It was called a celethene.
T. G. looked upon the great beast in amazement. He had come often to the biocenter since his arrival, and he always marveled at the diversity of flora and fauna on the planet. Most of the creatures in the biocenter, whether dinosaurs, birds, or mammals, were as brilliantly colored as gems. The plants were of the greenest greens he had ever seen. All of them made life on Earth seem muted gray by comparison, and he found himself falling in love with nature all over again.
Despite his preoccupation with his new role as prophet, T. G. thought often of Jenni. More than once she had dragged him to the zoo back home, buying them both season passes and using them often. Her love of nature had been unlike any he had ever seen, for she could sit for hours, it seemed, just looking at a patch of wildflowers or listening to the rain or watching birds in the sky.
I wish you could see this place, he caught himself thinking, before remembering that she possibly had. Yet there had been no sign of her at all on Noron, and Pretsal and the Twelve had even checked their underground resources to see if anyone else like T. G. had been reported anywhere on the planet. She was nowhere to be found—and with each passing month, T. G. began to accept that she simply was not there.
He missed her. He loved her.
He stood at the edge of the pit, gazing at the huge three-homed dinosaur—the triceratops of Earth—its skin a dull orange mottled with brownish purple along its upper back and on its belly. Watching it move about as it used its nose horn to root among the woody plants of its enclosure, T. G. was reminded of The Enormous Egg, a boy-meets-dinosaur story that he had adored as a child. He could still see the pen-and-ink illustrations in his mind, and he smiled at the comparison.
“I think I’ll call you Uncle Beazley,” he said with a smile, drawing the name from the dinosaur in the book. He still carried an affection for the childhood story, but more significantly, Uncle Beazley was an animal much like the one whose skin had made up the Gift’s outer sheath. He had grown quite fond of the creature and visited it often.
The gentle beast had a distinguishing attribute that allowed T. G. to recognize it at once, even to the point of picking it out of a herd. Upon its powerful right shoulder it bore a vivid purple crescent-shaped mark, outlined in dappled red.
Dinosaurs still flourished on Noron, both in the wild outer forests and in zoos. From tyrannosaurids to sauropods, ceratopsians to pterosaurs, the entire prehistoric cast of characters memorized by every child on Earth still walked the land, side by side with the elephants and lions and apes.
It was an incredibly complex chain of life to which the great creatures contributed. To his surprise, T. G. had learned that the fearsome, red-and-golden-skinned Tyrannosaurus rex was not usually an active hunter, despite its terrifying appearance and virtually every theory of Earth-bound science. The long-necked sauropods with their huge appetites kept the lush, worldwide plant life in check, but their massive remains after death presented a problem. The carnivorous tyrannosaurids and their smaller cousins, acting as scavengers, made quick work of the giant plant-eaters’ huge carcasses when necessary—preventing the huge body masses from decomposing over the lengthy periods of time that would be involved—and then left droppings that were optimally balanced to nourish the plant life upon which the sauropods fed.
Design and execution, a symphony of life.
Via the simulight unit in Pretsal’s apartment, T. G. accessed a great amount of basic physical data about the world of Noron. The planet had but a single supercontinent upon its face, which was divided into three large nations that had warred for most of the Planet’s recorded history. The largest of these was Luracayn, which covered almost the entirety of the continent’s northern half. Sethii, located primarily to the southwest, was the next greatest in size and economic influence. The smallest of the countries was Kamir, which occupied just under one-eighth of the area available on the continent and was landlocked.
The planet had no great mountains or mountain ranges, only high, rounded hills a few thousand feet tall. It had never known quakes or volcanic activity, since the planet’s crust was intact and its internal pressures were contained. Noron’s single ocean was smaller than its landmass, with small, shallow secondary seas dotting the landscape. Wide rivers coursed from sea to sea and finally out to the great ocean, where they emptied.
Interestingly, Noron was missing the vast fossil beds of Earth. Why should it be so? T. G. wondered. How could it be so?
He stayed in the shadows of the planet, hidden from the Watchers, as he learned of the world into which he had come. Disguised well enough to blend with the public, Pretsal always at his side, he traveled by day throughout the city and the surrounding countryside. Body makeup gave him the same skin tone as a native Noronian, and special contact lenses, which T. G. hated wearing, covered his normally brown eyes with the pearlescence common to the planet. Pretsal’s old robe completed the effect, and a “chuni”—slang for “child”—was born.
