Out Of The Silent Planet (16 page)

The tapping instantly stopped and a remarkable face appeared from behind a neighbouring monolith.

It was hairless like a man's or a sorn's. It was long and pointed like a shrew's, yellow and
shabby-looking, and so low in the forehead that but for the heavy development of the head at
the back and behind the ears (like a bag-wig) it could not have been that of an intelligent
creature. A moment later the whole of the thing came into view with a startling jump. Ransom
guessed that it was a pfifltrigg - and was glad that he had not met one of this third race
on his first arrival in Malacandra. It was much more insect-like or reptilian than anything
he had yet seen. Its bulld was distinctly that of a frog, and at first Ransom thought it was
resting, frog-like, on its 'hands'. Then he noticed that that part of its fore-limbs on which
it was supported was really, in human terms, rather an elbow than a hand. It was broad and
padded and clearly made to be walked on; but upwards from it, at an angle of about forty-five
degrees, went the true forearms - thin, strong forearms, ending in enormous, sensitive,
many-fingered hands. He realized that for all manual work from mining to cutting cameos this
creature had the advantage of being able to work with its full strength from a supported elbow.
The insect-like effect was due to the speed and jerkiness of its movements and to the fact that
it could swivel its head almost all the way round like a mantis; and it was increased by a kind
of dry, rasping, jingling quality in the noise of its moving. It was rather like a grasshopper,
rather like one of Arthur Rackham's dwarfs, rather like a frog, and rather like a little old
taxidermist whom Ransom knew in London.

'I come from another world,' began Ransom.

'I know, I know,' said the creature in a quick, twittering, rather impatient voice. 'Come here,
behind the stone. This way, this way. Oyarsa's orders. Very busy. Must begin at once. Stand there.'

Ransom found himself on the other side of the monolith, staring at a picture which was still
in process of completion. The ground was liberally strewn with chips and the air was full of dust.

'There,' said the creature. 'Stand still. Don't look at me. Look over there.'

For a moment Ransom did not quite understand what was expected of him; then, as he saw the
pfifltrigg glancing to and fro at him and at the stone with the unmistakable glance of artist
from model to work which is the same in all worlds, he realized and almost laughed. He was
standing for his portrait! From his position he could see that the creature was cutting the
stone as if it were cheese and the swiftness of its movements almost baffled his eyes, but
he could get no impression of the work done, though he could study the pfifltrigg. He saw
that the jingling and metallic noise was due to the number of small instruments which it carried
about its body. Sometimes, with an exclamation of aunoyance, it would throw down the tool
it was working with and select one of these; but the majority of those in immediate use it
kept in its mouth. He realized also that this was an animal artificially clothed like himself,
in some bright scaly substance which appeared richly decorated though coated in dust. It had
folds of furry clothing about its throat like a comforter, and its eyes were protected by
dark bulging goggles. Rings and chains of a bright metal - not gold, he thought - adorned
its limbs and neck. All the time it was working it kept up a sort of hissing whisper to itself;
and when it was excited - which it usually was - the end of its nose wrinkled like a rabbit's.
At last it gave another startling leap, landed about ten yards away from its work, and said:
'Yes, yes. Not so good as I hoped. Do better another time. Leave it now. Come and see yourself.'

Ransom obeyed. He saw a picture of the planets, not now arranged to make a map of the solar
system, but advancing in a single procession towards the spectator, and all, save one, bearing
its fiery charioteer. Below lay Malacandra and there, to his surprise, was a very tolerable
picture of the space-ship. Beside it stood three figures for all of which Ransom had apparently
been the model. He recoiled from them in disgust. Even allowing for the strangeness of the
subject from a Malacandrian point of view and for the stylization of their art, still, he
thought, the creature might have made a better attempt at the human form than these stock-like
dummies, almost as thick as they were tall, and sprouting about the head and neck into something
that looked like fungus.

He hedged. 'I expect it is like me as I look to your people,' he said. 'It is not how they would
draw me in my own world.'

