Here, where the moon and the sun were so enormous, earthtides were detected even by the most insensitive.
He felt sick at his stomach. Either the sucking of his blood had been accompanied by an injection of some poison or he would have to reaccustom himself to the quivering of the land.
He tried to sit up and found that his hands and feet were tied.
The girl was gone.
Apparently she was not as friendly as she had first appeared. She had not seemed anxious about him then because she knew he was unable to hurt her.
He did not blame her, since he was a stranger and she would have been a fool to have approached him without caution. Perhaps she would not have been a fool, though, if she lived in a world where human beings were friends and murder and war were unknown.
That she had bound him showed that she did not live in such a utopia.
He sighed. It was too much to expect of any world that human beings should all love and trust each other. As on Earth, so here. So every place, probably. Fortunately, Ishmael did not have to be in a Utopia or seeking one to be at ease.
He was not at ease now, of course. But he felt relieved and even optimistic. He was not the only human being in this world, and once he learned the girl's language, he would get answers to some of his questions.
Ishmael smiled at her as she expertly butchered a double-nosed monkey-bear beast. While she worked, he inspected her closely. She wore a large white comb of some ivory-like substance in her hair, which was as long and free and black as any maiden's of Typee. Her ears were pierced to hold thin rings of some jet-black stony material in each of which was set a large dark green stone. This stone bore in its interior a bright red object that looked like a spider.
Around her neck was a ruff of short feathers of many colors, and around her waist was a thin, semitransparent belt of tanned leather. On the lower end of the belt were bone hooks which supported a kilt that ended just above the knees and was of the same material as the belt. Her sandals, of a thick dark brown leather, encased feet with four toes, the little toe having been exiled by edict of Evolution.
Her figure was slim. Her face was definitely triangular. The forehead was high and wide. The enormous luminous green eyes were shadowed by eyebrows excessively thick and black but arched by nature. The lashes were tiny spears. The cheekbones were high and broad but still less wide than the forehead. The lower jaw angled inward, ending in a chin which he would have expected to be pointed but which was rounded. It was the chin that saved her from ugliness and carried her off to beauty. The mouth was full and pleasant, even when she began to bite off pieces of the animal's fat.
Ishmael, having seen many savages who ate raw meat, and having himself indulged, was not repulsed. And when she offered him a large piece of meat, he accepted with thanks and a smile.
Both ate until their stomachs were packed rightly. The girl found a stone and cracked open the animal's skull and dug out the brains and ate this. Ishmael might have accepted her offer to this, if he had been starving. But he shook his head and said, "No, thanks."
Apparently shaking the head meant to her a positive, because she started to feed him. Ishmael, sensitive to the contrary way of alien people, understood his error at once and nodded. She looked puzzled, but she withdrew the food.
There was no disposal problem, he saw. She had only to carry the bones and other matter to the nearest plant and beat with her hand on the plant. Within a few seconds, a creeper emerged from a small hole in the stem and wrapped itself around the remains. Other creepers, as if notified by some vegetable telegraph, slid out of other holes and also enfolded the carcass.
The girl tore off six pods and punched two and drained one into Ishmael's mouth. During this procedure, the creepers ignored them. He supposed that this was because they had been given meat and blood and so had spared the giver. Nevertheless, the water numbed both him and the girl for about fifteen minutes. During this time, if any predator had appeared, it could have had them with no more effort than it took to leisurely gnaw away upon them.
When he was free of his paralysis, Ishmael tried with rolling his eyes and squirming his body to indicate that she should untie him. She frowned, very prettily, he thought, and sat for a while considering his desires. Then she arose and, smiling, cut the intertwined grasses with which she had bound him. He arose slowly, rubbing his hands and then bending over to rub his feet. She backed away, the knife in her hand, but after a minute decided that she must go all the way or not at all. She put the knife into a scabbard of leather on her belt and turned her back to him.
He climbed upon a plant leaning at forty-five degrees to the ground and looked out over the jungle. As far as he could see, there was vegetation except on the top of some seemingly very high buttes in the distance. The whole forest shook as if afflicted with fear. He himself was tired of the eternal quivering and the faint, but definite, anxiety and slight nausea resulting therefrom. Apparently it did not bother the girl; she must have been born to this form of quaking.
Everywhere except to his right was jungle. On that side was the dead sea, expanding and contracting with the semblance of life.
The air sharks were gone. Far to the west was a broad reddish tinge which he supposed was another of the drifting clouds of tiny objects. With them would come more of the monstrous creatures of the air and perhaps more of the sharks.
The great red sun had rolled some distance down the sky, but it still had a quarter of the heavens to go. The heat had increased, and he felt thirsty again. He dreaded drinking when it meant helplessness for a quarter of an hour. Moreover, what would the cumulative effects of the narcotic be? So far, he had not noticed any headache or particular sluggishness or other results.
