by Jerry
The east paled, she supposed it was the east, though it was only its paling that had ever told her so, and soon the sun would rise again. She could stay awake no longer, but at last she had brought her soul to a balance she could live or die with.
Lying on the shore of the lake, she wearily closed her eyes.
She did not think the Roanei ever granted wishes.
But if she could get only one wish, she would wish big.
She would wish alive something the universe needed badly, something the Roanei could not comprehend. She would wish for humanity; but not for Man.
She thought, her withered cheeks wet with her last tears, “Roanei, I wish for the rebirth of the Toomeer, they who gave themselves to death that you yourselves might live.”
For the last time she moved in the landscapes of responsive dream, where human symbols clothed alien reply.
Wearily she struggled across the floor of the barren valley. The hummocks were strewn with countless bones, and they were white, and they were very dry. At a turning in the path she came across a dwarf It squatted among the bones and stared up at her.
“Good evening,” the dwarf said quietly.
“Good evening.”
“You are quite certain of your wish?” it asked. “This is forever, you know. You wish for the rebirth of a race you do not know, rather than your own?”
She nodded mutely.
The dwarf s face puckered oddly. “This is very hard to understand. Did you hate your own kind so?”
“I didn’t hate,” she said, “but I never learned to love. I didn’t have the Toomeer to teach me,” she added with a touch of bitterness.
“Do you hate us, then?” asked the dwarf.
“I am trying not to hate anything for a few minutes more, and then it won’t matter,” she said.
The dwarf looked down at its gnarled palms, spat into them and wiped them on its thighs.
“The universe is full of creatures,” it said slowly, “and all live their separate lives and crave their varied wants and hold their distinct values, and little do we comprehend or sympathize with any of them. One thing we find always and everywhere. When an individual is brought back to brief existence, and permitted to request racial rebirth, it invariably wishes the return of its own species. Each being appreciates the existence of its own kind, shares their particular values. We never grant such requests. We are rather . . . amused.”
It looked at her, its eyes almost pleading. “But you . . . you have shamed us.”
It was silent awhile, rocking back and forth on its haunches, considering.
“If you ask for rebirth,” it said at last, “not for your own kind, but for another, we can only assume that, however little we can appreciate the reasons for such requests, there is something in that other race of higher and more universal value than the contingent preference of a single species. We feel we must grant such a request. For what is higher, should be.”
The dwarf tightened its lips. “We can restore life when we choose. But the cost to us is high. High not in your concepts of money, or time, or energy, but in terms you could not grasp, though to us they are of highest importance. But somehow at this moment, although we feel the costs, we shall ignore them. Your request is granted, then. The race of the Toomeer shall live again, as they did when we were young.”
She bowed her head. “Thank you,” she said softly.
And the heavens darkened with a crash as a sheet of lightning caromed from end to end of the heavens above them, and out of the darkness and the lightning a voice spoke in rolling thunder.
“WE HAVE NO WISH NOR NEED TO RETURN”, boomed out the voice, awesome beyond belief and yet more human than she had ever heard from the lips of men. “FOR CYCLES WE HAVE BEEN CONTENT TO REMAIN FAR BEYOND YOUR VIEW. EVER SINCE THE EVENT YOU PRESUMED OUR ANNIHILATION. WE FOUND THAT THE VALUES WE HAD HELD FOR THEIR OWN SAKE WERE NOT AS EPHEMERAL AS WE HAD FEARED, FOR THEY ARE CHERISHED IN A REALITY YOU HAVE NOT YET GLIMPSED. WE OURSELVES WERE SURPRISED.”
The thunder softened to an organ richness.
“WE HAVE LONG WISHED YOU TO JOIN US, ROANE I. BUT UNTIL YOU RECOGNIZED THE NEED, WE COULD NEITHER REACH NOR INSTRUCT YOU. WHAT YOU HAVE THIS DAY FOUND LACKING WITHIN YOU, WE CAN TEACH YOU TO POSSESS. WE CALL YOU TO US. WILL YOU COME?”
As the dwarf nodded, tears fun-neled the gnomish face.
