(back)   (page 3 of 3)   Millions of years passed.   The Watchers came once again to Fengi.   'Another race has appeared,' they said. 'They have tamed fire, and are taming animals too. They reshape the earth and the wood and the water in their own image. Go and stop them.'   So Fengi appeared on earth again, hissing loud enough to rattle the heavens. The primitive humans stood before her, huddling against each other in fear. None of them spoke.   'Who is your king?' cried Fengi.   One stepped forward. 'We have no king, no lord or leader. Not in any real sense. Each is the master of their own nature among us, and all may do as their minds direct them.'   'Know you that I am Fengi, the Great Mother of the Watchers, the ones you call Roaches, and this world is mine and my childrens'. You puny creatures, who try in vain to master nature, have no claim to it. My race beat the fishes in a great war of evolution, and the dinosaurs, and they will also beat you. For the Watchers will always emerge from any disaster unharmed. My children will never change, not until the sun falls from the sky and we come again to paradise.'   Another human stepped forward. 'We know of the blessing you have bestowed upon your people. None of us are in a position to bless our people, but if we were, we might say: Be wise and cunning. Live by your smarts and your skills. Above all, rely not on the world, for it was spawned by a harsh and merciless monster; but believe in only one constant--change. For if you can change, then the universe can hold no terrors for you.'   Fengi's eyes burned with fury. 'I declare war on you,' she hissed. 'You will fall, like the others fell.'   The first human who spoke turned to the others. 'We cannot kill these Watchers, as the others tried to do. We can only accept them, and try to live with them. If we can concentrate on our own survival, we can win. If we care only for glorifying ourselves, we will fall.'   So Fengi left.   The war began.   The humans built their cities and their tools; they raised monuments and created works of art. And they fought each other, destroying their works, for they had no one leader; but they lived on after the flames had died out, and they changed their ways and learned from their mistakes.   They sent gas and sticky traps to kill the Watchers, or ground them beneath their heel; they built artificial suns in the dark places, so that light would instantly stream down and the Watchers would scuttle frantically out of its merciless eye. But the humans realized that they could never be rid of the Watchers, which had been since the dawn of time, and so they learned to live with them. The watchers have returned to the dark places, watching, preying on the waste of the huge life forms above them, and Fengi sleeps far beneath the surface, in the center of the world.   But...   Someday, as every Watcher knows, the sun will burn red in the sky, the colour of Fengi's ancient eyes; and then it will fall, and fire will spread across the earth; and when that happens, the Watchers will claim their birthright.