Treasure

by K. T. Tomb

  I’m not going to die, he thought. I’m not going to die, for I am surely already dead, and this is hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  After this, King Janaka led Sita to Rama. He placed her hand in his and said to Rama, “This is Sita, my daughter, O Rama, who is from today your partner in life. Accept her. Hold her hand in yours. She will always follow you as your shadow.” Rama looked at Sita. He had never seen a more beautiful woman. Sita looked at Rama. She had never seen a more handsome man.

  Following the wedding everyone returned to Ayodhya. All in the city cheered their arrival. Rama and Sita continued to serve their parents and delight the holy ones and gods. Sita and Rama were the perfect husband and wife. They were exceedingly devoted to each other. —Ramayana

  ***

  The Chrysanthemum

  It unfurled like petals, or like a snake unwinding in all directions from a coiled sleep.

  At the heart, there bloomed a pulsing orange glow, a second sun but much larger in the sky. The young dinosaurs seemed not to notice it at all as they continued to race across the plain, leaving the looks skyward and slack-jawed wonder to their human passengers. As they stared into the tear in reality above them, John was reminded of the storm at sea once again. Were they connected? The skies had split that night, of that he was sure, although he didn’t see it as he was huddled below decks, praying for his life with his crewmates. The cataclysm above his head began to rotate; the petals that unfurled lasciviously stretched and writhed as tentacles of some great octopus in the sky, grasping to take purchase on the very fabric of the sky. The pulsing glow at the heart throbbed with puissant energy and began to change color so rapidly, it made John feel sick to look at it, moving forward at a pace as he was. He forced his eyes shut to stop the nausea that rose from his gut. He heard a human voice— Sykes by the accent—yelling something. Bent low over his steed, he opened one eye and saw his captain gesticulating. Rajeev was sliding down the side of the dinosaur from behind Sykes, apparently deliberately, although he looked terrified as he held onto Sykes’ free hand, braced his feet against the flank of the dinosaur and pushed away, soaring through the air six feet away from the trampling feet of his mount. He landed heavily on his shoulder, but appeared to be cushioned by the thick grasses of the plain. He lay still for a moment, at which time the dinosaurs bearing the five humans had covered another thirty yards. John got the idea: the captain wanted off the chase, at least in this place; populated as it was by hundreds of the giant herbivores, there should be a diminished threat from the predatory varieties. Of course, that didn’t rule out in John’s mind that they were as likely to get trampled underfoot as easily as eaten, not to mention the impending apocalypse in the sky. Turning around on the broad back of the long-necked animal, he stood and ran toward the tail, bowed at the legs to maintain balance, and jumped from the beast’s rear. He caught a stiff blow from the creature’s tail, and was diverted in his flight, landing head first on the ground.

  He was not fully knocked out, although stars swamped his vision and he felt as if Montgomery had slipped him some extra rations of rum. The earth swung beneath him, strengthening the sensation of being at sea. He came fully to his senses with Pikeham offering him a hand up, with a grim countenance. John accepted it, and wordlessly, the two men were drawn to look up as if the hand of the creator was on their necks. Sykes and Mandeep approached, supporting Rajeev between them who had apparently hit his head harder than it had appeared to John. The long-necked young dinosaurs disappeared, kicking up dust as they blazed a trail to sanctuary, if one could exist in this land. John looked up. He could do nothing else. The strange burning flower in the sky was miles across and filled the air over their heads; but it was more. It was more than just in the sky, it was somehow the sky itself, it was higher than any cloud, but more massive, impossibly huge. Nothing could be so large and in the air. John had seen a hot air balloon once at a fair—it was a child’s toy in comparison. Pikeham seemed to be thinking the same thing.

  “Gentlemen, this phenomenon is not of this earth; at least, it is unlike anything I have ever seen before. Whether this is meteorological in nature, or in fact, the Book of Revelations, I am unsure. I fear that this is the end for us, my friends,” he said, and his face was sincere. It was the first time that the doctor had referred to any of the crew as friend, and sounded like he meant it. Mandeep dropped to his knees and began to pray to Allah in Arabic, and John felt like he would join him if he knew the words. Instead, he stared up at the flower in the sky, a great purple, red, orange chrysanthemum with the heart of a star, and the star changed and flowed and grew, and shrank, and then it became a window, a portal, and all the men on the earth shook at their knees. The window looked out onto another world, from the skies looking down. It was as if the land that they were on was the underside of a cloud, or perhaps on the moon in the heavens or a lily pad at the feet of Vishnu, floating in the stream of forever. The vision that was shown was of an impossible landscape; gigantic stepped pyramids reached up in all directions, with golden pillars and strange ethereal beings swimming through the air. The beings dived and bobbed, sometimes lazily, sometimes energetically, around a point of brightest light that seemed to be growing and shrinking at the same time.

