I cleared the tears from my eyes with the sleeve of my one-piece. I dared not look back at my ruined feet, so I looked forward instead.
At first I thought it was evening, but then I realized that we were simply in a gloomy vegetable grotto of some kind. The ground was clear for some thirty meters to either side, and where the branches of the trees did not quite meld together matted rugs of twig-and-vine had been extended between them. There were partitions, too, made out of the same rough “cloth,” cutting out squarish shelters and areas of private space. There was no fire, and there were few artifacts, all made of wood. Cups, bowls, spoons, spears.
I looked around uncertainly at the gathering crowd. Their staring eyes were filled with a curiosity that I could recognize all the way across the biological gulf between our species. I was struck by how similar they all were, in this particular guise. There was no evidence of sexual dimorphism, though there were certainly some smaller individuals—presumably children—in the party. There were more than thirty of them, but less than fifty. I didn’t take an accurate count.
Standing was out of the question, but I could sit up, supporting myself on one hand, with my injured legs trailing the other way. I did so, trying to get as close as I could to a position of assumed equality. They watched me, as if I were expected to give some kind of performance. They seemed ready to take an interest in whatever came naturally.
Here you are, queer thing—do your bit.
“What do you want?” I asked. My voice was no longer soothing; I couldn’t have sounded soothing if I’d wanted to. “I can’t do my song and dance act anymore. I can’t do magic, and without the right equipment, I can’t do miracles. I know I’m supposed to convince you that I’m a god, but for the life of me I can’t think how. A cigarette lighter is supposed to be the thing, so that I can introduce you to the miracle of fire, but I don’t have one. They went out of fashion, four hundred years ago. All I have is a thing which would look to you like a sculpture of a seed pod. It doesn’t do a damn thing.”
I paused, and looked around to see what effect the speech was having. They weren’t rolling in the aisles, but they weren’t throwing rotten vegetables either.
“You’re the ones with the canny tricks,” I told them. “You do the best froggy carnivore I’ve seen since the Natural History Museum in London. That one was just a model, though; the real ones became extinct millions of years ago. Only you’re not going to become extinct, are you? The amphibians of Naxos have figured out a way to keep on going. Who needs cleidoic eggs when you have the kind of adaptability you have, hey? Shapeshifting and intelligence, too—conscious control of bodily form. I bet it took you a long, long time to cultivate that little trick. I bet you’re clever, too, but you’ll never become civilized. You don’t need fire to cook your food because you can alter yourselves to digest what the hell you like as easily as you please. You should investigate the wonders of stone, though. It’s useful stuff.”
They were watching me as if fascinated. I had the crazy idea that I ought to keep talking, in case their fascination gave way to something that would be the worse for me.
“You see in me,” I told them, “the very acme of Earth’s evolutionary process. A human being, phenomenally intelligent and knowledgeable, able to organize the crossing of the great labyrinth of outer space—not personally, you understand, but I am here as ambassador for the entire race. For myself, I am but a humble toiler in the realm of science—a gleaner in the fields of knowledge, trying to pick up the scraps that my ancestors left behind when they sowed the great harvest of wisdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...sorry, I mean reaped the great harvest. You’ll have to excuse me—I’m not quite up to my best. My feet hurt. I’m not an outstanding specimen of my kind, I suppose, but I am an Englishman, which might mean that I am in some distant sense related to Shakespeare. It’s said that if you go far enough back ancestral lines get so tangled up that everybody now alive is related to everyone then famous. England and Shakespeare are, from the viewpoint of aliens a hundred and fifty light years away, of little enough consequence in the cosmic scheme, but he could write speeches better than I can.... This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle.... This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars.... This other Eden, demi-paradise.... This fortress built by Nature for herself.... Against infection and the hand of war....”
I found myself laughing, and didn’t know why.
This other Eden...demi-paradise.
It suddenly seemed so very amusing. But I wasn’t thinking about England. Not any more.
They were tired of my performance now. I could see it in their eyes. They wanted to get on to the next act. I wondered what it was. Then one of them stepped forward from the mass. It may have been the one who first approached me, but I couldn’t tell. When I saw what he was carrying, I felt like screaming.
Instead of screaming (which wouldn’t have helped) I dragged Harmall’s transmitter from my pocket and started yelling into it.
“Harmall! Fix on this and get me the hell out of here! The bastard aliens have got me and they’re going to kill me. I’ll transmit now and start again. I’ll keep going as long as I can.”
I transmitted the message and opened the channel again. I kept pressing the buttons, one after the other, recording a few seconds of meaningless noise and then transmitting. I wanted the beeps to be flowing into Harmall’s receiver, to give him the best possible chance of getting a fix on my position.
If he could.
If he was listening.
If he wasn’t, then I was finished.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The thing the alien was holding was some kind of switch. Not a light switch...switch as in “long, flexible cane”...switch as in riding whip. He didn’t look as if he did a lot of riding.
