Eye Among the Blind

by Robert Holdstock

  “Look, nobody said—”

  “I said you got that clear, Zeitman? You deserted us, now you phase out.”

  “I don’t want your job, Kawashima! Will you shut up a moment?”

  Kawashima smiled, a gesture of triumph, not mirth. “You got that clear, that’s good. Now. What the hell Erlam send you here for?” He picked up his towel and continued to absorb the sweat from his body.

  “I’m going to be doing field work… I hope, simple liaison work with the Ree’hd-”

  “In which case you’ll be under my authority. I hope Erlam explained that to you.”

  Zeitman affirmed, a little shocked, very annoyed, but he affirmed anyway and said nothing else about it. He went on, “He says I should get an update from you. Major advances only—he seemed to think there had been some.”

  Kawashima made a sound that Zeitman interpreted as a sneer. “Erlam is a pain, a real pain! Yes, there have been advances. Things are changing, Zeitman—rapidly and incomprehensibly things on Ree’hdworld are turning end over end. That’s half the reason Erlam is a pain; that man, he likes everything just so. Nice orderly installation, nice orderly world, nice orderly biology; everything must fit a pattern. The man’s on a bigger trip than I was just on.”

  “To the point,” said Zeitman, irritated by this slandering of Dan Erlam. “How are things changing?”

  “I can only tell you what we’ve seen. Conclusions come later. First, the Ree’hd are behaving strangely. They are suddenly very angry and giving Erlam something to worry about. We’ve squatted on Ree’hdworld seven hundred years, Zeitman, and in all that time we’ve really been very good people—we’ve not interfered with the Ree’hd beyond inviting them into our installation. Everything—Ree’hdwise—is as it always was. But that is not enough for them. They want us offworld to the last man. Now that’s change…”

  Zeitman agreed. That was a change indeed. Four years ago he had visited the nearest three burrow communities to make his farewells and without exception the burrow Ones had urged him to return before too long. There had been nothing but friendship.

  Kawashima, talking more relaxedly, went on, “One of your jobs will be helping to figure out that change. As I say, it is Erlam’s headache too because it is having an effect on the installation. He and his ugly henchmen are going crazy trying to keep their mega-vazes holstered.

  “The second change, the one I think is the more significant, is the Rundii. In the last few months their behaviour has altered radically.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’d put it down to curiosity. They’ve started to take interest in things, in particular artificial things.”

  The burrows, the city! It began to come clear to Zeitman where the source of Erlam’s anxiety lay. He said as much to Kawashima.

  “That’s right. A thousand tourists a day go through the burrows. More, probably. But now the trips end sharp at dusk. I won’t say the burrows swarm with Rundii, but they can be heard, prowling around; they even came up into the museum once! They’ve never been violent, of course, not deliberately violent, but they panic so damn easily. It has cost lives.”

  Somehow it was impossible to imagine the Rundii as curious beings. They were Ree’hd-like animals, wandering in small packs, weaponless, clotheless, mindless, hunting by brute force, attacking when frightened (or as Kristina believed, when they met something outside their experience, a form of panic reaction) and generally staying in the deep jungles and forests of the continent. They showed no sentient behaviour whatsoever. And such developments did not occur in a heartbeat of time.

  “Why should the Rundii cause Erlam to get so jumpy? A well thrown stone can still be dodged in daylight, and the burrows are well lit, aren’t they? Just because they’ve found a possible new hunting ground doesn’t mean a great change is taking place.”

  Kawashima did not fully agree, but he said no more about the creatures. Instead he reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a small glass plate which he passed to Zeitman. It was a primitive form of photograph and when Zeitman held it to his eye and the content became internally illuminated, he thought that something was wrong with the focus. Then, after a moment, he realized that there was something wrong with the content.

  It was a picture of the inside of a burrow, dim roof-lighting, crumbling walls. A white shape was seen half in profile, turning away from the observer—a Ree’hd shape, but transparent and unreal. Zeitman was looking at a ghost.

