Lucifer Comet (2464 CE) Read online

  He seemed to be ignoring her question. When I saw this, I used the gradient and followed Narfar to Dora, intending to enter into friendly partnership with him and free that ingredient and show him how to let it deploy itself. But Narfar, sensing my arrival, went defensive and met me aggressively off Dora. You know the rest.

  Why weren’t you smashed when the comet hit you?

  We don’t smash easily.

  Why then are you dying now—oh, I didn’t mean that— I am dying now, or my body is, because I am allowing it. I have done my work on Erth, and I find it good; and I have been driven away from Dora. There are other planets, and / will find one for my work, but I will not be operating in my own body.

  I want to assimilate that. I can’t do it in a hurry. .

  Of course you can’t, but now there is no time. Listen to me, Dorita, my body is weakening fast— I am listening, Quarfar.

  Not far below the north pole on Dora, there is a certain crater like a circular box. It contains something of great value. Knowing you, I am sure that you will find it. Dorita— you must not open it! Under no circumstances may you open it. Do you understand, Dorita? Do not open that box!

  But why may I not open it?

  Because you must not! I enjoin you!

  She was ready with another eager question. Then her mind sensed that Quarfar was dead.

  18

  At home, Dorita mind-called Narfar. Awakening (in a Central Park tree again), he came to her quickly and easily, flying rather low in his haste, so that a number of people saw him and swore off pot.

  While waiting, she used a measuring tape and a compass (both luckily in that serendipitous desk) to get distance and azimuth from the center of her sofa to the foot of the upward stairs which happened to be on a direct line from the sofa through the open apartment door. Hearing a wing-clatter in the apartment, she hurried back to find Narfar standing with outstretched arms and wings (necessarily equidistant from both side walls, his wingspread being four meters). “Stay here,” she commanded. “I’m doing something important for both of us,” and she closed the door from the outside.

  Up the zigzag stairs she prowled to the sixth floor, and sighted down the stairwell to assure herself that the stair-foot on her fifth floor was in line with the head-and-foot on this sixth; then up another flight, and another down-sighting; then up the final flight to the roof-door at its head, and a sighting. Passing through, she hooked the end of her tape to a latch-lever on the door, walked a catwalk out and over and back, paused when she thought her position was about right and checked her tape and compass. She was off a meter over and a meter back, she would have to leave the catwalk and tread the graveled roof-surface; would she break through? Removing her shoes, cautiously she stepped off (the roof held), and found the position which had to be exactly over the center of the sofa. This she marked in the gravel with a finger; and she hurried back to Narfar—who, at her entry, again extended arms and wings, grinning like a coal scuttle and not in any way drooping.

  The time was 1441.

  She approached the eager one cautiously, pausing a meter and a half from him and extending her hands, saying, “Take my hands, no more.” He seized them and started to draw her to him, but she fired a peremptory mental negative, at the same time frowning; he released her hands and began to droop everywhere. She warmed him with tentative encouragement; he brightened a little.

  She mindspoke; this was too important to risk bad speech. Now listen, Narfar, I know how to get us to your world, but it has to be done right now. Do you know what the five-forty-six gradient is?

  No—

  It is the space-trail you took.’ when you first went to Dora. Now do you know?

  Trail still there?

  It is. Do you remember how it smells?

  Oh, sure! Where trail?

  Come! she ordered. Taking one of his hands, she led him to the apartment door, opened it, peered out: nobody; she’d have to take a chance on the upper floors, but maybe it didn’t matter anyhow. She led him up the three flights of stairs on a run and checked her watch: 1452, time tightening. Around the catwalks she led him, and paused in front of the mark in the gravel. Now listen carefully, Narfar. Pick me up, but don’t fool around with my little body. I want you to hover— hover, get it?

  Hover, yes— Hover just above that cross-mark you see there in the gravel, maybe yea far above it, almost touching it; but you must not touch down upon it. Got it? Her concern was that his weight, or anyway their combined weight, would break through the roof.