“AND BRING BACK THIS RACE.” continued the words on the wind. “WE ARE GRATEFUL TO IT. GIVE IT YOUR POWERS AS WELL. PERHAPS THEY MAY DO SOMEWHAT WITH THEM.”
The dwarf stared into the sky. “Will they do better than we? They were a race riddled with weakness and folly beyond imagining.”
“THAT IS TRUE. AND WITH STRENGTH AND UNDERSTANDING. PERHAPS MAN WILL BECOME THE LATTER-DAY ROAN El OR MNESTEPOI. BUT PERHAPS IT WILL BE A NEW CORONOLEE OR TOOMEER. THE RACE HAS THE SEED, THE POTENTIAL FOR ALL THINGS. THE UNIVERSE IS A TESTING GROUND. AND WE MUST NOT PREJUDGE WHAT THEY MA Y BECOME.
“BUT FOR YOU, ROANEI, WE HAVE BEEN LONG WAITING. COME. CHILDREN.”
There was a long silence. Through the air a shaft of brighter sunlight struck down and bathed the dwarf. Finally he sighed deeply, rose to his feet, stretched his arms towards the heavens. He stood there, winds whipping his hair, tears drying on his craggy face; and as she watched, his form dwindled, dissolved, was gone.
She stood alone on the bare plain, the bones scattered far about her, white and bare and dry, to the furthest horizon. As she watched, they began to stir.
“And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.”
THE BEHOLDER’S EYE
Jennifer H. Orr
How would you feel if you were stranded on an alien world with no one to help in your struggle for survived or to alleviate the bitter loneliness of total isolation? And then, picture someone appearing on the scene who strikes you to the core with fear and loathing. Would the experience invite despair, or perhaps a certain shifting about of one’s sense of values?
Savor this one slowly, and then read it again.
Consciousness slowly returned, and with it confusion and a dull, throbbing pain. She lay quietly, trying to orient herself and assess the evident damage to her person. The main source of discomfort proved to be her head, which rested against a rough, hard surface. The rest of her body ached in protest as she cautiously flexed her limbs, but nothing seemed to be seriously amiss. Drawing several deep breaths, she became aware of an unfamiliar fragrance tinged with decay. She heard the murmuring of moving liquid and a gentle, ceaseless rustling.
She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at a network of sinuous branches covered with clumps of shimmering foliage. Then she remembered, and knew she had been lucky. Apprehension as to the fate of the others grew into fear. Suppressing dizziness and nausea, she sat up slowly and looked around.
The ravaged ship lay several yards away. She knew, at a glance, that the damage it had sustained on impact was undoubtedly beyond repair, but she pushed away such hopelessness. Her vision became blurred and she impatiently rubbed her eyes and continued to scan the area. There!
She scrambled to her feet, then collapsed with a new wave of dizziness. She crawled.
Within a few feet of him she knew he was lost. His head rolled back at an improbable angle when she turned him over. One eye stared, unseeing. The other half of his face was no longer recognizable. She mewled with grief, rocking him in her arms.
Her grief was compounded when she reached the ship. He was pinned in the seat, head thrown back, face contorted, dead hands clenched around the edges of the bulkhead plate which had sliced away his life.
She leaned against the sloping side of the ship, drained and weary from her painful task. They were gone—nothing more than two shallow mounds of alien soil. Listlessly gumming a dry cud of sustenance, it occurred to her that she would give some thought to finding a source of nourishment on this strange planet. The tanks were useless and her supplies would not last indefinitely . . .
unless some element could be found in which the spores would flourish and reproduce. Only through an act of will and effort would she survive. But she felt strangely numb. To go on alone—maybe forever?
She got up and squeezed into the ship, pushing against the warped hatch, shutting out the new world, wallowing in solitary misery.
She awoke to self-evaluation. A certain amount of grief, loneliness, and fear was natural and healthy, but it now threatened to become counter-productive. Ashamed at such a show of weakness, she resolved to go on as best she could and set about the business of survival. It became less of an empty task when she confronted her environment. So much to learn . . . That stream—was it safe to drink from? Where did it lead? The numerous plants—some oddly familiar as echoes of her homeland . . . And what of the creatures that lived here and pursued each other so loudly? Nighttime seemed to herald a sort of rampant lunacy. She had listened from within the ship, shivering slightly with fear of the unknown. But now, in the pragmatic light of the morning suns, she knew she must make this place her own.
