The Church of the Unborn, part 3

Nilankha

Anthimia 8, 234 AC

The last time I posted an installment of this story, we were discussing the Ingathering movement on Algonar. Now let us return to the matter of the finial building ornaments, with which we started this tale some time ago. The temple built by the Church of the Unborn featured numerous spires, some of which were deliberately shaped in the form of male organs. Others had a more neutral, abstract shape and had finials or lightning rods at their apexes, such as the ones you saw at the beginning of this lecture. The towers and spires of the temple bore names of Noantri who had contributed the money for their construction, as did many other features of the Temple. The interior of the Temple also displayed hundreds of small flat metalwork images of babies, each one added to the wall when a healthy, surviving child was born.

As the Ingathering progressed in the interstellar Noantri community, the situation in Algonar continued to deteriorate. The loss of industrial jobs and the service work associated with them brought the city not only high crime and poverty but the desolation of empty buildings: factories, schools, shops, and residences. The Noantri were not immune from this desolation. The "faithful" still hoped that the Nouergic Gateway would open for them, taking them to the land of the Golden Sun. But other Noantri had given up hope, instead attempting to leave the city and migrate elsewhere, or turning to a peculiar form of Noantri crime, fraud and fortune-telling and spurious "future-finding" or telepathic eavesdropping and spying. The Noantri of Algonar were restless, and inter-Noantri violence, sadly, increased.

Suddenly one foggy autumn, the Ingathering team of techno-prophets returned, and this time they were headed by the leader of the Nouergic Gateway project, the immensely charismatic Redon the Third. We are all mostly familiar with his role in the Great Gateway, but he was active on many worlds long before the Migration. He appeared with his entourage as out of nowhere (actually, a Gateway site some ways out of the city, complete with vehicles driving through the Gate), and they settled as guests in one of the richer Noantri urban compounds. The presence of the Nouergic leader caught the attention of all the Noantri factions, who flocked to the Temple to hear him preach (through an electronically enhanced voice) that the Migration was coming, that the Gateway was already in action, and liberation was imminent. He was tall and majestic, clad in Noantri grey with a great cloak of grey floating about him like a cloud. He had long, flowing blue-grey hair, and manifested, as Nouergists still do, an aura of colored light - with him, it was a brilliant mid-blue, the color of sapphire. 

The phenomenon of pseudo-reincarnational lineages is still obscure to this day; it is very rare and has never been adequately explained. Redon III was the third incarnation of the man who may have been the originator of the Ingathering movement, Redon I the Great, who was based in another Noantri colony in a different star system. Redon II lost his life in a space battle with an Other-human enemy, and by the time Redon III appeared, he was already in his thirties (by New Earth reckoning). The theophoric gift transferred across incarnations and indeed intensified, so that Third was more powerful than his predecessors. It was Third who designed and implemented the modern Nouergic programs which led to the Gateway.

It was this Redon III, who had a talent for showmanship as well as theophoric power, who captivated the Noantri of Algonar. Instead of preaching inside the Temple, or on the plaza outside it, he climbed (through interior stairways) to the portico, where a line of spires pointed skyward. Redon III appeared on the edge of the portico, moving about, holding onto the narrow spires that supported the pointed finial and leaning precipitously into space. The sapphire glow and the tossing cape was a spectacular sight, as he proclaimed the future of Noantri, the passage to New Earth, and the fertile future of a free people.

And at the end of his proclamation, he did something which both scared and astonished the crowd. He let go of the spire and launched himself into thin air! But he did not fall; gravity had no hold on him, and he floated, standing on fog with his arms outstretched, until he slowly descended lit by blue fire, to alight on the ground as if he had no weight at all. Then, before the Algonar police could stop him or break up the crowd, he and his band disappeared into nowhere. 

Redon stayed for about a month, traveling through the Noantri colonies on Algonar planet, returning to the Temple to preach. Only when he felt that his message had reached enough Noantri did he leave, promising that he would return in Nouergic strength, to lead the people through the Great Gate to their new home on New Earth.

