Time Journey to the Origin and the Future
Contents:
Mariana’s Introduction
Jan Fridegård’s Introduction
The Lonely Planet
New Time Journey on Angels’ Wings
Inside the Portal in the Super Universe
The Planet of the Mayas
Peculiar Interlude
The Maori Culture of Origin
Conversation on a Voyage
The Incas and the Aztecs
The Sumerians
The Bön or Bon Religion in Tibet
Minoxor and the Minoans
The Gardens
The Hittites
The Ancient Egyptians
Maorion’s Story
Heading for Hunera
The Inuits
Zuidum and the Zulus
The City of the Slumbering
The Etruscans
Taoism – The Chinese Original Culture
Shinto – The Japanese Original Culture
A Leap to the Circassians
A Thought-Provoking Ceremony
The Basques
Unusual Research
Back to the Central Race
Unforgettable Beingness
The Central Race – Paradise?
A Wedding in the Zulu Way
Shala’s Story
All’s Well … But No End
Epilogue
Appendix
Meditation Exercises
Jan Fridegård’s Introduction
At the end of the book On Angels’ Wings, I said “Au revoir!” to my readers. A continuation of my stories from a world above, around, and inside a world hasn’t come to the fore until now. A lot has happened since the last time – then the year was 1998 – and now I think the world is ready to receive not one, but several, messages about all the possibilities that are available to humans. I’ve experienced a lot more here among the gold-rimmed clouds, where I get around strumming my harp …
No, I’m just kidding. I hope you got an idea of something completely different in my last book. But one of my tasks in this reality is to travel and learn. I have really done that. To travel at the speed of thought is no obstacle to experiencing things, grand adventures and depth soundings in the dark green, crystal clear waters of philosophy, where all stones are gemstones. The farmer boy from Sörmland is buried and forgotten. Here exist only life, rebirth, and processes of creation of various kinds. The processes of creation I will tell you about, since they are miracles to you. For me, they are works from one single Source, but I will return to that.
We’ll start with looking back upon the beings who have become my friends, teachers, and companions in this life. I call them angels, Masters, and guides to make it easier for you to understand. It may sound solemn, but you know that I have a good time here as well! Humor is a gift that most of the higher beings really possess in the highest degree. Nice for me, who am so close to laughter!
First I met my guardian angel Jolith. She brought me to two beings who would become my teachers and companions in this fantastic paradise jungle. They are Shala and Zar. With their help I’ve gotten to experience my new, eternal life like a bouquet of the most diverse,
wonderful, luxuriant flowers. Every day is not just a day, but it imprints its lovely pattern in my soul. Every day is a day without counting of time, without beginning or end. This means that every day is the Day and that the Day is Now. Time spreads out its magnificent carpet without fringed ends, since it has no ends.
One might think that if there is no time, there is no need to learn anything. Time for the Earth humans is a race against themselves – absolutely not against us. Shala and Zar taught me that even here, in the mountains and valleys of Eternity, there are undreamed-of possibilities. There is so much to learn, to study, to experience, and to develop with and develop into. On Angels’ Wings proves this, and the same is true for this book, Time Journey to the Origin and the Future. You will understand that title eventually.
Shala and Zar are still by my side. They go their own ways when they so desire, but they are always willing to help me whenever necessary. They are my teachers and friends and remain so. They will take me forward in this book, both with bombs and grenades, with a quiet rumination, and with a sigh from the south wind.
I told you in On Angels’ Wings about the Nine Elders of Sirius and about the goddess Helia. Even then, the Earth began to get in bad company, since a couple of other globes with malicious rulers sent evil energies to Tellus (Earth). Things have been going downhill since then, first a roller coaster ride, but these days only downhill. Since we wrote On Angels’ Wings, only misery has occurred. Generally speaking, that is. Seven years ago the EU wasn’t quite as crazy as it is now. The power seeps over, that’s just the way it is. We can’t do anything about it and the question is, what you can do? The small countries are running off their legs, they lie down in the foam from EU’s champagne bottles and crawl with dripping knees, with their hands outstretched in prayer and the corners of their mouths wetted by life-saving water, ever closer to the Big Brother who will give them manna from his abundant horn.
