Resurrection

III

Our sessions with the envoys had given us some insight into the workings of their society. They had no great aggregations that could be termed cities, for why should creatures who are so vulnerable choose to live close to their potential predators? Instead, each one who grew to adulthood built a secretive cave whose entrance was carefully hidden. Here they could shed their shells in security when the time came. Here they could hide from those who would use them.

With some shock I discovered that none of the envoys knew of their parentage. Sex for them was a spurt of eggs or semen in the springtime response to the tides. They had no emotional attachment to the free-swimming young homaroids that they used so abominably. Only those young who had achieved an educatable size and proven intelligence were brought into servitude.

It was likely then that these civilized beings preyed equally upon their own genetic heirs as well as others, using them as beasts and as food. It was Bentham’s worst nightmare come to life.

I also discovered that they had no concept of religion, no spiritual center to their life. My dialogue with Ttch*lok each evening became a ritual that followed his feeding. But now there was a purpose in my discussions, for, through him, I believed that I could regain the faith that I had lost. If I could have God speak to this creature then there was still grace in the Universe. And there was still hope for me.

I began to tell Ttch*lok of a spirituality through which he could hope to surmount the tether that bound him. I spoke of the virtues of a faultless life, and the certain rewards of the afterlife after the release of his soul. I spoke of a kind God and how he would reward those whose life was free from sin.

In time I believed that Ttch*lok began to comprehend and understand the possibility of his own salvation. I baptized him one night with a cupful of water from the nearby sea, as seemed appropriate at that time and place. “My friend,” I made him repeat in Italian as I held his claw and arm upraised, “We are reborn.”

We prayed together, there on the damp, green mud; a strange crustacean and a failed priest, repeating words whose origins were centuries old and hundreds of light-years distant.

I rejoiced in my eager convert, imagining that he would carry religion back to the godless civilization that spawned him. I fantasized that Ttch*lok would be my first missionary; that he would carry the message of redemption and spirituality to the needful and unknowing souls of this horrid world.

I would have a flock of believers at last! Strange though they might appear to others of my faith. I relished the souls that were to be saved.

One evening I noted that the pail seemed rather full to overflowing. Choice scraps were evident. “Was this a reward?” I asked innocently for today’s session had gone extremely well, with hardly an error in understanding.

“No,” Ttch*lok responded with no hint of sadness. “They are feeding me to make sure that I am full when my time comes.”

“I don’t understand. What time is this? Are you going to return to your masters?” The emissaries had mentioned nothing of their departure.

Ttch*lok clicked his feelers together nervously. “I am at my limit, father. I have learned so much that I feel that I will burst if relief does not come soon.”

Startled at his remark I peered closer. Yes, the signs were unmistakable; there was a cloudy appearance in the eyes, the shell had taken on a milky sheen, and the movement of all appendages were languorous and weak. “The softening is coming,” I said in sudden understanding.

“Yes,” Ttch*lok replied. “And they will eat me for my knowledge when that happens.”

I was rocked back on my heels. Eat their translator? Why would they… Then it dawned on me: By eating him they would gain facility with our language. With that core of knowledge they could more easily gain fluency. Yes, and then they would no longer have to suffer the laborious and demeaning process of translation through a captive animal.

It made perfectly good sense. Ed would no doubt think it a “clever ploy.”

I thought that it was horrible.

All through the night I tossed and fidgeted in my bunk, wondering what my moral obligation was in this case. On the one hand the feeding of Ttch*lok to the three emissaries would materially enhance our process of learning more about their civilization and this world. I had a sworn obligation to aid and support that process.

On the other hand, if I did nothing I would lose my single convert. I would allow a Christian to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency. Not only that, but a living, thinking, feeling being of no little intelligence would be consumed as fodder, with little ceremony or remorse on the part of his masters. To them he was simply a convenient animal whose substance could be harvested with dispatch.

Did I not have a higher obligation to save his soul, if not his material being? I had baptized this child and therefore had a debt to protect him.