He looked down toward the girl. She had climbed into a giant leaf which, hammock-like, was suspended between two thick-boled plants. She was lying down, obviously preparing to go to sleep. He wondered if he was expected to stand guard while she rested or if she just took it for granted that he would crawl into one of the leaves near hers and also sleep. If she had not bothered to inform him of what was expected, then she was not worried. But he could not understand such unconcern. This place held enough known terrors. What of the ones he did not know?
Before lying down to face the question of to dream or not to dream, he looked around again. The utter alienness of the too-dark blue sky, the Brobdingnagian and blood-red sun, the salt-thick sea, the shaking land, the bloodsucking palsied vegetation and the air aswarm with floating animals and plants gripped his heart and squeezed it. He wanted to weep, and he did so.
Afterward, he thought about where he could be. The Rachel had been sailing on the nocturnal surface of the South Seas in 1842, and events indicative of unnatural forces had manifested themselves. And then, as if the sea had been instantly removed, the ship had fallen.
As if the sea had been removed. What if the sea had been taken away, not by magic but by evaporation? By Time's evaporation?
Ishmael had been a lowly member of the crew of a whaling ship. But that did not mean that he was only a sailor. Between voyages, he was a school teacher and, wherever he was, he read much and deeply. Thus he was acquainted with the theory that the sun would, some day, millions or even billions of years from now -- from then, rather -- cool from white-hot to red-lukewarm and then become a cold dark cinder. The natural loss of orbital energy would bring the earth closer to the sun. And the moon would draw nearer and nearer to the earth until the mutual attraction, building up, would tear both celestial bodies apart.
Another theory, exactly the contrary, stated that the tidal friction of moon and earth would cause the two bodies to move more and more apart. This theory, according to the graybeard who advanced it, had to be the correct one, and he had proceeded to "prove" it by mathematics. Evidently his mathematics were wrong, or something had happened to interfere with the progression of natural events. Perhaps during his long history man had acquired powers
which had enabled him to tamper with even such seemingly untamperable phenomena as the orbits of planets.
Was he indeed on the Earth of the far far future? Had the Rachel sailed through a momentarily weakened spot in the fabric of Time or through some conduit of the cosmos, which, operating shutter-like, had opened to take in the Rachel?
He was convinced that he was on the bottom of the dried-up South Pacific. The dead sea was all that was left of the once seemingly boundless waters. And the shaking and swelling earth was no fit place for most life. The majority of animals had deserted the ground, filling the area above the ground with aerial fish of various sorts.
Far from feeling even more lonely and alienated with this theory, he felt greatly heartened. The man without a theory or a dogma is ship without sails or rudder. But he who has a theory or a belief has something wherewith to steer by and to sail close-hauled against the wind if need be. He can ride out the roughest of storms and stay clear of shoals.
That he might be on Earth, and not on some planet of some star so distant that no Earth eyes could see it, encouraged him. It was not the Earth he knew, and if he had had a choice, he would perhaps have gone back in Time, not ahead. But he was here. He had not had a home, except for the planet itself, for years; and if he could make himself at home in the forecastle of a whaling ship or among the cannibal Typees, he could try to make a home here.
He climbed down cheerfully and crawled into the leaf-hammock next to the girl. She raised to look at him and then turned her back and apparently went to sleep. There were other leaves above them to hide them from air sharks, but what about the great cockroaches -- he fondled his slightly wounded ear -- and who knew what other larger and more fearsome carnivores?
What about them? he thought and soon was asleep.
On awakening, he drank more water from one of the pods which the girl had torn off earlier. The sun had now one-eighth of the heavenly arc to go. The heat had increased slightly. The moon had rolled over the eastern horizon like a Titan's bowling ball. At the speed it was going, it would overtake the sun again and both might descend the horizon together.
The girl gestured, and he followed. They crawled around and pushed aside plants until she found breakfast. This was a paralyzed beast which may have been the descendant of the house cat Ishmael had known. Its head could have been Tabby's, but its body was serpentine and the legs were excessively long and thin. The fur was long and shaggy and barred with white and black.
The girl waited until the creeper had withdrawn from the cat's jugular before she stabbed it through the throat. Why she should wait, he did not know. Perhaps there was some sort of mental communication between sentient flesh and semisentient vegetation here. Or perhaps she was merely observing a rule which, if broken, would result in an attack by the plants.
There were many things which he did not understand. But he was glad that he was with her for more reasons than that she was human company. She knew how to fare in this difficult world, and she also seemed to know where she was going. He went with her, since she did not object, and as they traveled northward, he learned her language.
The sun eventually abdicated below the horizon, and a black sky with strange constellations came into succession. The moon, like the death's head of a god, rolled down the heavens. It was so gigantic that Ishmael took a long time getting used to the feeling that it was dropping upon Earth and would crush him. He learned to tell when the large earthtides, following the moon, were coming. He hated these, because they increased that always present -- if slight -- nausea.
The long, long night was at first hot, then comfortable, then, near the end, cold. He shivered, for he had only a sleeveless shirt and sailor's bellbottoms; his shoes had been carried off while he slept by, he presumed, cockroaches. Namalee, the girl, wore little to protect her from the cold, but she did not seem to suffer at all, being like a naked Patagonian in that respect. It was inevitable that he proposed they sleep with their arms around each other so he could keep warm. She refused, just as later she refused him when he tried to kiss her.