The EU is a colossus on plastic feet, which is staggering around in its own greatness. In the past you talked about feet of clay, but they wouldn’t last today. The plastic feet are more flexible, strong, and sharp,
until they are worn out by all the irregularities up there in the seething colossus. The goal, which is one single ruler for all of Europe, then becomes a new Christian Tyrant. Europe gets filled with slaves.
When Earth looks like that, you just have to accept it and be grateful that you are on the right side. But since you earthlings don’t understand how you’re getting on, we have to intervene in one way or another. The way things look now, it will indeed be in another way, but first we’ll have to try to reach you through the written word. The next step will be the screaming word, and after that it will be silent.
I intend to cheer you up with some playful angel batter in your faces. I don’t mean that I’m going to throw cakes at you – we don’t think that’s funny – but apparently you do. Your humor has also reached its peak when the violence plays back in the direction of the laughter. The angels are pretty distressed. Happy and sanely thinking as they are, they dance around and try not to watch what the earthlings are up to. However, it is their task, so eventually they have to both watch and intervene. If only you could understand that when something soft strokes your leg, when something clicks where it shouldn’t click, when a tone sounds from a place where it shouldn’t sound, then there is an angel on the go. You have them all around you, but even if they threw a dozen cakes in your face, you wouldn’t notice. However, you are noticing the violence, whether it plays back as a clown or a dead man in a garbage can.
The violence seems to have made inroads into the TV sets of the family homes to stay. Small children are crouching when the knives fly like sparks over terror-struck heads, when the blood flows in rivulets on walls and on the actors’ outstretched bodies. For the children the blood is real, even if the adults reassure them that it’s ketchup. Don’t you understand that you are making the task more difficult for us to reestablish peace, to save the children, when you mess up your movie screens and TV shows so terribly? When sex, violence, obscenity, power, and pure evil are permitted even for children’s eyes, then the earthlings are really going downhill. To fight is a natural thing for you since the beginning of time … but what about all the rest?
This is a warning cry in the minor key, which in turn is triggered by a look in our earthly binoculars.
Now we are leaving Earth, and I am going to tell you about journeys in other spheres, which at least partially play their notes in major.
1.The Lonely Planet
I was sitting in my comfortable house, pondering. I certainly didn’t ponder over Earth, rather the stars. In On Angels’ Wings I could tell a lot about them, that many planets are inhabited and that there are many humanoids in outer space. That’s hard to believe on board planet Earth, isn’t it? To think that people can’t get into their sluggish brains that Earth is one of millions of inhabited planets. Not all of them house humanoids. There are many variations of life. Star Trek and Star Wars are quite passable, even though the romance kindles too much – I think I’ve mentioned that before.
Opposite where I was sitting pondering is a wall where all messages are received. It is our mobile phone, our radio, our TV – in short: our all-in-one. We don’t always have to sit and look at that wall. If it’s something important, the message will instantly arrive as a mental projection in our brains. On this occasion, Zar’s image appeared and he called out to me, “Can you come right away? You are called to the Angels’ School.”
There was nothing to do but to obey. I immediately went to my dear school, where I had spent a timeless time of joyful, exciting, and enriching studies. Zar awaited me in the hall. His snow-white hair flickered a bit when I opened the door. His young face was as open and cheerful as always; he looked like a walking statue of Apollo. The contrast between his white hair and his whole youthful, vigorous character gave a peculiar charm to his apparition.
“We’re going to the observatory!” he said and took my hand. Hardly were his words spoken, when we found ourselves in the middle of the gigantic observatory hall, where ingenious instruments were lined up around the enormous telescope. There was no ceiling; it was completely open. Above us the sky was pitch-black and star-sparkling. I had learned
of many stars and planets, but much, much more still remained. Above all, the inhabited celestial bodies were important to keep track of. I sighed. This myriad, this eternal, dizzy star world, how would I be able to learn more about it? As usual, Zar read my thoughts.
“Nobody can,” he said, smiling gently. “I don’t even think the Great Spirit knows the name and the circumstances of it. But you’re here because it’s time to go out on a mission. I will accompany you, because it’s not without dangers. We’re going to the Pleiades, but not the part one usually speaks of. The Pleiades are known as seven stars, but they are many more, and there are small planets behind them that no astronomer has yet found. It’s to such a planet we’re going.”
