Majipoor Chronicles

by Robert Silverberg

  She crouched and studied it closely. It did look reptilian, yes, with shining scales and a smooth, hard body. Its eyes were green and chilly and did not blink at all; its hair was a weird mass of thick black coils that moved of their own accord in a slow writhing; its tongue was a serpent-tongue, bright scarlet, forked, flickering constantly back and forth between the narrow fleshless lips.

  “What are you?” she asked.

  “A Ghayrog. Do you know of my kind?”

  “Of course,” she said, though she knew very little, really. All sorts of non-human species had been settling on Majipoor in the past hundred years, a whole menagerie of aliens invited here by the Coronal Lord Melikand because there were not enough humans to fill the planet’s immensities. Thesme had heard that there were four-armed ones and two-headed ones and tiny ones with tentacles and these scaly snake-tongued snake-haired ones, but none of the alien beings had yet come as far as Narabal, a town on the edge of nowhere, as distant from civilization as one could get. So this was a Ghayrog, then? A strange creature, she thought, almost human in the shape of its body and yet not at all human in any of its details, a monstrosity, really, a nightmare-being, though not especially frightening. She pitied the poor Ghayrog, in fact—a wanderer, doubly lost, far from its home world and far from anything that mattered on Majipoor. And badly hurt, too. What was she going to do with it? Wish it well and abandon it to its fate? Hardly. Go all the way into Narabal and organize a rescue mission? That would take at least two days, assuming anyone cared to help. Bring it back to her hut and nurse it to good health? That seemed the most likely thing to do, but what would happen to her solitude, then, her privacy, and how did one take care of a Ghayrog, anyway, and did she really want the responsibility? And the risk, for that matter: this was an alien being and she had no idea what to expect from it.

  It said, “I am Vismaan.”

  Was that its name, its title, or merely a description of its condition? She did not ask. She said, “I am called Thesme. I live in the jungle an hour’s walk from here. How can I help you?”

  “Let me brace myself on you while I try to get up. Do you think you are strong enough?”

  “Probably.”

  “You are female, am I right?”

  She was wearing only sandals. She smiled and touched her hand lightly to her breasts and loins and said, “Female, yes.”

  “So I thought. I am male and perhaps too heavy for you.”

  Male? Between his legs he was as smooth and sexless as a machine. She supposed that Ghayrogs carried their sex somewhere else. And if they were reptiles, her breasts would indicate nothing to him about her sex. Strange, all the same, that he should need to ask.

  She knelt beside him, wondering how he was going to rise and walk with a broken back. He put his arm over her shoulders. The touch of his skin against hers startled her: it felt cool, dry, rigid, smooth, as though he wore armor. Yet it was not an unpleasant texture, only odd. A strong odor came from him, swampy and bitter with an undertaste of honey. That she had not noticed it before was hard to understand, for it was pervasive and insistent; she decided she must have been distracted by the unexpectedness of coming upon him. There was no ignoring the odor now that she was aware of it, and at first she found it intensely disagreeable, though within moments it ceased to bother her.

  He said, “Try to hold steady. I will push myself up.”

  Thesme crouched, digging her knees and hands into the soil, and to her amazement he succeeded in drawing himself upward with a peculiar coiling motion, pressing down on her, driving his entire weight for a moment between her shoulder blades in a way that made her gasp. Then he was standing, tottering, clinging to a dangling vine. She made ready to catch him if he fell, but he stayed upright.

  “This leg is cracked,” he told her. “The back is damaged but not, I think, broken.”

  “Is the pain very bad?”

  “Pain? No, we feel little pain. The problem is functional. The leg will not support me. Can you find me a strong stick?”