The stream tested out as drinkable, if somewhat distasteful. Arming herself, she set out along its bank. Best to explore a small distance today. Must not wander far from the ship.
She encountered nothing alarming, but saw much that was encouraging and cause for wonder. The surrounding forest teemed with life. Little fuzzy creatures chittered and scampered through the underbrush—agility on three feet. There were vines weighted down with gleaming fruits, bushes of many-colored blossoms. An ungainly animal with tiny, ferocious eyes peered at her through the trees. She hissed at it, and it darted away, crashing clumsily into everything in its path and snorting indignantly.
She ignored the fruits and collected specimens of moss and lichen. Presently it seemed best to return to the ship as the shadows lengthened.
That night, she studied her haul. Testing proved much of it edible, so she decided to taste a likely sample. Slightly bitter . . . but with an interesting aftertaste. No harm done. At least she wouldn’t starve.
The following weeks were busy, which was good for her morale, though she felt, nonetheless, oppressed at being so stranded in a strange land. The repairs necessary to render the ship operable had proven to exceed her capacity, as she had feared. It was, however, fortunate that more damage had not been done, and downright miraculous that anything.at all had survived so near a brush with the greatest—and rarest—peril of hyperspace travel. The ship’s emergence into space-normal would have been nothing short of explosively spectacular had it materialized any closer than the hairsbreadth which had separated it from another object. She had pondered long as to the nature of that object, only to conclude that it must have been one of the many tiny moons which orbited this globe. Whatever its identity, its presence at that point in the space-time continuum had been sufficient to seal the doom of her ship and shipmates.
She labored at converting the wreck into suitable living quarters, continued to forage for food, and learned to fend off any animals which seemed threatening. Thus, a daily routine of work, reconnaissance, and research was established.
One day, while foraging, she found a wounded threeleg (as she had come to call the little creatures). She carried it home and nursed it in her loneliness. With her ministrations of trial and error, or, perhaps, in spite of them, it survived and grew quite tame. When fully recovered, it took to hanging around her clearing, along with assorted relatives—all of whom clearly expected daily handouts. As the days grew cooler, they took up residence under the ship. She did not discourage this, and took it as a sign to prepare for a cold season of indeterminable length.
Exploration of the surrounding countryside had revealed no signs of civilization, but a plentiful supply of life-sustaining materials could be gleaned. At first, she had indulged in dreams of rescue and homecoming, but soon abandoned such hope as unrealistic and futile. Instead, many sleepless hours were spent in making elaborate plans for future long-range expeditions of this, her new world.
But now it grew colder, and more food must be sought. She had gone further than usual one day in her quest. An unfamiliar growth at the base of a tree caught her eye. She bent to study it, but jumped and swung around in alarm at the sound of something heavy crashing through the undergrowth. A singular creature emerged and stopped a few feet away. She stared in amazement and revulsion. It was a biped like herself, but taller, stockier, and fearfully ugly. Pallid flesh, covered with coarse, dark growth; hands sprouting numerous digits tipped with little shells; sunken eyes; tiny ears set close to the head and stunted nose; cavernous mouth rimmed with spikes which opened and closed, emitting a peculiar, rasping sound.
It had seen her, and stumbled toward her, hands outstretched. The curious coverings on its lower trunk flapped in a sudden breeze, revealing huge, unmistakably male genitalia.
She shrank back as it approached, repulsed by its rank odor. A cold, clammy hand grasped her arm. She wrenched herself free and fled, glancing over her shoulder for signs of pursuit. Seeing none, she paused and listened, heart pounding. Nothing.
