Whatever Gods May Be (3 page)

The 'stinger-brew', as Zolan had referred to it thereafter, had kept him lolling along through the years in a kind of numb bliss.  Furthermore, the unique substance served a therapeutic purpose as well, supplementing Zolan's normal diet with concentrated levels of vitamins, proteins, and most importantly, oxygen.

Zolan had serendipitously come upon the drinking man's fountain of youth; a truly medicinal martini that was fairly crammed with healthy ingredients.  Now, when Zolan refused Thalick's hundred-proof pick-me-up, the Stinger realized there was sound reason to worry.

Thalick suddenly became obstinate.

HEART GOOD.  LUNGS GOOD.  ALL INTERNALS GOOD VERY OLD----BUT GOOD.  TAKE.

Thalick again urged, lowering his tail over his head for Zolan to extract the panacea it held.

I GIVE - I KEEP ALIVE----TAKE!

"It wouldn't matter, Bug," Zolan insisted, rubbing the claw he was resting against like a trained masseur attempting to knead out a painful kink from an overtired muscle.  "Even with the brew, I would be just as dead with the Little One's passing tonight."

ZOLAN WRONG.  THALICK NO BELIEVE?

Thalick forced himself to calm down, remembering at last that he was dealing with a man who - at least according to his readings - was on the very brink of mental collapse.

Zolan rested both hands on the pincer in front of him, then leaned over until his face was only an inch from Thalick's nearest eye.  Today, he would have to be patient.

"Bug, do you remember what Valry said that last day?"

Thalick abruptly quieted at the mention of the name.  Valry Phillips.  Yes, he remembered what she had said; there was nothing about Valry that Thalick would ever forget.  Hissing quietly, he gave Zolan his answer.

VALRY SAY:  REMEMBER - AND I RETURN

"That's right," Zolan continued, "She said, 'remember me and one day I'll return.' Well, I've always dreamed of Valry, Bug.  And she talks to me in my dreams.  When I'm alone, she's always there with me.  When I'm sad, she's there again, and when I'm afraid, as I've been all my life, she's nearby putting me at ease."

Zolan stopped and turned to look at the flaring Little One.  "You ask how I know that tonight will be my last?" Zolan said in a barely audible whisper.

YES, I ASK

"I know because
she
told me."

Before Thalick could properly digest this new pearl of madness, Zolan had scaled his claw with a speed and agility that was astonishing for a man nearly three thousand years old, and flung himself against the base of the Stinger's massive tail.  As if he had just taken position in a rather comfortable lounge chair, Zolan stretched out his legs and yelled to Thalick.

"Onward, oh ugly one," he squawked, "I have a date tonight; a date with the worms."

WHAT - HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS?

"The worms," Zolan repeated through a snort, "Shakespeare, Thalick, Shakespeare.  Haven't you ever heard of Shakespeare? He was a great man, my friend.  And he liked worms." Zolan chewed his lip in thoughtful silence before adding: "They also liked him!"

Finding this final utterance nothing short of hysterical, Zolan lapsed into uncontrollable giggling.  Thalick tried patiently for the hysteria to pass, mulling over in his magnificent brain what a Shakespeare could possibly be.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Zolan suddenly snapped.  "Let's be off.  Mr.  Worm awaits!"

WHERE? The Stinger questioned resignedly.

"A final look at my kingdom, Bug," Zolan said dramatically, "A tearful good-bye to all that was - and all that will be." I've ruled well here, Bug.  I hope that where I'm going, I can serve as gracefully.  A worm, a worm, my kingdom for a --

Zolan didn't finish.  Howling peels of laughter clutched him for the next several minutes, while Thalick hissed miserably to himself.  The Stinger briefly considered tranquilizing Zolan; with the way he was carrying on, he might yet fulfill his own prophecy of doom.  Thalick quickly rejected the notion, though.  Zolan wasn't really doing anything that could possibly worsen an already hopeless condition.  In fact, the Stinger couldn't remember the last time he had seen his friend so joyful.

