REGENESIS

by D. Scott Dickinson

  “It is settled. They agree to your suggestion we find a temperate location suitable for agriculture, and I have agreed to their suggestion it be near the sea. You and I will not make the journey alone. All are committed to a mutual destiny.”

  With that, Noah, Davina and the band of furry bipeds pass through the main gate, trudging through the wet shallows, and strike out from the walled city. In a direction they hope will draw them toward the sea.

  It is a certain sign of man’s hubris that he invariably credits only himself with sure knowledge of matters unknown and unknowable.

  Thus it is that Noah presumptuously takes the lead in a direction away from the walled city nearly opposite to the way they have come. Roughly continuing in the same line of march they had taken across the plain for many days. If nothing else, he reasons, they will leave the scene of the dire wolf kill far behind them. The furry band fall in next to Noah, content to let him and his mate lead them where they will.

  What they do not realize is that it is they, the followers, and not the man-creature who will guide them all to the new Chosen Place. That their way will be charted. That the true path will be blazed in a dream.

  The presence of water and the smooth interstitial pathways through it make the journey an easy, heartening affair. The water is cool and sweet, and the lakes are deep and rife with fish, albeit not the finned beasts which are the bipeds’ familiar prey.

  They make swift progress through the watery realm, and it does not seem long before the temperature begins to drop. Heralding their arrival in more seasonable, comfortable climes. The furry bipeds have a new spring in their step as the cooler air begins to blunt the heat of two suns.

  It is after one such day that their leader receives an unexpected, but welcome, visit.

  The leader is restless and expectant this night. They have traveled many days since leaving the walled city and, while the man-creature appears confident they are going in the right direction, he is not so sure. But neither does he have a clue as to what different path they might take.

  What he needs is guidance. But from whom? It is an uncertainty that haunts his dreams this night. Until . . .

  His question is answered by the sudden appearance of the Old One, a presence he has not felt since their escape through the high mountain pass. The spirit speaks:

  “I have heard your call for guidance.

  “The hairless one is full of pride, but pride alone will not lead you to the place you seek, the New Chosen Place.

  “You left the true path late this day, and now he is taking you away from where you must go.

  “I will guide you back to the true path and lead you to the place you seek.”

  The leader wonders:

  “But how are you, insubstantial and unseen spirit, to guide us? I alone speak to you. The others will not follow a guide they cannot see.”

  Shaking his head, the Old One explains:

  “They will follow you, and you shall follow me. Trust your feelings, for I will tug on them to guide you on the true path.

  “You must convince the hairless ones that you will take the lead. The rest I will do, for I shall prepare the way and be there ahead of you.”

  Nodding his understanding, the leader asks only:

  “But how will I know when we have arrived at the New Chosen Place?”

  The specter answers with a riddle whose rhyming couplets only befuddle the listener:

  You’ll know you’ve arrived

  When the sky comes alive

  With strobing streaks

  And shrill shrieks.

  As they disappear

  And the heavens clear,

  You will know you are here

  With me once more,

  To leave nevermore.

  Before the leader can ask the meaning of this riddle, the spirit vanishes.

  Next day, the leader approaches Davina in what Noah observes to be a remarkable display of emotion for such a phlegmatic creature.

  Instead of his usual expressionless, stolid way of communicating, the furry biped launches into an almost animated, nearly imploring monologue. Beseeching Davina for his mate knows not what.

  When the leader finishes, she merely nods her head and utters a single syllable in the furry creature’s strange tongue.

  “You have been demoted,” Davina explains to her mate. “The leader claims to know we are traveling in the wrong direction, and he is resolved to lead his people on a different path. I told him we will follow them.”

  While he cannot fathom how the furry biped knows the right way from here, Noah can offer no better alternative. Accepting his mate’s decision, he surrenders the lead and they fall in with the furry band as its leader turns them in a more easterly direction.

  They are on the southern fringe of the northern high desert, and Noah wonders if their new route will bring them to the imploded valley where he left his scout vehicle. The scientist in him salivates at the prospect of recovering the solar-powered mass spectrometer he so cavalierly abandoned in his craft.

  Distracted by these thoughts, he is startled by the company’s sudden halt as the leader points northward.

  There lies a broad river, transecting the southern edge of the high desert, flowing where none flowed before. It is wide. It is deep. And it rages eastward from an unseen source to their west.

  Approaching the river’s bank, the leader kneels and, cupping his hands into a bowl, drinks from its crystal clarity. Then, the rest of the band join him and replenish themselves.

  But the flow carries no fish. And no other living thing. It is as sterile as the high desert it has breached.

  Not far to the west, two of the band’s hunters find a narrow stretch in the lifeless river, whose shallows the travelers easily ford. From there, the leader strikes out in a more northeasterly direction. A course they maintain for the next several days.

  The landscape is so changed Noah barely recognizes it. The northern high desert is desert no more. While the vegetation remains sparse, there is water everywhere—broad lakes, small ponds, raging rivers, flowing streams—and they soon discover the source of so much water under a cloudless sky.

  It is the earth itself!

  Pushing up huge volumes of water from beneath its surface.

