The Days of Peleg (54 page)

Shem almost seemed to be speaking to himself, now.

“Our
Creator
who gives life, and watches, with care, the activities of man.”

He whirled around to Peleg, moving in and speaking close to his face.

“There
are
superstitions and myths in the world, but
they
all worship objects that the
Creator
has made, instead of the
Creator
Himself. They revere celestial bodies, venerate forces of nature, or, in the case of your Citadel, worship
Knowledge
itself.”

He sat back, speaking to himself again.

“But how can one truly know a work of art, unless one has actually met the artist?”

Peleg had no intention of answering this rhetorical question, but a tiny smoldering thought was occurring to him that might
still
undermine this apparent victory of Shem’s.

“Shem,” he began. “Perhaps there
is
a case for some form of higher intelligence that contributed to the organization we see around us. But
if
this creator were all-knowing, or capable of designing perfection, I don’t see the evidence.”

This time he looked directly into Shem’s eyes.

“A creator who
could
design perfection certainly did not assemble the real world that
I
live in. This world is filled with fighting, death, and calamity. During the last twelve years I have seen men do atrocious things claiming they were in the right, witnessed natural disasters of enormous proportions, and …”

He paused as pent-up emotions surfaced.

“And this world killed my friend, Serug, with some kind of poison which eventually destroyed his ‘amazingly designed system’. Either your
Creator
can
not
design perfection, or he has cruelly chosen not to.”

He swallowed hard, and shook his head. Shem allowed him to continue.

“It seems like an intelligence that could design perfection could at least create a world where hunger, strife, and death did not exist. I mean, if he can arrange something that always repairs itself with replacement parts, then there is no reason why man couldn’t …”

Shem interrupted.

“You are absolutely correct.” Shem was nodding with a big grin on his face. This was definitely
not
the reaction that Peleg had expected. “There is no reason why men could not live forever,” Shem finished Peleg’s sentence.

Peleg stared, stunned again by this surprising Mentor.

“I will explain.”

Shem sat back and spoke as if from memory.

“When the
Creator
made the universe, and all life in it, it
was
perfect. He
did
design it just the way you have suggested. There was no death, no disasters, no cruelty, no deception, and no killing. Everything functioned perfectly, and humans
were
designed to live forever.”

“Did you witness this?” asked Peleg cautiously.

“No, I did not,” answered Shem. “But my father knew one who did.”

“Then what happened?” asked Peleg, caught up in the explanation against his will.

“Rebellion,” was the simple one word answer.

“Rebellion?” retorted Peleg. “In a perfect world?”

“The
Creator
designed the first man and woman with a remarkable ability that went beyond the laws of nature. The
Creator
wants the humans of his creation to love him of their own accord, so he gave them the ability to make independent choices.”

He looked at Peleg conspiratorially.

“The
Creator could
have designed them to love Him involuntarily, but where is the value in that?”

“Why do you say ‘beyond the laws of nature’?” asked Peleg.

“We shall discuss that later.” Shem said quickly. “My point is that they were given total freedom to do anything they wished with the exception of one command, and they chose to disobey. They rebelled.”

Again the conspiratorial look.

“Obedience means nothing unless the possibility of
disobedience
exists.”

Peleg nodded, understanding.

Shem continued.

“At any rate, they chose to disobey, and rejected the
Creator
’s care and protection. The
Creator
politely obliged, and since that moment, all of creation has been falling into disrepair. People died of old age in mere centuries, and all of the problems that you mentioned entered the world—and they have continued to worsen ever since.”

Any temptation to be comforted collapsed into fantasy, and a blanket of despair fell over Peleg. Whatever hope he may have had for escaping the futility of life vanished.

“What is the point of living, then?” asked Peleg. “It seems as though it doesn’t matter whether or not your
Creator
exists after all. I mean, what hope is there?”

Again that irritating grin.

“That is where
you
come in,” said Shem with way too much excitement.

Peleg flinched, staggered at this inconceivable response. He waited for Shem to explain himself.

“Although the first man brought about this curse that we now live in, someday the
Creator
Himself will enter this world as a baby and grow to undo the damage that the first one did. He is the coming
Zeh-ra
! The Seed! He will reverse the curse and give us a new immortality!”

He lowered his voice, his eyes burrowing into Peleg’s disbelieving face.

“We don’t understand
how
he will accomplish that, but he will be one of
your
descendants!”

Peleg was uncomfortable with this sudden shift that focused on him.

Shem smiled at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You can now see what wonderful events are in motion because of your arrival!”

This only increased Peleg’s discomfort, and he wanted to get attention on something else. He remembered that Mentor Inanna had asked him to watch for anything that might shed light on humanity’s shortening lifespans.

“If I understand you properly, breakdowns in creation will continue to worsen, correct?” Peleg asked.

“Yes,” said Shem.

“So would you say that the apparent decrease in lifespans is part of this?”

“Oh, its not
apparent
,” said Shem. “It is very real. Someday soon, the average lifespan will be under one-hundred and twenty years, and, I suspect, within a few millennia, a man will count himself fortunate to make it to eighty.”

Peleg shuddered and nodded, putting his thoughts together.

“Would it be correct to say that Mentors represent a strain of humanity that is left over from this fall?”

Instead of giving a serious answer, Shem responded again with another of his laughing fits. Peleg was definitely growing to dislike them.

“Mentors?” Shem laughed some more and then said, “Peleg, Mentors do not exist. That is just an artificial, baseless, man-made categorization of humanity.”

Peleg stared incredulously at this Mentor, who seemed to be claiming that he wasn’t real.

