DARK IS THE SUN

by Philip José Farmer

  The Shemibob said, "Some of the figures are letters which humans used in their writing from the beginning. That X, that T, that H, and that O, and others have always been used here. They are simple, naturally formed figures, so natural that they've been used on other worlds, including my native planet.

  "But many of the characters are unfamiliar to me. And I believe they were unfamiliar to the great civilizations which saw them floating above in the sky when the Earth rotated more swiftly on its axis.

  They probably had more success than I've had in interpreting the message. It must be a message, a spelling out of Earth's doom and, perhaps, the means for escaping the doom."

  Sloosh said, "Perhaps. It would have been better if, instead of letters of some alphabet, the sender of the message had used moving pictures. These could have been understood by anyone."

  "That does seem the logical thing to do," she said. "Perhaps the figures were designed as directions to

  The House. Anybody could follow them to it. In which case, we should be able to see something that will enlighten us."

  From somewhere in Deyv's mind a thought seeped out like water that had forced its way up through rock.

  "Now I know what you meant when you said that the figures won't go out again until a new universe is formed!" he said. "But ... if the House and its occupant are waiting until then, wouldn't they—perhaps—

  have come from an older universe to this one? I mean, couldn't they have survived the death of the universe that existed before ours? They passed unscathed through the fall of all matter and the formation of the giant fireball and its explosion and the formation of this universe? The House is made of something which will outlast the deaths of many worlds!"

  Sloosh patted Deyv's shoulder. "Very good. You are learning."

  "What nonsense," Hoozisst said. "Why would anyone stay in The House while the Earth was a good place to live in? Surelv, that man, if he is a man and not just a statue, would leave The House to enjoy life. What sense is there in sitting frozen on that chair and only rousing, and that not often, to look out the window?"

  "We don't know that he does stay in The House," The Shemibob said. "Of course, that would imply a longevity that makes even mine look as short as a mayfly's existence."

  The Yawtl snickered.

  "Besides, there is no guarantee that The House would be drawn to a planet," Sloosh said. "It might float through space until it falls with all other matter toward a common point."

  "Perhaps," The Shemibob said, "it makes no difference to the tenant."

  "The point is," Hoozisst said, "is there anything there that will tell us what the flying figures mean?"

  The Shemibob sighed and said, "No."

  "Then we've wasted our time and put ourselves in danger for nothing."

  "You're too practical, too unimaginative," Sloosh said. "This universe wasn't created for the likes of you."

  The Yawtl lifted one lip to show some sharp teeth, but he said nothing.

  Deyv looked from the screen into the sombre depths below the window. Was the statue really a human being who woke up now and then after an unimaginably long nap? Who then walked through a hall and into a room that held a window and looked through it to see how the world had changed? And then he walked back to the throne and became a statue again?

  What woke him up and what put him to sleep again, that is, turned him back into a stuff that nothing could destroy?

  Deyv shook his head, and he shivered.

  Sloosh said, "I wonder why the hand on the thrigz is yellow and the figures are blue?"

  The Shemibob gave her flapping laugh. "What is the color of time?"

  Sloosh buzzed laughter. "I don't know. What is the angle of a thought?"

  "Or the temperature of love?"

  "Or the rate of acceleration of instinct?"

  ''Is a dead ray of light gray or blue?"

  They burst out laughing again. This was cut off by a cry from the Yawtl. "His finger moved!"

  Startled, all looked at the screen.

  After a while, Deyv said, "I think I see it move, too." He wanted desperately to get down off the roof and into the vessel.

  The Shemibob said, "No, it didn't. You imagined it. So did Hoozisst."

  "It's like watching a corpse and thinking you see its chest rise and fall," Vana said. She didn't sound too certain, however.

  They kept on looking at the finger with the gold band. There wasn't a sound. It seemed as if the whole world had died.

  Finally, The Shemibob said, "We have less time than I thought. We should go now."

  Deyv did not recall ever having heard words that made him as happy.

