So we floated, my unconscious companions and I, away from Pezerjink on our little sky-platform, two thousand feet above the valley of Onuk. Whether the zitpoidl were awakening, whether they had spotted us, whether they could still recapture us, I had no idea, but I had done all I could. If this escape bid failed, then that was that. No point, then, in peering about to see. Besides, I wasn’t exactly keen to look straight down. Carefully I focused, not on the void below, but on the mountainous south-east boundary of the valley several miles ahead of us.
You may be surprised that I was able to sit up and gaze around at all, rather than lie face down on the lannemilb, quaking with terror as I clutched the rim. You may be comparing my account with how you would feel in my place, up in the sky on an open disc just twelve feet across, without even a rail to hold on to. But actually, for a couple of reasons it wasn’t so bad.
I have already pointed out that the greater physical courage of my Mercurian body exercised a strengthening influence upon my timid Earthly mind. This is part of it, but it can’t be the whole story. After all, not even my Mercurian self could have been accustomed to flying around in the sky on the equivalent of a magic carpet, a situation just as outrageous to me, Ren Nydr, as it was to me, Hugh Dent. Admittedly the people of Ixli were used to balpars – as they called the lannemilbs – but they weren’t used to having them float at the lofty altitude of this Ancestor of all silicon cells.
To tell you the truth (if you can believe it) the main reason why my fear of heights was controllable, was that there was a comforting aspect to our aerial glide, a reassurance which could only have spilled out from the Ancestor itself, as its mindless instinct enveloped me in a kind of aura, so that I shared in the sense that we were skimming over the invisible ghost-surface of Valeddom’s primordial ocean.
For that’s as good a description as any other, of what we were doing. Otherwise I would not have experienced that sense of peace, as if I were on a raft on calm waters so clear as to be invisible – as invisible as the reality, namely, empty air.
A hand stirred, and I saw Fnekt was waking up. The others, in the next few moments, also showed signs of emergence from their slumber. Evidently we were drifting out of range of the powerful zitpoidl minds.
Hastily I said to Fnekt, “Don’t make any sudden moves. We’re very high up, but it’s all right.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, and grunted, “I see what you mean.” (I admired him then, more than I had ever done.) “You certainly got us out of there, somehow,” he added with a jerk of the head back in the direction of the giant cone of Pezerjink. “How did you do it? And what is this thing we’re on?”
“Wait,” I said, “and I’ll tell you all.” Fnekt co-operated with me in reassuring the others one by one as they opened their eyes, so as to avoid any panicky flinching or jostling away from the edge of the lannemilb, which might have been disastrous. Each of us, once the initial dangerous moment was passed, conquered our fears, though not our amazement; Bryce’s expression was the most puzzled of all – I guessed he was wondering why he wasn’t more scared.
Jackson, on the other hand, was complacent. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had always had an exceptional head for heights anyway. It would be typical of him.
The women hardly spoke; they sat in the centre, their arms around one another, and on their faces a look of huge, patient relief.
All were safely awake. So now I had to make my speech. I didn’t particularly enjoy narrating my triumph, for I wanted to forget the sadness of it; at the same time I was even more relieved at our escape than my companions were, for the greater responsibility was mine in that it was I whom Nzaterpli had summoned to Pezerjink, the others merely drawn in my wake.
Eventually my tale drew to a close. I fell awkwardly silent, wondering how much I could expect them to believe, wondering whether what I could see in their expressions meant suspense, or actual doubt, but then – as I saw their faces relax – I realized that they had merely been waiting for me to finish. They believed every word.
Little sister Haffnem piped up, “I’m sorry for Nzaterpli. But thank goodness you got us away from her.”
“Yes, well,” I winced, “it was a close shave.”
Opavedwa gave a shiver and spoke tightly: “The zitpoidl are perhaps not evil.... but they’re bad for us. You did well, Ren, to get out of that thing’s head.” She shuddered again. “Brrr...”
“Yep, and you had all the worry,” Jackson commented. “All we had to endure was a few hours in the land of Nod.”
