Princess of Amathar (2 page)

"You must know that this world is not natural. Planets do not form like this. Who created Ecos?" I wondered.

"I know no such thing,” replied the beast. "If you had not appeared claiming to be from another world, I would never have given it a second thought."

I knew that he was baiting me, because I had described the Earth in great detail to him before, and he had accepted it, and I knew that he believed that I was not a native of Ecos.

"I do know how Ecos came to be though," he continued. "Many years ago the universe was empty. The only thing that existed was the great Goddess Bitch. She lived in the void for a long, long time. Then she became tired of the darkness and ate up all of the black and let the day come. She shed her fur and it became a ring around her and hardened into Ecos. She gave birth to pups and they became Malagor. She left her feces and it became the other races of Ecos. Then she curled up and went to sleep and became the sun."

"Do you believe this?" I asked.

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me for a moment. Then he smiled. "This is what my mother told me when I was a pup."

I smiled too. We sat in silence for a moment. Then I spoke again.

"Have you always lived here, in this cabin?"

"This has been my base camp while I have explored the nearby land,” he explained. "I was making ready to leave this place and move on when I found you. Again I am thinking that I should move on now."

"If you don’t mind,” I said. "I would like to accompany you."

"I would like that," he replied, and then he said for the first time, "Alexander."
Chapter Two: The Hidden Artifacts

After getting a good long sleep, Malagor and I began to pack our meager belongings for an extended journey. Our belongings truly were meager. My dog-like friend had only a few furs and some weapons and tools to his name, and I had almost nothing to mine. I was interested to observe Malagor's weapons. With the exception of his knife, which was obviously well-manufactured, they all seemed to be hand-made, and consisted of a spear, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. As soon as we had grouped the possessions into two bundles, we each took one and started on our way. There seemed to be no north, south, east, or west in Ecos, so we went in the direction that Malagor said he had previously been traveling. After we had walked across the plain quite a long ways, I looked back at the cabin. It was inching its way up toward the sky. It seemed a lonely place now. As we got farther and farther away, it would move up the endless horizon, though of course it would disappear from view before it got very high. I wondered though if, when we reached where ever it was we were going, it would be looking down at us from some point high up in the heavens.

While we walked along, I asked Malagor many questions about the world of Ecos, the fauna and flora, and the intelligent inhabitants.

"How big is Ecos?" I asked. I had thought that had Ecos been just a hollow planet, I would have been able to see far more of the horizon as it stretched up into the sky and that much more clearly than I could. It seemed to me that it was far larger.

"Two hundred twenty six thousand hokents,” he replied.

This of course, led to my lesson in the measurement of distances in Ecos, which was common to the Malagor and the Amatharians, and a few other intelligent races. The kentan was the basic unit of measurement, and had apparently been derived from the size of an insect lair, as strange as this may have seemed at the time. Then again, I recalled that honey bees made cells in their hive that were completely uniform in size, no matter where you happened to find the hive, or what the bees were using as a source of pollen. I marveled that the kentan had come from a zoological observation such as this. As nearly as I could calculate, the kentan was about five and one-quarter inches. A kentar was ten kentans, or about fifty two and a half inches. A kent was ten kentars, one hundred kentans, or about forty three feet nine inches. A kentad was one hundred kents, or some eight tenths of a mile. And a hokent was one thousand kentads, one hundred thousand kents, or eight hundred twenty eight miles. So when Malagor said that Ecos was two hundred twenty six thousand hokents in diameter, he was telling me that it was about one hundred eighty seven million miles in diameter. With a little mental calculation on my part, I realized that with a sun just under one million miles in diameter, this would put the surface of Ecos about ninety three million miles from the surface of the sun--about the same distance that Earth is from the surface of its sun. If my calculations held correct, then Ecos would have a surface area of over three billion planet Earths. It was quite an astounding concept. For a while I thought about the fact that the great plain we walked across, might well be larger than the surface area of my home planet, and yet be only a tiny fraction of Ecos. But after a while these types of musings can only give one a headache, so I turned my head to other thoughts. Looking around across the plain, I observed a marvelous collection of plains animals. I could identify the ecological niches of most of the beasts, by observing their similarities to Earth animals, and yet some of these denizens of the great prairie were completely unearthly. There was a herd of beautiful antelope-like creatures, with long spiral horns and stripes across their backs and six legs. There were beautiful flying things that looked like butterflies two yards wide. Whether they were birds or insects or something entirely different than either, I could not say. There was a large caterpillar creature thirty feet long, with a huge maw in front, that ate everything it came across, plant or animal, and there was a beast that preyed upon it that stood twenty feet tall and looked like a cross between an ostrich and a praying mantis. Some of these animals we hunted for food, some of them we gave a wide berth, and some of them we stopped and stared at in amazement, because not even Malagor had seen the likes of them.

