The Caterpillar's Question by Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer (4 page)

Nothing happened, of course. He touched it with his free hand, somehow feeling the need to verify its solidity. It was cool and hard, exactly as a rock should be.

"But what brought you here?" he asked her.

She clung to his hand, not responding, not disappointed. She stood by the rock, expectantly.

"Tappy, I want to understand," he said. "You brought me here for a reason. You can tell me, if you want to. I have heard you speak in your sleep. Please, I want so much to know about you. Maybe if you talk, you won't have to go to that clinic. Anything I can do--"

She faced him, her eyes not quite finding his. She spread her hands in a gesture of incapacity. She would not, or could not, speak to him in words.

He started to move away, but instantly she grabbed him, catching his shirt. She would not let him leave.

"All right, I'll wait," he said. "Just let me sit down." He turned, about to settle on the rock. This time she almost tackled him. She shoved him away from the rock, but held his arm, refusing to let him go either.

He could not understand what she wanted, but he waited with her there by the rock while the sky brightened gloriously in the east. Dawn was coming. Too bad he had not brought his paints.

Every few seconds Tappy touched the rock, delicately, as if afraid it would explode. There was something about it that mesmerized her. But this seemed to make no sense! Was she, after all, losing touch with such reality as she had known?

The sunrise swelled to its full wonder. He was tired and battered, but he loved it. He stood there, describing its colors to Tappy, as the phases of it manifested.

Then the first beam of direct sunlight speared through and touched the rock. He was remarking on that, aloud, when Tappy grasped his hand again, and reached for the rock once more.

This time her hand passed into it. It was as if the stone were fog. As he stared, not quite believing his eyes, she made an inchoate sound and half stepped, half tumbled into the rock.

Her body disappeared within it. He opened his mouth to exclaim in amazement-- but then her trailing hand hauled on his arm, urgently drawing him after her.

Jack understood none of this, except for one thing: Tappy was not crazy. She had somehow known that this rock would change, and that she could enter it as the first sunbeam touched it. It had been some kind of a window, a portal-- to what? To Imago?

Her hand tugged again, becoming desperate. Tappy was going there, unafraid, and she wanted him with her. Could he refuse?

What was there to hold him in his familiar world? Trial on a charge of rape? No, he had reason to go elsewhere. Far elsewhere!

He knew that if he took any time at all to think about it, he would know better. He had no business stepping into rocks! But he could not let her go alone.

Jack entered the rock. Its substance enveloped him, passing across his body with a faint electrical tingle. Then his head followed, and he was through.

Chapter 2

Later, he wondered why he had entered the immense boulder. If he had stopped to consider the outr� dangers that might await them, he would have yanked Tappy from the boulder.

His will and his reason at that moment seemed to have stepped outside for a chat, leaving his body without guidance. He felt numb, though something thrilled beneath the crystalline surface of his frozen brain. Still not believing that he would find the rock anything but impenetrable or that he could ignore its petrous imperative, he stepped forward. He did not know what to expect when his hand, holding Tappy's, went into the rock.

He found a soft resistance which forced him to lean against it, and then he was in darkness. He was unable to breathe; his nostrils were covered with a semi-liquid stuff. Silicon had become silicone.

Her hand pulled on his, and, holding his breath and hoping that he would not have to do it for long, he went two more steps. Air flowed around him. Light touched his shut eyelids. He opened them and breathed deeply.

He looked around. For a moment, he felt like a preliterate confronted with his first photograph. He could make no sense or order out of what he saw. It was all just a snarl of lines with no meaning. Tappy was the only thing not unchaotic. She was standing facing the sun, her blue-gray eyes open, her head tilted back as if bathing in the light. She looked happy. Then the landscape seemed to shift and to fall into an arrangement which was, if not familiar, at least Terrestrial enough to be reassuring. The boulder from which they had emerged was about six feet higher than the one they had gone into. The other side had been pinkish-gray granite. This looked like black basalt. It was near a shallow creek about two hundred feet broad at this point, and it was in a valley extending for half a mile on both sides.

