The Carpet Makers

by Andreas Eschbach

  Nargant was silent. With his index finger he traced slowly over the torn upholstery of the main steering knob; it felt scratchy in some spots where the stuffing was spilling out through the cracks and tears.

  “What’s your plan?” No matter what, he wanted to be able to say later that he had not agreed to this.

  Nillian sighed. “You drop me off in the atmosphere in the airboat. I’ll land near a settlement and try to make contact with the inhabitants.”

  “And how do you plan to communicate with them?”

  “To judge by the radio transmissions we’ve picked up, they speak a very old form of Paisi. It may require a little getting used to, but I think I can manage.”

  “And if not?”

  Nillian shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe I’ll pretend to be deaf and dumb. Or I’ll try to learn the language.” He hoisted himself up out of his seat. “I’ll think of something.” Then he climbed down the narrow ladder leading into the lower part of the spaceship.

  Nargant recognized that the rebel wouldn’t be deterred from his plan, and he gave up his resistance. Bowing to fate, he followed him below and watched with uneasiness as Nillian loaded equipment into the airboat—the tent that was actually intended for emergency landings, some food, and a few of the instruments for planetary exploration that were supposed to stay in their storage cabinets during this flight.

  “Take a weapon,” he advised.

  “Nonsense.”

  “What do you intend to do if you get into a dangerous situation? There are humans down there, after all!”

  Nillian paused and turned around. Their eyes met. “I’ll rely on you, partner,” the young rebel said finally with a strange smile that Nargant didn’t know how to interpret.

  A brief whine of the engines was sufficient to slow the expedition ship down in order to leave its low-level orbit and descend. The planet loomed larger and larger, and soon the nerve-racking whistling sounds of the first atmospheric particles sailing past the shell at tremendous speeds came from everywhere. The whistling turned to howling and finally to a deafening roar as the spacecraft fell deeper into the layers of atmosphere.

  Nargant continued to brake and went into a parabolic trajectory, which, at its lowest point, would come quite close to the surface and would then catapult the ship back out into space.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready!”

  Just before reaching the lowest point of the arc, he disengaged the airboat. As elegantly as if their pilots had practiced nothing else for years, the two craft separated. Nargant shot up into the black sky and went into a very high stationary orbit in which he followed the rotation of the planet and would remain approximately above Nillian’s location. As the thundering of the engines died down and the spaceship recovered with crackling sounds from its exertion, he made radio contact.

  Nillian was already recording a running report.

  “I’m flying over a settlement. You could almost call it a city … very spread out, many small huts and narrow streets, but also some broad roads. I see some greenspace and gardens. A kind of wall encloses the entire settlement, including the gardens. Outside the city wall, there seems to be nothing but desert and steppes, but with hardy vegetation in some places. I see some grazing animals; so there may be some breeding of domestic stock.”

  Nargant checked the recorder. The sturdy unit was running constantly, recording every word.

  “On my right side is a dark, towering rock formation, easily recognizable from the air. The sensors suggest possible caves there. That’s where I’ll land; maybe it will be a good base location.”

  Nargant pulled a face. Caves! On such a desolate planet, wouldn’t there be other—and, above all, safer—places to set up an inflatable tent?

  “Whoops! There are also a few buildings in the area outside the city. Some of them are quite far from the settlement, several hours by foot, I would guess. The infrared sensors show that the structures are inhabited. I also see something that could be smoke from a chimney.”

  It was insanity. The whole undertaking was insanity. Nargant massaged his neck and wished he were far away.

  “Now I’ll fly in a wide loop toward the south until I see the rock I’m heading for. It really is useful as an excellent optical marker from the air. I’m coming in there for a landing.”

  Nargant pulled out a rag and began to polish the covers of the gauges. I advised him against it, he thought. Maybe I should have insisted on recording my opposition in the logbook.

  The harsh sound of the landing gear touching down was followed by the whining slowdown of the gravity motor.

  “I’ve landed. I just opened the hatch and am now breathing the planetary atmosphere. The air is breathable, quite hot and full of smells—it smells of dust and excrement, and there’s another sweetish smell, like something rotting.… Naturally, I’m especially sensitive now after breathing only sterile air for months in the ship, but I think I can get by without breathing through a filter. I am going to get out now and scout around the rocks for a good location for the tent.”

  Nargant sighed and looked up. Through the viewing hatch at his right he saw the larger of this planet’s two moons. The planet had a second, significantly smaller satellite circling in the opposite direction and requiring less than two planetary days for a complete orbit. But at the moment the smaller moon was not in view.

  “It’s quite rocky and steep here. I think I’ll break the connection for a while and hang the unit on my belt so I’ll have both hands free. Do you still read me, Nargant?”

  Nargant bent toward the microphone and pressed the ON switch. “Of course.”

  “It’s a relief to know that.” He heard Nillian laugh out loud. “I just realized that I am several million light-years from home, and that it’s a long way on foot if you leave me in the lurch. Okay, until later.”

