Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (34 page)

This single creature rose silently until it filled the sky. It came between me and the pale sun and its complex shadow patterned the dun earth. It pulsed once, gathering itself and then releasing, and I noticed that it was able to take in atmosphere through valves on its side and then blow it out through the blind mouths. It pulsed again. With this slow jetting motion it began to turn in the sky and then moved inland. It was moving in my direction.

I noticed that the creature was not as disorganized as I had at first thought. The largest balloons, for such they were, supported the center of the body. Fringed around these were smaller balloons which were able to move independently on long thin necks, each like the head of a reared snake. These, I soon realized, were eyes. I had not been able to distinguish them at a distance. The eyes were studying the ground.

With a sudden compression the creature dropped and some of its black tendrils uncoiled and scrabbled on the earth. Then its balloons filled again. Straining, it rose. To my astonishment it lifted one of the giant starfish. It heaved the starfish high in the air and the blind mouths got to work, burrowing directly into it and sucking its juices. While it ate the creature moved on.

I did not stay around to watch any more. I steered the mule down the sloping sides of the
Nightingale
and into the ship through the hole in the staff canteen wad, close to my chambers. I parked it and climbed out wearing only my survival suit. As I did so the shadow of the creature darkened the entrance way. I could see tendrils dangling down, plucking Up the land crabs, and fossicking among the material ejected from the ship. I felt the
Nightingale
lurch slightly and guessed that it had been bumped by the creature. I could imagine it above us and beginning to explore us with its tentacles.

One of the tendrils poked in through the door and began feeling about. That set me running, but then I stopped. Staring in at me through the gaping hole in the ship’s side was one of the giant eyes. I saw its pupil contract as it focused on me. The tendril stopped moving abruptly. It did not suddenly strike for me. It held still like a frozen branch.

I moved slowly and as I did so, the eye shifted slightly, to keep me in view. I wanted to get through the safety door and into my quarters. But the scrutiny of the eye was extraordinary. It made my every move seem enormous.

Finally I reached the door, opened it and dived through. The door slid shut behind me and immediately I heard something begin a soft exploratory tapping.

My control room had, of course, external cameras and I was able to view the creature as it touched the ship and ogled it, its eyes swooping down at the ends of their extendable supple necks.

I observed that it was careful in its interaction with us. There were many small aerials that it could have broken, but it touched them lightly. Where the hydroponics ring had been detached there were safety doors and these it explored gently. Mounted on the side of each door was a security panel consisting of twelve independent digits. Each panel had a simple code, a sequence of eight numbers. The cluster of several eyes gathered at one of the doors and a delicate tendril began to tap at the panel. This amazed me. A monkey tapping a typewriter might accidentally write a sentence given enough time. But this creature was methodically tapping out sequences of numbers which would inevitably lead it to the combination for the door.

It had puzzled out the function of the panel and how to operate it. Perhaps harder, it had worked out what a door was! Yet how could this be? There was nothing about the creature that suggested high technology or even domestication. Given the thumb, it was odds on that we humans would one day invent the door knob. This creature had tentacles and eyes and floated on thousands of red balloons of gas. What would it invent? The speculation daunted me. I knew I was facing intelligence of a raw and yet very pure kind.

I saw the moment when the creature found the correct combination, and the door slid open. Several eyes lowered to watch this. The creature closed the door and then tapped out the code again. The door obediently opened. Whereupon the creature closed it again and then moved over to another of the doors. It tried the same code. No result. At this it set to with a will and within minutes had the new code cracked. Thereafter it set both doors opening like the clatter of castanets. The creature was playing with the ship.

Now, intelligence and compassion are not necessarily linked, but there is a good chance that the intelligent creature which shows restraint in the face of the unknown, may be an entity one can treaty with. I observed the creature closely as it bobbed around us, its red balloons holding it steady and its jets occasionally puffing. There was a lightness about the eyes. One of them floated right in front of one of the cameras and stayed there looking. I could have been forgiven for thinking that the camera’s function had been reversed and that the creature was looking at me. The eye was dark and lustrous. It had a black pupil and a lens and an iris which could open and close. It was covered with a film, like plastic, and fluids permeated through this. Can I say the eye was thoughtful? Humorous even? There is a danger in such assumptions, I know, but such were my impressions.

