Shakespeare's Planet (12 page)

Horton stood on the rocky shore, with the remnant of meat clutched in his hand. There was about the pond, about the bowl in which it lay, a sort of somberness that verged on melancholy, if not on actual fear. It was a depressing place, he told himself, but not entirely without its fascination. It was the kind of place where a man could crouch and think morbid thoughts—morbid and romantic. A painter, perhaps, could use it as a model to paint a canvas of a lonely tarn, capturing within his composition a sense of lonely lostness and divorcement from reality.

We all are lost
, Shakespeare had written in that long paragraph at the end of
Pericles
. He had written only in an allegorical sense, but here, less than a mile from where he had written the paragraph, writing in the flaring of the homemade candle, was that lostness of which he had written. He had written well, that strange human from some other world, thought Horton, for it seemed now that everyone was lost. Certainly Ship and Nicodemus and himself were lost in the vastness of no-return, and from what Elayne had said, back there by the fire, the rest of humanity as well. Perhaps the only ones that were not were those people, that handful of people, who still remained on Earth. Poor as Earth might be this day, Earth still was home to them.

Although, come to think of it, Elayne and the other searchers of the tunnels might not be lost in the same sense that all the others were. Lost, perhaps, in the sense that they never knew where they might be going, or what kind of planet they would find, but definitely not lost in the sense that they ever needed to know exactly where they were—self-sufficient to the point that they had no need of other humans, no need of familiarity, strange people who had outgrown the need of home. And was that, he asked himself, the way to defeat the sense of lostness—to no longer need a home?

He walked close to the water's edge and hurled the meat far out. It landed with a splash and disappeared immediately, as if the pond had accepted it, reaching out and taking it, sucking it down into itself. Concentric ripples ran out from the center of the splash, but did not reach the shore. The ripples were suppressed. They ran for a ways and then were flattened out and disappeared, the pond returning to its calm serenity, to the black flatness of itself. As if, Horton told himself, it valued its serenity and did not tolerate disturbances.

And now, he thought, it was time to leave. He'd done what he had come to do, and it was time to leave. But he did not leave; he stayed. As if there were something there that told him not to leave, as if, for some reason, he should linger for a while, as a man may overstay his time at the bedside of a dying friend, wanting to leave, uncomfortable in the face of oncoming death, but still staying because of a feeling that it would be the negation of an old friendship if one were to leave too soon.

He stood and gazed about him. To the left loomed the ridge where the abandoned settlement was located. From where he stood, however, there was no sign of the settlement. The houses were hidden by the trees. Straight ahead lay what seemed to be a swamp and to the right a conical hill—a mound—that he had not noticed until now and which apparently did not stand out with distinctness from the settlement ridge.

It rose, he judged, a couple of hundred feet above the level of the pond. Symmetrical, it seemed a perfect cone, tapering to a jagged point. It had something of the appearance of a volcanic cinder cone, but he knew that it was not. Aside from the fact that it was apparent it could not be a cone, he could not pin down his immediate rejection of it as volcanic. Lone trees grew here and there upon it, but otherwise it was bare of vegetation except for the grasslike growth that covered it. Looking at it, he crinkled his brow in puzzlement. There was, he told himself, no geologic factor he had observed or could immediately bring to mind that would explain a formation of that sort.

He returned his attention to the pond, remembering what Carnivore had said—that it was not really water, that it was more like soup, too thick and heavy to be water.

Walking down to the edge of it, he squatted and carefully reached out a finger to test the fluid. The surface seemed to resist slightly, as if it might have a fairly tough surface tension. His finger did not plunge into it. Instead, under slight pressure, the surface became indented beneath his fingertip. He applied more pressure, and the finger broke through. Plunging in his hand, he rotated his wrist so that his cupped palm was uppermost. Lifting his hand slowly, he saw that he had a handful of fluid. It lay quietly in his curved palm, not seeping through his imperfectly closed fingers as water would have. It seemed to be in one piece. For the love of Christ, he thought, a piece of water!

