by Phillip Mann
The first Spideret arrived scampering down the corridor. It stopped in surprise and its eyes grew out on stalks when it saw the live woman in the case of death.
Clarissa smiled and fired once, scything the creature in half.
The others arrived. They climbed round the walls. They climbed on their dead comrade. They climbed on the adjacent cases.
They stared at Clarissa and their dull eyes came alive and reflected the movement as her magnificent quills of crimson and iridescent blue rose like flame round her neck and face.
48
ULTIMA THULE
Laurel.
Laurel indeed, or something that looked very like Laurel. Laurel as Pawl remembered her. A shape fashioned from memory.
She stood simple and naked at his doorway and looked at him with eyes that held no hint of recognition, the eyes of a new-born child. Her skin was creamy and unwrinkled, the skin of a baby. But yet she was a whole woman and the colours in her skin and the lights in her hair and the curve of nostril and firmness of hip and sturdy thigh all told of Laurel.
Pawl walked to her, slightly shy before her level eyes, aware of his own grubbiness. He held out his hand. She lifted her own webbed hand and placed it in his and then stepped over the threshold.
“You called and I came.”
Her voice. The same lingering over the “m” sound which made her sound sultry and considered at the same time. The same pitch.
“I am glad to see you.” How inadequate! “Where did you come from?” Silly question!
She turned and looked out into the clearing. “Over there.”
“And before that?”
“I do not know.” A simple statement, said without worry or concern.
“Who am I?”
“You are Laurel.”
Abruptly she yawned and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. The gesture was wholly Laurel. Her hips moved with the yawn as she stretched and Pawl felt that movement touch the core of his sexuality. There was nothing he could do as his body responded. He felt an emotion only slightly younger than time itself, a longing to join.
And yet he held back. Now was not the time for touching, not yet. That would come. But he relished the firmness as his manhood came alive. He felt his juices start to flow. There was a great dilation inside him. Pawl the savage, never far below the surface in the time of their loving, brushed aside, like something sucked dry, the sad, ragged-spirited Pawl of his latter days.
Laurel had always been able to do this. She had that capacity to make him bigger and better than he was in nature, to make him into what all men should be: bright as fire, gentle as water, sound as earth and merry as the good air.
“Are you tired? Will you rest?”
Laurel nodded and Pawl led her through to the quiet room where he had spread warm covers, ones which Laurel had chosen, over the sleeping place. She fingered the clothes, stroking them, tracing the patterns with the flat of her hand. And then she looked at him and there was something like recognition in her eyes.
She lay down, rolled over, one hand spread under her face, the other curled between her legs, and within moments was asleep. Pawl covered her.
He went outside quickly and found to his surprise that night had fallen.
“Are you happy, Pawl?” The voice was a croak.
Happy was not the word for what Pawl felt. He was radiant. A sun burned in him and he wanted to explode.
“Come and sit by me. I shall not be with you much longer.”
Pawl sat down next to Odin and felt the creature nestle close. “Are you pleased with it, Pawl?”
“She pleases me.”
“It is very powerful.”
Odin was trying to tell Pawl something. Pawl sat quietly.
“It is a seed, you know. It is a seed of the trees. Be clear about that. It is just one seed. There will be many others.”
“Others? Like Laurel? You mean more will appear?”
“No. No. No. Don’t be alarmed. Not like Laurel. Others.” The space inside Pawl’s head in which Odin spoke became silent but still alive. Odin was wondering how to explain to Pawl that which is hardly explicable in human terms. “It, Laurel as you call it, is one. It is a symbol of your love. Your love in all its shapes. And it will change, too.”
“Change? How will it change? I don’t want her to change.”
“All things change, Pawl. That is the one law which binds us all together. No not the one law, not the only law. There is one other.”
“And what is that?”
“You must find out for yourself.” The voice was a whisper. Then the silence was total. Odin had withdrawn.
Pawl was irritated that his happiness had been tainted at the moment of its first blooming.
Beyond the trees on the close horizon of Pawl’s world, a purple stain grew in the sky. Gradually the livid face of Erix rose, turning the green to blackberry.
Later, lying beside Laurel, Pawl felt her wake and start and moan to herself. Then gently, like water on water, like the tide creeping up the sand and into the rock-pools, he felt her hands begin to explore his body.
49
ON CENTRAL
“What is that smell?” Lar Proctor, lying in bed with his curved fangs hung on a peg above him, sniffed.
The young boy who had been massaging his legs smiled prettily. “What smell?”
“That smell. Don’t say you can’t smell it. It’s horrible. It’s from over there somewhere.” Lar Proctor pointed vaguely in the direction of the bedroom wall where a large portal gave on to a veranda above one of the deep gardens.
Delicately the boy removed his nose plugs. “I wear these because of hay fever when I’m working in this room.” Then his face wrinkled in disgust. “That smell. Ugh. It’s something rotten. I’ll go and see, shall I?”
Lar Proctor slithered off the bed. “Wait a moment. Don’t open that curtain until I’m decent.” He burrowed into his robe and drew it tightly round him. “Now you can draw the curtain.”
