Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  She prayed aloud to no god to let her slow enough to have one sight of this marvel. To the unknown power that had helped her, she sent desperate fear-lit images of her onrushing crash, explosion, death—unless Calgary could be slowed enough for her to belly-land it in one piece. She had the momentary sense that the power was reluctant, perhaps tired—but desire to know more of this wonder drove her shamelessly. She pled with all her soul to slow more.

  And sluggishly, but in time, response came. Once the slowing was so abrupt that her glide fell below Calgary’s high stall speed. She went tail down and began to drop like a stone, until she found one last unbelievable gulp of fuel to send the ship back into level flight. She tried to send in careful detail the image of her needs. They were almost unfillable—to glide Calgary to some sort of bare, level landing place, large enough to absorb what would be her ground momentum. If only she could, once, see these marvels! No matter how injured she was, she longed only to die with her eyes filled with them.

  Nothing but death lay ahead, but CP was in ecstasy such as she’d never dreamed of.

  Releasing the controls for an instant, she flung her arms wide. “I name thee Cold Pig’s Planet!” she said to Auln. (Auln? Whence did that come to her?) But no, she was not falling to the satellite of any sun. “I name thee Cold Pig’s Dark Star!”

  Appropriate, she thought wryly, grabbing the controls, and strapping in tighter. All those weary hours of Earth-flight kept returning to her aid. Skillfully she nursed the awkward old ship over the pale fires of this shoreless sea; she was too low to see beyond the far, high horizon to where land might lie. She could only fly straight with the direction of revolution toward where she remembered the continent bulged seaward.

  Unsteady breezes tossed her, sometimes bringing her so low that Calgary barely skimmed the crests—and once she all but nose-dived in, as she caught a flash of strange life, dark-bodied, playing in the waves. Too fast, too low, Calgary could not survive splashdown here. Resolutely she ignored all wonders, made herself concentrate on staying airborne, above what seemed a world on fire. The horizon was so weirdly high! This world was huge.

  And then a line of brighter fire showed on the horizon ahead, seeming almost above her. Shore! But forested, she saw. Those lighted shapes were a solid wall of trees—she was hurtling toward a fatal crash. Frantically she pictured, pled for what she needed—and then saw that the forest wall was not solid, there was a great opening, an estuary slanting out. She swung Calgary to aim into it; she could see now that it wasn’t a wide river, but a relatively small stream edged with swamp, almost treeless. Perfect. But coming at her fast, too fast—if only there could be head wind! She was prepared for anything now, had no wonder left but only gratitude as the sudden shore wind struck and slowed her.

  Into the opening they tore, over the margin that appeared barest. Then Calgary’s belly structures hit sticky marshland, crushed clangorously—the ship bounced and careened past flying trees—flat-spun twice, throwing CP about in her straps—and went wing up, the down wing breaking off as it plowed fountains. And finally, incredibly, all motion stopped.

  CP slowly, dizzily, stared around her at the cabin. No broken walls or glass, air-pressure reading constant. The cabin seemed to be intact. Intact. She was down safe! And, apart from a bruises, herself uninjured.

  Her hearing was deadened by pressure change. When her ears opened, she could hear only the clanks of cooling metal and the crackle of a small flame by the jets, which died as she watched. No hiss of escaping air. But the silence outside had the unmistakable sense of density and resonance that told her the Calgary was no longer in vacuum but in air.

  Weak almost to fainting, CP wiped her breath from the vitrex to peer out. It was confusing—a world like a color negative, all light coming from below, with strange-hued shadows above. So beautiful. Only trees and shrubs were around her—a wilderness of trees; CP had never seen so many trees all in one place. And they stretched on and on, she knew, to the horizon. Beyond them she could just see the lighted sparkle of running river water, free water, presumably fresh.

  A paradise—save only for the lethal radioactivity, which had her scanning dial stuck against its high edge. A paradise, but not for her.

