Beneath the Eye of God (The Commodore Ardcasl Space Adventures Book 1) (6 page)

Now the horse could hardly keep from laughing out loud at the foolish cat, for he had been trying and trying to sneak up on the cats in order to stomp them beneath his great hoofs. This, as you know, is the kind of thing that horses enjoy doing, but the cats always hear him coming and run away. Now here was the silly King of the Cats about to tell him the cats' own secret way of travelling silently through the forest. It was all he could do to suppress his laughter and keep a serious look on his face.

"The solution is obvious," said the King of the Cats. "You horses all walk down on the ground and make noise while we cats walk up on the branches and are silent."

The horse looked puzzled. "I don't understand," he said.

"It's really quite simple," said the King of the Cats. "The earth is hollow, just like old trees become when they fall to the ground. When they lay on the ground the hollowness of the earth creeps into them and they too, become hollow, and if you beat on them with a stick, they make a great loud noise. But if you beat on a standing tree, it makes hardly any sound at all. When you, with your mighty hoofs, walk upon the hollow ground, you make a great noise just like beating a dead tree with a stick. When we cats walk upon the living trees, we naturally make no sound at all, for the living trees are not hollow."

The horse was not convinced. "You mean if I were to walk on the branches, I would make no sound?"

"You don't have to take my word for it," said the King of the Cats. "Try it yourself and see."

So the horse reared up on his hind legs and brought his front hoofs down with a mighty crash on the high root right next to where the King of the Cats was sitting. The tree shook and the forest rang with the force of the blow. The King of the Cats was so frightened he almost leaped out of his skin. But he quickly composed himself and said, There, you see? That made hardly any noise at all."

"What!" cried the surprised horse. "That was an even louder noise than I make when I walk upon the ground."

"Well of course it sounded loud to you," said the King of the Cats, "just as the grinding of your own teeth sounds loud to you when you are chewing grass. But no one else can hear it."

The horse ground his teeth together and listened to the sound inside his head. Then he pounded his hoof down on the high root again. The King of the Cats was bounced half an inch into the air by the force of the blow. "There, you see?" he said. "Not a sound. If you don't believe me, ask anyone."

The horse looked around. Their conversation had attracted the attention of a number of forest creatures. There was a big tusker, some rats, a night flyer and several others.

The horse reared up and came crashing down on the root once more. He turned and glared at the assembled creatures. "Did any of you hear that?" he asked.

The animals looked at the horse. Then they looked at the King of the Cats who was trying to appear nonchalant. Then they looked at the horse again and all shook their heads. "I thought I heard something like the sighing of the breeze in the topmost branches of the trees," said a little bird, "but I'm not sure."

The horse was amazed. "But this is of little use to me," he said to the King of the Cats, "for I am too big and heavy to walk about on tree branches."

"Nonsense," smiled the King of the Cats. "They're much stronger than they look. All it takes is a little practice. You'll soon get used to it and then you'll be able to gallop through the forest as quickly and silently as I do."

Then a look of concern crossed the face of the King of the Cats. "Why," he said nervously, "since you are so big and strong, you may even be able to run faster through the treetops than I."

The horse smiled reassuringly. "Oh, I doubt that I should ever become as quick and as good at it as you. Where do I start?"

"Well," said the King of the Cats, "if you really insist on doing this, I suppose you might go over to where this high root enters the ground and walk up toward me."

The horse walked around to where the wide arched root entered the ground and stepped up onto it. He stomped on it with his hoof and looked around. All the forest creatures tried to look as if they hadn't heard anything. The horse took a few more steps. The root was wide and flat where it entered the ground though it became narrower as it approached the tree, it was still more than strong enough to support his weight. He continued carefully on, higher and higher.

The King of the Cats backed up along the high root as the horse advanced toward him until he was right up against the trunk of the tree.

"That was easy enough," said the horse. "Now what do I do?"

The King of the Cats turned and looked up at the tree trunk. "The branches are too high on this tree. Why don't you back down and we will find one where they are easier to get to?"

The horse looked around him, at the nearest branches high above and at the ground far below. "Horses do not like to back up," he said.

"Well, you could try to turn around," said the King of the Cats, "though it is rather narrow."

The horse tried to turn around and found it rather narrow. He tried to back down and discovered he didn't like that either. He tried to turn around again, lost his balance and fell off, landing with a very loud crash on the ground where he broke his armored neck and died.

Everyone for miles around heard the mighty crash. It was just as if you struck a great hollow tree with the biggest stick you could find.

***

The Commodore poked at the campfire, sending a burst of sparks swirling up into the darkness. "Nicely told, lad," he said, "though exactly what kind of socio-political nonsense the twins will be able to root out of it, I'm sure I can't imagine. And it seems to have failed in its primary mission, in that it hasn't put anyone to sleep. Now if it's tales you want, let me tell you about the time I encountered a god."

The twins shifted uneasily. "Oh, have you fellows heard this before?" the Commodore asked innocently. "Surely you won't mind if I tell it just once more for the edification of the two new members of our little troop? It was one of those rare and strange encounters which will someday enable philosophers to illuminate the theological structure of the universe. I call it Odin at the Bar."

Erol reached out and switched off the recorder, then clapped a hand on each side of his head where most humans had ears and burrowed down into his bedroll. The Commodore ignored him.

"The far Antares are a seedy bunch of dim stars out beyond the edge of nowhere," he began. "Compared to them, this forsaken dustbin is the center of the Milky Way.

"Their planets are few and barren, the last refuge of the dregs of the universe. Hunted men go there because they know that no crime short of genocide could ever induce a lawman to take the trouble to come in and try to root them out.