  She scouted about for something he might use as a crutch and spied, after a moment, the stiff aerial root of a vine dangling out of the forest canopy. The glossy black root was thick but brittle, and she bent it backward and forward until she succeeded in snapping off some two yards of it. Vismaan grasped it firmly, draped his other arm around Thesme, and cautiously put his weight on his uninjured leg. With difficulty he took a step, another, another, dragging the broken leg along. It seemed to Thesme that his body odor had changed: sharper, now, more vinegar, less honey. The strain of walking, no doubt. The pain was probably less trivial than he wanted her to think. But he was managing to keep moving, at any rate.

  “How did you hurt yourself?” she asked.

  “I climbed this tree to survey the territory just ahead. It did not bear my weight.”

  He nodded toward the slim shining trunk of the tall sijaneel. The lowest branch, which was at least forty feet above her, was broken and hung down by nothing more than shreds of bark. It amazed her that he had survived a fall from such a height; after a moment she found herself wondering how he had been able to get so high on the slick smooth trunk in the first place.

  He said, “My plan is to settle in this area and raise crops. Do you have a farm?”

  “In the jungle? No, I just live here.”

  “With a mate?”

  “Alone. I grew up in Narabal, but I needed to get away by myself for a while.” They reached the sack of calimbots she had dropped when she first noticed him lying on the ground, and she slung it over her shoulder. “You can stay with me until your leg has healed. But it’s going to take all afternoon to get back to my hut this way. Are you sure you’re able to walk?”

  “I am walking now,” he pointed out.

  “Tell me when you want to rest.”

  “In time. Not yet.”

  Indeed it was nearly half an hour of slow and surely painful hobbling before he asked to halt, and even then he remained standing, leaning against a tree, explaining that he thought it unwise to go through the whole difficult process of lifting himself from the ground a second time. He seemed altogether calm and in relatively little discomfort, although it was impossible to read expression into his unchanging face and unblinking eyes: the constant flickering of his forked tongue was the only indicator of apparent emotion she could see, and she had no idea how to interpret those ceaseless darting movements. After a few minutes they resumed the walk. The slow pace was a burden to her, as was his weight against her shoulder, and she felt her own muscles cramping and protesting as they edged through the jungle. They said little. He seemed preoccupied with the need to exert control over his crippled body, and she concentrated on the route, searching for shortcuts, thinking ahead to avoid streams and dense undergrowth and other obstacles he would not be able to cope with. When they were halfway back to her hut a warm rain began to fall, and after that they were enveloped in hot clammy fog the rest of the way. She was nearly exhausted by the time her little cabin came into view.

  “Not quite a palace,” she said, “but it’s all I need. I built it myself. You can lie down here.” She helped him to her zanja-down bed. He sank onto it with a soft hissing sound that was surely relief. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked.

  “Not now.”

  “Or to drink? No? I imagine you just want to get some rest. I’ll go outside so you can sleep undisturbed.”

  “This is not my season of sleep,” Vismaan said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We sleep only one part of the year. Usually in winter.”

  “And you stay awake all the rest of the time?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am finished with this year’s sleep. I understand it is different with humans.”

  “Extremely different,” she told him. “I’ll leave you to rest by yourself, anyway. You must be terribly tired.”

  “I would not drive you from your home.”

  “It’s all right,” Thesme sai
d, and stepped outside. The rain was beginning again, the familiar, almost comforting rain that fell every few hours all day long. She sprawled out on a bank of dark yielding rubbermoss and let the warm droplets of rain wash the fatigue from her aching back and shoulders.

