Whatever Gods May Be (18 page)

Then, for the first time since the story began, an awesome addition dominated the cave wall.  Ten enormous, scorpions lined side by side one another, surrounded by as many sticklike representations of people as Stonepainter could cram into the allotted space for a single scene.  For five square feet, the insect figures reigned in various positions of allied association with Stonepainter's people.  Later, the scorpions were marshaled into fighting tableaus where they could be seen heroically annihilating great numbers of the vampires that had fallen through the blackness above.

It was at this point in Stonepainter's work that his genius and honesty shone most bright.  Like a good reporter, he gave attention to important details and logistics, incorporating them into his text at strategic points that was sure to make a definitive impact, without detracting from the major thrust of the tale.  He did this by carefully portraying the casualty rate among his kind through the ages, before and after the arrival of the Redeyes and Stingers.  With impressive clarity, his drawings indicated that humans were slowly dying because of the predator vampires, and that only because the Ten scorpions had helped his people was there a human community in the world that was free from the demonic Redeyes.

The next pictograph was almost surrealistic in nature.  A bearded man stood divided through his midsection by a large cylindrical object with wings on its side.  Standing next to him, though not as tall, was the figure of a girl.  The artist at this stage had clearly taken special pains to make the girl's face as detailed as possible, and he had most noticeably added an enormous smile to it -- an expression remarkably absent heretofore on all the faces of Stonepainters' people up to this point.

The final tableau pictured the ten scorpions traveling single file, with a great crowd of people around them showing Stonepainter's tribe.  On top of the lead Stinger, the girl with the smile watched ahead, while on the very last insect, the bearded man sat staring to the rear.  Both of these characters were portrayed as large as the scorpions, thus suggesting an almost omnipotent quality about them.

Stonepainter stood away from the wall and sighed.  It was good work, he knew, but somehow he felt that it was incomplete.  Something was missing.  .

Deciding that it was time for a break, Stonepainter turned around and walked towards the cave entrance.  It was midmorning and he was feeling hungry.  As dull as it was, the daylight hurt Stonepainter's eyes after so many hours working by fire glow.  He squinted up at the dingy sky, blemished with the ever-present Dark Spots blinking in and out of overlapping cloud cover, then stared down into the valley.

The tribe was as inactive as it had been for the past week, following its arrival to this water laden valley, and even the Stingers positioned at clockwork points around the valley borders were still and quiet.  He knew, however, that they would soon be moving around, and would see to finding food shortly.  Stonepainter rubbed his painful belly and sniffed.  He would have to wait awhile longer for breakfast.

Suddenly, his eyes came to rest on a blur of movement near the forest edge.  He stepped out of the cave completely and squatted at the edge of the rock lip.

The Stinger known as Thalick was enjoying a brief respite near the place where the desert, valley and mutant forest all converged at a fork.  Stonepainter experienced a momentary surge of terror as he spotted the fast-moving figure behind the tribe's lead benefactor; at first, it looked exactly like one of the vile Redeye's sneaking up on the Stinger.  Stonepainter breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the figure again reappeared from behind a boulder and was recognized as the Little Goddess.  Stonepainter watched her with interest, though he could not fathom what she was doing so far away.

But as long as it was Valry Phillips, and not one of the fiendish bloodsuckers, Stonepainter's curiosity would stop right here.

It was not unusual to find the girl near Thalick, for the two of them were nearly inseparable.  Their strange relationship was never too deeply analyzed by Stonepainter, or for that matter any other member of the tribe; there was no reason for such scrutiny: the activities of gods - which the Stingers, the girl and her father were unquestioningly regarded as by Stonepainters' people - could never be fully comprehended by the likes of mere mortals.

Stonepainter watched the scurrying girl for only a moment longer, then returned into the cave.  He was now bothered by something that he had seen and felt while watching the girl.  An overwhelming sense of dread flooded through his entire being, and unable to dispel the weight that had come over him, he picked up the two rocks used for scrawling and began to tap the cave wall in front of him.

Up to now, he had never been able to add to his story of tableaus.  His attempts at historical reporting had been taken to their fullest extent, and there was nothing more to depict of the past that was not already completely documented on twenty feet of rock face.

There was only the future to describe - but since that had yet to transpire, Stonepainter had never presumed, much less imagined in his dying brain, that the images of tomorrow could ever be fairly portrayed by those trapped in the confines of the present.

Today, however, Stonepainter was about to become something more then the world's first reporter in a million years.  A spark of intuition flamed within him, and in the span of minutes, he was about to rise from the level of gifted storyteller to that of prophet.  He remembered the girl's face this morning and had seen a glimpse of things yet to be.  Clutching his tools with practiced deftness, he began to work again.

On the wall, yet another player to Stonepainter's mural began to materialize.  A player who was soon to arrive -- and would be the catalyst to either salvation or damnation to an entire world.

TWENTY-TWO

The Rover battled for control and failed.  All of its most advanced and gifted senses reported the same thing; it was 'lying -- or at least being rendered incapable of functioning on the most basic level.  Things grew dim; power departed -- from the machine's point of view, there was no pain or fear associated with these occurrences.  Perhaps only a nagging, electro-neutronic frustration that performance capability was being wrenched away at light speed.

External senses suddenly came alive for one last time --enough to tell the Rover that it was out of the Hall.  The starship, almost by instinct, activated its retro boosters --responding to the surprising environment of a planetary atmosphere rather than that of deep space.  At least, the Rover considered pragmatically, it could give Zolan a relatively soft and safe landing to -- wherever the Hall had sent them.

Not that Zolan would have appreciated the courtesy.  He was out cold on the control deck, oblivious to the Rover's efforts in keeping both of them intact and unharmed.

