I saw something white and semi-transparent-rather like ice. A great big thing, very long: a kind of box, an open box: and of a disquieting shape which I did not immediately recognise. It was big enough to put a man into. “Then I took a step back, lifting the lighted match higher to get a more comprehensive view, and instantly tripped over something behind me. I found myself sprawling in darkness, not on the carpet, but on more of the cold substance with the odd smell. How many of the infernal things were there?
I was just preparing to rise again and hunt systematically round the room for a candle when I heard Ransom’s name pronounced; and almost, but not quite, simultaneously I saw the thing I had feared so long to see. I heard Ransom’s name pronounced: but I should not like to say I heard a voice pronounce it. The sound was quite astonishingly unlike a voice. It was perfectly articulate: it was even, I suppose, rather beautiful. But it was, if you understand me, inorganic. We feel the difference between animal voices (including those of the human animal) and all other noises pretty clearly, I fancy, though it is hard to define. Blood and lungs and the warm, moist cavity of the mouth are somehow indicated in every Voice. Here they were not. The two syllables sounded more as if they were played on an instrument than as if they were spoken: and yet they did not sound mechanical either. A machine is something we make out of natural materials; this was more as if rock or crystal or light had spoken of itself. And it went through me from chest to groin like the thrill that goes through you when you think you have lost your hold while climbing a cliff.
That was what I heard. What I saw was simply a very faint rod or pillar of light. I don’t think it made a circle of light either on the floor or the ceiling, but I am not sure of this. It certainly had very little power of illuminating its surroundings. So far, all is plain sailing. But it had two other characteristics which are less easy to grasp. One was its colour. Since I saw the thing I must obviously have seen it either white or coloured; but no efforts of my memory can conjure up the faintest image of what that colour was. I try blue, and gold, and violet, and red, but none of them will fit. How it is possible to have a visual experience which immediately and ever after becomes impossible to remember, I do not attempt to explain. The other was its angle. It was not at right angles to the floor. But as soon as I have said this, I hasten to add that this way of putting it is a later reconstruction. What one actually felt at the moment was that the column of light was vertical but the floor was not horizontal-the whole room seemed to have heeled over as if it were on board ship. The impression, however produced, was that this creature had reference to some horizontal, to some whole system of directions, based outside the Earth, and that its mere presence imposed that alien system on me and abolished the terrestrial horizontal.
I had no doubt at all that I was seeing an eldil, And little doubt that I was seeing the archon of Mars, the Oyarsa of Malacandra. And now that the thing had happened I was no longer in a condition of abject panic. My sensations were, it is true, in some ways very unpleasant. The fact that it was quite obviously not organic-the knowledge that intelligence was somehow located in this homogeneous cylinder of light but not related to it as our consciousness is related to our brains and nerves-was profoundly disturbing. It would not fit into our categories. The response which we ordinarily make to a living creature and that which we make to an inanimate object were here both equally inappropriate. On the other hand, all those doubts which I had felt before I entered the cottage as to whether these creatures were friend or foe, and whether Ransom were a pioneer or a dupe, had for the moment vanished. My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call “good”, but I wasn’t sure whether I liked “goodness” so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat, and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played. For a second or two I was nearly in that condition. Here at last was a bit of that world from beyond the world, which I had always supposed that I loved and desired, breaking through and appearing to my senses: and I didn’t like it, I wanted it to go away. I wanted every possible distance, gulf, [1] curtain, blanket, and barrier to be placed between it and me. But I did not fall quite into the gulf. Oddly enough my very sense of helplessness saved me and steadied me. For now I was quite obviously drawn in. The struggle was over. The next decision did not he with me.
Then, like a noise from a different world, came the opening of the door and the sound of boots on the doormat, and I saw, silhouetted against the greyness of the night in the open doorway, a figure which I recognised as Ransom. The speaking which was not a voice came again out of the rod of light: and Ransom, instead of moving, stood still and answered it. Both speeches were in a strange polysyllabic language which I had not heard before. I make no attempt to excuse the feelings which awoke in me when I heard the unhuman sound addressing my friend and my friend answering it in the unhuman language. They are, in fact, inexcusable; but if you think they are improbable at such a juncture, I must tell you plainly that you have read neither history nor your own heart to much effect. They were feelings of resentment, horror, and jealousy. It was in my mind to shout out, “Leave your familiar alone, you damned magician, and attend to Me.”
What I actually said was, “Oh, Ransom. Thank God you’ve come.”
CHAPTER TWO
The door was slammed (for the second time that night) and after a moment’s groping Ransom had found and lit a candle. I glanced quickly round and could see no one but ourselves. The most noticeable thing in the room was the big white object. I recognised the shape well enough this time. It was a large coffin-shaped casket, open. On the floor beside it lay its lid, and it was doubtless this that I had tripped over. Both were made of the same white material, like ice, but more cloudy and less shining.
