The Rape of The Sun Page 4

  darkness total . . . darkness punctuated by pirouetting lights winking-out some sort of code which escaped him . . . darkness quasi-brightening into pregnant twilight in which the light-ballet persisted, becoming

  billions of seemingly submarine lights penumbra’d by watery glowing, randomly distributed beneath the blue disk-surface of a semi-dark world which was not Earth but called itself Dhorn, billions of stars in the sky of Dhorn and a zooming-in to a point of focus opening out! opening out! VISION. . . .

  4

  It was a world of translucent blue. Collins, the now-resident spectator-mind, was immersed in the blue, floating in what felt like dry water. He apprehended himself suspended in a fluid-heavy blue gas which might as well have been water. Points of luminosity, which he felt as artificial, pervaded the fluid medium. Below him, the medium condensed into impenetrable indigo murk; around him, the medium was visually penetrable, he could see dark rugged land masses; above him, there was relative visual clarity, as though the gas were thinner up there.

  A shape swam up out of murk: a dragon, surely, flying the blue fluid on great leisurely billowing wings with its tail extended lengthily behind. Collins mused upon the dark dragon, drawn to it, moving beside and above and below it.

  The dragon was a man like no man he had ever seen: blue-green in the blue ambiance, possibly sea-green in outer daylight; nearly naked, but wearing a necklace and bracelets which appeared to be golden. What Collins at first had taken to be a tail clarified itself as a pair of long legs tight together and extended behind, with great webbed four-toed feet and with something like fins flaring at the ankles; these legs were being used primarily for guidance rather than for propulsion, which came from the wings, and the willowy leg-motions suggested two knees per leg. The hips and buttocks were slender-humanoid; yes, definitely the creature wore close-fitting dark blue trunks; genitalia were hidden, but Collins knew intuitively that he was watching a male. Chest and shoulders and neck were muscular-enormous, as they must be to power the long arms that swung the rippling wings. Those arms, like the legs, appeard to have two bend-points each, and at their ends were clearly defined four-fingered hands with light webbing between the fingers; but the skin-and-muscle wings, which hung from the arms and extended from just above the wrists to the thighs, constituted the major source of swim-thrust. A head was outthrust from the thick neck: a head shaped like a V pointed forward, the prominent nose-tip being its apex, from which the forehead slanted back-upward to an excellent cranium, while the jaws slanted back-downward to a wide lip-compressed mouth and a chin which almost fused with the neck. There was no head-hair. The eyes were apparently bifocal but were set wide apart; just now the eyes seemed glazed in a way which suggested to Collins a transparent nictating membrane. From forehead-top, two horns thrust forward: helical horns like those of an impala, half the length of the head.

  Altogether graceful was the rippling of the swimmer. Altogether purposeful was his attitude. He was going for some goal.

  Collins, mind-probing, grasped that the name on the swimmer was Dhurk, and that Dhurk had the military title of Superior—which seemed to mean something like Commander in an Earth navy. Superior Dhurk seemed in his mind to be youngish, perhaps early thirtyish in earthly terms, however many years that might signify on Dhorn. But' Dhurk was clearly decisive-young; more, he was idealistic-young.

  Entering the alien brain, Collins’s mind labored at self-orientation therein. The brain proved not totally inhuman, allowing for a quale related to fluid habitat which would be alien to a human brain. There was also some inhuman locomotor wiring entailed in deployment of wings and of finger-and-toe webbing and ankle finning and of double-elbowed double-kneed arms and legs. These complexes aesthetically charmed Collins; their potent grace was alluring. Gradually Collins felt himself into the motor arrangements, then the sensorium, and ultimately into the conscious-and-subconscious memory banks.

  Whereupon, Collins became Dhurk, transiently, in terms of receptive experiencing. But Dhurk alone, unaware of his. brain-guest, remained the thinker, decider, and doer.

  And Collins felt the power of the swimming as though Collins were doing it. His nostrils energetically filled his lungs with the blue fluid medium; almost he could feel his warm blood cells appetitively gathering in his lungs to absorb the inhaled gas, whereafter the cells catabolized the gas, passed the hydrogen-derivate to body cells, and returned to the lungs, excreting the unused gas components along with hydrocarbons for exhalation. His mindsoul tasted the sensuous fragrance of the blue gas that he swam in, and his exultation in the new experience at times became sub-sexual (yes, this Dhurk was fully male).

