I turned slowly away from where Wagner had disappeared over the side ofthe wall and faced my captors, the Zards. Chief among them was the King,he being a foot or two taller than the others, with a graceful andpowerful pose that struck awe into the eyes of the beholder with itsinnate command and dignity, both of which flowed from it as naturally aswater from a well. There were about twenty guards in the squadron thatprotected the King, but it was not so much from the terror of them thatthe Canitaurs fled, nor was it because of the guards that patrolled thewalls and were sure to join any fray attempted, it was instead anapparent fear of the King, and rightly so, for his demeanor was fierceand sophisticated, as if he were not just a warrior nor solely ascholar, but a mixture of the two that gave him an aura that inspiredfear, some unseen presence that filled the air around him and sent hisneighbors into a reverencing awe reminiscent of a lover's sacredeuphoria, intangible yet undeniable.
As I turned to him, he smiled and greeted me softly and pleasantly, insuch a way that seemed contrary to his nature. Instead of being terribleand glorious like the crash of thunder or the din of waves, his voicewas melodious, subtly so, like a soft summer rain affecting the dreamsof a slumbering child as it falls gently on his face. There was a rhythmthat ran through it, like poetry, yet not like average poetry, where therhythm is forced and the lines deformed to its ungainly warble, but likeheavenly poetry, where the rhythm is beyond the conscious and into thesubconscious, where it inspires a feeling of quaint remembrance ofitself, as if it were there and not there at the same time. And while itwas soft and pleasant, it was not feminine, for it was a strongbaritone, reinforced by its own superiority and strengthened by its witand sobriety.
"Greetings, o' chosen one," he said to me, "I see that you have arrivedsafely."
"Yes, quite soundly," I replied, a little taken aback on two fronts:firstly that he was not angry or indignant that I had attempted todestroy his kingdom and take his life in the process, and secondly thathe seemed to expect me, as if I were his midday tea partner.
"I am glad, for I would wish you no harm, though your Canitaurianfriends obviously felt no such concern. But just as well, for theyalways were unpredictable. I'm sorry that there is no one here at themoment, or we should have a great welcoming parade for our newly arrivedkinsman redeemer, but they are off at the lake, inspecting the fire Isuppose. I must admit it caught me off guard for a moment or two, and atfirst I was actually quite surprised. I soon remembered, though, thatour friends the Canitaurs would have gotten some notions in their headsof a battle, at your arrival. It must be a grand sight in any case, andnot one to miss."
I gave him a strange look, for I was a bit confused myself at theattitude he donned towards me, very friendly, as was Wagner, as Irecalled, though it seemed as contrary to his nature as it did to theKing's. He saw the expression of my eyes, and seemed to read rightthrough my thoughts and see my apprehension of punishment, for hebeckoned to his guards to leave us alone. They moved quickly anduniformly, a well-trained unit, and positioned themselves in a lineformation along the street. The King and I then strolled down theirmidst, they walking along with us at a distance of a few yards, whichwas all that the closely built buildings would permit. In a moment ortwo we reached the Temple of Time, which was on the far side of a largesquare plaza that opened up between it, the palace, and the governmentcenter. Once we reached it, he led me inside and the guards took up postaround its outside.
"You need not fear," he told me when we were alone, "You are amongfriends here. You see, the Canitaurs were not the only ones waiting fora kinsman redeemer, the Zards were as well. That day that you were seengoing into the Canitaur's outpost was a big disappointment for us, I hadalmost begun to think that you were beyond our reach. I am sure you knowall about the conflict between us, and the circumstances of your timethat brought its beginning about?"
"Yes, I do," I responded as we walked through the great entry hall ofthe temple, lined with bookshelves and a rich red carpeting. He wassilent for another moment as we crossed into another room that led to achamber with a long table in its center and a great many statues andworks of art scattered throughout its whole. There was an altar at thefar end, built into a giant statue of a White Eagle that graced theentire wall, it holding the altar in its giant claws.
He saw me look at it and told me, "This is the Hall of Time, and that isthe altar to Temis, the God of Time. It is a very sacred place, to bothus and the Canitaurs, for it was built by Temis himself, before the raceof man inhabited the earth. By the time any men came to live on Daem, ithad been buried by the dirt and debris of thousands of years, but whenthe Great War took place, the shock uncovered it and revealed it to men,a sort of revelation that came only as it was needed the most. Daem'swar started over the control of it, and to a point still is. To acertain extent is has helped us greatly, since the Canitaurs are afraidto lay siege to us in the regular fashion, for fear that it will be laidto ruin, and then our fate sealed in flesh and bone as well as earth andstone. But come, there is something I want to show you," he told me.
With that he started over to a door in the wall adjacent to theentrance, which, as there were only two doors, was the only other exit.It led to a long, winding stair that went up to the top of the towerthat I had seen from below. We walked up it in silence, more from awe ofits magnificent construction on my part than fatigue in climbing itssteep stairs, which wound on and on almost indefinitely. There were nowindows in the tower, and only a few paintings to liven up the sparselydecorated walls, yet they needed no adornments, for they werebeautifully constructed from a strange stone that split and colored in amarvelous twisting pattern.
