Now the ship’s energizers did not jet-stream air, hot and cold, out in blustering torrents of winds to skim over the poles and harass the minute people, and their cities, and ruin their glowing green fields—which were difficult to ruin now, and that made him faintly smile, a little enviously.
Slowly, bit by bit, he was dying. He so longed and yearned to see the bright, hot light of his own single yellow sun. He fell asleep and dreamed of the silver moon and how it had lit the nights on his planet, and he could see again a girl he had strolled with there in his youth. Sometimes, if he could meditate deeply enough, he could almost feel the bite of twangy mountain air in his nose, and smell the briny air of the sea. Ah, that was a dream he would never realize. His world was gone, under the water, and an ocean had sprung up in its place.
Still, El Dorraine had suns and moons, three of them. Often he had watched them flitter briefly by in the gray blackness. Even two tiny suns, and three grape-size moons, would be a little reminiscent of his own larger ones. So, when he felt his time was near, he donned his silver suit, put on his protective helmet and all the other gear that would help him breathe in the thin air outside of his green ship. Then he opened the door, rusty with disuse. He lowered the ladder and most carefully descended to the ground. He didn’t want to jar the land and split it open with earthquakes. Though as careful as he was, those living in far away Far-Awndra felt their earth quiver as the winds rose and blew. Sharita was combing her long, long hair, and her hands stilled, and the sentence half-spoken froze on her tongue.
The God was thinking of her as for the second time, in the while he had been a guest on this small planet, he walked on the surface of El Dorraine. Very lightly he treaded a distance from his ship, and with utmost ease, he lowered himself down on the ground, stretching out beside the long pile of red rocks that he had stacked there himself.
When he had himself settled fully, the way he wanted to be, he opened the visor of his helmet. The thin air of El Dorraine entered his lungs and nourished him not. His blue eyes caught the bright gleamings of the twin suns as they hurried by, and he saw the rise of the triple moons, and there were faint, rainbowed sun-risings and sunsets. Over and over again repeating, up then down, the moons spinning about themselves as they made the larger orbit around the planet—and they all came and went so fast, so very fast! He grew weary of watching, and closed his eyes, very tired. The now and then warmth he felt on his skin, then the chills of the quick nights, too short for him to really sleep and fall into dreams of his own world, his own people and then, of his own God.
He began a prayer, a prayer from his childhood, for memories of other prayers were all slipping away. And even with that familiar prayer, he had difficulty recalling the complexities of his own native language. His voice came to him hoarse, alien, touched with the accent of his small visitors. That caused him to smile with the humor of it all. They called him a God. The slight smile was still on his face as his blue eyes opened and glazed over before they rolled backward. He expelled his last breath, and he was dead.
Sharita was still sitting quiet and unmoving, as was her husband. They raised their eyes and looked at each other. “Something has happened,” she said in a hushed, awed tone. “Something is missing.”
“I wonder what?” her husband replied. Then he got up and went to stare out the window toward the Scarlet Mountains. The Green Mountain home was almost concealed now.
The lights of the twin suns, the tiny triple moons, were caught and reflected in the glazed blue pools, many, many times over, before the officials from El Dorraine came upon the God lying there.
Shocked and stunned, they could only stare. Their God was dead! They had thought he would never die! A God went on forever, into everlasting eternity. They looked at each other with eyes gone doubting, and faces gone pale. Could it be, then, that he had spoken the truth? Had he been, after all, just a man? A man of another size and color?
But for the first time in their long, long relationship, they could see him in full extension. Not reduced this time in proportion behind the shrinking glass. Oh, what a God he had been!
Sadly, depressed, they journeyed back to Far-Awndra and held a meeting in the council room, and discussed seriously the meaning of the God’s death. Had the God really been once only a man? Was it possible for only men to achieve that exalted state? That was a thought to dwell and ponder on. But unhappily they all agreed: They had wanted a God—not a man—whatever the size.
“Why isn’t Es-Trall here?” someone asked of the queen sitting at the head of the table where her father once sat. Beside her was her husband, both sharing equally the crown and the responsibilities.
“Unfortunately, Es-Trall is too brittle to descend the spiraling staircase,” she offered as an excuse, not the real truth. A way could be found to bring Es-Trall down, if he would have it that way, but he wouldn’t.
“He is the stubbornest old man you would ever want to meet,” opined King Dray-Gon, “but he has good reasons for being the way he is, for coming into this room would distract him in too many directions, and he has his feet now on one path.”
“Does he know now the whole truth?” asked one of the ministers. “Can he just look at one of us, and say definitely which is which?”
“Not yet,” answered Dray-Gon. “He says it is difficult to tell.”
Everyone in the room sighed deeply, with the exception of the king and queen. “Let us talk now about the God’s funeral,” said Sharita. “He was a most gracious God, refusing to be patronizing and condescending, but willing to demean himself and come down to our level. So we must honor him in death as much as we did in life.”
