Whatever Gods May Be (17 page)

It would now return such tender ministrations in kind.  But first there was the taking -- and releasing -- of prisoners.

Deep within its murky interiors, the warp acted as a seal for the many dimensional planes that existed.  One dimension rarely had access to another without some phenomenal upset of natural forces that would allow for such a synaptic occurrence and for countless untold ages, these places of light and darkness, solid and ethereal, good and evil, had been isolated unto themselves.  No entrances had been created, no exits left opened.  The delicate balances of the universe had thus far been preserved.

Very soon, however, all would not be well.

For now, a great mistake was in process.  The balances of creation - so mysteriously and painstakingly constructed by the unseen forces of nature - were being tipped precariously by the will of ignorance.

NINETEEN

The cosmos screamed; the heavens balked with disbelief.  And like the blink of an eye, or the transition from one thought to another, a bridge had suddenly appeared in a place where one had never previously existed - or for that matter - should ever have existed!

A door had been opened.

And something had been let out.

Freedom!

Though still formless and inanimate, It could already discern that shape and flesh were assembling around it.  The cloudy haze and claustrophobic walls of its prison-like world were falling away, and in its place a cool, open space of blackness began dawning ahead.  Legions of others like It had been released as well; though It knew that it alone possessed a superiority that made it the king of its kind.  But at least It would not be alone.  For too long, It had been so alone!

Bright lights brilliantly flashed past It.  Suddenly, It was no longer just a thing; He had become...finished!

Earlier He had wanted to somehow express his joy over the escape; now, He found that this was no longer impossible.  Still plunging through the flashing depths of this strange void, He could now smile, for He now had a mouth and eyes.  Hands and feet were formed within the sluggish span of seconds, and within one millionth of such a time period, a complete body had been constructed.

He knew what He had wanted to become from the very beginning; and now He had fulfilled that simple whim.  Too long had He remained the disassembled mass of consciousness deprived of corporeal existence.  Now, He was ready to assume his rightful place in the scheme of things.

Something round and familiar appeared ahead.  A planet.

Of course, He recalled humorlessly! Just like old times! He turned around on himself to check on the Others.  They too had completed transformation.

His followers.

There was very little difference in their shape changing from what they were now to what they were only seconds before; mad, mindless horrors, the blood-eaters were nowhere near like Him.

He alone possessed the powers of the infinite - and infinitesimal!

But regardless of the Others' dumb inferiority, they would be useful to him.  For he now had an army behind him!

Looking at the world below him, he realized he would soon have a battlefield to fight on as well.

Rush hour.

The Hall blinked once, then twice in surprise.  And then it proceeded to choke.

Like a sinking ship, the time vortex began to lose

integrity, unable to sustain the convergence of traffic invading its interior.  Bad enough that it had been dragged out of its cold environs long before the appointed time; it could perhaps have tolerated such an indignity for a brief interval without reprisal.  But to be flooded with an inordinate amount of flak simultaneously and within the same, small astrographical area - was a transgression which simply couldn't be allowed to pass unpunished.  Indeed, the Hall could do nothing else now but ride out the chain of events forced upon it by those ignorant of its dangerously, tyrannical nature.

Released suddenly from the mysterious leash that had bound it so securely, the Hall, under normal circumstances, would have been content to smother itself again for the sake of all universal laws of physics.  But one of its limbs which had mercifully crushed out the life of the tormenting agent which had attacked its body would not follow the same benevolent example.  Mistakenly, it had touched the incompatible tissue of a three-dimensional universe.  Now, as if it had suddenly recoiled and screamed in pain, the Hall-sub access became a crazed jumble of cosmic nerve endings.  Divorced from the main Hall body light years distant, this sub-Hall became battered and trapped to an existence that could only be termed as agonizing.

It would, however, not bear the brunt of its agony alone.

Space around the shattered Hall-access became strangled; a nearby moon was sent hurtling out of the solar system -- and the blue-green planet to which it once belonged was about to be targeted for a terrible revenge.

The transients from one of the lower planes came first, howling and screaming all the way.

They were legion in number - and they had a leader.

TWENTY

Ten Thelerick Stingers had completed the voyage -- and were already exploring the new real estate.

Challenger II followed thereafter.

And at last, the cause of all of the sub-Hall's problems was expelled in the form of the Rover Starglide and its lonely, unconscious little crew -- Zolan Rzzdik.

The Hall smashed into Earth in silence; in fact, had it not been for the War waging below, it would have passed through the world harmlessly, eventually collapsing back on itself and not returning to real space for a hundred years.  Gradually, the waters below would have calmed and the winds and land would have ceased their tormented antics of the past two days.

But the Hall, like its prisoners, had a far different fate awaiting it.  Merging with the atomic hell fires of Man's final conflict, the warp unwittingly fused with the irradiated atmosphere, cloaking the sky with a blanket of poison, more insidious and more enduring than the any fallout.  The Hall, within seconds, became a very different creature -- a dark, black thing that would torment the fragment of humanity below it for the next million years.

There are, however, blacknesses in nature far exceeding even those found in space, the Hall - or death.  Evil, for instance has a color far darker than all of these; it is at times brilliant and blinding in its dimness.  Lucifer, a creature of evil to a world now dying, is known as "the Light Bearer"; a translation riddled with contradiction that would have amused this creature immensely, had he existed - or does exist - depending on one's point of view with regard to the anthropomorphisms of evil.

