Free The Seven Gifts by John Mellor Page B

the waves, and the stars.
    Up above him, dodging around the fleeing,
fractured clouds, were countless billions of stars; some near and
some far. Some, he knew, no longer existed; yet he could still see
them. Some were about to die, yet he would see them for many years
to come. And he wondered how many were there, whose light had yet
to reach him.
    That was not a sky above him, it was a
lamination of time. Layer upon layer of different slices of time,
reaching out beyond his vision, beyond his comprehension.
    He had felt very small, and singularly aware
of the sheer enormity of existence and his own tiny part in it.
Beneath that indescribable, endless vista of time and space - and
who knew what else - there was a young boy and his boat, battling
for their lives in a storm; unbeknown to anyone.
    But perhaps not? Perhaps someone was up
there, watching over him. It was a comforting prospect; and of no
less value for that.
    That experience, he remembered, had made the
nightmare of the storm worthwhile. That vision - of the timeless
immensity of life; the billions of other worlds, on which perhaps
other young boys in small boats battled for their lives in
unimaginable alien storms - had remained with him long after he had
reached the safety of harbour.
    And now it had come back to him. Awareness,
the Angel had spoken of - essential to a fisherman; to any seaman
for that matter. That was why he liked being at sea. He had a sense
of awareness out there - of his own being and its relationship with
others. He was conscious of life and death; of feelings and senses;
conscious of values. And that, he suddenly knew, was why the Angel
had brought him fishing - to remind him of that consciousness. For
Consciousness, he realised, was the third gift.
    He turned to the Angel, who was leaning over
the transom checking the tension of the warps.
    “The third story is about awareness, isn't
it?" He didn't wait for confirmation but carried straight on:
“Awareness of one's own life and the lives of others. Awareness of
relationships; needs and fears, love and sorrow. Awareness of space
and time; events; death, and what lies beyond it. Awareness . . .
consciousness.
    “I think the third gift was
Consciousness."
     
    “Yes," the Angel confirmed,
straightening up from the transom. “ CONSCIOUSNESS was the guardian's
third gift to the Earth.
    “The first was SPACE - in which it could
exist; the second was TIME - in which it could change; and the
third was CONSCIOUSNESS - in which it could know.
    “These first three gifts give the Earth form
and structure, enabling it to create a suitable environment in
which people can evolve and then grow. The remaining four define
its future, and give the people their purpose." Then the boat
stopped dead, the trawl warps twanging in the water astern of them.
The boy grinned.
    “I think you've just found us a rock."
    “Oh well," the Angel sighed. “I should have
been aware of that, I suppose." She laughed. “Let's haul the gear
then and see if we've caught anything for our tea."
     
     
    o ------------------------
o
     
     
     
    ~ The Fourth Gift ~
     
    Flight of a Honey
Bee
     
    HENRY WAS a small, anthropomorphic honey
bee. He had a startling black and yellow body, covered with hairs
for trapping pollen, and four hard-working, whirring wings. He also
had five eyes, two feelers, six legs, three skins, four lips, four
Malphigian tubes, two mandibular glands, two salivary glands, eight
wax glands, three body segments, a very large multiple brain, and a
sting - among other things. He was, for all his apparent
insignificance, a complex little creature. He was also - being a
worker bee - technically a ‘she', although sexually undeveloped.
However, Henry was an aggressive little honey bee, always buzzing
around, shouting and telling the other bees what to do; which
masculine trait explains both name and pronoun.
    Whenever a worker bee returned to the hive
after a hard day searching for nectar, she would perform