Whatever Gods May Be Read online

  "Beautiful, don't you think, Bug?" Zolan asked suddenly, making an awkward stab at small-talk. "See how she holds the monster? It's amazing; every morning her timing is perfect!"

  Thalick hissed indulgently. His enormous mandibles were incapable of human idiom, but this did not present a communications problem between himself and the man. An incisive telepath, Thalick had no need for speech. This was indeed fortunate, because the only sound he could produce that was audible (if not thoroughly alien and unintelligible by human standards) was a loud, slimy hiss.

  Unnecessary as it was, though, Thalick hissed regularly when communicating with Zolan; it seemed to the Stinger that the man actually appreciated the noise. The great Thelerick had wisely deduced that what was said was sometimes nowhere nearly important as how one said it. Consequently, the hiss was produced as an aural complement to cerebral interchange solely for Zolan's benefit.

  BEAUTIFUL, ZOLAN were the silent words, mingled with a hiss, that were delivered to the man's brain as a response.

  Zolan closed his eyes and chuckled to himself again. How patient you are, Thalick old buddy; but then you've had to be, haven't you? You've had an eternity to practice that faithful art. You -- a thing that can never die.

  When Zolan finally turned to face him, a wave of unpleasant sensation flooded over Thalick. His vitals froze up, while his tail lashed nervously from side to side. The hairs on his legs bristled sharply, like those on an angry cur, and his two claws came together and vibrated softly like the agitated drumming of human fingers. Bad news was about to be delivered.

  "Thalick, what I'm going to tell you is going to be hard to believe." Zolan stopped here for emphasis, then finished, "But you must believe me!"

  HSSS?

  Zolan reached out to pat a nearby claw.

  "I'm going to die today, Bug: Tonight, to be exact, when the Little One returns."

  HSSSSSSS----HSSSSS'.

  "No, I'm very serious," Zolan said quietly.

  HSSSSSSSSSSS?

  Zolan slapped a pincer irritably and growled.

  "No, I'm not drunk either. I'm telling you I've had it. Tonight's the night. I thought you should know."

  Thalick did not respond this time. Quickly, he executed a series of mental examinations on Zolan to determine the quality of his ludicrous statement. Too often in the past had the Stinger been the victim of something Zolan called a practical joke. Thalick did not completely understand "sense of humor" or laughter; hence, such a useless function, and its origins, totally eluded the perfectly disciplined mentality of the Stinger.

  But this time, Thalick's peripheral mind-scan revealed no familiar playfulness in Zolan's thoughts. Here was cause for concern, Thalick noted; for it now appeared that the man believed unreservedly what he had imparted to Thalick. Making a half-hissing, half-gurgling yowl, the Stinger twitched into action. Antennae waved in Zolan's direction like angry serpents, as a rapid, minute examination of all Zolan's physiological functions (and in most cases, dysfunctions) was quickly performed.

  Zolan grumbled irritably, but allowed Thalick to initiate his bio-scan.

  Data flowed back to the Stinger; most of it was not terribly surprising. Zolan's health was admittedly dreadful. Arthritis ran rampant, arteries had hardened; lungs were perpetually congested; overall nothing unusual to note for a man three thousand years old.

  Dismal as Zolan's condition was, however, Thalick could find no impending evidence to support the man's conviction that today would be his last. By the Stinger's rough estimate, Zolan was good for at least another year -- possibly longer, if he accelerated his potent administrations, and Zolan took special care of himself. Puzzled, the Stinger repeated his bio-survey.

  A follow-up appraisal revealed a most disturbing discovery. Thalick's analysis the second time around revealed considerable brain-tissue deterioration; several times worse than the previous year during Zolan's last informal examination.

  The results struck the Stinger like a blow. From what he could determine, Zolan was quickly losing his mind.

  Not even hissing, Thalick started to tremble all over; a strange, strangled peep was all that escaped his mandibles. His monstrous claws suddenly went limp in front of him. Thalick concluded that Zolan's absurd belief that he was going to die was a direct result of a dying brain. Bearing this in mind, Thalick realized that whatever he transmitted from hereon would have to be done with this unpleasant fact taken into account.

  Now, though far from human, Thalick quickly considered what the most humane response would be to Zolan's deranged declaration.

