Manuitius Covenant: The Life and Death of Planet Earth

By R. Handley B. Price

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• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456795115

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© 2011 by R. Handley * T. Hildebrandt * B. Price. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 09/06/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-9512-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-9511-5 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

MANUiTiuS COVENANT

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MANUiTiuS COVENANT

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PLANET EARTH

THE CREED

Chabeni stood in the entrance of the temple. His men shuffled up behind him and hesitated, fearful of his mercurial temper and aware that he was overwrought with anger over his defeat at the hands of Ros Netalli the warlord of Basin City. Their flight across the bay had been costly and their remaining force had not the strength to defend itself against whatever inhabitants they might encounter on the island. Nun Chu was accustomed to these awkward moments when he would take control of the situation without seeming to, and to maneuver the leader towards forward movement by cleverness and a subtle sense of timing. He spoke softly to Chabeni in their native tongue and drew him into the entrance parlor of the temple. To Lay Winh he directed the men to claim the building. To remove the rubble of the destroyed tower and set up rooms for the leader. As evening fell and the sky turned a deep red towards the west, Chabeni was settled with his pipe and cushions and Nun Chu walked through the main hall of the temple.

A double row of stone columns was open to the sea and a warm wind rattled the debris on the littered granite paving. The men were butchering a starving white ox they’d found wandering the ruins and were anxious to eat meat regardless of the risk of poisoning themselves. Nut Loi approached in silence and held his hand out to Nun Chu. Mandu found this in the wall, Sun. In his hand was a tarnished fragment of metal in the shape of a full crescent. It was jammed into a crevasse in the wall near the door, Sun. Nut Loi held it out and Nun nodded acknowledgment as he took it into his hands with mounting interest. Thanku Loi, Sun. Carry on. Nun Chu turned back and walked out the back of the temple onto a broad patio area strewn with rocks and broken bits of the building. He sat on a low wall and looked at the thing in his hand. The failing light glistened on the dull metal, and he was moved to sniff it for a scent. Raising it to his nose he thought he heard the wind inside the hollow concavity of the cup. He held it to his ear, and it spoke to him.

HISTORY OF THE FALL

The Professor stood behind the ornate podium and looked out over the audience. Over three hundred people were crowded into the grand auditorium and their faces were expectantly upturned and attentive as they waited for the professor to speak. He began by thanking the university provost and the Internuclear Science Department for their support and the few non-aligned corporate sponsors who helped underwrite the presentation. Then he launched into a brief introduction of the history as it has been pieced together from many differing accounts dating back to 2042.

Ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests from the Federation, Not many of us are old enough to remember the time before the arrival on our planet of the Delegation of Manuitius Ministerium. But we all know too well the many benefits and advantages their presence has brought. No doubt we would not have easily survived the Hellian occupation without the guidance and assistance of Manti and their intervention on our behalf. This discussion today concerns itself with the origins of Manti influence on earth and the beginnings of popular reliance upon their wisdom, both material and spiritual.  It seems like the remote past when we were a free species with our future in our own hands. We were an innocent race then, only 6000 years since our ancestors learned to walk upright, all the while monitored from the center of the galaxy by a race of beings far older, and far more advanced than we ever imagined. But I get ahead of myself ladies and gentlemen. Let me take you back just over 200 years, to a cold November evening in new Orleans, Louisiana in the United States of America. A man found an object laying on the ground, lightly covered with snow. It was a dull metal and a cup-like crescent in shape. It all began with this strange object.

Many years ago, years after the last world war, there was an illiterate goatherd on an abandoned island in the Philippines. He lived in extreme poverty among a small tribe of primitives who managed to avoid the destruction of the war by hiding in caves and drinking from subterranean springs. The goatherd lived alone on the barren land and learned to feed himself by watching what his goats ate. In return he protected his goats from the wolves, and cared for them when they suffered injury. One day he had the opportunity to fix the broken arm of one of his fellow tribesmen after he had fallen off a steep cliff. The goatherd used the same simple methods he’d learned on his goats and the arm of his tribesman had healed. the man was grateful hand so anxious to repay this debt that he told many others of the great deed. In time, word spread across the islands of a goat man who could work healing upon animals and men, and his reputation grew far beyond his talents.

During this period, after the Fall of the Sky as it came to be known, the sea was the primary means of travel and trade among survivors of the Third World War and the ensuing collapse of the global oceanic threshold. Many people lived on crude boats and traveled the waters up and down the coast cultivating small plots on shore to which they would return later for harvest. In this way the story of a healer spread throughout lands that had not been devastated by the Fall. Along the northern parts of Africa, throughout the former Algerian and Libyan nations a group of desert dwellers had faired better than some. Their traditional ways had adapted them to the harsh conditions of the desert and their land was distant from the conflicts and upwind of the toxic storms. These desert people had evolved a resistance to sunlight but their culture remained primitive. The leaders of these men had heard the stories about the healer and were ruthless in their tribal greed and had sent a band of armed men to bring the healer back to their capital. A great feast was prepared and the healer was required to work miracles to prove his power. The healer failed the tests and with deep anger and disappointment the leaders had him beaten and thrown into a pit of vipers. The poor old goatherd lay in a deep well with serpents for many days. He suffered sickness and injury and drifted ever closer to death.

