Panglor

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "Pangly," said Alo. "Let's go out and see if the sun is setting yet. I saw a terrific sunset last night."

  He blinked as though seeing her for the first time, and opened his mouth. Alo turned to go to the airlock before he could think of anything to say, so he cleared his throat and followed. LePiep yelped; he turned to catch her. Then, with Alo, he went outside.

  The sun appeared to be coming up over the horizon. "Nuts," Alo said. The sun was pale yellow again, and the sky surrounding it was pitch-black, with a sprinkling of stars. "Hey, look at that," she said, pointing out over the plain. What had been vast desolation was now grassland, rolling lazily into the distance. Panglor looked on the other side, to the tumbled land. There, too, life had sprung into being—grasses and shrubs and small trees inlaying and changing the entire visual character of the terrain. The air was scented with chlorophyll.

  Panglor breathed deeply and stood silent a minute, letting the sight saturate his senses. He turned back toward the plain. "Uh-oh," he said. "Look at that."

  Half a kilometer out on the plain, a silver spaceship was materializing, like a ghost ship appearing out of the ether. It was the Deerfield.

  Chapter 9

  "Um," said Alo, moving closer to him. "That's them, huh? They're gonna be awfully mad."

  "More than just mad, I think," he said, shading his eyes and squinting. Deerfield lay on its side, a giant silver cylinder gleaming in the sun. A dark spot appeared as a hatch was opened, and a man came out. He went back in, and soon half a dozen men spilled out. They milled around, agitated, and several of them pointed in the direction of The Fighting Cur. "Something else I think," Panglor said, "is that they're going to get here in about two minutes, and we'd better get the hell out of here before they do." He glanced at Alo, expecting to see fear. But she set her face determinedly and nodded.

  "Better play for time, until we can get an advantage," she said. "Wait a sec." She dashed into the ship. A minute later she came running out, with a totebag. "Food," she said, breathing hard. "Might get hungry."

  Panglor gave her a look of admiration. Then they ran down the ramp and into the rocky maze.

  "Slow—down—" he gasped, after trotting for several minutes.

  She fell back as he caught his breath. "I think they'll have trouble following us," she said, grabbing for his hand. That felt strange to him, and apparently it showed, because she let go of his hand and snagged a tool loop at the waist of his tunic. "Just keeping us together," she said cheerfully.

  The greenery that crowned the twisty path made the situation seem somehow less desperate—unthinkable that men could follow this way with assault or murder in mind. Panglor, in fact, believed they were safe as long as they kept moving. He did not feel so safe about where they were going. A course straight away from the ship might bring them right back to it, as far as he knew, but right now the terrain ahead looked deep and labyrinthine. Perhaps he should worry more about finding their way back when they wanted to return.

  Alo hummed as they walked. He glanced sideways at her and wondered at the change in her personality. "I think the planet's letting us get away with this," Alo murmured, looking around contentedly. They were skirting a pond of real water with several airfish gliding over it. The sun was zigzagging its way to the zenith.

  "Could be," he agreed, feeling mellow. "What's the matter, Peep?" The ou-ralot was squirming in his arms.

  "Hyol-hoop," said LePiep, and she leaped from his grasp and ran along the bank, radiating excitement.

  "Hey! Damn—LePiep!"

  Alo touched his arm reassuringly. "It's okay, I think. She won't stray. She knows."

  Panglor clenched his hands nervously. "Stay close," he called unhappily.

  LePiep looked back, ruffling her furry wings. "Hyoop!" she cried agreeably. Then she turned and marched forward, leading the way. Alo chuckled and clenched the bottom of Panglor's tunic.

  * * *

  They halted, facing a low escarpment. The easiest-looking path was to the right, along the base of the escarpment. But the ou-ralot, heedless, scampered directly up the cracked and layered face. "LePiep—don't!" But the command was in vain. The ou-ralot went straight to the top, and there was nothing to do but follow her up. They made the climb cautiously, and from the top they followed level ground for a distance. The path ended at a low drop-off.

  "Pangly!" cried Alo. Before them was a wide, shallow basin. Along the right was tumbled landscape, and to the left was a glinting vapor-lagoon. On the lagoon's banks rested a grounded spaceship—a huge, rhomboidal oblong, greatly enlarged at both ends. Its hull was emerald silver in color. One end of the ship was partially submerged in the pond.