Though the ache of despair for the man's mental unhingement still sickened Thalick, it was now cushioned somewhat by the obvious painlessness Zolan was experiencing.  This comforting observation helped the Stinger make his next decision rather quickly.

Thalick rose to his full height and moved to the edge of the cliff.  The nickname 'Bug' had been an apt alias; the Stinger most closely resembled a giant scorpion.  Only the ringed antennae, the stubby wings tucked neatly on his back, and the house-like dimensions of Thalick separated his appearance from that of the miniscule insect that once populated these deserts by the millions.

HOLD, ZOLAN Thalick warned, then flung himself off of the mesa's edge.

Zolan continued laughing as Thalick floated down to the valley below.  Bouncing in the sand, the Stinger refolded his wings and broke into a lazy crawl.  He listened to Zolan babbling happily behind him, then turned his attention to the burning suns above.

THREE

By now, the faster traveling Little One had positioned itself squarely in the center of the primary.  The dim light that pervaded across the sands was haunting and strobe-like, casting shadows over the dunes and rocks where shadows had no right being.

Suddenly, the sky lighted up as it had done once before at dawn, creating a charged curtain of energy extending to all points on the skyline.  For as long as the interphase lasted, the spectacular borealis would display its fireworks performance across the world.  Indescribably beautiful, it would continue for only an hour, yet it was a necessary palliative for a planet that would die without such treatment.  The coupling of both suns briefly affected the magnetic field of the globe, causing a chain reaction in the atmosphere.  The child of this union was the colorful ionized blanket Zolan and Thalick were now watching.  The borealis precipitated complex chemical transformations high above the stratosphere that would one day completely restore the ozone this world had lost ages ago which had shielded out the deadly rays from the sun and space.

Already, in the past few centuries, the vestigial layovers and mutations of Mankind, as well as other sapient life around the globe, were decreasing rapidly and the number of deaths due to cancer from ultraviolet exposure had been greatly reduced.

As Thalick scrambled down into the valley, the sky raced through the color spectrum of dark blues to bright oranges, occasionally punctuated by blinding flashes of white.  The atmospheric pyrotechnics were a terrifying tribute to nature, but to both Zolan and the Stinger, the skylight brouhaha was only mildly distracting.  After five centuries of morning and evening displays, the borealis was no more alarming to them now, than the rising of the moon had probably been for the ape-like ancestors to Man a few million years earlier.

And yet, a civilization that had come much later and that had flourished briefly before immolating itself in atomic hell fires would have had a much different reaction to the celestial miracles transpiring overhead.  Indeed, the people of that crushed society would have been awed and dismayed at what they would have seen.

Accustomed to a sky with only one sun, they would today have had to adjust to a sky with two -- a sky over a tired and ravaged world they had helped to smash and which they had known from the beginning as Planet Earth.

By midday, Thalick had traveled nearly fifty miles.  He had wanted to turn back several hours earlier, but Zolan had insisted that he keep going.  The two friends had been heading east and now they had arrived at the outskirts of the largest human community on the planet - New Phillips.

New Phillips was the first city ever founded after the Day of the Little One, and it was the largest.  Zolansville had come much later, and therefore had some catching up to do in terms of population.  Both cities lay only thirty miles from one another, on either side of the enormous mountains that cut off the desert from the ocean.  Still primitive, their peoples only advanced to the comparable age of Bronze in Old Earth history, New Phillips and Zolansville formed ostensibly the new cradle of civilization.  Though human beings littered the planet to some degree or another, roving in packs for protection against the still ferocious, mutated temperament of nature, it was here, in these two places, that the seed of learning and restoration had begun to take place in an orderly, disciplined fashion.  John Phillips had started the wheel turning, while Zolan had contributed axles and a carriage five centuries after Phillips had died.  Thalick would finish the monumental job of tutoring following Zolan's demise, but it had been the collective heritage that these three extraordinary teachers had passed on to humanity, that would insure its survival for ten thousand centuries to come.

