by James Gunn
By the second period awake she was making note of the intensity and modulations of their sounds and by the third she was beginning to get some understanding of what they meant when they were trying to gain her attention or direct her actions. She considered the advantage of concealing her ability to comprehend before she decided that the ability to question provided a greater opportunity.
“Okay, kids,” she said, “we’re going to start talking.” And she squealed and whistled at them.
The two attendants opened their round eyes even wider, in expressions that Asha interpreted as surprise transforming into delight as they burst into gusts of squeals and whistles.
“Slow down,” Asha squealed and whistled at them.
They slowed and the conversation began with personal matters. They called themselves “the people.” It was the universal term for every dominant species on every civilized world, though sometimes modified by an adjective indicating status, such as “the god people” or “the chosen people” or “the people destined to rule the world, the solar system, the galaxy, or the universe.” Asha decided to call them the “squeal” people and their world “Squeal.” It was, of course, like all their other words, except those altered by whistles, only this squeal was uttered softly with an expression that Asha learned indicated pleasure or happiness.
An indispensable part of the language was facial expression and body positions. She tried hard to master it though her face and body did not adapt easily to the new demands placed upon them.
The Squeal world, she learned, was a happy world where everything was good and nothing bad ever happened. “Why, then, is my door locked?” she asked.
“To keep you safe,” she was told.
“From what, on this happy world?”
“From accident. As visitor (honored guest? god?) you must be protected for even greater happiness.”
“And what is that?” Asha asked, but no amount of questioning could produce clarification for what the attendants might not themselves be able to comprehend. Neither could she identify the squeal words for spaceflight or get them to understand the concept for space itself or the possibility of getting off Squeal and into the vastness beyond or even that there were other suns in the heavens or other worlds like theirs. That was either a bad sign or an indication that her attendants might be limited in their educations or their understandings of the world. Perhaps that kind of knowledge, that there might be other worlds than theirs, would make them unhappy. The essence of unhappiness, after all, was dissatisfaction with what you have. With humans and many other species, it was a divine dissatisfaction that impelled them into the unknown, but on the Squeal world it might be forbidden or inconceivable.
She could not even find an adjustment to the mirror/receiver that showed the sky, particularly the night sky, and she did not know what stars the night sky revealed, or if this world had a moon or moons, and where in the galaxy it might be located. Everything suggested a fatal isolation from the rest of the galaxy. But she did not surrender to despair. And her refusal to accept defeat was not because of the example of her sunny attendants.
When she was not engaged in conversation, Asha spent a great deal of her time studying the mirror/receiver. She needed more information than her attendants could provide, and she acquired a mastery of how to direct its view of the world. She studied the various climate zones of the planet before she settled on the temperate areas where nearly all the squeal people lived. She guessed that Squeal had little or no planetary wobble and therefore no incentives or opportunities for people to move around, once settled. Or perhaps the arctic and tropical zones offered too many challenges to sustain their philosophy, or illusion, of joy.
She noted several sizes of communities, from villages in the midst of cultivated areas to modest-sized cities that apparently served as gathering places for goods and services, and larger cities that may have provided manufacturing and transportation. The largest and most complex of these, she found, was the city into which she had been transported, and the comments that she could elicit from her attendants seemed to confirm this. That seemed appropriate. The center of governance, of whatever sort, ought to be the place of honor, or worship, for the Transcendental receiver. Or perhaps she was only glorifying her own materialization here.
She studied the city, street by street, and house by house, returning, time after time, to the plaza in which she had made her appearance, with its central fountain topped by the Machine. If there was any hope of finding a way off this world, isolated by circumstances or its people’s will, it had to be here. The creators of the Transcendental Machine must have had a purpose for placing a receiver on this planet, though it was a million long-cycles ago. That purpose may have been to influence the development of this planet or the evolution of its creatures, or to conquer it, or just to use it as a way station, but there was something here that had attracted those extinct technologists from another arm of the galaxy.
But what? And had it been extinguished in the past million long-cycles, a period long enough to predate the Squeal people themselves? Perhaps Squeal was an experiment that failed.
Asha’s contemplation was interrupted by the opening of the distant doors and the entrance of three of the Squeal people. They seemed a bit larger than the others she had encountered, they were wearing clothing that resembled the finery in which she had been dressed when she arrived, and they were bearing gifts.
* * *
They looked a little ridiculous in their fancy garments, gowns in royal blue or silver that reached to the floor and hid their feet, and scarves wrapped into headdresses, but they wore them with the happy expression that accompanied the squeal word for “world,” or, perhaps, if that was possible on this Elysium where distinctions might create envy, pride. They came in one at a time but formed into a single line in front of her.
The one on her left, dressed in royal blue, had a silver globe in its hands, about the size of a child’s head and engraved with cryptic designs. “I offer to you this symbol of Squeal. If you accept my offer of eternal bliss, the world of Squeal will be yours,” the Squeal person said, as nearly as Asha could interpret, though, indeed, the message could have been far more grandiose, or even more threatening, than she imagined was consistent with what she knew about this world.
