Gods of Green Mountain (13 page)

Baka couldn't begin to imagine why his son would want to use those things--they had a bitter taste, and were tough and stringy when cooked. Indeed, the pufars that were brittle, hard, and yellow, grown in full sunlight and without water, were tough enough to break one's teeth. But Far-Awn wasn't dreaming up another recipe. He used a huge stone mallet and brought it down hard on a yellow hull, hammering until the hull was a yellow mash. All day he and his brothers hammered at the hulls until they had a huge amount piled in a heap. This they covered, and pinned down, so in the morning they wouldn't awaken to find all their fine, golden mash blown away by the winds.

In private, Far-Awn had already done some experimenting, so he knew exactly what to add to the mash to get the consistency he wanted. When he had the mash rolled out, like a huge sheet of dough for baking, Baka barked again, "What, by the gods, are you going to do with that? It's too large for any of our ovens."

Far-Awn and his brothers were too busy to answer. Already they had stripped Baka's home free of the puhlet hide covering, and now they took large sheets of the pliable mash-cement, and began covering the sod house.

Leaning back comfortably in his chair, Baka stopped fuming, and watched his dull-gray sod home slowly change into a brightly gleaming golden dome. The simmering heat from the suns soon had the mash as hard as metal. Far-Awn looked at his father when the job was done, and slowly smiled. "Well, Father--do you have anything to say now?" Baka looked the house over, and stated flatly: "Looks rather pretty, though I suspect the first hard wind and rain will have it down."

"No, Father. This is the house I will live in with my wife." And with those words, Far-Awn's bachelorhood ended.

Not the hardest rain could wash off the golden mash covering that soon protected every home on the upper borderlands! Nor could the strongest winds blow the houses away! Nor could the funneling winds rip up the houses and hurl them miles away and smash them down, or against a mountainside, as the funnels had done in their so recent past. Nor could the sod wash down into mud again.

Oh, the joy of it! The thrill of it! The excitement of being innovators, each man, woman, and child! With unlimited food, with energy unrepressed, with rampant hope and enthusiasm, so much those people accomplished in a short while, changes that would have taken a less determined, less industrious populace generations to achieve--they did it all in a matter of years, a few years.

The blustering weather was still their enemy. But now they had the energy, with permanent shelter, with material they could use to protect and shield themselves and their animals. The pulverized tough hulls of the sunbaked pufars were mixed with the juice of the purple melons, and this mixture was shaped into huge blocks, and baked in mammoth mountain ovens. The heat from those ovens was comparable to the fire of a hundred noonday suns! The white-hot sizzling blocks were then cooled in the blue ice taken in great slabs from Bay Gar--and the steam from the cooling blocks rose to the heavens! Surely the Gods had to see this! When the blocks cooled, again they were heated, and again cooled. Time and again this was done. What had been only nebulously suggested after the first firing and cooling became an awesome reality!

Even Far-Awn in his red-hot sizzling love affair with his new wife, had to stand perfectly still and stare at what they had just created. He put his arm about Mar-Laine's shoulders, and said to no one in particular. "This is beyond my greatest expectations! For years I have dreamed of something like this--but to see it--to know at last we have the ultimate means of protecting ourselves..."

No one quite guessed what he intended to do with the transparent blocks that were stronger than any metal they had yet found in the underground burrows. Far-Awn stood with his arm about his wife, and said, "There, shimmering with a soft luster, is truthfully our salvation. What does it matter now what wraths the Gods aim at us? What angry God can hurl a mighty arrow that can penetrate through these diamond-strong domes we will build over all our land? This transparent dome will not shut out the sunlight, but it will be our shield against the storms."

Yet, to cover all the land with a dome large enough seemed an impossible task. A meeting was held, and Far-Awn spoke: "We will construct a series of transparent domes, but it is beyond reasoning to protect every house, every farm with planted fields. We must form villages, and surround our homes with farmlands, and over all of that, we will build transparent domes."

They began the impossible task, and succeeded. For the first time in their known lives, all that they owned, loved, possessed, and held dear was safe from the extremes of weather. They were, at last, in control.

Eventually, in time, every village and farm in the upperlands was sheltered under a glistening domed roof. No longer could the driving rain flood away their seedlings. And the rain flooding off the domes was caught in reservoirs and used again. The people under the domes rejoiced that never again would they have to burrow in the earth like worms, or crawl on their knees like insects, or curl their toes into the earth because of the underground darkness and the dim-despairs that went with it. Free they were to live forever in the lights from two suns. They felt sometimes, almost guiltily, like the Gods themselves. It worried some when they thought long on this subject. Everything was going so well--it wasn't natural. Life wasn't ever easy...

However, anxiety over anything couldn't persist overlong when their small villages expanded into towns, and then into cities, and a way was found to make brilliant dyes from the pufar hulls and the pigmented ground under the crystals. Faster than quickets grabbing up grain, the women seized upon these dyes, and colored the cloth they spun from the webby pufar roots--and soon their clothing rivaled the radiance of the sun-downings, and the glories of the day-startings. The small golden huts enlarged into multiroomed mansions of any color of their choice. Like walking jewels, they felt full of power, eager and zealous for all the good life now offered, though they still labored hard and long. They were accustomed to work. Now they learned to play just as hard. A council of men headed by Far-Awn met each day, discussing the boundless dreams they meant to magnify into reality.

