Alice's World Read online

  “You want me back, don’t you?” She smiled.

  “I don’t know…. No, I guess not. It’s a good memory, on the whole. I like to keep my good memories good, when I can. Sometimes I want you back, but it’s only good, clean lust, nothing else. The hairy animal.” He smiled vacantly.

  She rose. “You’re practical,” she said.

  “I’m a bastard, that’s what you mean. Nothing wrong with that.” He leaned back in the chair again, watching her with amused interest. She was a bitch, he thought; a compassionate, beautiful, ever-understanding bitch. Calm, silent, and very, very beautiful. She always knew how to put her natural resources to the best possible use. Cat. A good name. The sleek, purring animal, graceful and lithe, sometimes even faithful. Independent as hell, and with a lot of sharp claws just in case.

  He had walked out on her once: she hadn’t liked that. Hurt her pride, probably, which would have been bad enough if she had been anyone else than sweet, patient Cat. She wasn’t resentful, but she was stubborn. She always got what she wanted, in the end.

  Legs tucked under her, because she knew he didn’t care for legs anyway. If he had, they would have been displayed three inches from his eyes by now. She had her ways. He smiled.

  “Who’s the lucky one with the wandering key now?” he asked, rising. “Anyone I know?”

  “Do you care?”

  “Not really. Just curious.”

  She said, “Dr. Gernstein. From sociology. I like him—he’s amusing.” Frank, dispassionate.

  “So. I’ve been wondering why the dreamy look.” He was standing by the disconnected visor screen, watching her reflection in the pearly gray glass. “He’s an ass.”

  “That,” she said, “is perhaps a matter of taste. I happen to like him.” She looked at him. “Do you think that I throw myself at anyone who happens to come by?”

  “A meeting of minds, then? Anyway, he’s an ass. And probably wearing out both lock and key these days, if I know him.”

  “It’s a good lock,” Cat said, laughter in her eyes. “It can take a lot of wear and tear.”

  “But that key of his,” Monteyiller said, “is in bad shape.”

  “Are you offering me a new one?” She was laughing openly now.

  “I think that lock of yours can take any key, any time. Besides, my own key is engaged elsewhere. Some other time.” He leaned over the maneuver console and pressed a button. The screen flickered to life, filled with the hovering ships’ random search of the planet. He watched thoughtfully while the pictures succeeded each other, conscious of a warm glow in his face. And a pleasant tingle somewhere else.

  The bitch, he thought amusedly. The bloody impudent bitch. Start talking about anything at all, and within two sentences she’s there.

  And, within two more sentences, he’d be there too.

  He gazed intently at the screen, feeling her laughing eyes on his neck. Later, perhaps. He watched the glowing panorama, imprisoned behind the curved glass.

  Cat smiled, but said nothing. That was one of her good qualities: she knew when to keep quiet.

  A sun-burned desert flashed by on the screen, a steppe covered with slowly waving grass, a beach in the sunset, high dark trees in the background, and there on the beach a creature that gazed up at the sky. Monteyiller reached out and connected the camera for continuous surveying. The camera zoomed in on the creature, until it filled the whole screen.

  At a distance and in the weak light, it had looked like a man on a horse, but in close-up it was different. It was a horse, but where the head should have been, the horse-body merged into the upper torso of a human being. It was a man, seemingly in middle-age, and he stood with his hands on his sides, gazing up at the sky. His long hair flowed in the wind, and his eyes gleamed with a vague intelligence. Monteyiller stood back, biting his lip.

  “This,” he said, “is what is commonly known as a centaur. See him?”

  Cat jumped gracefully down from the table and came up to him. She eyed the creature with frank interest.

  “A fabled beast from early Hellenic times,” she said lightly. “A symbol of virility. A lecherous beast.”

  She unconsciously passed her tongue over her lips.

  “It was worshiped far into later Hellenic times, getting more and more lecherous with age. A nice specimen, isn’t it?”

  “There’s never been any centaurs,” Monteyiller said. “You have a filthy mind, that’s all.”

  “It must be a good year for nonexisting creatures,” Cat remarked. “He’s fat.”

