A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “The Evil One,” she said, taking Yd at Yd’s word and interrupting.

  “Yes. And Yd is evil; that much of your faith is true. Later we will speak more, much more, of Yd; now you are still relearning your concepts of myself.

  “I rule your people only because you permit me to do so. Yet you gain from it also; my wisdom and—shall we say—impressive appearance—has enabled your tribe to expand its territory and rise above all other groups of your kind. My gain is that without the assistance of your society I could not long live.”

  Wink went black.

  “Oh, do calm yourself. It is quite true. I eat a great deal. The Lake is not quite big enough to provide for all my needs. Without the labor of your Fishers—well, perhaps I would not starve; I could always reduce. But I have reached a point now where I can diminish no further in size without sacrificing some of my intellect, and I’d rather not. Yet often I have wondered how you could afford to support me.”

  “But, God! You are the source of all knowledge, all the arts of civilization, all supremacy in intertribal statecraft, all power—”

  “Well, good. I suppose I’ve paid my way. But, little Green-Eyes, I thought you now understood I am no god.”

  “But what then am I to call you?”

  “. . . I hadn’t thought of that. You may still refer to me as God, if you wish, to your companions, if you feel that would be politic. But within yourself you must not so think of me. Think of me, rather, as—oh, the Prisoner of the Lake. Or, perhaps, your Biggest Audience. Or, Yd Who Waits.

  “Or you could call me by my real name, the one given me of old by my friends, my own kind, my long-mourned people.”

  “And what was that, great one?” she shone softly, suddenly awash with compassion for the divinity.

  “Skysinger.”

  “. . . Among my companions, in our own means of communication, I was accounted something of an artist/poet. And I it was who invented eyes and first discovered the glory of the stars. Thus, Skysinger. Of course, in the language of light, I have a serious speech impediment, hence this clumsy code you have striven so diligently to learn; I know I am no singer to you. Still, it would please me . . .”

  “Then I shall make so bold as to call you . . . Skysinger,” she answered diffidently.

  “Thank you. It has been long and long since I have had a friend to call me a friend’s name.

  “Now I will tell you how my people died.”

  Once upon a time, during the hatchling stage of the world, there lived a Giant Sea Monster. Now, this monster was the very first and only one of its kind, so it had no broodfoster Yd to take care of it and love it. And everyone knows that when a hatchling grows up without an Yd’s fostering love, it turns out not to be a very nice person at all; and so it was with this monster.

  It was neither he nor she nor Yd, yet somehow all three, so it made a child all by itself. But it did not love its child, for it had never learned how; and it sent the hatchling away into exile.

  But the child grew and also made children, and being somewhat foolish (by monster standards) made several of them more or less at once, and these smaller ones grew up with one another to love and enjoy, so they were different from their parent and their parent’s parent. Now these new creatures—we will not call them monsters—talked and swam and explored the seas and played with thoughts and made children and enjoyed the world, until one night they realized food was getting scarcer and scarcer, and they discovered that Child—the second monster, you know—had gotten far too big and was eating far too much. They tried to show it the error of its ways, but despite its size and years it had remained rather stupid. Until it could no longer ignore the obvious; and it tried to invade the Greater Ocean where dwelt the Eldest, the First One. But that monster was prepared with many little slave-monsters, strong fighters, and together, they killed the great Child.

  This left the other creatures with no immediate problems and they went about their business, though some of them wondered uneasily about the personality of their mysterious neighbor, who never came forth to join their community.

  Millennia later, their bad dreams came true, and the monster attacked. First it secretly poisoned two of their kind, to gain what vantage it could; then it gathered up its warriors and invaded. The creatures had always known peace, and had no idea how to fight. They had no natural enemies in all the seas, for they were too big, too strong . . .

  No more. The monster killed them all.

  All but one, who had explored far up a river in its younger nights, and who dwelt at this time in a broad Upland Lake. Now this one managed to trick the slaves of the monster into believing they had killed it, and so they reported.

