Searching their memories for old measurement systems they thought they’d never use again, the partial crew managed to convert “west by northwest” into something Sata could use for a flight plan. The seventy-six kilometer trip took almost three seconds.
“I
love ion drive!” the pilot declared.
Boro chuckled as he stepped to the engineer’s console.
Mati raised her flight control. “Give me . . . anti-mass one and maneuvering thrusters.”
“All green,” Boro said, then returned to the command chair.
The City of Memna, on a level plain near the old shoreline, had no monuments or massive palace foundations. All that remained were small blocks of rough stone, piled no more than a meter high, that outlined former houses and a few larger buildings. As Mati lowered the ship from two
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thousand meters, they could see the circular layout of the ancient city, with an open plaza in the center, and avenues radiating out in eight directions.
“The number most sacred to their gods,” Rini whispered.
Mati guided the ship slowly along the avenues and among the ruined buildings for several minutes. “It looks like . . . this city didn’t grow, bit by bit, like the capital of our kingdom. It was planned and built all at once.”
“I hope there’s a Nebador marker somewhere . . .” Boro mumbled.
“It’s in the middle,” Sata said. “Manessa spotted it as soon as we arrived.”
Boro nodded to Mati, and she guided the ship along one of the main avenues, then landed in a clear space near the black marker.
“Marker five-zero,” Rini read. “The City of Memna.”
Councilor Memna worked side by side with her people, never asking them to do anything she wasn’t willing to do. So it was that they worked with glad hearts, and within a year they all had houses and the new city was functioning well.
The air seemed to get no worse, and some even said it was a little better.
The drought continued and the crops were poor, but they shared alike in what they had, and Memna made sure no one hoarded more than their share of anything. She dispensed justice as cases were brought to her, barely pausing in her work with stone chisel or garden hoe in hand. The people around her listened to her wise words as they worked, and knew in their hearts they had chosen the right path and their city would be pleasing to the gods.
“Why do you not take the best food and live a life of leisure, like King Zolko?” a young woman asked, pausing in her work to comfort her baby.
Memna smiled. “The gods are pleased when each citizen gives what she is able, and only takes what she needs. That is the essence of civilized life. King Zolko’s way is the way of the animals in the jungle of Torku.”
The girl smiled and returned to her work.
Sata was grinning. “That is so wonderful! I wish our kingdom was like that. Could you imagine our king helping to rebuild the houses at Lumber Town, listening to petitions while he pounded nails?”
Boro howled with laughter. “No, I can’t! I don’t even think the soldiers
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will help. The people will do it all.”
“I think . . . Nebador’s sort of like that,” Rini said with a smile and sparkling eyes, “like Memna’s city.”
Mati wore a slight frown. “I think you’re partly right — about giving and taking. But I’m worried that in Memna’s city, they did it for all the wrong reasons.”
The others shrugged, and Rini continued reading.
As the months of the second year began to pass, some of the people of the City of Memna became unhappy. Memna’s judgments always favored social harmony, and whenever that goal was in conflict with the needs of an individual, the group won and the person lost.
Those who saw the city as a hive, whose purpose was to function as efficiently as possible, were happy. Artists and other sorts of free-thinkers did not feel the same.
Also, travelers occasionally arrived from the old capital city, now being quickly dismantled to create the monuments King Zolko had ordered. They hoped to find better air, less dust, and perhaps a little rain, but were disappointed. Memna tried to silence them and brand them as heretics, but the truth crept throughout the city like a disease.
Some people gathered in houses late in the evenings to carry on the traditions of their previous guilds and orders. One such order contained a couple of old masters and several young students, all dedicated to mental discipline and psychic abilities. After doing her share of the work of the city for more than a year and a half, Nosta, a young woman of the order, decided it was time to act. She knelt before her masters one evening.
