Priam's Lens Page 8

  It was said, too, that some of the animals from the old days had been modified and that large and dangerous things roamed, but in all the years the family had been in this spot there had been nothing so dangerous. If the beasts were not simply rumors and old wives’ tales, then they were certainly not native to this region. There were some animals about, true, but they were grazers or very small predators easily dealt with. Humans had no natural enemies save the Hunters of the Titans and, of course, other humans.

  Not that any more enemies were needed. It was certain that there were more Hunters roaming this area than many, if not most, others. The Titans lived but a week or so away, in their shining bubble city. Father Alex had seen it from a vast distance as a small child, but he had no desire to see it again. It was said that should the Titans be looking out, or should you see one of them or they you, that you would be attracted to the place like marflies to candystalks, and you would walk to your doom.

  That part he had no desire to ever test, for he knew that the Titans were experimenting with captive people and breeding them for some reason. The Hunters were but one example of this, and a particularly frightening one. Still, it ate at the core of what made someone human that for all the deaths and destruction and all the deprivations that the Titans had brought upon humankind, he had no idea what they looked like, or if they looked like anything at all. Even as a child, looking from afar at that great energy bubble, he remembered seeing only the suggestion of structures of some sort inside it, but all distorted, all so terribly strange and different that it was hard, after all this time, to even visualize what he really had seen.

  They never came out, except rarely inside their bright floating bubble ships—maintenance, probably, tending to things that were out of balance or just checking on the development. Perhaps they could not come out without those bubbles. Perhaps they could not breathe this air, or they could not abide things in the air. Perhaps they themselves were too fragile to exist outside their powerful devices. Still, why would they create such a place as this and then not use it for anything, not even harvest it or even come out and admire their handiwork? That was yet another mystery.

  It was said often that in the old days humans also knew and interacted with creatures that were not humans, yet not angels or demons, either, but simply different creatures from very different worlds. Still, all of them had enough in common with humanity that they had been able to interact as two intelligent species.

  Whatever the Titans were, they clearly did not consider humanity their equals, nor even close rivals. Pets, perhaps, or even lower, but certainly not thinking creatures who could turn worlds into gardens just as they could.

  There was always a chill after a storm; the water had been wrenched violently from out of the air, yet even a slight breeze in this situation could chill wet bare skin and hair. He knew, though, that this was not what the old ones would have considered cold. His mother had told him once of it being so cold that water turned to something soft but solid that came out of the sky and covered the ground. He had seen this from the plains as he’d looked to the tall mountains to the west, which often were so high they rose into the clouds and were hidden from view. When you could see their tops, they were often white in color, white with what his mother had told him about. But in those days it had happened here for part of the year. That was hard to imagine. White powder that was solid water falling all over and covering the plains... It was a pretty vision, but only that The sentries were already moving back out to protect the family, while the Mothers were coming back together, forming their kraal and settling back in for the night, while the men not on duty established their own place and tried to find somewhere in the grass where they would not be sleeping in the mud. It would not take long for things to go back to normal, they all knew. Even now they could sense water coming back into the air, and the ground was absorbing even that huge amount of rain, leaving things moist but much more comfortable. Even the clouds were parting, breaking up, and through one massive hole they could see the vast number of stars out there, not all of which were yet under the Titans, and the faded reddish larger moon, Achilles, and the smaller, almost faded out yellow-brown of Hector.

  The two moons were quite comforting to them all, since they had been there before and would probably be there after, long after their names were forgotten. Having seen no other sky, they had no idea what it was to live under the light of a full globular cluster, nor did they think it was unusual that their moons were dull, of differing colors, and orbited in opposite directions from one another. They did not and could not know that the two moons were only apparently close, and that great Achilles was actually not just twice the size of tiny and irregular Hector but much farther away and thus far larger, and that one day poor Hector would slip just enough out of its delicate balancing act that its bigger brother and its planet would eventually tear it to bits.

  Father Alex did not shake his depression even as the relief and joy swept through the Family like something liquid and sweet. Instead, it added to it, for surviving a near nightly event one more time wasn’t exactly what he would consider a highlight of life.

  But it was a highlight of their lives.

  Each generation was distanced still more than its predecessor from the old life and what it had meant to be human. At least he was old enough to remember when people still wore clothing, and had things like food in sealed containers that did not spoil. The reterraforming of Helena had been global but not deep. Beyond a two-meter depth, much of what had been buried down there or stored down there remained, until the first-generation and second-generation survivors finally went through it. But now—what did these young ones know? How quickly within Father Alex’s own lifetime they had descended into a level of primitiveness even he would have thought inconceivable.

  “Daddy, how can so many of us have died so quickly and so terribly?”

