Caring for the injured men and tending to the mastodon, especially during these days of bread and circus, became an unending chore with little time for rest or sleep. I was assigned to an upper berth within the palisade, where the great beasts were housed. That night my fitful slumber was disturbed by the sounds of many gladiators tapping and talking below. While hidden within my bed of hay, I noticed that one tuneful voice seemed to dominate and resonate more intensely than the others, sounding near and far, thin and thick, both frightful but oddly soothing and at times familiar yet strange.

Were these the spirits who talk in voices beyond words? My young ears never heard such a bizarre musical language as this. From the din came an odd mixture of crying sounds and laughter. The lilting and rising, starting and stopping, staccato sounds of their foreign chorus made a strange music that momentarily quieted my fears. What did these words mean? Could they be God's reply to my earnest inquiries, or will my youthful naivety be mocked by these wizened, warriors?

The hidden, subterranean yearnings of my soul; “Who am I? What is my function?” almost answered in fatigued dreamscapes, now began their torment anew as I awoke to the farce that was my reality. As I became fully alert, I realized how little I understood of the world or of the Superior Men’s native language.

I moved forward to see more. There, in the smoky half-lit lodge stood a cluster of imposing Superior Men guards sheepishly forming a line, teetering in their drunkenness like drooling children, waiting to be measured for walking sandals. On his knees in front, weaving about his work like a graceful dancer, was a fearsome veteran prizefighter. Tenderly cradling his enemy’s huge foot, he traced its shape on a stencil of slate.

The shoemaker had to be of Men of Men I guessed, judging from his lithe frame and elegant posture. His brows were set wide and his great yellow-white hair plunged down around his shoulders. His bushy, gray beard covered his torso like a blanket. His eyes darted like fireflies and without slowing his pace he looked my way. My gaze lingered, and our eyes locked. I felt exposed as a fawn, found out and naked. The heat from his stare stung me like a firebrand. He went on with his work without acknowledging me to the others.

“To cobble the shoes,” he said to no one in particular, “take a portion of flattened sun-dried ox or auroch skin, fold it over a length of rock for a sole and heel, and tie along the measured side of the foot to make it fit. The end result is handsome footwear to aid in battle for comfort and protection in winter, giving a good soldier God’s speed over sand, gravel, rock and mud.”

Those who worked the amphitheater during these holidays never knew when their last day would come. Each morning headmen would come into the tunnels and untie the men and boys who were chosen to be that day’s workers and/or entertainment. They wrapped decorative scarfskins around the necks of the doomed gladiators and supplicants. Even some beasts rated a colorful shawl. The placing or neck-lacing of the tourniquet around the neck by the Superior’s priest was sometimes known to have a strange, soothing, almost religious effect on those who were about to surrender to their dishonorable fate. All the years of mind numbing indoctrination and the constant reminders of their unworthiness made the drones that much easier to control.

Each morning small groups of slaves were rounded up and taken out. Those who had revealed frailty by falling down from thirst, hunger or exhaustion were directly beaten with sticks and taken to the arena to meet their ignoble slaughter. As the weeks of noisy carnival went by, I saw that my friend, the elder gladiator, had not yet been neck-laced. It was also said that they were saving us younger boys for last.

Each night a few loud and haughty Superior Men guards would enter the cobbler’s hovel and gently lay down their bludgeons and take turns getting their feet measured. The old man would joke with them as he did repairs. His well-built sandals soon became fashionable. If a headman wanted slave-made items, however, protocol dictated he could not deal directly with a fated captive. So in order to possess these popular sandals, the ‘Big Headman’ traced his foot on an oilskin and had his henchmen anonymously deliver the pattern to my father.

Yes, my father, for that is who he was and this is how he came to me in these last few days we spent together: This unwearied warrior would stitch and pound and polish silently into the night with little sleep, all the while knowing that pending orders of sandals for influential parties might just keep his name off the death-list for one more day. One night without pausing, he spoke in a low song, talking quietly, beneath his breath, so as not to be conspicuous. Between his rhythmic hammering, he wanted me to hear.

"These are the last shoes I'll be making. I've drawn too much attention to myself and my industrious delaying tactics are becoming obvious to some. Time is short, I need to know your history now, for I have long searched for my son, a boy of about your age who was ordained to be king."

"I am drone, sire, I could not be your progeny." I said.

