New Writings in SF 9 - [Anthology] Read online

  Kaalba, stocky, powerful, with the broad high forehead of a thinker, began to wade ashore towing his catch by a stumpy, reptilian tail.

  “Kaalba.”

  “What is it?”

  He had found out in the last twenty days that it was not all bliss to be alone with the beautiful Zara. It was not her endless questioning so much; because he liked explaining things to her, but the assumption that he was there present for that purpose. A kind of chief minister, court chamberlain.

  She had managed to keep their love-making on a slightly analytical level, as though it was one more thing that a girl ought to know about.

  “Why did you run on and leave me?”

  “Why do you always answer a question with another question?”

  “Do I?”

  “Help me to drag this animal ashore.”

  “Is it an animal? Isn’t it a fish?”

  “Living creature then. Just pull.”

  In the shallow water, it was harder to move. Although it was small, it was very compact. Three-quarters of a sphere, on a flattened base an arm’s length across; almost the weight of a man. When it was stranded in a hand’s depth of water, they were ready to squat back on their heels and rest.

  Zara said, “What will you do with this fish ? It has a very hard shell and how can we tell if it is good to eat? I expect it would taste like a lizard, if you could get at the meat, which you can not.”

  “Help me to turn it over.”

  When the dome of the shell was in the water, he began to chip at the base with his axe and Zara lost interest. She walked farther on until the water reached her waist, then she plunged forward and began to swim with a powerful, overarm stroke.

  Totally preoccupied with his task, he did not see her circle round and then drift down towards him, floating on her back and watching three white birds wheeling and gliding against the distant cliff.

  The first clue that she was once more in his midst came from behind his knees. A voice saying, “It is easier to swim here than in the river. Why is that?”

  Kaalba checked a down stroke which might have ended her chat for all time and looked at her. Hair a shining black skull-cap, emphasizing the proportions of her oval face, water glistening on her skin like blue jewels.

  He said, “Where there is nothing, a stone will fall easily; where there is solid ground, it will rest. Between the one and the other, there is a range of thickness. This water is thicker than river water and does more to prevent you falling through it.”

  “Why is it that you always have an answer?”

  “I do not always have an answer, but so far you have not framed the questions which I cannot answer.”

  “What are they?”

  “How can I know that ?”

  “You are laughing at me.”

  “And nobody should laugh at the beautiful Zara?”

  Her heels had grounded in soft sand, so she sat up and changed the topic.

  “What are you going to do with that shell?”

  Kaalba had cut neatly round the thick base and levered it off. He had severed thick sinewy tissue which held the body in its house. Now he was ready to tip the mess out. When he did so, the sea was stained red and Zara moved away in disgust.

  “Do you have to do that?”

  “Now we have a large, empty vessel. Very strong. There are many uses for such a thing.”

  “What for instance?”

  “Not just now perhaps. But in the clan. We are expected to take back with us one beautiful thing and one useful thing. Since the most beautiful thing there is, came with me out of the clan, I shall have difficulty with the first; but this could well do as the second.”

  “That was a nice thing to say. Now I know why I agreed to come with you.”

  “Were you still in doubt?”

  It was a rhetorical question. He knew in his heart that the answer was “Yes”. But she did not make an overt statement of it and as he knelt beside his shell, scooping water into it with both hands, she joined him, suddenly good humoured. Even began to prod out some remaining fragments of flesh with a sharp, narrow-bladed knife from her belt.

  Now it was light enough to carry and they walked out of the sea on to a bar of white sand.

  “But what can you use it for?”

  “Water storage. Grain. A mortar. A cradle.” He rocked it experimentally. “It may turn out to be a beautiful and a useful thing. I can bore holes along the rim and fit thongs as handles. Then we can carry it between us.”

  “Meanwhile it is very awkward.”

  “Meanwhile we should choose our place for tonight. In fact for several nights, because we have gone as far as we can go in a straight line and we have also found our marvel.”

  Facing them, the cliff became a wall as they approached. Higher than the tallest tree in the forest. It was amazing now that they had found a way down it. Their route showed as a pale zig-zag against the brown stone face. It stretched away left and right in an unbroken line until the curves of the headland took it away out of sight.

  Zara said, “What is that black shadow over there?” Her outstretched arm was vividly modelled, blue velvet against sand and cliff. Looking along it, he found that he was looking at it and was distracted.

  When he did not answer she stopped suddenly and the clumsy shell dropped to the sand between them. Her eyes were all pale gold iris with the pupils narrowed to a point against the glare.

  “You’re not looking.”

  “I prefer to look at you.”

  “Oh that.” She was indifferent about her own image, being used to it and not yet moved to be glad that he should care about it. Recognizing that it was so, Kaalba shaded his eyes and looked more closely at the cliff.

