The Stone God Awakens

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  He had gotten that out of Ghlikh during the nights when everybody should have been resting from the day's labours. Khyuks had steadfastly refused to tell him the code. In fact, Khyuks refused even to admit that there was such a thing as a code. But Ghlikh was another person. His threshold of pain was lower, or his strength of character was less. Or he was more intelligent than Khyuks and realised that he would have to break sometime. So why not tell now and save himself much pain for nothing?

  Khyuks cursed Ghlikh for a traitor and a spineless gutless coward, and Ghlikh said that if he did not shut his mouth he would kill him at the first chance. Khyuks replied that he would kill Ghlikh the first chance he got.

  Though Ghlikh did reveal the code, he did not—or could not—reveal the location of the central base of his people. He swore that he had to be high enough above The Tree to see certain navigational checkmarks that would eventually guide him to the base. These marks were high trunks which grew leaves in a pattern that could be determined only by someone about two thousand feet above them. They might even be under one at this moment, but he could not tell from below.

  Ulysses shrugged this disappointment off. He had no plans for attacking the base even if he knew its location. He lacked the force for an attack. But he would have liked to know where it was so that when he did have enough force, he could attack it. He would find out, one way or another.

  He was sitting with his back against a comparatively smooth slab of loosened bark, a big fire about ten feet in front of him. It was almost night. Below, it was night. The sky was still blue, and faraway clouds were touched with pink, light green and a darkening grey. The cries and screams of hunting animals and the hunted wafted up like almost forgotten nightmares, they were so faint. The two bat-men were near him, sitting side by side but not speaking or even looking at each other. The Wufea, Wagarondit and Alkunquib were around six large fires. Guards were posted out on the branch and also out of sight on bark ledges on the sides of the branch. The mouth-watering odour of roasting meat and fish was everywhere. A hunting party had gone out onto the branch earlier and returned with three four-horned, auburn-haired goats, ten large fish (taken from a black-and-grey-spotted cougar-sized cat which had caught them), bags full of ten different types of berries, and three large heavily furred monkeys.

  The hunters had reported that the vegetation on top of the branch consisted mainly of short but thick-bodied fir trees, berry bushes, a knee-high grass which grew out of dirt caught in the fissures, and an ankle-deep moss. The riverlet contained an abundance of fish but no snoligosters or hipporats. The main predators seemed to be the black-and-grey puma, a small bear, and several types of otters. The other animals were the goats and monkeys.

  They ate well that night and slept as close to the fire as they could get without burning. At this height, it got bitter cold after the sun went down.

  In the morning, they ate the remnants of their supper for breakfast and set out to build rafts. They cut down some of the firs, which were only about twenty feet high, and made rafts. And they launched out with good spirits and high hopes.

  For once, they were not disappointed or deceived. The riverlet took them at an easy pace for about thirty miles and then ended in a widening of the branch. Here the riverlet did not hurtle over a ninety-degree bend in a cataract. It just spilled over the sides of the wide area, blocked by an upward bend of the branch. The party disassembled the rafts and carried the poles up the incline, which was at a forty-five-degree angle. Once on top, they found another spring which soon grew into another riverlet. They put their rafts together and let the stream take them. This type of portage was repeated ten times. Eventually, the branch took the longest uninterrupted stretch they had so far experienced. It lasted about sixty miles, and the descent was so gradual that the water just ran out into the swamp. Ulysses estimated that they must have covered about two hundred and fifty miles on the one branch. Ghlikh said that they had been fortunate to find this one. Only a few were like this.

  They climbed up out of the stinking cold wet swamp until they found a promising branch about six thousand feet up. Ten days later, they came to a waterfall, the foot of which was five thousand feet below them. And here The Tree ended.

  Ulysses felt a little dazed and a little unreal. He had gotten so accustomed to the world being one gigantic tree with its many levels of interfused and winding branches, seemingly sky-high trunks and dense vegetation, that he had thought of the world as only—Tree.

  Now before him was a plain that stretched out perhaps fifty or sixty miles and beyond were the tops of mountains. On the other side of the range, if he could believe Ghlikh, was the sea.

  Awina stood beside him, close enough so that her furred hip rubbed against him. Her long black tail moved back and forth, its tip sometimes tickling the back of his legs.

  "Wurutana has spared us," she said. "I do not know why. But he has his reasons."

  Ulysses was angered. He said, "Why can't you think of our success as being due to my powers as a god?"

  Awina started and looked up at him sidewise.

  Her eyes were enormous, as always, but the pupils had become slits.

  "Your pardon, Lord," she said. "We owe you much. Without you, of course, we would have perished. Still, you are a small god compared with Wurutana."

  "Size does not necessarily mean superiority," he said.

  He was angry, he thought, not because she denied or depreciated his godhood. He certainly was not that insane. It was just that he wanted to get the proper credit for bringing them through. Credit as a human being, even if he was forced to speak in terms of his godhood.

