Related by Lora, Twilit Majz of Many Generations
 

Death has a smell, a feel to it, not like rot, not like raw meat, like I imagined it might back somewhere else in time when I was another person entirely, wandering in the naiveté of childhood. 

Being around massive death is like being caught up in an electric vortex of stings that surge up through your nose then spin mercilessly deep into your brain. It feels like hundreds of razor sharp claws raking your heart, a thousand microscopic hammers punching at your stomach, a twisting of every atom in your knees into shapes that support your body only at the cost of immense agony.

So it was for all of us shivering in the Caves of Waiting as the last booms of Puric weaponry faded outside. I wasn’t used to this kind of feeling, but the Organics were. They went about wailing, berating, cursing, then beginning to clean up the carnage almost like automatons. That was probably the most disturbing thing I had yet witnessed here on Rathe, home of monsters, fools and saints.

I felt myself collapsing onto my knees. My heart labored against the tight grip of deep shock. My skin felt alternatively hot then cold. I wanted to kill or die, also alternatively.

“So, this is what it has felt like to be human for far too many humans for most of human history,” the dispassionate part of my brain noted. 

“This is what it has felt like to be Iglenda for 10,000 years,” the warmest part of my heart added. The greater part of my heart was busy freezing solid, entering an Ice Age of epic proportions.

The Iglendas gathered around me, lifted me up, carried me on their shoulders down to the Place of Fire. They bathed me and each other, sang songs of their long struggle, drank deep of some heady brew that rendered their nerves helpless within a short while. I joined them, drinking until I fell into sweet unconsciousness. We all needed it. Then we began the task of retrieving and processing the dead and healing the wounded. It took us many days. I don’t know how many. I stopped counting, stopped thinking, just did what needed to be done from one moment to the next.

Not least, we gathered the heads of Pon and the 22 Heroes and Heroines who had destroyed the Puric genetic banks. With immense reverence the Organics placed them in crystal containers filled with a fluid probably much like formaldehyde but far more pleasant to the nose. These were to be set in places of honor on the island in the middle of the pool in the Place of Fire. I learned this place was called “The Island of Insight” and was the Organic’s Holy of Holies. Here all the most sacred and meaningful ceremonies of the Organics took place. 

During a Ceremony of Remembrance, the 23 were enshrined as Xexra and twelve high officials chanted, “From now until the end of Time may they bear witness to the lives of those who have lives at all because of their selfless sacrifice!” Even the remnants of Zygon, just a few tattered morae, were enshrined in this place of honor. Those around me were filled with happiness. A radiant light emanated from their eyes. It fell upon me, but had no power to warm the glacier that had become my heart. It felt frozen to my lungs. Every breath tore at my insides. How could they shine so, radiate such wonder and light when so many were dead? I did not know. My mind was consumed with thoughts of hatred and revenge. When those who had killed Pon and Zygon were dead, then and only then would I rejoice.

Xexra and her people knew better though. They had seen this kind of death for thousands of years. During the long process of gathering the dead and tending the wounded she and many of the Organics kept noting over and over, horrible as all this was, their millennial sufferings were almost at an end. 

“There are only so many of them left,” they said. “They have no way to reproduce. They don’t have the skill to rebuild the Harmonizers. They have too long abandoned the technologies of survival to those infernal machines. Now, the only skills they have left are those which produced nothing more than distractions for their idiot hands and minds. Let us see how long they can survive. Not long, we imagine. Then, we will be finally and forever free of them and our age-long sufferings!”

I marvelled at their exultation, their deep joy. In the midst of so much loss, they were truly overjoyed. Unlike them, I was not inured to these kinds of things. I felt no such joy. I wanted to kill every Puric I could personally get my hands on. Call it long overdue housecleaning, call it pure revenge, call it whatever you like. To my frozen heart, mass murder seemed the way to go. Then there was my sense of personal guilt. It nearly suffocated me. I had had my finger on the button that would have allowed the Puric city to be flooded with the same nuclear waste that offed the Harmonizers, and I had prevented that from happening. I had pushed that bloody button and stopped them from dying right then and there.

Zygon would still be alive if I had not done that. The 1342 Organics killed in the attack by the Purics would also still be alive. I would have to live with that knowledge. Would it destroy me?