  “And not Ree’hd, either,” said Kawashima when he spotted that Zeitman had realized what he was looking at. “There’s a spine ridge and a shape to the lateral eyes that can only mean one thing—”

  “Pianhmar?” Zeitman shouted. “Are you saying…?” He looked again, more carefully, excitement rising within him. Yes, a spine ridge, visible through the insubstantial body of the creature. A spine ridge! The feature that distinguished the mythological Pianhmar from the two observable species on Ree’hd-world. “A Pianhmar ghost. I can hardly believe it, I just can’t. Who took this?”

  Kawashima tapped his chest. “It frightened the life out of me. And I’m not the only one to see them. Five reports in the last two months, four reports during the previous six.”

  For a while Zeitman felt himself to be floating in a void, his mind unable to decide whether or not he was dreaming, while he waited for the impact of Kawashima’s discovery to register fully. He thought of the Pianhmar, who were part of the legend of Ree’hdworld and in whom few humans believed (but he remembered that the Ree’hd themselves did not think of the Pianhmar as myths; they rarely thought of them at all, in fact). He thought of ghosts—ghosts, which were no forms of fantasy but very real echoes through time-space of particular human auras; ghosts which had been so well worked out and understood that they were no longer interesting. On Earth.

  But Pianhmar ghosts!

  Chapter Four

  An hour later Zeitman arrived at Dan Erlam’s office. He walked along a corridor that was rilled with dictaprint chatter and busy body motion and passed through double doors that closed behind him and left him in a room where the only sound was the almost inaudible (but annoyingly intrusive) whirr of heating systems in the ceiling and wall. A large, green room, walls sloping inwards giving a sensation of greater depth, with a glass-topped desk sprawling across nearly one third of the floor space—and sprawled across the desk, head down, arms outstretched, neck connected to the mobile masseuse that Erlam had had specially imported—Erlam himself. He waved a hand as Zeitman came into the office and reached out to switch off the robot rollers. The skeleton-thin machine reeled up and slid away into a corner and Erlam straightened in his seat, feeling the back of his neck and smiling with pleasure.

  “So you’re back. I should have expected it, I suppose. Everything else has been going wrong these past months.”

  “Nice to see you too, Dan,” said Zeitman, smiling broadly and sitting down across the vast desk from Erlam. “Rheumatics?”

  Erlam scowled. Rheumatics! Zeitman could almost hear him saying. There’s no such thing as rheumatics, only disused muscles and under-oiled joints. “Been doing a lot of reading lately, and this gravity on heads as large as mine… well, you know how it is.”

  “I understand fully,” said Zeitman, inspecting the decor of the office. Erlam followed his meandering gaze, smiling. “Impressive?”

  “Hideous. You have the tastes of an adolescent.”

  “Young at heart, Robert. The only way to be on an age-breaker like Ree’hdworld. Young at heart. You yourself are looking gaunt, underfed.”

  “I’ve done a fair amount of travelling,” replied Zeitman, as he finished his scrutiny of the murals from Morgansworld. They were crude in execution, not to mention content, but their interesting feature was that they moved—ten-second cycles of frantic, sweaty activity. “What do they call them? I’ve seen them but never heard them referred to.”

  “The holodynes? Holodynes. The three-dimensional effect isn’t wildly exciting unless yo
u’re up close. Forget them. We have things to discuss.”

  Zeitman sat and took a good look at Erlam. The man was grossly fat and his bulging forehead seemed to bulge even more as his hairline receded beyond the horizon. Zeitman was glad he didn’t look moist. Rather, Erlam—for all his excesses—seemed cool and at ease. His thin lips were perpetually stretched in a natural smile, though today, for some reason, Zeitman could not feel the warmth he usually felt from the Director.

  “You get to see Kawashima?”

  Zeitman nodded, slowly. “An aggressive man, to say the least.”

  “He’s like that with everybody. Mind you, most people around here are going through it too: snappy, jumpy, easily irritated. Something to do with the moon, I expect.” He stared straight at Zeitman as if willing him to disagree, to tell him something far worse. But Zeitman just shrugged and smiled, and the moment passed.

