The Revolutions of Time Part 7

Most had taken some type of weapon, a pitchfork or club or occasionally a sword, for the threat of war was a constant, but none of them had any idea that their only danger was behind them. It was not all in the clear though, for a patrol of guards equipped with long spears and clothed with a tough, leathery armor were making their way to and fro along the tops of the walls, where there was a platform of about five feet across that served as a road to the soldiers in their watches. It was evident by their countenances, though, that the guards now on duty were more interested in the fire than in their immediate vicinity, thinking, no doubt, that the laurels were to be won there and not at Nunami, and as such, they paid little heed to the walls, instead walking with their necks craned precariously to the north.

We were able to jump unto the wall silently from our concealed roost on the treeway when the nearest patrol had pa.s.sed by. From there we went along the wall a short way until we came to a battlement, there taking the downward leading steps that brought us to the ground. Once there we were pleased and hopeful at what we saw: everything was abandoned, and no Zards were in sight save those on the walls, whose gaze was cast elsewhere. We set to work, then, according to our preset plan, which was to break up into groups of two and cover the city with our atomic anionizers, so as to spread the destruction as evenly as possible.

Wagner and myself were partners, and we took the central district, near the government's center, the palace, and the Temple of Time, which rose above the city like a great tree amidst a desert. It was, in fact, the very structure that had so stood out to me during my journey through the prairie upon my arrival, and once again its sobering sensation struck me, and I found myself staring up at its top, a full 800 feet high, the bottom being an ornate and elaborate temple. The middle, which supplied most of its height, was a long, round tower, and at top there was a spherical pinnacle which had what looked to be a room in it.

Wagner soon called my attention back to our work, and we busied ourselves with planting a bomb at the base of the palace, using a smaller type anionizer, which, I noticed, was set just right so that while all of Nunami would be leveled, the temple with its great tower would be beyond the impact and left standing. Just as we had set it correctly, we heard a high-pitched whistle, which was the preconcerted signal among the raiders to use if any danger was nigh. We looked up directly and saw its reason: a squadron of Zards had been garrisoned inside the palace and had not left like the others, apparently because its sole purpose was to protect their king, who did not leave the city, being preoccupied with business and not seeing the flames. When he did go to the window, he saw the fire, and rushed to see what was about, but instead of finding out, he ran into us, who were right outside the palace.

Wagner dashed wildly through the streets in an impressive show of dexterity, and did a wall-jump between two lofty buildings to gain the wall. The others had done likewise, having been trained by a lifetime of conflict to have nerves of lightning speed and earthly strength. Their instincts had come in subconsciously when they had seen the cause of the alarm and they escaped, without thinking of me in the critical moment. I lacked such strength and speed of mind and was caught as soon as I had seen the squadron, aided, probably, by the fact that upon seeing me the king had become excited and rushed at me with great speed. When Wagner had first turned around and saw me their prisoner, he looked crestfallen and hopeless, for he had no way to rescue me. He held the remote control for the atomic anionizers in his hand and was about to set them off and make good the plan, but before he could, our eyes met for an instant, and we connected beyond time and s.p.a.ce, experiencing a strange intra- personal deja vu. All was silent and still in that instant, and I saw him struggling inwardly: would he detonate the anionizers and make good his long awaited plan, or would he retreat and leave the city unharmed, for though I was wearing the electron reflecting suit, the collapse of all the high rise buildings would litter the ground with debris from them, and all on the ground would be crushed. Would he spare me from death, or his people? In that instant his face spoke more than many others' do in their entire lifetime. It was cut through with a contrasting countenance, and yet inside of his eyes there was something foreign to them shining through, something that I had never seen on his fretless features before: evil intent. I could not tell if it was natural to them and simply well hidden, or if it was an alien expression, but it was fearfully expressed, and his eyes seemed to say, even at that great distance, that he took a third course, that he would save me, but not for my sake, instead for his peoples'. And then it pa.s.sed, for he looked away, replaced the remote to his belt, and leapt to the ground, where the other Canitaurs were awaiting him. I saw him no more until the situation was much changed.

