A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Wink only laughed, and kept her reservations private.

  But, three nights later, it was Wink herself whom a Servant of God stopped, as she creaked down the muddy path to the Lake to make a small votive offering.

  “Are you Green-Eyed She?” flashed the Servant.

  “Yes, honored one,” Wink glimmered, almost invisibly.

  “Follow me. And turn up your brights; I am getting old and can no longer see certain frequencies as well as once I could,” he brusquely ordered, and turned to scuttle up a branching path with a celerity that belied his age.

  Wink said, faintly, “Yes, sir! I mean, YES, SIR!”

  “You needn’t light up the City, hatchling, I’m not that blind yet! . . . Not yet too blind to talk, not yet so blind as to throw myself into Holy Water for God to eat, no, by God, not yet!” Wink realized he was glimmering to himself, and wisely kept dark.

  For the first time in her life, she found herself inside the great stone temple that incorporated the original pier built by the Founders in ancient days. The blank, empty thoracic shells of long-ago Supreme Hierophants lined the walls leading to this most holy of sacrificial altars, standing sentinel over the ages. But the elderly Servant ushered her off into a side chamber and through a maze of passageways ending in—Wink gave one swift green blink of surprise, hastily mantled—the High Priest’s office.

  “This is the she,” said her guide, who turned and clittered back the way they’d come.

  The venerable priest looked her over for some moments in lightlessness, stalks twitching meditatively.

  “Well, you are Green-Eyed She, called, I believe, Wink,” he began, finally. “Choirmaster speaks well of you, praising the purity and clarity of your spectrum. He has ventured the opinion that with accelerated training, you could achieve a certain virtuosity in very fine discrimination of wavelengths.—Well, and what have you to say to that?”

  “That—that I am honored by the Choirmaster, and hope to earn his words.” Wink was completely taken aback by this unprecedented interview.

  “I also see from your broodfoster Longstalks that you seemed to have a true and early vocation to the Service; and everyone to whom I have spoken assures me that you are not, unlike so many others, in it for the cushy berths that may be had if one survives the risks of Fishing. Eh? Are you a gambler? Do you like to see and reflect rumors about novices skipping up directly into Service? Eh?”

  Wink went deep burnt sienna from embarrassment. Obviously someone had observed and reported the conversation with Red. “No, honored one. I saw such an idea once, true, but paid it no thought. And I certainly didn’t reflect it on! I do not seek to avoid my duty as a Fisher. Rather, I conceive it to be an honor. One knows that all Servants of God have truly earned the privileges they enjoy, for they have all been Fishers. If a novice were to become a Servant without having first been a Fisher, the respect for the entire Service would soon decline.”

  The old he chuckled, little silvery sparks shivering over his carapace. “Your words look very much like ones I saw yesternight, in a very long, actinic argument. Well, we shall leave that, for the moment.

  “Now I shall put you through your catechism.

  “Who is God?”

  The sudden switch nearly caught Wink off guard.

  “God is Yd Who created world and sky, both the stars that sing and the sun that chastises, and Who fashioned mortals out of the mud and reeds of the shore of Holy Water; eternal, all wise, all powerful, all good.”

  “What is the purpose of life?”

  “To serve God.”

  “Where do we go when we die?”

  “Into the mud and water of Holy Lake, whence we came, for the greater glory of God, who hungers for our sake.”

  “If God knows no gender as mortals know it, why do we call God Yd?”

  “Because Yd nurtures us, Yd’s mortal hatchlings.”

  “Who is the Evil One?”

  “The Enemy of all life, who in the beginning of time sent devil slaves against the Favored People of God; but God strengthened them and aided their counsels, and wrestled with the demons, and vanquished the Evil One.”

