The Planet Dweller

by Palmer, Jane;

  Yuri suddenly clutched his throat, and only then realised that he was breathing the familiar oxygen mixture humans couldn’t do without, and wondered how long such an arrangement could last in these exotic surroundings. He was sure the purple trunked trees with branches like chandeliers and flowers like carnivorous birds couldn’t have been nurtured to maturity on such a thin mixture. Had he fallen anywhere else, Yuri would probably have been smashed to pieces on the jagged rock outcrops or glazed marble sheets that surrounded the pool of orange sand if something hadn’t broken his fall and saved him from suffocation.

  Not knowing what he should be hiding from or how to avoid it, Yuri pulled himself from the bed of sand for the cover of the trees. They looked dangerous enough in themselves, though their perfumed thoughts were strictly for the wind and companion trees. He could see no other signs of life, like the animals or insects that should have been necessary to fertilise the abundant vegetation that clung to every nook, cranny, and cliff face. This didn’t make him feel any easier. Perhaps this was a world where the vegetation browsed off the animals. From the look of some of the plants, they only lacked knives and forks.

  Yuri struggled past twisted trunks and stems until he came to the edge of a high bank that fell sharply into the fast-flowing waters of a wide stream. He turned to push his way back through the vegetation only to find it had closed up to block his way. A long deep sigh resonated about him and he recognised the pervading perfume. Yuri would have toppled into the gushing water below if a wide dry path hadn’t risen out of it and caught him before he fell. Not knowing what had caused the freak tremor, but glad enough to be able to scramble away from the voice to the other side, Yuri fled as fast as the undergrowth would let him.

  He at last reached an open space. Beyond it was a cluster of rocks. They were fused with vitrified minerals in a bizarre fashion that confused his limited comprehension of geology. Yuri ran his fingers over the glassy surfaces in wonderment as they collected the light of the yellow sun and radiated fluorescently. They lit the skin on his bare arms where the nettles had stung him, and the angry irritation disappeared. Though this did offer some relief at the height of the traumatic experience, it didn’t last long. A strange whispering surrounded him.

  Yuri bounded onto the rocks to try and escape it. To his horror, they suddenly became smooth and he slithered back down to the sandy ground. Frantically he ran for the cover of the trees. Before he could reach them, the ground conspired with the rocks to rise into the sky and make a well from which he couldn’t escape.

  Yuri tried desperately to claw his way out of the trap even though he realised it was no use.

  The astronomer slumped down in the centre of the well and looked up at the sky, the last thing he expected to see before the walls caved in and swallowed him like a gnat. He had quite forgotten his urge to make contact with the sensuous entity, and wasn’t very enthusiastic about its way of making contact with him.

  The soft whispering sigh echoed again about him. ‘Creature,’ it said, as it seeped into his thoughts, ‘what are you?’

  Whatever this intelligence was, Yuri sensed that it was too large even for his much maligned intellect to comprehend, and he crushed himself against the sand as though it could see him from the top of the well.

  ‘What creature are you?’ the voice persisted.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Yuri protested, though whether with his tongue or mind he had no idea.

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Let me out of here,’ Yuri pleaded.

  No sooner had he said the words than the walls began to shrink. He again found himself in the clearing with the trees on one side and the restored outcrop of rock on the other.

  ‘You should not be alarmed,’ the voice went on.

  Yuri was bewildered. ‘Is there any rational reason for that statement?’

  The voice hesitated as though logic were something quite foreign to it. ‘I am Moosevan,’ it eventually replied.

  If Yuri’s hair didn’t stand on end quite naturally already, it would certainly have done so at that. As Diana had refused to believe his zany fears, he had assumed her voice to be equally ridiculous. It didn’t improve his equilibrium to discover that they were both right.

  ‘What is Moosevan?’ he asked gingerly, something at the back of his mind telling him that he would be better off not knowing.

  ‘I am Moosevan,’ the voice repeated as though that were the answer.

  ‘Yes... but what are you?’ Yuri insisted, looking frantically about to see if the being was hiding behind some outcrop or tree.

