Speculative sullivan the.., p.8
Speculative Sullivan: The Collected Short Fiction, page 8
9
The raging fire of the alien dawn illuminated terrain that was markedly different from the day before. Forests were still abundant, but not in such overwhelming profusion. The ocean of jungle was no more; instead, islands of dark trees were haphazardly scattered against an ochre carpet of vegetation. Gently rolling hills blended gracefully with the scenery. Sean and Rachel were not sure at first that these were towns, so skillfully did they complement their surroundings.
At times the husks of cities were seen in the distance, hazy giants sleeping in the flickering light.
Later in the day the music started again, booming symphonically into Sean’s consciousness in a loud scherzo. This continued for some time, finally mellowing to a harmonious lento. At least Gruber was sticking to a single work, Sean thought. He might even learn to enjoy the orchestral accompaniment, given time . . . if he hadn’t had the disconcerting notion that Gruber knew he was listening, and had even gone so far as to comment on Sean’s thoughts with a well chosen musical passage or two. But this was nonsense, he told himself; Gruber was incapable of such subtlety. Of course, there was really no evidence of that; Gruber could be musically sophisticated, for all Sean knew. Nobody on the ship had known a thing about him. He could have been a concert violinist.
Where else could the music be coming from, Sean asked himself? Rachel knew nothing about it. It couldn’t have been the aliens. The whole business began to get on his nerves.
“Sean brought us over to the other side,” Gruber sang, accompanied contrapuntally by Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”
Sean spun on his heels angrily. “Shut up, Gruber!” He bared his broken teeth in a feral grimace.
“Sean.” Rachel grabbed his arm. “He has to have some way to relieve the pressure—he can’t get at Javak.”
“He’s not going to take it out on me!” Sean snapped. “I’m not an empath.”
“Just have a little patience.”
“I’ve had patience all along,” Sean shouted. “I’m tired of making excuses for him.”
“Sean, they’re listening.”
He glanced over at the group of aliens huddled at the far end of the ship, around the forward ring. Two of them were looking at him: Gifon and Pomuz. The others were engaged in some sort of ritual massage, gathered in a circle with their heads down, arm over arm. Or were they communing? They stroked each other’s gelatinous flesh tentatively, groping. If they were linked mentally he might be able to listen in, as he had listened in accidentally on Gruber’s thoughts. He concentrated.
Closing his eyes, he blanked his mind, as he had been taught in Zen training. He straightened his spine and began to count his breaths, one for each inhale, one for each exhale. At length there was a stillness in his mind, balanced by the cadence of his breathing. Through the quiet flitted occasional random ideas; these he neither tried to capture nor block out, letting them vanish as they would. Finally, even these few involuntary thoughts were gone.
The stillness rippled, as water mildly disturbed. Something emerged, vibrant and complex. It grew, a nebulous mixture of thought, sensation and emotion; it began to sort itself out, giving individual substance to the components of the alien jumble. These components became clearer; they were—
“The o-ther side.”
—gone.
The orchestra, at the peak of a crescendo, was drowning out the aliens.
“. . . on the other side,” Gruber’s incongruously pleasant voice crooned. “Sean brought us over to the o-tha-ha si-eye-ide.”
10
When Sean first opened his eyes and saw the spire reaching up toward him, he thought he was still dreaming. The ship came in nearer to it, then veered away and circled. It was an enormous needle, bristling with quills, thrusting up from the depths of a sprawling network of orderly movement. A city.
As the ship drew closer, Sean saw that the quills were actually rectangular moorings, like the one they had used to enter the ringship. Nearer the ground was a level where dozens of unoccupied ships hovered. It was an airport, centrally located in the metropolis.
The breeze began to whisper through the ship once again, as it closed with the mooring and aligned itself.
Javak motioned for them to go out through the shimmering metal screen at the mouth of the mooring tunnel. Gruber rose first and stepped through soberly. There were no gaps in the stuff as he moved through it.
