This side of Infinity (ssc), page 8
A wild giant from the northern wastes was brought into the valleys and exhibited to the people by a traveling showman. This giant was called a troll, because light slowed him down and under direct sunlight he was totally paralysed. The true giants, the skin-clad barbarians of the snows, were never captured alive. The troll was the first living creature of this size ever shown to the valley humans. He was exhibited in the open air, at night. One morning after the people had departed, just before dawn, the troll was visited by a wandering poet.
“This is not your world,” said the troll to the poet, as they watched a passing satellite and waited for the dawn.
The poet replied: “We are here, therefore the world is ours.”
The troll: “You live in our lands without being part of them. You make your own lands around you, and you huddle together within them, refusing to face the natural world.”
The poet: “We fear the dark and the unknown.”
The troll: “To you, life is light and vision. On your home planet the creatures must dwell in continuous light. Here, we live only in darkness. When the sun sets, all the creatures of the rocks come alive and dance, that the sun shall not rise again. We were bom in darkness, and the darkness shall return.”
The poet: “There are eyes in the deep forests, glimpsed by travelers. At night the goblins come out and light fires on the hillsides. Do they too pray for the end of day?” The troll: “All creatures pray for the end of light. One evening the sun will go down into the mists forever.”
I
The northern stars twinkled in the frost-clear air above the valley. The dryad known as the White Lady watched the fur-sprites digging into the snow. She was standing to one side, admiring the showers of snow hurled up by the fur-sprites from their excavations. She was viewing the scene in slow-time, so to her the snow appeared to rise and fall with graceful dignity. As dryads grew older they used more slow-time perception; this one was very old.
Underneath the snow was an ancient human village. It had been inhabited less than a century ago, before daylight vanished from the North Polar Continent. The fur-sprites were digging down to it in search of metal for use in their laboratory caves. Unlike the fur-sprites, the dryad had no scientific curiosity to bring her so far from her forest. She merely wanted to watch the fountains of snow gliding down in slow motion around the excavations. Below the surface layers of dry, powdery snow, several feet of ice covered the valley floor, and this too had to be removed.
After hours of work the crushed buildings were slowly uncovered. The village had been reduced to rubble after sundown, and its remains had been preserved under the ice ever since. The fur-sprites began probing some promising looking spots, and now only a little snow and ice was being thrown onto the mounds of waste material which ringed the site. The dryad returned her perceptions to the normal time rate and drifted over to the large shallow pits dug out by the fur-sprites. The bare rubble, with snow packed hard in the crevices between the stones, was cold and hard beneath her.
A fur-sprite padded over to her. “Lady, I have discovered metal. Will you dowse the nature and extent of the substance?”
“I will do so gladly. Lead me to your boreholes.”
She followed him to the spot where he had drilled his telekinetic probes. She knew the fur-sprite would not ask for her aid unless the samples were promising.
“There are my test drillings, Lady,” said the fur-sprite. “All save one contain iron alloy.”
His sample cores were laid out on the snow beside the small cylindrical holes he had drilled. The dryad examined them, approving of their neatness, then studied the body of metal lying beneath the surface. It was larger than she had expected. The fur-sprite had found the remains of a public transport vehicle, which contained as much usable metal as six normal-sized vehicles.
“This is welcome news,” said the fur-sprite. “Lady, I thank you.”
The news was flashed to the other fur-sprites, several of whom had also discovered metal objects. They all ceased work and made obeisance to the North Star. It was fitting that the first whisper of the greater wind should reach them at that moment.
Two southerly winds came up the valley towards the Pole during each revolution of the star-field. The lesser wind, lasting for half an hour, corresponded to the morning in the sunlit south, and the hour-long greater wind began during the southern evening. Both winds carried with them the echoes of the lands they had passed over, and these echoes were savored by the people of the valleys. The faint southernmost echoes served to heighten the atmosphere of bleak grandeur from the frozen sea at the valley mouths.
Standing on the ruins of the human settlement, surrounded by a circle of white snow mounds, the dryad and the fur-sprites drank in the wind, its scents and its thoughts, its emotions and its atmospheres, and its singing rushing motions. The wind caught up the dry surface snow and whirled the tiny flakes onward through the night. The dryad went into slow-time again, and the dance of the snowflakes became as majestic as the eternal movement of the stars.
The dryad gradually tasted a strange taint in their friendly wind. The fur-sprites noticed it too. Far away near the valley’s southern end, some alien mind was sending out a stream of weird unhealthy images. It was like an oil slick spreading over a pure ice-cold sea. The dryad recognised the source of the thoughts, and she hastily returned to normal time.
“Lady, what is this thing?”
The fur-sprite she had aided was standing beside her. She laid a hand on his small smooth-furred head to comfort him.
