THE PILGRIM’S JOURNEY

I used to love science fiction, but then I was young. I dared say this little story is a return to my own youth....

“I will go now,” thought Daniel, “the time seems so right somehow.”

So he prepared himself for his journey, not that he’d need to take much with him: just a spare pair of boxers and something to eat on his way.

He wasn’t quite sure which way to go. Since the war that most certainly seemed to have ended all wars, things were different. Places needed to be avoided at all costs because, if he was going there (wherever there might be) it had better be in one piece and without radiation sickness.

“I’m going now,” he called to Samantha, though she didn’t acknowledge because, well, the dead don’t do things like acknowledging when they’re spoken to. She just sat in that chair, her chair, and stared t him through unseeing eyes. But he knew she understood, all right. Samantha understood most things, and when he got to where he was going he’d probably find a cure and bring it back to her.

And he set off.

The street was deserted. Of course it was! Everyone else was either dead or dying. All the friends he’d had and even all the mere acquaintances, they’d all either died or been turned mad, which was worse.

The pavements outside had been shattered like everything else had been shattered and it seemed to him that even the air that he breathed was broken. But he knew enough about legs and life to know how to walk, so walk he did.

He was walking away from the town and its shattered streets and fallen buildings. Samantha would have waved him on his way had she been able to, he knew that, they always had done everything together, true lovers in a world tainted by too much hatred. Not that that mattered much any more. It takes people to hate, and he hadn’t seen many more of those lately. Not even on the television, but that had stopped working along with the lights and the water that used to splash out of taps and didn’t any more.

Somewhere, behind him, was the town library, or at least that’s where it had been until the fires took hold and it went up in flames taking all the books with it. All that knowledge, all that learning and all those stories, ashes now, scattered across the world, blown by the poisonous winds that came from the distant city.

It took him two days of walking towards the desert, the one that had always been there and not the one that had been blasted into existence because of the war. And during that two days he only saw two other people, a man and a woman walking together like mad people, not talking, not even greeting him despite the fact that they were strangers to him. But he whispered a meaningless hello to them anyway.

He’d always wanted to look at the old desert. Since time immemorial, he remembered being taught at school it had been there as a warning to mankind against the folly of being human. Some bright people, they were called scientists, had speculated that it hadn’t always been a desert. Once it had been fertile, fields and woodlands maybe, the sort of place Samantha would have loved.

Now he was able to walk on its golden sands, so he took one step and then another, and his feet sunk luxuriously into that sand. The sun had warmed it and it felt wonderful, so wonderful that when night fell and he needed to take a break, to rest both feet and heart, he just lay on it, almost toasted by a heat that melted away before the moon came out.

And then it was cold. Very cold. But he lay there, in his mind a pilgrim daring to dream.

He might have frozen to death had it not been for his ugly visitor, looking something like a beast that might be called a monster, and he knew what he meant because he had dreamed about it so many times.

And this monster could speak.

“What are you doing sleeping in the dark on our desert?” it, he or she, asked.

That made him crawl painfully to his feet, painfully because it felt as if every bone in his body bad somehow been turned into ice. Sand that had started off gloriously warm had turned extremely cold. Very, very cold. Icy. Much nicer, though, than the blistering winds that had blown from the distant city, the one that was no more.

“I’ve come to worship the desert,” he replied, knowing it wasn’t strictly speaking the truth, but what did it matter? Truth had never mattered, not now and certainly not way back when the main political truth was who could tell the best lie.

“Then you are a fool,” replied the monster. No, not quite a monster, maybe a little like a man. But what kind of man? He wasn’t at all sure of that.

So, “Who are you?” he asked. He’d always been a believer in asking direct questions beause that was often (but not always) the best way of resolving his own ignorance.

“A good question,” came the reply, “I am Edwin and if you want the most honest yet unbelievable truth, I am a Martian.”

“Oh, I believe you,” nodded Daniel, “you could be nobody else, bearing in mind the rusty tone of your skin. Yes, Mars. It’s obvious. Yet is isn’t.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t?” asked his inquisitor, actually smiling and showing two rows of fairly red teeth.

“Well, Mars isn’t the sort of planet people like you could live on,” nodded Daniel, “and they say it’s been dead for a heck of a long time.”

“Of course it has,” smiled he who called himself Edwin, “before my ancestors came here they quite unintentionally destroyed my home world as somewhere fit for life. There were too many of us and we became like tribes arguing and then fighting against each other. Stupid, really, but it happened.”

“Like here, then,” nodded Daniel, beginning to enjoy the conversation.

Edwin smiled his red-toothed smile. “Exactly,” he said, “and my own forefather made the trip to your Earth and swore we would never become more tan a dozen in number. That way there could be no warring tribes, just a dozen peaceful Martians living in harmony on the second best world in the solar system. And one day we, their progeny, will return and mend our world, put it back together again, reseed the deserts. One day soon, I think, because look at what you miserable simpletons are doing to your Earth.”

“Possibly like what your ancestors did to yours,” dared Daniel, only half believing what Edwin was saying.

“Touché” smiled the other, “maybe we shouldn’t have done it…”

“Done what?” ask Daniel.

“Looked at human females and did what all red blooded males do when they see beautiful women,” grinned Edwin, “made gloirous love to them, and when they produced inevitable offspring we rejoiced that we had increased the numbers of our own kin. But it was a mistake, because they became a great deal too many, and divided into tribes and started squabbling, then firing powerful weapons at each other.”

“You mean, you lot are to blame for my Samantha?” demanded Daniel, “the most wonderful force of nature anywhere under the skies of either here or Mars destroyed because you fancied our women?”

“If she’s surrendered to the fallout from the latest bomb, then yes, I guess we are to blame. Who would have thought it: Martians destroying a second world!”

Daniel shook his head. “It wasn’t just Marians,” he said, “our own kin had something to do about it.”

Edwin smiled. “That’s unbelievably generous of you,” he murmured, “but tell me, my good fellow, whenever you lot dig up remains of my ancestors, why do your refer to us as Neanderthals? It’s such a long name when simply Martians will do…”

© Peter Rogerson 14.09.24

xxx

Reviews

[Essie W]

Very nice story with some very interesting ideas. I would maybe look at the few paragraphs that start around," So, “Who are you?”" as that part gets a little unnecessarily wordy. I like how you brought Samantha back into the discussion at the end so she is present all the way through.

[Peter Rogerson]

It i a failing of mine that I can become unnecessarily wordy. Thanks for your kind thoughts.