  Now the creature in the lake would have been very lonely and unhappy indeed, had it not the friendship of a swarm of tiny little beings who lived in the rocks around the lake, who had helped it immeasurably in driving off the fighters. It knew these little beasts for intelligent beings, though they spoke not as its own people had, and it thought that perhaps in them it had found that which might in the fullness of time be forged into a weapon capable of taking final vengeance upon the monster. For if its little friends ever advanced to the point where they wished to sail the seas to other lands, they themselves would have the monster to contend with. So it counselled them, and they increased, and they and the creature both waxed mighty together in strength and wisdom, over the long years of the wheeling stars.

  Any questions?

  “It is a most peculiar experience, to hear the articles of one’s faith so retold, twisted and altered, and made to appear as the myths of outland barbarian tribes, who have no real god to show.”

  “I hope you are not too deeply troubled, Little Green-Eyes.”

  “No . . . I don’t think I am. In some ways, I feel—relief!” A pop of greenstreaked orange; surprised realization. “This story makes better sense then the old ones did, in places.”

  “Good. It is nearly dawn, little morsel. You had better get back home. I am sorry it takes me so long to say anything.—Oh! One more thing. My first new order to your people: Tell them to begin breeding for long and flexible mouthparts. I’ll have something for them to do, generations from now, besides eat.”

  “. . . Eh?!” A cloudy spiral of gray.

  “Your pincer-claws are admirably suited for certain tasks, and indeed you can do amazingly fine work with them; I am often consumed with admiration for the offerings your artisans show me. Yet—they aren’t quite fine enough for certain things I have in mind. I’ve thought about it and it seems to me the mouth-parts are the only appendages with any potential.”

  “But—but God—Skysinger—Great One—how can we ‘breed for’ any quality?”

  “Oh, yes, you are rather hit-or-miss about passing on the genetic information, are you not. It has at least kept you adaptable. Tell me, your shes compete among themselves for the softest, sandiest places to lay their eggs, true? Would it be considered a privilege to lay them on the beaches of Holy Water?”

  “Of course! But the priests do not allow it. They have always feared there would be such a stampede that the shores would soon become roiled and fouled, which would be displeasing to God.”

  “Tell them to build a fence around a large section of the beach, and put guards at the gate. Then let in only those shes with the longest and most supple mouth parts. When they have deposited their eggs and departed, let in only those hes with the same characteristics, to fertilize them. Then permit only the noblest and most successful and most loving Yds to gather up the ripened clutches from that special beach, to brood them.

  “Let it be known among all the tribes over which your tribe has jurisdiction, that God values such mouth-parts. They will soon work out a similar system on their own.

  “And let it be known that the hes who hatch from these special eggs will have special procreative privileges—well, time enough for that a generation from now.

  “Just tell them about the fence and the beach, Morsel.
And hurry along; light touches the tops of the distant eastern hills.”

  Her rowers were already pulling for all they were worth.

  Night followed night in an unending procession of beauty and delight, and every one filled Wink’s young mind with a maelstrom of wonder, for Skysinger, even in Yd’s halting coded speech, spun such visions for her as to dazzle her inner eyes. Yd had personally witnessed all of mortal history, and recounted for her eyes the glories of the past, making legends live. And on other nights, Yd sang of heroic deeds yet to come.

  “. . . great vessels of wood, with a thousand rowers . . . or perhaps—have you ever watched the skYdwellers, sailing on the air? Perhaps a thousand thousand of them could be tamed and harnessed . . .”

  Or again, Yd would delve into Yd’s own history.