  He wanted Awina, more than anybody, to give him credit. Now, why should he wish that? Why should this beautiful but weird creature, this sentient but nonhuman being, be so important to him?

  On the other hand, he thought, why shouldn't she? She had been his mainstay from the first day here, she had taught him his first language (in a manner of speaking), she had served him in many capacities, not the least of which was that of morale upholder. And she was very attractive, in a physical sense. It had been so long since he had seen a human being, he had become accustomed to the nonhuman. Awina was a very beautiful female (he almost thought woman).

  Yet, though he was often very fond of her, he sometimes felt repulsed by her. This occurred when she got too close physically. He moved away, and she looked at him with an unfathomable expression. Did she know what he was thinking? Did she correctly interpret his moving away?

  He hoped not. Because if she did, she was intelligent and sensitive enough to know that the avoidance of physical contact was a defence on his part. And she would know, as he knew, why he had to defend himself.

  He shouted at Wulka and the other chiefs. "Let's go! Follow me down off The Tree! We'll be on good solid dry ground soon!"

  The descent went well enough, though he had to resist a tendency to hurry. The vast black-grey bulk of The Tree seemed to be even more threatening, now that he was about free of it, than when he had been inside it. But nothing happened; no Wuggrud or Khrauszmiddum boiled out of The Tree to make a final attack.

  However, once they were out on the plain, they would be easily detected by the winged men. It would be best to stay inside the shade of The Tree until nightfall and then move out.

  Fortunately, the ground at the base of the great Tree here was not so swamp-like. Once they had moved away from the branch down which the riverlet had run, they found dry ground. They made their camp on the northward side of a branch which rammed into the earth at a forty-five-degree angle. Ulysses studied the plain, which was covered by a shin-high green-brown grass and was spotted with small stands of an acacia-like tree. There were great herds of grass and leaf eaters out there: horses, antelopes, buffalo, the giraffe-like animal which he thought had evolved from the horse, the elephant-like beast which could have evolved from the tapir, the giant heavily-legged rabbit, and the bluish curving-tusked long-legged swine. There were predators,
too, the twelve-foot high roadrunner, the cheetah-like leopard, and prides of porcupine-haired lions.

  That night, the party moved out from The Tree. They did not get far because they spent so much time in hunting. At dawn they made small fires inside a stand of acacia and roasted the meat. Then they slept in the shade of the trees while some stood guard.

  The third day, they reached the mountain range. Ghlikh did not even have to be threatened with torture. He volunteered the information about a pass, and so they marched along the mountains for two days until they found the gap. It took two days to get through the mountains. Abruptly, just at dusk, they came around the shoulder of the mountain and there, sparkling far off, was the sea.

  Then the sun was down, and the sky became black. Ulysses felt happy without knowing why. Perhaps it was because the mountain shut off the view of The Tree and the night kept him from seeing anything that reminded him that he was not in his own time and on the Earth on which he had been born. It was true that the stars formed unfamiliar constellations, but he could ignore that. Later, he was unable to ignore the moon. It was too huge and too bluish-green and white-flecked.

  They rose at dawn, ate breakfast and then set off down the slope of the mountain. By dusk they had reached its foot, and the next morning they set out across the relatively flat land for the sea. This was heavily forested at first, but, the second day, they reached an area of many open fields, houses, barns and fences.

  The houses were square buildings, sometimes two-storied, usually built of logs but occasionally of granite blocks, rough-hewn, set in mortar. The barns were part stone, part wood. Ulysses investigated several and found all unoccupied by anything except wild animals. There were plenty of wood and stone figures and some paintings, all primitive, but there were enough human figures to assure him that the artists had been men.

  He used had been because there was no sign of any human body, living or dead.

  Sometimes, he came across a house or barn which had been burned. Whether this was due to accident or war could not be determined.

  The animals that had been in the unburned barns, and in the houses, had either escaped or died of starvation.

  Nowhere was there even a human bone.

  He spoke to Ghlikh. "What has happened here?"

  Ghlikh looked up at him, shrugged his bony shoulders and spread his wings out as far as the string would allow them. "I do not know, Lord! The last time I was here, six years ago, the Vroomaw lived here. Aside from occasional raids by the Vignoom and the Neshgai, they led a peaceful life. Perhaps we will find out what happened here when we get to the main village. Now, if I were to be permitted to fly ahead, I could find out very quickly. . . ."

  He cocked his head and smiled painfully. He could not, of course, be serious about his proposal, and Ulysses did not even comment on it. They were passing their first graveyard at that time, and Ulysses halted the column. He wandered through the yard, examining the headpieces of the graves. These were thick poles carved out of some reddish hardwood with the skulls of various birds and animals at the tops. There were no other means of identification on the graves, and Ghlikh and Khyuks did not know what the skulls were supposed to mean.