  41

  SEVENTY times The Dark Beast had crossed the glaring skies.

  Thrush was walking now and babbling, on the edge of mastering many words and forming short sentences.

  Vana had just announced that she was again pregnant. Neither she nor Deyv had given in on the dispute about which tribe they would live with.

  Phemropit said that it would soon need more "food." They must look for another source of the ore from which it got its energy. The Shemibob had promised that they would keep an eye out for it. But she confided to the rest that there was not much chance they would find the ore.

  This made Deyv sad. Though he found it impossible to love the creature, he did have a certain fondness for it. Moreover, he and the others depended heavily upon it for transportation, meat, and protection.

  When it expired, they would have a much less comfortable and safe life.

  Shortly after this, the Yawtl said that they were getting close to his native village.

  "What do you propose to do?" The Shemibob asked. "Take your egg and the Emerald to your home and be a shaman there? Or go on with us to look for the gateway? It would be best if you did both. You might be able to talk your people into coming with us. Then, if we get through the gateway, you and your people will have a new world to settle down in. You might also find new and valuable things to steal."

  "If!" Hoozisst said. "I am not one to put much faith in if's. Besides, this gateway probably leads only to some other on this planet. I'd find myself in a worse situation and might never get home."

  "Then you will die and your tribe with you."

  Deyv thought that if the Yawtl's village was nearby, then so was the place where Feersh had moored her tharakorm. And near that was the cave in which she'd hidden his and Vana's eggs. He asked Hoozisst if he would lead them to it

  "What can you give me for this service?" Hoozisst asked.

  "Nothing," Deyv said angrily. He hesitated, then said, "Nothing except not cutting your throat. After all,

  Yawtl, you owe me. If it wasn't for you, I'd not be in this mess."

  "Thank him, then," Sloosh said. "If it wasn't for him, you'd not have had all these educational experiences. You'd be a simple savage squatting in the mud, incapable even of dreaming about the wonderful things you've seen. Not to mention having known me."

  "I owe you," Hoozisst said, his eyes narrowed. "But it's not what you think."

  Later, Deyv told Vana of his conversation.

  "But we can find the cave by ourselves."

  "Do you really think if s necessary? We have these." She lifted up her soul egg.

  "I'm not sure they're true ones. You know what The Shemibob said when I asked her if she'd fixed them so they'd show a phase-in even if we were mismatched."

  For some reason, Vana burst into tears and ran away. Deyv figured out why she'd done that a few minutes afterward. He was sorry that he'd hurt her. But the truth had to be faced. Anyway, he wasn't certain that The Shemibob was just teasing him. Look at how stubborn Vana was about his going to her tribe.

  Another thing worried Deyv. That was that the baby had no soul egg. Both he and Vana had looked for a .soul-egg tree during their journey. Of course, they'd found none, since these were either well protected by their owners within the villages or by the Houses or hidden in the forest. Anyway, even if o
ne had been found, it might not have had a matching egg for Thrush. What if, when they got back to their tribe, whichever it was, no match could be found?

  Thrush would be killed. It wasn't so bad to lose a babv before you came to love it. At least, that was what Deyv had been told. But to see a spear thrust into the baby now—that vision was unendurable.

  He told Sloosh about this.

  "You are a savage! Could you do this?"

  "What else could I do? I wouldn't like it, I'd be grief-stricken. But that is the ancient way of my people."

  "Sometimes," Sloosh said, "I don't know why I bother trying to talk you into going through the gateway."

  They ate heavily of a sow that Aejip killed. The Yawtl surprised everybody by insisting on cooking it He exnpained that he was in a good mood because his journey was soon to be ended. He wanted to do some service for the others as a slight repayment for what they'd done for him.

  Dew awoke with someone yelling in his ear. He had a bad headache, and his mouth felt as if it had been filled with sand which Aejio had used to bury her excrement. Then Vana was shaking him and shouting that he should wake up.

  "Feersh his been killed! Her throat's been cut! And The Shernihob's bag has been stolen!"