  Collins was at home in the medium as Dhurk was at home. Collins understood the variations of its density as Dhurk undulated upward from middle-murk into the stimulating rarefaction of the loftier regions where the Horn dwelt, where divine Hréda dwelt. As the medium upward-thinned, the arm-wing motions of Dhurk accelerated to drive his body skyward; but the same thinning of the medium offered less resistance to arm-wings, so that fatigue was far away. Conceivably this mighty Dhurk would eventually break the surface and air-loft like a manta ray....

  Then Collins through his Dhurk-eyes noted ahead an upward slope in the gas-ocean bottom. Mind-straining through those unstrained eyes, whose nictating membrane had now flicked open, he descried the high slope clearly, a slope brilliant with artificial light.

  Ultimately he saw the castle. With Dhurk-determination he drove upward.

  Dhurk was hard-aroused coming in on Castle Dhom, the Horn’s home. It was not Dhurk’s first call on the castle; nevertheless his emotions were appropriate for a middling-young officer’s pilgrimage to the jagged-lofty peak of all power on the planet Dhom and the power center of a multi-star hegemony.

  Long before, in the throne room, Dhurk had knelt before the Horn; knelt wavering and semi-buoyant in the high thinness of his gaseous medium. He had received his Dear Ancestor’s austere welcome, had arisen trembling, had extended constitutionally strong but just then infirm hands to be grasped by the Horn’s powerful hands. Dhurk thought that his own responding grip had been (thanks to his intense concentration) about right, perhaps: strong enough to imply his own strength, but not quite strong enough to challenge the Horn’s grip; Dhurk had even managed a subtle compression of his lips to suggest a wince, and he thought his Ancestor’s nod had been approving. That had been a year ago, when Dhurk had been knighted and promoted to Astrofleet Superior.

  At a palace ball that evening, Dhurk had been presented to High Priestess Hréda, granddaughter to the Horn; and Hréda had winsomely honored Dhurk by inviting him to dance with her in a gracefully vigorous complexity called the Morka which was rather like a slow-motion semi-swimming saraband with finger-snapping instead of castanets. Hréda was another reason for Dhurk’s arousal, coming in on the castle. He was seized by the memory of her chartreuse bare hands and wrists upraised above her flowing saffron gown that swelled assertively with her extended wings and delicately above her small unbound breasts, and the short skirts of that gown flow-swishing about her thigh-smoothery, and her exquisite little head thrown back and imparting undulant motion to her seagreen hair—which in females took the place of horns—and her perfume, and the tenderness of her little hands (whose finger-webbing was ever so light) when several times in the dance-figures their bare hands had formally touched. He did not fail to recall tenderly that during every one of his four subsequent visits he had in one accidental way or another encountered High Priestess Hréda; one such encounter happened to be private, and he hoped that the pat she had given his shoulder as she departed meant that she understood and forgave his awkwardness then....

  All right Only—why was he, a mere superior, now summoned to a conference with the Horn’s High Cabinet? While Dhurk studied the question, his lean-handsome face hardened into a frown (and the impression for Collins was that Dhurk was sensitive, but also that Dhurk could be ruthless).

  The palace was at hand, now. Dhur
k thrust himself upward; past windows and balconies, to an irregular crenellation like coral clusters at the foot of a conch-shell tower. Overpassing the crenellation, he came to rest on a gently slanting roof-roughness. Here the environing pale blue medium was only semi-buoyant as though he were alighting on an offshore shelf just beneath ocean-surface in shallows.

  And palace attendants semi-swam toward him.

  In a great-hall gathering, increasingly and incredulously Dhurk had to recognize that he was not being regarded as an unimportant man among these important men. The dehorned steward who conducted him from the roof took him immediately to a dehorned chamberlain, who in turn led him to the truncate-horned High Chamberlain of the Palace. This grave, aging individual did Dhurk obeisance and escorted him from personage to personage in a spacious lounge where tangy nonintoxicant beverages flowed freely (aid these were true liquids, not gases). “After the conference, Superior Dhurk,” the High Chamberlain informed him, “there will be spiritous liquors if you wish.”