I tried to get to my feet, to move away, but I didn’t have a chance and he knew it. The gleam in his eyes no longer signaled curiosity or intelligence, but cruelty. He was going to cut me up and he was going to enjoy it.
I got halfway to my feet, and then hurled myself forward, aiming to butt him in the soft white belly. I got a whistle out of him as he failed to dodge quickly enough, but the whole maneuver probably hurt me more than it hurt him. He stuck a knee in my face and I felt the cartilages in my nose grind as blood spouted out.
Then the blows began to fall, and there was nothing I could do but roll up into a ball and try to fend them off as best I could. I tried to take them on my arms, but he was going for any fleshy bit of me he could reach, and he didn’t care what I did. The damned thing whistled as it cut through the air—a sound that could have been a syllable in their crazy language.
I felt the cloth across my back tearing, and I felt the blood soaking it through.
Now I was screaming. It wasn’t doing any good, but there was no way I could help it.
My clenched fist, though, was still clicking and clicking at the buttons on the little metal thing, sending forty messages a minute out into the void. All anyone listening would be able to hear in the split-second recordings was a much-interrupted howling. I only hoped that they wouldn’t take it for a mechanical fault.
As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. I was sprawled out, face down, still conscious. As before, the moment the torn flesh was no longer being tormented, the pain somehow became ordinary. It was well-nigh unbearable, but it was ordinary. I could think again—I could even act, if I could find enough strength in my body to lift my head.
I tried, for no better reason than to demonstrate my defiance.
I looked up, at the faces peering down at me, trying to focus on their eyes.
I tried to say something to them.
“You...,” I began. I was planning to insult them if I could only find the right word. “You....”
And then I had to stop, because I saw something that was absolutely beyond belief, so astounding that it had to be the product of deranged consciousness. My thoughts froze, and I tried to focus my eyes.
I t
ried....
and I saw....
and it was real!
It was
You! Lying on your back staring up at the pale white ceiling, feeling oh so heavy as if your limbs were made of lead, and you wonder what the problem is and why you can’t move your eyes at all...until suddenly you realize that you’re dead, and you’re lying naked in your coffin.
The only lights are six black candles, and you hear the murmurous voices of the mourners getting closer, and you know they’re coming to see you, to stare and sneer at you as you lie there past recall. They’re dressed in black, with tall black hats, and their faces seem long as they float into view from the periphery of your field of vision. They look down at you like vultures contemplating their next meal, and they mutter away in such fast, low tones that you can’t understand a word they’re saying, except that it’s all about you and it’s nothing good.
The tears are falling, and you can feel them soaking into your skin, but you can’t tell whether they’re real tears or tears of blood. They ooze into your flesh and make you feel unclean, making you swell up like a bloated bladder...rich pickings for the ghouls.
You can hear the music now—the missa solemnis played on a penny whistle, and the faces draw back as you begin to move on down the aisle of the great cathedral, whose vaulted ceiling replaces the plain white one, drawing your gaze higher than you ever imagined possible and dazzling your sight.
You never imagined that you’d be able to eavesdrop on your funeral, and you feel that you might be guilty of some especially pernicious voyeurism. You shouldn’t be there, though wherever else you should or might be is beyond the power of your imagining. Above the sound of the music and the muttering voices—or perhaps beyond those sounds—there is another noise that isolates itself and seems louder and softer at the same time. You can hear it, but you’re sure that the congregation can’t. it’s a sound for your ears only.
It’s the sound of sobbing.
Someone is crying...crying as if the world were ending, and there’s nothing you can do.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
It’s not even because you’re dead, because being alive wouldn’t make the slightest difference. It’s a sickness that afflicts the whole world, a plague that rots more than flesh, that eats its way into the heart of everything, a cancer consuming the whole universe, gobbling up the stars.
The funeral seems unnecessary, somehow, as though the world wished you on your way a long, long time before...as though you didn’t need to die.
The colored light that filters through the cathedral windows is growing dimmer now, as night falls quickly. The voices fade away, and the music reaches its final plaintive phrases before bursting out again, no longer a celebration of human tragedy but a mocking dance which you recognize as the final movement of the Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, which you know so very well, where the demons and spirits enjoy their lunatic dance in celebration of the triumph of evil.
The ghosts come out of the walls, no longer afraid of the twilight, but there’s something pathetic about their capering and you know there’s no need to fear them, because you’re of their company now and they can’t be anything but welcoming anymore. If the devil himself were to greet you, you wouldn’t be afraid, because you knew—you always knew—that you belonged to him, and that hellfire would be your just reward. You’re filled with a feeling of relief that it’s all over....
Except, of course, that it isn’t.
There’s still the blood. it has to be let out. You know that it’s only a simple thing, like the lancing of a boil, but there’s something about the idea that makes you cringe and sweat, something that fills you with a terror so limitless it strips you of your intelligence and leaves you whimpering like a puling animal. It has to be done, but it’s the worst thing in the world, by comparison the healing fires of hell are the gentle breath of the sun.
