The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets (21 page)

And then they left, up the main road and through the village. And as they drudged onward, past the place that for most, was the only home they had ever had, to the emptiness that awaited them, Zack saw little Santar darting between the windows of a house that was not his. He must have been robbing it.

18

“W
here are they taking us?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say Sorkium.”

“Is that the capital?” Zack asked.

“No,” said Klatu. “It is rumored that there are at least a dozen Sorkiums, and the one that I think we are headed to is just the closest city in the Empire, an outpost really – at least to Sork.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“That I couldn’t tell you; I have never traveled that far from the village.”

The prisoners marched north into the formless void that was the desert, and the village behind them slowly turned into a little orange-green dot. They talked very little, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

When night came, the soldiers stopped the convoy and set up camp. They pitched tents and built little cooking fires, over which they roasted strange meat as they laughed and drank from their canteens – but none of that was for the Makains, and Zack and his companions spent the evening
watching them from the darkness in silent hunger and thirst. When the soldiers finished, most retired to their tents, and the prisoners tried to sleep while a few guards walked up and down the line to make sure that they were not sneaking any water from their backpacks. Lilly was much farther up from Zack, with the women, and Zack had no way of communicating with her.

They began moving again at dawn. The sun was in full force that day, grandiose and arrogant as it climbed to its perch atop the Limbean universe, at all times showering them in its weightless yellow poison. When it reached its objective, and the sky and sand baked until blurry, the soldiers stopped the line and finally gave the Makains a small ration of water. It was not enough. Zack was already dehydrated, and his head was pounding. How long, he wondered, could he possibly endure this?

After the break, Zack tried to make conversation with Santanodis. “So, Santar told me that you taught him about animals and how they struggle for survival. Back in Hawaii, I spent some time studying the natural world myself, before I pursued a career in business.”

“How dare you speak Santar’s name to me… my beloved child, whom I will never see again because of you.”

“Santanodis, I am so sorry. You have to believe that I never meant for any of this to happen. If there was anything at all that I could do, I would.”

“You could break these chains and summon a flood to destroy the soldiers. Or does Makaio’s magic only work when you are trying to collect donations or sell Klatu’s cacti?”

“Santanodis –”

“How
did
you pull off the fountain illusion by the way?”

“I didn’t, God makes it work.”

“
Yes
, that is right. He makes the fountain work, but only in that one room, completely under your control, and no one has ever seen what is under that ground. Truly, the only thing that I do
not
understand is why Sacat would let you keep control over a hidden spring.”

“Santanodis, believe me, I know that it’s difficult to accept things solely on faith, but I swear to you that Hawaii is a real place and that someday you, Santar, and your wife can be reunited there.”

“Oh now you bring my wife into this? All right then, let’s talk about my wife. Let’s talk about her. We fell in love when we were each in our fifteenth year; she was the first person that had ever shown me any kindness in my life. Her parents did not want us to marry because I was too young and too poor to provide for her, and when her father found out, he and I nearly killed each other in a two-hour brawl.

“In the years that followed, I worked day and night at my trade, tool-making, to save enough silver for children. I slowly gained my father-in-law’s respect, but my wife and I were unable to conceive, even as each of us entered our nineteenth year. We prayed to God. We prayed to Makaio. We visited the shamans in the neighboring villages and prayed to their gods. And yes, we even prayed to the Devil. And in the meantime, all four of our parents died, and we were left with only each other.

“Then, finally, by some miracle, we had Santar. He and his mother are my entire life, and I will never see them again. You, with your lies and false promises of Hawaii, took them away from me forever.”

“Santanodis, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. If only there was something I could do.”

“I don’t want you to say or do anything. I just want you to listen and to know how many lives you have destroyed.”

“For what it’s worth, I think Santar loved you very much.”

“
Roarglvuk
!” This was the most vile curse in the entire Limbean language.

The march continued. The soldiers did not feed them on the second night either, and Zack’s headache accelerated. His throat was sore, and his lower back ached from the weight of his load. If he had been alone in this predicament, he might have vanished to Earth or disobeyed the soldiers so that they might kill him. However, he owed it to the villagers, whom he had led to ruin, to stay alive as long as possible.

The next morning, clouds appeared on the distant horizon, and the entire procession stopped, as every soldier and prisoner got down on his or her knees in silent prayer, facing the clouds. Even the coyotes, at the soldier’s direction, lay down and were still. This was the first time that Zack had ever witnessed this spectacle. “What are they doing?” he whispered to Klatu.

“They believe that the clouds are the spirits of their dead ancestors, who roam the skies collecting what little water trickles through the holes of the great glass sphere so that they may bring it to the living as rain.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes, and they believe that the wind,” he continued, putting his index finger in the air, “is the Devil’s breath, as
he tries to blow them off course. The prayers help the spirits overcome the Devil, but I’ve always thought the whole thing was a bit of a fiction myself – especially after I learned that our ancestors are really in Hawaii.”

“Yes, well, I guess you can’t blame them for trying, can you?”

“Not at all.”

The march continued. The prayers were not successful in attracting any rain, and Zack’s dehydration got worse. He was dizzy. His feet hurt. His head throbbed with every pulse of blood that surged through it, and his entire torso was wrapped in dull-dogged back and stomach pain.

From this point forward, they took few breaks. With little water and no food, there was no longer much need for the Makains to relieve themselves, and the soldiers certainly did not care about letting them rest their backs and feet.