  For answer, he wrapped both arms around her waist, held her midriff tight against his own, grinned down upon her, and lofted. An instant later, they hovered at the right position; her cutichron told her that they had no more than two minutes to wait, and a good thing in view of what she was sensing low.

  Hugging him, she mindbreathed: Smell the air, Narfar! Smell for that gradient, that space-trail to Dora! When you smell it coming, leap into it!

  Oboy! Back to my Dora—

  She clutched him, fearful of space-death. Twenty-one hundred airless frigid light-years….

  An instant later, they stood in knee-deep rank grass on a world strange to Dorita. The heat hit her like a suddenly opened furnace door. But the mind of Narfar was exulting: Home!

  She felt his exultation die. He almost whimpered: But Dorita, this right where my great king-city is, I know smell—but where city? She had stepped away from him, looking about, already beginning to be heat-weak. In every direction, long grass grace-noted by occasional trees and a pond or two; then, in every direction, jungle….

  Minute by minute she was more heat-oppressed, more clothing-wet; and insects were droning malevolently about her. Nevertheless, she tried to reassure him. Narfar, believe me, this has to be your Dora. Right place. But wrong time.

  Wrong time? What you mean?

  You were away from Dora for a long time, Narfar; I told you that. Looks like things happened while you were gone. Like maybe all your people got sick and died.

  My people would never all get sick and die! I fixed them up so they could not!

  Then where are they?

  He looked about, frowning, wing-drooping.

  Narfar, this is not the time you knew. This is many many years later, many many lives later, generations later. Nothing now is the same as you knew— Unexpectedly, he seized her and winged aloft with her. The jungle had crashed open; the meadow was filled with stampeding homed four-legged beasts, something between bison and moose. Their dust and their hoof-thunder went on for many minutes, they were trampling each other, there was no evidence that there was any end to them….

  They maniu, they my friends, my creatures, mind-snarled Narfar, but they stupid, now they crazy, they not know me, they trample us. We stay up here till they go by. Must be you right, Dorita; my men keep maniu down, they not grow too many; now they too many, must be no men any more.

  Ultimately their noise died; the maniu vanished into far jungle, smashing through trees and into trees. Many of their bodies lay mangle-scattered in their wake.

  Now we go down? suggested the batman.

  Dorita’s big means-moment had come: not the biggest of all moments, but the one which had to lead to that. On this one, it was do or die again. Only, right now, the tropical humidity was improving the attractiveness of die… .

  What you thinking, do or die? he demanded, clutching her to him, afraid that she might fall.

  Her mindthrust was urgent. Narfar, you say this is where your city was. Can you smell out your great house?

  Oh sure, but it not there— Take us down, and find where it was.

  Swinging himself around into swan-dive position, Narfar swooped and head-down cruised the broad meadow, his nose inches from the grass except when he had to loft over a maniu carcass; thoughtfully he had transferred his Dorita-burden to his back, and there she clung terrified, head between his pumping wings and agitated by those wings, clutching his chest with her arms, clutching his pelvis with her legs�
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  He stopped in midair so abruptly that she was nearly catapulted over his head. This it, he announced with satisfaction; and turning in the air, he dropped softly into the grass, on his feet. Dorita let go and fell into the grass; she got herself cat-seated erect and looked up at him.

  From triumph, again he had gone disconsolate. This where it was, he asserted, but it gone. Where is?

  Are we inside where your great house was?

  Yes.

  What room are we in?

  Great room where I meet with my leaders.

  Did you have a throne?

  What?

  Did you have a big seat where you sat to meet your leaders?

  Oh yes. Wait, I find. Right here, but no seat now.

  You are standing in front of a little mound in the grass. Why don’t you dig into it? Here, let’s find something to dig with— Not need; strong smell, I dig fast! He mole-burrowed into the mound, and rapidly he unerthed a little stone throne with a narrow curly-edged back and no arms, rather like the throne of Minos at Knossos. Dorita repressed a giggle: she’d always wondered why the throne of Minos was so silly-looking; but she saw the reason for the structure of this one, Nar-far had to curl his wings around the seatback. Had there been wings on Minos? Cut it: there was serious-dangerous work to be done.