  NO DIE TODAY---MAYBE, TOMORROW! Thalick relayed awkwardly.

  Zolan broke into a grizzled, toothless smile, which was followed by a hearty cackle. His merriment, however, a moment later degenerated into a fit of racked coughing.

  Thalick zeroed in on the man's painful congestion, transferring most of the discomfort onto himself. Due to his enormous size, Thalick could create an empathic synapse that was sufficient to alleviate Zolan's agonizing seizure. For only a second, the Stinger twitched and undulated in pain. Then, both he and Zolan simultaneously quieted, as Thalick absorbed the full trauma from his friend's decaying body.

  "Thanks," Zolan coughed once more, leaning on one of Thalick's pincers for support. "You do that very well."

  As Zolan straightened up, the Stinger hissed sharply. He then hoisted his tail over his head and let it dangle a few inches from the man's haggard face. Hissing once more, he urged Zolan to take the prescribed treatment.

  Surprisingly, Zolan only nodded and waved the rubbery appendage away.

  "That won't help anymore, Bug," he gurgled miserably, "there's only one cure for me - and by tonight I'll have it!"

  NOHSSSSSSSSSSSSS

  Thalick arched his back angrily. Zolan refusing a stiff jolt of 'stinger-brew' was a bad sign indeed. Much as the long-extinct cow could process and synthesize food and nutrients to produce milk, so could Thalick also perform a similar feat by voluntarily realtering his blood chemistry to manufacture vast amounts of alcoholic plasma. Much to Zolan's delight, the Stinger's ultimate beverage had considerable bite to it, and from the small sample of whisky Zolan had provided him with centuries earlier, Thalick's marvelous system had been able to analyze, disassemble and store the chemical code of the liquor in his DNA for all time.

  The 'stinger-brew', as Zolan had referred to it thereafter, had kept him lolling along through the years in a kind of numb bliss. Furthermore, the unique substance served a therapeutic purpose as well, supplementing Zolan's normal diet with concentrated levels of vitamins, proteins, and most importantly, oxygen.

  Zolan had serendipitously come upon the drinking man's fountain of youth; a truly medicinal martini that was fairly crammed with healthy ingredients. Now, when Zolan refused Thalick's hundred-proof pick-me-up, the Stinger realized there was sound reason to worry.

  Thalick suddenly became obstinate.

  HEART GOOD. LUNGS GOOD. ALL INTERNALS GOOD VERY OLD----BUT GOOD. TAKE.

  Thalick again urged, lowering his tail over his head for Zolan to extract the panacea it held.

  I GIVE - I KEEP ALIVE----TAKE!

  "It wouldn't matter, Bug," Zolan insisted, rubbing the claw he was resting against like a trained masseur attempting to knead out a painful kink from an overtired muscle. "Even with the brew, I would be just as dead with the Little One's passing tonight."

  ZOLAN WRONG. THALICK NO BELIEVE?

  Thalick forced himself to calm down, remembering at last that he was dealing with a man who - at least according to his readings - was on the very brink of mental collapse.

  Zolan rested both hands on the pincer in front of him, then leaned over until his face was only an inch from Thalick's nearest eye. Today, he would have to be patient.

  "Bug, do you remember what Valry said that last day?"

  Thalick abruptly quieted at the mention of the name. Valry Phillips. Yes, he remembered what she had said; there was nothing about Valry that Thalick would ever
forget. Hissing quietly, he gave Zolan his answer.

  VALRY SAY: REMEMBER - AND I RETURN

  "That's right," Zolan continued, "She said, 'remember me and one day I'll return.' Well, I've always dreamed of Valry, Bug. And she talks to me in my dreams. When I'm alone, she's always there with me. When I'm sad, she's there again, and when I'm afraid, as I've been all my life, she's nearby putting me at ease."

  Zolan stopped and turned to look at the flaring Little One. "You ask how I know that tonight will be my last?" Zolan said in a barely audible whisper.

  YES, I ASK

  "I know because she told me."

  Before Thalick could properly digest this new pearl of madness, Zolan had scaled his claw with a speed and agility that was astonishing for a man nearly three thousand years old, and flung himself against the base of the Stinger's massive tail. As if he had just taken position in a rather comfortable lounge chair, Zolan stretched out his legs and yelled to Thalick.