“I believe the City of Memna is pleasing to many of the people, those who never have an original thought in their heads. I do not believe the gods are so small-minded. I have repaired a little boat that no one wanted, and I plan to depart tonight. I will find the fabled Arch on the Island of Glimpa, where I will sit in meditation until the gods receive my offering of mind and spirit, or until I die.”
“I thought so,” Mati said. “If something is good just because it pleases the
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gods, that leaves you at the mercy of the priests to know what is good.”
“Or . . .” Rini began, hands behind his head while looking up at the ceiling,
“or other people acting as priests, like King Zolko, and Memna.”
Mati nodded. “Nosta figured that out. She must have had good teachers.”
Boro’s face scrunched as he tried to follow the discussion. “So . . . by priests you mean people telling you what the gods think?”
Mati
nodded.
“There’s just a little more,” Sata said.
The masters and the other students of the order quickly gathered as much bread and dried fruit as they could find, and went down to the shore to see their brave friend off in the darkness. Nosta was never seen again by mortal eyes.
After that time, the air became thinner and thinner, and no more clouds appeared in the yellowing sky. The crops failed at both the Monuments of Zolko and the City of Memna. By the end of the second year, the people were dying and had forgotten all about the joys of peace and harmony. No one in either city claimed to know what might be pleasing to the gods.
Boro growled. “But what’s the puzzle?”
Sata swiveled in her chair and looked at him with sympathy.
“Maybe that’s part of the puzzle,” Rini suggested with a coy smile.
Boro growled again. “A puzzle in a puzzle. Let’s see if we can find that arch.”
Sata turned to her console and selected the chart. “Hmm. There’s only one group of hills that would have been an island when this was a sea. Must be Nosta’s island.”
“Glimpa,” Mati remembered.
“Thanks. It was big, about thirty-five kilometers from here, spanning the horizon from east to northeast. You don’t need a flight plan for that!”
“Nope. I’ll just use atmospheric thrusters, if Boro doesn’t mind,” the pilot said, placing one hand on her flight control.
Stepping to his console, Boro touched a symbol. “I think we can spare a few minutes.”
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Mati lifted the Manessa Kwi a hundred meters into the thin atmosphere, then pointed the ship eastward over the empty, dry seabed, the same way young Nosta went, alone in her little rowboat, twenty thousand years before.
Deep Learning Notes
The City of Memna was run under an economic system we call “communism,”
which advocates “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It is an economic system, and should not be confused with the political systems attempted by the Soviet Union and China in the 20th century. Most recent experiments with communism were in the USA during the 19th century. It is most often attempted in a religious community setting, as it requires a level of discipline greater than people usually have on their own.
What “wrong reason” (in the motivations of the ancient people) did Mati spot when the crew was learning about the City of Memna?
Which is more comfortable for you: the social harmony of the “hive,” or the dis-harmony of “artists and free-thinkers”? Which did Nosta the apprentice prefer?
Why did travelers find the physical conditions (air, rain, etc.) no better at the City of Memna than at the Monuments of Zolko?
How was Nosta’s god-concept different from Memna’s?
Instead of Rini becoming defensive when Mati figured out something he had not, what did he do?
The sky was “yellowing” because a planet losing its atmosphere is also losing its hydrological cycle. Without rain or snow, the land becomes arid. Dust, therefore, becomes a major factor in whatever atmosphere is left, as it is today on Mars.
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Chapter 18: The Fabled Arch of Glimpa
They could easily see the dark stain on the crumbling rocks where the ancient sea had lapped at the shores of the island. Mati took the ship a little higher and they began searching for an arch, or a twenty-thousand-year-old rowboat. No one held their breath about the rowboat.
About a quarter hour into the search, Boro grumbled. “There’s probably a Nebador marker. Can’t Manessa follow the transmission from it?”
“No,” Rini said. “The markers don’t start transmitting until the ship is near.”
“Damn . . .” Boro whispered, and went back to staring at the visual on the large bridge display.
“You okay?” Sata asked, turning to look at him.
