Reliquary

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IT WAS ALMOST complete.

He stepped into the humid darkness of the Temple, running his fingers lightly along the cool orbs that made up the walls, caressing the organic surfaces, the hollows and swells. It was right that it should be built here: so like what had come before in that other place, yet so unlike. He turned and settled into the throne they had crafted for him, feeling the rough leathery surface of the seat and the slight give of the lashed members, hearing the faint creak of sinew and bone, his senses alive as never before. It would soon be complete. As he, now, was complete.

They had toiled long and hard for him, their leader and master. They loved and feared him, as was his due, and now they would worship him. He closed his eyes and inhaled the thick, fragrant air that eddied about him like a fog. In times past he would have been repelled by the reek of the Temple, but that was before he’d acquired the gift of sensory acuteness. The plant had given him that, as it had given him so much else. Now, everything was different. The smell was like a vista to him, ever shifting, painted in every imaginable color, here bright and clean, there dark and mysterious. There were mountains and canyons and deserts of scent, oceans and skies, rivers and meadows, a magnificent panorama of fragrance, indescribable in human language. It rendered the world of sight flat, ugly, sterile by comparison.

He savored his triumph. Where the other had failed, he had succeeded. Where the other had withered in fear and doubt, he had grown in strength, and courage. The other had been unable to discover the flaw that was hidden in the formula. He had not only found the flaw, but had taken the next step and perfected the glorious plant and the secret payload it contained. The other had underestimated the Children’s desperate thirst for ritual, for ceremony. He had not. He alone understood the ultimate meaning.

This was the true manifestation of his life’s work—how galling to think he had never realized it before! It was he, and no other, who had the power, the intellect, and the will to carry it through. He alone could cleanse the world and guide it into its future.

The world! As he murmured the word aloud, he could feel that pathetic world so far above him, pressing down upon the sanctuary of his Temple. He saw everything so clearly now. It was an overpopulated world, teeming with insectlike swarms that had no purpose, no meaning, and no value, their ugly little lives churning like the manic pistons of some senseless machine. They were above him always, dropping their dung, mating, giving birth, dying, tied to the slaving meat-wheel of human existence. How easy—and how inevitable—that it should all be swept aside, all of it, as one kicks open an anthill and grinds the soft white pupae underfoot. Then the New World could come: so fresh, so various, and so full of dreams.