Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “What are your orders, sir?” Torimatsu asked.

  Komurasaki looked up sharply. Command now fell to him. He felt unmeasurably weary, suddenly burdened. What were his orders? He gazed into Kyozokura’s dead eyes, but they held no answers, only accusations.

  If Kyozokura had died upon the trail or in a battle proper, he knew what he could do, what he might be able to justify. But his commander had been murdered by a coward’s hand, an honorable man brought to a dishonorable end. Komurasaki tried to remember the differences that had arisen between the two of them in the past month, but memories of that discord had died with Kyozokura.

  “We ride,” Komurasaki said grimly. “After we attend to our dead, we ride after those who murdered our commander.”

  Damn you! Komurasaki thought. And damn me!

  The man who had been a beggar in the streets of Samarkand and a lurker in the warrened alleys of Azbahani now sat at a solitary table in the common room of the Three Cup Inn in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He drank pint after pint of dark bitter ale, but oblivion eluded him. A small photograph lay on the table before him, a picture of a young girl wearing a white coat that dropped to below her knees. The girl in the photograph smiled and leaned against a machine in a room of machines.

  Her name was not Mitsuko.

  “Mitsuko...” the man breathed.

  Dawn came upon Jerusalem, but it remained midnight in the man’s soul. He could not see the light, for he dwelt in a night that refused to lift.

  Sooner or later, everything runs down, succumbs to the inevitability of entropy. I first came across that concept in some of the stories of J.G. Ballard, who was one of my favorite writers in the 1960s. I often did not understand all he was trying to say, but the imagery and cosmic breadth of his tales kept me coming back to them, and it’s probably his influence that helped inspire the tales of Cemetery Earth, with its shattered moon, cold and swollen sun, and humans huddled against the coming darkness. At the same time, however, I have to acknowledge the shattering vision of a tideless sea and an Earth populated by giant crustaceans in The Time Machine. Nor can I forget the impression made upon me by Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse Earth, with its idea of a tidal-locked Earth, or the visions of a swollen sun in William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland, or the darkness of his The Night Land.

  Sailor on the Sea of Never

  A Tale of Cemetery Earth

  The Moonbow arched across the star-splattered sky.

  Jason strolled the cobbled streets of Homara to the misty quays where he hoped to find a ship bound for Kephos. It was said the ancient gods listened closely to prayers drifting upward from that city, the eldest of Earth’s cities, with foundations laid long before the sons and daughters of Earth fled to the stars. If there were such things as gods, Jason thought, and they, too, had not abandoned an Earth millions of years dead, they might grant him the amnesia he sought, would let him forget the tower in the violet desert and the way crystal tears flowed from turquoise eyes.

  “Pity a child of misfortune.”

  Jason whirled to confront the whisperer in the darkness, hand darting to the butt of his revolver. He did not, however, draw the weapon when he saw an old man, bent and trembling.

  “I haven’t anything to spare, old man.”

  “A copper,” the old man said. “A prophecy for a copper. Your fate foretold for, perhaps, a demi-copper.”

  Jason laughed bitterly. “Even that is overpricing it.” The hardness of his face softened a bit. He reached into his leather purse and dropped a small coin into the outstretched withered hand, “Prophesy, old one.”

  Watery blue eyes closed. The oldster whispered: “I see waves of golden light…the day is a gold coin…the night a silver one…your soul must choose…the void will be close at hand…”

  The old man opened his eyes, vacant and haunted. He shambled off, vanishing in the darkness. A coin wasted, Jason thought, for the fates of all men were the same on cemetery Earth. There was no escape from the darkness.

  His questions on the waterfront led him to a ship of dark arakwood moored at the last pier. The thin rods of its masts rose against the frosty stars. The ship was the Moonbow Runner, its master a squat evil man named Scry.

  “Aye, bound for Kephos with cargo,” he said, looking up from his manifest. “We leave as soon as my stickmen round up a crew, drudges for base tasks.” He chuckled. “Cheaper than paying Homara’s prison-master.” The expression on Jason’s face made him chuckle again. “You’re in no danger, lad. Too much sand in your veins, nothing of the sea at all. I’ll ferry you to Kephos, but you’ll sleep atop decks near the pilot and supply your own food.”