She hurriedly made her way back to the ship, clamoured in, and pounded the hatch fast. All that night she listened, in fear which gradually ebbed to cautious vigilance. Then she began to realize the wonder of it—another being here, perhaps intelligent. But perhaps not. To stand and walk on two legs was not the measure of intelligence. And she resisted the possibility of likeness to one so loathsome . . . so alien. Nonetheless, it was fascinating to have encountered a new creature. Regrettable that it had shown aggression. But wait . . . had it been aggression which prompted it to act as it had, or something else? Could it have been trying to communicate? Was it in need of help?
She was overcome with dread and aversion at the thought of seeking further contact, then chided herself for yielding to xenophobia. The thought occurred that this being bore the closest resemblance to her of any which she had seen. Perhaps this accentuated its differences, thus exaggerating her distaste. Anyway, to hide and cower was not only unwise, but impractical—to say nothing of frustrating!
She would investigate in the morning—with great care.
It had grown colder during the night. The threelegs barely stirred as she left the security of the ship. She crept between the trees, alert to all sound and movement. The clearing of yesterday’s encounter was deserted. She studied the trampled undergrowth from which the biped had emerged. Following the path of broken branches, she found a large footprint in the damp soil. She placed her foot in it, again noting her relative smallness. Similar tracks continued for some distance in an erratic path through the forest. Then, abruptly, she stumbled upon the object of her search. The biped lay face down, sprawled upon the ground, unmoving. She ran and took cover behind a thick tree, observing it from a distance for what seemed an eternity. It made no sound, nor did it move. She threw a rock which landed inches from its head with a resounding thump. No response. Finally, she approached it hesitantly, prodded it with her foot, and danced back. Nothing. It must be dead.
She felt an unsettling mixture of relief and disappointment. Then the creature moaned and rolled over, startling her into flight. Peering from behind the tree, she waited apprehensively for its next move. But it seemed oblivious to everything, and she grew tired of her vigil. Stupid beast to sleep so soundly out in the open . . . She turned to go, then paused. What if it was sick? She shrugged. Little she could do, and probably dangerous to try. Abruptly, she started off through the trees, then ran to the stream, filled an empty pod with water, scampered back to the inert form, and placed the pod nearby. Going home, she wondered if she had been wise or foolhardy.
Next day, the pod had been drained of all water and the biped was nowhere to be seen. As she stood gazing down at where it had lain, a frightful clamour erupted. She recognized the hideous screeching of a “fanger,” a local predator which she had learned to fear and respect, and began to make her way back to the safety of the ship. Then a strange agonized cry brought her to a halt.
Curious . . . She moved in the direction of the sounds and parted a thicket of fruit vines. To her amazement, a clearing lay before her, dominated by the hulking form of an alien craft. It gleamed enigmatically in the afternoon sunlight, but there was no doubt of its origin as an artifact of intelligence. Circling around, she located the source of the commotion. The biped was being attacked by the fanger and had obviously been driven to the limit of its poor capacity for self-defense. It lay near the ship, helpless, ripped, and bleeding, as the beast advanced for the final blow. Automatically, she took aim and fired.
The fanger reared up and howled, then crumpled to the ground, shuddered once, and expired.
She ran to the biped, forgetting all caution in the exultation of discovering another intelligent being—for the strange craft must have been its means of arrival in this isolated place.
He was curled in a ball and unmoving. She gently prodded and pulled at him, examining his wounds and feeling for pulse points. Finally locating a weak throbbing in his neck, she began to attend to his major injuries, hoping that her ministrations would prove correct. Having done everything which seemed reasonably possible, she sat back and waited.
Twilight had begun to deepen into night and still he had not stirred. She shivered in the sharpened coolness and jumped nervously when an animal cackled in the nearby undergrowth. Knowing she must take cover for the night, she decided to attempt a move into the uncertain security of his ship. In searching for a point of entry, she noticed a scorched, fused strip on the ship’s skin. The blackened seam began about a third of the way up one side and continued to the “top.” It was as if the ship had been struck by lightning. She located an opening.
Inside was a spacious compartment—curving walls lined with unfathomable instruments, many of which emitted a soft, luminescent glow. The floor was smooth and warm and faintly pulsating. Marveling, she gazed about, afraid to touch anything but consumed with curiosity. Then she remembered the occupant of the vessel and hurried out to see how she might contrive to move him inside.