We walked, and we hunted as we walked, and at last I was sure we must have been traveling for a week. It is very eerie to do anything for a long period of time, and then to look up and see the sun in the exact position that it was in when you started whatever it was that you were doing. That's how it was for me. At last however, Malagor decided it was time to stop and sleep, so we cleared the grass from an area and made a fire. Malagor and I then took turns watching for beasts and sleeping. We each slept once, ate, then slept again, and then we started on our way once more. We followed this procedure many, many times over. We continued to hunt for food animals along our way, and at every small stream, we stopped to fill our water skins. I must confess that I never did know how long a journey our trip was, but it seems to me that it must have been close to a year. At one time I asked my friend how long he though that we had been walking. His only reply was, "What does it matter." At long last we reached the edge of the great plain. Before us stood a line of small hills which looked to be easily passable. On the lower slope of the hills grew many small bushes, profusely covered with tiny blue berries. Malagor picked one, smelled it, tasted it, and pronounced it good.

"We will stay a while here,” he announced. "Berries do not grow enough places to warrant passing them by."

I examined the bushes closest to us.

"Some of these berries are new growth, and some of them are rotting on the plant,” I said. "How long will the season last?"

"I do not know season," he said. "What is season?" I then realized that in Ecos, beneath the perpetual noon day sun, with no variation in sunlight or length of day, there would be no seasons, at least not in the sense of the word I knew. I was walking around in an endless springtime. I wondered of the mechanics of such a weather system. It had to be completely different than that of a regular planet. I knew that there was weather, for I had experienced it myself, at least in its mildest forms. There had been some partially cloudy skies as we walked along, and even an occasional shower to help keep us cool. But I had not experienced a great storm, fog, or snow. I asked Malagor about this and he explained.

"There are many high places in Ecos, mountains and hills. In these places it is cooler. Low places, deserts and plains are warmer. There is much rocky land. The air above this is warmer. The air above the swamps, bogs, and other soft lands is cooler and wetter. The hot air moves up. The cool air moves down. Then they both blend together to make many kinds of weather." As if on cue, we were suddenly darkened by the shade of a large cloud above us. Moments later it began to hail. We held our furs above our heads to shield us, and quickly scrambled around looking for a cave or an overhang in which to hide ourselves. I found a large overhanging cliff and called Malagor over. We sat down under it and built a fire from some scrub brush.

"I will cook the meat of our last kill," said Malagor. "You can unpack our furs and tools. This little overhang will make a good place for our base camp. When the hail stops, I will hunt for more meat, and you may pick some berries."

"You won't need any help hunting?" I asked.

"I have watched you, and have decided that you are not a very good hunter,” he said. "Perhaps it is because your nose is too small."

"What does my nose have to do with hunting?"

"You cannot smell when an animal is ready to become dinner." I laughed. "I must admit that before I met you I'd never hunted at all, and certainly not with a spear or a bow. I don't have the benefit of having hunted all my life as you have."

"I have not hunted all my life,” he said. "When I had a home, I traded for my food."