  Good, she told him. You found your throne, your great seat. Now sit on it.

  I sit. He did so, with considerable dignity.

  Now, she announced, I sit on your lap.

  That nice!

  But let my bod alone, she cautioned, positioning herself crosswise on his thighs below his genitals. Now listen closely, Narfar. You and I are going back in time.

  That mean what?

  We are going to move from today into yesterday, and then another yesterday, and then many more yesterdays. We are going back as far as it took the comet to bring you from Dora to Erth. Do you get it?

  Maybe, a little. Like I remember what I do long ago, and all of a sudden 7 doing it again. Like that?

  Like that. But 7 need your help.

  All right. How?

  7 do all the moving in time. 7 move both of us. But 7 have to stop once in a while. Every time 7 stop, you tell me if we there yet.

  There? Where?

  Where you were before you went out to fight Quarfar.

  I up north, in ice.

  7 not mean that. 7 mean, where you were before you go north and meet Quarfar.

  Before, I here in my great house.

  I know, but… 7 mean where in time. Narfar, before you go north to fight Quarfar, you maybe meet with your leaders?

  Sure. Right here. 7 sit on throne.

  You know all the leaders?

  Sure.

  They know you?

  Sure.

  All right. Now, when we go back in time, every time I stop, you tell me if you see your leaders that you know.

  Oh, that good, Dorita! Now I get it, all of it! Do time-stuff! Go!

  She clung to his neck, frowned with intense mind-body concentration, and did what she had done when she had gone into day before yesterday to inspect her stolen money. But now, perilously, she made the time-journey open-ended.

  The savannah vanished, and there was a mighty giddiness and a rushing blur, like running at high speed an elevator with no walls and having no indicator to number the floors swishing past. She had no business doing this unprecedented thing, no mortal business; and never in her life had her euphoria boiled higher.

  19

  She switched it on. After an indefinite while of disorientation, arbitrarily she cut. Same broad hot savannah surrounded by jungle, but being drenched now by soaking rain. Far in the future of then yet; she did another timedive of longer duration. …

  Savannah again, but sere under hot sun, obviously during a long drought: her wet clothes were steaming, and so was Narfar’s wet body. Still not then by a long time, but she would linger here to dry; and she departed his lap and moved about in order to do it more efficiently, while Narfar circled in low air for the same reason….

  He yelled: “Hey!”

  “What?”

  Dropping to the grass beside her, he grabbed her hand and pulled her to a nearby place where two rotted posts were sticking out of the ground; they hadn’t been here before—or later? He gabbled in his tongue, she lost it and mind-begged for thoughts; aroused, he told her, Those wall posts of my great house, still a withe hanging to one! He dragged her back to the throne: Sit on me, Dorita, we do more time-stuff!

  Knowing little about rotting-speed for wood and withes, at a broad guess she estimated that they had back-timed to an era only a few generations later than Narfar’s. Already so deeply into the past! On Erth now, men had perhaps advanced to the point of rough-chipping crude stone tools… . Well, now she would have to bring off some very delicate further increment.

  She therefore now held them in rushing limbo while she counted from one thousand to one thousand ten; and she cut; and she and Narfar fell to the ground, for the throne had vanished; the savannah too had vanished; they were crowded in by trees and vines in dark jungle—and in a tree just overhead, a red-and-white-banded snake the size of a full-grown anaconda hissed down at them and writhingly prepared to drop and attack….

  Releasing Dorita, Narfar lofted to an air-position level with the tree-branch; eying the serpent’s eyes, he commenced a chittering; the serpent began to weave with its head, mouth closed, tongue flickering. Presently Narfar extended his long arms and began to stroke the neck-back of the snake with one hand while he caressed its neck-underside with the other. The snake raised its head high in sensuous ecstasy; presently, flowing off the limb, it coiled itself gently about the body of Narfar and peered with contentment into his eyes while he continued his stroking.