  Nevertheless, her prayers were granted. She was seeing a New World. She could touch it if she wished. A deep, extraordinary happiness she could scarcely recognize filled her. Her lips trembled with a constant smile she’d never felt before. But she could no longer keep her eyes open. She knew she had spent some hours fighting the Calgary down; she didn’t realize it had taken her three Earth-days.

  As she lost consciousness, hanging sidewise in the straps, from somewhere outside a living creature gave a single unearthly echoing hoot, loud enough to penetrate the sealed cabin.

  Her last thought was that she would probably awaken, if she did, in the bonds and cuffs of Base prison.

  She woke up painfully stiff and thirsty, but with the same marvelous alien world outside the port. And the air-pressure reading had stayed constant! All essential seals were intact—a final miracle.

  Calgary had come to rest nose down on its broken wing stub; the “floor” was at a forty-degree angle. As CP unstrapped and slid down, she saw how good this was: the big port at her chair gave her the view outside right down to ground level, and so did one end of the bow window. The opposite port gave her the treetops. She paused curiously to study their strange adaptations of form to utilize light coming primarily from below. There seemed to be two general types, a pad-leaved sort, and a big tree fern, but there was extraordinary intervariation.

  How much sealed air-space was left her? Gone, of course, was the whole underbody, the scouter dock, and the trailing space equipment-including the ice-rock. But she had the pilotage and observation chambers, and the door to the galley had sprung askew without causing leaks. So had the wash-and-wastes roomlet, and even the door of her own bad-memoried little cubicle—no leaks in there.

  Gratefully she pulled off her heavy helmet and shook out her flaming hair. Her last days would be not only sublimely interesting but actually comfortable!

  Her water supply was intact too, she had checked that when first slaking her huge thirst. She would have to conserve, but she would have quite enough for the twenty days or so of oxygen left to her. That lack would be her end, as had been foretold from the start.

  Just as she settled by the window to open a food pouch, movement outside drew her eyes. Calgary had plowed a long open avenue through the swamp brush, and was turned so she could look right back down it to the far, high green glimmer of the sea.

  Now something she had taken for vegetation moved, moved again, and became a long willowy pale animal. It was clambering down from a low fork in a tree by the “avenue,” where it had perhaps spent the night. Had it been watching Calgary, shocked by the crashing intrusion of the ship? Even at this distance she could see that its eyes were enormous. They were shining with reflected light, set very far apart on a thin whitish head. The head resembled that of a goat or sheep which CP had seen alive in the zoo. It was definitely watching her now. She held her breath.

  As it swung down, she could see that its side-skin hung in folds, and a long-ago memory of her one picture book came back. Earth had once had “flying” squirrels and other gliding animals. Perhaps this creature was a giant form like that, and used its flaps for gliding between trees?

  Down from the tree, it sat on its haunches for a moment, still watching her. Please, don’t be frightened, she begged it mentally, not daring even to close her mouth, which was open for a first bite of breakfast bar. The creature didn’t seem alarmed. It stretched, in a laughably human way, and dropped its short forelimbs to the ground. It had a short, stout upcurled tail.

  Now CP remembered a picture that was closest of all—the kangaroo. Like the kangaroo, this animal’s rear end was higher than its shoulders on all fours, because of its long, strong hind limbs; and its neck was curved up to carry its long head level. Only its
tail was much smaller and shorter than the picture she recalled.

  To her delight, it began calmly to amble, or walk-hop, right toward Calgary. As it came closer she could see its draped pelt clearly.

  It wasn’t fur.

  It wasn’t bare hide or leather.

  It was—yes, unmistakably—and CP’s mind seemed to explode with silent excitement—it was fabric.

  As it came closer still, she could make out that around the neck and along the back-ridge ran a pattern of what could only be embroidery. It was set with knots and small shiny stones or shells.

  She simply stared at the approaching form, unable to take in all the implications at once.

  A world not only bearing life, but bearing intelligent life.

  Too much, that she had stumbled on this.

  And yet—was she really so surprised? The feeling that something . . . or someone . . . was “hearing” and helping her down had been so strong. . . . Was she looking at the one who—?