  “Because we were so removed from the land ourselves that we had forgotten how to do things, son. We played at being farmers and ranchers when actually it was done by machines and computers and automated systems. We forgot just how many skills, how many pieces of knowledge it takes to make a simple pair of pants or build a grass hut or to cultivate the land with or without draft animals. We ’d forgotten how to be blacksmiths, how to be potters when you had to create everything, literally everything, from scratch, how to fashion and make a yoke or properly plow and plant. We equated primitive with simple; in fact, it was our lives that had been made simple by our machines. The primitive was impossibly complex. We simply never realized how little we really knew.”

  His parents had even come to suspect that the survivors, few as they were compared to those who had lived here, were almost being shaped into this existence, turned back into nearly hairless animals deliberately, perhaps for the same reason naturalists preserved some representatives of various animal and plant species in reserves. Just to have them around, so long as they made little trouble. Perhaps as a reserve for experimentation, or breeding, although for what purpose it was impossible to know.

  They were still close enough to have the language, and the stories, but even now the bulk of the big words meant little to the younger ones, who had no frame of reference for them. The Family was evolving into a social group that could survive as a group and perpetuate itself but, like animals and insects, for no larger purpose. For no other purpose at all.

  Father Alex often looked up at the stars when he was at his most melancholy, knowing what they were, and wondered if the Titans had done this to all the worlds of humans by now. Was there anybody left out there save a few living pretty much as they were living and facing the same bleak future? Were there still places like those his parents had spoken of, lands with strange names where machines did the work and humanity went between those stars in their own shining ships?

  He would not, could not, believe that God would allow this to happen without some higher purpose. All those tens of thousands of years, all that work and dream
and effort, could not have been, in the end, a cruel cosmic joke. He had to believe that God, somehow, was working His will, that even if humanity was sent back into the wilderness for some divine punishment or to relearn some long-forgotten lesson, there was a Promised Land at the end. Perhaps not for him, or for anybody here, but sometime.

  Because, if there wasn’t, then even survival didn’t matter at all.

  • • •

  “As the God hears me and is my witness, Father, the dead spoke to us on that hill!”

  Littlefeet was still scared and looked like he’d come through hell as well as the storm. Big Ears was, if anything, in even worse shape, but he was so exhausted that he’d just about passed out coming into the camp.

  “And Big Ears heard this as well?” The priest wasn’t exactly convinced that there was anything extraordinary here other than a young boy’s imagination and fear, but, still, Littlefeet was generally very reliable. It was why he’d sent him in the first place.

  “Yes, Father. You can ask him as soon as he awakens.”

  “I will do that. Now, eat something here and then tell me slowly and carefully of your whole experience, particularly what you really saw up there. The body, conditions, all of that.”

  Littlefeet gave a pretty straightforward account, but the description of the body as fair and unmarked was most significant. Where could such a one have come from except perhaps from the Titans themselves? But, then, why send the Hunters after him? An escapee? In all his years he’d never heard of anybody escaping once caught and brought in there, although there were tales of ones emerging as slaves of the Titans and acting as Trojan horses to bring others into captivity. Still, if not from there, then where? The idea that there was any sort of underground civilization going was always one of those stories, but if they were down there then why did this one come up? Certainly in all his life they’d never given any indication that they existed in this part of the world.

  “Littlefeet—this is important. Did you feel any wind up there? A cool wind, as if coming from the hill?”

  The boy thought. “I do not remember it, but it might have been. We paid little attention, since we were exposed there in daylight. We just wanted to make the observations and get back into the grass. You never said nothin’ ’bout scoutin’ the place, Father.”

  “That’s all right. I was just wondering if this fellow was coming out from a cave or something of that sort. It would explain something.” But not much.

  “It may be, Father. We did not stay to see. But it was a ghost for sure anyway! It said it was!”

  Father Alex sent Littlefeet away to get some rest and tried to think on this. If Big Ears confirmed this story—and, knowing both boys as he did, he was certain that this would be the case—then what did it mean? Could a spirit truly be bound to a place in that way? Nothing in his training suggested it, and he fought such superstitions among the family even though, he knew, they believed in all of them and worse. When you have nothing, magic is all you have.

  He decided to consult with Mother Paulista about this.

  His counterpart among the women was younger than he but looked at least as old if not older, with thin gray hair and a haggard, weather-beaten face and form. She did, however, possess a better mind than he for the memorization and interpretation of the scriptures, and she was pretty hardheaded when it came to this sort of thing.

  “A fair man in a place that can have no fair men, and a disembodied voice that claims to be his ghost, all on that cursed rock,” she muttered, as much to make sure she had things right in her mind as to feed back his facts. Still, he answered her.

  “That is what is said, yes. They are boys, and they ran, of course, as well they should have from something this extraordinary.”

  “Yes, boys, but they are of the age to be men, and there are several girls here who are now old enough to do their duty for the survival of the family and the propagation of the faith that binds us. I see that you believe them. If we do not interpret anything, but merely lay out the facts, there is only one conclusion possible.”

