“I’ll vote with La Floquet,” said the Aldebaranian quietly. “Important business waits for me outside.”
Troublemaker, Thornhill thought. “Four against three, then, with the Spican and the Regulan unheard from. And I guess they’ll stay unheard from since we can’t speak their languages.”
“I can speak Regulan,” volunteered the Aldebaranian. Without waiting for further discussion, he wheeled to face the grave dewlapped being and exchanged four or five short, crisp sentences with him. Turning again, he said, “Our friend votes to leave. This ties the score, I believe.”
“Just a second,” Thornhill said hotly. “How do we know that’s what he said? Suppose—”
The mask of affability slipped from the alien’s face. “Suppose what?” he asked coldly. “If you intend to put a shadow on my honor, Thornhill—” He left the sentence unfinished.
“It would be pretty pointless dueling here,” Thornhill said, “unless your honor satisfies easily. You couldn’t very well kill me for long. Perhaps a temporary death might soothe you, but let’s let it drop. I’ll take your interpreting job in good faith. We’re four apiece for staying or trying to break out.”
La Floquet said, “It was good of you to take this little vote, Thornhill. But it’s not a voting matter. We’re individuals, not a corporate entity, and I choose not to remain here so long as I can make the attempt to escape.” The little man spun on his heel and stalked away from the group.
“There ought to be some way of stopping him,” said McKay thickly. “If he escapes—”
Thornhill shook his head. “It’s not as easy as all that. How’s he going to get off the planet, even if he does pass the mountains?”
“You don’t understand,” McKay said. “The Watcher simply said if one of us leaves the Valley, all must go. And if La Floquet succeeds, it’s death for me.”
“Perhaps we’re dead already,” Marga suggested, breaking her long silence. “Suppose each of us—you in your spaceliner, me in my observatory—died at the same moment and came here. What if—”
The sky darkened in the now-familiar manner that signaled the approach of the Watcher.
“Ask him,” Thornhill said. “He’ll tell you all about it.”
The black cloud descended.
You are not dead, came the voiceless answer to the unspoken question. Though some of you will die if the barrier be passed.
Again Thornhill felt chilled by the presence of the formless being. “Who are you?” he shouted. “What do you want with us?”
I am the Watcher.
“And what do you want with us?” Thornhill repeated.
I am the Watcher, came the inflexible answer. Fibrils of the cloud began to trickle away in many directions; within moments the sky was clear. Thornhill slumped back against a rock and looked at Marga.
“He comes and he goes, feeds us, keeps us from killing ourselves or each other. It’s like a zoo, Marga! And we’re the chief exhibits!”
La Floquet and Vellers came stumping toward them. “Are you satisfied with the answers to your questions?” La Floquet demanded. “Do you still want to spend the rest of your days here?”
Thornhill smiled. “Go ahead, La Floquet. Go climb the mountain. I’m changing my vote. It’s five-three in favor of leaving.”
“I thought you were with me,” said McKay.
Thornhill ignored him. “Go on, La Floquet. You and Vellers climb that mountain. Get out of the Valley—if you can.”
“Come with us,” La Floquet said.
“Ah, no—I’d rather stay here. But I won’t object if you go.”
Fleetingly, La Floquet cast a glance at the giant tooth that blocked the Valley’s exit, and it seemed to Thornhill that a shadow of fear passed over the little man’s face. But La Floquet clamped his jaws tight and through locked lips said, “Vellers, are you with me?”
The big man shrugged amiably. “It can’t hurt to take a look, I figure.”
“Let’s go, then,” La Floquet said firmly. He threw one black, infuriated glance at Thornhill and struck out for the path leading to the mountain approach.
When he was out of earshot, Marga said, “Sam, why’d you do that?”
“I wanted to see how he’d react. I saw it.”
McKay tugged at his arm fretfully. “I’ll die if we leave the Valley! Don’t you see that, Mr. Thornhill?”