At last we came to the top. It was much like it had appeared to be frombelow, for it was a large glass sphere that sat on the tower, like thedome on top of a light pole. It was divided in two, and the stairs wentright through the bottom half and opened into a circular foyer that thenhad a small flight of stairs running up to the main room. There werelittle closets and such in the empty spaces on the bottom floor. Theupper room was a good thirty feet in diameter, and the walls and ceilingwere all made of glass, very sturdy and insulating, yet completelytransparent. On the floor was an odd carpet that was smooth and thin,like a silk or fine linen, yet very strong. There was a rounded table onthe side of the entrance hole opposite the stairs, and a curved couchthat sat against the wall behind it, cut perfectly to its circularoutline. Two cushioned chairs sat at the table and a small end tableleaned up against the couch, on top of which there was a medium sizedspyglass, that is, a telescope.
The sun was just coming up and shining its golden hues on thesurrounding lands, which were beginning to darken as the fires of LakeUmquam Renatusum died down to a faint glow in the center of the forestsof the near-north. It was the first time that I had gotten a bird's eyeview of Daem, and I was amazed at its beauty. The plains stretched onone side of Nunami like a broad field of gold in the morning light, itsdew drizzled grasses waving in a solemn and dignified manner to and frolike the constant beating of the earth's heart, and when looked uponabstractly it moved as if one great beast of benevolence, holding itselfin unison as it chorused back the silent tones of life. Its edges drapeddown to the ocean like a curtain of woven sunlight on the eastern andsouthern sides of the island of Daem, and on the western side of Nunamithe great forest came up right to its edge. There was a little of theforest between the ocean and the city on that side, while to the norththere was a great stretch of trees, all the way until the ocean againcame into sight in the far, far north. On the ground the trees of Daemseemed like mighty towers and battlements of nature, and on the treewayone felt suspended in air hundreds of feet above the ground on a cloudof green and growing foliage, but from afar and above they were revealedin their true splendor, shooting up from the earth as if they were thearms of the ground itself, grasping huge clusters of leaves and branchesfar above in their tightened fists. Some way into the forest, the groundsprang up into mountains that were as fierce and behemoth as the treesthat
clothed them. They were terrible to the eye and mind, as evidencesof the power that exists outside of oneself.
The city of Nunami was also revealed to me for the first time in depth.As I have said, it was surrounded by a thick, tall wall made of stonesand precious jewels, with four gates, one at the furthest extreme ineach direction. It was a circular city, made mostly of the samematerials as the wall and temple, which were a plain, silvery stone; adark rock with inherent patterns; a mixture of cobblestone and acolorful compositor rock; and a vast array of metals, everything frombrass to silver to platinum. Made in an ancient style, the buildingswere tall, the average being what was equivalent to at least a dozen ortwo stories in the pre-desolation times, and they were close together,built along roads paved with cobblestone and lined with trees whosegirth, though not as monstrous as those in the wild, was still great.There were farm fields and vineyards and orchards and meadows forgrazing animals all within the city walls, and not just congregatedaround the outside, for there were buildings all around the wall'sperimeter, but scattered among the other buildings in a natural andpleasing way. In the southern part there was a lake that was of fairsize, and a fleet of fishing boats anchored at its shore showed that itdid its part to contribute to the city's well-being. Several of thetrees throughout the city were especially conspicuous in their grandeur,for they rose hundreds of feet from the ground and had great waterfallsflowing down from their tops, as if they were crying great torrents oftears down from their aged faces, though if in sadness or joy, Icouldn't tell.
To the east there was land visible from the height at which I foundmyself, though in the distance it became hazy and I could not make outits distinct features. It was evidentially corrupted, however, for ithad an uneasy look about it, as did the ocean, which was a faint, paleshadow of the rich blue it was in my childhood days. The sky as well wastainted, and it looked to be filled with the accumulated atrocities ofcountless generations. The clouds were thick and bluish, and thespherical mural of the sky itself had been greatly dried, cracked, andcrumbled since my time, for it bore the marks of pain, the marks of thelabor pains of the earth's last gestating doom. And well they should, Ithought, for in the years since my natural life it had seen muchsuffering and much destruction.
The King broke the silence, saying, "Lovely, isn't it, Jehu? And it isall yours for the taking."
"What do you mean," I asked him.
"Exactly what I said, the whole world is yours, if you want it."
"But how?"
"All you have to do is join us, the Futurists, and we will reward youwith all the power and glory that you can imagine."
At that I sobered up and replied, "But what of Onan, of my quest to stopthe doom of humanity from materializing in this final juncture. He isthe one who sent me, and he is the Lord of the Past, whom the Canitaursfollow. I am his agent, why would I turn from him to serve meremortals?"
He laughed a slight, sarcastic laugh, "Tell me, Jehu, to whom did hesend you, your ancestors or your offspring?"