  “The fare?”

  “Twenty obols.”

  “Five,” Jason offered.

  They eventually agreed upon a price and grasped hands. Scry poured himself a measure of foul, dark brew, but none for Jason. Just as well, Jason thought, for Scry was not the type of man with whom other men drank, not if they valued their souls.

  Jason stationed himself and his belongings near the pilot’s stand at the prow of the ship. He curled protectively around his gear and slept lightly. Toward the end of the seventy hours that was Earth’s night, Jason was awakened by the return of the stickmen with their insensible prey, men who had had no intention of leaving Homara until they fell asleep in the wrong alley, entered the wrong brothel, or let the wrong stranger buy them a drink. When they awoke, Homara would be a vague memory.

  The pilot came aboard then, weaving unsteadily, and they slipped mooring, poling into the harbor. The pilot guided them, softly calling directions to the wheel-man. When the sun’s red disc blistered the horizon, the vastness of the sea was around them.

  The pilot’s name was Xanthos, a small, compact man burned brown by years of toil under the dying sun. He sat at the bow and did not mix with the rest of the crew.

  The captives were herded onto deck, ankles bound together by rope, and were given rough round stones called holystones, palm-sized, with which to smooth the salt-roughened decks. Under harsh taskmasters, they sanded one small portion after another.

  “Poor devils,” Jason murmured.

  “They’ll jump ship in Kephos,” Xanthos said with a shrug. “Scry will pay his stickmen for more. It is his way.”

  “Why sail with these men?” Jason asked. “I thought a pilot could pick and…”

  “Aye, a pilot goes where he will, if young and clear of mind,” Xanthos replied. “I am neither. I’ll not run the ship on some shoal, but the darkness weighs too heavy on me.” He looked Jason over. “You are more out of place here than I.”

  “This was the only ship bound for Kephos.”

  “What awaits you in Kephos?”

  “What awaits any man in Kephos?”

  “Unnumbered temples erected to unnumbered gods,” Xanthos murmured. “Offer your prayers to a jackal-headed god and hope for a better life. If you believe in gods; ever seen a god, lad?”

  Jason shook his head.

  “What about ghosts?”

  Jason looked up sharply.

  “This is a dead world, with people living like carrion beetles on its carcass,” Xanthos remarked. “Even if we assume those who abandoned us took their ghosts with them, there have been at least a million generations since. What could be more natural than we share the world with ghosts?” He let his grey eyes sweep across the sea. “There is no time out here on the tideless sea, far from the habitations of man. No watchfires against the night. Ghosts often walk upon the waters.”

  Jason turned from Xanthos and his talk of ghosts upon the deep. He stared out to sea, his back toward this ship of harsh men, as they sailed under the slowly rising sun and the mocking stars.

  The change came when the streamered sun was directly overhead, filling a third of the starry sky. A holystoner leaped to his feet and screamed of a family in Homara.

  “Work, you lazy devil!” Captain Scry shouted, storming forward. “Work!”

  Muttering ceased and the
others returned to their work. But the man leaped at Scry, and Scry felled him with a single blow. The captain kicked him twice in the ribs. The first impact filled the still air with the sound of shattering ribs; the second lifted the man from the deck ad sent him over the rail. Jason and the regular crew flew to the rail in time to see bubbles trailing downward, nothing else.

  Jason watched the other holystoners. They continued at their monotonous task without pause. Jason turned to Scry and was greeted with a visage full of suspicion and alarm.

  “Sit down,” Xanthos said softly. “That’s the only thing to do.”

  He sat near Xanthos; eventually Scry turned away. Jason said: “Look at the men. Their eyes.”

  “What can they do?”

  Jason gazed at the brooding holystoners. “What will they do?”

  The Moonbow Runner sailed through the long afternoon. The fat red sun continued its slow slide across the stars toward the vague western horizon. Sixty hours into the day, the coruscating streamers of the sun caught the Moonbow in such a way as to make it seem the silent ship, silent but for the slapping of the sea and the rhythmic grinding of the holystoners, sailed under an arch of blood.