Like Zolan and Thalick, Phillips had been a time traveler.  An Earthman from the civilization that had brought the world to ruin, Phillips had been abducted by the unholy Dark and delivered to his planet several million years into its blackest future.  It was a world, John Phillips quickly discovered, out of a Lovecraftian novel; a place of monsters; a place of demons; a place of death.

The War had doused the Earth with radiation and plague and had nearly rendered it impossible for Man's survival.  The great upheavals of continents and seas, coupled with infernal wind and heat storms lashing across the far corners of the globe had destroyed nearly all forms of animal life.  Man slinked through the poisoned centuries like a dying snake, barely able to spawn new generations to insure the preservation of the race.  He became primitive and savage, forgetting the gifts of tongues that his more brilliant and ultimately more destructive ancestor had bequeathed him.  Physically, he grew bigger, but to the same proportion, he became weaker and his intellect diminished with neglect.  Most tragic of all, after a million years of racial perseverance, Man's only reward in the end appeared to be death.

The War had been responsible for Earth's destruction, yet an ultimately more devastating force had appeared.  The Dark.  A formless entity of blackness, it had cloaked the world like a shroud on the day of the War.  Long after the mushroom clouds and fallout had dissipated, the shadow of the Dark continued to foul the Earth with unspeakable horror.  A kind of universal cesspool, the Dark was a portal to unseen dimensions which acted like a great wad of cosmic fly paper, sucking in and spewing out everything that came near it.  For Thalick, Phillips and Zolan, the Dark had been a terrible trap.  But for the parasitical Redeyes, a door to freedom had materialized - and yet another predator of humanity was on the loose.

A monstrous import from the dankest corners of the Dark's domain, the Redeyes had reigned unchallenged on Earth for a millennia.  When Thalick and his followers became marooned on Earth, they were able to provide committed, if not largely ineffective, protection to the human survivors.  But by this time, the Redeyes had existed aboard the planet for two hundred centuries, and had occupied the dead cities of Man like vermin.  They had glutted themselves so much on the human game, that when Thalick and his small band of star travelers arrived, Man numbered only a few thousand over the entire world.

The vampires could do little against the Thelerick Stingers and within a century, the small colony of men under their protection became the largest food target on the planet for the voracious Redeyes.  For thousands of years, the Stingers continued to migrate their herd of men across the globe, always staying just far enough ahead of the roving vampire hoard to insure its protection.

But, like Mankind, the Thelericks were faced with too many enemies.  For while the death rate due to Redeye attack was virtually nil, the Dark and its mysterious draining properties was killing off Thalick's colony at an accelerated rate.  The Stingers watched helplessly, as did later John Phillips, the slow deterioration of Mankind.  Phillips introduced what little knowledge could be useful to his dying people, including language, the construction of weapons and scant medical techniques, but like the Stingers who had watched over the colony for so long before, he sat by miserably while hundreds of men and women perished monthly.

Of course, the coming of the Little One had changed everything.  Man was now at least crawling hopefully for new life again.  Phillips did not live to see the miracle of learning he had left behind, but what he had accomplished was enough to sow and harvest the beginnings of a new civilization.  From that original surviving mass of wandering nomads that Thalick and the other Stingers had salvaged, the city of New Phillips had sprung into being.

Zolan clipped Thalick's tail sharply and instructed the Stinger to bypass New Phillips completely.  He did not want to be seen today.  Though he usually enjoyed his rare jaunts into town, which took place every fifty years or so, Zolan had decided against a public appearance this morning.  He regretted the decision, for he knew the people of this world adored him - as he did them; had he or the Stinger entered either New Phillips or Zolansville, both would have been treated as gods.  The Guardian and the Master, as Thalick and Zolan had been titled through the ages, were living legends as two of the three Lords (Phillips held the third, posthumous distinction) who had battled the Dark and won.  Festivities and celebrations, along with a slew of religious rituals, would have spanned for days.