The Three Suns of Amara

by William Temple

  He lay still for some moments, whooping for breath. Then he sat up slowly, hands pressed to his sore breastbone. From the couch she regarded him, the fire of hate gone. She looked like a petulant, disappointed child. The strikingly blue eyes looked big and sad.

  “You win,” said Sherret with a gasp. “Technical knockout. I didn’t…see it coming.”

  He managed a grin.

  At once she ran over to him, knelt, held his head tightly against her warm body, rocking him gently. The blood from his cheek smeared her breasts.

  “Sherry, I’m really sorry. Oh, Sherry—”

  “Forget it, pet. I said the wrong thing the wrong way.”

  She said, softly, “Only wicked Petrans live with more than one man at a time. I always had only the one. So I couldn’t be unfaithful.” Between kisses, she went on, “I loved them all…but only some of them loved me. Perhaps none of them did—for they all left me in the end. I think Lee loved me—and will come back to me—when he has proven himself.”

  Sherret felt a stab of jealousy about Lee. He stood up, picked her up—she was surprisingly light—and carried her back to the couch.

  He said, “You’re getting me in a whirl. I just don’t understand your way of life. I was angry with you because I love you, and I was jealous of those other men. Now you talk of Lee coming back. Is it him you want—or me?”

  She made no answer. Instead, she ripped a piece of cloth from a cushion, licked it wet, and tenderly cleaned up his face. She ignored the daubs on her own flesh. He was amused by her method and touched by her concern. Even though he knew she would have done as much for Lee—and perhaps had done, if they had fought in the same way.

  “Did you ever fight with Lee?” he asked, suddenly.

  She avoided his gaze. “Yes.”

  “Who won?”

  “I lost,” she sighed. “For he left me.”

  “But that was to prove himself, didn’t you say?”

  “Yes. He had to. But he might have stayed with me if I hadn’t been so foolish. I annoyed him so much sometimes that he tried to beat me.”

  “But you wouldn’t let him. You knocked him down with your pocket thunderbolt, didn’t you? What are you—an electric eel?”

  She didn’t understand the reference, and let it pass. “Yes, I was very foolish. He came here seeking self-respect, and I tried to help him—and I did, too. And then I would lose my temper and spoil everything, undo all I’d built up. Maybe he would have gone on his way eventually, all the same. He had a mission, you see. He said he must face the most dangerous creatures on this planet, stand up to them and survive. Only then, he said, would he be able to call himself a man.”

  “What are these dangerous creatures?”

  “They’re called the Three-people. I’ve never seen them and I never want to. They live in the pass between the mountains in the northwest. Only fools or heroes go there. The fools never return. The heroes return seldom—and when then do, they have become fools. They’ve lost their wits and rave wildly about the Three-people. But nothing they say makes any sense any more. Their minds have gone. Lee said he would come back to me. I think he meant to. But he has been gone a long time, far longer than it should take him to reach the mountains and return. So sometimes I fear he will never return. And sometimes I fear he will—as a poor crazy man.”

  Sherret tugged at his beard absently.

  “This planet of yours, Rosala, gets a bit too bizarre for me at times. I can’t get a clear picture of the place. I keep trying to piece it, together, but nothing joins onto anything. I’m beginning to think the pieces aren’t meant to fit. They belong to different jigsaw puzzles. Melas trees and Petrans and Three-people…Have you ever heard the expression ‘Beware of those who become three’?”

  “Yes, it’s a common saying. It relates to the Three-people.”

  “But how do they become ’three’?”

  “I don’t know, Sherry. I don’t think anybody knows. But they are terrible monsters of some kind. It frightens me to think about them. Let us forget them. Let’s talk about—oh, the Melas trees.”

  “It rather frightens me to think about them,” said Sherret, ruefully. “But all right, tell me about them.”

  Long ago, she said, the Melas tree was a simple fruit-bearing tree which flourished in this part of the country in a perfectly normal way. The birds ate its fruit and carried its seeds far and wide.