Chapter 8: The Temple of Time

I turned slowly away from where Wagner had disappeared over the side of the wall and faced my captors, the Zards. Chief among them was the King, he being a foot or two taller than the others, with a graceful and powerful pose that struck awe into the eyes of the beholder with its innate command and dignity, both of which flowed from it as naturally as water from a well. There were about twenty guards in the squadron that protected the King, but it was not so much from the terror of them that the Canitaurs fled, nor was it because of the guards that patrolled the walls and were sure to join any fray attempted, it was instead an apparent fear of the King, and rightly so, for his demeanor was fierce and sophisticated, as if he were not just a warrior nor solely a scholar, but a mixture of the two that gave him an aura that inspired fear, some unseen presence that filled the air around him and sent his neighbors into a reverencing awe reminiscent of a lover's sacred euphoria, intangible yet undeniable.

As I turned to him, he smiled and greeted me softly and pleasantly, in such a way that seemed contrary to his nature. Instead of being terrible and glorious like the crash of thunder or the din of waves, his voice was melodious, subtly so, like a soft summer rain affecting the dreams of a slumbering child as it falls gently on his face. There was a rhythm that ran through it, like poetry, yet not like average poetry, where the rhythm is forced and the lines deformed to its ungainly warble, but like heavenly poetry, where the rhythm is beyond the conscious and into the subconscious, where it inspires a feeling of quaint remembrance of itself, as if it were there and not there at the same time. And while it was soft and pleasant, it was not feminine, for it was a strong baritone, reinforced by its own superiority and strengthened by its wit and sobriety.

"Greetings, o' chosen one," he said to me, "I see that you have arrived safely."

"Yes, quite soundly," I replied, a little taken aback on two fronts: firstly that he was not angry or indignant that I had attempted to destroy his kingdom and take his life in the process, and secondly that he seemed to expect me, as if I were his midday tea partner.

"I am glad, for I would wish you no harm, though your Canitaurian friends obviously felt no such concern. But just as well, for they always were unpredictable. I'm sorry that there is no one here at the moment, or we should have a great welcoming parade for our newly arrived kinsman redeemer, but they are off at the lake, inspecting the fire I suppose. I must admit it caught me off guard for a moment or two, and at first I was actually quite surprised. I soon remembered, though, that our friends the Canitaurs would have gotten some notions in their heads of a battle, at your arrival. It must be a grand sight in any case, and not one to miss."

I gave him a strange look, for I was a bit confused myself at the att.i.tude he donned towards me, very friendly, as was Wagner, as I recalled, though it seemed as contrary to his nature as it did to the King's. He saw the expression of my eyes, and seemed to read right through my thoughts and see my apprehension of punishment, for he beckoned to his guards to leave us alone. They moved quickly and uniformly, a well-trained unit, and positioned themselves in a line formation along the street. The King and I then strolled down their midst, they walking along with us at a distance of a few yards, which was all that the closely built buildings would permit. In a moment or two we reached the Temple of Time, which was on the far side of a large square plaza that opened up between it, the palace, and the government center. Once we reached it, he led me inside and the guards took up post around its outside.

"You need not fear," he told me when we were alone, "You are among friends here. You see, the Canitaurs were not the only ones waiting for a kinsman redeemer, the Zards were as well. That day that you were seen going into the Canitaur's outpost was a big disappointment for us, I had almost begun to think that you were beyond our reach. I am sure you know all about the conflict between us, and the circ.u.mstances of your time that brought its beginning about?"

"Yes, I do," I responded as we walked through the great entry hall of the temple, lined with bookshelves and a rich red carpeting. He was silent for another moment as we crossed into another room that led to a chamber with a long table in its center and a great many statues and works of art scattered throughout its whole. There was an altar at the far end, built into a giant statue of a White Eagle that graced the entire wall, it holding the altar in its giant claws.