  They drank baraas, and chased it with genuine Irish, and talked about Zeitman’s time away from Ree’hdworld; they found their feet with each other again, became the old friends they were, relaxed with each other. But there was an underlying tension in Erlam that Zeitman felt was directed at him; Erlam was unhappy about something, and not the greater worry shared by them both.

  Zeitman told of his wasted months, brooding over the world he had left, wishing he had never gone away. Then the gradual realization that Kristina had meant more to him than he thought. There had been pleasure all along the line, of course. New challenges and old problems that he could have set his mind to. But he had participated in these things very little. He travelled a huge circle, went to Earth, and came back—ultimately—to Ree’hdworld.

  “Why?” said Erlam. “Why back here? There’s no pleasure here—not on the same scale as some of the colonial worlds.”

  “Did I give the impression I wanted pleasure? No…” he fell silent for a moment. “You know why, Dan. You know why I’m back.”

  Erlam watched him, then nodded. “Kristina.” He suddenly became angry. “For Christ’s sake, Robert—you’ve got a damnable cheek! You treat the woman like… like an inferior being for years; you walk off and leave her, and then expect to come creeping back! It’s not fair of you, damn you. Not fair.”

  Surprised at the outburst Zeitman was at a loss for words, for a second or two. “Dan, it wasn’t just me, you know. There was fault on both sides…” What on earth was the matter with Erlam? Why so touchy about the point? “Anyway, Kristina is only a very small part of it. Very small.”

  And the rest was Ree’hdworld and Zeitman himself. Ree’hdworld because of the fascination the place held for him (as indeed it held for Erlam), a fascination based on his own understanding—and that understanding was shared by very few others. There was the biology of the world—previously his full time study—a biology that he could not accept as being everything it seemed. There was the Pianhmar legend, and who could resist that? Every world that Zeitman had ever visited claimed to have some mysterious past intelligence, but only on Ree’hdworld did he get the feeling that the legend was substantially more than myth. And with Pianhmar ghosts moving through the burrows near the city, how much longer could widespread scepticism last?

  And Zeitman himself. It was no surprise to him to find he looked gaunt and underfed. He must have looked a wreck, contrasted with how he had looked four years ago during the phase of his life when he felt confident and secure among his colleagues. All that was gone. In only one thing did he find security—Ree’hdworld! A world substantially free of humans, where he could lose himself, if he wanted, in an alien nature and alien environment, and not be forced to play tough games with aggressive Japanese biologists, and behave in a way that was contrary to his inclination.

  He was running back to the warmth of familiarity, and in so running he hoped to find again his old confidence, his youthful carelessness. He hoped to shake off that terrible thing that he knew had afflicted him, the almost unmentionable disease that was spreading through map-space and decimating colony after colony, and which had taken a hold of him and was wearing him down.

  He said, simply, “I like it here.”

  Erlam burst out laughing. “I know how you feel, Robert. The place sort of gets under your skin. How about the job? Like it?”

  “Liaison Corps? Since when did we have a Liaison Corps attached to the military?”

  Erlam grinned. “We never did. You are it. Your old job had been reassigned, but the city fathers all agreed with me that you were worth getting back. And the old fool in charge of the military happens to be… well, we drink a lot together. Listen, don’t bloody complain! You’re lucky to be allowed back at all.”

  “Fine… fine… I’m not complaining. I accept-gratefully.”

  Erlam was flushed and getting happier. He reached across the desk for Zeitman’s glass. Zeitman reached out and stopped him from refilling him with Irish whiskey. He was already feeling light-headed and the strange colour combinations of the murals in the office were merging and mingling to form an almost white sensation in his head. Years since I threw a drunk, he thought angrily. Why now? Why on my first day down when there’s so much to learn?

  He tried to shake the dizziness off and the room swam back into focus.

  “Strong stuff,” said Erlam, waving the flask of baraas. “From Dominion. Susanna Neves brought it in and we confiscated it, naturally. It was my turn for a favour. Breathe deep. The active ingredient disperses quickly, but more so if your blood is well oxygenated. Alcohol should be so delicate, huh?”

