Fletcher Pratt (15 page)
Authors: Alien Planet
An elevator ride is always long when one has been absent from cities for some time. But this one seemed exceptionally prolonged, and I felt the blood drumming in my ears with the speed and distance of the ascent. Ashembe whispered, with a smile, "Open the mouth to preserve yourself from the effects of pressure."
A moment later we came to rest without a jar. Another panel moved open and the reception committee led us out along a long and narrow passage at the end of which a door was opened by one of the omnipresent keys. One of our guides said something to Ashembe, and he turned to me with a translation.
"This is your apartment," he said. "You are to stay here for some several days, while I return to the place where the Shoraru has been left with a guard and remove therefrom the mercury and the records of our journey. You will find everything necessary in the apartment and your food will be sent to you. If you have any difficulty, turn this key (he indicated the second one of a row just inside the sliding panel) and someone will come to assist you. Fare thee well."
I entered, and was left alone.
I looked around.
My temporary home was an apartment of three rooms, the outer walls of which, formed by the outer wall of the building, were curved to the arc of a large circle. All these outer walls were of glass (or some other transparent material—I found by experiment that it was practically unbreakable) from floor to ceiling. From them one could look out and see beyond the glass walls of the exactly similar building some hundred feet or more away, a succession of other towers, stretching off into the utmost distance.
Though it had been evening outside the city when we crossed the river, I noticed no trace of night here; a soft light, like that of a brilliant but cloudy day, suffused everything, and when I stepped to the window to look up I could see only an overarching roof of what appeared to be bright clouds, far above me. Up to this cloudy source of light the buildings around me soared, to be truncated abruptly where they met it, and when I looked down, I saw that though the tops of the buildings were far above, streets were just barely visible below.
The floor of the central room of the three, to which I had been admitted first, was covered with a soft brown material not unlike a carpet for flexibility under foot; apparently it was a composition of some sort forming the floor. The walls were decorated in a geometrical pattern of yellow and dark gray, with a pleasing irregularity of design. Near the door, as I have said, was a row of keys; over each a plate of white metal bore Murasheman characters. Against one of the inner walls, near where they slanted toward each other at the narrowest part of the apartment just by the door, a table stood against the wall. Like all the other furnishings, it was a dark metal, its supports decorated with the same tasteful geometric arrangement as the walls, and its top quite bare.
Against the opposite wall, a row of seats like those in the car was placed, and scattered about the room were several more chairlike seats, the seat curving up to form the arms. They had flattened arms on which one might conceivably rest a notebook, and a single band across the back, just below shoulder height.
This completed the furnishings of the main room. Near the glass outer walls, doors led right and left to the other rooms of the apartment. Both of these stood open, though one was closed off by a curtain, and at the side of each was one of the keys, with its accompanying metal plate hanging on the wall. These were, as I correctly assumed, for the purpose of opening and closing the doors.
The doorknob is a device unknown on Murashema.
I tried the door at my left first. The room it gave on was smaller, the floor bright and hard. Three of the chairlike seats were arranged against the wall here, and there were two more in the room. Over against the wall seats stood a table, simpler than that in the living room, and covered with a white substance of soft texture. In the opposite wall was the usual row of keys, and instead of the yellow and gray of the living room, this one had large panels in blue and cream. Save for the tables and chairs, it was quite empty. I conjectured that it might be the kitchen or dining room.
The room on the opposite side was totally different. Instead of the cheerful blue and cream and yellow and gray, it was decorated in a neutral green and save for two chairs, was quite devoid of furniture. There was an unusually long row of keys just inside the door. It might have been a bedroom had any bed been visible; and as I thought of this, I remembered that nowhere in the apartment had I seen such an article. For the present, my chief need was food, and I returned to the room I thought was a kitchen, fully intending to try each of the keys until I got what I wanted.
I tried the key at the left end of the line first, with the idea of seeing what I could get for myself without summoning an attendant. One of the blue and cream panels slid to one side, giving place to a screen of shining metal. Upon it appeared a picture of an ornate goblet filled with a sparkling red liquid. A wonderfully clear voice said a few words in Murasheman; the goblet turned round without any visible agency directing it, and before I could decide what it meant, disappeared, to be replaced by a plate piled high with a jelly-like substance in green and blue stripes. Like the other, this picture was accompanied by a brief speech, and like the other it presently disappeared.