  ‘I am old...’ Moosevan tried to rationalise. ‘I am...’ but that wasn’t the most dominant thought in her mind. ‘Your touch pleases me,’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Half as old as this galaxy,’ was the unusual reply.

  Yuri looked up again at the sky scattered with the debris of so many stars and knew that was very old. Normally he wouldn’t have sniffed at a show of affection coming from a mature woman. One ninety thousand million years old was in his view taking things too far.

  Yuri gulped. ‘That is very old. What do you look like?’ He suspected that something so old was bound to be going off by now.

  ‘I am here,’ Moosevan insisted, wondering whether other creatures with eyes were able to see.

  ‘I can’t see you. Where am I supposed to look?’

  Moosevan gave a deep sigh. ‘What are you called?’ Her tone was languorous, as though the knowledge of his name could only heighten her contentment.

  He didn’t see any point in withholding it as she seemed to be in total command of everything else. ‘Yuri.’ He still thought he might try to dodge her attentions and rose in readiness to make another dash for what he thought to be freedom. ‘Why won’t you show yourself? Have you something to hide or do you think the sight of you would alarm me?’

  ‘I would not alarm you, Yuri. Why should I alarm you?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Yuri, ‘but you have done very well so far.’

  Without warning, he made a successful sprint to the top of the rock outcrop and over the other side.

  Knowing he couldn’t escape her, Moosevan let him go.

  Congratulating himself on his ability to move so rapidly for someone fast approaching fifty, Yuri bounded over boulders and fought his way through bushes before stopping to wonder where in this world he was going. He had no idea of where he was, apart from it being in a dying galaxy on the edge of the Universe, or how he had got there, apart from it being through a children’s fairy ring that was harbouring more than mushrooms.

  He sat down on the warm sand to rest.

  It wasn’t long before the voice of Moosevan caught up with him. ‘Are you tired, Yuri?’

  ‘I am thinking.’

  ‘What are you thinking, Yuri? Tell me?’

  ‘I am thinking that, as you do not want to show yourself to me, I should have nothing to do with you.’ His hand sank into the soft sand and strange perfumed sensations filled his body.

  As the caress of the creature engulfed him he could hear Moosevan say, ‘I am here, Yuri... I am here.’

  This time Yuri didn’t want to get up and run. The fear of this exotic entity left him, and a comforting reassurance had replaced it. Dancing ribbons of mist flickered round his body and mesmerised him into near sleep.

  ‘I like your touch,’ whispered Moosevan. ‘You are not like anything I have felt before.’

  Slowly Yuri sank to the soft sand where he lay gazing up at the sky of supernovae remnants through a sparkling haze. Wondering why he should have been so panic-stricken, he let the waves of sensation flow over him like the undulations of a silken sea.

  Perhaps Moosevan was like the sea, fluid and reshaping. Perhaps she was like the sand he lay on, soft, warm and yielding. As he listened to her voice gently lulling him to sleep, Yuri cast his agile mind over all the things she could have been. Was she a phantom that lived in the magenta trees or like the vitreous substance
s permeated into the rocks? No, she couldn’t have been just those because her voice was everywhere, even beneath him.

  Yuri’s eyelids suddenly snapped open in horror.

  He cast Moosevan’s caresses aside and leapt to his feet. Of course she was everywhere and he couldn’t escape her.

  She was the planet!

  This was too much for even his broad mind to take. He bolted to the first gap he could see and ran until his legs could run no more. Reason at last told him that he couldn’t escape.

  There was a stretch of water ahead, and had he managed to stagger to it, he would have seen it reach up in solid waves to break his fall. He chose instead to have his fall broken by the more unyielding pebbles Moosevan had not thought to adjust.

  Yuri hadn’t been lying there long before his attention was taken by two pairs of boots containing large, splay, three-toed feet. This was something new. It may have had a considerable degree of nastiness about it, but it was still different.

  Carefully Yuri raised his head to find himself looking up at two flat-headed green faces that peered back at him through polarised visors.