From time to time Ish privately appeared to T. G., giving counsel and new revelation as the student was able to comprehend it. Specialized skills that were quite out of the ordinary became his to master, gifts of Ish. He matured quickly under the burden he had undertaken, learning to ask Ish not for a lighter load but for a stronger back.
They had indeed chosen well.
The Dark knew that the Truth had returned to Noron, but Ish kept it safe through his strengthening of the Twelve. Darafine labored day and night to translate the scroll into the language all of Noron now spoke, but the going was slow. The languages did not mesh easily, and her love for the scroll’s message would not allow her to hurry. No word, no syllable, no inflection could be lost. No Noronian still living knew the Old Tongue but she, leaving her to carry out the privilege alone, but the rest of the Twelve did all they could to aid her and keep her as comfortable as possible as she worked.
When the time came, the Truth would be ready for its new audience. T. G., waiting for that day, hoped he would be as well.
Also aiding the Twelve was a faithful underground of those who had awaited the Awakening—small in count, numbering no more than a few thousand, but spread across the planet’s face with an established base in practically every major city. They, too, would be ready to move when the time came.
It soon would.
“What is it? What did I say?” T. G. asked, puzzled.
“You said you were twenty-four,” Pretsal replied, swallowing a bite of grilled locust. They sat at a shaded wooden table in the food court of an outdoor marketplace, enjoying the regional fare as they took time out for lunch. The place was crowded and obviously quite popular.
“You may look like a youngster as we walk the streets,” he continued, “but you forget that you are not one in reality.”
T. G. thought for a moment. It had never occurred to him that a year on Noron probably differed from one on Earth.
“How long is a year here? How many days?”
“Three hundred sixty.”
“That’s pretty close … shouldn’t matter that much. How old are you?”
“I have seen the Feast of Rebirth fifty-two times,” Pretsal said.
“No way.”
Pretsal smiled, slightly amused at his disbelief. “Yes. Fifty-two.”
“Pretsal, no way!” T. G. began to laugh, thinking his new friend was pulling his leg. He went back to his meal of red locust, sliced fruit, bread, and grape juice. After a few moments, he went on. “Come on now … really, how many years old are you? You don’t look fifty-two.”
“I should hope not,” Pretsal smiled, taking a bite.
“I’d say you’re thirty, maybe thirty-five tops. Why did you say you were fifty-two?”
Pretsal’s face become puzzled. “I do not understand. I did not say that.”
“You said you saw the Feast of Rebirth—”
“T. G.,” Pretsal corrected him, “that feast comes every six years.”
“What?”
“I am 317 years old.”
“What?”
“What?” Pretsal echoed.
T. G. saw the serious expression Pretsal wore. “You really aren’t kidding, are you? You’re serious!”
“Why would I joke about that? It is not funny.”
“So how long do you guys live, anyway?”
“It varies,” Pretsal casually answered. “Eight hundred … nine hundred years.” He pointed at the remaining locust drumstick on T. G.’s plate. “Are you going to eat that?”
“Have at it.” An astonished T. G. slid his plate toward his friend. He had gotten used to locust, and even liked it, but he had had enough. As Pretsal ate, the young prophet looked upon him with new eyes. Three hundred seventeen? He did some quick calculating in his head. You were born almost a hundred years before the start of the Revolutionary War?
T. G. was stunned. “Imagine all you could accomplish with a life span like that! There’d be no limit to the advances you could make.”
“One would think so,” the giant nodded. “But such has not proven to be the case. Complacency is most seductive, T. G. My people have, in the past, traveled in space, explored the depths of the sea, and accomplished great things in medicine, structural engineering, and physics.”
He paused to take a drink, swirling the juice in his cup as he considered a history he knew too well. “For thousands of years now, though, things have remained virtually unchanged. Ours is a stagnant society Even most of those who had ventured into space returned here long, long ago, abandoning the bases we once built on other worlds simply because it was easier to live here.”
They left the food court and headed back toward Pretsal’s apartment. Questions formed in T. G.’s mind as they walked, and as his friend closed and locked the door behind them, he plopped onto the heavy wood-and-leather sofa and renewed their conversation.