"So there they sit, the scum at the bottom of the galaxy after the humanity has been poured out, sunk in violence and degradation, fit only to prey upon each other.

"And there was I, sitting in the dreariest bar in the dreariest spaceport on the dreariest planet in that entire dreary star system, minding my own business, having a little glass of the foul dragon's sweat they call booze."

"From the darkness at the edge of the firelight, one of the twins rolled over and asked, "How did an upstanding fellow like you ever come to be in such an unsavory place?"

"That," snorted the Commodore, "is another story. I shall be happy to tell that story after I have finished telling this story."

"No, no. Spare us. I withdraw the question."

"I was, if you must know, there on a secret mission of considerable importance to the lives and well-being of a great number of honorable and righteous citizens who had turned to me as a last desperate hope for salvation. The poor wretches could offer little in payment but the justice of their cause touched my heart and I . . . "

"The bar, the bar," the twins shouted in unison. "Tell us about the bar."

"What bar? Oh, that bar. It was a terrible place. Did I mention that? Outrageous prices for rotgut booze. So there I was, standing at the bar chatting with a couple of fellows when, as is my custom when making a point or giving a certain phrase an added bit of emphasis, I uttered the exclamation, 'Great Odin's armpit' or 'by Sainted Odin's tooth, or something like that. I am no longer certain exactly which phrase I used. There are a number of them with which I have enlivened my speech since boyhood.

"Anyway, this shriveled little fellow suddenly pops up at my elbow and says, 'Ah ha! So you're the one.' Well, I happen to be, at that moment, at a particularly fascinating point in the story I am telling to these other fellows so I ignore this outburst and continue talking.

"'Ah ha!' he says again. 'So you're the one.'

"He is beginning to annoy me. 'I beg your pardon, you little fart,' says I politely. 'You are interrupting a conversation here.'

"He's bald as an egg, his clothes are in tatters and he has a wild and maniacal look in his eye. 'You're the last one,' he shouts. 'If you'd let me go, I could rest in peace.'

"I realize immediately that the little fellow is quite mad and will have to be handled with tact and understanding. 'What in the seven worlds of Belail are you talking about, you little worm,' says I, hoisting him off the floor by his throat.

"Well, his eyes bug out and he quiets down considerably. 'You,' he gurgles after I set him down, 'you are the last soul in the universe to invoke me, to believe in me. You can set me free. I'm Odin.'

"I look at him and he looks at me. 'Are you trying to get on the wrong side of my good nature?' I inquire. 'Because if you keep to this course, you will surely do so. Odin is a mighty god of power where I hail from, not some grubby little pipsqueak who interrupts honest men in a forsaken dive out beyond the edges of Hell.'

"'Odin,' he says, 'also called Woden, chief warrior god of a 36-member pantheon worshipped by the mighty and warlike tribes of seafaring Vikings in the far north of old Earth back beyond the beginnings of time. Danes and Norse they were, big red-bearded giants of men who needed gods they could respect even when we occasionally dropped an avalanche on top of them or marooned them on an iceberg just to show who was boss.'

"'You're not exactly my idea of a real man's god,' I said. 'Even on a bad day, Odin would have to be at least twenty times your size and a hell of a lot tougher.'

"'I was. I was,' he cries. 'I was the power and majesty of a great people who created me and believed in me. I was the strength in them, the might of great sea kings.' For an instant his eyes flashed and there was fire in him. But then it flickered and he sighed, 'But that was long ago. Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, has come and gone, and with it have gone the gods, the earth and the mighty people who believed in us. We lost, you know. We lost the great battle at the end of time. And new gods came with their own time and I'm all that's left and it's all because of you.'

"'Me?' says I.

"'You're the only one left,' he sighs, 'the only one who still remembers, who still invokes Odin.' Then he draws himself up to his full four and a half feet. 'Look at me,' he shouts. 'I slew Ymir, father of giants, and built the Earth from his carcass. I used to be somebody. Now you're all that's left and I have to follow you across the galaxy from one seedy dump to another. Look at this place. Aren't you ashamed? You're the last one, you half-heathen, and you refuse to die.' Now he was shrieking and sobbing and pounding on the bar.

"He was making me nervous. 'What can I do?'

"'You could buy me a drink,' he says.

"So I bought us a couple of drinks and he explained how I was the last person in the universe who had even heard of him and my belief, feeble as it was, was all that gave him substance and kept him from returning to Asgard and his wife and all the other old forgotten gods.

"We had a few more drinks and he was telling me all about what a great place Asgard was and how beautiful Frigg, his wife, was. So I asked him, what could I do, short of committing suicide, to help him?

"We had gotten to be pretty good friends by this time. I ordered another round and he explained that it's not so much the waiting that bothers him, he's used to that and one more lifetime isn't all that long after ten thousand years or so. But what does bother him is the travelling. I was a pretty active fellow in those days. What he really wanted to do was settle down in one place and kind of relax until he was able to disincorpulate himself and return to Asgard. He also said that by staying in one place, he could conserve the strength he had left and concentrate better on helping me, since I was his last subject, so to speak.

"Well, at that point I didn't much think I was going to be calling on him anymore anyway. I mean, it's one thing to call on a god that's big and powerful if you happen to get into a jam where nothing else seems to work. But how could I ever ask for help from this little shrimp. I mean, he was a nice guy but not my idea of a god.

"So I settled up and went my way and he went his. I haven't seen him since. For all I know, he's still back on that dumpy little planet, though I did give him enough to get himself off to someplace nice. I've been in a few tight places since then and I've thought about calling him, but hell, what good would he be? I don't think he's got a thunderbolt left in him."