"Tell me then, drone and don't figure - but why you would, only gives me pause...You are somebody's progeny."

"But, sir..."

"And you interrupt! And what of that now just tell me, have you ever met your mother?"

"No."

"Sister?"

"No, but I knew of a young friend who spoke of her mother often. She let me kiss her. She had blind-writing bumps in her mouth, on the insides of her cheeks. She said it spelled her real name and not her slave/drone name. Her mother gave her her real name.""And do you have these blind-writing bumps in your mouth, son?"

"Yes, I do."

"And do you know what these bumps say?"

"Yes sir, she translated them and told me never to speak of it."

"So she told you never to speak your name...? Am I never to say...? What? Say...?"

"Never to say my name, sir."

"So the writing bumps are now speaking bumps that speak your name! So then your name is: ‘One Who Never Speaks His Name!’ Squawk squawk like a hen! So it's as an egg is to a chicken, ha! Your name is like an egg! It is what it is not yet, Plop, plop, ha!" He returned to his tapping and nailing.

Turning red and blue with rage, in some childish need to clarify, I took the bait and spurted the truth, "My name is Dhukata! ...I am Dhukata!"

"Shhhhh... My son, my son! I am Duma, your father!" He slowly put down his tools, and after a pausing for what seemed to be an eternity to double-check his surroundings, he jumped up into my loft, untied me and hugged me like a bear. Somehow I recognized him. As if in a fever, my tears gushed as I pressed against the heat of his hairy beard and chest. As he pulled away to let me breathe, he pulled out a colorful, light-green scarf that he had hidden under his clothes. He placed it flat on the ground between us, spreading it out with his huge, rough hands.

"This is your code."

Joy and confusion filled me.

"Father, is this the colorful death-scarf you give me?"

"No, no my son, this does not speak for the so-called ‘Superior Men’ or of death, but of life. This is the code of your mother and a chart of your future...here, see these dancing birds? Here, see the message colorfully tinted and carefully shaped and sewn onto this cloth by your mother's loving hands..."

"Father, ...what is loving?"

"Oh my dear son, It is the most difficult thing to make plain with mere words. Loving is where you came from. It lives inside what I'm telling you. This code will help you find your life's mate and just as I found your mother, you will find love. Then you will have a true cause to fight for and because it is true, you will be victorious. One day it will be you who will try in vain to sing the right words so that your sons and your daughters will know of love.

Your mother and I were pinnacle breeders, which means we were valued. For years we were kept in captivity where we endured cruel and inhuman experiments. Through this baptism of pain we were united. For years they thought we were producing sterile drones but despite rumor and spies, an angel revealed that we were among the chosen by God and not by men. We are from the first of Men of Men. And you...your presence is also revealed in these patterns and drawings in the water, see the light between the birds dancing...?”

Speaking softly he smoothed the sacred cloth with his rough fingers.

“Dancing, since before you were born..."

Through the night we talked and by the dimming tar-light that had illuminated so much, we compared our hand and foot prints over and over again and again, against the configurations on the scarf to show how the symbols confirmed our kinship.

Holding me firmly aloft upon his shoulders, I was able to tear a hole through the thatch of the roof to peek through the inky blackness of night. We gazed skyward and compared and named the stars by their brightness and dullness respectively. The distinct positioning of the constellations revealed their great mysteries to us through legend.

“These stars and galaxies are the sparks and smoke of the ancient’s distant campfires. Endlessly piercing the void with their innate light, they will show us the proper path to take in this world.”

Certain star-lines matched the shapes my mother had painstakingly painted between the white clouds and turquoise birds on the neck-cloth. Everything was destiny. Everything meant something. The color represented the decade. The white patches meant it was winter when I was born. Sewn on the inverse was an indication of a map that I would someday utilize. It showed the way to a place of haven. My father explained everything in that last time we spent together. He told me how the universe was born. He knew the names of the demigods and the names of each star.

“The stored energy in the seeds and fruits we find to eat emanate from our star, the One Sun God.” He said.

“Our vision is limitless but the stars that we see can never be reached. Even the most excellent hunters in the world know they will never journey through the void in this life. The stars are progeny of the volcano gods. They constantly explode in on themselves in a vacuum where they burn in a massive ball, round like an eye. They produce tremendous quantities of light. These gods blaze on throughout eternity at the very edge of life and empty space. In their benevolence, they drop seeds along with life giving rains down upon us, here in these flatlands, where we live closer to hell.