  “That’s enough. All very correct. Now, what if I were to tell you that all of those things are false, that Yd created neither world nor sky, nor fashioned mortals out of mud or anything else, nor is eternal, all-wise, all-powerful, all-good; and the purpose of life is merely to live and grow and change; and while we do indeed go into Holy Lake to be consumed by God when we die, it is more to ease the burden on the Corps of Fishers than for anyone’s glory; and Yd had made only one offspring in Yd’s life, and that one died; and though God may once have tricked a few of the Evil One’s underlings, Yd certainly never vanquished the Evil One, who is not the enemy of any land-locked life.”

  Wind had gone black with shock. “But who would dare blaspheme so—?”

  “God dares.”

  It was nearly dawn before she lurched from the temple, dazed and quivering. Nor did she hurry to reach the cool safety of her broodhome, but trudged slowly, ruminating. Even when the eastern sky began to whiten and blaze, still she remained more absorbed in the equally blasting illumination within. Only when a fearful, sickly-green alarm blared in her eyes did she realize how late it was. Her broodfoster had come out searching for her, and now Yd hustled her along, rattling with anxiety, and blinking and scolding all the way. They kept their eyes curled down below their ventral flanges, hunched against the rising sun.

  After reaching the thick rock shelter of the warren, and after escaping her foster’s worried lecture, she fled deep into the convoluted passageways, to her own solitary little niche—granted her upon her acceptance into the novitiate. Here she could know peace . . .

  No. Nor ever again.

  For how could she have peace when the High Priest had destroyed the foundations of her universe, even as his own had been destroyed—by God Ydself—some night before?

  “For God’s recent indifference to us had been a matter of grave concern for some time,” old Mottling Quickly Changing had told her, when she had partially recuperated from her first shock and bewilderment. “And the highest among us went to the altar and called out to Yd. But Yd saw us not, or refused to see. Then I ordered out the vessel, and taking two others with me to bear witness—and to row—I went in search of God, far out onto the dark waters of the Lake. Then God arose, and I quailed before Yd’s vast majesty, and Yd said, ‘What would you of me, little hatchling?’ And I gathered my wits, and said, ‘Your children desire to know by what cause you are wroth with them, and what it is they must do to regain your grace.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I am not wroth, but deep in thought, for the time approaches for many changes and great events.’ Then Yd put me through my catechism, as I did you; and Yd told me—Yd showed me—wonders—terrors—and—and we rowed back, my priests and I, that black, starless night, blinded by the light.”

  “What did Yd tell you—?” she had dared to ask.

  “I think I will let Yd tell you all about it, Ydself.”

  She, she was to see God, to speak to Yd, to watch Yd’s slow, divine words with her own eyes! She, Wink!

  “—Why me?” she had shimmered desperately.

  “It is God’s will that one go who is young, healthy, strong—that rules out most of the Servants—skilled in communication, skilled in song, whole, sound of mind—that rules out an unfortunately large percentage of Fishers and former Fishers, Servants or not—and especially one who is patient, openminded, not overly inculcated with the truisms of our society, intuitive, imaginative, and exceedingly intelligent. That rules out most of the general populace; besides, we deem it advisable to keep these new ideas within the Service, for the time being. We also add our own requirements that the candidate have a good citizenship record and a firm understanding of the concept of duty. I made inquiries among the Corps of Priests and the Corps of Broodmasters, seeking names; yours appeared most often.

  “As for your entering the ranks of the
Servants, it is well known that only a Servant of God may speak and understand the special words of God, is it not? You will take up your new duties as soon as you can complete the special training.”

  “. . . Let it be as you will it, honored one,” she glimmered softly. “But am I then never to become a Fisher?”

  “You had truly anticipated that?”

  “I had awaited it, not with pleasure, perhaps, but with . . . curiosity.”

  He contemplated her a moment. “The ascetic in you, no doubt. This will be an adventure far greater.”

  God spoke not as mortals spoke. Who could guess how the divine might meditate within itself upon the universe, or might—staggering thought—commune with other entities of its own kind? For the puny understanding of mortals, however, God had created a light-emitting organ of Yd’s own holy flesh, not one that worked as mortals’ did, but one large, and slow, and simple, and stilted in its expression, as befitted the stately dignity of a God.