  The column resumed its march down the narrow dirt road. The farms became more numerous, but all were deserted.

  "Judging from the state of decay of the buildings and of the growth of vegetation around them, I'd say they were abandoned about a year," Ulysses said. "Maybe two years."

  Ghlikh told him that the Vroomaw were the only human beings of whom he knew, except those who were the slaves of the Neshgai, of course. In fact, the Vroomaw may have been descended from the Neshgai's runaway slaves. On the other hand, the Neshgai may have gotten their slaves from captured Vroomaw. In either event, the Vroomaw lived in an area about a hundred miles square and had a population of about forty-five thousand. There were three main villages of about five thousand citizens each, and the rest lived on farms or hunted. They had had some trade with the Dhulhulikh and with the Pauzaydur. The latter were, according to Ghlikh, a people who lived in the sea, not on it. They were a sort of porpoise-centaur, if Ulysses could believe Ghlikh's descriptions.

  Ulysses inquired about the history of the humans, but Ghlikh professed ignorance on this.

  Ulysses decided that he knew less about this world than he had when he opened his eyes in the burning hall of the Wufea. Well, not really. But he was far more confused. There were all the many genera and species of sentients, many of whom could not be accounted for by the theory of evolution, and now there were the human beings who had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. He had been thrilled for days by the prospect of seeing a human face again, of hearing human voices, of touching human skin. And they were gone.

  The dirt road wound through the country and eventually led them to a stockaded village by the sea. There was a harbour here with most of the vessels, ranging from dugouts to single-masted ships like Viking craft, wrecked on the shore. Apparently, a storm had swept most from the anchorage and deposited them on the beach.

  The village looked as if everybody had decided to get up during the noonday meal and walk out. About a quarter of the houses had been burned down, but this could be attributed to lack of attendance of cooking fires.

  There was only one thing to mar the picture of a whole population voluntarily deserting. That was a tall wooden pole in the centre of the main square. Its top bore a carved wooden head. The head was hairless and had very big fan-like nonhuman ears, a long snakish nose and an open mouth from which projected elephantine tusks about four inches long. The head was painted a dark grey.

  "Neshgai!" Ghlikh said. "That is the head of a Neshgai. They have left this behind as a sign of conquest."

  "If they took this country by assault, where are the signs of violence?" Ulysses said. "Where are the skeletons?"

  "Obviously, the Neshgai cleaned up afterward," Ghlikh said. "They are a very neat people. They like order and cleanliness."

  Ulysses looked for evidences of mass burials and found several large graves. He dug into one and uncovered a pile of about a hundred skeletons. All were human.

  "The Neshgai would take their own dead back to their country," Ghlikh said. "All Neshgai are buried in one place, a very sacred place."

  "How long have the Vroomaw been here? Surely you know that much about them?"

  "Oh, about twenty generations, I would say," Ghlikh said, screwing up his face.

  "That would be about four hundred yeras," Ulysses said.

  Why couldn't he have been depetrified a hundred years ago? he thought. Then he could have found his own kind and settled down among them and had children. And with his knowledge of technology, the humans would not have been conquered by the Neshgai. It probably would have been the other way around.

  Of course, he would be dead now, buried with a pole above his grave and the skull of some beast on the end of a pole. HERE LIES ULYSSES SINGING BEAR, 1952 A.D. –10,000,000 A.D.

  For a little while, he was depressed. Since the grave would be his inevitable end, why concern himself about anything? Why not go back to the Wufea village and settle down there among people who worshiped him? As for the mate he needed so strongly . . .

  Inside an hour, he had shucked off the black mood. It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.

  He explored the houses and the temples and then went down to the beach. There was a ship, still riding at anchor, which had not been damaged too badly. Its hull was fouled and several of the boards needed replacing, but it could be fixed up with material from storage sheds in the docks. He explained to his chiefs what he wanted done. They nodded as if they understood, but they
also looked doubtful. Scared, perhaps.

  It occurred to him then that they knew nothing about sailing. Indeed, for all of them except himself and the bat-people, it was their first sight of the sea.

  "Sailing will be strange and perhaps frightening for you at first," he said. "But you can learn. You may even delight in it, once you know what you can and cannot do on the sea."

  They still looked dubious, but they hastened to carry out his orders. He studied the masts and the sails available. All the boats and ships used the square rig. Apparently, the Vroomaw did not know about fore-and-aft rigs. Which meant that they probably did not know about tacking or sailing close-hauled. He could not understand this. It was true that man had put out to sea for many thousands of years before he invented sails to enable him to tack back and forth. But, once the force-and-aft sail had been invented, it should have remained forever in man's technology. It had not, which meant that there had been a catastrophic gap in the continuity of man's knowledge. There must have been a total fall into savagery with no contact with the seas for at least several generations. And no lore handed down, not even by word of mouth.