  Jason leaned back on his elbows and gazed upward. Legend had it that the Moonbow had once been another world, that it had strayed too close to the Earth. Campfire stories, he thought, naïve myths of a past that may not have been, and Jason slept.

  He awoke to sinewy hands clutching him, lifting him. He went for his revolver but it was gone. His head lolled when something hard struck his temple. He saw the desperate faces and wild eyes of the holystoners. Jason shouted, but his cries went unheeded.

  Cold water closed over him, enveloping him in darkness and soft silence. The bubbles of his breath burst around him. As the dark waters of the tideless sea clasped him, he struggled upward. The he broke the surface, sputtering and coughing water.

  He called for help but there was no answer. Already, the Moonbow Runner was beyond reach in the starlit darkness.

  Something bumped Jason; he grabbed with a desperation as vast as the sea. Jason gazed into the dead eyes of Xanthos the pilot. Jason gripped his macabre life-preserver and looked after the vanishing ship. He could not help but wish the mutineers good fortune and sheltering port.

  Jason and the dead pilot floated through the long night. When the sun rose, Jason turned him over, so he would not have to look into the eyes of the man who, under other circumstances, might have been a friend.

  They were but specks upon the sea, flotsam at the mercy of sluggish currents. Light flowed from the world, and Jason rested his head against the pilot. How foolish he had been to seek forgetfulness in Kephos, to kill the memory of the girl who had died in the violet desert. Or was this the answer to his prayers, before he had even uttered them in the dark-mitered temples of Kephos?

  Let go, he told himself in the long darkness. Accept the oblivion of the sea, he urged himself. He might have let go if he could have been sure that oblivion would follow death. But the land beyond death was yet an undiscovered country, and if men dragged along the memories of their futile lives where was the solace? He would mere trade one misery for a worse one.

  A light flashed through the night, passed him, then swung around to settle upon him. Jason blinked in the blinding white glare.

  A black metallic hulk loomed over him, an impossible ship, he realized dimly. Something splashed in the water nearby. Men spoke in unfamiliar tongues. Hands pried him from dead Xanthos. He was pulled from the embrace of the sea. Men carried him on their shoulders. Before unconsciousness claimed him, he looked into the sky and saw something more impossible than a metal ship—a bright silver disc where the Moonbow had been.

  Jason lay in a room with a round window. Sometimes, when he gazed through the window, he saw familiar ruby streamers. Other times he saw golden light that made him shudder. Day and night followed each other with unnatural swiftness. He regained his strength quickly.

  The men who had saved him from the sea were a strange lot, unlike any other men he had ever known. They were alien in the kindness they were ready to show a stranger and they walked as if they were unafraid of the sky.

  A man with a moustache and a blue uniform came for Jason and took him on deck. Jason gazed around and shuddered. The sky was mostly blue and the sun on the horizon was bright and tiny. Worse of all, there were no stars in the daylight sky.

  Jason shook off the man holding him and ran. This was a young sun, still strong enough to chase away the stars. Jason felt utterly alone and was for the first time in his life scared. Whether he had traversed millennial years or had been rescued by phantoms, it did not matter—this was not his world.

  Jason ran up stairs until he could go no further. His back was against the railing and beyond that was a tide-wracked sea. Men chased after him, their eyes filled with neither hate nor fear but wariness and pity.

  It seemed to Jason that two suns floated in the sky, one cold and familiar, the other hot and bright and alien. The stars were grey ghosts. Another life, he thought, and with time he might forget the tower in the violet desert, and live the life of a man of this time. But he would always look at the sky and shudder at the unfamiliarity of it all, would always know he belonged to a much different world.

  Jason stood on the railing and looked toward the heaving sea below. A shout made his turn. The man with the moustache was extending his hand. Jason could have grasped that hand with ease.

  Jason leaped, and the foamy green sea rushed at him, closed over him.

  The impact crushed the air from his lungs. He hung in the middle of the sea, suspended between darkness and light. He kicked his legs, slowly at first then faster. He erupted from the water, bathed in ruby light and utterly alone upon the sea.

