Eye of the Beholder

Chapter 3.6 The Old Gods

Tengri could sense the growing discomfort among his dream companions. He decided it was time to take them home. He spoke to the goddess.

Like you, this is not our true home. We must go back there now. Will you join us ?

He knew she understood he meant the lounge on Coon Island, from his dream image of where the group had gathered, some physically, some via QAR, and some in spirit only. He also knew from the change in tone of the dream around him that these companions agreed with the move.

I will, she said. Where you are, I will be.

And so it was. No one hesitated to give up the link to Mars and return to familiar surroundings. This shared dream had challenged their understanding. They all felt the need to think it over, and discuss it among themselves. Even the miners, Frogo, Dutch and Stovie, were happy to leave their drones behind. Sedna knew the drones, hers and Newt's as well, would be standing in the chamber, like silent guardians, until they returned to reactivate them.

Tengri saw that not all of their original company was still with them. Some did not understand what the goddess had revealed, and felt the need to let it sink in before they would be ready to learn more.

When all who remained in touch were settled in the lounge, or wherever they had left their bodies, and were comfortable in this familiar dream space, Tengri stood. The ghostly, magnificently naked goddess sat next to Sedna, who was being her own gloriously human self.

He used the dream speech to address the goddess.

Some of us find your story unsettling. It was clearly a time of sorrow for you and your people. Your world was dying. You did what you could to save it. But in doing so you brought devastation to two of our companion worlds. And to our own.

We have long known some of this story, and speculated about more of it. But our true origins have been shrouded in mystery. A mystery you have begun to unravel for us. Please tell us more.

She began.

Long ages passed. Again our world was growing colder and we needed more of the heavy metal.

We returned to your world. The raptors were gone. Some of the creatures from our own world that we had left behind had evolved to be more like us.

This world was our last resort. We treated it more cautiously. There was not enough heavy metal in the seas to extract it efficiently. And the world's inner turmoil had jumbled the surface, so the heavy metal was mixed with stone, and we had to dig it out, a tedious process.

We enhanced the bodies of the natives to make them more able, and set them to work in the mines.

The work was hard, and they did not live long. So we let them breed.

Some of our men found the new native women attractive, and began using them for pleasure. They thought these women, though lovely, were inferior and could not bear children by them. But they were wrong. Our seed was strong. And so was theirs.

Often enough the spirits who animated the children of these unions came from among us—we who had surrendered our bodies to dwell in the place of dreams. As human children they often became stronger, wiser, and more beautiful than their parents.

Frequently the mothers would slip off into the jungle to hide and raise these children. When they matured, the young ones had little interest in slaving for the overlords.

Instead they went deeper into the jungles to make their own communities, and gradually spread across the world.

The overlords didn't care. They had more than enough slaves to work the mines. Many of them took pleasure in lording it over the new communities, pretending to be gods. They had found this new world good, and were wearying of the efforts to save the old one. Some may sleep there still, but most are in the dream, or on this new world, here among you.

The rest you know.

She vanished back to her place in the Q.