Chichester Greenway

by Alton Saunders

  Chapter 16:

  ICE, SEA AND LIBRARIES

  Vonn and Akkri spent a carefree few minutes chasing one another around the pink-tinged crags and along the red-tinged valleys of cloud before gliding down to one of the circular turrets of The Golden Palace. It had a balcony all round it and there they landed and stayed for a while, staring down at a corner of the grey city that showed through a gap in the clouds. Lines of lights, red going away from them and white coming towards them, were moving slowly along the streets. What were they? In the dim light they could see an infra glow from the buildings.

  “Have we really been down there?” Akkri asked. The day had been so strange and intense. As with Vicky and Andrew, it had a dream-like quality; so much of it did not fit with any of their previous experience.

  “I know what you mean. I feel just the same way. Those two, Vicky and Andrew, they’re nice, aren’t they? I think we’re meant to keep in touch with them even if we do other things while we’re here. There were a lot of things they said which I didn’t really understand, though.”

  “Yes. I wonder what that school place is like? They seem to go there even though they don’t like it. What’s it for, I wonder?”

  “How about going and visiting them there tomorrow?” Vonn suggested.

  “Yes, let’s do that. I’m hungry. I didn’t think much of the food we had at Andrew’s house, did you? Do all Earth people have food like that? Let’s go and have some proper Vikan food, shall we? I wonder what the others have been doing?”

  They went down to the big main room that was sometimes a dining room, sometimes a lounge. Yask, Sumar and Viney had just come in, too, and the five of them sat down to a meal together.

  “We’ve all taken short trips to the surface while you’ve been away, everyone except Korriott, Tamor and Annilex, that is. They were working on something together,” said Viney. “It didn’t seem right to make contact with any other Earth people yet, though. You had to establish contact first, on behalf of the rest of us.”

  “We three went right up to the north of the planet,” said Yask. “It’s all frozen sea, terribly cold. And we saw a huge animal covered with white fur. It was bigger than any animal on Vika.”

  “And the sky was blue even though it was afternoon,” said Viney.

  Just then Toln, Bavilan and Annilex came in, followed shortly afterwards by the other members of the expedition.

  “I think we need to have something to eat before we hear one another’s stories,” said Korriott. “We’ve all got a lot of reporting back to do. It should be an interesting evening! And before we do that, we’ve something to show you!”

  After the meal she led the way along the main corridor to a flight of steps that went down to double doors made of polished wood. They opened as she approached and they saw in front of them a great hall they had not seen before, a very strange hall indeed. Around the outside was a wide pavement with chairs and benches; the walls were white, with lights at intervals along them, the ceiling curved and transparent, showing dark, ragged clouds with a few stars beginning to appear, but it was the centre that really caught their attention – a long rectangle of clear blue water.

  “It must be what Andrew was telling us about!” Vonn exclaimed. “We’ve got an indoor swimming pool!”

  “Well, let’s go back to the lounge so we can hear more about that and everything else,” said Tamor.

  Back in the lounge they settled themselves in a circle of chairs. “I think Akkri and Vonn should start,” said Annilex.

  Akkri tried to give a summary of the day’s events but he had to keep stopping to confer with Vonn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s really difficult. There were so many things I didn’t understand. It’s like trying to remember a dream.”

  “Just tell us anything at all,” said Toln.

  “All right,” said Vonn. “The skimmer dropped us off beside a road. The road was black with flecks of ultra. There was a terrible noise from the vehicles going along the road. I don’t know why they made that noise.”

  “And a terrible smell, too, not like the smell of the air out on the balcony here,” said Akkri. “The vehicles went along on wheels, like carts.”

  “The buildings we saw today were all extremely ugly,” said Vonn. “One of them had a smell of its own, different from the other smells.”

  “I can see why it’s difficult to talk about,” said Bavilan. “There’s just too much detail already, and there’s no way we can imagine the smells or the noise, because we weren’t there.”

  “And that was just one little corner of the city,” said Vill.

  “Tell you what,” said Ky, “let’s see how much of Akkri and Vonn’s experience is available to the rest of us.”

  They all settled back in their chairs. Akkri and Vonn found they were reliving, moment by moment, all that they had encountered, together with details they had not consciously noted at the time – the individual sounds of the vehicles, a sudden musical note of an ugly, rasping quality, that seemed to come from one of them, a pleasant flower-like scent as they walked past a lady with black, shiny circles fastened in front of her eyes. It was, if anything, even stranger than the day itself. When they came to Andrew’s road, they saw there was writing on a board high up on the first house. It read Chichester Greenway.

  Akkri felt exhausted by the time he came to their farewells to Andrew and Mrs Canadine and their launching off together to return to The Golden Palace. He opened his eyes and looked around. Vonn still had her eyes closed. She had a sad expression on her face, he noticed. There had been occasions on their journey from Vika when she had looked like that, too, he remembered. For some reason he had not wanted to ask her what it was about.

  Annilex broke the silence. “I can understand why we felt no one else should make contact yet. My brain is buzzing. So many new impressions. So much we don’t understand. It’s not just the surroundings they live in – you seem to have seen nothing beautiful all the time you were there – but even more the way the people themselves are, the things they are interested in, the things they do, the things they say. It’s very different from how we Vikans are.”

  “Andrew and Vicky and Mrs Canadine are kind and friendly, though,” said Vonn. She felt she wanted to defend their new friends.

  “But those three older boys weren’t,” said Sumar.

  “No. No, they weren’t. I don’t know what they wanted, but it was clearly something dangerous for Andrew and Vicky,” Vonn replied.