  As the sun set, its streamers wrapping the world, a dark speck moved against the solar disc. It was a trireme, he saw, with blue eyes painted upon its prow. The oarsmen, he knew, would be professional sailors, not slaves. They hauled Jason from the sea, gave him hot drink, and nodded sagely when told of the mutiny by the holystoners.

  “Where are you bound?” Jason asked the captain, an Anjiklan named Falstatta.

  “Homara with oil, spice and grain,” the mariner replied. “When you book passage to Kephos again have a mind to the men with which you sail,”

  “Kephos?” Jason murmured. “I’ve decided not to go there. All Kephos has is gods, cruel gods who hate their abandoned children.”

  It’s no use trying to link Tawa of the Sky Clan to any tribe. There may be parallels between her people and the Hopi, but Tawa’s folk have the elder claim. As we found people when we came to the New World, so too might have modern Indians. When I visited Calico, where Leakey made his contested claims, I considered that humans might have been in the New World when Neanderthals held sway in the Old. If Tawa ever makes it home, she might discover that the long twilight has finally ended.

  In an Elder Place

  A Tale of Tawa of the Sky Clan

  Tawa of the Sky Clan passed three days enveloped by wooded silence, then the forest fell away. Waves whispered upon an unseen beach. The road soared into purple twilight. The first stars emerged. Night gripped the land by the time she rounded the curve in the high road and saw that the Elder of Balphos had not lied.

  At the end of a well-trammeled road the Typhonian Oracle awaited. Hewn into the cliff, the stone façade gleamed darkly. The Oracle’s portal was a snake’s head, fangs tapering into columns.

  The cliff fell sheer to the sounding Argosian Sea. The water reflected star-patterns Tawa knew by names unknown to the people of Central Sea. Familiar lights lessened her loneliness, but she still yearned for them above her homeland’s sacred mesas, to see them from the Center Place at the Convergence of the Straight Roads.

  Tawa saw a fire near a tumble of stones, a man crouched by it. Tawa approached cautiously, her hand near the hilt of her sword.

  He was an old man with ebony skin stretched so tight she saw t
he skull beneath his skin. His hair was a pale nimbus. He stood with the aid of a black hardwood staff.

  “Greetings, pilgrim,” the old man murmured. “My fire is yours.” He squatted by the fire; he laid the staff across his knees.

  Tawa kneeled by the fire. Its warmth was as small as its flames, but it was enough to drive the night beyond their backs.

  “Thank you, grandfather. Are you a priest of Typhon?”

  The old man shook his head. “Just a traveler, like you. My name is Sethothtris. I once lived in the Land of Khemet.”

  “I am Tawa.” She lifted her eyes to his black face. “You do not know my land, beyond the Ocean of Darkness outside the Pillars.”

  Sethothtris nodded sagely. “Albion in the mists.”

  Tawa touched the hilt of her Kelt-crafted sword. “I’ve been to Albion, seen its Circles of Stone, but my home is far from there. At times I despair of ever…” She paused. The path home is not clear.”

  “You come to the Oracle to find the path?”

  Tawa nodded,

  “I came seeking the Destroyer,” Sethothtris said.

  “Did you find Set in Typhon?” Tawa asked. “The Pelasgians say they are the same.”

  He glanced at the Oracle. “I’ve never been within.”

  “Then…”

  “Others have,” Sethothtris whispered. “They enter the mouth.”

  “What do they see?”

  The man from Khemet sighed. “None never return.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “The path was not as well worn when I mounted the road.” He sighed. “In Abydos is a temple more ancient than any other, built underground when my fathers dwelt in Aktos south of Zinj. Full of youth and foolishness, I entered that elder place. I stood by a sarcophagus that had never known death. Set appeared to me, skin white as death, hair red as fire. He did not speak to that cowering youth, but reached out his pale hand and touched my mind. How it burned!” He clamped his fists to the sides of his head and howled into the darkness. “I stood in the midst of the City. The Eye of Ra blazed in the vault, but everywhere was darkness. I called to Set, but he did not answer. I could not pass through the reeds. I walked upon the sands and sailed the endless waters till I came here, but I was afraid to enter, more afraid to leave.”