The boy drew back the heavy drape and they both stepped out on to the veranda.
They found themselves looking into the face of a giant multicoloured pansy which puffed and fluttered.
“Why, it’s beautiful,” said the boy and dropped down dead.
Lar Proctor looked at the swirling colours. Velvet purple, gash red, screaming blue, knife silver, smother brown … the colours turned and they twisted his spirit and drew it from him like yarn. Lar Proctor sagged with his empty mouth open. His body slumped over that of the boy.
The Diphilus had to be careful. There was much heat on Central and more than once it found itself burned as it rolled through ducts and squeezed itself along pressure pipes. At the heart of this planet, it knew, was its enemy – a blazing inferno of dazzling particles trapped within a magnetic net. That was the source of all Central’s power and the Diphilus decided to keep well away from it.
It took up lodging in a cold store in which were hung the heavy bodies of creatures like tortoises, each with its bell-shaped shell still intact.
Once a man and a woman came to take meat. The Diphilus touched them and stole their electricity, and when their bodies were frozen it hung them up on the racks.
The Diphilus, with its boundless curiosity and sense of wonder, came to know Central in a way that the Hooded Parasol could not. Immersed for millennia in abstractions and the peculiar relationships between spiritual power and the life and death of stars, it took delight in discovering that it could turn lights on and off and make vacuum chutes work and doors open and close merely by playing with its potential. The shuttle it ignored, since symbol meshing was an old art; and while it was perhaps the greatest art, the Diphilus wanted to play. Simple circuits. The Diphilus was like a child with a train set.
One morning it started the lift doors working like castanets until the motors burned out. The Senior Proctor was trapped between floors for three hours. It opened the space hangars without warning and a whole maintenance crew, comple
te with the ships they were working on, was sucked out into the vacuum of space. Once it turned the central heating off in a dormitory sector and locked the windows open. On that night fish tanks froze to solid blocks.
Eventually it explored along the cables of the hidden bio-crystalline brains and there it discovered madness. It detected the shapes of thought of one of its own kind brought in from the far Norea. It felt the laughter of a brother it had never known.
Tampering with those delicate circuits was the Diphilus’s undoing.
Beyond the everyday running of the Homeworld, the computers of Central were in disarray. People were beginning to panic. The scientists who controlled Central said that the artificial planet had developed an eccentric magnetic field. This, they said, explained the bizarre events. But panic bred panic and panic led to contradictions.
One night the Diphilus turned on all the lights and then switched them off seconds later. And then on again. From the shuttle platform above Central it looked as if the metal world was a gigantic light bulb switching on and off.
The fluctuations in potential were enormous. The computers tried to cope switching power from gardens to cold stores, to emergency services, to stabilizers, to factories, to living quarters. The generators in the heart of the planet went crazy, trying to balance surge and trough in the same instant.
The bio-crystalline computer, with only half its circuits functioning, thought it saw an easy economy and cut power to itself. Dominoes started to fall. Eventually the circuits which controlled the great magnetic net at the heart of the planet failed. At the same moment the generators went into high demand and a fireball started in the black centre of the plasma.
The destruction took nanoseconds.
The Parasol, dilating, shrivelled to smoke.
The Diphilus roared as it ignited.
A fire in the bleakness of space blossomed and spread. It would blaze for centuries before it cooled to a glassy cinder.
Thus ended Central, and the rule of the Proctors, and one curious Diphilus.
50
ULTIMA THULE
Laurel made love in an artless and total way. The directness of her passion took Pawl’s breath away. She received him with a singleness of attention which liberated him to be all the good things he could be.
He flowed over and she flowed with him, before and after, and they lay together warm and panting like an animal that has two hearts.
Lying there in that state in which secrets seem to belong to another world, Pawl felt her creep into his mind. She was a drowsy presence, a tumble of hair and warm lips, and she made her home inside him. Was it ever like this? thought Pawl, and found that he could not remember. The past was sinking like an abandoned ship.
In the morning they unpacked clothes. Pawl could see a growing quickness in Laurel’s eyes as she held the bright gowns against her and swayed with them. She tied a red and green scarf in her hair, just as Laurel had when they were together on Lotus-and-Arcadia.
They began to joke about the past, laughing at memories, but Pawl noticed that Laurel only talked about the times when she had been with him. Rummaging among Pawl’s trunk she found the Beltane family emblem and held it up.
“What’s this? It’s heavy.”
“Your family emblem.”
“Of course.”
They made love when the desire took them and in the afternoon Pawl built a garden.
Laurel dragged a chair from the main survival dome and sat close to Pawl while he dug. He could feel her eyes on him as he managed the lines of a fence and marked out where he would plant the vegetables.
She paid no attention to Odin, nor did she mention him, though she passed by him many times. It was as though she could not see him. When Pawl introduced him she nodded in a casual way, and that was all.
Pawl worked until the sweat poured off him, making rivers through the dirt on his skin. He delighted in feeling his muscles work and in showing off before his lady.
In the late afternoon she rose from her chair. “Come on, Pawl. Let’s swim. There’s a pool over there.” And without waiting for reply she ran to the edge of the clearing and disappeared into the scraggly bush. Pawl ran after her. He remembered, when they were landing, seeing one of the round black pools close by.