It was interesting, but inconclusive. For something like ten minutes I gazed at this Barmecide feast, while dish after dish was presented to my gaze and then withdrawn. Then, before I could decide how I ought to go about expressing my desire for the viands, the last dish vanished, the panel closed again with a click, and the key was returned to its position automatically.
Clearly, in order to bring the meal to materialization, some definite act on my part was needed. I tried the key again; and when the panel slid back on the representation of a bowl filled with a steaming amber-colored liquid, I quickly snapped the second key. A smaller panel near the ceiling opened and from it issued the sound of a stringed instrument, being played in a series of the most execrable screeches and squawks I have ever heard in my life. I hastily returned the key to the first position, closing the panel, and tried the next one as the soup vanished from the screen in favor of a platter of rather delicious looking buns. This time I got a voice, engaged in a lecture of oratorical character. I shut this one off, and gave my attention to the screen where the food was appearing again. I was looking at some round red objects swimming in a brown sauce.
There must be some special way of setting the key, I thought, and tried to turn it to a position halfway between on and off. It immediately slipped from my fingers to the off position and the panel slid to with a bang to cut off the pictured meal.
Once more I turned the key. The panel slipped back again, and a wholly new procession of dishes began. This time I gave my attention to the edges of the panel itself. At one corner there was a small projection that might be either a stud or the head of a screw. I tried pressing it, and when that was without result, remembered in time that I had never seen Ashembe use a button-control of any kind; everything had been turnable keys. With a flash of inspiration I turned the stud. Picture and voice ceased immediately; the screen, like the panel before it, slid back, and a moment later there appeared in the deep-recessed hole a round container of brass.*
* More likely the vessel was gold which, of course, has no particular value on Murashema.
I lifted it out and took it over to the table. At one side near the base, the inevitable key was placed in a countersunk niche. I turned it; there was a snap and the lid of the container came away in my hands revealing a dish like a soup-plate filled with a jelly from which a faint flower-like odor exuded.
A round flat spoon accompanied it. I tasted it—it was sweet and pungent, of the same character as the foods Ashembe had made on the Shoraru, and I ate with a relish sharpened by hunger. The dish finished, I returned to the screen, snapped it again into position by means of the stud and when another pictured dish appeared, ordered it by the same means as the last.
My dinner over, the problem of how to dispose of the dishes arose. I decided that they would probably be returnable by the same means that brought them, and snapping on the food key again, I turned the stud and when the panel slid back, balanced one of the used containers on top of the new one that appeared in the gap. There hardly seemed to be room for more.
I shot the screen back into position, waited a moment for the containers to be taken care of and then opened it again. Three containers came tumbling out of the narrow space and I opened them, to find two entirely new dishes of food in addition to the empty dish I had left there.
There was only one thing to do and that was to try more keys. I already knew what the second and third of the series would produce. The fourth snapped another panel back, and on the screen I saw a couple of diminutive figures in Murasheman costume who began to speak and move around. A play of some kind. I shut it off and tried the next key.
The result was truly startling. Instead of a single panel, half a dozen small ones at the base of the wall and all the way around slid back, revealing rows of tiny nozzles from which jets of water issued with such force that I was nearly carried off my feet. I hastily shut the panels, but the damage was done. My dining room was already half afloat and the water was pouring through into the living room. I snapped the door shut to cut off the floor, and balancing myself with some difficulty on the seat of one of the chairs to get out of the water, turned the key again in the hope that the faucets were accompanied by a drainage arrangement for disposing of the surplus water. It seemed that they were, for the floor rose no higher, but whenever I shut the panels, a residue of water remained on the floor. I turned to the next key.
This time I got a current of warm air from panels at top and bottom of the room. It dried the water in a trice, whistled through the room in a miniature gale and would even have carried off one of the spoons, had I not rescued it. It was all very useful, but I was getting no further with my problem of dirty dishes.
With the next key I finally achieved success. A panel next to the one that had brought me my dinner slid back on what would be called a dumbwaiter on Earth. In it I placed my dishes, shut the panel, and when I opened it again, found that they were gone.