“I am impressed, Ren,” said Fnekt, “most of all with the speed of your understanding. I suppose that I, too, might have realized that the lannemilb must be a balpar, and would therefore float; but for an ex-Dluku to make that leap of intuition was pretty good…”
Bryce said slowly, “And this lannemilb, this Ancestor of all lannemilbs, that we’re on.... it feels safe.... and yet we’re flying so high....” He shook his head, struggling as usual to fit the facts to his scientific outlook. “I suppose,” he admitted, his voice cracking somewhat, “we’re tricked into thinking there’s no actual ‘height’ to be scared of, as we’re full of the sense that we’re actually at sea level!”
“You got it, Semor,” I encouraged.
“It’s a pity,” mused Jacko, “that Justine didn’t decide to climb out with you, when you smashed the window.”
The stupidity of that remark took my breath away. Could he really be that dumb? I shot a quick glance at his face. No, he wasn’t trying some subtle joke; he really meant what he had just said. It was woefully clear that he really had taken my narrative to mean that Justine and I had been literally, physically imprisoned inside a zitpoidl’s hollow head like sweets rattling round in a tin.
I said shortly, “Justine didn’t want to come out. She’s happy where she is.”
“Let’s hope,” said Opavedwa in the wise tone people use to smooth things over, “that no other human being ever gets trapped in that kind of happiness. Remember that statue of the Defender, with its warning arm? The ancient Vutuans had the right idea: avoid Onuk.”
Her words ended the discussion on the right note, covering up the enormity of Jackson’s blunder, which none of us wanted to mention – it was too embarrassing. Perhaps we all reached the same silent conclusion, that if such literal-mindedness was his defence against the weirdness of our adventure, then he had a right to be left undisturbed as he took that childish road. Anyhow, with one accord, we abandoned the whole subject – we left off talking about the realm of the zitpoidl, the trapped soul of Justine Lazenby, and our escape from Pezerjink.
*****
The crater and city of Vutu passed us some way to the west, receding from sight, and soon afterwards I heard a brief series of tiny popping sounds. I felt my Vutuan chest-band loosen. It had split up the back. I knew then that I could take it off and throw it away, and at the same time so did the others with theirs: we all laughed and cheered as we removed the bands and dropped the hated things over the side of our raft.
Next, we gazed at the gradually approaching mountains to the south-east of us. Billions of years ago that range must have traced an ocean shoreline on the infant planet; now the long memory of the Ancestor of all silicon cells was heading us towards it.
I had pinned all my hopes on the idea that when we bumped onto that “shore” we should be able to descend from the lannemilb and resume our journey on foot.
“I want to know,” I said, “was my decision good, about where to aim? If we alight on those mountains, can we find a pass through them? And from there find our way home to Ixli? And we need to decide whether to try to take the Ancestor with us....” I stopped, for I saw that Fnekt was smiling.
He replied, “No need to worry about all that. There’s a pass, all right, and the Ancestor will bear us through it. All the way home.”
“What? How can that be?”
“You must realize, the ancient ocean had currents. We know something about them, enough for me to assure you that we shall get home without first having to touch ground.” He added, “Before all this happened I would never have believed it could be done, but given the reality of this Ancestor cell, I can tell you, we’re just about home and dry.”
“Well,” I said, weakly.
Opavedwa, now that true safety was within reach, became more the anxious mother than she had been when threats dominated on all sides. She reached out and drew us all closer to her, so that the six of us were huddled in a tight mass at the centre of the lannemilb.
“Look, it’s true,” she breathed, and I looked and, yes, we were now aiming a bit south of our former course as the current veered in a slow curve, and the pass through the mountains was becoming visible as the peaks ahead of us shifted in the changing perspective.
Bryce said, “But look here – why should this bring us precisely to your home city?”
Fnekt had the answer ready:
“Because Ixli’s location was originally chosen in the knowledge of these sky-currents. Millions of years ago our city was placed to take advantage of the opportunities of aerial commerce. We hardly go in for that any more, but what’s carrying us along now is the Ixli-Vutu current, and I think we’ll find it’s as usable as it ever was.”