Eventually, as the day ended, the creature departed. The eyes, and the large spheres which took most of the weight, expanded and the creature rose. It relinquished contact with the ship with a curiously caressing motion. The tentacles slid over us, tapping. The creature rose so high that it became a pattern in the sky like a deep red stain. It disappeared behind the hills, contracting and expanding, as it jetted.

You have already gathered that here was a creature that I rather revered. After all the death aboard the
Nightingale
and the dumb company of the land crabs and mute starfish, here was intelligence of a high order. It was not like the bio-crystalline intelligence of the
Nightingale.
It was other.

But my life returned to the same pattern. The days became indistinguishable. I ferried around the ship at the
Nightingale’s
behest and chopped at it to reduce its weight. Then one day I was sitting in the mule, resting on the ground, wondering if I could use the land crabs to help clear the DME section, when a shadow fell over me.

I looked up and found that I was surrounded. Six or seven eyes on long red extensions bobbed in the air near me. The body of the beast was hunched and compressed. It reminded me of the untidy bag that wasps make for their nest except that it was blood-red and not paper-white. Before I could do more than let out a cry of fear, one of the tough tendrils that were coiled like ferns under its body released and darted at me and wrapped around the mule. It gripped like a steel hawser, but there was no mistaking the life in it. The end of the tendril, much to my surprise, was hairy and I noticed that each of the hairs had a small sucker at its tip which adhered to the clear plastic of the mule. I saw the creature grip and the walls of the mule buckled. I made sure that my survival suit was working as the mule was jerked off the ground throwing me to the floor. I was carried up to the .. .
(pause)

WULF:    Go    on.

WILBERFOSS:    I am seeing it all. I faced death. Ask anyone ... I thought I was going to be eaten. The blind mouths were open ... I had seen them plunge into a creature and suck it dry. One drew close to me. It was ringed with triangular teeth. They were small within the funnel where they were growing but became large at the tip. Beyond, on the outer skin of the lip, they were broken and missing. They could grind and cut. An elephant’s trunk with teeth is not a bad image to describe them for there was also something sensitive about the way they nuzzled.

I was carried higher, beyond the blind mouths. I was lifted by the tendril and at the same time the creature was rising so that when I looked down I saw the
Nightingale
far below me. How high I was lifted I do not know but the red balloons which supported the creature reached a tremendous size so that they became translucent and I could see the veins within them and the smoky shape of clouds through them.

I assume we hovered in the stratosphere of this world. I was placed on the upper part of the creature’s body which was soft but firm like well-toned muscle.

Giant eyes gathered around me.

Several tendrils rose. Carefully the plastic membrane of the mule was gripped and cracked and picked apart. The anti-grav unit which was situated in the lower rear portion of the small craft, tore free. It fell away and rolled down the creature’s red belly and disappeared. The roof of the mule was tossed aside and then the door and walls. A tendril touched me.

I was held simply. One tendril was around my chest and I held it with my arms. Another was between my legs so that I rode. A third pressed into my back. They were careful, but I was turned around, upside down and once was held only by one leg. The scrutiny was enormous. Once a tendril touched the energy and atmosphere pack on my survival suit and I shouted in alarm and waved my arms at which the probing ceased.

I was set down on my feet and the tendrils released me slowly. I immediately fell down. The skin of the creature was as hard as the laminate panels inside the
Nightingale
and yet was easily flexible and moved under me. I pulled myself together and I stood up warily with arms outspread until I was actually standing on the creature. I could feel the tremble of its life through my feet. I looked at the gently moving hills of the creature and could occasionally see a pulse beat under the surface. I was reminded of the fluttering of birds caught in a net and that is a strange image to be summoned up for a creature so vast. It stretched all about me, acres of red skin. I was standing in a shallow concave depression.