  “It is an opening. Dark where the light can not reach. A place to stay, if we can get to it.”

  “It looks no harder than the way we came down.”

  * * * *

  Inside the cave it was cool. They sat just inside the shade line and looked out over a greater distance than they had ever imagined to the far horizon. The shell was against one wall chocked between stones and half-filled with clear water.

  Saplings and bracken and moss were heaped ready to make a bed. Fruits, birds’ eggs and the carcase of a small tree bear filled the larder. Wood for a cooking fire. Their own possessions—Kaalba’s blowpipe and pouch of small deadly darts tipped with a paralysing nerve poison; his flint striker to make fire; Zara’s multi-link necklace of red, yellow and green stones which she would wear again when they made their ceremonial re-entry to their village.

  It was unusually quiet in the cave. Even granted that they were in a kind of acoustic booth, which shielded them from the familiar clatter of the forest above. Only a faint, rhythmic swaying sound—as regular as breathing—from the sea directly ahead.

  The silence was almost oppressive and Kaalba moved uneasily to the cave mouth. Up above, the forest had in fact gone still.

  Zara said, “You should be very grateful that I found this cave, it will save you a lot of work, and we shall be more comfortable here than in a shelter.”

  It was a strong position and one likely to remain as a lifelong talking point, if not rigorously undermined from the outset. As if on cue, dissent came on a cosmic scale and Kaalba was some seconds before he recognized that he would survive to benefit.

  The floor of the cave lurched suddenly to the left in a spasm of activity, which he saw was carried in a deep-moving wave across the sand and into the sea. This picture he carried with him as a mental still as he slid back and joined the trash pile brought up against an inner wall.

  He could only blame himself. Twice in the span of their memory, similar phenomena had disrupted the clan’s living space. Earth tremors had shattered every house in the village with corresponding havoc in the surrounding forests. In this confined space it was infinitely more threatening. But no serious damage was done. Zara was sitting among the rubble of sticks and food, dazed but seemingly unharmed

 
From the depths of the cave there was a grinding rumble which reached a period with a flat, percussive smack, as though a slab had fallen from a great height on to a flat threshing floor. Air rushed out of the tunnel, dust-filled, carrying small fragments of debris.

  Thinking that part of the roof was breaking away, Kaalba heaved himself clear in a total concentration of strength and swung Zara from where she was, until she was between himself and the firm wall and shielded by his own body.

  As much as anything the sheer power of this move surprised her, and the overwhelming force of the grip which continued to hold her so that she could not move. It was indeed the first time in her experience that she had been so constrained to do something without being consulted, and though it was patently intended to be in her own interest, in a confused way, it seemed to be a kind of betrayal.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  Large golden-brown eyes, very wide open, very close. Foreheads touched flatly, warm and smooth, as he pushed her head back against the wall with his own. Before he released her, he suddenly moved and kissed her lips.

  “You’re still hurting me.” But this time the voice was softer and uncertain. Illusions are the hardest thing to give up, but her armour of self-sufficiency had been given a shrewd knock.

  Kaalba helped her to her feet. The ground was steady now and there was no sound from the depths of the cave. From the forest, a muted clatter had started up as though an all-clear had been given. Brilliant light showed up a hanging dust cloud. Rhythmic surge from the distant sea. Except for the litter on the cave floor, it might have been a shared hallucination.

  Zara said, “You will have to make a shelter in the forest after all. I am sorry. It was not a very good idea.”

  Such generosity deserved to be met.

  “It will not happen again.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “It never happens twice together. Now we know that this place will be safe for many days. It was a very good idea.”

  Challenge, however, was in the air. From the depths of the cave, out of sight, round a syphon-like bend came the amplified sound of further movement. Drag and stop, scrabble, slide and stop. Some self-mobile thing was coming out towards them from the darkness.

  Zara, who had begun to sort out the heap was back beside Kaalba in two strides. It was the first time she had turned to him instinctively for protection and the significance of it was more important to him than his own fear of what was about to happen. He had sudden insight into the wisdom of the idea of this proving time. A hundred days was bound to throw up circumstances which would make the partners recognize their dependence on each other and set them in a right relationship.

  He said aloud, “Whatever it is, it is coming very slowly. Dig out my blowpipe.”

  When she had found it, he said, “Now go out on to the path and wait.”

  “I will stay with you.”

  It was said as an appeal rather than a contradiction.

  “As you will.”

  They went back to the entrance and stood flat against the wall, so that the light went past them down the bend. Movement quickened as though its maker was gaining strength.

  Looking along the wall at the height of a man’s head, they missed its first appearance. When Zara said, “What is it?” in a voice riddled with angst, it was already in full view. A grey shape, dragging itself along the floor, like a moving shadow. Now they could distinguish that it had in some measure the shape of a man.

