Gods of the Greataway

by Michael G. Coney

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

Millennia ago Starquin visited the Solar System. Because he is huge - some say bigger than the Solar System itself - he could not set foot on Earth personally. yet events here were beginning to interest him, and he wanted to observe more closely. So he sent down extensions of himself, creatures fashioned after Earth's dominant life-form. In one of Earth's languages they became known as Dedos, or Fingers of Starquin. Disguised, they mingled with Mankind. We know this now, here at the end of Earth's time. The information is all held in Earth's great computer, the Rainbow. The Rainbow will endure as long as Earth exists, watching, listening, recording and thinking. I am an extension of the Rainbow, just as the Dedos are extensions of Starquin. My name is Alan-Blue-Cloud. It is possible you cannot see me but are aware of me only as a voice speaking to you from a desolate hillside, telling you tales from the Song of Earth. I can see you, the motley remains of the human race, however. You sit there with our clubs and you chew your roots, entranced and half-disbelieving as I sing the Song - and in our faces are signs of the work of your great geneticist, Mordecai N. Whirst. Catlike eyes here, broad muzzles there, all the genes of Earth's life, expertly blended, each having its purpose. Strong people, adapted people, people who survived. The story I will tell is about people who were not so strong. It is perhaps the most famous in the whole Song of Earth, and it tells of three simple human beings involved in a quest who unwittingly became involved in much greater events concerning the almighty Starquin himself. It is a story of heroism and love, and it ends in triumph - and it will remind the humans among you of the greatness that was once yours.

Release date: April 23, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 278

Sample

The quiet boy was back.

Ellie saw him first, on a dull, windy day when the guanaco clouds swept in from the sea, promising rain with every gust. He stood at the rim of the tide, his cloak of pacarana skins flapping, ignoring the waves that rushed past him.

“Manuel! Hi, Manuel!”

She clambered down the bank to the beach, ran barefoot across the sand and arrived at his side, breathless. “Manuel,” she said again. “You’re back.”

At last he looked at her. “Hello, Ellie.” His eyes were different. There was a remnant of a vision in there, so that he didn’t see her with all his mind. And he looked taller, his barrel-chested figure towering over her. Suddenly she was a little frightened of him, and her half-formed plan didn’t seem such a good idea.

She tried it nevertheless. “While you were away, we had some high tides. Your shack was damaged.” She indicated the tumbledown structure huddled under the brow of the low cliff.

“I’ll soon put that right.”

“Perhaps you should stay in the village for a while, Manuel. We have room in our house, if you like.”

“I’ll manage, thanks.” He’d turned away again and was gazing at the horizon so intently that she looked, too, but could see nothing.

“It’s that girl, isn’t it,” she said unhappily.

“What girl?”

“I saw her around here — you can’t fool me. A skinny girl with next to no clothes on. And sometimes with your clothes on. She looked as though she’d expire at the sight of a snake cloud. She stayed with you for days. And then you both went away. Where have you been, Manuel? I … I’ve missed you.” Her head spun a little. She didn’t know if it was because of the oxygen that the wind was bringing from the sea or the nearness of Manuel.

Manuel said, mostly to himself, “Belinda’s out there somewhere. But how can she be? There are no islands — the Rainbow said so.”

“The rainbow? What rainbow?”

“It’s a big computer. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Come and stay with me, Manuel. Please.”

He looked at her properly now and smiled. “Maybe. I’ll walk you back to the village, anyway. I have to go up to the church. I need a few answers.”

“You won’t get them from Dad Ose.” Ellie laughed breathlessly, happy now that he had half promised.

“I’ll get them from God,” said Manuel, and Ellie’s smile died.

*

The village was preparing for the forthcoming Horse Day celebrations. Fat Chine, the village chief, strutted to and fro, supervising the seamstresses who worked on the bodies of the symbolic combatants — the Horse and the Snake. Nearby, the head of the Snake was being painted in bright and threatening colors, having been formed of clay and baked in a pit. The head of the Horse required little attention. The Horse was the hero of the celebration and the same head was used from year to year. The Snake was the villain and always lost the battle and was destroyed.

Subconsciously, each villager cherished the hope that one year the latest version of the Snake would prove to be of such a terrible aspect that it would put the Horse to flight and provide the spice of variety to the festivities, but this hadn’t happened yet. Dad Ose, the priest, hoped it never would. He had quite enough difficulty persuading the villagers of the superiority of Good over Evil without their wretched little pagan ceremony adding to the confusion.

Meanwhile Insel, the most devout of the villagers, to the extent of being totally cloud-struck, lay on his back praying to the heavens for good weather.