He saw me look at it and told me, "This is the Hall of Time, and that is the altar to Temis, the G.o.d of Time. It is a very sacred place, to both us and the Canitaurs, for it was built by Temis himself, before the race of man inhabited the earth. By the time any men came to live on Daem, it had been buried by the dirt and debris of thousands of years, but when the Great War took place, the shock uncovered it and revealed it to men, a sort of revelation that came only as it was needed the most. Daem's war started over the control of it, and to a point still is. To a certain extent is has helped us greatly, since the Canitaurs are afraid to lay siege to us in the regular fashion, for fear that it will be laid to ruin, and then our fate sealed in flesh and bone as well as earth and stone. But come, there is something I want to show you," he told me.

With that he started over to a door in the wall adjacent to the entrance, which, as there were only two doors, was the only other exit.

It led to a long, winding stair that went up to the top of the tower that I had seen from below. We walked up it in silence, more from awe of its magnificent construction on my part than fatigue in climbing its steep stairs, which wound on and on almost indefinitely. There were no windows in the tower, and only a few paintings to liven up the spa.r.s.ely decorated walls, yet they needed no adornments, for they were beautifully constructed from a strange stone that split and colored in a marvelous twisting pattern.

At last we came to the top. It was much like it had appeared to be from below, for it was a large gla.s.s sphere that sat on the tower, like the dome on top of a light pole. It was divided in two, and the stairs went right through the bottom half and opened into a circular foyer that then had a small flight of stairs running up to the main room. There were little closets and such in the empty s.p.a.ces on the bottom floor. The upper room was a good thirty feet in diameter, and the walls and ceiling were all made of gla.s.s, very st.u.r.dy and insulating, yet completely transparent. On the floor was an odd carpet that was smooth and thin, like a silk or fine linen, yet very strong. There was a rounded table on the side of the entrance hole opposite the stairs, and a curved couch that sat against the wall behind it, cut perfectly to its circular outline. Two cushioned chairs sat at the table and a small end table leaned up against the couch, on top of which there was a medium sized spygla.s.s, that is, a telescope.

The sun was just coming up and shining its golden hues on the surrounding lands, which were beginning to darken as the fires of Lake Umquam Renatusum died down to a faint glow in the center of the forests of the near-north. It was the first time that I had gotten a bird's eye view of Daem, and I was amazed at its beauty. The plains stretched on one side of Nunami like a broad field of gold in the morning light, its dew drizzled gra.s.ses waving in a solemn and dignified manner to and fro like the constant beating of the earth's heart, and when looked upon abstractly it moved as if one great beast of benevolence, holding itself in unison as it chorused back the silent tones of life. Its edges draped down to the ocean like a curtain of woven sunlight on the eastern and southern sides of the island of Daem, and on the western side of Nunami the great forest came up right to its edge. There was a little of the forest between the ocean and the city on that side, while to the north there was a great stretch of trees, all the way until the ocean again came into sight in the far, far north. On the ground the trees of Daem seemed like mighty towers and battlements of nature, and on the treeway one felt suspended in air hundreds of feet above the ground on a cloud of green and growing foliage, but from afar and above they were revealed in their true splendor, shooting up from the earth as if they were the arms of the ground itself, grasping huge cl.u.s.ters of leaves and branches far above in their tightened fists. Some way into the forest, the ground sprang up into mountains that were as fierce and behemoth as the trees that clothed them. They were terrible to the eye and mind, as evidences of the power that exists outside of oneself.

The city of Nunami was also revealed to me for the first time in depth.

As I have said, it was surrounded by a thick, tall wall made of stones and precious jewels, with four gates, one at the furthest extreme in each direction. It was a circular city, made mostly of the same materials as the wall and temple, which were a plain, silvery stone; a dark rock with inherent patterns; a mixture of cobblestone and a colorful compositor rock; and a vast array of metals, everything from bra.s.s to silver to platinum. Made in an ancient style, the buildings were tall, the average being what was equivalent to at least a dozen or two stories in the pre-desolation times, and they were close together, built along roads paved with cobblestone and lined with trees whose girth, though not as monstrous as those in the wild, was still great.

