Atlantis

By Orson Scott Card

 

Kemal Akyazi grew up within a few miles of the ruins of Troy; from

his boyhood home above Kumkale he could see the waters of the

Dardanelles, the narrow strait that connects the waters of the Black

Sea with the Aegean. Many a war had been fought on both sides of

that strait, one of which had produced the great epic of Homer's

ILIAD.

This pressure of history had a strange influence on Kemal as a

child. He learned all the tales of the place, of course, but he also

knew that the tales were Greek, and the place was of the Greek

Aegean world. Kemal was a Turk; his own ancestors had not come to

the Dardanelles until the fifteenth century. He felt that it was a

powerful place, but it did not belong to him. So the ILIAD was not

the story that spoke to Kemal's soul. Rather it was the story of

Heinrich Schliemann, the German explorer who, in an era when Troy

had been regarded as a mere legend, a myth, a fiction, had been sure

not only that Troy was real but also where it was. Despite all

scoffers, he mounted an expedition and found it and unburied it. The

old stories turned out to be true.

In his teens Kemal thought it was the greatest tragedy of his life

that Pastwatch had to use machines to look through the the millennia

of human history. There would be no more Schliemanns, studying and

pondering and guessing until they found some artifact, some ruin of

a long-lost city, some remnant of a legend made true again. Thus

Kemal had no interest in joining Pastwatch. It was not history that

he hungered for--it was exploration and discovery that he wanted,

and what was the glory in finding the truth through a machine?

So, after an abortive try at physics, he studied to become a

meteorologist. At the age of eighteen, heavily immersed in the study

of climate and weather, he touched again on the findings of

Pastwatch. No longer did meteorologists have to depend on only a few

centuries of weather measurements and fragmentary fossil evidence to

determine long-range patterns. Now they had accurate accounts of

storm patterns for millions of years. Indeed, in the earliest years

of Pastwatch, the machinery had been so coarse that individual

humans could not be seen. It was like time-lapse photography in

which people don't remain in place long enough to be on more than a

single frame of the film, making them invisible. So in those days

Pastwatch recorded the weather of the past, erosion patterns,

volcanic eruptions, ice ages, climatic shifts.

All that data was the bedrock on which modern weather prediction and

control rested. Meteorologists could see developing patterns and,

without disrupting the overall pattern, could make tiny changes that

prevented any one area from going completely rainless during a time

of drought, or sunless during a wet growing season. They had taken

the sharp edge off the relentless scythe of climate, and now the

great project was to determine how they might make a more serious

change, to bring a steady pattern of light rain to the desert

regions of the world, to restore the prairies and savannahs that

they once had been. That was the work that Kemal wanted to be a part

of.

Yet he could not bring himself out from the shadow of Troy, the

memory of Schliemann. Even as he studied the climatic shifts

involved with the waxing and waning of the ice ages, his mind

contained fleeting images of lost civilizations, legendary places

that waited for a Schliemann to uncover them.

His project for his degree in meteorology was part of the effort to

determine how the Red Sea might be exploited to develop dependable

rains for either the Sudan or central Arabia; Kemal's immediate

target was to study thedifference between weather patterns during

the last ice age, when the Red Sea had all but disappeared, and the

present, with the Red Sea at its fullest. Back and forth he went

through the coarse old Pastwatch recordings, gathering data on sea

level and on precipitation at selected points inland. The old

TruSite I had been imprecise at best, but good enough for counting

rainstorms.

Time after time Kemal would cycle through the up-and-down

fluctuations of the Red Sea, watching as the average sea level

gradually rose toward the end of the Ice Age. He always stopped, of

course, at the abrupt jump in sea level that marked the rejoining of

the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. After that, the Red Sea was

useless for his purposes, since its sea level was tied to that of

the great world ocean.

But the echo of Schliemann inside Kemal's mind made him think: What

a flood that must have been.

What a flood. The Ice Age had locked up so much water in glaciers

and ice sheets that the sea level of the whole world fell. It

eventually reached a low enough point that land bridges arose out of

the sea. In the north Pacific, the Bering land bridge allowed the

ancestors of the Indies to cross on foot into their great empty

homeland. Britain and Flanders were joined. The Dardanelles were

closed and the Black Sea became a salty lake. The Persian Gulf

disappeared and became a great plain cut by the Euphrates. And the

Bab al Mandab, the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, became a land

bridge.

But a land bridge is also a dam. As the world climate warmed and the

glaciers began to release their pent-up water, the rains fell

heavily everywhere; rivers swelled and the seas rose. The great

south-flowing rivers of Europe, which had been mostly dry during the

peak of glaciation, now were massive torrents. The Rhone, the Po,

the Strimon, the Danube poured so much water into the Mediterranean

and the Black Sea that their water level rose at about the same rate

as that of the great world ocean.

The Red Sea had no great rivers, however. It was a new sea, formed

by rifting between the new Arabian plate and the African, which

meant it had uplift ridges on both coasts. Many rivers and streams

flowed from those ridges down into the Red Sea, but none of them

carried much water compared to the rivers that drained vast basins

and carried the melt-off of the glaciers of the north. So, while the

Red Sea gradually rose during this time, it lagged far, far behind

the great world ocean. Its water level responded to the immediate

local weather patterns rather than to worldwide weather.

Then one day the Indian Ocean rose so high that tides began to spill

over the Bab al Mandab. The water cut new channels in the grassland

there. Over a period of several years, the leakage grew, creating a

series of large new tidal lakes on the Hanish Plain. And then one

day, some fourteen thousand years ago, the flow cut a channel so

deep that it didn't dry up at low tide, and the water kept flowing,

cutting the channel deeper and deeper, until those tidal lakes were

full, and brimmed over. With the weight of the Indian Ocean behind

it the water gushed into the basin of the Red Sea in a vast flood

that in a few days brought the Red Sea up to the level of the world

ocean.

This isn't just the boundary marker between useful and useless water

level data, thought Kemal. This is a cataclysm, one of the rare

times when a single event changes vast reaches of land in a period

of time short enough that human beings could notice it. And, for

once, this cataclysm happened in an era when human beings were

there. It was not only possible but likely that someone saw this

flood--indeed, that it killed many, for the southern end of the Red

Sea basin was rich savannah and marshes up to the moment when the

ocean broke through, and surely the humans of fourteen thousand

years ago would have hunted there. Would have gathered seeds and

fruits and berries there. Some hunting party must have seen, from

the peaks of the Dehalak mountains, the great walls of water that

roared up the plain, breaking and parting around the slopes of the

Dehalaks, making islands of them.

Such a hunting party would have known that their families had been

killed by this water. What would they have thought? Surely that some

god was angry with them. That the world had been done away, buried

under the sea. And if they survived, if they found a way to the

Eritrean shore after the great turbulent waves settled down to the

more placid waters of the new, deeper sea, they would tell the tale

to anyone who would listen. And for a few years they could take

their hearers to the water's edge, show them the treetops barely

rising above the surface of the sea, and tell them tales of all that

had been buried under the waves.

   

 

Noah, thought Kemal. Gilgamesh. Atlantis. The stories were believed.

The stories were remembered. Of course they forgot where it

happened--the civilizations that learned to write their stories

naturally transposed the events to locations that they knew. But

they remembered the things that mattered. What did the flood story

of Noah say? Not just rain, no, it wasn't a flood caused by rain

alone. The "fountains of the great deep" broke open. No local flood

on the Mesopotamian plain would cause that image to be part of the

story. But the great wall of water from the Indian Ocean, coming on

the heels of years of steadily increasing rain--THAT would bring

those words to the storytellers' lips, generation after generation,

for ten thousand years until they could be written down.

As for Atlantis, everyone was so sure they had found it years ago.

