Aliens from Analog Page 6

  Because of its limitations—which God had deliberately designed in as a rebuke to the pride of his people, of course—in both spectrum and subtlety of expressible forms, its codings differed not only from those of the language of the Favored People but from those of all the languages of all the other tribes they had ever conquered, converted, or otherwise made contact with. This holy coding system must each novice study, commit to memory, before he or she (never Yd) could hope for advancement. Often, the candidates lost much of this knowledge during their years Fishing for God, and needs must relearn it all upon their return to the City. Periodically, over the generations, hierophantic administrators had attempted to abolish this apparently inefficient system, and, for example, send out untutored novices into the wilderness when much younger, and only begin teaching them after they had fulfilled this portion of their duty. But invariably the experiment had failed. The younger ones lacked the mature vigor needed to withstand the solitary vigils in the wild, and an ex-Fisher usually proved incapable of grasping any complex intangible concept unless he or she had already absorbed the root and essence of the idea. Therefore, the pre-adult years must span a very broad base of an eclectic education, only roughly sketched in; any subject of lore which might prove of use someday must be begun then.

  Now the repetitious, numerical, arbitrary symbolisms of the language of God became Wink’s life. Fortunately, she did not have to learn to speak it herself, since God (naturally) understood the thoughts of mortals even before they became visible; but she had to learn to understand Yd when Yd spoke. She awoke in the evening with a Servant standing over her sand pit, flashing phrases in the measured cadence of divine speech, and translating them with a brief coruscation in the common talk. She ate with the lessons still before her. She performed her devotions at the side of a translator-teacher, who herself was temporarily excused from all other duties. She eliminated her wastes, groomed her carapace and segmented limbs, deposited her as- yet-unformed and non-viable eggs in the loamy area set aside for that purpose, and digested her food with them always beaming at her, in relays. And when she shut her weary eyes in the morning to sleep, still her mind’s vision saw them and sought to read them: the eternal umber, rose, bone, umber, bone, rose, rose, umber, rose, bone…the everlasting three, two, two, three, one, three, three, four, one, three, two, four, four…the unceasing up-blurred, up-sharp, left-blurred, down-blurred, right-sharp, down-sharp…the interminable and incoherent four right-sharp rose, two left-blurred umber, one down-blurred bone….

  They had moved her from her broodfoster’s den into the cold stone temple. The halls thronged with other students, acolytes, and votaries;but Wink was alone, pursuing her own unique, intensive, single-minded course, living in her own private chamber, small though it was. Sometimes she yearned to escape, to clatter back to old Longstalks’s apartments as fast as her six legs would carry her, to renounce the Service, to be free to joke once more with Red and the Gimp and her other friends.

  Then the passion of her vocation would possess her once again. Three left-sharp bone….

  She had to abandon all her other interests. Not only did she now live in isolation from her broodmates and comrades, in itself a great psychological hardship, but even found herself forced to neglect any intellectual pursuit that did not pertain directly to her assignment of communicating with God. The High Priest could not contain his impatience with her progress, though he could not in justice fault her in comparison with what any other individual might have accomplished in the same time. But he had devoted his life to the service of God, and it grated upon him that he could not immediately provide an acolyte perfectly tailored to Yd’s request.

  Wink watched her childhood vanish behind her in mere days, rather than in the years she should yet have had; she watched the prospect of a normal young maturity snatched forever from her.

  She did her best to keep her inner vision firmly fixed upon the High Priest’s words:

  “…an adventure far greater…”

  The last lingering rays of light faded from the east; the stars emerged in their uncounted choral swarms, singing their high, exalted, celestial, incomprehensible song.

  Slowly, Wink emerged from her dark chamber and made her way through the twisting corridors to the great cool nave. Her claws clicked on the wet flagstones and echoed against the walls as she marched down to the altar. The Servants of God awaited her there, lucent, shimmering—singing hymns, praying.

  She passed them and clambered down from the altar—the dock—to the little rowboat, where already sat her two rowers, younger acolytes dark with awe. These knew no God-talk. The wooden blades dipped.

  Far out onto the black water, they shipped oars. The boat bobbed. There was no sign of God. On the distant shore, the temple loomed dark; the priests had ended their rituals.

  Wink resolutely kept her emotions from showing on her shell, took up her courage, and sang out God’s holy name, the long purple glow, with an upper harmonic in the ultraviolet. The waters of the lake accepted it, spread it….

  …Minutes passed. Wink saw and heard nothing. She maintained the call and her prayerful state of mind. Slowly the uncomfortable certainty grew that she was being watched. Her eyestalks swiveled in all directions. Nothing. Still she learned in the upper frequencies, but she was beginning to dim; the strain was beginning to tell.

  Suddenly it seemed that Holy Water itself chuckled—a radiating dazzle of silvery sparks expanded in concentric bands, from a point directly below the boat. Then—without Wink’s having caught its approach—she found herself staring straight into a huge yellow eye, not a pincer-length away from her own green one. Another eye rose out of the water on the other side of the boat—this one was blue—and gave her its thorough attention.

