After the Old Gods: Flight of the Maita, #21

By C. D. Moulton

Kroon (Book two) is experiencing a plague that could destroy the entire population – and they can't contact the empire.
This was not meant as a part of the Flight of the Maita series, but was added by request of several readers.

Critic comment:
I was one who asked Moulton to place this into the Flight of the Maita series. It is a very realistic tale of an AIDS-like plague, and the solution is not beyond belief. It is a good character study.
– KL  Rating *****

Superb!!!   ***** PA

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201424336

Book preview

Prologue

Are the gods really dead? Are the Ithians right?

It's a thing which will require study. I'll have to read all I can. and will have to run the television show that brought this mess to a head to see what really transpired. As is usual in this type of thing, there are far too many wild stories and far too many versions of what really happened. There are, as always, as many versions as there are people, but as a historian, I can't allow anything so vague to affect my thinking or my decisions. The best thing I can do is to interview those directly involved with the alien craft and review the television recordings which appear. at this point. to be rather complete.

I never accepted the old gods as they were presented. That I must admit – and further, the Ithians were the only religion that could have attracted me, had I been forced to a choice. There's something automatically repulsive to me about one who would tell me I must accept a belief or I'm damned. Some of them would even directly try to kill those who were of another religion – even a different cult of the branch they supposedly represented.

Who were those strange aliens who had come to Kroon to disrupt the society and to destroy the beliefs of so many? What right did they have to instruct us how to run our world? Hadn't Kroon done quite well without interference? Were the aliens truly a positive thing?

These questions must be answered from the perspective of a historian, and not that of a priest, fanatic. or even one who was directly involved at the time. Personal involvement must suggest emotional response, which is never objective.

That the aliens were real couldn't be denied. They weren't a trick of one or another church. All churches – exclusive of Ith – were as much as destroyed by the fact there were any aliens to come here. Ithianism, by its very nature, simply wouldn't care.

The aliens brought some small being with tentacles who was supposedly from a planet called Menta. It always seemed to be far the most intelligent among them when everything was later considered, if only because it kept its mouth (figuratively. It didn't speak, or I should say, vocalize, directly) shut, and merely observed, inserting wise comments at rare times, and with rare insight.

There was the huge hairy one they called a Vendan, and the one who was almost like a Kroon, except that his skin was one-colored – and that an ordinary pinkish off-white. He was supposed to be from a world called Terra.

That ship! It was enormous, and reportedly made of pure platinum.

To be quite honest, Kroon wasn’t doing well at all, so I must suppose they had the right to attempt to save us from ourselves. Everyone who was not from a church, plus the Ithians, seemed to like them. That fellow who had been employed by the television station as a cameraman wrote some things far more telling than anything those politicians and priests ever wrote.

Brother! The representatives of the churches didn't like them! Not at all! They’re still crying about it, even though their churches are gone. It seems there are always a few who will cling to an idea, no matter how dead it is.

It's more than the halfyear since they left, and things are still not settled in any way, though the small wars have become much less. As they were mostly fighting among different sects, that was to be expected. Like it or not, the Mentan was right when it said the only thing we ever got from our churches was war, intolerance, and blind hatred.

I've tried to be honest in researching the history of Kroon through the history of its various religions, and find it to be unjustifiable, from any position. It really is a sad and bloody heritage those churches have given us. Enn Far, from the Ithian church, has worked very long and hard to try to straighten the sordid mess out, and will certainly be elected representative to the council. That's foregone. He was the only Kroon who made any sense through the contact,  which was quite an accomplishment, in itself. Almost everyone else involved had been nothing less than an embarrassment to the Kroon race. That their actions and statements were more reprehensible than responsible is another of those undeniable facts.

