The Universe Builders: Bernie and the Putty (41 page)

“Great Protector, there are others who would ask you questions. Will you speak with them?”

“Yes, Leader Gondal, but please be brief. There are other demands on my time.”

Minister Tonst, the liaison between the Senate and the Temple, stood. “Great Protector, your presence here comes as a great surprise to us. We are curious to know how you fit into the cosmology of our world. Are you an agent of the Sun? Are there others like you yet to be discovered?”

Alcandor and Bernie had anticipated this question and knew to avoid it. Any attempt to provide answers would lead to controversy and divisiveness. Bernie said, “Minister Tonst, I understand your curiosity, but I have no time for such discussions. I have spoken of these matters with Lord Alcandor. I will let him answer your questions at another time.”

Senators were not used to having their questions deflected. Several responded with boos. Almost immediately, there was dead silence as they realized what they had done. The Great Protector frowned at the senators who had booed him.

“What am I to make of this discourtesy?” The Great Protector’s displeasure was clearly written on His face.

Gondal responded, “Great Protector, please forgive us. It is our custom to respond to our speakers in this manner. No disrespect is intended. I beg you to think of it as nothing more than an expression of disappointment.”

The Great Protector turned to the Leader. As He did so, Gondal shrank from the steely gaze of the giant god who faced him. Suddenly, the ground began to shake.

Every senator and lord felt terror as they braced for the unknown fury of the Great Protector. Senators and lords scrambled to their knees. Cries from every corner beseeched the Great Protector for forgiveness.

Only one lord was confused. Alcandor knew Bernie would not harm them. What then, he wondered, was happening? He and Bernie had talked about the skepticism of the Senate and the possible need to demonstrate his power. But this was not part of the script.

“Alcandor, something is happening,” said the Great Protector to the only man still standing in the Senate.

“Can you tell us what it is?”

“I can show you.”

The Great Protector’s image transformed into a giant image of Alcandor. As the small Alcandor looked up at the giant Alcandor, the giant also looked up. It took a moment to understand.

“We’re seeing the world through the eyes of the Great Protector,” Alcandor called out, shocked at the enormity of it all.

Alcandor’s image disappeared, replaced by a rapid series of new ones as the Great Protector sought the source of the shaking earth. People saw images of their world from high in the sky. There were views of the coast and then close-up views of waves from far out in the ocean. When the view changed again, they saw a long and wide strip of land with ocean on both sides. Far below, the clouds looked like tiny puffs of smoke. Green forests covered the land, except for swatches of destruction left by fires and hurricanes. In the middle, they saw the Central Mountains.

Everyone watched, unable to tear their eyes away, as the Great Protector searched for the source of the disruption. Forests and mountains flew by, and they saw the end of their land. Only one man among them truly understood what they saw.

Moments later, far out on the ocean, they saw a round continent. If Alcandor had any reason to doubt the science lesson Bernie had given him about the shape of the world, those doubts were forever banished. From Bernie’s height above the planet, Alcandor saw the softly rounded edges of his world.

Image after image flashed before them, none lasting even a second as the Great Protector searched at the speed of thought. Quickly, another continent loomed ahead. With a flash of insight, Alcandor recognized the course traveled by the Great Expedition. Viewed from above, it was easy to see the explorers were right. The entire continent was a ring of land completely enclosing a small ocean.

The god was moving fast, and the Sun was left behind as more images of western lands were seen. It might have been complete darkness, but the god’s vision shifted into a new spectrum and the visibility remained clear. Finally, as He rounded the planet and came to the eastern coast of their land, the light of the Sun could be seen again.

Another vibration shook the Senate building, knocking several senators from their seats.
Please hurry, Bernie
, thought Alcandor.

Without warning, everything began shrinking, until it appeared the land and the oceans had been painted on the outside of a child’s ball. The eyes of the god turned from the painted world and the night sun appeared. In an instant, the night sun went through a full cycle of light and dark.