Days passed. The Organics returned to their accustomed life tasks. I wandered from cave to cave in a state of shock that only slowly wore off. As it did, I realized I was stranded here on Rathe with no way to get back home, no way to let my own people know what had become of me. I would have sunk further into a black pit of despair, except the Organics had decided to enshrine me too – as an honorary member of their ruling Council. They considered me a Savior on a par with Pon, Zygon and the 22. I let them love me in this overwrought, irrational way. It kept me alive, when otherwise I might have ended my own miserable life.

The duties of the Council were many. Even though my own place there was ceremonial, I had a say in matters of importance – disputes among various groups mostly. The Iglendas were organized in groups of 150 – Circles they were called. Each circle had its own name, symbol, and societal function. Each Circle sent a representative to the next tier in the government – a body of 150 representatives. That body selected a representative that went to the next body of 150 and so on until a council of 150 advised the ruling Council of 15. This Council made final decisions in all disputes. Laws, I discovered, were made at the level at which they actually applied, and only applied to cases in those particular localities. 

Interestingly enough, the Council of 15 was headed by Xexra. As the shock of the end of the Purics and their latest attack wore off, the Council took up the debate over their next course of action. They were gathered in conference on the Island of Insight in the center of the Pool of Fire. I was there with them.

The Council seesawed back and forth between wanting to go after the Purics and personally kill each and everyone by hand and deciding to seal up the Caves of Waiting and simply wait until attrition and the natural course of life and death offed the bastards with no more blood shed on our side. They debated for days. 

There I sat on the ceremonial sidelines watching. I was with the kill them by hand crowd.

Finally, unwilling to make such a momentous choice by themselves, the Council sent the alternatives down through the various tiers of the Organic government. They wanted a straw poll of the People.

“This will take many days,” Xexra said. The Council of 15 dispersed to their own duties and meditations. I was left on my own, except for what was fast becoming ‘my retainers’ – a crowd of Iglendas that had pledged themselves to my every need. They saw to my food, my ritual baths, my clothing, even my entertainment – if I had been capable of being entertained. Mostly I meditated in front of Pon and the remnants of Zygon, pondering my past, wondering about my future, arguing with images of my father over hating the Purics so much. He didn’t approve, or, some part of my dispassionate brain knew he wouldn’t approve.

I asked him if he had ever looked into the murdered eyes of someone he had spent time with, someone he had loved. Robert, in my imagination, said he had not. “If you had, perhaps you would see our race’s murderous history in a different light, the kind of light I am beginning to see things in!” I challenged.

Imaginary Dad grew dead silent.

“How can blood not call for blood?” I further challenged. 

Imaginary Dad had nothing to say. He simply hung his head and wept. I ignored his weeping.

After many days, I don’t know how many because I had quit paying attention to time, the People’s representatives at all levels had assessed the opinions of those in their localities and were ready to relay them to the Council of 15.

We all met in ritual bath and meditation to prepare ourselves to make the right choice, then we went to the Island of Insight.

Still wet from my ritual bath, my hair stuck to my forehead and neck, I listened to the opinions of the People of Rathe. They were divided. They could not decide which course of action was best. They left it to the Council of 15 to decide. They would follow whatever they advised full-heartedly.

Xexra rose and looked at us sternly.

“This is a difficult moment. I don’t need to tell you that. What shall we do? We have endured millennia of enmity, torture, death. The end of our many sufferings is at hand. Shall we go out and exact revenge for our latest losses, or wait out the life spans of the last of our enemies, who are now sure to die forever?

My ice-locked heart drove me to my feet. I had no idea what I meant to say. I didn’t plan a word of my speech, it just burst from my lips as naturally as steam from a suddenly spouting geyser.

“This is not about revenge,” I shouted. “This is about the safety of us all. Do you imagine our enemies will simply wander about witlessly in the wastelands of their lives waiting passively for death? Have they plotted your destruction for 10,000 years to give up now? You have lost thousands of your family, you have lost friends, lovers, compadres, but what have they lost? They have lost their future. They are a dead race. If the desire for revenge is hot within you, what do you think burns in their hearts even as we speak? They know where to find us. Can we keep them out if vengeance is their goal? I say we cannot. I say we will die whether we hide or go forth to put a final end to our plight. Is it better to wait for death or forestall it?”

A terrible silence fell over the Council and the other representatives of the People who were present. One heartbeat, two…three, then all hell broke loose. 

With one voice all those present shouted, “To war it is!” 
 

to be continued...
 
 

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