Sighing, Thornhill said, “I see it. But don’t worry too much about La Floquet. He’ll be back before long.”
Slowly the hours passed, and the red sun slipped below the horizon, leaving only the distant blue sun to provide warmth. Thornhill’s wristwatch told him it was past ten in the evening—nearly twelve hours since the time he had boarded the spaceliner on Jurinalle, more than four hours since his anticipated arrival time in the main city of Vengamon. They would have searched in vain for him by now and would be wondering how a man could vanish so thoroughly from a spaceship in hyperdrive.
The little group sat together at the river’s edge. The Spican had shifted fully into his brownish-red phase and sat silently like some owl heralding the death of the universe. The other two aliens kept mainly to themselves as well. There was little to be said.
McKay huddled himself into a knob-kneed pile of limbs and stared up at the mountain as if hoping to see some sign of La Floquet and Vellers. Thornhill understood the expression on his face; McKay knew clearly that if La Floquet succeeded in leaving the Valley’s confines, he would pay the price of his double resurrection in the same instant. McKay looked like a man seated below a thread-hung sword.
Thornhill himself stared silently at the mountain, wondering where the two men were now, how far they would get before La Floquet’s cowardice forced them to turn back. He had no doubt now that La Floquet dreaded the mountain—otherwise he would have made the attempt long before instead of merely threatening it. Now he had been goaded into it by Thornhill, but would he be successful? Probably not; a brave man with one deep-lying fear often never conquered that fear. In a way Thornhill pitied little La Floquet; the gamecock would be forced to come back in humiliation, though he might delay that moment as long as he possibly could.
“You seem troubled,” Marga said.
“Troubled? No, just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About Vengamon, and my mine there … and how the vultures have probably already started to go after my estate.”
“You don’t miss Vengamon, do you?” she said.
He smiled and shook his head. “Not yet. That mine was my whole life, you know. I took little vacations now and then, but I thought only of the mine and my supervisors and how lazy they were, and the price of ore in the interstellar markets. Until now. It must be some strange property of this Valley, but for the first time the mine seems terribly remote, as if it had always belonged to someone else. Or as if it had owned me and I’m free at last.”
“I know something of how you feel,” Marga said. “I lived in the observatory day and night. There were always so many pictures to be taken, so many books to read, so much to do—I couldn’t bear the thought of missing a day or even of stopping my work to answer the phone. But there are no stars here, and I hardly miss them.”
He took her hand lightly in his. “I wonder, though—If La Floquet succeeds, if we ever do get out of this Valley and back into our ordinary lives, will we be any different? Or will I go back to double-entry bookkeeping and you to stellar luminosities?”
“We won’t know until we get back,” she said. “If we get back. But look over there.”
Thornhill looked. McKay and Miss Hardin were deep in a serious conversation, and McKay had shyly taken her hand. “Love comes at last to Professor of Medieval History McKay.” Thornhill grinned. “And to Miss Something-or-Other Hardin, whoever she is.”
&nbs
p; The Regulan was asleep; the Aldebaranian stared broodingly at his feet, drawing pictures in the sand. The bloated sphere that was the Spican was absorbed in its own alien thoughts. The Valley was very quiet.
“I used to pity creatures in the zoos,” Thornhill said. “But it’s not such a bad life after all.”
“So far. We don’t know what the Watcher has in store for us.”
A mist rolled down from the mountain peak, drifting in over the Valley. At first Thornhill thought the Watcher had returned for another visit with his captives; he saw, though, that it was merely a thin mountain mist dropping over them. It was faintly cold, and he drew Marga tighter against him.
He thought back over thirty-seven years as the mist rolled in. He had come through those thirty-seven years well enough, trim, athletic, with quick reflexes and a quicker mind. But not until this day—it was hard to believe this was still his first day in the Valley—had he fully realized life held other things besides mining and earning money.
It had taken the Valley to teach him that; would he remember the lesson if he ever returned to civilization? Might it not be better to stay here, with Marga, in eternal youth?