“Which one?” I asked, of course. It felt good to embark on an adventure again; it was a long time since the last one.
“We call it Cesteion,” answered Zar.
“Is it inhabited?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“Yes, you might say so; in any case it will be soon,” Zar replied cryptically. He wrapped his yellow cloak around both of us and then off we went upwards.
“Cestius was plebeian,” I cried in the roaring wind, while I felt solid ground beneath my feet.
“Bravo!” Zar replied, amused. “That’s where the name originates. Cesteion is an outcast planet, a very small ball in the grand play. Despite its exclusion and its position outside the Pleiades, so far out that the nearest Pleiadean star is hardly distinguishable, this little planet struggles for its value in the cosmos. Thus, a true plebeian.”
“I seem to remember,” I continued, as the learned man I thought I was, “that the plebeians in Rome struggled to gain equality with the patricians. Eventually they won it, but they were underestimated by many, who only saw their poverty and low status. The dark crowd, as they were called, wasn’t allowed to wear white togas like the patricians. We call them poor and uneducated, but that wasn’t actually the case.”
“Quite right,” nodded Zar. “Exactly the same thing happens here.
Now look around.”
I popped out of his cloak flap and looked properly around. How interesting with a plebeian planet!
However, what I saw could hardly be called plebeian. We stood high up on a cliff and had an incomparable view of the neighborhood. I couldn’t help but compare it with Earth. The cliff wasn’t entirely gray, in places it was shiny black and glistening red and here and there it was covered with the most emerald green moss I’ve ever seen. The cliff descended rather abruptly on our side, and below it was a great waterfall, but when I turned around and took a few steps in the opposite direction I discovered that the river, which the waterfall came from, made a turn in another direction so that it formed a U. On both sides of the U there were settlements. Roofs next to roofs formed a pattern from up here, and it was a beautiful, green-and-copper shimmering pattern. I realized that the red color on the cliff had to do with copper. Zar was standing smiling the whole time, and then he beckoned me to follow him.
“It’s time to have a closer look at the village down there,” he said. “If you look carefully, a narrow path runs over there. Do you want to see if it leads downwards?”
It did. It was cramped and had thin steps carved between small ledges. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for a human to get down from the cliff alive. We floated, of course, as usual, but to float downwards doesn’t feel as comfortable as floating upwards. I concentrated on avoiding stumbling in my long blue garment and Zar laughed at me.
“How much time do you really need to become an angel?” he teased.
At last we were standing at the upper part of the village. The stairs continued all the way down to the water, and the upper section of houses was connected to the lower one with a very primitive bridge of logs, half flooded by the waves of the river. “Where are the humans?”
I asked the question loudly to Zar.
“We have come here to find that out,” he replied, “in case they are humans. We don’t know that either.”
“The houses have to be built by humans,” I protested. “They are simple, but appear to be fully habitable.”
There was a narrow passage between the houses, which stood so close that their roof edges met. Zar chose a house at random – they looked the same, but this one had a green sign on its low door. Nobody opened. Zar took the liberty of opening the door and we looked inside. The only room was empty. There were four long, wooden bunks that presumably were beds, a low table, but no chairs. The inhabitants probably sat on the floor. In the middle of the floor was a fireplace, and a smoke vent, which we hadn’t noticed before, was found in the ceiling.
“Do you think there are humans living here?” I asked.
“I see leftovers on the table, the wood glows at the bottom of the fire, and it smells warm somehow,” replied Zar like the worst Sherlock Holmes.
We looked into more huts, but it was empty everywhere. In many places there were signs that there had been life recently. Where could everyone be?
“We have come here to lay the foundation of a new race,” explained Zar. “After all, somewhere there surely must be someone or some …”
We had come all the way down to the river, at approximately the center of the U. Zar lifted his cloak and tiptoed carefully over the wet, slippery logs. I followed him, while saying a little prayer that I wouldn’t stumble into the water. I had completely forgotten that I was an angel, and I felt only human limitations, until Zar grabbed
my arm, pretty roughly.
