local settlement date 36,006
Always question authority.
King Namor Zujahrah
32 river fish
Barbaralba, the ship, set anchor in Kar Harbour.
A small fishing village last time Barbaralba, the goddess of war and Namor, the King of war, sailed by.
It had become a city. Built with the help of designers, builders and patents from Angel Island.
Up the small river were a few small farms and settlements. Few enough people that there had never been enough toxins to poison the river. It was a river that had fish since the beginning of fish. Along with the fish it had many creatures that ate fish. It was known as one of the oldest tropical forests that still thrived on Barbancor. And that is why the crew of Barbaralba's theater and the other visiting tourists on the journey stopped at Kar Harbour.
Namor sat on the deck of their host, one of the city affairs coordinator, Bensag. He had been a sailor on one of the schooners that had not burnt at Havatara. He left Adrone to be among the first to move to Barbancor. Lived with a Barbancorian fisher. Aslatie was also involved with city affairs. Much of the city was involved in maintaining the city. Almost every home was a small inn. The small city thrived and managed to do it quietly and peacefully.
"What are you looking at, Papa."
"Janyah, my angel. I'm looking at distant relatives. In the trees."
"From Man's side."
Janyah sat down beside her father and looked up into the towering trees to where the sound of the monkeys came.
"They sound like they are in a panic."
"That it does. Which makes me think we are close relatives. The Old King says it was a long time ago that we were in the trees. Long before we came to this planet. We were land lovers more than a hundred million years ago. We left the trees to run on the plains. Maybe we loved to eat fish. The Old King says that as far as he can understand, we left in a relative hurry. We had to get a big brain on us to survive all the dangers of the last planet."
"So we decided to grow a brain and we did."
"Almost. We decided we wanted to survive. Not a decision one generation makes. It's evolution. We were the fighters that pushed it to the limit. And when things in our environment change. Always. Everything. We changed. Every creature can. Not every creature changes as we have. A fish that can live in the ocean and is good at being a fish eventually need not change so much. A fly that is good at doing what flies do may also change very little. Maybe it will get smaller in size and greater in number. But if it doesn't need to evolve, usually it won't. But everything mutates a little every generation. You are different than me or your mother because you are a mix of the two. And all life works like that. So that every birth is a small change.
A fish that is small can live in a shallow river. A big shark needs more space. Every space that becomes available becomes filled with some kind of life.
And in a way, it all, life started at very simple and kept branching out trying everything it could try. Not knowing it. Two of one type come together and something a little new is the result. Eventually life made it so that we would better survive if we could think more and eventually communicate. Make a written language and have the talent to do as we pleased. Laugh and have fun. Love and care. Those are things rocks can't do. And it isn't something that reason has decided on. If just about anything that is possible can happen with the elements that there are. Then eventually it does. And when it happens that there is a possibility that simply life is the path to the gods, in a way, the gods are already part of life. The potential to become something is as real as the having been something. The Old King is certain that before we were life, we were physics and chemicals.
And on our way to become the gods we were very mad tyrants. There was a wide open niche for a few of the primates to take advantage of their power over language. Build a magnificent lie. Scream louder than the other primates. Kill better than the other primates. And they have tied us in war games for 100,000 years. Maybe longer. Maybe since before we took the leap toward the gods."
"Papa."
"What."
"You aren't at fault for us killing one another."
Namor laughed.
"Thanks, Janyah. And perhaps it isn't even a fault. It was a process until we could see beyond it. Stand a little taller and see a little farther into our own future. To see instead of having all the shiny metal and power over the weaker, we could be the gods of the universe."
"You know what I would like to do today."
"What would you like to do today, my angel."
"I want my father to take me up the river, in a canoe. Camp in the wild. And not come back until tomorrow. We will take a bow and some arrows to fish. A knife. A couple blankets."
"Now that I hear you speak the idea I am certain that that is exactly what I wanted."
"The gods decided it for us and we just listened."
They borrowed a canoe and the things they needed, bid their short fair well to the rest of the family and set out. Up the river.
With monkeys hanging from trees bantering at them.
Birds flew by them singing to one another about whatever it is birds have to say to one another. Ultimately basically the same as all the creatures. Hello. I am here. Are you here as well. How do you want to deal with one another and the rest of it.
By early afternoon they were well beyond the city's outer limits. They had pasted all the people waving at them. Some saw two tourists in a canoe bringing a little added wealth in the form of monitory capital to their city. For others, it was King Namor and his daughter.
Namor felt like a real king in his canoe with the world around him letting him and one of his angels enjoy some of life. If he were a real king of the old world, he would be taking time out of his war crusades to breed with his daughter. Kings often did that to protect the bloodline. Kings, like many priests, wanted as many children as possible and if they had a beautiful daughter, or even an ugly one, they would want her to carry on their genes. It was the way of the monster God religions. Backwards to the way life was suited. Life was better suited for the woman to decide where she collected her genes.
