Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE VRUVYIR, RUSSELL realized dimly, were not fairies, not demons, not dragonflies. They were people. They had supple, almost reptilian bodies with suckers in the tail, which they clamped firmly to the ground, their roost poles or anything to which they wished to attach themselves. They had reptilian bodies, two pairs of short arms, two pairs of bright transparent wings and dazzling golden tendrils which fell in shaggy profusion over their amber faces. And they had faces strangely like those of grave sea-horses.

Yet they were people.

They were people because they had society and culture—and a science and a technology as yet undreamed of by such simple creatures as mankind. Above all, they were people because they had language—and the gift of tongues. Clearly, they were a great people.

Russell did not experience fear. He felt a great sensation of awe.

They had materialized—or so it seemed—out of thin air. And now they were ranged around the base of the great column, poised motionless upon their tails, occasionally fluttering their beautiful wings, and regarding with expressions of bland serenity the three human beings who confronted them.

Farn zem Marur stared at them with ashen face and with sword in hand. Anna held her crossbow unsteadily. Russell glanced at the grenade he was holding, then smiled and put it gently down at his feet.

The voice that seemed to fill the world rolled across the sky and spoke to them again. Russell looked at the Vruvyir. Their faces were mask-like, their sea-horse lips immobile. Yet the voice that spoke impeccable English—and. he supposed, perfect Russian and perfect Gren Li—was a real voice. The sound of it seemed to shake the very earth on which he stood.

“The Vruvyir, having greeted their children, ask: why have you come to this place?”

Russell licked his lips. The expressionless faces and the voice that came from nowhere unnerved him. When he spoke, his own voice was no more than a whisper. He could barely hear it himself, yet he was convinced that every one of the strange beings heard it clearly.

“Because there is much that we wish to know. Because we need to understand.”

Laughter rolled across the sky. “Children! Children! You need to understand?”

“Yes, we need to understand,” asserted Russell. “We need to know why we have been taken from our own worlds. We need to know why we were imprisoned behind a barrier of mist. We need to know what future there can be for us in a world that is not ours.”

Again the laughter rolled. “Children! Does the rat in the cage need to understand the scientist’s purpose? Does the earthworm need to grasp the ecology of nature? Does the amoeba need to comprehend parturition?”

Russell felt the tears stinging in his eyes and falling down his cheeks. Crazily, his mind was elsewhere. He was tormented by visions. He saw Absu mes Marur entering the bond. He saw Tore Norstedt building a boat. He saw Ireg giving him a stone axe. Were people such as these to be regarded as rats in a cage?

“We are not rats or worms or amoebae,” he shouted. “Nor are we children. We are men and women. Compared with such as you, we may have little knowledge or achievement. But we have pride, we have dignity, we have curiosity. We know what friendship is, and we are not without some courage. You may destroy us, but you shall not defeat us.”

“Lord,” murmured Farn zem Marur, “it is well spoken. I am privileged to die in such company.

Speak but the word and my sword shall answer.”

“Russell,” whispered Anna. “I am glad that we knew each other. The journey was worth while.”

Again the laughter rolled. “We are the Vruvyir. You are our children—in whom we are well pleased.”

Russell experienced a sudden blind rage. They, the Vruvyir, were playing with their victims.

Behind those blank sea-horse faces, he sensed silent laughter—profound amusement, doubtless, at some great alien joke. He wanted to smash something, to wipe the laughter out of their minds. He looked at the grenade at his feet. He felt the lighter in his pocket.

“So you are the master race!” he shouted. “So we are barbarians whom it amuses you to taunt! Well, we think the joke is sour. We have a different sense of humour. Let us see whether you will be amused.”

He made a sign to Anna and Farn zem Marur. Then he moved to pick up the grenade.

“Stay still!” thundered the voice. “Children, do not destroy yourselves! You came here to understand. So be it. But what if you cannot bear the burden of understanding?”

As the voice issued its command Russell found that he could not move his arms, his body or his legs. It was as if they had been set in invisible ice. With difficulty, he turned his head—the only part of him that he could still move—and looked at his companions. Farn and Anna also were frozen into immobility.

They had looks on their faces such as he knew that he, himself, must be wearing. Looks in which incredulity and shock seemed to blend with a curious resignation.

He turned his head once more, with difficulty, and regarded the ranks of the Vruvyir. Even as he answered their question, he noted that there were not more than about fifty of these strange beings present.

That was, somehow, important. There was something at the back of his mind that… He mentally shrugged the notion away as irrelevant.

“It is for us to decide if we can bear what you call the burden of understanding,” he said calmly.

“You may destroy us, as I have said. Indeed, it would seem that your task is an easy one, for we are few and you are many. Also, you have power such as we have never experienced. But while we are alive we exercise the right to think, the right to explore, the right to discover the real nature of our predicament.”

“Brave words!” said the voice that filled the sky. “Proud words, spoken with the pride that is born of ignorance. The carnivore is supreme until it encounters the hunter, the hunter is supreme until he meets the warrior, the warrior is supreme until challenged by a greater warrior. Such is the pattern of life… Little ones, you walk in the forest, yet you do not know the dangers of the forest. We, the Vruvyir, say this to you: knowledge can destroy, understanding can destroy. Do you still seek knowledge and understanding?”

Russell was silent for a moment or two. Then he said quietly: “We are familiar with destruction. We know that it is a part of life… But it is better to be destroyed on strange frontiers than to live in a prison of ignorance and fear.”

Again the laughter, but this time it was gentle. And was there some new element in the eyes set boldly in those grave sea-horse faces? Compassion?

