A Star Above It and Other Stories

by Chad Oliver

  “I’m not going to walk out on it. That’s why I came back here. I’m going to write up precisely what I have discovered, leaving out nothing. There will be no secrets. I am going to tell our own people exactly what I have found. Hell, I’m giving them the secret of practically eternal life! What man ever did more for his people? If they don’t believe me, that’s their business. I’m giving them the chance. And I’m giving them the key that may one day unlock this culture, if they will only use it. You see, we made our big mistake in trying to impress The People with technological gadgets. They just don’t care about technology. Perhaps if we had tried something else—Shakespeare, poetry, art, music—they might have listened to us. I don’t know.”

  Frank shook his head. “You need a doctor.”

  Canady smiled. “Not any more, pal. And I’ll tell you something else. I hope everyone does think I’m cracked. I hope they dismiss my report and toss it in the trash file. My conscience is clear. I’ve found what I want. All I want now is to be let alone.”

  “You’re really going?”

  Canady walked over and sat down at his desk. “I’m going to write this report. It will take a couple of days. After that, I’m going out alone.”

  “To get a good heart?”

  “To get a good heart.”

  Canady assembled his notes and went to work.

  Frank Landis stared at him and ran his hand through his sandy hair. Almost desperately, he picked up two battery-powered sewing machines and went out into the snow to peddle his wares.

  VI

  The lakes and ponds were still frozen solid and the mountain streams were still glazed with ice. The barren black brush of the plains was still skeletal and gaunt against the drifts of silver snow and the winter winds still whined down the canyons and froze the sweat on your face into little drops and rivulets of ice.

  Yet the worst was over when Arthur Canady left the sphere and the camp of The People and set out alone into the wilderness. The snow-choked blizzards and the rivers of knife-edged winds had passed. The winter was resting, holding its own, waiting for the spring thaws and the return of green to the land. The gray winter skies had turned to cloudless blue and the great red sun was warm again on his back.

  You must feel that you are part of all life….

  It was a strange Odyssey and Canady felt that strangeness keenly. It was a quest for the intangible, a search for the unknown. Canady was a trained man and he felt competent to search for many things: success in a field he knew, material prosperity, the solution to a scientific problem. He was enough of a product of his culture to feel at home looking for gold or uranium or a prize set of horns to hang over an old-fashioned fireplace.

  But a good heart?

  That wasn’t so easy, Where did you look? How did you go about it? His scientific training got in his way. What was a good heart? It was a phrase he would have denounced as meaningless in a seminar discussion. It was mysticism. It was something for philosophers and theologians and politicians to kick around. It was fuzzy, slippery….

  You must look within yourself.

  He rode out across the white-coated plains, drifting with the yedoma herds that offered him meat and warm furs. He watched the tiny tracks that criss-crossed over the crust of the snow. He watched the great birds that soared high in the sky on motionless, splendid wings. At night he pitched his small tent in whatever shelter he could find. He sat before his tiny fire and watched the twin moons float down the cold arc of the stars.

  He rode into the far mountains, climbed the ageless rocks and stood with his head in the sky looking down upon the vastness of the land below him. He listened to the wind, rode through the whispers of the trees.

  You must believe, that is all.

  Perhaps he had help; he did not know. The Old Ones lived still in the high places, and perhaps they looked upon him with compassion. Canady felt a great peace growing within him, a peace he had never known in the cities of Earth. It was a hard life but he too became hard. He took a secret pleasure in the toughness of his body, in the sharpness of his eyes. He awakened with the sun, grateful for the life in his body, eager to see what the day would bring. Smiles came easily to his face and he was relaxed, free from worry.

  Why had his people thrown all their energies into bigger buildings, more powerful ships, more intricate engines? Why did his people spend all of their lives grubbing at jobs they detested, their greatest joys coming from a slickly gutless mediocrity on the tri-di set? What had they mistaken for progress, what had they sacrificed to that strange god? How had it come about that pleasure had become something to snatch on the run, between business appointments, between the soggy oblivion of sleeping pills?

  Progress.

  Could it be that true progress might be found on a simple pathway through the trees and not on a super freeway at all? Could it be that eternal life had always come from a kind of faith, from being close to the land and the world of living things?

  If you believe, if your heart is good, you will see the Old Ones. The guardian spirit will come to you. Then, my son, you will be one of The People—for always.

  Canady rode alone across the rolling plains and up twisting mountain trails. Winter lost its grip on the land and the streams leaped from their banks, fed by the melting snows. Patches of green came again to the lowland valleys and the first wildflowers poked up their heads toward the sun.

  When he thought he was ready, Canady turned and rode high into the mountains. The warm spring wind brushed at his face and he filled his lungs with it in a kind of ecstasy. He was at peace, with himself and with the world around him. If nothing else, he had found that much.

  He rode toward Thunder Rock to begin his fast.

  Thunder Rock thrust its dark, wind-scarred bulk up into the sky high above the timber line where the last stunted trees clung to their precarious holds on the face of the mountain. There was a small cave in the side of Thunder Rock, a cave that opened upon a level sheet of stone that extended to the sheer face of a black glass-smooth cliff. Standing on that shelf of stone, a man could look down on the rivers of clouds that wound around the lower peaks.