  "Onward, oh ugly one," he squawked, "I have a date tonight; a date with the worms."

  WHAT - HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS?

  "The worms," Zolan repeated through a snort, "Shakespeare, Thalick, Shakespeare. Haven't you ever heard of Shakespeare? He was a great man, my friend. And he liked worms." Zolan chewed his lip in thoughtful silence before adding: "They also liked him!"

  Finding this final utterance nothing short of hysterical, Zolan lapsed into uncontrollable giggling. Thalick tried patiently for the hysteria to pass, mulling over in his magnificent brain what a Shakespeare could possibly be.

  "Well, what are you waiting for?" Zolan suddenly snapped. "Let's be off. Mr. Worm awaits!"

  WHERE? The Stinger questioned resignedly.

  "A final look at my kingdom, Bug," Zolan said dramatically, "A tearful good-bye to all that was - and all that will be." I've ruled well here, Bug. I hope that where I'm going, I can serve as gracefully. A worm, a worm, my kingdom for a --

  Zolan didn't finish. Howling peels of laughter clutched him for the next several minutes, while Thalick hissed miserably to himself. The Stinger briefly considered tranquilizing Zolan; with the way he was carrying on, he might yet fulfill his own prophecy of doom. Thalick quickly rejected the notion, though. Zolan wasn't really doing anything that could possibly worsen an already hopeless condition. In fact, the Stinger couldn't remember the last time he had seen his friend so joyful.

  Though the ache of despair for the man's mental unhingement still sickened Thalick, it was now cushioned somewhat by the obvious painlessness Zolan was experiencing. This comforting observation helped the Stinger make his next decision rather quickly.

  Thalick rose to his full height and moved to the edge of the cliff. The nickname 'Bug' had been an apt alias; the Stinger most closely resembled a giant scorpion. Only the ringed antennae, the stubby wings tucked neatly on his back, and the house-like dimensions of Thalick separated his appearance from that of the miniscule insect that once populated these deserts by the millions.

  HOLD, ZOLAN Thalick warned, then flung himself off of the mesa's edge.

  Zolan continued laughing as Thalick floated down to the valley below. Bouncing in the sand, the Stinger refolded his wings and broke into a lazy crawl. He listened to Zolan babbling happily behind him, then turned his attention to the burning suns above.

  THREE

  By now, the faster traveling Little One had positioned itself squarely in the center of the primary. The dim light that pervaded across the sands was haunting and strobe-like, casting shadows over the dunes and rocks where shadows had no right being.

  Suddenly, the sky lighted up as it had done once before at dawn, creating a charged curtain of energy extending to all points on the skyline. For as long as the interphase lasted, the spectacular borealis would display its fireworks performance across the world. Indescribably beautiful, it would continue for only an hour, yet it was a necessary palliative for a planet that would die without such treatment. The coupling of both suns briefly affected the magnetic field of the globe, causing a chain reaction in the atmosphere. The child of this union was the colorful ionized blanket Zolan and Thalick were now watching. The borealis precipitated complex chemical transformations high above the stratosphere that would one day completely restore the ozone this world had lost ages ago which had shielded out the deadly rays from the sun and space.

  Already, in the past few centuries, the vestigial layovers and mutations of Mankind, as well as other sapient life around the globe, were decreasing rapidly and the number of deaths due to cancer from ultraviolet exposure had been greatly reduced.

  As Thalick scrambled down into the valley, the sky raced through the color spectrum of dark blues to bright oranges, occasionally punctuated by blinding flashes of white. The atmospheric pyrotechnics were a terrifying tribute to nature, but to both Zolan and the Stinger, the skylight brouhaha was only mildly distracting. After five centuries of morning and evening displays, the borealis was no more alarming to them now, than the rising of the moon had probably been for the ape-like ancestors to Man a few million years earlier.

  And yet, a civilization that had come much later and that had flourished briefly before immolating itself in atomic hell fires would have had a much different reaction to the celestial miracles transpiring overhead. Indeed, the people of that crushed society would have been awed and dismayed at what they would have seen.