A sense of lightness affected us all during that long drifting journey. Family solidarity, the comradeship of friends, the comforting ride and the awesome view, and the expectation of a home at the end of it all, combined to produce a dreamy holiday atmosphere, in which we approached any topic in a happy-go-lucky manner. My Mercurian mother demonstrated her brilliant method of coming to terms with my Earth-mind. It was during this ride that I became aware that she thought of the Hugh identity as a kind of bonus to the Ren identity, as if she’d suddenly discovered she had two sons instead of one, though they both inhabited the same body. She said (I translate her idiom loosely), “It’s my dodge, and I’m sticking to it, ‘Renhugh’!”
“Good for you, Opavedwa. And what about you, Haff?” asked Jackson/Tmaeu. “Two men for the price of one, huh?”
“But why did we all transfer together, onto the same world?” demanded my old teacher with his permanent ache for logic. “That’s what I don’t get.”
“Souls must be sticky,” said Fnekt.
“Oh, great,” moaned Bryce. “Must title my PhD thesis, ‘Research into the stickiness of souls’.”
“Don’t bother,” came the curt response from Jackson. “We all made the trip. That’s a fact. Science is luggage we can send for later.”
Bryce shrugged, “Oh, well, perhaps I have a mother somewhere in Jempeldex who could be persuaded to take the same line.” He went quiet for a few minutes, except for some muttering shakes of the head. Then he was off again complaining as usual about the implausibility, the downright unbelievability, of various aspects of Valeddom. This happened on several occasions, and, like the good sport he was, he allowed us to gang up on him each time. One of these little conversations ended more seriously than the rest.
“The sight of those zitpoidl,” Bryce said, “got me thinking about shape. The silicon giants, formed from a totally different kind of biology, nevertheless possess two arms and legs and a head just like we do – which makes me think there must be something about the humanoid shape that is basic to intelligent life.”
“Well, it’s common, certainly, on many worlds; so our scientists tell us,” agreed Fnekt.
“But what does it mean?” persisted Bryce. “How human is human? What about you people, and what about the Mercurian me? I thought at first we must be descended from some ancient space-faring race that left colonies on both planets, but that’s not so, is it? We’re not part of the same family tree at all, are we? I mean, if I went back to Earth as I am, as Semor Recrecd, I couldn’t interbreed with Earth people or have blood transfusions with them, could I?”
“That is right,” said Fnekt. “That is something that is known. The word ‘human’, strictly speaking, does not refer to a species but to an approximate shape, size and type of mind.”
“But how is it known?”
“As to that – you’ll have to ask the Hish.”
“The what?”
“Fnekt,” reproved his wife, “I don’t think you should call our ruler the Hish. Not right at the start, anyway.”
“The nickname is in common use....”
“Not right at the start, dear, all right?” She then said to Bryce and me, “The Ixli-Melsh – to use our ruler’s formal title – will answer any of your questions, when we arrive; but perhaps we could fill you in a bit first, at least as regards the laws and customs of our city.”
“Of course!” said Bryce eagerly, and a long question-and-answer session began.
I did not take much of it in. I found that I knew some of it already – I wore, after all, a native Ixlian brain – though my knowledge was a mere residue, remote and small and smudgy as a picture seen through the wrong end of a poorly focused telescope. For example “Ixli-Melsh” did mean something to me, but nothing more than a hint of some tall shape vaguely akin to a planetarium projector.
Bryce meanwhile plunged into the economics and geography of our destination, though because of the way he framed his questions – in a style more suitable for Earth studies – my Mercurian family had their work cut out trying to give him satisfying replies. I left them to it, and day-dreamed for much of the journey.
So smooth was our glide over the non-existent sea, so constant our altitude as we curved with increased speed through the mountain range and then slowed down after emerging out the other side, that the ancient waters, which my intelligence told me were no longer present in reality, nevertheless seeped into my imagination until it hardly mattered that they were invisible to the eye; all ground below me was submerged, and I and my companions were cushioned, by the ghostly surface whose current carried us steadily homeward.