  “Among my kind, intelligence was directly related to size. That is one of the reasons I fear the Evil One, for Yd must be unimaginably huge by now, and therefore clever beyond understanding. And that is why I puzzled for so many centuries over how you tiny things could have intelligence; yet you obviously did. Finally I realized that you had almost as many brain-cells as I, perhaps, but the cells themselves were extraordinarily small. With that hint, I solved the quandary that had long vexed me, how to increase my own intelligence without growing too large for the Lake to support. I began experiments to mutate the motherkind of which I am composed, for smaller and smaller units. It only took a few millennia. I would guess I am now about as intelligent as one of my kind eleven or twelve times my size. Whether that will be enough to out-think and defeat the Enemy, I know not.”

  Or Yd would tell her of the many discoveries Yd had made over the long centuries of solitary observation and meditation.

  “The stars do indeed form a pattern, one that seems to you ephemeral creatures to be solid and unchanging. But I have lived long enough to watch some of them slowly drift across the silence. See that bright red one? No, there: the one caught in the yellow-white net of other stars. Yes. Well, I remember when it wasn’t in that net; it used to be paired with the blue one to the left. And those very bright white ones in a line used to form a triangle. I’ve thought about it and it seems to me that some stars must be closer to us than others, and they move relative to one another; and that is why some of them appear to me to sail across the face of the sparkling blackness.”

  “Then—the sky is not the great carapace of your first High Priest, standing sentinel over the vault of the world, sending us messages of divine wisdom from the inside of its shell, which we are too stupid and corrupted to read?”

  “Of course not! Childish nonsense!”

  “And it is not the hollowed-out broodwarren of the world, with airvents to a greater outside world to let light in and smoke out?”

  “No. Intriguing image, but I doubt it.”

  “Then what is it, O Skysinger the Wise?” She had progressed in her confidence with Yd to such a degree that she felt almost safe in expressing a little teasing challenge now and then.

  “Well—I have wondered whether perhaps the sky—is not simply sky, whether it is not air that just goes on forever. Still, there are reasons why that theory doesn’t quite fit, either . . .”

  “And the stars are but another species of skYdweller?”

  “Oh, no. They’re—at least, I suspect they are something quite different.”

  “Well, then?”

  “You’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

  “I shall not!” Wink replied indignantly.

  “You will, though.”

  “How would I dare?! Please tell me.”

  “I suspect the stars are really suns, like ours, only so remote that—”

  She laughed at Yd.

  But some nights Skysinger seemed melancholy and weary of speaking, and then Wink sang for Yd. In the course of time she went through her entire repertoire of hymns; and when Yd demanded more, she hesitantly shone some of the secular folksongs of her people, with many apologies for their imperfections and unworthiness. But Yd loved them, of course. Eventually, she ran out even of these. She began to compose her own, but soon discovered that the Muse does not always mass-produce upon demand. The priests sent out novices as runners to all the tribes of the Known World, to gather songs and stories for God. Thus began something of a classical fluorescence . . .

  And on some nights Skysinger and Wink simply chatted together, philosophizing, gossiping, speculating.

  “If you are not God,” Wink asked abruptly, once, “who is?”

  They worked away at that one (always an entertaining question whenever and wherever it arises), off and on, for countless nights.

  And so the nights passed, and the dawns intruded, sending them to their respective nests, she to sleep and dream, Yd to ponder and reflect in lonely silence. The nights curled by like the stars, all alike, each unique . . .

  “. . . I may be late tomorrow-eve, Skysinger, with your permission. A desire has taken me to speak and play once more with my broodmates and friends. I have hardly seen them for—oh, quite a long time,” Wink said vaguely.

  “Naturally you may do as you please. You ought not to permit me to take up so much of your life, Morsel.”

  “But I so enjoy our grand communions, Skysinger, my big old friend,” she gently replied. “There is really no-one I would rather talk to than my poor old Prisoner of the Lake.”

  Next twilight she left the massive white temple through the mighty portals rather than through the pier-altar. The ways of the City of God seemed unusually crowded with jostling strangers; yet always a passage opened up before her as if a great invisible claw had brushed the people aside. As she made her way through the nighted streets—brilliantly lit by a thousand babbling conversations—a wave of gleaming purple seemed to spread before her, followed by a wave of lightlessness and blank dark carapaces. The shadows returned to the streets.

