THE TWILIGHT DANCER

by Ardath Mayhar

  I deactivated the anti-grav sled and let it sink wearily to rest on the hot sand. It held rock and soil samples, shallow cores, all my equipment and supplies, and my only weapon. Not that this was supposed to be used as a weapon, of course. Once a world was scanned and declared free of predators, Techs are not armed.

  All I had was the laser that I used for taking rock samples and cores. By jury-rigging this with some primitive alterations, I had made it useful, though not very accurate. Only that had allowed me to delay the attackers for long enough to escape their rush.

  Inflating the sand-colored shelter, I set the solar still and got out enough freeze-dried food to make a light meal. I was too hot and weary to eat much, but I needed strength to continue my flight.

  As the sun went down, a long, jagged shadow reached toward me from the heights to the west, laying a notched pattern across the ochreous sands. In time it swallowed up my camp, and the temperature dropped abruptly. The relief from the terrible heat was enough to make me relax, and I closed my eyes with relief.

  A mistake. When I opened them again, I could see, on the edge of the horizon, the "inhabitants," whom I had disturbed in their dormant state. Imagine the ugliest grasshoppers possible. Cross them with the biggest cockroaches imaginable. Arm them with yellow chitin, give them mandibles capable of munching rock like taffy candy, and add a set of arms tipped with saber-like claws.

  Our scans had dismissed them as dormant insects, which I suppose they were. However all the other insects found in this arm of the galaxy have been timid, though hardy, and far smaller. The scans had declared there to be no inhabitants here, no predators, meaning we needed no armaments. They were dead wrong.

  These things seemed as intelligent as anything I had met in my experience as a first-in exploration Tech. They were also mean. Anything intelligent, waking out of a sound sleep at the wrong time of the year to find alien creatures on its doorstep, realizes its danger and takes immediate, concerted action. These creatures did just that.

  I had been taking a rock sample in a notch in the cliffs. My laser cut through the stone easily – right into a mass of sleeping insects. A dozen sets of many-lobed eyes brightened simultaneously, filled with instant hostility, and before I could run they were piling out to destroy me.

  The sled saved me. It was nearby, with all my stuff aboard. I hopped on, set the solar engine on high, and got the hell out. The things were already chewing off hunks of rock and slinging them at me with the power of projectiles. I gave them a beam from the laser tool, which brought down a rockfall and scared them enough to let me gain some distance. The next bunch to follow melted in the needle of light I swept across them.

  While the sled climbed the red sandstone ridge beyond which the desert dropped into leagues of nothing, I did what I could to make my rock tool into a weapon. When the sled reached the top of that ridge, I looked back, and they were coming. A swarm, just dots in the distance, was bobbing toward me, very fast. I didn't want them to get any nearer, so I chose the desert as my best option.

  Now I wondered about that. The map across my knees had been made from the air. Distances seem unrealistically short from up there, obstacles sometimes are invisible, and the direct route to the station across the waste might be thirty miles, as the map asserted, or it might more probably be nearer fifty.

  I was exhausted, and the sled had barely kept its charge from the sun level with its expenditure of energy. It would take hours, plugged into the supplementary power pack, to recharge it.

  The things were still coming, I knew in my bones, but there was nothing I could do about it, right now. I was too tired to crawl, much less run, and I couldn't leave the sled, anyway.

  I slid backward into the shelter, which fitted me like a sort of extended sleeping bag. My head was at the opening, allowing me to watch the back-trail. All detail had been swallowed up in shadow, now, and only the top of the eastern ridges held a hint of rose from the sunset. The first stars were popping into the darkening sky. Aesthetically, it was a lovely view. I cursed it fervently.

  I had the laser beside me, its butt comfortingly solid at my elbow. Before going to bed I had done some more tinkering with it. Maybe the damage it did originally would make my pursuers cautious, but I had an eery feeling that they might have thought things over and made plans of their own.