Sean and Rachel exchanged apprehensive glances. Biting his lip, Sean took Rachel’s hand and they went in after Gruber. He was just ahead, walking downward through the kaleidoscopic patterns thrown on the tunnel walls, humming to himself. The six aliens came through behind them.
Silently, Rachel and Sean walked with cautious steps. Though their feet still clung, their bodies underwent a curious sensation of buoyancy as they went farther down the tunnel. When they reached the liquid-metal screen at the end they were nearly floating.
Gruber dived through the stuff in slow motion, a distorted silhouette of his form visible through it for only an instant.
“Well,” Rachel said. She pushed herself forward, and was absorbed by the shimmering metal. Sean took a deep breath and followed.
Falling! screamed the wrenching and twisting in his gut as he stepped into open space: the building was nothing more than an enormous cylinder. Figures were bobbing in mid-air at various levels. Convulsive gasps ripped at Sean’s throat as he shot his hand back through the cold, wet metal, grabbing the edge of the aperture.
In front of him was the floating figure of Gruber; a grotesque, laughing foetus. “Come on in,” Gruber said. “The water’s fine.”
Sean was still holding Rachel’s hand; like Gruber, she floated free, laughing.
“Gruber’s right,” she said. She disengaged her fingers and swam outward.
Holding his breath, Sean watched her. He didn’t want to follow, but Javak’s sonorous hum came from behind. He imagined Javak was urging him on, and, even though Pomuz had been a calming influence, he didn’t want to try his former taskmaster’s patience. He jumped.
Somersaulting, Sean passed Rachel and Gruber. His body spun rapidly, then slowed. The aliens, clucking among themselves, stepped from the shimmering aperture and floated effortlessly toward him, one by one.
With a rolling motion, Pomuz flipped onto his back, and began gently to descend. Javak kicked, frog-like, until he was next to Gruber. He received a hateful stare from the big man as he pushed him after Pomuz.
The group descended to the bottom, passing others on their way up. At the base they dropped lightly to their feet. Around them were tunnel mouths, recessed in the curve of the building’s interior. They entered one.
For some time they walked through featureless passageways, snaking first one way, then another. Weightlessness gradually decreased, and was finally gone altogether. Waves of reverse-charge gravitons, Sean hypothesized, centered in the building by, perhaps, the same power that flew the ringships and ignited the wirepoints—the power that inhabited the tetrahedron.
“Where are your friends taking us now?” Gruber asked him, grinning.
“My friends?”
“Yes,” Gruber said. “You brought us to see your friends, didn’t you, Callahan? Aren’t they bringing us home to meet the family?”
Snatches of music capered through Sean’s mind, but he quickly shut them out. He tried to ignore the taunt, too, but failed. The accusation was simply too close to the truth—he was responsible for them being there.
Like a worm, the tunnel wound outward from the needle-port into the city. They emerged from its mouth and blinked into the alien light.
It was an enormous, thriving place they saw, motion and color everywhere; an expressionist painting come to life. Massive, convoluted shapes were lifted into the air or buffeted from side to side: entire buildings disassembled themselves and regrouped in novel patterns in a matter of seconds. Humanoid forms, with their visible circulatory systems, nerves and internal organs, passed in groups, or singly. The only ornament or garment any of them wore was a small orange thing around the neck or on the shoulder. Sean thought they looked at Pomuz deferentially.
“Big man I see through you,” Gruber sang to the tune of “Skip to My Lou,” capering ludicrously around the group. Javak seemed a bit annoyed, but the others buzzed and squawked excitably. The phonemes, “Groo-bah,” were distinguishable several times.
Gruber did a mock German folk-dance until he tired of it, then fell sullenly in line behind the others. They all boarded a skeletal vehicle that stopped conveniently for them; a more uniform and elegant conveyance than the jungle transport, but quite similar to it in general appearance. Swift and silent, it whisked them through the twisting streets. In the distance, an imposing building brooded over the city, massive and unchanging.
Gliding to a smooth stop, the vehicle confronted a giant jigsaw puzzle. Its parts interlocked in a preposterous manner, shifting and balancing precariously here and there as they watched. It was a building, but not like the Terrans were used to.
