For the first time Logan really saw her. “A distant cousin?” he asked vaguely. It was hard for him to remember names and faces of cousins; he had too many, and he never attended family reunions if he could in any way find a reasonable excuse not to.
“Yes, Prince Logan, I am a distant cousin of yours. My name is Lamar, and we met once a long time ago. I doubt you would remember. You had your nose in a book while everyone else was dancing and singing. Your great-great-grandfather Far-Awn’s sister married one of my grandfathers—his name was Sal-Lar.”
“Oh, I know Sal-Lar!” responded Logan with enthusiasm, as if Sal-Lar were an old and good friend, and not dust in the ground. “I read his history books when I was a boy. Sal-Lar married Bret-Lee when she was comatose, and he was going to be sacrificed, just when Far-Awn came back with the puhlets and pufars!”
Lamar didn’t doubt for a moment that Logan had read every history book ever written. It was a wonder his eyes weren’t reddened and dull-looking from so much reading and studying, instead of flashing and dark, and so intensely alive it made her heart thud loud when he scanned his eyes down over her…and then up to stare at her face. He was really seeing her at last!—and she, stupidly, couldn’t think now of a word to say, and her face seemed frozen so she couldn’t even move and put to good use that smile she had practiced before the mirror for so long. Instead of speaking, or smiling, she got down on her hands and knees and helped him gather up his armload of supplies. By the time this had been accomplished, she had recovered some of her poise, and sweetly charming, she handed to him the last spilled item. “I hate to tell you this, Prince Logan, but I don’t think you are human,” she said, looking directly into his beautiful dark eyes. “You are like that thing up there on the wall—with thoughts racing around inside your brain, flashing your eyes—but you are only a calculating machine walking blindly about on two legs. You are programmed to reach the God’s home, and nothing else. You are not a man at all. Have you ever stopped and thought about what you will do after you accomplish your goal? There will be nothing left for you. Do you know what I think? And of course, you don’t want to know what I think, because you don’t care about anyone’s thoughts but your own. When we come back from the God’s home planet, you will dry up like a dead leaf of fall, or curl into an old dry claw, like Es-Trall!”
Stunned, Prince Logan was left with his arms carelessly stacked with books and rolled-up charts, and his brain awhirl with bewilderment. Why, what had he done to cause all that anger and resentment, and ugly words, when she had been the one to trip him! He was the one who had taken that hard fall and wrenched his knee, and she was angry! By the Gods, he would never understand women! What Star-Far saw in girls was beyond him! Not that his older brother had any intention of marrying a girl anytime soon. It was Star-Far’s oft-repeated remark that he was saving all three wives for his old age, and while he was young and middle-aged, he would sample all the cups of wine.
Wine? Why the devil would anyone compare women to wine? More like poison! Yet, in the days that came after, he began to watch Lamar, though he took care not to let her know he was looking.
On a day of great excitement, when their first spaceship was finished, he smiled at Lamar and shyly asked, “I’m going home for a short visit. My parents are always complaining they don’t see enough of me. So I was wondering…I thought, well, that maybe…I mean, you wouldn’t want to…would you?”
“Oh yes, I’d love to! I thought you would never ask!”
In his own flying ship, Logan flew Lamar to the crystal palace, and introduced her to his parents and to his new little sister, called Roseanne, and of course, to Star-Far.
Immediately attentive, Star-Far turned on the charm. “We haven’t met before, have we?” he asked, raking his sky-blue eyes over her nubile figure, and then back to the lovely pale face framed in soft dark hair, and rare violet eyes. Star-Far glanced at his mother, whom he thought the most beautiful woman alive—and yet, here before him was an entirely different type, and just as breathtakingly lovely in her own special way.
While Logan rhapsodized to his parents about the splendid, powerful ship they had now—vastly superior to any of the smaller ones made and tested—Star-Far closed in on Lamar, and backed her into a corner. “You are not really going on that fool trip, are you?” he asked, looking at her in his special way reserved for only the most beautiful and appealing girls. “A beauty like you, that sort of thing is for dull, ugly girls who can’t catch a man and must find some other reason for staying alive.”