“Before God touched us we were merely crawling, lower life forms. Some beings comply with God and humble themselves in the forms of worms, doves, flowers and other sentient creatures. These face the metamorphosis of death with nary a whimper. Other manifestations are more feral and apt to take advantage of the excess that goodness brings. The vampire bat drinks the blood of the auroch and proliferates under the shelter of darkness both compressing and escaping daylight. Predators will not often prey on other healthy predators for they know that a hunter will fight to the death to survive, using all his skills. Night is the territory of the carnivore who steals life and eats his flesh and blood gravy in the blackness, when the One Sun God leaves this world to rest and sleep with his chosen mistress, the Goddess of the West.

“Oh the misery of one lonely, singular Earth sharing the attentions of the one Sun who has two lovers. One a nagging fishwife and the other a lunatic mistress who alternately cry and bleed at different times in different places. While he is tending to and playing with his children under balmy western skies, he leaves Stepmother Earth scolding her numberless children here in the far east with angry thunder, lightning, whirlwinds and hail.”

Dumas’ arms were so long that he seemed to touch the stars as he gestured for emphasis. Pointing to some indistinct nebulae in the farthest reaches of the night sky, his voice droned on rhythmically, almost musically, as in prayer.

"To acknowledge the gods among the planets is to know them and to be near them. And so my son, pray to the gods and demigods of these worlds and we may someday visit them! They are a reflection of our lives and they can help us find our own Promised Land. Because the Lord has endowed us with eyes to see from lowly earth up to eternity, then surely it must follow as night does the day, that we will meet again and rejoice.

“We’ll know where it is when we find it. It will feel warm and familiar like a fire in winter or a cooling rain in summer. We will hold it in our hearts so that we can once again meet there and be together. We will fly up to the precipice where we will pray for guidance in battle and victory over winter and relief from the bad vapors of summer. The configurations in the night sky will tell us when the great ice will come and where antelope will be. The gods are helpful; they will teach us to create the picture-words that will make our children immortal. And wives! They will deliver us fertile wives and virile sons! Many, many, sons! Pray my son. Chant the eternal vibration! Oooomm...To bond the tribe, chant the vibration!

“See there, now hold your eyes just beside the lodestar. Do you see within the great brackets that frame the universe? There is the bear that both follows and leads our people to good hunting grounds. And there, the primeval sturgeon provides delicious gifts of life-giving nourishment. You will notice the movements in the universe as the seasons change directions. From his home beneath the mountains of ice where he sleeps, the One Sun God leads us on to wider ranges and shows us where bountiful fishing can be found.

“We must follow the Sun God and his sisters, the stars, on into the next bend in the millennium, past our own lives. We must begin now to prepare the next generations. Only man among all animals possesses the talent of reflection upon himself and in so doing, he influences both life and death. Although, only the giant albatross is able to see two daylights in one day," He continued.

"With the help of God's very breath and the warm prevailing west winds, the sea birds will lead us to where the great herds of musk-oxen are found, beyond the evergreens in the cold, dry highlands. There you will see colossal rainbows, iridescent like fine silk garments shining in the twilight as they wrestle and dance all across the northern realm. These fiery sky-devils alternately fight and dance to see which gods shall impart which colors on us here, below.

“Which perspective shall reign, shall it be blue trees and green skies, purple light or pink darkness? All with eyes can witness the everlasting struggles between the gods of fire and heat and the devils of cold wind, rain and empty void. Even the base flatworms which live inside rocks fathoms below the icy seawaters need to reach for light. God knows them and calls them by name. Cannot man’s ears likewise heed His call? Does not the mind of man seek light despite the dark tangle of human manipulation and superstition imposed upon us by our progenitors? The eternal light our great father has provided for us and for the blind sea-worm both warms and burns.

“See the light that erases shadow and fills the world with color each morning. The light of Ilish, the playful god, like a happy father playing with his giggling children, able to get down on his hands and knees, down to the level of his toddlers. See Ilish, the same god of volcanoes, thunder and whirlwinds, gently cooing with and nourishing his children on mild days and calm seas. And Plisiten, fearsome man-god of time and revenge also the giver of color; green in trees, blue in skies, red in blood. He is giver and taker, destroyer and creator."