“We’re going in there!” he whispered, pointing at one of the huts on the other river bank. A narrow streak of smoke rose up from the roof, and a tiny bit of light was seen through the open door. Windows didn’t exist; the huts were completely smooth, built of clay and twigs. We ventured right up to the doorway and stuck in our heads. But we withdrew them just as quickly.
In there, a birth was going on. A being lay on the floor on her own. Her stomach was swollen and her legs were spread. The being whimpered and howled. The woman (in case it was a woman) had a human body, but her skin color was grayish and her head quite large. Her eyes were large and black and right now filled with fear. Not a soul
was in her proximity; she seemed totally abandoned. A long drawn-out scream was heard and we looked inside again. The birth was in full swing. Zar entered the hut and stood at the foot end of the woman. He motioned for me to walk to her head end. The pain must have been unbearable, since the poor mother screamed and yelled as the child was pushed out in small, careful twitches. I grabbed the woman’s arms while Zar helped the child leave the secure womb of the mother. Then it was all over.
The mother lay with closed eyes; it seemed as if she was asleep. Zar wrapped the child in a cloth lying on the table. He rubbed it and then motioned for me to come. I didn’t want to leave the woman’s head, she looked so dangerously dead. But when I saw the little boy, I was amazed.
It was a completely human, most delightful baby, who welcomed the world with a howl, like most children do. Zar cut the umbilical cord with a knife and then he left the room, while I was standing with the little one in my arms, absolutely not knowing what to do. The mother was some kind of humanoid, quite different from a human. Her nose and mouth were compressed into a nose, and her chin was nonexistent. The baby in my arms was rosy and fair-skinned, and when he opened his little mouth to make an angry cry, I saw a most human little tongue, which resembled a rose-leaf, move in there.
“We have come here to establish a new generation,” I heard Zar’s voice behind me. “I’ve searched everywhere, but there is no life anywhere. The planet might be inhabited in other locations; we have to find that out.”
“The mother seems dead; how will a lonely baby survive here?” I asked, terrified. “Do you think she has … she has been with an ordinary fellow, an earthling? The kid looks like a quite ordinary human baby, perhaps from a southern country, since his hair is so black.”
“Now she wakes up!” Zar remarked calmly. “We’d better materialize ourselves a bit better, so she can see us.” We did, and it resulted in yet another violent cry.
Zar smiled kindly and laid the baby next to her. She stared at us with her huge dark eyes. Her mouth/nose was half open and she
breathed heavily. Zar tried to talk to her in different languages that I didn’t understand. I had had other things to do than to engage in language studies. The woman stared uncomprehendingly at Zar. Then after a long while came a cooing sound that perhaps was a laugh.
“Finally she understands what I’m saying,” said Zar. “It was the eleventh or twelfth language I tried that made her listen. I don’t think it’s exactly her language, but at least it resembles it. Now we need to find out what has happened.”
I observed Zar’s face while he conversed with the woman. The sound was guttural and was accompanied all along by gestures. The child lay at the mother’s breast and imbibed his first meal. Everything was all right now, and I wondered why in heaven’s name we would be here? What kind of task was this? But Zar turned around and looked at me. His countenance showed that my thoughts were wrong.
“Jan,” he suddenly cried, “now I’ve got to know why it is deserted here and why the woman has given birth to a baby of earthly breed in the midst of the outskirts of the Pleiades.”
“It might be interesting,” I replied a bit sarcastically, “to stay in an earthen hut in a deserted village without understanding why and how come. What is my role in all this? You’re nosing around here and there, you can even speak their language.”
“This woman and the baby are the only living humanoids on this planet,” he told me. “All humans – for that is what they are – have been eaten up by dinosaurs. At least, it sounds as if she was talking about these ancient giant animals. She managed to escape into this hut and has lived here in fear the last month of her pregnancy. A few days ago she heard a number of terrible crashes and assumed it was a natural disaster approaching. She hasn’t ventured out of the hut.”
“We were lucky to avoid the dinosaurs,” I muttered. “But how can the child be so different from the mother?”