  The use of his rank superior as a courteous appellative only served to impress upon Dhurk his comparative insignificance here. This middle-rank officer, only a junior noble, found himself being presented to such celebrities as the Secretary for Interplanetary Affairs, the Premier of the Imperial Legislature, the Director of the Dhorn Interscientific Institute, the Lord Ultramax of Astrofleet (Dhurk’s remote-supreme chief who ruled all the armed forces), and His Holiness the World Archbishop (there was room on the planet for only one religion). All, of course, wore their aristocratic horns untruncate, the same impala horns that were on the Horn and on Dhurk (but not on any Dhorner woman, for these instead grew head-hair). A family resemblance, perhaps, in this vast Horn-horned family—or perhaps a broader thing, a species vestige?

  When ultimately Dhurk was conducted to his place in the shell-baroque cabinet room at a mighty elliptical table of dull-polished romani rock, he discovered that his place was marked with an embossed plastic name-plaque. This artifact was hardly as portentous as the pure gold name-engravings for the councillors, but it told him instantly and emphatically that on this particular day he was not considered out of place here.

  The councillors got themselves seated gradually, each placing a hand on his chair-back, gracefully lofting himself around, and settling liquidly into the seat. As the conversation continued, Dhurk was gratified to be included, particularly when several questions were addressed to him by his high chief the Lord Ultramax. The head chair remained vacant; apart from where it sat, you could tell that it was the head chair because it was larger than the others, and its intricate ornamentation included a flanking pair of oversize helical horns. Dhurk knew that this was the Horn’s chair; he did not know whether it would be occupied today.

  His Holiness the World Archbishop arose and rapped for order; it was accorded him. “We will open with our usual Wisdom Litany,” he announced in a magnificent tenor; all bowed heads and spread wings, flexing them in gentle rhythm, creating quiet currents in the medium.

  Archbishop: “Now thanks be to God that we are here assembled.”

  All (except Dhurk who didn’t know this in-litany): “We do praise him; it is right that he be praised”

  “We thank our Dragon-God for giving us the gift of his son our Dear Ancestor the Horn.”

  “We do praise him; it w right that he be praised.”

  “Also for his consecration of Princess Hrédra as his High Priestess, to our Dragon-God we are grateful.”

  “We do praise him; it is right that he be praised.” By now, Dhurk could join in: a litany is a litany.

  “Humbly we acknowledge the magnanimity of our Dragon-God for appointing us his unworthy children to serve the Horn in high places.”

  “We do praise him; it is right that he be praised ”

  “And since we have now the fearsome duty of giving wise counsel to our Ancestor, we pray that our God may hover over us as we deliberate. Let us banish all vain thoughts from our minds, and open our minds to the wisdom of our Dragon-God, so that we may counsel the Horn with nothing but wisdom.”

  The length of this invocative verse told Dhurk to be silent this time: the litany’s ultima would change. The others intoned: “Oh God, hear our praise, respond to our prayer: fill us with wisdom ”

  Dhurk joined in the inevitable: “So be it”

  As all heads came up, the Archbishop smiled benignly at the earnest little pale green man who sat at table foot: the

  Premier of the Imperial Legislature, who served as chairman of the cabinet. “Brother Chairman, I turn the meeting over to you for secular purposes.” The Archbishop sat.

  The chairman-premier stood, stood quivering-stiff, and intoned: “Our Dear Ancestor the Horn of Dhom!”

