Hieroglyph (83 page)

The tourists were generous to me, while the tourist kids always loved Levi. In the off-season, Levi and I ventured far over the horizon, sometimes as far as the tumbledown ruins of El Paso and Tucumcari. The two of us were restless souls by our natures as man and beast.

© 2013, Haylee Bolinger / ASU

Time had made me an older man. Being a horse, Levi was downright elderly.

That being said, the time had come for me to venture to the Tall Tower. Plenty of room up in orbit for a man's soul to grow to vast dimensions. Living in outer space, I would have a superhuman life span and wield superhuman powers. I'd be up among the stars, with the highest of the high technologies.

But one simple matter bothered me. What about my horse? To become “superhuman” is a great thing, obviously. But what about the “superequine”?

It was the wife who had first put that problem into my head. “It just don't seem fair,” Gretchen told me one summer evening, as we sat on our back porch together at the rancho, drinking homemade beer. “Our animal friends will never share our bliss, when we're Ascended Masters up in Outer Space!”

My wife, Gretchen, enjoyed an intense spiritual life. Gretchen had always lived within sight of the Tall Tower. The Tall Tower cast its morning shadow from Arizona clear to Los Angeles.

Nothing mankind had built could match the steely splendor of that six-legged derrick soaring toward the stars. Big lights glared upon it, and small lights twinkled brightly, up and down the curves of its almighty slopes. Pretty swarms of drone-planes flew among its cross-braced beams.

Flower gardens hung off it. Trailing clouds rippled from the Tall Tower like pennants, because it pretty much made its own weather.

Since its completion, no earthly structure had ever matched the Tall Tower. Why build two of them? And why build such things on Earth? You had to build off the earth to outbuild the Tall Tower. The Tall Tower was the tallest, grandest possible structure that the earth could support.

The tower sang to us as it stood there. Every night there were launches, the passenger ships firing off. Those space-trains carried crowds of eager human beings, shedding all earthly limits, abjuring all worldly ties.

As mankind departed from Earth to build grander things in outer space, the healing Earth grew green and wild again. A man on a good horse could follow the empty highways from the Yukon to Honduras, and never set an eye on a fellow human being.

With technology lofted to the starry realm, the bears, wolves, and bald eagles returned to rule Earth's rivers, plains, and peaks. Longhorn cattle abounded. So did rugged mustangs, like my Levi. The earth abided under a night sky swarming with satellites.

Gretchen respected the Ascended Masters, putting faith in them for her salvation. Each and every night, cartridges of human astronauts were loaded into the Tall Tower's base. A narrow launch tube ran up the tower, a rifle barrel to the stars.

These spacecraft capsules, nestled within, would get quantumly transposed, through the astral technology of the Ascended Masters. The capsules existed down at the tower's base, and yet also existed far up at the tower's remote summit, both at the same cosmic instant.

When that wave-form probability collapsed, the quantum spacecraft would fling themselves from the tower straight to the heavens, squirting off slick as watermelon seeds.

When Gretchen betook herself upward, we didn't fight about that matter. The Ascended Masters had astral capacities. They lived in stellar paradises forged from the iron of asteroids, great space cities so colossal that I saw them in the daylight with my naked eye.

We human beings knew as much about their cosmic science as my horse, Levi, knew about saddle-stitching. The Ascended Masters were nano, and robo, and bio. We human beings were their larvae. The Ascended Masters never reproduced—for they left that vital task to us, humanity.

Through their own wise choice, the Ascended Masters were celibate. The greatest of them were astral, boneless entities, all telescope eyes, nerves, and megatons of living brain, floating through the cosmos in shining steel shells.

Earth was their cradle. The Ascended Masters called us from that cradle, to become their recruits. We ventured up there to join them in the heavens, once we felt good and ready for it, and until then, they kept their starry distance from us. That was a sensible arrangement.

Now, to tell the truth, some people had some problems with this state of affairs. Human nature is crooked, and sometimes we balk at salvation like a horse will shy at a shadow. So I will confess that I, too, had a problem. What about my horse?

That arrangement excluded my horse. A man is a being. And a horse is also a being. But humans are aspirational beings, who imagine, and speculate, and plan, and build.

No horse does all that. Yet Levi also had his dignity and worth. Because Levi wore the saddle and was dutiful. Levi had met his bargain with me. Now I found myself alone with him. My boys had grown, my wife had gone her own way. It was just him and me, under those bright stars and satellites.

Call me stubborn, or call me a sentimental fool, but I owed something to my sturdy beast.

So I settled my affairs. I sold off the spread, and I gave away my earthly possessions. I took a last farewell look around, and I saddled him up. The two of us headed for the Tall Tower to meet our destiny.

NEVER ONCE HAD I
ventured to the remote and icy peak of the Tall Tower—I had only seen it, stenciled on the skyline like a promise of redemption. But I had been to the wicked city that grew within the spread legs of the tower's mighty base.

This thriving, noisy desert metropolis, crowded with space-bound pilgrims of every size, shape, and creed, bore the name of “Desconocido.”

Because it had a giant tower standing on it, Desconocido was a mighty easy town to find. Finding trouble in that town was even easier. Those who dwell in the shadow of the gods will always make fun of the divine. The townsfolk of Desconocido were sharp-witted and crooked people, always full of their own schemes, with the much-mixed pigments of a whole lot of local color.

Desconocido was an oasis by its nature. The Tall Tower collected ice on its slanting, cloudy spars. Meltwater trickled down through a host of pipes. Giant steel shadows crawled across the city every day, sundial style. Every neighborhood had its own climate.

