Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER THIRTY

DAYLIGHT CREPT UP over the edge of the great green savannah to reveal two plastic coffins/boxes lying in the middle of the road between the hotel and the supermarket. A Stone Age warrior, incongruously wearing a jacket of animal skins, tattered woven trousers and plaited sandals, with a steel axe in his hand and half a dozen plucked chickens held by their extended necks and slung loosely over his shoulder, walked purposefully out of the green wilderness and along the strip of road towards the Erewhon Hilton.

He saw the coffins and stopped.

He saw the coffins just as their occupants pushed the lids off.

Russell was the first to climb out. He gazed around him, blinked, staggered a little, then held his head. Then he heard Anna groan, lying by his feet. He stooped and helped her up. They held each other tightly for a moment, saying nothing— because there was too much to say.

They gazed wonderingly at the silent hotel. Then they, noticed the Stone Age warrior.

With a great shout, he dropped axe and chickens and ran towards them. Even as he moved, there was an answering shout from the Erewhon Hilton.

“Russell, my friend!” said Ireg. “Anna! It has been a long time. You live. That is enough. My heart is very full.” He hugged them both.

Russell and Anna stared at him, stupefied. When they had last talked with him, Ireg’s vocabulary had been limited to that of a very primitive savage.

“How long?” demanded Russell intently.

Ireg grinned broadly. “Long enough for me to learn much. My head hurts with all that learning.”

Before Russell could get him to amplify the statement, people began to pour out of the Erewhon Hilton. Familiar faces. Familiar voices. And yet…

And yet there was the difference.

They were leaner and tougher. Their skins were crinkled and cracked with sunlight and wind. Their bodies were hard with exertion, and straight with confidence.

But the big difference was age.

John Howard’s hair was a silvered grey. Marion Redmar was heavily pregnant. Robert Hyman had lost an arm, and the stump was healed. Selene Bergere carried a baby at her breast. Mohan das Gupta was blind. And there were changes, subtle changes, in the others.

Russell licked his lips. He looked at Anna. She was swaying. He put out his arm to steady her.

People were talking, laughing, crying, asking questions. He heard nothing but the thought that rolled like thunder in his head: “Surely it was only the day before yesterday… Only the day before yesterday.”

He looked at John Howard, saw that his lips were moving, and could not concentrate upon the words. Before the explanations, before the handshaking and the kissing, there was that terrible, urgent question.

Russell looked at John Howard and cut across the flow of words.

“How long? How long is it, John?”

The babel stopped.

“Long enough,” he answered, gently. “Quite long enough… We thought you were dead.”

“How bloody long?”

“Take it easy, Russell… You don’t know?”

“God dammit, I’m asking you!”

“Three and a half years—our time.” John Howard smiled. “Now, how long has it been in your time?”

But Russell was too busy catching Anna as she fainted.

At the same time, John was recovering from his own sense of shock. “Come on, everybody,” he snapped briskly. “Let’s get them inside and give them both a chance to pull round. We’ll all find out what has been happening, soon enough. And let’s move those bloody boxes out of the way. They bring back too many memories.”

Presently, Russell and Anna were leaning back in two of the comfortable chairs in the lounge of the Erewhon Hilton. Anna had only fainted momentarily. The colour was now coming back into her cheeks as she slowly sipped a glass of water.

John had banished everyone from the room except Ireg and Marion Redman who, as time passed, had come to be regarded as the group’s official doctor. He had wanted to banish Ireg also; but Ireg had turned a deaf ear to his plea. Were not Russell and Anna his friends? Had he not been the first to find them? John Howard did not press his argument too strongly with over two hundred pounds of partly educated Stone Age warrior.

Marion said: “Feeling better now? It’s bad enough to be brought here once in a box—but to be brought here twice…” She gazed at the pair of them compassionately.

“I am all right,” said Anna. “It was stupid of me. I am all right now. It was just that—” Words failed her. Russell held her hand tightly.

“There’s no hurry,” said John. “No hurry at all. Would you like me to give a potted version of our side of the story? Then, when you are ready, you can tell us a little of what has happened to you. And we can fill in all the details later.”

Russell took a deep breath. “We’d like that very much.” He smiled. “But just to ensure that the amazement is not too one-sided, I think you ought to know that we are only aware of being away for about a couple of days.”