  Pumping it to every low, hollow place.

  Forcing it through the loose soil to create new channels.

  Pulsing into open arteries and veins carrying the life element to regions long dormant.

  “The geology of the high desert is changing,” he advises his mate.

  “This barren landscape will become a vibrant, living thing with all this water.

  “I feel we are walking across a world in the process of remaking itself. I feel we are witnessing a renewal of this land.”

  Nodding knowingly, Davina thinks to herself:

  “Yes. And soon we shall be more than mere onlookers. We shall ourselves be makers of the new world the Earth Spirit foretold. But first, we must reach the place she prepares for us.”

  After many days’ travel through this freshly watered plain, they notice the levees are becoming fewer and narrower. Where once they traveled easily over wide paths of firm earth separating the many lakes, ponds, rivers and streams, they now must choose carefully among a diminishing number of tenuous, disconnected patches of dry land. Meantime, the still and flowing bodies of water have deepened as they have spread, making many impassable.

  Noah is first to realize they are trapped in a maze, warning his mate:

  “The water is rising, and soon we will be cut off. We must proceed with caution. Even the most inviting stretch of dry land may be a deceit luring us into a dead-end and stranding us there.

  “I am familiar with mazes very much like this, of the strategy needed to unlock them. Tell the leader I will find our way through this watery maze.”

  With the leader’s agreement, Noah quickly turns onto a nearby levee that connects to another running in a different direction, and that to a
third, thence to a fourth and so on. Constantly looking four stretches ahead, Noah navigates through the spreading floodplain.

  It is when he chances to look back that panic grips him, for every bare patch they have traversed is being swallowed by a rising tide.

  Raising the alarm with a rapid forward-throwing motion, he breaks into a steady jog to outrun the spreading water. With the rest on his heels, he races ahead toward what he perceives to be a line of ridges rising far above the plain.

  The rising flood washes away the plain’s last trace of bare earth as they slosh through its shallows to throw themselves, winded and exhausted, on the elevated slope of the nearest ridge.

  Looking back, Noah sees a vast floodplain, cleansed of bare earth, whose lakes, ponds, rivers and streams have become one.

  What once was desert is destined to become the Great Northern Fens, a world of muck and mire, of cattails and tall grasses, of mysterious sucking sand and sinister pitfalls. But that is the work of a future yet to be.

  As soon as they have recovered their strength, the leader turns them due east away from the flooded plain. Into an area as dry and barren as the fens are wet and soon-to-be lush. There are no lakes here, no ponds, no rivers, no water anywhere.

  It is as if the high desert has reasserted itself here. Rebuffing the wet bounty of a sweating earth. Rejecting the promise of life.

  Appalled at the harsh, sterile landscape, Noah urges his mate to persuade the leader to turn back, to follow the shore of the floodplain they are leaving behind. But Davina shakes her head resolutely, determined to complete the quest as foretold to her.

  She knows the leader seeks the true path and it does not lead back to the watery landscape they have left. And she knows to leave it now is to wander in the wilderness and forsake the destiny they are meant to fulfill.

  Again Noah defers to her resolve. While wondering why they are leaving fish-filled waters for the parched, lifeless dunes of the high desert.

  In fact, they are passing only a few leagues from the grounded scout craft near the edge of the imploded valley. But the sand ridges here are high and conceal it from the travelers’ view.

  The leader pauses at the edge of the highest line of ridges which, unlike its lower cousins, has a peculiar cleft several feet high overhanging deep shadow. It is in this shadow the leader makes a discovery that will sustain them for the rest of their journey through the dry and lifeless desert.

  The sigh of sucking water is unmistakable, and it whispers to them from deep within the high ridge’s low recess. There, the leader discovers a softly pulsing well washing up many finned creatures from the bowels of a river cave beneath the earth. Eating and drinking their fill, the exhausted travelers shelter in the recess as its shadow becomes one with the blackness of night.

  Next day, the leader strikes out in a northeasterly direction, following the line of sand ridges. They march in its shadow for several days, each night retreating into the darkened recess of a high ridge to eat, drink and sleep.

  It is on the seventh day when everything begins to change.

  Davina is first to notice it, as she sniffs the air, her eyes widening at the familiar scent.

  It is the fragrance of the ocean. The salty, tangy taste of the sea on a freshening wind.

  The familiar, briny scent fills her with nostalgia and longing. It calls to her from the forsaken shore a world away.

  Soon, the gentle zephyrs grow to a breeze, then to a stiff wind as the presence of salt in the air becomes overpowering.

  So distracted is she Davina nearly bumps into the leader as he suddenly halts the band.

  And just in time.

  There, spread before them, is the wide ocean, its wind-roiled surface gleaming like a million stars.

  High, crashing waves beat against the base of the high bluff where they stand, and rock-strewn beaches stretch away into the distance in both directions beyond the wave-blasted cliff.

  Captivated by the grandeur of this pristine coast, Noah is reminded of his treks along California’s Big Sur where he and friends vacationed one spring break. The scene here surpasses even the most breathtaking vistas of that Pacific shore. While these slopes are dotted with the same stunted, wind-swept trees as the familiar bristle-pines along the Big Sur.