This was agreed on with willing alacrity, and all the people of El Dorraine came to honor and bury the giant God. Over his mammoth body they spread a cloth made of the golden pufars, embroidered painstakingly with silver and scarlet and green for his mountain home. Once he was so covered, huge red boulders were lifted and piled over him. No easy job, even with the assistance of the machines designed just for this purpose. For not even with machines were they the rock piler he had been for his copilot. But they managed, just as they always managed.
Years passed before the burial was completed. Now they had a second range of Scarlet Mountains, parallel to the first. Now that the God was completely covered over, they performed the ritual the God had mentioned was customary on his green-blue planet, spinning somewhere in its own universe, far, far away. They repeated the prayers he had taught them were said for this occasion of grief and sorrow. They were recited by everyone who lived in El Dorraine.
“Let us keep these prayers for our own use when our dear ones go into the deep sleep.” A suggestion from the queen, deeply affected by the loss of the God, especially so when she looked at her father. Ras-Far had lost his zest for living, for eating, for doing anything. “It’s my time too, Sharita,” he said as she tried to encourage him on. “Seek not to hold me here, when I have grown tired of the days, and weary of all that life can offer now.”
“Father!” she cried in great distress. “Have you grown weary of me? Of your grandchildren? Hasn’t Dray-Gon been a good son to you? Have you seen yet the child of my old age? Think back to when our foreparents died in their twenties—and consider what we have now a blessing!”
If anyone could hold him here, she could. Yet there were so many he missed, La Bara especially—his first two wives he could hardly remember, or his first two daughters; they were lost so far back in the past. He even missed Ron Ka and all the spirited disputes they had over the proper way to raise their grandchildren. He held Sharita’s hand firmly in his. “Daughter, would you have me linger on and on in the way of Es-Trall and turn into a withered old weed that doesn’t know when winter comes? You and I will meet again—perhaps.”
It was the “perhaps” that troubled Sharita, so she cried as she and her father clung together, saying good-bye. It was the law now; if one so chose, they could go into the deep sleep when life became a burden and n
ot a joy—and now Sharita regretted putting her signature and royal seal on that document. She said then with the sweet charm that made her so beloved to him, “I will have Es-Trall take careful note of the length of your slumber, and time your awakening to coincide with mine and Dray-Gon’s, for we have vowed to each other to lie down together in our last sleep.”
Ras-Far hid some cynicism that was his. Es-Trall’s theories he swallowed with a grain of salt, unlike his daughter who believed faithfully in that wizened old man. Just as faithfully as she had believed in that mammoth God. It was then she shocked him. “Father, Logan, says he will travel to the home of the God one day, that he will find it—however far off it is. Can’t you wait for that day? Don’t you want to be here?”
So! Another thing she would believe! She was still as a child, seeking always something large and powerful to cling to. His second grandson would reach the God’s planet? How impossible! How improbable!
“And besides, Father. Dray-Gon and I need you. Es-Trall needs you! Think of him, always alone in his tower, charting the sky, the stars, looking for that galaxy Logan will find one day—two minds are better than one, right?”
He had to smile then at her logic, and then he laughed, agreeing. But was there room on one planet for two Es-Tralls?
“You really think it is possible?” asked Star-Far of his younger brother, more than a bit enviously. Since he was next in line for the throne, he wasn’t allowed to be as adventuresome as the second son. “I mean, you could just be wasting your time and effort—and look what we have all around us to enjoy.”
Logan had the unfocused eyes of a dreamer, a mind as sharp as a rapier; he didn’t look at anyone, he looked through them—an ability inherited from his grandfather. His hair was night-colored, almost midnight blue. His eyes were brown—dark reddish brown, his skin bronze, the exact shade of his father’s. He was as the night—and Star-Far, with his coloring, was as the day. The young girls of El Dorraine couldn’t decide which young prince was the handsomer, though definitely Star-Far had the largest claim on charm—his smiles coming easily, his gallantry naturally. Logan seldom smiled, for he was deep in a world of his own, solving problems that would have baffled Star-Far, who cared not at all for deep thinking or problem solving. The younger brother wouldn’t attend a palace ball without a direct command from his parents—and Star-Far couldn’t attend enough balls, as he would dance through life, and romance every beautiful girl he met along the way. And while he was doing this, in a high tower, alone with the oldest man alive, Logan read from cover to cover every book ever written, and stored there.
With Es-Trall coaching him, Logan pored over the heavenly charts, and asked ten million questions. For hours on end, he could peer through the telescope that had evolved through the years into one of gigantic size and immense power. Through Logan’s mind raced legion after legion of speculations, as he read and questioned all the words that mammoth god had left recorded. In that green spaceship were all the God’s charts still—based on facts—and his maps were there, charted from experience, and his calculator was more complex and ingenious than theirs.
