Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset (54 page)

The polar continents were covered for the most part by eternal snows and ice; but the great mass of equatorial land displayed nearly all the features that might be observed on the terrestrial continent of Africa from a similar altitude.

There were mountains and deserts, great lakes, bush and tropical rain forests. Under the heat of the sun, the deserts burned with fiery, iridescent hues of yellow and orange and red; the mountains were brown, freckled with blue and white; the bush was a scorched amber; and the rain forests seemed to glow with a subtle pot-pourri of greens and turquoises.

The planet rotated on its own axis once every twenty-eight hours and seventeen minutes terrestrial time. Calculations showed that it would complete one orbit round Altair, its sun, in four hundred and two local days.

The life of the planet was clearly based upon the carbon cycle; and an
analysis of its atmosphere showed only that there was a slightly higher proportion of nitrogen than in that of Sol Three.

The
Gloria Mundi
stayed in the thousand-kilometre orbit for four hundred and ten revolutions or approximately twenty terrestrial days. During that time every aspect of the planet was photographed and telephotographed. In one section of the equatorial continent, the photographs revealed the classic sign of occupation by intelligent beings – irrigation or, just possibly, transport canals.

The occupants of the
Gloria Mundi
experienced sensations akin to ecstasy. They had endured confinement, synthetic hibernation and the black star-pricked monotony of a deep space voyage; they had crossed sixteen light-years in sixteen years of suspended animation and over four years of waking and ageing. And at the end of it their privation and endurance had been rewarded by the best of all possible finds – a world in which people lived. Whether they were people with four eyes and six legs did not matter. What mattered was that they were intelligent and creative. With beings of such calibre it would surely be possible to establish fruitful communication.

The
Gloria Mundi
touched down within twenty kilometres of the nearest canals. With such a large ship – and bearing in mind that the German pilot had only experienced planetary manoeuvres of the vessel in simulation – it was a feat of considerable skill. The vessel burned a ten-kilometre swathe through the luxuriant forest then sat neatly on its tail while the four stability shoes groped gently through the smouldering earth for bedrock. They found it less than five metres down.

For the first three planetary days, nobody went outside the vessel. Vicinity tests were conducted. At the end of three days the airlock was opened and two armoured volunteers descended by nylon ladder into a forest that was already beginning to cover the scars of its great burning. The volunteers stayed outside for three hours, collecting samples but never straying more than a few metres from the base of the ship. One of them shot and killed a large snake that seemed to exhibit the characteristics of a terrestrial boa.

On the ninth day of planetfall an exploration team consisting of the Swedish pair, the French pair and the Dutch pair set out. Each of the members of the team wore thigh-length boots, plastic body armour and a light plastic visor. The temperature was far too high for them to wear more – other than fully armoured and insulated and altogether restricting space suits.

The women carried automatic sweeper rifles: the men carried nitro-pistols and atomic grenade throwers. All of them carried transceivers. Between them they had enough fire-power to dispose of a twentieth-century armoured corps.

Their instructions were to complete a semicircular traverse in the planetary east at a radius of five kilometres, to maintain radio contact every fifteen terrestrial minutes and to return within three planetary days.

All went well for the first planetary day and night. They encountered and reported many interesting animals and birds, but no sign of intelligent beings. In the middle of the second planetary day, radio communication ceased. At the end of the third day, the team did not return.

Six people, tormented by anxiety, were left aboard the
Gloria Mundi
. At the end of the fifteenth day of planetfall, a rescue team consisting of the three remaining women set out. They, too, carried nitro-pistols and grenade throwers.

The fact that it was the women who went and not the men was not fortuitous. Of the men who remained, two were vital to the running of the ship (assuming no success in rescue) if it was ever to return to Earth; and the third, Paul Marlowe, was suffering from a form of acute dysentry.

He said goodbye to Dr Ann Victoria Marlowe,
née
Watkins, without emotion. He was too ill to care: she was too clinical to be involved. After she had gone, he lay back on his bed, tried to forget his own exhausting symptoms and the world of Altair Five and to lose himself in a microfilm of one of the novels of Charles Dickens.

