Gods of Green Mountain (51 page)
Lamar stared up at him, awestruck by his wisdom and confidence. For if Es-Trall did the thinking in his distant high tower, it was Logan who turned the visions into reality, and worked out all the minor details that were beneath Es-Trall's lofty philosophy and technical ability.
"If we are to attain the power to jet our ship beyond the control of our galaxy, then we are going to need a ship just as large as this one the God came in...and just as powerful," she contributed. "Your design is perfect, Logan, it just doesn't have the power."
Together they put their heads, making notes, comparing ideas and conjectures, until Lamar grew so sleepy her head began to sag...and then she was nodding. Logan was startled to discover for the past ten minutes he had been talking to a girl who wasn't hearing a word. He picked her up and carried her to the small cubicle that was hers, bare of any luxuries, and gently laid her on her narrow bed. He stood staring down at her, wondering why she was so persistent, so determined, when most of the other girls had long ago dropped out of the mission, one by one. Her dark, soft hair was spread all over her pillow like a sensuous cloud to sleep on, and when he reached to touch it, a tendril curled about his finger like a ring, like a wedding band. Logan had it in his mind that he would never marry, that he would devote his life to science and let Star-Far make the three children he was allotted--giving Star-Far a total of six.
But looking now at Lamar sleeping, he knew Star-Far wasn't going to make his children--he was going to make them himself, and with this very girl so set on winning him. Not that he would let her know it yet. So easy it would be to fall into a pit of lovemaking, like Star-Far was already submerged in, and he might never be able to climb out and fulfill the destiny he believed was his alone. He leaned to kiss Lamar's lips, so that she only stirred in her sleep and whispered his name, as if in her dreams she knew whose lips touched hers.
The next spaceship constructed was of a mammoth size, blue, like all the others, and emblazoned with the purple and blue and gold standard for the royal house of Far-Awn. Into the storage bins of the ship went a generous supply of pufar seeds, and even some of the star-flower plants themselves, grown in pots, to give the favored planet of their dead God a quicker start toward all the glories and miracles the pufars could bring about. They themselves had created a paradise out of nothing. Turning themselves from dirt-dobbers seeking only to feed and keep themselves alive into people in control--not just actors playing out their parts against a beautifully designed and painted backdrop and manipulated against their wills. Their lives were their own; they wrote the script, directed the play, acted out the parts...and when the last curtain went down, they too would swing the counterweights and make even that decision. Perennials, some to bloom again. Annuals, some to bloom but once. And only Es-Trall knew which was which, and he wouldn't tell...
Only they, in all the worlds that were, had the particular blessing of the star-flowers. Their dead God had told them this. To honor him, and the other sleeping God in the first Scarlet Mountains, they would bestow their blessing on that distant, blue-green planet that was called Earth.
Years passed as the gleaming blue ship sped on toward the planet of the dead Gods. Inside were Logan and Lamar, as his first lieutenant, and nineteen other young men, annuals and perennials. No longer were any of them able to sink into the dim-despairs, for the promise started in Sharita had blossomed into reality for all. Darkness could be resisted now, no matter how long it lasted, and they could come out of it alert, cheerful, smiling.
It was Logan who spotted it first, glowing bluish green in the enormity of ebony all around. It had but one sun, but one moon; there were five oceans of deepest blue, and the ground was a patchwork of browns, golds, and greens. Oh yes! So exactly it fitted the God's description--it had to be the correct one! Besides, it was so overwhelmingly large!
Joyous, exhilarated, everyone, the message was beamed back to their home planet: "We are here at last, in sight of the God's green earth!" Captain Logan's announcement was recorded in their history books. His mother and father embraced, tears in their eyes--and Logan's grandfather, Ras-Far, sat very quiet, realizing he had reached the ultimate peak in his life. The time for sleeping was now, for dormancy, for rejuvenation. To awaken at some far distant time a babe again, with a new life and a new body, and a new zest for going on. He was a perennial and would come again, as would Sharita and Dray-Gon, and Star-Far and Logan--and Es-Trall, the one who had started it all on the day he had discovered the star-flowers and had thrust them greedily into his mouth. But he was a secret known only by himself, his daughter, and her husband. On his wedding day Star-Far would be told--if he ever had a wedding day. It would take a clever, exceptional girl to catch and hold him. Somehow fate had mixed up the brothers. It should be Logan who would inherit the throne and the responsibilities.
"Well, nothing is perfect," said Dray-Gon pragmatically, "even for us." Sharita had to laugh, for he sounded so much like Raykin, their minister of state for so many years.
Logan directed his ship lower, into the gravity field of the huge planet. Then, under the layers of clouds the ship soared, able now to observe what had only been briefly glimpsed before. The captain's dark eyes met with the violet ones of his first lieutenant, both pairs shining with excitement and a happiness that was close to ecstatic rapture. For the first time their lips met in a real kiss, passionate and simmering with inner fires. "Wow!" exclaimed Lamar in breathless wonder when their lips separated. "You don't do badly for just a beginner!"
Logan reasoned it was all the restraint, held back so long it had built up into an explosive force, and Lamar laughed happily at his consistency, so that even romance could be turned into a form of physics.
