CHAPTER 17
THE LIFE SOURCE
The first section of path they followed was overgrown with delicate deer ferns, suggesting that the path was almost never used. The valley narrowed abruptly, and the path followed the valley stream still more closely. There was simply not enough room or soil here for giant trees, but a profusion of ferns, moss, vines and small trees clung with tenacity to rocky ledges and crevices. Johnny recognized rhododendron, vine maples, huckleberry, and Oregon grape vines, all displaying colorful spring finery, mostly in the form of delicate white or yellow blossoms around which flying insects swarmed. He could have repelled them but he purposely let them go about their business.
Johnny and Ann were careful where they placed their feet, lest they prick themselves on devil's club spines as sharp as porcupine quills, or crush big slithering banana slugs or other creatures. Alongside the path the stream tumbled through a rock-faced gorge: clear, frolicking, joyous. In it they glimpsed dark, torpedo shaped fish darting swiftly.
The path that had all but disappeared in the spring foliage again became more evident in the form of widened ledges and stair-like footholds painstakingly carved in solid volcanic basalt; its normally rough pitted surface worn smooth by feet and time. Dozens of ancient wooden totem poles placed every few meters attested to the origins of the path, which must have been made by Two Bear's ancestors over many hundreds of years. The totems may have been carved, or they may have been grown that way, it was impossible to tell which.
As they walked further they passed through a smorgasbord of geological formations; massive white granite blocks formed deep within the earth, pushed up by shattered volcanic flows of glinting black obsidian, piles of ash and rock fragments thrown by titanic volcanic explosions, and half-inch thick sheets of brittle, crumbling, jagged gray shale that had been broken to bits by volcanic cataclysm.
Despite abundant evidence of eons of punctuated geological violence on a gigantic scale, life encroached on the rock structures everywhere; moss, grass, ferns, lilies and bushes, along with insects, snails, birds, and rodents that scampered or slithered amongst them. Over the centuries life and the weather were relentlessly converting even the most stubborn rock into dark patches of soil which teemed with life.
In the wonderful stillness of this primal wilderness it was a long time before Ann spoke. "The Tribe found the object several thousand years ago, after already treating the grove of trees as a holy place for several generations."
"Object?"
"What we sometimes call the Source. The whatever-it-is that is apparently responsible for invigorating life around here. The Tribe doesn't exactly worship it, but they do respect it and fear it."
"People blindly fear what they don't understand."
"No, it’s not just blind fear, if what the Tribe and we Goths have learned is true."
"What has been learned?"
"That we should keep our distance from it. At moderate distances up to several miles it invigorates life. Plants and animals grow faster, bigger and without disease, and live longer than normal. IQs jump by dozens of points. Psychic powers are awakened or strengthened. But there's a flip side, a dark side. Great-granddaddy Goth got too close, and got a sour taste of it." She stopped walking and lay Ned gently on a patch of mossy ground. “Let’s stop a minute to rest, talk, and check on our patients.”
Ann pointed further up the path, to where a sizable tree grew, an Aspen with a trunk that was two meters in diameter. “That’s not a normal tree, Johnny.”
“I agree,” said Johnny. “It looks normal, though perhaps over-sized for an Aspen and a little misplaced. But I can sense that it is much more than a mere a tree. It radiates life very strongly. Off-scale, actually.”
“It’s an outgrowth of what the People call the One Tree.”
“Perhaps an apt name,” added Johnny. “Aspens spread by their root systems. The result can be one organism that covers many square miles of area and masses greater than the Great Tree. I sense that this is but a small portion of a very large tree indeed. This is the Source?”
“No. The Source is just over the next rise. The One Tree provides a pathway between the Land of the People and the Source. The People have always been interested in the Source, for much longer than even the Tribe has lived here. A part of the One Tree has been here for countless ages, basking in the Source’s power. Several thousand years ago the People arranged for the Tribe to help them watch over the Holy Forest and the Source, much as the Tribe later made a similar agreement with the Goths.”
Johnny nodded. “The advantages to the Tribe are obvious: better health, strength, and plenty of myths and mystery to help keep their interest at a peak. You said the One Tree is some sort of pathway?”
”That’s how the People refer to it. Its roots form a link to their hidden refuge, which is an unknown distance away: what seems like only miles, but is actually much further. The Land of the People resides in a different but nearby other dimension, according to your father.”
“So Ned and others of the People can go to and from the Land from here? How?”
“By following the root system through the mountain, but only with the help of a unicorn.”
“You mean Pru?”
Ann smiled. “So you also remember her! Yes, that unicorn is very special.” She knelt next to Ned and placed her hand on his forehead below the horns. “Ned will be coming around soon. He doesn’t need any more help from us.”
