THE NON-WAKING LIGHT

The Non-Waking Light

By E. Theo King

The sky reflected the last of the setting sun like a river of lava falling toward the horizon. No sleep and yet another mile. Sole pounded against gravel under a purple black sky. Ash road twisted and turned many times into the rounded hills as black dragonfly like bug's darted from bush to bush on the dusty way.

A lone flower broke through gray flat limestone.

Ministry of one...and life.

Looking toward those long dark miles, it seemed nothing had walked, or crawled, or burrowed, or slid, or cursed across that vastness in quite some time. I had seen not a human or alien for days, it seemed, nor anything else. My canteen, only a few hours dry, was now hollow metal. It seemed so for weeks. I carried it, abandoned, at my side; name plate glittering in what was left of an orange haze: “Druze.” When last I filled its interior with water I remembered the pale fiery liquid my throat welcomed in another life. The bitter, burning warmth. Now the sickly-sweet juice of a cactus would be welcome. No change.

Weeks before the Padre', at least that's what I called him, looked down on me framed in yellowish day sky. He just smiled in that strange humorless way these people had. His face looked worn by years in the dry desert. But his eyes blazed a hole right through you. He was hooded as were many of the people in the village they carried me to. His cloak, dark gray in the reddish glow of this hot dwarf sun. He said, "Stay to the road, Jebel Druze." Reading the name off my jacket, a slightly timid but worn smile framed his ancient eyes. His voice had a slightly “buzzy” quality. But, not bad for a non-Terran

My eyes shut and for days I remembered sweat and dark pain. Yellowish dreams and red dawns that lasted forever. I could not find my way out or even raise my head. The bed was very warm and moist under me. And every day I heard the voice of the Padre.
Every branch leads to the root," he said.

It sounded a thin note; very deep within me. I remembered something buried deep in my memory about quitting something. Then I'd slip back into some dark, that I can't remember.

After what seemed like weeks my mind began to retain more of the dull bright. My thoughts began estimating travel time as only a navigator could. Deep was not what I had been nor felt at the moment of the crashing girders and buckling panels. Pity, I thought, now. Memories returning. The Salm; my ship. The needle shaped star breaker! Her once gleaming hull now channeled, weeks before, into the side of a sandy hill side; useless and still.

#####

Unchanged.

To say I was lucky for that seems strange, now. Yet seeing these strange people; this dust dry prairie hill village they loosely translated into the word “Judgment,” on a world I could hardly pronounce, when I should not be seeing at all. Well, I counted it as a grain of sand in my scale. I knew this. They were a little straight edged, short, and rustic calling themselves the Followers, but likeable. I liked the slow pace of life here. I liked not having to prove myself with every decision I was forced to make. The people I had lost.

Their worship, strangely Spartan for this part of the universe was like their furniture: simple. And my back began to appreciate that ache. Not that it mattered. At the time I was in no hurry.

The road beckoned.

Memories.

It was a long time. This world was almost locked to face its star. But not quite. So, the days were many times longer than Earth standard. All I knew is that the air felt cold one day. When my legs could hold me, steady and firm, I knew it was time. My silver flight suit, ribbed by the borrowed long green, gray overcoat, covered by scrubby canvas material, served its purpose. Just, it seemed, like those people.

"Two or three days (sun rises) toward the morning sun."

"Thanks, Padre. I'll find my own way."

With rations for weeks on a small cart and an education on the edible plants I would find along the way I set out reluctantly.

"Whoever finds that spaceport finds life." The Padre couldn't help himself.

"I've navigated worst".

"What hasn't met you hasn't passed you," he said.

"I'll try and remember that. Listen I'll repay you, I mean for fixing me up...next time I'm in the neighborhood. Eh?"

He answered by giving me a shiny white rock. Its surface smooth and worn.

"What the...? No. I…"

"Keep it, hooman." He turned away.

"I'll see many of these on that road."

"Many less...none better. All things yield in time."

I convinced my tired mind I knew what he was talking about. His only explanation, a thin gray eye in a dry lined face and a Persian smile.
The thin gravel road to the space port lay directly ahead. Arbitrarily, I chose this direction as north and set off. As if this rock had any kind of magnetic field. Thirty odd villagers came out to see me leave with a look of mourning on their faces.
“Stay to the road,” were the Padre's last words as he slowly shrank in the distance.

Unchanged. Now.

It had been said by many; nameless days ago, or perhaps of the one who originally may have spoken it; that punishment is a personal suicide. Indeed, many believe this. It doesn't matter. The scars on my boots are real. The burnt round jagged hole in my cauterized left rib, three up from the bottom is real. I could still feel the blackened stick they used as they pulled it out covered in thick dark liquid which I knew in this light was my blood. I am real. An innocent man can be impotent. My foot stumbled over a rock.

Acrid screams of my transgressions cried out to the empty sky. The red sun had set for many Earth days. Only the stars and a bright nebula bore witness.

Finding a footstep in the cold dark to be a measure of faith I intrigued myself with the whispers of my history and considered once more in many a while the loneliness of time. The Tiger campaign, Gamblers Glen, worlds like marbles on a mask tallied themselves. Rolling among the curves of space‑ time and I with them. I had no family save the fragile body I borrowed from death. A cruel joke for life to be given and in a moment of its fullness selfishly recalled like a defective chip. My parents...most of my acquaintances met that fate. I was irredeemable. Shivering in waiting darkness.