When Logan passed through the magnificent halls of the palace, with music resounding from the ballroom, he didn’t hear it. He merely ran as fast as his long legs could take him down all the long corridors to the high apartment his parents shared, bursting in on them…“Father! Mother! It is possible! We can get there from here! Turn that green spaceship over to me—and men who think as I think—and we will have a highway to travel on that will have no ending! There will be no boredom, ever! Will you do it—allow the God’s home to be mine? Please!”
His father smiled. “Your mother and I were just speaking of you, and wondering when you would ask for that museum piece as your own private toy to tinker with. So take your scientists, your physicist friends. The ship is yours, and your mother and I agree, the God would be pleased.”
This was by far, Logan’s utmost happiest moment! A smile broke on his face, like sunlight after a long, cloudy storm—a smile much more impressive since it came so seldom. “I must go tell Grandfather!” he called, before he turned and again sped down the long halls to his grandfather’s rooms, bursting in without any announcement to find his grandfather attended by two beautiful young servant girls, who brushed his grandfather’s silvery hair, and shaved his face. Beautiful girls that Logan completely disregarded, as if they were shadows, without any meaning for him. “Grandfather, excuse me for interrupting your toilet—but the spaceship of the God is mine! So there is no long sleep in store for you yet! When we come back from the God’s planet, you must promise that you will be here waiting for me!”
His grandfather smiled crookedly, thinking of how capriciously fate knotted the twine. It should be Star-Far, who had started his swim toward life in that very ship, who would seek the goal that was Logan’s main interest in life. “Good luck to you, Logan. As for my being here, I may well be…” And his eyes twinkled as he looked at the two girls who had shyly withdrawn to stand in the shadows. Two girls that were a gift from his daughter to replace the young men who had waited on him formerly. “They came of their own choice, Father…to serve you out of respect and admiration—through no coercion of mine. My birthday gift to you made my husband laugh! I will never give him such a gift!”
With young Logan, all the top brains of El Dorraine journeyed forth again to the Green Mountain, as they still called it that. The flying ships they used now were strong, so powerfully constructed they could have easily withstood the historic bay storms of yesteryear. The storms that came now were as but kittens compared to the tigers that had ravished El Sod-a-Por. Right through the open door of the green spaceship those airships flew.
The huge maps of deep blue with the white avenues were laid on the floor of the God’s ship, as if one day he knew they would have a need for them, and he had considerately placed everything convenient for their small size. Though they were not now, by any means, of the minute smallness when the God had last viewed them.
Their small ships flew over the maps, taking pictures, so they could later make smaller exact duplicates, easy to handle and study. The giant pages of his books were turned one by one, so they too could be reproduced in miniature scale. Very much Logan wanted to use that giant calculating machine of racing lights on the wall—almost he was tempted to use the nose of his plane to push one of the buttons that would bring those lights into brightness again, and see what would happen. But judiciousness won out over temptation.
It grew tiresome, a waste of time, to fly back and forth to Far-Awndra, across the ocean, so the scholarly young men turned the God’s former home into a university. In that seat of learning, there was but one subject, one goal in mind, though it took a thousand roads to reach there. Included in the student body were a few young women of serious intent, and they were as dedicated as any of the young men. Logan would have had it otherwise, and kept them out—sent all females back to the cities where they could dance and flirt, and keep their pretty noses and hands out of his affairs. He had a short, impatient way with all of them. And though he was handsome, like every member of his family, he was soon disliked by every girl there but one. That one clung to him like a burr, always choosing the seat just before his, so she could half-turn, smile at him, and posture herself in seductive ways that showed her figure to advantage. Logan ignored the fluttering of her dark long lashes, the way she would raise her arms to lift her heavy dark hair from her neck, and tease him in every coquettish way a certain book had guaranteed would work on the most reluctant male, unless he was a blind, sexless eunuch.
This girl with the dark, curling hair and violet eyes stared at Logan often, wondering if such an accident could have happened to him—and that was what made him so resistant to her charms, which she knew she had. However, her eyes were attentive to the least detail about his appearance, and his form-fitting clothes revealed he hadn’t suffered such an accident. Nothing, absolutely nothing she did made him see her—to
him, she was like air to see through—and the more he ignored her, the more determined she became. Thoughts of how to capture his interest kept her awake at night, and she was running out of ideas.
One day Logan was passing by her worktable, in a hurry as usual, his arms loaded with books and rolled-up charts, when she quickly put out her foot and tripped him. He sprawled on the floor in a very undignified way, his charts, and books, pencils, scattering everywhere. “Look what you did!” he flared in a rare burst of uncontrolled bad temper. “But for you and your inane, stupid posturing, this ship we’re planning would be off the ground, instead of just a design on paper! Women weren’t meant for anything but play—so why don’t you go home and learn how to cook, and clean house, and how to handle your legs so they don’t get in everyone’s way!”
“It wasn’t my leg—it was my foot.”
“Then keep your damn feet under your table where they belong!”
“Damn you for your snooty, higher-than-thou attitude!” she flared back just as hotly. “I am a distant cousin of yours—so there is no reason for you to look down your princely nose at me!”
Gods of Green Mountain Page 36