"But Father, these gods of both lightness and darkness, they seem to be men, they have knees and eyes and blood. Do they also know as we do of time and vengeance? Who shall compose the picture-graphs of the constellations to instruct the unborn? Who will carve the Word on the cavern walls? Who will resurrect us? How will we recognize our enemies from our own in the wild? And when the day dawns when we are victorious in this world-wide battle between these disparate versions of men, then dear father, then will we be gods?"

"No my son, we will not be, although we can see their heavenly fires from a distance, we cannot become gods in this life. In millennia to come, however, we will become as gods and devils within this world. The oracle says that men will one day fly like birds and dig like moles and swim beneath the ocean as fast as squid. We are great inventors. We have been called upon by God to construct our own strain. We will grow stronger and be more ferocious than any animal on earth! We must husband what has been bequeathed us. We must possess the world!”

I swallowed dryly.

“This light, ...is this God? Is this radiance the same, dear father as the knowing glint behind your eyes, your sparkling eyes that have seen so much life? Will this eternal light permit us to distinguish the ancestral variations among our own kind who we must protect, or will the great One Sun God empower us to make the judgment to detect the colors of our true enemies? Who must we exterminate? Which version of man will be first to be delivered into darkness?"

"There will be a time," he answered, "when nobility will reign, soon after our chore is done, soon after our new breed hunts down and destroys every hominid that is alien to us. Our essential life’s purpose is to banish all pretenders from the face of the earth. God expects us to carry out His instructions. Rewards and punishments will be meted out according to our successes and failures. In order to do our duty and to demonstrate our gratitude and sincerity, we must fulfill His prophecy. There is no other alternative, this cleansing is imperative and inevitable.

It will not be the fate of the indolent and softhearted Superior Men to inherit this world. The mastery over flora and fauna will not be left to any degenerate tribe or coalition of drones or eunuchs who have no familial stake in this matter. It must be our new breed, our new legend that binds and unites. We must inculcate and condition future generations to annihilate our most dangerous opponents - all ‘other’ hominids. This reign of purification and terror will be the penultimate test of our mettle.

“It will be painful and distasteful but necessary that when we raise our children, we train them in mayhem, terror and torture in order to prepare them and toughen them for the extraordinary burdens and rigors this mandate will demand of them. It may take ten-times ten-thousand years to accomplish but one day this truth will set us free. The universe is compelled to know itself and this order must be sustained by human beings. The continuance of cosmic consciousness and man’s conversations with God depends on us!

“We may not be able to quell our murderous instinct on that exact day when the last sub-human is exterminated. This may be our greatest challenge, to allow ourselves to evolve toward godhead and not self-destruct, unthinkingly turning on each other like hungry rats that have out-grown their crowded and claustrophobic warrens. Will we behave as rats or men or gods? Only by assimilating with the ‘better angels’ of our nature will we be able to maintain control of our primal calling. There will be a time, an End-Time, when the last human being may mistakenly murder his own. That error can be corrected if we, who are alive now, leave logic and reason as our legacy. At that time, during that great banquet, we shall commemorate our godliness, communicating the brotherhood of man with all the power and protection of all men on all islands and lands of this good, fertile earth. We will name that moment ‘Day One’ and we will begin counting our years, decades and centuries forever forward accordingly.

“Applying this communal wisdom may one day safeguard us from ourselves but only if we acknowledge and anticipate the enigmatic, fluid and oft-times varying rules of the universe. Then and only then will we be successful in replacing the previous order. If we continue to eat our own, long after all ’others’ have become vanquished, we will be un-forgiven. If we continue to frivolously kill our own at play, and in sport, as we now practice here in this circus, we will perish. Our only hope is to value man and to one day establish one tribe standing on one world under the One Sun God - then and only then, will our homicidal compulsion end. “The rutted road to Hell and self-destruction will be cobbled with the disinterred bones of ego, arrogance and false pride. If we are not vigilant, we will slip quietly beneath the seductive, warm waters of our sensual bath of self-deception, our wrists painlessly slit by the gods of our own pleasures and sloth. With a drunken laugh and a ghoulish grin, the devil will banish all consciousness, all that is seen, touched or heard; all birds, trees, minute fish and great whales. All life, as we now know, will quickly exit. No one will see it! The solitary witness will be the lonely daughter of the void, a heartless whore with a vacant womb, sipping the last tepid drops of rancid wine left un-spilt after the feast - at the end of the universe."

