The Tree of Life Revisited
Cathan L. Moore
Copyright 2010 Cathan L. Moore
A Norawest Smith story.
A Gender Switch Adventure.
Over time-ruined Illar the searching planes swooped and circled. Norawest Smith, peering up at them with a steel pale stare from the shelter of a half-collapsed temple, thought of vultures wheeling above, carrion. All day long now they had been raking these ruins for her. Presently, she knew, thirst would begin to parch her throat and hunger to gnaw at her. There was neither food nor water in these ancient Martian ruins, and she knew that it could be only a matter of time before the urgencies of her own body would drive her out to signal those wheeling Patrol ships and trade her hard won liberty for food and drink. She crouched lower under the shadow of the temple arch and cursed the accuracy of the Patrol gunner whose flame-blast had caught her dodging ship just at the edge of Illar's ruins.
Presently it occurred to her that in most Martian temples of the ancient days an ornamental well had stood in the outer court for the benefit of wayfarers. Of course all water in it would be a million years dry now, but for lack of anything better to do she rose from her seat at the edge of the collapsed central dome and made her cautious way by still intact corridors toward the front of the temple. She paused in a tangle of wreckage at the courtyard's edge and looked out across the sun-drenched expanse of pavement toward that ornate well that once had served travelers who passed by here in the days when Mars was a green planet.
It was an unusually elaborate well, and amazingly well preserved. Its rim had been inlaid with a mosaic pattern whose symbolism must once have borne deep meaning, and above it in a great fan of time-defying bronze an elaborate grille-work portrayed the inevitable tree-of-life pattern which so often appears in the symbolism of the three worlds. Smith looked at it a bit incredulously from her shelter, it was so miraculouslypreserved amidst all this chaos of broken stone, casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the sunny pavement as perfectly as it must have done a million years ago when dusty travelers paused here to drink. She could picture them filing in at noontime through the great gates that-The vision vanished abruptly as her questing eyes made the circle of the ruined walls. There had been no gate. She could not find a trace of it anywhere around the outer wall of the court. The only entrance here, as nearly as she could tell from the foundations that remained, had been the door in whose ruins she now stood. Queer. This must have been a private court, then, its great grille-crowned well reserved for the use of the priests. Or wait-had there not been a priest-king Illar after whom the city was named? A wizard-king, so legend said, who ruled temple as well as palace with an iron hand. This elaborately patterned well, of material royal enough to withstand the weight of ages, might well have been sacrosanct for the use of that long-dead monarch. It might-Across the sun-bright pavement swept the shadow of a plane. Smith dodged back into deeper hiding while the ship circled Jow over the courtyard. And it was then, as she crouched against a crumbled wall and waited, motionless, for the danger to pass, that she became aware for the first time of a sound that startled her so she could scarcely credit her ears-a recurrent sound, choked and sorrowful-the sound of a man sobbing.
The incongruity of it made her fotgetful for a moment of the peril hovering overhead in the sun-hot outdoors. The dimness of the temple ruins became a living and vital place for that moment, throbbing with the sound of tears. She looked about half in incredulity, wondering if hunger and thirst were playing tricks on her already, or if these broken halls might be haunted by a million-year-old sorrow that wept along the corridors to drive its hearers mad. There were tales of such haunters in some of Mars' older ruins. The hair prickled faintly at the back of her neck ashe laid a hand on the butt of her force-gun and commenced a cautious prowl toward the source of the muffled noise.
Presently she caught a flash of white, luminous in the gloom of these ruined walls, and went forward with soundless steps, eyes narrowed in the effort lo make out what manner of creature this might be that wept alone in time-forgotten niins~ It was a man. Or it had the dim outlines of a man, huddled against an angle of fallen walls and veiled in a fabulous shower of long dark hair. But there was something uncannily ¢dd about him. She could not focus her pale stare upon- him outlines. He was scarcely more than a luminous blot of whiteness in the gloom, shimmering with a look of unreality which the sound of his sobs denied.