There were farm fields and vineyards and orchards and meadows for grazing animals all within the city walls, and not just congregated around the outside, for there were buildings all around the wall's perimeter, but scattered among the other buildings in a natural and pleasing way. In the southern part there was a lake that was of fair size, and a fleet of fishing boats anch.o.r.ed at its sh.o.r.e showed that it did its part to contribute to the city's well-being. Several of the trees throughout the city were especially conspicuous in their grandeur, for they rose hundreds of feet from the ground and had great waterfalls flowing down from their tops, as if they were crying great torrents of tears down from their aged faces, though if in sadness or joy, I couldn't tell.

To the east there was land visible from the height at which I found myself, though in the distance it became hazy and I could not make out its distinct features. It was evidentially corrupted, however, for it had an uneasy look about it, as did the ocean, which was a faint, pale shadow of the rich blue it was in my childhood days. The sky as well was tainted, and it looked to be filled with the acc.u.mulated atrocities of countless generations. The clouds were thick and bluish, and the spherical mural of the sky itself had been greatly dried, cracked, and crumbled since my time, for it bore the marks of pain, the marks of the labor pains of the earth's last gestating doom. And well they should, I thought, for in the years since my natural life it had seen much suffering and much destruction.

The King broke the silence, saying, "Lovely, isn't it, Jehu? And it is all yours for the taking."

"What do you mean," I asked him.

"Exactly what I said, the whole world is yours, if you want it."

"But how?"

"All you have to do is join us, the Futurists, and we will reward you with all the power and glory that you can imagine."

At that I sobered up and replied, "But what of Onan, of my quest to stop the doom of humanity from materializing in this final juncture. He is the one who sent me, and he is the Lord of the Past, whom the Canitaurs follow. I am his agent, why would I turn from him to serve mere mortals?"

He laughed a slight, sarcastic laugh, "Tell me, Jehu, to whom did he send you, your ancestors or your offspring?"

"To my ancestors," I said slowly, "Though the Canitaurs seemed to imply that my time was long ago. To be candid, I do not understand."

"Of course you do not understand, and how could you, when no one has told you? You see, Jehu, the question of time is not so linear as you would think. You know full well that the conflict between the Zards and Canitaurs is over how to address the renewing of the earth: they would send you, our kinsman redeemer, back into time to prevent the nuclear wars, while we would send you to the future to bring back its completion. They hold to traditions as if they were the foundation of life, while our people have no traditions in the traditional sense, if I may use that oxymoronic phrase, but we look to what will come instead of what has pa.s.sed. History is unimportant to the present, Jehu, because we have advanced to the point that we do not make the same mistakes as our ancestors. In the past, they waged war needlessly and did so in the name of humanitarian deeds. But today, we are advanced enough that we use peaceful and just means to reach our ends. In your day there were many absurd beliefs, for example the so-called 'fats' that were so vehemently avoided, are actually quite healthy, while on the other hand, protectionism and socialism are quite absurd ideas, and yet they were held dear. But today we have no such presuppositions, today we understand the world and know justice where your society knew only its shadows. We do not need to be bound by the mistakes of yesterday, for we have the enlightenment of today, and while the Canitaurs cling to the old time's ways, we have progressed to the point where we have no need of such traditions."

He continued, "It may seem to you foolish to follow Zimri instead of Onan, because Onan's realm has already been established and grows greater everyday, while Zimri's doesn't exist and never will, but you miss a very important point in the understanding of these matters. For, as you probably know, time and matter are the foundations of physical existence, and while the two components are independent, they are also parallel. Matter is always revolving, from its simplest form in the atom to its greatest in the universe, everything is revolving and rotating.

So is time. Imagine time as a galaxy, revolving continually around the black hole at its center, that is, an enigma that is actually devoid of all matter. Time is revolving around a great enigma as well, which is devoid of time, that enigma being eternity. Eternity is not a place where there is infinite time, but rather a place where there is simply no time, it is the counter-part in the temporal realm of a black hole in the material realm. And just as a galaxy in the material realm revolves around the black hole at its center, in the temporal realm, the flow of time itself revolves around eternity. That means that time repeats itself over and over again, just as on earth a year is the amount of time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun once, in the temporal realm, an age is the amount of time that it takes the time continuum to revolve once around eternity. Just as every year the climate on the earth is similar, every particular day having its usual temperature and weather, and every general period having the same seasons, so is time.