Then, in the distance, they saw the Sun, surrounded by black instead of blue. In a flash, the great Sun loomed larger than anything imaginable. They could almost feel the heat as enormous columns of flame flickered and shot upwards from the surface of their god.

Just as quickly, they saw their world again. This time, the view was from high above the Central Mountains. Smoke and gas were escaping from a large fissure near the top of one mountain. The images came more slowly now, although harder to describe. It was as if the god had entered the mountain and was looking at the pressure and heat changes deep below the surface. Alcandor sensed Bernie’s desperation to find and correct the problem before it was too late.

Before He could do anything to release the pressure, the top of the mountain exploded. The top, once covered with white snowcaps, disappeared as pieces of rock and magma flew in every direction. Immediately, red magma gushed from the open wound and flowed down the mountain, igniting everything in its path. The images changed again as the Protector scanned the area for nearby cities or towns. He found none.

The Protector’s view shifted back to the emerging volcano. And then it ceased. In the center of the Senate, there was only emptiness.

The crowd was silent as they tried to absorb what they had seen. Here and there could be heard soft whispers as people tried to understand the un-understandable.

“Was that real?” one of the senators shouted to Alcandor.

“Yes. Without a doubt.”

“Why didn’t we hear or feel anything when the mountain exploded?” asked another.

“It’s very far away,” said Alcandor as he considered the distances involved. “We probably won’t feel anything for a while. It will be even longer before we hear it.”

Gondal asked, “How dangerous is this?”

“Anyone living close to the mountains is in great danger. The quakes might be able to reach us even here. The danger will come from the quaking earth, fires, and maybe flooding. I’ve seen stone buildings knocked down—”

Gondal didn’t wait for Alcandor to finish. He shouted to the crowd, “We must leave. It’s not safe here. Seek protection in open areas. Stay away from the water. Watch out for fire. Tell others. Go! Go, now!”

No one needed to be told again as they made their way out of the Great Chamber. Just twenty minutes later, seismic waves rippling through the earth reached them. Two massive columns on the eastern side of the Senate Office Building crumpled, and a large section of its roof fell to the ground.

It was two hours more before they heard the sound of the explosion.

The Rest of the Story

During recent weeks, Bernie had developed an inspection routine to use when he thought Billy might have done something. When the quake hit, he automatically launched into his routine. It took several minutes to realize his mistake. It had been careless to let the Senate see him viewing a world they believed was flat, or checking out the sun and the moon. He had no time to think about that now. He would have to trust Alcandor to contain the damage.

Finally, he’d found the problem. It was a volcano and not a simple one either. It was a supervolcano, capable of wiping out life on the planet with its lethal combination of toxic fumes and cloud cover. In just days, the clouds could fill the sky, cutting off the sunlight his plants needed to survive.

He stopped sending his vision back to the Senate. He needed his full attention to deal with the problem. They would have to use their imaginations from here.

Then he remembered the quake damage could easily reach the Senate and beyond. Did he dare go back and make sure everyone was safe? No. This was the priority. He had to stop the volcano before it killed thousands of people.

Bernie watched in horror as the earth trembled yet again. He hadn’t expected Billy to have made more than one. Within minutes, a chain reaction along the Central Mountains had given birth to four more volcanoes. Three of the four were supervolcanoes and the fourth showed potential. Each arrival was accompanied by an explosion and massive quakes, which opened giant fissures and unleashed billowing clouds of dark gases, volcanic ash, and more red-hot magma to flow down the mountain.

As Bernie tried to gauge the full extent of the problem, he saw three hot spots in the ocean, where clouds of steam and gases bubbled up from the ocean’s floor. Potential tsunami sprung into his mind. Meanwhile, the new volcanoes spread fire to the beautiful green hills. Soon they contributed their own smoke and ash to the once-blue sky.

Bernie focused on the active volcanoes. He’d had plenty of practice when Billy created over 200 of them. Two million years ago, Billy’s volcanoes had wiped out his plant life.
After you plug your two hundredth volcano, you start getting good at it
, Bernie thought with some sarcasm.
Thanks for nothing, Billy.