"To my ancestors," I said slowly, "Though the Canitaurs seemed to implythat my time was long ago. To be candid, I do not understand."
"Of course you do not understand, and how could you, when no one hastold you? You see, Jehu, the question of time is not so linear as youwould think. You know full well that the conflict between the Zards andCanitaurs is over how to address the renewing of the earth: they wouldsend you, our kinsman redeemer, back into time to prevent the nuclearwars, while we would send you to the future to bring back itscompletion. They hold to traditions as if they were the foundation oflife, while our people have no traditions in the traditional sense, if Imay use that oxymoronic phrase, but we look to what will come instead ofwhat has passed. History is unimportant to the present, Jehu, because wehave advanced to the point that we do not make the same mistakes as ourancestors. In the past, they waged war needlessly and did so in the nameof humanitarian deeds. But today, we are advanced enough that we usepeaceful and just means to reach our ends. In your day there were manyabsurd beliefs, for example the so-called 'fats' that were so vehementlyavoided, are actually quite healthy, while on the other hand,protectionism and socialism are quite absurd ideas, and yet they wereheld dear. But today we have no such presuppositions, today weunderstand the world and know justice where your society knew only itsshadows. We do not need to be bound by the mistakes of yesterday, for wehave the enlightenment of today, and while the Canitaurs cling to theold time's ways, we have progressed to the point where we have no needof such traditions."
He continued, "It may seem to you foolish to follow Zimri instead ofOnan, because Onan's realm has already been established and growsgreater everyday, while Zimri's doesn't exist and never will, but youmiss a very important point in the understanding of these matters. For,as you probably know, time and matter are the foundations of physicalexistence, and while the two components are independent, they are alsoparallel. Matter is always revolving, from its simplest form in the atomto its greatest in the universe, everything is revolving and rotating.So is time. Imagine time as a galaxy, revolving continually around theblack hole at its center, that is, an enigma that is actually devoid ofall matter. Time is revolving around a great enigma as well, which isdevoid of time, that enigma being eternity. Eternity is not a placewhere there is infinite time, but rather a place where there is simplyno time, it is the counter-part in the temporal realm of a black hole inthe material realm. And just as a galaxy in the material realm revolvesaround the black hole at its center, in the temporal realm, the flow oftime itself revolves around eternity. That means that time repeatsitself over and over again, just as on earth a year is the amount oftime it takes the earth to revolve around the sun once, in the temporalrealm, an age is the amount of time that it takes the time continuum torevolve once around eternity. Just as every year the climate on theearth is similar, every particular day having its usual temperature andweather, and every general period having the same seasons, so is time.While every age is completely new and original, they all follow the samepattern, and through every age the same general events happen, though afew of the small details change from one time to the next.
"So you see, it is true that Onan sent you to both the past and thefuture of your original time. The Pastites would say that you were sentforward in time, because you existed in our past, while the Futuristswould say that you were sent backwards in time because you existed inour future. While this would seem an unimportant question, it is not,for we have to choose one or the other. You, the kinsman redeemer haveto choose one or the other. That is why you were sent, you have todecide. Our fate must be decided by a mortal because the gods have vowedto never interfere directly in our ways again. You must decide, Jehu,for you hold the fate of humanity in your hands: in all the other agesbefore us, the wrong decision was made, and every time some greatcalamity came that somehow threw the earth into a great ice age thatdestroyed all life for many millenniums. We know that the wrong decisionwas made, but we cannot tell what it was that was done. Tell me Jehu,will you join the Futurists? Surely you can see that the Pastites arejust that, stuck in the past, with their obsession with traditions andlegends. They are of the past, but we are of the future, we are theprogressive ones. Dear Jehu, choose the future, and when the earth isspared from the great impending doom, we will set you up as ruler of theworld to show our gratitude. Will you join us, friend?" he asked me withthe most entreating eyes, though of somewhat doubtful sincerity.
There was a deathly silence that followed, for I was thinking long andhard about what I should do, until at last I spoke, "Your majesty, I amafraid that I will have to turn you down and remain with the Pastites.Onan sent me, and it is Onan whom I shall follow."
The King shook his head and sighed dejectedly, for a moment he lookeddisheartened and crestfallen, but then he again resumed his formerprideful pose and said to me, less humbly and entreating than before,"Very well, I was afraid that you would do that. I have no choice nowbut to keep you here indefinitely as a prison
er, until such time as yourealize the error of your ways and repent. It may seem improper torefuse the decision of the kinsman redeemer, but I must, for I will notallow my people to be destroyed by your ignorance."
With that he turned and walked quickly down the stairs to the door,turning to me just as he reached it and adding with an almost spitefulintonation, "But then again, what clarity of mind can be expected fromsomeone from the unenlightened past." He then left the room, closing thedoor with a powerful thud, after which I heard a small metallic clickand his strong, commanding footsteps fading down the long stairway. Assoon as the sound had died away and he was no more to be heard, I randown to the door and tried to open it, but to no avail, for it waslocked. There was no way to escape: I was a prisoner of the Zards.
Chapter 9: Mutually Assured Deception