Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (35 page)

I crossed my hands back and forth in front of my face. (We had established that this signified negation. The creature would rub two tendrils in front of one of its eyes to give me the same information.) Then I made motions with my hands to mime blowing and propulsion. I don’t think I am a good mime and three eyes floated close to scrutinize what I was trying to communicate. They waited patiently. I pointed up at the main body of the creature and then made the pulsing movements again and tried to show the whole thing lifting and shifting. There was a long pause and then the blind mouth that was close to me vented suddenly. I was caught unprepared and the gust blew me back like a rag doll. Had the creature not been supporting me under the arms and across the back I would have been blown to the ground. And that would have been the end of me for we were some fifty feet above the ground.

The gust stopped almost immediately but it had blown my right arm back, almost dislocating it. It hurt but I hardly cared. There were suddenly fifteen or twenty eyes hovering around me and with great deliberation, one of the tendrils snaked out and carefully tapped the rocket vent. Then it pointed at a cluster, say fifty or sixty, of the blind mouths which had gathered some distance away and were directing their empty gaze downward. The body of the creature compressed and in unison, the blind mouths vented, stirring the rubbish on the ground into eddies and whirlpools. The entire creature, carrying me with it, rose. I shouted something and made circles with my hands on either side of my helmet which was our sign language for “yes.”

The small gust did not carry us far and the creature let itself drift back downward slowly. Finally it deposited me safely in the canteen area. Then it drifted away from the ship. It made signs with several of its tendrils pointing at its underbelly. I had a feeling that it wanted to demonstrate something and so I stayed close to the opening in the canteen wad and watched as it jetted gently away.

When it was about a mile or so from the
Nightingale
it paused. The eye balloons ad rose until they were high above the body. Above them stretched the giant semi-transparent lifting balloons. The tendrils coded up like springs under the body and at the same time, the blind mouths lowered until they ad pointed stiffly downward like fingers, hundreds of fingers. In a strange way the creature was trying to imitate the
Nightingale.

I saw it draw atmosphere into itself through the vents in its side. It was for a moment distended and then it released through the blind mouths. The sheer power of its drive sent it rocketing up to the sky. Even as it accelerated it drew breath and the cycle continued. It shrunk rapidly to a mote of redness, a spark of sunlight, high in the sky.

The bushes which had been beneath it were flattened. A cyclone of dust spiraled into the sky and became a short-lived mushroom cloud. I felt the blast of the creature’s departure as a wind which struck us and roded over us. Rarely have I seen any animal so committed to movement as my strange red creature of gas and bladder: the charging bud perhaps, the striking snake, the graceful leap of the kris deer which jumps and points and spears in the same movement.

As I say, it was imitating our ship, or what it thought our ship might be like. In its terms, the bladders and balloons which supported it were like my anti-grav unit. They were stable and solid. But the jets were fierce: the very stuff of raw energy.

I watched it high in the planet’s sky for many minutes but then lost it as the day declined. I wondered how high it could climb, how high it could reach, before the thinning atmosphere threatened its balloons and the cold threatened its life.

After this event I did not see the creature for three days. In retrospect I believe this was a most important time. I believe the creature returned to the sea to mud. The creature was thinking about us. It had great powers of reason and I think it came to understand the
Nightingale’s
predicament.

The
Nightingale
was of course interested in this creature. It was programmed to appreciate alien life and asked me if I was hoping to take a sample of this life-form with us if we were lucky enough ever to depart this high-gravity planet. That possibility had never occurred to me but it made me realize how attached I was becoming to this . . . this . .. what? I realized that I had never even given it a name. Names can be important. But how could I name it? Given this harsh world of hungry land crabs, creeping starfish and gray shrubs, I might cad the creature Friend; I might cad it Hope; I might cad it Companion. It became a focus for an energy which, for want of a better word, I shad call Love. For that is exactly how I thought of it. It gave me focus and meaning. Among death it was life and so I gave it a most private name, Chi-da. That is how I will name it from now on.

Chi-da returned some three days later. It may have come from the sea: I do not know for I was working in the part of the ship which had dealt with data records. This area had had its own living complex which included a creche where the very young children of those who worked aboard the
Nightingale
could play and be educated. It had
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suffered the same fate as the rest of the
Nightingale.

I had become inured to death and decay by this time. The creche was horrible to clear as I had known many of the children and had sat and told them stories. . . But I did it. I cleared the bodies and then I cleared the furniture and the toys. I tipped them ad out of the ship and down to feed the land crabs.

I also threw out the records and the record keepers. It was while I was engaged on this task that Chi-da returned. The sky darkened to blood as it anchored. Several eyes bobbed down on the end of their stalks and I walked to them and then made the affirmative gesture. Two tendrils returned the gesture. The positive gesture had also come to serve as a greeting. Chi-da settled to watch me.

Most of the bodies were in an advanced state of decay but there was one, a woman as it happened, who had managed to get into her survival suit but who had not managed to activate the atmosphere control. She had remained, more or less preserved, in vacuum. I waved and pointed to Chi-da before I tipped her from the ship and Chi-da caught her as she fed.

The giant creature removed the suit with the care and precision of a watchmaker and then examined the body. Many eyes gathered for this, like students at a medical school autopsy. Chi-da had no way of knowing whether I was a man or a woman. It may have known nothing of gender but it was able to study eyes and fingers and lungs and liver.

Later I found the body of a man well preserved in his survival suit. He had become trapped in the darkness between levels when the transportation system failed. The power packs of his suit were run down. He had obviously kept his lights going as long as possible and had finally committed suicide by opening the valves on his suit to the vacuum of the interdeck. I waved again to Chi-da as I lugged his body up and pitched it out. So Chi-da was able to investigate two of us.