The Rover fired across the sky, blazing through the thick, murky skies of an alien world it had no time to analyze -- a world which the starship and its sole occupant would never leave.

* * *

The Sentinel Stinger was performing again, though this time his theatrical prowess demanded little effort on his part.  In fact, if he did nothing at all, he would come away with standing ovations from his relatively small audience now watching him with intense interest.  He would not disappoint.

Not even twitching a sensitive antennae, the Sentinel Stinger lay prone in the grey-white sand, watching the girl advance towards him with the rarely-used eye lodged in the back of his head.  Not even Valry knew that it existed, and the Sentinel Stinger had never found the need to inform her of its presence.  All the better for the game now in progress; for had she known of this secret handicap, Valry might have abandoned the daring plan she had in mind, and consequently deprived the Stinger of yet another opportunity to have studied the relatively new science of human behavior.

In the centuries before finding Valry and her father John Phillips, the Sentinel Stinger and his comrades were forced to accept the barbaric and primitive humanoid giants as unsatisfactory objects for scientific observation.  These poor, demented creatures were little more than animals (though the Stingers had determined that at one time they might have possessed adequate intellects) and were dull specimens in which to conduct extensive analyses.  To their credit, however, the Stingers did not allow their intellectual disappointment to in any way affect their compassionate duty in aiding these sickly beasts against a violent and hostile world.  For fifteen centuries, they stayed close to a large herd of human giants, fighting off the varied menaces that sought to exterminate it.

Like diligent shepherds, the Thelerick Stingers kept their flock well guarded and protected, never discriminating against it because of obvious flaws and inferiorities.

But then, twenty years ago, the Thelericks discovered the man from the past -- John Phillips, along with his daughter, who struck an immediate sympathetic vibration with the Stingers, both mentally and emotionally.  Prized specimens of observation, the Stingers studied these two humans constantly -- in particular, Valry, who was much, much more, the Thelericks realized, than just human.

Once again, the Sentinel Stinger was demonstrating his uniqueness; if not to the other Thelericks, then to the watching heavens above that seemed to have blessed him with a special genius even he did not understand, nor was even aware of.  For the past twenty years, he not only acquainted himself with as many oddities of human nature as he could, but he allowed himself also the adventure of thinking, acting - and most recently - feeling like the creatures under his constant scrutiny.

In this final endeavor, it was the child-woman Valry with whom Thalick had learned the most.  Old Phillips was an equally fascinating source of study; his clear, intellectual superiority over the giant mutants of his race, coupled with an exciting plethora of technical knowledge from an advanced civilization which no longer existed, made the mind of the astronaut an attractive item for Stinger learning.

But it was Valry Phillips whom the Stingers, and particularly the insightful Thalick, gravitated to most of all.  Her magical effect on the giant aliens was equally powerful among the maldeveloped tribesman with whom she and her father had traveled across the world for decades.  Adored by all, Valry's mystical charm was also plated by a hearty respect; for the powers of John Phillips' daughter were those which even the tremendous Stingers recognized to be a mystery beyond their understanding.  And while they maintained a studious distance from her at all times, the Stingers always acknowledged Valry as an equal, if not a superior creature to themselves.

Thalick took this process one step further.  He had come to love Valry, unreservedly.  From babyhood to the present, he had rarely left her side, sometimes to the parental consternation of her father.  This initial rivalry for affection between Thalick and Phillips passed quickly, though, as the man learned to appreciate the Stinger's attentiveness to his daughter, which he was often remiss to supply due to other tribe related matters.  Thalick for his part was equally considerate.  Instinctively, he never tried to position himself as a substitute parent figure to the maturing Valry, which might have offended Phillips.  With that spark that made him something truly phenomenal, Thalick proved himself the perfect diplomat.  He would do whatever Phillips wanted concerning his daughter without a word of reproach or advice.  And Phillips became enormously grateful, sometimes even dependant on the Stinger in the rearing of his remarkable daughter, especially when it was discovered that she was unlike any little girl ever seen before.

Valry's frightening psychic capabilities had even alarmed the omnipotent Stingers when first encountered.  Her father was simply terrified.  Though still in the earliest stages of development, Valry's talents were destined to be awesome when fully matured.  Thalick had reasoned accurately that the telekinetic and telepathic prowess the girl was displaying, though still in their infancy, would progress accordingly with age.  Every day that passed seemed to support this theory.  And though now Thalick was indulgently participating in what appeared to be another harmless frolic by his special child, Valry was about to prove that another phase of her remarkable development was about to be completed according to the Stingers' calculations, and much to his embarrassed surprise.

Thalick's attention momentarily wandered away from the sneaking girl approaching him.  Regarding the menacing blackness of the sky above, he allowed one antennae to bolt upright ever so slightly.

There was something in the air he didn't like.

Glancing at the tribe a few hundred yards away, he could see that all was still and quiet.  An atmosphere of general exhaustion prevailed, which had even affected the normally energetic Stingers.  The exodus across the great desert had been long and hard and would account for the general malaise, but there was a heavier, more oppressive, element pervading across the valley that disturbed Thalick considerably.

He was no longer enjoying the game.  Like Stonepainter several hundred yards above, Thalick was having a premonition; a nagging itch that couldn't be scratched, and wouldn't be forgotten.

The worry was unidentifiable; the cold wave of paranoia apparently unjustified.  Yet both would not be shaken, and it was all Thalick could do from bolting to all eight legs in a burst of nervous energy.

Long dead and buried creatures to this world once known as psychoanalysts would have diagnosed the Thalick as having an anxiety attack.  They would have recommended rest, medication, therapy ...or all three items to alleviate the problem.