Pomuz indicated that Sean, Rachel and Gruber should enter it.
“How does he expect us to get inside such a thing?” Rachel asked, somewhat intimidated by the structure’s unstable look.
“Fun-nee house on the o-ther side,” Gruber sang as he passed under a balcony that was aligning itself above an entrance shaped like a two-meter tall keyhole. Sean and Rachel followed him reluctantly.
Their captors steered them toward a rounded doorway, through coruscation that imitated the natural light outside. They stopped while the aliens conversed. Pomuz said something to Javak, who retreated, never taking his eyes from Gruber. The five other aliens followed, disappearing around a corner.
They were alone.
“Let’s go,” Gruber said, looking sharply at Sean and Rachel. “This is our chance.”
“Where do you suggest we go?” Sean asked him. “We’re in a city full of aliens, and we haven’t the faintest idea of how to fly one of those ring-ships, much less where to go.”
“That’s why they left us alone here, Frederic,” Rachel said. “They knew we couldn’t go anywhere.”
“Look at it this way,” Sean said. “At least here they’ve given us a little privacy.”
Gruber’s heavy features took on a hurt expression. He began to sulk, and did not respond.
“Let’s see what’s in there,” Rachel said, pointing to the circular hole in the wall.
“All right.” Sean went ahead, peering gingerly into the adjoining chamber. As far as he could see in the dim light, it contained nothing but several large loops suspended from the upper part of the concave, polished stone. He stepped inside cautiously—and was struck by a jet of tiny particles.
Startled, he jumped back into the corridor.
“What is it?” Rachel demanded, frightened.
“Something hit me.” He looked at her.
“Sean!” She broke into a grin, white teeth exposed through the caked grime on her skin. “Your face is clean! It’s a bath!”
Gruber snorted and barrelled through the opening, grabbed at the hanging loops to steady himself, turned and grinned at Sean and Rachel.
They laughed, threw off what was left of their clothing, and joined him.
11
Sean and Rachel wandered, refreshed, through the jigsaw building. Aliens came and went, but paid no attention to them. When one of the aliens wanted to go somewhere, he simply approached the wall; it would swing open to admit him, like a door or hatchway.
“It really is TK,” Sean said, after watching one exit. “But they need a prop of some kind, like the rings—or the wirepoints.”
“Not here,” Rachel said. “Here they seem to be able to control everything with their minds alone.”
“That could mean the power source is centered here in the city,” Sean replied.
“Possibly.” She caressed his arm.
Sean looked at her. She looked almost radiant after the bath, and he had not had sex with anyone for a very long time; he was becoming aroused.
And so was Rachel. They backed into an alcove created by the recently moved stone.
“Do you think they’ll stop us from making love here?” Rachel asked, as if she could read his mind.
A bit surprised, Sean looked at her again. “Why don’t we find out?” He put his arm around her and kissed her, open-mouthed. She responded eagerly, her tongue playing lightly with his. The thrill of imminent danger coupled with the sensuousness of the kiss gave them a tremendous lift. There was no jolt from the prod.
Hurriedly removing their clothing, they fell to the floor. Sean entered her hungrily. They made love with great passion, like two children who had just discovered sex.
Later, as they lay together in the flickering artificial light, enjoying a pleasant, warm fatigue, Rachel brushed her lips against Sean’s neck, her small body curled around his.
“Sean,” she whispered.
“Umm?”
“What do you think is going to become of Gruber?”
“Hard to say.”
“He frightens me,” she said. “The way he acts.”
“I doubt he’ll ever be quite right again,” Sean replied. “He just keeps going deeper into his own head—and mine.”
“Do you think the aliens know he’s sick?”
Before Sean could answer, a silhouette loomed above them. It was Javak, staring at them, his bony facial plates vibrating.
“Well, look who’s here,” Rachel said. “I always suspected he was interested in having a little fun.”
Javak gestured for them to get up and come with him.