By then he understood her language enough to know at least the name of the place from which she came and why she was here. And he also understood why he was not to touch her.
She was Namalee, daughter of Sennertaa, ruler of the city of Zalarapamtra. Sennertaa was the jarramua, which meant king but could be more closely translated into English as the grand admiral. He was also the chief priest of Zoomashmarta, the great god, and superintendent of those who spoke for the lesser gods.
The city of Zalarapamtra was far to the north, halfway up a mountain which Ishmael suspected had once been the undersea half of a South Pacific island. There Namalee lived in a crystalline palace carved by stone tools and by acid secreted by beasts under the guidance of the founder of the city, the demigod Zalarapamtra. She was one of the twenty-four daughters of Sennertaa, who had ten wives. She was a sort of vestal virgin whose chief duty it was to go out with a ship on its maiden voyage to bring it good luck.
Ishmael did not comment on her failure.
She did not seem to be downcast about that. But it was only because a far greater tragedy had obliterated the comparatively small one of the destruction of her ship and its crew.
Several days before the Rachel had fallen out of the empty skies, Namalee's ship had met another whaling ship from her city.
The other ship had hailed them, and its captain had come aboard. It was evident that he had horrible news, because his skin was pale and his eyes were red with weeping, and he had applied ashes mixed with grease on his hair and had gashed his breast with a knife and had covered with a mask the face of the little god of the ship.
Namalee had thought at first that her father or mother or the only son of the family had died. The captain's news was far worse than that. The city of Zalarapamtra had been destroyed, and most of its inhabitants killed, in a few hours in the middle of the long night. The Purple Beast of the Stinging Death had done it. Only a few had escaped on ships, and one of these had brought the news to the captain of the whaling ship. He had sailed around and around in his grief until he had found another ship to which he could tell the news.
Tears ran down her face, and she had to hide her face behind her hands for a while before she could continue.
"This Purple Beast," Ishmael said. "What is it?"
"There are fortunately very few," she said. "The half-god, the founder of our city, Zalarapamtra, killed the great Purple Beast that owned the mountain where the city now stands -- stood. It is vast, bigger than that tremendous but harmless beast through which we and our ships fell. It trails many thousands of thin tentacles which sting men to death. And it drops eggs which explode with great noise and ruination."
Ishmael lifted his eyebrows at this.
"I am indeed sorry," he said, "that you lost your family and your nation in such a short time and in such a manner. Tell me, are we going north because Zalarapamtra is there, and you hope to find some survivors and start rebuilding the city?"
"First I have to see for myself what happened," she said. "Perhaps it is not as bad as the captain said. After all, he fled the city during the destruction. He only surmised that everybody had been killed and that the city was totally destroyed.
"In any event, other whaling ships will be returning, and these will be carrying mostly men but each will have one of my sisters. We can make obeisance to our chief god, and promise to obey him better in the future so he will not allow such destruction to come again. And we will elect a new Grand Admiral, and we virgins of Zoomashmarta will take husbands and bear children for the future."
"And your ship was speeding back to Zalarapamtra when mine fell like a wooden star from the heavens and destroyed your vessel," Ishmael said. "I would have thought that blow would have been the last. It's a wonder you have kept your sanity."
He thought about her story for a while, feeling a great pity for her. She was, for all she knew, the last of her famil
y and she might be the last of her nation before the story was ended.
"This kahamwoodoo," he said, using the name which, translated, meant the Purple Beast of the Stinging Death, "this kahamwoodoo must truly be gigantic. Its tentacles must be very long, too, if they can probe into every room of the city, which you say is carved out of rock and goes deep into the mountain. Surely, though, some must have been able to avoid the stinging death."
"They may have," she said, "but there are some things I did not tell you about the kahamwoodoo because I took it for granted that you knew. And I should not have done so, since you are not even of this world, if what you tell me is true."
"It is true," Ishmael said, smiling. He did not blame her for her doubts. If, when he had been sailing with Ahab, he had met a young woman who claimed to have been propelled from the past, would he have believed her?
"The kahamwoodoo, according to the stories told by the priests and by the grandmothers, is often accompanied by smaller beasts. These are of various kinds and travel on top of the great beast. When the great one kills, he is sometimes robbed by the smaller, though they dare not take too much. And he does not bother these fellow travelers unless he becomes too hungry or they annoy him. So, you see, the small beasts would have gone into the rooms of the city to kill what the great beast missed."
They were lying on two leaves side by side and over which was a thick canopy of interlacing leaves and vines. Ever since the huge red sun had dropped into the slot of night, she had been particular about having a heavy cover of vegetation over them. She was especially cautious when they prepared a place to sleep. Ishmael had asked her why, and she had replied that there were a number of reasons. She described some of them, and he had trouble getting to sleep thereafter and staying asleep.
The Wind Whales of Ishmael v4.0 - rtf Page 3