  “It’s the lotus of Brahma!” Rajeev said, and John believed him. The light grew to fill the whole vista and John felt it would surely soon come through the window in the flower in the sky to fill this strange land beyond time and beyond death where the dinosaurs roamed. Then, there was nothing. The blackness was absolute, and yet, it glowed in its ineffable night. The men looked at each other in confusion, all except Mandeep, who was prostrate before God. A few minutes passed, and in the distance the dinosaurs lowed like cattle, completely undisturbed. How wonderful it must be to be as they are, John thought. Total purpose in existence, no doubt or fear of the unknown. It was enlightenment, in a way. Purity of being, no existential crisis amongst these beasts. Pikeham craned his head, and shielded his eyes from the daylight.

  “Something is happening up there; look, there grow lights!”

  John saw. Tiny orbs were igniting, coalescing from the night into clouds and then exploding under some unknown spark. The orbs grew bigger, but it wasn’t an effect of their increase in size, but due to the view through the window in the sky moving closer. The lights revealed themselves to be orbs of burning gas, stars in the dawn. They gathered together in a slowly graceful ballet. They swept around each other, gathering up great clouds of dust and cosmic detritus, illuminating them and dragging them in a galactically-embroidered train; the star dancers dressed in the stuff that all creation is made of. The trains became less diffuse as they watched, and the view shifted again, sweeping past great red orbs that spat fire into nothingness, between a pair of rapidly spinning blue stars and a thousand million others, coming to a stop around an unremarkable yellowness with a dozen small lumps making lazy ellipses around their mother. It soon became clear that they were looking at their own sun, and the planets of which Earth was one. At the distance, the window was showing them they could see mighty Jupiter form from a cloud of dust, almost identically as the later stars they had seen form, illuminated by their elders. It didn’t ignite as they had, and he was soon joined by his great brother Saturn, who cloaked himself with rings. Neptune and Uranus came into being, and the human observers marveled at the sight. No man could possibly hope to see these sights through a telescope, but again, the view was momentary. The planet Earth—at least the visual representation of it through the window—burned, vomited fire, cooled, was struck by meteors, acquired a moon, cooled some more, and shrouded herself in cloud banks of poison rain. The window closed in on the Earth, now blanketed in great seas, and dived below the waters, showing twitching, tiny organisms dividing and splitting and mutating and shifting into new species, humping themselves out of the water. John thought it couldn’t have happened like this; real animals didn’t spontaneously grow legs and mouths, but there they were, forming into
primitive amphibians before his eyes. Pikeham was weeping now, great sobs but not of woe, but laughter.

  “It appears I have been wrong my entire life. Mr. Darwin will never let me hear the end of it, should I be fortunate to take tea with him again!” He laughed so heartily, John thought he might have given into hysteria, not that he could have been blamed for doing so. John looked at the skies overhead and saw a reflection of what surrounded them. The animals on this earth were the same, the three-horned and long-necked prey animals, the sharp toothed raptors and the great bat-winged shapes in the sky. There was a difference in the landscape portrait of these immensely talented painters, whose palette was time and whose brushes were the very fibers of the universe. In the skies above the skies themselves, a flaming star was beginning to fall.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rama’s parents watched him mature into a young prince. Rama was a perfectly perfect young man. He had all the noble qualities. He was patient with others’ wrongs, but would not do wrong himself. He enjoyed the company of elders and wise men. He was very intelligent and courageous. He was righteous and kind. He was the perfect warrior. He knew when to use violence and when not to. He was healthy, strong and handsome. He was highly learned in the scriptures. Rama was a sat-purusa, the ideal man. —Ramayana

  ***

  Morning Star

  Captain Sykes stood agog at the destruction being played out before his eyes.

  He had no appreciation for theatre or the sciences, had seen no shows and took no entertainment other than the singing of songs at sea and the imbibing of a single tot of rum per day. The visual display before him was therefore not anything he could relate to a story or a play, just pure terror as creatures grew, died and evolved, and then are wiped out by a huge flaming meteor. Rajeev saw Shiva incarnate, the God of Death, destroyer of worlds come to signpost a great change in the epochs; Brahma closes his eyes and a world dies, again and again as part of the wheel of time. Mandeep viewed it in an entirely unphilosophical manner, believing to have lost grip of his senses and prayed only for the deliverance of his person to Allah. Dr. Pikeham marveled at the living proof of the evolution of species, and watched with a scientist’s eye as the progress it had made over millions of years was wiped out before him. John had no frame of reference for what he had seen, but silently wept. The petals of the chrysanthemum rotated again, folding back in on themselves, wrapping the bulb in their embrace, hiding the now darkened window. The cosmic flower disappeared, leaving no trace, no sign that it had ever been there. Dinosaurs lowed as cows would do, and the only accompanying sound was the buzzing of dragonflies and other small insects going about their way serving the needs of pollination, of evolution itself. Mandeep was now on his feet.