“She claims that nine months ago, before the dinosaurs had found this side of the planet, a stranger arrived at this village. He looked like us, she says. He was tall, brown haired, and handsome, and he gathered the inhabitants of the village around himself and warned them of the
upcoming disaster. He spoke their language. All agreed that he was a god, especially when they witnessed his departure. He chose this very woman and cast his seed into her. Thereafter, he called on a craft that fetched him. I know who he was, but that’s another story. Now we must explore the rest of this planet.”
“Are you crazy?” I exclaimed, terrified. “Are we voluntarily going to expose ourselves to man-eating dinosaurs?”
“We are not of flesh and blood,” Zar answered patiently. “Stop seeing yourself as an earthling. Now you’re actually a kind of extraterrestrial! The dinosaurs can’t do us any harm. I’m going to precipitate a craft for us. I believe something has happened on this planet to make it so devoid of organic life, but I might be wrong. That’s what we are going to find out.”
“And leave this poor woman to starve to death with her kid?” I asked angrily.
“By no means!” laughed Zar, and he made some gestures over the table top. There were now a large bowl of fruits and vegetables, a cheese plate, and a pitcher of milk. Next to the woman stood a pail of water, and on the floor lay clean pieces of cloth to wrap the baby in. Zar winked at me and then we hurried out of the hut.
Our craft swept along at low altitude above the beautiful, but a bit gloomy, landscape. There were mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and smaller deserts, but no oceans. Everywhere the traces of the dinosaurs were seen, in the form of overturned trees, huge footprints on the shores, and the occasional gigantic carrion.
The farther away we got from the woman with the newborn child, the more desolate it became. It seemed as if her particular side of the planet was the most habitable and as if there had been an earthquake or some other major disaster, which had opened large cracks in the mountains. In several places rocks were still falling from the cliffs, and the river, which we could follow from the original U, had in some places flooded rather exhaustively. Waterfalls plunged down into a furious fizz, and here and there we saw traces of settlements half-buried
or overthrown. The farther away we got, the more dead dinosaurs we discovered. It didn’t seem as if they had survived, not a single one of them.
“A meteor may have been rushing by and perhaps only needed to graze this planet in order for these disasters to occur,” sighed Zar. “It
will take thousands of years to get it properly fixed!”
“Who is going to fix it?” I asked snappishly, because counting in thousands of years wasn’t really my cup of tea. But Zar didn’t respond. He had spotted something. High up on a mountain, at the brink of a deep crevice, a small figure was moving. We lowered our speed and descended to such a low altitude that we could land. There was a small plateau behind the figure, and soon we were standing on solid ground and were able to step out of the craft. The scenery wasn’t beautiful here. Broken mountains, landslides, and floods were the only things we saw. The figure on the mountain was a man. He was holding an infant in his arms.
“It is teeming with kids here,” I hissed at Zar, who impatiently waved off my silly remark. Perhaps it wasn’t that unjustified after all.
When the man caught sight of us he almost lost the baby in amazement. Then tears came to his eyes, and when Zar began talking to him he answered eagerly and happily. Of course, I understood nothing. The man beckoned us to follow him, and he led us to a cave in a nearby mountain. Between ten and fifteen children were sitting huddled there. The man was their teacher, and he had hidden them and himself when the great quake came.
The man was called Porrn (the R’s were pronounced with a hissing sound). His appearance differed very little from the woman we had first met. The children had similar compressed noses and mouths; they appeared to be both boys and girls of different ages. There were no more adults. Porrn had searched everywhere where it was possible to get around. No cries for help had been heard. They had believed that they were alone, thrown out into a new and frightening world. The children had been sitting in the cave for at least a week, and the older ones had been taking care of the younger ones when Porrn left them to search for survivors. Was there any help available?
Zar sent for reinforcements from the space fleet. When the crafts sailed in after a few minutes of waiting, Porrn didn’t believe his eyes. Soon both he and the children were loaded into the crafts, to be shipped to the part of the planet where the woman with the newborn child lived. Many well-preserved houses were there, and Nature wasn’t damaged by the disaster.