“About what you said before,” T. G. began, “I would have thought your race too intelligent just to sit here and rot like that. I mean, what about the future? When history looks back—”
Pretsal took a seat, his expression far from one of pride. “Intelligence has no bearing upon it … and our history is not a proud one. Our minds, once noble, became clouded by a vicious moral decay. Over time the mental skills that built our great cities turned in their entirety toward creating newer, better, and more inventive forms of depravity. Cruelty of an intensity you cannot imagine swept the world. Each man’s hand was raised against his neighbor. Sexual atrocities that would sicken any sane person became commonplace.”
He hung his head. “We almost destroyed ourselves. Weapons of incredible power wiped out whole cities … whole nations … whole cultures. Unceasing warfare laid waste the entire world. Mutations were born. Huge men, violent, disfigured giants without compassion or mercy exploded exponentially into the populace and struck terror into all who saw them. The monstrosities roamed the land in huge numbers, killing and raping and maiming. Because of their wickedness, severe and fatal birth defects took more than half of the newly born. Combined with the losses due to war, our population, once numbered in the billions, plummeted until there were no longer enough living to bury the dead.”
Realization struck T. G., and he considered the intricate murals of ancient bloodshed in the hallway outside in a new light.
“Those carvings out there,” he said, “in the entry hall … they aren’t mythological, are they? They aren’t just legendary or symbolic. Those were real people, and real battles, and real monsters …”
“Yes,” Pretsal nodded. He rose and walked over to an ornate storage cabinet set into one wall. As its doors swung open, T. G. saw a glimmer of polished metal and formed glass upon the tall shelves within. Pretsal reached into the cabinet and withdrew a large, roughly rounded object, and only after he turned around and began to bring it closer did T. G. realize it was a helmet. A very old one.
“This belonged to my triascendant,” Pretsal began. “He wore it in battle many times. As you can see, it saved his life.”
“Triascendant?”
“The father of the father of my father.”
He handed it to T. G., who was surprised by its great weight. It was about eighteen inches from side to side, and somewhat longer front to back. Its polished surface caught the light hypnotically, even centuries after its manufacture. It was lined with leather and a firm, black gel-like material he did not recognize. As T. G. struggled to heft it into better position, Pretsal indicated a long, deep indentation along its upper right side.
“A blade fell here,” he said. “One wielded by an enemy long ago on a battlefield far from here. And here …” He indicated a pitted burn mark on its other side. “Here a ripcharge struck. Either of those blows would have been fatal … and I would never have been born.” He smiled. “I suppose I owe my life to this helmet.”
T. G. looked at a huge, curved trail of rounded indentations that ran down the left side and then up near the back. After a moment, what they were dawned on him.
“Toothmarks?”
“ ‘Monsters,’ as you call them.” He took the helmet from T. G. and returned it to its place. “Hell truly lived on Noron. The stench of billions of dead filled the air. Corpses covered the land, the streets, the hidden places. Still men fought. Still they slaughtered each other without mercy. Finally, so few remained that our extinction seemed certain.”
“What stopped it?” the transfixed student asked.
“We do not know for certain. At the last possible moment, some measure of sanity returned to the planet suddenly and without apparent cause. The few who remained, scattered across the planet’s ravaged face, turned from their relentless fury and stopped the killing. Still, they were wicked … but their wretchedness was no longer made manifest in its totality.
“As time went on, new nations were founded, rising from the rubble and debris of the old. Unfortunately, our moral depravity still runs deep … only those few who have clung to the Truth and have looked toward the coming Awakening have not succumbed. For most, this is still a world without hope.”
The words drove home for T. G. the vital reason for his being there. It was a world of great physical beauty, but it was spiritually, morally dead. The eyes and senses were fed to satiation, but the soul starved to death.
Only in the final days had a glimmer of light returned, as the dwindling few who still remembered awaited the Voice in the Dark. And even as that Voice stood at the doorstep, waiting for the final sign that he should make himself known to all, the horrifying moral decay of the planet intensified.
An Awakening was at hand, the only hope for Noron.
A defense against it was in place.
T. G. was expected—and he could not be allowed to live.