The mad ape with their love of their own phallus. Hormones numbing the brain. The hormones mutants making the most children and suddenly there is a few hundred thousand years of madness. Women used as rape toys and slaves to the primates with their love of phallus, metal, blood and war.
Namor knew he did not want to be part of that vicious cycle of devolution.
Just about the same time he was pushing away his lust for the back of the creature in the front of the canoe, remembering he was who he was, who she was and where he was, Janyah turn around just like her mother would.
"Let's stop over there and eat a river fish."
"I was trying very hard to think the same thing."
It was a small beach made by collecting of sand at the curve of the river. There was a small creek running into it. There was a small grassy area before the plants and trees. It was not made like it was so that Namor and Janyah could camp there. It was how it was and for a creature that had always been part of such an environment millions of millions of years, it looked to be put there for no other reason.
"We'll camp here."
"It would be an insult to the universe not to."
Janyah smiled at her father then jumped out of the canoe to pull it up on the sand.
"I'll catch some fish. You watch."
Namor watched Janyah lying in the shallow water, her buttocks breaking the surface. Her feet moving just a little. Her bow string pulled and her arrow aimed at a gathering of fish.
Watching Janyah was much like watching Barbaralba. There seemed to be no barriers between her and the world she moved in. The water moved around her like it was happy to see her. Butterflies seemed to be attracted to her. Birds looked at her when she passed them but did not fly away.
"I got one."
"You are an angel, Janyah. The universe is smiling at me today. I can see it. There is no place more beautiful than this moment looking at you looking at me knowing we are both here and a fish meal is awaiting us because millions of years of evolving has made us capable of partaking in such beautiful communion."
"That's a pretty compliment."
"I guess I better gather some wood to fry up the fish. Make this paradise experience a bit more delightful."
While Namor collected wood, Janyah started a flame with a little fire bow and a stick resting on a piece of wood, with dry leaves and twigs and thin bark from a dead tree.
Namor had no trouble finding wood. There had been no one ahead of them to collect it. Most tourists enjoyed being served their food. They enjoyed sleeping in comfort. They had fear for the wild. They still had trouble to understand that they were part of such a brutal environment. That their ancestors were social animals partly because it was the only way for them to survive in the wild. Many years later after so many years fighting wild beasts, they felt safer behind thick walls. Understandable. For in a way it was true. And for Namor and Janyah it was fine. It meant there would be no one to bother them. And for Namor who had grown up in a castle, it was clear that what could be seen as protection from the wild could also be seen as a prison to keep the mad primates out of the wild.
In fact. One could come up with a million ways to justify anything one chose to justify. And that was pretty good proof that one should be careful not to come to any grand conclusions. Especially before the fish is fried.
"About fifteen years ago, your mother and I, with Zauqir as our fearless guide, ran over to the Island of Adrone for the first time. First time for a royal family king. Drave King. First time for your mother. And we watched the moons come and go. While we waited for the tide to go out and come in again. And it was both frightening and beautiful. A balance of the two. Because it was very real and our participation in it was very real and we had to follow, what the Old King likes to call, the laws of physics. Every moment of it was beautiful and if I had to wonder why, it would be because I was with people I loved. Angels that were sent to help me."
"Like you were sent to help them. Called to help, Papa. Angels can find each other. Even if they didn't know they knew each other, they will find each other and afterwards it will make sense."
"That's a bold leap, Janyah. But I think it is like that. There is more to awareness in life than we arrogant war creatures dare to give it credit."
A large winged, long legged grey blue bird screeched. For Namor it sounded and looked like it had screeched at him. To say, I am here and I see that you are here.
"I like it that my father was the Drave King that came out to see his kingdom and fought against the eternal war of ignorance and blind hate."
"I like it that my daughter is brilliant and self aware. And teaches her father things he sometimes forgets."
"Do you want any more fish."
"Not tonight. Tonight all I want to do is stay awake as long as possible and watch you and the ever changing and sometimes dangerous paradise around us."
Janyah smiled and looked up at the stars that were taking over the darkening sky.
"Where is the planet we came from."
"Somewhere out there. Not too far away, relatively. The Old King says if must be practically a neighbor if the logs are true. If the date of the logs is true. They might not be. We might have been on the star ship as a simple starter kit. All the ingredients necessary to start up life if the star ship found suitable conditions. But that would make the logs fiction."
Janyah looked at her father.
"It would be easier to travel through space without having to actually be alive on the space ship. Just send a started kit with the basics. But I don't think we are that far. We are too addicted to our ego. We would fear the evolution of something other than us."
"I don't really picture it."
"The Old King is quite certain that all life is closely related and it only needs a place that is suitable. Only a place, is the big problem, however, in a universe of so much extreme hot and extreme barren cold."
"Can we go back to the planet we came from."
"I don't know. Perhaps we will know where it is when we get to the space ship but I don't think we should put too much hope in such a silent beast. And maybe we left the last planet in a condition like this with the hope of starting over. Just like the play of your mother's. Destroy one land and go find another and destroy that."
