Paradox Moon: The First Book of Regenesis

by D. Scott Dickinson

  It is, as well, a tale of renewal and hope. Of the beginning of a vital new world arising Phoenix-like from the ashes and scars of the old.

  The band climbs until nightfall, which catches them on a switchback in the cleft not halfway up the escarpment. It is a level terrace-like landing that spreads from one side of the open chasm to a deep recess under a rocky outcrop.

  As they fall out to sleep, the man explores the pitch-black recess and hears the trickling, splashing vibrations of running water. There, in the farthest depth under the rocky outcrop, is a pool of fresh, sweet water fed by several narrow rills running down the back wall.

  Drinking greedily from his cupped palms, the man hears the gentle whoosh of darting fish, and he soon has two fry filleted and ready to eat. But first, he must alert the leader to the presence of the pool, and so he leaves the scaled fish-steaks unguarded at its edge.

  That will prove to be a rash and reckless act!

  Returning with the leader, the man is miffed to find his carefully prepared dinner gone. But he quickly captures more fish, and the missing steaks are soon forgotten.

  After drinking their fill, the band and its leader return to their bivouac at the side of the chasm, leaving the man to his dreams in the deep recess by the pool. Full and content, the man is asleep at once, immersed in the untroubled slumber of an unwary mind.

  His first sensation of nearby movement is unwelcome, and he tries his unconscious best to shake it off. But it is a nagging sensation that won’t be stilled and, finally, he is forced to open his eyes.

  They widen in disbelief as he finds himself gazing into the muzzle of a coal-black bruin staring back at him with the same Sphinx-like inscrutability as the crocodilian behemoth in the subequatorial reed-fringed glade.

  This is no colossal, short-face bear from his recent visions of the Pleistocene. This is the cave bear of this world, more menacing but not unlike its remote cousins in his own.

  It is no larger than he but, like the wolverine of his world, its heavily muscled shoulder-hump, rows of sharp teeth and great, hooked claws belie a menace greatly exceeding its size. Completing the threat are two long saber-like fangs protruding downward from the toothy palate, like those of the great cats that haunted his dream amidst the unnatural rings of boulders on the rift valley's floor. In sum, the bear is a picture of enormous latent strength and ferocity.

  Lying stock-still so as not to incite a brutish response, the man is astonished at what happens next.

  The bear positions its muzzle against the man’s chest and, instead of attacking, gently nudges him across the floor of the recess out to the sleeping band. Once clear of the rocky overhang, the bear abandons the man and silently backs into the deeper blackness within.

  Pondering his polite eviction from the bear’s territorial retreat, the exhausted man drifts back into sleep.

  The next morning, he warily approaches the pool where he finds no evidence of his visitor of the night before.

  Wondering if it was another of those fanciful dreams that plague so many of his nights, the man closely inspects the area around the pool. He is unable to find any exit the bear could have taken.

  But when he sees that the spot of the previous day’s meal has been scraped clean of fishy entrails, scales and bones, he knows it was no dream.

  So intent is he on his ruminations the man fails to notice the immediate departure of the band. With their uncanny habit of going without food or water for long stretches, they are ready to resume the journey the instant they arise.

  Emerging from the shadowed recess, the man has to move out quickly to catch up with the departing band. They already have attained the next switchback. He fleetingly scans the passing strata in his haste to reach them.

  It is enough to confirm the voice in the tower’s lament for a paradise lost and a civilization gone.

  He is climbing alongside his fellow-travelers by the time they reach the final switchback, and its gentle acclivity soon brings them to the roof of the world.

  Surmounting its rim, the man looks wistfully back at the great continental rift valley and the eternal symbolism it embodies. Nowhere else, he suspects, will this planetoid so fully reveal the secrets of its geologic past. As both an earth scientist and lunar pioneer, he is grateful to the great valley for sharing with him the story of its world.

  But the time for reflection is over as, without even a backward glance, the band strikes out at once into the high desert.

