“I have seen,” he said, “many strange and precious things on the worlds of other stars. And I have brought back with me the most wonderful of them all. I want you to welcome her to Earth.”
Here he turned to someone who had been waiting inside the hatch, and handed her out.
I don’t think that any of us, least of all the Miss Lewisham, caught on for a moment. We were too busy, like everybody else, staring at the little creature who was clinging to David’s hand.
She seemed incredibly small and fragile to be a grown woman, and yet that is what she was, and no mistake about it. She wore a very quaint drapery of some gossamer stuff that shimmered in the sunlight, and the lovely shape of her beneath it was something to wonder at. Her skin was perfectly white and beautiful, like fine porcelain, and her little face was pointed and fey-looking, with eyebrows that swept up toward her temples like two delicate feathers. Her hair was the color of amethysts. There was a great deal of it, piled high on her head in an intricate coiffure, and the lights in it were marvelous, as though every conceivable shade of that jewel had been melted and spun together and made alive. Her eyes, slanting under those sweeping brows, were the same color, but deeper, a true purple. They looked out in great bewilderment upon this noisy alien world.
“She is from Altair,” said David. “Her name is Ahrian. She is my wife.”
The reactions to that last simple statement were violent and more than a little confused. Sometime before the shouting died, and while Bet was still staring like an absolute idiot at her unexpected sister-in-law, the Miss Lewisham departed, with every hair still perfectly in place. Where her temper was, I don’t know. The reporters stampeded, and no one and nothing could hold them back. The TV men were in transports when David kissed his little bride from Altair. I looked down at Marthe.
“I suppose,” I said, “it wouldn’t be any good asking you to go away now.”
She said it wouldn’t be. She was shivering slightly, like a wolf that has found a fat lamb asleep under its nose. “A woman from Altair,” she whispered. “This isn’t a story, it’s a sensation.”
“It’s certainly a surprise for the family!”
“Poor little thing, she looks scared to death. Whatever you feel, don’t take it out on her.” Marthe glanced up at me, as though a sudden thought had occurred to her. “By the way,” she asked, “is your brother quite right in the head?”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” I said.
Up on the platform, the focus of the excitement, the new Mrs. David McQuarrie trembled against her husband and stared with those purple enigmatic eyes at the alien hosts of a world that was not her own.
2 Stranger on Earth
Grimly we set off on the ride home. I had managed to get Bet on one side and threaten her with bodily injury if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. David himself, what with the exultation of homecoming and the sensation he had created with his dramatic announcement of marriage, was flying too high to notice any of us too much. He held Ahrian in the circle of his arm as if she had been a child, and talked to her, and soothed her, and pointed out this and that interesting thing along the road.
As she looked at the houses and trees, the hills and valleys, the sun and the sky, I couldn’t help being sorry for her. In my younger days I had gone, as supercargo in my father’s ships, to Venus and Mars and beyond the Belt to Jupiter. I knew what it was like to walk on alien soil. And she was so far away from home that even her familiar sun was gone.
She glanced at us now and then, with a kind of shy terror. Bet sulked and glowered, but I managed a smile, and Marthe patted Ahrian’s hand. David had taught her English. She spoke it well, but with a curious rippling accent that made it sound like a foreign tongue.
Her voice was soft and low and very sweet. She did not talk much. Neither did we.
David barely noticed that we had a stranger with us. I had said vaguely that Marthe was a friend of mine, and he had nodded and forgot her. I was rather glad to have her along. There are times when families should not be alone together.
The McQuarrie place is built on top of a rise. The house is large, and was originally built almost two centuries ago, when old Anson McQuarrie founded the family fortune with a fleet of ore carriers for the Lunar mines. There are old trees around it, and a thousand acres of land, and it is one of those places that exude from every pore a discreet odor of money.
Ahrian looked at it and said dutifully.
“It is very beautiful.”
“Not quite the sort of place she’s used to,” David remarked to us. “But she’ll love it.”
I wondered if she would.
We all piled out of the car, and Marthe hesitated. She had been so completely absorbed in studying Ahrian that I doubt if she had thought of her own position at all. Now the sight of our rather hulking house seemed to daunt her.
“I think maybe I better go back now,” she said. “I’ve imposed enough, and I’ve got a lot to go on. I’d like to really interview them both, but this is hardly the time for it.”
“Oh, no,” I told her emphatically. “You’re staying. Bet’s got to have somebody to yak to, and it isn’t going to be me. You’re her old school chum, remember?”
Marthe took a good look at Bet’s furious countenance and muttered, “I have a feeling I’m going to hold this against you, Mr. McQuarrie.”
She was so right. Except that I held it against myself, the other way round.
Suddenly Ahrian, who was a little distance up the walk with David, let out a quivering scream. David began to yell angrily for me. I went on to see what was the matter.
“It’s only Buck,” I said.
“Well, get him out of here. He’s frightening Ahrian.”
“She might as well get used to him now,” I said, and took Buck by the collar. He was a very large dog, and one of the best I ever had. He didn’t like Ahrian. I could feel him shiver, and the hair on his back bristled under my hand.