“By Jove, I’m glad to see you,” said Ransom, advancing and shaking hands with me. “I’d hoped to be able to meet you at the station, but everything has had to be arranged in such a hurry and I found at the last moment that I’d got to go up to Cambridge. I never intended to leave you to make that journey alone.” Then, seeing, I suppose, that I was still staring at him rather stupidly, he added, “I say-you’re all right, aren’t you? You got through the barrage without arty damage?”
“The barrage?-I don’t understand.”
“I was thinking you would have met some difficulties in getting here.”
“Oh, that!” said I. “You mean it wasn’t just my nerves? There really was something in the way?”
“Yes: They didn’t want you to get here. I was afraid something of the sort might happen but there was no time to do anything about it. I was pretty sure you’d get through somehow.”
“By they you mean the others-our own eldila?”
“Of course. They’ve got wind of what’s on hand . . .”
I interrupted him. “To tell you the truth, Ransom,” I said, “I’m getting more worried every day about the whole business. It came into my head as I was on my way here-”
“Oh, they’ll put all sorts of things into your head if you let them,” said Ransom lightly. “The best plan is to take no notice and keep straight on. Don’t try to answer them. They like drawing you into an interminable argument.”
“But, look here,” said I. “This isn’t child’s play. Are you quite certain that this Dark Lord, this depraved Oyarsa of
Tellus, really exists? Do you know for certain either that there are two sides, or which side is ours?”
He fixed me suddenly with one of his mild, but strangely formidable, glances.
“You are in real doubt about either, are you?” he asked. “No,” said I, after a pause, and felt rather ashamed “That’s all righ
t, then,” said Ransom cheerfully. “Now let’s get some supper and I’ll explain as we go along.”
“What’s that coffin affair?” I asked as we moved into the kitchen.
“That is what I’m to travel in.”
“Ransom!” I exclaimed. “He-it-the eldil-is not going to take you back to Malacandra?”
“Don’t!” said he. “Oh, Lewis, you don’t understand. Take me back to Malacandra? If only he would! I’d give anything I possess . . . just to look down one of those gorges again and see the blue, blue water winding in and out among the woods. Or to be up on top-to see a Sorn go gliding along the slopes. Or to be back there of an evening when Jupiter was rising, too bright to look at, and all the asteroids like a Milky Way, with each star in it as bright as Venus looks from Earth! And the smells! It is hardly ever out of my mind. You’d expect it to be worse at night when Malacandra is up and I can actually see It. But it isn’t then that I get the real twinge. It’s on hot summer days-looking up at the deep blue and thinking that in there, millions of miles deep where I can never, never get back to it, there’s a place I know, and flowers at that very moment growing over Meldilorn, and friends of mine, going about their business, who would welcome me back. No. No such luck. It’s not Malacandra I’m being sent to. It’s Perelandra.”
“That’s what we call Venus, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you say you’re being sent.”
“Yes. If you remember, before I left Malacandra the Oyarsa hinted to me that my going there at all might be the beginning of a whole new phase in the life of the Solar System-the Field of Arbol. It might mean, he said, that the isolation of our world, the siege, was beginning to draw to an end.”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Well, it really does look as if something of the sort were afoot. For one thing, the two sides, as you call them, have begun to appear much more clearly, much less mixed, here on
Earth, in our own human affairs-to show in something a little more like their true colours.”
“I see that all right.”
“The other thing is this. The black archon-our own bent Oyarsa-is meditating some sort of attack on Perelandra.”
“But is he at large like that in the Solar System? Can he get there?”
“That’s just the point. He can’t get there in his own person, in his own photosome or whatever we should call it. As you know, he was driven back within these bounds centuries before any human life existed on our planet. If he ventured to show himself outside the Moon’s orbit he’d be driven back again by main force. That would be a different kind of war. You or I could contribute no more to it than a flea could contribute to the defence of Moscow. No. He must be attempting Perelandra in some different way.”
“And where do you come in?”
“Well-simply I’ve been ordered there.”
“By the-by Oyarsa, you mean?”
“No. The order comes from much higher up. They all do, you know, in the long run.”
“And what have you got to do when you get there?”
“I haven’t been told.”
“You are just part of the Oyarsa’s entourage?”
“Oh no. He isn’t going to be there. He is to transport me to Venus-to deliver me there. After that, as far as I know, I shall be alone.”
“But, look here, Ransom-I mean . . .” my voice trailed away.