  Serpent-cloaked, Narfar dropped to the ground in front of ground-sitting amazed Dorita. This one of my friends, he told her; almost all beasts my friends. But you go too far back with time-stuff. This what my city-place and my great-house-place look like when I first come to Dora. / scout it first, find it like this; I bring my people here, we chop down trees and grub roots and make place for city, I eat a lot of the roots, l charm so trees never come again in city-place, I tell all beasts we need space, they say okay and go deep into jungle and leave space to us. Can you go more forward with time-stuff?

  Who’d know? Dorita mused, watching the snake. Do we take him or her with us?

  For answer, Narfar chittered lovingly at the snake; it tongued his nose, then uncoiled from him and vanished into jungle. Narfar then sat on the ground with legs extended together and stretched his arms toward her: Come, we go.

  She objected: You are sitting in the throne-place. We must not be where the throne will be, or we will end up inside it.

  He hunched-over a meter to his right.

  She demanded: Will anything hard be there?

  Think not, he replied; maybe, but think not. Come, we go.

  She tried six seconds forward. She was relieved to see that they had come out of transition beside the stone throne, not inside it; but Narfar, peering about, leaped horrified to his feet, dropping her. They were in a rotting palace built of wood and withes and thatched with grass; there were many holes in the walls, and much of the roof was gone.

  He ran out through the single door, and she heard the heavy wing-beat of his departure aloft. She followed outside: he was gone, but she knew what he must be doing. The scene was painful. She stood beside the palace (it was big, all right) in a great city of huts like something out of ancient Africa—only, it was no longer a vital city, it was a sprawling graveyard of desuetude.

  Intrigued by the ruins, Dorita began to prowl streets of high rank grass, entering a few huts. In one, she found a child somewhere between two and five, a naked bluish-green male, emaciated, crying with the pain of his hunger and his bloated belly. She shrank back: it was her first confrontation with utter misery. Panting, she ran out of the hut; she could not help the child, she had no food
to give him. Food? She saw rank abandoned gardens; she peered at the bordering jungle and thought of weird edible tropical fruits: there was food aplenty for a million children, but this little kid alone had no way to get it… . She didn’t dare harvest wild stuff in an old garden or go to the jungle for tree-fruit: in either case, she wouldn’t know what was poison and what not; in the jungle-case, there were surely lurking carnivores. Where were the child’s parents? For that matter, where were all the other children?

  Narfar alit beside her, panting, not fatigued but anguished. He seized and hugged her, pressing his forehead to her chest with his nose between her breasts, not in lust but in misery-needing-woman-comfort. It can not be! he mind-blurted. I fly everywhere, over whole city: all ruins, no people! I make forever-city here: can not be it ever go to ruin!

  Above his mighty hairy shoulder, above one shriveled wing, Dorita saw something. Holding Narfar, she peered at I the something. It was a most ancient blue-green man emerging naked from a nearby hut, emerging in a laborious hands-and-knees crawl with head low. He got about body-length out of the hut and paused, exhausted, breathing hard, swollen belly nearly touching ground, ribs threatening to break through dry skin.

  Having got his head up with difficulty, he stared at Dorita and Narfar, stared prolongedly as though with bleared eyes he sought to see clearly. His head, face, and body were Neanderthaloid, like Narfar’s; only the skin-color and the winglessness were different.

  He opened his mouth, and coughed, and coughed again, and swallowed, and swallowed again; then he managed to eject a feeble short chitter; then he dropped his head, and panted, and coughed, and panted. Dorita was electrified: distinctly she had heard the old man say, “Narfar!”

  And Narfar had heard! Narfar raised his head away from Dorita, then released her and sprang to his feet; he whirled, stared, and ran to the old man; kneeling beside him, Narfar raised the ancient to his knees and peered into his face. He demanded: “Who you?”

  The feeble one managed to utter: “I Gians.”