Santorini--Thios--the Aegean island that blew up. But the oldest

stories of Atlantis said nothing of blowing up in a volcano. They

spoke only of the great civilization sinking into the sea. The

supposition was that later visitors came to Santorini and, seeing

water where an island city used to be, assumed that it had sunk,

knowing nothing of the volcanic eruption. To Kemal, however, this

now seemed far-fetched indeed, compared to the way it would have

looked to the people of Atlantis themselves, somewhere on the

Mits'iwa Plain, when the Red Sea seemed to leap up in its bed,

engulfing the city. THAT would be sinking into the sea! No

explosion, just water. And if the city were in the marshes of what

was now the Mits'iwa Channel, the water would have come, not just

from the southeast, but from the northeast and the north as well,

flowing among and around the Dehalak mountains, making islands of

them and swallowing up the marshes and the city with them.

Atlantis. Not beyond the pillars of Hercules, but Plato was right to

associate the city with a strait. He, or whoever told the tale to

him, simply replaced the Bab al Mandab with the greatest strait that

he had heard of. The story might well have reached him by way of

Phoenicia, where Mediterranean sailors would have made the story fit

the sea they knew. They learned it from Egyptians, perhaps, or nomad

wanderers from the hinterlands of Arabia, and "within the straits of

Mandab" would quickly have become "within the pillars of Hercules,"

and then, because the Mediterranean itself was not strange and

exotic enough, the locale was moved outside the pillars of Hercules.

 

All these suppositions came to Kemal with absolute certainty that

they were true, or nearly true. He rejoiced at the thought of it:

There was still an ancient civilization left to discover.

Everyone knew that Naog of the Derku People was going to be a tall

man when he grew up, because his father and mother were both tall

and he was an unusually large baby. He was born in floodwater

season, when all the Engu clan lived on reed boats. Their food

supply, including the precious seed for next year's planting, was

kept dry in the seedboats, which were like floating huts of plaited

reeds. The people themselves, though, rode out the flood on the open

dragonboats, bundles of reeds which they straddled as if they were

riding a crocodile--which, according to legend, was how the

dragonboats began, when the first Derku woman, Gweia, saved herself

and her baby from the flood by climbing onto the back of a huge

crocodile. The crocodile--the first Great Derku, or dragon--endured

their weight until they reached a tree they could climb, whereupon

the dragon swam away. So when the Derku people plaited reeds into

long thick bundles and climbed aboard, they believed that secret of

the dragonboats had been given to them by the Great Derku, and in a

sense they were riding on his back.

During the raiding season, other nearby tribes had soon learned to

fear the coming of the dragonboats, for they always carried off

captives who, in those early days, were never seen again. In other

tribes when someone was said to have been carried off by the

crocodiles, it was the Derku people they meant, for it was well know

that all the clans of the Derku worshipped the crocodile as their

savior and god, and fed their captives to a dragon that lived in the

center of their city.

At Naog's birthtime, the Engu clan were nestled among their tether

trees as the flooding Selud River flowed mudbrown underneath them.

If Naog had pushed his way out of the womb a few weeks later, as the

waters were receding, his mother would have given birth in one of

the seedboats. But Naog came early, before highwater, and so the

seedboats were still full of grain. During floodwater, they could

neither grind the grain into flour nor build cooking fires, and thus

had to eat the seeds in raw handfuls. Thus it was forbidden to spill

blood on the grain, even birthblood; no one would touch grain that

had human blood on it, for that was the juice of the forbidden

fruit.

This was why Naog's mother, Lewik, could not hide alone in an

enclosed seedboat for the birthing. Instead she had to give birth

out in the open, on one of the dragonboats. She clung to a branch of

a tether tree as two women on their own dragonboats held hers

steady. From a near distance Naog's father, Twerk, could not hide

his mortification that his new young wife was giving birth in full

view, not only of the women, but of the men and boys of the tribe.

Not that any but the youngest and stupidest of the men was overtly

looking. Partly because of respect for the event of birth itself,

and partly because of a keen awareness that Twerk could cripple any

man of the Engu that he wanted to, the men paddled their boats

toward the farthest tether trees, herding the boys along with them.

There they busied themselves with the work of floodwater

season--twining ropes and weaving baskets.

Twerk himself, however, could not keep from looking. He finally left

his dragonboat and climbed his tree and watched. The women had

brought their dragonboats in a large circle around the woman in

travail. Those with children clinging to them or bound to them kept

their boats on the fringes--they would be little help, with their

hands full already. It was the older women and the young girls who

were in close, the older women to help, the younger ones to learn.

But Twerk had no eyes for the other women today. It was his

wide-eyed, sweating wife that he watched. It frightened him to see

her in such pain, for Lewik was usually the healer, giving herbs and

ground-up roots to others to take away pain or cure a sickness. It

also bothered him to see that as she squatted on her dragonboat,

clinging with both hands to the branch above her head, neither she

nor any of the other women was in position to catch the baby when it

dropped out. It would fall into the water, he knew, and it would

die, and then he and everyone else would know that it had been wrong

of him to marry this woman who should have been a servant of the

crocodile god, the Great Derku.

When he could not contain himself a moment longer, Twerk shouted to

the women: "Who will catch the baby?"

Oh, how they laughed at him, when at last they understood what he

was saying. "Derku will catch him!" they retorted, jeering, and the

men around him also laughed, for that could mean several things. It

could mean that the god would provide for the child's safety, or it

could mean that the flood would catch the child, for the flood was

also called derkuwed, or dragonwater, partly because it was aswarm

with crocodiles swept away from their usual lairs, and partly

because the floodwater slithered down from the mountains like a

crocodile sliding down into the water, quick and powerful and

strong, ready to sweep away and swallow up the unwary. Derku will

catch him indeed!

   

 

The men began predicting what the child would be named. "He will be

Rogogu, because we all laughed," said one. Another said, "It will be

a girl and she will be named Mehug, because she will be spilled into

the water as she plops out!" They guessed that the child would be

named for the fact that Twerk watched the birth; for the branch that

Lewik clung to or the tree that Twerk climbed; or for the

dragonwater itself, into which they imagined the child spilling and

then being drawn out with the embrace of the god still dripping from

him. Indeed, because of this notion Derkuwed became a childhood

nickname for Lewik's and Twerk's baby, and later it was one of the

names by which his story was told over and over again in faraway

lands that had never heard of dragonwater or seen a crocodile, but

it was not his real name, not what his father gave him to be his

man-name when he came of age.

After much pushing, Lewik's baby finally emerged. First came the

head, dangling between her ankles like the fruit of a tree--that was

why the word for HEAD and was the same as the word for FRUIT in the

language of the Derku people. Then as the newborn's head touched the

bound reeds of the dragonboat, Lewik rolled her eyes in pain and

waddled slowly backward, so that the baby flopped out of her body

stretched along the length of the boat. He did not fall into the

water, because his mother had made sure of it.

"Little man!" cried all the women as soon as they saw the sex of the

child.

Lewik grunted out her firstborn's baby-name. "Glogmeriss," she said.

GLOG meant "thorn" and MERISS meant "trouble"; together, they made

the term that the Derku used for annoyances that turned out all

right in the end, but which were quite painful at the time. There

were some who thought that she wasn't naming the baby at all, but

simply commenting on the situation, but it was the first thing she

said and so it would be his name until he left the company of women

and joined the men.

As soon as the afterbirth dropped onto the dragonboat, all the other

women paddled nearer--like a swarm of gnats, thought Twerk, still

watching. Some helped Lewik pry her hands loose from the tree branch

and lie down on her dragonboat. Others took the baby and passed it

from hand to hand, each one washing a bit of the blood from the

baby. The afterbirth got passed with the baby at first, often

dropping into the floodwater, until at last it reached the cutting

woman, who severed the umbilical cord with a flint blade. Twerk,

seeing this for the first time, realized that this might be how he

got his name, which meant "cutting" or "breaking." Had his father

seen this remarkable thing, too, the women cutting a baby off from

this strange belly-tail? No wonder he named him for it.