Down even lower drifted the blue ship from El Dorraine, so those on board could view the rivers, mountains, lakes--and huge cities. Cities? This surprised them. So, the cracking of the earth's surface and the deluge that came after the close passing of the red planet had not exterminated all of their giant God's kind; they had risen again--and in force!
Cities crowded the land edges near the seas, and pushed inward to the plains. Everywhere cities, pushing one on the other, with small space in between.
Down lower they went. Now they could see tall buildings and streets, and long highways that flowed and crisscrossed everywhere. Through the eyes of their telescopes they could see ripe golden grains blowing in the wind, and lush fields of grasses, and beasts enclosed by the thousands within pens--and people moving about like frantic "ants" here and there. There was great agitation in their actions, not understandable. As those in the ship watched, they saw small spitting fires and bursts of smoke, and buildings that collapsed into dust...and some of the running people fell and lay still.
Disturbed, Logan signaled for the ship to be lifted beyond the layers of cloud banks. "Recall how the God spoke of wars? That must be what is going on down there. We have come at an inopportune time."
All their brilliant young heads were put together, and this was talked over seriously. What should they do after traveling so far, and after searching for so long, and building toward this moment for so many years? For the first time Logan had doubts about the mission of this journey, and about the reception they would receive. The natives of their God's world were not the domestic, primitive farmers of old El Sod-a-Por, nor were they the sensitive intellectuals and sensualists of El Dorraine--they were something in between, eager for killing, for taking. And perhaps after all, after seeing their lush fields and golden grains, the pufars weren't needed.
Had they come so far to give, when already gifts had been lavishly bestowed? This was no barren, arid El Sod-a-Por. This was a world already rich in material things. Logan momentarily frowned and looked somehow a combination of his father and his maternal grandfather.
Between them they had such a close communication, Lamar could read his thoughts. "Those penned animals down there must be meant for slaughter," she reminded him, "such as we used to do with the puhlets and quickets and quackets. And if you noticed, there are a few places down there where the ground is not fertile-looking--the pufars could benefit those people. Yet, there are so many people down there. It may not be wise to give them the means to live as long as we do. We can hold down our population--but can they?"
Another young man expressed his opinion: "But look at us--we who are the best have evolved from annuals into perennials, and the quality of what we are does the deciding, not our own choice. The pufars know how to keep the scales balanced. And those peoples down there are not stupid--they too will become wise in ways of control, just as we have. And to let a great genius die and never live again is a sin of irresponsible waste. The seeds of the flowers themselves know in which soil they thrive best, and they do their own selecting, and impart to a chosen few the best of everything. But even the annuals are given special blessings of extraordinary good health and above-average appearance, and sometimes they too are spectacularly beautiful, so no one is ever certain which species he or she is--that's the beauty of it--and to hold on to youth and vigor for so long, isn't that alone a miracle in itself? Don't those struggling, warring peoples down there deserve the chance to develop into what we are?"
It was voted upon and unanimously agreed. It would be unfair to leave and not bestow their gifts, needed or not. The star-flowers were wise--they would decide if they would flourish and give lavishly, or die without bestowing one thing.
As Logan looked the great world over, searching for just the right place to land their ship safely and scatter the seeds, and put their plants into the soil, he didn't know his ship was being observed too. Not one on that blue spaceship realized that they themselves were partly responsible for the frenzied activity going on below.
Those in the ship didn't hear the screams of terror, the broadcasts of UFOs quickly denied by all those in authority. "You are not seeing a spaceship...what you are seeing can be explained as a natural phenomenon caused by the play of light and atmosphere peculiarities that happen on rare occasions."
Over a huge dun-colored plain the blue spaceship skimmed, very reminiscent to the space travelers of their old Bay Sol. They looked at each other and smiled. A desert--though not as barren as Bay Sol, for even here some living growth reached toward the sun. A perfect place!
However, clued as they were to the nature of the people who inhabited the earth below, Logan kept his ship high until all was ready for the landing. He chose the very early day, just before the dawning of the single sun, while the fierce inhabitants of this warring world were still sleeping.
But those in control on the ground were not sleeping; very much they were aware of the hovering blue spaceship that filled them with apprehensions unlimited, with fears rampant, with speculations wild and fanciful. Hotlines were ringing, and leaders of nations were conversing in excited voices while the news media tried to soothe the public into believing they weren't really seeing a UFO--just a strange and rare atmospheric condition. Even a president took to the airways, soothing, calming, rationalizing...no reason to panic--everything was under control. "Flying saucers just don't exist!"
Just before dawn, on a broad flat sweep of the Arizona desert, Logan sat his ship down as lightly as a feather. As their captain and the great-great-grandson of Far-Awn, it was his honor to be the first one to set foot on the homeland of their god. Just behind him came Lamar in her white uniform, with her dark hair concealed beneath a white helmet blazed with gold. They were not the pint-sized men and women the mountain God had known just before his death. If he could have seen them now, he would have judged them as half his size. Even they didn't realize how rapidly they grew in proportion to every other thing that grew on their planet.