  “It is a centaur,” he admitted. “Yet—”

  “A biological experiment?”

  “Why? And why a centaur?”

  “The women might have liked him.” She smiled. “But it is possible, though, isn’t it? Fifty thousand years is a long time.”

  Monteyiller didn’t answer. He watched the screen, biting his lip. The centaur waved his tail a little, but didn’t move.

  “A flying horse,” he said tiredly, “a giant bird, as big as one of our ships, two dragons—fire-breathing, no less—a giant gorilla…this is the sixth so-called fabled beast I’ve seen up to now. So what’s the matter with the bloody planet? Has it gone mad all of a sudden?”

  He disconnected the screen with an angry gesture and walked away. Cat followed him out of the room, down the corridors. He kept his voice down for the sake of the people passing by on their way to their various duties. He was a popular captain, on the whole, but certain things are better not discussed too freely.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “If I shoot the bloody things—which I would do, given half a chance—they’d probably turn out to be friendly and harmless, and I’d be the big trigger-happy fool. Or they might turn out to be nothing but fantasies, hallucinations, and I’d be a fool again, the big bully shooting away at shadows. H.Q. would crucify me. And if I don’t shoot, you can bet they turn out to be vicious as hell, and H.Q. will ask me why didn’t I vaporize the monsters right away. Naturally, I’d repeat what the computers said and H.Q. would tell me I had a brain myself, or I should have one! Damnit, what should I do?”

  They went down the main corridor, and entered the ship’s only canteen, which as usual was thronged with personnel. Most of the tables were occupied by tired-looking technical staff, who had been relieved by the night shift, sipping mildly alcoholic beverages. There was tension and impatience in the air. Something had to happen, Monteyiller thought, and fast. The fleet had been circling Earth for ten days now, doing nothing but monitoring the planet, and finally, today, sending down the scoutship. Probably everyone knew about the result by now.

  They made their way between the crowded tables, exchanging greetings to right and left, and finally ended up at a vacant table in a comer. Monteyiller ordered two cups of pseudo-coffee from the dispenser and leaned over the table, pointedly avoiding the inquiring looks from the people near them.

  “So what are you going to do?” Cat asked. “Go down?”

  “And risk the whole fleet?” He grimaced. “We can’t afford that. This fleet was a great sacrifice for the Confederation. If we fail here, there won’t be a new one. I’ll play it very, very safe.…A new scoutship, perhaps, when Jocelyn and Martha are back, and then—” He looked thoughtfully at her. “They’re your business from now on, don’t forget that I want to know exactly what happened down there. You turn them inside-out if you have to; just make sure I get some answers.”

  “If you’re suggesting I use the probe on them, I won’t.”

  “I’m suggesting nothing. Do you think I want to destroy them? Put them on your couch and speak kindly to them, or use hypnosis or whatever you do—just remember that I need something fast”

  “You’re asking for a lot,” Cat said quietly.

  “There are people asking a lot of me too,” he said curtly. “You have only me pestering you, but I have the whole bloody H.Q. breathing down my neck, demanding quick results because the Conservationists are breathing down their neck
s, howling for the termination of the whole project. They think this expedition is a waste of money, and they’re partly right. So in the end it all comes down to me, and I’m passing the buck to you for the moment. Clear?” He smiled joylessly.

  “Clear.”

  He leaned back in the chair, feeling exhausted. Cat was regarding him with large, questioning eyes, with a frankness bom out of two years of companionship. She knew, all right; she understood him. The tough captain of the fleet, the bright wonder-boy who always succeeded, and she looked right through him. But he needed her; she was the only one in whom he could confide.

  It’s too big for me, he thought. Too bloody big, and there’s no way out of it.

  He looked over her shoulder, at the visor screen placed by the far wall. Space filled the rectangle, unblinking stars, and silently floating dragonfly-ships. And down there under them, rolling like a rotting apple, stained with brown and blue, Earth. The continents could be vaguely discerned through specks and streaks of sluggishly floating clouds.