One evening, Chi-da and I were together. I was sitting on top of the
Nightingale
and Chi-da had settled on the hills and plateau. The creature was like a thick carpet. The entire land around the ship looked to be covered with red cloth which billowed slowly, its color accentuated and brightened by the light of the setting sun. Several eyes were around me and on an impulse I had danced one of the slow Talline dances that Medoc had taught me. I don’t know what Chi-da made of it but I at least had taken pleasure in clapping my hands and in making the small steps and turns. I suppose I was exhilarated. That day I had been carried by Chi-da out over the sea and had seen the strange patterns that covered the surface of the sea.

I had also seen another creature like Chi-da on the far horizon, calmly jetting. It had suddenly swung around and come toward us. From its abrupt change I guessed that these creatures had some means of communication and that Chi-da had called to it. It passed over us, higher by some hundreds of feet, and eyes came down. The new creature, darker in tone than Chi-da, stayed with us for a while and then jetted high and departed.

Later we returned and I found myself feeling a little more “at home” if I can cad it that on this grueling world. It is ad a matter of finding things which are familiar, ready. I had posed myself a question. Why had a creature such as Chi-da evolved such rare intelligence? I had no answer, but the implication was that there was an extraordinary social order on this world. I wanted to know more. I also wanted to tell the creature more.

Anyway, in the evening, I stationed myself on the top of the
Nightingale.
After my little dance I pointed at Chi-da and then at the sea. Its dilated eyes looked at me and then around at the sea. When its gaze returned to me I pointed at myself and the
Nightingale
and then up to the stars.

It did not look up, but moments later it detached from the ground and began a gentle susurrus as it spread its blind mouths and jetted from the ground. The lifting balloons inflated, the cords tightened and up it went with steady acceleration-1 have no idea why it left or ready what idea I had communicated. Perhaps it thought I was asking it to leave.

But later that night it came back and settled on the hills.

I made one bold guess about Chi-da and that was that it wondered at discovering intelligence in a creature as small as me.

Some days later Chi-da helped me clear out the DME areas.

The vast dim chamber that had been the DME area was my greatest challenge. Its scale was greatly beyond the human. I stood within it, in the thin light which penetrated through the hole that had been tom by the meteorite when we lurched into local time/space.

The moment that the particle screens faded, the five sectors of the DME area which were still viable became as one. Have you ever looked at soap bubbles and seen how their facets intersect and then, when one of them explodes, how the remaining wads adjust? I imagine something like this happening within the DME sector. One skin failed and then another and another until finally ad that was left was a brew of atmospheres and the choking organisms.

When the
Nightingale
was free in space the different zones which served the DMEs clustered within the vast chamber like eggs. Under the crushing force of this planet’s gravity, the particle screens had been strained and when the screens finally collapsed after the wind storm, ad the entities along with the vegetation and furniture that constituted their environment, had tumbled together, pressed to the concave door.

This was the miserable sight that greeted me. The
Nightingale
with its normal practicality had told me that if I could clear this area then we would be close to achieving escape potential. Heracles confronting the Augean stables faced no more daunting task, and I was not Heracles.

The idea was that I should introduce land crabs into the DME chamber and let them gorge and then eject them. The
Nightingale
assured me that the land crabs could do no harm to anything that was not already damaged. It was the
Nightingale
that suggested that perhaps the giant red creature could be pressed to help. Chi-da would be invited to ferry the crabs and then dispose of them.

I communicated our needs by the simple method of visiting the surface, netting a land crab and lifting it up to the hole smashed by the meteorite and then releasing it to scrabble down inside. Chi-da watched. And as I lifted my third land crab, it simply scooped up a hundred and stuffed them through the hole.

It seemed to look at me quizzically as if to say, “Why do you want to fill your ship with land crabs?”

Following an impulse I beckoned to it. I re-entered the ship through the meteorite hole and two of the eyes contracted and followed me. They looked around the dark interior where the land crabs were already scurrying and fighting. A tendril also managed to snake through the hole and this tapped the walls and plumbed the floor and slapped the land crabs. The pair of eyes must have watched for half an hour. Then the tendril reached and captured a large land crab that had been particularly voracious. When I saw that, I gave the affirmative gesture before the suspended eyes. Again I was regarded steadily while the land crab squirmed in the tendril’s grasp. Then the tendril holding the crab and the pair of eyes withdrew.

I was about to follow when the entire hole was blocked by one of the blind mouths. It came feeling in, thrusting aside and bending the smooth laminate of the inner wads. I lifted to the top of the chamber to avoid it and hung suspended and watched. Inside the chamber the blind mouth felt about until it discovered the mess where the land crabs were feeding and then it lowered its mouth in and began to draw the material into itself.

After a few moments it withdrew from the chamber and I hurried after it. The blind mouth turned away from the ship and fired the material toward the ground. What the giant creature thought of it I had no way of knowing but I gave the affirmative sign to the ogling eyes which watched me ad the while.

Then Chi-da set to it with a will. It widened the meteorite hole and two blind mouths took turns to enter the chamber and evacuate the contents. It worked ad day and into the night and when the chamber was empty it lifted silently and jetted its way toward the sluggish moonlit sea.

The last things I shad say concerning Chi-da offer terrifying insights into the alien mind which, in giving us knowledge, emphasize just how little we truly understand.

Chi-da was away for seven days. During that time the
Nightingale
overstayed its optimum departure time. I will explain. I came to realize how much I had come to depend on the creature that had helped me. I had never known such a pure relationship of giving and receiving. It gave and I received, but I must have contributed something. Looking back I doubt that I would have survived on that cruel world had I not had that creature as companion.