But the thing that Twerk could not get out of his mind was the fact

that his Lewik had taken off her napron in full view of the clan,

and all the men had seen her nakedness, despite their efforts to

pretend that they had not. Twerk knew that this would become a joke

among the men, a story talked about whenever he was not with them,

and this would weaken him and mean that he would never be the clan

leader, for one can never give such respect to a man that one laughs

about behind his back.

Twerk could think of only one way to keep this from having the power

to hurt him, and that was to confront it openly so that no one would

laugh behind his back. "His name is Naog!" cried Twerk decisively,

almost as soon as the baby was fully washed in river water and the

placenta set loose to float away on the flood.

"You are such a stupid man!" cried Lewik from her dragonboat.

Everyone laughed, but in this case it was all right. Everyone knew

Lewik was a bold woman who said whatever she liked to any man. That

was why it was such a mark of honor that Twerk had chosen to take

her as wife and she had taken him for husband--it took a strong man

to laugh when his wife said disrespectful things to him. "Of course

he's naog," she said. "All babies are born naked."

"I call him Naog because YOU were naked in front of all the clan,"

answered Twerk. "Yes, I know you all looked when you thought I

couldn't see," he chided the men. "I don't mind a bit. You all saw

my Lewik naked when the baby came out of her--but what matters is

that only I saw her naked when I put the baby in!"

That made them all laugh, even Lewik, and the story was often

repeated. Even before he became a man and gave up the baby-name

Glogmeriss, Naog had often heard the tale of why he would have such

a silly name--so often, in fact, that he determined that one day he

would do such great deeds that when the people heard the word NAOG

they would think first of him and his accomplishments, before they

remembered that the name was also the word for the tabu condition of

taking the napron off one's secret parts in public.

As he grew up, he knew that the water of derkuwed on him as a baby

had touched him with greatness. It seemed he was always taller than

the other boys, and he reached puberty first, his young body

powerfully muscled by the labor of dredging the canals right among

the slaves of the dragon during mudwater season. He wasn't much more

than twelve floodwaters old when the grown men began clamoring for

him to be given his manhood journey early so that he could join them

in slave raids--his sheer size would dishearten many an enemy,

making them despair and throw down his club or his spear. But Twerk

was adamant. He would not tempt Great Derku to devour his son by

letting the boy get ahead of himself. Naog might be large of body,

but that didn't mean that he could get away with taking a man's role

before he had learned all the skills and lore that a man had to

acquire in order to survive.

This was all fine with Naog. He knew that he would have his place in

the clan in due time. He worked hard to learn all the skills of

manhood--how to fight with any weapon; how to paddle his dragonboat

straight on course, yet silently; how to recognize the signs of the

seasons and the directions of the stars at different hours of the

night and times of the year; which wild herbs were good to eat, and

which deadly; how to kill an animal and dress it so it would keep

long enough to bring home for a wife to eat. Twerk often said that

his son was as quick to learn things requiring wit and memory as to

learn skills that depended only on size and strength and quickness.

What Twerk did not know, what no one even guessed, was that these

tasks barely occupied Naog's mind. What he dreamed of, what he

thought of constantly, was how to become a great man so that his

name could be spoken with solemn honor instead of a smile or

laughter.

One of Naog's strongest memories was a visit to the Great Derku in

the holy pond at the very center of the great circular canals that

linked all the Derku people together. Every year during the mud

season, the first dredging was the holy pond, and no slaves were

used for THAT. No, the Derku men and women, the great and the

obscure, dredged the mud out of the holy pond, carried it away in

baskets, and heap it up in piles that formed a round lumpen wall

around the pond. As the dry season came, crocodiles a-wandering in

search of water would smell the pond and come through the gaps in

the wall to drink it and bathe in it. The crocodiles knew nothing of

danger from coming within walls. Why would they have learned to fear

the works of humans? What other people in all the world had ever

built such a thing? So the crocodiles came and wallowed in the

water, heedless of the men watching from trees. At the first full

moon of the dry season, as the crocodiles lay stupidly in the water

during the cool of night, the men dropped from the trees and quietly

filled the gaps in the walls with earth. At dawn, the largest

crocodile in the pond was hailed as Great Derku for the year. The

rest were killed with spears in the bloodiest most wonderful

festival of the year.

The year that Naog turned six, the Great Derku was the largest

crocodile that anyone could remember ever seeing. It was a dragon

indeed, and after the men of raiding age came home from the blood

moon festival full of stories about this extraordinary Great Derku,

all the families in all the clans began bringing their children to

see it.

   

 

"They say it's a crocodile who was Great Derku many years ago," said

Naog's mother. "He has returned to our pond in hopes of the

offerings of manfruit that we used to give to the dragon. But some

say he's the very one who was Great Derku the year of the

forbidding, when he refused to eat any of the captives we offered

him."

"And how would they know?" said Twerk, ridiculing the idea. "Is

there anyone alive now who was alive then, to recognize him? And how

could a crocodile live so long?"

"The Great Derku lives forever," said Lewik.

"Yes, but the true dragon is the derkuwed, the water in flood," said

Twerk, "and the crocodiles are only its children."

To the child, Naog, these words had another meaning, for he had

heard the word DERKUWED far more often in reference to himself, as

his nickname, than in reference to the great annual flood. So to him

it sounded as though his father was saying that HE was the true

dragon, and the crocodiles were his children. Almost at once he

realized what was actually meant, but the impression lingered in the

back of his mind.

"And couldn't the derkuwed preserve one of its children to come back

to us to be our god a second time?" said Lewik. "Or are you suddenly

a holy man who knows what the dragon is saying?"

"All this talk about this Great Derku being one of the ancient ones

brought back to us is dangerous," said Twerk. "Do you want us to

return to the terrible days when we fed manfruit to the Great Derku?

When our captives were all torn to pieces by the god, while WE, men

and women alike, had to dig out all the canals without slaves?"

"There weren't so many canals then," said Lewik. "Father said."

"Then it must be true," said Twerk, "if your old father said it. So

think about it. Why are there so many canals now, and why are they

so long and deep? Because we put our captives to work dredging our

canals and making our boats. What if the Great Derku had never

refused to eat manfruit? We would not have such a great city here,

and other tribes would not bring us gifts and even their own

children as slaves. They can come and visit our captives, and even

buy them back from us. That's why we're not hated and feared, but

rather

LOVED and feared in all the lands from the Nile to the Salty Sea."

Naog knew that his father's manhood journey had been from the Salty

Sea all the way up the mountains and across endless grasslands to

the great river of the west. It was a legendary journey, fitting for

such a large man. So Naog knew that he would have to undertake an

even greater journey. But of that he said nothing.

"But these people talking stupidly about this being that same Great

Derku returned to us again--don't you realize that they will want to

put it to the test again, and offer it manfruit? And what if the

Great Derku EATS it this time? What do we do then, go back to doing

all the dredging ourselves? Or let the canals fill in so we can't

float the seedboats from village to village during the dry season,

and so we have no defense from our enemies and no way to ride our

dragonboats all year?"

Others in the clan were listening to this argument, since there was

little enough privacy under normal circumstances, and none at all

when you spoke with a raised voice. So it was no surprise when they

chimed in. One offered the opinion that the reason no manfruit

should be offered to this Great Derku was because the eating of

manfruit would give the Great Derku knowledge of all the thoughts of

the people they ate. Another was afraid that the sight of a powerful

creature eating the flesh of men would lead some of the young people

to want to commit the unpardonable sin of eating that forbidden

fruit themselves, and in that case all the Derku people would be

destroyed.