While every age is completely new and original, they all follow the same pattern, and through every age the same general events happen, though a few of the small details change from one time to the next.

"So you see, it is true that Onan sent you to both the past and the future of your original time. The Past.i.tes would say that you were sent forward in time, because you existed in our past, while the Futurists would say that you were sent backwards in time because you existed in our future. While this would seem an unimportant question, it is not, for we have to choose one or the other. You, the kinsman redeemer have to choose one or the other. That is why you were sent, you have to decide. Our fate must be decided by a mortal because the G.o.ds have vowed to never interfere directly in our ways again. You must decide, Jehu, for you hold the fate of humanity in your hands: in all the other ages before us, the wrong decision was made, and every time some great calamity came that somehow threw the earth into a great ice age that destroyed all life for many millenniums. We know that the wrong decision was made, but we cannot tell what it was that was done. Tell me Jehu, will you join the Futurists? Surely you can see that the Past.i.tes are just that, stuck in the past, with their obsession with traditions and legends. They are of the past, but we are of the future, we are the progressive ones. Dear Jehu, choose the future, and when the earth is spared from the great impending doom, we will set you up as ruler of the world to show our grat.i.tude. Will you join us, friend?" he asked me with the most entreating eyes, though of somewhat doubtful sincerity.

There was a deathly silence that followed, for I was thinking long and hard about what I should do, until at last I spoke, "Your majesty, I am afraid that I will have to turn you down and remain with the Past.i.tes.

Onan sent me, and it is Onan whom I shall follow."

The King shook his head and sighed dejectedly, for a moment he looked disheartened and crestfallen, but then he again resumed his former prideful pose and said to me, less humbly and entreating than before, "Very well, I was afraid that you would do that. I have no choice now but to keep you here indefinitely as a prisoner, until such time as you realize the error of your ways and repent. It may seem improper to refuse the decision of the kinsman redeemer, but I must, for I will not allow my people to be destroyed by your ignorance."

With that he turned and walked quickly down the stairs to the door, turning to me just as he reached it and adding with an almost spiteful intonation, "But then again, what clarity of mind can be expected from someone from the unenlightened past." He then left the room, closing the door with a powerful thud, after which I heard a small metallic click and his strong, commanding footsteps fading down the long stairway. As soon as the sound had died away and he was no more to be heard, I ran down to the door and tried to open it, but to no avail, for it was locked. There was no way to escape: I was a prisoner of the Zards.

Chapter 9: Mutually a.s.sured Deception

The light of the newborn sun rose that instant far enough above the horizon to shine directly into the tower's upper dome-like room, and I was awe struck by the texture that the lights created on the gla.s.s of the walls, for when it shone through at just the right height, a previously invisible picture came to view. It was of a towering clipper ship with sails that stretched across their masts like skin over the bones of a pleasantly plump fellow, the wind billowing them about at a leisurely rate. Waves broke gently upon the ship's side as the crew rested peacefully on the various cables and nets, all except for the one-legged captain who was busy looking at the map and accompanying charts. It was a quaint and beautiful scene, though it soon pa.s.sed away as the sun moved upwards in the sky, and I wouldn't have mentioned it, except that as it disappeared, I found myself looking at where it had been, but instead of the ship, I saw directly through the gla.s.s the inhabitants of Nunami arising and beginning their daily business, a scene which I might have missed since I was previously wholly absorbed by the picturesqueness of the sky.