Bernie began by cooling the magma at the mouth of each volcano to stop the flow and to seal it. He moved rapidly, cooling hot magma everywhere he found it. In this way, he corked one volcano after another.

Next, he focused on getting the fires put out. On a planet with so much plant life, there was no shortage of oxygen in the air, which fed the rapidly burning forest fires. Bernie had extinguished Billy’s forest fires before by changing the air to carbon dioxide. But he couldn’t use that solution again. The heavy gas could easily flow into a valley and kill the people there. For the same reason, he couldn’t snuff the fires by removing the oxygen.

Instead, he created massive thunderclouds above each raging fire and let them deliver sheet after sheet of torrential rain. And, for good measure, he created storm fronts and sent them to chase the volcanic ash and poisonous gases that had already been released.

As Bernie started to catch his breath, he felt the earth tremble again. It didn’t take long to locate the new epicenter, which was close to the site of the second volcano. A fifth volcano, another supervolcano, had exploded. He saw gases escaping and knew magma would soon follow. His first thought was to plug it as he had done with the first four, but a fifth volcano meant something else was going on.

Billy must have created a network of fault lines under the mountain range. If he plugged this volcano, it would just build up pressure until the next one blew. He needed to fix the real problem.

Bernie spent three more hours searching the earth under the mountain range. He found the fault lines and fused them one by one. In addition, Billy had created a continent-long strip of hot magma just below the mountains. Every time a quake opened a crack, the magma was ready to emerge. It wasn’t until he cooled the magma under the mountains that things began to quiet down. The number of quakes gradually subsided, and there had been no new volcanoes for the last two hours.

Bernie was so exhausted, he almost forgot about the fault lines in the ocean. He found them on both sides of the continent. Bernie fused those lines as well, but by now he was drained; all he wanted to do was sleep. Even the gods paid a price for using their powers.

Oh, no! Alcandor!
Was he okay? Bernie sped back to the Senate. The sun was nearly down, and people were milling about in the street. Some wept, while others wore expressions of hopelessness. Everywhere, buildings had suffered from the quakes. The side of the Senate Office Building had collapsed, along with part of its roof. Bernie’s heart pounded as he scanned the wreckage, but he found no bodies.

Bernie quickly moved to Alcandor’s home. The building had buckled in one section. He found Alcandor pacing in his study.

“Alcandor! Thank goodness you’re safe,” Bernie exclaimed as he materialized. There was no longer any pretense between them. Bernie appeared as his true self.

“Bernie, I’m so glad to see you. You’ve been gone so long. I… I was worried about you too,” Alcandor said, as they embraced.

“What happened?”

Bernie explained the supervolcanoes and what he had done to stop them. He explained the superheated magma below the mountains, the fault lines he repaired, and the forest fires he extinguished. When he finished, he asked, “Tell me about the people. Did we lose many?”

“We were lucky. Gondal had the wits to send everyone out of the building before it collapsed. We used our signal system to tell people in nearby towns to keep out of the buildings during the quakes. So far, it appears we have injuries, but no known deaths.”

“Thank goodness.”

“You put on quite a show,” Alcandor said with a twinkle in his eye.

“I’m sorry about that,” said Bernie. “I didn’t think about what people would be seeing when I looked for the source of the problem. I hope it won’t cause difficulties for you.”

“I don’t think many people understood what they were seeing. In any case, leave that to me. It looks like you could use some rest. In fact, I think we could all use some rest,” Alcandor said wearily.

“I agree. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Bernie was exhausted, but the relief he’d felt when he found Alcandor unharmed had taught him a valuable lesson. He must do whatever he could to keep Alcandor safe. That was his greatest priority. And he would find a way, no matter what…

As he began to fade away, Alcandor’s voice sounded in the background.

“Good night, Bernie. And thank you again for saving our world.”