"Tell me about your home,” I said, but he only mumbled that he had to go hunting, and picking up his weapons, he left, even though he had not yet cooked our meal, and the hail had not completely stopped. I watched him head across the plain toward the roaming, grazing herds that wandered there. He was a strange and lonely figure. I sat down to unpack the rolls of furs that were our bedding, and tossed a few damp twigs on the fire. Then I began to look around the small overhang that was to be our home for who knew how long.

The area beneath the cliff was about forty feet wide and fifteen feet deep. The ground was bare of the tall golden grass that reached from the plain, right up to the edge of the sheltered overhang. The area was completely clear of fallen debris, with the exception of a pile of small boulders at one end. I walked over, knelt down, and examined the stones. There seemed to be no place above from which they could have fallen. It looked as if someone had piled them there. I looked between them and saw only darkness. Using my newfound strength, I began moving the stones away from their resting place, setting them to the front of the overhang to serve as a wind break. In no time I had moved them all, building a suitable wind break as well as exposing a small tunnel leading back into the hillside. I knelt down to look into the tunnel. Then I heard a noise behind me and turned to see that Malagor had returned, with the carcass of a small antelope-type animal slung over his ever-crouching shoulders.

"What have you found here, my friend?" he asked, setting down his burden.

"It is some kind of tunnel. It looks like it was dug by intelligent beings. At least it was hidden by intelligent beings with those boulders. They seem to have been placed here deliberately." He laughed, and for a moment I did not understand why. Then he said. "You moved those boulders all by yourself?"

"With powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.” I smiled. "Shall we go inside?"

"It is your hole,” he said.

I retrieved a burning twig from the fire, and kneeling down, began to crawl into the tiny tunnel. It was a tight fit. When I had made my way completely inside, Malagor followed. The tunnel remained the same for the first fifteen or twenty feet. Then it opened into a chamber large enough for me to stand up in. Raising the small torch above my head, I looked around. Even with the light, it took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. It had been a long time since I had been in darkness of any kind. At last though, I began to be able to see around me.

The chamber was roughly round and carved out of the solid rock. I realized now that not only was the tunnel man-made, or shall I say life-form made, but the cave was artificial as well, for there was no evidence of water or any other natural mechanism for creating subterranean caverns. Placed around the room, apparently with great care, were a number of interesting artifacts. There were two rifles the likes of which I have never seen before. They seemed like some kind of laser gun from a science fiction movie. The metal parts were bright silver or chrome, and the stocks were made of some unknown wood and carved into beautiful but unearthly designs. There were several small square devices next to them which might have been batteries or rechargers. Sitting in a small stack, were a half a dozen cans with no labels. They were the only things made of metal in the chamber which showed any sign of rust whatsoever, even though the thick covering of dust made it plain that we were the first to enter here in a long, long time.

Also in the chamber were a number of interesting tools. There was a beautiful hunting knife. It looked similar to one that might be sold in a sporting goods store on earth, but the blade was carved in bizarre, alien designs of unequaled craftsmanship. There was a hammer, saw, screwdriver, and a shovel, all obviously designed to fit into a backpack or utility belt now long returned to the dust of the ages. Sitting in the back of the room were two swords.

The swords were the most incredibly beautiful blades that I had ever seen in my life. For you to appreciate this completely, I must explain that I take a great interest in swords. While I was in the military, I was given cursory training in fighting with a saber. I have always thought it unfortunate that in the twentieth century, such a civilized weapon should be discarded in favor of the assault rifle. I enjoyed sabers and joined a club of military officers and enlisted men who practiced their use and studied them. It was great fun. We went to many museums to see beautiful old swords, and I must say that in our matches staged purely for our own enjoyment, I became quite a good swordsman. So when I say that these were swords more beautiful than any that I have ever seen, you may see that I do not speak without some experience in the subject. There was a long sword and a short sword. They were somewhat similar to the Japanese samurai swords known as the katana and the wahizashi, with gentle sloping blade and two-handed hilt, but unlike the Japanese weapons, these blades had sharp pointed tips. They too, were beautifully carved with unearthly designs, and the hilts were set with large gems, which sparkled in the light of the now fading ember. The sheaths, if ever there existed any, were long rotted away.