*****
I awoke from a doze and sat up. I felt cooler. The sky, and the panorama, looked dimmer. I remembered having heard that Ixli, which was about 400 miles southeast of Vutu, was close to the night side of Valeddom.
My companions, silent and motionless, were staring ahead. Their intentness communicated itself to me. I strained forward likewise.
What was that distant necklace of pale silver? It was a range of icy hills, strung along our dim grey forward horizon, and overhung by a low black curtain, the beginning of the sky of Darkside, pierced by a few bright stars.
Closer, below and around us stretched a scrub-dotted, hummocky brown plain, with an interruption some miles off in the form of a single round patch of blues and greens towards which we swept along a curve of current.
This special colourful area was a couple of miles across. In the midst of it stood a mile-wide hemisphere of brighter light, a volume of air that glowed of itself. My deep self knew that we were meant to enter that glow. We were going to land somewhere among the structures within it, which were becoming easy to see, arranged upon the cultivated ground.
Most of the buildings were not too dissimilar to the mushroom-shaped Vutuan houses, but since their surroundings were vastly different from those of Vutu, the total effect was nothing like the crater city, and I was glad of that.
But how were we going to land? This thing we rode – we could not steer it, nor alter its altitude or speed.
Bryce asked, “Do we signal to them somehow?”
Fnekt replied, “Relax! The scrublands around here are scattered with gleaners and hunters – watchful people. They must already have spotted us. The floaters must by now have been alerted.”
Within minutes I saw how right he was. As if dozens of torches or lamps had been switched on in mid-air, a cloud of glittering specks became visible in the glow above Ixli. It did not take many more minutes before I guessed: balpars. Aerial platforms, the same kind as that on which we rode; not nearly as large as ours, and hovering at a lower level, but broadly similar.
Our invisible travelling current brought us rapidly closer to that welcoming committee so that I soon made out the figures of the pilots manning the balpars. Closer still, and I saw lines that reached up from the ground to tether each platform. It all spoke of system, organization, expertise; we must be a special case but they knew just what to do, to haul us in.
I liked the contrast between Vutu and Ixli. Balpars were something which the Vutuans hadn’t possessed at all. Perhaps (I speculated) people living so close to Onuk had developed a prejudice against the silicon cells, whereas here, hundreds of miles away, there was no hesitation in using them.
“Hold tight,” said Fnekt. We had nothing to hold onto but each other, so we went back to huddling in the midst of the available space, as far from the edge as we could squeeze. And then I felt a slight “pop” as though we had burst through an invisible curtain of elastic gel, as we entered the bright zone over Ixli.
It was a zone, not only of stronger light, but of richer air; with my next breath I took more oxygen into my lungs and detected a moss-like scent of moist plant growth.
Mere seconds later our aerial platform shook heavily as a silver claw appeared on its rim; evidently, a kind of metal vice had whirred up to grip the edge of the Ancestor. Another whirr, another impact and clamp. Then it happened a third time and I could see the three clawlike attachments spaced equally round our sky-raft’s edge. Our forward motion ceased, and we began to descend.
We naturally could not see what was pulling us – it had to be directly below – but on our way down, passing the platforms which hovered at various heights, we were hailed cheerily, informally, by their riders. Those close enough cried greetings by name (except of course to Bryce whom they had never seen). One of them shouted, “Where d’you get a raft that size, Fnekt?” But when they recognized me, they looked startled. I could guess only too well what they were thinking. Ren the Dluku has returned!
Some riders weren’t on their balpars but were hanging with one foot in a kind of stirrup part way down the anchor-ropes; with one hand they held onto the rope and with the other they held something like the energy pistol of the Vutuans. Police, my Earth-mind thought. Despite the armament, they, too, seemed friendly. And why not? Except for Bryce the stranger from Jempeldex, and Tmaeu the Vutuan, we were Ixlians, returning home.
