Eye Among the Blind

by Robert Holdstock

  It was frightening and yet… fascinating.

  The thought of the fascinating fauna of Ree’hdworld led inevitably to thoughts of Robert Zeitman, her ex-husband. By now he would be somewhere in orbit, she imagined; perhaps scanning the planet’s surface with a telescope… perhaps even watching her as she sat by the river and shivered.

  When Zeitman had been here before he had been passionately interested in the biosphere of Ree’hdworld, convinced that there was something very out of balance in what he saw about him. He and Kristina had examined every animal they could catch, and it was during their various hunts that Kristina had first become aware of Urak (then a Ree’hd of low status) and he of she. Urak had been the Ree’hd that Zeitman had asked to examine, and the native with whom they had discussed the impossible actuality of a semi-humanoid race totally distinct from the human race of Earth.

  It was still incredible to Kristina that for all Zeitman’s being away for several years, it was only in the last few days that she and Urak had reached an emotional understanding that had resulted in him taking her as a “lover.” It was time wasted, but Urak had merely been behaving properly. The interest had been there for a year, but Urak had taken his year-kin already and would not destroy that Ree’hd’s soul by leaving her (it would have to be him leaving her since he was not the dominant of the pair relationship at that time). At the changing, four days back, Kristina had become Urak’s year-kin instead of Reems’gaa—it was a choice that had been disapproved of by many of the local Ree’hd, but none had the right to argue with the burrow One.

  That it was Reems’gaa whom she had displaced was an unfortunate coincidence. Six years previously Robert Zeitman, in one of his thoughtless moods, had made some ill-timed and inappropriate observations on Reems’gaa and caused her to lose her offspring and her chances of ever again giving birth. This had not affected her position in the community, but it was a severe personal blow to the Ree’hd female. Kristina, six years later, was compounding the wound.

  She was drawn from her reminiscence by someone touching her arm. Urak was pointing to something in the sky, and looking up she saw a skimmer gliding high overhead.

  A moment of anxiety and the slow calming of her racing heart. She knew Zeitman would be on that skimmer and that he was certainly very upset that she had not met him at the landing base. She knew, however, that if she had been there she would have been cold, incapable of warmth, and that would have made the meeting unbearable.

  “Sorry Robert,” she thought after the vanishing vessel.

  The singing went on, though the community was already beginning to disperse. The wind was less strong now, but just as cold, and Kristina drew her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. She looked at the ranks of natives, some swaying gently as their prayers and fears were offered to the remnants of the sam-hat-rhine.

  With a start she saw an Earthman sitting on the opposite bank watching her. There were many Ree’hd on the other side of the river since the burrow community spanned below the river-bed through the solid rock. The Ree’hd were great tunnelers and in their “adolescence,” prior to the differentiation of their extremities into the sensitive appendages they would become, they had tough, shovel-like hands that facilitated the tunnelling through the hard-packed soil and soft bed-rock below this part of the continent.

  The human who sat among the natives was staring at her, but there was something strange about the way he stared, something… blind. Perhaps her sixth sense, perhaps memories of seeing blind men before, but she knew without knowing that the man was blind, and as she thought that so she observed him lift a hand in salute.

  She waved back. Could he see that? She pointed to the man and indicated that he should come across the river and sit with her.

  The man across the water shook his head.

  Kristina was uneasy. But her uneasiness was nothing compared to the agitation that Urak was showing. The dawn song was dying slowly and several Ree’hd were showing an interest in the blind man. He had not been to the community before and Kristina could not remember seeing him in Terming; and there was no sign of a skimmer or any means by which he had approached the community. “Do you know him?” she asked Urak, imagining that the man meant something to the Ree’hd.

  “No,” said Urak. “Who is he?” Urak was tense and Kristina could not imagine why. She said, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. Why does he upset you?”

  “He fills me with unease,” said the Ree’hd, hunching forward and staring across the water. “Something about him…”

  “He can’t go far,” said Kristina. “Finish singing and we’ll talk to him.”

