Jacob's Ladder

The shooting was closer now, louder. The zinging whine of seeker bullets bouncing off the metal window louvers sang a waspish counterpoint to the low rumble of armored engines idling outside the stockade. I had come to be with the Grandmother, to sit with her during these last hours. I was afraid, had been afraid since the Mother and the Father fell under a hail of crossfire, staining the gray dust of the compound with their yellow ochre life fluids. With open, empty hands - as they had been told was the proper way to greet strangers - they had gone to greet the newcomers, not understanding that a battle to the death had been joined.

I watched, unbelieving, as they fell, knowing they were still struggling to understand what was happening to them and why it was happening even as their lives ebbed away. No one looked at me as I stood there in the doorway becoming aware of death, seeing it, smelling it, tasting it, absorbing it - and the life forces of the Mother and the Father - through my pores.

Now I was three; there was a strangeness in the feeling of fullness in my flesh container, a small awareness of the Others who were themselves part of the Mother and the Father who were now a part of me. I was young, very young and they were my first; they were older and had experienced much, collected many life forces since the messengers arrived, messengers who told us they were sent by their god to save our immortal souls.

"Believe in Me and none other," was the command of their god. "Believe in My word as written in My Book or perish." Many of us had perished before that lesson was learned, before we understood that they did not know that God has many faces, many names, many forms, and all are of the Oneness that is God. The Mother and the Father became containers for those many who died. Now I, in turn, contained them all. All that remained in fleshly containers here in this place were the Grandmother and me.

I closed the front door on the battle, finally understanding that which the Mother and the Father and all those dead others had not: another of their Gods had sent His messengers to save our immortal souls in His name, too; this battle would decide which Message we should believe. It didn't matter which God won or even how many of them and us tasted death before that decision was made. Were not all our souls immortal if we believed?

I went to the Grandmother's room. "Enter," she said, the word full and round with the soft, liquid, bell tones of our own speech which we had long been forbidden to speak here in this place. She was holding the Good Book of the messengers, open in the Chapter of Genesis, the words of the Beginning. "Sit," she said. "I have been reading." Only then did she look up at me. "Then we are the last," she said, acknowledging the presence of the Mother and the Father within me, and, within them, all the Others who had given up their life containers in this quest for understanding of these beings and their Gods.

I sat beside her on the Terilla mat. It had been woven long ago from the coarse plant fibers of this harsh, unforgiving, backward world, so different from the gentleness of our own. I listened as she spoke, the words and sounds of our language a golden flow of melody, drowning out the sounds of the battle being waged outside.

"Be not afraid," she said, and suddenly I was not. "Those words are written in this book, as are many, many other words. Whoever wrote some of these words was wise and full of knowing, on the path to full understanding. Others?" She shrugged, the sound that accompanied the movement sending ripples of color coursing through the transparent membranes of her speech center.

As she stopped speaking, the sounds of battle became louder, the rumble of idling engines coming into full-throated, growling life. There were voice sounds now, orders being shouted, the rattle of guns, the whistling pop of lasers leaving white-hot streaks in the air, the screams of the wounded rising into crescendo, then falling silent.

I wondered then about their dead. In that whirlwind madhouse of slaughter, how did they find time to collect the life forces of their dead before they drifted away? Did they not empty the broken life containers, preserving the essence of each being so it could be born again to them? I shuddered. The thought that this had not been done, that those creatures now falling in the compound outside were being condemned to that place they named the eternal burning limbo of Hell, filled me with horror.

It was not to a burning pit that one of us went should this unmentionable, no, unthinkable, thing happen. No, it meant eternal banishment from our kind, wandering alone in the coldness of nothing forever, or even worse, being snared into servitude in a different, lower life-form, perhaps even one like theirs.

"Be not afraid," the Grandmother said again. "We will soon leave this place. We know now what we came here to discover. We have met these beings before, perhaps many times before in many different places." She raised the Good Book, indicated a place, then handed it to me. "Read," she commanded. "This is the story of one called Jacob."

I read: "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." I looked at the Grandmother in wonder, then read on, finishing with: "Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! it is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven."

I handed the open Good Book back to the Grandmother and she carefully placed it in the center of the mat. Then she stood, imposing in her height, allowing her full colors so long hidden to express themselves, rippling, shining, opalescence lighting her coarse robe from within as she slightly extended her wings.

"It is time to go," she said, and made a small graceful gesture.

A stairway appeared, spiraling upward through the ceiling, through the roof, upward, far beyond and away from this small, barren planet circling a double sun. This place had been chosen for this encounter because there were no native life-forms here, no other living beings that might be endangered by the meeting.

The front door was battered open and the heavy tread of feet encased in battle armor caused the floor to tremble. The Grandmother and I climbed the shining ladder, its steps slowly disappearing behind us as we returned to our own world, taking all our Others with and within us.

I had only gone up a few steps when the first man burst into the room below, I turned on the ladder, my full colors shining, my wings partially extended, and gazed down at him. He was young, bloodstained, hot with killing lust, full of winning the battle for his God. He raised his visor and looked up at me. One after the other, surprise, disbelief, awe, and finally fear were plain to read upon his face. He dropped to his knees, and I turned and continued up the ladder.

I thought of their Good Book lying open on the Terilla mat below, and of the story of Jacob. Yes, this was as Jacob said indeed a dreadful place, and these stairs did lead to a kind of Heaven...the place we call home.