Beneath the Eye of God (The Commodore Ardcasl Space Adventures Book 1) (5 page)

Now for the first time since he had gone off to school, he felt himself once more a part of the living forest. He smelled, heard and felt the life around him. He was again at home. For the first few days of their journey, he and Leahn hunted with a bow and arrows borrowed from Erol. These had never been Ohan's weapons and Leahn had outdone him in bringing down small bright birds from the lower branches. He spent the time watching. Now he saw again the all-but-invisible paths of the burrowers on the forest floor and the aerial roadways favored by larger skydwellers. He saw again with the patient eyes of his childhood.

"Leave the bow and arrows," he told Leahn. "Our companions deserve more than a few small bony birds. This evening we will try for bigger game." Leahn looked at him doubtfully. He knew he had gained little stature in her eyes so far. He was the native but she had out-hunted him. Tonight he would have to do better.

She left her sword behind and they set off into the gathering twilight. They had gone some distance from the road before Ohan found what he was looking for. They circled around so as not to leave a scent. He sat Leahn in a crevice between two root ridges and showed her the path to watch. Then he climbed back up the trunk and ran out across a low branch into the darkness.

***

The deep loam of the forest floor concealed a rich menu of succulent roots, tubers and tasty grubs. All that was needed to seek them out was a sensitive snout and a couple of sharp digging tusks. Their owner, somewhere between a pig and a large rat, had several paths he liked to browse. This was one of his favorites, rich in worms just beneath the surface. But tonight he sensed something subtle in the air, something not quite right. He turned off his accustomed route. His hearing was acute, his nose the best in the forest. He turned again and began to get annoyed. He should be eating. He was running instead. He turned to the left, then to the right and the right again. He was surprisingly agile on his short legs and tiny hoofs. Something flashed at the corner of his sight—an arm. And Leahn's dagger was in his brain.

She was impressed. Ohan happily dressed the tusker. He buried its entrails near its favorite forest path, said a brief prayer of apology for his need, gave thanks for the animal's cooperation, wished it success in its next life and thanked the forest for nurturing them both.

The Commodore usually showed a great deal more interest in eating than in cooking. But for this special occasion he took over the supervision—if not the actual preparation—of the feast. Ohan gathered some aromatic leaves and a number of theories were advanced on how best to prepare the beast. The Commodore, being the loudest, won.

"It's best to overeat every once in a while," he burped happily as he stirred the dying embers of the cook fire, "if only to show your stomach who's boss."

"Would you like to see the stars?" Ohan whispered to Leahn as they sat beside the fire. It had taken him a while to gather his courage. The successful hunt and a full stomach made him bold.

"Could we?" she asked enthusiastically. "We've only been in the forest for a few days but I already miss seeing the sky."

They crept away from the firelight and were soon lost in darkness. Ohan had noted a young water tree earlier in the evening. Once away from the fire, their eyes adjusted to the gloom. In the daytime, sunlight never made it to the forest floor. As if in compensation, the darkness of night was also absent here. Only when the Eye of God was turned away did it become truly dark.

They moved silently through the night. Its sounds closed in around them. Ohan was amazed at how much at home Leahn was in the forest. Her childhood, he knew, had been spent largely in the outdoors. She adjusted far more quickly to the forest than he ever would to the saddle.

They scrambled up one of the big aerial taproots to the trunk of the water tree, then used vines to pull themselves up into the lower limbs. From there it was simply a matter of selecting the best route from the maze of branches, vines and climbers that were the foundations of the aerial world. There was little sense of vertigo. Though the ground was far below, everywhere one looked was a reassuring, though deceptively fragile, network of greenery. Several times Ohan paused and they listened to the furtive footsteps of a night creature scurrying away.

Once they came upon a tiny pool of water formed in a hollow by the morning mist. Leahn peered into the water and saw several pairs of eyes looking back a her, tiny amphibians evidently too unpalatable to worry about being eaten.

They entered a final layer of dark leaves that obscured the branches and left them feeling carefully for each foothold. They emerged suddenly from the tangled leaves to confront the blaze of heaven. Both stopped and stared. Their water tree continued on above the forest canopy in a perfectly formed half-sphere of widely spaced and narrowing branches. They climbed a little higher. The tops of the other trees stretched to the horizon as a gently swaying sea of leaves. Every breeze was traced in wandering ripples across its living surface.

They clung to the branches. The smooth bark was still warm from the lost day's sun. They let the sighing of the leaves wash over them. Ohan was delighted to be again in his beloved forest. But Leahn found herself shivering beneath the Eye of God's silent gaze. Her thoughts were in the distant highlands, her hopes of bloody vengeance.

Chapter 5

When at last they roused themselves and started to descend, their sudden movement startled a forest cat who had been inching up to investigate these two intruders in its realm. It gave a blood-curdling shriek and bounded off through the leaves.

As soon as his heart stopped pounding and he could speak, Ohan laughed and explained what had made the dreadful noise. Leahn put the knife back in her gauntlet. She pressed her body close against his as he tried to climb past her to lead the way to the ground. She laid her head next to his and whispered in his ear. "Thank you for sharing this lovely place. In my homeland I too, had secret corners where I was sure no one else had ever been. If we ever get back there, I'll show them to you." Ohan almost missed his footing on the branch.