She also checked on Two Bears. “He is well enough now to wake, but chooses to focus on healing himself more fully. We call it a healing trance. So close to the Source, he should be completely recovered within minutes.”
She stood. “In the meantime, I’ll acquaint you with the Source itself.” The two of them continued alone up the path for only a few dozen meters, until Ann signaled Johnny to stop.
Johnny looked at what was ahead, but didn't at first see anything seriously out of sorts, except that the path ended there where the ledge widened into a small clearing. The stream also began nearby, as a torrent that erupted from an underground cave system that was probably volcanic in origin.
On closer examination part of the little clearing looked odd. The path didn't simply widen into a clearing. There was a five-meter wide stretch where the cliff fell back like a cave, even though it didn't seem dark like a cave. The more he stared at it, the stranger it seemed; he couldn't make out what he was looking at. Strangest still, with his powerful psychic powers he sensed with a void in the middle of the clearing, an absence of life, even though with his eyes he was seeing small trees and ferns.
"Move yourself a little to the left and right," advised Ann. "You'll identify it presently."
"Is it a cave or ravine?" he asked.
"No, it's kind of a big box that looks like it's made of mirrors, though it isn’t mirrors either," she answered. “Your dad called it the Cube.”
With that hint, he could distinguish something more at last. The reason it was so hard to make out was that it did seem to be made of mirrors facing out from a partly exposed cube, such that he was seeing the reflections of the stream, small trees, and the glass-like, glittering black obsidian that surrounded most of the object. But as he looked closer, it seemed to stretch back into the cliff face as if it were a cave, but that wasn't right either, because there aren't trees and sunlight inside of caves.
Abruptly his perception came into full focus. What showed of the object was indeed a huge cube shape, with all the sides that he could see being equal squares, perhaps six-meters long to a side. Most of it seemed to be protruding out of the solid rock of the Mountain. The clearing was really less than half as large as it first seemed, the rest was but an imperfect reflection on the side of the Cube facing them. Altogether, it was peculiar as hell.
But it wasn't scary. In fact, if not for his mother's firm grip on his shoulder, Johnny would have worked his way much closer to get a better look. He started to ask her if they could go closer, but she shushed him to be quiet
and pulled him back down the path, away from the thing in the cliff. She remained quiet until they were well out of earshot from the thing, and then she started telling him about it.
“It isn’t reflections you were seeing in it,” she began.
“What?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“If you stood in front of it, you wouldn’t see your reflection.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s perhaps an opening into another world, and it’s dangerous. Your Great-granddaddy swore that if someone gets too close the Source sometimes changes things."
"What does it change?"
"Nearly everything, he claimed. Your family can become different people, and things you thought happened didn't happen, and people say things happened that you don't remember happened. Have you ever heard of doppelgangers? Two Bears says that your doppelganger can appear in the Source and that such a thing is a very dangerous situation. So the Tribe and the first Goths agreed with the People that the Cube should stay hidden, and reasoned that the trees and the Tribe were God's way of hiding it. The first Goths felt it to be actually evil, even though even with their Goth powers they didn’t sense it to be evil."
"What does the Tribe say?"
"A similar thing. It's taboo for them to get close to the Source, though the true reasons have perhaps been lost in time. Only the Shaman is allowed to even look at it. Tribe members are told that in order to keep a balance between good and evil in the world, The Great Father provided both invigoration of life in the area and the Source itself, which can do evil.
“But their main concern since white men came to the area is to preserve the Holy Forest and the secrets of the People and the Cube. They've seen white men ravage practically everything they can get their hands on. Also they’re interested in fulfilling their obligation to the People. The People also want the Holy Forest, their One Tree and Land, and the Cube to remain hidden from the civilization of the white man."
“What do the People say about the Cube?”
“That it could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Your dad thought it was connected to them in some way, but they don’t seem to know much more about it than we do.”
"What about you, Mother? What do you think that thing is?"
"You have read more science fiction than I have, Johnny. I think that the Cube was left here long ago by visiting aliens, perhaps long before humans walked the Earth. The Cube itself can’t be sampled and dated, but your father used scientific methods to date the surrounding volcanic obsidian to be over ten thousand years old. The surrounding rock is flush with the Cube surface without any signs of disturbance. So it doesn't look like a hole was dug that the Cube was put in. It looks more like the rock formed around it, sometime after the Cube was put here. Or perhaps it floated here in the rock when the rock was molten. Maybe the volcano brought the Cube up from deep within the Earth. In any case it’s pretty certain that the Cube is at least ten thousand years old.”
“Location is a very relative concept,” added Johnny. “Even these mountains are 'moving' along with the tectonic plates that form the Earth's crust. This thing may be stationary relative to the mountain, but then again that may only seem to be the case because we are viewing it for a very short time from a geological perspective. But why is it here? To stimulate life here on Earth? Who or what put it here?"