  I nodded, my eyes closing. I jerked them open and looked down the dusky reaches the sled had covered. A film seemed to obscure my vision, and I crawled out of the shelter again, trying to see more clearly in the twilight. Something moved back there ... not the bugs, I thought. There hadn't been time for them to come so near.

  The last light left the ranges, and the sky went dark. Incredible stars blazed down from sheer black space. Alhazred had no moons, but those stars gave a shimmering glow to the landscape that turned it ethereal with luminescence.

  There! I saw motion, moving toward me. I grasped the laser and watched intensely. Then my hands relaxed and my mouth opened with amazement.

  Silver-gray wings flittered in the starlight. Those were not small wings but multiple, valley-spanning ones, curving wide, rippling like silk in the freshening breeze of evening. They seemed to rise, grasping the sky itself, then to droop back to sweep along the desert floor. Wings of what? Force? Energy?

  This was something unlike any being I had seen, yet it was dancing, there on the desert, making the twilight magical and terrifying. It moved slowly toward me, looping backward as much as it swooped forward.

  Now I could see that those many wings all were part of the same creature, which was manipulating them as a dancer does filmy scarves. They formed patterns, extending the motion in many directions, glimmering in the tenebrous light. The being danced toward me and paused, as if sensing my presence.

  For a moment everything went still. Even the breeze that had been scattering particles of sand across my field of vision paused. My eardrums popped as if with lessened pressure as we regarded one another, the dancer and I, across impossible gulfs and unbridgeable differences.

  Fear lanced through me, and I jerked up the laser. The beam entered the being at its center, and the thing went wild with joy. Sparks shot through the webbed stuff making up its body, danced along veinings and lacy structural elements until all those looping, swirling wings were ablaze with motes of golden light. The dancer spun faster, a whirlwind of energy and ecstasy.

  I backed into my shelter and watched helplessly. I had not meant to harm the thing – my action had been a reflex. Still, I would have thought my weapon would do more than intoxicate it.

  Then I heard the sounds, the chittering and scruffling of Bugs moving. They were very near – those things were FAST.

  Sparks from the rippling wings were dripping onto chitinous shapes moving now below the dancing being, and as each spark fell it seemed to seek out a Bug. The yellow chitin would glow hotly for an instant, then it would split open with a pop and a sizzle. Every time, a Bug disappeared forever.

  The Dancer did not tire, spinning like a tornado, now, on its narrow toe, its wings dropping fire onto the waves of approaching Bugs. There seemed to be enough sparks to go around, for not one of the insects got through that protective rain.

  The drops were still falling when I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. From time to time I would wake a bit to see the wings of the Dancer surrounding my camp, still swirling, rippling, dripping fire, as the thing danced through the night.

  That was something to see, those great twinkling wings rising and falling, their filmy spans obscuring the stars. Even when I woke at last the dance still went on, though the growing dawnlight was drowning it with its stronger rays.

  I could see no sign of Bugs, living or dead. If any survived, they must have fled for home. Any that died were not to be found ... perhaps the flaming drops melted them away entirely.

  When I started the sled again in full daylight, I set out slowly, thoughtfully. It is forbidden to kill intelligent native inhabitants of any world we explore. Th
e Bugs were intelligent, I am certain, but that is not going into my report. I disturbed a nest of giant insects, which chased me out of my way and almost killed me. That is what will appear officially.

  I wonder if Arnold has found anything similar. But if he doesn't mention such a discovery to me, I am certainly not going to bring up the subject. The Owners don't like problems, and I don't intend to bring any to their attention.

  THE GIFT

  "You know I don't like such things. Go without me, dear." Even as she spoke, Helen knew her sister wasn't really paying attention. The girl was holding up her costume, examining her reflection critically. Nothing but her Gypsy dress could find a spot in her mind, Helen knew.

  She tried again, touching her shoulder. "I don't know the Raymonds... they're your friends. I never liked parties, especially masquerade parties, the silliness and the costumes and the noise. Do go without me, Maura. You'll be with Jonathan. It isn't as if you must go alone."