'No,' said the pfifltrigg. 'I do not mean it to be too like. Too like, and they will not believe
it - those who are born after.' He added a good deal more which was difficult to understand;
but while he was speaking it dawned upon Ransom that the odious figures were intended as an
idealization of humanity. Conversation languished for a little. To change the subject Ransom
asked a question which had been in his mind for some time.

'I cannot understand,' he said, 'how you and the sorns and the hrossa all come to speak the
same speech. For your tongues and teeth and throats must be very different.'

'You are right,' said the creature. 'Once We all had different speeches and we still have at
home. But everyone has learned the speech of the hrossa.'

'Why is that?' said Ransom, still thinking in terms of terrestrial history. 'Did the hrossa once
rule the others?'

'I do not understand. They are our great speakers and singers. They have more words and better.
No one learns the speech of my people, for what we have to say is said in stone and sun's blood
and stars' milk and all can see them. No one learns the sorns' speech, for you can change their
knowledge into any words and it is still the same. You cannot do that with the songs of the hrossa.
Their tongue goes all over Malacandra. I speak it to you because you are a stranger. I would speak
it to a sorn. But we have our old tongues at home. You can see it in the names. The sorns have
big-sounding names like Augray and Arkal and Belmo and Falmay. The hrossa have furry names like
Hnoh and Hirthi and Hyoi and Hlithnahi.'

'The best poetry, then, comes in the roughest speech?'

'Perhaps,' said the pfifltrigg. 'As the best pictures are made in the hardest stone. But my
people have names like Kalakaperi and Parakataru and Tafalakeruf I am called Kanakaberaka.'

Ransom told it his name.

'In our country,' said Kanakaberaka, 'it is not like this. We are not pinched in a narrow
handramit. There are the true forests, the green shadows, the deep mines. It is warm. It does
not blaze with light like this, and it is not silent like this. I could put you in a place
there in the forests where you could see a hundred fires at once and hear a hundred hammers.
I wish you had come to our country. We do not live in holes like the sorns nor in bundles of
weed like the hrossa.' I could show you houses with a hundred pillars, one of sun's blood and
the next of stars' milk, all the way... and all the world painted on the walls.'

'How do you rule yourselves?' asked Ransom. 'Those who are digging in the mines - do they like
it as much as those who paint the walls?'

'All keep the mines open; it is a work to be shared. But each digs for himself the thing he wants
for his work. What else would he do?'

'It is not so with us.'

'Then you must make very bent work. How would a maker understand working in sun's blood unless
he went into the home of sun's blood himself and knew one kind from another and lived with it
for days out of the light of the sky till it was in his blood and his heart, as if he thought
it and ate it and spat it?'

'With us it lies very deep and hard to get and those who dig it must spend their whole
lives on the skill.'

'And they love it?'

'I think not ... I do not know. They are kept at it because they are given no food if they stop.'

Kanakaberaka wrinkled his nose. Then there is not food in plenty on your world?'

'I do not know,' said Ransom. 'I have often wished to know the answer to that question but no
one can tell me. Does no one keep your people at their work, Kanakaberaka?'

'Our females,' said the pfifltrigg with a piping noise which was apparently his equivalent for a laugh.

'Are your females of more account among you than those of the other hnau among them?'

'Very greatly. The sorns make least account of females and we make most.'

THAT NIGHT Ransom slept in the guesthouse, which was a real house built by pfifltriggi and
richly decorated. His pleasure at finding himself, in this respect, under more human conditions
was qualified by the discomfort which, despite his reason, he could not help feeling in the
presence, at close quarters, of so many Malacandrian creatures. All three species were represented.
They seemed to have no uneasy feelings towards each other, though there were some differences of
the kind that occur in a railway carriage on Earth - the sorns finding the house too hot and
the pfifltriggi finding it too cold. He learned more of Malacandrian humour and of the noises
that expressed it in this one night than he had learned during the whole of his life on the
strange planet hitherto. Indeed, nearly all Malacandrian conversations in which he had yet taken
part had been grave. Apparently the comic spirit arose chiefly from the meeting of the different
kinds of hnau. The jokes of all three were equally incomprehensible to him. He thought he could
see differences in kind - as that the sorns seldom got beyond irony, while the hrossa were
extravagant and fantastic, and the pfifltriggi were sharp and excelled in abuse - but even when
he understood all the words he could not see the points. He went early to bed.

