John Racham (10 page)

And
there, right in the focus of the circle, grew a shimmer of white: a
transparent ovoid that hovered and shone. The native chant became words,
rolling in echoes against the
cliffside
.

"Hel-
seeee
!
Hel-
seeee
!"

Query
stared,
felt his back hair lift, as the shimmer slowly
grew more solid, more substantial, took on a shape. He had that strange sense
of soft, feather fingers touching his mind, groping among his thoughts. The
shape was clear now, distinct.
A human shape.
A woman,
tall and imperious but all pearly glow, like some Greek statue carved in
radiance. The chant swelled louder, more impassioned:

"Hel-
seeeeee
!
Hel-
seeeee
!"

He shared something of the overwhelming awe.
A supernatural person
...
a
goddessl
He wanted to shout and

69 feel afraid along with the rest, but that
tickle in his mind, light as gossamer, stopped him.
Held him.
All at once the uncanny visitor raised her arms, spread them wide. The chanting
and clapping stopped as if cut off by a switch. There was absolute silence, a
hush that echoed. Then she lowered one arm, pointed the other, and Query heard
her quite positively in his head.

"You!
Come! Come to me! Come!"

There
was never even a question of refusal. He struggled up at once, helpless as a
puppet on a string, swaying unsteadily, distantly aware that he was drunk, but
imbued with only one thought. He started shambling forward, weaving in and out'
among the breathless natives. The hillside had faded into gloom against which
the
goddesslike
woman stood out in a white glow like
a human candle flame. He stumbled on, having trouble focusing his eyes and more
trouble believing what he saw. She was tall, almost as tall as he was. And
slim yet not frail.
Fully a woman.
Yet white like
pearl, even to the clustering curls of her hair. Only her eyes had color, were
glow gold flames that drew him on and on, controlling him with power that had
nothing of hurt in it, nothing angry, just power. Until he stood, swaying,
within touching distance of her, mouth stupidly agape. There came a monologue
inside his head, in a cold, clear precise
voice.

Not
one of us. And yet . . . and yet . . . what are you? Why are your thoughts so
confused?

"I'm
drunk!" he confessed
muzzily
.
"Drunk
on the local brew.
Strong stuff.
And sick,
too!" She understood something of it, he knew.

You
are in pain?
Distress of
some kind?
There
was just the ghost of an expression on her face to go with the words in his
head. Smooth. Alabaster . . . that was the word he had been looking for.
Beauty incarnate
...
or
delirium?
And in that moment all the warm comfort of the drink ran out
of him, all the anesthetic, the false glow . . . and he folded and fell, knotted
breathless by the hot wire agonies in his belly, straining to curl in on
himself, to breathe, to bear the screaming pain of it For one hideous breath .
. . and then the cold, imperious authority of her struck through the cloud of
agony, pushed the pains away—not right away, but just there, just out of

70 reach, so that he held quite still not
daring to move, feeling the sudden sweat breaking out all over his body.
And then her
voice
again.

Be
still. There is no pain now.

He
held it for another breath, and she was right. He let go, fell flat, rolled
over
,on
his back and lay there
looking up at her, as drained as if he had been passed through a wringer. She
inclined her head to look down at him curiously. It was a living force, that
curiosity. Then she
spoke
again.

You
will come with me. I wish to know more about you!
Then
came
the
crowning insanity of all, as she stooped, crouched, took his hand firmly, with
a real, flesh-and-blood hand of her own, and straightened up. He lifted, up and
away from the damp moss, as if filled with air or something lighter. Up like a
bird, but a bird that could fly with neither wings nor effort, not stirring a
breath of air in passing. Up, so that he could stare down and see the silent
natives, the hillside, the shimmering pool, all dwindling fast away down
there, then lost in the mist. Alone in trackless mist with only the white
goddess-woman and her curiously impersonal stare, her unbelievable perfection
of shape and form.

I'm
deadl
he thought. This is it, the final delirium.
Snatched up to Heaven by an angel.
That native brew must be
really powerful stuff
I

But it was rationalization, and he didn't
believe it. He believed what he was seeing, no matter how incredible it was.
And he knew, somehow, that she was not aware of these thoughts of his. He knew
that it was more effort for her to speak into his mind than to fly away with
him like this. He knew many things, as if he stood near a vast storehouse of
wisdom and some of it was leaking off at him. There was no sense of motion in
him, only in the mist that whirled past. Then there were patches of dark, a
vast concourse of mighty treetops, a forest; they stooped down into it like an
eagle pair, swooping through the leaves and branches to home in on one tree out
of all the rest, like birds to a nest.

As gently as though on tiptoe, he stood on a
broad branch.
He
walked with her hand in his, her shoulder to his, along the branch and right
into the heart of the tree.

71

And
there were bright colors here.
Tiny
starlights
on the walls, hanging lanterns that shone but looked like bell-flowers.
And a softness that was firm for him to sit on. And then lie back on, and
stretch out. And her glow gold eyes coming closer, holding his, drowning him in
their inscrutable depths.