  Impossible. She could think no further, only stare.

  The creature—no, the person—calmly returned her gaze, and then sat down again, upright. With delicate spatulate fingers, it unfastened the throat of its cloak—CP could clearly see its thumbs—and removed it, revealing its actual pelt, which was cream-white and short. It folded the cloak deftly into a long strip and tied it round its body, then dropped back on all fours and resumed its amble toward her.

  But it did not head to her window, it detoured around Calgary on higher ground. As it passed, twitching one of its tall “ears” toward her, CP had a confused, faint mental impression of others—very diverse others—somewhere nearby, whom this one was going to meet. The notion vanished so quickly she decided she had made it up. Her visitor was passing out of sight from that port, into the undisturbed forest ahead of Calgary’s stopping place.

  She clambered quickly to the side post, but the stranger was already beyond sight among the trees. Perhaps someone or something else would come from that direction? She made herself comfortable by the vitrex, and at last began to eat her bar, studying all she could see. She was over the broken wing stub now. Calgary had come to rest against a dry hillock, this side made a natural approach. Slowly, so as not to alarm anything, she extended the auditory pickup and tested it. It worked! A world of varied rustlings, soft tweets, a croak or grunt, filled the cabin.

  After a moment’s thought, she tested the sound transmitter and extruded that too, so that her voice could be heard outside.

  Presently she became aware of a periodic crackling or crashing sound coming from the woods beyond the hillock. She watched, and saw a far treetop sway violently and go down. Soon another followed, a little closer, and then yet another smaller tree jumped high and disappeared. A big herbivore, perhaps, feeding?

  But as the sounds came closer, they seemed clearly deliberate. Perhaps a path or road to Calgary was being cleared. If so, what would appear? An alien bulldozer? A siege ram? A weapon carrier brought to blast her and Calgary out of existence?

  Yet she waited unafraid, only glad and fascinated. This world did not feel hostile. And had they not already helped her, saved her life? Calgary had rudimentary defenses, mainly of a ballistic sort, which in recent decades had been occasionally used only to break up rocks, but it never occurred to her to deploy them. Life here had saved her life, and she had intruded a great shipwreck upon them. Even if they wished to be rid of her now, whatever came she would accept.

  And suddenly it was there—so different from her expectations that she didn’t at first take it in. One—no, two—tall-humped forms were pushing through the trees. Their sides and tops seemed hard, she could hear thuds as they brushed against stems. Why, they were great tortoises, or turtles! She had once seen a tiny live one, much flatter in outline. Or could these carapaces be, like the Watcher’s cloak, artificial shells? No, she decided. Their limbs and necks were formed to them, she seemed to see attachment in the openings’ depths. Could they be trained beasts, used here instead of inorganic machines?

  As she watched mesmerized, one of them backed ponderously into a tangle of tree trunks, sending them down like paper trees. Then it turned, reared up, and began neatly to break up, sort, and pile the debris. Just behind it, the other was doing the same. Then it came past the first, selected an obstructive giant tree, and repeated the process. She realized how very big they were; the tops of their shells would be higher than her head, and their push-force must be in tons.

  As she saw the results of their work, she realized these couldn’t be animals, however trained. They weren’t merely clearing a way, they were creating order. Behind them stretched a neat, attractive clearway, without the edging tangle of damage usual on Earth. It wound away quite far; she could see perhaps a kilometer.

  As the creatures reared up, worked, dropped down to push, it was evident to CP that they had a generic resemblance to the first one, whom she thought of as the Watcher. The same heavier hind limbs, here ponderous and half-hidden by their carapaces; the same shorter forelimbs, here massively muscled. When they extended their necks, these too were long, though thickly muscular, coming from very large front openings in the shell. They walked with heads high and level. The heads, now retracted to their shells, were somewhat similar to the Watcher’s. Not at all reptilian, with upstanding “ears,” heavy frontals, and protectively lidded eyes.