  CHAPTER 10

  Eva stood looking thoughtfully at the slashed stinging nettles and discarded scythe and shirt. She could tell by the state of the weeds they had been attacked less than an hour before, and certainly not for the benefit of Daphne Trotter. The way that scythe had been used on the nettles indicated its wielder could have intended the same fate for the local harpy had she approached too closely to gloat. It did briefly cross Eva’s mind that Yuri had perhaps concealed Daphne’s dismembered body somewhere. There was no trace of bloodstains, and Yuri’s arms, even holding the scythe, were too short to have hauled her from the horse. She dismissed the thought.

  Eva tucked a selection of Yuri’s exercise books under her arm and walked thoughtfully back to her car parked out on the road leading to the museum. Coming towards her were the two shaggy individuals she had seen leading parties of the architecturally inquisitive round the grounds. Normally she wouldn’t have spoken unless they had shown some eagerness to be known, but she thought she might as well ask them as anyone else.

  ‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Early lunch hour?’

  ‘Yes,’ said John, as Fran became apprehensive that a scientist should show interest in them. ‘We’ve two parties coming at midday so we’re having a break now. Looking for someone?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I was. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Mog - I mean Diana - anywhere about have you?’

  ‘Di?’ he asked as they stopped by the car. ‘She’s got the day off. Isn’t she at home?’

  Eva was irritated by John’s ponderous manner, but replied politely enough, ‘No, nor is Julia, and she’s not with the loony Russian.’

  Fran’s mouth opened to make the standard protest at what could be taken as a racist comment so John said quickly, ‘Can I take a message in case she drops in at the museum?’

  ‘Not really - Thanks all the same. It’s just something I thought she would be interested in.’ They viewed her with ill-concealed curiosity. ‘Something I dug out of some old records, about asteroids and alignments ... and things. Probably nothing to worry about at all.’

  ‘Not serious then?’ probed Fran.

  ‘No, it might not mean the end of the world.’ She opened the door of her car, ‘if we’re lucky.’

  ***

  Had Eva realised where Diana was, it might have dented even her equilibrium. Having stood by the fairy ring long enough to make Moosevan understand that their contact should be much closer than from opposite sides of infinity, Diana had been allowed to enter that misty tunnel that had swallowed Yuri. No perfumed blanket of ardour for her, just an efficient snatch into emptiness and sudden jolt as she landed.

  Oddly, Diana couldn’t remember anything in between, and fortunately knew nothing of the forces involved in making the trip possible. She did know that the moving porridge of prickly particles she had landed in had laddered her tights in three different places.

  Drawing in a lungful of air with surprise and annoyance, she bellowed, ‘Not funny, Moosevan!’

  Moosevan immediately sensed her anger, even if she found her words incomprehensible. With a less passionate sigh than she might have used for Yuri, the larger of the females unrolled a thick mattress of gossamer seed heads and deposited that under her visitor instead. From being pricked all over, Diana was now coated with enough fluff to make her resemble a snow woman. She sneezed uncontrollably as it was drawn up her nose.

  ‘Cut it out, will you!’ she spluttered in rage. ‘Get me out of here, you lump of astral debris.’

  Thoroughly disorientated, sneezing, and looking as though she had just escaped from an exploded mattress, Diana thankfully found solid ground under her feet. A light breeze picked the seeds from her one by one, while her thoughts churned in annoyance.

  As the mental ferment subsided, the mellow, appealing tones of Moosevan could be recognised, ‘Are you well?’

  Although her tongue was not going to make the reply, Diana had to spit out a mouthful of seeds before being able to think, ‘That wasn’t funny.’

  ‘Funny?’ queried Moosevan. ‘What is funny?’

  ‘Forget it. I don’t suppose you do get to hear many good jokes out here.’ Diana gave up and looked about her. It was difficult to believe Moosevan when she had described herself as just an ordinary planet. She was a planet all right, but certainly not ordinary. The glowing reds and purple of the vegetation engulfing her could only belong to a very passionate planet.

  ‘You will not run away as well?’ Moosevan inquired tentatively.

  ‘In these shoes?’ laughed Diana. ‘Didn’t I go through that mangle and fluff bath just to see you ... or a bit of you anyway - As well as who?’ Moosevan sighed heavily. ‘Oh come on, who else have you snatched?’ Before Moosevan was persuaded to reply she realised. ‘Yuri! I should have known. What did you want him for?’