The eyes were very close to me. I took two difficult paces and reached out and touched one of them and it did not flinch or blink but a tendril immediately rose and tapped my helmet. I guessed that the creature thought that my helmet, which has a single plastic face plate, was a single eye. I stood squarely in front of the eye and thrust my head forward and I blinked and opened and closed my eyes several times trying to make the movement obvious. I wanted the creature to understand that I was an entity who lived within the protective environment of my survival suit. It studied me intently. I pointed at my eyes, making myself stare like a fish, and then pointed at one of its eyes. The eye drew even closer and I saw its lens bulge. The iris contracted. I was hypnotized and motionless before its scrutiny. After several minutes it drew back. I had the clear impression that it was thinking, weighing up what it had seen.

The tendril which had tapped my helmet and which had been waiting close with its hairy tip furled, now reached down and tapped my metallic gloved hands. I thought for a moment and then reached and tapped the tendril.

One of the thick tentacles that I have called blind mouths now reared over the near horizon and hung over me. In diameter it was perhaps one and a half times my own height. It could have eaten me easily. With great deliberation, the tendril tapped the blind mouth with its fringe of sharp teeth, and then waited. I lifted my head, opened my mouth and showed my teeth. The eye looked down on me.

What a breakthrough that was! Tendrils opened and closed, the eyes bobbed, the trembling in the creature increased and I was astounded to see a deeper red suffuse through that segment of the body of the creature that was close to me. Of course, I fell down again.

Communication. We had created the beginnings of language! A tapping meant, “What do you have that is like this that I have?”

The creature tapped my foot and I again tapped one of its tendrils. It paused for thought.

A few moments later the creature tapped my gloved hands seeming to indicate the fingers. In response I was careful to touch only the small hairy suckers at the end of a tendril and that seemed to satisfy it.

We went on like this for a long time until I suddenly realized that I was running out of both power and air. I pointed at myself and then pointed down, pointing through the creature. I cannot say that the creature understood. It merely gathered that all was not well and took action.

Immediately a tendril wrapped around me, supporting me between the legs and beneath the arms. Then it lifted me and I found myself dangling in space.

I was carried down and deposited within the
Nightingale,
in the place that had once been the staff canteen. I scampered to the safety door leading to my rooms and let myself through. With the door closed I yanked off my helmet and breathed deeply. I had cut things fine. I had little more than three minutes of air left to me. But I was alive. I began to shake uncontrollably as I stood, leaning against the door. Reaction I suppose to all the shocks I had received and it was all I could manage to drag myself up the ramp and into my rooms. I made my way into the control room and lay down.

The external cameras were all working and the screens presented an interesting image of the creature. It was browsing unconcernedly among the land crabs, gathering them up in clusters and presenting them to the blind mouths.

Thereafter we had many meetings. We continued our elementary communication and one discovery was to prove significant later. The mule being now broken, I had taken to using my small domestic anti-grav unit for work outside. It was much slower than the mule but at least gave me mobility. Sometimes the creature joined me. It anchored itself to the hills and spread, like a red silk canopy, over the plateau where the ship rested. It supported me in its tendrils and, with several large eyes bobbing along, carried me wherever I pointed. We were close to the base of the ship where the emergency thrust and guidance rockets were located. I had been trying to show how the
Nightingale
had been damaged and strained by the landing.

A tendril reached out and tapped twice on one of the dark rocket vents. I thought for a moment and then pointed to one of the blind mouths that was sucking along the plateau, fossicking perhaps for one of the giant starfish. The blind mouth paused and then found a large land crab and seized it and lifted it up to within a few feet of me. With a peristaltic contraction, the triangular teeth tore into the shell and cracked the land crab and sucked out its juices and meat. It turned aside and spat away the empty shed. It was asking me a question. “Is the rocket vent a mouth through which the
Nightingale
could eat?”