I'm called Hal Korr, and am a historian. I was in the jungles of Frite with the anthropological team who earlier discovered the ancient ruins of the Kitronchitlan race. Our dig returned less than ten days ago, so I didn't know of any of this mess until I stepped on the ground from our ship. It was my first knowledge anything had happened in my short absence. I seldom listened to the newscasts on shipboard, as there was no reception in the Jeurne Valley, where I spent the past year, so perhaps I can be somewhat more analytical about it, my having lived through the time in rather extreme isolation from the whole thing.

That's the sworn duty of a historian. I must make no judgments in what I record, but must write the facts. That is all!

As I understand, these aliens landed in their spaceship, saying they were merely on vacation from some empire, and had happened on Kroon, so stopped to look around. There were a number of small wars in the desert over those silly scrolls. (Sorry, I'll try not to make judgments. I must not make judgments! Only a moment ago, I said I would stop doing that.) The aliens flew over to demand the wars stop, then flew over all the major cities on the world where the various militaries fired every type of our weapons with no effect on them whatever. They came to ground near the capital where they met with the politicians from the old churches to set up a worldwide television show where that idiot, Gu Verdeen, (Sorry – I did promise not to do that!) and those others made absolute fools of themselves. The priests and religiopoliticians were seemingly easily manipulated into making claims that were demonstrably untrue by dint of the fact of the aliens' being here. The Great Vision of Soolinn was shown to be totally false, causing the end to that ... to one arm of the most powerful church on the world of Kroon.

When the teachings of Soolinn fell, the rest of the branches growing from his worship were dragged along with the Church of the Vision. Gui Veltree was soon manipulated into acting like some kind of idiot – but then she always had acted that way. (Again! I must show no bias! I'm going to have to rewrite this whole thing! Note: retranscribe this before printing.)

I have to study those tapes. I've been told all the aliens did was to point out how ridiculous the ideas were when the priesthood contradicted themselves so completely and so often.

I'm assuming manipulation through rhetoric. The churches have had more than a thousand years to learn how to slip out from under tight spots by themselves manipulating language. That was only poetic justice.

Perhaps I'm wrong. I'll gladly admit that, if it's true. Now the Ithians are in power, but they had, by advice from the aliens, made a world council bid. They set up a form of government to be run by council, not by the churches, so the religions are denied any voice in the government. I suppose that will last but awhile. Kroon doesn't have a history of keeping a thing that's good – not for very long. Some new religion will arise to take power, and we'll be as bad off as ever. It won't be the Ithians, as that kind of religion has no base for power. They believe there may or may not be a god or gods, but if there are gods, it's irrelevant. These gods, should they even exist, certainly don't care what we do.

If one studies history one tenth as much as I have he can't fail to see their point. There are no strongly religious members in the historical studies guild. The results of earlier points about what heritage we have from the churches ensures this will persevere. I am, however, somewhat less than pleased with the demands being made upon my time, as these people insist I make speeches. I'm a recording historian, not an orator. I'm able enough when it comes to that. I simply feel it an imposition on time better spent elsewhere. I am primarily a teacher. I would personally much prefer that I be left alone to pursue my studies. I'm not certain this society's worth the trouble, or that it'll last. As I say, we have a history of doing the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time. History is not going to treat kindly what we had, and it isn't at all likely it'll be any more kindly disposed to what's replacing it.

One thing Enn Far did that will be a positive point in history is his disarmament pact. This is the first time in our existence we haven't been armed to our ears and in some kind of war with, as the Mentan is supposed to have said, our own kind. It seems we would be better disposed to get along with aliens than with others of the Kroon race.

Is that true elsewhere? If so, how would I research it? I think I would very greatly have enjoyed conversation with the Mentan. Like all the aliens, it was bluntly truthful to us about ourselves. Its statement, including the above, is reported as, You have the effrontery to ask us to allow you congress with the Maitan Empire? There are now several thousands of worlds already a part of the empire who are vastly different from you, and even from any of us on this ship. They get along very well with one another, as you can see from this little group. No two of us even slightly resemble one another. You seem unable to get along with your own kind. To think of you co-existing among the peoples of the empire is ludicrous!