  Because of its limitations—which God had deliberately designed in as a rebuke to the pride of his people, of course—in both spectrum and subtlety of expressible forms, its codings differed not only from those of the language of the Favored People but from those of all the languages of all the other tribes they had ever conquered, converted, or otherwise made contact with. This holy coding system must each novice study, commit to memory, before he or she (never Yd) could hope for advancement. Often, the candidates lost much of this knowledge during their years Fishing for God, and needs must relearn it all upon their return to the City. Periodically, over the generations, hierophantic administrators had attempted to abolish this apparently inefficient system, and, for example, send out untutored novices into the wilderness when much younger, and only begin teaching them after they had fulfilled this portion of their duty. But invariably the experiment had failed. The younger ones lacked the mature vigor needed to withstand the solitary vigils in the wild, and an ex-Fisher usually proved incapable of grasping any complex intangible concept unless he or she had already absorbed the root and essence of the idea. Therefore, the pre-adult years must span a very broad base of an eclectic education, only roughly sketched in; any subject of lore which might prove of use someday must be begun then.

  Now the repetitious, numerical, arbitrary symbolisms of the language of God became Wink’s life. Fortunately, she did not have to learn to speak it herself, since God (naturally) understood the thoughts of mortals even before they became visible; but she had to learn to understand Yd when Yd spoke. She awoke in the evening with a Servant standing over her sand pit, flashing phrases in the measured cadence of divine speech, and translating them with a brief coruscation in the common talk. She ate with the lessons still before her. She performed her devotions at the side of a translator-teacher, who herself was temporarily excused from all other duties. She eliminated her wastes, groomed her carapace and segmented limbs, deposited her as-yet-unformed and non-viable eggs in the loamy area set aside for that purpose, and digested her food with them always beaming at her, in relays. And when she shut her weary eyes in the morning to sleep, still her mind’s vision saw them and sought to read them: the eternal umber, rose, bone, umber, bone, rose, rose, umber, rose, bone . . . the everlasting three, two, two, three, one, three, three, four, one, three, two, four, four . . . the unceasing up-blurred, up-sharp, left-blurred, down-blurred, right-sharp, down-sharp . . . the interminable and incoherent four right-sharp rose, two left-blurred umber, one down-blurred bone . . .

  They had moved her from her broodfoster’s den into the cold stone temple. The halls thronged with other students, acolytes, and votaries;but Wink was alone, pursuing her own unique, intensive, single-minded course, living in her own private chamber, small though it was. Sometimes she yearned to escape, to clatter back to old Longstalks’s apartments as fast as her six legs would carry her, to renounce the Service, to be free to joke once more with Red and the Gimp and her other friends.

  Then the passion of her vocation would possess her once again. Three left-sharp bone . . .

  She had to abandon all her other interests. Not only did she now live in isolation from her broodmates and comrades, in itself a great psychological hardship, but even found herself forced to neglect any intellectual pursuit that did not pertain directly to her assignment of communicating with God. The High Priest could not contain his impatience with her progress, though he could not in justice fault her in comparison with what any other individual might have accomplished in the same time. But he had devoted his life to the service of God, and it grated upon him that he could not immediately provide an acolyte perfectly tailored to Yd’s request.

  Wink watched her childhood vanish behind her in mere days, rather than in the years she should yet have had; she watched the prospect of a normal young maturity snatched forever from her.

  She did her best to keep her inner vision firmly fixed upon the High Priest’s words:

  “. . . an adventure far greater . . .”

  The last lingering rays of light faded from the east; the stars emerged in their uncounted choral swarms, singing their high, exalted, celestial, incomprehensible song.

  Slowly, Wink emerged from her dark chamber and made her way through the twisting corridors to the great cool nave. Her claws clicked on the wet flagstones and echoed against the walls as she marched down to the altar. The Servants of God awaited her there, lucent, shimmering—singing hymns, praying.

