Whatever Gods May Be (6 page)

A wave of guilt washed over Zolan.  Even at the hour of his death, he was leaving yet one more responsibility for the old Stinger.  Stabbing at the water with his stick, Zolan watched the waves ripple and lap across the surface to the surrounding shores.  As the water calmed down once more, the soft reflection of the rising Little One crept into view.

Zolan turned around to study the faint glow humping over the low hills.  An hour from now, and the speeding sun would be flaring overhead for a few moments, before racing to its farthest point around the world, just in time to reappear by morning for a repeat performance.

It would be a morning that Zolan would not live to see.

Thalick watched the old man intently.  He did not move from where he lay nestled near the entrance of the glade, nor did he attempt to communicate with Zolan.  For just a few moments, he relied solely on senses he so rarely needed; all eight eyes simply stared at the man watching the evening sunrise.

For Thalick, the day had been nothing short of dreadful.  Due to Zolan's sudden heart attack, all question of travel back to the Mesa, or even to the nearer cities of Zolansville or New Phillips was out of the question.  The man could not risk the stress.  His heart had been, in a matter of seconds, critically damaged.  Thalick doubted that the coronary was psychosomatic on Zolan's part, but regardless, it now appeared that Zolan's morning prediction concerning his own demise was no longer confined to the realm of the impossible.  Zolan's heart was now as flimsy as paper; even the Stinger could not pinpoint accurately when the final blow would come.

But the fact that Zolan's death was now verifiably imminent, gave the Stinger something akin to a throbbing migraine headache.  Intense emotions flared within him, but puzzlement and helplessness were the two monsters that threatened to squash him completely.

How Tom had survived in the tunnels for so long was no longer a mystery; but what allowed him to do so, and resurface safely, was far the more disturbing to contemplate.  Even after a follow-up investigation of the immediate vicinity and tunnels below, Thalick could still not pick up evidence of any other life signs.  Only Tom's markings registered, with no indication that even an outcast Redeye had occupied these remote sands or subways for centuries.  Yet, something or someone had aided the boy along since his escape from the Redeye City, and furthermore had instructed him to remain in the oasis until Zolan's arrival.

Was it possible, he wondered uncharacteristically, that
she
had actually returned?       

Thalick quickly disengaged himself from such ridiculous notions.  He could not believe in such phenomenon.   The dead could never return.  Zolan was either deluding himself, or was truly mad, and such infectious diseases of the mind were affecting even the Stinger.  Thalick had always rejected the concept of supernatural transpirations.  Mysticism, magic, and even the primitive and ridiculous rituals that were performed by the people of this world to honor him were secretly beneath the level of merit to even incur a hiss of scorn from the Stinger.  Apostates of either a heaven or a hell, like Angels or Devils, simply didn't exist.

No, this angel was no ghost, Thalick insisted to himself.  If it existed, it would corroborate under a careful probe antennae and have a definite origin other than the cloudy parameters of either heaven or its fiery counterpart.

Still, so many questions remained.  And these unanswered questions made the Guardian, the Great Thelerick - sometimes known as Thalick, the Stinger, very, very nervous.

The sky gradually grew lighter, and Zolan's face was eerily silhouetted against the backdrop of brush and palm trees.  Thalick could tell that his friend was in much greater pain now, though his face outwardly remained passive and calm.

Zolan turned his head towards Thalick when he heard the familiar buzzing rumble through his brain that told him his friend wished to communicate.

"Yes, Bug?" Zolan thought in question.

PAIN BAD?

Zolan closed his eyes.   "Bad," he nodded.

Thalick kept his hisses muffled, so as not to awaken the sleeping boy curled up against his side.  For a moment, Zolan and Thalick only stared at one another, their minds completely open to the other.  At last, the Stinger broke the peace.

