Old Venus

by George R. R. Martin

  That said, I preferred the comfort of the flying sled to the rawness of the wild world below. This way I had time to consider and plan, though I must admit my considerations and planning were not accomplishing a lot. It was more as if wheels were spinning inside my head but wouldn’t gain traction.

  Besides, let me be entirely honest. The woman was why I wanted to remain. I was smitten. Those green eyes were like cool pools and I wanted to dive right into them. I wanted to believe there had been some kind of connection on her part, but considering my current appearance the only person or thing that might love me was a hog that had mistaken me for a puddle to wallow in.

  I can’t say how long we flew, but I feel certain it was hours. I know that exhaustion claimed me after a while, the cool wind blowing against me, me snug in my seat. I might have felt better and stronger, but I had swum in the cold ocean, pulled myself from a hot mud pit, climbed a great tree, and fought a great fight, so I was tired. I drifted asleep for a while.

  When I awoke the sun had dipped low in the sky, and so had we. We were coasting down between large gaps in the great trees. We came to trees so huge they would have dwarfed the redwoods of home. There was even one with shadowy gaps in it the size of small caves.

  That’s when I saw that nearly all the trees had large gaps in them, from head to foot. It was part of their natural construct. As the sun finally set, we flew into one of those tight wooden caverns, Devel parked his airship, and we stepped out.

  The night was dark as in the inside of a hole. No moon was visible. What stars there were made a thin light. But then, as I stood there looking out of the gap, soaking in the night, an amazing thing happened. It was as if there was suddenly dust in the air, and the dust glowed. I was confused for a moment, then some of the dust landed on me. It wasn’t dust at all, but little bugs that were as silver as the flying sled, shinier. The entire night was filled with them. They gave a glow to everything, bright as the missing moonlight.

  I should pause here and jump ahead with something I later learned. There was no moonlight because there was no moon. This world was without one. Of all the things I had trouble getting used to, that was the one that most pained me. No bright coin of light coasting along in the night sky. In place of it were glowing insects, lovely in their own way, but they could not replace in my mind the moon that circled Earth.

  Jerrel pulled a length of dark cloth from inside a container in the craft, fastened it to the top and bottom of our cavern. It stuck to where she put it without button or brace or tack or spike. The cloth was the same color as the tree we were in. I realized immediately, that at night, and perhaps in day at a decent distance, it would appear to be a solid part of the tree. We were concealed.

  There were cloaks inside the craft’s container, red and thick. Jerrel gave Devel one, me one, took one for herself. She turned on a small lamp inside the craft. The source of its power I assumed was some kind of storage battery. It lit up the interior of our cavern quite comfortably.

  Jerrel broke out some foodstuffs, and though I couldn’t identify what she gave me, except for a container of water, I lit into that chow like it was my last meal. For all I knew it was. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad, either.

  Before long, Devel lay down and pulled his cloak over him and fell asleep. I was near that point myself, but I could tell Jerrel wanted to talk, that she was interested in me. She began with a few simple questions, most of which I couldn’t answer. I told her about the great ocean liner and what had happened to me, how I thought I might be in a dream. She assured me she was real and not a dream. When she laughed a little, the way she laughed, sweet and musical, it assured me my ears were hearing a real voice and that my eyes were seeing a strange and rare beauty.

  Jerrel tried her best to explain to me where I was. She called the world she knew Zunsun. She took a slate from the craft with a marker, drew a crude drawing of the sun, then placed her planet two places from it. I knew enough basic astronomy to know she was talking about the planet we called Venus.

  I learned there was only one language on Zunsun, and everyone spoke it, with varying degrees of accent according to region. I told her about the moon I missed, and she laughed, saying such a thing seemed odd to her, and it was impossible for her to grasp what it was I so sorely missed.

  After a time, she opened the back of the sled and took out a large container of water. She also found a cloth and gave that to me to clean up with. I was nervous wiping myself down in front of her, but as she seemed disinterested, I went about it. Running water through my hair and fingers, wiping myself as clean as possible with what was provided. When I was nearly finished, I caught her eye appraising me. She was more interested than I had first thought.

  I don’t know why, but Jerrel took me into her confidence. Had Devel been awake, I don’t know she would have. But I could tell she trusted me. It was an immediate bond. I have heard of and read of such things, but never believed them until then. Love at first sight was always a romantic writer’s foolishness to me, but now I saw the idea in an entirely new light, even if it was the light from a battery.

  “Tordo has taken our half of the talisman,” she said. “The other half is in the city of the bird-men. Once it was whole, and its powers gave the bird-men a great advantage against us. Our people warred constantly against them. We had no real land to call our own. We moved among the trees, for we couldn’t defend ourselves well in a direct fight against the bird-men, not with them having both halves of the talisman and aided by wings.”

  “Where does it come from?” I said. “What does it do?”