  Fifty thousand years since the Exodus, and no one had visited it since. It had lived in the immense libraries of the new Empires, as a myth, a probability, a half forgotten memory without substance, without proof. Fifty thousand years was a long time; Empires had come and disappeared, dynasties had come and gone, immortal history was made and forgotten. The annals had become fables, facts had become superstitions. The Empire that had once deserted the mother planet for a new administrative center in the midst of its far-flung dominions had turned to dust millennia past, its successors hardly more than footnotes. Wars and disorder had taken their toll. Cultural and technological decline had made each planet its own kingdom. The long night closed in over the shattered remnants of the Empire, and Earth was a fable, a myth, the place of all dreams, the palace of light. There were religious cults worshiping it. And learned men argued that Earth never existed, that it was the ancient dream of Heaven.

  And yet, here it was. The coordinates found in a ruined library somewhere. The Confederation of Planets, consisting of sixty-four formerly agricultural—and therefore unexploited—planets in an insignificant sector of the old Empire, took a chance and sent out an expedition. They could hardly afford it, but it was a risk worth taking. There might be things left on Earth, technical miracles spumed by the old Empire, unbelievable riches waiting to be taken. They came to scavenge in the rubbish left by the old Empire, eager, hopeful, and just a little bit afraid. The fourteen ships that circled around the planet were only the vanguard of another, far mightier armada of bureaucrats, soldiers and citizens which, after fifty thousand years of exile, prepared to return to the home planet. The ships circled patiently around the planet while the instruments searched after signs of human or mechanical activity. So far, there had been none, except for the monstrous beasts that the cameras picked up now and then. And the enormous structure, of course, the hallucination or whatever it might have been.

  Monteyiller wondered what it was like down there as he gazed at the scenes depicted in the visor screen: mountains, rivers, immense forests stretching away to the horizon. And the ever-present ruins. He shifted his eyes to Cat, who still regarded him.

  “It’s awesome, in a way,” he said, “coming back to Earth…it frightens me. If the defense systems still worked and attacked us, it wouldn’t scare me. That would be something tangible, something I could do something about. But this…I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t understand it,” Cat said, shrugging. “You never liked what you couldn’t understand. I know that.”

  He shot her an incisive glance. “You mean yourself, don’t you?”

  “Well…in a way, yes.”

  He looked up at the visor screen. “You could be right,” he muttered. “That planet is like a woman, just waiting for someone to come by. It’s capricious and tricky, and you never know where you stand with her.”

  “And yet you come to her,” Cat said. “You aren’t very wise, are you?”

  “A purely accidental occurrence, for old times’ sake, nothing else.” He rose abruptly. “Come, let’s go.”

  She followed him out into the corridor. “Where?” she asked.

  “I’ve got work to do, that’s all.” He looked up at a visor screen placed near the roof. Still nothing new. He sighed.

  “In that case,” she said, “I’ve got work to do, too.” She started down the corridor, then hesitated and turned. “Call me if you need a key sometime, Mon. I just might have one for you.”

  “The offer’s still open, eh?” He grinned.

  “It’s never been closed.”

  “Some other time, perhaps. Bye, Cat.” He turned around and strode down the corridor with quick, determined steps, toward the observations center. He smiled unconsciously, fingering the key-ring in his pocket. Cat was always so tactful. And he was practical; she had said so herself. He didn’t need a new key. He had kept the old one all along.

  4

  On Earth: The white stallion descended softly from the sky and halted with a powerful thrust of the mighty wings in the air, a hundred feet above the ancient landing field. He hovered noiselessly above the ship, whose instruments cautiously observed him, decided that he didn’t exist and unhurriedly proceeded to catalogue this new phenomenon into its files. The scoutships were highly intelligent, as robots go, but they had certain drawbacks—they didn’t believe in fables. Pegasus was allowed to hang in the darkness unharmed, because, according to certain irrefutable laws of aerodynamics, this creature couldn’t possibly behave that way, and the menacing disrupters which had trained themselves with deadly precision upon him, turned indifferently away. Untroubled, Pegasus gazed down at the man and woman who uncertainly walked away from the ship, and his eyes were big and shining and filled with a strange, infinite joy.