  The topography is similar to the high desert of the northern latitudes where the man first set foot on this moon after landing and abandoning his scout vehicle. Trudging alongside the band’s leader, the man is diverted by recollections of all that has passed since that first fateful contact with this unfamiliar world.

  He is shaken out of his reverie by sudden, animated gestures of the leader and his band, who are pointing excitedly at something in the distance. Peering intently across the landscape, the man can barely make out an oddly irregular feature in the long, smooth horizon ahead.

  The rest of the day is consumed in the company’s relentless effort to reach it. As shadows begin to lengthen, the feature begins to assume vague shape and definition.

  The man is astonished by what he is seeing.

  It is a dense forest of soaring trees with spreading, sparsely leafed limbs, interspersed with the truncated trunks of trees whose limbs are gone. Night falls too quickly for him to make out fine detail or even color, and the man is frustrated he must wait for the morrow to satisfy his whetted curiosity.

  In dawn’s spreading light, the forest clearly displays its impressive girth, depth and height, and the man is all the more anxious for a closer look. Still, there is something very odd about the trees. Trunks, limbs and leaves alike—all are ash-white—and the stumps are smoothly cut. Nearing the forest, the man realizes why the trees have such an unfamiliar look.

  This forest provides no shade.

  This forest spreads no foliage.

  This forest grows no bark.

  This forest shelters no living thing.

  This forest is pale, silent and still.

  It is not living; it is dead.

  It is not organic; it is stone!

  Like mute granite markers in an abandoned graveyard, the towering trees and crouching stumps are petrified mineral. The silent sentinels of a lost world.

  The man reads it in the rings.

  Carefully examining the surface tableau of a wide stump, the man is astonished to see an infinitude of rings beyond count. Rivaling those of the primeval Methuselah pine of the Ancient Forest in his own world. Which flourished and survived nearly five millennia.

  The pattern tells the story.

  He sees a series of wide but narrowing inner rings, followed by razor-thin middle rings, and finally a sequence of narrow but widening outer rings. Here, etched in historical time, is a clear picture of the climatic events that doomed this world.

  The thinning of the inner rings marked a slow but steady degradation of the woodland environment, with its growing scarcity of moisture.

  Contemporaneous with the layer of char near the summit of the rift valley, the anemic, hair-width thinness of the middle rings marked the desiccating, life-draining drought accompanying global conflagration.

  The widening outer rings mark the return of moisture and gradual renewal of the planet’s life-sustaining vitality. They tell the final chapter of the tale, a rebirth of life and hope, the voice in the tower could not foretell!

  While the man is deciphering the message of the rings, the leader decides their best course forward is straight through the petrified forest. There are wide lanes between many of the trees, and the solid, open ground is free of litter and obstruction.

  They are deep within the ghostly wood when night drops a black curtain over the visible world. Utter darkness enfolds the company, and they fall out to sleep where they are.

  The man’s unconscious thoughts are invaded by funereal scenes in a mournful, mut
ed dirge of rueful remembrances.

  His mind fills with long-forgotten memories of his former world, embracing the fond images of family, friends, co-workers, even strangers he does not recognize and cannot recall. He is horrified as, one by one, they dissipate and fade into shadows of mortal corruption, decay and death.

  Leaving only the skeletonized bones of his past.

  Once the doleful images are gone, melody intrudes on his subconsciousness--an expectant song of redemption, promise and hope.

  His mind fills with the recent memories of this world:

  His travels across new frontiers whose biodiversity has challenged and enriched his understanding;

  His adventures along the way, from the high desert of the northern latitudes to the depth of this ancient stone forest.

  On his journey into a future as yet unwritten.

  A warm and welcoming light overtakes his thoughts as every visible stump begins to burn. Like the will-o-the-wisp that lured Eve to the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, the ghostly fire sends flickering flames skyward into the ash-white leaves of overhanging limbs. The man is mesmerized and deeply moved by the bizarre images cast by the silvery leaves overhead.