They climbed to the ground and raced laughing back to camp. There they found their companions engaged in mild debate over a device Erol was setting up. "What is it,?" Leahn asked.

The Commodore replied. "That, my dear, is a piece of bulky nonsense the twins insist we drag along over hill and dale just to prove some nutty theory of theirs."

"Ah." Leahn nodded sagely. "Shocking."

"As usual, our leader has stated the case a bit less than precisely," Erol said as he fiddled with the device. "To refer to the possibility of world awareness as a 'nutty theory' is not altogether accurate."

"I do want to be fair," the Commodore said. "How about interstellar hogwash? Is that closer to the mark?"

Ohan and Leahn settled in around the camp fire, ready for another evening of fascinating—if often incomprehensible—conversation.

"Those who study the myth and magic of primitive societies have long noted a curious fact," Elor explained. "Traditions abound all across the galaxy in connection with the ancient monuments of primitive man, the huge monoliths that seem far too large and heavy for him to move. The legends about them are remarkably similar. Early man called on the power of the worlds themselves to aid in raising these monuments. These myths are dismissed by many scientists."

"One needn't be a scientist to recognize simple-minded bilge," the Commodore snorted.

Elor amended his statement. "These myths are dismissed by scientist and layman alike. These same scientists spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how primitive man moved these great stones using only rudimentary technology. To observe the most advanced scientists of our age attempting to master stone-age skills can be amusing."

"And you don't agree with that approach?" Leahn asked.

"We can chip an obsidian arrowhead with the best of them and we have no doubt that stone-age engineers were fully capable of raising the structures we see around us in this forest, without the aid of giants or supernatural intervention. Yet there remain, here and there in the galaxy, primitive structures that cannot be so easily explained. But even these do not trouble some scientists as much as does the persistence of early man's belief in magic.

"We see it in the cave drawings of hunter-gatherers. They use magic to aid them in the hunt. They attempt to magically capture the essence of their quarry in their paintings. The very fact that primitive man has so often survived on so many hostile worlds shows that he was no fool. So the question arises, would he have continued to invoke this hunting magic if it wasn't effective?"

"At the mission school they told us we call things magic simply because we don't understand how they really work," Ohan said.

"Precisely the point," Elor said. "Only it's not the primitive man who called it magic because he didn't understand it. He may have understood it perfectly. It is modern science that doesn't understand it. And it is modern science that calls it magic.

"Further questions are raised by those who point out that most surviving religions are old. They were born in the earliest days on their own worlds. It is not that modern technological religions haven't been tried. They just haven't flourished. Why should this be? Is there a connection between the alleged magic used by primitive man when he was still close to nature, and his ability to create lasting faith? Was he, in fact, closer to his true essence back in those early days? Was he closer to the power of God?"

The Commodore could contain himself no longer. "The idea that just because some bozo lives naked in a tree and hunts bears with a stick, that this somehow makes him more spiritual than the rest of us is . . . is . . . "

While he was hunting for the proper word, Elor continued. "Some scientists have begun to wonder if planets are not similar to immensely powerful machines. An ordinary volcano dwarfs all but the largest fusion engines yet a volcano is merely a vent letting off a bit of the pressure inside a living world. If conditions are right, this immense power can generate a mantle of life—living forests and seas in a web of life so complex, so intertwined, so subtle that we cannot begin to comprehend it. Does this suggest an analogy to you?"

Ohan blinked. Was Elor asking him? He had to shake his head. He didn't even know what 'analogy' meant.

Apparently Elor didn't require an answer. He went on. "Some see a living planet as a vast power source overlaid with the unbelievable complexity of life—life bubbling up from power—feeding on it in interrelationships that cannot even be guessed at, then sinking back into it again. An immense engine, if you will, an immense replica of the human cortex overlying and powered by man's soul."

"What?" Ohan and Leahn cried together.

"There, you see?" the Commodore said triumphantly. "Even they won't buy it."

"What would be the purpose of such a . . . a machine?" Leahn asked incredulously.

Elor paused. "It's purpose is to create intelligence."

"What intelligence?" Leahn demanded.

"Yours and mine. Man and reptile. We do not stand apart from the web of life, we are elements of it. It created us."

"Well yes, in that sense, I suppose it did," Leahn admitted. "But to say that the world set out to create us would mean that the earth itself was intelligent, consciously intelligent."

Elor nodded. "That is the inescapable conclusion to which some have been led, the conclusion that has earned them the ridicule of their fellows."

"And richly deserved it is, if you ask me," the Commodore muttered.

"We know that when our brains crossed a certain point in size and in the sophistication of their connections, creative thought rather than instinct and reaction began to occur. And where do we find greater size and sophistication than in the web of life that envelops a living world? The question then becomes, can a world possess a single core where all the data from those connections can be gathered and processed—a single soul or spirit?"

