaxad believed in your Creator?”

  “Naturally!” scowled Shem, apparently bewildered at any alternative. “What else could he do?”

  Loud voices could be heard down the corridor. Peleg had noticed them earlier in the distance, but as they approached, the increasing clamor demanded their full attention.

  Soon they arrived at a room on the left where an intense, virulent, assembly was apparently arguing. Peleg saw a lone man facing a group of forty-three men and women who were shouting and smacking their fists into their hands, very upset about something. Peleg still had not had enough exposure to the language to understand anything, but it looked like they were demanding some sort of change, and it was not being well received.

  Although the people appeared (in the dim bio-light) to have a full range of skin and hair tones, they all had the large brows that Peleg had come to expect here, and they all wore the same one-piece animal skin suits that wrapped over one shoulder much like a uniform. Only a variety of armbands and skullcaps distinguished certain individuals.

  As they became aware of Shem, the voices faded swiftly except for one woman who was passionately oblivious to her surroundings. She stopped as she abruptly realized she was the only one shouting. The resulting silence echoed out into the corridor until each pair of eyes was fastened (with fear?) on Shem’s face.

  Shem spoke a short soft sentence, and the men and women relaxed with a smattering of awkward laughter. Shem then entered the room, and addressed them for a few moments while Peleg watched their faces.

  They seemed to be filled with a tremendous amount of respect for Shem, but their expressions indicated a severe disagreement with what he was saying. Slowly their heads dropped slightly in what appeared to be reluctant acquiescence, and eventually Peleg sensed a grudging acceptance of whatever Shem was requesting. He also got the impression that their acceptance would not last much longer.

  Shem finished with what appeared to be a demand that everyone express his or her understanding, then he bowed slightly to the man who was apparently in charge, and turned to leave. Peleg spun around to exit the doorway and almost ran into the two guards who still constantly shadowed him. Shem went past them, and the two continued down the corridor.

  “What was that all about?” asked Peleg.

  “Nothing that needs to concern you,” said Shem, but his voice had a layer of worry that Peleg had not heard before. “In fact, please forget you even saw anything.”

  Peleg opened his mouth to ask if there was any danger, but Shem interrupted.

  “It is time to eat,” he said. “Turn this way.”

  Shem steered him to the left and up a steep incline. The air began to smell moist, and Peleg felt the ground soften beneath him. Something brushed his face, and he pushed it aside with his hands when he suddenly realized he was walking through moist leaves and small branches.

  A cool breeze ruffled his hair (the first wind he had felt in months), and he recoiled slightly. Suddenly his eyes were pierced with a thousand bright lights, and as Shem prodded him forward, he found himself standing on the surface under a blazing star-filled sky, shimmering with more luminosity than anything he had experienced since he had first been taken underground into Haganah.

  He shaded his eyes and continued walking. He now smelled the wonderful aroma of cooking meat, and looked around, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  His two guards were still ever-present, but Shem had run to greet someone who was standing some distance away. Peleg turned to find the direction of the smell, and realized they were standing at the extreme edge of a small clearing. The ramp they had just exited was covered by a small clump of trees and bushes, but the food was obviously behind him just beyond the edge of a thick forest.

  Shem was nowhere to be seen, so Peleg moved slowly (so as not to alarm his ‘shadows’) and proceeded towards the food. After all, Shem had said, ‘Time to eat’.

  He walked through the foliage until he saw a group of women digging in a large trench. Soon, however, he realized that the trench had already been dug, but that something had been buried in it, and they were simply uncovering it.

  The smell of cooked meat became stronger, and as he looked into the trench he saw flickering lights which he soon realized were hot coals. Large sticks and shovels were shoved into the coals, and soon large slabs of unknown baked ribs and flanks were extracted from the ashes. In the distance, Peleg could now see at least three similar trenches from which meat was being collected.

  No wonder his food was always so tough! He thought about the secrecy which made these people strive to hide their existence. Apparently they dug these trenches under the trees, built fires in them during the day, and then let them die down to coals. After that, prepared meat, probably from the previous day’s hunt, was placed on the coals and then buried to trap in the heat. At night, people would collect the food and then distribute it to the community below.

  He also realized that this solved another problem. Almost all activities that people did on the surface could be done below ground—except one. Cooking. No fires or smoke could be allowed underground. In addition to the smoke accumulation which would make breathing difficult if not impossible, it would slowly discolor and blacken the white crystalline walls; making what little light existed below even less effective. Until someone created smokeless fire, there could be no flames in Haganah.

  A heavy hand landed on his right shoulder, and he turned to see Shem grinning at him.

  “The stars are brilliant, are they not?” he asked. “During the Great Deluge I was unable to view the stars for more than a year.”

  He handed Peleg a large stoneware plate piled high with ribs, vegetables, fried roots, a thick slice of rye bread, and a sauce that was certain to be very spicy if its aroma was any indication.

  “I think you’ll find that food tastes much better up here in the fresh air,” declared Shem. “We seldom eat topside, however. There are sentries around this area, but you can never be too careful.”

  Peleg began to tear into his food. Although the meat was still hard to chew, apparently it toughened further by the time they delivered it to his room.

  He asked the question that had troubled him since he arrived.

  “What type of meat is this?”

  “Usually, it is bear meat,” answered Shem. “However, we prepare whatever the hunting parties bring to us. When the Creator blesses, they will sometimes capture a mammoth or, on rare oc
casions, even a tannyn—or, as you would say, ušemšutum—which is what you are eating now!”

  A loud cricket chirped twice nearby, and Shem grabbed his arm again.

  “We must go below, now,” he said with sudden urgency. “You may continue to eat along the way.”

  “What is happening?” asked Peleg as they rushed back to the portal. He began to realize that the ‘cricket’ was probably an artificial signal.

  “Nothing immediate,” answered Shem. “It is time for the guard change, and we must get out of the way. The cooking pits must be filled in, and when it is clear, the hunters will depart for the day.”

  Slowly, with Shem’s help, he stumbled back through the foliage and down into the opening which led back into the caverns; laboriously chewing his food, and awkwardly pushing the rest of his meal into his mouth as quickly as possible.

  As always, his two shadow guards remained behind him.

  They passed through areas that seemed more residential, much like those he witnessed on the way to his first interrogation. However, this time there was no attempt to quiet the children, as he could hear young voices in loud discussions and laughter. Some seemed to be playing while others were apparently preparing for the day’s activities.

  They continued walking as Shem bowed slightly to those who glanced out of their doorways, and on occasion he pointed to Peleg with a smile and a few short words.

  In the distance Peleg heard a harsh rasping sound, which grew louder as they approached. When they arrived at the source, he saw that it was a simple child’s pull-toy. A small girl was pulling it across the hallway under the watchful eyes of an older man who sat on the other side of an open doorway.

  It was a wooden duck with small wheels. Some internal mechanism powered by the turning wheels scraped together, creating a grating quack! whenever she pulled on the attached tether.

  Shem spoke briefly to the man inside, and then grabbed Peleg’s empty plate and handed it to him.

  The man smiled as he accepted instructions from Shem, and the two began talking. Shem pointed at Peleg excitedly, apparently talking about him, yet never actually introducing him.