  Maura whirled, making the bright layers of skirt swirl about her. "You're alone too much. Reading! Writing! Brooding and morosing!"

  Helen laughed helplessly. Her sister could always crack her up with her invented words. "I live alone just so I can do all that reading and writing and morosing without interruption. I like all the things you never did like. Why can't you believe it? And now you have your husband persuaded he must help you `get me out of myself.' What nonsense! Only when I'm at work am I truly `in myself.'"

  Helen did not mention the particular thing that disturbed her, among many about this party. The Raymonds had just received an inheritance of ancient artifacts their uncle had managed to pilfer from one of the digs he helped to conduct. Though well-qualified as an archeologist, the man had been very slack as to ethics. It was the thought of such precious artifacts in private hands that disturbed her.

  She didn't particularly like the Raymonds, anyway. Their new wealth had gone to their heads. Their very old house had been renovated, ruining the very things that had made it historically valuable. The depredations of the renovator were either ridiculous or hideous. Better never to have been wealthy at all than to be that sort of nouveau riche.

  She said nothing to her sister, however. Maura took everyone at his own evaluation. To have been invited to this festivity delighted her, for she was a shameless social climber. Now she turned to Helen with her `I'm a poor orphan child – be good to me' expression. It had always worked in getting her way with Helen, and it didn't fail now.

  Being for adults only, the party began at nine. At a quarter after eight, Helen checked herself in her mirror. Though she hated dressing up in any form, she had to admit that she looked stunning in her black velvet gown, the only formal thing she owned. It was cut medieval style; she had added a rope of pearls to her thick braid of inky hair and a wide golden belt that tied in a knot and dropped a pair of ornate tassels down the front of the skirt. If she called herself Mary Stuart, she didn't think anyone at the function would know enough history to object.

  It was unusual for her to own anything so formal, but it had been purchased for a reading of her poetry on the occasion of winning the Pratt Award and had hung uselessly in her closet ever since. She had not agreed to go to such an occasion afterward, though she had won more prestigious and rewarding literary prizes, since.

  The touch of the velvet brought back the reading in one detailed flash. She hated that gift of hers when it made itself known in such ways. Reliving her – and sometimes other people's – past could be frightening.

  Maura and Jonathan arrived just in time to walk with her, two blocks to the Raymonds'. To arrive in costume, cramped into their ancient VW, would be ridiculous.

  The autumn night was warm, but a brisk wind was ruffling the leaves along the gutters. The moon, almost at the full, winked above the whipping branches of oaks and elms. A perfect night... Helen recalled trick-or-treating with her small sister in years long past. They had roamed the dim streets safely, then. Now only the fact that they were three adults kept them from being at risk.

  The Raymond house stood in the center of a huge lot ... at least five acres ... surrounded by a formal garden studded with oaks and hickories, beneath which Indians had probably camped when they were saplings. Their porch was lighted with a row of Chinese lanterns, and the double doors were open. A motley crew of costumed figures occupied the wide entry-hall, which in southern fashion had been turned into a living-room.

  Maura and Jonathan (both as Gypsies) were lost almost at once in the crowd. Helen found herself in the clutches of Elissa Raymond, who squealed like a teen-ager and led her about the rooms on the first floor, introducing her to the guests. Helen realized at once the real reason why Maura and Jonathan had been invited, though she responded as gracefully as she could manage to people impressed at meeting the winner of the country's foremost prize for literature.

  "You simply must meet our local poetess" (the term grated on Helen almost unbearably). "She has won all sorts of literary prizes, and her books are being taught in colleges!"

  The uncomprehending but awe-stricken responses made her uncomfortable. Poets were evidently very strange beasts, indeed, to Elissa's peers.

  "We particularly wanted you to be here," her hostess gushed, "because tonight we intent to unveil Uncle Stanley's collection. You have written about such things, and we felt it would be interesting to you. You can probably tell us such fascinating stories about them."