So as to get shot off up into orbit, pilgrims came to Desconocido from every corner of the world. Commonly, these sacred pilgrims would have some final fit of the nerves before they left Earth forever. They naturally desired some farewell glutting of the fleshpots. The locals were more than ready to oblige.

So Desconocido was a fine place to wake up next to a stranger. A place to discover new tastes for ancient human vices. A place to get robbed, or to get killed, maybe. Maybe all of that would happen to you in one single day.

My own needs were simple and my aims were clear. My horse, Levi, and I had long been partners. I refused to become superhuman until Levi was superequine. I had made up my mind that Levi would transcend the innate limits of the horsely.

Somebody in Desconocido would help me with my ambition. Obviously this notion of mine could not be entirely new. Nothing was entirely new to Desconocido.

I therefore commenced to look around the town, with the caution of my worldly wisdom, being a man of mature years.

My first concern was proper shelter for my horse. I found that stable above the city.

The Tall Tower had vertical farms. Vast expanses of steel real estate sloped upward. Crops could grow within chosen spaces that were cooler, wetter, drier, or brighter, all according to taste.

So I found a perpendicular hacienda run by some kindly Jewish folk. These religious sectarians had strict dietary requirements. Their ancient scriptures didn't allow them to eat modern foodstuffs.

Modern dining was based on microbes, algae, and insects, as one might well expect from agricultural science. The Jews found that prospect bothersome. Nobody else did, but the chosen folk had never been just anybody.

My new hosts were hard to beat for industriousness. They had staked up a regular Hanging Babylon for themselves, with steel gardens of baths and troughs and tubes and pumps and shelves, for nigh on a vertical kilometer.

My hosts had practical use for a horse on the Sabbath, when they forbade themselves electricity. So these farmers and I came to a cordial arrangement. They sheltered my horse, fed him his grain, and me my spinach, and also, they loaned me a cot. In return, I sought out new markets for their vegetable produce, among the other folks downtown.

I made it my business to inquire among all the numerous cults, breeds, and creeds of tower dwellers. The Tall Tower had attracted every breed of mystic to itself, from the Amish to the Zoroastrian. Those of a spiritual bent clung to the tower like iron dust to a steel magnet.

I made it my business to inquire among these believers. Mankind had always been perplexed about God, and life's meaning, and the soul, and immortality, and human purpose in the world. Most of us had it figured that the Tall Tower had resolved these issues through sheer mechanical engineering.

However, I soon learned of other ways of thought. These mystical creeds had many good answers ready for my heartfelt spiritual questions. They all had different answers to offer me, though.

After we'd discussed spiritual matters for a few hours, I might change the subject and offer them some kosher vegetables. Commonly they would buy.

My questions about superanimals were already known to these wise folk. I learned about supercanines and superfelines. Many tenderhearted pet owners had desired to share their spiritual aspirations with their family companions. Attempts were made, and some results were found.

That news encouraged me. I followed up on every lead. My ambitions were rewarded.

I learned about superbirds from the Parsees. The Parsees, too, were Tall Tower folk. For centuries on end, these Parsees had been the smallest of mankind's great old-time religions.

It had long been the sacred practice of the Parsees to expose their dead to vultures atop a great “Tower of Silence.” Thus the affinity, for such was the ancient Parsee ritual.

Most everyone in the tower felt a deep respect for the Parsees. For the tower people, the presence of the Parsees among them was a touching validation of their chosen way of life.

Unfortunately, the sacred vultures of the Parsees had all died out from Earth's climate change. As the earth's stricken skies cleared up somewhat, the Parsees had struggled to revive—or rather to reinvent—their extinct, sacred, corpse-eating birds.

With much cleverness and effort, the Parsees had bred themselves a superbuzzard. These superbirds nested within the Tall Tower.

These artificial Parsee supercondors were the size of small aircraft. The ultrabuzzards had become a common sight, drifting over the American Southwest, where they followed the bison herds for the sake of the carrion. Splendid creatures. A poetic sight, and truly a gift to the world.

But to tell the truth, their Parsee hearts just weren't in this achievement. The superbird project didn't satisfy their deeper aims. So these genteel, noble people, who had an unbroken spiritual tradition of four millennia, had reached the end of their trail. The only direction left for the Parsees was up. One by one, they were all becoming superhuman space-folk. Soon the earth would know their faith no more.

That tale well nigh broke my heart. I might have joined the Parsees, if they accepted converts. But these vanishing folk were a proud and dignified people, and just weren't having any of that. So, instead, I just sold them some aquaponic rice and some saffron.

Next, I tried out my vegetable wares with the tower's big-time grocers. Businessmen are a practical people, so they sold modern scientific foods made from bugs and algae. I convinced the grocers to stock old-fashioned vegetables as window dressings. I threw in some pretty flowers to settle that deal.

These antique displays made the shoppers stop and gawk. I would drop by the stores in my fancy cowboy gear and publicly devour some vegetables, for the sake of the show. That was a pretty good business.

In return for this service of mine, a grateful grocer informed me about superhorse feed: a high-performance fuel, purpose-brewed for racehorses.

This sticky, salty goop had every nutrient that the peak-performing athlete horse could require. Levi commenced to dine on that substance and began to perk up right away. I also arranged some regular blood filtering and growth-hormone management. Results were gratifying. Old Levi's mortal horseliness began to visibly slough right off him.

The dingy hair of his dappled palomino hide fell out in clumps. A spry new superhorse fur grew in, thick and shiny. His gnarled yellow teeth turned white at the roots. His cracked hooves grew in hard and smooth.

The Jewish folk grew somewhat afraid of Levi. So I had to rent Levi a fresh stall in an old metal foundry, where he could buck, kick, and crash into things without hurting anybody.