  Dew tried to sit up, but his elbow kept slipping. "What? Who?"

  "The Vawtl!" Vana said. Her face looked drawn and pale, and her eyelids were heavy. "He did it! He did it! Thank Tirshkel, Thrush is safe!"

  Dew staggered up to find the room in the vessel in an unroar. It took him some time to determine exactly what had happened. Only Vana at first was aware of it. She'd eaten less than the others because she'd had a stomach upset. The drug that the Yawtl had put in the meat had affected her less. She'd awakened first and despite a sluggish feeling had gotten up to check on the baby. He was still sleeping, having eaten some of the drugged meat.

  Then Vana had seen Feersh, lying on her back, her mouth open, a bloody slice ringing her neck. So deep had been the incision that the bone of the windpipe showed.

  Sometime during the journey, the Yawtl had found in the jungle a plant containing a drug. He'd prepared it in the pork, in what form no one knew. He must have put aside a piece for himself of undoped meat.

  Everybody recalled seeing him eat; they would have thought it strange if he hadn't.

  After all except himself had fallen asleep, he'd killed the witch. And then he'd taken off with the bag and all its treasures except for The Shemibob's flashlight and Emerald of Anticipation. She had kept them by her while she slept.

  Why hadn't he just cut everybody's throat? That would have been logical. It would have kept them from pursuing him. Also, he could have dragged their bodies out, though it would have been perhaps too much for him to haul the great weight of the Archkerri and The Shemibob. Then he could also have taken the priceless vessel.

  No. That would have been too much for him to transport at the same time as the bag. He could have hidden it, though, and come after it later.

  Sloosh's opinion was that Hoozisst had spared them for two reasons. One, though he was often sarcastic about them, he really liked them. Except for the witch, whom he hated because she'd cheated him and tried to murder him. Two, the Yawtl probably wanted to give them a run for the treasure.

  "We ran him down once, and that hurt his pride. He's giving us another chance, rather giving himself one, to elude us this time. He'll not only have the bag of treasures but the satisfaction of beating us."

  "But," Deyv said, "he knows that you can see his psychic tracks. He can't lose you."

  "He can if I get tired and give up. Or if I don't chase him at all."

  "He won't be able to return to his village," Vana said, "until you've given up on him."

  "Until we've given up," The Shemibob said. "Which may be never."

  They buried the witch, loaded up, and set out Sometime later, Deyv had a consternating thought. What if the Yawtl went to the cave and took their eggs? It would be just like him; he'd have a good laugh envisioning their faces when they found them gone. He told Vana of this, and she started worrying, too.

  Just before sleep-time, there were several mild tremors of the earth. The Shemibob consulted her

  Emerald and said that a severe shock could be expected soon.

  "Maybe," Deyv said. "By the way, your Emerald didn't do any good predicting when Hoozisst would steal your bag."

  "It can operate only on the information I give it," she said, looking down at him from under long-lashed silvery eyelids. "It did say that the Yawtl would try to steal the bag—"

  "I didn't need the Emerald to know that."

  "Don't interrupt The, lesser one. I didn't need it either. Nor did I have to have it tell me that he would be getting ready to steal the bag when he departed from his usual behavior pattern. That. departure was his offering to cook our supper. Unfortunately, I was so involved in a philosophical discussion with Sloosh that I failed to take note of his deviation."

  "Ah!" Deyv said, grinning. "Then even the greater ones can make errors."

  "Don't get smart with me," she said, but she smiled. "As for the Emerald, you mistake its nature. It's not a magical device. It's scientific, and it is only as useful as its operator makes it. It's chiefly valuable for analyzing a large amount of data, which even my mind can't handle. Not so swiftly, anyway."

  Not long after lunch, they were shaken by a series of quakes. They would have been thrown to the ground if they hadn't happened to be riding Phemropit. At this place, the highway ran through a narrow valley, and avalanches from both slopes almost reached them. One boulder rolled to within a foot of the stone-metal creature.

