The Engineer did not even try to read what was written on the paper before he snorted contemptuously. “We might be able to help.”
“Really?” The Gypsy bot took a step toward him.
“No!” said Lois McAlois and Mary Thyme together. “You can’t—”
“Of course she can,” said the Engineer. He grasped her wrist and tugged. “Just come with us.”
“Remember!” cried Mary Thyme. “They hate bots!”
“But I want—”
Lois seized Pearl Angelica’s other arm, and for a moment the bot was stretched between the two opposing forces. But then one of the other Engineers drew a cylindrical object from a pocket and pressed a button. A parsley-scented mist engulfed both women.
Pearl Angelica gasped as she saw Mary Thyme recoil and her aunt collapse upon the floor. In the edges of her vision she glimpsed white coveralls falling too. Then her own muscles weakened and her world grew dim, faded out, went black. She knew nothing of Orbitals being hurled aside, of a child’s arm snapping, of screams and shouts, of herself being seized, thrown over a shoulder, and carried at a run from the bubble.
* * *
Chapter Five
The forest’s edges, like those of forests everywhere, on Earth as it was on First-Stop, were crowded so thickly with small bushes and saplings that anyone who approached from open ground might be pardoned for believing the forest choked with underbrush, pathless and impenetrable. But if one pushed through the vines and stems and brambles just a little past the border zone, one found a surface deep with half-decayed organic matter, darkened by the dense canopy held high overhead by massive trunks, bare of all undergrowth except for the most shade-tolerant of small plants. Here there were paths indeed, the widest of them trodden by the local sentients, the Racs.
Many of these footpaths converged where the ground sloped gently toward the steep dropoff at the edge of the bluff. Here the underbrush had been cleared away to provide a vantage point, a vista of moss-covered valley floor, of that tree the visitors to their world, the Gypsies, had grown to dwarf the largest in any forest any Rac now living would ever see and now were carving, petrifying, and polishing into a Tower that would last for ages, of the orange dwellings they had grown for themselves, of the paths the feet of their giant animals had worn through the valley’s carpet of moss, of the blackened ground upon which landed the vessels in which they journeyed to and from the sky.
In the center of the clearing, a ring of stones surrounded a bed of ashes from which a wisp of smoke arose. Back a bit, among the trees, was the scatter of small domes, framed with bent saplings and covered with slabs of bark, leaf thatch, and hides, in which the Racs lived.
One of the huts was new, the leaves upon its roof still green. Before it sat the three visitors to the village, each one wearing across his rotund abdomen the belt and shoulder strap that supported tools and pouches. The one named Wanderer occupied a rounded boulder and was still and watchful. The other two sat cross-legged on bare dirt beside him, their tails twitching restlessly behind them. Shorttail was scraping a piece of rock the length of a straight stick as long as he was tall. Stonerapper was turning a small rock over and over in his hands, perhaps thinking of how best to chip a point for the spearshaft being shaped beside him.
The local, tailless Racs squatted on the bare ground between their huts and their communal firepit, facing the edge of the bluff and the one who stood there, arms stretched to either side, silhouetted against the dimming evening sky. From their angle, they could see both the long-shadowed Tower and the arc of stone that opened toward it, the watching place whose building Blacktop had urged upon them.
No one was speaking. All were listening, to the sough of breeze in the canopy overhead, to the creak of branches, to the scuffles and squeals and chatters of their wild kin in the forest, to the clangs and rumbles of tools in the valley below. They were waiting, waiting for what would someday be recorded as the first sermon to be delivered on this world.
Blacktop slowly bent both his arms, bringing his hands toward his face. With sweeping, exaggerated movements, he scratched his muzzle, first on one side, then on the other. Each member of his tribe returned the gesture. A moment later, the visitors did likewise.
In one of the Rac huts, a pot toppled and shattered. The sound turned heads, and all saw the creature that scampered, striped tail defiantly erect, into the deeper shadows. Stonerapper stood and hurled his rock. There was a yelp of pain. Someone made a sound of complaint and exasperation. Someone else produced the teeth-baring snort that was Rac laughter.
When the tribe turned back toward Blacktop, he was pointing over their heads, toward the trees that now concealed the mischief-maker. He spoke in a voice as coarse as gravel, as roughly rasping, as reassuring as a sandbar beneath a swimmer’s feet: “I hear the voices of our grandmothers and grandfathers. They are as they have always been, small and handless, speechless, often hungry. We are different.”
After a moment of silence, he repeated himself: “We are different. We have been changed by our world’s visitors from the sky.” He turned to indicate the Tower and those who had made it. “They gave us speech and hands and minds with which to use them. They gave us destiny.
“They gave us knowledge too. First they taught us the secrets of shelter and fire, spear and basket, knife and pot.”
His voice rose in pitch and volume and grew smoother, almost melodic, in emphasis. He held a clenched fist aloft. “What is second?”
No one answered, though they stirred before him.
He answered his own question, speaking more quietly. “The Tower. They give us the Tower, and they tell us that there is so much more to learn, an endless forest of secrets.”