Horse clouds keep blowing from out of the sea,

Make easy breathing for you and for me.

Manuel waved to the villagers as he plodded up the hill to the church, and they waved back, if half-heartedly. They were a little afraid of him. He had curious powers and strange friends — and an unwholesome lack of respect for their leader, Chine. For such a young man he was enviably self-possessed. Tongues were clicked in disapproval as Ellie left his side with obvious reluctance and approached the village huts.

“You’ll come to a bad end, my girl,” shrilled old Jinny. “The Snake will come for you one day, mark my words!”

“I can outrun you to the Life Caves any day, old woman.”

“Not if you’re dreaming on the beach like a lovesick llama, making eyes at that young goat!.”

Meanwhile, the young goat himself, mind full of wonders, was nearing the ancient sandstone church. The priest huddled against the lee wall, sheltered from the wind, gazing at the mountains and practicing his daily Inner Think.

The fabric of my body is replenishing itself, he told himself, absently fingering an ancient religious symbol in the form of a faceted piece of rock, which hung around his neck. Each cell is regenerating even as I think, and I shall therefore never, never die. The Clock that tells my body to age is stilled, stilled.

If the villagers had known of Dad Ose’s daily practice, they would have pointed the finger of ridicule. So he had kept his secret, imagining it to be a matter of exceptional spiritual control over the baser bodily processes, and certainly not a thing the villagers would have understood.

In fact, the explanation of Dad Ose’s longevity — he was now 496 years old — would have alarmed the priest himself. There were tiny alien parasites within his chromosomes, known to an earlier age as Macrobes, and they didn’t want to die. Since the priest was determinedly celibate, it was unlikely that he would ever sire descendants for the Macrobes to attach themselves to. So it was in the aliens’ best interests to keep Dad Ose alive — forever, if necessary.

“Dad Ose!”

The priest sighed, recognizing the voice. Manuel was back from his wanderings and had come to pester and embarrass him again. Mentally releasing each body cell from his care, he stood, dusted off his robe and turned to greet the young man.

“So you’ve come back. Did you find your girl, Manuel?”

“No, I didn’t. I met a lot of people and … things, but I didn’t find Belinda. I know she’s out there somewhere, but I must have been looking in the wrong place.”

“So what are you going to do now? Continue your search?” asked the priest hopefully.

“Yes, but first I must talk with God. Do you mind if I use your church for a moment?”

On a previous occasion when Manuel had made such a request, Dad Ose had become involved in a futile argument. Now he had learned his lesson. “Certainly, Manuel,” he said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Thank you.” Manuel passed through into the dim interior and Dad Ose followed, smiling to himself. He knew what was going to happen next. Manuel — that naive young fool — walked confidently to the vestry door and addressed the Almighty as though he were a friendly neighbor.

“Are you there, God?”

And Dad Ose’s smile broadened as the reply came: “I am here, Manuel. How can I help you?” It was a quiet voice, little more than a whisper, but Dad Ose was close enough to hear it. On the previous occasion he had not been close enough, and had, to his shame, panicked when it appeared that Manuel was listening to a ghostly voice that he, the priest, in his own church, could not hear.

“I did everything you said, God,” said Manuel, “but I didn’t find Belinda. Once I thought I had, but it turned out she was just a figment of my imagination. I went to a place called Dream Earth, where if you wish for something, it happens. And, well … I wished, without realizing it. And there she was, just as I remembered her. Then she was gone. Will I ever see her again?” His voice became urgent. “I have to know!”

“You will see Belinda again,” came the whisper.

“When?”

“In the Ifalong, when the Triad is reunited.”

“The Triad? That’s what you call me and Zozula and the Girl, isn’t it?”

“In the Ifalong, which is all the happentracks of what you call the future, the minstrels will sing of you, Manuel. The Triad will become famous throughout all the human peoples, right down to the Dying Years. They will sing of the Artist and the Oldster and the Girl-with-no-Name, who will be heroes in their spoken-and-sung history — the Song of Earth. You will defeat the Bale Wolves and remove the Hate Bombs, thus ending the Ten Thousand Years’ Incarceration of Starquin, the Almighty Five-in-One.”

“Well, fine. But when will I see Belinda?”

“Very soon, after the Triad is reunited.”

“Are you telling me I have to join up with those two again? The Girl … well, she’s fine. But Zozula is a pompous old ass.”

“On many happentracks the Triad will not be reunited. The Girl will remain a neotenite for the rest of her life, Zozula will die in the service of the Dome — and you, Manuel, will never see Belinda again.”