The conflict of the two obligations wore on me through the long night hours.

In the steamy dawn I crept from the dome to where Ttch*lok lay sleeping. “Quiet,” I whispered as I cut the tether that bound him to the staff. The line was surprisingly weak. Ttch*lok could have sundered it in a moment with his claw, had he so chosen.

“Come with me, my friend,” I said and led him away from the dome and into the dark vegetation surrounding the campsite. He resisted weakly at first, as if unwilling to move. I assumed he was early in the stage of stupor that preceded the softening.

Finally he stirred, albeit slowly. I had momentarily feared that the progression of the softening had already reached the point where he was unable to move. That would be a serious problem since I doubted that I could bear his weight in addition to the hard suit.

For hours we trudged through the dark foliage and sucking mud, ever away from the dome and those who would misuse Ttch*lok. When gray dawn lay upon the sky we were kilometers away, heading up the peninsula toward the swamps of the mainland.

Ttch*lok stumbled frequently as if his limbs were not strong enough to maintain the pace. I gave him such help as I could, supporting his weight whenever it seemed he was losing strength.

The signs of his forthcoming change were more apparent in the morning light. A small crack had formed, extending from the base of his tail to a point halfway along his back. It had not yet separated, for I could see no white flesh between the sides of the crack.

I prayed that there was still enough time for us to find a safe place to hide.

“Non posso continuare. I tire,” he said finally and slumped to the ground. He could go no farther and, I must admit, my own resolve to continue had faded in the reality of the forced march and my inability to drag his weight any longer.

I discovered a sheltered spot. It was a simple overhang of dirt on the side of a ridge covered with feathery shrubs. I dragged him in as far as I could and lay beside him, exhausted.

We could not be spotted from the outside, I was certain of that.

“Is there anything that I can do?” I asked, wondering what needs Ttch*lok might have and if I were capable of providing whatever might be requested.

“You should not have taken me,” he whispered so softly that I strained to hear him. “I was not made to live beyond my purpose.”

“Nonsense,” I responded at once. “No one deserves to die needlessly. I have an obligation to save you for your own sake, for the sake of your soul.”

“I have no need for this body, father,” he responded weakly. “My soul will go on.”

“Yes, it will,” I responded. “But at a time and place of your own choosing.” “My soul is eternal,” he said. “I live in others,” and with those words my friend, my convert was gone.

He slumped in my arms, surrendering his material self to my embrace, just as I would some day relinquish myself to my redeemer.

I did not know whether his last words were question or statement.

As the day progressed the process of Ttch*lok’s softening accelerated. The crack on his back finally extended the entire length of his body. As it began to widen, a rich, redolent fluid spilled out. Ttch*lok’s body writhed and squirmed in small random motions that twitched his exoskeleton this way and that. His strength claw jerked upwards at one point and then fell limply to one side. There was no resistance when I lifted it; the muscles had loosened completely.

Heat radiated from his body as the process accelerated. I watched the firm exoskeleton split and easily peel away. The oily fluid that oozed from the cracks must lubricate the shell and permit it to peel so easily, I surmised. As pieces of the shell fell away the white flesh beneath was revealed.

Metaphorically I wondered if, when my own mortal sheath had to be sloughed, it would expose the soft white purity of my soul? Just what were the similarities between us, the parallels in our spirituality? Clearly the mores of this world were at odds with the civilized processes of my own, as I had observed many times in these past weeks. Still, couldn’t there be some grace in all of this predation, some salvation from “nature, red in tooth and claw?”

Couldn’t the Word of God be brought to these beings?

The smell of the lubricating fluid and the heat radiating from the process began to attract visitors. The small flying insectoids were the first to arrive and landed on Ttch*lok’s white flesh, ready to feed. I swatted them away with a branch of X-Coniferlycanthus that I tore from one of the shrubs outside of our lair.

The crawling things were harder to deal with. I finally took a few moments to roll a large stone in front of the opening and scooped out a moat in the gray-green mud behind it. The moat immediately filled with water and formed a secondary barrier behind the stone. I used the back of my glove to squish those few crawlers and scurriers who squeezed by the boulder and managed to ford the moat.