  Then the species was attacked by a blight which all but killed it off. Its fruit became poisonous; only the ignorant devoured it and died. The birds shunned it. Moreover, the seeds lost the vital reproductive power, except for the occasional throwback or sport. The lone tree near the house must have sprung from an odd exception of this kind. Maybe some creature carried the seed there, maybe at the cost of its life.

  But Melas trees didn’t give up that easily. They had a tremendously strong instinct for survival. Paradoxically, the disease caused a mutation which helped survival. All plants have a primitive awareness, not exactly a mind and certainly not intelligence. They are simply aware in a weakly telepathic way.

  The disease caused some chemical change in the sap of the Melas tree which enormously increased the sensitivity of its awareness, its, telepathic awareness.

  “You mean, gave it reasoning power?” asked Sherret.

  Rosala shook her head. The tree hadn’t any reasoning power to begin with, so that couldn’t be stimulated. It completely lacked hindsight or foresight. But it was aware that past and future states existed, because it was aware that humanoid creatures were conscious of them.

  And quite unthinkingly it happened upon a way of using the humanoid brain as a medium for reproducing itself. Literally reproducing itself—not just producing seedlings.

  For in the humanoid mind there was foreknowledge of the Melas tree’s continued existence tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…In short, a Melas tree existing in thousands of future instants of time.

  The Melas tree, able to live only in the present, but aware of this picture in the humanoid mind, conceived these multitudinous future states of itself as separate other trees, all existing in the same instant—somewhere. Instinctively, it sought to contact its own kind, and reproduce.

  And contact it did, through any humanoid mind which came within its sphere of influence. This sphere extended only to the reach of its branches. Any humanoid who strayed under them became a victim.

  Even so, the tree’s control was limited. If the humanoid was contemplating the past or present or was unconscious, it was useless to the tree. For the past was unalterable, the present couldn’t be duplicated, and an unconscious mind couldn’t be contacted. Only the future was malleable.

  Once the humanoid mind became forward-looking, extrapolating into the future, even if for a distance of only a few moments, the tree would reach through, contact its future self and snatch it into the present.

  “For Pete’s sake, how?” asked Sherret.

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Then how do you know all this other stuff about the Melas tree?”

  “I was told.” She added, archly, “Some very wise men have stayed under this roof.”

  “H’m. A lot of supposition, but some of it is probably true. Certainly, every time I contemplated making a movement, or a sequence of movements, a tree materialized—sometimes in batches. You can’t make a movement without thinking about it first, however fleetingly. But did they have to keep barring my way?”

  “Of course, darling. They didn’t want you to escape until they’d used your mind to the limit.”

  “But they were trying to crush me to death.”

  His voice became tight, constricted, and at the word “death” broke on an off-key note. It was as though invisible hands were throttling him. The room seemed to darken, as though the shadow of death had fallen upon it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The black cloud passing across his mind lasted maybe only seconds, but it left him gasping.

  Rosala w
as watching him concernedly. When he could breathe again, she said, quietly, “You and I, Sherry, we’re both much too frightened of death.”

  He wiped his damp forehead, and muttered, “I’m not afraid of death, but sometimes I’m afraid of dying.”

  “For me, it’s the other way about. I’m not frightened of dying, but I’m really afraid of being—nothing. Of becoming non-existent. Once a Petran fades altogether, there’s no returning. And just before you came, I very nearly died.”

  A short silence. Then Sherret said, “I don’t understand. Perhaps we’re not talking about quite the same thing. You’re still a mystery to me, Rosala. I know I love you. That’s all I really know about you. You know far more about me.”

  “Yes, Sherry, that’s true. I know things about you that you don’t even know yourself—your unconscious fears and conflicts. When you were ill and delirious, I tried to help you externalize some of the bad things which were living in your mind like parasites. The strongest of them was a terror of being trapped in a small space and there strangled to death.”