What no one pointed out was that in the old days, when they fed

manfruit to the Great Derku, it wasn't JUST captives that were

offered. During years of little rain or too much rain, the leader of

each clan always offered his own eldest son as the first fruit, or,

if he could not bear to see his son devoured, he would offer himself

in his son's place--though some said that in the earliest times it

was always the leader himself who was eaten, and they only started

offering their sons as a cowardly substitute. By now everyone

expected Twerk to be the next clan leader, and everyone knew that he

doted on his Glogmeriss, his Naog-to-be, his Derkuwed, and that he

would never throw his son to the crocodile god. Nor did any of them

wish him to do so. A few people in the other clans might urge the

test of offering manfruit to the Great Derku, but most of the people

in all of the tribes, and all of the people in Engu clan, would

oppose it, and so it would not happen.

So it was with an assurance of personal safety that Twerk brought

his firstborn son with him to see the Great Derku in the holy pond.

But six-year- old Glogmeriss, oblivious to the personal danger that

would come from the return of human sacrifice, was terrified at the

sight of the holy pond itself. It was surrounded by a low wall of

dried mud, for once the crocodile had found its way to the water

inside, the gaps in the wall were closed. But what kept the Great

Derku inside was not just the mud wall. It was the row on row of

sharpened horizontal stakes pointing straight inward, set into the

mud and lashed to sharp vertical stakes about a hand's-breadth back

from the point. The captive dragon could neither push the stakes out

of the way nor break them off. Only when the floodwater came and the

river spilled over the top of the mud wall and swept it away, stakes

and all, would that year's Great Derku be set free. Only rarely did

the Great Derku get caught on the stakes and die, and when it

happened it was regarded as a very bad omen.

This year, though, the wall of stakes was not widely regarded as

enough assurance that the dragon could not force his way out, he was

so huge and clever and strong. So men stood guard constantly, spears

in hand, ready to prod the Great Derku and herd it back into place,

should it come dangerously close to escaping.

The sight of spikes and spears was alarming enough, for it looked

like war to young Glogmeriss. But he soon forgot those puny sticks

when he caught sight of the Great Derku himself, as he shambled up

on the muddy, grassy shore of the pond. Of course Glogmeriss had

seen crocodiles all his life; one of the first skills any child,

male or female, had to learn was how to use a spear to poke a

crocodile so it would leave one's dragonboat--and therefore one's

arms and legs--in peace. This crocodile, though, this dragon, this

god, was so huge that Glogmeriss could easily imagine it swallowing

him whole without having to bite him in half or even chew.

Glogmeriss gasped and clung to his father's hand.

"A giant indeed," said his father. "Look at those legs, that

powerful tail. But remember that the Great Derku is but a weak child

compared to the power of the flood."

Perhaps because human sacrifice was still on his mind, Twerk then

told his son how it had been in the old days. "When it was a captive

we offered as manfruit, there was always a chance that the god would

let him live. Of course, if he clung to the stakes and refused to go

into the pond, we would never let him out alive--we poked him with

our spears. But if he went boldly into the water so far that it

covered his head completely, and then came back out alive and made

it back to the stakes without the Great Derku taking him and eating

him, well, then, we brought him out in great honor. We said that his

old life ended in that water, that the man we had captured had been

buried in the holy pond, and now he was born again out of the flood.

He was a full member of the tribe then, of the same clan as the man

who had captured him. But of course the Great Derku almost never let

anyone out alive, because we always kept him hungry."

"YOU poked him with your spear?" asked Glogmeriss.

   

 

"Well, not me personally. When I said that WE did it, I meant of

course the men of the Derku. But it was long before I was born. It

was in my grandfather's time, when he was a young man, that there

came a Great Derku who wouldn't eat any of the captives who were

offered to him. No one knew what it meant, of course, but all the

captives were coming out and expecting to be adopted into the tribe.

But if THAT had happened, the captives would have been the largest

clan of all, and where would we have found wives for them all? So

the holy men and the clan leaders realized that the old way was

over, that the god no longer wanted manfruit, and therefore those

who survived after being buried in the water of the holy pond were

NOT adopted into the Derku people. But we did keep them alive and

set them to work on the canals. That year, with the captives working

alongside us, we dredged the canals deeper than ever, and we were

able to draw twice the water from the canals into the fields of

grain during the dry season, and when we had a bigger harvest than

ever before, we had hands enough to weave more seedboats to contain

it. Then we realized what the god had meant by refusing to eat the

manfruit. Instead of swallowing our captives into the belly of the

water where the god lives, the god was giving them all back to us,

to make us rich and strong. So from that day on we have fed no

captives to the Great Derku. Instead we hunt for meat and bring it

back, while the women and old men make the captives do the labor of

the city. In those days we had one large canal. Now we have three

great canals encircling each other, and several other canals cutting

across them, so that even in the dryest season a Derku man can glide

on his dragonboat like a crocodile from any part of our land to any

other, and never have to drag it across dry earth. This is the

greatest gift of the dragon to us, that we can have the labor of our

captives instead of the Great Derku devouring them himself."

"It's not a bad gift to the captives, either," said Glogmeriss. "Not

to die."

Twerk laughed and rubbed his son's hair. "Not a bad gift at that,"

he said.

"Of course, if the Great Derku really loved the captives he would

let them go home to their families."

Twerk laughed even louder. "They have no families, foolish boy," he

said. "When a man is captured, he is dead as far as his family is

concerned. His woman marries someone else, his children forget him

and call another man father. He has no more home to return to."

"Don't some of the ugly-noise people buy captives back?"

"The weak and foolish ones do. The gold ring on my arm was the price

of a captive. The father-of-all priest wears a cape of bright

feathers that was the ransom of a boy not much older than you, not

long after you were born. But most captives know better than to hope

for ransom. What does THEIR tribe have that we want?"

"I would hate to be a captive, then," said Glogmeriss. "Or would YOU

be weak and foolish enough to ransom me?"

"You?" Twerk laughed out loud. "You're a Derku man, or will be. We

take captives wherever we want, but where is the tribe so bold that

it dares to take one of US? No, we are never captives. And the

captives we take are lucky to be brought out of their poor,

miserable tribes of wandering hunters or berry-pickers and allowed

to live here among wall-building men, among canal- digging people,

where they don't have to wander in search of food every day, where

they get plenty to eat all year long, twice as much as they ever ate

before."

"I would still hate to be one of them," said Glogmeriss. "Because

how could you ever do great things that everyone will talk about and

tell stories about and remember, if you're a captive?"

All this time that they stood on the wall and talked, Glogmeriss

never took his eyes off the Great Derku. It was a terrible creature,

and when it yawned it seemed its mouth was large enough to swallow a

tree. Ten grown men could ride on its back like a dragonboat. Worst

of all were the eyes, which seemed to stare into a man's heart. It

was probably the eyes of the dragon that gave it its name, for DERKU

could easily have originated as a shortened form of DERK-UNT, which

meant "one who sees." When the ancient ancestors of the Derku people

first came to this floodplain, the crocodiles floating like logs on

the water must have fooled them. They must have learned to look for

eyes on the logs. "Look!" the watcher would cry. "There's one with

eyes! Derk-unt!" They said that if you looked in the dragon's eyes,

he would draw you toward him, within reach of his huge jaws, within

reach of his curling tail, and you would never even notice your

danger, because his eyes held you. Even when the jaws opened to show

the pink mouth, the teeth like rows of bright flame ready to burn

you, you would look at that steady, all-knowing, wise, amused, and

coolly angry eye.

That was the fear that filled Glogmeriss the whole time he stood on

the wall beside his father. For a moment, though, just after he

spoke of doing great things, a curious change came over him. For a

moment Glogmeriss stopped fearing the Great Derku, and instead

imagined that he WAS the giant crocodile. Didn't a man paddle his

dragonboat by lying on his belly straddling the bundled reeds,

paddling with his hands and kicking with his feet just as a

crocodile did under the water? So all men became dragons, in a way.

And Glogmeriss would grow up to be a large man, everyone said so.

Among men he would be as extraordinary as the Great Derku was among

crocodiles. Like the god, he would seem dangerous and strike fear

into the hearts of smaller people. And, again like the god, he would

actually be kind, and not destroy them, but instead help them and do

good for them.