As evening fell I heard the larger creatures gathering outside, some of whom were probably wild homaroids. I made shuffling noises to keep them at bay while still waving the branch at the insectoids and keeping an eye peeled for any other crawlers who had forded my moat. I rested not a wink that night as Ttch*lok changed beside me. I tossed pieces of his shell outside as the process continued.

The next day was a repeat of the first, only with greater numbers of flying insectoids and creeping, slithering intruders. My branch was worn to a stick and I had to replace it twice as the day progressed.

Halfway through the day my cooler quit and I began to warm up from the exercise of swatting and squashing. I began to grow thirsty, but refrained from drinking my small water reserve until I absolutely had to. Now that the cooler had gone there would be no more condensation to refill the reservoir.

But regardless of my own discomfort I knew that I must keep my vigil, to guard against those who would steal this soul from my care.

By late afternoon of the second day the entrance to our hideout was littered with the remains of the flying, crawling, and slithering creatures that I had dispatched. In the bright light of day none of the larger predators were visible. That did not mean that they were not there. It only meant that they were biding their time, awaiting a moment’s lapse on my part; a nod from me and they could feast on the succulent body lying in repose beside me.

When night fell I could hear the predators coming close, testing my ability to drive them away, testing my resolve to save this soul from the horrors of his own world. Each time I arose and waved my arms in what I hoped was a threatening manner.

I persisted and wondered at last as to why I was doing this. Why, after abandoning my own calling, had I chosen to intervene with this one pitiable creature, this one who was not even of my own species?

My innermost faith had decayed years and years before, long before I embarked upon this journey into the boundless reaches of God’s great Universe. And perhaps the reason for it.

How could a priest serve his flock when the congregation was an ever changing aggregation? When they were people who looked upon the rites as performance, who changed churches, religions, and morals according to the fashion of the time?

Sermons meant nothing to them, being merely an interesting phase in the show, much akin to the musician who plays to amuse the audience between acts. Mention shame and they would get up and leave, talk of sin disturbed them, speaking of death was unthinkable, and asking them to believe in the Trinity was impossible.

Despite this, I had to pander to the needs of the age, for it was deemed better to have a flock of marginal Christians (and the money was welcome too) than preach in an empty church. Yet, despite all of my efforts to make those who chose to attend realize the peril to their immortal souls, it took only one popular figure to state that Mithraism was the religion and, in an instant, my entire flock would switch allegiance to the temple down the street.

Every waking moment I lived in dread of finding myself without a congregation to care for.

In the end I could stand such lukewarm adherence to the faith no longer. I despaired of mankind ever maturing into a life of belief and spirituality. If we few practitioners, advocates of the faith, could not obtain their commitment then humanity was lost; they would only have the taste of religion without being nourished by the substance.

I abandoned my church, leaving the spiritual care of my two dying parishioners for a younger, and less critical replacement and embarked into God’s great Universe on the Hercules, searching for my lost faith among the stars. Perhaps there I could find renewal, I had hoped.

Instead I had found Ttch*lok.

By the morning of the third day Ttch*lok’s new shell had finished expanding and begun to darken. The exoskeleton was starting to achieve the consistency of leather. This was some relief for me as the smaller insectoids were no longer a problem, for their tiny apparatus could not penetrate Ttch*lok’s new armor. I no longer needed to wave my branch and crush the occasional visitor. I rested my arms and sucked a few drops of water, the last of my reserve.

When that night fell the homaroids and other predators still lurked, awaiting their chance. Perhaps when the shell hardened further I would have a chance to sleep, to rest from this vigil, I thought.

As I sat there I pondered again at what I was doing. A disturbing simile occurred to me in that haze of sleep-deprived, semi-critical thinking: the similarity of the homaroids’ consumption of the flesh of living thinking beings to the rites I had learned. Was this not a communion of sorts? Wasn’t their consumption partaking of the substance of life itself, a sharing of being more intimate than my own ritualistic taking of the flesh and the spirit?