David was going to get ugly about it, and then Ahrian said, “It is that I have not before seen such a creature. It means no harm. Only it is uneasy.”
She began to talk to Buck, in her own soft liquid tongue. Gradually his muscles stilled and the hackles flattened and the ears relaxed. His eyes had a puzzled look. Presently he stalked forward and laid his head in her hands.
Ahrian laughed. “You see? We are friends.”
I looked at the dog. There was no joy in him. Ahrian took her small white hands from his head. Abruptly he turned and went away, running fast.
Ahrian said softly, “I have very much to learn.”
“Just the same,” said David, glaring at me, “you be careful with your confounded livestock.” He swept Ahrian on up the walk. The door had been opened. David did the inevitable thing. He picked Ahrian up in his arms and bore her with a courtly flourish across the threshold.
“All I’ve got to say is,” Bet snarled, “I hope they can’t—I mean, I just couldn’t bear it to have a little nephew with lavender hair!”
She stamped on into the house. I took Marthe firmly by the arm. “Bet can fix you up with suitable garments.”
“What for?”
“We are having a dinner tonight, in David’s honor. Formal, of course. There will be many people.”
“How delightful,” she said, and groaning, followed Bet.
That dinner may not have been delightful, but it certainly was not dull. The drawing rooms teemed with what Daisy Ashford would have referred to as costly people, all quite ill at ease. Ahrian, sitting at the table in the place that was to have been the Miss Lewisham’s, was a little figure fashioned in some Dresden of Fairyland, dressed in a matchless tissue of pale gold and crowned with that incredibly beautiful hair.
The women didn’t know how to deal with her, and the men were fascinated, and all in all it was not a successful social occasion. Late in the evening David made her sing. She had a curious stringed instrument from which she drew soft wandering music, and she sang songs of her own wo
rld that were sweet and very strange. Some of them didn’t have any words. They told of the things that lie hid beyond mountains, and of the secrets oceans know, and of the long, still thoughts of deserts. But they were not the mountains or the deserts or the seas of Earth. Toward the end there came into her eyes two great crystal tears.
Soon after that I noticed that she had disappeared. David was holding the center of the stage with some thrilling recital of events beyond the stars, and it seemed to be up to me to look for her.
I found her at last, standing disconsolate on the steps that led down from the terrace into the garden. There were many shadows in it, and the shrubs rustled in the wind, so that it must have seemed a frightening place to her. There were clouds, I remember, veiling the sky.
She turned and looked at me. “Why did you come to me?”
“I thought perhaps you might be lonely.”
“There is David,” she answered. “Why might I be lonely?”
I could not see her face, except as a small blurred whiteness in the gloom. “Yes,” I said, “you have David. But it’s still possible to be sad.”
She said, “I will not be sad.” I could read nothing in the tone of her voice, either.
“Ahrian, you must try to understand us. We were upset today, because we hadn’t expected you, and—well—” I tried, rather lamely, to explain how things had stood. “It wasn’t anything personal. You’re part of the family now, and we’ll do all we can to make you welcome.”
“The little one—she is full of anger.”
“She’s just a kid. Give her time. A month from now she’ll be wanting to dye her hair to match yours.” I held out my hand. “We have a custom here of clasping hands as a token of friendship. Will you take mine, Ahrian?”
She hesitated, a long, long moment. Then she said gravely, as if it were something I must remember, “I do not hate you, Rafe.” She put her hand in mine, a fleeting touch as light and chill as the falling of a snowflake. Then she shivered. “It is cold on your world when the darkness comes.”
“Is it always warm on yours?” We started toward the house, and looking down at her beside me, I thought I could understand why David had not been able to let her go.
She answered softly, “Yes, it is warm, and the moons are like bright lamps in the sky. The spires and the rooftops glisten, and there are dark leaves that shake out perfume—”
She broke off, too quickly, and said no more.
“You must love David very deeply to have come all this long way home with him.”
“Love is indeed a great force,” she murmured.
We went inside, and David claimed her again.
For several days I did not see much of Ahrian. I handle the financial end of the McQuarrie business, not because I like it but because I have to do something to justify the money I spend. David had brought back an invaluable cargo, some of it from worlds that, like Ahrian’s, had never been touched before. I think we cleared around a million dollars on it, over and above the cost of the voyage.
I was so busy that I hardly had time to see Marthe. Strange, how important it had become to see Marthe, so quickly and without anything being said about it. She had left our house, of course, in high spirits over the inside stuff she had got for her articles. I had said, “When will I see you again?” And she had answered, “Any time.” That’s how it was—any time we could possibly make it.
One night, when by chance the family were all together at dinner, Ahrian said shyly, “David, I have been thinking—”
Instantly he was all attention. He really did seem to adore her. I will admit that I had a few sneaking suspicions, or perhaps it was only a puzzled wonder, since David so far in his life had had only three loves—star-ships, himself, and the McQuarrie name, in that order. But his manner with Ahrian appeared to show that he had found the fourth.
“In my home,” said Ahrian, “I had a small place that was my own, in which I found much pleasure in fashioning little gifts for those I loved. Only a very small place, David—might I have one here?”
