The Stone God Awakens

Ghlikh told him that the Vroomaw were the only human beings of whom he knew, except those who were the slaves of the Neshgai, of course. In fact, the Vroomaw may have been descended from the Neshgai's runaway slaves. On the other hand, the Neshgai may have gotten their slaves from captured Vroomaw. In either event, the Vroomaw lived in an area about a hundred miles square and had a population of about forty-five thousand. There were three main villages of about five thousand citizens each, and the rest lived on farms or hunted. They had had some trade with the Dhulhulikh and with the Pauzaydur. The latter were, according to Ghlikh, a people who lived in the sea, not on it. They were a sort of porpoise-centaur, if Ulysses could believe Ghlikh's descriptions.

Ulysses inquired about the history of the humans, but Ghlikh professed ignorance on this.

Ulysses decided that he knew less about this world than he had when he opened his eyes in the burning hall of the Wufea. Well, not really. But he was far more confused. There were all the many genera and species of sentients, many of whom could not be accounted for by the theory of evolution, and now there were the human beings who had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. He had been thrilled for days by the prospect of seeing a human face again, of hearing human voices, of touching human skin. And they were gone.

The dirt road wound through the country and eventually led them to a stockaded village by the sea. There was a harbour here with most of the vessels, ranging from dugouts to single-masted ships like Viking craft, wrecked on the shore. Apparently, a storm had swept most from the anchorage and deposited them on the beach.

The village looked as if everybody had decided to get up during the noonday meal and walk out. About a quarter of the houses had been burned down, but this could be attributed to lack of attendance of cooking fires.

There was only one thing to mar the picture of a whole population voluntarily deserting. That was a tall wooden pole in the centre of the main square. Its top bore a carved wooden head. The head was hairless and had very big fan-like nonhuman ears, a long snakish nose and an open mouth from which projected elephantine tusks about four inches long. The head was painted a dark grey.

"Neshgai!" Ghlikh said. "That is the head of a Neshgai. They have left this behind as a sign of conquest."

"If they took this country by assault, where are the signs of violence?" Ulysses said. "Where are the skeletons?"

"Obviously, the Neshgai cleaned up afterward," Ghlikh said. "They are a very neat people. They like order and cleanliness."

Ulysses looked for evidences of mass burials and found several large graves. He dug into one and uncovered a pile of about a hundred skeletons. All were human.

"The Neshgai would take their own dead back to their country," Ghlikh said. "All Neshgai are buried in one place, a very sacred place."

"How long have the Vroomaw been here? Surely you know that much about them?"

"Oh, about twenty generations, I would say," Ghlikh said, screwing up his face.

"That would be about four hundred yeras," Ulysses said.

Why couldn't he have been depetrified a hundred years ago? he thought. Then he could have found his own kind and settled down among them and had children. And with his knowledge of technology, the humans would not have been conquered by the Neshgai. It probably would have been the other way around.

Of course, he would be dead now, buried with a pole above his grave and the skull of some beast on the end of a pole. HERE LIES ULYSSES SINGING BEAR, 1952 A.D. – 10,000,000 A.D.

For a little while, he was depressed. Since the grave would be his inevitable end, why concern himself about anything? Why not go back to the Wufea village and settle down there among people who worshiped him? As for the mate he needed so strongly ...

Inside an hour, he had shucked off the black mood. It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.

He explored the houses and the temples and then went down to the beach. There was a ship, still riding at anchor, which had not been damaged too badly. Its hull was fouled and several of the boards needed replacing, but it could be fixed up with material from storage sheds in the docks. He explained to his chiefs what he wanted done. They nodded as if they understood, but they also looked doubtful. Scared, perhaps.

It occurred to him then that they knew nothing about sailing. Indeed, for all of them except himself and the bat-people, it was their first sight of the sea.

"Sailing will be strange and perhaps frightening for you at first," he said. "But you can learn. You may even delight in it, once you know what you can and ca

They still looked dubious, but they hastened to carry out his orders. He studied the masts and the sails available. All the boats and ships used the square rig. Apparently, the Vroomaw did not know about fore-and-aft rigs. Which meant that they probably did not know about tacking or sailing close-hauled. He could not understand this. It was true that man had put out to sea for many thousands of years before he invented sails to enable him to tack back and forth. But, once the force-and-aft sail had been invented, it should have remained forever in man's technology. It had not, which meant that there had been a catastrophic gap in the continuity of man's knowledge. There must have been a total fall into savagery with no contact with the seas for at least several generations. And no lore handed down, not even by word of mouth.

He picked a large house to live in and moved in Awina and the chiefs, letting the others stay in three separate houses with their subchiefs. Guards were stationed at the main gate and told to beat the huge drums in the house over the gate if they saw anything suspicious.

Three weeks later, the ship was ready. It was launched from its drydock and Ulysses took the entire force out on its maiden cruise. Its sailors had been given verbal instructions. Now they tried to put their hazy knowledge into effect. They almost capsized the boat several times. But, after a week of steady schooling, they were ready for an extended coastwise voyage. Ulysses, besides building and installing a fore-and-aft rig, had also built and in-stalled a rudder. The Vroomaw boats had used big oars or sweeps to steer.

He christened the boat the New Hope, and one fine dawn they set out for the land of the Neshgai.

The coast was flat with many good beaches and only a few cliffs here and there. The water was comparatively shallow to about two miles off the coast and free of shoals or large rocks. The trees, large oaks, sycamores, fir, pine and several unknown to the Earth of his time, came down close to the beach. There were plenty of animals: deer, antelope, the long-necked giant horse, which he called a girse when he thought in English (which was not often anymore), buffalo, huge wolf-like animals, seals, and porpoises.

He asked Ghlikh why the land between the Neshgai and the Vroomaw was empty of sentients.

"I can only speculate," the little winged man said. "But I would say that it is because all sentients along the coast had gone to live with The Tree."

Ulysses noted the with. Why not on? Ghlikh talked as if there had been an invitation, and the sentients had moved into a house with others.

"Living is easier with The Tree," Ghlikh said. "There one can hide from one's enemies. Food is plentiful and easy to get."