0D

0D

Father said, “You are too young to understand the responsibility that has been thrust upon you by your misfortune of finding these creatures. You have not yet been granted access to the city of stars. It is the way of the Elohim to introduce our young to the other elohim in stages, after they have developed a stable personality. But after this exchange I judge you are now ready for this and therefore I will announce your own birth to the other Elohim. But you must be willing to accept two conditions. The first is you must send some of these clever animals you have found to a world circling myself, that I may examine whether they are amenable to our control. The second condition is that you shall only listen to the chatter of the stars. You shall not ask of them the smallest question. You shall not speak to them of these creatures nor any other thing, until I myself announce the existence of these creatures. Our highest law will bind you to this Covenant.”

To these conditions, Daughter reluctantly agreed. So Daughter entered into a covenant with Father to speak no words to the elohim, and to bring a male and a female of these creatures to Kemen for a time of testing before allowing them to set aside their servitude and embrace the Elohim as teachers.

When she had carried out the letter of the agreement, and even threw in an infant human for free, the avatar of Father joined Daughter as she looked down upon the new garden. And she said, “Here are the servants, as I vowed, brought within reach of your avatar to do with them as you will.”

But Father said, ‘All you have given me is three creatures in a world that will kill them if they try to leave their little farm. You must bring to Kemen forty more such families before I will hold our covenant to be fulfilled.”

There is no native fauna in Kemen but some of the flora moved of its own accord and most of it was dangerous. A whipping tree can render a man down to a pile of broken bones and bloody flesh in a few heartbeats. Some of the leaves formed clenching mouths with teeth. Thorny ball bushes rolled under their own power by shifting their weight and selectively gripping the ground. Most plants were deadly to touch. Daughter and Father toiled together to plant several dozen gardens in Kemen and populate them with wayward couples brought from Earth through a shortcut in reality that any two Elohim could establish. The first children to be born away from Earth came to be. But many of the colonists brought to Kemen died long before the span alloted to them, all killed by the hostile flora. Later, beginning in the first garden, the colonists even began to kill each other.