It was at the time of early morning, when men on Earth go out to milk the cows, that Ransom was
wakened. At first he did not know what had roused him. The chamber in which he lay was silent,
empty and nearly dark. He was preparing himself to sleep again when a high-pitched voice close
beside him said, 'Oyarsa sends for you.' He sat up, staring about him. There was no due there,
and the voice repeated, 'Oyarsa sends for you. The confusion of sleep was now clearing in his
head, and he recognized that there was an eldil in the room. He felt no conscious fear, but
while he rose obediently and put on such of his clothes as he had laid aside he found that his
heart was beating rather fast. He was thinking less of the invisible creature in the room than
of the interview that lay before him. His old terrors of meeting some monster or idol had quite
left him: he felt nervous as he remembered feeling on the morning of an examination when he was
an undergraduate. More than anything in the world he would have liked a cup of good tea.

The guest-house was empty. He went out. The bluish smoke was rising from the lake and the sky
was bright behind the jagged eastern wall of the canyon; it was a few minutes before sunrise.
The air was still very cold, the groundweed drenched with dew, and there was something puzzling
about the whole scene which he presently identified with the silence. The eldil voices in the
air had ceased and so had the shifting network of small lights and shades. Without being told,
he knew that it was his business to go up to the crown of the island and the grove. As he
approached them he saw with a certain sinking of heart that the monolithic avenue was full
of Malacandrian creatures, and all silent. They were in two lines, one on each side; and all
squatting or sitting in the various fashions suitable to their anatomies. He walked on slowly
and doubtfully, not daring to stop, and ran the gauntlet of all those inhuman and unblinking
eyes. When he had come to the very summit, at the middle of the avenue where the biggest of
the stones rose, he stopped - he never could remember afterwards whether an eldil voice had
told him to do so or whether it was an intuition of his own. He did not sit down, for the earth
was too cold and wet and he was not sure if it would be decorous. He simply stood - motionless
like a man on parade. All the creatures were looking at him and there was no noise anywhere.

He perceived, gradually, that the place was full of eldila. The lights, or suggestions of light,
which yesterday had been scattered over the island, were now all congregated in this one spot,
and were all stationary or very faintly moving. The sun had risen by now, and still no one
spoke. As he looked up to see the first, pale sunlight upon the monoliths, he became conscious
that the air above him was full of a far greater complexity of light than the sunrise could
explain, and light of a different kind, eldil-light. The sky, no less than the earth, was full
of them; the visible Malacandrians were but the smallest part of the silent consistory which
surrounded him. He might, when the time came, be pleading his cause before thousands or before
millions: rank behind rank about him, and rank above rank over his head, the creatures that
had never yet seen man and whom man could not see, were waiting for his trial to begin. He
licked his lips, which were quite dry, and wondered if he would be able to speak when speech
was demanded of him. Then it occurred to him that perhaps this - this waiting and being looked
at was the trial; perhaps even now he was unconsciously telling them all they wished to know.
But afterwards - a long time afterwards - there was a noise of movement. Every visible creature
in the grove had risen to its feet and was standing, more hushed than ever, with its head bowed;
and Ransom saw (if it could be called seeing) that Oyarsa was coming up between the long lines
of sculptured stones. Partly he knew it from the faces of the Malacandrians as their lord passed
them; partly he saw - he could not deny that he saw - Oyarsa himself He never could say what
it was like. The merest whisper of light - no, less than that, the smallest diminution of shadow -
was travelling along the uneven surface of the groundweed; or rather some difference in the
look of the ground, too slight to be named in the language of the five senses, moved slowly
towards him. Like a silence spreading over a room full of people, like an infinitesimal coolness
on a sultry day, like a passing memory of some long-forgotten sound or scent, like all that is
stillest and smallest and most hard to seize in nature, Oyarsa passed between his subjects and
drew near and came to rest, not ten yards away from Ransom, in the centre of Meldilorn. Ransom
felt a tingling of his blood and a prickling on his fingers as if lightning were near him;
and his heart and body seemed to him to be made of water.