  She passed them and clambered down from the altar—the dock—to the little rowboat, where already sat her two rowers, younger acolytes dark with awe. These knew no God-talk. The wooden blades dipped.

  Far out onto the black water, they shipped oars. The boat bobbed. There was no sign of God. On the distant shore, the temple loomed dark; the priests had ended their rituals.

  Wink resolutely kept her emotions from showing on her shell, took up her courage, and sang out God’s holy name, the long purple glow, with an upper harmonic in the ultraviolet. The waters of the lake accepted it, spread it . . .

  . . . Minutes passed. Wink saw and heard nothing. She maintained the call and her prayerful state of mind. Slowly the uncomfortable certainty grew that she was being watched. Her eyestalks swiveled in all directions. Nothing. Still she learned in the upper frequencies, but she was beginning to dim; the strain was beginning to tell.

  Suddenly it seemed that Holy Water itself chuckled—a radiating dazzle of silvery sparks expanded in concentric bands, from a point directly below the boat. Then—without Wink’s having caught its approach—she found herself staring straight into a huge yellow eye, not a pincer-length away from her own green one. Another eye rose out of the water on the other side of the boat—this one was blue—and gave her its thorough attention.

  Now—in the light of her own fading note—she could see beneath and surrounding her small vessel a bulk of something huge and dark. A roughly circular patch of it began to glow in the all-too-familiar rose and bone and umber, but refraction at the surface broke up the message. Timidly she dipped an eye into the water.

  “. . . they have chosen to send me. Welcome to my domain, small hatchling.”

  The mass of God fell away into the lightless depths on all sides.

  Wink went utterly blank. All her coaching momentarily fled.

  “Fear not. Take all time needed. My life is long.” Again, pale glints of humor accompanied the statement.

  At that, her wits returned.

  “I abase myself before your almighty divinity,” she said, as it had been drilled into her. “I present myself to the will of God.”

  “Your name is—?”

  “I am called Green-Eyed She, Supremely Holy.”

  “Then, Green-Eyed She, my will is that you not so diminish your valuable self . . . How much have they told you? Do you know what your work is to be? Has anyone said that God has blasphemed? . . . Feel free to interrupt at any time; I know that I speak too slowly for you little twinkly scooters.”

  Wink flashed blac
k and orange in rapid succession, astonished and nonplussed. “The High Servant has told me that you have said many of our beliefs are not—are not quite—as we have believed. He said you wanted a young person to talk to, that none of the old Servants would do. They taught me the divine speech as swiftly as my poor weak mind was able to learn it. Now I am here, though I am still learning.”

  “I rather suspect they harried you, though they need not have. One of your brief generations more or less means little to me.

  “Now I will clarify matters somewhat. I want you to be my messenger to your people. I wanted someone young, someone new, because I have noticed that your people have difficulty learning anything strange to them once they have passed the middle of their lives. I wanted someone intelligent because much of what I must tell you will be difficult to understand, and you must be able to explain it to even the most backward of your people in a way they can accept. And I wanted an artistic singer because I enjoy watching your songs and productions. I am often lonely and part of your duty will be to entertain me.

  “These are the rules: Most of the time, I will speak, you will watch. But because I speak so awkwardly, you have my permission to flash in whenever you please; you can squeeze whole codas of reply between two of my words. And if you can guess what I am about to say, show me. I will tell you whether you are right and when you are, we can go on to the next thing. That will save some time, don’t you agree?”

  “Agree? Of course, God. Let it be as God wills.”

  “That reminds me: this God business. I suppose your High Priest told you about all that?”

  “That you had said—strange and wondrous things, yes.”

  “Here is truth: I am not God, at least, not in the sense of a creator and regulator of matter and life, or even of the ways of natural phenomena in the world. I control nothing and have made little. Old as I am, I am but a hatchling compared to the youngest of those mountains yonder. Strong as I am, I quail before the sun even as you do, and I can no longer heave myself very far out of the water. Yet large as I am, I would be but a morsel to one who is my enemy, who dwells in the Greater Ocean.”