It was natural enough that they should have had doubts about me, since the last they had heard about me was that I had evolved backwards towards brutehood. After my exile into the wilderness, the people of Ixli couldn’t have expected to see me again. Well, recovery from the Dluku state was extremely rare, but it wasn’t unheard-of. So, now, every time one of them shot a curious look at me, I returned him a calm wave. One of them cried, “You are Ren Nydr, aren’t you?”
I beamed at him. “Isn’t it grand that I’m back in the human fold?”
In a few minutes, to my heartfelt relief, after our glorious, amazing ride on the Ancestor cell had brought us four hundred miles through the air over the Mercurian wilderness, we touched ground.
I would never forget that ride, but I was glad it was over: enough was enough, and now my Ixlian blood was stirred by the greatest wonder of all, that of being home, though it was a home that my Earth-mind had never experienced.
*****
The three grapple-clamps, that had been used to bring us down, had retracted into the ground, and we were able to step straight off our platform onto a clear space inside the city.
I call it a city, though by now I had learned it had only about eleven hundred inhabitants. By Valeddomian standards that is a good-sized city.
With professional agility some of those whom I thought of as the “police” swarmed down the cables anchoring the balpars, and formed a kind of honour guard around us. Into this ring of personnel a heavily built Ixlian entered from ground level and greeted us. He carried his bulk impressively, like an ambassador greeting a foreign embassy. But his words to Fnekt were commonplace. “Glad to see you back home.”
“Good to see you too, Iklant.”
Iklant then turned to Bryce, and half-turned to me. “I am the repre-sentative and the emissary of the Ixli-Melsh,” he said in a more formal tone. “The Melsh would see you as soon as you are willing, so as to hear your story.”
Bryce answered, “Fine by me. I am eager to meet your ruler.”
Fnekt added, “I can speak for all of us: we are ready now, if the Melsh will grant us audience.”
“Then follow me,” said Iklant. Walking beside Fnekt he added in a lower voice, “You have certainly arrived in style! Are you sure you’re not too tired to make a good go of this interview? The Melsh won’t insist on seeing you straightaway if....”
“We would have been tired if we’d had to walk,” Fnekt said in high good-humour. “As it is....”
Iklant shook his head in wonder. “As it is, you floated in on the grandfather of all balpars.”
“Literally,” agreed Fnekt.
I, meanwhile, eagerly stared around as we walked down one of the avenues of Ixli. For the time being I had had my fill of fantastic adventure and felt hungry for peace and security, but could I believe that these blessings were really on offer? It seemed I could! Not that I understood much of what I saw. The residue of Mercurian mind underlying my Earth-ego was just sufficient to blunt my amazement, softening the impressions that came at me thick and fast, so that I could experience them as a gentle rain rather than as a bewildering hail.
The houses here, I now noticed, were, after all, different in some noticeable respects from the mushroom-design of the Vutuans’. Ixlian houses consist of cylinders topped not by hemispheres but by cones like old-style Chinese coolie hats. Lower down, prongs or rungs or little ledges protruded at various heights on the cylindrical part of each house, and some had balpars moored against them. Occasionally I glimpsed traffic: a steerable balpar with some kind of jet-motor attached, gliding through the air a few streets away, or using its jet to turn.
The houses, and the more blockish public buildings, were all decorated, in a way that the Vutuan buildings had not been, by stylish bright graffiti: coloured scribbles which teased the eye by inviting you to look in vain for a complex pattern. I soon learned to blank that stuff out; it wasn’t much to my taste.
Another, more pleasing, difference between Ixli and Vutu was that here each house was surrounded by a circular garden. Typically the entire property extended maybe fifty yards in diameter, with green lawns, not of grass but of some ground-cover plant with round leaves, and dotted by spiky yellow-and-brown shrubs. In some of the gardens I saw tables and chairs set out. Men and women sat and chatted, some stood up to wave at us as we passed, and others remained silently absorbed in moving their palms over the surfaces of tilted desks.