  He stared at her, the choking sensation returning.

  “You feel it now? Then we failed. ‘Difficult Birth’ failed.”

  “Difficult what?”

  She sighed. “It was the title we gave our symbolic painting. You seemed to understand it then. Your fear of confined spaces and strangulation was born when you were born. Obviously, something went wrong. Possibly the umbilical cord was twisted around your neck. You were nearly suffocated to death.”

  Nervously, he rubbed his neck, but he was interested. “That could be so. And when the Melas trees closed in around me, trying to kill me—”

  “No, they weren’t trying to kill you. Only capture you. They were trying to form a stockade around you.”

  “I see. But eventually I should have starved to death.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. That’s what usually happens. But by then you would have helped to create a whole forest of Melas trees.”

  “Well, that’s quite a consolation. How did you manage to save me, Rosala?”

  “Partly you saved yourself, by becoming unconscious. They could no longer enter your mind, and therefore couldn’t complete the barrier around you. So I was able to reach you and get you out.”

  “I owe you plenty for that. But to get at me, you must have walked beneath their branches. Yet, apparently, they didn’t attempt to hook you. Are you immune from their influence?”

  Rosala bit her lip, and was silent for a moment.

  Then she said, quietly, “At that time I was in no condition to be of use to them. I scarcely existed. I was a shadow.”

  Sherret glanced at her sharply.

  “Then I didn’t dream that part of it. I thought you were a ghost. You were transparent…”

  He gripped her arm. It was as solid as his own.

  “Yet now—” he began, but she clung suddenly to him, sobbing, “Sherry, don’t ever leave me. Please. Stay with me. Believe in me. Stay with me.”

  He was surprised, but her intensity touched him. He put his arm about her and stroked her soft, bright hair. He wanted to reassure her, and the words which came automatically were tired old cliche.

  “Don’t worry about it, darling. I love you. We’ll always be together after this.”

  He meant it sincerely enough.

  “But you said you had to go on—to Na-Abiza. You said you were Ulysses, and I was the enchantress, Circe, holding you here against your will…”

  “Remember, dear, I was delirious. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  She looked up at him hopefully, with tear-wet eyes.

  “Yes, you were ill,” she said, eagerly. “You kept having nightmares about the Melas tree, painting that awful picture in your mind. After this, we shall paint only lovely pictures, Sherry. We shall create such wonderful things. My mind has the power to change material things and remold them. And I can let your imagination join onto mine and work through my mind. Together we shall design and build and make our dreams reality. For you and I, we are artists”

  She emphasized the word, proudly.

  “Much of this work was created through the minds of men working in unison with mine," she went on. “And the garden—”

  “And you,” Sherret broke in, astonished. “I remolded you, in dreams, I thought. Are you telling me that actually happened?”

  “I desired only that my appearance pleased you,” she murmured.

  “And you will stay that way—you won t fade into a ghost again?”

  He felt her tremble.

  “As long as you wish me here as I am, so long shall I be here.”

  “Of all the mysterious things on Amara, you are the most mysterious, Rosala. Of course I wish you here, and just as you are. But does your existence depend only on my wish?”

  She made no answer for a while, resting her head on his shoulder.

  Then, in a small and muffled voice, “Petrans do not believe in themselves, as persons. They think of themselves as mirrors, only reflecting the real people. They can exist only through the belief of the real people, the people who have faith. Then they seem real, even to themselves…and everything in the universe is only a seeming. Even you, Sherry. But you real people can live together, because you believe. We Petrans can’t—we can’t support each other by faith. If we try, we die to nothing. We sympathize with the Melas trees, because we are like them; we can survive only through the minds of others.”

  He held her protectively, but his mind was spinning. These Amaran frames of reference, outside all of his experience, might end by driving him off his head. They had already caused him one breakdown.