  It had stopped in the light and Kaalba had the feeling that it was absorbing light, drinking it in like liquid food. Zara began to tremble against his arm as it began to move again. Fascination with what he was seeing made him forget the blowpipe and the dart, poised ready to fly.

  Slowly, the shape separated itself out. First, it was on all fours; head weaving from side to side like a stunned man. Then it sat back on its haunches. Rising to full height, taller than Kaalba by a head, it filled the cave from, floor to ceiling. Perfectly proportioned, smooth as polished obsidian. Such a man as they had never imagined.

  It was clear enough that, under their film of dust, those limbs owed nothing to flesh and blood. They were nearest in texture to Kaalba’s shell.

  Zara said, “Look at its head.”

  She had a point. It was a smooth ovoid structure, bland, hairless, pale silver below the dust. No mouth or nose or ears destroyed the continuity of line. Set where eyes should be were palm-sized disks, glowing with changing colour as their photo-chromatic crystals altered composition in the strengthening light and filtered its intake of energy.

  As she spoke, the head turned to the sound. It saw them and stood still. There was a strange wait to a count of five and then it spoke.

  No visible movement identified a source of sound, but it appeared to come from the head. Faintly at first, then gathering strength. A deep, melodious tone, incomprehensible; but with the unmistakable, rising inflexion of a question, repeated again and again, followed by a short statement as though it was identifying itself. Eye-disks rippled with changing colour and glowed now as though they had collected enough light to make them an outgoing force.

  It stretched out its hands palms upward in the eternal mime of non-aggression.

  Kaalba took a decision. He stepped forward and spoke, “I am Kaalba. This is Zara. What do you want? Where have you come from ? Who are you ?”

  The words came back like an echo, “I am Kaalba....” in a voice of such timbre, that their language seemed more musical and full of subtlety than they had believed.

  Gathering confidence, Zara spoke and the eyes watched her in a ceaseless flux of colour and pattern. Her words were repeated. Then the figure took time off for thought. In its indestructible core, millions of circuits were dredging up their mites of learning, whipping them along in nanoseconds for the attention of its computer mind. Data suggested an immense passage of time. Here was a new and unfamiliar species. Near enough though for recognition to the pattern of man. The woman’s voice had a tone almost exactly that of the briefing clerk who had dictated behaviour codes into his frontal bands.

  However, these two seemed harmless enough. In any event, they could be no threat. There was no need to make any demonstration of force by using the laser tube in the middle finger of his left hand. Self-consciously aware that it was a shade theatrical, he went to Zara and inclined his head. Then he knelt down in token of submission. There was precedent enough in his fiction bank for this courtly gesture and he had no reason to be dissatisfied with its effect.

  Zara said, “Look, Kaalba. It’s deferring to me. Isn’t that wonderful ? This will be the most amazing thing that anyone has ever taken back to the clan. I shall call it, Tros.”

  When it began to repeat her words, she said sharply, “Stop doing that.” The voice cut off, but there was a feeling that the repetition was still going on, just below the threshold of audibility.

  * * * *

  Five days later, they had their first two-way conversation. Cleaned of dust, sparkling in the bright light, a smooth shell of an unknown and beautiful metal, Tros accepted his name and followed them like a patient dog, listening to every word they spoke. When it had heard enough and was stocked with the requisite number of identified speech units, its computers went into action and gave it a translation key.

  Zara was standing at the cliff edge, looking over the sea to the distant horizon. The sun was a white glare. Tros had cut down intake of light and his eye-disks were opaque plates of pale gold. He stood a pace to the rear like a respectable retainer. She said, “In the forest, we could never see as far into the distance as the eye could reach, except into the sky where nothing is. Looking out here, the sea curves away to left and right. Why is that, Kaalba?”

  Tros, now ready to get into the act, said, “It is because the surface of the planet is curved. It is a sphere. You are seeing an arc.” He went on at some length, glad to break his infinity of silence. Using the limited vocabulary in a way which would have delig
hted the technocrat who had designed him.

  The voice was well-modulated and deferential; but carried utter conviction, although what it said was an unbelievable thing. Zara said, “Did you hear that, Kaalba? Isn’t Tros clever ? Now all my questions can be answered.”

  Kaalba only wanted the answer to one, which was how to switch the man off. He saw only that he was likely to be displaced in the one field where Zara had turned to him and at a time when she had seemed about to step from behind her self-preoccupation and move towards him. On a wider issue, he was also aware that this smooth-speaking, tin man could be a serious menace.

  This last he saw at first on a psychological level though he would not have so identified it. A feeling that to be told every answer would undermine the very foundations of his mind. Almost immediately, there was supporting evidence that even on practical grounds it could be dangerous.