Although by now he knew it wasn't water. Strange, he thought, that Shakespeare had known no more than it was soupy. Although perhaps he did. There was a lot of writing in the book, and he'd read only a few paragraphs of it. Like soup, Carnivore had said, but this bore no resemblance to soup. It was warmer than Horton had thought it would be, and heavier, although that was a matter of judgment and to be certain, the fluid would have to be weighed and there was no way he could weigh it. It was slippery to the touch. Like mercury, although it wasn't mercury; he was sure of that. He turned his wrist and allowed the fluid to run out. When it was gone, his palm was dry. The liquid was not wet.

Unbelievable, he told himself. A liquid warmer than water, heavier, cohesive, not wet. Perhaps Nicodemus had a transmog—no, the hell with that. Nicodemus had a job to do and once he'd got it done, they'd be getting out of here, off this planet, and on into space, to other planets probably, or perhaps to no planets at all. And if that should be the case, he'd stay in cold-sleep and not be revived. The thought did not seem to frighten him as much as it should have.

Now, for the first time, he admitted what had been at the back of his mind, more than likely, all the time. This planet was no good. Carnivore had said as much in his first words of greeting, that the planet was no good. Not frightening, not dangerous, not repulsive—just not worth a damn. Not the kind of place that a man would want to stay.

He tried to analyze the reasons for his thinking this, but there seemed to be no specific factors he could line up and count. It was just a hunch, an unconscious psychological reaction. Perhaps the trouble was that this planet was too much like the Earth—a sort of dowdy Earth. He had expected that an alien planet would be alien, not a pale, unsatisfactory copy of the Earth. More than likely, other planets were more satisfactorily alien. He'd have to ask Elayne, he told himself, for she would know. Strange, he thought, how she had come through the tunnel and walking up the path. Strange that on this planet two human lives would cross—no, not two, but three, for he was forgetting Shakespeare. Somehow fate had dipped down into its bag of tricks and had conjured up three humans, within a very limited space of time—so limited that they'd encounter one another or, in the case of Shakespeare, almost encounter one another—would, at least, all three of them, have impact on one another. Elayne was down at the tunnel now with Nicodemus, and in just a while he'd join them, but before he did, he probably should investigate the conical hill. Although how he'd investigate it or what his investigation would tell him, he had no idea. But somehow it seemed important that he have a look at it. More than likely he had the feeling, he told himself, because it seemed so out of place.

He rose from his squatting and walked slowly around the edge of the pond, heading for the hill. The sun, halfway up the eastern sky, was warm. The sky was pale blue, without a sign of cloud. He found himself wondering what the planet's weather pattern might be like. He'd ask Carnivore; Carnivore had been here long enough to know.

He rounded the pond and came to the foot of the hill. The ascent was so steep that he was forced to go almost on hands and knees, bending forward to claw at the grasslike ground cover to keep from falling back and to help himself along.

Halfway up he halted, breath rasping in his throat. He stretched at full length on the ground, clawing his hands into the soil to keep himself from sliding back. He twisted his head so he could see the pond. Now its surface was blue instead of black. The mirror blackness of it was reflecting the blueness of the sky. He was panting so hard with the effort of his climb that it seemed to him the hill was panting with him—or perhaps that some great heart inside of it was beating rhythmically.

Still half-winded, he got on hands and knees again and finally reached the top. There, on a small flat platform which crowned the hill, he looked down the other side and saw the the hill truly was a cone. Around its entire circumference, the slope thrust upward at the selfsame angle as the one he'd climbed.

Sitting cross-legged, he stared out across the pond to where, on the opposite ridge, he could make out some of the masonry of the deserted settlement. He tried to trace the outline of the houses, but found it was impossible because of the heavy growth that broke up the lines. Slightly to his left stood the Shakespeare house. A thin trickle of smoke rose from the cooking fire. He could see no one around. Carnivore, more than likely, was not back from his hunting trip. Because of the dip of the ground, he could not see the tunnel.