The sky was blue and unclouded. A gentle cool breeze flowed around him. He judged that the sun was about a quarter of the way above the true horizon. But he seemed to be in a valley in the floor of a crater. Immense walls circled the valley. He did not, of course, know how far away they were.

Certainly, he was not on Earth. Though some of the low-growing plants nearby looked like Terrestrial bushes, the tree on his right was, he was sure, not a thing that grew anywhere on his native planet. Its pea-green bark was as smooth as skin, and it exuded a greasy and slightly reddish thick liquid. The ground at the base of the tree and among high, arched, exposed roots was wet with the liquid. Its branches started about halfway up the fifty- or sixty- foot height but began a leftward twist not far from the trunk and spiraled up around the trunk. The leaves were dark green disks covered with pale red spider's-web designs.

About a dozen flying animals were roosting on the branches or were on top of nests made of dried mud. Some were tiny, the size of yellow finches; some, as large as ravens. Their batlike wings were covered with brightly colored fur. Their faces were batlike, foxlike, and monkeylike. Their cries were as varied and as melodious as those of birds.

Tappy, still smiling, startled him by muttering in what sounded like a foreign language, then made gestures which he interpreted as a request for him to describe their surroundings.

He told her in detail everything he could see. She turned, her hand still in his, and tugged him toward the east, if it was the east, along the creek bank. He walked beside her, giving her directions when they came to a rock she might fall over or to a sudden dip or rise. Meanwhile, his empty belly asked for food, and he wondered how they were going to eat and how, if they had to spend the night in this country, they would survive if the air got cold and if there were any dangerous animals or snakes in this place.

A horn blared nearby. Startled, he and Tappy halted. She moved her head from side to side as if she were listening. He looked around. From a distance, ahead of them, came another sound. It was almost exactly like the chuffing of a steam locomotive, the sound of which he knew from watching movies. Whatever originated it, it had to be a long way off. Then the horn blared again, nearer this time.

Though it sounded much like that of an automobile, Jack did not think that there was any such nearby. This terrain and the lack of roads indicated that cars would be a rarity indeed. Though, of course, he really did not know what to expect here. Surely, the sound had to be originated by an animal. However, he was wrong unless the honker was a two-legged animal that had arms, hands, legs, and feet remarkably like a human's.

Around a huge boulder eighty feet ahead of them near the creek strode a humanoid figure. The face was not that of Homo sapiens; it looked more like the helmet of a medieval knight than anything else. The eyes were dark slits in the brown skin. Below them a large, noseless, and sharply downward-angling bulge formed the upper jaw. The froglike mouth had very thin dark lips. The lower jaw, chinless, sloped abruptly below the lower lips toward the neck. In all, the face below the high forehead formed in profile an isosceles triangle.

Its dark skin glistened with grease. Its penis was about eight inches long and two inches thick, but it lacked testicles.

Its mouth open, issuing the blaring sound, it marched straight toward Tappy and Jack, its pace not the least broken when it saw them. Its right hand held a stone-tipped spear and on its back was an animal-skin pack. Behind it, around the boulder, came a parade of similar beings. Two males were first, carrying bows in their hands and quivers full of arrows on their backs. Then came six obvious females (though they lacked breasts) and seven children. Behind them were four adult males and two half-grown males, all armed with spears.

Except for the honking leader, all were silent.

Tappy, far from looking alarmed or questioning, seemed to be at ease. She was even smiling. Presently, the parade passed them, and, after a while, the honker and the honking were gone.

Jack did not ask her any questions about the creatures. He knew that she would not answer. He went to the creek, bent down, and scooped up water in his cupped hands. After he had drunk enough, he told Tappy to drink. The water seemed to be pure, another indication that he was not on Earth.

"That's great stuff," Jack said, "but my belly's kicking up a storm. I wonder what's good to eat around here?"

They resumed walking and came to a bush laden with large cherrylike fruit on which a family of tiny opossumlike animals were feeding. These ran when the two approached them. Jack did not know if the fruit was fatal to humans, but he would, at this moment, anyway, rather die of poisoning than starvation.

He picked and bit into a "cherry" and tasted something like a butterscotch liqueur. He spat out the four small pits and said, "If you'll wait awhile, Tappy, we'll see if this kills me."

