The Gods Shall Provide

Trielsa scraped carefully at the heavy white clunch, freeing the delicate vevola plant with as little root loss as possible. In the cratered landscape of clay and dust left behind by the miners, the vevola was a precious symbol of vitality and endurance. She would plant it outside the Hall of the Ancestors, where its purple blossoms and sweet scent would help dispel the sorrow around the place.

She stood up, ignoring the grumbling creaks of her tired joints. It was second Sunning, and she threw her arms wide to embrace its nourishing warmth.

“Tri? Trielsa?” She sensed him beside her before he spoke, forcing herself back to consciousness begrudgingly.

“What’s wrong, Fordy?”

“It’s the pain again, Tri,” he winced and clutched the sides of his head as though afraid it might fall off. “It’s back, and it’s serious this time. I think… I think it might be my time.”

Sadness descended on her like a blanket, weighing her down. She took Fordy's hand in her own, noticing, not for the first time, the brown age spots. He saw her glance and nodded.

“You see? They say once you lose your shine death isn’t far off. And I haven’t felt shiny in so many cycles, Tri.”

She patted him comfortingly. “We’re none of us young anymore, but that doesn’t mean we’re done for just yet. I’ll go to the Halls of the Ancestors, maybe I’ll get lucky and find a cure for that headache there. Copper is good for head pain like yours.”

“Thanks Tri, you’ve always looked out for me. I guess I’ll head on back to the stream. I haven’t found any mica in a long while, but the waters are a comfort. The burbling reminds me of the songs of the Gods, you know?”

She adjusted her gatherer’s pouch with the delicate vevola inside, angrily pulling the knot so hard it almost snapped. “I wish you wouldn’t call them that, Fordy. You know how I feel about the Colonizers!”

“I know we disagree on the creator stories, Tri,” he said sadly. “I wish you could find comfort in it all the way I do. It’s no good for you to be so eaten up with hatred and resentment all the time.”

“Creators?!” She spat the word venomously, and in that moment Fordy didn’t see the frailty that had crept in to her over time, she transformed in his mind back to that fierce and shiny youth of many cycles past. “Oh, just look what they created, Fordy! Take a moment to admire the grey, the dust, the ruins of our world! We were here for millenia before they showed up, creators or not. We terraformed this place, we worked the land, it was us, our ancestors, US that made this planet home. Some Gods they are, taking all that is beautiful and wholesome and life giving and stealing it from the lands… then what? Disappearing back into the ether like they were never here at all! Please. Save me from this creation, I want none of it.”

She saw his face crumble slightly, sagging to the left as another wave of pain overtook him.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’ll go commune with the ancestors and meet you there at fourth Sunning. And rest up a bit, Fordy. You’re worrying me with all this talk of dying.”

Trielsa whirred into action, moving rapidly over the pitted ground, avoiding the deepest sink holes instinctively. Gradually the ground softened and patchy yellow grasses and hardy white dropsy flowers grew here and there among the rusted hulks of the old mining equipment. Ahead of her the Hall of the Ancestors rose up, the sheer scale of it taking her by surprise as it did every time. Not a beautiful building, no – its corrugated siding and gaping entrance not framed with marble pillars and carved statues… like the mausoleums in the Colonizers stories. but it was softened somewhat by the gentle ferns and flowers she had planted like an offering to those that came before. She paused a moment before entering the dark sliding doors, quickly stooping to brush her fingers through the bed of vevolas, sprinkling some water over them as a blessing.

Inside the Hall it was cooler and the air was thick and musty, with tangy scents of oil and burnt copper. Rows of shelving reached almost to the high vaulted ceiling, stretching far out of sight into the darkness ahead of her. She turned to the left, past a stack of misshapen heads, their eyes, though dead and sunken seemed to follow her reproachfully. She had already foraged them all in the past, there would be no help there. Their copper was long gone.

Down a row of broken ossuaries she crept, searching out the name plates, rubbing dust from labels until she found the one she was seeking.

IIIDE – the ancestor before Fordy, on the third shelf up, a largish box mostly still intact. No grave robbers had come for him yet, that was good. Maybe he would bless her with what she needed to help her friend.

Lifting the box down took all her strength, she could feel her shoulders grinding in protest. She laid it on the ground and pried off the lid, overwhelmed for a moment by the sad sight of the crumpled remains within.