"What nonsense," the Commodore growled. "Mankind has been rummaging around inside his own skull for ages searching for his soul. He hasn't found it yet."

"If we cannot recognize it within ourselves," Elor said, "how can we deny its existence elsewhere?"

"I can deny any damn thing I choose to deny."

"The trouble with being too chauvinistic and denying intelligence in others is that we may someday meet entities who deny intelligence in us. Some believe that planetary intelligence can be measured, that it should emanate more strongly from a primitive planet than from one that has long been settled and industrialized. Indeed, as we develop, we may begin to poison the very wellsprings from which that power emerges until, on a long-settled and industrialized planet, that power may be altogether dead. The final irony may be that by the time we become scientifically and philosophically advanced enough to recognize the existence of this primitive power, we have killed it in our own world."

There was a moment of silence around the little fire, broken only by its crackling and the distant sounds of the night.

"And that's the measuring device there?" Leahn indicated the machine Erol was holding.

"One more piece of junk these two have hornswoggled me into dragging around the universe," the Commodore grumbled.

"It is an ingenious variation on the gravity wave detectors first developed for interstellar navigation," Elor said. "The subtle emanations are superficially similar. With this device, we compare those of the various planets we visit with their level of development. So far, the correlation has been precise and predictable. The more primitive the planet, the more energy it seems to radiate. Your world is the exception."

"I'm afraid I don't . . . " Ohan began.

"Don't listen to them, lad," the Commodore cried. "It'll only make your head hurt. They think that just because your planet is shining like a lighthouse on their infernal dials, that you can't possible be as advanced as they think you are.

"Advanced indeed! Just look at yourself, lad. All you lack is a tail to be perfectly at home swinging through the trees. And Leahn here, lugging that rusty old sword around when a modern blaster is a twentieth the weight and a hundred times as efficient.

"No offense, children. It's just that the twins won't admit that their stupid machine is busted. That would be the simple explanation so naturally it won't do. It has to be some weird anachronism that exists only here, some bizarre throwback to your primitive past that we have to go tramping through the underbrush to discover, all the while excusing ourselves for stomping so heavily on the world, lest it take offense and swallow us."

He laughed. "You don't stroll about the countryside chattering to the dirt beneath your feet, do you, lad?"

Ohan laughed too. Put that way, it did sound a little silly. He had watched the world's dreams many times but he hardly ever talked to dirt.

Erol gathered up his machine protectively and packed it away. "I hardly think it is 'busted', he said testily. "Not when it shows the precise increase in emissions that would be expected here among the trees over that which was registered out where they had all been cut down."

"Monitoring world awareness is merely one mission among several we pursue here," Elor said calmly. "Another is the search for the origin of the spaceship that has been parked in orbit over your seacoast for the past five centuries."

"What?" Ohan and Leahn said again.

Elor smiled. "We thought you might retain some racial memory of it among your people's myths. We were right. You called it the Star of Evil, once as bright as the sun, now a point of light seen briefly just after sunset. You said the other stars do not allow it to join them in the night sky."

"That's just a kids' story," Ohan protested. "No one ever said anything about a spaceship. It was one of the stories my mother used to tell me when I was little. They discourage those stories at school. They say our myths and legends are superstitious nonsense."

"They are wrong," Elor said. "Your people's stories are precisely what we have come all this way to hear." He took out a little crystal recorder and laid it on the ground in front of Ohan. "Would you tell us one?"

Ohan stared at the machine as if it were about to attack him. "Oh, I don't . . . I couldn't . . . I mean I'm not a storyteller. It's an art among my people, one handed down and practiced for years. All I know are children's tales."

"That should be just the thing," the Commodore said as he shifted his bedroll into a more comfortable position. "Tell us a bedtime story. If yours doesn't work, I'll tell one of mine. That always puts the twins away."

"Go on, sport," Leahn urged. "Nobody's told me a bedtime story in years, not the kind you would want to repeat in polite society, anyway."

Elor switched on the recorder.

"Well, all right," Ohan said reluctantly. "But don't blame me if it's too childish."

"Traditional children's stories are seldom childish," Elor assured him.

***

One day a large powerful horse was trotting along a forest path when he happened to meet the King of the Cats. Now horses do not usually deign to notice creatures as small as a cat and cats do not often come down near the forest floor, so these two creatures had not previously met.

On this particular occasion, however, the King of the Cats happened to be sitting on the aerial root of a water tree at about eye level when the horse came along.

This horse was a sly one and when he saw who it was, he said to the King of the Cats, "My dear King, I've heard so much about you and now we meet at last, face to face. This is indeed a pleasure. There is something I have always wondered about. Perhaps you can help me."

The King of the Cats smiled and said, "If there is any way in which a poor little forest creature such as myself can assist a mighty horse, I should be honored to do so."

The horse smiled to himself as he said, "I've always admired the way you cats are able to slip through the forest so quietly. Surely there must be some kind of secret way you have of doing this which I would be most grateful if you would teach me."

"Oh, goodness," said the King of the Cats. "Is that all? That's not much of a secret but I will gladly share it with you."