Like the river in flood. A frightening thing, to have the water rise

so high, sweeping away the mud hills on which they had built the

seedboats, smearing the outsides of them with sun-heated tar so they

would be watertight when the flood came. Like the Great Derku, the

flood seemed to be a destroyer. And yet when the water receded, the

land was wet and rich, ready to receive the seed and give back huge

harvests. The land farther up the slopesof the mountains was salty

and stony and all that could grow on it was grass. It was here in

the flatlands where the flood tore through like a mad dragon that

the soil was rich and trees could grow.

I will BE the Derkuwed. Not as a destroyer, but as a lifebringer.

The real Derku, the true dragon, could never be trapped in a cage as

this poor crocodile has been. The true dragon comes like the flood

and tears away the walls and sets the Great Derku crocodile free and

makes the soil wet and black and rich. Like the river, I will be

another tool of the god, another manifestation of the power of the

god in the world. If that was not what the dragon of the deep heaven

of the sea intended, why would he have make Glogmeriss so tall and

strong?

This was still the belief in his heart when Glogmeriss set out on

his manhood journey at the age of fourteen. He was already the

tallest man in his clan and one of the tallest among all the Derku

people. He was a giant, and yet well-liked because he never used his

strength and size to frighten other people into doing what he

wanted; on the contrary, he seemed always to protect the weaker

boys. Many people felt that it was a shame that when he returned

from his manhood journey, the name he would be given was a silly one

like Naog. But when they said as much in Glogmeriss's hearing, he

only laughed at them and said, "The name will only be silly if it is

borne by a silly man. I hope not to be a silly man."

Glogmeriss's father had made his fame by taking his manhood journey

from the Salty Sea to the Nile. Glogmeriss's journey therefore had

to be even more challenging and more glorious. He would go south and

east, along the crest of the plateau until he reached the legendary

place called the Heaving Sea, where the gods that dwelt in its deep

heaven were so restless that the water splashed onto the shore in

great waves all the time, even when there was no wind. If there was

such a sea, Glogmeriss would find it. When he came back as a man

with such a tale, they would call him Naog and none of them would

laugh.

   

 

Kemal Akyazi knew that Atlantis had to be there under the waters of

the Red Sea; but why hadn't Pastwatch found it? The answer was

simple enough. The past was huge, and while the TruSite I had been

used to collect climatalogical information, the new machines that

were precise enough that could track individual human beings would

never have been used to look at oceans where nobody lived. Yes, the

Tempoview had explored the Bering Strait and the English Channel,

but that was to track long-known-of migrations. There was no such

migration in the Red Sea. Pastwatch had simply never looked through

their precise new machines to see what was under the water of the

Red Sea in the waning centuries of the last Ice Age. And they never

WOULD look, either, unless someone gave them a compelling reason.

Kemal understood bureaucracy enough to know that he, a student

meteorologist, would hardly be taken seriously if he brought an

Atlantis theory to Pastwatch--particularly a theory that put

Atlantis in the Red Sea of all places, and fourteen thousand years

ago, no less, long before civilizations arose in Sumeria or Egypt,

let alone China or the Indus Valley or among the swamps of

Tehuantapec.

Yet Kemal also knew that the setting would have been right for a

civilization to grow in the marshy land of the Mits'iwa Channel.

Though there weren't enough rivers flowing into the Red Sea to fill

it at the same rate as the world ocean, there were still rivers. For

instance, the Zula, which still had enough water to flow even today,

watered the whole length of the Mits'iwa Plain and flowed down into

the rump of the Red Sea near Mersa Mubarek. And, because of the

different rainfall patterns of that time, there was a large and

dependable river flowing out of the Assahara basin. Assahara was now

a dry valley below sea level, but then would have been a freshwater

lake fed by many rivers and spilling over the lowest point into the

Mits'iwa Channel. The river meandered along the nearly level

Mits'iwa Plain, with some branches of it joining the Zula River, and

some wandering east and north to form several mouths in the Red Sea.

 

Thus dependable sources of fresh water fed the area, and in rainy

season the Zula, at least, would have brought new silt to freshen

the soil, and in all seasons the wandering flatwater rivers would

have provided a means of transportation through the marshes. The

climate was also dependably warm, with plenty of sunlight and a long

growing season. There was no early civilization that did not grow up

in such a setting. There was no reason such a civilization might not

have grown up then.

Yes, it was six or seven thousand years too early. But couldn't it

be that it was the very destruction of Atlantis that convinced the

survivors that the gods did not want human beings to gather together

in cities? Weren't there hints of that anti-civilization bias

lingering in many of the ancient religions of the Middle East? What

was the story of Cain and Abel, if not a metaphorical expression of

the evil of the city-dweller, the farmer, the brother-killer who is

judged unworthy by the gods because he does not wander with his

sheep? Couldn't such stories have circulated widely in those ancient

times? That would explain why the survivors of Atlantis hadn't

immediately begun to rebuild their civilization at another site:

They knew that the gods forbade it, that if they built again their

city would be destroyed again. So they remembered the stories of

their glorious past, and at the same time condemned their ancestors

and warned everyone they met against people gathering together to

build a city, making people yearn for such a place and fear it, both

at once.

Not until a Nimrod came, a tower-builder, a Babel-maker who defied

the old religion, would the ancient proscription be overcome at last

and another city rise up, in another river valley far in time and

space from Atlantis, but remembering the old ways that had been

memorialized in the stories of warning and, as far as possible,

replicating them. We will build a tower so high that it CAN'T be

immersed. Didn't Genesis link the flood with Babel in just that way,

complete with the nomad's stern disapproval of the city? This was

the story that survived in Mesopotamia--the tale of the beginning of

city life there, but with clear memories of a more ancient

civilization that had been destroyed in a flood.

A more ancient civilization. The golden age. The giants who once

walked the earth. Why couldn't all these stories be remembering the

first human civilization, the place where the city was invented?

Atlantis, the city of the Mits'iwa plain.

But how could he prove it without using the Tempoview? And how could

he get access to one of those machines without first convincing

Pastwatch that Atlantis was really in the Red Sea? It was circular,

with no way out.

Until he thought: Why do large cities form in the first place?

Because there are public works to do that require more than a few

people to accomplish them. Kemal wasn't sure what form the public

works might take, but surely they would have been something that

would change the face of the land obviously enough that the old

TruSite I recordings would show it, though it wouldn't be noticeable

unless someone was looking for it.

So, putting his degree at risk, Kemal set aside the work he was

assigned to do and began poring over the old TruSite I recordings.

He concentrated on the last few centuries before the Red Sea

flood--there was no reason to suppose that the civilization had

lasted very long before it was destroyed. And within a few months he

had collected data that was irrefutable. There were no dikes and

dams to prevent flooding--that kind of structure would have been

large enough that no one would have missed it. Instead there were

seemingly random heaps of mud and earth that grew between rainy

seasons, especially in the drier years when the rivers were lower

than usual. To people looking only for weather patterns, these

unstructured, random piles would mean nothing. But to Kemal they

were obvious: In the shallowing water, the Atlanteans were dredging

channels so that their boats could continue to traffic from place to

place. The piles of earth were simply the dumping-places for the

muck they dredged from the water. None of the boats showed up on the

TruSite I, but now that Kemal knew where to look, he began to catch

fleeting glimpses of houses. Every year when the floods came, the

houses disappeared, so they were only visible for a moment or two in

the Trusite I: flimsy mud-and-reed structures that must have been

swept away in every flood season and rebuilt again when the waters

receded. But they were there, close by the hillocks that marked the

channels. Plato was right again--Atlantis grew up around its canals.

But Atlantis was the people and their boats; the buildings were

washed away and built again every year.