I'm ashamed to have to admit I fully agree with that painful but true assessment. We can’t get along with our own kind. We have never gotten along with others on Kroon and, if history is truly the best prophet, we never will.

The fall of the old churches is also a good thing, in another perspective: They had become purely political organizations vying for power among themselves. There was no tiny freedom or choice left to the people. Ithianism will end that, for a time.

When I think of it, I'm not too surprised these three aliens and their intelligent machine were able to topple the old church system. The priesthoods had become so deeply ingrained in their sniping at one another all the aliens had to do was give them powder enough and they would blow themselves into the hell they so very loudly and long decried.

I was contemplating many such random things, audiblizing them into my portable recorder as I unlocked and entered my office at the University of Zeneye, the Capital City of Klarstenland of Kroon. I threw my records and notes onto the desk, read my mail, checked over my incoming assignment sheets, and called records for copies of all they had on the aliens. I would have to spend a few hours on it to be able to deduce what had really happened, and what was rumor or direct untruth from the dispossessed.

Damn it all! I needed this time to correlate my work of the past year and to write my book about it! We've made some major advances in the digs in Jeurne Valley Rift about the ancient Fricke civilization of the Kitronchitlan race. It shouldn't have to wait, just because I was asked to make speeches about the effects on our sad history of contact with the aliens! We wouldn't know the effects for a minimum period of hundreds of years! It will probably mean the later leaders will perhaps be a slight bit more clever and careful in their scheming, but nothing else will change.

Why me, damn it?!

No sense in getting upset. If I want to be a professor I'll have to act like the bureaucrats think a professor should act, but damn!

I picked up the printed-out transcription of that worldwide television broadcast, but it wasn't good enough in written transcript, though this Z character, the Terran, seemed very sharp, to me. It needed intonation and facial expressions, I decided, then decided that intonation may be important, but facial expressions may mean nothing in a being from a different society. There are even vast regional differences in the area where I was recently working that are almost directly opposite to those of this area.

I located the cubes of the broadcast, placed them into the player on the television monitor, and sat back with the controls. I could then stop, rewind, slow, speed up – whatever. Might as well enjoy the show – and from what I've heard, it was really a show! After a full halfyear, it's still all the people talk about!

Erl Flann, that insipid wimpish newsman from the old Vision Church, was introducing the people. He said this one was the Terran, Z, who would answer all the questions.

I studied the Terran very carefully on action stop. He was but a few centimeters shorter than Flann, had brownish hair on his head, an unusual trait, but was otherwise very much like us. He was an even light whitish/tan color, where we have many patterns of color, but was bipedal, had ten fingers, as we do, had brownish eyes where ours tend more to greens, reds, and blues – very close, really. He seemed confident rather than arrogant as the priests later claimed, and not at all like what the priests said previous to the show, if the papers I read were accurate.

I ran it on. Next was the Vendan, Ape. He was large – possibly two and a half meters, had pointed ears, was covered in a brownish-red fur that seemed quite thick, had ten toes and fingers, each of which ended in very sharp and strong-appearing claws. Flann explained Ape didn't speak, directly, but there was a way provided so we would know what he wanted.

The Mentan drew my attention. It was less than a meter, sort of a squarish globe with four tentacles and eyes that were on short stalks atop the globe. Flann explained it and Ape wouldn't take part in the debate, but would observe.

I ran it forward until there was a sudden voice from nowhere. Flann jumped, and asked what it was.

It was the machine that keeps the records and reports for the aliens. I immediately saw how the churches were made .to appear as ridiculous as they, in reality, are. The machine stated that/ as all had agreed to hold a debate. the rules should be reviewed before begining their discussion or questionings. Flann became rather flustered and stuttered about, then asked the machine to state the rules. I decided right there was the point where the churches lost the debate. One thing I know about debates is that one concedes any point starting into the arguments. That is defeat before the battle is joined. I saw right then how this broadcast was designed to be a debacle for the churches. I would think those priests would have better sense. They had many centuries of practice in those same tactics.

