The Visitor (51 page)

We did not know what or where the captives were that held that book in place, but when the last page was burned, there was only silence in that place and the scritching feet of a small, skittering black thing that tried to escape from between the book covers and flee. I brushed it to the floor; Ialond hit it with his hammer; and Tamlar burned the place where it was squashed. She also took the pitcher of crawling evil that Bobly and Bab had collected.

“I will put it in the earthfires,” she said. “Where it may stay forever, or as near as makes no difference.”

Then we left the place, quickly, for Hussara, Volian, Wogalkish, and Tamlar told us they intended to clean all the valleys of Bastion from their center at Hold to the Walls of the Mountains, collapsing every cavern upon itself and flooding it until it was clean, and opening every cave at either end so Volian and Tamlar could blow through it and burn every musty corner clean and bare.

Then dust rose in monstrous clouds that shut out the sun. Flames ran across the valleys. They found Gone's habitation in Apocanew, and others like it elsewhere, but there was no other book. Span after span, the world shook and fires burned mightily, smoke and dust filling the air, until at last the wind came to blow it away and the rain poured down to settle it and put out the fires. When they were finished, the three valleys lay stricken before us, like vast open pit mines from the days before the Happening, all destroyed except for the fortress at the center of Hold, for it stood upon Tamlar's mound where the Guardians took up residence.

Only then, my other children arrived. The doctor soon found a new friend in Geshlin, the Gardener. She is very lovely and she knows a great deal about the use of herbs in medicine. She arrived almost immediately after the cleansing of Bastion along with Tchandbur of the Trees (whom we had seen briefly at the Battle of the Plain), and with Ushel, the dweller of the Wilderness, whose charge is the creation and maintenance of variety, botanical and zoological and, for all I know, viral and bacterial as well. With Tchandbur's arrival, trees sprang up as though by…well, as though by the power of the small god. We would go to sleep seeing a barren one night and awaken to find it a forest the next morning. We have flowers and fruits everywhere.

Befun, the Guardian of Animals, dropped by with Pierees and Falasti, beautiful women both, with voices like singing birds and falling water, Pierees to fill the trees with birds and Falasti to fill the streams with fishes. With the arrival of Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun, all twenty-one of us were together for the first time, and we celebrated the occasion with a feast. Shortly thereafter, Bastion was entered by a group of anchorites who, it seems, have been followers of Elnith for several generations. Ben, a student of the doctor's, brought them to meet her, bringing a petition to build an abbey of the Silences on a forested hill in Praise. The anchorites take vows of silence, and even their meetings are silent. When Elnith attends their gatherings, I usually sleep through them.

With the rooting out of the devil Fell, and the restoring of Bastion to a natural and beautiful place to live, we were ready to start separating sheep and goats, which, with the not-quite-willing cooperation of the demons, seems to be going well. Whenever the demons try to tell us that there is no small god (much less any Real One) Dezmai and Michael sing them into stupefication and I, Elnith, silence them for hours at a time. They go on working with us, nonetheless, because they are intent upon finding out how we do this. We continually find them searching places we have been for signs of the device we have supposedly used, though they as consistently refuse to believe our explanations. To the Chas
mites, truth is determined by how well it fits their expectations, and doesn't that sound familiar?

After Alan rounded up the survivors from the redoubt, the Chasmites sent a group to meet with the fifty of us sleepers who are left. The Chasmites are indeed, direct descendants of pre-Happening survivor scientists who managed to keep track of the years since it happened. Strangely enough, they have kept themselves separate from the rest of humanity for almost the same reasons the small god gave us for separating the race. Their initial reasoning was that if science had been pushed, hard, in the century prior to the Happening, mankind would have had some way to avoid the catastrophe. I mentioned that the small god said she brought the asteroid because of what man had become, and they retorted that man might not have become that if we had been relentless in our education of our young people and had not perpetuated ignorance under the guise of cultural sensitivity and the politically correct.

I warned the people from Chasm to be careful in their research and behavior, for any cruelty to people or animals might be met with violence from the Guardians. When I speak about the Guardians to the Chasmites, however, they tend to turn off and swing their eyes over my shoulder to focus on infinity. They have the same reaction to mention of the small god or the Real One. They have consistently refused to have a god contest, and I fear they will have to encounter the godlet rather forcibly before they believe there is anything there at all.

Arnole has set up a school at the fortress for the children of the recruits who are coming in. He calls it the university of the Real One, and it teaches only things that are known to be true, which means it is largely devoted to mathematics and sciences. Dismé and Michael have threatened to set up another school nearby which will teach only things known to be helpful, such as medicine, music, and horsemanship. Needless to say, no Regimic materials have remained except what is in the Archives of the Fortress.

Camwar and Jens, Bobly and Bab, have arranged to join a caravan to New Kansas at the end of the year in order to
carry the message of the small god and arrange for the first god contest. As yet, we have heard nothing of the small god's threatened prophets, and Dismé and I have wondered if, indeed, her peroration on herself as deity was not hyperbole designed to rub our fur the wrong way. The impression I got was that the small god is not above amusing herself at our expense a great deal of the time.

In speaking to Alan and the doctor, I have suggested we take a leaf from the Real One's book and focus on
what is,
which includes a few people on the moon and a growing population on Mars. Surprisingly, the small god has said nothing at all about them, quite possibly because both places have small gods of their own (or they are worshipping The Real One, which is not unimaginable).
What is
may also include one aquatic and one arboreal intelligent race. We all guess cetaceans and gray parrots, and Falasti and Pierees have gone away to see if we are right.

One year has passed since I last woke in the redoubt. Michael and Dismé are expecting a child in mid-fall. I feel like a grandmother. Alan says he feels like a grandfather, too, and though he is uncertain which of my children may also be his, he pretends to find in Michael a likeness to his grandfather. I don't think it matters, personally. Dismé sought me out to tell me the room set aside for a nursery was evidently invaded during the night, for a stone stands in the corner of it. This is, she believes, the twentieth stone, and she is driving Bertral mad wanting to see the book every hour on the hour to see who is about to be born.

It is almost dinner time, and Alan and I have planned a special meal for our anniversary, just us and the children, any who happen to be nearby. This last account has filled the last page in my journal. Perhaps I will find another one and write more, as time passes. Then again, I may leave the story as it is.

 

Signed: Nell Latimer Block.
Summerspan ten, nineday,
Year one of the Small God. Chasm date: 3052.