When Kemal presented his findings to Pastwatch he was not yet twenty

years old, but his evidence was impressive enough that Pastwatch

immediately turned, not one of the Tempoviews, but the still-newer

TruSite II machine to look under the waters of the Red Sea in the

Massawa Channel during the hundred years before the Red Sea flood.

They found that Kemal was gloriously, spectacularly right. In an era

when other humans were still following game animals and gathering

berries, the Atlanteans were planting amaranth and ryegrass, melons

and beans in the rich wet silt of the receding rivers, and carrying

food in baskets and on reed boats from place to place. The only

thing that Kemal had missed was that the reed buildings weren't

houses at all. They were silos for the storage of grain, built

watertight so that they would float during the flood season. The

Atlanteans slept under the open air during the dry season, and in

the flood season they slept on their tiny reed boats.

Kemal was brought into Pastwatch and made head of the vast new

Atlantis project. This was the seminal culture of all cultures in

the old world, and a hundred researchers examined every stage of its

development. This methodical work, however, was not for Kemal. As

always, it was the grand legend that drew him. He spent every moment

he could spare away from the management of the project and devoted

it to the search for Noah, for Gilgamesh, for the great man who rode

out the flood and whose story lived in memory for thousands of

years. There had to be a real original, and Kemal would find him.

   

 

The flood season was almost due when Glogmeriss took his journey

that would make him into a man named Naog. It was a little early for

him, since he was born during the peak of the flood, but everyone in

the clan agreed with Twerk that it was better for a manling so

well-favored to be early than late, and if he wasn't already up and

out of the flood plain before the rains came, then he'd have to wait

months before he could safely go. And besides, as Twerk pointed out,

why have a big eater like Glogmeriss waiting out the flood season,

eating huge handfuls of grain. People listened happily to Twerk's

argument, because he was known to be a generous, wise, good-humored

man, and everyone expected him to be named clan leader when sweet

old ailing Dheub finally died.

Getting above the flood meant walking up the series of slight

inclines leading to the last sandy shoulder, where the land began to

rise more steeply. Glogmeriss had no intention of climbing any

higher than that. His father's journey had taken him over those

ridges and on to the great river Nile, but there was no reason for

Glogmeriss to clamber through rocks when he could follow the edge of

the smooth, grassy savannah. He was high enough to see the vast

plain of the Derku lands stretching out before him, and the land was

open enough that no cat or pack of dogs could creep up on him

unnoticed, let alone some hunter of another tribe.

How far to the Heaving Sea? Far enough that no one of the Derku

tribe had ever seen it. But they knew it existed, because when they

brought home captives from tribes to the south, they heard tales of

such a place, and the farther south the captives came from, the more

vivid and convincing the tales became. Still, none of them had ever

seen it with their own eyes. So it would be a long journey,

Glogmeriss knew that. And all the longer because it would be on

foot, and not on his dragonboat. Not that Derku men were any weaker

or slower afoot than men who lived above the flood--on the contrary,

they had to be fleet indeed, as well as stealthy, to bring home

either captives or meat. So the boys' games included footracing, and

while Glogmeriss was not the fastest sprinter, no one could match

his long-legged stride for sheer endurance, for covering ground

quickly, on and on, hour after hour.

What set the bodies of the Derku people apart from other tribes,

what made them recognizable in an instant, was the massive

development of their upper bodies from paddling dragonboats hour

after hour along the canals or through the floods. It wasn't just

paddling, either. It was the heavy armwork of cutting reeds and

binding them into great sheaves to be floated home for making boats

and ropes and baskets. And in older times, they would also have

developed strong arms and backs from dredging the canals that

surrounded and connected all the villages of the great Derku city.

Slaves did most of that now, but the Derku took great pride in never

letting their slaves be stronger than they were. Their shoulders and

chests and arms and backs were almost monstrous compared to those of

the men and women of other tribes. And since the Derku ate better

all year round than people of other tribes, they tended to be

taller, too. Many tribes called them giants, and others called them

the sons and daughters of the gods, they looked so healthy and

strong. And of all the young Derku men, there was none so tall and

strong and healthy as Glogmeriss, the boy they called Derkuwed, the

man who would be Naog.

So as Glogmeriss loped along the grassy rim of the great plain, he

knew he was in little danger from human enemies. Anyone who saw him

would think: There is one of the giants, one of the sons of the

crocodile god. Hide, for he might be with a party of raiders. Don't

let him see you, or he'll take a report back to his people. Perhaps

one man in a pack of hunters might say, "He's alone, we can kill

him," but the other hunters would jeer at the one who spoke so

rashly. "Look, fool, he a javelin in his hands and three tied to his

back. Look at his arms, his shoulders--do you think he can't put his

javelin through your heart before you got close enough to throw a

rock at him? Let him be. Pray for a great cat to find him in the

night."

That was Glogmeriss's only real danger. He was too high into the dry

lands for crocodiles, and he could run fast enough to climb a tree

before any pack of dogs or wolves could bring him down. But there

was no tree that would give a moment's pause to one of the big cats.

No, if one of THEM took after him, it would be a fight. But

Glogmeriss had fought cats before, on guard duty. Not the giants

that could knock a man's head off with one blow of its paw, or take

his whole belly with one bite of its jaws, but still, they were big

enough, prowling around the outside of the clan lands, and

Glogmeriss had fought them with a hand javelin and brought them down

alone. He knew something of the way they moved and thought, and he

had no doubt that in a contest with one of the big cats, he would at

least cause it grave injury before it killed him.

Better not to meet one of them, though. Which meant staying well

clear of any of the herds of bison or oxen, antelope or horses that

the big cats stalked. Those cats would never have got so big waiting

around for lone humans--it was herds they needed, and so it was

herds that Glogmeriss did NOT need.

To his annoyance, though, one came to HIM. He had climbed a tree to

sleep the night, tying himself to the trunk so he wouldn't fall out

in his sleep. He awoke to the sound of nervous lowing and a few

higher-pitched, anxious moos. Below him, milling around in the first

grey light of the coming dawn, he could make out the shadowy shapes

of oxen. He knew at once what had happened. They caught scent of a

cat and began to move away in the darkness, shambling in fear and

confusion in the near darkness. They had not run because the cat

wasn't close enough to cause a panic in the herd. With luck it would

be one of the smaller cats, and when it saw that they knew it was

there, it would give up and go away.

But the cat had not given up and gone away, or they wouldn't still

be so frightened. Soon the herd would have enough light to see the

cat that must be stalking them, and then they WOULD run, leaving

Glogmeriss behind in a tree. Maybe the cat would go in full pursuit

of the running oxen, or maybe it would notice the lone man trapped

in a tree and decide to go for the easier, smaller meal.

I wish I were part of this herd, thought Glogmeriss. Then there'd be

a chance. I would be one of many, and even if the cat brought one of

us down, it might not be me. As a man alone, it's me or the cat.

Kill or die. I will fight bravely, but in this light I might not get

a clear sight of the cat, might not be able to see in the rippling

of its muscles where it will move next. And what if it isn't alone?

What if the reason these oxen are so frightened yet unwilling to

move is that they know there's more than one cat and they have no

idea in which direction safety can be found?

Again he thought, I wish I were part of this herd. And then he

thought, Why should I think such a foolish thought twice, unless the

god is telling me what to do? Isn't that what this journey is for,

to find out if there is a god who will lead me, who will protect me,

who will make me great? There's no greatness in having a cat

eviscerate you in one bite. Only if you live do you become a man of

stories. Like Gweia--if she had mounted the crocodile and it had

thrown her off and devoured her, who would ever have heard her name?

 

There was no time to form a plan, except the plan that formed so

quickly that it might have been the god putting it there. He would

ride one of these oxen as Gweia rode the crocodile. It would be easy

enough to drop out of the tree onto an ox's back--hadn't he played

with the other boys, year after year, jumping from higher and higher

branches to land on a dragonboat that was drifting under the tree?

An ox was scarcely less predictable than a dragonboat on a current.