SHE IS DEAD, ZOLAN.  SHE NO COME BACK     

Zolan turned away and refocused on the Little One peeking over the horizon.  Thalick also snatched a glance at the half dome of fire hovering over the dunes.  For the first time since its creation, the old Stinger actually feared and dreaded the Little One's arrival this evening.

"She promised she would come back, Thalick," Zolan smiled, "She promised five centuries ago, and now she has promised again through the boy."

VALRY DEAD, FRIEND ZOLAN, Thalick transmitted softly.  Zolan could detect a rare quality of compassion in the Stinger's thoughts, and it touched him deeply.  He had almost forgotten how much Thalick had also loved her, too.

"She will come back, Bug," was all Zolan said.

"She'll come back," a refreshed voice concurred near Thalick.  Tom was stretching and leaping to his feet all at the same time.  He squinted, looking into the face of the Little One rising into the sky.

"Very soon.  She promised."

Zolan felt a chill pass through him as Tom spoke.

"Were you talking to the Guardian, Master?" the boy asked curiously.  Zolan walked slowly back to where Thalick lay.  For the moment, the pain in his chest had subsided, so such movement was not terribly uncomfortable.

"Yes, I was.  As a matter of fact, we were talking about you.  How do you feel?" Zolan asked.

The boy was instantly absorbed with his new, giant playmate.  Where he had been numb with terror only a few hours before, Tom was now perfectly content in the Stinger's close company.  Youth, Zolan thought suddenly, and chuckled.

"Fine," Tom answered off-handedly, clearly more interested in Thalick than talking with Zolan, "What does he eat?" he asked, test kicking one of the giant claws in front of him.

Zolan was amused and just a little envious.  He had not adjusted as quickly to the Stinger's presence so long ago, as the boy was now doing.

"Not much, really.  He's totally self-contained.  Maybe a rock now or then, I suppose, but that's all,"

"He's big." Tom said admiringly, petting the claw and hissing at the same time.  "I have a Dalka that's big, but nothing like this."

Thalick remained silent; Zolan was sure that his friend was probably not terribly pleased with being compared to a six foot long, flying marsupial that was a Dalka, but he gave no indication as to being even slightly offended.

Zolan stared thoughtfully at the boy.  He had a sudden old man's longing to talk to the young, to share with a life about to begin part of a life that was soon to end.

Ah, what stories he had, Zolan applauded himself in recollection; and what stories needed to be told.

Behind him, the Little One grew brighter.  At night, the dwarf was even more spectacular than in the morning when it was forced to compete against Mother Sol for attention.  But with only the dim and far-away twinkling of a million stars, one of which provided light and life to a world Zolan had left long ago, the Little One could charge masterdom over the entire night.

"What do your people call that, Tom?" Zolan asked the boy, genuinely curious as to how the world's savior was referred to by the general population.

Tom turned around from what he was doing, which was absently pulling a convenient mandible, the equivalent of a sensitive whisker on the human face for Thalick.  The boy glanced at the full sun above, 'and replied indifferently.

"God's Eye," he said tonelessly, teen went back to the important business of trying to separate Thalick's lower lip from the rest of his body.

"Do you know how it got there, Tom?" Zolan persisted, not knowing for sure why he was starting this line of abstract questioning with a 10-year old boy who could never hope to comprehend the explanation behind it.  Perhaps, he thought ruefully, he was attempting to arouse the lad's curiosity so that he could fulfill an old man's darkest wishes to be asked to tell a story.

But Tom was disappointingly uncooperative.  "Uh-uh," Tom said distractedly.  He was by now far too absorbed with the way Thalick's mandible could be twisted into knots with rather boyish ease.  A second later, however, a sharp hiss ceased further painful experimentation.

"Good," Zolan replied enthusiastically, ignoring the boys' obvious disinterest and shuffling up to a claw and easing himself into a sitting position on top of it.  "Then time for a little, old-fashioned education."

Zolan was full of energy now; hardly the same man who a few hours earlier had suffered a massive heart attack.

