Zach Hughes - Seed of the Gods

—are the logical results of life, the end results to this time. Nature, in her wisdom, has created in us the ability to cope with the problems of a dying planet, but she has not made the task an easy one. It is up to us to help as we await her next move.» Such talk did indeed interest Rack. He was, after all, involved in life. But still there was something in him that drove him to question the ways of his world. Was the ultimate pleasure service to one's race? If so, why did every Far Seer have at least one Keeper? Not solely for the purpose of storing information in the blank portion of the Keeper's mind. No. Rack, like all Healers, spied like a curious child, and often saw the Far Seers lost in their own pleasure, using the bodies of the Keepers. It was a pleasure alien to the nature of a Healer, of course, and it was indulged in with an amusing regularity. To a Healer, curiosity was the source of pleasure, and as he matured, Rack discovered that he was never reprimanded when he did his duty and saved the titillation of his curiosity for his free time. He reasoned that he was as much entitled to his pleasure as Red Earth was to his. During his free periods he filled his mind with the dim legends of the Old Ones and engaged in what the Far Seers looked on as Healer weakness, rambling on his long, mobile legs over the wide, empty space of the area. His ability to heal the damage he suffered from the hard projectiles and the toxic gases gave him mobility. His curiosity and his wanderlust sent him to the thin frost of the far north, to the steamy heat of the middle regions, to the waters of the west. He scaled mountains on the way, crossed a great river and climbed the broken face of the rift to the west of the river. In a box made of the Material, were the treasured results of his travels: two hard-material nuggets, one the size of his thumb ball, the other tiny, almost invisible. The large one was heavy in his palm, and irregularly shaped. It could be scratched with a sharp, extra hard piece of the Material and it held an endless fascination for Rack. The smaller nugget was fast being eaten away, for even in the protective atmosphere of the establishment it accumulated brown waste on itself from time to time and, when cleaned, became smaller and smaller. But Red Earth was mistaken in thinking that Rack was merely interested in accumulating the hard-material nuggets because they possessed a certain rarity. To Rack the nuggets did not represent riches, as they did to citizens of the eastern lands. The nuggets held a dark mystery for him. Rack was constantly frustrated in his pursuit of knowledge regarding the Old Ones. He avidly sought out the dim, old legends, retained for their aesthetic values. To the Far Seers these legends were a part of the culture, saved for the picturesque beauty of the thoughts of the first Healers. Some of the most beautiful were the thoughts of Rose the Healer, preserved from deep antiquity. Ah, Rack sighed, how they rang, coming from the peaceful, childlike mind of an aging Keeper in the steamy land beside the southern sea: And when the sun flared up,searing the Old Ones, vast clouds of smoke and particles covered the sky. And the Old Ones died, fornicating even in death, to give birth to the New Ones who had scales. «Negative, negative,» sent his teachers. «It is the thought of Rose the Healer,» Rack protested. «He speaks in symbols,» said the teachers, «for the process of evolution crawled forward on feeble legs through"—Rack again received an image of a vast series of sun cycles—"to meet the slowly deteriorating conditions.» «And yet,» Rack argued, «Rose the Healer said that the sun flared up and killed the Old Ones suddenly.» «It is against logic,» said the teachers. «For have we not observed the sun for countless sun circles and has it not been stable?» «How do you explain this, then?» And there were others that had tails and died birthing and those with malformed features and stomachs without vital organs. «We know little,» they admitted, «for the Old Ones had no Keepers and all their store of knowledge, however insignificant, has been lost. We can only presume that such a race, with none of the advantages of civilization, with no kept records, existed on the plenty of a youthful planet, feeding and breathing the bounty of nature. There are also legends of other living things. And yet we find no proof. Surely, had the Old Ones built we would find remnants of their achievements, for is not the Material everlasting, resisting the acids of the air and the smoke of the burning earth of the southern lands?» «Could they have built of the hard materials?» «Negative, negative,» they sent. «You have traveled far. You have talked with many Healers who have nuggets, and yet, have you found the source of the hard material? Is it conceivable that there was once a life form on the planet capable of producing such a lifeless material? Could you possibly think that enough of the hard material could be amassed to construct even one establishment?» «But there is more than one type,» Rack said. «I have seen yellow and white, dark and light. Some nuggets feed on themselves with dark waste, while others, such as my large one, grow only a white, powdery waste when exposed to the yellow of the air.» «Another proof,» said the teachers. «It feeds on itself. In a short span of sun circles an establishment made of your hard material would be reduced.» The hard material was indeed fragile. But Rack had a new idea. «Perhaps,» he said, his heart beating with excitement, for he was being daring, «the hard material came from the bowels of the earth.» He received warning vibrations, for he was treading on dangerous ground. But he plunged on. «Perhaps the Old Ones penetrated the surface?» There was sadness in the answer, not anger. «It is conceivable. For the Old Ones died, did they not?» In truth, the Old Ones had died and left behind old legends and nothing more. In the final days the bodies of the Old Ones covered the Earth. So were the thoughts of Rose the Healer marred by impossible statements, making the total credence of his thoughts less than reliable, for no planet, however young and fruitful, could support so much life. On all the continent the Eastern Group Establishment was the largest concentration of the Material known and at peak production periods in the summer it was the most populous. The picture showed Power Givers in a grouping equal to the number of digits on Rack's left hand, a paired group of Far Seers, and rock-weighted Healers diving in the thick water. The whole group numbered no more than the digits on Rock's hands and horny feet. If only, Rack lamented, the Far Seers had not erased the old thoughts. If only they had saved more than just the beautiful thoughts of Rose the Healer—what a delightful concept his name evoked, a confused mental image of something delicate and bright and beautiful. But only Rose was whole in the minds of the Keepers. Rack's only other source of information on the Old Ones was an occasional misfiled tidbit. The discovery of these excited Rack wildly. He had found mention of a sunken city in the mind of a northern Keeper, a city in the eastern sea that towered to the sky. An unknown Healer far back in antiquity had been the source of the reference which had been filed with readings of air purity at the tops of various mountains. And on the western sea, a group of Healers told of another city of the Old Ones they had heard of, a city that spread over what was now the plains of glass in Red Earth's area beside the great river. There was even a name for this lost city, but the name was difficult to conceive, for it suggested no known image. «Could it be,» Rack had asked, «that the Old Ones truly knew civilization and constructed establishments?» «I think,» said a young, visionary Healer, «that question is answered by the picture of city.» He had not truly considered what the image implied.