“Happentracks are all the possible ways things might happen?”

“That is true. They are infinite, diverging and multiplying from any given instant.”

“So you’re threatening me. If I don’t join up with those two, I won’t see Belinda.”

“I don’t threaten, Manuel. I foretell the Ifalong. It’s your choice which happentrack you follow. And since there are an infinite number of Manuels, you will follow an infinite number of happentracks. I have pointed out the most advantageous.”

“Advantageous for who?”

“For the almighty Starquin. You are simply my tool, Manuel. You will find the situation has certain benefits.”

“Well, thanks,” said Manuel, annoyed, turning away abruptly and almost colliding with Dad Ose. Together they walked outside.

“Well?” asked the priest.

“I must do some more searching. It’s very complicated, Dad. You wouldn’t understand.”

The priest was nursing a secret smile. “I wouldn’t understand? Me, foolish old Dad Ose? Well, Manuel my son, let me tell you one thing I do understand. You have not been listening to the word of God. You have made an arrogant and stupid assumption. Tell me this: Do you really think God would bother with you, a young beachcomber from Pu’este? God has more pressing problems, I assure you.”

“Maybe he hasn’t. After all, you heard him, too. I know you were listening.”

“What I heard, Manuel,” said the priest, slowly and distinctly, “was an old woman standing outside my church and talking to you through the cracks in the wall. Not God. Not an almighty voice from above. Just an old woman who has nothing better to do. No.” He held up his hand as Manuel was about to contradict him. “I know this for a fact. The last time you spoke to God — as you call it — I saw her walking away. I was going to apprehend her, when I was interrupted.”

“By Wise Ana?”

“She is not wise, she is just a storekeeper. But yes, she happened along, and the old woman got away. How did you know?”

Manuel just nodded absently, his expression thoughtful.

“Listen, my son, if you don’t believe what I’m saying, I’ll bring you proof. You and I will talk to this old witch together!”

“I’d rather not, Dad.”

“Well, by God, I’ll bring her to you!” Furious, the priest stalked off on skinny legs, his robe flapping in the wind. Ever since the last occasion, he’d been looking forward to confronting the old crone who had the gall to impersonate God. He could hardly blame Manuel — the boy was at an impressionable age — but this was just the kind of nonsense that gave religion a bad name and converted people to cloud worship. Rounding the corner rapidly, he gave a shout of triumph.

“I knew it! I knew it!”

An elderly woman stood there. She was dressed in a long black cloak with a cowl that fell across her face, so that he could not see her eyes. She stood unnaturally still, and if Dad Ose had been a little more observant and a little less triumphant, he would have noticed that her cloak hung in motionless folds, unaffected by the wind that sang among the stones of the church.

And he might have been more careful.

“I’ve got you this time,” he exulted. “Now you can do some explaining, old woman. What do you mean by filling the minds of my people with your nonsense? What kind of sacrilege is this, impersonating God? Who are you, anyway?”

“My name is Shenshi.” The voice was dead and expressionless. “Remember that. The rest, you may be happy to forget.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Dad Ose was still panting from his sprint. “Now talk. Why do you pretend to speak the word of God?”

“Because I am God.”

“You? God?” Amazed by her temerity, the priest struggled for words.

“In a manner of speaking.”

She’s crazy, thought Dad Ose. A poor crazy old woman. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. One must have compassion. He searched within himself for the appropriate emotion, and the Macrobes helped him.

“I feel sorry for you, Shenshi,” he said eventually.

“You really don’t have to.”

“Let me give you the advice of one who has lived for almost five hundred years and seen much.”

“I’ve lived for almost one hundred and fifty thousand years.”

“God is an old, old man riding a horse cloud. He is normally good and kind, but if anyone ever takes his name in vain, by God he smashes them. So I advise you to be careful whose name you take, Shenshi. God is everywhere, listening.” He tapped the stonework. “Walls have ears.”

“You profess to many religions, Dad Ose. Have you ever heard of the Blessed Shu-Sho?”

Dad Ose had. According to the Sacred Tapes, the Blessed Shu-Sho had come into prominence in the 80th millennium, performing miracles and sparking a religious revival. And now he came to think of it, giving Mankind the Rock symbol, one of which hung around his neck at this very moment. “I’ve heard of her,” he said, smiling.

“She was my mother.”

“What!” This was too much. Compassion can only be taken so far. The old woman deserved to be thrashed for such heresy. Dad Ose found himself stepping forward, his intentions not entirely clear, but certainly with a view to laying a rough hand on this disgraceful old hag.

And something obstructed him.