But among his former clan was the man with the mended arm. He had witnessed his friend’s abduction and had been powerless to stop it but he was determined somehow to help him escape. This man was poor and had no way to buy a boat, but eventually he bartered his labor for passage to the far shores where he’d heard his friend had been taken. The man made his way to the distant capital and asked discreetly about the fate of the healer and was told that he was thrown into a pit and left for dead. The friend waited for nightfall and with a willow rope he scaled the steep walls of the hole and knelt beside the poor goatherd and listened carefully for the beat of his weakened heart.

The old man was still alive and with much courage and fortitude the friend pulled his body from the pit, carried him in a stolen cart to a hiding place near the wharf where he hoped to smuggle him aboard a ship for China. The friend had long believed that China was a wonderland of freedom and plenty. He dreamed that if he could somehow get there, he could restore his friend. They lived for three weeks under the docks of the squalid wharf and finally the friend was able to smuggle the old man aboard an ancient vessel for the fabled country of Hongkong. They hid in the hold of the old ship among Ethiopian and Somali slaves on their way to be sold in Manilla and Old Macau. The goatherd’s health deteriorated, one arm turned black and an old witch doctor from Mogadishu took it off with a big knife one dark night as the ship rode the high tides into the teaming bays of the city.

Hongkong in 2068 is a frightening city. The war had taken its wealth and most of the original population had died or fled, but in the years after the war it had become a center for all manner of survivors seeking the illusive promise of freedom. The once grand skyscrapers had been striped of their interiors and glass and transformed into tall gray skeletons emptied of the business of the world and converted to storage towers for wild and unruly immigrants from everywhere and nowhere. Violence and disease clogged the streets as the rats ran among footsteps of millions of people from all over the world. For six days the friend desperately searched for help for the injured goatherd. One dark night of cold drizzling rain, they sought shelter under the awning of a nondescript shop. Just inside, a figure sat watching them from the shadows under a pale haze of smoke from a long pipe. Like a ghost, he said in a low voice, Step inside my friends, rest your weary bones. As the friend painfully guided the goatherd to a rough sitting position. The old man could plainly see that he was very ill. He rose from his rattan chair and stood looking down at the poor goatherd. He saw the blackened shoulder where the arm had been taken and the wound burnt off, he saw the pale face, drawn and sickly, he saw a deep gash on his skull where he had been viciously beaten, and he looked carefully at his broken and bloody hands.

This is a very special man, The old necromancer rubbed his chin and brought out a cell phone, I knew this was an important day when I woke up this morning, he said to himself, even though it was night, then he punched some buttons and talked in a foreign language to the phone. The friend didn’t know what a phone was, and although he was confused, he was very tired and lost in a strange place and somehow he knew his job was done, and he felt great relief.

Sabeni Chaldera was the old man’s name. He had practiced the Black Arts since his father, now long dead, had taught him to conjure the Demons of Etemmu and the ancient methods of control over spirits of the dead. He was delighted to learn the story of the healer, for it seemed to fit precisely with his quest. He rambled on for an hour about the profound significance of the Chosen One and the Sacrifice Horizon, While he talked he drank great draughts of blood wine and ate from a huge crust of black bread. He pushed bread into the old man’s hands and urged him to tell more of the healer, but there was nothing more to tell, and from exhaustion the friend of the goatherd fell fast asleep. The old necromancer arranged for the goatherd to be taken to an island far out in the bay. It was here that his people began the rudimentary restoration that would mend the sickness and injury the goatherd had suffered.

Life is a fleeting thing, and if the the soul of this poor man had feet, one of them would be in heaven, and the other would be on earth. Several nights passed while numerous underground experts tried their best with whatever they had. The beatings had inflicted severe damage: His jaw had been broken, his remaining arm was shattered in three places. His skull was split in the back. and both legs were as rotten as the arm that had been removed on the old ship. His surgeons were ingenious and their choice of materials was both clever and imaginative, for the junkyards and supply houses were in much disarray after a brutal war. But from what was available, his doctors fashioned substitute implements that provided limited mobility and a rudimentary function of speech. Although his teeth were made of iron and his chest was open to the air, the most significant addition was a small metallic crescent shaped device that had held a high place of importance in the liturgy of the Creed for many years. It had been found in an abandoned temple that the cult had taken as their headquarters after the war. And Sabeni Chaldera believed that the device was a magical amulet that was cast down from the heavens to deliver guidance and validation to the Creed of the cult. Sabeni had a leather pouch for the device and wore it himself for many years. He believed the device talked to him and told him what to do. He knew that he must watch for a particular person and that when this person emerged he was to cultivate and restore him to high esteem.