  “What was that? What in the name of Allah does this mean?” he said.

  “For us? We’re leaving. Hang the mountain, hang it all. Look around you, boys. This is the last respite of a history that was ended long ago. We leave it as it is, my lads. We leave it and ne’er speak o’it, y’hear me? We head back to the ship, and sail east, whether that leads us to the end o’ the earth, or no.” Sykes was set of jaw, and John had seen his countenance before, one that would brook no questions and hear no dissent. Nevertheless, Pikeham spoke his mind, the only man who did not see Captain Sykes as his superior.

  “Unacceptable, Captain! Did you not see the same as I? We are the only men on earth who can speak with certainty that these creatures still exist, and in the name of science, we must make a full report to the Royal Society; in fact, I mean to do so, should we manage to escape this land and make fair sail to China.” Pikeham’s fear had receded, and John saw the familiar glint of ambition in his eyes once again. Sykes was close to explosion, purple in the face and flexing his hands. To prevent his captain from suffering the indignity of visiting violence upon his gentleman passenger, John did it for him. A militarily drilled one-two sank Pikeham to his knees. John took no pleasure in it, and there were no cheers from Mandeep or Rajeev—Rajeev at least had been spared Pikeham’s ruminations, thanks to the language barrier. Pikeham groaned, and tried to form words, but was unable to speak.

  “I thank ye, lad, but you know that striking a gentleman is a flogging aboard ship,” Sykes said. John nodded, accepting of his fate. “Fortunately for you, we are neither at sea, nor do I ‘ave my cat ‘o’ nines. Get him up, and let’s get moving. Least you can do is aid your poor victim to walk until he can do it himself.” John did so.

  “My apologies, Dr. Pikeham,” he said, but couldn’t quite make his voice have the required amount of contrition judging by the sour look the doctor shot at him. “If what we saw was indeed the history of our world, then surely we were shown it for a reason. As to what reason that might be I cannot fathom; I do not have your wisdom.”

  John was actually fairly sure that he had come to some kind of conclusion as to what he had seen, although his philosophical knowledge was, to his own mind, rudimentary and his scientific knowledge even more so. This place, he thought, this land out of time, was a warning that time itself was not quite the linear progression that humanity had believed it to be, a straight line that ran from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to the new, steam-powered ships of the sea and the fires of industrial revolution and the conquest of the British Empire. All he saw had happened before, and all he saw could—no, would—happen again. The dinosaurs he saw around him as they made their way back across the plains, this time skirting the foot of the mountain that they had thought to climb before they were shown the futility of the quest, these ancient creatures were once in his own shoes. Perfectly confident in their position as the dominant species on the planet so many millions of years ago, before creation itself, before humans and their petty cares and troubles and short lived cycles of birth, penance and death. There was nothing to say that the kingdoms of men would outlast the suzerainty of the dinosaurs. At any moment, Brahma could close his eyes, and the world would fall out of existence and back into the stream of the universe to be forgotten and reborn, with a new species at the helm to guide the course of the earth. Whatever forces were at work beyond the chrysanthemum were neither Judeo-Christian, nor Muslim, nor Hindu, nor obedient to the laws of science. In fact, to John’s mind, they were more like the pragmatic stoicism of Captain Sykes, caring for his ship at all costs, steering the course as best he knows how, and trying to keep his crew alive; or was that hyperbolic? Was it arrogance to assume that just because the eyes of man had witnessed the great window to time and space that whoever opened the window knew they were there at all? Does the boot have sympathy for the snail it crushes unknowingly? He didn’t know. The scriptures said that you cannot know the face of God, but, he wondered, could he finally know what it was to be touched by the divine? In any case, there was little to do but continue living, in as true a manner as he could. Perhaps one day, a long time from the day when God showed a soldier who didn’t know what to believe how time was a flat disc, maybe one day science or religion or both working together would learn the path required to avoid a second extinction, to manifest a destiny outside of the one trodden by the gargantuan lizards of the past, and to forge a new narrative history.