  "Is it alien?" Alo said, awed.

  "Jeez." Panglor scratched his head. "Looks like it." He saw no sign of life. No reason to expect to. The ship looked as though it had made a hard landing; the hull had buckled and split on the underside. There was no telling if its inhabitants had survived—and no telling how long the wreck had lain there. "No one home, looks like, but we'd better be careful anyhow."

  "There goes LePiep," Alo cried, grabbing his arm. The ou-ralot capered down the slope toward the lagoon and the wrecked spaceship.

  Panglor leaped after her, scrambling on rocky footing. LePiep looked back, grinning, and with a toss of her head ran on.

  The dash ended abruptly at the foot of the slope. LePiep was poised by the lagoon, sticking her nose out, and within moments several large airfish drifted into sight and came over to regard her silently. She poked and sniffed, not quite touching noses with them, and then she peered up at Panglor in satisfaction. "Okay?" he said, bending to scoop her up, carefully, so that she could still face the airfish.

  "Hrruuu."

  The fish departed, moving their fins gently. "Lots of them over there," Alo said, pointing toward the ship. At least a dozen or more of the airfish hovered near the submerged end of the craft, and they were not the only sort of creature present. Someone or something resembling a man separated from the cluster of airfish.

  "What's this?" said Alo.

  Panglor made no immediate reply. He recognized the creature as the one he had glimpsed with LePiep, when she was lost. From a distance it looked like a man, but he soon realized that, although it was humanoid in appearance, the creature was no human. Perhaps this was the owner of the spaceship. The alien walked toward them—or perhaps floated; its movements were exceedingly graceful, and its robe nearly brushed the ground, so that its feet were invisible—and met them along the lagoon's bank.

  The being was as tall as a man, thin and spry, with facial features resembling a man's, though sharper. Its nose was a beaklike affair, and its square-pupiled eyes peered out from beneath large-boned brows. The alien bent right, from the waist, and then left, in a swishing movement—as though bowing, side to side.

  "Hwell-wee-trwullyoo-k-k-zhuum," the creature said.

  Panglor heard that, but also understood, "Greetings. I welcome you to my ruins, humble though they be. I trust they will suffice to provide hospitality to two shipwrecked, and perhaps forlorn, humans."

  Panglor met the creature's gaze warily. How could it know who they were? he wondered in astonishment. LePiep, however, emoted reassurance as she squirmed in his arms; apparently she trusted the alien. Well, she had met it before, and she had a good sense for whom to trust and whom not to trust—so, Panglor thought, he might as well follow her lead. He bowed forward in human fashion. "Greetings to you, too," he mumbled.

  Alo nodded. "Hi."

  The alien spoke again in its own tongue, which Panglor heard as, "Would you care to accompany me to my ship?"

  Panglor gazed curiously at the alien. He looked male to Panglor, at least by human analogy, and Panglor thought something else, too; he thought the creature was a Kili. Panglor had never seen a Kili—no human had—but he had seen artists' renderings, based upon artifacts found in Kili ruins, and this alien looked a lot like those renderings. That would be something—finding the first Kili ever
to be seen by humanity!

  "Sure," he said, answering the invitation. He nudged the ou-ralot in his arms and added, "This is LePiep."

  The alien again bowed sideways with a swish. "LePiep. Yes—we met earlier. My name is Tiki. May I ask yours?"

  "Oh—I'm Panglor," said Panglor. "And this is Alo."

  Alo smiled with surprising charm, and the alien bowed and swished again. Then he turned and led the way toward the wrecked spaceship.

  Alo whispered to Panglor, "I like him. I wonder what he is."

  Panglor grinned, nudged her, and hurried after the alien. "Say—ah—Tiki."

  The alien turned and looked at him serenely.

  Panglor squinted and said, gesturing self-consciously, "Ahm—say, aren't you a Kili?" He cleared his throat and flushed.

  Tiki stared at him for a moment. "I see what you mean," he said. His eyes lost focus.

  "What?"

  Tiki's gaze cleared. "Yes. I am. At least in the sense that you use the word. Kili." He bowed. Then he turned and started walking again.