She shook her head and groped along a branch, tore five of the fruit loose from their thick stems, and popped them into her mouth. They ate all the rest and then drank more creek water. Jack went behind a bush for a bowel movement, though Tappy could not see him, of course. Not having toilet paper bothered him, but the amenities of civilization-- or was it conveniences?-- were not to be found here. Not so far, anyway.

Tappy went behind the same boulder to relieve herself after Jack had told her where not to step. He kept expecting to feel a sudden sharp or burning pain in his guts. As time went on without any discomfort, he forgot about his apprehensions.

He knew now that they had arrived in the morning of this planet and were going northward. The sun had risen higher, not descended. Also, the numbness he had felt after going through the rock had dissolved. Though he still was uneasy, he could think clearly. What that led to was a strong desire to be back on Earth. Especially when, just as Tappy began climbing up the rocky but bush-grown slope toward the top of the valley, he saw a group of tawny lion-sized animals come out of the forest across from the creek. When one of them roared, it exposed large sharp teeth.

To live, big predators had to prey on big herbivores, but Jack had not seen any of the latter. He hoped that the large meat-eaters were on their way to a place where large grass-eaters abounded. He also hoped that these predators would not consider him and Tappy as food. He breathed easier when the group, after drinking from the creek, walked back into the forest.

Tappy had not halted when the beast roared. She was feeling her way up the slope, grabbing a bush when the footing was insecure and pulling herself on up. He followed her. By the time they reached the top, his hands were bleeding from sharp rocks and thorns, a knee of his trousers was torn, and he was sweating and thirsty again. He forgot about that, when, panting, he looked around and up. The floor of the crater angled downward from the bases of the walls, enabling him to see much of the area. Most of it seemed to be covered with green and scarlet plants, the branches of which surely extended over the many streams that must run down from the walls. There had to be a lot of rainfall to keep all this vegetation alive.

Now he could see more clearly what had seemed to be just splotches on the crater walls when he had been in the valley. The entire circle of crater wall was covered with gigantic figures and symbols.

The walls had to be at least thirty miles away. Perhaps fifty. He had been in Arizona once and knew how deceiving distances could be in very clear air. That meant that the figures might be a thousand feet tall. He could not estimate accurately since he did not know how far away they were.

The symbols scattered among the figures were of many bright colors, and none was like any he had ever seen before. Some of the figures were of machines or vessels. Most were of bipeds, some of whom looked human enough. They were doing all sorts of things and were in various postures. Some of the paintings looked like spaceships, but he could not be sure.

"Damn it, Tappy! Wait for me!"

She was heading toward the woods. He caught up with her and said, "We have to stay together so I can see the dangers. Remember, I'm the one who isn't blind!" Tappy made a gesture with her right hand which he interpreted as apologetic. If he had hurt her by reminding her of her blindness, he could not see it on her face. She looked eager to get going. To where? Did she know? Or was she being drawn by some undefined but powerful feeling like the instinct of a lemming? That was, he told himself, not a reassuring analogy. Lemmings were pulled toward destruction. However, it might be the right comparison after all.

He was thinking too much, too concerned about what they might be walking into. If he allowed himself to be sucked into the maelstrom of his thoughts and apprehensions, he would not be able to go on. He would just sit down and refuse to go a step farther. He would die. Either he would starve or a predator would get him.

That was enough incentive to make him drive onward, though another was the crater panorama. He was a painter, and his curiosity about the gigantic figures burned in him. That must be the biggest mural in the world. Who could have done it? How? Why?

They entered the shade of interlocking branches, the lowest of which radiated from the trunks about ten feet above them. Through the infrequent spaces among the leaves, sunlight speared. This illuminated the ground-mat of purple plants, one inch high, growing closely together, which seemed to spread everywhere. His feet crushed the plants, and a thin liquid exuding from them spread a faint peppermint odor. Most of the trees had a deeply corrugated, pale orange bark. The heart-shaped green leaves, covered with purple rosettes, were about six inches long. The branches were populated by a variety of small furry creatures, winged and wingless. They were as noisy as birds, and some of the fliers were as beautiful and varied in their markings as Terrestrial birds.