He frowned. Eternal youth, yes … but at the cost of his free will. He was nothing but a prisoner here, if a pampered one.
Suddenly he did not know what to think.
Marga’s hand tightened against his. “Did you hear something? Footsteps, I think. It must be La Floquet and Vellers coming back from the mountain.”
“They couldn’t make it,” Thornhill said, not knowing whether to feel relief or acute disappointment. He heard the sound of voices—and two figures, one small and wiry, one tall and broad, advanced toward them through the thickening mist. He turned to face them.
Chapter Four
Despite the dim illumination of twilight and the effects of the fog Thornhill had no difficulty reading the expression on La Floquet’s face. It was not pleasant. The little man was angry both with himself and with Thornhill, and naked hatred was visible in his sharp features.
“Well?” Thornhill asked casually. “No go?”
“We got several thousand feet before this damned fog closed in around us. It was almost as if the Watcher sent it on purpose. We had to turn back.”
“And was there any sign of a pass leading out of the Valley?”
La Floquet shrugged. “Who knows? We couldn’t as much as see each other! But I’ll find it. I’ll go back tomorrow when both suns are in the sky—and I’ll find a way out!”
“You devil,” came McKay’s thin, dry voice. “Won’t you ever give up?”
“Not while I can still walk!” La Floquet shouted defiantly. But there was a note of mock bravado in his voice. Thornhill wondered just what had really happened up there on the mountain path.
He was not kept long in ignorance. La Floquet stalked angrily away, adopting a pose of injured arrogance, leaving Vellers standing near Thornhill. The big man looked after him and shook his head.
“The liar!”
“What’s that?” Thornhill asked, half-surprised.
“There was no fog on the mountain,” Vellers muttered bitterly. “He found the fog when we came back down, and he took it as an excuse. The little bullfrog makes much noise, but it’s hollow.”
Thornhill said earnestly, “Tell me, what happened up there? If there wasn’t any fog, why’d you turn back?”
“We got no more than a thousand feet up,” Vellers said. “He had been leading. But then he dropped back and got very pale. He said he couldn’t go on any farther.”
“Why? Was he afraid of the height?”
“I don’t think so,” Vellers said. “I think he was afraid of getting to the top and seeing what’s there. Maybe he knows there isn’t any way out. Maybe he’s afraid to face it. I don’t know. But he made me follow him back down.”
Suddenly Vellers grunted heavily, and Thornhill saw that La Floquet had come up quietly behind the big man and jabbed him sharply in the small of the back. Vellers turned. It took time for a man six feet seven to turn.
“Fool!” La Floquet barked. “Who told you these lies? Why this fairy tale, Vellers?”
“Lies? Fairy tale? Get your hands off me, La Floquet. You know damn well you funked out up there. Don’t try to fast-talk your way out now.”
A muscle tightened convulsively in the corner of La Floquet’s slit of a mouth. His eyes flashed; he stared at Vellers as if he were some beast escaped from a cage. Suddenly La Floquet’s fists flicked out, and Vellers stepped back, crying out in pain. He swung wildly at the smaller man, but La Floquet was untouchable, humming in under Vellers’ guard to plant a stinging punch on the slablike jaw, darting back out again as the powerful Vellers tried to land a decisive blow. La Floquet fought like a fox at bay.
Thornhill moved uneasily forward, not wanting to get in the way of Vellers’ massive fists as the giant tried vainly to hit La Floquet. Catching the eye of the Aldebaranian, Thornhill acted. He seized Vellers’ arm and tugged it back while the alien similarly blocked off La Floquet.
“Enough!” Thornhill snapped. “It doesn’t matter which one of you’s lying. Fighting’s foolish—you told me that yourself earlier today, La Floquet.”
Vellers dropped back sullenly, keeping one eye on La Floquet. The small man smiled. “Honor must be defended, Thornhill, Vellers was spreading lies about me.”