The rescue team maintained radio contact for no more than seven hours. Then it, too, became silent.

After four days, Paul Marlowe was over the worst of his dysentery; and he and his two companions were in a state of extreme depression.

They considered waiting in the citadel of the
Gloria Mundi
indefinitely; they considered pulling back into orbit; they even considered heading out of the system and back to Sol Three. For clearly there was something badly wrong on Altair Five.

In the end they did none of those things. In the end they decided to become a death-or-glory squad.

It was Paul Marlowe, the psychiatrist, who worked the problem out logically. Three people were necessary to manage the ship. Therefore there was no point in sending one or two men out if he or they failed to return. For the vessel would still be grounded. So they must either all go or all stay. If they stayed in the
Gloria Mundi
and eventually returned to Sol Three, they would lose their self-respect – in much the same manner as mountaineers who have been forced to cut the rope. If, on the other hand, they formed themselves into a second search party and failed, they would have betrayed the trust vested in them by all the people of the United States of Europe.

But the United States of Europe was sixteen light-years away and under the present circumstances, their duty to such a remote concept was itself a remote abstraction. What mattered more were the people with whom they had shared danger and monotony and triumph – and now disaster.

So, really, there was no choice. They had to go.

By this time the ship’s armoury was sadly depleted; but there were still
enough weapons left for the three men to give a respectable account of themselves if they were challenged by a visible enemy. On the twentieth day of planetfall they emerged from the womb-like security of the
Gloria Mundi
to be born again – as Paul Marlowe saw it imaginatively – into an unknown but thoroughly hostile environment.

The designers of the
Gloria Mundi
had tried to foresee every possible emergency that could occur – including the death, disappearance, defection or defeat of the entire crew. If by any remote possibility, it was argued, such types of catastrophe occurred on a planet with sophisticated inhabitants, it would theoretically be possible for the said inhabitants to take over the ship, check the star maps, track back on the log and the computer programmes and – defying all laws of probability, but subscribing to the more obtuse laws of absurdity – return the
Gloria Mundi
to Earth.

That, in itself, might be a good and charitable act. Or, depending on the nature, the potential and the intentions of the aliens who accomplished it, it might by some remote chance be the worst thing that could possibly happen to the human race. Whatever the result of such highly theoretical speculations could turn out to be, the designers, were of the opinion – wholeheartedly endorsed by their respective governments – that they could not afford to take chances.

Consequently the
Gloria Mundi
had been programmed to destroy herself on the thirty-fifth day of her abandonment – if that disastrous event ever took place. Thirty-five days, it was argued ought to be long enough to resolve whatever crisis confronted the crew. If it wasn’t, then the
Gloria Mundi
and all who travelled in her would have to be a write-off.

The designers were very logical people. Some had argued for a twenty-day limit and some had argued for a ninety-day limit. Absorbed as they were in abstractions, few of them had paid much attention to the human element, and none of them could have foreseen the situation on Altair Five.

By the evening of the twentieth day of planetfall, the three remaining crew members had covered about seven kilometres of their search through the barely penetrable forests and had found not the slightest trace of their companions. They had just set up a circle of small but powerful electric lamps and an inner perimeter of electrified alarm wire behind which they proposed to bivouac for the night when Paul Marlowe felt a stinging sensation in his knee.

He turned to speak to his two companions, but before he could do so he fell unconscious to the ground.

Later he woke up in what was, though he did not then know it, one of the donjons of Baya Nor.

Much later, in fact thirty-three days later, the
Gloria Mundi
turned into a high and briefly terrible mushroom of flame and radiant energy.

It was mid-morning; and Poul Mer Lo, surrounded by small dancing rainbows, drenched by a fine water mist, was kneeling with his arms tied behind his back. Behind him stood two Bayani warriors, each armed with a short trident, each trident poised above his neck for a finishing stroke. Before him lay the sad heap of his personal possessions: one electronic wrist-watch, one miniature transceiver, one vest, one shirt, one pair of shorts, one plastic visor, a set of body armour, a pair of boots and an automatic sweeper rifle.