"Come here, boy," Zolan said, "Sit next to me.  Sit," he paused to stare at the glowing Little One, "where you can see ...  the Eye of God."

Tom leaped on to the claw beside the old man.  "Now, Tom," Zolan began, "this is a story about the Guardian here." The boy's eyes reacted with interest, "And its a story about that," he said pointing at the flaring star racing towards them.

"Are you in the story?" Tom asked.

Zolan chuckled and rubbed the boy's already mussed-up hair.  "Ho-ho, indeed I am!" Zolan cackled heartily, "Without me, you see, the whole world would be a very different place today."

He paused momentarily, fighting back a wistful frown before continuing, "Now, once upon a time…”

Thalick listened to Zolan begin, though part of his attention was preoccupied with computating a jumble of facts about angels and Redeyes.  But of most immediate concern to the old Stinger was the Little One inexorably approaching its zenith overhead.  In an hour, it would be directly above the oasis and if what Zolan had said was accurate, he would soon lose one of the closest human beings he had ever known.

The Stinger stared at the star, thinking back across the sands of time, through the centuries of memories, following Zolan's storyline to its remote beginning.  The Days of the Dark seemed so long ago, even to the eon-old Stinger, more like a bad dream rather than another lifetime.  It could, in fact, have been easily forgotten by the old Thelerick, had it not been for the shadowy, wavy face of Valry Phillips who haunted his dreams as much as she haunted those of Zolan.

Valry, the child.

Valry, the savior of a world.

Thalick stared at the Little One above.

And he began to remember.

It had begun with the journey through the Great Void, in the company of nine other Thelerick Stingers.  So very long ago…

Here life has death for neighbor,

And far from eye or ear,

Wan waves and wet winds labor,

Weak ships and spirits steer;

They drive adrift, and whither,

They wot not who make thither,

But no such winds blow hither,

And no such things grow here.

SIX

The Present

For eons, they trekked through the interminable void between galaxies, searching for a new home.

In a much larger galaxy than their own (and one in which they would soon be entering) a small, insignificant little world referred to the Thelerick Stingers' origins as the Small Magellan Cloud.  And though from an astronomical standpoint, it was the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, it had taken the Stingers nearly ten thousand years to bridge this petty distance between star clusters.

Now, as the Stingers approached the bloated Milky Way with its hundred million suns, it appeared that greater journeys would still be necessary for them to make.  The wasteland boundaries of the Milky Way were disappointingly lacking in suns; more dismal still was the distinct scarcity of habitable planets that the Stingers could look forward to colonize.  Out here, only faint dwarf stars or immature suns not even a billion years old scattered across the galactic rim.  What few planets clung to these useless fireballs were either airless slabs of iron, or the more typical gas monstrosities that seemed to comprise the majority of stellar retinue in the universe.  Both categories of world were useless to the weary Stingers, which meant that hopes of an immediate landing were quickly shattered.

The central core of the Milky Way lay thousands of more light years beyond -- corresponding almost directly to the number of years more it would take for the Stingers to reach this new destination.  With resignation, but not without the determination that had made such previous, gargantuan journeys possible heretofore, the Thelerick Stingers plunged ahead for the brilliant galactic center.

For the last time, the Stingers glanced back to the cloudy nebulae from whence they came.  The Magellan Clouds were the most prominent celestial bodies against the blackness of space, far outshining even the impressive hue offered by the giant Andromeda galaxy nearly two million light years further away.  Billions of years before the Stingers flashed into existence, the two mist-covered galaxies of the Magellan group had collided with one another.  The impact had smashed a million stars into the gaseous waste of scattered hydrogen and helium, and this detritus issue still cloaked most of the Magellan galaxies in rainbow mists that concealed their retinue of stars within.  Because of the dense gas that prevailed, the Stingers were unable to pinpoint their home star so far away.  Even in its present nova state, the Thelerick sun was obscured completely by the thick, ionized hydrogen clouds that comprised most of the two galaxies relatively small volume.