  A houseguest, she thought. And an alien one, no less. Well, why not? The Ghayrog seemed undemanding: cool, aloof, tranquil even in calamity. He was obviously more seriously hurt than he was willing to admit, and even this relatively short journey through the forest had been a struggle for him. There was no way he could walk all the way into Narabal in this condition. Thesme supposed that she could go into town and arrange for someone to come out in a floater to get him, but the idea displeased her. No one knew where she was living and she did not care to lead anyone here, for one thing. And she realized in some confusion that she did not want to give the Ghayrog up, that she wanted to keep him here and nurse him until he had regained his strength. She doubted that anyone else in Narabal would have given shelter to an alien, and that made her feel pleasantly perverse, set apart in still another way from the citizens of her native town. In the past year or two she had heard plenty of muttering about the off-worlders who were coming to settle on Majipoor. People feared and disliked the reptilian Ghayrogs and the giant hulking hairy Skandars and the little tricky ones with the many tentacles—Vroons, were they?—and the rest of that bizarre crew, and even though aliens were still unknown in remote Narabal the hostility toward them was already there. Wild and eccentric Thesme, she thought, was just the kind who would take in a Ghayrog and pat his fevered brow and give him medicine and soup, or whatever you gave a Ghayrog with a broken leg. She had no real idea of how to care for him, but she did not intend to let that stop her. It occurred to her that she had never taken care of anyone in her life, for somehow there had been neither opportunity nor occasion; she was the youngest in her family and no one had ever allowed her any sort of responsibility, and she had not married or borne children or even kept pets, and during the stormy period of her innumerable turbulent love affairs she had never seen fit to visit any of her lovers while he was ill. Quite likely, she told herself, that was why she was suddenly so determined to keep this Ghayrog at her hut. One of the reasons she had quitted Narabal for the jungle was to live her life in a new way, to break with the uglier traits of the former Thesme.

  She decided that in the morning she would go into town, find out if she could what kind of care the Ghayrog needed, and buy such medicines or provisions as seemed appropriate.

  2

  AFTER A LONG WHILE she returned to the hut. Vismaan lay as she had left him, flat on his back with arms stiff against his sides, and he did not seem to be moving at all, except for the perpetual serpentine writhing of his hair. Asleep? After all his talk of needing none? She went to him and peered down at the strange massive figure on her bed. His eyes were open, and she saw them tracking her.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Not well. Walking through the forest was more difficult than I realized.”

  She put her hand to his forehead. His hard scaly skin felt cool. But the absurdity of her gesture made her smile. What was a Ghayrog’s normal body temperature? Were they susceptible to fever at all, and if so, how could she tell? They were reptiles, weren’t they? Did reptiles run high temperatures when they were sick? Suddenly it all seemed preposterous, this notion of nursing a creature of another world.

  He said, “Why do you touch my head?”

  “It’s what we do when a human is sick. To see if you have a fever. I have no medical instruments here. Do you know what I mean by running a fever?”

  “Abnormal body temperature. Yes. Mine is high now.”

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Very little. But my systems are disarranged. Can you bring me some water?”

  “Of course. And are you hungry? What sort of things do you normally eat?”

  “Meat. Cooked. And fruits and vegetables. And a great deal of water.”

  She fetched a drink for him. He sat up with difficulty—he seemed much weaker than when he had been hobbling through the jungle; most likely he was suffering a delayed reaction to his injuries—and drained the bowl in three greedy gulps. She watched the furious movements of his forked tongue, fascinated. “More,” he said, and she poured a second bowl. Her water-jug was nearly empty, and she went outside to fill it at the spring. She plucked a few thokkas from the vine, too, and brought them to him. He held one of the juicy blue-white berries at arm’s length, as though that was the only way be could focus his vision properly on it, and rolled it experimentally between two of his fingers. His hands were almost human, Thesme observed, though there were two extra fingers and he had no fingernails, only lateral scaly ridges running along the first two joints.

  “What is this fruit called?” he asked.

  “Thokka. They grow on a vine all over Narabal. If you like them, I’ll bring you as many as you want.”

  He tasted it cautiously. Then his tongue flickered more rapidly, and he devoured the rest of the berry and held out his hand for another. Now Thesme remembered the reputation of thokkas as aphrodisiacs, but she looked away to hide her grin, and chose not to say anything to him about that. He described himself as male, so the Ghayrogs evidently had sexes, but did they have sex? She had a sudden fanciful image of male Ghayrogs squirting milt from some concealed orifice into tubs into which female Ghayrogs climbed to fertilize themselves. Efficient but not very romantic, she thought, wondering if that was actually how they did it—fertilization at a distant remove, like fishes, like snakes.