  Now—in the light of her own fading note—she could see beneath and surrounding her small vessel a bulk of something huge and dark. A roughly circular patch of it began to glow in the all-too-familiar rose and bone and umber, but refraction at the surface broke up the message. Timidly she dipped an eye into the water.

  “…they have chosen to send me. Welcome to my domain, small hatchling.”

  The mass of God fell away into the lightless depths on all sides.

  Wink went utterly blank. All her coaching momentarily fled.

  “Fear not. Take all time needed. My life is long.” Again, pale glints of humor accompanied the statement.

  At that, her wits returned.

  “I abase myself before your almighty divinity,” she said, as it had been drilled into her. “I present myself to the will of God.”

  “Your name is—?”

  “I am called Green-Eyed She, Supremely Holy.”

  “Then, Green-Eyed She, my will is that you not so diminish your valuable self…. How much have they told you? Do you know what your work is to be? Has anyone said that God has blasphemed?…Feel free to interrupt at any time; I know that I speak too slowly for you little twinkly scooters.”

  Wink flashed black and orange in rapid succession, astonished and nonplussed. “The High Servant has told me that you have said many of our beliefs are not—are not quite—as we have believed. He said you wanted a young person to talk to, that none of the old Servants would do. They taught me the divine speech as swiftly as my poor weak mind was able to learn it. Now I am here, though I am still learning.”

  “I rather suspect they harried you, though they need not have. One of your brief generations more or less means little to me.

  “Now I will clarify matters somewhat. I want you to be my messenger to your people. I wanted someone young, someone new, because I have noticed that your people have difficulty learning anything strange to them once they have passed the middle of their lives. I wanted someone intelligent because much of what I must tell you will be difficult to understand, and you must be able to explain it to even the most backward of your people in a way they can accept. And I wanted an artistic singer because I enjoy watching your songs and productions. I am often
lonely and part of your duty will be to entertain me.

  “These are the rules: Most of the time, I will speak, you will watch. But because I speak so awkwardly, you have my permission to flash in whenever you please; you can squeeze whole codas of reply between two of my words. And if you can guess what I am about to say, show me. I will tell you whether you are right and when you are, we can go on to the next thing. That will save some time, don’t you agree?”

  “Agree? Of course, God. Let it be as God wills.”

  “That reminds me: this God business. I suppose your High Priest told you about all that?”

  “That you had said—strange and wondrous things, yes.”

  “Here is truth: I am not God, at least, not in the sense of a creator and regulator of matter and life, or even of the ways of natural phenomena in the world. I control nothing and have made little. Old as I am, I am but a hatchling compared to the youngest of those mountains yonder. Strong as I am, I quail before the sun even as you do, and I can no longer heave myself very far out of the water. Yet large as I am, I would be but a morsel to one who is my enemy, who dwells in the Greater Ocean.”

  “The Evil One,” she said, taking Yd at Yd’s word and interrupting.

  “Yes. And Yd is evil; that much of your faith is true. Later we will speak more, much more, of Yd; now you are still relearning your concepts of myself.

  “I rule your people only because you permit me to do so. Yet you gain from it also; my wisdom and—shall we say—impressive appearance—has enabled your tribe to expand its territory and rise above all other groups of your kind. My gain is that without the assistance of your society I could not long live.”

  Wink went black.

  “Oh, do calm yourself. It is quite true. I eat a great deal. The Lake is not quite big enough to provide for all my needs. Without the labor of your Fishers—well, perhaps I would not starve; I could always reduce. But I have reached a point now where I can diminish no further in size without sacrificing some of my intellect, and I’d rather not. Yet often I have wondered how you could afford to support me.”

  “But, God! You are the source of all knowledge, all the arts of civilization, all supremacy in intertribal statecraft, all power—”

  “Well, good. I suppose I’ve paid my way. But, little Green-Eyes, I thought you now understood I am no god.”

  “But what then am I to call you?”

  “…I hadn’t thought of that. You may still refer to me as God, if you wish, to your companions, if you feel that would be politic. But within yourself you must not so think of me. Think of me, rather, as—oh, the Prisoner of the Lake. Or, perhaps, your Biggest Audience. Or, Yd Who Waits.

  “Or you could call me by my real name, the one given me of old by my friends, my own kind, my long-mourned people.”

  “And what was that, great one?’ ’ she shone softly, suddenly awash with compassion for the divinity.

  “Skysinger.”

  “…Among my companions, in our own means of communication, I was accounted something of an artist/poet. And I it was who invented eyes and first discovered the glory of the stars. Thus, Skysinger. Of course, in the language of light, I have a serious speech impediment, hence this clumsy code you have striven so diligently to learn; I know I am no singer to you. Still, it would please me…”

  “Then I shall make so bold as to call you…Skysinger,” she answered diffidently.

  “Thank you. It has been long and long since I have had a friend to call me a friend’s name.

  “Now I will tell you how my people died.”

  Once upon a time, during the hatchling stage of the world, there lived a Giant Sea Monster. Now, this monster was the very first and only one of its kind, so it had no broodfoster Yd to take care of it and love it. And everyone knows that when a hatchling grows up without an Yd’s fostering love, it turns out not to be a very nice person at all; and so it was with this monster.