“Let’s take a ride to see if we can find more life,” decided Zar, and so we were soon up in the air again. We watched out for dinosaurs, because they were as dangerous as natural disasters, but we couldn’t see any. We passed a jungle area that also had survived from overly severe damages. There we saw several birds and some small mammals resembling monkeys. To my great surprise, Zar talked with them, too. What he told them I don’t know, but it resulted in the birds taking off in the direction Zar showed them, and inside the cabin of our craft there was a dreadful wildlife. We took care of five monkeys – two adult couples and a kid. They chattered and bustled about, as they certainly had never traveled by spaceship before.
We encountered a desolate landscape that seemed scary. It was in some places shrouded in snow, in other places only sand. There was no vegetation at all. I thought it felt very depressing.
“Aren’t we going home soon?” I asked, but Zar just laughed and shook his head.
“We must return to the newborn child,” he said. “You and I are here to found a new race and the regrowth of an entire planet; I’ve already told you.”
“Surely we can’t do magic, you know,” I objected, a bit sour.
“What have you learned over these years?” Zar asked sternly. “Do
you remember when you and Henry had learned to precipitate and produced an awful cake castle? It was at play, wasn’t it?”
I laughed. Henry was a friend from the Angels’ School, and we had been up to some stupid prank, despite the angels we were. Surely I remembered his abominable palace that was a forbidden toy for angelic students thirsting for knowledge.
“To be sure, you know that I can precipitate,” continued Zar. “That’s
why I was sent with you, in case your desire of creation would manifest in far too extravagant expressions! Here we must strictly abide by the original method: We can anticipate an interesting development, but yet it finds itself in its initial stage. The newborn child, begotten by an angel, is the helper and the leader who this people needs in order to get their planet back on its feet. It was a blessing that we found all the children; I hadn’t counted on that. Now everything will occur at a faster pace.”
We had reached the small village on the mountain slope and in the valley. The teacher and his school class were already there.
“You’re not afraid of more dinosaurs, are you?” I asked. “We believe they all have died.” Zar translated for me.
“The fear of dinosaurs was quite exaggerated,” explained Porrn. “Certainly they existed and certainly they ate humans if they had the chance, but there weren’t as many as people believed. It was possible to protect yourself against them. There was only one variety, and they kept together at a particular location on the planet. Occasionally it happened that one or several of them went hunting. That was when it was hazardous to be out at night, because they only attacked during nighttime. I saw from the craft that there was a big hole left at the location where they had lived. All of them are certainly gone. But we had enemies, too. There were often battles between the dark people and us. We don’t really understand why and it was always we who were attacked. Then we, of course, had to defend ourselves. Surely they are also gone; they lived in the inaccessible mountainous areas where the disaster occurred.”
Inside, with the recently-become mother, it was quite homey. She had apparently recovered and sat surrounded by adoring children and fed her son. The table was weighed down with food, so that all the newcomers had a good meal. Of course, Zar had arranged it. The fire in the middle of the earthen floor crackled and sparked and sent its beautiful light on all the happy faces.
Zar spoke to them. I later found out what he said. He commanded Porrn to take the baby’s mother as his wife and together with her ensure that the village became populated again, when the children had reached
the appropriate ages. The baby would be a good leader, and one of his offspring would in future generations inherit his abilities. Thereafter, Zar named the little one Cestius, after the earthly plebeian leader. It was time for Cesteion to evolve into a thriving planet, with a population that lived in symbiosis with Nature.
While Zar talked, I sneaked out to our craft. I remembered the little monkeys. When I let them out of the cabin they chattered happily, and one of them came up to me, smacking his lips. I realized that they were hungry. Now I also had to precipitate. What do monkeys eat? Bananas, apples, pears, grapes, and other fruits, whispered a not entirely unknown voice in my ear. It was Shala’s voice. She wasn’t here, but apparently she had followed our journey from the observatory in the Angels’ School. I pondered for a moment, and then I found out how to do it.
When the monkeys got to see all the fruits materialize in front of their feet, they took as much as they could in their arms and hurried to climb up on the rooftops. It was an amusing sight, especially for the children who came gamboling from several directions and, wide-eyed, admired the munching little animals. They would certainly be good friends, I thought. Then came Zar.
