Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

The convulsions stopped, although he continued to breathe hard. He managed after a moment to sit up, and he looked confused, then puzzled.

Karl Woodward watched it, and leaned forward. “Thomas? Can you hear me, Thomas?”

Somebody behind him said, “It’s a miracle! Lazarus risen once more!”

Woodward turned to them and frowned. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. It could be technology, or it could be the Opposition.”

Cromwell had not responded to their calls; still, they watched him get unsteadily to his feet, look around, then shake his head in wonder, turn, and head back towards the shuttle. He left the suit where it was.

The technicians on the ground had heard but not seen the action. Still, they were unsure how to react when Cromwell returned to them.

“Brother Cromwell? Are you all right?” the botanist called to him.

The question seemed to throw him for a moment. “I—I’m not sure. I would swear upon a stack of Bibles that I’ve just died, but aside from a real burning in my gut someplace like a badly upset stomach, I feel okay. Damndest thing. Up until now I thought I’d already gone through everything. Now maybe I have.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “My implants are dead. You still in contact above?”

“Yes, sir. They want you back up there and fast. The Doctor in particular.”

He looked around. “Yeah, I think so, too. Any sign of the boy?”

“Boy?”

“Yes. I was with one of the survivors from the lifeboat. He wasn’t there when I—came to.”

“Not here.”

“Well, without his gun he’s no threat to whatever that is. I think we’ll find him, sooner or later. Let’s get back up there.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, sir?” one of the techs asked.

He nodded. “Once you die, everything else is an anticlimax,” he responded.

It had not been an easy final decision to make, but Karl Woodward decided that he had no choice. For better or for worse, Balshazzar had sufficient ready food and water and a nearly ideal climate to support over eight hundred people right out of the box; no dependence on flaky technology when you had nowhere else to go.

Cromwell’s recovery from what appeared to be certain death was another factor. The thing down there might be evil, good, or simply an alien, singly or collectively, as stuck as they were, but in any case it had no percentage in doing away with them.

A medical scan on Cromwell had shown traces of a clean and absolutely lethal wound; it was also clear that the damage had been repaired with a minimum of internal scar tissue in a way no surgical computers could match, and that the damage left seemed to be slowly but methodically cleaning itself up. Cromwell had no memory of that last death strike, only of being knocked out by something and awakening gasping for air. When he watched the recording of it, though, he was somber, silent, and he never once asked about it nor spoke about it again.

In Woodward’s case, he felt that he’d made the commitment the moment he’d sent the shuttle down the first time. He still had doubts, though, not so much about sharing with an alien presence but rather whether or not there was a sufficient challenge there to keep the people’s faith renewed.

They found the remains of the woman who’d shot Cromwell and shot at the creature; it was as if the life force had been sucked right out of her, and she was rapidly decaying into the ground, just so much fresh fertilizer. They did decide to give her a proper Christian burial, although she probably wasn’t a Christian nor much of a believer in anything, but it was all they could do.

Olivet was a monstrous hillside presence, but it wasn’t good for an awful lot other than shelter against the frequent gentle rains. Something here tended to drain any standby power sources, so that within weeks they were left with only those devices that could use backup solar power. Even that wasn’t great; the gas giant that gave such a spectacular sky half the time wasn’t nearly as efficient for solar-powered devices and in fact blocked some useful solar wind.

Of Alan Chu they hadn’t seen or heard a trace. If he was still alive, if he hadn’t also been a victim of the creature or gone mad and perhaps done away with himself, he certainly kept away from the colony. When fear replaced faith, you made your own Hell.

John and Eve, along with a huge number of other couples, were married in a natural grove of trees festooned with colorful flowers.

For a while they set up guards and perimeters and security patrols, but it didn’t last. There just didn’t seem to be any threat, not to them, anyway.

Woodward presided as much as he could, and held regular teaching sessions, but he knew that there was trouble down the road and it worried him. Already many of the new colonists had taken to nudity or at least nothing more than a symbolic type of fig leaf. Why bother, when the temperature rarely varied from twenty-four to thirty-one degrees Celsius? Besides, it wasn’t like any of them in this day and age could make clothing using only needles and thread, even if they’d had a lot of thread.

The truth was, that worried him less than the fact that they didn’t really have to work any more. It was all just there . A balanced, vitamin-enriched diet of fruits and veggies whenever you wanted, and in whatever quantities you wanted. Nothing much to sustain a fire, so little or no baking, but that was okay. Freshwater streams, juice-filled fruits—you had all the basics, and in something of a tropical paradise.

One day Woodward, wearing only his old broad-brimmed straw hat, walked up to where Olivet remained, like some ancient, abandoned temple to the Greek gods of yore. He kept his book collection there still, and it was pleasant to read and sometimes to just look out and think.

This time, relaxed on the grass just beyond the “tent” assembly, he thought of Captain Sapenza and his curse and wondered if the Captain had been right. The ultimate revenge against the Bible thumper. Send him to an ersatz Eden and watch all that faith just dissipate.

It wasn’t going to happen, at least not on his watch. After, God would anoint someone else to lead them, teach them, give them their choices.

There was a crackling sound nearby. The creature had not bothered them nor attempted much communication with them, either, after that first encounter, but they always knew it was there. It no longer bothered or frightened them. You can be afraid of the unknown only so long when it doesn’t bite.

Woodward sensed that, today, the thing was much, much closer to him than ever before, yet there was nobody else around to see and hear. They were all down there, in the meadows and forests.

“Come on up,” the Doctor called loudly. “I’m not doing anything much that can’t be disturbed. It may be about time that we talked, don’t you think?”

He was conscious that the rustling was very close now, perhaps only a few meters to his right.

The distortion effect was always fascinating. Viewing through a glass, darkly, he thought, but that really wasn’t it. More like viewing through a misshapen but transparent glass container that rippled and distorted whatever was behind, kind of like a trick mirror.

He turned back and looked down on his people below. “I have to thank you for Thomas. He is the closest friend I have in this life, and I would have missed him a great deal.”

There was no response. He didn’t expect one; even Cromwell hadn’t been able to get the thing to really communicate, yet both of them had the feeling that the thing understood them.

“You are losing them, you know,” came a voice. It was a strange, nonhuman voice, whispered, throaty, rasping, yet clear.