“Yeah. Just . . . learning patience.”
“I know what we need!” she said, hopping up and dashing to the galley.
Soon each person received a cup of cold tea in their drink holder. “We’ve been forgetting the things Kibi usually does.”
“Bull’s eye!” Boro suddenly shouted, bouncing up and down in the command chair and spilling his tea. “The Arch of Glimpa, or I’m a purple donkey!”
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Mati grinned as the natural rock arch came into view, spanning fifty meters or more with stone of yellow, orange, and deep rusty red. She gained a little altitude and guided the ship in that direction.
“There’s the Nebador marker!” Rini announced as they cleared a low ridge of boulders between the ancient coastline and the arch.
As Mati lowered the ship into the sandy open space near the little black monument, Boro frowned and looked askance at the huge rock arch that seemed to tower over them.
Sata noticed his worry. “We’re uphill from it, and more than a hundred meters away. It’s only about forty meters high, so it can’t fall on us.”
Boro relaxed, but his frown didn’t completely disappear. “No closer!”
Mati
nodded.
“Sonmatia Four, marker five-one,” Sata read. “The Arch of Glimpa.”
Day one. I rowed all night long. As the sun rose, my arms felt like lead, but I dared not stop or I would drift south. I entered a second-level walking meditation, but willed my arms to move instead of my feet. In a clear sky, the sun seemed bent on cooking me. Somehow, as the blessed evening finally arrived, I crawled onto the rocks at the south end of Glimpa.
Day four. The sun-blisters on my hands and arms are beginning to harden. The air is so thin, I drag myself along slowly, ever searching for the Arch. I found one spring with water, but many others are dry.
Day seven. The fabled Arch stretches itself before me, silent as a . . . tomb.
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My tomb, I guess. Whether the gods accept my humble gift or not, I know my mortal body is done. I shall never know the touch of a mate, nor bear a child.
Perhaps, if my offering is accepted, the wind will blow again, the rain will fall, and my friend Kelsa will ask Regno to join with her, and they will have a daughter and name her Nosta.
Day eleven. At sunrise I sit on the Arch to salute the new day and summon courage and joy into my heart where dread and fear lurk in waiting. I can see smoke rising from the City of Memna, and in the exact opposite direction, somewhere in the Desert of Bakka, more smoke from the Mines of Sarto. By mid-morning I seek the shade beneath the Arch, and descend into the deepest levels of meditation. Slowly, without any act of will, I allow my spirit to rise up to Heaven.
Day fifteen. I am completely out of food. I am too weak to travel far, and the only things growing here are bitter and make me lose more than they give me. Even if I had the will to return to the boat, I know I would die on the way.
No, I will finish what I started, here, at Glimpa’s Arch. The act belongs to me, the consequence, pleasing or not, belongs to the gods.
Day seventeen. I can no longer climb the Arch to see the sunrise. My world has shrunk to the little strip of shade beneath the Arch as it moves from hour to hour.
Day twenty-one. Yesterday I sat in the most joyful awareness of the gods for half the day and all the night. The morning glow in the sky was like a gift to me, a little private celebration, for I no longer have the strength to follow the shade. After I write this, I will prop myself against the base of my beloved Arch, giving everything in my mind and heart and spirit to the gods. As the sun climbs into the sky, I will die.
My hand shakes and I can write no more.
Deep Learning Notes
“The act belongs to me, the consequence, pleasing or not, belongs to the gods.” This is a theological idea found in most religions. What do you think of it?
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Many plants are not actually poison, but they are “emetic,” which means they make us vomit. When this happens, we lose not only what we just ate, but also anything else in our stomachs. This is what Nosta meant when she said,
“. . . make me lose more than they give me.” The same thing happens if we are thirsty and drink sea water. We will vomit, and actually be more dehydrated than before we drank the sea water.
Is there a person you know, or have heard of, who has given their life for something they believed?
How did Nosta die?