Trapped against the wall, with two powerful arms barring her escape, Lamar marveled on how two brothers could be so different. “Prince Star-Far,” she replied coolly, “I assure you that I am going. I haven’t spent half my life studying and preparing for that journey just to be turned aside because I happen not to be dull and ugly. I would rather go with your brother, Logan, on that trip than dance through a thousand balls with you.” Very gently she pushed him away, and walked to where she could sit close at Logan’s side. From there she smiled benevolently, charmingly at Star-Far. Her look and her attitude implying that he was a mischievous little boy who had to be tolerated but not enjoyed.
The crown prince stood stunned, shocked, and quite angry. Girls didn’t treat him that way! Not once had he been rejected, or even rebuffed! The queen had taken all this in, and later reported the incident to her husband. “Dray-Gon, it was marvelous what that girl did to Star-Far! All along I have been hoping some girl would put him in his place. He has an exalted opinion of himself, believing he is irresistible.” Then Sharita was laughing. “You know, our first son is almost as intolerable as you were when we first met. I took one look at that darned puhlet fur jacket you were wearing and wanted to slap your face—and you stood there foolishly gawking at me for so long, pretending to be dazzled, and all along you were only mocking, and trying to be as insulting as possible.”
The king had in his hands the model of the spaceship Logan had brought, as he stared down at the beautiful baby girl in her crib, draped about with shimmering pink cloth and filmy lace. A daughter at last—like her mother—only this one had hair silver-pink, and highlighted with gold—but her eyes were the same almost blue color of Sharita’s. Their last child, the child of their old age, yet when he turned and looked at his wife, she had hardly changed at all, except, in his eyes, to grow more beautiful. All these years she had managed to keep him intoxicated so that he hadn’t turned his eyes toward other, younger women as did many other men his age. He couldn’t imagine a life without Sharita beside him. Trying to think back to that long-ago evening when they had first met, he didn’t recall any effort to be mocking—but insulting, yes.
“Darling, if you are trying to chew over old cud, and start some argument, save it for tomorrow night. I’m not in the mood now. I am just too happy, what with my new baby daughter and this ship Logan has built. Look at this, Sharita! I believe this ship of his is designed just right, and it is so simple—like a child’s top to spin! This one is going to work. I feel it in my bones!”
He set the model aside, and came to pick up his wife of so many years, and he spun her about as her arms clung round his neck. “Just think of the enormity of it! Our son is going to the God’s giant green planet! Can you believe that? Recall when we traveled there, just across the desert of Bay Sol, and thought we were making a real contribution? And look where Logan is going—out of our galaxy and into another! I wish we were going too, you and I. I wish we weren’t held here by so many duties and responsibilities.”
They kissed several times before Sharita was set upon her feet and drawn out on the terrace where they could see the stars in the dark plum night sky. Both were thinking the same thoughts, of their journey to the God’s home…
But Logan would cross through outer space, enter another galaxy, to reach a great world whereon lived giants of unknown character…if indeed any were left. “You know, Sharita, it seemed at the time that ours was a fabulous, incredible odysse
y—but when compared to Logan’s, it will be but a stroll down a garden path.”
Sharita was thinking everything was relative. Their trip hadn’t been any stroll down a garden path. There came to her still nights when she had dreams that woke her up trembling, with her heart pumping fast and hard, and glad she was to turn over and find in her bed the man who made all this worthwhile. Looking out there, into the dark night and all that space, and to realize it went on and on and on into infinity made her shiver. At least they had been able to look ahead and see their goal. Yet, she wasn’t disbelieving Logan could do it. For that reason he was born, as she and Dray-Gon had been born for their journey, and to give to their world what they had. Very tightly she embraced her husband, laying her head against his chest, wondering how those distant giants would welcome her son and his party of young space travelers.
“Dray…” she began in a small faltering voice, “the God said he left his world in ruins—but some just as large as he could still be there. What if they don’t want or don’t need what we are sending?”
That made Dray-Gon laugh heartily. “Oh, they will! Only fools wouldn’t accept a gift such as we will deliver!”