Part four will follow.

The Church of the Unborn, part 2

Nilankha

Ersta 22, 234 AC

Algonar was a city built on heavy industry, especially the making of motor vehicles and construction equipment. Its founding and location was dictated by the iron ore and petroleum deposits which were essential for that civilization's technology. It was a grim, polluted, grey city of huge residential blocks and dusty office complexes on the shore of a large lake, with barren mountains in the distance. Its architecture was built not for pleasure or comfort but for the simple housing of workers, both Other-human and Noantri.

The large Noantri population in Algonar worked mainly in the service industries, not the mines, refineries, or factories. They lived apart, as has been said in part 1, and were constantly under suspicion, since not only were they another species of humanoid, but were (correctly) rumored to have mysterious psychic powers. Despite the racial distrust that often boiled into hate, the other-humans often used the Noantri as fortune-tellers, curse-lifters, or spies.

It was in this situation that new, unfamiliar Noantri appeared among the communities. No one knew how they had gotten to Algonar, though there were rumors of strange lights and sudden bursts of electromagnetic disturbances in outlying areas, which the Algonar authorities could not explain. These new Noantri, speaking the late Imperial language of Algonar, introduced a radical and almost mythical idea: the Ingathering of the Noantri and their passage through a Stargate into another world, a world that would belong only to Noantri. No more Other-human persecution, no more reservations and ghettos, and a warm golden sun lighting a fertile, pristine new world.

The initial work had already been done, including DNA compatibility analysis, and pioneers were already there preparing the way for the Great Migration. The invitation was open: someday soon, there would be a way out of Algonar. Seekers were at this moment using the waning powers of interstellar spaceships to find Noantri populations. The call was out among all the Noantri, wherever they could be found: Odiyan! Which meant, the way out, or Exodus. It would not be by means of unreliable spaceships that they would travel to the New World, but through the Great Gateway, a massive nouergic working which had been re-invented in this declining age of the Last Empire by the master Theophore, Redon the Third.

But it would be years before the Odiyan was to be realized. The logistics of finding and moving what would be millions of people and their belongings, even with nouergic technology, took decades, perhaps even a century depending on the origin time of the movement and the discovery of New Earth. During the decline period of the Last Empire, the economy of Algonar deteriorated. The mines and oilfields were yielding less and less, and other Other-human countries were taking much of the mining and manufacturing work away from the older systems in Algonar, doing work more efficiently and cheaply. By the time of the flourishing of the Temple of the Unborn and the fertility movement, Algonar was a city in depression and sometimes even desperation.

Meanwhile, a fervor had grown among the Noantri. An escape was possible. There was a way out of poverty and oppression. Someday the Nouergists would re-appear and the Noantri could walk through the Gateway to the land of the Golden Sun. The children of the Church of the Unborn would have a safe place to grow up. The children were for the future on New Earth. And above the suspended image of the Mother rose another image, the Golden Sun. She was the woman clothed with the Sun. Soon the nouergic saviors would return to lead the Noantri through the Gateway.

Part three will follow.

The Church of the Unborn

Figure 1

Nilankha

Ersta 11, 234 AC

The artifacts you see in Figure 1 are called "finials," and they are architectural features from a structure built in one of the strangest passages of recent pre-Crossing history. They were placed at the point of carved and molded pinnacles which surmounted a building that was the headquarters of a cult that flourished on the racially and ethnically mixed world of Algonar. The purpose was not just decorative, but also practical and symbolic. They served as lightning rods to protect the temple's towers, and also were meant to call to mind biological necessity. As you can see, they are symbolic of male generative power, and the one on the left is meant to represent a sperm cell.

They are made of a strong but conductive metal, and over the years outdoors acquired a greenish patina. No doubt they had been struck by lightning many times in the turbulent weather of that part of Algonar. About fifty of these finials are known to exist on New Earth, having been brought through the Gateway by museum institutions or private owners. You can see one at the University of Surakosai's "Ingathering and Migration" display and research area.