  Some brief static; then the loudspeaker was quiet. The recorder stopped automatically. The familiar sounds of the spaceship closed in around Nargant: the almost inaudible hissing of the air supply system, occasionally an oddly resounding clank from the engine, and the diverse whispering and clattering noises of the instruments in the control panel.

  After a few minutes, Nargant realized that he was staring as though hypnotized at the numbers on the ship’s clock and waiting for the next radio contact. Irritated, he stood up and climbed down into the lounge to have something to drink.

  I’m angry at myself, he realized. Now Nillian has his adventure, and I’m hanging here in orbit, dying of boredom.

  It took a distressingly long time for Nillian to make contact again.

  “I just had my first contact with a local inhabitant. An older man. The communication went quite well, better than I expected. But I probably confused him a bit with my talk. I had thought there were no people hereabouts, but from what he said, there must be some sort of gemstones in these caves, and sometimes people come here looking for them. He was quite chatty; we had a good conversation. Interestingly, here, they still consider the Emperor to be the immortal, godlike lord, even if they don’t know very much else about the Empire. When I told him about the Rebellion, he wouldn’t believe a word of it.”

  Nargant could still remember well the time in his life when the Emperor had also been the center of the universe for him. Even now, after twenty years of difficult, bloody secularization, he still felt pain in that place where this faith used to be, a pain that was tied to shame, to a sense of having failed—and also to a feeling of loss.

  The young rebel had it good. Back then, he was still just a child, and in his education he was never subjected to the all-stifling religious machinery of the priestly caste. He surely couldn’t even imagine the burden of anguish someone like Nargant would carry around with him for the rest of his life.

  “It’s fortunate I landed the airboat in a spot where it can’t easily be seen. I don’t think he saw it. But still, I’ll look for a different place to bed down for the night.”

  The rest of
the day passed quietly. Nillian flew to various places and took pictures, which he transferred up to the ship. Nargant was able to look at the photographs on the monitor: shots of broad, desolate landscapes, of crooked, old huts in need of repair, and of hardly recognizable footpaths winding endlessly through rocky ravines.

  The next morning, Nillian gave up on his original idea of simply walking into the city and looking around. Instead, he spent the entire day locating individual wanderers who were either under way on foot or were mounted on riding animals. He landed at a safe distance, walked up to them, and asked them questions. In one of these contacts he bought himself a complete outfit of local clothing in exchange for his immensely valuable wristband. This willingness on Nillian’s part to make sacrifices instinctively impressed Nargant, and he had to admit to himself that his fears were eased by the caution with which the rebel was proceeding.

  Around noon on the following day, Nillian discovered a man who had apparently lost his way in the desert. “I’ve been observing him for a while. It puzzles me why a man would be under way here on foot. He can only have come from the city, so he must have been walking for at least an entire day. Down here, the heat is merciless and there’s no water anywhere. He seems to keep falling down.” He was silent for a while. “Now, he’s not getting up any more. He’s probably lost consciousness. Well, now I can at least spare him the sight of the airboat. I’m going to land.”

  “Give him a tranquilizer shot,” Nargant advised. “Otherwise he’ll wake up on board your airboat, and you have no idea how he’ll react.”

  “Good idea. Which vial is that? The yellow one?”

  “Yes. Just administer half the dosage; his circulation system is probably significantly weakened.”

  “Okay.”

  By listening to the sounds from the loudspeaker, Nargant followed as Nillian picked up the unconscious man and transported him to a cool, shady place. There he hydrated him with one and a half bottles of water. Then he could only wait until the rescued man awoke.

  “Nargant, this is Nillian.”

  Nargant started. He had dozed off in the pilot’s chair.

  “Yes?”

  There was a little crackling and popping in the loudspeaker, and then Nillian asked, “Does the concept ‘hair carpet’ mean anything to you?”

  Nargant scratched at his head and thought about it. “No,” he said. “I could only guess that it refers to a carpet made of hair or, at least, having that appearance. Why do you ask?”

  “I talked with the man a bit. He told me that he was by profession a knotter of hair carpets. Profession is maybe the wrong word; the way he described it sounded more like a social caste. Anyway, I asked to be sure, and he really did mean that he ties carpets out of hair—human hair.”

  “Out of human hair?” Nargant was still trying to wake up fully. Why was Nillian telling him all of this?

  “It must also be an enormously time-consuming business. Unless I completely misunderstood, he needs his entire lifetime to tie just one of these carpets.”

  “Sounds rather odd.”

  “I told him that, too, and he was absolutely astonished at my attitude. Making these carpets must be something like a sacred rite here. By the way, because I didn’t know what a hair carpet is, his conclusion was razor-sharp: that I must come from another planet.”

  Nargant gasped for air. “And what did you say?”

  “I admitted it. Why shouldn’t I? I find it interesting that the people here know there are other inhabited worlds. Since everything seems to be so primitive, I wouldn’t have expected that.”

  To his own amazement, Nargant noticed that his hands were shaking. Only now did he sense that he was sick—sick with fear. He was filled with anxiety that would not ease until this adventure was over and Nillian was on board again, an anxiety that was trying—against all reason—to protect the two of them from the consequences of their obvious insubordination.