"We don't know."
"And what about this 'change' business? Is this thing really dangerous?"
"Yes."
"But Dad examined this thing close enough to identify and date the surrounding rock formations. Did he notice anything strange?"
Ann sat down and stared, silent and brooding, towards the Cube. "Your father used to get close enough to touch it, all right. He said that it feels hard and solid as a mountain and perfectly smooth, just like it looks." She sighed. "Your Dad was a new generation Goth. He was going to use modern science to study the Cube, and unlock its secrets. And then perhaps for us and the Tribe, he could even break the curse."
"Curse?"
"Yes, that is what he called it. At the expense of our freedom humans have for generations pledged themselves to guard this forest grove and the secret of the Cube. You yourself are part of that now, for better or for worse. Not that he’d ever unilaterally break with those traditions; but your Father realized that times do change.”
“He was probably right. Mother; this thing can’t possibly stay hidden forever. Probably within our lifetimes, outside pressures will go critical. One way or another our secrets will get out, due to satellite surveys or increased Tribe interactions with the outside world or whatever. The Tribe, People, and Goths need to consider if there are other options."
“Are there? Your Father didn’t find any. What do you think would happen if we went public?”
“Given the ecology movement in recent years, I think the biggest trees would stand an excellent chance of survival.”
“Yes, there’s a very good chance of that much I think, if Fenster doesn’t cut everything down first. But then what if the ecology movement falters in only a few decades or centuries, under increasing population pressure for instance? And what about terrorists and other nut-cases?”
Johnny shrugged. “What if the Goths and the Reservation falter in a few more generations? Isn’t that just as likely?”
“Possibly. But what about the Cube itself? What would people do about it right now? What would our Federal Government do?”
“Fudge,” cursed Johnny under his breath. “Right now the USA Government would grab it probably, and keep it as their own secret in the name of national security. They might even destroy the forest to keep the great trees from bringing more scientists to the Mountain. Word would leak out about it though. Other nations would worry about our country having it, and that could destabilize our relationships with those countries. Militaries could be re-formed and used. Things could rapidly get very, very bad.”
“I agree. Maybe humanity will never be ready for the Cube, I don’t know. But I don’t think we’re ready now. That’s what Goths, the Tribe, and the People have all agreed on for many generations.”
"But is it fair to keep all of this to ourselves Mother? I know a lot of good people that would love to see these trees, and would love to help us figure out the Cube. Then there are our healing abilities to consider. Millions of people die of stuff that could perhaps be cured."
"Only a few people seem to have healing powers that can be amplified by the Cube, so the effect would be limited. More people could easily be killed fighting over who owns or uses the Cube, than could be helped. Imagine our current problems with Fenster, but magnified a thousand-fold. And Dark isn’t the only evil in this world, Johnny. Imagine a dozen Mr. Dark type demons trying to get at the Cube and use it for their own purposes."
"Fudge!"
"Exactly. Complicated issue, isn't it? Now you begin to understand what I meant by it being a curse and why I wanted to keep you away from the whole thing all those years.”
“But that’s not the main reason you have kept us away from the Mountain, is it?”
“No. Your dad was obsessed with studying the Cube. I was just as determined to keep him away from it. I made him spend most of his time in Ohio, but his heart was always here. Despite the risks, he insisted on pushing for more understanding. Then one day he came up here on the Mountain to study the Cube and never returned.”
Johnny had heard the story many times. Was there more to it? “He simply disappeared?”
“Into the Cube, presumably.”
“But maybe he isn’t dead then! Maybe he’s just lost!”
“I came up here myself with Two Bears and Mort to look for him, but there was no sign of him anywhere. After a few days of desperate, useless searching I realized that I had to get you away from the Mountain.”
“Me?”
“Johnny, you’re too much like your father, I knew that you would put yourself in danger too.”
“You were right, I suppose. Af
ter all, here I am.”
“I was wrong. It was inevitable that you would return to Goth Mountain. If we had lived here, you would now be much better prepared for all the dangers that you now face.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, we are where we are now. Get over your guilt, Mom.”
“Well said,” injected a familiar voice. Ann and Johnny turned to face its source, a giant of a man. Beside him stood a short, hairy, goat faced little creature.
“Two Bears! Ned! You've recovered!” shouted Johnny, as he and his mother ran to greet them.
When at last they stopped hugging, Two Bears eyed both Goths soberly. “There is something I must tell you,” he announced. “Something very bad. But first something else perhaps just as bad needs to be told to both of you by Ned.”
Johnny took Two Bear’s knife from his belt and returned it to the big shaman. “So tell us. I doubt that anything that you two could possibly tell us could wipe the smiles off of our faces.”
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