  Canady had tethered his mharu far down in a mountain valley where there was plenty of grass and water. He could see the valley from Thunder Rock, and once in a while he caught a glimpse of his mount, little more than a black dot on a stamp of green far below.

  He allowed himself a few swallows of icy water from a nearby snow-bank and that was all. He ate nothing. In the daylight hours he stood on the shelf of rock and looked down on the world, and at night he shivered in his cave. He had his fur robes but there was no material with which to make a fire.

  The air was thin and seared his lungs. His joints were sore and stiff. The days without food left him weak and giddy, and he looked down at the black dot of the mharu and wondered whether he would ever be able to climb down the mountain again. He was surprised to find that his mind lost none of its sharpness. In fact, it worked with an almost preternatural clarity, as though all problems were easy and all questions could be answered. He felt as though he were running a fever and he was reminded of the sensation of heightened awareness that sometimes comes with fever dreams. And then he remembered that when the fever was gone a man would wake up and everything that had seemed so clear would vanish like bubbles on the wind….

  The days and nights blurred together. He lay quietly in his cave and he had never felt less alone. It gave him an eery sensation to think that each man and woman of The People had once slept where he was sleeping, walked where he was walking, thought where he was thinking. There was no visible sign that they had ever been here but he could see memories of them in every stone, in every stain of dampness, in every tongue of sunlight that licked at the cold surfaces of the rocks. He sensed a continuity of life that he had never appreciated before, a linking together of living things in an endless procession over the plains and into the wild mountain ranges.

  On the fourth night, the rains came.
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  A sea of swollen clouds washed over the stars. For long minutes the moonlight gleamed on the edges of the clouds, setting them aflame with pink and silver light, and then the darkness was complete. There was an electric hush as the world held its breath.

  Then the lightning came, jagged white forks of frozen fire that flashed down from black cloud masses and hurled themselves with livid fury at the stolid bulk of the mountains. The thunder crashed on the heels of the lightning, splitting through the skies with a tearing, ripping explosiveness that tore the very air apart.

  Canady huddled in his cave, blinking at the savagery of the storm. The walls of the cave were white with the continuous flashing of the lightning, his ears roared with the brute power of the thunder.

  Thunder Rock!

  The rain came down in solid sheets, hissing on the ledge of stone, pouring in torrents down the cracks and crevices of the mountains. The stone shelf outside the cave became a puddle, a lake, and the water washed into the cave itself, soaking his feet.

  Canady stood up, his head almost touching the roof of the cave, He did not fear the storm. He ignored the water at his feet. He stared out into the raging night.

  The guardian spirit will come to you.

  His skin crawled. A prickling sensation ran up and down his spine. He narrowed his eyes, tried to see, The white flashes of the lightning were everywhere. The thunder beat at his ears.

  He felt them. He felt them all around him. He closed his eyes. There! He could almost see them—

  The Old Ones.

  Mighty, powerful, old when the mountains were young. And yet friendly, respectful, equals—

  Canady clenched his fists.

  He whispered the hardest prayer of all: “Let me believe! Oh, let me believe!”

  There was a long moment when nothing seemed to happen. Then, abruptly, the lightning and the thunder died away. The storm rolled off into the distance, muttering and grumbling to itself. There was silence except for the soft patter of the rain outside the cave.

  Canady opened his eyes. There was a sinking sensation in his chest. Had he failed? Was it all for nothing?

  Then he saw it.

  A great bird flew out of the darkness and perched on the rain-wet shelf of rock. He looked like a hawk, an eagle. He was a mighty bird, raven-black, bold eyes glittering in his head, great wings folded at his sides. There was nothing supernatural about him. Canady could see the drops of water on his feathers, hear the faint whistle when he breathed.

  And yet—

  The guardian spirit will come to you.

  The eagle walked toward the cave.

  Canady stepped forward to meet it.

  Suddenly, the cave was alive. He saw them now, all around him, glowing like creatures of light and energy. They touched him and they were warm. They seemed to have faces and they were smiling, smiling….

  Canady felt tears in his eyes, tears neither of happiness nor of sorrow, tears that came from an emotion too strong to be borne, too mighty to be named. He stood up straight as a man stands among his friends.

  And the night was dark no longer and the stars looked down on him from a bright and peaceful sky.

  VII

  The small gray metallic sphere lifted from the camp of The People but now it carried one man instead of two. It gleamed dully in the light from the great red sun. It hovered high above the surface of Pollux V, looking down on a world flushed with green. It paced the planet as the world rotated on its axis.

  It seemed a puny thing as it awaited the arrival of the mother ship from the CAS fleet of Earth, dwarfed by the vault of the heavens and the vast expanse of the land below it. One day it might return, but there were easier worlds for contact. And hidden in its tapes and papers and records it carried a secret no man would believe, a key that could have unlocked one of the hidden secrets of the universe.

  Frank Landis sat on his bunk, surrounded by his sewing machines and rifles and model steam engines. He fingered them each in turn, his blue eyes blank and staring, thinking about the crazy man he had left behind….