"We will ribbon our cities with connecting covered highways," said Far-Awn. "Now it will be easier to soar over the mountains and hills than to curve around them." The bridges and flying highways were the greatest challenges to the new young engineers with brains never stymied, as the ingenious paths of talent were many, though untried before. It amazed most that so much of their brains had lain dormant, unused, with abilities not even suspected, except by their leader.

In more time, all of Upper and Lower El Sod-a-Por were connected together. One invention inspired another invention, and genius inspired its like, and no one was spared in the challenge of creating the perfect environment. For their children, and the children that came after, they would have a jeweled setting, where there would be time for education, for personal achievements, for the private pursuits of pleasure and happiness. In fifty years most of the surface of the upper and lower borderlands were changed drastically. Even the weather seemed to dissipate and mellow, withdrawing into the distant hinterlands of the mountains and bays.

It was only then that government was thought about seriously.

Baka was given the honor of naming the leader nominated. He was old now, very, and walked with a cane, and his once brick red hair was entirely white. Yet he had lived to reach an incredible age--an age unheard of in the old days when all life was a constant struggle. He was ushered respectfully into a room where Far-Awn sat with a grandson on his knee, patiently teaching the child to read. "Hey, shepherd," Baka called in his strong voice that hadn't mellowed with age in the least. "Guess who was nominated--and who was elected by unanimous vote to live in that grand crystal palace so foolishly placed on the highest bluff?"

"Someone I know?" asked Far-Awn, lifting his oldest grandson from his knee and putting him on the floor. Then he raised his handsome head and looked at his father with dancing lights of amusement in the depths of his violet, almost blue eyes.

Baka almost let himself smile. He still hadn't learned to do that easily. "Yeah...
you
know him slightly; no one knows him well. I used to call him an idiot, a weak-minded fool because he daydreamed, and thought, and lay about lazily doing nothing--and making pets out of those fool puhlets. Now it seems, everyone has gone a bit crazy, and they think this very same shepherd will make a great king. They have chosen him to lead them--can you imagine that!"

"I think
everyone
must be a bit touched with the sun-madness," replied Far-Awn. "I told them months ago that I didn't want to be a king. But if they had to have one, I recommended Sal-Lar; he enjoys those formal ceremonies much more than I do...and Bret-Lee would have myriad occasions to wear those elegant clothes she's so fond of."

Baka flared hotly, "Who wants a man for king who is so much in love with words? He speaks for hours, and when he is finished, no one knows what they have just heard. It's you they want. You say concisely what you mean, and be damned to anyone who disagrees. They like that...but in one point they have conceded to your wishes. If you don't want to be called king, they are going to name you, the Founder."

"Well, Father, what do you think? Should I accept?"

"Since when have you asked me what I think? Did you ask my permission the day you ran off with the only living flock of puhlets? So why ask now?"

"Since you have no opinion, I think I will accept." Far-Awn got up from his chair and went to the window of his grand home, and looked out at the mass of people below his window. They cheered when they saw him, a mighty roar that must have been heard by the Gods of the Mountain.

Far-Awn called for his wife and his children and grandchildren, and also his mother, and with them all, he went out on the balcony and made a speech of acceptance. He would be their Founder King.

He looked then at the magnificent crystal palace high on a bluff overlooking what would be the government city.

He was going to live in a crystal palace. Funny, he had dreamed that when he was ten years old--but who would have believed it? Not even himself.

In the Reign
of King Ras-Far

S
al-Lar wrote in his record book of the past: "Our artists gave the best of their talents to make our carnival cities beautiful, and not just gaudy as they had been in the beginning. After Far-Awn was named the Founder, our government city took on an air of dignity and elegance. He told us we had to cultivate our artists and craftsmen as one would cultivate a garden of superb and special flowers. Long ago laws had been made to forbid the killing of puhlets, and if we couldn't eat them, what to do? We made them pets, and let those who would return again to the wilderness. Most preferred to stay with us, and we built for them a beautiful outdoor sanctuary where they could live without fear from the warfars. We even tamed a few warfars, believe it or not.

"However, in our new dignity and arrogance, the name El Sod-a-Por became an embarrassment. Certainly we were no longer the 'ill-favored one.' No indeed! We were, instead, the
most
favored one! We put it to a vote, with the majority deciding on a new name, El Dorraine, the ideal."

Sal-Lar closed his book, laid down his pen, and sighed wearily before he closed his eyes. Was anything ever ideal? He was an old man now, far older than he knew, and everything had a flaw. There was a weakness to El Dorraine, he knew it, just felt it in his bones. Everything was going along too smoothly. The Gods still were there, weren't they? Waiting their chance. With that frightful thought, he fell asleep.

One day, when Far-Awn was an old, old man, though he by no means gave anyone the impression he was more than middle-aged, he deemed what he thought proper and absolutely necessary for an individual of his nature. He talked it over with his wife, and she agreed, for she too was tired. There came a time when life could be a burden when it persisted overlong. "Just look at the age we have reached, Mar-Laine. In my father's time, a man was old when he reached thirty, and not many lived to reach even the age of twenty."