One member of his audience stood erect, a stone-tipped spear in one hand. His fur was pale, almost white, and the dark lines that patterned the pelts of so many others were in him broken into trails of dots. “I am Pathways,” he said, and his voice quickly lost its initial roughness as anger crept into his words. “It is no secret that they know more secrets than we do. Look!” He held his spear above his head and shook it. “This is the strongest weapon that we have. But to them it is weak, a mere pointed stick, little better than a rock to hurl. What do they have? Why do they not teach us how to make greater weapons?” He spat, and his voice was suddenly smooth again. “They fear us. They know that if they make us equal to them, we will destroy them. We will expel them from our world. We will even surpass them as we have surpassed our wild cousins.”
Blacktop’s sigh was a gust of wind, a theatrical gesture of body and arm designed to reach every Rac gathered in the shadows before him. “I, for one,” he said. “I have no wish to destroy them or expel them or shame them. They have done us nothing but good. They have made us. They have raised us above those cousins. They have taught us…”
“But they have not taught us everything!” The voice was desperately silky.
“No more than we teach our cubs everything. Some things they must learn for themselves.”
“Are we then cubs?” cried Pathways.
“Of course we are. We are a new people. We have existed for only a few years, and already we have secrets it took our Gypsy friends thousands upon thousands of years to learn.”
“But we need more if we—”
Leaf’s voice rose above the others: “We must defend the Tower, keep it ours.” She was looking not toward Blacktop but toward the shadows under the trees, where the strangers sat. “Sticks and stones are not enough.”
Blacktop shook his head. “They are right,” he said. “They are right when they say we are not yet ready for all those secrets that will let us be like them. We must earn them.”
“How?” said a rough voice from the shadows.
“We must find secrets of our own. By ourselves, without the help of others, we must learn how to find secrets, and how to use them.” Blacktop’s voice was now as roughly calm as the other’s. “Then we must find those secrets that will let us
climb the Tower and reach the treasures, the secrets of our Makers, at its tip.”
Voices murmured from his audience: “How can we do that?”
“Only flying beasts and wind can go that high.”
“Will they leave us their Bioblimps?”
“It cannot be climbed.”
“Surely they will take their flying beasts away with them,” said Blacktop. “This task, they say, is ours. We must learn to fly, or to build a tower of our own that we can climb.”
“But how?”
“We cannot!”
“They can,” said Blacktop. “And they had no teachers, no Tower to draw them on. They learned their own ways, and they say that we can do the same.
“And I believe them. The day will come when we will reach the treasure they have left us. We will gain their secrets. We will learn how they made us and how they travel in the sky. We will be able to make Bioblimps of our own, and more.”
“How long?” Pathways slumped where he stood. “How long will it take us? How long will it be before we too can visit the stars?”
“Many years, many generations, more time than we can yet imagine. But the day will come, and then we too will be gods.”
“Gods?” said someone, voice smooth with anxiety. Blacktop, whom they would soon call their priest, had mentioned gods before, but the concept was still new and strange. “What are gods?”
Blacktop turned away to stare out over the valley. The sky was darker now. Shadows were merging into dusk, the sounds of labor falling quiet. Ina moment, he drew a stone knife from the belt around his waist and stepped toward the border of the clearing. In silence, he chose a sapling as thick as two of his fingers, cut it near the ground, trimmed away its branches and its top to leave a stick somewhat less than two meters long, and carried the result back to his position before the tribe.
“Gods,” he said then. “They know what they are. Their library, there…” He pointed with the stick toward the Tower’s base. “It is full of knowledge of many things, even of gods. And I have been there. I have read. I have learned, and they have made no attempt to stop me.”
“Then they believe in sharing all they know.” That smooth voice was Wanderer’s.
“No!” Leaf was leaping to her feet. “The Tower is ours!”
“Sit down.” Blacktop thumped his stick on the ground. “Yes. They freely share. Yet they do not fetch it to us as we fetch food for infants. What they have is ours, but only if we exert ourselves to reach it.” He pointed with the stick once more. “To climb the Tower. To learn to read. To search through that library.”
His knife was still in his hand. Now he lowered his stick and began to remove its bark. “Gods. Even when they dwell on a mountaintop, in a sea, or in the sky, they know everything, all secrets, all that happens everywhere. They live forever, and they can make bushes burn and never be consumed. They can make water flow from rock and food fall from the sky. They can pile up stones to make a mountain, or rain stones and fire upon those who defy the rules they set. They make worlds and fill them with trees, beasts, and people.”
A sigh swept through the Racs who squatted before him. “Ahh,” they said.
One added, “And how must we treat such beings?”
“We must obey the laws these Makers give us,” said Blacktop. “We must hold them high and worship them and find ways to glorify them.” He paused in his peeling of his stick, staring down at the curls of bark that were accumulating at his feet, hesitating as if he had seen or thought of something he did not like.
“The Gypsies have many gods themselves,” he finally said. “Some of them demand blood, the deaths of children and young females and captives from other tribes.” When a smooth and angry tone rose from his audience, he added, “Others ask only that fruits and flowers be piled at their feet. We will have to learn what offerings please our gods best.
“If we succeed,” he went on. “If we succeed, if we glorify our gods in the ways they wish, then when we die we will journey into the sky. We will be with our gods forevermore among the stars.”