  “What are you planning to do now?” he asked, and hoped his voice was not betraying any of that.

  “The hair carpets interest me,” came his untroubled reply. “I asked him to show me the carpet he is working on, but he says he can’t. No idea why—he muttered something I couldn’t understand. But we’ll visit one of his colleagues, another carpet maker, and I can see his carpet.”

  It was a physical matter. His mind knew that the rebels had a different concept of discipline, but his body didn’t understand it. His body was more prepared to die than to disobey a command.

  “When are you going there?”

  “I’ve given him an energy compound; I’ll wait until it takes effect. Maybe an hour. The man was in bad shape. But I can’t get out of him what he was doing there in the desert. A rather mysterious story, the whole thing.”

  “Are you wearing the local clothing?”

  “Of course. Incredibly uncomfortable, by the way. It makes places itch you didn’t even know you had.”

  “When will you report in again?”

  “Right after the visit to the other carpet maker. We have a two- to three-hour walk ahead of us; fortunately the sun is already rather low, and it isn’t quite so hot now. It could be that he will invite us to stay the night, which I won’t refuse, of course.”

  “You’ll have the radio with you in case of an emergency?”

  “Of course.” Nillian laughed out loud. “Hey, are you worrying about me?”

  Nargant felt a twinge at these words. He realized that, in all honesty, he wasn’t, and it made him feel shabby and vile. Actually, he was worrying about himself, about what would happen to him if something unfortunate occurred to Nillian. He didn’t deserve the friendship the young rebel was extending to him, because he was incapable of returning it. All he could do was envy Nillian’s easy attitude and inner freedom and feel like a cripple in comparison.

  “I’m dead tired,” he said, avoiding the question. “I’ll try to sleep a little. Good luck. Out.”

  “Thanks. Out,” Nillian responded. There was an audible pop, and the recorder turned itself off again.

  Nargant remained in his chair, laid his head back, and closed his eyes. He felt as though his eyeballs were vibrating. I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, he thought. But he was asleep before he could manage to lift his eyelids one more time, and he slipped into a restless dream.

  When he awoke, it took a while before it came to him where he was and what had happened. As he stared at the ship’s clock, his dull brain tried without success to figure out how long he had slept. At any rate, the counter on the recorder hadn’t moved, which meant that Nillian hadn’t yet reported in again.

  He walked to the viewing window and looked out, down at the enormous sphere of the planet. An endless twilight stretched across the dirty-brown surface from pole to pole. It was like a shock when he suddenly realized that it was already early morning in Nillian’s location. He had slept the entire night.

  And Nillian hadn’t reported in.

  He reached for the microphone and hit the activation switch much too hard.

  “Nillian?”

  He waited, but everything remained silent. He became more formal, “Kalyt 9 calling Nillian Jegetar Cuain, please respond!” That also brought nothing.

  Time passed, and Nillian still didn’t check in. Nargant sat in his pilot’s chair and spoke Nillian’s name into the radio again and again for hours. He rewound the recorder and listened to the reports, but there really was nothing, no radio message from Nillian. He was unaware that he was constantly chewing his lower lip and that it was already starting to bleed.

  He felt virtually torn in two by opposing powers pulling at him like two forces of nature. On the one hand, there was the command, the clear, unambiguous and unrescinded order, not to land on the planets under observation and also his sense of obedience, of which he had once been so proud. He had known from the beginning that this adventure had to go wrong—from the beginning. One single man, alone on an unknown planet in an unknown culture, which had ha
d no contact with the Empire for tens of thousands of years—what could such a man expect to accomplish except to hasten his own death?

  On the other hand, there was this new feeling of friendship, the knowledge that now, somewhere down below was a man who might be trapped in a dangerous situation and who was hanging all his hopes on him. There was a man who believed in him and had worked to gain his friendship, even though he knew that those things were difficult for this former imperial soldier. Maybe Nillian was looking up into a dark night sky at this very moment, where he knew there was a small, fragile spaceship, and was waiting to be rescued.

  Nargant drew in a deep breath and steeled himself. He had made a decision, and that gave him new strength. With practiced hands, he prepared to send out a multi-format broadcast message.

  “Nargant, pilot of Expedition Boat Kalyt 9. Calling Heavy Cruiser Trikood under Capt. Jerom Karswant. Attention. This is an emergency.”

  Pause. Without noticing it, Nargant wiped beads of sweat from his brow. He felt as though this were more than a radio message, as though he had to engage his entire body and all its strength to say and do what was necessary. He knew that he couldn’t think about it too much; otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to send the message. Just talk and send it immediately, and then let the consequences come. He released the PAUSE button.

  “Disregarding our orders, my partner Nillian Jegetar Cuain landed on the surface of Planet G-101/2 three days ago standard time, in order to do additional research among the inhabitants. His last planned radio contact is now eight hours overdue. The following events should be noted.…” He reported the facts briefly, completely, and without regard for the trembling in his legs. “Please advise. Nargant, on board Kalyt 9. Current standard time 18-3-178002. Last instrument calibration: 4-2. Position: map quadrant 2014-BQA-57, orbiting the second planet of sun G-101. Out.”