The fact that I did not understand all of what I saw, and that not everybody greeted us, I took as a good sign, that I was being given a not-too-exciting welcome, an introduction which promised to be peaceful and gradual, so that I could take my own time to step into the great calm pool of ordinary life. Even the fact that I mildly disliked some aspects of what I saw, helped to make the whole thing seem normal: one does not expect to like everything in a place.
My mood of contentment grew strong enough to survive the most peculiar sight which met my eyes on my way to the Melsh.
It happened as we passed the arched entrance to a three-storey octagonal building, constructed of shiny black stone blocks. The structure was obviously not a dwelling. On Earth it could have been anything from a power plant to a library.
A man was being taken into that building under guard. He was dressed in the same style as most Ixlians: loose shirt and trousers and a bright red cloak. By contrast, the four figures (two men, two women) escorting him all wore flowing white robes, obviously a special uniform of some sort. Bystanders made way for them.
Well, so what, I might have said to myself; I had only just arrived and could hardly expect to understand every detail of Ixlian society. But there was one point that really jolted me.
Blindfolding....
If the man under guard had been blindfolded, I could easily have thought up stories to account for it, imagining, perhaps, that he was a foreigner being escorted into a sensitive area and being forced to wear the blindfold for reasons of national security.
Only, it wasn’t he who was blindfolded. It was his escort of guards.
I clamped a lid upon the scene. That is to say, I rejected it, and all the questions to do with it, even the simple question of how the guards could walk if they couldn’t see. I simply wasn’t having it. I had just come home and I was enjoying my stroll in the bright air and soon, after we’d reported to the Ixli-Melsh, I would be taken to my house. No more gaping mysteries right now, thank you. Slam. Click. Lock.
Bryce asked Fnekt, “See that bunch in the white dresses. Who the heck are they?”
Fnekt hesitated as if reluctant to speak.
Jackson said, “Those guys are Oinameks. Haven’t we told you about them?”
“Oinameks?” (The word must be closely derived from the Valeddomian oinamku, “immortal”. No wonder Bryce was intrigued.) “What are they, the boss class? Servants of the Machine? They have the look of rulers.”
“Rulers! Not likely! The very idea would bore them crazy.” Jackson was obviously keen to show off his knowledge of his adopted culture. “And what do you mean, the Machine?”
Bryce sounded a little embarrassed.
“Well,” he said lamely, “in Jempeldex there’s a saying, or a legend, that Ixlians are ruled by a Machine Intelligence.... Of course, I, that is to say, my old Jempeldexan self, took it with a pinch of salt.... and my Earth self believes it even less....”
“Good!” laughed Jackson. “As for the Oinameks, they’re the archivists of Ixli. Not associated with government at all.”
“There’s a bit more to it than that....” began Fnekt.
I interrupted them, pointing to another large structure that loomed some way beyond the one we were passing. “Look, is that the palace of the Ixli-Melsh?”
Iklant, our guide, looked askance at me.
“You could call it a palace, yes. But if we call it anything, we just call it the Centre.” He sidled closer. “Tell me, Ren, how much do you remember? Fnekt has told me the incredible news....”
“That I changed from Dluku to Earth-mind? Yes, but,” I hedged, “I also, luckily, have some dregs of our knowledge still left in this brain. Enough to let me feel at home here. Completely – at home!”
And that, I thought, had better be true.
To make sure of it I must go all out to accept, accept, adapt, adapt! Become a native - or rather, encourage my already native Ren Nydr self. Play down my Hugh Dent self.
Therefore I must go easy on my Earth memories and my Earth assumptions. From now on I should simply pretend, as well as I could, that I was Ixlian. No, not pretend – actually be Ixlian. That way I might take in, with ease, those sights which disagree with Earthly notions of what is sensible.
That way, next time I saw blindfolded guards escorting an un-blindfolded person, I wouldn’t find it unsettling; I would simply shrug it off as being none of my business.
*****
Passers-by, who chanced to see us, tagged along out of curiosity, and other citizens, attracted by the rumours which flew ahead of us, also swelled our ranks, so that by the time we reached the abode of the Ixli-Melsh the procession numbered about fifty.
