As that exasperating fellow Frigate had told him more than once when ‘Burton was angry with him, he was a broad but not deep thinker. Nevertheless, the logical extrapolation of the concept of the soul he’d heard when with Frigate and the others had impressed him. Indeed, they had convinced him.
Loga’s account was a shock. Not one, though, which stirred the depths of his mind. These had already been disturbed. So, next to Frigate, he was the one who could most accept this extraordinary history.
Loga continued, “It was Monat’s people who came to Earth and set up the wathan generators. This would be, approximately, 100,000 B.C.”
Frigate said, moaning, “And all those who’d lived before? Beyond saving? Gone? Forever?”
“Enough thought and grief have been expended on them,” Loga said. “There is nothing you can do about them, so don’t be self-sadistic. As you Americans say, tough shit. It sounds callous, but it’s the attitude you must adopt if you don’t wish to torment yourself needlessly. Better that some may be redeemed than none at all.”
The wathan generators and the wathan catchers were buried far down, so deep that they were surrounded by a heat that would melt nickel-iron.
“Catchers?” Aphra Behn said softly.
“Yes. There is one in a big shaft in the tower. Did you see it on your way up here?”
Burton said, “We saw it.”
“That is the very grave problem, the pressing problem which I shall get to after a while.”
From that time on, the wathans fixed themselves to or integrated with the human zygotes. When a zygote or an embryo or any of any age died, their wathans were attracted to the buried machine and caged.
“So what the Church of the Second Chance preaches is not entirely true?” Burton said.
“No. It was I who came to Jacques Gillot, La Viro, and told him what we thought he should know. I didn’t reveal more than half the truth, and I lied about some things. It was justifiable because you Valleydwellers were not ready for the full truth.”
“That’s debatable,” Burton said.
“Yes. What isn’t? But I did tell Gillot that the salvation of the wathan depended upon its attaining a certain ethical stage. That was no lie.”
Monat’s ancestors came from a planet of a star which was neither Tau Ceti nor Arcturus. They had found a planet which had no sentients as yet, and they had made it into the Gardenworld.
“After about ten thousand years, they began resurrecting the dead children of Earth.”
“Including the miscarriages and abortions, etcetera?” Burton said.
“Yes. These were developed into full-term infants. I should say, were and are being. When I left the Garden, all those who’d died under the age of five before approximately A.D. 1925 had been resurrected.”
The Gardenworld project had started during the tenth century B.C. The Riverworld project had begun in the late twenty-second century A.D.
Frigate said, “What century is it now in Terrestrial chronology?”
“When I left the Garden for here it was, let’s see, umh, to be precise A.D. 2009. It took me one hundred and sixty Terran years to arrive here. It took fifty years to re-form this planet. The wholesale resurrection day took place twenty-seven years after that. That would be, A.D. 2246. It is now, I’m not sure about this, A.D. 2307.”
“My God!” Alice said. “How old are you?”
“This is really irrelevant now,” Loga said. “But I was born sometime during the twelfth century B.C. In that city which you call Troy. I was a grandson of the king Homer called Priamos. I wasn’t quite five years old when the invading Ak-haiwoi and Danawoi took the city, sacked and burned it, and slaughtered most of its people. I would’ve become a slave, I suppose, but I defended my mother. I stuck a spear into the leg of a warrior, annoying him so much that he killed me with his bronze sword.” Loga shuddered.
“At least, I didn’t have to see her and my sisters raped and my father and brothers butchered.”
Monat and his people raised several generations of Terrestrial children. After this, many of Monat’s people left for other planets. Monat and some others stayed to supervise the human adults who’d grown up in the Garden and were now taking their turn in raising new generations. Monat had left the Garden, however, to accompany the human beings to the Riverworld.