Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

Not just because they were so disdainful of the civilizations of humanity and its allied races, so contemptuous of the old Commonwealth as to ignore it entirely, not just for the billions they killed without even seeming to notice, the Titans were hated most of all because they took what had already been made lush and green and adapted it to themselves rather than do the hard stuff that earlier Commonwealth teams had done in the days before the Titans. They had had to create or import or liberate the necessary water; they’d had to build the atmosphere, balance the climate, sow anemic or dead worlds, make them live again and bloom.

The Titans were the epitome of evil because they did not create; instead they stole creation and distorted it.

The lightning danced all around, the air smelled of ozone, and the temperature dropped precipitously as the air was emptied of its moisture in a series of great torrents like tremendous floating waterfalls. The wind whipped around the grasses, stinging those whose skins had not yet toughened to the elements, but in the maelstrom the babies’ cries were completely drowned out as they were soothed and comforted, cradled in their mothers’ arms.

It seemed to last forever; it always seemed that way, and when one’s only clock was sunrise and sunset and the position of the sun and the moons in the sky, nothing of those benchmarks could be seen through the storm.

But it did end, with most of the night yet to come. At least it paused, as these storms often came just at or just after sunset but could bring their friends along like ranks of marchers across the sky on and off, on and off, for many hours.

And now there was the sudden immediate quiet. The cannon roars grew ever more distant as the sounds of the first insects came, signaling the end of this round of thunder and lightning and rain. The smallest babies’ cries could be heard, and the frantic moves of the mothers and wet nurses comforting them so that there would be no noise that would carry. The Hunters usually preferred to work during the day, but even after dark, the infants might tell someone that a Family was near, that easy pickings were within reach.

It was said, too, that some of the animals from the old days had been modified and that large and dangerous things roamed, but in all the years the family had been in this spot there had been nothing so dangerous. If the beasts were not simply rumors and old wives’ tales, then they were certainly not native to this region. There were some animals about, true, but they were grazers or very small predators easily dealt with. Humans had no natural enemies save the Hunters of the Titans and, of course, other humans.

Not that any more enemies were needed. It was certain that there were more Hunters roaming this area than many, if not most, others. The Titans lived but a week or so away, in their shining bubble city. Father Alex had seen it from a vast distance as a small child, but he had no desire to see it again. It was said that should the Titans be looking out, or should you see one of them or they you, that you would be attracted to the place like marflies to candystalks, and you would walk to your doom.

That part he had no desire to ever test, for he knew that the Titans were experimenting with captive people and breeding them for some reason. The Hunters were but one example of this, and a particularly frightening one. Still, it ate at the core of what made someone human that for all the deaths and destruction and all the deprivations that the Titans had brought upon humankind, he had no idea what they looked like, or if they looked like anything at all. Even as a child, looking from afar at that great energy bubble, he remembered seeing only the suggestion of structures of some sort inside it, but all distorted, all so terribly strange and different that it was hard, after all this time, to even visualize what he really had seen.

They never came out, except rarely inside their bright floating bubble ships—maintenance, probably, tending to things that were out of balance or just checking on the development. Perhaps they could not come out without those bubbles. Perhaps they could not breathe this air, or they could not abide things in the air. Perhaps they themselves were too fragile to exist outside their powerful devices. Still, why would they create such a place as this and then not use it for anything, not even harvest it or even come out and admire their handiwork? That was yet another mystery.

It was said often that in the old days humans also knew and interacted with creatures that were not humans, yet not angels or demons, either, but simply different creatures from very different worlds. Still, all of them had enough in common with humanity that they had been able to interact as two intelligent species.

Whatever the Titans were, they clearly did not consider humanity their equals, nor even close rivals. Pets, perhaps, or even lower, but certainly not thinking creatures who could turn worlds into gardens just as they could.

There was always a chill after a storm; the water had been wrenched violently from out of the air, yet even a slight breeze in this situation could chill wet bare skin and hair. He knew, though, that this was not what the old ones would have considered cold. His mother had told him once of it being so cold that water turned to something soft but solid that came out of the sky and covered the ground. He had seen this from the plains as he’d looked to the tall mountains to the west, which often were so high they rose into the clouds and were hidden from view. When you could see their tops, they were often white in color, white with what his mother had told him about. But in those days it had happened here for part of the year. That was hard to imagine. White powder that was solid water falling all over and covering the plains… It was a pretty vision, but only that.

The sentries were already moving back out to protect the family, while the Mothers were coming back together, forming their kraal and settling back in for the night, while the men not on duty established their own place and tried to find somewhere in the grass where they would not be sleeping in the mud. It would not take long for things to go back to normal, they all knew. Even now they could sense water coming back into the air, and the ground was absorbing even that huge amount of rain, leaving things moist but much more comfortable. Even the clouds were parting, breaking up, and through one massive hole they could see the vast number of stars out there, not all of which were yet under the Titans, and the faded reddish larger moon, Achilles, and the smaller, almost faded out yellow-brown of Hector.

The two moons were quite comforting to them all, since they had been there before and would probably be there after, long after their names were forgotten. Having seen no other sky, they had no idea what it was to live under the light of a full globular cluster, nor did they think it was unusual that their moons were dull, of differing colors, and orbited in opposite directions from one another. They did not and could not know that the two moons were only apparently close, and that great Achilles was actually not just twice the size of tiny and irregular Hector but much farther away and thus far larger, and that one day poor Hector would slip just enough out of its delicate balancing act that its bigger brother and its planet would eventually tear it to bits.

Father Alex did not shake his depression even as the relief and joy swept through the Family like something liquid and sweet. Instead, it added to it, for surviving a near nightly event one more time wasn’t exactly what he would consider a highlight of life.

But it was a highlight of their lives.

Each generation was distanced still more than its predecessor from the old life and what it had meant to be human. At least he was old enough to remember when people still wore clothing, and had things like food in sealed containers that did not spoil. The reterraforming of Helena had been global but not deep. Beyond a two-meter depth, much of what had been buried down there or stored down there remained, until the first-generation and second-generation survivors finally went through it. But now—what did these young ones know? How quickly within Father Alex’s own lifetime they had descended into a level of primitiveness even he would have thought inconceivable.