Divinity
Page 3
logof wood. The inside of the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes becameaccustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner. It was aweird-looking head, also of wood.
It struck him then. The log of wood had been the old god, good enough toworship until he had come along and shown them what a god could reallydo. Now it had been contemptuously deposed and decapitated. The hut wasa shrine. It was all his.
He _had_ been promoted after all. The thought didn't please him in theleast. Suppose _he_ failed them too--and that was very possible, for hehad no idea of what miracles they expected of him. Then he would bedeposed and--he gagged at the thought, but he knew that he had to finishit--decapitated.
But for the moment there was no thought of deposing him. The gifts theyoffered were more lavish than ever. And in addition to the food andflowers, there was something new. A jug, filled with a warm,sweetish-smelling liquid. He could get the odor faintly through theintake valve of his helmet. Later on, when his worshippers were gone andhe had his helmet off, he realized that it smelled up the entire hut.
It couldn't be harmful. Nothing that they had offered him so far washarmful. He took a sip--and sighed with content. This was one of the fewthings he had been lacking. There was alcohol, and there were flavorsand essences that reminded him of the drinks he had encountered on adozen planets. But this was first class stuff, not diluted oradulterated with the thousand and one synthetics that were put in tostretch a good thing as far as it could go.
Without realizing the danger, he downed the entire contents of the jug.
* * * * *
He felt good. He hadn't felt so good in years, not since his mother hadmade him a special cake for his birthday when he was--let me see now,was it eight or nine? No matter, it had been many years ago, and theoccasion had been notable for the fact that she had let him drink someof the older people's punch, made with a tiny bit of some alcoholicdrink. He felt _very_ good. He picked up his helmet and put it on hishead, and stuck the stem of a green flower rakishly through the exitvalve of the helmet, so that the flower seemed to dance every time heexhaled, and staggered out of his hut.
He was fortunate that it was dark. "I'm drunk," he told himself. "Neverbeen so drunk in my life. Never felt so good. Mother never felt so good.Malevski never felt so good."
He passed a shadowy figure in the dark and said, "Hiya, friend andworshipper. Ever see a god drunk before?"
The figure bowed, and kept its head lowered until he had moved on.
"Drunk or sober, I'm shtill divine," he said proudly. And he began tosing, loudly and impressively, his voice orchestral in his own earswithin the confines of the helmet. "Ould Lang Shyne, she ain't what sheushed to be, ain't what she ushed to be--" The words came easily, and asit seemed, naturally to his lips.
After awhile, however, he tired of them. After awhile he found that hislegs had tired of them. He sat down with a thump under a spiky tree andsaid solemnly, "Never felt so good in my life. Never felt so happy--it'sa lie. I don't feel good."
He didn't, not any more. He felt sick to his stomach. A touch of soberthought had corroded the happiness of his intoxication, and he was sickand afraid. Today their god was a hero, today they would forgive himeverything. But did they actually _prefer_ a drunken god? No.Drunkenness made a god human, all too human. A drunken god was a weakgod, and his hold on his worshippers was their belief in his strength.As he valued his life, he must get drunk no more.
"Ain't gonna get drunk no more, no more," he sang sadly and solemnly tohimself, and finally he fell asleep.
* * * * *
He awoke with a hangover and a memory. He was not one of those men whowhen sober forget all they have done when drunk. He rememberedeverything. And he knew that he must put drunkenness away from him.
That morning they brought him only food and flowers. But at the eveningceremony they presented him once more with a jug of liquor as anadditional reward for his destruction of the deadly beast. For the firsttime, Bradley took an active part in the ceremony. He held up the jugand said in grave tones, "In the name of Carrie Nation, I renounce theeand all thy works."
Then he poured out the liquor and smashed the jug on the ground.
After that, the smashing of the jug was part of the ceremony ofworshipping him. It left him unhappy at first, but sober. After awhile,the unhappiness disappeared, but the soberness remained. From now on, hewould act as a god should act.