A reason why these creatures had developed no religion occurred to me as well. Each of them was virtually born anew after each successful softening. Each rose after three days, like the Lord, from the false death of mortality, forgetful of their prior transgressions. Each and every one of them was resurrected in a continuous renewal of innocence.

They were living a spiritual life such as I had never imagined.

I cried at the thought, muddled as it may have been. I fervently wished that we humans could do likewise. That we could shed our baggage of sin and pain and return with refreshed souls, able to grace life with greater facility. I yearned that others could drink of my life and experience and so carry it forward to eternity.

But, unlike these blessed creatures, these sorrowfully predatory homaroids, my own sins would not be shed like their exoskeleton but would stay with me unto my final breath, dooming my eternal soul to ascend without a second chance for redemption. Like all humans, I had only one pass at life; one chance to live, and must die with the consequences of my mistakes.

As I’d had to live with my failure to keep my faith.

With these morbid thoughts in mind I must have dozed momentarily. I was started awake by a slight noise beside me and spied a large slithering centipede who, having taken advantage of my inattention, was chewing at one leg of the slumbering Ttch*lok.

I lashed out with my foot, bringing the suit’s armored heel down square in the center of the ’pede’s back. Its legs kicked as it coiled about to tear at my foot with its sharp mandibles. Several of the pede’s appendages tore futilely at the underside of my leg, the piercing spurs on each of its many limbs failing to find purchase in the metal.

I came erect, keeping my foot squarely on its back, holding the creature in place. With a shock I saw that the pede’s mandibles were actually peeling small slivers of my suit’s armor away with each bite. A line of little scratches marked where it had been nibbling.

I placed all of my weight on the pede’s back and brought my other foot down hard on its head, feeling its crown crack in a satisfying shock that ran up my leg as the gore from its innards splattered in all directions. One more spasm and then it lay still under me, dead at last.

With a feeling of disgust I lifted the thing with both hands and tossed it into the night. I heard the nocturnal predators scramble toward it and then listened to the sounds of a scuffle as they battled over the choice parts.

Then the night was silent once more.

I dozed no more that night but stared at the damage my inattention had caused to Ttch*lok’s leg. I had failed in my mission, just as I had failed my flock.

I think I cried then as well.

In the morning I noted some stirring of my charge and, when I looked closer, I saw that there was some movement of his sensory organs. The eyes swiveled toward me, staring blankly. The feelers writhed aimlessly. Was Ttch*lok returning to consciousness, I wondered?

As yet there was no movement in his limbs: Apparently the muscles had not been released from the protective slumber that God had provided to protect him against damage to the still unhardened integument.

After a few moments the eyes closed and the feelers stopped their movement. I prayed that all was well.

Ttch*lok moved no more that afternoon.

To my testing hand the shell appeared to be as firm and solid as his original had been. Few of the insectoids bothered us now. They had learned that they could not penetrate our hard armor. Nor did the crawlers come near. Apparently they had only been attracted by the heat and the smell of the softening fluid and, now that those were gone, had no interest in us.

I was certain that the predators still awaited outside, although I could not see them. Perhaps, I thought in a haze of sleeplessness, I could rest my eyes for a moment, just a moment.

I dreamed of myself as the new messiah of this world, with Ttch*lok as my prophet. I dreamed of the two of us carrying the word of a life free from fear, a life that blessed the sanctity of intelligence for the precious gift that it was, a thing to be guarded and protected. I dreamed of hordes flocking to hear the Word and sharing a true communion of souls, of life and spirit.

But then the dream turned to nightmare as the hordes, misunderstanding our message, fell upon each other, clawing and fighting and tearing and eating at each other in a frenzy, the mass of greenish-gray bodies a massive blur of hideous movement.

I saw my disciple pulled down into the mass and rendered into pieces, surrendering himself in this most intimate of communions.

And then they reached for me.

