Standing on the balcony of her living quarters, Raym could see for miles. It was a sight that she enjoyed, as fresh and new each time as if it were the first. The rolling vistas of green fields, pastures dotted with sheep and cattle. Smoke from the chimneys of tiny houses here and there and beautiful gardens, all attesting to the life in the valley.
She felt a pang of sadness, as the memories of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and so on back through her matrilineal line, entered her mind. This view wasn’t always so beautiful.
Through the memories passed down to her, from mother to daughter, Raym remembered the Old Ones, what they had done for these people and what these people had tried to do to them. Raym shuddered at that last thought.
A war and terrible plagues had decimated the planet and population. Scattered remnants of a once proud people had huddled in the shadows, waiting for death to find them. There were so few left, barely enough to make a viable genetic pool were they ever to find a way to start over. Just gathering those few together was an impossible task. There was no form of transportation left, no means of communication.
Then, as if by magic, the Old Ones came. They were Sanator - healers - curers. They took the sick and made them whole. Then they gathered them all together and gave each a self-replicating servitor, a piece of nano-technology so advanced that no one then, or now, has ever been able to figure out how they worked. As each child was born, a new servitor appeared to see to the necessities of that child.
The servitors provided everything the people needed. They were able to pull molecules and atoms from the air and create whatever was necessary to sustain life - clothing, shelter, food, all was provided and the people thrived. The servitors groomed the landscape, creating the wonderful garden world that Raym could see from her balcony. Even the weather was controlled. The climate was the same year-round. Nobody went hungry. There were no homeless. It was a perfect utopia.
The people became complacent. No longer was it necessary to learn anything. What would be the purpose? Everything they needed was provided for them. With no formal educational institutions, the passing of knowledge through reading and writing became lost in time. Only through oral traditions was information passed on, and most of that was soon steeped in superstition.
As the population grew, more and more people elected to move into the small river valleys among the high, rolling, tree covered hills. There they grew their own food, tended their flocks of cattle, sheep, horses, chickens and children. Traders would go out from village to village a couple times a year to barter for any needed items.
They also forgot. They forgot who had saved them from themselves. They forgot, over the generations, who had given them the servitors and created their world of luxury. The Old Ones, those benevolent beings who had saved them from extinction were looked on with suspicion. More and more people began questioning the motives of their benefactors. There were a few who perpetuated the belief that the Old Ones were a danger, a power that could destroy should anyone displease them. After all, if they could give luxury and life so easily, surely they could take it away just as easily.
Aware of the growing distrust and before the people committed the ultimate act against them, the Old Ones disappeared, taking with them their advanced technology. Some say that the people had burned them at the stake for practicing witch craft. Others say that they were just driven back into the ether from which they had appeared. No one really knows. As time passed, the stories of the Old Ones became just that - stories, that were used to scare children into compliance.
Raym turned to stare at the sleeping infant girl in Farran’s arms, then she turned away again. Yes, this most definitely was a child of the Old Ones.
“I would say that the child accidentally opened a walker’s gate as she was being born,” Raym said as she gazed out the window. “It would be impossible to say whether her mother will ever be able to find her. It is possible that if she were to live, her memories might reveal the gate back to her own dimension. I just don’t know,” Raym sighed heavily, not turning to face Farran.
“Leave the child and go. I will take her to the temple and do what must be done, for the good of the people.” She heard him place the child on the table. It was a moment before she heard him turn to leave and then his footsteps fell quickly. It was almost as if he couldn’t wait to get away.
Raym turned around once she heard the door close behind Farran. No one knew where she had come from. Most just assumed she had traveled to their tiny mountain village from a place on the other side of the great water, or perhaps from the south. The truth would have had them up in arms, fear driving them to destroy her, for Raym was the birth name she had been given by her mother.
Her name, as eighth on the High Council of Windemere, had been Halona. When her daughter had assumed Halona’s position on the High Council, she had reverted to her birth name and left Windemere, as her mother before her had left, to come here and look after the people of this planet. Her servitors kept her tell-tale ears trimmed to look like the general population’s.
Raym was old, 127 Windemerian years. She only had a very few years longer to live. She felt her age in her bones as she looked down at the sleeping infant.
|