The Game of Stars and Comets

I drew a deep breath; I began to understand at last. Though I had been—somewhere else—and I had been—been another—I was truly who she now hailed: Bart s'Lorn. Even as I knew that, the other identity in me made a last despairing attack, but this time her touch gave me strength to hold.

  "Illo!" I cried her name, and that was another key, unlocking more of the past. My task was like trying to patch the holes in a tattered strip of weaving, so that the design would once more be whole and right.

  "Bart!" There was a joyful note now in her answer. Though I could not see her face, I thought that she was triumphant—that I had fulfilled some task she had longed for me to accomplish by my own efforts.

  Task? For a moment only that other gave a last shadowy cry of thought—the task—duty—I had failed! Only that was not so—I was here, in the here and now—I was Bart s'Lorn!

  Slowly I found words, but, as I spoke aloud, my voice sounded weak as might that of one who had been ill a long time.

  "What happened?"

  "You were not yourself," she answered promptly. "I do not know what or who possessed you. You said that we must reach the Gate before we were taken. One of the vines caught you. I stunned it free—and then we got on Witol and we rode. I have been trying to draw you back. And who is Almanic? You called that name many times."

  "Almanic—" I repeated. Yes, once more a shadow thought curled quickly and was gone before I could seize it. "I think he was a friend but also a war leader. I believe he was the one who ordered me—No, not me—but perhaps he who once wore this necklet—to do something. And the wearer was too late."

  I was still weak inside, but I could now see clearly. We were still transversing one of the aisles, though here all the boxes were planted with vigorous growth, growth which moved and twisted as we rode by. I knew the reason for that unnatural life and it set me shivering.

  "What is the matter?" Illo demanded instantly. Her hands were no longer pressed against my forehead, but rested, one on each of my shoulders, as if it were necessary that she keep close contact with me.

  "They fed—these things were fed—on—flesh and blood! This was the place—no, I cannot remember!" Nor did I want to. Save that, in me, the cold horror grew stronger and stronger. I had to fight with all the will power I could summon to keep myself from sheer panic.

  "Do not try!" Her command was sharp. Once more her hands were on my forehead, and, with her healer's skill, she drove away that evil out of me.

  I looked steadily ahead. There had been a thick mist there—surely I remembered that now. The cloudlets still floated overhead, but the fog which had been so dense when I last remembered surveying the far part of this garden (if one can call such a forcing place that) was gone. I did not know how far we had come, but before us now was a doorway—a closed doorway.

  There were plants as tangled there as they had been in the splotch of upper jungle. I had a queer, fleeting impression that once they had swarmed here as a tide, trying to beat a way through that portal. A great patch of them spread out from that to the right, forming a thick river of growth which reached up and up, past the network of lights, a column steady now with the matted substance of seeking vegetation standing against the wall to reach out—up and out!

  However it was toward the door they guarded we headed.

  As at the open portals we had seen there was a curved arch carrying the intricate unreadable script of the unknown. I eyed the mass of vegetation warily.

  "The stunner, where is it?"

  "Here," once more her hands dropped from my forehead. A moment later she reached around before me with the weapon. I checked its charge. The unit was full.

  "I used the last of the other one." Illo explained, "to ray that vine which was squeezing you to death. It is recharged but we have only two more charges."

  I made the setting carefully, adjusting it from wide to a narrower beam. Witol paused just beyond the reach of the waving vines and branches. Here the plants were far more active, greedy, demanding. They were larger, too, with a bloated look to them.

  Squeezing the button I sent the first ray at a particularly active vine which had twice lashed at us, only to sprawl short by just a fraction, not knowing whether this weapon would still serve us. The vine jerked as might a man who had taken a hit. Then it looped limply down, and those behind it also started to wither. Encouraged, I played the ray back and forth across the whole width of the door, watching the mass droop and die.

  Our path open, Witol walked forward of his own accord. Then, from the center-most point of the door arch, there suddenly shot a finger-thin beam of blue light. It struck, full on my throat, at the necklet.

  From out of the air above us sounded a voice, with the inflection, I thought of a question. Password—? Was escape to be locked against us by the safeguards set eons ago?

  The necklet was once more warm. While from somewhere, perhaps out of the nightmare of that other mind which had invaded mine, I picked words—two of them—meaningless sounds—still I was as sure of their importance as if I had been taught them from earliest childhood:

  "Iben Ihi!"

  There came a groaning, a shivering of the door. The leaves grated apart slowly, so slowly—opening to us. Twice I thought it was stuck and would move no farther. Perhaps Illo and I could have scraped through that thin slit but the gars, no. And there was no thought of leaving them.

  On it went by jerks, the scraping loud. At last we had space enough. Witol walked forward without being urged, and we came out of that place of evil growth into a long corridor which inclined upwards at a gentle slope.