Russell looked at them and was afraid.

The voice thundered on: “Children, little ones, hear that which, if at all, you will comprehend but dimly… Think now of time. Not of personal time, for you are as the butterfly that lives a short space in a short season. Not of biological time, for life—simple life—is transient in its unfolding. Not of geological time, for even the existence of the rocks is as nothing to the burning of the stars. Think, then, of cosmic time. Think of the youth of the galaxy, of the great, gaseous whirls that ultimately became a thousand million suns. It was in such time, in the time that is no time, in the long, dusty dawn of galactic creation, that absolute life itself was born… It did not begin in some primordial planetary ocean. It began as a thing of fire, born of the children of fire, incandescent with power, white hot with promise… The stars are alive, little ones. And sometimes they dream… And sometimes they give birth…

“When the world you call the Earth was nothing, not even a swelling in the womb of a star that was too young to dream, there were already a million ageing planets spawned by quicker, brighter fires. The original Vruvyir were not born on or of any such planets, little ones. Nor were they born of or in the normal scheme of time. They were born of a dying star, they coalesced from fire, they took form in vortices of pure energy. They were sentient firebirds, the product of direct stellar procreation. They danced, they lived, changing form constantly for the sheer joy of making new patterns. And, in the end, they leaped away from the parent star to pit themselves against the cold and the dark and the slow erosion of entropy that is the end of all things born of fire.

“They came to a planet, they endured, they starved themselves down to unimaginably low temperatures, they took permanent form, they learned the secrets of simple biological life. They, our ancestors, the great ones, deliberately froze themselves in the sluggish cycles of planetary existence, until they knew that the chosen form was sufficient for their self-appointed task. What was that task, little ones? They were to be no less than the source of low temperature life.”

The voice paused for a moment or two—long enough for Russell to realize that his head was aching, his mind was reeling and his imagination was numbed. He glanced at Anna. Her face was haggard and drawn, her eyes wide and staring. He wanted to touch her, to comfort her. But he could not move. He wanted to fall down, even, but he could not move. He looked at Farn zem Marur, stiff and unseeing. And he was moved by a great pity, Farn zem Marur’s medieval mind was already in retreat—perhaps soon to be followed by the more sophisticated minds of the two twentieth-century terrestrials.

Apparently unheeding, the great voice rolled on.

“The galaxy was a garden, the garden had yet to be planted. The Vruvyir carried the seed. They spread out between the fertile stars, some to fail in their task and to be destroyed by fire or darkness, some to bring movement and biological pattern to hitherto sterile worlds where the chemistry of life had yet to intrude upon the slow physics of stagnation.

“They came to a planet, little ones. Two thousand million years ago they came to the third planet of a midrange star. They saw that the world was lifeless yet possessing great promise. So the Vruvyir came and they quickened the planet. They quickened it simply by defecating into the rich and vacant oceans.

Such, children, was the origin of life on the planet you call Earth.

“The Vruvyir departed, the aeons passed. Then, less than a million earth-years ago, they returned to this tiny corner of the garden. Great was their joy to find that life had flourished. Great was their interest to observe the life form destined to be dominant—an upright biped that used tools, that was learning the value of fire, and that was not afraid to dream.

“Samples were taken and distributed to worlds where the original quickening had yet to yield a form of such potential. Samples were taken and left to flourish. Now, on this world, samples of the original stock and also of the samples have been brought together, each in a familiar microcosm, so that the Vruvyir may observe their children and consider their destiny, and so that the children may discover one another… And in such discovery, fashion their own destiny… For, as children will, each has flourished at a different pace and in a different way. For some, the day of understanding has already dawned, while-some still live in the pre-dawn light… Thus, the Vruvyir grant you the burden of knowledge. Make of it what you will.”

There was silence.

There was a silence so profound that it seemed louder even than the voice that had rolled across the sky.

Russell looked at the ranks of the Vruvyir. Their wings remained still, their sea-horse faces expressionless. There were not so many of them as he had at first thought—forty, perhaps. They looked many, but their numbers were few.

There was something at the back of his mind. Something important. If only he could think! If only his wits had not been bludgeoned into uselessness by such a fantastic encounter and such a fantastic revelation!

Then, suddenly, irrationally, intuitively, Russell made the mental leap. The empty roosts, the silent city, the smallness and the greatness… All pointed to one mad conclusion.

He looked at Anna and Farn, exhausted with wonder, traumatized with knowlege. He thought of all his companions in the zoo—brought there and kept there because of the whim of the Vruvyir, the master race, the source of life, the lords of the galaxy.

And he took the gamble.

It was a crazy thought. But then, was anything sane in a nightmare such as this? Surely, only the unreasonable could be reasonable? Only the absurd could have any bearing on reality.

He spoke.

“You have called us your children. And, if there is truth in what you have said—and, strange though it may be there is the ring of truth—you must realize that children sometimes stumble on the answer to a question that has not been asked.”

Again the laughter. Again the voice that filled the sky.

“What, then, is the answer to this question that has not been asked?”

Russell gazed at the expressionless faces that confronted him.

And took a deep breath. “You brought us—the samples, as you call us—together because there is little time left. We have seen your city. It is a city of ghosts… The Vruvyir are dying.”

It was a crazy thought, prompted by many things—the lack of previous contact, the number of poles in the ‘chicken roost’, the sense of emptiness that seemed to pervade the entire landscape surrounding the city…

Laughter seemed to shake the firmament.

Again there was the voice of the Vruvyir, the voice of the world.

“A valiant guess, little one. A proposition of some interest—but wrong. The Vruvyir are not dying.

They are already dead.”