By this time I was thoroughly tired. I decided to try the bedroom and its devices.
Luck was with me there. The first key I turned caused a big panel to slide back in the wall, revealing a bed on four wheels, which, animated by a spirit of its own, trundled out into the middle of the room. At the same time, apparently by means of some synchronized device, a slow current of cool, fresh air, from an indiscernible source, filled the whole apartment. Had it not been for the light which streamed uninterruptedly through the glass outer walls, the sleeping arrangements would have been perfect.
I woke after ten hours with a fine feeling of comfort and strength. After keying the bed back into place, I went to the dining room and had breakfast.
Breakfast out of the way, I started out with the determination of trying every key in the three rooms, which were extraordinarily bare by Earthly standards. I decided to try the living room. The second key would bring me an attendant, I recalled—so I tried the first key.
Bzzz-click!
said a piece of machinery somewhere, and I stood in utter darkness! Fortunately my hand was still at the key. I snapped it back again and turned in time to catch sight of the quickly-rising shutters that closed off the glass wall of the apartment. If I had only known that the night before!
Passing over the second key, I tried the next. A portion of the wall slid back, revealing a screen like that from which my dinner had been ordered. On it appeared the picture of a Murasheman city, the towering walls glowing in the rays of a dawn sun. The point of view changed as one watched, the whole gorgeous structure appearing to sink and tilt. A moment more and I was looking down on it from above. Seen from overhead, the city was no longer a collection of towers but a flat, gray plain, with markings of various colors here and there, and little figures running about on it. It struck me suddenly that the whole city was roofed in.
The pictured city rose toward me, slipped a little to one side, and then stood still; the point of view changed and I saw two Murashemans alighting from a vehicle like a small edition of an airplane with diminutive wings, no propeller at all in front and a long, knife-like helicopter blade that was just ceasing to revolve. I heard the sound of their feet on the roof of the city and they began to talk. Another play.
The next key gave me what appeared at first to be a different type of play (or movie). I saw a group of men sitting in a large oval hall walled with windows and running into a series of arches at the top. One of them was making a speech. Though I could understand no word of what he was saying, there was something so arresting in his demeanor that I kept the screen on. To my surprise, it suddenly went blank, a voice spoke a few words in Murasheman and another picture began to form.
I saw the scrubby pines and rolling sandy hills of the hunting ground before me. A group of men clad, not in the neutral leather jerkins of the people of the hunting ground, but in bright uniforms of a peculiar electric magenta, were marching through the scrub. I noted that they wore closefitting metal helmets with nasals * and neckpieces and carried shields inscribed with some device.
* The noseguard of a helmet.
As I watched, I could catch the motion of others to left and ahead of the party, scouts thrown out to guard them against surprise. Then one in the center of the group, who wore a crested helmet as an indication of authority, turned to speak to one of the others, and I saw it was Ashembe!
The picture was already beginning to fade when, remembering my experience with the dinner, I leaped forward and found the little stud at one side of the panel. I turned it; the picture came back in full strength, and I was watching the expedition to the Shoraru.
Ashembe and his guard marched through the forest glades without pause or interruption. Once there was a flicker of motion among the trees at one flank, but it proved to be only one of the scouts who had killed some small animal and was bringing it in to hand to the main guard. Half an hour of watching this uneventful progress was plenty. I turned the stud.
Workmen, now, handling a tall, intelligent machine at the top of one of the cities. They were placing molds of various shapes in position and as they did so, the spout of the machine discharged a viscous, shining material of a pale yellow color. I let the picture fade out to one of a seashore and white-winged boats speeding across an ocean as clear and blue as a sapphire. A voice accompanied this picture and a shadowy pointer appeared across it to indicate one of the craft. Then this too, faded.
Apparently this was the Murasheman version of a newspaper. This, like the play, would do for a little later. I snapped the key off and turned to the next one.*
* With this chapter Schierstedt's division of the manuscript into chapters ceases. The remainder is written hurriedly, and in some cases the text is so hopelessly muddled that I have not made any attempt to straighten it out. I have, however, taken the liberty of dividing the remainder of the manuscript into chapters.