As he sat, he pulled absentmindedly at the ground cover. Some of it came loose, clay clinging to the roots.
Clay
, he told himself,
that's funny
. What would clay be doing here? He got out a pocket knife and opening a blade, stabbed at the soil, digging a little pit. As far as he could dig, it was clay. What, he asked himself, if the entire hill was clay? A sort of monstrous frost boil, heaved up in a bygone day and remaining till this moment. He cleaned the blade and closed it, put the knife back into his pocket. It would be interesting, he thought, if he had the time, to untangle the geology of this place. But what difference did it make? It would take a lot of time and he didn't plan to stay that long.

Getting to his feet, he went carefully down the slope.

At the tunnel, he found Elayne and Nicodemus. She was sitting on a boulder watching Nicodemus work. He had a chisel and a hammer and was tapping out a line around the panel.

“You're back again,” Elayne said to Horton. “What took you so long?”

“I did some exploring.”

“In the city? Nicodemus told me about the city.”

“Not in the city,” said Horton, “and it isn't any city.”

Nicodemus turned around, the hammer and chisel hanging in his hand. “I'm trying to chisel the panel out of the rock,” he said. “Maybe if I can do that, I can get at its backside and work on it from there.”

“What you'll do,” said Horton, “is cut the wires.”

“There wouldn't be any wires,” said Elayne. “Nothing quite that crude.”

“Maybe, too,” said Nicodemus, “if I can free the panel, I may be able to pry the cover loose.”

“The cover? You said it was a force field.”

“I don't know what it is,” said Nicodemus.

“I take it,” said Horton, “that there was no second box. The one that triggered the cover.”

“No,” said Elayne, “and that means someone tampered with the setup. Someone who didn't want anyone to leave this planet.”

“You mean the planet's closed?”

“I suppose that is it,” she said. “I suppose there would have been some sign set up at the other tunnels warning against using the selector which would take anyone to this planet, but if so, the signs are long since gone, or maybe they are there and we don't know what to look for.”

“Even if you found them,” Nicodemus said, “you probably couldn't read them.”

“That is right,” said Elayne.

Carnivore came stalking along the path. “I am back with fresh new meat,” he announced. “How are you doing here? Have you got it solved?”

“No,” said Nicodemus, turning back to work.

“It takes you long,” said Carnivore.

Nicodemus swung around again. “Get off my back!” he snapped. “You've been riding me ever since I started. You and your friend Shakespeare messed around for years without doing anything, and now you expect us to get it all worked out within an hour or two.”

“But tools you have,” wailed Carnivore. “Tools and training. Shakespeare, he had none of this, nor did I. It would seem, with tools and training …”

“Carnivore,” said Horton, “we never told you we could do anything. Nicodemus said he'd try. You have no guarantee. Stop acting as if we're breaking a promise that we made you. There never was a promise.”

“Better, perhaps,” said Carnivore, “that we attempt some magic. Magic put together. My magic, your magic and her magic.” He pointed at Elayne.

“Magic wouldn't work,” said Nicodemus, shortly. “If there is such a thing as magic.”

“Oh, there's magic, all right,” said Carnivore. “That is not in question.” He appealed to Elayne. “Would you not say so?”

“I have seen magic,” she said, “or what was reputed to be magic. Some of it appeared to work. Not every time, of course.”

“Happenstance,” said Nicodemus.

“No, more than happenstance,” she said.

“Why don't we all just clear out,” said Horton, “and give Nicodemus a chance to do what he is doing. Unless,” he said to Nicodemus, “you think you need some help.”

“I don't,” said Nicodemus.

“Let's go and see the city,” Elayne suggested. “I'm dying to see it.”

“We'll stop at the camp and pick up a flashlight,” Horton said. He asked Nicodemus, “We have a flashlight, haven't we?”

“Yes,” said Nicodemus. “You'll find it in the pack.”

“You're going along with us?” Horton asked Carnivore.

“If you please, no,” said Carnivore. “The city is a nervous place for me. I'll stay right here. I'll cheer the robot on.”