The palace – or “Centre” – bulked from afar above the dwellings of Ixli. Perhaps sixty yards in diameter, it was a circular stone building, of lighter colour than the octagonal structure we had passed earlier. Its outer walls, twelve yards high, had many doors, but no windows at all that I could see. A round silhouette up above suggested that a dome rose from the middle of the roof, rather like the raised yolk of a fried egg, not extending as far as the edge.
Our entrance was without ceremony. We simply opened a door and crowded in.
Along an aisle I walked between Bryce and Fnekt, with the others behind me. The aisle traversed concentric rows of seats, inwards towards the towering Melsh.
I was trying to rid my mind of Earth comparisons, but I couldn’t help thinking, inaccurately, of the London Planetarium. Instead of the projector, there was the Melsh; instead of the dome with stars, there were the walls and ceiling (including the domed part in the middle), all glowing with pearly light.
Spaced along the rows of seats were stubby pillars shaped like obelisks or termite mounds, and as I passed close by one of them I glimpsed (on the side facing the Melsh) a small screen animated with a moving picture. Plant stems waving in the wind; shadows on hummocky terrain – surveillance, I guessed, of scenes on the plains outside Ixli. And I saw other, similar moving picture screens on other pillars. Plus some thinner pillars here and there which were topped with milky globes, like eyes on stalks.
We had all fallen silent. The atmosphere was friendly, but solemn. We, the returned voyagers, drew up quietly in a line facing the Melsh. Behind us the crowd settled to listen.
Without turning round I heard more people coming in the way we came, and more were coming in by other doors…
And now I’ve put it off long enough –
Imagine two giant spindles, end to end, one on top of the other, standing vertically to about five times the height of a man. The sight of it was nothing much; any picture of a chemical plant or physics lab or even the insides of an old glass-tube radio will furnish you with far weirder shapes.
What haunted me was the voice.
WELCOME, it boomed, not too loud but weightily, like a well-drilled chorus, reminding me of what all Ixlians knew – that the Melsh was, indeed, a blended store of the wisdom of Ixlians down the ages.
An achievement accomplished by means which I could not even guess at: for a vast length of time the greatest men and women of the city had donated their best thoughts to a repository of brain-recordings from which eventually a composite Mind had emerged, far stronger and larger than the mind of any single human could ever be, and with a personality of its own.
Because it was composed of such highly respected ingredients, and because during its long lifetime it had earned the trust of the city’s inhabitants, the Melsh was loved as if it were a wise old grandfather.
Bryce, however, did not understand any of this, for he was not an Ixlian. Probably the sight of the big spindle shape and the mighty voice emerging from it had stirred memories of those legends in which Ixlians were supposedly “ruled by a Machine”. That’s how he must see it, I reflected; understandably he looked scared.
His negative attitude could not escape notice. The Melsh, with its eyes all over the place, and with its experience in reading human expressions, must be able to tell that there was one person present who did not trust it.
Sure enough, after a short few minutes’ questioning of Fnekt and Opavedwa about our adventures, it turned its attention to Bryce.
It greeted him bluntly – in English!
SEMOR RECRECD, PERHAPS WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER, YOU AND I.
For a moment, Bryce and I were stunned to hear our own language spoken by this City-Intelligence on Mercury. Then we both remembered that we were by no means the first Earth-minds ever to reach this world.
WELL, SEMOR, HAVE YOU A QUESTION FOR ME?
The Melsh had shrewdly guessed at Bryce’s special yearning for answers. I didn’t suppose it could actually read thoughts, but it had some pieces of evidence: the short account given by Fnekt, the expression on Bryce’s face, perhaps the behaviour of previous Earth-minds.
DON’T BE TONGUE-TIED. YOU ARE THE INTERESTING ONE. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS NEW TO ME. AND YOU POSSESS THE ADULT EARTH-MIND.
Bryce responded in blunt language – one plain speaker responding to another – as he seized the opportunity to disburden himself of the one great question that had haunted him ever since his arrival on Mercury.
