jeweled bacteria. Yet, Tedesco was a mutant, and his victims were Pures. It was clear where Jask's sympathies should lie.
“Is it clear?” Tedesco asked quietly.
Jask looked up, confused, unable to answer.
The bruin turned to his rucksack and began to open various compartments. “Let's have something to eat,” he said, toneless and remote.
They consumed three lengths of dried, salted meat (Jask could choke down only half a stick; Tedesco happily finished the rest), five pieces of fresh fruit (Jask being satisfied with two, Tedesco with three), half a loaf of hard brown bread (Jask spat out his first bite, disgusted by the texture and taste and aware, for the first time, that he was eating tainted food fit only for mutants; the bruin munched happily on the remainder), and a quantity of water from the long wooden flask in Tedesco's pack. They spoke only occasionally as they ate, reserving most of their comments for the food or for the shifting, rippling colors that glowed brilliantly in the walls.
When they were done, Tedesco said, “I promised you a discussion.”
Jask looked blank for a moment.
“On the virtues of our individual notions of this world's history,” the mutant explained.
“Mine is not a notion,” Jask said.
“Oh?”
“We'll see.”
“Yes, we will,” Jask said, though he had already begun to wonder if the bruin's version — whatever it was — might not be more sound than his own. According to Pure philosophy, he was now in the realm of the Ruiner, who should have sought him out instantly and destroyed him. Yet he lived. As far as he could see, he was not even changing physically. Unless the Ruiner were modifying him slowly, inwardly… The idea repelled him and caused him to draw into himself, hugging himself like a child in the womb.
The husky mutant leaned back against his rucksack, as if the lumpy bag were a pillow. He used the long, hard claw at the tip of his stubby but humanlike thumb to pick at his jagged teeth. He said, “Let's hear your story first, my friend. How do you explain the world in which we find ourselves?”
Jask thought a moment, brushed nervously as his hair, cleared his throat and spoke carefully, wanting to get this all right. His religion was not one that evangelized, because its requirements for membership were biologically stringent. Yet, he felt, on some fundamental spiritual basis it was important to make this tainted creature understand the infinite wisdom inherent in the doctrine and dogma of the Pure church. As concisely and as dramatically as he could, his tone becoming more confident as he continued, he told what his kind believed…
Many thousands of generations ago, there had been no mutants in the world, for all of mankind lived in harmony with Lady Nature. These Pures established a civilization of conquest and discovery, the mysterious remains of which are to be seen to this day in the many ruins and in the still-functioning fortresses where the Pures maintain a vigil against the Ruiner. Lady Nature set no limits on her creatures, but offered them even the stars if they proved themselves capable of accepting and using the gift.
“And what happened to bring about this crumbling Earth we now inhabit?” Tedesco asked.
There was a note of sarcasm in his voice but also, Jask thought, not just a little genuine interest.
As a temptation, to test the mettle of Her creations, Lady Nature permitted mankind the knowledge of the Genetic Mystery, allowed him to learn how life could be created without Her, how species could be altered and how man himself might change his appearance so that he could fly or live beneath the waters like fish. She fully expected them to reject the application of this knowledge, expected them to proclaim their love for Her and to refuse to accept the role of gods in Her place. Instead mankind went against Her will, created whole new races, sometimes for experimental purposes and other times for little more than a lark, for decoration in a society they felt had come to lack ethnic differences and individualism. Once they had disregarded Lady Nature's prime right of creation, they had opened this sector of the universe to the influence of the Ruiner, another cosmic force working in opposition to Lady Nature, once Her mate and now Her enemy, a creature of evil and hatred and jealousy. With the Ruiner corrupting men's minds and souls, the laws of Nature were more and more discounted until at last Lady Nature and the Ruiner engaged in direct, mortal combat, battling back and forth across the face of the Earth, warring for the possession of human souls.
Tedesco laughed. Or perhaps he coughed. Jask could not be sure, for the bruin's face was blank when he looked up.
“Go on,” Tedesco said.
“At last,” Jask said, “the world was little more than ruin, with most of mankind destroyed or tainted. Lady Nature, disappointed in us, left behind only a residual piece of Her power to watch over us as. She fled to another part of the universe to begin new work. The Ruiner, having stalemated Her, pleased with that and eager to locate Her and do damage to Her new work, also left behind a fragment of himself in order to maintain the balance of power established here between him and Lady Nature. We've been struggling, in the thousands of years since, to maintain Lady Nature's original creations and to enlarge our enclave populations so that, in time, She may find us worthy, once more, of Her close attention.”
Tedesco stared at a scintillating splotch of chartreuse that vaguely resembled a dragon's head and played in the wall behind Jask. He said, “But your enclave populations are declining.”
“Only temporarily.”
“Constantly,” he disagreed.
Jask was plainly dejected, his head held low between his frail shoulders, his body a mass of sharp angles as his bones pressed against his thin padding of flesh like struts against a tent skin. He said, “Perhaps we simply aren't worthy of Her renewed interest.”
“And perhaps she doesn't even care,” Tedesco said.
“She must care!” Jask snapped. But his emotional response was only momentary; he subsided into apathy again, staring at his knees. “It isn't for Her to care — not until we've erased our past sins and have proven that we are proper receptacles for Her grace.”
Tedesco considered all of this for a moment, looked away from the green walls and studied the diminutive Pure. “I don't believe in any god or goddess,'' he said, his voice low and gruff. “But if I did, I don't suppose I could fancy one that was as fickle as yours.”
Jask said, “I didn't expect you to believe it.”
“Why? Because I'm — tainted?”
“Yes.”
“So are you.”
“But I wasn't always this way.”
“That hardly matters,” Tedesco said. He smiled slightly and added, “So far as I can see, Lady Nature is an unforgiving bitch goddess. You'll be on the outs with that one until the last day of your life — and perhaps even after that.”
Jask said nothing.
“Will you listen to my story now? It's much easier to swallow than yours, much more detailed than yours without all these vaguely defined gods and their cosmic brawls.”
Defensively Jask said, “No one can understand Lady Nature or the Ruiner well enough to define them crisply. Could a nonsentient forest animal define you or me? Surely you can understand that the higher life form of Lady Nature and the Ruiner is all but incomprehensible to us lesser creatures.”
Tedesco sighed and said, “Will you listen? And will you think about what I tell you?”
“It will all be lies,” Jask said.
“Do you honestly think I would deceive you?”
“Not purposefully.”
Tedesco grinned. “Ah, then you believe me deceived myself, or even mad.”
“Or both,” Jask said ruefully. “But I'll listen.”
Tedesco sat straight up, leaning away from his rucksack. “First of all, there is no Lady Nature or Ruiner. Never was. Never will be.”
Jask said nothing, but he was clearly disbelieving.
Tedesco said, “Approximately a hundred thousand years ago, men first learned how to build machines that would fly. They had accomplished much before this time, though the deeds of those eras are utterly lost to us now.