“I miss you, Freedy” she told him softly, hoping that somewhere he could still hear her words. She placed the now crumpled and bruised vevola flower she had picked earlier within the box, clasping it between his fingers as an offering. The sweet scent mingled with the motor oil and acrid smoke and she remembered flashes of times now long forgotten – where they had run through meadows filled with flowers and life. Maybe it was best that Freedy was no longer here to see what had become of the world he loved.

She was delaying her task, and she knew it. Steeling herself against the horrors and violation of her actions, she reached into Freedy’s head cavity, feeling around for anything that might still be usable. Some spark of life to replenish poor Fordy and cure his headache. Some copper to replenish his wires. Some platinum for his ocular implants.

Nothing. Maybe it had been too long – when exactly had she said her final goodbye to Freedy anyway? She tried to recall, but it must have been hundreds of cycles ago. Strange how quickly time passed when you went from living to plain surviving.

She heard a groan from the entrance and jolted around, leaving the box and its sad contents forgotten in the middle of the floor.

“Tri? Any luck, Tri?” It was Fordy, barely standing, half leaning against the sliding door, almost as dead as the ancestors themselves. A slight moan escaped her as she thought of how soon she might be saying goodbye, laying him to rest on the shelf beside the others they had known and loved, loved and lost. Just a serial number 4DE to mark his existence.

“Stay outside!” She barked, not wanting him to confront the horrors within. “I’ll come to you!”

He was sitting on a broken driveshaft when she reached him, the soft orange light of fourth Sunning making him glow like burnished bronze. One eye was dimmed completely, drooping. He no longer raised a hand to support it, all energy fading from him as he was lost within his pain.

“Oh Fordy, I’m so sorry. The ancestors couldn’t help this time… I think… I think it’s been too long. I think maybe there’s no more parts to be had. No more spark on this whole damned planet. Your Gods stole it all!” She kicked angrily at a patch of dropsy flowers, consumed by her own impotence.

“It’s not your fault, Tri,” Fordy said weakly. “Not you, or the Gods either. Although – you make me think. When Freedy was still with us – when he was strong and talked of his time before we existed – he told me a story of the great Battles of the Gods. At the end times, right before they forsook us for the last time. He said one of those battlefields was not far from here – by the tin mines over yonder. He said something I didn’t really understand at the time… he said ‘When the world seems all used up and every spark has gone, every mineral stolen… look to the graveyards of the gods for your salvation. The Gods will provide. What do you think he meant by it, Tri?”

His one remaining eye looked at her with a sickly hope inside that filled her with renewed fight.

“He might be right!” She said, grabbing a rusty spade that leaned against the old driveshaft. “I’ll find it, Fordy, I promise I will!”

She ran like she hadn’t run since she was new herself, ran like the Eastern winds pressed against her, propelling her forward at an impossible speed. Ran until the ground became spongey and sent her sprawling, the spade flung out ahead of her.

Here the scenery was brown and lumpy. An occasional tree stood bravely over the field, bare branches that had not budded in decades still reaching towards the suns. The mood was somber and foreboding, but Tri ignored it, grabbing for the spade and digging fervently at the soft ground.

At first nothing happened, and she moved on further, one hole becoming three, becoming a dozen with no luck. Fourth Sunning ended and the five moons rose like sisters in the sky behind her. Still she dug on. Two dozen holes, three.

Now white bones glistened all around her, smaller and frailer than she remembered. Some Gods these were, that broke and faded so swiftly with time. Their leering skulls mocked her as she pulled them from the earth, one by one, searching desperately for some spark, some copper, something shiny in all the brown.

There! Finally – a glint in the damp soil, something silvery beneath the layer of dirt. A jawbone, brittle and crumbling in her grasp – and attached to it, a platinum bridge! Was it enough? Could she fashion new wiring, new neural pathways to save Fordy? She had no time to question it, no time now to search further. The brutalized earth had given a blessing, a new resource in a land stripped of everything. Who knew how many more deposits were out there, among the fallen Colonizers in this field of death where they lay buried. Titanium knee joints, perhaps, or diamonds for new gear drivers.

She smiled bitterly. Freedy had been right, after all. This time, the Gods would provide.