Poul Mer Lo was naked. The mist formed into refreshing droplets on his body, the droplets ran down his face and chest and back. The Bayani warriors stood motionless. There was nothing to be heard but the hypnotic sound of the fountains. There was nothing to do but wait patiently for his audience with the god-king.

He looked at the sweeper rifle and smiled. It was a formidable weapon. With it – and providing he could choose his ground – he could annihilate a thousand Bayani armed with tridents. But he had not been able to choose his ground. And here he was – at the mercy of two small brown men, awaiting the pleasure of the god-king of Baya Nor.

He wanted to laugh. He badly wanted to laugh. But he repressed the laughter because his motivation might have been misunderstood. The two sombre guards could hardly be expected to appreciate the irony of the situation. To them he was simply a stranger, a captive. That he could be an emissary from a technological civilization on another world would be utterly beyond their comprehension.

In the country of the blind, thought Poul Mer Lo, recalling a legend that belonged to another time and space, the one-eyed man is king.

Again he wanted to laugh. For, as in the legend, the blind man – with all their obvious limitations – had turned out to be more formidable than the man with one eye.

‘You are smiling,’ said an oddly immature voice. ‘There are not many who dare to smile in the presence. Nor are there many who do not even notice the presence.’

Poul Mer Lo blinked the droplets from his eyes and looked up. At first he thought he saw a great bird, covered in brilliant plumage, with iridescent feathers of blue and red and green and gold; and with brilliant yellow eyes and a hooked black beak. But the feathers clothed a man, and the great bird’s
head was set like a helmet above a recognizable face. The face of Enka Ne, god-king of Baya Nor.

It was also the face of a boy – or of a very young man.

‘Lord,’ said Poul Mer Lo, struggling now with the language that had seemed so easy when he practised it with the noia, ‘I ask pardon. My thoughts were far away.’

‘Riding, perhaps, on the wings of a silver bird,’ suggested Enka Ne, ‘to a land beyond the sky … Yes, I have spoken with the noia. You have told her a strange story … It is the truth?’

‘Yes, Lord, it is the truth.’

Enka Ne smiled. ‘Here we have a story about a beast called a tlamyn. It is supposed to be a beast of the night, living in caves and dark places, never showing itself by day. It is said that once long ago six of our wise men ventured into the lair of a tlamyn – not, indeed, knowing of the presence or even the existence of such a creature. One of the wise men chanced upon the tlamyn’s face. It was tusked and hard and hairy like the dongoir that we hunt for sport. Therefore, feeling it in the darkness, he concluded that he had encountered a dongoir. Another touched the soft underbelly. It had two enormous breasts. Therefore, he concluded that he had come upon a great sleeping woman. A third touched the beast’s legs. They had scales and claws. Naturally, he thought he had found a nesting bird. A fourth touched the tlamyn’s tail. It was long and muscular and cold. So he decided that he had stumbled across a great serpent. A fifth found a pair of soft ears and deduced that he was lucky enough to discover one of the domasi whose meat we prize. And the sixth, sniffing the scent of the tlamyn, thought that he must be in the Temple of Gaiety. Each of the wise men made his discovery known to his comrades. Each insisted that his interpretation was the truth. The noise of their disputation, which was prolonged and energetic, eventually woke the sleeping tlamyn. And it, being very hungry, promptly ate them all … I should add that none of my people have ever seen a tlamyn and lived.’

Poul Mer Lo looked at the god-king, surprised by his intelligence. ‘Lord, that was a good story. There is one like it, concerning a creature called an elephant, that is told in my own country.’

‘In the land beyond the sky?’

‘In the land beyond the sky.’

Enka Ne laughed. ‘What is truth?’ he demanded. ‘Beyond the world in which we live there is nothing but Oruri. And even I am but a passing shadow in his endless dreams.’