That night, which was the third night, Zack felt a deep and painful emptiness in his stomach that made him think of the starving children in foreign countries that he, God, Lilly, and Socrates had discussed in Heaven as if they were nothing more than a brain-teaser from the pages of his college philosophy readings, and a profound sense of guilt came over him. Why hadn’t he done more to help them in the days before God came? Zack had no idea that hunger was this physically painful, and he had only gone for a couple of days without food. He did not want to even begin to imagine what it must feel like to actually die of starvation.

The next morning, an enormous cliff came into view on the northwest horizon. At first, Zack could not see anything beyond its edge, but as the morning wore on, and they got
closer and closer, the plain beneath appeared and unfolded wider and wider, and it became clear that there was no second cliff on the other side. It was not a canyon; Zack and the others were marching on a gigantic shelf.

Could it be? Was Zack looking at a forgotten prehistoric ocean? Was Limbo once like Earth, and had God changed it? Perhaps by moving it closer to that vast sun that seemed to take up more and more of the sky each day? Or was it the Devil?

Later that day, the soldiers gave the Makains their first taste of Sorkian prisoner food – moldy cacti. Zack de-needled it with the speed of a Limbean native and wolfed it down even quicker. At least for a little while, one of his maladies would be in remission.

The march continued. That night, Zack lay awake, staring at the strange Limbean stars, feeling his blood coarse through his tired veins. “Hey Klatu, are you up?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“In Hawaii, we look for patterns in the stars and give them names. Do you do that here too?”

“Yes, take a look there.” He pointed to a large, snowy cluster directly above them. “That’s the Crystal City.”

“Crystal City?”

“Yes. According to ancient legend, that’s where King Crysetheus lived. They say that in those times, golligans, the desert-loving children of the Devil, and humans, the water-loving children of God, were equal in intelligence and strength and warred ceaselessly for control of the world. That is, until Crysetheus, with the help of the goddess Athena, stole the golligan’s intelligence and drove
them underground, where the noxious fumes dwarfed their stature.”

“Athena? We have her in our myths in Hawaii too. I wonder if Makaio told the villagers about her.”

“I don’t know, but I thought that the legend was hundreds or even thousands of years old. They tell it in other villages too.”

“Do you believe it?”

“No, it’s just a story. It doesn’t have facts and miracles to back it up like Makaism does.”

“Right… right.”

“Anyway, move your eyes just a little to the right, and you’ll see Crysetheus, immortalized on his starry throne.”

“Uhhhh… ok.” There were seven or eight intense points of light, but Zack could not discern a king or a throne.

“And then back over to the left of the Crystal City, you’ll see Golthnor, the Great Golligan King, whom Crysetheus vanquished.”

“Oh yes, I think I can make him out,” Zack lied.

“And then way up there,” Klatu said, pointing, “is the Coyote Shaman, who lives at the very northernmost tip of Limbo and possesses more healing power than all the human medicine men in the world combined.”

“Uhhhh…”

“Can’t you see any of them?”

“To be honest, not really. Just like in Hawaii, they don’t look anything like their names!”

They laughed.

On the fourth morning, Kerberus rode up and down the line, looking the prisoners over, and Zack, emboldened by
the small reserve of cactus mush sitting in his abdomen from the day before, decided that he would try to work on him. He summoned all of his remaining strength and heaved the words out of his leathery throat and cottony mouth. “How can you do this to women and children?”

Kerberus laughed. “Are you so new to the world that you have not seen war?”

“I know of war. Killing men is one thing, but hurting women and children? Only someone with no honor at all would do that.”

“Ha. Oh, my naïve little captive, you truly do know nothing of war. Tell me, do not your women aid your soldiers? Do not they give birth to the little babies that will someday grow to be your future soldiers? And when those soldiers take the field of battle and kill my soldiers, do not they harm my soldiers’ women and babies, who will no longer have husbands and fathers to provide for them? In war, my dear little slave, every last citizen of one nation is in conflict with every last citizen of the other. Soldier against soldier, woman against woman, baby against baby. To claim otherwise is nothing more than a cheap, self-serving political trick.”

Zack wondered what Stan would think of this argument. “General, you’re right, that is the way that things are, but it is not the way that things have to be! In Hawaii, we learned a long time ago that certain things are always wrong, even in war.”

Kerberus snickered. “Hawaii? No thank you. You keep your religion. I will keep the spoils of war!”

“Kerberus, there is an entire world beyond this one for those that chose to do good.”

“Oh really? I am enchanted.”

“You should be. Makaism, not war, is the path to true happiness.”

“True happiness? I am not convinced. Do you know what brings me the most happiness?”

“What?”

“Taking my enemies’ wives.”

“That can never compare to the eternal happiness of Heaven or to the happiness of doing good in this life… not to mention the happiness that comes from finding just
one
special woman and building a real relationship with her.”

“A real relationship? You talk like a woman!”

“There’s nothing feminine about wanting to be a good husband and father.”

“Well, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste. Do pray tell though, was that your wife that you sat with in the circle before the Church?”

“Absolutely not, she… she was just a fellow Makain!”

Kerberus chuckled. “Your inelegance betrays you! You are very young to the ways of the world indeed. I think that when we get to Sorkium, I shall put you in a prison cell across from your wife’s so that you can watch me with her.”

“That will never happen Kerberus.”