The only difference was that when he landed on the ox's back, it

would not bear him as willingly as a dragonboat. Glogmeriss had to

hope that, like Gweia's crocodile frightened of the flood, the ox he

landed on would be more frightened of the cat than of the sudden

burden on his back.

   

 

He tried to pick well among the oxen within reach of the branches of

the tree. He didn't want a cow with a calf running alongside--that

would be like begging the cats to come after him, since such cows

were already the most tempting targets. But he didn't want a bull,

either, for he doubted it would have the patience to bear him.

And there was his target, a fullsized cow but with no calf leaning

against it, under a fairly sturdy branch. Slowly, methodically,

Glogmeriss untied himself from the tree, cinched the bindings of his

javelins and his flintsack and his grainsack, and drew his loincloth

up to hold his genitals tight against his body, and then crept out

along the branch until he was as nearly over the back of the cow he

had chosen as possible. The cow was stamping and snorting now--they

all were, and in a moment they would bolt, he knew it--but it held

still as well as a bobbing dragonboat, and so Glogmeriss took aim

and jumped, spreading his legs to embrace the animal's back, but not

SO wide that he would slam his crotch against the bony ridge of its

spine.

He landed with a grunt and immediately lunged forward to get his

arms around the ox's neck, just like gripping the stem of the

dragonboat. The beast immediately snorted and bucked, but its

bobbing was no worse than the dragonboat ducking under the water at

the impact of a boy on its back. Of course, the dragonboat stopped

bobbing after a moment, while this ox would no doubt keep trying to

be rid of him until he was gone, bucking and turning, bashing its

sides into other oxen.

But the other animals were already so nervous that the sudden panic

of Glogmeriss's mount was the trigger that set off the stampede.

Almost at once the herd mentality took over, and the oxen set out in

a headlong rush all in the same direction. Glogmeriss's cow didn't

forget the burden on her back, but now she responded to her fear by

staying with the herd. It came as a great relief to Glogmeriss when

she leapt out and ran among the other oxen, in part because it meant

that she was no longer trying to get him off her back, and in part

because she was a good runner and he knew that unless she swerved to

the edge of the herd where a cat could pick her off, both she and he

would be safe.

Until the panic stopped, of course, and then Glogmeriss would have

to figure out a way to get OFF the cow and move away without being

gored or trampled to death. Well, one danger at a time. And as they

ran, he couldn't help but feel the sensations of the moment: The

prickly hair of the ox's back against his belly and legs, the way

her muscles rippled between his legs and within the embrace of his

arms, and above all the sheer exhilaration of moving through the air

at such a speed. Has any man ever moved as fast over the ground as I

am moving now? he wondered. No dragonboat has ever found a current

so swift.

It seemed that they ran for hours and hours, though when they

finally came to a stop the sun was still only a palm's height above

the mountains far across the plain to the east. As the running

slowed to a jolting jog, and then to a walk, Glogmeriss kept waiting

for his mount to remember that he was on her back and to start

trying to get him off. But if she remembered, she must have decided

she didn't mind, because when she finally came to a stop, still in

the midst of the herd, she simply dropped her head and began to

graze, making no effort to get Glogmeriss off her back.

She was so calm--or perhaps like the others was simply so

exhausted--that Glogmeriss decided that as long as he moved slowly

and calmly he might be able to walk on out of the herd, or at least

climb a tree and wait for them to move on. He knew from the roaring

and screaming sounds he had heard near the beginning of the stampede

that the cats--more than one--had found their meal, so the survivors

were safe enough for now.

Glogmeriss carefully let one leg slide down until he touched the

ground. Then, smoothly as possible, he slipped off the cow's back

until he was crouched beside her. She turned her head slightly,

chewing a mouthful of grass. Her great brown eye regarded him

calmly.

"Thank you for carrying me," said Glogmeriss softly.

She moved her head away, as if to deny that she had done anything

special for him.

"You carried me like a dragonboat through the flood," he said, and

he realized that this was exactly right, for hadn't the stampede of

oxen been as dangerous and powerful as any flood of water? And she

had borne him up, smooth and safe, carrying him safely to the far

shore. "The best of dragonboats."

She lowed softly, and for a moment Glogmeriss began to think of her

as being somehow the embodiment of the god--though it could not be

the crocodile god that took this form, could it? But all thoughts of

the animal's godhood were shattered when it started to urinate. The

thick stream of ropey piss splashed into the grass not a span away

from Glogmeriss's shoulder, and as the urine spattered him he could

not help but jump away. Other nearby oxen mooed complainingly about

his sudden movement, but his own cow seemed not to notice. The urine

stank hotly, and Glogmeriss was annoyed that the stink would stay

with him for days, probably.

Then he realized that no COW could put a stream of urine between her

forelegs. This animal was a bull after all. Yet it was scarcely

larger than the normal cow, not bull-like at all. Squatting down, he

looked closely, and realized that the animal had lost its testicles

somehow. Was it a freak, born without them? No, there was a scar, a

ragged sign of old injury. While still a calf, this animal had had

its bullhood torn away. Then it grew to adulthood, neither cow nor

bull. What purpose was there in life for such a creature as that?

And yet if it had not lived, it could not have carried him through

the stampede. A cow would have had a calf to slow it down; a bull

would have flung him off easily. The god had prepared this creature

to save him. It was not itself a god, of course, for such an

imperfect animal could hardly be divine. But it was a god's tool.

"Thank you," said Glogmeriss, to whatever god it was. "I hope to

know you and serve you," he said. Whoever the god was must have

known him for a long time, must have planned this moment for years.

There was a plan, a destiny for him. Glogmeriss felt himself thrill

inside with the certainty of this.

I could turn back now, he thought, and I would have had the greatest

manhood journey of anyone in the tribe for generations. They would

regard me as a holy man, when they learned that a god had prepared

such a beast as this to be my dragonboat on dry land. No one would

say I was unworthy to be Naog, and no more Glogmeriss.

But even as he thought this, Glogmeriss knew that it would be wrong

to go back. The god had prepared this animal, not to make his

manhood journey easy and short, but to make his long journey

possible. Hadn't the ox carried him southeast, the direction he was

already heading? Hadn't it brought him right along the very shelf of

smooth grassland that he had already been running on? No, the god

meant to speed him on his way, not to end his journey. When he came

back, the story of the unmanned ox that carried him like a boat

would be merely the first part of his story. They would laugh when

he told them about the beast peeing on him. They would nod and

murmur in awe as he told them that he realized that the god was

helping him to go on, that the god had chosen him years before in

order to prepare the calf that would be his mount. Yet this would

all be the opening, leading to the main point of the story, the

climax. And what that climax would be, what he would accomplish that

would let him take on his manly name, Glogmeriss could hardly bear

to wait to find out.

Unless, of course, the god was preparing him to be a sacrifice. But

the god could have killed him at any time. It could have killed him

when he was born, dropping him into the water as everyone said his

father had feared might happen. It could have let him die there at

the tree, taken by a cat or trampled under the feet of the oxen. No,

the god was keeping him alive for a purpose, for a great task. His

triumph lay ahead, and whatever it was, it would be greater than his

ride on the back of an ox.

   

 

The rains came the next day, but Glogmeriss pressed on. The rain

made it hard to see far ahead, but most of the animals stopped

moving in the rain and so there wasn't as much danger to look out

for. Sometimes the rain came down so thick and hard that Glogmeriss

could hardly see a dozen steps ahead. But he ran on, unhindered. The

shelf of land that he ran along was perfectly flat, neither uphill

nor downhill, as level as water, and so he could lope along without

wearying. Even when the thunder roared in the sky and lightning

seemed to flash all around him, Glogmeriss did not stop, for he knew

that the god that watched over him was powerful indeed. He had

nothing to fear. And since he passed two burning trees, he knew that

lightning could have struck him at any time, and yet did not, and so

it was a second sign that a great god was with him.

