by Linda Talbot
~~~~~~~~
The Song of Selenus
Selenus gleamed in the violet light of planet Leros; a polished city on a gliding cushion that might be moved, according to need and suspended almost anywhere in the galaxy.
It had grown with airy domes and walkways, in the most flexible materials, expanding and contracting into fresh forms and colours, according to where the city was situated.
It absorbed elements in its environment; air, light, heat and cold, and altered from an ochre-coloured maze of warm domes, minarets and mellow stairways, to a shimmering expanse of cold white walls and frozen pools.
Men had used Selenus as a means of defence, moving her to zones of safety in inter-galactic conflicts. Her mirrored surfaces reflected the sun, blinding invaders and deflecting plans to land.
Her squares and broad streets breathed and almost imperceptibly altered; pursuit through their complexity was impossible and beneath walkways lay cavernous depths; a twilit lacework of mysterious ways whose logic no one had discovered but which had claimed those who fled there in fear.
Very gently Selenus pulsated, like a great heart beat, perfectly synchronised and needing no human hand to regulate the rhythm. And although no one heard, she sometimes sang; her register beyond the reach of human ears, the sound like pearl drops strung on air - an expression of autonomous harmony sending soft vibrations through the spheres.
Some had tried to destroy her; pierced her gleaming domes, shattered her walkways, but, like the seeds of sure succession, the fragments flew to settle and generate anew.
Fresh forms and feelings emerged, she sang a slightly sadder song but with a new resolve to resist aggression.
Among the breathing buildings, flowers flourished; long trumpets of pale gold with purple stamens, crimson clusters with deep brown corollas, white whorls with black veins and a profusion of foliage; spear-like leaves on flexible stems, squat groundcover like a fibrous cushion, trailing leaves of green and gold, veiling doorways and windows.
The plants grew at varying rates according to where the city was suspended; sometimes maturing overnight with new species appearing like aliens among them, soon to coalesce in a carpet of colour and wistful green.
In the year 2,150 Selenus was transferred to Verdur, a green planet with ample supplies of nitrogen, phosphate and potash. Her plants sank roots deeply, spreading through the nutrients until the caverns formerly extending beneath the city became a matted, impenetrable growth. There was one less means of escape.
Above ground, the vibrant flowers trailed their stems; hugging pillars and concealing steps. A special workforce was appointed to clear doors, windows and thoroughfares.
Selenus pitched her song in a lower key; her breathing at first impeded, then she relented to the persistent growth and yielded her shining domes and glistening steps, until the pulse of plants and architecture was one.
Only the mirrors - kept scrupulously clear - deflected the sun. And those were what the astronauts from Earth, who had been suspended in time and so knew nothing of Selenus, saw one morning as they passed into the present.
"Looks like water!" said Hoffman.
"Let's sample that," suggested Blanchard, while O'Driscoll activated a change of course.
The sun caught a mirrored surface that flashed into their eyes. But by then they were heading irreversibly towards Selenus to land in a mass of multi-coloured flowers on the city's outskirts.
"What is this? Olde England?" asked O'Driscoll, a Dubliner with a faint recollection of a childhood trip to Devon. Hoffman seemed anxious.
"It doesn't tally with any of our charts," he said, "Verdur should be uninhabited."
The city glimmered, and even as they approached, almost imperceptibly, grew. Apart from the plant controllers no one lived there. Selenus sang to herself in a low key.
The astronauts came to the first mirror pool, knelt down, and thrust their hands against hard glass. They found no water, although from some succulent stems they sucked a sickly liquid, hoping it was harmless.
They stumbled through leaved archways up moss-thick steps. Windows reflecting now and then the dazzle of the sun, disorientated their steps. "Haven't we been this way before?" asked Blanchard, recognising a blue and green tilted walkway between pillars.
"Who knows? Let's go back to the craft. There's nothing here," said Hoffman.