Yet there were places of peace. Over my shoulder, only the long night greeted me now.

Ahead, a light.

Come.

Stay to the road.

The night withdrew its hold on the land. Stars reclaimed their eternal galactic arcs. Still the road went outward. Little scurrying noises told me I was not to be alone. But what was that light?

“Fanatic.” I worked every syllable of that word in my consecrated mind. Thoroughly counseled by my peers. They knew me well. Increasingly I didn't know them. I was on top of the professional heap. But what did I really do? Who cared in this overpopulated universe. Getting my pockets shot off and my neuro-chip fried by microwave bomb bursts for organizations known and little known was not a vocation with noble references. They got the cargo. I had nothing.

Fear and anger. Fear of rejection drove me to never be emotionally involved with my work. Even the pleasures thereof. Anger at not having done so. Darkness can be a lonely place.

I spat into the unresolved night and listened to the scuttle of my feet in the worn ash.

Minutes passed. Hours like days.

My shadow began to gain contours as the source of the light grew brighter and closer.

A sparkle beaded in the darkness of a soft rounded hill. It was not far to the right. Perhaps a kilometer off the road. Depending on this planet's hospitality perhaps the night might be spent on a warm carpet before an atomic heater. Real fire would be too much to salivate an expectation. And the path was hard to see.

Stay to the road.

The word had been given to me by the villagers, and I had listened half eared to the story. The “non-waking light.” Nonsense. Every world had such stories of the night. When dark dreams take you and you are never to be found. I was a dreamer who walked alone. But I was not alone. There was a light. As it got bigger I knew this was no dream.

A “Goddess,” if so finite a title could be placed upon a figure of such potent femininity, seemed to grow from the pinpoint. Neither "holo" nor mental projection nor conscious energy taking a substantive form could do justice to what I saw. I had seen things in my travels. But what could make a man's heart ache like this. She touched me. My arm felt and remembered the slight tremble as wind placed delicate lips against a bristled cheek. A slight icy numbness, like sweet whiskey, spread through me and tried to take root. Warm arousal, pumped into my temples, and extremities; it seemed to flow into the cool silver of her eyes.

An idol placed conspicuously by a Panglossian society, now lost, beckoned for me to follow. A temple with secrets she begged me to explore. Yet I struggled. What was wrong with me? What was wrong?

I remembered long gold hair. Long ago and not here. I remembered an invitation that I did not accept. I remembered the regret at not having done so. I realized I had such things as this alien ghost enticed me with. Where did they bring me? This empty place. Where death almost took me. Death almost took me.

My thoughts roiled and tumbled, looking for ...what? Another place? Another reflection in the mirror? I fell to my knees breathing heavily. I looked up. White rock clutched in my hand.

Her lithe form turned, towered well above me and the huge stone blocks scattered like irregular houses about the large flat area next to the hill. Flashes like isotope powered crystals illuminated her hairlike parts of her yellow gown which flowed straight and smoothly into place. Then it began to thin. The apparition faded to granite pinpoint. Finally, to go unseen.

Words buried in lost memory reasserted themselves. A prophesy of dark stone. Instincts grown from a thousand transgressions froze my teetering limbs. My heart failed to reach out through my ribs. Where was the assurance that would move my unrepentant limbs to commit an atrocity. An empty tomb of responsibility. No one was on site. I could do it. I would do it. She knew it...I knew it. Aching to leap into the one final death, I choose dying the thousand little deaths to life.

Slowly, involuntarily I said, "No more," to the universe's blank depths and somehow knew I was understood. No more apparitions.

Silence.

A rock sliding back into the wind.

The road beckoned.

#####

Many days after I found my way back to the thin, rocky path, praise, lit my lips as the spires of the spaceport appeared. White and silver rocket sleds and metallic blue sliders; rose above a dark black hill, framed in purple blue. Long shadows stretched out for me as the huge red sun rose in the auburn sky. And the tiny shadows of many humans appeared in and around those machines.

The first transports leapt from their magnetic rails early the next sunrise, wedging through the thickness of cryogenic clouds and the lower atmosphere longing for the panchromatic comfort of space. Their needle shapes reminded me of my own dead Salm. Dead now, but I was alive.
I sat in a large terminal lounge alone at the counter of a small open cafe. As was the custom, someone handed me a drink, commenting upon my condition. Reflex response brought it slowly to my lips. It was clean, refined and the vapors tickled the hairs of my nose. Seemed like an age since last I felt that. However, a new reflex stopped my hand and I remembered. "Thanks," I said. I got up and walked over to a water dispenser. Reaching for the paper cups I smiled.

An attendant cried out, "Last transport slides in an hour.” He looked over at me with, an eyebrow raised and asked, “You plan' on leaving, sir?"
"Yeah.” Looking down at myself still dressed in the dusty red robe, I laughed. “After I send something to a friend," I said flipping the white shiny rock into the air.

I looked at the white rock in my hand, and then across to the hills and valley of the way, now dark in the shadow of morning. The light was waking.

"This world is not my home."

Again, the road beckoned.

End