“Now let’s go home,” he said. A couple of hours ago those words would have sounded like music to my ears, but now I was beginning to enjoy this planet. Zar certainly saw what was going on in my brain. He took my arm and gave me a friendly shove towards the craft.
“We have established a new human tribe that will populate this planet,” he said, smiling gently. “Our mission here is accomplished.”
“I can’t understand; what was I supposed to do here?” I hissed sulkily when we boarded the craft. “To be sure, you did everything.”
“Jan, you have to understand that you are still learning, and this was a lesson in how to found a society based on love and cooperation. Porrn is a good fellow; he is getting away with this task. You were certainly mostly spectator, but sometimes that is more beneficial than being a participant. There are always possibilities for a restart for all planets, but not all of them get the help they need.”
“I have a feeling that there’s something fishy about the whole thing,”
I muttered, and peered at Zar’s beautiful profile, where he sat at the flight controls. “Has it something to do with Earth?”
“We hope not,” replied Zar. “But if the worst would happen, you can help out, thanks to your newly acquired experiences. The Earth is not bigger than Cesteion, but it contains more evil than this planet has ever experienced. Surely there was evil on Cesteion too, but not in the same way, not so highly developed. Fortunately, the evil ones were wiped out on Cesteion, and we hope that the good triumphs and thrives there now. We don’t know the children, but we know that children imitate the adults. There are only two adults now, and they are good people, both of them. Already in ten Earth years we will travel here again and find out what has happened.”
We had risen above the village, and Zar let the craft circle a little before we took off. It wasn’t far to the ground. Suddenly we got to see about a dozen beings rush out of the forest that lay beyond the lower village. They were equipped with bows and arrows, and they rushed towards the village. Zar flew back to the landing site and landed. We had thought that we left a peaceful village without any enemies, without any other life than what existed there now.
The children who played with the monkeys were the first to detect the intruders. They ran screaming into the house. The unfamiliar beings discovered us and came running towards us with raised bows. They didn’t know that we were a bit difficult to catch, I thought contentedly. I wondered what Zar was going to do. He stood perfectly still by my side, and the arrows that hailed towards us didn’t affect us. Zar raised his hand and called something to the beings. They weren’t really of the same kind as the others. These beings were in reality more humanlike, except that their faces were wide, their foreheads very high, and their eyes deeply sunken, below bushy eyebrows. Their skin color was very dark. Other tribes obviously remained on the planet, even though we hadn’t seen a shred of life as we circled above it.
When they noticed that the arrows didn’t cause us any harm, they fell on their knees and began to sing. I thought it was a strange reaction.
“It was interesting that there are several tribes,” whispered Zar.
“They probably think that we are gods, and it’s better that way.”
The leader of the unfamiliar tribe came gently up to us when Zar beckoned him. The warriors had stopped singing and stood still, observing us. Zar afterwards told me about their conversation. Since time immemorial, the black people and the others had been enemies. The cause lay far back in time, when a black woman married one of the others. The black people had been considered at a disadvantage, at least they had felt so. You see, the black woman had died in childbirth very soon after the wedding, and the baby also died. The black people considered this to be an accidental sign. Thereafter came the suspicions that were followed by hostility. The woman in confinement, called Baila, and Porrn called themselves Cesteians, but the other group had no other name than the Black People.
Zar had spoken with the black leader about love. He had explained that as the situation seemed right now, there were no other humans on Cesteion. If any more had managed to hide in some crevice, it would sure enough be noticed eventually. To be sure, nobody wants to starve to death. Love between the two tribes was necessary for the build-up of the planet. Zar assured that Porrn and Baila were friendly tuned and that they wished to live together with the Black People.
The conversation’s result was that the ten warriors debated with each other for a moment, and thereafter five women were fetched who had survived together with them and who had been hiding in the forest. There were plenty of dwellings for all of them. Porrn and Baila, with the baby in her arms, ventured out of their house, and Zar and I got to see a moving scene of reconciliation. The Black People were singing again. Apparently it was their way of expressing feelings – not the worst, right?
Now we could finally leave the planet Cesteion and hope that light and dark were blended, not just on the surface, but also in the hearts of the humans.
I sensed why we had been there. I took it as a warning signal to Earth.
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