  “Indeed?” He had thought of several, each unlikely, but she was far more pragmatic.

  “The Hunter band coming into this family’s land after so long yet doing so little suggests that they were sent here on the orders of the shining demons. We have been left alone too long, I think. They are after fresh blood, and they want to stamp out the largest group of those remaining faithful to God in their immediate domain. They have failed to get us before, or to do more than slightly wound us with a capture or kill here and there, and they are losing patience. What better way to ensnare us and make us betray our whole family than to lay such a trap? Butcher one of their own, knowing we will have to look and see if it is a kinsman, then station a demon to entice the youngest and most gullible up there, all the better to possess and then lead the entire family into Perdition. No, if a demon chooses to live on that rock, let him live there until his foul Master is cast into the Pit and we are raised up. The rock must be reinforced as a place of evil, a place where none of the faithful is to go! This must be agreed and be consistent through the Family.”

  “You do not think it could be anything else? A third party? One of the ancient machines?”

  “There are no ‘third parties.’ There are those of God and those of the Prince of Darkness! You, a priest, should know that!” she snapped. “All else is illusion. God has cast us into the wilderness as He did His people in the earliest of times because we lost faith, we lost belief, we worshiped science and became soft and dependent on the machine. Satan can do nothing without God’s allowance! The ancient machines do not work now. All of that is shown to be the devil’s work! No, Father, we must not succumb to deviation or false hopes. Men will not rescue us. Only God will raise us up, and then only when we have been so purified that we are worthy of Him. This is the endgame of Eternity. We must forgo all that corrupted us and return to Eden’s grace or we will be consumed. We have a burden even Adam and Eve did not have, since we must first cleanse and purify before we can even be in the state to, this next time, reject the sweet lies of the serpent! Don’t forget this, Father, lest you fall as well!”

  He sighed. He didn’t expect much more from her than that, and, in fact, her theology was sound if a bit too certain. He wished he could live in the mental frame of Mother Paulista, where the only question was whether people could get back in God’s good graces. Still, he suspected that she was right on this. What else could it be but a trap? Who else couid use a disembodied voice like that but those who still had machines?

  “Thank you for your counsel,” he told her. “I will pray on this.”

  “Do so, but also look inside as to why this discussion was even necessary.”

  He started to get up and return to the men’s circle when an arm shot out and stopped him.

  “Take the two boys, explain to them what they escaped, and prepare them for manhood. I should like to induct them before the next Stamight.”

  “I thought a little more time—”

  “There is no more time! They are past due, Father. They must be prepared, and since you have involved them in this, they should be confirmed as soon as possible. They will need position to help cure their thoughts of this thing and make them strong.”

  He shrugged. “Very well.” Few people had much of a childhood any more as soon as the first sexual experimentation and pubic hair appeared.

  He sometimes thought that Mother Paulista was the real leader of this Family, and the spiritual rock. He had the title, but mentally he just couldn’t make the leap that seemed no problem for her. He envied her that: the fact that she could so easily be theologically inflexible while ignoring inconvenient commandments. The social structure of the family had evolved quickly because it was the most efficient way to ensure its survival. Still, he wondered how she got around those little points like not coveting a neighbor’s wife or committing adultery when there was in fact no longer any sort of monogamous marriag
e. There were a lot of little holes like that in her cosmology, but nobody, least of all him, dared to bring them up.

  He knew he was losing his faith, losing it in a kind of hemorrhage over the past year or so, more slowly before that. It had all seemed so plain and simple when he had been instructed in the faith, when the gray-bearded Father Petros had laid hands upon him and upon his oath ordained him a priest of the Holy Church. Father Petros, who had grown up under the old system, who had been an archbishop when such a post had meaning.

  Maybe Paulista was right. Maybe he was just thinking too damned much.

  • • •

  Every seven weeks, for just a few nights, both the moons of Helena vanished, coming up only in daylight and, because of the distortions caused by the Titan grid, virtually unseen. During that time, between two and five nights would pass when neither moon appeared, and these had always been called Stamights. These had had a special meaning for those of Helena, even in the old days: not of fear, but of romance, and the renewal of faith and vows.

  The Families who now were all that remained of that once proud civilization still used them for the most important of rituals by which the Families remained bound together. Boys became men, girls became women; sometimes, new holy ones were ordained, and, at the very end, just before the first moon rose, babies were baptized.

  But the rule that only virgins could lie with virgins was absolute, and so one thing came first, if any were ready. It didn’t matter if it was the right time for making babies or not, not the first time.

  Littlefeet and Big Ears had both been postpubescent for several Stamights, but until there were girls to match with them they were held in a no man’s land, not yet fully men, but able to undertake responsible tasks such as the one Father Alex had sent them on to the rock. By the time of this Stamight, that experience was long past, although never quite forgotten by those involved in it. Still, because of the Family’s constant movement through the plain and grasslands, that place was now far away.