“Thanks,” she said, deciding to conceal her ability to understand the squeal language. Her attendants would no doubt relay that information when they had the opportunity, but so far she had detected no communication between them and those who brought her food and drink, and perhaps she would gain a critical advantage until her knowledge was revealed. “You’re a peach,” she added, accepting the globe, “although I don’t know what I would do with this world if I owned it.” The globe was apparently hollow and not as heavy as she anticipated.
The Squeal person in the middle, clad all in silver, held a staff made of some dark wood and carved with intricate shapes. “I give you this symbol of the Squeal people’s oneness with the world of Squeal so that you will come to join it as if it were your own,” it said.
“Thank you, too,” Asha said, accepting the staff with her free right hand. “You folks are great with the symbols, and I wish I were sure what they implied and what I was supposed to do with them.”
The Squeal person on Asha’s right, dressed in a silver gown and a royal blue headdress, held out Asha’s own garments, which had disappeared from her room after her bath and she had thought had been discarded as unfit for whatever role they planned for her. Now they seemed to have been restored to pristine condition. “I return to you these honored garments in the hope that they will mark your acceptance of your materialization in the shrine and your union with our happy world and its happy people,” the Squeal person said.
Asha turned and handed the globe to the attendant she had decided to call “Eenie” and the staff to “Minie” and turned back to accept the garments from the third Squeal person. “I think I like you best of all,” she said, “though I
shouldn’t show it. You’re like the three kings of the Orient in the fable, or more like the noble suitors for the hand of the princess, and I don’t know what would happen if I chose one of you. Maybe you would be my consort, but what kind? Ceremonial? Physical relations, if that’s possible? Or a sacrifice? I’ve got to have more information, and you aren’t likely to give it to me, and neither are Eenie or Minie.”
She turned and put the garments on the bed. She’d like to put them on as a sign of independence and a feeling of regaining some measure of control, but it would certainly be misinterpreted as a decision for her third suitor.
When she turned around the three of them were moving toward the door. She followed them closely and before the door could close she had slipped out of the room into the large, formal entrance hall. The three suitors turned, as if paralyzed by surprise to find her there. She moved slowly but determinedly to the tall vase in the center of the room. None of the suitors made any move to stop her. Perhaps that would have been as unthinkable as her action had been unpredictable.
Ignoring them and the doors to the outer world beyond, Asha studied the designs around the top edge of the vase, which rose to her waist. In raised figures in blue against a white background were stylized drawings. One resembled the Machine receiver. It was empty. In the next the receiver had a figure in it. Human or humanoid, it could have been her or a Squeal person. In the third, the figure was stepping down from the fountain, with other figures gathered around it. In the fourth, the figure, accompanied by two others, was ascending a ramp into a building. In the fifth, two figures were leaving the building side by side. In the sixth, they were standing together in the receiver. In the seventh, the receiver was empty.
Or was it the first, as she had come around to where she had started? Or did it matter? Was this a cycle that the Squeal people thought repeated itself endlessly? She had no doubt that these designs described what she had experienced, as if some long-dead potter had foreseen the future. Or, more likely, that these people had built this tradition into their culture in an attempt to neutralize the magic—and maybe their terror—of the Machine. Surely no true transportee had appeared in the lifetime of their civilization, but stories get handed down the generations until they get embodied in myths and beliefs, maybe reinforced by the frauds she had speculated about before.
But that final design was troubling. There was barely room in the Machine for one person, much less two, even if one of them was a small Squeal person. And even if two could squeeze in, she knew nothing could follow. There was no way for the Machine to work in reverse, no way to make herself and her chosen consort, whoever it was, disappear. Or walk out of the Machine unchanged.
Asha turned and went back toward her chamber. The door swung open as she approached, like the decision she would have to make soon, and locked with a click behind her, like the probable result.
* * *
She spent the next day questioning Eenie and Minie about the Machine in the plaza outside, Squeal mythology, and the suitors, but speculation seemed to be foreign to them, and Asha desisted when she saw that her efforts to make them respond were making them uneasy and maybe, if that was possible, unhappy. Asha felt guilty about introducing doubt into their sunny worlds, as if she were the serpent in the Garden of Eden, even though she suspected that some dark truth lay hidden beneath the surface paradise. Maybe she would be the one to reveal it. Or maybe she was it.
She continued to search the mirror/receiver for some indication that this world had entered the space age and was somehow connected to the Federation and its network of nexus points that made interstellar travel feasible. When she grew tired of looking for spaceships or the broad expanse of landing areas or the massive construction facilities that would be necessary to support a space-travel industry, she turned to her Monster and the Princess puzzle, laying out strategies that reminded her of her own predicament. But who was the Monster and who was the Princess? And then, each time she approached a solution, she wiped out her own calculations.