But perhaps there is a place or thing that rivals even evil for loneliness - or worse, colorlessness.  And it is an environment that few creatures in all creation could hold a claim to memory, for it is a kind of living anteroom to both existence and nonexistence.  Like death, it has allowed no one who has become intimate to its confines emerge with any kind of recollection of conditions therein.

This place is called the womb.

But now - like the Hall warp in Earth neighborhood - one womb in the universe was about to break every rule in the book.

The creature was fully formed; a human fetus at the final stage of development, only hours away from breaking free of its liquid prison into the alien wonderland of oxygen and nitrogen.  The living warden to the yet unborn child lay unconscious to events transpiring within her; Cathy Phillips, along with her husband, had passed out immediately following her entrance into the rebellious space warp.  Now Cathy's unborn child slowly opened its eyes and stared out at the small ocean before it.

Already, there was an intelligence sparkling in the eyes that bespoke something far superior to humanity.  A smile formed on the fragile lips; a smile of wonder and expectancy, and yes, of sadness too.  The human awareness - that part of the child that would have been terrorized at being so cruelly trapped in this watery hell - had not yet awakened.  It would not be needed until the time of actual birth.  Later, it would dominate the life of the child for years thereafter -- and this sharp, wonderful brilliance radiating out of the eyes now, would only come into brief, fleeting grazes of contact with the mortal half near the close of its life.

For only a few seconds, the eyes remained open, as if the watcher was just checking to see all was in order before the greater adventure of birth commenced.

Then, all was as it had been before.  In the next few seconds, the eternal peace of ages was about to be interrupted by a flashing - and painful pandemonium of activity.  Air would be sucked greedily into unused lungs, and a howl would pierce the silence of an eon.

The great duty of life was about to begin.

And the child Cathy Phillips held within her would be the first in history to be delivered one million years after its conception.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal

With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter

Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her

From many times and lands.

TWENTY-ONE

The Future

The etchings were crude and childlike; hardly a work of art by any set of criteria, primitive or otherwise.  Indeed, though not pretty scenes to behold, the language on the walls in the forms of simple pictographs were clear and concise, and a story could be read from them that would remain extant for the next ten thousand years.

Stonepainter regarded his work with satisfaction.  He had given no thought to posterity's interest in his scrawls, though he did paint with the hope that other members of the tribe could share with him what he had drawn.  Like all men, in all ages, who took the trouble and pain to communicate an idea, there was an underlying certainty for Stonepainter that his work alone possessed a particular brand of beauty.  He was not critical of the lack of detail or color in his drawings; since his were the only ones he had seen in his life, he had no other standard with which he could compare to effect a more imaginative judgment.  Such subjective analysis and artistic growth would have to wait a few more generations, perhaps to become latent in one of Stonepainters offspring.  Until that time came, though, Stonepainter was the reigning genius of his age.  He alone had taken the trouble to plot down his people's history, and for him, every dent, every slash, every jagged scrawl against the harsh basalt, was a stroke of unmistakable splendor.

Stonepainter had worked quickly, as he had done in the past, when he and the tribe could only stay in one place for a short time.  The cave had been a wondrous windfall for Stonepainter.  Usually, he was forced to mark his story quickly against the first available boulder he could find, and hope that the harsh winds and sands around it would not blast it away after he had departed.  Since it was impossible to return to the same spot twice, Stonepaintrer was never allowed the luxury to double-check to see if what he had wrought had not been blown to distortion by the elements.  Regardless, Stonepainter never worried about such dismal possibilities; he enjoyed the moment of creation alone, and never preoccupied himself with the endurability of his past labors.  The cave's advantage lay in the fact that he was allowed hours of undisturbed writing which could not have been possible had he been working outside where sudden wind or hail storms raged so often and with such severity, forcing him to take shelter, lest he be ripped to bits.

Stonepainter had remained in the cave for several days.  Since it was only a hundred yards from the main body of the tribe, located at the lip of a ridge overlooking a murky stream winding down from the mountains above, he did not feel cut off from the rest of humanity.  This was comforting for Stonepainter, and with the knowledge that warm fires were so near, he had allowed himself to be completely absorbed with the task at hand.

His work was now finished.

And it was a thing to be proud of indeed.  He began reading the pictographs from their starting point near the cave floor, which would end some thirty feet later across the wall and at eye level.  The tableaus were ingeniously linked together by sharp lines pointing to the next one in correct succession.  It was an impressive detail, and one which saved Stonepainters work from turning into an indecipherable ménage reminiscent of cave drawings that had occupied yet another stone age millions of years earlier.

In the beginning, the story depicted darkness over the world.  It was a bad darkness, and one which Stonepainter indicated as being devastating to his people.  Falling from the Darkness on top of the people he had drawn, Stonepainter introduced a hideous creature into the scenes that was greatly exaggerated in appearance.  The carnivorous vampires were roughly human shaped, so the artist had taken license to create almost comical caricatures, to denote the difference between men and the invading Redeyes.  Several tableaus of graphic horror followed, as various scenes detailed the feeding practices of the vampires on the people of Stonepainter's world.