Epilogue
Smaller spaceships had been built and tested, but this was their first important ship. It jetted out of the cavernous mouth of the Green Mountain to reach beyond the clouds, traveling higher and higher, until their own small planet was revealed as a glowing jewel, all green, violet, and red set against black velvet. To inch their way off their own star made all of El Dorraine cheer madly with the enormity of this accomplishment.
Other ships were constructed, each larger, and farther and farther they reached out into space, skimming through the black vacuum. In his ultimate and best blue ship, Logan, as captain, searched all their own galaxy and found nothing at all like themselves, or even growing life. He wasn’t disappointed nor despondent as he flashed back the news to those waiting on El Dorraine.
“Mother, Father, you know the God said this was the way of things. That growing life is unique, and extremely difficult to find, and everything up here looks the same when viewed from a distance. We have to close in to see any differences—and so far, we are alone in our galaxy.”
Back to El Dorraine zoomed the spaceship of blue, to study again the giant charts of the Gods. “Look,” said Logan to Lamar, who was always just a step ahead of him, behind him, or to his side, “our God reached our planet by accident, not by design. None of his charts indicate the way from his planet to ours, so they are of no real value until we find his galaxy. But, if an accident of fortuitous discovery can happen once, it can happen fortuitously twice! Doesn’t Es-Trall proclaim that happenstance makes for the greatest discoveries and inventions?”
Lamar stared up at him, awestruck by his wisdom and confidence. For if Es-Trall did the thinking in his distant high tower, it was Logan who turned the visions into reality, and worked out all the minor details that were beneath Es-Trall’s lofty philosophy and technical ability.
“If we are to attain the power to jet our ship beyond the control of our galaxy, then we are going to need a ship just as large as this one the God came in…and just as powerful,” she contributed. “Your design is perfect, Logan, it just doesn’t have the power.”
Together they put their heads, making notes, comparing ideas and conjectures, until Lamar grew so sleepy her head began to sag…and then she was nodding. Logan was startled to discover for the past ten minutes he had been talking to a girl who wasn’t hearing a word. He picked her up and carried her to the small cubicle that was hers, bare of any luxuries, and gently laid her on her narrow bed. He stood staring down at her, wondering why she was so persistent, so determined, when most of the other girls had long ago dropped out of the mission, one by one. Her dark, soft hair was spread all over her pillow like a sensuous cloud to sleep on, and when he reached to touch it, a tendril curled about his finger like a ring, like a wedding band. Logan had it in his mind that he would never marry, that he would devote his life to science and let Star-Far make the three children he was allotted—giving Star-Far a total of six.
But looking now at Lamar sleeping, he knew Star-Far wasn’t going to make his children—he was going to make them himself, and with this very girl so set on winning him. Not that he would let her know it yet. So easy it would be to fall into a pit of lovemaking, like Star-Far was already submerged in, and he might never be able to climb out and fulfill the destiny he believed was his alone. He leaned to kiss Lamar’s lips, so that she only stirred in her sleep and whispered his name, as if in her dreams she knew whose lips touched hers.
The next spaceship constructed was of a mammoth size, blue, like all the others, and emblazoned with the purple and blue and gold standard for the royal house of Far-Awn. Into the storage bins of the ship went a generous supply of pufar seeds, and even some of the star-flower plants themselves, grown in pots, to give the favored planet of their dead God a quicker start toward all the glories and miracles the pufars could bring about. They themselves had created a paradise out of nothing. Turning themselves from dirt-dobbers seeking only to feed and keep themselves alive into people in control—not just actors playing out their parts against a beautifully designed and painted backdrop and manipulated against their wills. Their lives were their own; they wrote the script, directed the play, acted out the parts…and when the last curtain went down, they too would swing the counterweights and make even that decision. Perennials, some to bloom again. Annuals, some to bloom but once. And only Es-Trall knew which was which, and he wouldn’t tell…
Only they, in all the worlds that were, had the particular blessing of the star-flowers. Their dead God had told them this. To honor him, and the other sleeping God in the first Scarlet Mountains, they would bestow their blessing on that distant, blue-green planet that was called Earth.