“If you, Ixli-Melsh, are the ultimate expert system, answer me this: why have the astronomers of my world got all the wrong ideas about Valeddom? What’s going on? We used to believe, rightly, that this planet, which we of Earth call Mercury, had a sun-synchronous rotation and a Twilight Belt, and then, when our science got better, we ‘disproved’ it all! How come? How is it possible to ‘disprove’ the truth? And how did our astronomers fail to detect the atmosphere and the possibility of life here at all? This is the riddle that’s been driving me crazy during almost every hour of my time on this world. I’m not kidding you, Ixli-Melsh: at this rate I’ll soon be reduced to saying either that it’s all a dream or that my life back on Earth was the dream, and that since I can’t believe in both at once, one or other of them must give way.”
THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH INSTRUMENTS CANNOT TELL AT A DISTANCE. OUR OBSERVATORY REPORTS THAT THERE IS NO LIFE ON EARTH.
“You mean – what do you mean, ‘no life on Earth’? What do your telescopes see?”
WHEN THEY POINT AT EARTH, OUR TELESCOPES AND SPECTROSCOPES RECORD A DEAD WORLD. WE KNOW THAT IS WRONG, FOR WE HAVE MET MINDS LIKE YOURS WHICH COME FROM EARTH. YET ALL OUR INSTRUMENTS SEE ON IT IS ROCK, SAND, DRY OCEAN BEDS, NO BREATHABLE ATMOSPHERE -
“Since when?” interrupted Bryce hoarsely – and to say that my blood ran cold as I waited for the Melsh to answer, would be a poor description of the clammy terror which fingered me.
If only it could be said that the Valeddomian instruments had always given the verdict “no life on Earth”, we could assume that there was something wrong with the gadgetry and we needn’t worry. But if they had once detected life, and now did so no longer; if in other words their message had recently changed – then, possibly, they were telling the truth, that something lethal had happened to our Earth since our departure from it.
But no – hang on – I wasn’t thinking straight! The Melsh had admitted that there was a conflict between reality and the observatory’s results. So, all right, he was saying that Earth wasn’t dead although it looked dead from here.
Just as, from Earth, Mercury seemed dead and yet was not.
OUR INSTRUMENTS CEASED TO TELL THE TRUTH SOME HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO.
“What could possibly cause scientific instruments to behave in that way?” demanded my teacher.
I AM NOT SURE, said the Melsh. PERHAPS YOU CAN HELP ME FIND OUT.
“Yeyyyy! Thank you!” cried Bryce like a little boy bursting with excitement. At the dream of intellectual adventure come true, all his distrust was forgotten; delight flushed his doubts away - delight at being offered a chance to get at a mystery and push back the frontiers of his knowledge. A bit of puzzlement remained. “But,” he reflected, “I wonder what the heck can I do, that you can’t.”
HAVE NO DOUBT, THERE IS MUCH THAT YOU CAN DO, THAT I CANNOT DO. BUT WE HAVE SAID ENOUGH FOR NOW. IKLANT WILL SHOW YOU TO YOUR QUARTERS, SEMOR, AND I WILL CALL FOR YOU AGAIN AS SOON AS YOU ARE RESTED. ALSO THE NYDR FAMILY WILL BE ANXIOUS TO GET HOME. MEANWHILE BE ASSURED, ALL OF YOU, THAT YOUR EXPLOITS WILL BE REMEMBERED.
The Melsh knew how to pitch its tone for a kindly dismissal.
Bryce was obviously the one of us whom it was really interested in. I could well understand that an adult Earth-mind and, what’s more, a teacher, was much more of a jackpot from the Melsh’s point of view than the rest of us could ever be, no matter how much I might have to say about the Vutuan Dayside trip, about Onuk and the zitpoidl, about the escape from Pezerjink or anything else.
I was hardly at all miffed. In fact I was quite relieved at being let off without having to talk about (and thus re-live) that whirlwind of events.
For the moment, the golden contentment of everyday life was the big adventure, for me.
*****
TO BE CONTINUED