  The corridor was not clear. Men had died here, or things with the bony likeness of men. They lay full length upon the floor or in piles along the walls as if they had leaned there until time had sent their bones sliding down. Armor of metal were about some of the bodies, and I noted all I could see clearly wore about their neck bones collars like that which chance had set upon me.

  There were weapons, too, or at least I judged some rods, a few still clasped by finger bones, to be those. We did not stop to examine this battlefield. I had a vast reluctance to look at the dead, an aversion to disturbing their rest. Even Witol picked his way with care, striving not to touch one of the sprawling piles of bones.

  Our way was lighted by a soft diffusion of gray, though I could see no torches, none of those criss-cross rods of illumination which had been in the large plant chamber. Witol was unable to quite avoid touching one outflung skeleton arm. At contact the bones crumbled into a white powder, an armlet of metal fell, with a soft small clang, to the floor. Though the air was fresh enough there was such a feeling of both age and despair about this place that I was in a hurry to be past the ranks of the dead, to find the end of our road, only hoping that would be a door to the outer world.

  For the first time since we had entered this way Illo spoke:

  "What were those words—those with which you commanded the door? I have heard off-world tales of doors and enclosures where a barrier is set to open only to certain sounds, some only if one certain imprinted voice utters them. But this is no off-world place of our time—"

  "I do not know. Somehow they were just in my head," I had to answer. Her surmise concerning the reason for the opening door sounded logical to me. There is no guarantee that what has been discovered by one race or species in the past may not be recovered by those who follow them long after. Doors, safe keeping boxes, and files, on my world at Portcity could be sealed by the thumb of their owner thrust into a sensitive opening, one attuned only to that owner.

  At that moment I was willing to believe that those who had fashioned this installation (whatever they had intended it to be) could have sealed the secret of some of their doors into the necklet. That confronted by the voice demanding the proper password some locked-in simulator had produced in my mind the proper words. So far we had been amazingly lucky. I could only hope (for what that hope might be worth) that this luck would continue.

  The slowly rising ramp was
not long and was topped by another door. This one lacked that arch and inscription, but as Witol advanced, with more confidence than I could summon, it too, as if in answer to our very approach began to open with the same grating reluctance the others had shown.

  I heard Illo's soft gasp of wonder as the opening split middle of that door grew wider. We were looking into a place lighted as had been the garden hall, but with a less strident, more eye-easy glow. And what did we see? Was it the equivalent of one of our villages, or a large holding, of even Portcity? Or was it simply one large complex of living and working quarters all linked, still quartered here and there by passages, such as that which lay beyond the door?

  The buildings were not of the metal which had been in common use elsewhere, but rather of another substance, almost as if one had gathered great gleaming jewels and hollowed them, giving them doorways. They were of different shapes, which added to the gem simulance. Some were square and tabled with recessed step cutting, some carbochon, ovals, or drops, other sharply pointed, diamond fashion. Colors played across them, ebbing and flowing, though each had one color particularly its own and the ebb and flow was the darkening and lighting of shades of that color.

  Though I have seen tapes made of the pleasure worlds, and some of the remains of fabulous Forerunner finds, I had never seen the like of these. It was like viewing a dream world. One felt that a single step forward into the valley which ran ahead might break that dream, shatter those fantastic jewels into nothingness.

  There were no clouds overhead, nor any visible grid been set, in scattered pattern, circles of crystal, as if to represent the stars of the outer world. None of these were bright enough to emit any true light, and I guessed that that must be diffused from the buildings, or even the walls of this huge cavern.

  Whether the city holding hollow had been formed by nature or by the efforts of intelligence I could not guess, but it seemed to be a half-sphere, the walls we could see sloping up in that fashion. There was no sign of any growing thing, again in sharp contrast to the perilous way we had come. The silence was awe-inspiring and complete. So complete, that the hoof clicks of Witol and the other gars sounded far too loud, somehow wrong, as if this wondrous place should have been left to drowse eternally, dreaming—

  I had half expected to see more evidence here of whatever disaster had struck down those defenders within the outer portal. However the way or street before us was bare. If any dead remained, they lay within their homes and I had no desire to explore there. In fact both Illo and I were content to stay on Witol's back as the bull paced proudly forward.

  Our feeling of intrusion slowly died, but not our sense of wonder at the beauty of the place. There was no sign of any aging, no evidence here of disaster or defeat.

  Illo spoke very softly, as if any voice might disturb some sleeper:

  "Their end—it came well."

  When I made no answer, she said:

  "Can you not feel it? The peace? All that was dark and evil shut out forever?"

  My hands without my conscious willing went to the necklet. That was still as warm as the skin on which it lay. Far back in my mind swirled once more that terror and horror which I had carried with me into the darkness—swirled, died—was gone. I could feel now as she did that there was nothing here—not the dead awesome silence of Mungo's Town and Voor's Grove, the menace of the Tangle—that other stranger and more fearsome terror which had lain in wait among the planted boxes. No—there was not an emptiness which made a man feel estranged and alien—there was peace—utter peace.