  She prepared a meal for him of thokkas and fried calimbots and the little many-legged delicate-flavored hiktigans that she netted in the stream. All her wine was gone, but she had lately made a kind of fermented juice from a fat red fruit whose name she did not know, and she gave him some of that. His appetite seemed healthy. Afterward she asked him if she could examine his leg, and he told her she could.

  The break was more than midway up, in the widest part of his thigh. Thick though his scaly skin was, it showed some signs of swelling there. Very lightly she put her fingertips to the place and probed. He made a barely audible hiss but otherwise gave no sign that she might be increasing his discomfort. It seemed to her that something was moving inside his thigh. The broken ends of the bone, was it? Did Ghayrogs have bones? She knew so little, she thought dismally—about Ghayrogs, about the healing arts, about anything.

  “If you were human,” she said, “we would use our machines to see the fracture, and we would bring the broken place together and bind it until it knitted. Is it anything like that with your people?”

  “The bone will knit of its own,” he replied. “I will draw the break together through muscular contraction and hold it until it heals. But I must remain lying down for a few days, so that the leg’s own weight does not pull the break apart when I stand. Do you mind if I stay here that long?”

  “Stay as long as you like. As long as you need to stay.”

  “You are very kind.”

  “I’m going into town tomorrow to pick up supplies. Is there anything you particularly want?”

  “Do you have entertainment cubes? Music, books?”

  “I have just a few here. I can get more tomorrow.”

  “Please. The nights will be very long for me as I lie here without sleeping. My people are great consumers of amusement, you know.”

  “I’ll bring whatever I can find,” she promised.

  She gave him three cubes—a play, a symphony, a color composition—and went about her after-dinner cleaning. Night had fallen, early as always, this close to the equator. She heard a light rainfall beginning again outside. Ordinarily she would read for a while, until it grew too dark, and then lie down to sleep. But tonight everything was different. A mysterious reptilian creature occupied her bed; she would have to put together a new sleeping-place for herself on the floor; and all this conversation, the first she had had in so many weeks, had left her min
d buzzing with unaccustomed alertness. Vismaan seemed content with his cubes. She went outside and collected bubblebush leaves, a double armful of them and then another, and strewed them on the floor near the door of her hut. Then, going to the Ghayrog, she asked if she could do anything for him; he answered by a tiny shake of his head, without taking his attention from the cube. She wished him a good night and lay down on her improvised bed. It was comfortable enough, more so than she had expected. But sleep was impossible. She turned this way and that, feeling cramped and stiff, and the presence of the other a few yards away seemed to announce itself by a tangible pulsation in her soul. And there was the Ghayrog’s odor, too, pungent and inescapable. Somehow she had ceased noticing it while they ate, but now, with all her nerve-endings tuned to maximum sensitivity as she lay in the dark, she perceived it almost as she would a trumpet-blast unendingly repeated. From time to time she sat up and stared through the darkness at Vismaan, who lay motionless and silent. Then at some point slumber overtook her, for when the sounds of the new morning came to her, the many familiar piping and screeching melodies, and the early light made its way through the door-opening, she awakened into the kind of disorientation that comes often when one has been sleeping soundly in a place that is not one’s usual bed. It took her a few moments to collect herself, to remember where she was and why.

  He was watching her. “You spent a restless night. My being here disturbs you.”

  “I’ll get used to it. How do you feel?”

  “Stiff. Sore. But I am already beginning to mend, I think. I sense the work going on within.”

  She brought him water and a bowl of fruit. Then she went out into the mild misty dawn and slipped quickly into the pond to bathe. When she returned to the hut the odor hit her with new impact. The contrast between the fresh air of morning and the acrid Ghayrog flavored atmosphere indoors was severe; yet soon it passed from her awareness once again.

  As she dressed she said, “I won’t be back from Narabal until nightfall. Will you be all right here by yourself?”