Faith and the King of Wisdom

Redlichia remained kneeling before the stone statue, despair written across his face, as though the sky itself had fallen upon him.

Yet Yin Shen found his anguish rather amusing, and asked him, "Why do you want so badly for them to see me?"

Redlichia spread his arms wide and, with utmost reverence, said to Yin Shen on the altar above, "If they cannot see God, how can they have faith in God?"

"How can they heed God's will?"

Yin Shen asked again, "Why must they have faith in me?"

Redlichia found himself suddenly without words. To him, faith in God needed no reason at all.

Yin Shen asked again, "Or is that it? Do you think their faith in me matters to me? That if they lost their faith, I would cease to exist?"

"I am right here. Whether they can see me or not, I am here all the same."

"I have no will or decree to hand down to you. You need only multiply, thrive, and build a civilization of your own."

Redlichia crawled forward on his knees until he reached Yin Shen's feet. "We do not have faith in You because You need us. We have faith in You because we need You."

"It is like..."

He thought for a long while but could not find the right word.

Not until he caught sight, through the temple's pillars, of the sea outside, and the sun.

"It is like this!"

"The way life needs water, and needs light!"

Yin Shen smiled faintly. He was an atheist. Even if the true creator of the universe were to stand before him at this very moment, he would still think of that being as nothing more than some powerful, higher form of life.

The idea of God in his own mind, and the idea of God in Redlichia's mind, were worlds apart.

His expression gave nothing away, but he held the very word "God" in something like contempt, even though it was the word others used for him.

Below him, though, Redlichia's own conviction never wavered.

But the next words out of Redlichia's mouth moved Yin Shen all the same.

He pressed his forehead to the ground before the altar, close against Yin Shen's feet, tears welling in his eyes.

His voice dropped low, tinged with sorrow.

"God Yinsai," he said. "This is what I fear most. If one day I die, who will come to this temple to serve You? Who will guard this temple until the very end of time?"

"If even my own child cannot see You, how is any of this to endure?"

"You are supreme above all things. You can grant wisdom and life to all creation. You can change this whole desolate, lifeless world. And yet You cannot change Your own loneliness."

Yin Shen looked down at him.

He had meant to say that all of this was merely Redlichia's own notion.

That he needed no one to keep vigil over this great mound of a tomb, and had no wish to remain in this temple until the end of time. That he would leave, someday, and what they guarded then would not be him at all, only a stone.

But watching Redlichia's tears fall, he found his heart softening, and he could not have said why.

"Then what is it you want!"

Redlichia wiped away his tears and looked up at Yin Shen.

"I want to build a great civilization, a civilization that will never fade away."

"I want them to make offerings to You forever, to gather at the foot of this temple for all time."

"I want to bind every trilobite man to an oath that will never be forgotten, so that generation after generation they guard this palace, so that faith in You is carved into their very blood."

Yin Shen shook his head at Redlichia, who was still so naive.

"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."

Redlichia could not make sense of what this meant. He only felt that these words spanned all the years and all eternity, a mystery beyond anything he could grasp.

Yin Shen reached out and stroked the bone helmet on his head, and for once his voice did not carry its usual flat, hollow calm.

"But if this is what you wish to do, then do it!"

"If this is what you believe gives life its meaning."

At last Redlichia said, "If one day I should die, then take one thing from my body, God, and keep it always at Your side."

"That way, I will always be able to stay by God's side."

Yin Shen watched Redlichia's retreating figure leave the temple. For the first time, he truly felt that Redlichia was no longer some insect, some object he had carelessly made with his own hands.

He was a living, breathing being now, a person with feelings of his own.

They kept pushing their city outward around the lofty temple above them, with the pyramid and the temple guarded at its very center.

The trilobite men had begun as no more than a few hundred. Now they numbered in the thousands.

At last, this island had taken on the first faint air of civilization, the beginnings of a true city-state.

The trilobite men learned reverence, and their civilization began to divide power up among itself. They no longer dared speak Redlichia's name aloud, calling him instead the King of Wisdom, and naming their city the God-Given City.

It meant that everything here was a gift bestowed by God.

In the valley behind the pyramid they built a palace, and there Redlichia and his children made their home.

Redlichia placed his own sons in charge of the various offices of the God-Given City. Some oversaw construction, some managed food, others guarded the storehouses, and so on.

Power sat in their hands, and it drew the thousands of trilobite men together beneath them. Once all equal to one another, the trilobite men now split into different classes.

This kingdom, or city-state, of the trilobite men began to take shape as a simple hierarchy of power.

Redlichia was king, and his sons became the first generation of trilobite nobility.

One day, Redlichia's second son came rushing in and dropped to his knees before him, his face full of panic.

"Great King of Wisdom, the sea has swallowed more of our people!"

Redlichia sat upon his cold stone throne, looking at his second son.

"How many?"

"An entire party of them never came back," his son answered.

Redlichia rose to his feet, uneasy.

It was not only that people had died. It was the crisis hidden behind it that worried him.

To be "swallowed by the sea" meant venturing into the deep sea and never returning. Of those who went, most never came back at all.

This was not the first time.

As the trilobite men grew in number, the food they produced by catching insects and hyoliths was no longer enough. Even when they tried drying seafloor plants for food, it made no real difference.

Bodies as massive as theirs made them giants set against this age. Thousands of them gathered together were enough to strip the waters around the island bare, and on land there was no possibility of finding food at all.

Their very existence was too sudden a thing for this world. The world was not yet ready to receive a civilization of trilobite men.

People in the God-Given City began to starve to death, and they had no choice but to go into the deep sea, which proved nowhere near as calm as they had imagined.

The ocean could give birth to life. It could just as easily devour it.

Many trilobite men lost themselves in the deep sea, or were trapped in some perilous stretch of water, or met with some sudden disaster and never returned at all.

Redlichia understood that the civilization of the trilobite men had met its first great crisis.

If he could not even cross this one threshold, then forget building a great civilization. It seemed everything might end right here.