  Looking back to get his bearings, he sees the parched, lifeless landscape they have crossed. Girdled by rolling hills to the west where the sand ridges melt away into the distance. The landward terrain nearby is still arid, true high desert, but the proximity of the ocean takes the edge off the harshness of the dry landscape running from the faraway hills to the overlook on which he stands.

  Turning back to the vista of ocean, he sees features that first went unnoticed.

  Off to the south, a rocky promontory reaches out over the surf.

  Next to the overlook, a scatter of boulders rises like a stairway sculpted out of the solid stone cliff by natural forces long ago. Affording easy access to the beaches on both sides.

  And below, finned creatures frolic off-shore.

  The million stars upon the surface of the sea begin winking out as both suns begin their descent below the horizon. As the world goes dark, glowing fans of blood-red and yellow-orange spread above the horizon, slowly morphing into an aurora borealis of shimmering silver and gilded gold. Which stays through the night beneath the stars.

  The astral display is so intense, it turns the night into crystal twilight.

  Noah and his mate are bewitched by the grandeur and magic of this place.

  They do not suspect the horrific display that will greet them on the morn. When the blackness of night will rule the day!

  Davina is first to notice the change. She awakens to a shiver as the wind has turned cold.

  Gone is the borealis.

  Gone are the stars.

  There is no light.

  There are no suns.

  Looking skyward, she is startled to see that which has been absent since she left her polar home.

  Clouds!

  Pearls scudding across the heavens, their nacreous billows glistening like the hidden surfaces of the closed shells she collected along the shore of her polar world.

  The clouds come racing down from the north, casting wide shadows that bleed over sea and land.

  Reaching over to wake her mate, Davina’s hand is stopped by a sudden shriek as long arteries and spidery veins of bolt-lightning turn night into day. Then comes the rain—sweeping, pounding, driving torrents of it. Spreading across the desert and blotting out the sky.

  Awakening with the rest of his band, the leader knows what Davina knows: They have arrived.

  For the band, this is the New Chosen Place. Guided by the leader’s visions, their journey across a world has delivered them once more to the Life Source.

  It is the solution to the riddle told by the Old One in the depth of a dark night when he turned their steps toward the true path:

  You’ll know you’ve arrived

  When the sky comes alive

  With strobing streaks

  And shrill shrieks.

  For Davina, this is the crucible of a new civilization.

  It is the destiny foretold by a silver maiden. Bearing a gift most precious. In the deep of night. In a sylvan glade. Where magic was made and a new race conceived.

  The time has come to redeem that gift. To fulfill that destiny.

  Turning to her mate, she takes his hand in hers, places it on her distended stomach and happily announces:

  “It is time.”

  Hours later, under the light of two suns, beneath a wide gathering of clouds, in the earthy aromatic mist of recent rain and the heady scent of the briny sea, Noah, Davina and the band of furry bipeds celebrate the arrival of her newborn.

  And they call him Adam.

  Chapter 57. Years Later

  Arm-in-arm, Noah and Davina stand upon the wide porch of their home on the ocean overlook. Gazing at the fertile fields that stretch to the landward horizon of hills.<
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  They are grateful for the fruitful land.

  For the friendship and collaboration of the furry bipeds whose odd polished stones grace the rocky promontory over the sea.

  And, most of all, for the seven healthy sons who give their union purpose.

  But their thoughts are very different this day.

  Despite her curious nature, Davina is content with the life they have made here and sanguine about prospects for the future. While she knows her mate is anxious about that future, she possesses the basic fatalism of her people, accepting that which she knows she cannot change.

  Despite his personal happiness from a life with this remarkable woman, Noah is haunted by an old anxiety.

  Their arrival at this New Eden was heralded by a gathering of clouds and the birth of the first son, Adam. It has been a joyful time of discovery, renewal and affirmation. As they established themselves on this delightful shore. As they bore six additional sons, the sole hope of a new civilization.

  Noah wistfully recalls his momentous return to the imploded valley he left so long before. He remembers celebrating the salvage of the solar-powered mass spectrometer from his abandoned space vehicle. And in this moment of nostalgia, he happily recalls sharing his exuberance with Davina and their first, infant son upon returning from that early scouting trip.

  The journey was one of many and the first to collect samples for chemical analysis with the mass spectrometer. Yet, the equipment was fated to fall short of expectations. While it broke samples down into their constituent elements, it could not unlock the mystery of the peculiar properties they exhibit in nature.

  The natural world has been their laboratory and classroom, and as Noah taught each of his seven sons he himself gained insight and understanding of the wonders around them. Learning many new things about his adoptive planet—its geography, geology, chemistry and physics.

  Sharing their mother’s innate curiosity, his sons have been eager students. Passionate to learn all there is to know. Rewarded by the thrill of each new discovery.

  Proud of the brave, resourceful, intelligent young men they have become, Noah’s only reservation is what he fears may be an imbalance in their character. He is afflicted with the lot of every father as he critically assesses shortcomings that might impede them in making their own way in the world.