The Cache by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online Page B

the sea (which he had never seen), flown through the air in magical wagons, lived to be two hundred years old, talked to each other at great distances through magical devices? Was the story true that the old ones had fallen out among themselves and devastated each other with weapons so terrible it made his flesh crawl to hear of them? Or was the other story, that the demons of the earth had destroyed civilization, true?
    The preachers said that almost all the knowledge of the old ones had been lost, that their books, even, were destroyed. Some parts of ancient scriptures, telling of the creation of the world, of Adam and Eve, of the wanderings of the lost Hebrews across the desert (this one?) and of Our Savior had been found. But these were incomplete, parts of them were lost. And it had taken half a century for the preachers in Fiiniks to decipher the spelling of the old ones. And even now they were very uncertain of the meanings of many words. In fact, disputes over the interpretations had led to a religious war about ten years before Benoni was born. The losers had fled westward through the desert. Their goal was the great ocean said to exist beyond the mountains.
    Benoni could not read the Found Testaments; he had been lucky to be born in the ruling classes and given enough schooling to read the writing of Fiiniks, which differed from that of the old ones. The preachers said the writing of the old ones, though having an alphabet similar to the demotic, had different values in many cases. To master the old ones’ writings, a man had to spend almost all his time in the attempt. It was not worthwhile unless a man wanted to be a preacher. Benoni envied the power the preachers had, but he intended to become a big man in Fiiniks through other means.
    Next dusk, Benoni walked onwards. A week later, he was almost surprised by a band of horsemen. They came around the corner of a mountain, and Benoni was almost caught in the open. He heard them about thirty seconds before they came into view, enough time to hide above the trail behind a boulder.
    The riders were all men and dressed strangely. They wore clothes tied around the head that fell halfway down their back, and their bodies were covered in loose robes of many colors. Their standard-bearer carried a white flag on which was a golden hive and large golden bees swarming from the hive. By this, Benoni guessed that the men were a war party from Deseret. He had heard about Deseret from Navahos he had talked to in the market-place during the December-January trade-truce. They said that the white men of Deseret had once been a small community on the Great Salt Lake, that they had a strange religion something like that of the Fiinishans. That during the past hundred years they had increased in numbers, were pressing upon the Navahos, and had conquered much territory to the east.
    Benoni watched them go by regretfully. To take the scalp of a Deseret man would bring him much honor at home.
    He went on, and two days later passed near the remains of a village of Indians. The Indians were dead, probably victims of the Deseret war party that had passed him. Every corpse had been stripped of its scalp. Benoni felt contempt for the Deseret men. It was all right to kill enemy women and children, for that meant the women would bear no more males, the male children would not grow up to kill you, and the female children would not grow up to bear males. But there was nothing about the deed to warrant honor. You left those scalps untouched.
    Four weeks later, after going over a great mountain range, Benoni left the desert. It was almost like stepping from one room to another. On one side, sand and rocks and cacti. On the other, grass and trees.
    He was in a country of great plains cut occasionally by creeks and, now and then, a small river. There were many trees along the waterways; not so many on the plains. Yet even here there were enough to make him think this land rich in wood. Here began the