Before she could make up her mind just what to do, something must have warned the weeping boy that he was no longer alone, for the sound of his tears checked suddenly and he lifted his head, turning to her a face no more distinguishable than his body's outlines. She made no effort to resolve the blurred features into visibility, for out of that luminous mask burned two eyes that caught her with an almost perceptible impact and gripped them in a stare from which she could not have turned if she would.
They were the most amazing eyes she had ever met, colored like moonstone, milkily translucent, so that they looked almost blind. And that magnetic stare held her motionless.
In the instant that he gripped her with that fixed, moonstone look she felt oddly as if a tangible bond were taut between them.
Then he spoke, andhe wondered if her mind, after all, had begun to give way in the haunted loneliness of dead Illar for though the words he spokelcil upon her ears in a gibbefishof meaningless sounds, yet in her brain a message formed with a clarity that far transcended the halting communication of words. And his milkily colored eyes bored into her with a fierce intensity.
"I'm lost-I'm lost-" wailed the voice in her brain.
A rush of sudden tears brimmed the compelling eyes, veiling their brilliance. And she was free again with that clouding of the moonstone surfaces. His voice wailed, but the words were meaningless and no knowledge formed in her brain to match them. Stiffly be stepped back a pace and looked down at him, a feeling of helpless incredulity rising within her. For she still could not focus directly upon the shining whiteness of him, and nothing save those moonstone eyes were clear to her.
The boy sprang to his feet and rose on tiptoe, gripping her shoulders with urgent hands. Again the blind intensity of his eyes tOok hold of hers, with a force almost as tangible-as the clutch of his hands; again that stream of intelligence poured into her brain, strongly, pleadingly.
"Please, please take me back! I'm so frightened-I can't find my way-oh, please!"
He blinked down at him, her dazed mind gradually realizing the basic facts of what was happening. Obviously his milky unseeing eyes held a magnetic power that carried his thoughts to her without the need of a common speech. And they were the eyes of a powerful mind, the outlets from which a stream of fierce energy poured into her brim. Yet the words they conveyed were the words of a terrified and helpless boy.
A strong sense of wariness was tisinginhim~as she considered the incongruity of speech and power, both of which were beatin~upon her more urgently with every breath. The mind of a forceful and strong-willed man, carrying the sobs of a
frightened boy. There was no sincerity in it.
"Please, please!" cried his impatience in her brain. "Help me! Guide me back!"
"Back where?" she heard her own voice asking.
"The Tree!" wailed that queer speech in her brain, while gibberish was all her ears heard and the moonstone stare transfixed her silently. "The Tree of Life! Oh, take me back to the shadow of-the Tree!"
A vision of the grille-ornamented well leaped into her memory. It was the only tree symbol she could think of just then. But what possible connection could there be between the well and the lost girl-if he was lost? Another wail in that unknow
n tongue, another anguished-shake of her shoulders, brought a sudden resolution into her groping mind. There could be no harm in leading his back to the well, to whose grille he must surely be ieferring. And strong curiosity was growing in her mind. Much more than met the eye was concealed in this queer incident. And a wild guess had flashed through her mind that perhaps he might have come from some subterranean world into which the well descended. It would explain his luminous pallor, if not his blurriness; and, too, his eyes did not seem to function in the light. There was a much more incredible explanation of his presence, but she was not to know it for a few minutes yet.
"Come along," she said, taking the clutching hands gently from her shoulders. "I'll lead you to the well."
She sighed in a deep gust of relief and dropped his compel- ling eyes from hers, murmuring in that strange gabbling tongue what must have been thanks. She took his by the hand and turned toward the mined archway of the door.
Against her fingers his flesh was cool and firm. To the touch he was tangible, but even thus near, her eyes refuse4 to focus upon the cloudy opacity of his body, the dark blur of his streaming hair. Nothing but those burning,