  It was neither he nor she nor Yd, yet somehow all three, so it made a child all by itself. But it did not love its child, for it had never learned how; and it sent the hatchling away into exile.

  But the child grew and also made children, and being somewhat foolish (by monster standards) made several of them more or less at once, and these smaller ones grew up with one another to love and enjoy, so they were different from their parent and their parent’s parent. Now these new creatures—we will not call them monsters—talked and swam and explored the seas and played with thoughts and made children and enjoyed the world, until one night they realized food was getting scarcer and scarcer, and they discovered that Child—the second monster, you know—had gotten far too big and was eating far too much. They tried to show it the error of its ways, but despite its size and years it had remained rather stupid. Until it could no longer ignore the obvious; and it tried to invade the Greater Ocean where dwelt the Eldest, the First One. But that monster was prepared with many little slave-monsters, strong fighters, and together, they killed the great Child.

  This left the other creatures with no immediate problems and they went about their business, though some of them wondered uneasily about the personality of their mysterious neighbor, who never came forth to join their community.

  Millennia later, their bad dreams came true, and the monster attacked. First it secretly poisoned two of their kind, to gain what vantage it could; then it gathered up its warriors and invaded. The creatures had always known peace, and had no idea how to fight. They had no natural enemies in all the seas, for they were too big, too strong….

  No more. The monster killed them all.

  All but one, who had explored far up a river in its younger nights, and who dwelt at this time in a broad Upland Lake. Now this one managed to trick the slaves of the monster into believing they had killed it, and so they reported.

  Now the creature in the lake would have been very lonely and unhappy indeed, had it not the friendship of a swarm of tiny little beings who lived in the rocks around the lake, who had helped it immeasurably in driving off the fighters. It knew these little beasts for intelligent beings, though they spoke not as its own people had, and it thought that perhaps in them it had found that which might in the fullness of time be forged into a weapon capable of taking final vengeance upon the monster. For if its little friends ever advanced to the point where they wished to sail the seas to other lands, they themselves would have the monster to contend with. So it counselled them, and they increased, and they and the creature both waxed mighty together in strength and wisdom, over the long years of the wheeling stars.

  Any questions?

  “It is a most peculiar experience, to hear the articles of one’s faith so retold, twisted and altered, and made to appear as the myths of outland barbarian tribes, who have no real god to show.”

  “I hope you are not too deeply troubled, Little Green-Eyes.”

  “No…I don’t think I am. In some ways, I feel—relief!” A pop of greenstreaked orange; surprised realization. “This story makes better sense then the old ones did, in places.”

  “Good. It is nearly dawn, little morsel. You had better get back home. I am sorry it takes me so long to say anything.—Oh! One more thing. My first new order to your people: Tell them to begin breeding for long and flexible mouthparts. I’ll have something for them to do, generations from now, besides eat.”

  “…Eh?!” A cloudy spiral of gray.

  “Your pincer-claws are admirably suited for certain tasks, and indeed you can do amazingly fine work with them; I am often consumed with admiration for the offerings your artisans show me. Yet—they aren’t quite fine enough for certain things I have in mind. I’ve thought about it and it seems to me the mouth-parts are the only appendages with any potential.”

  “But—but God—Skysinger—Great One—how can we ‘breed for’ any quality?”

  “Oh, yes, you are rather hit-or-miss about passing on the genetic information, are you not. It has at least kept you adaptable. Tell me, your shes compete among the
mselves for the softest, sandiest places to lay their eggs, true? Would it be considered a privilege to lay them on the beaches of Holy Water?”

  “Of course! But the priests do not allow it. They have always feared there would be such a stampede that the shores would soon become roiled and fouled, which would be displeasing to God.”

  “Tell them to build a fence around a large section of the beach, and put guards at the gate. Then let in only those shes with the longest and most supple mouth parts. When they have deposited their eggs and departed, let in only those hes with the same characteristics, to fertilize them. Then permit only the noblest and most successful and most loving Yds to gather up the ripened clutches from that special beach, to brood them.

  “Let it be known among all the tribes over which your tribe has jurisdiction, that God values such mouth-parts. They will soon work out a similar system on their own.

  “And let it be known that the hes who hatch from these special eggs will have special procreative privileges—well, time enough for that a generation from now.

  “Just tell them about the fence and the beach, Morsel. And hurry along; light touches the tops of the distant eastern hills.”

  Her rowers were already pulling for all they were worth.

  Night followed night in an unending procession of beauty and delight, and every one filled Wink’s young mind with a maelstrom of wonder, for Skysinger, even in Yd’s halting coded speech, spun such visions for her as to dazzle her inner eyes. Yd had personally witnessed all of mortal history, and recounted for her eyes the glories of the past, making legends live. And on other nights, Yd sang of heroic deeds yet to come.

  “…great vessels of wood, with a thousand rowers…or perhaps—have you ever watched the skYdwellers, sailing on the air? Perhaps a thousand thousand of them could be tamed and harnessed…”