  ‘He is pleasant to sense. His touch pleases me.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ whispered Diana. ‘A passionate planet.’ Then to Moosevan, ‘You can’t have him, you know. Humans don’t keep as long as planets.’

  ‘When I have been driven out, I will cease to exist. I will replace him long before that happens. I will not let him come to harm.’

  ‘Cease to exist?’

  ‘You have told me what would happen to your world if the parts of my new body were to reassemble.’

  ‘I couldn’t remember. I didn’t realise I was aware of it,’ apologised Diana.

  ‘You slept heavily. I took the message from deep in your mind,’ said Moosevan.

  ‘Thank God. I don’t think I could have explained it while conscious.’

  ‘I do not want to destroy your world. I no longer have the right to claim any part of it.’

  ‘There must be some way out of this without blowing up the Earth?’

  ‘No, though there is another way you can help me.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Diana, wondering what she could do to help a planet.

  ‘The small creature I took will not speak to me. I do not know why. I tried to reassure him, yet he runs and runs...’

  ‘Then leave him alone,’ Diana told her.

  ‘Leave him?’ Moosevan sounded reluctant.

  ‘You sprang quite a surprise on him. As he accepted your invitation into the ring, it meant the fascination is mutual. He just didn’t know his galactic girlfriend was going to turn out to be a planet. Give him time to get used to the idea. Keep quiet and see what he does.’

  ‘What will he do?’ asked Moosevan.

  ‘Human nature is a strange and complex thing. There isn’t time to explain it. Just believe me.’

  ‘If you are right, I will do all I can to prevent those creatures from repairing the accretion machine which will destroy your world.’

  That gave Diana a jolt worse than her arrival. ‘What creatures?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Moosevan replied carelessly, ‘I
just felt one. It seems to be tunnelling into my crust...’ Then she lost interest. ‘Tell me about this planet you live on. Has it a being like me?’

  ‘There isn’t time. This is urgent. Tell me about these creatures?’

  ‘They are probably the Old Ones. They made the machine that can help me pass from one body to another. Do not worry. I will not let them reach its control.’

  ‘You don’t sound sure.’

  ‘Sure?’ murmured Moosevan. ‘So few things have bothered me for so long. Sure? Urgent? What do these things mean?’

  ‘They mean I am going to stay here until the last second to make sure these creatures are aware how urgent this situation is.’

  ‘That would be dangerous,’ Moosevan warned. ‘You are so delicate.’

  ‘Don’t remind me of that!’ snapped Diana.

  ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Didn’t you feel my hot flushes?’

  ‘I don’t think there is anything wrong with you now.’

  Diana felt relieved. Even if she was going to be killed at any moment, the combat she had been having with her hormones could well be over. Whether this was something to be elated about under the circumstances, she wasn’t quite sure.

  ***

  Reniola fired another explosive punch at the layer of rock Moosevan had used to entomb the equipment that had been installed millions of years ago for her own preservation. Reniola began to wonder if the planet dweller wanted to be saved after all. The sheer walls were layered like the skin of an onion and made of stone so thick it was a wonder that Moosevan didn’t show some objection to her blasting her way through it.

  At last Reniola came to a substantial cavity encrusted with sharp crystals. As she slithered through it she tripped and trod on her tail so many times she could have quite happily blasted that off as well. The signal led her on and on through narrower and narrower passages. She hoped Moosevan wouldn’t decide to breathe in at a crucial moment. Her natural vaporous form would have been no good in such a situation. It lacked fingers and the dimensional mortal reasoning crucial to the matter in hand. So she pressed on awkwardly until she came to another sheer wall of rock. It was so impregnable this had to be the place. The blast needed to get through would have run the risk of irritating Moosevan and could make her move violently enough to close every space and cavern beneath her surface. That wouldn’t have done the mechanism operating the accretion beam any good. It had to be repaired if the capricious creature was to be preserved. Vibration was out too. That could have shifted the crust without Moosevan’s help and brought the roof down on the equipment as well as the engineer.