by E. C. Tubb
Beautiful beyond all visions of loveliness, a fact confirmed by his eyes and one to be added to another verified by his brain. She was beautiful and she was more alien than anything he had previously known.
A thing Regan found hard to accept as he watched her in Medical Centre, moving to Elna’s direction, her small high-arched feet carrying her with a dancer’s grace.
“Again? Of course, Doctor Mitchell, anything you wish.”
Her voice was softly resonant, echoing in the mind like the distant sound of chiming bells, plucking at the strings of emotion so that he responded to her attraction as if to a thing of delicate wonder beyond the concept of price.
“And again?” She moved like a wisp of perfumed cloud. “And again?”
Exercises to check her coordination, the cold eyes of scanning instruments following her every gesture as others sniffed the air and her body with electronic nostrils. She ignored them, turning, the mane of glowingly roseate hair streaming like a dawn-touched waterfall from the high curve of her brow, rippling over the soft roundness of her shoulders. Beneath the simple garment she wore the lines of her figure were prominently feminine; the mound of breasts sharply delineated by the narrow constriction of her waist, the swell of hips and thighs, the taper of calves and ankles.
Her face was angelic; soft lips, gentle eyes, ears like shells, a chin touched with a dimple, nostrils made to be touched, a brow designed to be stroked, skin which yearned for kisses as her hands with the delicate fingers had been made for caresses
“Mark!” Elna’s voice cut through his reverie and Regan started, conscious that he had been daydreaming, lost in a world of imagination. “I’ve finished for the time being. You can have Enalus taken back to her room now.”
“Must I be locked away, Commander?” She took a step towards him, hands lifted in mute appeal. “I get so lonely at times and it has been so long. Why must I be shut away in a prison?”
“For protection,” said Elna. “Yours and ours.”
“Commander?” She ignored the comment. “That’s so cold, isn’t it? May I call you Mark? Elna calls you that, may I?” She smiled at his nod, her face irradiated as if from within by a glowing luminescence. “That’s wonderful! You are so kind to me, Mark. You are all so kind. But why must I be kept shut away as if I was a prisoner? What harm have I done you? What harm could I do? Please, Mark, couldn’t I be allowed a little freedom?”
It was incredible to think that she had come from a plant. Even more incredible that she should have the power to communicate as she did with words of such familiarity. An ability she had demonstrated from the very first when she had stepped from the opened bole to stretch and smile and extend her hands to those watching as if she had been a traveller at the end of a long voyage who had just arrived to be greeted by friends.
“Mark?”
The siren call of her voice laved him with its warmth and intimacy, hinting of secrets shared and episodes to come, of promises unspoken but implied.
With an effort he said, “No, Enalus. Not yet.”
“But why, Mark? Why?”
“Because you are strange to us as you must know. We have to be careful. Moonbase must not be put at risk. I—well, just be patient for a little while longer. I promise you it won’t be long. You can trust me for that, Enalus. Just be patient for a little while longer.”
He was babbling and knew it but a part of him was unable to halt the spate of words. Beyond the girl he could see Elna, the disapproval on her face. An emotion not matched by Mandela who stared as a man entranced.
“Mark, will you summon security or shall I?” Elna lifted her communicator.
“No.” Regan turned and clenched his hands and felt the nails drive into his palm. The pain cleared his head a little, giving him a measure of detachment so that, when he turned again to face the little group, he was able to speak with direct firmness.
“Elna, take Enalus to her room. Make certain she is secured.”
“Mark! Please! You promised—”
“After you have done that summon Trevor to join us here.”
“Mark?”
Without looking at her, Regan said “I haven’t forgotten my promise, Enalus. You’ll be given more freedom as soon as I’m certain you present no danger to the base. Until then I’m taking no chances. Now please be sensible and cooperate. Do you need help, Elna?”
“No.”
“An orderly, perhaps?”
“I can manage.”
Regan sagged a little as she ushered the girl from the chamber. Watching him Doctor Mandela said, softly, “Did she get to you, Commander?”
It would have been stupid to lie.
“Yes. And you?”
“Me too.” Mandela drew in his breath and released it with an audible sigh. Then he said, quietly, “What the hell have we got here?”
“Something alien.”
“I know, but when you’re with her you tend to forget that. She seems more human than any other human I know. And she’s lovely with it—that hair, those eyes, that figure, that skin! Men dream about such things and try to put their thoughts into words. They call it poetry. Others make songs and paint images and still more can do nothing but sit and think and think and destroy themselves with hopeless longing. I’ve seen them. Pathetic creatures who are obsessed. We call them mad.” Again Mandela drew in his breath. “Is that what we have here? A source of madness? Or have we found an angel? Which, Commander? Which?”
*
Boardman listened to the silent humming and then looked at the others. “Well, that’s one problem solved. Enalus isn’t using vocal communication at all. If she had her voice would have registered on the recorder.”
“Telepathy?” Regan switched off the machine. “So she’s reading our minds.”