  But Urak could not finish his own song. He sat and watched the man with four unblinking eyes that had lost their sparkle as his tension grew. Around Kristina the Ree’hd song drifted away and more and more of the Ree’hd began to leave the steeply sloping bank of the river and return to their burrows.

  The cloud-covering was now thick and oppressive, and the wind changed in character—no longer the magic sentience blowing in a single direction, but a playful sequence of gusts and eddies—the sort of wind pattern during which the bodies of dead infants were offered to the river.

  This was early spring and the rushing waters of the river were the soul of a new season; their monotonous sounds were the prayers of the world as life cycles began to revolve.

  Urak seemed to overcome his anxiety and he rose from the bank and turned to follow the stream of Ree’hd back to the burrows and the copious repairs that the rain had necessitated. “Are you going to the city now?” he asked. There was a cheerfulness, a harmony in the air.

  Kristina remained seated, watching the man opposite her. When Urak spoke she looked up. “No… no, I’ll stay here awhile.”

  Urak’s touch on her face was as gentle as it was reassuring. He said, in his own tongue, “Don’t postpone what might well be a pleasant meeting. Four years is a long time to be apart from someone. He may have changed.”

  Kristina could not have agreed more. “I know, Urak. That’s what I’m really afraid of. I’ve changed too… and not in the right way for harmony with Robert.” She shook her head. Urak walked away but, unaware of his departure, she talked on. “It will be a frightening meeting. I can already see his eyes… full of despair, full of need. And what can I say? Just: ‘hello-goodbye… there’s nothing left Robert. Nothing for us, so forget your romantic plans. Go about your business and leave me alone’.”

  The man on the opposite bank watched her. He seemed concerned. Kristina realized that Urak had left and that she sat alone by the river. She felt cold. Through a break in the cloud she saw a fragment of the dull red disc of the sun—she watched it and thought of Earth’s tiny sun and how huge the sun of Ree’hdworld was by comparison. In the far distance she could see the energy accumulators above Terming and she could imagine the hideous bustle of human traffic, and the rape that they were perpetrating upon the Ree’hd culture, spreading out from the old burrows where they had set their first installation.

  Kristina was ashamed to be pink, fat and bipedal. She wished she were a fish… a silver fish, darting upstream, as if inviting the watcher to catch it.

  “Don’t brood. There’s no point.”

  He was sitting by her and her mind could not accept the fact for a second. “How… how did you get over here so fast?”

  The blind man laughed. “I move fast. Don’t bother yourself with it. Concentrate on cheering up.”

  Astonished by his matter-of-factness, Kristina stared at the blind man who turned his head to watch her with uncanny accuracy. He was very old, that was clear—and yet there was something very youthful about him. He wore clothes styled in antiquity, an outfit of leather, cracked and dulled with time. He wore no cataphrak and should have been freezing, but he seemed to find the climate quite amenable. Looking at his face, Kristina detected great warmth, and strong humour. Looking at his eyes she felt a chill, however; his eyes were white, completely white, with a fe
w tiny blood vessels tracing a path around the very edge of each orbit.

  As she moved her head so his head turned to follow; though his eyes never quite met hers, he almost certainly could see what she was doing. He seemed to enjoy her puzzlement and remained silent.

  After a moment she said, “I’m sorry if I’m staring, but I thought… I thought you were blind.” She was peering at him, searching, as if the answer to the paradox was written somewhere in the folds of flesh upon his face.

  “My name is Kevin Maguire, by way of an introduction. And yes, I am blind. But I have extra senses and I can visualize you quite clearly.”

  “You do? How? I don’t know of any human that can do that. I’m Kristina Schriock, by the way.”

  Maguire nodded. “Yes I know—I just left your husband on a skimmer flying to Terming…” Kristina didn’t even want to think about that. Did the man jump then? “and you’d be right with what you say. There are no humans who can do what I do.” He grinned broadly. “I’m unique. To change the subject, I’m surprised my name hasn’t struck a bell somewhere in your head. Or has this world forgotten me already?”