  “What word bring you from God, Great Lady?” flashed out one on the edge of the crowd.

  She courteously turned both eyestalks toward him. “Only that Yd is pleased with all the labors of Yd’s people,” she replied, benignly lavender.

  Bright white lights erupted around her: huzzahs.

  Wink clambered up the ancient trail to the cave where she’d been hatched and raised.

  “Longstalks—! It’s Wink! I’m home for a visit, but I can’t stay long.”

  A small, glittering, clattering swarm of hatchlings swept past her and scuttled away. The largest of them came but up to her penultimate segment. Silver sparks shivered over her abdomen, in fond nostalgia.

  “Longst—?” She brought up sharply. A young Yd unknown to her occupied Longstalk’s chamber. The brood scrambled around Yd, sparkling for attention. “Who are you? Where is Longstalks?”

  The young Yd hunkered down, scooting backwards and lowering Yd Is eyes several inches in superstitious awe.

  “I am Ringtail Puce.” Yd seemed unwilling or unable to venture further.

  “Great Lady.” A reflection off the ceiling, coming from the mouth of the chamber, caught her attention; she swiveled an eye.

  “Gimp!”

  “I can answer your questions, Great Lady,” Yd continued soberly. “They beamed to me that you had come into the City.”

  They trudged in darkness through the tunnels to Gimp’s quarters nearby.

  “May I ask the Great Lady where her guards are?”

  “Guards—? Do drop the Great Lady nonsense, Gimp; we’re alone now.”

  “Nonsense, Great Lady?”

  “You know me, Gimp; I’m only Wink.”

  “As you say, Great Lady.”

  With a mental sigh, Wink decided to let it pass. After all, one could not expect towering intellect from an Yd.

  “Where is Longstalks?”

  “Longstalks has passed into Holy Water for the glory of God.”

  Dead—Wink went black and lowered her upper body to the floor.

  “. . . When?”

  “Twenty-eight nights ago.”


  “Why was I not told? Why was I not told?” she blazed.

  “You were communing with God, Great Lady. Who would dare to interrupt?” Who indeed? Her shell creaked; but the emotion remained locked inside, dark.

  “Yd was very old,” Gimp offered.

  “I know, but . . .”

  “Yd was only an Yd,” Yd replied.

  “Yd was my broodfoster!”

  “As you say, Great Lady.”

  Time passed in wordless darkness.

  “Well. I’ll mourn later. I have a halfnight break and I must use it well. Where are Red and Sweetscales and Smoothly and the rest of the old swarm? Take me to them; I would see foolish jests and insults once again.”

  “Smoothly the Rotund He has gone missioning to a new tribe dwelling beyond the Melancholy Mountains. Sweetscaled She has left the Service and joined the Corps of Warriors. And Red-Footed He has been a Fisher these three years and more. I cannot take you to any of them, Great Lady.”

  “Three—” Years? Three years? Had she been gone so long?

  “Yes, Great Lady, I know that three years is longer than the normal tour of duty for a Fisher. But it is as he wishes it. He is one of those whom the life of the wilderness has claimed, and now he cannot bear to live in the City of God.”

  She went to the Lake not at all that night; nor the next, nor the next. She remained in her guarded temple chambers—how long had those guards been there? who had ordered them to guard her?—and grieved. By the twilight of the third night the shock had passed and she could think cogently once more.

  She had been “communing with God”—and with no-one else—for over four years. She had never noticed the time passing. She felt she had lived a hundred lifetimes of scholarly acquisition of knowledge, and she did not grudge it—but she had lost so much! Track of the time, her religion, her old broodfoster, her broodmates and friends; and her proper, normal niche is her society . . .

  All I ever wanted was to live in the City of God and sing in the choir, she thought. I only wanted the natural honors due a Servant, not to be a—a Great Lady, for God’s sake!