Laurel worked her way easily through the bush while Pawl found the going difficult. Soon all he knew of her was the swish of leaves and the occasional breaking branch well ahead. Fear gripped him and he barged ahead like a wild pig butting under the branches, heedless of the scratches that opened up on his arms.
Suddenly the bush ended and opened on to a slope of grass which led down to the dark water. Laurel was at the lake edge wading out about to plunge.
“Wait for me.” Pawl stumbled down to the margin and Laurel, laughing, cupped water in her hands and splashed him.
“Come on, dive with me.”
Pawl looked at the dark rippleless water and knew that he could not.
“Come on.”
Pawl shook his head. “I’ll wait. Be careful. Don’t go too far.”
Laurel laughed at this. “I’m a born aquatic, remember.” She fanned her webbed hands. “And besides, there’s nothing on this world can do me harm. Not even Odin. Watch.”
She dived, and moments later broke the surface far out in the lake. She waved to him and then dived again.
Numb with unknown fears Pawl squatted down in the marshy grass at the lake’s edge and watched. Laurel swam and dived and lunged from the surface and fell back, kicking the water to brown lather. Pawl watched to see other ripples on the smooth lake. He wondered at her. The black water menaced him but she cavorted without fear.
Eventually she swam back to him, darting through the water like an otter. She stood up ten yards from the shore where the water lapped just to her breasts. “Come in, Pawl. Try it. Nothing will hurt you. Here, hold my hand.” She waded from the water with her arms held out. “Come on.”
Uncertainly Pawl stood and then began to edge into the water. It was surprisingly warm and thicker than he had expected. He could not see his feet. Laurel’s hand took his wrist in her firm grip. “Come on. Nothing to be afraid of.”
Slowly he edged deeper until he could crouch down and the water came up to his chin. Laurel pushed him and he made a few pathetic moves with his arms until he felt something slide over his feet and along his belly, and he lost his balance threshing, and went under.
Death. That was what Pawl thought. Death. The blackness was total and squeezed into his nose and mouth and ears and through his skin. He gasped and tasted the bitterness … and then he was up and panting and Laurel was with him holding him with her arms round his waist so that he could not fall again. She helped him to the shore, and there he collapsed down spluttering, with the black water dribbling from his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were so afraid.” She rubbed her hands over his curved back and kissed his neck. He felt her breasts with their nipples firm press into his back.
“Laurel.”
“I am Laurel. Thank you for coming for me. Thank you for coming to my world.”
Ten minutes later he had overcome his panic and was able to laugh. They sat together by the lakeside in the late evening sun. Laurel fetched some small blue star-headed flowers and draped them over his arms. She plunged her hand into the dark water and brought it up, holding a small silver eel squirming in her palm. “This is the only creature that lives here,” she said. “It cleans the roots of the trees.” And then she let it go, lowering her hand into the water. The eel flipped over the web between her first and second finger and was gone. “On this world everything belongs. Everything has its job. Me and you.” She stood up. “We’ll go back now.”
They took their time climbing back through the bush and gathered fruit and flowers. Pawl was surprised that he felt so relaxed inside himself. Though he did not understand what had happened, in that plunge he had accepted and been accepted by this world and he was now no
longer a visitor, he was an inhabitant. He did notice, however, that the scratches on his arms had completely healed.
During their absence Odin had moved. He had shifted some yards further away from the domes in the direction of the silver tree. Patiently, but with painful slowness, he was inching up the slope towards where the nearest of the silver roots broke through the green soil.
“Shall I help you?” asked Pawl, speaking only with his mind. But he received no reply. The silence was like a wall. But beyond the wall, beyond his grasp, there was something like a fire burning.
“Leave him,” said Laurel. “He will make peace on his own. Did you bring your book with you? I want you to read to me. Every moment is precious. There is so much I need to learn and unlearn.”
That night the pain of Odin broke through.
Pawl was lying back, thinking about the events of the day, when he heard Odin’s voice calling to him. It was the voice of a child and Pawl had no option but to get up and go to him. Laurel rose with him but Pawl hushed her and she lay back.
Outside the clearing was deep purple with Erix light. Odin had made it to the base of the tree and now stood raised up on the lips of his basal sucker. He was like a purple sheaf of wheat. All his tendrils were extended and stood out stiff from his body.
“Tonight I die. Sit close. There are things I must say.” Pawl settled.
“I have feared this moment, Pawl. I have been your friend, and I have been your greatest enemy. I killed Laurel.”
Then, in simple phrases, Odin described how he had captured Laurel’s mind and drowned her. He explained how he had been the agent of the Inner Circle and how the great Tree on Sanctum had lent him vanity to enable him to achieve the deed. “That vanity is now withdrawn and all I have left is the guilt. Guilt has killed me. I was a simple Gerbes, undistinguished among my race. I was taken for no fault of my own and made into the great deceiver. Forgiveness cannot help. There can be no forgiveness, only a withering of the spirit and awareness. Life is cruel, Pawl Paxwax, and the only dignity we have is in enduring.”