  Kristina thought hard for a moment, staring quizzically at the smiling man next to her. Kevin Maguire. She repeated the name to herself and tried to remember her first few years on Ree’hdworld. There was certainly something familiar about the name, but not about the man beside her. He looked almost too casual for a man from Terming. In any case, what would a blind man be doing in a limited installation? He could be of no possible use.

  It came to her quite suddenly. “Kevin Maguire—the man who left the Pianhmar search record.”

  Maguire smiled. “A search-and-found record. A record of feelings, of travel, of excitement, of sadness. I put everything into that little strip of tape.”

  “The record gives no details of any actual contact. A few people think that the record is incomplete. Most think it’s nothing but a record of failure.”

  “Failure?” Maguire seemed shocked. “Failure,” he repeated. “I don’t understand why anyone should…” he suddenly became angry. “I gave Earth details of the first contact ever with a greater intelligence than ourselves—I gave the Ree’hd an account of the death of my friend, their brother, Hans-ree… I left it all at the base of the mountains before I went… what failure? Did they think I was lying?”

  “Who was Hans-ree?”

  “A good Ree’hd,” said Maguire. “A very good Ree’hd. He was my guide to the mountains. In those days, you understand, I was truly blind. He took me as far as he dared, and when I begged him to take me further, up on to the first range, he agreed. It cost him his life and I buried him, and I even sang a song for him, and I only hope that that was enough—he was a good Ree’hd. Did the locals think I lied about that too?”

  A sudden bitterness had entered his manner and Kristina wondered how she could make amends for a cruel twist of fate that had denied the generations on Ree’hdworld the knowledge of Maguire’s activities. She decided honesty was the best policy. “The tape was a mere fragment, rescued from the scattered fragments of a recorder. The fragment ended before any such contact details were given; there was nothing following a whispered message that you thought you were being watched by beings you thought might be the Pianhmar…”

  Maguire had settled into silence. It seemed to Kristina that he was brooding over a loss that was no one’s fault at all.

  “Don’t brood,” she said. “There’s no point.”

  Maguire glanced at her and his blind eyes seemed to sparkle again. He laughed loudly and slapped his hand on her knee. It was then that Kristina remembered when Maguire’s first contact was supposed to have been. Angry at having been deceived she snapped, “You can’t possibly be Kevin Maguire! He died seven hundred years ago. You bloody fraud!”

  “Wait,” said Maguire, reaching out a hand to stop Kristina climbing to her feet and walking away. “What do you mean-died?”

  “How could he have lived? The lifespan of human beings on Ree’hdworld is cut to about a hundred and seventy years, so Maguire couldn’t have lived past the twenty-fourth century.”

  “But I tell you I am Maguire. I am the man who left that record. I’m the first man who ever contacted the Pianhmar, no matter what anyone says. I’ve been away and now I’m back.”

  “You expect me to believe that? That you’re… what, seven hundred years old?”

  “I’m old,” said Maguire simply. “Too old, perhaps.” He shrugged. “In any case you’re making a wrong assumption.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re assuming that I’m human. That if my eyes are blind I cannot see, that if my age is greater than the sturdy oak then I should be six feet down.”

  Kristina wondered—briefly—what the “sturdy oak” was; then she shook the irrelevancy out of her head and said, “Well you are human, I can see that.”

  Maguire looked away. He pointed to the low hills between the community and the city of Terming. “When I first listened to the world about the Ree’hd burrows, you know what I thought? And don’t forget, I was really blind then. I thought: Earth.”

  “I’ve been there on vacation and it looked very dirty to me.”