  As they came closer, working rapidly but always neatly, she could see that their carapaces carried decorations. Some self-luminous pebbles or seeds had been set among the designs; their undershells, seen brightly illumined, were beautifully scrolled, and seemed to have straps or tool pockets mounted on them. Logical, she thought; frees the front limbs to walk. And finally, as the closest one rose up to grapple a tree fern, came the most bizarre touch of all—she could clearly see that it was wearing cuffed, decorated work gloves.

  This perception set off her overloaded nerves—she nearly dropped the kaffy from her shaking hands as a gale of giggles swept her, turned into peals of laughter that rang through the speaker into the swamp. Abashed, she thought how inappropriate this was, that the first human voice heard on this world should be not a proper formal speech, but laughing. She couldn’t help herself. She had laughed little in her life. No one had told her the sound was very sweet.

  She had it under control in a moment. Wiping her eyes, she saw that the turtlelike workers had dropped their logs and come closer, for a look-in. She hoped the sound she had made wasn’t displeasing or ugly to them.

  “Excuse me,” she said absurdly through the speaker.

  A vague feeling of all-rightness suffused her; one of the “turtles” made what was clearly an attempt at imitating her laugh, and they went back to their labor, now almost at the ship.

  And when her vision cleared, she could see, in the distance, six or seven new shapes approaching up the path the “turtles” had made.

  She finally bethought herself the binoculars, and peered with all her might. The glasses were of course set for celestial use, with a very small field, and she had trouble at first in counting how many were in the group.

  Four—no, three of them—closely resembled the Watcher, but she could pick him, or her, out by the paler fur, and the color of the tied-up cloak. This method of transporting stuff seemed to be common. The other two kangaroolike ones differed among themselves too—she had a glimpse of more strangely formed heads, possibly even an extra very small set of forelimbs—but she was too busy trying to see all the others to check.

  Another of the turtle or tortoise types was with them, its carapace heavy with encrustments. She gained a quick impression that it was quite old. It was even larger, and differed from the tree movers in its eyes, which were enormous and very bright beneath the heavy lids. Indeed, her first sight of the group had featured eyes—huge eyes, so bright and reflective that some seemed almost self-luminous. She noticed that all of them, as they advanced, looked about continuously and carefully, but with their major attention on Calgary—a
lmost like a group of advancing headlamps.

  Touching, partly leaning upon the carapaced one, came a short figure so swathed in red fabric veils that CP could make nothing of it, except for the great eyes in a face much shorter and more pugged than the Watcher’s. The fur on its skin was pale, too. CP had the impression that this creature—no, this person—was somewhat ill or weak, perhaps old, too. She or he paced upright, much of the time leaning on the big “tortoise,” only now and then dropping to a quadrupedal amble. Their slower movements seemed to be setting the pace for all.

  Another veiled person of the same general type, but taller and blue-veiled, came behind, moving strongly, so that the limbs often thrust through its veils. CP could definitely make out two pairs of upper “arms”; the lower pair seemed to be used for walking. Its upper body was upright so that, walking, it resembled a creature CP had only once seen a child’s picture of—a being half-horse and half-human. But its face was neither horse nor human—the features were so snarled that only the big eyes, and four tall feathery protrusions that might be ears, or other sensory organs, could be identified.

  Two more figures with gray pelts brought up the rear. One of them attracted CP’s attention by swerving off the path into a pool of water, and drinking deeply with webbed hands held to a kind of bill or beak. She guessed that it might be at least partly aquatic. Its companion waited for it. Behind this one’s shoulders were two hard-looking humps that might be vestigial wings.

  The party was close now; CP had discarded the binoculars. As they passed the tree-moving turtles, the personages she thought of as the Senior Tortoise and its veiled companion paused, and the others halted with them.

  There was a brief interchange, consisting of some short, voiced phrases mingled with odd, meaningful silences. CP could not tell which voices belonged to whom; only one was melodious, but they were not unpleasing. Nor did they sound tense, agitated, or hostile. She gleaned the notion that this visit was in some weird way routine, and also that the road had been constructed voluntarily, by nearby residents, perhaps.