  Only connect. Only adjust. But the group of associated memories and reflexes forming a personality called “Sherret” hadn’t been all that stable, to begin with. It was rent with conflicts. Under the continued stress of trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, it could well begin to break up, become schizophrenic.

  And “Sherret” would be no more than a loose group of nameless and aimless dreamers wandering in a fog of amnesia.

  He said, “I need you, Rosala, quite as much as you need me.”

  She gave a little sigh of happiness, then pressed her lips warmly to his. As they kissed, a fragment of conversation echoed somewhere in his memory.

  “…Have you ever been to Na-Abiza?”

  “Yes, I have, human, but I didn’t get there.”

  So this was where the trek to Na-Abiza ended.

  The sky shaded from color to color, and sometimes they sat in the garden and watched it. Sometimes it ran through its chromatic scale unseen and unheeded, for they remained in the house for long periods—working, talking, laughing, making love. Also—perhaps too often—quarreling.

  And Sherret learned to accept the incredible. On the face of it, a mature doctrine, but occasionally he had misgivings. It could lead to a dulling of the sense of wonder. Excess of anything tended toward boredom—even, strangely enough, excess of novelty.

  There was plenty of novelty.

  Just to watch Rosala paint involved a series of surprises. She needed no‘brush. She painted with her fingers.

  She would set a canvas on its back, pour quantities of colors onto it, and let them ooze sluggishly together. Then she’d run her fingers lightly over the mess, mixing, separating, arranging with hair-line delicacy. It was as though each nerve-end at her finger tips was working independently on its own contribution to the overall design.

  Not a speck of paint adhered to her fingers.

  Sherret questioned her about this exquisitely controllable force flowing from her. She couldn’t enlighten him about its nature. All Petrans had the power at birth.

  “Birth?” Sherret echoed. “I’ve been wondering about that, too. How do Petrans get to be born if they never cohabit?”

  Rosala said, seriously, “There are some questions you mustn’t ask, darling. We’re a parasitic race and therefore vulnerable. To protect ourselves we’re sworn to a code of
secrecy about certain fundamental matters. But I’ll tell you this much. You and I could have children.”

  “Petrans?”

  “You might as well ask 'Boys or girls?’ We shouldn’t know until they were born.”

  He fingered his beard. “Have you any children?”

  “No, Sherry.”

  “Somehow, I’m glad. Another thing—are you sworn not to reveal your age?”

  “Bodily, I’m as young or old as you wish me to be. And’ mental time is merely relative. Relatively, time is not the same on this planet as on Earth,” she answered evasively.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’m not trying to pry. I’m only trying to learn where I stand.”

  “You stand on your own feet, as you told Captain Maxton. Darling, why do you keep trying to formalize everything? You must get Reparism out of your system. It can never work on Amara. Inflexible things only get broken here.”

  Another row was in danger of brewing. He thought it best to keep quiet. But his silence became sullen.

  She sensed that, and her uncertain temper began to simmer. She started to work it off on a large block of granite-like stone. She attacked it with her bare hands, furiously pulling away chunks as though it were wax, indenting it with a finger-thrust, engraving it with a fingernail. It began to take shape but, obviously, from her expression, the wrong shape.

  Suddenly her temper boiled over. The whole massive block went hurtling to the far wall. The crash made the house shake. Hung paintings came toppling to the glassy floor.

  “Think I’ll go for a stroll,” said Sherret, with forced calm. Inwardly, he was shaking. In one of her blind rages, Rosala could as easily smash him against a wall.

  After the house, the garden was a haven of peace in the subdued green daylight. Rosala never painted by the light of the Three Suns because they were never together in the sky. But in the house she drew their light together by some optical wizardry and fused them into the glaring white light she demanded for her work.

  Sherret, chewing on a B-stick, roamed along the edge of the pool. Recently he’d noted that the diving plinth was subsiding. He planned a minor engineering job to reset the thing. When he mentioned it to Rosala, she laughed.