  Panglor squinted, trying to figure out what that meant.

  "Hurry," said Alo, prodding him. "Keep up. Maybe he'll hide us in his ship."

  Oh, right. There was still Deerfield to worry about, wasn't there? "Good idea," he whispered back. "But I don't know what to expect from a Kili." Alo shrugged and tugged him by the arm.

  They approached the ruined spaceship beside the vapor-lagoon. With a flourish, Tiki ushered them to the entrance, the nearest of two large gashes in the angled underside of the hull, behind the enlarged front end. Tiki remarked, "The original entrance port has disappeared. The hull will no longer change structure to let us pass through." He sounded sad, as though a friend had left him. Panglor glanced curiously at him, and at the torn, yet smooth, edge in the ruptured hull.

  They entered a storage hold cluttered with boxes and machinery, then a short passageway. Panglor and Alo ran their fingers along the walls, touching the subdued metallic finish inquisitively, and briefly inspecting every object they passed. Tiki led them to the enlarged front end of the ship, and here the passageway dipped and opened into an enormous spherical chamber. Panglor stared up and turned around in astonishment. The entire inner surface of the sphere was studded with what looked like seats, oddly shaped tables, and instruments. "Damnedest thing I've ever seen," Panglor said. "What kind of gravity control do you have?"

  "None, anymore," said Tiki.

  "It's crazy," Alo said. "Is it for zero gravity?" She darted up the curved incline and ran down in a big arc testing the shape.

  "Before," Tiki said gravely, "we had selectable gravity against the inner surface, and we chose what we wished. And the shape, of course, changed as we wished." His neck twitched. "But none of that now. We had a rather difficult crash." He blinked somberly.

  "We crashed, too," said Alo.

  "Of course," Tiki said. "Many do. Would you like to sit? Can I bring you anything for refreshment?"

  "We have food," Alo said, holding up her totebag. She sat on an odd-shaped couch that was nearly level, glanced at Panglor, and patted the seat beside her. Panglor released LePiep to nose about and sat beside Alo. He took a sandwich and a bulb of juice and faced Tiki, who was drawing something for himself out of a small panel. A long stick, apparently food.

  "You mean other ships have crashed here?" Panglor said.

  "Oh my, yes," answered Tiki. "Did you imagine you were the first? I can take you to see other shipwrecks, if you like. Some of the finest ones are just a short walk from here."

  "You're joking," Alo said, munching.

  "Why would I joke with a guest? I don't have guests often—it's been a while since my last ones disappeared."

  Panglor scowled. "Disappeared?"

  "Just vanished, most of them. I've tried to organize shipwrecks into groups to work for the social betterment, and so forth, but it never works. Most of the people go crazy and just fade out or wander off, and that's the last you see of them. Usually it's the sane ones. That's why I'm here, still, and my poor fellows and keepers aren't."

  "What do you mean, that's why you're here?" asked Panglor.

  "Sorry, I thought you knew. I am considered unwell, almost not Kili. Mad. Never could follow it myself, though." Tiki turned his two eyes inward, crossing them for a moment, and then relaxed and bit off a piece of his stick. "I hope you don't mind my digesting while we talk. My fellows would not have approved, but then, they're not here anymore." He looked cross-eyed again, then gazed back at the humans.

  "You are humans. I have met some of your race-fellows. Actually a number of them have crashed here through the years, but the crews never were able to adapt. The place just didn't coincide with their conceptions about how things ought to be."

  Panglor cleared his throat uncomfortably. He waved his sandwich in the air, then took a bite and started to talk with his mouth full. Alo interrupted him. "How'd they get here?" she said. "How'd you get here?"

  "Why, the same way we all did, I imagine," said Tiki, brushing his sleeves. "Pulled right out of stressed space."

  "Stressed space?" said Panglor, wonderingly. He jerked his thumb upward. "We were brought down from orbit."

  "Were you, now? How interesting! Does that mean your people are exploring here again?"

  "Uh-uh. We got here by—well—never mind that. What about this planet. It acts just like, I don't know, a—"

  "Discontinuity," said Alo. "Like there's a discontinuity in the physical laws here, or surrounding the whole planet."

