I Care

The queen had fallen ill, gravely ill.

On the third floor of the Wisdom Palace, in a stone chamber, the queen sat by the window and looked out at the world beyond. She had watched this place with her own eyes as it grew from empty wilderness into a magnificent city, and with her own hands she had once helped the King of Wisdom raise the very first house of the God-Given City.

She had kindled the spark of civilization and cut open the road that led to it.

Once she had watched the sun rise and shine upon God's pyramid and a valley of barren wilderness. Now she watched its dying light fall across the God-Given City, across its rows of buildings, tall and low, layered one above another.

The sun of civilization had only just risen, and already she was to take her final bow and leave the stage.

Redlichia came up to her stone chair and folded his arms around her from behind.

"I have spoken with the children."

"I want them to cross the sea and search out the land, to find the Origin Site where God descended, and to fulfill my last dream."

The King of Wisdom's face broke into a smile, the pride of a life fulfilled.

"Whoever finds the Origin Site, to him I shall give the throne, and with my own hands I shall set the crown upon his head."

Only then did the queen draw her attention back from the view beyond the window and turn it on Redlichia, aged now just as she was.

"Are you not rushing it?"

"Some things may be left for the children to do. Not everything need be finished in our own generation."

"Too much haste lays too great a weight upon the children. In the end things may turn out nothing like what we imagined."

The queen reached up to touch Redlichia's face, and her eyes brimmed with tenderness.

"We are both old now."

"It is time we stopped and rested a while, is it not, my king?"

Redlichia shook his head. He had grown old, but the great ambition in his eyes was still plain to see.

He had built the God-Given City. He had founded the Yinsai Kingdom. He had set light to the tinder of civilization and made it blaze brilliantly.

Only the last step remained.

Just the last step now.

He believed he could do it, just as he had accomplished every great feat before it. He was the King of Wisdom, God's own blessed firstborn son.

"I cannot wait any longer."

"We have conquered the sea. Now we ought to set foot upon the land once more."

"We are the firstborn of God, the chosen masters of sea and land."

"Before I die, at the very least, I want to see land and sea both held in our grasp. Then I can die before God without one regret left in me."

"I will tell God."

"I have done it."

"I have fulfilled everything He hoped of me. And I shall lay my vow before Him as well."

The queen turned a puzzled look on him. "A vow?"

Redlichia only smiled and said nothing.

Redlichia had thought no small number of them would come looking for him. He waited until night fell over the city, and still no one came.

After dark, of his seven children, only Yesael came to the Wisdom Palace to see Redlichia.

His children had lands of their own to rule by now. Redlichia was still their king, but they no longer leaned on him as wholly as they once had.

His sons and daughters had opened up cities of their own and built domains that belonged to them alone. Their father's dream mattered far less to them than their own power and their own lands.

Redlichia felt the loss of it. Yet the instant he saw Yesael, light kindled in his eyes all the same.

Yesael came into the palace under the moonlight and knelt on one knee before his father.

"King of Wisdom, I am willing. I shall seek out the Origin Site, and there I shall build a new city."

Redlichia looked at Yesael, then rose slowly to his feet. He came straight down to stand before him and laid a hand upon his shoulder.

Redlichia kept his arm about his son's shoulder, and the two of them walked out of the palace together.

Father and son sat down on the ground together, shoulder to shoulder.

In that moment not a trace of kingly dignity was left in him.

"Good!"

"Yesael, you are not only my son. You are the one who walks this road beside me."

"Father has grown old. I have only you now to make my dream real."

Never before had Yesael spoken with his father so intimately, heart to heart. He felt joy, and in the same breath sorrow, at his father's words, "Father has grown old."

"Father, your dream and your ideals, I shall be the one to make them real."

Redlichia laughed until he doubled over, a loss of composure that was rare in him.

"When you return, I shall give you a gift. The most precious gift I possess."

Redlichia gazed at his reflection in the water. Looking back at him was a tall trilobite man with a dark carapace, his eyes steady and stern.

He reached up to touch the crown upon his head, as though he meant to take it off.

The crown had not grown there naturally, and no craft had forged it. After Redlichia became the King of Wisdom, he had made his own carapace grow into the form of a crown, so that it counted as part of his carapace itself.

"God said that a king wears a crown."

"You tell me. Why must a king wear a crown?"

The queen watched his back. "Perhaps to show that a king is not as other men are?"

"But ever since you took the crown, you have carried yourself with far more dignity."

Redlichia nodded.

"So the crown is a king's mark. But beyond being a mark, it is nothing remarkable at all."

"But let this crown hold within it the supreme royal authority of Wisdom, and a vow sworn to the divine. Then this crown becomes something else entirely."

"It would be more than the mark of the King of Wisdom. It would be the symbol of a covenant between royal power and divine authority."

The queen shook her head. "A vow, again!"

"What manner of vow has the king sworn with God?"

A smile crossed Redlichia's face. "I told God that I would bind every trilobite man in an oath never to be forgotten, and carve our faith in God into the bloodline itself."

"And this is what God said to me then..."

In his eyes was reflected that starlike play of light, and with it that same hollow, distant voice.

"These things mean something only to you. To me, they mean nothing at all."

"No civilization is eternal."

"Even the sun in the sky will one day burn out, and the universe itself moves inexorably toward its own end."

"However great a civilization may be, it cannot outlast the wearing of the years."

"However devout the faith, it will be forgotten in time. However tall and solid the temple and its statues, they will crumble to ruin in the end."

To this very day he still did not understand those words.

He could not picture the eternal sun going dark, still less the vast universe marching toward its own end.

Nor had he ever seen an unbreakable temple crumble with the passing years. He believed the civilization he had built would stand unbroken forever, and he believed still more firmly that no length of ages could wear his faith away.

At last Redlichia spoke his plan aloud.

"I mean to see that no trilobite man ever forgets his faith in God. I mean to brand my will into the bloodline of the royal authority of Wisdom. Whoever wears this crown shall lie prostrate at the feet of the divine in loyalty, just as I do."

"This, then, is my covenant with God. Whoever wears this crown shall offer up his own will to the divine, and the most loyal faith he has to give."

"And only by offering up his will to the divine may any man become King of Wisdom."

Redlichia gazed out the window at the towering, magnificent pyramid beyond, and a fervor beyond measure lit his face, a thing that came near to madness.

"In this way, every King of Wisdom in the ages to come shall be just as I am."

"The Yinsai Kingdom shall bathe forever in the glory of God, and stand guard over His temple."

"Until the end of time."

"Until the day the sun itself goes dark."

When the queen had heard him out, she rose to her feet and stared at Redlichia in disbelief.

Never once had Redlichia forced his will upon his children's own wishes. Never once had he made use of the power of the royal authority of Wisdom.

He was a kind and rational king, a true King of Wisdom.

Yet she had never imagined that the very first time Redlichia used the royal authority of Wisdom, he would turn it on his own bloodline, on his own children.

"My king, do you truly mean to do this?"

"Did you not say that God does not care?"

"Is all this worth doing, for a longing that is yours and yours alone?"

The queen caught at Redlichia's hand. "Let it go!"

"God said He does not need your vow. And the children may well not want the will and the chains you would force upon them."

Redlichia was more stubborn than the queen had ever expected. He looked at his queen, and his eyes were filled with unshakable resolve.

"God does not care!"

"But..."

"I do."