  “I can only speak of legend. The halves have been separated a long time. One half was with our people, the other with theirs. It is said that in the far past the two tribes, weary of war, divided the talisman. This was not something the bird-men had to do, as they were winning the conflict, and we would not have lasted. But their warrior-king, Darat, felt we could live together. Against the advice of his council, he gave our people one half of the talisman and kept the other. Divided, it is powerless. United, it was a dangerous tool of war. No one remembers how it was made or of what it was made, or even what powers it possesses. When Darat died the tradition of peace carried on for many years with new rulers, but then the recent king of the bird-men, Canrad, was of a different mind. After many generations he wanted the lost power back.”

  “And one of your people, Tordo, betrayed you?” I said.

  Jerrel nodded. “He was a priest. It was his job to protect our half of the talisman. It was kept in a house of worship.”

  “You worship half of a talisman?”

  “Not the talisman. The peace it gives us. Peace from the bird-men, anyway. There are others who war against us, but they are less powerful. The bird-men could be a true threat. It surprises me that Canrad has taken this approach. The peace between us had worked for so long.

  “What we are trying to do is stop Tordo before he delivers our half of the talisman. My father, King Ran, sent us. We did not want to alarm our people. We thought to overtake the thief swiftly, as we got news of his treachery immediately, Tordo’s and that of the lesser priest, the one who was with him in the flier. But it turned out Tordo was prepared for our pursuit. His actions hadn’t been of the moment, but were long prepared. He had the winged men waiting. An assistance given him by King Canrad. Tordo knows how my father thinks, knew he would try to catch him with as little alarm as possible by using a small force. He knew this because Tordo is my father’s brother, our uncle.”

  “Betrayed by family,” I said. “There isn’t much worse.”

  “We could go back and raise an army, but it would be too late. Two days and he will be in the city of the Varnin, and they will have both pieces of the talisman, and all of its power.”

  “Seems to me, that being the case, you should have flown all night.”

  Jerrel grimaced. “You may be telling the truth about being from another world.”

  “You doubt me?” I asked.
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  She smiled, and it was brighter than the light from the battery. I melted like butter on a hot skillet.

  “Let me show you why we do not fly at night. Why no one in his right mind does.”

  She took hold of the cloth she had placed over the entrance to the tree cave, tugged it loose at one edge, said, “Come look.”

  I looked, and what I saw astonished me. The sky was bright with the glowing insects, thicker than before. Their light showed me the sky was also full of great batlike creatures, swooping this way and that. They were the size of Conestoga wagons, but moved more lightly than the flying sled. They were snapping and devouring the shiny bugs in large bites, gulping thousands at a time.

  “Fly at night, they will make sure you do not fly for long. We call them Night Wings. They rule the sky from solid dark until near first light, then they go away, far beyond the trees and into the mountains where they dwell.”

  “This means your uncle has to stop for the night as well,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she said. “When the Night Wings depart in the early morning, we will start out again, hope to catch up with them. They don’t have a tremendous lead, but it’s lead enough if they are able to arrive at the city of the Varnin and my uncle delivers the talisman.”

  “Were you and your uncle ever close?”

  “Close?” she said. “No. He was not close to my father. He felt he should have his place of rule. My guess is he hopes to do just that under the agreement of Canrad of Varnin. He would rather rule with a cloud over his head than not rule at all.”

  “I would like to assist you. I have a good sword arm. I can help you stop your uncle. I pledge my allegiance to you.”

  Jerrel grinned when I said that.

  “I accept,” she said. “But Devel must accept as well.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I said.

  “For now, let us rest.”

  We took our cloaks, stretched out on the floor of our wooden cave. I tried to sleep, and thought I would have no trouble, exhausted as I was. But I merely dozed, then I would awake thinking I was fighting the waters of the Great Atlantic, only to find I was indeed on Venus, sleeping in a tree, and sleeping not far away was the most beautiful and enticing woman I had ever known.

  I was up when Jerrel and Devel rose.

  It was partially dark, but some light was creeping through the cloth over the gap in the tree. Jerrel pulled it loose, let the beginnings of early morning seep in.

  Jerrel and Devel moved to an area of our cave away from me and whispered. As they did, Devel would glance at me from time to time. His face was a mixture of emotions, none of them appeared to be amused.

  After a moment Devel came to me, said, “Jerrel trusts you. I feel I must. Her judgment is generally sound.”

  “I assure you,” I said, “I am trustworthy.”

  “Words are easy, but you will have your chance to prove your loyalty,” he said. “Don’t let us down.”

  “Did I let you down in the fight?”

  “No. But what we face from here on out will be much worse. It will try all of us.”

  “Then put me to the test,” I said.

  We flew away from the tree and into the morning sky. As we went, the sun grew large and the sky grew bright. The glowing bugs were long gone to wherever they go—some in the gullets of the Night Fliers—and the hungry bat things were gone as well. We sailed on into the bright light and before long it was less bright and the clouds above were dark and plump with rain. Finally, the rain came, and it came hard and fast and began to flood the seats on the craft.