“I know!” said he with one of his singularly disarming smiles. “You are feeling the absurdity of it. Dr Elwin Ransom setting out single-handed to combat powers and principalities. You may even be wondering if I’ve got megalomania.”
“I didn’t mean that quite,” said I.
“Oh, but I think you did. At any rate that is what I have been feeling myself ever since the thing was sprung on me. But when you come to think of it, is it odder than what all of us have to do every day? When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting.”
“Oh, I dare say,” said I. “But that’s rather different. That refers to a moral conflict.”
Ransom threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, Lewis, Lewis,” he said, “you are inimitable, simply inimitable!”
“Say what you like, Ransom, there is a difference.”
“Yes. There is. But not a difference that makes it megalomania to think that any of us might have to fight either way. I’ll tell you how I look at it. Haven’t you noticed how in our own little war here on earth, there are different phases, and while any one phase is going on people get into the habit of thinking and behaving as if it was going to be permanent? But really the thing is changing under your hands all the time, and neither your assets nor your dangers this year are the same as the year before. Now your idea that ordinary people will never have to meet the Dark Eldila in any form except a psychological or moral form-as temptations or the like-is simply an idea that held good for a certain phase of the cosmic war: the phase of the great siege, the phase which gave to our planet its name of Thulcandra, the silent planet. But supposing that phase is passing? In the next phase it may be anyone’s job to meet them, well, in some quite different mode.”
“I see.”
“Don’t imagine I’ve been selected to go to Perelandra because I’m anyone in particular. One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications. I rather fancy I am being sent because those two blackguards who kidnapped me and took me to Malacandra, did something which they never intended: namely, gave a human being a chance to learn that language.”
“What language do you mean?”
“Hressa-Hlab, of course. The language I learned in Malacandra.”
“But surely you don’t imagine they will speak the same language on Venus?”
“Didn’t I tell you about that?” said Ransom, leaning forward. We were now at table and had nearly finished our cold meat and beer and tea. “I’m surprised I didn’t, for I found out two or three months ago, and scientifically it is one of the most interesting things about the whole affair. It appears we were quite mistaken in thinking Hressa-Hlab the peculiar speech of Mars. It is really what may be called Old Solar, Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I man that there was originally a common speech for all rational creatures inhabiting the planets of our system: those that were ever inhabited, I mean-what the eldils call the Low Worlds. Most of them, of course, have never been inhabited and never will be. At least not what we’d call inhabited. That original speech was lost on Thulcandra, our own world, when our whole tragedy took place. No human language now known in the world is descended from it.”
“But what about the other two languages on Mars?”
“I admit I don’t understand about them. One thing I do know, and I believe I could prove it on purely philological grounds. They are incomparably less ancient than Hressa-Hlab, specially Surnibur, the speech of the Sorns. I believe it could be shown that Surnibur is, by Malacandrian standards, quite a modern development. I doubt if its birth can be put farther back than a date which would fall within our Cambrian Period.”
“And you think you will find Hressa-Hlab, or Old Solar, spoken on Venus?”
“Yes. I shall arrive knowing the language. It saves a lot of trouble-though, as a philologist, I find it rather disappointing.
“But you’ve no idea what you are to do, or what conditions you will find?”
“No idea at all what I’m to do. There are jobs, you know, where it is essential that one should not know too much beforehand . . . things one might have to say which one couldn’t say effectively if one had prepared them. As to conditions, well, I don’t know much. It will be wa
rm: I’m to go naked. Our astronomers don’t know anything about the surface of Perelandra at all. The outer layer of her atmosphere is too thick. The main problem, apparently, is whether she revolves on her own axis or not, and at what speed. There are two schools of thought. There’s a man called Schiaparelli who thinks she revolves once on herself in the same time it takes her to go once round Arbol-I mean, the Sun. The other people think she revolves on her own axis once in every twenty-three hours. That’s one of the things I shall find out.”
“If Schiaparelli is right there’d be perpetual day on one side of her and perpetual night on the other?”
He nodded, musing. “It’d be a funny frontier,” he said presently. “Just think of its You’d come to a country of eternal twilight, getting colder and darker every mile you went. And then presently you wouldn’t be able to go farther because there’d be no more air. I wonder can you stand in the day, just on the right side of the frontier, and look into the night which you can never reach? And perhaps see a star or two-the only place you could see them, for of course in the Day-Lands they would never be visible . . . Of course if they have a scientific civilisation they may have diving-suits or things like submarines on wheels for going into the Night.”
His eyes sparkled, and even I, who had been mainly thinking of how I should miss him and wondering what chances there were of my ever seeing him again, felt a vicarious thrill of wonder and of longing to know. Presently he spoke again.
Perelandra Page 2