I started awake to feel something lifting my arm and lashed out, thinking this was still the dream, or maybe fighting some new predator come to call. It was only when I opened my eyes that I realized how wrong I was.

The new Ttch*lok had come fully awake and was standing over me, his huge strength claw grasping my arm while his back legs held my body in place.

A shock of fear went through me: Did this reincarnation retain any knowledge of our relationship? I wondered if he could sever my arm with his claw’s sharp edge, an edge that had not yet been dulled with use? I wondered if our friendship and his discovery of faith was among the eighty percent of memory that was lost.

If so then I was surely doomed.

Anxious moments passed with no change to the tableau as my fear grew, for I now remembered how ravenous any homaroid must be after the softening; desperate to replace the energy that had been lost and anxious to consume me and thereby gain whatever knowledge I possessed.

So much did I fear my own rendering at the hands of this horrific creature that I nearly fainted, slumping in the hard suit that surely would be no protection against that huge, sharp claw.

His eyes swiveled this way and that, seeking to make sense of the surroundings. Ttch*lok had been so deep in his pre-sloughing stupor (Was it only four days ago?) that he surely could not remember how we had come to be in this tight overhang.

Finally his eyes came back to focus on me. He reached across and grabbed my other wrist, lifting both wide. “My friend,” he said in flawless Italian, “we are reborn.”

And with those words he let me go and raced from the place where I had held my vigil, past the rock I had rolled into place, and across the remains of the creatures that I had tossed outside. I had never seen one of the homaroids move so swiftly.

Seconds after he had disappeared into the brush there was a piercing scream and some thrashing sounds. I stumbled out and saw Ttch*lok, or whoever he was in this reincarnation, stuffing the remains of one of the smaller homaroids into his orifice. His strength claw had neatly decapitated the little creature with a clean cut.

The prey had become predator.

I saw no more of Ttchiok, although I searched the vicinity until darkness fell. I did find evidence that he had hunted vigorously in the short time since emerging: severed armor lay near and far, all cut with that fierce and powerful claw, all emptied of their contents. Apparently he had an understandable drive to replace the energy lost during the softening and was hunting with a vengeance. I waited through the night for him to return, hoping that he had retained enough of civilized memories to come back to his friend and mentor. I was disappointed; I had failed again.

I stayed awake as best I could, waiting against hope for his return. I must have dozed frequently, for the day went by much faster than it should. During my waking moments I recalled my dream and puzzled over what it might mean.

Had I been wrong in taking Ttchiok from his proper place and secreting him here in the wilderness? Perhaps the ethos of this place was not my own, was not the smooth, disciplined structure humans had evolved over the centuries and which now was contributing to the lack of resolve in our spiritual lives.

Perhaps the rough edges of this barbarous place held a new level of understanding, one built upon the absolute certainty of rebirth, of the knowledge of what true communion contained for the individual.

Had I prevented the emissaries from sharing Ttchiok and carrying his soul back with them? That possibility worried me more than I cared to think about.

But then I recalled his words upon awakening from his rebirth. “I am reborn,” he had said. A modicum of the faith had remained in him and I knew that he would carry it forward. Even if he fell prey to something larger and more ferocious perhaps some part of that faith would be passed along.

And so it would go until the faith was shared throughout this world, shared in the vast communion of predation and love.

I too, must be reborn, I thought in an amazing epiphany. I now realized that so long as a few of the faithful professed the Word and carried the ideas forward into the future, there would be no loss of God’s faith in the world. Like the flesh of Ttch*lok we few faithful must surrender our own lives to serving humanity until the day we die and pass a part of that faith on to others.

It is our own way of communion.

In the morning I wearily started my journey back to the dome, wondering what my punishment would be now that I had destroyed our link to the emissaries. I am sure that some of my associates would want to extract a horrid penalty for what I had done, forcing me to pay penance for transgressions real and imagined. I doubted that any would understand why I had to act as I did.

God works wonders in strange ways and to me he had administered a hard lesson; but in that lesson he had taught me a new humility about my role in this life.

And renewed hope for my role in the next.