My crude dam might hold for an hour, certainly no longer. I had no time to convince them by persuasion. It would be opposing the full violence of reality with the thin web of philosophy. The important thing at the moment was to lead the tribe to safety.
I looked down upon them and I began to speak wearily.
"I am Theusaman, god of the sun," I said. "Take up your possessions and follow me...."
Baiel had won, after all.
All that happened more than fifty years ago.
I did lead the tribe to safety; that much I accomplished. They have since built many villages and they have learned the art of agriculture and of domesticating cattle. They have thrived and grown and joined with other tribes. They will survive and someday rule their planet.
As Baiel once predicted, the glacier is rapidly retreating. The process began with the heat generated by the exposed dorsal tube of the dead Olympus. Each spring the run-off of melting water is greater than the ice which accumulates during the winter. When the glacier is gone, it will give my people a fertile world like our own Earth.
For that I am glad, because I have given them nothing else.
Nothing else!