The
rest was dream upon dream, some gloriously
good
,
others
temfyingly
black and bad, and yet others that
bewildered him completely. None were clear as to detail but more as if he had
to hurry through them, to skim and digest and catalogue the contents. It was
more like thumbing through an unending series of lesson books and instructions,
learning, struggling to
leam
, and all the while
conscious of his laggard ability, the relentless drive to do better.

The
bad ones were horrible, all about himself and everything that was wrong with
him, full of aches and pains and twisted spots, things he would rather not have
touched; yet he had no choice but to struggle and fight his way through. There
were a lot of those.

The
good ones were about him, too, but not himself alone. Always there was someone
else close, someone warm and wonderful, holding him safe, cradling, comforting
and caressing him, exciting him, inspiring him with leaping strength and power
and exultation, making him happy, whole and well. Those ones were a kind of
delight, a sort of reward for doing well.

But
the others, the problem ones, were baffling. Fingers in his mind picking and
turning over the pages of his life, sorting them into words and questions and
ideas and more questions, until he felt all jumbled and scattered and argued
over. All fragments. All dreams.
Nothing in any detail that
he could cling to.
Wild bits of imagination.
And the strong conviction of passing time, a long time.
A lifetime, in a way.

Query became slowly aware that he was awake.
That he was flat on his back and comfortable, with his eyes shut . . . but
awake. Not dreaming. In that moment all the million scattered fragments of all
those dreams rose like a swirl of invisible dust and blew away. He opened his
eyes and saw a blue bell-like flower shining down on him with its own cool
light. It stood out from the pale yellow wall,

72 as if it was growing there on a slim stem,
and hung down shining on him.

"I
think you are well now, Stephen Query." The voice was slightly hesitant
over the shapes of the words but clear and confident otherwise. A quiet voice,
yet it seemed to sing.
Over to his left.
He rolled his
head to look. She was seated there, across the room from him, about eight feet
away and quite at ease. Seated in a curious bowl-shaped seat that seemed to be
part of the yellow wall and made of the same stuff. Feet planted firmly apart,
hands on her knees, back against the support, her face calm, only those gold
eyes with any hint of life. She might have been a statue in pale pearl, as
before, but now there was no visible radiance from her. Above her head another
bell-shaped flower, growing from the wall, shed its light down over her head
and shoulders.

He
moved, sat up, swung his legs over the side of the thing he lay on and put them
down on the floor. It struck warm and somehow fibrous, like a smooth carpet
against his bare feet. A quick glance showed him that he was naked. So was she,
and it seemed unthinkable otherwise. He looked at her again, curiously, really
looking this time, aware that he was not giving any offense. Her face told him
nothing, yet he knew she was patiently waiting for him to adjust. A perfect
face, finely chiseled, a study in mild curiosity.
Ageless,
unlined, smooth.
Her skin, all of her, was white as milk, and yet with
the glow and sheen of abundant health, needing no color at all to enhance it.

She
sat quite still, as if there was all the time in the world for him to stare,
her slow gentle breath lifting her breasts, that might have been arrogant,
overabundant, even coarse, on another woman but were all part of her flawless
shape, her completely. There was just the suspicion of a blush of pink at her
nipples and lips, and her fingernails. And not a hair on her body apart from
the clustered white curls on her head. And he knew she was by far the most
beautiful, most wonderful, most alien creature he had ever seen. And he was
afraid. He looked into her eyes.

"They called you
Helsee
,"
he said, remembering. "You're some kind of supernatural being. An angel,
or a
goddess
..
.
aren't
you?"

"No." She seemed to take his words
just as they came

73
and think them over carefully. The jungle people use that sound to mean my
people, we who live in the trees. To them, I suppose we are . . ." she
hesitated, selecting her words,
"...
a kind of supernatural thing.
Superhuman.
I found
that concept in your mind. But I am not that as you mean it
The
jungle people fear us and reverence us in equal parts. That is understandable.
But I am not supernatural, nor a goddess.
Helsee
is
the word for my people. My name is
Azul
. I am flesh
like you."

"You're
talking
...
in words, I mean. Not in
my head, as you did before." His fear was shriveling now in the face of
her obvious efforts to understand him and have him understand her. "You're
speaking my language!"

"Yes.
Well enough, I
hope,
that you can understand me. It
was not easy to learn the way. We do not speak as you, with a word-sound for
everything. We use shaped sounds, words, to focus on, to point, to identify and
to make symbols.
Names.
But the rest, the emotion and
coloring, we do that directly from one to another. It took me a long time to
understand that your kind do not use this way of feeling together. Is it true
that your kind have no way of sharing feelings at all?"

"No,
that's not quite true. We do have a kind of empathy, sometimes, not very well
understood. It's seen in a crowd, in a panic, sometimes in a theater, an emotional
rapport. But it comes and goes, and nobody knows a great deal about it. There
are some
people,
there always have been a few, who've
claimed to know what other people were feeling.
A kind of
sympathy.
How true that is I don't know. As for me, I've never had
anything like that, not until I came here and found that I could . . .
feel,
along with those you call the jungle people. I've
certainly never been able to do it with anybody else. If anything I understand
them less than they understand each other.
A kind of odd man
out."

"Ah!"
she made a fractional nod. "Then it is as I thought
You
are not like
the.other
ones. I suspected as
much."