David smiled at her and said that she might have anything there was on Earth or the other planets, except the ugly clothes that might be all right for Earthlings but were not for her. Ahrian smiled back, asking, still with that shy hesitance, for some gem stones of small value, and some fine wires of platinum and gold.
“Diamonds,” said David. “Emeralds. All you like.”
“No. I will have the crystal and the zircon. Uncut, please. I wish to shape them myself.”
“With those tiny hands? Very well, darling. I’ll have them here tomorrow.”
Ahrian thanked him gravely and glanced across at me. “I am learning very quickly, Rafe. I have seen all your horses. They are a wonder to me, so large and beautiful.”
“If you like,” I said, “I could teach you to ride.”
“Perhaps on that very little one?”
I laughed and explained to her why a three-week foal was not suitable for that. David said fiercely that he was not going to have Ahrian trampled to death by one of my lubberly beasts, and forbade anything of the sort.
After dinner I got Bet alone and asked her how she was making out with Ahrian.
“Oh, I suppose it isn’t her fault, but she gives me the creeps, Rafe! She goes drifting around the place like a funny little shadow, and sometimes the way she looks at you…I get the feeling she’s studying me—way deep inside, I mean. I don’t like it—and I don’t like her!”
“Well, try to be as nice as you can. The poor little critter must be having a hard enough time of it. Remember we’re as alien to her as she is to us.”
“She wanted to come,” said Bet, without pity. I left her, and went off to keep a date with Marthe…
3 Gifts of—Love
David fixed up a wonderful workshop for Ahrian, where she could make pretty trinkets to her heart’s content. She would remain there for hours, humming softly to herself, letting no one, not even David, in to see what she was doing. She worked for weeks, and then one evening she came in to dinner with the pleased air of a child who has done a nice thing. I saw that she was carrying some light burden in a fold of her gown.
She was wearing a kind of tiara that went very well with her masses of amethystine hair and her curious little face. It was a delicate thing, exquisitely wrought of mingled wires of platinum and gold woven into a strange design of flowers and set with a flawless crystal that she had cut herself in a way that I had never seen a crystal cut before.
She strewed her small burden glittering on the tablecloth. “See! I have made a gift for everyone. You must wear them, or I shall be so unhappy!”
They were beautiful. For David and me she had made rings—for, as she said, we did not wear jewels as the men of her world did, and so she had had to be content with rings. For Bet there was a necklace, of a sort that no girl could resist if the Devil himself had given it to her.
There was a chorus of astonished comment. David told Ahrian that she could make a fortune for herself if she would make and sell these things to the world. Ahrian shook her head.
“No. These are gifts and must be fashioned with a meaning from the heart. Otherwise I could not make them.”
The stones were all most curiously cut.
It was exactly eight days after that giving of gifts that the thing happened.
David was away on some business in the city. Marthe was spending the weekend—Ahrian seemed an odd kind of chaperone, but we thought she would serve—and we had been taking a stroll in a wood that there is north of the house.
All of a sudden we heard the sound of someone screaming.
We started to run back toward the house. A scream has no identity, but somehow I knew this one came from Bet. Marthe got some distance ahead of me, and then she began to scream, too. There were other sounds mixed with the screaming. I made all the speed I could. Where the wood ended, there was a wide stretch of turf, with the house way at the back of it and here and there apple trees that
were part of an old orchard.
Bet had got herself up into one of these old thorny veterans. Her clothes were torn and there were dabbles of blood on her face and dress. Her cries had ceased to have any meaning. In a minute she was going to faint.
My big dog Buck was under the tree. He leaped and sprang, and his teeth flashed like knives in the sunlight, snapping shut no more than a short inch beneath the limb Bet huddled on. He moaned as he leaped, a strange and dreadful sound as though he were being tortured and were pleading for release.
I shouted his name. He turned his head, gave me one pitiful look, and then he went back to trying to kill my sister. I was carrying the heavy blackthorn stick I used when I walked in the country. I hit him with the knob of it. Poor Buck! He was dead in a minute or two, as quick as I could make it, and he never tried to defend himself. I caught Bet as she tumbled out of the apple tree, and Marthe and I between us got her to the house.
Ahrian was there. She gave a little cry of horror and bent her head, and I remember the flash of crystal on her forehead in the dim hall. Servants came and took Bet. Marthe ran off somewhere to be sick, and I called town for David and a doctor.
For a while I was busy with brandy and restoratives. Presently Bet came around, more terrified than hurt. Her scratches had come mostly from climbing into the tree. She said she had been looking for Marthe and me, when suddenly Buck had appeared out of nowhere and, for no reason at all, tried to tear her throat out.
“I never did him any harm,” she whimpered. “I like him, and he liked me. He must have gone mad.”
I was glad when the doctor came and put her under for a while. Buck was taken away for autopsy. He was not rabid, nor was there a sign of any other disease. I had that stick burned up. I couldn’t forget the way Buck had moaned, the way he had looked at me before he died. David had some bitter words to say, and I nearly hit him, which was unfair under the circumstances.
The Best of Leigh Brackett Page 27