“One lifetime until we join our Makers in the sky, then,” said a voice. “Not many lifetimes.”
“And if we do not?” Pathways sounded angry, skeptical.
“If we do not, then when we die, we will be punished.” Blacktop removed the last bit of bark from his stick and set his knife aside. Quite unceremoniously, he then gathered up the shreds and curls of bark and tossed them onto the coals in the firepit. Smoke thickened and billowed. Small flames appeared, and then the mass of bark was crackling. “An age of agony,” he said quietly. “An age of fire and torment will be ours. And only if our gods are kind and merciful will they ever lift us from that punishment. Then, perhaps, they will return us to life and give us another chance to obey their laws.”
The silence that followed was broken only when Wanderer asked, “But what are their laws?”
Blacktop looked as if the question made him uncomfortable, but he answered without delay: “They have given us only one law, to learn, to climb the Tower.”
“Will we all be punished then, if we cannot climb the Tower?”
He shook his head. “Surely we will be in obedience to the gods as long as we pursue the goal they have set us. We know them now…” He turned toward the valley, set one end of his stick on a patch of earth, and leaned upon it. It sank into the soil, and when he let go it stood alone, its tip oscillating back and forth. “They are not cruel, not so cruel as to punish all the many generations that must pass before the Tower’s treasure is finally within our reach.”
“Are there truly no other laws?”
“They have given us no others. But I have learned…” It was now too dark to see anything in the valley except the shaft of the Tower, but that was enough. He pointed toward the library near the Tower’s base. “Their gods have given many more to them, and some seem suitable for us.”
No one said a word as a young Rac stirred the ashes in the firepit, heaped glowing coals together, and added small branches. Flames licked at the air and lighted the faces that looked toward Blacktop. Red-orange glints danced in unblinking eyes, and lips seemed to flicker.
His back remained toward them, but he still seemed to hear their silent demand that he continue. “Do not kill,” he said musingly. “They eat meat, though, so that must mean do not kill other sentients. Do not lie or steal or envy what others have. Honor your forebears. Worship no other gods. Treat others as you wish them to treat you.”
“And which,” asked Pathways. “Which is the most important? The last, that says it all?”
“None of those,” said Blacktop. “For our gods have urged none of them upon us.”
“What then?”
“Just this: learning. The pursuit of secrets. The pursuit of the Tower. We will have proved our virtue when we have climbed it and made all its knowledge ours.”
After a moment’s pause, he asked, “Does someone have a gourd?”
“A melon?” A hand held one above the heads before him.
“That will do nicely.” He accepted the offering and retrieved his stone knife from the ground where he had set it. As soon as he had scooped two holes through the melon’s warty rind, one on either side, he impaled its base on the tip of the stick he had planted in the soil.
“There,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Pathways impatiently.
“The Tower,” said Blacktop, indicating the shaft of the stick. “The treasure house atop it, its doors standing wide and waiting only for our perseverance and success in finding secrets that will lead us to them. And within…” He reached through one of the openings he had carved, groped, and withdrew a fistful of melon flesh. He held it before the tribe, melon juice dripping from his hand and soaking the fur of his arm.
Then he put the sticky mass in his mouth. He chewed and worked his lips, and in a moment he spat into the palm of his hand.
“Within it,” he said at last. “The seeds of greatness, of god
hood, that we must gain.”
The brilliant variegations of Caledonia Emerald’s scalp blossoms were invisible in the gloom of the chamber where she leaned intently over a veedo monitor. It showed the view from one of the many tiny low-light cameras hidden in the trees around the clearing: Blacktop, his seed-covered palm held out, open, inviting, welcoming, promising. “Fascinating,” she said. “He has the actor’s gift, doesn’t he? But not everyone there’s as open-minded as he is. That Leaf…”
“We’re on our way,” said Lucas Ribbentrop, whose shock of white hair was the most visible nonelectronic item in the room. It was even more visible in better lighting, which also revealed just how young its owner really was. “We’re gonna be gods.” One dark hand flipped a selector switch, and the screen before him showed the stone watching place in the valley. “The church.” He flipped the switch again and zoomed in upon the stick and melon. “The central icon, the idol.” He pointed at his partner’s monitor. “The high priest.” When the bot indicated Leaf, he added, “And the crusader.”
“I wish Pearl Angelica was here to see this,” said Caledonia Emerald. “And I wonder what the higher-ups’ll say when they find out.”
“They’ll be surprised.”
“Not at being gods. Religion is just too easy to invent. But the doctrine?”
* * *
Chapter Six
The first thing to enter Pearl Angelica’s awareness was pain: It screamed behind her forehead, ululating in time with her pulse, rising, falling. It whined from her wrists, where something thin and tight held her hands together. It lurked at her ankles, where cold metal ringed her flesh. It cramped her calves.
The second was sound: A roar that reminded her of a Q-ship lifting into space, trembling the air but without the sense of thrust, the pressure against a seatback. She was lying on her side, and the pressure against her skin felt like normal weight. Engines, then, vibrating some metal shell around her, pushing her through air or water.
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