Noantri and Other-humans on Algonar coexisted in a troubled relationship. Outbreaks of racial/species violence were common and the Noantri of the major cities retreated into ghettos or reservations, though their labor and talents were continually employed by the Other-humans. The cult-building was located on the border of one of the largest Noantri urban colonies, in Algonar City, the largest city on its namesake world. 

The cult's origins arose in the inequality between Noantri and Other-humans, especially that of fertility and population growth. Unlike our own reproductive systems, those of the Other-humans were almost constantly fertile. Those who wanted offspring - and those who didn't - were quickly endowed with progeny. The result was that the Noantri birth rate was much lower than that of our neighbors. The Noantri realized that they would, in time, be outbred by the Other-humans and lose their already precarious position in Algonar society. Given the difficulties of cloning and genetic engineeering, how could the Noantri increase their numbers in a natural and economically feasible way?

And so was born the cult which built the church of the bio-finials. It arose from earlier fertility cults practiced by both Noantri and Other-humans, but this new form was much more organized and persuasive. It built its power on the fear of annihilation, and perhaps the love of children. The cult quickly took root among Noantri of both sexes, and came to be called the "Church of the Unborn," although it was also called the "Church of the Holy Child" by its female followers. A well-organized funding structure emerged, directed towards financial support for mothers and children. Algonar's other-humans often aborted or abandoned their children, since they bred more than they could support, but the Noantri Church attempted to make sure that no Noantri child would suffer that fate. The social welfare aspect of the Church of the Unborn assured its success, and in a few decades they were wealthy enough to build themselves a temple. 

The temple is well documented in a number of Algonar internet planispheres, especially Planisphere 24 which compiles a database of cults and sects. A video walk-through shows us the magnificent though strange environment within the cavernous space. Within the temple, it was as if one entered a vast womb. The tall pale colonnade to either side resembled bones, supporting a vaulted space of dark gleaming textures. Red glass clerestory windows high up in the walls turned the grey daylight of Algonar into courses of blood. As you advanced towards the central ritual space on the open floor, you entered into a zone of quiet, muffled by thick hangings of red sound-absorbing fabric, undulating in the slow-moving air of the enclosure. 

Along the sides of the main nave were subsidiary chapels where one could contemplate the wonders of Noantri biology, including visual environments designed not only to inform visitors but to engage their emotions, intensifying their desire to carry on the life of the people. The central ritual space was an island of golden light in this involuted world of red, and as you approached it you heard, softly, the sound of a beating heart, the heart of the Mother. She appears above the altar, suspended in her golden swirls of tapestry, her compassionate face looking down on the worshippers, beckoning them to follow her path and attain the ideal. I have no children myself, but perhaps this vision might have changed my mind! The temple's "pilgrims" included those who had already chosen, mothers with awe-struck children, some of the mothers already pregnant with another child. It was a woman's space, above all, and very few men, even if they were fathers, dared to trespass there. 

If you did choose the path of the Mother, the church organization was there to help you. Around the plaza of the temple were establishments, supported by donations from the community, to support the women who wanted to bring more Noantri into the world. There were pre-natal clinics, pregnancy and birthing places, and residences for the new mothers and children. This was a Second Recognition society, and most males did not have much contact with the females after their impregnation, so the "sisters" of the church, as it were, also became its administrators and helpers while their children were still infants, in return for child care. The statistics of this era of the cult are hard to discover, but during its heyday, it is possible that thousands of Noantri children were brought into the world at this site and at satellite sites around the Noantri colonies on Algonar. These new Noantri were often fostered out as they grew older, so that they could receive education and support outside the oppression of the city.

As a student of the dismal social sciences might suspect, this situation could not last very long. It was the expense and upkeep of the Temple itself that set off the underlying instability of the church, but the other main influence in its ultimate destruction was the shocking new factor of the Ingathering, and the visitors who came to prophesy a new destiny for the Noantri...

Part two will follow.