Usually the Zards would arise before dawn and be about their business, but because of the great flames of the night before, they had no doubt had trouble sleeping, and therefore slept later than usual when they finally did fall into the lands beyond consciousness. They hustled and bustled about the streets of Nunami, each doing their own business, and there was much business to be done in a city in which all provisions are provided internally, with no trade or commerce outside whatsoever. There were merchants and stores still, yet they were not traders but producers, each making their own wares as they sold ones they had already made. Butchers sat in their shops with their blood-stained ap.r.o.ns already donned, cobblers and tailors were busy with the day's repairs and new creations, the milkmen paraded the streets slowly and methodically, somehow getting their products to the citizens before 8 AM. The farmers and herdsmen were also at work in the fields that were spread throughout the city, plowing and sowing, and being joined by those who had just finished distributing the milk.

All was commonplace and normal, I thought, and I was surprised, for the Zards were not at all martially minded, a great contrast to their Canitaurian brethren. Of course, I had never actually met any of the Canitaurian commoners. It seems to me that the only ones who really are martially minded are the leaders and politicians, everyone else seems to mind their own business, and sometimes I wonder if there would even be any wars if there weren't any governments with the power to wage one.

There was a group of Zards by the government center, which was close to my involuntary quarters, and they were leaning over an opening in the aqueduct that ran down into the lake in the southern section of the city, branching off from there into all the various sectors. They were dumping a barrel of a fine, white powder into the water that was running down into the lake, and after the first had been poured in, they added another and another until they had put a good five barrels into the water source. Once they had finished, they took the empty barrels to a large cage that was down the road a bit, inside of a small grove of trees and shrubs. Inside the cage was a mult.i.tude of little beetles that crawled around every which way and were evidentially feasting on a large chunk of glowing material. For a moment I was surprised, and wondered what it was they were doing, but then it hit me: they were the delcator beetles that Bernibus had told me of earlier, the ones that absorbed the radioactive material and stabilized it. As I learned later, they had two good uses, one was that they consumed the unstable materials and neutralized them, but the other was that their droppings, when mixed into the water supply, also gave all that consumed them a greater tolerance for nuclear material. It was almost ironic that their whole way of life was dependent on the feces of another life form, but I will refrain from turning it into a metaphor.

The female Zards wore a black headpiece that mostly covered their faces, and at first I found it strange that for all his talk of progress, the King's people still oppressed their women, perhaps there wasn't as much progress as he had boasted, or, more likely, he was unaware that there was no such thing as progress, just different manifestations of oppression. History repeats itself, they say, and indeed it does, both literally and figuratively.

There suddenly arose a great commotion in the square between the Temple and the palace, and as I looked, I was surprised to see that there was a large crowd gathered. In the middle of the square there were two groups of ten Zards facing each other, with a single Zard in between them, and around the outside of the plaza area stood a hundred or so spectators, apparently watching those in the middle. A moment after I started watching, the solitary Zard, the referee as I found out, walked to the edge, and each of the groups walked to one of the opposing sides and then turned about to face the other. The referee let out a loud yell and in a flash, the two teams ran at each other headlong, until converging somewhere in the center of the field. As they met they dived upon one another and pushed and shoved until the left team had isolated one of the right's players, who was the only one on his team wearing an orange jersey. They dived on him and jumped until the whole field was piled high with them, and then they slowly began to disembark. Once all of the opposing team's players were off of the orange shirted Zard, all was silent and still as the referee held his hand aloft and began counting with his fingers. Everyone held their breathe and stood tensely by as they watched. Just before the referee's tenth and final finger was counted, the orange shirted player rose from the ground, amidst the screams of joy from his team and about half of the crowd, apparently their fans. The two teams then returned to their respective sides, and again the referee yelled loudly, signaling them to rush at each other once more, and more of the same ensued, this time it being the other team's orange shirted player to get pounced on. Once again there was a high pile on top of him, and once again, as they crawled off and he was exposed, the referee began to count. Except that this time the orange shirted one never got up. The other team cheered again and so did the other half of the crowd. The referee went to a pole on the sidelines and put up the number '1' on it while a few bystanders picked the Zard up and carried him off the field. They continued to play in this fashion for awhile, going until one team or the other had no longer any players to be jumped upon, but I was too disgusted at their violent nature to watch, and instead walked over to the end table and picked up the telescope, taking back as I did my thoughts about the innocence and gentleness of the common folk.