  Accustomed to a sky with only one sun, they would today have had to adjust to a sky with two -- a sky over a tired and ravaged world they had helped to smash and which they had known from the beginning as Planet Earth.

  By midday, Thalick had traveled nearly fifty miles. He had wanted to turn back several hours earlier, but Zolan had insisted that he keep going. The two friends had been heading east and now they had arrived at the outskirts of the largest human community on the planet - New Phillips.

  New Phillips was the first city ever founded after the Day of the Little One, and it was the largest. Zolansville had come much later, and therefore had some catching up to do in terms of population. Both cities lay only thirty miles from one another, on either side of the enormous mountains that cut off the desert from the ocean. Still primitive, their peoples only advanced to the comparable age of Bronze in Old Earth history, New Phillips and Zolansville formed ostensibly the new cradle of civilization. Though human beings littered the planet to some degree or another, roving in packs for protection against the still ferocious, mutated temperament of nature, it was here, in these two places, that the seed of learning and restoration had begun to take place in an orderly, disciplined fashion. John Phillips had started the wheel turning, while Zolan had contributed axles and a carriage five centuries after Phillips had died. Thalick would finish the monumental job of tutoring following Zolan's demise, but it had been the collective heritage that these three extraordinary teachers had passed on to humanity, that would insure its survival for ten thousand centuries to come.

  Like Zolan and Thalick, Phillips had been a time traveler. An Earthman from the civilization that had brought the world to ruin, Phillips had been abducted by the unholy Dark and delivered to his planet several million years into its blackest future. It was a world, John Phillips quickly discovered, out of a Lovecraftian novel; a place of monsters; a place of demons; a place of death.

  The War had doused the Earth with radiation and plague and had nearly rendered it impossible for Man's survival. The great upheavals of continents and seas, coupled with infernal wind and heat storms lashing across the far corners of the globe had destroyed nearly all forms of animal life. Man slinked through the poisoned centuries like a dying snake, barely able to spawn new generations to insure the preservation of the race. He became primitive and savage, forgetting the gifts of tongues that his more brilliant and ultimately more destructive ancestor had bequeathed him. Physically, he grew bigger, but to the same proportion, he became weaker and his intellect diminished with neglect. Most tragic of all, after a million years of racial perseverance, Man's only r
eward in the end appeared to be death.

  The War had been responsible for Earth's destruction, yet an ultimately more devastating force had appeared. The Dark. A formless entity of blackness, it had cloaked the world like a shroud on the day of the War. Long after the mushroom clouds and fallout had dissipated, the shadow of the Dark continued to foul the Earth with unspeakable horror. A kind of universal cesspool, the Dark was a portal to unseen dimensions which acted like a great wad of cosmic fly paper, sucking in and spewing out everything that came near it. For Thalick, Phillips and Zolan, the Dark had been a terrible trap. But for the parasitical Redeyes, a door to freedom had materialized - and yet another predator of humanity was on the loose.

  A monstrous import from the dankest corners of the Dark's domain, the Redeyes had reigned unchallenged on Earth for a millennia. When Thalick and his followers became marooned on Earth, they were able to provide committed, if not largely ineffective, protection to the human survivors. But by this time, the Redeyes had existed aboard the planet for two hundred centuries, and had occupied the dead cities of Man like vermin. They had glutted themselves so much on the human game, that when Thalick and his small band of star travelers arrived, Man numbered only a few thousand over the entire world.

  The vampires could do little against the Thelerick Stingers and within a century, the small colony of men under their protection became the largest food target on the planet for the voracious Redeyes. For thousands of years, the Stingers continued to migrate their herd of men across the globe, always staying just far enough ahead of the roving vampire hoard to insure its protection.

  But, like Mankind, the Thelericks were faced with too many enemies. For while the death rate due to Redeye attack was virtually nil, the Dark and its mysterious draining properties was killing off Thalick's colony at an accelerated rate. The Stingers watched helplessly, as did later John Phillips, the slow deterioration of Mankind. Phillips introduced what little knowledge could be useful to his dying people, including language, the construction of weapons and scant medical techniques, but like the Stingers who had watched over the colony for so long before, he sat by miserably while hundreds of men and women perished monthly.