  “Liaison Corps,” repeated Zeitman. “You want me to run a team of people… doing what to human-Ree’hd contact? Stopping it? Monitoring it?”

  “Whatever you like, Robert. Do as you please. The whole thing is just for officialdom’s sake, but it gives you the legal opportunity to get back among the Ree’hd. Your actual assignments will come from…” Erlam looked suddenly guilty.

  “That bloody Japanese, I know!” shouted Zeitman. “If he thinks he’s going to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, a moron who’s only been here a fifth the time I have…”

  “I’m sorry Robert, I really am. I can only bend the establishment so far. You know very well the position you had, which Kawashima now has, was the boss-position. I can’t change that.”

  Zeitman swallowed his pride. “But you can tell him to lay off. That Robert Zeitman goes where he wants, does what he wants. Right?”

  Erlam acquiesced. “Robert… it is already done. My, you’re a touchy fellow at times.”

  Zeitman felt better already, but it wouldn’t last.

  “Incidentally,” Erlam continued, “Susanna Neves might be useful as an assistant, and there are a few diplomatic corps people in Terming with too much time on their hands if you ever want a team of more than one.”

  “I thought Susanna was here as a secretary to some diplomatic topman… so she told me.”

  “It’s true—I got her off the hook just two hours ago. She’d have hated him. It’s a sad story about Susanna-parents kicked her here to help her find some responsibility. If she travelled with you I expect she already found some…”

  He couldn’t possibly know, thought Zeitman, but he was impressed at Erlam’s guesswork.

  Erlam went on, “In the meantime, the world of contact is yours. As Kawashima told you, I expect, the Ree’hd of several communities are giving us trouble. My worry is that the city-living Ree’hd will start acting up.”

  “There’s something very patronizing about your tone, Dan, and it damn well shouldn’t be there. Anyway, I can’t see that you have anything to worry about. There’s essentially no social structure in Terming—among the Ree’hd that is. They drift about between their own sector and the centre—they’ll do anything to help, and make every cent they can. You don’t get rebellion without organization and the only thing our home-grown Ree’hd seem anxious to do is to follow the human way of life. They don’t give a Rundii’s spit about money, but they seem to think it’s the thing to do, to make a profi
t.”

  Erlam laughed. “You’re right. And make profits they do. Every so often one of the topmen Ree’hd throws a party—one of those Ree’hd who are a little more organized than you seem to think—to which I get invited and I don’t come out of it for a week. If you’d spent more time in the city during the last twenty years you could have shared that perk. They’re great lads, Robert, those few. Things have changed in the last few years.”

  “Not to mention the last few hundred.”

  Erlam shrugged, looked a little fatalistic. “Can’t .help the past, Robert. Can’t help the way things were left to us.”

  Seven hundred years ago, thought Zeitman through a fast clearing head, there were just the Ree’hd, their burrows, and a few humans in tents, living in harmony, living as Ree’hd. The Ree’hd, in those days, had all been as the hill-dwelling Ree’hd of this century, gentle and quiet beings. Apparently empty vessels on a strangely still world.

  Humans.

  Wherever they went they took change, and change had come to Ree’hdworld within three centuries. At first it had been the installations—scattered beacons, way stations, geophysical units and training stations. A few hundred humans taking scant interest in the Ree’hd (though more in the occasionally violent Rundii) going through the motions of their human functions, exploring, probing, documenting. There had been a few, even then, who had found the myth of the Pianhmar a challenge, and in his reading and listening to records from the past, Zeitman had found much to suggest that there had been scientists and observers who had also felt uneasy about the world, about the way things were.

  Zeitman had his analog back through time to the moment of discovery of the only other intelligence besides man in map-space.

  Things were different now.

  The town had appeared first, an expanse of tents gradually replaced by less wind-susceptible buildings. Five hundred years after man’s arrival on the world the first tourists showed their faces, in an installation that was by then a city.