Watson, Ian - Novel 08 Read Online Free PDF Page B

omission, Loquela promptly ran to a bush and
returned with a redcurrant the size of a melon which she presented to Muthoni.
                 The
Kenyan woman hesitated briefly, then bit into it. Red
juice spurted and stained her silver-grey jumpsuit. “Oh God, that’s beautiful. Mzuri sanaV ’ She passed the berry to
Denise, who tasted it then offered it in turn to Austin, who ignored it.
Loquela seemed enchanted by Denise’s golden tresses; she fondled them, though
her full admiration was reserved for Muthoni’s jet-black skin.
                 “Captain
Van der Veld?” asked Austin . “I mean, you were Captain
Van der Veld? What do I mean?”
                 “Just
call me Jeremy.”
                 “What is this world, Jeremy? Who’s this
‘God’ you were telling my people about? An alien superbeing—is that it? Have we
finally met up with an alien intelligence?”
                 Jeremy
cocked his head. “Obviously God is alien, in the sense that we can’t know Him.
He’s beyond the level of our present understanding, don’t you see? But we
strive, we reach upward. Even the fish do that, don’t they? He helps us, Captain. I suppose it is help—though it sometimes works in,
let’s say, devious ways.”
                 “But
what is this God? That’s what I want
to know. Is he, well, localized? In one spot? Or does
he, er, reach out—to the rest of the universe? I mean, if he’s the God, he’d have to be everywhere,
wouldn’t he?”
                 Sean
suspected that the chain of command aspect was worrying Austin almost as much as whether there was a God
or a superbeing, or indeed whether the two must needs be the same thing. So Austin mainly wanted to know the limits of the
God’s authority. Well, it was a practical first step . . .
                 “You’re
asking me to define our God? Ah, that’s what we’re busy doing all the time.
Helping Him define Himself too, I fancy! To answer you literally, He’s
everywhere hereabouts by extension—and in Eden in particular.”
                 Though
it wasn’t the first step Sean would have taken. Perhaps it might be better to
know one’s own limits first—and the limits of these amnesiac, sybaritic
colonists ... Or rather, what they thought they were learning by forgetting
their Earth-assigned role and making merry in this paradise.
                 Three
men had ridden into the meadow, side by side, on three proud stags. Between
them the men were carrying a great lugubrious carp, blotched pink and white.
Its pectoral and pelvic fins were too small for it to be able to haul its own
weight across the ground. In any case, it was an up-and-down fish; it would
have tumbled over . . . Did the God help these people, as they helped the fish?
                 A
magpie flapped down just then, to perch at the top of the access ramp. It
cocked its head at them as though eavesdropping, then flipped its tail
impertinently and shat messily on the shining metal. Jeremy glanced at it, then searched the perimeter of the meadow warily.
                 “This
world couldn’t have been like this to start with,” said Paavo firmly.
                 “To start with? It’s always the start here. The beginning. Our new beginning. Oh, it was like this when we landed—so far as landscape goes. The birds and
beasts and fis^ came later, out of the pools and the caves, out of the shells d the rock-towers. Of course, they’d been taken from our ova stores.
How long it took to lay on I honestly don’t know,
though I think only a short while. This planet’s rather small, and it doesn’t
rotate, you know.”
                 “So
we noticed,” said Austin .
                 “It
oughtn’t to have the atmosphere or the gravity it does have.”
                 “We
realize that. So this God actually terraformed an