In between she sampled more of the Squeal food, moving past the baked foods to the fruit. She liked the sweetness of the purple balls and the tartness of the green, wrinkled grapes, but the bitterness of the red, sliced globes was a taste she would have to acquire if she were around long enough. She hoped that wouldn’t happen. She allowed Eenie and Minie to continue to bathe her and had gotten used to their marveling at the outward evidences of gender.
Then the three suitors returned. This time they were without their headdresses, revealing the beginnings of a growth of hair, like a dark fuzz on the top of their normally hairless heads, and their gowns had turned into skirts, leaving their chests bare. They seemed more muscular than she would have imagined, more muscular, certainly, than Eenie and Minie, who had smooth, supple chests. And they had more gifts.
The one with the silver skirt moved his head in the gesture that Asha had identified as respect or recognition of her position and presented a silver gown like the one it had worn the first time they entered, but perhaps more resplendent with fancy blue panels and something like lace around the neck and hem. “For your grand moment,” the Squeal person said. Or maybe the squeal and whistle meant “ceremony,” “coronation,” or “ascension.”
“I hope it fits,” Asha said, and handed the gown to Eenie.
The second suitor held out a length of silver links. In each link had been set a blue gem, or glass shaped to look like a jewel. “To adorn your eminence,” the suitor said, “when your greatness receives its proper recognition.”
Asha took the necklace or belt—it seemed too big to go around her neck and too small for her waist—and handed it to Minie. The attendants seemed overwhelmed with joy. “It looks pretty swell,” she said.
The third suitor held out a pair of slippers, one silver, the other blue. “To carry you to your destined place,” it said.
“I hope they don’t fit,” Asha said, and turned to put them on the bed. When she turned back they were standing in the same place, as if waiting for some response. “Look,” she said. “I’m sorry, boys—for I think that’s what you are or are turning into in some kind of Squeal world hermaphroditic process—but I just can’t make up my mind. You’ll have to come back.” And she said to herself, “And I’m not looking forward to that, because I think then you’ll come without your skirts, and I think you’ll have developed genitalia that I don’t want to see or even think about what they mean.”
After a moment they turned and left, watching more carefully this time that Asha didn’t follow. The door clicked behind them, and Asha knew she was locked in again and that she would have to find an answer before their next arrival.
She turned once more to the mirror/receiver. Once more she studied the city into which the Machine had delivered her. She knew it was the city because she could always find the plaza with the fountain and the Machine elevated at its center. This time the city was dark, with just a few scattered lights. Asha had seen night scenes before, but the receiver had never let her look at the sky. She could have told a great deal about her situation if she could have seen the night sky, but either that control had been blocked or it didn’t exist.
She was thinking about that when she noticed a bulky figure, so much unlike the elfen size of the little people, emerging from one of the buildings on the other side of the fountain plaza. “Tordor,” she said, and then she realized that it could not be the Dorian who had accompanied the pilgrimage on the Geoffrey. But it was a Dorian, and she knew how she was going to save herself.
CHAPTER FIVE
The powerful thunderstorm slowed and stopped. The disturbing sound from the red sphere faded away, and Riley heard a different sound behind him. Riley turned. It was Rory, shivering with cold or terror. Riley thought it was terror and felt a moment of sympathy for this massive creature enduring ancient dreads to follow him, or to pursue his own search for knowledge.
Rory and his people may have had good reasons for avoiding this place w
hen it stormed. Aside from the powerful forces of the storm itself, the resonations of the red sphere were enough to stir superstitious awe. Clearly the structure was built around the sphere, perhaps to contain its power, perhaps to silence its otherworldly voice, perhaps to imprison it so that it could never ascend back into the sky from which it had come. Clearly the sphere was the ship that had brought the Machine’s engineers to this world to build the receiver and its secret compartment in the heart of the sacred pyramid.
But now, and for many long-cycles into the past, the roof had fallen, and the sphere was getting its revenge. Because it should not be here. It should have returned the engineers to their home world, or sent them on to their next project. Why hadn’t it? Had they succumbed to some alien disease, here on this planet and this spiral arm of the galaxy, far from their origins and the biology that brought them to sapience and their mastery of technology? Or, since they had been to many alien worlds and survived their alien biologies, had the pyramid builders of that time, a million long-cycles ago, discovered them as they emerged from the sacred pyramid and massacred them for their transgressions, overwhelming their weapons with sheer numbers and reptilian ferocity?
Whatever the reason, the engineers of the Machine had not returned, and their indestructible ship had been left behind, standing here in what was then a desert, as a reminder to these reptilian people of the gods who had descended from the sky, who had wielded great power and done great deeds, and who had died or been slain. Rory’s ancestors must have been filled with terror and perhaps guilt, and perhaps it was from this mixture of guilt, sacrilege, and climate change that began their decline. This chariot of the gods, immune from the ravages of time and nature’s violence that affected everything else, might yet spawn more gods. Or maybe it would attract vengeful gods in vehicles like this to destroy them. Hide the evidence. Shield it from some all-seeing eye.