  It is a frozen landscape of cloud and snow.

  Majestic columns of blue ice vault upward through the fog of cloud, projecting their lofty spires into the void of space. The magnificent ice columns are dotted with many symmetrical apertures at their base. There are the vague, indefinable shadows of many moving figures coming and going through the openings.

  The dreamscape shifts abruptly to a desolate wilderness of snow and sea, whose angry waves crash against an icy shore. The harsh scenery is unmitigated by any sheltering feature or living thing. It is a hostile, forsaken shore.

  Like a zoom lens, the dreamscape homes in on a subtle movement at the end of a high stone embankment, dusted with snow, near the shore. The faint blur of motion begins to resolve into a distinct image of flesh and bone, and the scene takes the man’s breath away.

  There, in the sharp lens of his thoughts, is a most improbable vision.

  It is a perfectly formed girl or woman of his own species, carefully threading her way between the rocky snowbank and the angry sea. She is clad all in white and, while he cannot make out her fine facial features, she walks with a calm assurance that betrays neither hesitation nor fear. He can see the vapor of her breath as she exhales warmth into the gelid air.

  The man strains every sense to capture a closer likeness of the creature, even calling out in his urgent desire to know her better. But the moment he voices his wish, the images vanish, instantly and altogether, as the ghostly light is extinguished by impenetrable darkness.

  Once again, the man is alone, the solitary member of his species in this remote and forgotten planetary system. Whose small moon so mimics the conditions conducive to life on earth.

  Never has the bitterness of isolation and loneliness weighed so heavily on him. The tantalizing glimpse of the creature on the icy shore of his dream leaves him a hollow shell. Her unexpected appearance is a bitter reminder of the empty creature he has become.

  It is with a forlorn sense of separation and loss that the man greets the dawn of the next day in the ancient stone forest.

  Dismissing the images of his dream as the specious shadows of wishful thinking, the man continues his journey. Burdened with the sure knowledge he will die the last of his species on this far-flung planet. Unlike the furry bipeds and other denizens of this biosphere, he will neither mate nor sire any future generation to carry his line forward.

  The realization depresses him greatly.

  The company spends many days and nights traversing the forest of stone.

  So endless does it seem, the man wonders if they will ever escape its deathly pallor.

  Chapter 25. Terror from the Tree-Tops

  As they travel farther south, the air becomes cooler and drier. The man knows from his global mapping survey they are approaching the southern heliotrope forest and frozen tundra beyond.

  That knowledge revives his spirits, as his growing expectation and curiosity leave his longings and misgivings behind.

  A subtle change of color is the first sign they are nearing the outer boundary of the petrified forest and will enter a heliotrope world beyond. The lifeless sterility of ash-white pallor fades from the sparse leaves overhead, replaced by the universal harmony and balance of magenta and fuchsia.

  At long last, the company is emerging from this soulless, flint-hard place of death and returning to the living world.

  The dead stone forest ends only a few yards shy of a rising bluff surmounted by live towering trees crowned with a thick canopy of heliotrope foliage. Recalling the rainbow falls, life-giving waters and sheltering caves of the northern heliotrope forest, the leader is confident this forest, too, will provide all the band requires.

  For his part, the man is just grateful to be returning to the land of the living.

  The bluff is easily scaled, and soon they are following the bank of a wide, deep river. They are encouraged by the easy going on the smooth bank and by the presence of the familiar finned beasts and many smaller fish in the water beside them.

  They see only beauty and abundance; they are blind to that which they will not see.

  It is a frailty of human nature that, in surveying our world, we tend to look down and around and only rarely up and above. And it is a frailty the furry bipeds share.

  None suspects the lethal threat soaring above them on silent wings.

  None suspects the mortal danger that will attend their first encounter with the flying creatures of this world.