“Not necessarily. All she needs to do is to bypass the normal vibratory sequence of sound communication and impinge her words directly on the receptors of the cortex. She would reverse the procedure in order to understand what you were saying. Imagine using radios instead of ears and tongues. In fact the use of suit-radios is a good analogy.” Frowning he added, “But it still doesn’t explain how she knew the language. She could have learned it from someone, perhaps, but who?”
“I can answer that, Trevor.” Elna glanced at Mandela.
“From Carolyn Markson. Right, Rob?”
“We can’t be certain of that, Doctor.”
“But the evidence points to it.” From among the papers littering the desk she produced a file. “This is Carrie’s. I won’t read it but the facts are plain. After the initial examination and emergency transfusions another examination was made during which a pattern of tiny punctures was found on the scalp previously hidden by the hair. The penetration was to the bone. There was no blood. On the sides of the face we found a peculiar abrasion. I thought it to be beard-rash then I remembered that Malcolm Edmunds was closely-shaven.”
“And he hadn’t been close to her for days before she collapsed.” Regan narrowed his eyes in thought. “A connection?”
“We know that she lied about the condition of the plant,” said Boardman. “That could have been an instilled protective device. If so there must have been some form of contact. My guess is that the flower could have caused the punctures and, if it did, there could have been some form of mental contact.”
“Between a girl and a plant?” Regan waved a hand to dismiss the anticipated explanation. “All right. I know. The thing is alien so normal experience doesn’t apply. So, somehow, it read her mind and gained a knowledge of the language at least. And what else?”
Boardman said, slowly, “An image.”
“Trevor?”
“A pattern then, if you like. Something on which to build whatever was being formed in the pod. Haven’t you noticed the similarity?” He glanced from Regan to Mandela and raised his eyebrows. “No? I spotted it from the first and so did Lucy. There is a striking resemblance between Enalus and Carolyn Markson. They could almost be sis
ters—but one is far more refined and enhanced than the other. More attractive in every way. Yet the basic similarities are there. You agree, Elna.”
“Superficially they are, but it is only skin deep. As yet I’ve found it impossible to take X-rays of Enalus—her body is opaque to any form of scanning. She apparently has no blood, the tissue beneath the skin is a homogenous mass of fibroid and the skin itself is more of a flexible layer than a true epidermis. The navel is a mere indentation as to be expected and both secondary and primary sexual features are non-functional. That is she could neither give birth to a child nor suckle it if she did.”
“She must eat,” said Boardman. “Does she?”
“Yes—that function, at least, seems normal. Her ingestion of solid and liquid matter is that of a young healthy girl with a good appetite.” Elna added, dully, “She also has a perfect set of teeth—or would have if it were not for a minor irregularity in the upper left molar. Carolyn Markson has exactly the same irregularity.”
More proof, if it were needed, that the girl had been used as a pattern by whatever forces had determined the shape of what grew within the bole of the alien growth. And if there had been no pattern?
Pollination, thought Regan. Plants, like animals, were bi-sexual. A flower needed to be fertilised before a plant could bear fruit and, even though the growth had been alien, the same principles could apply. Had the other plants died because they had not been stimulated into entering the final stage of their lifecycle?
Boardman cleared his throat and said, “Well, so far so good. We know, or can make a reasonable assumption, how Enalus gained her knowledge of the language and how she communicates. We can also have a fair idea of how she comes to look as she does. The question now is—what do we do with her?”
*
She had been placed in a room at the end of a residential corridor, the other chambers empty now, the passage secured by a pair of guards. They snapped to attention as Regan approached and he acknowledged their salute before passing on to halt at the sealed door. For a moment he stood before it then, lifting his communicator, fired the stream of electronic particles that triggered the catch.
Closing the panel behind him he turned to look at Enalus.
She lay on the bed, her legs sprawled in an elegant disregard for normal convention, the long, smooth lines of her thighs gleaming like pearl in the glow of the lights. She had slit the sides of the gown she had been given and adjusted the neck so that it hung in appealing folds catching the eye and leading it to the double-swell of her breasts.
Or, he reminded himself, savagely, the mounds of tissue that gave the appearance of breasts. But it was hard, so hard, to think of her as other than human.
“Mark?” She turned to face him, her elfin face wreathed in the mane of her hair, the eyes like lambent pools beneath the arc of her brows. “Do you want me, Mark? You did say I could call you that.”
“Yes, Enalus. I did.”
“And?”
“We’ve been talking about you. Or perhaps you know that.”
“How could I know, Mark?” Did the sweet resonance of her voice hold a tinkle of mockery? “How could I know what you have been doing?”
“Don’t you read minds?”
“No.” She straightened with a swirl of material, hair flying, strands deftly swept back by a lifted hand. “Why should you think that? I speak and you hear my words. You speak and I hear yours. But what you think and how you feel, those things are a mystery to me.” Her face brightened a little. “My freedom, Mark? Did you come to give me that?”
“What would you do with it, Enalus?”
“Enalus, that is a nice name. I haven’t yet thanked you for giving it to me. My freedom?” She paused and sat with her hands locked around one uplifted knee. Aureoled by the light her hair glowed like a crest, a halo around the small neatness of her skull, the delicate structure of her face. “I wish to learn,” she said, after a moment. “There is so much to learn. And I need to grow.”