  “Well… a lot can have happened in several centuries. But take it from me, Ree’hdworld is a very Earthlike planet in many respects. As Earth was when I was around, anyway. Looking back at those hills now,” he was pointing towards the Hellgate mountains, “you know what I see? I see deep blue colours and shifting brown and green smeared vegetation. I see purplish tree forms wandering across the country, and outcrops of sodium-compound crystal formations. I see a world that I could easily believe was Earth. But it isn’t. You and I and everyone on the planet can sense the alienness of the place. Take a non-colour picture and you’d not convince a child that you were on the single world of a class K2 sun almost diametrically across the galaxy from Earth. They’d say it was Earth. But sit, awhile, and feel the place and it becomes sinister. Ree’hdworld is so unlike Earth that it takes years to grow used to the place. You probably already know that.”

  “Yes.” Kristina was feeling that alienness now. It was as she had felt it those first long months on the world, nearly half a lifetime ago and fresh from terraformed world of Kruzus B. It was nothing that could be expressed in words… it was, perhaps, a combination of feelings. A nature surrounding her in which she did not belong… the knowledge of the alien sun, the two moons that whipped the seas and vegetation in such frenzied bouts of activity. The fauna, fitting into all the expected niches, and yet not conforming to any evolutionary pattern that a human would be familiar with. Hostile animals that feared things outside their own experience… a planet where the air had never been conquered, but where the oceans supported a biomass so huge and varied that it had driven the catalogue computer crazy.

  She knew what the blind man meant. Ree’hdworld was alien on an emotional level, and she realized, as she experienced that alienness again, that she could probably never shake it off; unless… unless she could become a Ree’hd in spirit, if not in body.

  As a human, after fifteen years, she had learned to adapt to the environment, and she felt Ree’hdworld nature just slightly closer.

  Maguire said, “In the same way, I may look human, but I am more than human, and less than human. I have lost my claim to humanity. But I’ve gained my sight.”

  Kristina was unsure what to think. She hugged her knees and watched skipjacks jumping from the surface of the river in their efforts to catch drifting spores. Maguire appeared to be watching them too, and for a while there was no talk between them.

  How could she accept that this stranger was the man who had gone down into history as the last man to try and contact the Pianhmar, a man who, by his own word, had been the first and last to actually contact them? He was six hundred years too late for his story to be accepted without incredulity. But life could be suspended, couldn’t it? And if she assumed that the timing factor was explicable, then where was her
objection? She believed in the Pianhmar as fact, not as myth. And, incomplete though Maguire’s record had been, it had made definite reference to contact having been established.

  She looked at him. “If you are Maguire, and you contacted the Pianhmar,” Maguire nodded, as if he was anticipating the question to come, “then where are they?”

  “Why, gone,” he replied, as if nothing could be more obvious. “They were almost gone when I contacted them. I found the remnants of their race, and they took me into their bosom.”

  “You, but not anyone who tried before you…”

  “I was blind, remember? No one who tried before me was blind, and the Pianhmar killed them. It was important to them, in the state they were in, that no sentience actually look upon them. But a blind man… that was different. And it finally came home to the bureaucrats in the tent-city—that’s all Terming was in those days; it’s bigger now, I notice—that the only way to make contact with the fabled race was to use a man who couldn’t see.

  “They brought me from Earth for that purpose. Did you know that? All the way from Earth.”

  Kristina said flatly, “No bodily remains, no tombs, no cities, no ruins, no traces… just myth. Hardly indicates the existence of a great race, a race who were supposed to have conquered the galaxy before man had even evolved on Earth.”

  “They grew beyond such things. As you say, the Pianhmar had lived on Ree’hdworld for many millenia. In time, I don’t know how long ago, they began the slow process of decay, of devolution. They cycled out. Time covered their tracks, and I caught them at the very last.”

  “And there’s not an atom of them left now?”

  “On the contrary,” Maguire laughed. “There are quite a few atoms left. And many traces. There are even a few Pianhmar, I should imagine, if you know where to look. I can’t be sure.”

  “Where have you been since? Where have you spent your extra six hundred years?”

  Maguire considered the question for a long moment. “With them. Moving with them, seeing and watching with them, experiencing with them.”