"Maybe their technology is grand now. Maybe after the royal family left they gave up on war and embraced wisdom and they have had seventy thousand years of development. Maybe they have built cities in the heavens. A hundred star ships."
"If they had built and hundred star ships, they should have been here by now. One of them should have come to see how we have done with this planet."
Namor stood up and paced around the fire for a while wondering about the other planet. A space ship a hundred and ten kilometers long was a major project. It was possible that it was the first one. If they were the first one. Maybe the only one.
"Janyah. I think we better go back. They may be waiting for us."
"Tomorrow. We told them tomorrow."
"To the last planet we were on. There should at least be communication with them. Something went wrong if we failed to notice for 30,000 years that we came here on a space ship. There is no sense in so long a silence. That kind of silence is like the silence of what ultimately was a state of war with Barbancor."
"Sit down, Papa."
Namor laughed. And sat down beside his daughter and tried to imagine with her what the planet they came from was like.
Namor tried to imagine a world that had not been terra formed. A world that had the time to take billions of years to evolve from the simplest carbon based creatures, mutating and adapting, dying to be reborn as the next mutant, adapting and dying again to be reborn. Mating and mutating. Adapting and dying so long sharing information, just the information any life form could hold onto, genetically for the longest time and than adding to that all that had been added, including the ability to love and the most brilliant of all events, the awareness of it and being in it. A Namor talking to a Janyah. Speculating on what it was that came before the fish over the fire and the stars in the sky.
"It sounds beautiful. Such a place would have to be beautiful. So beautiful that to be part of it for a day would be a celebration worth the many lives and deaths it took to perceive how we perceive."
"And seeing how beautiful it and we are, with our brutal history and nature, appoints us. By measure of deduction of all perceivable probabilities, makes us that understand it. The care takers. For if the nature of life what we have attained is a seldom thing. It would be a sin against the gods to throw it away. The gods that are waiting to be."
"The gods that we are. On permanent vacation in their very own universe."
The tent did not get set up. They slept where they were, beside the little fire. Waking to the sound of screaming monkeys. And birds. And a magic clarity. They got up and walked through the forest. Trees bigger around than a fishing boat. The only light getting to their feet had danced over and through many leaves.
Janyah and Namor were so quiet in the trance of a real daydream that they surprised a great black sleepy cat. It twisted around, dragging its claws lazily over Janyah's stomach and catching Namor's leg. They jumped back and the black cat darted off into the shadows.
"Have you ever seen such a beast."
"Not in this life."
"We surprised her."
"She almost ripped open your belly."
Namor looked at the three lines on Janyah's stomach. He could see the layer of skin, the layer of fat and into the muscle. Then the blood came and it was obvious that the cuts needed to be attended to.
"She was very beautiful. She moved like a dance. She could have had us for breakfast but she gave us a scratch and went on her way."
"We better make our way back. We can't be walking around losing our blood."
Janyah held her belly and Namor uses a stick as a crutch. They both chose to laugh about their short flash of bloody excitement.
Janyah wrapped Namor's leg. Namor wrapped Janyah's belly then tossed everything in the canoe.
"It stings a little."
"You need to have it stitched together and you need to not move till we get you to your grandfather."
Namor made the canoe comfortable for Janyah to lay. He though about what had just happened. He knew his daughter could have had her insides ripped out had she not jumped back. Had the big cat been only a little more aggressive. Namor tried to avoid looking at the blood slowly pooling under his foot.
He felt euphoric. He had seen much more blood coming from Barbaralba when he went to collect her from the game's floor.
"She chose not to kill us, Papa."
"Maybe the gods have a few more things for us to do."
"She was an angel too. And she wanted us to know she was there."
"We could have been watching for her. That's true. Had we known. Now we know."
They could have stopped anywhere in the city to get help. But it was not far to their hosts. The river's current made up for Namor paddling alone. Zauqir, seeing Janyah, went in the house to prepare for the wounded.
Janyah told the story to her family while Zauqir tended to her wounds. Then he attended to Namor. Estan asked many questions about the big black cat. Over the next few days, many people asked about the big black cat.
Janyah told the story so that people understood that the black cat was an angel. And since an angel always brought a message, she was happy to carry her mark.
Estan wanted to know what the message was. He was inclined to think his sister a little crazy because sisters had that tendency at that age. No longer little girls and starting to look like women. Taking everything personally. As if the world was out to get them or serve them. Depending on what day or what time of day it was.
"She wanted us not to ignore her. Not to forget that she also shares this planet. We are not alone here and every time someone sees her mark, they will know. And if they don't I will tell them."
"You are a silly duck."
"Go fight with Mom and leave me be."
"Quack, quack, quack. My sister is a silly duck."
"You're the duck."
Barbaralba grabbed up her son and jumped into the river with him.
"Don't come back without fish."
Estan splashed around pretending to be his sister, the silly duck.
"Quack, quack, quack."
chapter 33
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