  "Well, really," said Tiki, spreading his hands and arms, "I think we can be more precise than that. After all, we're all here together, aren't we?" Panglor could have sworn that the Kili was manifesting embarrassment. How strange. "I think we can describe it," Tiki continued, "as a locus of many smaller discontinuities that naturally occur in the behavioral fabric of space, or, if you prefer, as an interference fringe of many aberrations in the wavefronts of spatial reality. You could define it as a zone surrounding the planet, or perhaps you could define the planet as an artifact of the zone itself. To be honest, I'm not sure that this planet exists at all, except as an interference effect."

  Panglor plucked at his teeth with a fingernail. "Yah?" He glanced at Alo, who had her eyes half closed, thinking. "So—" he said to Tiki, "how do all these ships happen to wind up here? They just pop in out of space?"

  "Like a big, natural capture-field," murmured Alo, blinking.

  "It seems to attract ships the way a gravity well attracts objects in unstressed space," Tiki said. "Or a counter-collapsing field in stressed space." He bit from his stick and chewed delicately.

  "So . . . so ships get caught like flies. Right out of foreshortening." Panglor felt a series of hot and cold flashes of fear—the uncertainty he felt in foreshortening, the terror that his ship would fail, would lose itself in limbo. "Maybe," he said, his voice trembling, "maybe space is full of planets—discontinuities—like this."

  "Loci. Interference patterns. No doubt you are correct. My sane fellows of the Kili have lost ships without explanation, and I have met others with similar problems. Still, I would hardly say that space is full of them. Rather, I think they are scattered about, and perhaps they cause eddies and undercurrents that draw straying ships to them in the stressed space."

  "Right!" Panglor said. "Of course!" He started to become excited; the fear was changing to an adrenaline rush. These loci, these interference patterns, could be like shoals in an uncharted sea. Perhaps they were irregular, perhaps they shifted; but if they could be known, they could be avoided. "Yeah! Yeah—hey, we ought to be able to detect these things and stay away from them." He jumped up and faced a startled Alo, then turned to a serene-looking Kili. He was bubbling with enthusiasm. He heard a whistle and turned to catch an excited LePiep in his arms.

  "What a discovery! This is where the lost ships are going!" He chuckled wildly; he could not believe his fortune. "Wait till we report this! They'll have to listen to us!" he exclaime
d. "They'll have to! My God, this could be the most important discovery in—"

  Alo interrupted him, tapping his arm. "Pangly," she said. "Pangly—have you forgotten? That's great, knowing all about this—this discovery. But how do we get back to brag about it? We're stranded here."

  "Why, we—" Panglor said, and his spirits sagged. She was absolutely right, of course. And it wasn't fair. "Ho-loo, ho-loo," mourned LePiep. Panglor sat down, utterly deflated.

  Alo sighed. "Don't worry, Pangly, we'll think of something," she said, patting him on the knee. She tickled LePiep under the chin, and LePiep's pleasure touched Panglor, relaxing him a little. Alo turned to Tiki. "How long have you been here? What's it like?"

  "Ah," said Tiki. "How long? Who knows? My friends the fish out there experience time more slowly than I, and I more slowly than many other folk. Why, there was one other madman I saw, who was neither of your race nor mine—who was mad enough to stay but too mad to enjoy it—and I saw him grow old and die, finally, poor soul." He crossed his eyes and became still.

  "What do you mean, he was 'mad enough to stay'?" Panglor asked, scowling.

  Tiki remained still, apparently not hearing Panglor's question. Finally Alo cleared her throat and Tiki suddenly stirred and said, "Madness, of course, makes it easier. My good but new friends—I have been here long, even by my own reckoning. I have seen ships appear, and sometimes disappear. And I have traveled, of course, but I have always come back."

  "Where?" said Panglor, startled.

  "Here, of course."

  "No, where have you traveled to? Around the planet, you mean?"

  "Oh, that. It's hard to say, of course. But I believe there is very little more to see in this world than I have seen already. If you travel far, you always return to your beginning. I think there is really not so much area here. Which makes me think it is not quite so much the real planet as it would seem." He rocked his head back and spoke as though his listeners were above him. "No, I have traveled to other discontinuity zones—elsewhere. I do not know where. Perhaps they are all linked. Sometimes there are voices . . . " He gazed wistfully upward.