John gazed at him open-mouthed. Russell suddenly felt much better. “Have a glass of water,” he suggested. “You look as if you need it.”

“Touche,” said John. “Shocks for all. I’ll try to contain myself until you have heard our bit… About ten days after you went sailing bravely off in that little boat, we began to have serious doubts. After about a month, most of us were convinced that you had all had it… Where is Farn, by the way? Is he alive?”

Russell and Anna looked at each other blankly. After a moment Russell said: “We don’t know. I’m betting he has been delivered by express parcel to Keep Marur much in the same way as we were brought here… I hope he’s alive; but in a little while I’ll tell you all that happened—or all that we think happened. It is still your turn.”

“Sorry. Where was I? Yes, by that time we thought you were dead. We mourned you; but life had to go on. We had to do something, we had to make plans—if only to stop us all going neurotic. But one thing our plans did not include was another attempt at passing through the mist barrier. At least, not until we knew more and not until we were better equipped… So we decided to educate and consolidate. Not only ourselves,” he glanced at Ireg, “but any other human beings in the same predicament. We felt we had to find some basis for understanding and accepting each other. It seemed a useful task.”

“It’s much more than that,” said Russell grimly. “It is our only hope of survival and sanity.”

“You recollect that Janice started to rear chickens?” asked John.

Russell smiled. “As if it were yesterday.”

“We didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out to be terribly important. It brought about a social and historical revolution.”

Anna joined in. “Chickens do not cause revolutions,” she observed tartly. “People are needed—special people.”

“In this case, both were needed,” said John. “Within three years our Stone Age friends—” he turned to Ireg—“you don’t mind us calling you Stone Age People?”

“Not at all, John.” Ireg grinned. “We call you the Canned Food People.”

“Well said, Ireg, old friend.” Russell began to laugh.

“Within three years,” went on John, “Ireg and his friends have become highly successful poultry fanners. It has changed their attitudes and their entire economy. They have found a local substitute for corn—it’s one of those high, tough grasses. The seeds taste like sweet corn dipped in vinegar. They have also discovered a kind of wild cabbage and something that looks and tastes like a cross between potato and onion. In short they have switched to an agrarian culture.

“And how did all that come about?”

“Janice—a woman to whom I take off my hat—went to live with them. Ireg and Ora came to visit us fairly frequently, and after a time she went back with them, taking a dozen hens and a cock. Originally it was just to show them how to cope with the hens and get eggs and chickens. She stayed in the River Settlement for a fortnight or so. Then she came back here for a while. But she couldn’t settle. She had found a mission in life. So she went back to the River Settlement and she has been there ever since. She has been teaching farming to the men and domestic science to the women. Now—God save us—she is teaching them to read and write.”

“A B C D E F G,” said Ireg complacently, “H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. Once two is two, two twos are four, three twos are six, four twos are eight, five twos are ten. I have ten fingers and ten toes, and that makes twenty. What do you think of that, Russell?”

“I think,” said Russell gravely, “that you are a great man, Ireg.” He turned to John once more.

“What about our friends at Keep Marur?”

John grinned. “They are tougher nuts to crack than the Stone Age People. The trouble is that they have some sophistication and some learning, but they also have a hell of a lot of rigid orthodoxy. Absu can’t get it into his head that we are not magicians. It does not, thank goodness, stop him from cooperating in important ventures. But he still thinks we do it all by mirrors.”

“What kind of important ventures?”

“Number One project is the building of a glider.”

“A glider?” Anna was nonplussed.

“A—man-carrying glider,” said John. “We thought you were dead. We thought you had frozen in the mist barrier. So, we reasoned, if we can’t pass through the mist, we shall have to pass over it. There are plenty of good thermals in this big prison of ours. Pulpul hide, incidentally, is much stronger and lighter than plywood, when it is cured properly. We demonstrated the principle of heavier-than-air machines to Absu with small models. So now we are working together on the construction of a light two-man glider. It should be ready in a month or two.”

“How will you launch it?”

“Teams of pulpuls. They run pretty fast when required.”

There was a brief silence. Russell’s head was reeling. There were so many more questions he wanted to ask, so much he wanted to say.

