Divinity, Joseph Samachson [free ebook reader for ipad .TXT] 📗

good thing he had put on his helmet. Not far away, a group of the natives was approaching, laden with more food and flowers. It was larger than the previous group. Evidently, as he had anticipated, they were showing him off to newcomers.

He came to a stately halt and waited for them to approach. He could see the surprise on their faces as they noted his change of costume, and he watched nervously as they stopped to whisper among themselves. It would be too bad for him if they didn't like it.

But they didn't seem to mind. One of them, a very impressive old man with green hair flecked with red, stepped in front of the others and made a speech, a melodious speech full of liquid sounds that were neither quite vowels nor consonants. He didn't have the slightest idea of what the individual words meant. But the significance of the speech as a whole was clear enough. As it came to an end, they presented him with more food and flowers.

Bradley cleared his throat. And then, with as deep and impressive a voice as he could manage, he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to accept your nomination. I promise you that if elected I shall keep none of my promises."

It was his first speech to them, and he enjoyed making it so much that every time he saw them during the next few days—they settled down to coming twice a day, morning and night—he made it again, with variations, listing the wonderful things he would do for them if elected to the office.

After awhile, as he began to enjoy the ceremony for its own sake, he didn't mind at all putting the helmet on for two short periods every day. Having so little contact with them, he could learn their language only very slowly. He could distinguish the word for flowers from that for food, although he himself could pronounce neither. He knew the names of a few plants, a few parts of the body. And he learned a few names of people. The red-green haired old man was, as close as he could make the sounds, Yanyoo. He took the trouble to notice that the prettiest girl was Aoooya.

At first everything had been exceedingly peaceful. But about a week after his arrival—he couldn't be sure exactly how many days had passed, because he hadn't kept count—he learned of some of the dangers they faced.

It was while they were holding the morning ceremony that the thing came out of the forest. At first he thought that a tree had moved. It was green, with reddish blotches like clusters of needle leaves, and it seemed to ooze forward toward them from among the trees. Aoooya noticed it first, and pointed and screamed. It was the size of a tiger, thought Bradley, and might be even more dangerous. He had difficulty keeping his eyes on the rapidly moving creature through the goggles of his helmet. He was aware of gleaming eyes, of two rows of dull green teeth, and of muscles that rippled under the green fur.

Several of the men had little blowpipes, through which they released a shower of darts. But the darts bounced off the fur, and the thing came on. Bradley fumbled for his gun, and almost dropped it in his excitement. When he finally brought it up into aiming position, his hand was trembling, and his finger could hardly catch the trigger.

The thing leaped into the air at the old man, Yanyoo, just as the gun went off. The body vaporized first, leaving for a fraction of a second the fierce head and the powerful legs apparently supporting themselves in the air. Then part of the head went, and the rest fell to the ground. But sheer momentum carried the green smoky vapor on, so that it surrounded first the old man, then several of the girls, and after them, Bradley himself. They were all yelling, all but Bradley, who put away his gun and muttered to himself in relief, and then the wind began to dissipate the vapor, and on the ground there was left only part of a head and six torn legs.

They were bowing to him and raising their voices high in thanks. It was easy, thought Bradley. Really, it was a cinch to be a god. The beasts that were such great dangers to them were mere trifles to him. To him, with a gun loaded with a thousand thermal charges each of which was capable of blasting armor plate. The thing wouldn't even have come close if he himself hadn't been such a timid, cowardly fool. Put Malevski in his place, and the detective would have got the creature as it came out of the trees. He wasn't Malevski.

It was a good thing for him that they couldn't know that. Now his position was completely secure. Now he could relax and enjoy his divine life.

He didn't realize that a much greater danger was yet to come. He found that out after the evening ceremony.

The group that came to see him this time was bigger than ever. Evidently, to honor him they had dropped all other work. Yanyoo seemed to have constituted himself Bradley's priest. He made a tremendously long and rhapsodic-sounding speech, but at the end there was no donation of the usual food and flowers. Instead, Yanyoo backed away, all the others doing the same, and looking at Bradley as if expecting him to follow them.

He followed. In this manner, with his worshippers walking respectfully backwards, they arrived at what seemed to Bradley to be an ordinary small hut. Outside the hut was what he took for a curiously shaped log of wood. The inside of the hut was in shadow, but as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he saw something in one corner. It was a weird-looking head, also of wood.

It struck him then. The log of wood had been the old god, good enough to worship until he had come along and shown them what a god could really do. Now it had been contemptuously deposed and decapitated. The hut was a shrine. It was all his.

He had been promoted after all. The thought didn't please him in the least. Suppose he failed them too—and that was very possible, for he had no idea of what miracles they expected of him. Then he would be deposed and—he gagged at the thought, but he knew that he had to finish it—decapitated.

But for the moment there was no thought of deposing him. The gifts they offered were more lavish than ever. And in addition to the food and flowers, there was something new. A jug, filled with a warm, sweetish-smelling liquid. He could get the odor faintly through the intake valve of his helmet. Later on, when his worshippers were gone and he had his helmet off, he realized that it smelled up the entire hut.