  All floated to their feet. Great double doors behind the head chair swung open, swirling the medium; trumpets flared, vibrating the medium. The Horn swing-strode in like a deep-sea diver with weighted boots. The image of the Horn thudded into Collins. This dragon-man was heavy-set, slate-green, triple-horned in gold, .robed in white with gold brocade. Fascinated, Collins-in-Dhurk focused on the three head-horns: the middle one looked artificial, it was much loftier than its flankers; but’ the two guardian gold or gilded horns looked as natural as Dhurk’s, only they were larger, rising half a head above the skull; all three horns were impala-helical. Descending, Collins’s hypergaze embraced the heavy head with its dark green face: hairless of course, indeterminately mature; the protruding nose was coarse, the ears were expansive, the sloping brow was broad and low, the green irises in the wide-apart eyes were dark enough to seem black, the upper lip was short, the mouth was heavy-lipped and broad, the exposed teeth were white and huge. Downward went the Collins gaze: the shoulders under the robe had to be gigantic, and the hands were gnarled crushers. Power was what the man exuded; power. ...

  The doors closed behind him, the trumpets were silenced. The Horn stood for a moment receiving ritual applause (hand-palms beating on chests); then he inclined his head, parted his robe in front, and eased himself into the head chair which had been pulled back for him by a horn-cropped steward. Everybody sat, presumably to stay seated now for the duration of the meeting.

  Dhurk was profoundly impressed. He had seen no comedy in any of it.

  Said the Horn, his rich basso affably unguent: “It is always a pleasure to meet with you, my dear sons.” Then, beginning at his left and going around the table clockwise, he greeted each minister by familiar name, exchanging brief pleasantries. When he came to Dhurk, who was halfway back to him on

  his right side, the Horn smiled warmly, saying: “My dear descendant Dhurk, I will be coming back to you directly.”

  Having completed the individual greetings, the Horn peered down the table. “Dear son the chairman, is there any business today other than what I will introduce?”

  “Dear Ancestor, nothing that cannot wait for a regular meeting of this cabinet.”

  “Very good, we will move on to what I bring. And first I wish to present my invited guest: Superior Dhurk, a distinguished officer of my Imperial Astrofleet Will you stand, Dhurk.” Standing, the superior flushed and bowed as he received general chest-beating for no reason that he could imagine other than courtesy. “You may be seated,” the Horn told him. “Dear sons, my reason for inviting Dhurk to be present will become apparent as this meeting proceeds.

  “I will specify the purpose of this conference, but I will lead up to it with a question. Other than the already long-accomplished founding and stabilization of this interplanetary society, what is the most important concern of this interplanetary society?”

  A number of possible answers were speeding through Dhurk’s mind: the economy, interplanetary defense, scientific enterprise, robotic productivity. ... He waited while all these experienced men were studying the quizzical expression on the face of their Horn.

  Then the chairman thought he had it. He shot: “It has to be what is the prime concern of High Dragon-Priestess Hréda: the Temple Museum of
Dhom!”

  “Right!” barked the Horn, and all the others beat chests vigorously. Dhurk was stunned. The Horn added: “My dear perceptive, wily son the chairman, well have you earned your title of legislative premier!”

  Piqued because he hadn’t thought of that, the Archbishop sought to cap it: “Of all the religo-cultural enterprises on Dhom, the Temple Museum is the brightest jewel; and saving only our Dear Ancestor, no person on Dhom is wiser or more inspired or more beautiful than the temple’s high priestess, the Princess Hréda.”

  More applause; but Dhurk thought that the smile which the Horn beamed upon the Archbishop was slightly crooked.

  “Well!” said the Horn. “Then all of you comprehend the enormous importance of our special conference. The latest inspiration of the High Priestess is brilliant in concept but staggering in its difficulty. I am going to name this project and entertain your ideas for its fruition.”

  Tense, they waited.

  “For her Temple Museum,” the Horn announced, “the High Priestess wants—and is to have—a ladiolis.”

  Shocked, Dhurk watched minister after minister straighten in his chair. For his own part, Dhurk was ready to slide under the table.

  And as comprehension of the word ladiolis appallingly seeped into the mind of Collins, it shattered the vision. Only for an instant, though: it recrudesced; the meeting continued. ...

  It was the Minister of Culture who ventured: “Surely the Horn must mean—a model of a ladiolis?”

  “I did not say a model. I said a ladiolis.”

  The Archbishop murmured: “Let us open our minds to the wisdom of the inward God." Aloud he suggested: “Dear Ancestor—would not a real full-sized ladiolis be—a shade large to be housed in a museum?”