Almost blind with temper, he bumped into a solid object that deflected his hand, then brought him to a sudden stop. It seemed to be some kind of a column covered with thick, coarse hair.

A drop of moisture fell on Dad Ose’s head. He brushed it off, puzzled. It was warm and slightly viscid. Shenshi appeared to be standing in some kind of a large cage, surrounded by these dark columns — eight of them. Dad Ose shook his head, suddenly feeling dizzy. What was happening? Where had the columns come from?

He looked up.

The columns canted over and joined around the edges of a hairy canopy about seven meters off the ground and almost as high as the church roof. Fluid dripped from one side of it. And now Dad Ose realized that the fluid fell vertically through the wind and that Shenshi’s robe was still, whereas his own flapped erratically around his legs — and at last he felt a twinge of alarm.

Then the canopy moved, and he could see the joints and the segments. And his mind snapped into focus, and he realized that Shenshi stood directly beneath a monstrous spider. The fluid was dripping from the creature’s jaws as it began to stoop toward him.

Bawling with horror, he flung himself to the ground. He drew his knees up to his body and covered his head with his arms and felt another drop of moisture fall onto the back of his hand. It began to eat at his flesh, corrosively.

He heard Shenshi say, “I’m sorry you had to meet Arachne.”

“Make it go away!”

“She’s gone. She only comes when she’s needed. She’s not needed now, I think. I’ve sent her back to her home happen-track. Stand up, Dad Ose, and forget about it.”

Dad Ose stood and forgot.

*

He rejoined Manuel at the church entrance. The young man was gazing north, where the giant shape of the Dome rose from the plain, dominating the valley, tall as the distant mountains and crowned with clouds. Man-made and ancient, it was an unquestioned feature of the landscape. Manuel was the only inhabitant of Pu’este who had ever been inside it, and now it looked as though he might have to enter it again, because Zozula and the Girl lived in there, and God’s word was law …

“Well?” asked Manuel.

“There was nobody there,” admitted the priest.

“I knew there wouldn’t be. What have you done to your hand?”

Dad Ose glanced at the angry burn. “I spilled some hot wine on it yesterday.”

“I’ll leave you now, Dad. Thanks for letting me use your church.”

“I hope you find Belinda, Manuel. It’s time you had a steady girl. Maybe she’ll cure this wanderlust of yours.”

At that moment the clouds around the Dome swirled suddenly, and a peculiar phenomenon occurred. Neither Manuel nor Dad Ose could actually say they saw a flash of bright light from near the apex of the Dome, but they could both truthfully say that they remembered such a flash. It was a fairly common occurrence, believed to be caused by the sneeze of the fire god, Agni.

“Bless you, Agni,” responded Dad Ose.

“No,” said Manuel, who knew better. “That was the Celestial Steam Locomotive.”

“The what?”

“Never mind,” said Manuel, knowing it would take too long to explain and that Dad Ose wouldn’t believe him anyway.

The Domes were designed to last as long as Earth itself; they are still out there now — huge and silent, but not quite empty. Their populations have fluctuated over the ages — and changed, too. They were built around the middle of the 56th millennium, in response to a growing demand for passive entertainment, and some people, even back then, spent their life from the cradle to the grave in the Domes, being entertained.

If that seems a trivial purpose for such gigantic structures, remember this: During the Great Retreat caused by the Nine Thousand Years’ Ice Age, the Domes provided safe havens for the remnants of the human race. And as the Earth grew older, the Domes gave shelter from another disaster: the dwindling of the atmosphere’s oxygen, due to the extinction of most species of oceanic photosynthesizers.

So the purpose of the Domes had changed as Mankind itself had changed. Now only a handful of people — known as Wild Humans — were adapted to the thin air outside the Domes. The majority of humans lived inside them, sustained by solar power and the life-support systems built millennia ago.

But they — the Dome’s inhabitants — had changed too.

*

A raccoon-nurse brought Zozula the news.

“Another of the neotenites has died. I’m so sorry, Zozula.” She was crying. Like all Specialists in the Dome, she was devoted to the sleeping humans in her charge and took the occasional death as a reflection on her competence.

“It wasn’t your fault. Were there any symptoms?”

“No. He just … died. It was completely unexpected.”

“It’s the fourteenth death in three days.”

“I know. I know.” The nurse made little washing movements with her hands.

“I’ll call a special meeting of the Cuidadors,” said Zozula. “And I’ll check the normal mortality rate with the Rainbow. This may be nothing unusual; perhaps mortality goes in cycles.”

“Our own lives are short,” said the nurse, gratefully. “We don’t know these things.”