It couldn't be harmful. Nothing that they had offered him so far was harmful. He took a sip—and sighed with content. This was one of the few things he had been lacking. There was alcohol, and there were flavors and essences that reminded him of the drinks he had encountered on a dozen planets. But this was first class stuff, not diluted or adulterated with the thousand and one synthetics that were put in to stretch a good thing as far as it could go.

Without realizing the danger, he downed the entire contents of the jug.

He felt good. He hadn't felt so good in years, not since his mother had made him a special cake for his birthday when he was—let me see now, was it eight or nine? No matter, it had been many years ago, and the occasion had been notable for the fact that she had let him drink some of the older people's punch, made with a tiny bit of some alcoholic drink. He felt very good. He picked up his helmet and put it on his head, and stuck the stem of a green flower rakishly through the exit valve of the helmet, so that the flower seemed to dance every time he exhaled, and staggered out of his hut.

He was fortunate that it was dark. "I'm drunk," he told himself. "Never been so drunk in my life. Never felt so good. Mother never felt so good. Malevski never felt so good."

He passed a shadowy figure in the dark and said, "Hiya, friend and worshipper. Ever see a god drunk before?"

The figure bowed, and kept its head lowered until he had moved on.

"Drunk or sober, I'm shtill divine," he said proudly. And he began to sing, loudly and impressively, his voice orchestral in his own ears within the confines of the helmet. "Ould Lang Shyne, she ain't what she ushed to be, ain't what she ushed to be—" The words came easily, and as it seemed, naturally to his lips.

After awhile, however, he tired of them. After awhile he found that his legs had tired of them. He sat down with a thump under a spiky tree and said solemnly, "Never felt so good in my life. Never felt so happy—it's a lie. I don't feel good."

He didn't, not any more. He felt sick to his stomach. A touch of sober thought had corroded the happiness of his intoxication, and he was sick and afraid. Today their god was a hero, today they would forgive him everything. But did they actually prefer a drunken god? No. Drunkenness made a god human, all too human. A drunken god was a weak god, and his hold on his worshippers was their belief in his strength. As he valued his life, he must get drunk no more.

"Ain't gonna get drunk no more, no more," he sang sadly and solemnly to himself, and finally he fell asleep.

He awoke with a hangover and a memory. He was not one of those men who when sober forget all they have done when drunk. He remembered everything. And he knew that he must put drunkenness away from him.

That morning they brought him only food and flowers. But at the evening ceremony they presented him once more with a jug of liquor as an additional reward for his destruction of the deadly beast. For the first time, Bradley took an active part in the ceremony. He held up the jug and said in grave tones, "In the name of Carrie Nation, I renounce thee and all thy works."

Then he poured out the liquor and smashed the jug on the ground.

After that, the smashing of the jug was part of the ceremony of worshipping him. It left him unhappy at first, but sober. After awhile, the unhappiness disappeared, but the soberness remained. From now on, he would act as a god should act.

The natives were not stupid, he saw that very clearly. The first jugs they had offered him had been beautiful objects, of excellent workmanship. But when they perceived that the only use he had for them was to break them, the quality deteriorated rapidly. Now the jugs they brought him were crude things indeed, made for the sole purpose of being smashed. He wondered how many other tribes had tricked their gods similarly.

No, they were not at all stupid. It struck him that with such advantages of civilization as he himself had enjoyed, they would have gone much further than he did. Two weeks or so after he had come down from the sky to be their god, he saw that they had learned from him. One of the young men appeared during the day wearing a wooden helmet. It was a helmet obviously patterned after his own, although it had no glass or plastic, and the openings in front of the eyes were left blank. The mythical Earth-hero, Prometheus, had brought fire down from the skies. He had brought the Helmet. He was Bradley, the Helmet-Bringer.

Even at that he had underestimated his worshippers. He had thought at first that the helmets were meant merely for ornament and decoration. He learned better one day when a swarm of creatures like flying lizards swept down out of a group of trees in a fierce attack. He had not known that such creatures existed here, and now that he saw them, he realized how fortunate it was that they were not more numerous. They had sharp teeth and sharper claws, and they tore at his head with a ferocity that struck fear into his heart. His gun was of less use than usual against them. He could catch one or two, but the others moved too swiftly for him to aim.

By this time, others of the natives wore wooden helmets, and he could see how the sharp claws ripped splinter after splinter from them. But the birds or lizards, or whatever they were, didn't go unscathed. From a sort of skin bellows, several of the natives blew a gray mist at them, and where the mist made contact with the leather skin, the flying creatures seemed to be paralyzed in mid-flight, and they fell to the ground, where they were easily crushed to death. By the time they had given up the fight and fled, half a dozen of them were lying dead.

They were evidently useless for food because of the poison they contained. He was surprised to see, however, that the natives still had a use for them. They dragged the dead creatures into a field of growing crops, and left them there to rot into fertilizer.

But such incidents as this, he found, were to be rare. For the most part, the life here was peaceful, and he found himself liking it more and more. Now, without laughter, he wondered again what his mother would have thought of him.

She would have been proud. He realized now that she had done her best for him. And when every one else had given up hope for him, she had not. Perhaps she had protected him too much—but she had early learned the need for protection. He could look at her now in a new light. Her own father had died early in life, and then her husband soon after her son had been born. She