  And the man who had been Arthur Canady came down from Thunder Rock and rode out of the mountains onto the wind-swept plains. The land was green with the promise of spring, the promise of world renewal, the promise of budding trees and fresh grasses and air so clean you could taste it.

  His every sense was heightened, he was alive as he had never been alive before. His heart was a song within him. He knew that the wife of the great Mewenta would be stolen by the Telliomata to make room for him, and he knew that this was a good thing, a happy thing.

  The ship was not going home. He was going home.

  And when he rode into the village of The People there was a smile on every face, and there was a new tipi in the camp circle.

  And Plavgar came to meet him and raised his arms in welcome.

  And the Old Ones who walked at his side forever whispered to him as he rode, whispered down the winds and across the fields, whispered down from the free skies where the eagle flew, whispered to him alone—

  “Welcome, brother, welcome.”

  THE GIFT

  The swollen white sun drifted slowly down toward the horizon, more than eleven light-years from earth. Long black shadows striped the land. The shadows seemed alive, shifting with the strong winds that blew through the undulating grasses and stunted trees of the fifth planet of the Procyon system.

  On that vast windswept plain that stretched away to encircling mountains of naked rock, creatures moved. There were squat and heavy-footed grass-eaters, walking slowly in dense defensive clusters. There were sleek, catlike carnivores, drinkers of the wind, prowling in pairs waiting for the night.

  And there were manlike things that could not have been mistaken for men. Hairy they were, with long and powerful arms. They crouched around tiny fires in crude pithouses: round holes dug into the ground and roofed with branches and mud. They worked on their hunting spears and nursed their babies and told lengthy and intricate stories. Sometimes, they laughed. They were waiting for the winds to die.

  There was a structure on that plain, a shining alien thing that did not belong. It had been there for half a century, but it was an intrusion. It stood apart and alone, a giant gleaming hemisphere of unyielding glassite.

  Around that arching dome, the land was sterile. Nothing grew there and no animals ever came.

  Sealed inside the great dome, faintly visible through the thick glassite, there was a small city.

  People lived there: isolated, abandoned, forgotten.

  There were soft shadows in the city now, indistinct patches of fugitive shade thrown by the lowering sunlight that filtered weakly through the treated glassite dome. Soon, the shadows would be gone and the illumination would be even again.

  There was no wind, of course.

  The winds never blew in the city.

  Lee Melner ran through the pale Colony streets, his heart pounding. The evening shadows had dissolved under the steady thrust of the overhead lights. There was no cover. He simply had to run through the empty lanes, run as fast as he could, and trust to luck.

  He might not be seen.

  If he were seen, he might not be recognized.

  And if they did report him—

  Well, he would face that when the time came. He had to go.

  He turned in to the last street, an avenue broader than the others. He could hear chanting ahead of him in the Square. He slowed his pace, catching his breath. He eased along the smooth wall that lined the inner-city street, hugging it. His throat was dry. He trembled with excitement.

  Lee Melner had spent all of his seventeen years in the Colony. The dome-covered city was his world. It was a controlled world: gray, precise, safe, and stable. There were no surprises. There was no action. Even the seasons never changed. It was always the same temperature. There was no darkness. There were no storms.

  (Sometimes, when the lighting was right, he could see great sheets of water washing over the dome. Twice i
n his lifetime, there had been tremendous crashes of thunder so loud that he could actually hear them. Once, he had thought he heard the far whining of the wind. That, he knew, was probably his imagination.)

  There was nothing to do.

  Most of the time, except with Ellen, Lee was bored stiff.

  That was why he had to be in the Square tonight. It was not that he was particularly impressed by Edson Hewitt’s revelations. It was the color and motion and sound that drew him. It was the smells, the jostlings, the tang of the forbidden.

  It was something different.

  He pressed into the back of the crowd, losing himself. Nobody looked at him. Edson Hewitt was going full blast, and he held every eye.

  He stood there on a platform, his tall, thin body shrouded in the black cape he always wore. Four flaming torches burned at the corners of the platform; Lee could smell the acrid chemical smoke. A woman in a shimmering white gown stood behind him. Her hands were clasped as though in prayer. Her head, framed by a cloud of long unfashionable blond hair that seemed to glow in the torchlight, was tilted back. She was staring intently up at the high underside of the dome.

  Pretty corny, Lee thought. Just the same, it was effective.

  “Citizens!” Edson Hewitt boomed in his deep, stentorian voice. “It is not too late for men of good will. You must have faith!”

  “Faith,” chanted the crowd, right on cue.

  “The ship will come!” Edson Hewitt lifted his skeletal arms in supplication. “The ship will come again, but it is not enough just to wait and hope. We have had enough of waiting! We must take action!”

  “Action,” echoed the crowd.

  “There is no limit to the power of the human mind. There is no barrier that can stand against its force. No, my friends, the light-years are as nothing! We must project the purity of our thought. We will be heard! There will be an answer!”

  “Answer.”

  “The ship will come again. It may be out there now, out in the great darkness, listening. We must put aside all evil things. We must cleanse ourselves. We must be worthy. We must project, project, project! And we must do it together!”