“Look here,” said John, eyeing them both. “There is such a lot to tell you that it will take days. We are, as you have already seen, well into the second generation. We’ve had accidents—Robert losing an arm, felling timber, and Mohan trying to blow himself to glory with explosives—but we’ll give you the domestic score when you have rested, and when we have had your own news.”

Russell sighed. So much had happened in the time they had lost. But then, also, so much had happened in the time they had known. So much that was frightening. And wonderful.

There was the echo of a whisper in his head: “The burden of knowledge is heavy, is it not?” The burden was indeed heavy—the burden of being a carbon copy. Was it right to share such a burden, and in so doing, perhaps, erode in his friends the sense of individuality that was so important for survival? Neither he nor Anna had yet been able to truly assimilate or accept what they had learned. They were both still in a state of shock. Perhaps, in the end, it would not matter to either of them that Anna Markova, Mark One, was somewhere in Europe scribbling away at her trade, or that Russell Grahame, Mark One, had retired from politics and was either drinking himself to death in the provinces or making a pile in industry.

He looked at her, perplexed. He looked at her with a question in his eyes. Anna looked back, and smiled. The answer was in her eyes. Intuitively, he knew it was the right answer. Intuitively, he knew that he could accept neither the responsibility nor the right to keep such knowledge to himself.

Russell spoke to Ireg first. “Ireg, my friend, forgive me. I am asking you to leave us now. What I have to say is hard to tell even to my own people. Some day, I will tell it to you. But, just now, the thoughts are too big for me to find the right words.”

Ireg left with dignity. “Russell, it is good that you come back to us. I—I understand. Janice calls us her children, and I know that there are things children cannot know. We will talk soon?”

“We will talk soon.”

Somewhat self-consciously, Ireg shook Russell’s hand.

When he had gone, Marion said: “You are sure you want to tell us about it now? You both look pretty shattered to me.”

“I had better tell you about it now,” said Russell. “Later may be too late, because already I am almost beginning to doubt what has happened… One question before I start. Have you had any more encounters with the ‘fairies’?”

“We have seen them, but not recently,” said John. “And always they are in flight. And always they disappear as soon as someone notices them.”

“They have faces like sea-horses,” said Russell.

“Seahorses?”

“Very solemn sea-horses.”

“What kind of creatures are they?”

“Ghosts. They are our masters. But they are only ghosts of ghosts.”

John Howard took a deep breath. “Why not begin at the beginning?”

“Why not, indeed?” said Russell. “And the beginning was the mist barrier.”

As he talked, his fatigue seemed to fall away. He knew that he would pay for it later. But, as he talked, he was aware of a new sensation. Compassion. Compassion for the Vruvyir— for the doomed master race that had leaped out among the stars to disseminate life and to pay for it with their own mortality. He felt he was beginning to understand the Vruvyir. He felt he was beginning to hear their music. Or was it all an illusion? Because, after all, they were now no more than ghosts.

He told John and Marion of the experience of passing through the mist barrier. He described his first glimpse of the great column and of the green translucent bubble that was the Sphere of Creation. He told of the encounter with the spider robots, and of the journey to the city that was, itself, a complex mausoleum. Then he tried to describe the appearance/materialization/projection of the Vruvyir. And, finally, stumbling over his own words, seeking and failing to find the right nuance, the appropriate image, he tried to convey some impression of his own experience in the Sphere of Creation.

When he had finished, Russell was exhausted. When he had finished, John and Marion were dumbfounded. When he had finished, Anna was weeping.

Presently, John said: “So we, too, are ghosts?”

“Living ghosts,” retorted Russell. “Doppelgangers with the ability to procreate. We can breed reality. The Vruvyir cannot. They can duplicate but they cannot breed. Their energies are spent.”

“And you say the original Vruvyir created life on Earth, and that they then seeded other planets?”

“So we were led to believe.” Russell shrugged. “I’m not asking you to believe us, John. I’m merely reporting in my own garbled fashion what passed between us and the Vruvyir, and what I, at least, experienced in the Sphere of Creation.”

“My experience was pretty much the same as Russell’s,” said Anna. “It was totally subjective. It might just be an hallucination. But for me it was real.”

