Wonderbird

The Lams were not gods. They had not come again to do the Performances. They would not play The Palace again.

This was the end.

He kept the thoughts below scanning-level, so the tribe might not know what he thought. He felt their unease, and they waited for his explanation. How could he tell them the truth; that there was no Performance, and that all the years of waiting for the Time of the Prophecy were in vain. How could he tell them he had been deceived? How? How?

He began to summon the thoughts from their lower-level home, when he stopped, and forced them back down, keeping the surface of his mind clear and untroubled.

He saw the square thing on the silver-sanded plain, fallen where the man-thing had let it fall; fallen where the she had thrown it. Perhaps in that square thing there might be a clue to help him. A sign, a symbol, an omen to reinstate his belief in the Lams once more.

Skilton? The thoughts swam toward him from the awed tribe.

Skilton, tell us, oh worthy and far-seeing emcee, what does all this mean? Was this the Performance?

He could only answer: Come.

And they followed him…

Followed him off the moss-ground, away from the Great Mountain, onto the silver-sanded plain, and toward the square thing. There they stopped and looked and thought.

After a great long while, they asked Skilton, and he told them, and they knew it was true, for they could see the square thing.

After a great while, they knew.

There was another thing. This was not the end. There would be a new beginning.

A new way of life…a new era.

When they got back to the borne of their births, they would discard the old Tophatt rituals, and the Jomillrjowks, and the new life would flower for them—and this time there would be no doubting, for they had all seen the Wonderbird.

Skilton lowered his massive head and clamped the square thing in his toothless mouth. He trotted back toward the foothills and the Great Mountain.

The younglings followed quickly, and the tribe followed them, and there were no laggards, for they were all trying to reason out the meaning of the squiggles on the new Truth.

The squiggles that declared the new religion. The squiggles that said:

The Complete Works of the

Marquis de Sade

ILLUSTRATED