“A coward and a liar, too,” Vellers said darkly.
“Quiet, both of you,” Thornhill told them. “Look up there!”
He pointed.
A gathering cloud hung low over them. The Watcher was drawing near—had been, unnoticed, all during the raging quarrel. Thornhill looked up, waiting, trying to discern some living form within the amorphous blackness that descended on them. It was impossible. He saw only spreading clouds of night hiding the dim sunlight.
He felt the ground rocking gently, quivering in a barely perceptible manner. What now, he wondered, peering at the enfolding darkness. A sound like a faroff musical chord echoed in his ears—a subsonic vibration, perhaps, making him giddy, soothing him, calming him the way gentle stroking might soothe a cat.
Peace among you, my pets, the voiceless voice said softly, almost crooningly. You quarrel too much. Let there be peace.…
The subsonic note washed up over him, bathed him, cleansed him of hatred and anger. He stood there smiling, not knowing why he smiled, feeling only peace and calmness.
The cloud began to lift; the Watcher was departing. The unheard note diminished in intensity, and the motion of the ground subsided. The Valley was at rest, in perfect harmony. The last faint murmur of the note died away.
For a long while no one spoke. Thornhill looked around, seeing an uncharacteristic blandness loosen the tight set of La Floquet’s jaws, seeing Vellers’ heavy-featured, angry face begin to smile. He himself felt no desire to quarrel with anyone.
But deep in his mind the words of the Watcher echoed and thrust at him: Peace among you, my pets.
Pets.
Not even specimens in a zoo, Thornhill thought with increasing bitterness as the tranquility induced by the subsonic began to leave him. Pets. Pampered pets.
He realized he was trembling. It had seemed so attractive, this life in the Valley. He tried to cry out, to shout his rage at the bare purple mountains that hemmed them in, but the subsonic had done its work well. He could not even vocalize his anger.
Thornhill looked away, trying to drive the Watcher’s soothing words from his mind.
In the days that followed they began to grow younger. McKay, the oldest, was the first to show any effects of the rejuvenation. It was on the fourth day in the Valley—days being measured, for lack of other means, by the risings of the red sun. The nine of them had settled into a semblance of a normal way of life by that time. Sin
ce the time when the Watcher had found it necessary to calm them, there had been no outbreaks of bitterness among them; instead, each went about his daily life quietly, almost sullenly, under the numbing burden of the knowledge of their status as pets.
They found they had little need for sleep or food; the manna sufficed to nourish them, and as for sleep, that could be had in brief cat naps when the occasion demanded. They spent much of their time telling each other of their past lives, hiking through the Valley, swimming in the river. Thornhill was beginning to get terribly bored with this kind of existence.
McKay had been staring into the swiftly running current when he first noticed it. He emitted a short, sharp cry; Thornhill, thinking something was wrong, ran hurriedly toward him.
“What happened?”
McKay hardly seemed in difficulties. He was staring intently at his reflection in the water. “What color is my hair, Sam?”
“Why, gray—and—and a little touch of brown!” McKay nodded. “Exactly. I haven’t had brown in my hair in twenty years!”
By this time most of the others had gathered. McKay indicated his hair and said, “I’m growing younger. I feel it all over. And look—look at La Floquet’s scalp!”
In surprise the little man clapped one hand to the top of his skull—and drew the hand away again, thunderstruck. “I’m growing hair again,” he said softly, fingering the gentle fuzz that had appeared on his tanned, sun-freckled scalp. There was a curious look of incredulity on his wrinkled brown face. “That’s impossible!”
“It’s also impossible for a man to rise from the dead,” Thornhill pointed out. “The Watcher is taking very good care of us.”
He looked at all of them—at McKay and La Floquet, at Vellers, at Marga, at Lona Hardin, at the aliens. Yes, they had all changed. They looked healthier, younger, more vigorous.
The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction Megapack(r) Page 44