Years passed as the gleaming blue ship sped on toward the planet of the dead Gods. Inside were Logan and Lamar, as his first lieutenant, and nineteen other young men, annuals and perennials. No longer were any of them able to sink into the dim-despairs, for the promise started in Sharita had blossomed into reality for all. Darkness could be resisted now, no matter how long it lasted, and they could come out of it alert, cheerful, smiling.
It was Logan who spotted it first, glowing bluish green in the enormity of ebony all around. It had but one sun, but one moon; there were five oceans of deepest blue, and the ground was a patchwork of browns, golds, and greens. Oh yes! So exactly it fitted the God’s description—it had to be the correct one! Besides, it was so overwhelmingly large!
Joyous, exhilarated, everyone, the message was beamed back to their home planet: “We are here at last, in sight of the God’s green earth!” Captain Logan’s announcement was recorded in their history books. His mother and father embraced, tears in their eyes—and Logan’s grandfather, Ras-Far, sat very quiet, realizing he had reached the ultimate peak in his life. The time for sleeping was now, for dormancy, for rejuvenation. To awaken at some far distant time a babe again, with a new life and a new body, and a new zest for going on. He was a perennial and would come again, as would Sharita and Dray-Gon, and Star-Far and Logan—and Es-Trall, the one who had started it all on the day he had discovered the star-flowers and had thrust them greedily into his mouth. But he was a secret known only by himself, his daughter, and her husband. On his wedding day Star-Far would be told—if he ever had a wedding day. It would take a clever, exceptional girl to catch and hold him. Somehow fate had mixed up the brothers. It should be Logan who would inherit the throne and the responsibilities.
“Well, nothing is perfect,” said Dray-Gon pragmatically, “even for us.” Sharita had to laugh, for he sounded so much like Raykin, their minister of state for so many years.
Logan directed his ship lower, into the gravity field of the huge planet. Then, under the layers of clouds the ship soared, able now to observe what had only been briefly glimpsed before. The captain’s dark eyes met with the violet on
es of his first lieutenant, both pairs shining with excitement and a happiness that was close to ecstatic rapture. For the first time their lips met in a real kiss, passionate and simmering with inner fires. “Wow!” exclaimed Lamar in breathless wonder when their lips separated. “You don’t do badly for just a beginner!”
Logan reasoned it was all the restraint, held back so long it had built up into an explosive force, and Lamar laughed happily at his consistency, so that even romance could be turned into a form of physics.
Down even lower drifted the blue ship from El Dorraine, so those on board could view the rivers, mountains, lakes—and huge cities. Cities? This surprised them. So, the cracking of the earth’s surface and the deluge that came after the close passing of the red planet had not exterminated all of their giant God’s kind; they had risen again—and in force!
Cities crowded the land edges near the seas, and pushed inward to the plains. Everywhere cities, pushing one on the other, with small space in between.
Down lower they went. Now they could see tall buildings and streets, and long highways that flowed and crisscrossed everywhere. Through the eyes of their telescopes they could see ripe golden grains blowing in the wind, and lush fields of grasses, and beasts enclosed by the thousands within pens—and people moving about like frantic “ants” here and there. There was great agitation in their actions, not understandable. As those in the ship watched, they saw small spitting fires and bursts of smoke, and buildings that collapsed into dust…and some of the running people fell and lay still.
Disturbed, Logan signaled for the ship to be lifted beyond the layers of cloud banks. “Recall how the God spoke of wars? That must be what is going on down there. We have come at an inopportune time.”
All their brilliant young heads were put together, and this was talked over seriously. What should they do after traveling so far, and after searching for so long, and building toward this moment for so many years? For the first time Logan had doubts about the mission of this journey, and about the reception they would receive. The natives of their God’s world were not the domestic, primitive farmers of old El Sod-a-Por, nor were they the sensitive intellectuals and sensualists of El Dorraine—they were something in between, eager for killing, for taking. And perhaps after all, after seeing their lush fields and golden grains, the pufars weren’t needed.
Gods of Green Mountain Page 37