The suffocation is mounting in your throat; your mouth is full and you’re slowly being strangled.
The blood is coming.
is coming....
is coming....
And suddenly, insanely, dream is replaced by delirium, and heat is searing my eyelids. I struggle to open them, and the sky is burning red.
It can’t be!
But it can, and it is, and red fire is everywhere, and instead of the dream carrying me away to hell, wakefulness has brought hell into the world. There is not only the sight of burning but the sound and the smell.
And the sound, too, of rifle fire.
I realize that the red flame is the flame of phosphorus flares, colored for blood and danger, and that the rifle fire is scattering the demonic forces, slaying the vampires and consigning their dust to damnation.
I wish that I could move, but the pain is too much to bear, and even triumph cannot lift my flesh as it lifts my spirits. I am not dead, but I am very, very weak.
Nevertheless, I know it as I fall back into the well of darkness, far from the grasp of wicked dream.
I know it: I am saved.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I woke up once more before the reinforcements arrived from the dome, bringing morphia to take away the pain. It was the pain that woke me, I think.
Angelina Hesse was sitting over me, with the flare gun in her left hand and the rifle in her right. It was evening, and the light was fading. She was frightened, knowing that if night fell, they might return.
She saw my eyes open.
“Hello Lee,” she said.
“Harmall got my message?” I said.
“He got them. I must have reached the first spot less than an hour after you left it. When they got the second fix...I got here as quickly as I could. The party from the dome will be here any minute.”
I twisted my neck to look beyond her, at the nearest of the bodies. It was no longer recognizable as something humanoid. The milky pink stuff had oozed out, and the whole form seemed to be half-dissolved.
“It’s not pretty,” she said.
“I suppose I don’t look much better.”
“You’ll be okay,” she told me. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and your skin is a mess. They did their best to flay you alive without the benefit of a knife. But you’ll live.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then I whispered: “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, tiredly. “It doesn’t make any kind of sense that I can see. Other worlds...alien ways. They’re preneolithic savages, Lee. We can’t expect civilized behavior.”
“If Harmall got the message,” I said, changing the subject, “does that mean he’s no longer a prisoner on the Ariadne? Or is the war still going on?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“This must change things.”
“I don’t know,” she said again. “Take it easy, Lee. Help will be here in a minute. Let it ride.”
The effort of speaking had become too much for me anyhow. I lapsed back into delirious semi-consciousness until the rescue party did arrive, but it was a quiet delirium, washed back and forth by an ordinary pain.
Once I was sedated, of course, I lost all track of time, and did not mind it in the least. The dreams which morphine brings are, in my experience, sweeter by far than those which wait in sleep. When I finally did come round again, there was nothing left of the agony but a dull sensation which, though far from comfortable, became unbearable only when I moved.
I was lying on my stomach in a cot, in what I took to be a small sealed-off section of the dome. Angelina—without a sterile suit—was sitting by the bedside, while Zeno, more discreetly packaged, was working with the aid of a small desk computer.
“Are we sterile,” I inquired, “or are we not?”
“We’re in the lab section of the dome,” she told me. “My suit was torn while I rushed to your rescue. There seemed little point in resealing it or trading it in for another. Anyhow, you needed a transfusion of whole blood, and I was the right type.”<
br />
“How am I?” I asked. My voice sounded thick and my tongue was furry. Zeno abandoned his screen and pulled his chair over to the bedside.
“Not so good,” said Angelina. “You have a lot of flesh to regenerate. You can do it, but it takes time.”
“They beat me up pretty comprehensively, hey?”
“Yes,” she said, “they did.”
“What’s the state of play with Juhasz’ Grand Plan?”
“Ticking over,” said Zeno. “He’s waiting to see if you develop any infections. If you don’t, he’s going to figure that it’s safe.”
“He’s going ahead, then?”
“It seems that way,” said Angelina. “Not that we have access to his most secret thoughts, you understand. The existence of the indigenes doesn’t seemed to have changed his mind.”
“The HSB?”
“Still out, as far as we know.”
Nothing much seemed to have changed.
“Lee,” said Zeno softly, “can you tell us what happened? We need to know. It’s all rather confused, from our point of view.”
I had a drink of water, and then told them what happened—how the aliens first appeared, changed shape, roughed me up as they marched me across country, dumped me on the floor of their rough abode, and finally set out to beat me to death.
“Think carefully,” said Zeno. “At the very end—what was going on?”
I thought carefully.
“I was thumbing Harmall’s damned transmitter, trying to signal for help. I remember being on the ground, trying to get away from the switch. I remember looking up. I saw....”
I’d raised my hand, as if to point at something, and the gesture just froze. My jaw stuck, and I was hung up there, in mid-syllable, for what must have been fully half a minute. I was aware of the fact that they were staring at me, but I just didn’t know how to go on.
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