He went on, half chanting and half speaking. "When the day comes that the ten thousand-plus year-old mandate to destroy all alien hominids is accomplished, It will behoove us to re-route and harness our passions into a life-affirming, celebratory energy - a positive force of human potential to rival the gods! We must build monuments to the One Sun God! We must write of this on the obelisks for all to see. It will be the day of the ‘laying down of arms‘. We must inform our soldiers that there will come an era of reckoning and peace. When we triumph on that day, time will begin. On that day soldiers will become hunters of animals and not of ’other’ men. We will be farmers and monument builders, fathers and grandfathers! On every tenth day we will give thanks and celebrate our God. Then Men of Men will reign supreme as has been pre-ordained. On that holiest of days we will name all animals and unravel the mysteries of the heavens at our leisure and then like gods, we will be supermen!"

My father, Duma, was neck-laced (chosen) and sent into the arena twice that week, and each time he returned victorious. In the first contest his opponent was a vicious, mangy saber-tooth tiger named Great Red, a regular favorite, that had already dismembered and eaten dozens of men. They placed both my father and the giant cat in separate bamboo cages, and then dragged them out, side by side, to the center of the arena. A clown was sent out to torment the cat with a long and noisy trumpet through which he would blow his irritating, flatulent music. Lesser jesters and sundry musicians were sent out to bang drums and play their deranged songs on their odd shaped instruments. The fools shoved burning reeds through the slits in the cage to further enrage the great cat. They spit at and otherwise attempted to humiliate my father through mocking gestures.

Thrilling the onlookers, they poured copious amounts of pig’s blood on Duma to further entice the hungry feline. Only when the foolishness had reached its crescendo and the crowd, drunk on wine and ergot, began hurling rocks and shouting their frenzied and demanding blood-chant in earnest, did the clowns scurry away. That's when the music stopped and even the raucous crowd briefly quieted. There was a moment of numbing silence as the last, solitary clown prepared to open the doors of the cages.

With his exaggerated antics, he beseeched the multitude to chant in unison, for my father’s blood. The loud, obnoxious screaming that ensued pierced my ears like a thunderclap and my heart like a dagger. I dared not look through my reddened and teary eyes, but my mind filled with my father’s words. One particular admonishment was to keep ever vigilant and aware. This gave me courage and compelled me to stand tall and keep witness.

As the doors were hurriedly popped open, the cat rapidly sprang from its confine and half-heartedly lunged in the direction of the swiftly retreating clown. Duma warily exited, moving back behind his cage, using it as a shield. During his imprisonment he had woven his ample hair and beard into a knotted length and although it was still attached to his head and face, this braid about the length of a man's arm, proved crucial. The tiger swerved, gaining its footing and opened its huge jaws, roaring, spitting and baring its awesome teeth and at once arched through the air, focusing directly for his target - my father's neck. Within an instant and as the cat was jumping, Duma threw himself aside like an acrobat doing a trick. When the great cat missed his target that first time and pounced upon the dirt, Duma rolled back directly. In order to keep the beast’s deadly jaws and front claws as far away from himself as possible he grabbed one of the tiger’s rear legs with both hands and began spinning the beast, lifting it off the ground one, two, three times around, tilting his own body backward, as far as he could to compensate for the heavy weight. The crowd screamed in approval.

Duma then slammed the dizzy cat into the side of the cage. This caused the beast to stagger and roll. Without hesitation Duma pounced on the monster and began violently, purposefully rolling, using the animal’s own struggling motion to wrap his tight braid just below the creature's awesome teeth and jaws. He slowly rose with legs wide, lifting the gasping animal and gradually tightening his garrote as he stood. The cat let out a bloodcurdling screech as its air was steadily choked away but not before letting out a pathetic mewing, whimpering sound as if it was now begging my father to let him go and spare its life.

The great beast finally went limp in my father’s grip and its breathing stopped. Bloodied but unbowed, and with his picturesque white hair and beard streaked with reddened stains, Duma still managed to place his foot upon Great Red’s head, stand tall and with both his fists in the air, let out his conqueror’s yell. “Victory!” The multitude roared to its feet. Such a performance had not been seen in ages!

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