  "I have studied archeology a bit," Helen admitted. "But I'm no expert. I really feel that such artifacts should be in museums, where true scholars can study them."

  The subtle dig didn't penetrate Elissa's veneer. She piloted Helen round and round until she felt like some sort of ocean liner in the grip of a particularly determined tugboat. The appearance of refreshments gave her a chance to catch her breath and to have a moment with Maura.

  The younger woman was starry-eyed. "The girl with the red hair and the elf costume that almost isn't there at all?" she whispered. "That's a starlet! And all the local bigwigs are here, too. Mr. Prentice from the bank and Doctor Chadwick and even Representative Hallock. I never thought I'd be asked something like this, Helen. Thank you so much for coming... I think they asked Jon and me just so we'd bring you."

  Helen found herself almost reconciled to her own discomfort. It was seldom, nowadays, that she could do something to make Maura happy. Jon took care of that most efficiently.

  All too soon, the tables and trays were cleared away. The Raymonds took their places; it was obvious an announcement was on its way. Elissa cleared her throat, and the babble of talk died away. "Tonight we have a special treat for all of you. It's particularly appropriate that it's Hallowe`en, because these things were found in a tomb!

  "To make it even more interesting, we have with us Helen Woodheath, whose works of poetry and prose have been concerned to a large extent with such ancient treasures. I hope she will..." the woman glanced sideways at Helen and giggled girlishly... "write a poem about tonight."

  Sidney Raymond gestured up the wide stairway. "We have the artifacts displayed in the blue bedroom, just upstairs. If you'll follow us, you will be able to file through in a double line. Do take all the time you want and ask anything you like... we may not be able to answer you, but Miss Woodheath might."

  Helen sighed and took her place beside the couple as they ascended the steps. She hated things like that! Then she forgot her immediate reaction as a wave of ... something ... poured down from the room at the top of the stairs.

  She felt almost sick. The gift! This was the sort of situation that brought it out fully! She clasped her hands hard over the knot of her gold belt, holding her quivering stomach in order with both hands and will power.

  The host and hostess conducted her through the blue bedroom first, as she might have to answer questions about the contents. She found herself staring in amazement at a long table filled with svelte figurines, some with two heads, some with none; rings and bracelets and necklaces of obscure gemstones
and mother-of-pearl were arranged artfully on velvet and satin.

  The sense of antiquity was almost as tangible as smoke, obscuring her vision. She felt dizzy and reached out to brace herself against the table. Her hand touched something cool.

  She jerked it back, but Elissa was already saying, "That is the one we intend to give to the museum, but we would like for you to wear it tonight, just to please us. Then you can give it to whichever institution you think would get the most out of it."

  Helen stared down at a necklace made of green and blue apatite beads. A single strand made a loop large enough to slip over the head. From the sides of that, two loops of the linked beads fell, to be caught up together at the center of the bottom loop. At that point, there was a polished disc of mother-of-pearl, which shone with many colors in the subtly controlled lamplight.

  It was beautifully made, its design sophisticated ... and she recognized it. Others like it had been found at Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia. She had been reading about the excavations there since the conclusions based on them had begun to find print. The oldest human city found, so far. She shivered.

  "I really can't take the responsibility..." she began, but Elissa held up her hand.

  "Nonsense! We insist!" she said. "Besides, what could possibly happen to it here in this lovely little town, surrounded by your friends and neighbors?"

  Your friends and neighbors! Helen thought, but she said nothing. She was caught, but she felt an unexplainable reluctance to touch the cool stones, to slip the loop over her crowned hair and about her throat.

  The low-cut neck of the gown allowed the stones to touch her skin. She could feel the weight of the mother-of-pearl pendant below her collarbone. The room began a familiar blurring, shifting ... she forced herself to focus on her hostess.

  Elissa led her to one side of the room, and people began to come in. There seemed to be too many of them, more than there had been downstairs. And they looked odd.