  The river leads them to a shallow gorge whose stony surface is broken into many narrow channels. Water courses along meandering veins squeezed between jagged shelves of upturned rock, trapped by serrated ridges of striated stone. The lively, eager streamlets race through the spidery flumes, crashing against the stony surfaces and spewing up spindrift in their haste. As they hurry through the gorge, the streams feed several crystal pools of runoff—some so deep the travelers cannot see bottom despite the liquid clarity.

  The man is struck by the odd effect all the pools display—a constant ebb and flow of rising and falling water at their shore—and he attributes it to the force of the racing streamlets that are their source. Still, the mechanical motion and clockwork rhythm unnerve him.

  The broadest pool lies at the foot of a tall, rocky outcrop, and its singular glowing radiance attracts his curiosity. A dark shadow beneath the overhanging stone suggests the presence of a cave or recess. A wide, level shelf of smooth stone separates the broad pool from the dark shadow, and the leader motions the band in their direction.

  Approaching the rocky overhang, they notice the rising and falling pool appears to be bottomless and is home to the small finned beasts and other fish alike. But that is not the strangest aspect of this place.

  All its surfaces, from the submerged walls of the pool to the smooth stone shelf, shimmer with the radiance of mother-of-pearl. For the man, it is like looking at the inside of an oyster shell, and he wonders what strange force of nature created it here.

  The dark shadow opens into a large cave. As night will soon be upon them, the leader motions the band will sleep in this natural shelter. While the band’s hunters are capturing finned beasts and fish for the meal, the man ventures farther into the cave to explore its depths.

  Even in darkness, the man can see the nacreous surface of the cave forms a grotto whose floor is punctuated by a series of round wells. The wells are not random, but evenly spaced where the walls of the grotto meet its floor. Like the surging and ebbing depth of the pool outside, the water in the wells is moving rhythmically, constantly rising and falling within the stone cylinders.

  The repeated, piston-like throbbing of water, up and down, seems tidal, and the man cannot understand how that can be. From his global mapping survey, the man knows he is far inland on this super-continent, many leagues distant f
rom the great ocean and its tides.

  Returning to the band, he fillets the small fish they have caught for him and sits cross-legged at the edge of the pool, trying to make sense of its uncanny hydraulic action while he eats.

  That is when something even stranger creeps into the periphery of his vision.

  It is a translucent, silvery blanket of what appears to be speckled protoplasm spreading slowly across the pool’s pelagic depth—neither a bottom-feeder nor a surface swimmer. Its slow, undulating progress exerts a hypnotic effect on the man.

  By the time he regains focus, it is nearly too late!

  The silvery blanket is just nearing the farthest margin of the pool when a fish darts from its lower depth in a frantic attempt to reach the surface. As it tries to elude the spreading protoplasm, filament-thin stingers strike out and stun the fish which is slowly enveloped.

  The man watches in horror as the live fish is liquified by digestive juices within the translucent mass.

  Leaping to his feet, the man sees thousands of the stinging filaments reaching toward the band from the wells within the cave. His cry sends the entire band racing away from the cave, around the pool and over the leaning ridges of shelfing stone. They do not stop until they reach the safety of the opposite side of the shallow gorge, where they pause on an elevated stretch of dry, solid earth.

  Turning as one, they look back at the scene of horror the sheltered pool has become. The entire area is alive with a surging, lunging, grasping mass of speckled protoplasm which fills the cave’s entrance, the pool’s surface and the entire stone shelf between.

  The gelatinous monster is flipping stunned fish into the air again and again before finally absorbing them into its mass. The man is reminded of the gratuitous cruelty of killer whales in his world, toying with the live seal cubs they then devour.

  The company has narrowly escaped a fate few trespassers in this monster’s realm avoid.

  The translucent creature is the giant carnivorous freshwater mollusk of this world, and the pool-caves where it dwells are its shell. It lies ever in wait. Hiding in the submerged recesses beneath the caves.