“I’m sure we’ll find the answer,” said Zozula with a confidence he did not feel.

The meeting of Cuidadors took place one day later in the Rainbow Room. The Cuidadors were True Humans, custodians of the Dome, sometimes called Keepers.

Sharp-tongued Juni was there, and Postune the engineer. Pallatha the agriculturalist sat next to Ebus the psychologist. Shrewd Helmet, the electrician, murmured to Selena the zobiologist and geneticist, who had come from the People Planet specially for the meeting.

Zozula called the meeting to order. “Fellow Cuidadors,” he began formally, “I hardly need to remind you of our sworn duty, but recent events make it appropriate. We are here in this Dome — as were our ancestors — for the sole purpose of looking after ten thousand sleeping human beings, who cannot be awakened because their bodies have evolved into a form unsuitable for normal life Outside.”

They didn’t know what had gone wrong with the breeding program, so long ago. They inherited the pathetic creatures they called neotenites, and from time to time Selena replaced them when they got sick and it seemed they might die. But meanwhile their minds were immortal, living on in that part of the Rainbow called Dream Earth. Their duty was to work toward the day when they were able to set the breeding program right, produce True Human bodies for all those minds, and repeople the Earth.

“And recently we have suffered a severe setback. Fourteen neotenites have died so suddenly that we were not able to replace them before their minds, deprived of life support, were snuffed out, too.”

Juni asked, “What’s fourteen, when we have ten thousand here?”

“It’s fourteen failures by us,” Selena answered her. “And it could be the tip of the iceberg. What’s happened these last three days could be the beginning of the end of the human race.”

“There are many other Domes,” said Ebus.

“I’ve contacted them,” said Zozula. “The problem’s widespread. The neotenites are dying.”

“I suppose it couldn’t be some ancient disease that has resurfaced?” said Pallatha.

“Not in all the Domes at once.”

Suddenly Helmet said, “It’s Dream Earth. That’s the problem. They’ve lost all incentive in there. Wouldn’t you, if you could have everything you wanted, forever?”

“Let’s ask the Girl,” said Ebus. He pressed a button on the table. “If anyone knows about Dream Earth, she does.”

The Rainbow Room was vast; a kilometer long, half a kilometer wide, half a kilometer high. A distant figure sat at a console, watching a three-dimensional display. She stood and began to walk toward them, slowly, painfully. She was a neotenite — the only waking, walking neotenite on all of Earth. Her legs were plump, her body gross and her face round. She was a big baby, big as an adult, but with her physical characteristics arrested at the infantile stage. That was what had happened to the human race. The only True Humans left were the Cuidadors, and they could no longer breed true.

“In another generation, people like her will be in charge of the Dome,” said Juni. “Can you imagine that?”

“If there are any people like her left,” Zozula pointed out.

“If not, the Specialists will take over,” Helmet said, glancing at Juni.

She reacted, as he’d known she would. “I’d destroy the Dome rather than see the human race come to that,” she snapped.

A Specialist stood nearby and he must have heard, although he gave no sign of it. He was Brutus, a huge gorilla-man whose ancestors had been created in the Whirst Institute. He was a brilliant geneticist and Selena’s assistant; he was also a man of infinite compassion. Suddenly he walked away from them, away across the Rainbow Room, took the arm of the Girl and helped her toward the table.

Juni flushed. “He’s touching her.”

“He has the decency,” said Selena. “Did we?”

The Girl sat down, smiling at them uncertainly. She had no name, although in the Ifalong she, like Manuel, was destined for glory. Then she would find a name, and a world would be named after her.

“Girl,” said Zozula gently, “you’ve heard we’ve lost some neotenites recently. Helmet suggests their minds have lost incentive because they have all they want in Dream Earth. What do you think?”

She replied, “I lived in Dream Earth for thousands of years before Eulalie died and you brought me out here to operate the special effects.” Zozula’s face became suddenly expressionless. Eulalie had been his much-loved wife of many centuries. “I never lost incentive. Life isn’t so easy in there. Certainly you can have whatever you want by making a smallwish, as they call it. But a smallwish expends psy, and there’s a limit to how much psy you can expend before you have to wait for it to regenerate. Most of the people in there are living quite normal lives between smallwishes. Dream Earth has become much more like real life, recently.”

“Why do you say ‘recently’?” asked Pallatha.

The Girl turned pink. “Oh, I … cleaned Dream Earth up, the last time I was in there. It was bursting at the seams. People had been using smallwishes to create other people. They’d create imaginary friends and enemies, and prostitutes and such, and other people w. . .