“Don’t they teach heredity at your Citadel?” asked Shem. “All humans have various traits: eye-color, skin-color, height, and so on. Let me ask you, if a blue-eyed man and a blue-eyed woman had a child, what color would its eyes be?”

“They could be anything,” answered Peleg, slightly puzzled. “Statistically, they would more likely be blue, however.”

“Good,” said Shem. “I see you learned
something
there. And what about two parents with light skin?”

“Again, the results could be anything,” said Peleg, “but with a tendency towards lighter.”

“Correct,” said Shem, “but if those light-skinned offspring only mated with other light-skinned people, and if that pattern of
only
light-skinned parents continued for several generations, soon they would find that….”

“Soon they would find that they were unable to have dark-skinned children,” Peleg completed the sentence, somewhat disgusted. Why would multiple generations deliberately seek out spouses that looked just like themselves?

“Very good,” the Founder nodded with a smile.

For the first time since he met Shem, Peleg was pleased that Shem was actually impressed with him. This was immediately followed by angry embarrassment when he realized he shouldn’t care what Shem thought.

“What you
don’t
seem to realize,” Shem continued, “is that longevity is simply another hereditary trait, just like height or hair color, and the society where
you
come from has arbitrarily chosen to claim that people who are taller with a larger brow and who mature more slowly are somehow a different race.”

He laughed again.

“Imagine a culture that believed people were a different race just because they had blond hair, or were short, or had large noses, or had dark skin. That is why it is so ludicrous when you use the term ‘Mentor’.”

He gave another spate of laughter.

“Next you’ll be trying to tell me that ectomorphs are a separate species!”

With that he buried his head in his hands and shook with silent laughter, leaning on the edge of the stone table.

When Shem had regained some composure, Peleg cautiously ventured another question.

“But it seems like everyone
here
in Haganah has a large brow, and some of the musculature seems to come from before the….”

But Shem was shaking with another fit of laughter, louder than ever, this time standing and stomping his feet. He walked around the room in small circles slapping his head with his hands, howling, until he finally collapsed on the floor near the bench where he had been sitting.

“Have you seen what we
eat
around here?” he finally wheezed out between breaths. “I’m sure you noticed that our meat was a little tough.”

“Somewhat,” said Peleg, without comprehension.

“
You
chew that dried pit-meat for the next several years and see if you don’t get your
own
large forehead.” He drew a deep breath. “If the headaches don’t kill you first, that is.”

He rose from the floor.

“Supposedly, that is why some of the men here sharpen their teeth,” he said, “Although I think it is done more for vanity’s sake.”

Peleg nodded, thinking of the flute player that lived across from him.

Shem settled back onto his bench with a loud sigh.

“I’m sorry for laughing so hard,” he said, “but you were
so
serious! It’s just hard to not …” And with that he lapsed into another, softer laughing spell.

Peleg’s impression of this manic Founder had not really changed, but he was suddenly concerned with the phrase ‘next several years’. He had no intention of staying that long.

The stone panel behind Shem slid open again, and a man stepped through to announce something to Shem.

Shem’s face filled with concern, and he nodded as the man left.

“I’m afraid we must continue this some other time,” Shem said. “Your escorts are just outside the door.”

Peleg raised his hand.

“I do have one other quick question,” he said, thinking of Mentor Inanna, and promising himself that he would never use the word ‘Mentor’ again in Shem’s presence.

Shem nodded.

“One area of research that I was asked to pursue during the Great Discovery was to look for the Watchers, or the Race of Semyaz. There were those who believed that they were a race with special longevity and abilities that may have escaped the Great Calamity. It was hoped that
they
, if discovered, could help reverse the issues of aging and life expectancy.”

Shem’s face clouded over with a look of trepidation, but he simply nodded for Peleg to continue.

“
Were
they a unique race that existed, or were they humans too, like Mentors?”

Shem’s face betrayed a concern and gravity that Peleg had not seen before.

“Yes, they were
very
real,” he said gravely, “but they were definitely
not
human.”

He shook his head, as if to rid himself of a painful memory.

“They appeared a few centuries before the Great Flood, with special powers and a promise to enrich our lives. Those of us who understood, knew they were emissaries of the Great Serpent who had deceived us into betraying the
Creator
in the first place. But they enslaved thousands, forcing them into labor and perverse research.”

He closed his eyes and reopened them.

“They are beings of energy who took on human form in an attempt to contaminate the human blood line—and therefore the line of the coming Seed. They were called the
Nephilim
. They engaged in vile hereditary experiments because they also were in rebellion against the
Creator
. They hated the
Creator
because the promise of the coming
Zeh-ra
did not apply to them, but they hoped to appropriate the promise by merging with humanity. One of the reasons for the Great Flood was to stop them before all pure human lines were lost.”

“So they were all destroyed?” said Peleg, dutifully trying to follow.

“They cannot be destroyed,” answered Shem, solemnly. “The
Creator
removed those most responsible away for future judgment. They are locked away in empty darkness until that time.”

“What do you mean, ‘those most responsible’?” Peleg felt a twinge of irrational fear. “You mean that some still exist?”

“Yes, some do,” he said, “but they can never take human form again.”

An alarm sounded somewhere in the hallway behind him.

“I’m sorry,” said Shem. “You really must go now.” He was obviously pre-occupied and could not afford to give any more attention to Peleg. He pressed the same stone panel he had used earlier, and the front doors slid open.

Peleg turned and peered into the blackness beyond, and he could see bits of bio-light reflecting off his ‘escorts’ who stood just outside the doorway.

The stone panel behind Shem moved aside, and an urgent voice called from behind it. Shem shouted something in response, then turned back to Peleg.