  Devel guided our flying sled down and under the lower limbs of the trees. We dodged in between them swiftly, and close to limbs that for a moment looked like inevitable crash sites. But he avoided them, flicked us through clusters of leaves, then down under a series of trees that were smaller in height than the others, yet wide and numerous of branch with leaves so thick the rain could hardly get through. It was as if a great umbrella had been thrown over us. As we went, the sky darkened more and the rain hammered the trees and shook the leaves; random drops seeped through. Then came the lightning, sizzling across the sky with great gongs of thunder. There was a great crack and a flash, a hum of electricity, and a monstrous limb fell from one of the trees.

  The lightning, as if seeking us out for dodging the rain, flicked down through a gap in the larger trees and hit one of the smaller ones just before we glided under it. A spot on the limb burst into a great ball of flame and there was an explosion of wood. It struck the front of the craft, hit so hard it was as if a great hand had taken hold of the front of the flying machine and flung it to the ground.

  Fortunately we were not flying high at the time, but it was still a vicious drop. Had it not been for the centuries’ buildup of loam from leaves and needles and rotting fruit to cushion our fall, we would have burst apart like a tossed china cup.

  We smacked the ground hard enough to rattle our teeth. The machine skidded through the loam like a plow breaking a field. It went along like that for a great distance beneath the trees, then hit something solid that caused us to veer hard left and wreck against the trunk of one of the smaller trees.

  It was such an impact that for a long moment I was dazed. When I gathered my thoughts and put them into some reasonable shape of understanding, I examined my surroundings. I was in the middle seat of the flying sled, Devel ahead of me, Jerrel behind. But she wasn’t. She was missing. I struggled out of my seat, got up close to Devel. He wasn’t moving. He couldn’t. He was dead. A short limb jutting out from the tree had been driven securely through his chest, bursting his heart. His body was painted in blood.

  I fell off the crumpled craft, landed on the ground, and started to crawl. When I got enough strength back to manage my feet under me, I searched around for Jerrel, screamed her name.

  “Here,” she said. I turned, saw her rising up from behind a pile of leaves and branches. She was scratched up, but from where I stood she looked well enough, all things considered.

  When I got to her she surprised me by taking me into her arms, clutching me to her.

  “Devel?” she asked.

  I gently freed myself from her embrace, shook my head. She made a squeaking noise and fell to her knees. I squatted beside her, held her as she shook and cried. As if to mock us, the sky grew light and the rain stopped. The world took on a pleasant, emerald glow.

  I was still astonished to find that at death all that was done in way of ceremony was that the dead were placed on the ground. I assumed that in the humid air of Venus, aided by insects and internal decay, bodies would soon lose their flesh and find their way into the soil. But it was still disconcerting to see Devel pulled from the machine by Jerrel, stretched out on the soil to be left. Jerrel wept over him, violently, then she was through. She left him, as she said, to Become One With The All. I convinced her to stretch his cloak over him though she thought it was a waste of material. I know how this makes her sound, but I assure you, this was custom. I guess it was a little bit similar to some American Indian tribes leaving the corpses of the dead on platforms to be consumed by time and elements.

  We traveled forward. The sky had completely cleared and the storm had moved on. We could hear it in the distance, roaring at the trees and the sky. I don’t know how long we walked, but finally we came to a clearing in the wilderness, and in the clearing were mounds of giant bones. Some were fresh enough that stinking flesh clung to them, others had almost disappeared into the ground itself. Teeth gleamed in the sunlight. In the distance the dark rain clouds moved as if stalking something, lightning flashed and thunder rolled and the wind sighed.

  “It’s a kind of graveyard for the great beasts,” Jerrel said, looking around.

  It was indeed. It went on for what I estimate to be ten or fifteen miles long, a half mile wide.

  We had brought some supplies from the crippled flying sled with us, and we found the shade of some very large and well-aged bones, sat down in the shade th
e bones made, ignored the smell from stillrotting flesh, and ate our lunch. It was an odd place for a meal, but our stamina had played out. We sat and Jerrel talked about Devel. It was minor stuff, really. Childhood memories, some of it funny, some of it poignant, some of it just odd, but all of it loving. She talked for quite a while.

  When our strength was renewed, we continued. I guess we had walked about a mile among the bones when we found her uncle’s airship. It was blackened and twisted and smacked down among a rib cage that looked like the frame of a large ship. The man I had seen before, the one who had been driving the craft, was still in it, though some creature had been at him—had actually sucked the flesh from his head and face. But it was him. I could tell that, and if I had any doubts Jerrel dismantled them. She drew her sword and cut off his fleshless head and kicked it into a pile of the bones.

  “Traitor,” she said. I saw then not only the beautiful woman I had fallen in love with but the warrior, and it frightened me a little.

  “The question,” I said, “is where is your uncle? Wait. Look there.”

  A little farther up, among the bones, were the wrecked bodies of several bird-men, blackened and twisted and scorched by fire.

  “The lightning hit them same as us,” I said. “Maybe your uncle was killed.”