“To grow?”
“In wisdom,” she said quickly. “Is that how I should say it? To grow in wisdom. To gain understanding. To increase my stature. Words! They are so limited. How I wish that you could understand me with a thought or that I could you. Words are so very slow. So slow. Mark, why did you send me here with Elna?”
He blinked at the sudden question, not expecting it, surprised that she should have considered the matter important enough to have remembered.
“I thought it best, Enalus.”
“And, what you think best, you do. This much already I have learned about you, Mark. As I have learned that all are different in small ways. Elna is different to you and Rob is darker and Trevor is older and Lucy is as old but different again. Why is that, Mark?”
“We have two sexes and are of different ages. Also there are various races among us.”
“But you are basically all the same,” she said, wistfully. “You are all human.”
Which is something you are not and can never be, he thought, and felt a sharp regret at the coldness of the truth.
A regret rendered the more poignant by the realisation that, of them all, she would be the most alone. A solitary member of her species who could never find her way home. A lost waif whose world might be nothing more now that a cloud of cosmic dust. It would be such a small thing to give what comfort they could. To help her. To pretend that she had a right to belong.
“Mark?” Enalus slipped from the bed and stood before him, looking very demure, very fragile and helpless, very young and alone. “Is the door to be opened? Am I to be allowed to mix with the others? Please!”
“Yes,” he said. “You are. That’s what I came to tell you.”
The decision insisted on by Boardman who had hammered home the need to learn, to observe, to reap what knowledge could be gained while they had the chance. Mandela had backed him, Elna had not. She was waiting in the passage coming to join him after he had given instructions to the guards.
“You told her, Mark?”
“Yes.”
“You should have given her a key,” she said, bitterly. “The key to Moonbase. What would it be, Mark? A laser? The master component of the Control Room? Or should we all have put our necks on a block?”
“Precautions will be taken,” he said, patiently. “She will be accompanied at all times and only allowed access to certain parts of the base. Damn it, Elna,” he flared as he saw her expression. “What else should we do? Lock her in a cage?”
“That or plant it in a garden.” She halted and met his eyes. “It, Mark. No matter how that thing looks it isn’t human. It came from a plant and it robbed the brain of a girl. And it—”
“You don’t like her,” he interrupted. “You hate her.”
“No, Mark,” she said after a moment. “I don’t hate her. You can’t hate something so alien—not if you are rational. But you don’t have to trust it either. Enalus will cause trouble, I’m sure of it.”
He smiled, trying to lighten the situation. “Woman’s intuition, Elna?”
If so, it was accurate. Three days later Malcolm Edmunds was dead.
CHAPTER 12
He was found in his room, lying supine on the unused bed, one hand lifted to rest above his head, his cheeks drawn and paper-pale.
“Anaemia.” Elna gave the diagnosis later after she’d examined the body in Medical. “At least that is the clinical definition of his condition. No sign of injury, no toxins, no signs of organic breakdown. Just a classic case of acute anaemia—Mark, this is incredible!”
“Why?”
“A person doesn’t get anaemia overnight. Malcolm was fit and healthy otherwise he would never have been accepted as a security officer. He was in top condition when last seen a few hours ago and yet, when called, he was dead. Dead, Mark! Dead from something that couldn’t possibly have killed him so soon. Anaemia doesn’t work like that.”
“Not even if accelerated?”
“No! Unless—” Elna broke off,
frowning, then said, slowly, “Anaemia is a shortage of red corpuscles and so a shortage of haemoglobin in the blood. Which means, in turn, that the body is unable to extract oxygen from the air sucked into the lungs and transport it around the body.”
“And a shortage of oxygen would lead to literal asphyxiation in the sense of being denied viable air. Could some form of vapour have done it? Something like carbon monoxide for example?”
“It could but it didn’t. Any gas or irritant vapour would have left traces. I found none.”
“And if the anaemia had been accelerated?”
“In that case I guess the result would have been what we see. Sudden death, accentuated pallor and a complete absence of haemoglobin.” Elna turned and took three steps across the floor, to turn again, her eyes haunted. “But, Mark, what you’re talking about is impossible. You can’t accelerate the progress of a disease or organic malfunction to such a degree. It means compressing weeks, months even, into a few hours. In that case there would be signs of malnutrition and there aren’t any. Malcolm Edmunds was fit when he went into his room and dead a few hours later. Something must have killed him.”
Carolyn Markson had no doubt as to what it was.
“It’s that thing,” she said. “Enalus. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Ever since he was given guard and observation duty he’s talked of nothing else. How lovely she is, how graceful, how gentle, how understanding. The bitch!”
“Steady!” Elna checked her pulse and looked over the bed at Regan. “How did you know he was dead?”
“Malcolm? I heard some of the orderlies talking and I got up and saw him as they wheeled him from the examination room.” Tears shone in the girl’s eyes, glistening like pearls as they ran down her cheeks. Still weak from her own ordeal despite the strength given by the massive transfusions, she had little control over her grief. “Why?” she demanded. “Why did it have to happen to him? We had plans and…and…”
Elna gripped her hand as the girl shook with a storm of weeping.