  They went on, and shortly before suppertime, they Came to a very narrow part of the valley. Before them was a pile of rocks, trees, and mud, hurled down by the temblors they'd experienced earlier.

  "The quake was even more severe here," Slposh said.

  He walked up to the edge of the great tangle and pointed into it.

  "Hoozisst's trail ends there."

  It took much digging by them and some bulldozing by Phemropit to uncover the Yawtl. He was lying face down under four feet of mud, his arms crossed on his chest. Bone stuck out from one crushed leg, and the right side of his jaw was shattered.

  Though they dug here and there for the bag, they failed to find it.

  "It's no use," The Shemibob said. "We could work here for a long, long time and still not find it. And yet... I could be standing right above it now."

  She finally decided that they would have to go on without the bag.

  "Hoozisst didn't mean to do us a service, but he did. If we hadn't been slowed up by having to recover from the effects of the drug and to bury the witch, we would have been here. And we'd have been killed, too. It wasn't such a bad trade, my treasures for our lives."

  After covering the Yawtl again, they pushed on over the rubble. This extended for about a mile, and then they were back on the highway. Phemropit rayed a deer, which was a quarter of a mile ahead of them, and they dined. It began to rain heavily then, so they went into the vessel. While they slept, Phemropit rolled ahead on the highway.

  Deyv was awakened by Vana.

  "What's the matter?" he mumbled.

  "Phemropit has stopped."

  They opened the door and looked out cautiously. Seeing nothing alarming, they got down and went in front of the creature. The Shemibob signaled, "What is wrong?"

  "I'm almost out of food. If I keep moving I'll use it all up. I must now do what you call going to sleep.

  Unless you can find more ore for me."

  "I'll be frank with you," The Shemibob said. "There is very little chance that we can locate the ore."

  "Then I'll have to shut down. That is too bad. I have enjoyed being on this strange world and knowing you. I've also learned much. If it hadn't been for you and the others, I would have been very lonely. As it is, I've learned new concepts, things which I would never have known if I'd been on my world. So, thank you and good-bye."
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  "Wait!" she signaled. "I'm sure the others would like to make their farewells."

  That didn't take long. One by one they flashed a few words. And then Phemropit's light-hole became dark.

  Vana wept and patted the hard nose. Deyv had not felt much sorrow, just regret that their mighty transporter and protector was no longer available. Vana's tears, however, evoked some sorrow from him.

  They put the folded vessel on Sloosh's back and seated the baby by it. Deyv didn't look back until he was a quarter of a mile down the road. The huge dark creature was motionless, waiting. No one would come to help it, though. It would sit there until some cataclysm dislodged it or buried it. Now and then it would rouse from its "sleep," stirred by some mechanism which Deyv did not understand, and it would

  "look" for salvation from some passer-by. It would never get it.

  Vana, who'd also turned to look, said, "We've lost three of our party in a very short time. Do you think that omens ill for all of us?"

  "I was trying not to think about that," he said.

  Ten sleep-times later, they came to a junction. Sloosh called them to a halt.

  "This is where we part. That is, if you insist on looking for your soul eggs. That road will take you into the area of Hoozisst's village and the cave. But you may never find the cave. As for The Shemibob and me, we'll keep on. Now that she no longer has her detector-sphere, we will have a hard time finding the gateway. But we'll succeed."

  Deyv felt desolate and lonely. He would miss the two very much, not only for their protection but for their comnrmionship and their knowledge. Also, he and Vana would have to take turns carrying the baby. And they'd no longer have the vessel to take refuge in.

  Vana's face showed that she was thinking the same thoughts.

  "If the Yawtl had stolen our eggs, there'd be no doubt about what we'd do," she said slowly. "But—"

  "That's tme," Deyv said. "So ..."

  They looked at each other, and Deyv said, "We'll go with you!"

  The Shemibob, fingering her Emerald, said, "I thought so. This stone predicted that you would. But I reallv didn't have to consult it."