  Far away in the brooding sky, Medea halted her coach in a shower of sparks, and the Valkyries gathered around her, wistfully looking down through the clouds. Behind the mountains, the Midgard serpent raised his colossal head over the snow-covered peaks and gazed with cold, piercing eyes at the two figures. The immense body, which clasped Earth like a girdle, trembled almost imperceptively. Mountains fell, rivers altered their courses, dust obscured the skies wherever the great body moved. Like an impenetrable shadow in the sky, the head hung, steadily looking down. Far behind all the others, the beetle Khepre stumbled over the clouds, joyously hurrying toward the old landing site, forgetting his age-old duties in his haste. The ship observed them all, noted their size and speed, decided that they didn’t constitute any danger whatsoever, filed the information for further use and promptly forgot them. The robot in the maneuver chair was busy monitoring the progress of Martha and Jocelyn, and didn’t pay any attention to the ship’s doings.

  The ship’s disruptors swung uncertainly over the immense bulk of the Midgard serpent, but having decided that this monstrous creature apparently was yet another of those inexplicable phantoms, it lost interest in the creature and reverted to the less disquieting task of searching for more substantial intruders. It ignored sullenly the strange beings that gathered in the dark sky, whispering and muttering in the shadows, looking with strange and lonely eyes at the man and woman.

  All the fables of Man waited in the dusk, patiently as they had waited for fifty thousand years. The three old women who had prophesied Man’s return, sat beneath the tree Yggdrasil, under a dark and brooding sky, spinning threads for their terrible web, while a dark man in a billowing cloak silently looked on.

  A certain dragon gnawed on the tree’s roots; his name was Nidhogg. And on the crest of a white-capped mountain, the Earth-goddess Demeter Chamyne waited with her court of bald men, so eminently suited for her purposes. She threw back her lustrous hair with a toss of her head and looked up at the sky, where Khepre happily stumbled on toward the landing field, and laughed.

  5

  Beyond the ruins: Jocelyn.

  In the pale light of the moon, he walked down a steep slope, Martha at his heels, gun li
ke a relic in his hand.

  There were soughing trees at both sides, ghostly pale in the moonlight; brittle plaster crunched under his feet. His eyes darted from side to side, searching the dusk for signs of attack, and finding nothing but brooding shadows. When he looked up at the sky, the stars were feeble and few, and a large portion of the sky was devoid of stars, as if some incredible huge object was blotting them out. Strange noises could be heard in the distance, like the rustling of dry leaves, tittering and whispering creatures in the dark, silently creeping nearer. She shrugged, and continued.

  He had convinced himself that it was a hallucination, after all. It made him feel better, but it also started him wondering. He walked down the slope, pupils widened, wondering what he saw, wondering what Martha saw. Neither of them spoke about it.

  The slope narrowed into a depression: cliffs appeared, and precipitous clefts. The landscape was gashed, mutilated, torn. In the cliffs, sedimental strata marched in hundreds of parallel ribbons: blue, gray, yellow, brown, red. And an abundance of fossils: Liparoceras, Cubitostrea, Trilobites. The strata started at Proterozoic time, at the foot of the cliffs, and went up to Quaternary and beyond. Petrified Crinoids and Cephalopods littered the ground at their feet; above them, the ruins of Man brooded under the sky, where the spaceships silently spread their iridescent wings. Once, a mighty river had flowed here.

  It narrowed more: into a gorge, a chasm enclosed by bluff cliffs, towering darkly over them. Still they walked down the narrowing path, secure in the knowledge of the man-robot and the sentient dragonfly-ship, waiting among the ruins behind them. Dark moss clung to the cliffs, and phosphoric growths. There was the sound of whisperings and small clawed feet, scraping against weathered stone. They turned around a jagged bend of the gorge, and saw the creature, crouched on a beetling cliff above them, watching them with large, unaverted eyes.

  The Sphinx: It was part woman, part beast. She had feathered wings, rising like a crown over her back; claws; powerful tail; and the thin, graceful brows of a beautiful woman’s eyes. She had a lithe feline body, the ruffled wings of a giant bird, the slender neck of a woman, proudly rising out of feathers and sleek, golden feline hair. She looked at them, and spoke with a voice that was musical and clear.