  Illo's sensitivity, born from her talent, had felt it first, now it spread to me. I did not believe that this wondrous jeweled city had been deserted by those who had rejoiced in its beauty. Rather they had made a choice, withdrawn into their homes, accepted freely, with thankfulness and wistful longing, that final peace.

  Witol paced on, but the clicking of gars' hooves could never disturb the sleepers here. We passed between the ever-changing hues of the walls until we came to one structure which bore no color at all. It was crystalline, yet its shape was wrought in facets as a gem might well be treated to best display its finest qualities.

  The gar bull came to a halt. Looking about I judged that this crystal of many flickering sparks of fire was the center of the alien city. For here the streets, or ways, between the smaller structures converged to join in a circle about it.

  Three spires of the flashing substance arose above all other of the buildings and there was a wide open entrance before us. I slid from Witol's back, reached up and drew Illo down with me. That we had reached the heart of all the mysteries which had been set to plague us and our kind—I was as sure of that as if I had shouted aloud some question and had been answered with the weight of true authority.

  We would discover no sleepers here, of that I was also sure, as I went up the two broad, wide steps which raised the diamond walls above the rest. With Illo's hand in mine I stepped confidently forward into what? A temple raised to some unknown force for good (for such a place as this could not house evil), a meeting place of assembly like our village halls, the palace of some ruler? It could be any one or all three.

  We passed within where sparks of light appeared to dance in the air. There was something else too, which made me alert, clear of mind, free from all fatigue of body, insecurity or doubt. This was how man was meant to feel—always and ever!

  I turned my head a little. Illo's eyes met mine. In them was my wonder mirrored, heightened, made into pure joy. We gazed at each other for a long moment. Something in me demanded that I hold to this, hold fast—for this was a moment which meant much. It would mean even more if one had that in him which could rise to the greater heights—the mountain tops of self-knowledge and confidence these others knew. Only—even as I realized that, I knew that my species was not made for such heights. We were as cracked jugs into which poured spring water, fresh and clear, only to have that dribble forth little by little, leaving us empty ever more.

  Hand in hand we went on between lines of flashing pillars until we came to the center-most heart of the place, even as it was the heart of the city. There was a bowl of opaline substance, around its sides also traveling rainbow fires. Only here those were softened, made less dazzling, less brilliant.

  We looked down into that and saw that in the very bottom, where that bowl was the deepest, there was liquid, a small, still pool of it, perhaps one cupful, or at the most two. As the bowl which held it, it showed many colors which skimmed its surface, now blue, now gold, now green, now red—now all mingled together in a burst of radiance.

  Illo dropped my hand and fell to her knees, her hand stretched forward, reaching down, until her forefinger tips touched the water. She sang, low, soft, words I could not understand. Yet I never wanted her to stop, for the singing was the color, the brilliant, ever changing color, and the color was the singing. Though what I meant by that I could not make plain even to myself.

  Slowly I, too, knelt. My hands were once more on the necklet. This time, as I fingered the plate set against the hollow of my throat there sounded a chime. Unlike Illo's singing that did not mingle with the color, but was apart, and it gathered in it both paeans of triumph, despair of defeat.

  The necklet fell forward, was loose in my hand. I held it so, knowing what I must do with it. There could be no troubling of this peace. The last loose thread of the pattern must be returned to the weaver and bound fast. I leaned forward, allowed the necklet to slip into the pool.

  No longer was the water still. The liquid began to churn about, rising as though I had taken a kettle ladle and stirred it so. Rise it did, higher and higher; faster it flew about the sides of the bowl, until one could not see water at all, only streamers of color whipped about, beaten into one another, emerging once again. Nor could I turn my eyes away from that whirl, though I knew the sight was setting a compulsion on me, preparing me for—

  I was in a garden and there was a woman singing as Illo had sung, soft and low, and
very happy. She was setting out small plants one by one, packing rich earth about their roots. There was the warmth of sun in the air and I was very happy. We were going to the fair and I would be able to buy some toy for my own self. I had my precious coin in my belt purse. I could feel it through the stuff of that purse whenever I pinched, and I pinched many times over.

  If she would only hurry—this was no day for planting in the garden—it was festival time. I ran to the edge of the street to look and listen. The street was very wide, the houses tall—or else I was small.

  Then—

  It was as if a dark cloud had crossed the sky. That cloud broke into pieces, and those pieces were dropping, raining down upon us. I was afraid and I cried and ran, ran inside the house, and hid my face against a cloth on the table. I heard cries, gasps. Then I knew there was something in the room with me. Fear struck me into a small tense statue. I dared not look—yet I must—it was forcing me to look—No!

  Maybe I screamed, perhaps my throat was too taut with terror to let me make a sound. It was calling me, making me—I had to—