Late one night Sabeni was sure he had found the Chosen One when the voice instructed him to have the cup itself installed as an integral part of the sheepherder’s mortal corpus. He was afraid and tried to deny the metallic voice but he grew weak and as resistance deserted him, he stole silently into the room where the old man lay on a steel table and he took the leather strap and gently tied it around the old man’s neck with the pouch centered over the collarbone. He stared down at the figure before him, his mind a confusion of conflicting motivations. He then turned and withdrew striving to remain focused on his nefarious plans. Sabeni had already contacted others with whom he had been plotting since the end of the war. They gathered in subterranean vaults below the crumbling island temple and planned their challenge to the current cabal of war lords and tribal leaders that had regained power to govern the region after the war. The plan of the necromancer and his cohorts was one of truly evil intent. He had visions of a great army made up of the shattered souls left aimless after the war. Millions of these people wandered the cities and countryside, starving and hungry for food and direction. Many of these people were deeply mutated into a transient zombie state from the effects of the nuclear winter that had persisted over much of the globe for years after the war. Their minds were gone but their bodies would stay animate as long as they were fed a steady diet of hyperbolic drugs.

With this army, Sabeni would create an unstoppable force that would sweep out the small minded governors and retake the southern China coast and rule the great city of Hongkong and all the riches of the world would return to his control. In Sabeni’s unbalanced mind the lowly healer would become the Central Messiah of this new religion. Now with the magic crescent tied securely about his neck, the Chosen One would come alive to help him carry out his great plan. To celebrate the final consummation of the Sacred Creed, Sabeni went out into the dark night to find a special innocent, one of similar height and weight as he, and with a reasonable set of clothes. On the main thoroughfare under a streetlight, he saw a tall man exiting a carriage. Sabeni approached the man from behind and with a long razor, he deftly slit his throat. He then stripped himself nude and took the clothes off the dead man and put them on himself. Then, with a flippant gesture, he strode back to his shop with his deviate purpose satisfied.

In 2070 the official Messianic campaign to take over Hongkong started in earnest. The humble goatherd was presented to the world as a genuine  God on Earth, with a strange inverted denial as proof of his profound humility and as thus, provided further undisputed proof of his Divine Nature. His birth was touted as much earlier than it actually was, his handlers claiming he was over 200 years old, He was carefully groomed and dressed in God-like clothing to form the centerpiece of a new religion based loosely on the Prophecies of the Pascha Elders. with the dark faces of the Vengeance of the Inquisitor as internal security. The Creed grew quickly in influence throughout the far east and the great army of the undead successfully conquered one nation after another killing all resistance and in some cases cannibalizing the vanquished.

During these hard years the goatherd was drugged and held in brutal captivity. His physical body was all the Elders needed to illustrate their twisted proclamations. His manufactured utterances were held as sacred and for six years the Elders spread a message of confusion and fear, and amassed a great fortune. But the bigger the movement became, the more unwieldy it was to manage, and as they lost control, the Elders tasted panic. During their ambitious push into Africa the end became clear. Deep in central Sudan, the old necromancer himself conceived a desperate plan to save the movement, they would actually crucify the Messiah, and by this momentous event they would regain valuable credibility and enough time by which they could resurrect their failing empire. Having no better solutions themselves, the Elders agreed with Sabeni, and in profound ignorance they carried out their plan.

High on a barren hill, carefully chosen for it’s impressive dominance over the windswept desert. The Elders set out to stage their last performance. A rude wooden cross was planted in the stony ground.  They sent runners to the four directions of the compass to call for the faithful of the world to bear witness to a final act of divine justice. As a Betrayer of the Creed the Messiah was transformed into the Beast.  As a symbol of Evil, they claimed that had now brought them to such extreme measures, the heroic Messiah had fallen and must be crucified.  Before the narrowed eyes of thousands on the vast empty desert, as the wind turned cold and the sky darkened, the goatherd was brought forth in chains.

His body was raised aloft and the sharp metallic sound of hammers driving iron nails rang through the dry air. The thin wrists tore loose and ropes finally tied his slack form to the black body of the cross. The healer was left to die as the faithful abandoned their faith and wandered off aimlessly into the wilderness. The Elders of the Creed stood too, blankly watching the spectacle’s final moment, their minds whirling with psychotic visions of domination and desperate anguish that they were not alone, that they had not just squandered everything on a false idea, that the silence of the empty desert did not foretell failure. Among the last to leave was an old man, standing a respectful distance from the foot of the cross… waiting for nightfall. The old man was the last friend of the crucified healer and he had one more task to do.

He had to take the old man and his cross, and secure it in a cave a hundred and forty meters down the mountain from this place of