But the city was still changing; a mirrored piazza moved from sun into shadow and gold trumpet flowers crept into its chasm. A tilted stairway folded silently in on itself and crimson flowers flowed there like slow water. The song of Selenus was cautiously subdued.
"Look at these roots!" exclaimed Blanchard, who had grown one of the last gardens on Earth before land became scarce. "I'll take some cuttings."
He gathered an unruly cross section of the tenacious plants. Hoffman and O'Driscoll were already heading back to the ship. It took three hours of hard searching to locate it. Selenus was devious, directing them to dead ends and steep walls from which they could see the craft. But the gleaming walls were unscalable; part of the slippery city's defences.
Finally they stumbled through a tangled expanse of green and purple growth, sloping to the side of one wall and spreading over waste ground to the space craft.
Blanchard bundled his cuttings inside, trying and failing to lie them in an orderly pile. They had a wilful resistance - poking, straggling, rearranging themselves; rustling uneasily as the craft prepared to take off.
When they landed on Earth, the welcome for the astronauts was overridden by the botanists' response to the plant cuttings from Selenus. They were baffled and intrigued; the city had fostered species of unprecedented vigour. Yet when planted, they rapidly wilted and died.
Hoffman tried unsuccessfully to explain that the plants did not merely complement the city; they were its very structure. The two could not be separated. Selenus had become a living organism.
The city was transported for investigation to Earth. A potent toxin was used night and day for two weeks to cut her free from the fibrous roots that had practically bound her to Verdur.
As she was uprooted she screamed.
On Earth centuries of pollution had sapped the land of nutrients. The people's diet was devised around manufactured pills; synthetic proteins, carbohydrates and minerals. A dinner party was joyless, reduced to swallowing the pills and leafing through the lush photographs of old books, printed when food was grown, cooked in kitchens and presented on plates.
From the sky fell acid rain and a pall of pollution often obliterated the sun. Selenus recoiled, the remains of her plants clinging miserably to the dull domes and stairways. She was no longer a synchronised organism but a city suffering again the stark divisions of the natural and the man-made; the plants striving to take root among buildings badly repaired and brittle, coldly tailored to man's needs.
Gradually, a creeping grey fungus developed at the base of the buildings, pushing with a soft and rotten insistence along the walkways, already green with moss.
The fungus spread like disintegrating flesh, up walls and through gaps at the bottom of mouldering structures, pushing underground in the dank darkness, feeling with foul fingers beneath the entire town, until it shifted uneasily.
The trumpet flowers strove to bloom but withered and dropped before unfolding. The crimson petals never unfurled, the green and gold leaves hung limply, sensing the seeping of destruction.
There was war again among the far flung worlds of the Solar System. The leaders elected to defend Earth fled to Selenus. But this time she had been too shamefully treated to shield them. Her very foundations had been violated, her gentle soul outraged.
At the first assault, she trembled on her wet foundations. Her mirrors reflected no sun. Her subtle stairways did not move, she did not shift colour or contour, had no power to expand or contract. Her will was wasted.
She was easily taken. The men who turned to her for protection were the first to perish. Her fragile domes were pierced and laid
low, her tiled piazzas shattered by heavy weapons, her glass pools and fountains fractured. The ensuing fires engulfed what remained of the plants, dead leaves cracking as they burned, dry stems forced into grotesque shapes. Even the fungus did not long defy the flames.
Two days later the ruins of Selenus simmered quietly; brief flurries of fire quickly dying. In a deep hole left by a shattered wall, huddled an eight year old boy, the son of a dead politician.
He whimpered, too terrified to move, watching the fiery fungus glint and die. Then, as the sound of tumult stilled, he heard, pitched low and immeasurably sad, the voice of Selenus, singing. It was a death lament that lifted away to the worlds that had destroyed her; unforgiving, unending; a microcosm of the misery caused by man. Only the boy, existing still in innocence, was able to hear it.
Back to Table of Contents