John Howard sighed. “Much as it goes against my scientific training, I believe you both. I believe what you say, and I even believe what the Vruvyir said or revealed to you. I believe it because it is fantastic.” He laughed grimly. “If you had given me a tolerably rational explanation of our circumstances, I probably would not have accepted a word of it.”

“What do they want of us?” said Marion suddenly. “What do these terrible creatures want of us?”

“There is a phrase that seems to be etched in my mind,” said Russell quietly. “Let the children of your children’s children live to demonstrate that the Vruvyir, leaping from their parent star, did not leap in vain.”

“On Earth,” said Anna suddenly, “on Earth there are enough nuclear weapons to annihilate mankind about seventeen times. Perhaps the Vruvyir can predict the end of such a build-up. Perhaps they want to salvage something—if it is worth salvaging… Perhaps they want us to grow.”

John wrinkled his forehead and ran a hand through the grey hair. “So we and Sept Marur and the Stone Age People are of one blood?”

“We always were,” said Russell enigmatically, “in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“What of the future?”

“It belongs to us—not to the Vruvyir… It seems we are here to stay—to live or die. Some day, there will be no more Vruvyir. Some day, I believe, there will be no mist barrier, no groceries delivered by obliging metal spiders. We shall be on our own. We are the inheritors.”

“So what do we do? Build a new society? Integrate? Utopia on Erewhon?” He laughed bitterly.

“And the classic question: would you want your daughter to marry a Stone Age savage?”

Russell was tired. “There is the classic answer. I would only want my daughter to marry a man…

Let’s make the best of it, John. We can do no more.”

“They are going to rest now,” said Marion with determination. “They have been pushed to the limit, and they are going to rest. We have all the time in the world to talk about these things. Now, they need a bit of peace.”

Even while she was speaking, Anna had closed her eyes. Russell put his hand on her breast, then closed his eyes also. They slept through most of the day.

That evening, just before sunset, Absu mes Marur rode to the Erewhon Hilton. He was surprised to find Anna and Russell apparently in their right minds.

“Farn zem Marur, pathfinder and warrior of some talent, also has returned to his sept,” said Absu.

Then he added inscrutably: “Therefore, I rejoice to find my friends as they are.”

“How is Farn?” asked Russell. “Is he well and rested?”

Absu met the question with another question. “Lord Russell,” said Absu formally, “I require to know how my pathfinder bore himself. Did he bring dishonour to his sept?”

Russell was shaken. “Farn zem Marur, your servant and our friend and companion, is a brave man.

He endured much and with great courage.”

“Then there is no debt to pay?”

Russell was puzzled. “What kind of debt?”

Absu appeared tremendously relieved. “No matter, Russell.

It was my duty to ask. I am glad the pathfinder carried himself as a man. That is enough.”

“How is he?”

“Dead.”

“Dead!”

“He returned,” said Absu, “tormented by visions. He spoke of a green sun, and of voices and of dragons. He spoke much that I could neither understand nor wish to understand. Finally, realizing his own affliction in a moment of lucidity, he ran upon a lance. Perhaps it was best. I did not care to look upon him in such distress.”

“Absu,” said Russell, “Farn zem Marur was not mad. He was a valiant comrade, and I do not doubt that he spoke truly of what he had seen and heard. It is hard for me to find the words to tell you, but I will try to explain all that happened to us.”

When he had finished speaking, Absu remained silent. He was silent for a long time. He, Russell and Anna were sitting by themselves on the steps outside the hotel, watching the stars turn bleakly and remotely in a still strange and alien sky.

“Clearly,” said Absu at length, “the Vruvyir are great magicians.” He smiled. “But you, also, are a sept of magicians. Therefore the odds are not too great.”

Russell shook his head. “There is no war, Absu. It is not a question of lances or of magic.”

“I know that, my friend. We have a task. It is our task to demonstrate that we are men.”

“It is our task,” said Anna, “to show that we are one race.”

“Above all,” said Russell simply, “we have to grow. We really have to grow.”

But it was Absu mes Marur, duplicate of Absu mes Marur, lord of sept Marur, gonfalonier of the western keeps, and charioteer of the red spice caravans, who summed it ail up “It is written,” he said softly,

“that if the seed be fertile, and if the weather be passing fair, the harvest will be bountiful. It is written in the earth. It is written in the sky.”