The natives were not stupid, he saw that very clearly. The first jugsthey had offered him had been beautiful objects, of excellentworkmanship. But when they perceived that the only use he had for themwas to break them, the quality deteriorated rapidly. Now the jugs theybrought him were crude things indeed, made for the sole purpose of beingsmashed. He wondered how many other tribes had tricked their godssimilarly.
No, they were not at all stupid. It struck him that with such advantagesof civilization as he himself had enjoyed, they would have gone muchfurther than he did. Two weeks or so after he had come down from the skyto be their god, he saw that they had learned from him. One of the youngmen appeared during the day wearing a wooden helmet. It was a helmetobviously patterned after his own, although it had no glass or plastic,and the openings in front of the eyes were left blank. The mythicalEarth-hero, Prometheus, had brought fire down from the skies. He hadbrought the Helmet. He was Bradley, the Helmet-Bringer.
Even at that he had underestimated his worshippers. He had thought atfirst that the helmets were meant merely for ornament and decoration. Helearned better one day when a swarm of creatures like flying lizardsswept down out of a group of trees in a fierce attack. He had not knownthat such creatures existed here, and now that he saw them, he realizedhow fortunate it was that they were not more numerous. They had sharpteeth and sharper claws, and they tore at his head with a ferocity thatstruck fear into his heart. His gun was of less use than usual againstthem. He could catch one or two, but the others moved too swiftly forhim to aim.
By this time, others of the natives wore wooden helmets, and he couldsee how the sharp claws ripped splinter after splinter from them. Butthe birds or lizards, or whatever they were, didn't go unscathed. From asort of skin bellows, several of the natives blew a gray mist at them,and where the mist made contact with the leather skin, the flyingcreatures seemed to be paralyzed in mid-flight, and they fell to theground, where they were easily crushed to death. By the time they hadgiven up the fight and fled, half a dozen of them were lying dead.
They were evidently useless for food because of the poison theycontained. He was surprised to see, however, that the natives still hada use for them. They dragged the dead creatures into a field of growingcrops, and left them there to rot into fertilizer.
But such incidents as this, he found, were to be rare. For the mostpart, the life here was peaceful, and he found himself liking it moreand more. Now, without laughter, he wondered again what his mother wouldhave thought of him.
She would have been proud. He realized now that she had done her bestfor him. And when every one else had given up hope for him, she had not.Perhaps she had protected him too much--but she had early learned theneed for protection. He could look at her now in a new light. Her ownfather had died early in life, and then her husband soon after her sonhad been born. She had faced a tough fight, and had thought to spare himwhat she herself had gone through. Too bad she hadn't realized exactlywhat she was doing. She was bringing him up with the ability, as the oldepigram had it, to resist everything but temptation.
The temptation to steal that petty cash, to put his hands into a drunk'spocket and lift the man's wallet, to lie to a pretty girl, to slug ahelpless victim--he had resisted none of them. He had resisted nothinguntil that day he had poured the jugful of liquor on the ground andsmashed the jug itself.
But could he blame his mother for all that? It had all been his ownfault.
* * * * *
And it would be his own fault if he failed
to resist the new temptationthat now reared its pretty head--Aoooya. She had taken to coming to hishut-shrine for a private little ceremony of her own. You might almosthave thought that she had fallen in love with him as an individual. Hewondered whether she had been impressed by his helmet. Did she take thatto be his actual head? No, of course not. They had made helmets forthemselves, therefore they knew that the thing he wore was also ahelmet. Perhaps they knew more about him than he thought.
But they continued to worship him, that was the main thing. And Aoooyabrought him, every day, little presents, special flowers and fooddelicacies, that argued a personal affection.
This was a danger that he recognized from the beginning. Perhaps a god_might_ fall in love with a mortal without losing his godliness.Perhaps. It had happened before. But, however the rest of the tribemight react to the idea, Bradley had noticed one young man who liked tostay near the girl, and he knew that this