Sean reached for the discarded clothing on the floor, tossing Rachel’s kilt to her. Slipping into his own, he patted the inside pocket. There was nothing there.
The tetrahedron had been stolen.
Was Javak the thief? Sean stared at the clear, gelatinous back of the alien.
Part of the floor rose gently to become an inclined plane, while the ornate wall in front of them tumbled back out of sight. They walked up the incline and through the makeshift exit.
No one had even known he had the object, not even Rachel. He wanted to tell her now, about the nocturnal meeting with Gifon, the presentation of the tetrahedron, his subsequent concealment of it and its loss, but it was too late to confide in her. Besides, he couldn’t afford to talk about anything until he knew precisely how much the aliens understood.
Where was Javak taking them? They walked behind his swaying figure up one passageway, down another, while he moved obstacles with the power of his mind. The power of his mind, and . . .?
A heavy block swung open, revealing the city, bathed in the glittering auroral light of the planet’s night. They stepped outside. In front of them was a skeletal conveyance like the one they had come to the building in. Pomuz and Gruber were inside it.
Elongating his syllables, Pomuz hummed something in a tone Sean interpreted as affable. The words, except for “Kal-han,” and “Ray-chel,” were indistinguishable, but the intention was clear: they were at least as much guests as captives. In the heart of the city the aliens could afford to be generous.
Javak, Rachel and Sean got inside the vehicle. It began to move, snaking quietly through the city. There was as much activity in the streets as there had been in the daytime: strange, ribbed vehicles slipped about ubiquitously; structures constantly adjusted and readjusted their details; scintillating, artificial imitations of the planet’s natural light exploded, danced and rippled in a variety of colorful displays.
Pomuz carried a small, glittering box with him, about two hands high and three wide. He opened it as they traveled and removed something from it. Enclosed in his huge hands were three small, chirruping creatures. These animals had scaly heads and tails, like reptiles, but their bodies were covered with a light, orange fur. They had long tongues that darted half a meter from Pomuz’ cupped palms, and inordinately large, intelligent black eyes.
Pomuz handed an animal to each of the three humans. The creatures fit easily into the palm of one hand. Sean accepted the gift, chuckling at the fat little beast’s somber expression. Smiling Rachel took hers. Gruber allowed the last one to be placed in his hand, its tongue flicking about like a tiny whip, but said nothing.
“I noticed these before, when we first arrived,” Sean said, “but I didn’t realize they were living things.”
“Why do you suppose they gave them to us?” Rachel asked. An answer of sorts came almost immediately, as her animal’s tongue lashed out and absorbed a drop of perspiration on its spongy tip.
Rachel and Sean were delighted. They laughed as Sean’s animal repeated the action with its tongue on his forehead.
“Look, Frederic,” Rachel said, eager to share their discovery with him.
Gruber’s eyes widened and he lifted his massive hand, the animal in his grasp. Only its head and tail were free. Gruber squeezed. The thing’s jaws opened in a silent scream and its tongue flicked wildly.
“No!” cried Rachel, staring wildly at the big man.
The animal stopped moving, blood trickling out of its mouth, over Gruber’s fat fingers and down his wrists.
No longer laughing, Sean watched Gruber hurl the tiny corpse away, but it bounced back from the car’s invisible field; it fell at Gruber’s feet, eyes staring up at him.
They were moving toward the immense building they had seen in the distance earlier. It stood, static and monolithic, like a guardian over the city. As the vehicle reached this gigantic building, its configuration of rings bent like a worm, fitting itself into a hollow groove in the stone face, two-thirds of the way up the side of the building. Streaming light suddenly issued from within—an opening. Pomuz stepped out between two of the car’s rings and was swallowed up completely by the light.
“This is important,” Sean said, not knowing why he was so sure of it. “Very important.”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “I think you’re right.”
They looked at the alien, standing in the brilliant light so calmly, like a distorted anatomical drawing. Sean put his hands to Rachel’s waist and helped her through the rings, then stepped up beside her. Gruber followed.