I ran the tape on. Everyone could ask and answer questions, including the alien, Z, and Erl Flann. Each must wait his natural turn, and no personal attacks were to be permitted. The broadcast was to run without interruption until they were through. Not bad. I expected a clever trick in the rules, but it hadn't materialized. My respect for these aliens grew.

Flann introduced the people from the churches, Gu Verdeen, from the Church of the Great and True Vision, Gu Needja (Idiot!), of the Church of the Fundamental Truth, Gui Veltree (I've heard of her punishment when she spitefully brought charges against others and was shown to have maliciously lied), of the old Church of the True Believers, Gu Ipth represented the Foes of Grumm and Gui Imtree represented the Church of the Sciencers.

This was designed to be a fiasco! Before we went one word into it I was ready to say nothing would happen, except that each of the leaders of the basic churches of the land would spit and claw at one another, and the aliens would be ignored. All Kroons would appear to be stupid. Now I could see the cleverness of the aliens in stating those rules before the debate began.

I was happy to see such tactics in fact would not be allowed. Needja started a tirade, and the alien's machine called for a point of order, stating this was a questioning session, and was neither the time nor place for cheap theatrical personal attacks. I literally applauded! Again, my respect increased. For the first time, I wished I'd been there to see the original broadcast!

Flann cut Needja off then, and went on to Veltree, who thoroughly enjoyed Needja's great discomfort, but was also having trouble restraining herself from doing the same. She called the alien Gu Z, but he said he wasn't a priest so Z would do.

Ipth asked about Grumm, whereupon the alien replied that, on his home world, they called the adversary of the principle god Satan.

Imtree asked about lightspeed, to which Z replied the ship doesn't actually exceed lightspeed, though it could. It wasn't necessary! (?)

Flann then again went to Needja, whereupon Z interrupted to say he was permitted questions, too. Flann stuttered a bit, then told the alien he could proceed. Z asked Gui Imtree how she correlated our science with the worship of Soolinn, then really destroyed the bunch of them when Imtree answered that she didn't understand the question. I'll quote exactly what transpired for this record.

Z: "Soolinn said we, my friends and I, do not exist. Your science told you, even before we appeared, that we do exist – and we are now here! How do you correlate the facts with the belief?"

All Imtree could think of to say was she hadn't thought about it, quite frankly. That showed how much science was utilized by the Sciencer sect.

It passed for a few moments, but as the alien obviously had read the Vision of Soolinn, the debate was over. The churches were dead. The questioning passed around for awhile longer, then everyone passed time to Needja, making it obvious to the stupidest watcher the priests had agreed before the debate to make plans to work together to defeat this alien. That just added to the victory of the otherworlders, though getting that stupid bunch to do anything together was an unusually difficult task, for which I again applauded the aliens.

Needja was stupid enough to say the aliens were a trick, and weren't really there, that they had hypnotized the Gus. I laughed when Z stated that it was possible he had hypnotized them all, but no one could hypnotize a television camera, so people would be calling by the thousands to tell them they were sitting in midair, asking questions of no one, besides which, if he wasn't really there, who or what had hypnotized them?

Z made them suggest the vision of Soolinn had been misinterpreted when it declared there were no other intelligences. He threw in their faces the fact the words were clear and explicit, stating within themselves they weren't subject to various other interpretations. No intelligences meant no intelligences, period, yet there were three very different ones right there, staring at them, and they were staring back.

Verdeen had been overlooked until that time. Flann suddenly apologized, and suggested the Gu could then ask several questions. His questions buried the churches of Soolinn and Pinneestees forever. He tried to be clever, and to suggest the aliens had twisted his words. Z replied it was permitted in the stated rules that any statement that was twisted could be