Balshazzar's Serpent

XIV: THE SOUL COLLECTORS

It had not been an easy final decision to make, but Karl Woodward decided that he had no choice. For better or for worse, Balshazzar had sufficient ready food and water and a nearly ideal climate to support over eight hundred people right out of the box; no dependence on flaky technology when you had nowhere else to go.

Cromwell’s recovery from what appeared to be certain death was another factor. The thing down there might be evil, good, or simply an alien, singly or collectively, as stuck as they were, but in any case it had no percentage in doing away with them.

A medical scan on Cromwell had shown traces of a clean and absolutely lethal wound; it was also clear that the damage had been repaired with a minimum of internal scar tissue in a way no surgical computers could match, and that the damage left seemed to be slowly but methodically cleaning itself up. Cromwell had no memory of that last death strike, only of being knocked out by something and awakening gasping for air. When he watched the recording of it, though, he was somber, silent, and he never once asked about it nor spoke about it again.

In Woodward’s case, he felt that he’d made the commitment the moment he’d sent the shuttle down the first time. He still had doubts, though, not so much about sharing with an alien presence but rather whether or not there was a sufficient challenge there to keep the people’s faith renewed.

They found the remains of the woman who’d shot Cromwell and shot at the creature; it was as if the life force had been sucked right out of her, and she was rapidly decaying into the ground, just so much fresh fertilizer. They did decide to give her a proper Christian burial, although she probably wasn’t a Christian nor much of a believer in anything, but it was all they could do.

Olivet was a monstrous hillside presence, but it wasn’t good for an awful lot other than shelter against the frequent gentle rains. Something here tended to drain any standby power sources, so that within weeks they were left with only those devices that could use backup solar power. Even that wasn’t great; the gas giant that gave such a spectacular sky half the time wasn’t nearly as efficient for solar-powered devices and in fact blocked some useful solar wind.

Of Alan Chu they hadn’t seen or heard a trace. If he was still alive, if he hadn’t also been a victim of the creature or gone mad and perhaps done away with himself, he certainly kept away from the colony. When fear replaced faith, you made your own Hell.

John and Eve, along with a huge number of other couples, were married in a natural grove of trees festooned with colorful flowers.

For a while they set up guards and perimeters and security patrols, but it didn’t last. There just didn’t seem to be any threat, not to them, anyway.

Woodward presided as much as he could, and held regular teaching sessions, but he knew that there was trouble down the road and it worried him. Already many of the new colonists had taken to nudity or at least nothing more than a symbolic type of fig leaf. Why bother, when the temperature rarely varied from twenty-four to thirty-one degrees Celsius? Besides, it wasn’t like any of them in this day and age could make clothing using only needles and thread, even if they’d had a lot of thread.

The truth was, that worried him less than the fact that they didn’t really have to work any more. It was all just there. A balanced, vitamin-enriched diet of fruits and veggies whenever you wanted, and in whatever quantities you wanted. Nothing much to sustain a fire, so little or no baking, but that was okay. Freshwater streams, juice-filled fruits—you had all the basics, and in something of a tropical paradise.

One day Woodward, wearing only his old broad-brimmed straw hat, walked up to where Olivet remained, like some ancient, abandoned temple to the Greek gods of yore. He kept his book collection there still, and it was pleasant to read and sometimes to just look out and think.

This time, relaxed on the grass just beyond the “tent” assembly, he thought of Captain Sapenza and his curse and wondered if the Captain had been right. The ultimate revenge against the Bible thumper. Send him to an ersatz Eden and watch all that faith just dissipate.

It wasn’t going to happen, at least not on his watch. After, God would anoint someone else to lead them, teach them, give them their choices.

There was a crackling sound nearby. The creature had not bothered them nor attempted much communication with them, either, after that first encounter, but they always knew it was there. It no longer bothered or frightened them. You can be afraid of the unknown only so long when it doesn’t bite.

Woodward sensed that, today, the thing was much, much closer to him than ever before, yet there was nobody else around to see and hear. They were all down there, in the meadows and forests.

“Come on up,” the Doctor called loudly. “I’m not doing anything much that can’t be disturbed. It may be about time that we talked, don’t you think?”

