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earth: toward the mountain.
High in the bloody sky, the Deathbird circled.
8
On their own world, they had lived in luminous, oily-walled caverns for millions of years,
evolving and spreading their race through the universe. When they had had enough of empire
building, they turned inward, and much of their time was spent in the intricate construction of songs
of wisdom, and the designing of fine worlds for many races.
There were other races that designed, however. And when there was a conflict over
jurisdiction, an arbitration was called, adjudicated by a race whose raison d’être was impartiality
and cleverness in unraveling knotted threads of claim and counterclaim. Their racial honor, in fact,
depended on the flawless application of these qualities. Through the centuries they had refined their
talents in more and more sophisticated arenas of arbitration until the time came when they were the
final authority. The litigants were compelled to abide by the judgments, not merely because the
decisions were always wise and creatively fair, but because the judges’ race would, if its decisions
were questioned as suspect, destroy itself. In the holiest place on their world they had erected a
religious machine. It could be activated to emit a tone that would shatter their crystal carapaces.
They were a race of exquisite cricket-like creatures, no larger than the thumb of a man. They were
treasured throughout the civilized worlds, and their loss would have been catastrophic. Their honor
and their value was never questioned. All races abided by their decisions.
So Dira’s people gave over jurisdiction to that certain world, and went away, leaving Dira
with only the Deathbird, a special caretakership the adjudicators had creatively woven into their
judgment.
There is recorded one last meeting between Dira and those who had given him his
commission. There were readings that could not be ignored--had, in fact, been urgently brought to
the attention of the fathers of Dira’s race by the adjudicators--and the Great Coiled One came to
Dira at the last possible moment to tell him of the mad thing into whose hands this world had been
given, to tell Dira of what the mad thing would do.
The Great Coiled One--whose rings were loops of wisdom acquired through centuries of
gentleness and perception and immersed meditations that had brought forth lovely designs for many
worlds--he who was the holiest of Dira’s race, honored Dira by coming to him, rather than
commanding Dira to appear.
We have only one gift to leave them, he said. Wisdom. This mad one will come, and he will
lie to them, and he will tell them: created he them. And we will be gone. and there will be nothing
between them and the mad one but you. Only you can give them the wisdom to defeat him in their
own good time. Then the Great Coiled One stroked the skin of Dira with ritual affection, and Dira
was deeply moved and could not reply. Then he was left alone.
The mad one came, and interposed himself, and Dira gave them wisdom, and time passed.
His name became other than Dira, it became Snake, and the new name was despised: but Dira could
see the Great Coiled One had been correct in his readings. So Dira made his selection. A man, one
of them, and gifted him with the spark.
All of this is recorded somewhere. It is history.
9
The man was not Jesus of Nazareth. He may have been Simon. Not Genghis Khan, but
perhaps a foot soldier in his horde. Not Aristotle, but possibly one who sat and listened to Socrates
in the agora. Neither the shambler who discovered the wheel nor the link who first ceased painting