  “There was one thing I thought was beautiful,” said Akkri. “Do you remember when we were still out on the street with Andrew and Vicky, before we went into their house? That vehicle that came flying over, a great shiny silver vehicle making a roaring noise. I’ve never seen a shape like that before, but I thought it was really beautiful.”

  Ky nodded in agreement. As an architect he appreciated the artistry possible in practical designs.

  “And there were some little pink flowers by the entrance to Andrew’s house. They were beautiful, too,” said Vonn.

  “What are we to do with all this information?” Eedo asked. “There must be some purpose in it. Some purpose for us, I mean.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Ky. “This is difficult to put into words, but somehow I think each part of our experience is a model of everything else. For instance, our journey from Vika took the time it needed and then we arrived. We didn’t have to plan it at all. In the same way I think we will arrive at understanding in whatever time that needs. Let’s just allow the understanding to come to us when it will, just as everything else in our lives comes to us as we need it.”

  Vonn felt herself relax as Ky said that. She realised that she had been tense and anxious in a way she never felt back home on Vika. There was something about Earth and Earth people that was bringing out feelings she did not know she had. Yes, that was the real origin of her anxiety; it was anxiety about unknown thing
s in herself. They were set jangling by the multiple unknown things they were encountering on Earth. Set jangling like a school bell, she thought, then realised she had no idea what a school bell was, or even if there was such a thing.

  “The experiences of the other groups who went down to the surface today should be a bit easier to take in since they do not involve any contact with Earth people,” Korriott said. “I suggest we close our eyes while they are speaking and let our own vision of their experiences develop straight away.”

  Viney told how she, Yask and Sumar had travelled across land and then ocean until large chunks of ice began to appear, and shortly afterwards a continuous expanse of icy hummocks, blinding in the midday sun. Akkri’s eyes were closed but he closed them tighter to try to reduce the glare although he knew the brightness was in his own mind.

  They had landed on the ice at the northernmost point on the planet and had stood there for a few brief moments, feeling a wind colder and more piercing than anything they had ever experienced on Vika. On their way back, the skimmer had gone down practically to ice level and there was the great white beast, steadily plodding south. “I wonder what other strange animals we’ll see,” said Vill.

  She, Ky and Eedo had travelled south and west over a vast ocean to the mouth of a great river. As their skimmer flew along it they had not realized for some time that they were no longer over sea – the river was so wide they could not see its banks. When the land on either side had gradually come into view they found it was covered with lush green jungle. The skimmer had veered in towards the southern bank and they had glided slowly along, just above water level, gazing at brightly coloured flocks of birds. One of the birds had a red beak and infra feathers. “I expect Earth people would say it has black feathers,” said Tamor. There were also huge scaly creatures basking on the mud banks.

  The skimmer had then flown them across miles of jungle to a hill where there were ancient walls and a crumbling stone pyramid. They had climbed out onto the top of the pyramid and had some food, listening to the shrieks and calls and cackles of the creatures hidden in the jungle. After that they had suddenly felt saturated with new impressions and had returned to The Golden Palace.

  Before telling of their excursion, Bavilan explained how he and Toln had decided on a particular destination: “We had been talking about our first glimpses of Earth when we were still back on Vika. Toln told me he had kept thinking of that awful place we saw, that place with mud and smoke and explosions. I said I had been thinking about it this very morning.”

  “I don’t think any of us have forgotten that,” said Korriott.

  “I don’t really know why,” said Toln, “but I wanted to see it again. I think I wanted to know if I was brave enough to do so.”

  “That was brave,” said Korriott.

  “Anyway,” said Bavilan, “our skimmer took us across a narrow sea. On this side there were huge white cliffs. They shone almost as bright as that ice in the far north. On the other side we went over sand dunes. Then it was fields and woods until we came to a flat green area covered with lines of white things, thousands of them. The skimmer set us down and we could see that the lines were lines of white stone tablets. They had crosses carved into them and writing, too, usually just names and some numbers. We really didn’t understand what it was about at all.”

  “In front of the lines of tablets there was a small stone building that had one of those crosses on top of it,” said Toln. “There was nobody about. We went inside. It had rows of wooden benches. The floor was made of red tiles and there was another cross on a table at the far end. The windows were pictures in coloured glass, pictures of people in long coloured robes.”

  “Then we came out again and came back here,” said Bavilan. “We didn’t see the fighting after all. I’m glad we didn’t, really.”

  Toln decided not to mention that before his journey with Bavilan he had already been out on an excursion of his own.

  Annilex explained that she and Tamor and Korriott had spent the day doing research. “We wanted to find out what resources of knowledge the Earth people have. It seems they have libraries, too, so we have decided to visit them to see what we can learn. There’s one thing they won’t be able to tell us, though – the real purpose of our expedition. I don’t think it’s just for fun. By the way, have you all discovered that the worlds outside our rooms are no longer there? I wonder why?”

  “We never knew why they were there in the first place,” said Vill, “but I daresay they’ve gone because we need to give all our time and attention to this world that we have come to.”

  “At least we can have a swim when we want to, now that we’ve got an indoor pool,” said Akkri. “In fact, I think I’ll have a swim right now. Anyone else want to come?”

  After breakfast the next morning Vonn and Akkri took a skimmer down the river towards the sea. They went past another large dome, a flatter dome with spikes sticking out of it, not beautiful like the building they already knew. Further down river there was a large barrier made up of curved sections rising up out of the water. “There’s such a lot we don’t understand,” said Vonn, who had been very quiet all morning.

  When they reached the sea, which looked grey and stormy, they headed back to The Golden Palace for lunch, then set off again soon afterwards, allowing their skimmer to find its way to Andrew and Vicky’s school.

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