The Deep Gods by David Mason Page B

the Morra-ayar replied. Your kind is most clever with its hands and eyes, possessed of great curiosity and swift moving. Yet your kind does not live very long, and there is no time to gain wisdom. Only by linking with others could your people have grown, and this you could not do any longer. You forgot.
    Then you know the future, Daniel said.
    It is not “future” to us. We are not within time, locked, as you are. We perceive forward and backward at the same time, as…
    There was a strange sort of spiral, turning in upon itself so that it had neither a beginning nor an end. It floated before Daniel’s vision, spinning.
    A memory stirred in his mind, and he thought, incredulously: why, it’s like the DNA molecule!
    As above, so below, the voice said. The images of reality are repeated, over and over in all things.
    I don’t understand, Daniel said silently. If there’s a future, and it’s all… fixed, why is there this idea of changing it? Why am I supposed to change it? If it can be changed, why don’t you do it, with all your wisdom and power?
    We have no power to do this, the Morra-ayar said. We have no power at all. Every being is responsible for itself; we may not force any, nor even help, beyond our limits.
    There was the curious sensation of a laugh.
    Did you think we were gods, like your gods?
    Daniel was swept into the flood of images again, and now he saw men. Flashing fragments of time swam past; his own time strangely mingled with a dozen other periods.
    He saw war planes diving over a field where armored warriors battled, gleaming towers of glass rising out of mud-walled cities. And here and there, mixed with other faces, he saw his own; it was a blurred reflection, as if seen in a flawed glass, but it was his own face. The faces of others, friends, lovers… those too floated by.
    His own time was clearest. He could see the streets and cities of his world, the familiar forms. But everything seemed to be crumbling as he watched. The cities grew darker, buildings fell into ruin, and were not rebuilt. The faces grew pale, sick, with a terrifying look of hungry evil written on each one.
    Then there were fewer and fewer human forms, and those he saw seemed less human. And, at last, there was a world of death; empty, treeless, deserted, where iron bones of dead machines rusted in a freezing wind.
    Now, do you understand a little? The Morra-ayar asked gently.
    Yes… but why me?
    Because the one who is lost brought you here, for his own purposes, the Morra-ayar replied. He sought through time, to find one who could be brought here… yourself . But because you are not of this time and place, and because you are like all your kind, free of all bonds to all other beings… you may decide as we cannot. You may change all.
    He is the one who is lost, the voice sang sadly. He was one with us, wiser and older than all of us. But in one thing, he changed. He desired to go alone, into other seas, to sail in isolation and darkness while his mind sought deeper than ours could, for truth.
    It is our nature that we do not like to swim alone; we find our own kind necessary, always, in the circle of the clan. He too felt that need, but he refused it, to search, yet he came back to us, always.
    Then he went into that sea that lies north and east, through a narrow channel…
    An image that was not a map, yet had the appearance of one, formed in Daniel’s mind. It was a perception of space and form, like seeing the globe of the earth from the inside, outward. Yet certain patterns were recognizable, and he saw that sea to which the Morra-ayar referred. It was one great landlocked sea, as they saw it; but it covered an area where the Black and the Caspian, and the Aral, all had been in his own world and time.
    He is there, in the Locked Sea, and we cannot speak with him. And now, imprisoned and alone, he is mad. He desires to die, and at the same time he desires to be free again, and live. But if he came out again, into these