Seed of the Gods

exploring finding, as in their homeland, vast, uninhabited emptiness. Everywhere the land was stripped bare. Low spots stank with the same rank growth. Broad, thick-watered rivers crisscrossed the land. Digging without fear beside them, Rack found discoloration that indicated the past existence of much hard material. When their supplies were gone, they soared back to the establishment, enriched with three tiny nuggets of the hard material. There, they refreshed, breathed, ate. Under Rack's hand, the life in Beautiful Wings' belly moved—an occurrence that never ceased to fill Rack with a proud joy. Rack went to Weathered Mountain's establishment to consult the minds of his Keepers. At the end of summer storms Beautiful Wings was confined to the establishment, as the time of birth was nearing. Of the most interest was the store of knowledge in the older Keeper, for the new Keeper's mind was stocked with technical data, while the other held more miscellaneous material. And while the mind of the younger one was orderly and arranged, the mind of the older, kept as a luxury by an old Far Seer, was chaotically misfiled. Ancestral records were mixed with fragments of ancient picture poetry, planet movements with speculation on the thoughts of the early Far Seers, broth inventories with the familiar Book of Rose the Healer. The older Keeper was pleasant-minded, childishly delighted with Rack's company, expressing herself in uncoordinated movements and audible sounds of pleasure. Her fleshy white body was no longer firm, and consequently she was neglected by the aging Far Seer, who sought his pleasure in the arms of his new Keeper. Rack, his mind engaged, did a kindness with his hand, was rewarded with a flow of pleasure. But he was, as always, contemptuous of such things; his time of readiness was long past, and his Healer's nature was not able to comprehend unpurposeful sex. Keepers, he felt, were to be pitied. The portion of their minds that was their own never matured, and, remaining at the level of a baby, could comprehend only sensation. But in the huge storage areas a wealth of information lay waiting to be mined. Rack sorted through the records, musing over the scant, beautiful pictures of poetic Healers, skipping the dry, technical records of the Far Seers, seeking any clue that might feed his curiosity. It was not true, he discovered, that the people of the east were unresponsive to duty. Once, long ago, Red Earth—or was it one of his teachers?— had indicated that the eastern civilization was based on the bartering of hard-material nuggets in exchange for services. Rack now found that this was not true. The easterners valued the hard-material nuggets mostly as objects of wonder and beauty, although, as Weathered Mountain had indicated, it was not unknown to exchange a nugget for favors. In the mind of the Keeper there was an exact record of each exchange made by Weathered Mountain. In addition there was an analysis of different types of hard material. This interested Rack, for he had seen only a limited picture of types. Apart from this information, he gained nothing new, and as the birth time neared, he abandoned his visits to the Keeper to tend Beautiful Wings. As the awareness of the inner movements came to Beautiful Wings, she felt no pain. Rack watched in awe as nature did her work. Soon, very soon, he would know. Was their child to be a Healer? Far Seer? Keeper? Power Giver? He hoped for the latter, a daughter with the beauty of his love, to be named Many Pleasures in honor of the union in the far north. Beautiful Wings asked nature, in a shy picture, for a Healer. She writhed now, feeling as the movements became more powerful. Rack, his hands on her belly, saw the miracle of birth flowering, the red, beautiful tint reminding him of the joining. Scales flowered and molted. «Come, Many Pleasures,» Rack sent to the unresponsive, tiny mind inside the Power Giver's body. «It is a pleasant world and it will be yours.» Beautiful Wings' body did the work for which it was designed, creating new life. Her lower portions, mottled ruby red, spread to reveal a large, soft fleshy area. With a new day dawning, the birth began. Interior muscles contracted and pushed until, miraculously, painlessly, a tiny head emerged, encased in a fleshy sack, followed by a soft, scaleless body which wiggled with life and reeked with the products of birth. Rack, trying to hide his disappointment, cleaned his Keeper daughter and presented her to her mother to suckle at the flowering chest bulges. Nature's balance was maintained. Ungovernable forces decreed the type of the child that was born, and obviously, another Keeper was needed. And their life would not be filled with a growing Power Giver or a curious, wild, young Healer, Rack thought sadly. «We will have ourselves,» Beautiful Wings sent. Rack berated himself for letting Beautiful Wings see his sorrow. He tried to take pleasure in watching the infant suckle the rich juices of her mother's body, but he could not help but think of the fate of their child, to be kept by a Far Seer, used for his pleasure. Ah, but she, in turn, would have pleasure. Protected inside an impregnable establishment, she would live a long, happy life. And she would make her contribution, for what is civilization but an accumulation of knowledge and experience? Without Keepers, civilization, dependent on the frail memory of other types, would decline. «We will have each other,» Rack agreed. He sent pictures of soaring, traveling. The ice of the far north, the fire