During the rains he cross many swollen streams, just by walking.

Only once did he have to cross a river that was far too wide and

deep and swift in flood for him to cross. But he plunged right in,

for the god was with him. Almost at once he was swept off his feet,

but he swam strongly across the current. Yet even a strong Derku man

cannot swim forever, and it began to seem to Glogmeriss that he

would never reach the other side, but rather would be swept down to

the salt sea, where one day his body would wash to shore near a

party of Derku raiders who would recognize from the size of his body

that it was him. So, this is what happened to Twerk's son

Glogmeriss. The flood took him after all.

Then he bumped against a log that was also floating on the current,

and took hold of it, and rolled up onto the top of it like a

dragonboat. Now he could use all his strength for paddling, and soon

he was across the current. He drew the log from the water and

embraced it like a brother, lying beside it, holding it in the wet

grass until the rising water began to lick at his feet again. Then

he dragged the log with him to higher ground and placed it up in the

notch of a tree where no flood would dislodge it. One does not

abandon a brother to the flood.

Three times the god has saved me, he thought as he climbed back up

to the level shelf that was his path. From the tooth of the cat,

from the fire of heaven, from the water of the flood. Each time a

tree was part of it: The tree around which the herd of oxen gathered

and from which I dropped onto the ox's back; the trees that died in

flames from taking to themselves the bolts of lightning meant for

me; and finally this log of a fallen tree that died in its home far

up in the mountains in order to be my brother in the water of the

flood. Is it a god of trees, then, that leads me on? But how can a

god of trees be more powerful than the god of lightning or the god

of the floods or even the god of sharp-toothed cats? No, trees are

simply tools the god has used. The god flings trees about as easily

as I fling a javelin.

Gradually, over many days, the rains eased a bit, falling in steady

showers instead of sheets. Off to his left, he could see that the

plain was rising upcloser and closer to the smooth shelf along which

he ran. On the first clear morning he saw that there was no more

distant shining on the still waters of the Salty Sea--the plain was

now higher than the level of that water; he had behind the only sea

that the Derku people had ever seen. The Heaving Sea lay yet ahead,

and so he ran on.

The plain was quite high, but he was still far enough above it that

he could see the shining when it came again on a clear morning. He

had left one sea behind, and now, with the ground much higher, there

was another sea. Could this be it, the Heaving Sea?

He left the shelf and headed across the savannah toward the water.

He did not reach it that day, but on the next afternoon he stood on

the shore and knew that this was not the place he had been looking

for. The water was far smaller than the Salty Sea, smaller even than

the Sweetwater Sea up in the mountains from which the Selud River

flowed. And yet when he dipped his finger into the water and tasted

it, it WAS a little salty. Almost sweet, but salty nonetheless. Not

good for drinking. That was obvious from the lack of animal tracks

around the water. It must usually be saltier than this, thought

Glogmeriss. It must have been freshened somewhat by the rains.

Instead of returning to his path along the shelf by the route he had

followed to get to this small sea, Glogmeriss struck out due south.

He could see the shelf in the distance, and could see that by

running south he would rejoin the level path a good way farther

along.

As he crossed a small stream, he saw animal prints again, and among

them the prints of human feet. Many feet, and they were fresher than

any of the animal prints. So fresh, in fact, that for all Glogmeriss

knew they could be watching him right now. If he stumbled on them

suddenly, they might panic, seeing a man as large as he was. And in

this place what would they know of the Derku people? No raiders had

ever come this far in search of captives, he was sure. That meant

that they wouldn't necessarily hate him--but they wouldn't fear

retribution from his tribe, either. No, the best course was for him

to turn back and avoid them.

But a god was protecting him, and besides, he had been without the

sound of a human voice for so many days. If he did not carry any of

his javelins, but left them all slung on his back, they would know

he meant no harm and they would not fear him. So there at the

stream, he bent over, slipped off the rope holding his javelins, and

untied them to bind them all together.

As he was working, he heard a sound and knew without looking that he

had been found. Perhaps they HAD been watching him all along. His

first thought was to pick up his javelins and prepare for battle.

But he did not know how many they were, or whether they were all

around him, and in the dense brush near the river he might be

surrounded by so many that they could overwhelm him easily, even if

he killed one or two. For a moment he thought, The god protects me,

I could kill them all. But then he rejected that idea. He had killed

nothing on this journey, not even for meat, eating only the grain he

carried with him and such berries and fruits and roots and greens

and mushrooms as he found along the way. Should he begin now,

killing when he knew nothing about these people? Perhaps meeting

them was what the god had brought him here to do.

So a slowly, carefully finished binding the javelins and then slung

them up onto his shoulder, being careful never to hold the javelins

in a way that might make his watcher or watchers think that he was

making them ready for battle. Then, his hands empty and his weapons

bound to his back, he splashed through the stream and followed the

many footprints on the far side.

He could hear feet padding along behind him--more than one person,

too, from the sound. They might be coming up behind him to kill him,

but it didn't sound as if they were trying to overtake him, or to be

stealthy, either. They must know that he could hear them. But

perhaps they thought he was very stupid. He had to show them that he

did not turn to fight them because he did not want to fight, and not

because he was stupid or afraid.

To show them he was not afraid, he began to sing the song of the dog

who danced with a man, which was funny and had a jaunty tune. And to

show them he knew they were there, he bent over as he walked,

scooped up a handful of damp soil, and flung it lightly over his

shoulder.

The sound of sputtering outrage told him that the god had guided his

lump of mud right to its target. He stopped and turned to find four

men following him, one of whom was brushing dirt out of his face,

cursing loudly. The others looked uncertain whether to be angry at

Glogmeriss for flinging dirt at them or afraid of him because he was

so large and strange and unafraid.

Glogmeriss didn't want them to be either afraid or angry. So he let

a slow smile come to his face, not a smile of derision, but rather a

friendly smile that said, I mean no harm. To reinforce this idea, he

held his hands out wide, palms facing the strangers.

   

 

They understood him, and perhaps because of his smile began to see

the humor in the situation. They smiled, too, and then, because the

one who was hit with dirt was still complaining and trying to get it

out of his eyes, they began to laugh at him. Glogmeriss laughed with

them, but then walked slowly toward his victim and, carefully

letting them all see what he was doing, took his waterbag from his

waist and untied it a little, showing them that water dropped from

it. They uttered something in an ugly-sounding language and the one

with dirt in his eyes stopped, leaned his head back, and stoically

allowed Glogmeriss to bathe his eyes with water.

When at last, dripping and chagrined, the man could see again,

Glogmeriss flung an arm across his shoulder like a comrade, and then

reached out for the man who seemed to be the leader. After a

moment's hesitation, the man allowed Glogmeriss the easy embrace,

and together they walked toward the main body of the tribe, the

other two walking as closely as possible, behind and ahead, talking

to Glogmeriss even though he made it plain that he did not

understand.

When they reached the others they were busy building a cookfire. All

who could, left their tasks and came to gawk at the giant stranger.

While the men who had found him recounted the tale, others came and

touched Glogmeriss, especially his strong arms and chest, and his

loincloth as well, since none of the men wore any kind of clothing.

Glogmeriss viewed this with disgust. It was one thing for little

boys to run around naked, but he knew that men should keep their

privates covered so they wouldn't get dirty. What woman would let

her husband couple with her, if he let any kind of filth get on his

javelin?

Of course, these men were all so ugly that no woman would want them

anyway, and the women were so ugly that the only men who would want

them would be these. Perhaps ugly people don't care about keeping

themselves clean, thought Glogmeriss. But the women wore naprons

made of woven grass, which looked softer than the beaten reeds that

the Derku wove. So it wasn't that these people didn't know how to

make cloth, or that the idea of wearing clothing had never occurred

to them. The men were simply filthy and stupid, Glogmeriss decided.

And the women, while not as filthy, must be just as stupid or they