He was conscious that the rustling was very close now, perhaps only a few meters to his right.

The distortion effect was always fascinating. Viewing through a glass, darkly, he thought, but that really wasn’t it. More like viewing through a misshapen but transparent glass container that rippled and distorted whatever was behind, kind of like a trick mirror.

He turned back and looked down on his people below. “I have to thank you for Thomas. He is the closest friend I have in this life, and I would have missed him a great deal.”

There was no response. He didn’t expect one; even Cromwell hadn’t been able to get the thing to really communicate, yet both of them had the feeling that the thing understood them.

“You are losing them, you know,” came a voice. It was a strange, nonhuman voice, whispered, throaty, rasping, yet clear.

He was startled. “So you can speak!”

“It was time,” said the creature.

Woodward nodded. “Are you native to here, or, like us, a stranded traveler?”

“Native… No. Something of a… caretaker. There is no other way to explain in your language. Any of your languages.”

“A caretaker. For whom?”

“Someone you think you know.”

Woodward smiled. “I doubt that. I think you got here, by accident, by scouting, by curiosity, and then you got stuck here just like us. These worlds—they’re traps, I think. Traps that lure all sorts of people here from all over the galaxy, maybe beyond.”

“Possibly. I never made it to the others. Have you?”

“You know we didn’t. Just surveyed them.”

“Mostly I have been surveying you,” the creature responded. “It is nice to have company, but the mental processes of your species totally bewilder me. You can reach the stars, yet your entire organization is based upon the worship of a God that never replies and a Son of God who was tortured and murdered in your primitive past.”

“Your people have no religious beliefs?”

“We—outgrew them.”

“Ah, just as you grew into honesty but out of tact, I see. Still, I should be delighted to discuss your people’s history and belief system sometime, and mine as well. I assume, though, that what you can’t pick up mentally you have picked up from hearing my talks.”

“Essentially. Your entire belief system appears based upon resurrection. Why is this so unusual? I was able to use the genetic code of your friend to reconstruct the damage inside him and bring him back.”

“And again I thank you for it, but it’s not the same thing. You got to him before brain function had ceased. He was dead, but he was still at home, as it were. We speak of someone tortured to death, pronounced dead, put in a hillside cave and sealed, who walked out hale and hearty and better than before three full days later. Can your skills do that?”

“No more than yours can. Still, within a generation of your people, your own beliefs will be mostly irrelevant to them. You must know that intellectually.”

“I concede nothing of the sort.”

“Look at them. Naked, soft, pretty much reverting to children who don’t have to obey their parents. The way this soil and this system is set up, when you die, you are absorbed, recycled. No traces are left in very short order. They will be innocents, ignorant of good and evil, but also incapable of growth of any sort. The Eden of your myth is set up as an ideal, but it is static, boring, a kind of forever childhood with no goal or purpose of any kind. No wonder those two rebelled.”

“You misunderstand faith.”

“And you misunderstand your own people’s nature,” the creature responded. “Or, more accurately, you are in denial about it. A wager, then, for two old intellectuals who can not go romp in the fields with abandon.”

Woodward frowned. “A what?”

“A wager. Your faith in them and your god against my belief in the least common denominator. Why not? It’s going to be a very long time, if experience is any guide, before the next ship shows up. Faithful worshipers versus brainless children. Faith in God and God’s nature in you all versus my faith that the least common denominator always wins in the end.”

Woodward turned to the crackling distortion, and out of that distortion arose a figure. It, too, was transparent, with what was on the other side twisted and distorted, but it was a clear figure.

And the serpent was the most beautiful of all God’s creatures…

“You’re on,” Woodward told it. “Until the next group shows up.”

“Done. Although I can not imagine them being in any way as interesting as you.”

“Perhaps they will arrive in sufficient shape to get back. A few things have from here.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps, if they do, they won’t find anyone here worth taking back.”

Karl Woodward sighed and relaxed. He’d thought he’d chosen wrongly, but now he understood that God’s hand had been behind this all along.

Head to head, faith against unfaith, for a generation’s souls.

What could be better?