of the south lands, the fields of the Breathers in the southern sea—they would see all. «And—» She sent a devastatingly strong picture, full of sadness and nostalgia, of the establishment where they had known their initial bliss, and then of the one in the far north and the repetition. «Do you miss it so?» he asked. «I shouldn't. It isn't logical.» She smiled as the infant had its fill and slept. «I will take you home,» he said. She sent alarm. «Surely they will listen to reason,» he said. «Here in the east we dig, and the death that was promised does not come. Moreover, they should be apprised of the predictions of the eastern Far Seers, the dire warnings of all-encompassing death.» «I fear for you,» she said. «We have unlimited soaring ability. We could fly to the satellite itself, given enough broth and air to carry us through cold space.» «Silly,» she giggled. «We could, at any rate, fly away again if they are not responsive.» He, too, longed for his homeland. He would take her to the valley of the hot waters. There they would dig and hopefully unearth other odd things, perhaps something that would pull together his confused thoughts. When their infant Keeper was able to take broth, she was delivered to the establishment of a youthful Far Seer who had not as yet been provided with a Keeper. The Far Seer assured them that she would be given the best of treatment, and his tender handling of the baby comforted them. Rack tried not to think of her future, but thought instead of the Book of Rack the Healer, the work he had planted in the scarcely formed storage space of her brain. Some day, a curious Healer would find it, read the pictures, and know him. In his daughter's mind he had left all his thoughts, all his questions, all his discoveries. They felt no regret when they soared, pack in place on Rack's back, into the clean, thin air above the early winter clouds. Nature provided and nature made a balance. Behind them was the product of their miraculously beautiful union—a baby without a name, a baby that had ceased to be theirs when she took her first meal of broth. Ahead was home. X People were dying in Rack's world. It was the first thing he sensed after an uneventful soar across the sea. In a land where the barren rocks were broken only occasionally by the gleaming, transparent domes of establishments there were new blank spaces. The location of scattered life in Red Earth's area of responsibility, home to Rack and Beautiful Wings, was engraved on their minds—a map with each life in its place. And as they soared past the coastal sands they noted a blank. Growing Tree the Far Seer, coresponsor of Red Earth, was gone. It was as if, on a large board strewn with lights, a light had gone out. And, as they continued toward the interior, other establishments void of life cast a pall of gloom over the feeling of peace that had flooded them at the first sight of the western lands. The end-of-circle storms had started moving earlier than ever before and were more severe. It was fortunate, Rack thought, that soaring on his power was less debilitating than moving on the surface. When at last they were hovering over Red Earth's establishment, he sent his mind down, encountering the heat of pleasure below. Red Earth was with his Keeper. Mouth to mouth with Beautiful Wings, Rack waited. After a time he sent, «I am Rack the Healer.» He was pleased to receive a quick flush of pleasure from Red Earth, but the pleasure was soon damped by surprise, questioning, and a heavy sense of duty. Rack answered, «No, I am not dead. Nor is Beautiful Wings.» «You have come back, then, to submit to the judgment of the law-givers?» Rack sent the strongest anger and contempt he could muster. «Growing Tree the Far Seer is dead before his time. Gone are Strong Swimmer the Healer, Quick Soar the Power Giver, and others in the eastern marches of the area. The storms are early and the Breathers labor in the establishments. At such a time will you be bound by your petty traditions?» «It is all heavy on my mind,» Red Earth admitted. «What is your reason for returning, then?» «I bring a message of gloom from the Far Seers of the east,» Rack said. «Would you hear in peace?» «Welcome in peace.» Red Earth had not changed, but an aura of sadness hung over Red Earth's establishment. The air was pure and good and Rack used it sparingly. Beautiful Wings was allowed more freedom of breath, since Red Earth was observing the rules of privacy and had not scanned their minds to discover the secret of her good condition after a long soar. «I have many questions,» Red Earth said. «But first, what is the message?» He received the news of impending doom with no show of emotion. After a long time he sighed, expelling his air. «We have read the same. But I would like to confirm the conditions in the breeding grounds of the Breathers.» He sighed again. «I hesitate, however, to consume the substance of a Power Giver and I must admit, I cringe at the thought of going into the outside under such adverse conditions as now exist.» «There is a way,» Rack said. He was not sure that it would work, but the situation was serious enough to warrant any experiment. Red Earth was nonplussed. The mind of a Far Seer would be required to measure the huge, but decreasing picture of Breathers in their broad field of surface slime in the southern sea. Rack said, «I ask your indulgence to break one of the rules of privacy.» «In what cause?» Red Earth asked. «Life,» he said simply. «A potent argument. You may act.» Rack walked across the room and stood behind