“These thoughts are coming from a human. I must learn more.”
“My Lady, no!” The fur-sprite knew what she intended to do.
“Peace, I shall be in no danger. My thoughts cannot travel against the wind.”
The White Lady withdrew her hand from the fur-sprite’s head. She opened out her mental field to its fullest extent, straining to pick up the human thoughts drifting northwards on the wind. The unpleasant taint intensified to the point where it was painful to her. She also received thoughts from creatures between her and the human.
The monster was Josef Somes, a traveling bandit turned plunderer from the equatorial continents where day and night still alternated. It wore an insulated airtight suit which protected it from the Polar environment. The human had crossed the frozen sea in its metal armor, and it was now journeying up the valley in search of the valuable mineral known as living-rock. This rock fetched high prices in the southern markets, and Josef Somes had found an old pre-sundown map which gave the position of a large lode. The dryad realized she knew where the human was heading for. That great mass of living-rock was the sacred outcrop jutting out at a bend in her own valley, just below the forests where the dryads and several other races lived.
The human was sheltering from the wind, the White Lady learned. As soon as the wind died down the human would leave its refuge and continue on its northward journey. That taint in the wind was only the beginning. The monster would come right up to the sacred outcrop beside her own forest and shamelessly defile the living-rock. If it was allowed to do this unchecked it would repeat the deed, and perhaps other humans would join it. This must not be allowed to happen.
The fur-sprites had opened their minds and examined the thoughts coming to them on the wind. They had not learned as much as the White Lady, but they knew that the living-rock near their homes was threatened by a human plunderer.
“Lady, we must go south to Homeground,” said the leader of the fur-sprites. “We hear the thoughts of our elders, calling all creatures to an assembly beside the living-rock/’
“You are right,” said the dryad. “Here we can do nothing about the menace. We must return to Homeground.”
II
Homeground, on the gentle western slope of the valley, was one of the few snow-free areas in the North Polar Continent. This was due to the efforts of its inhabitants, who maintained a permanent snow-repellent spell over it. In its hundred acres, which had been landscaped into a series of terraces by the busy gardeners, were nineteen separate stands of tall fir trees: Each stand was called a forest and was the home of a single dryad. Mosses, grasses, snowdrops and other plants grew in the open spaces between die forests, tended by the gardeners and the sad-faced gnomes who lived in the long earthen dykes. Solitary deciduous trees, without attendant spirits, rose above the undergrowth to a height of thirty feet or more.
After three hours’ journey, the dryad and the fur-sprites reached the aged oak tree on the northern edge of Homeground. Nobody was there to welcome them because the valley creatures had gathered on the Meeting Plain, at the opposite end of Homeground. The party moved on through the area covered by the snow-repellent spell.
The dryad’s hands moved swiftly in the outline of a sacred symbol as she reached the first of the nineteen forests; the dryad of this timber was absent, but her trees would remember. Inside the woods, and scattered about the open spaces, were the dwellings of the valley creatures. Dwarfs and fur-sprites shared caverns below the soil. Pine martens and tarsiers nested high up in the trees. The gardeners, elfin people related to the goblins, made tumbledown wooden huts with roofs of turf, and growing on these buildings were plants such as mosses and brittle winterfems. Long winding banks of earth sprawling haphazardly over the terraces contained low tunnels similar to rabbit warrens, and in these artificial caves lived the gnomes who often assisted the gardeners. The dryad and the fur-sprites with her saw all these dwellings as they travelled towards the Meeting Plain, and every home was empty. The fur-sprites were uneasy; they could not remember a time when Homeground had been deserted. Perhaps, the fur-sprites whispered to each other, perhaps the valley had been like this before sundown, when humans ruled the land.
In deference to the White Lady, the fur-sprites took the path through her forest and waited respectfully while she merged with her favorite tree for a brief moment. The dryad rejoined them, saying nothing, and they went down to the Meeting Plain together.
The Meeting Plain was the area of the valley floor at the foot of the living-rock bluff which formed die southern border of Homeground. Fur-sprites, dwarfs, dryads, gnomes, owls and all the other creatures of Homegound were standing, sitting or crouching around the circle of elders as the dryad and her prospector friends arrived.
The assembled creatures greeted the travelers warmly. The fur-sprites gave their news about the metal they had found, but the menace of the approaching human was foremost in their minds. The White Lady walked over to take her place with the other elders, and the conference continued.
Now that the first wave of human-fear had died down, the people were discussing the measures to be taken against the human. All the plans involved killing the intruder, for there was no thought of merely driving the human away. The memories of the times before sundown were still strong. Every month at first moonrise, the valley creatures lit a fire of coal and wood to celebrate their deliverance from humanity, and at the yearly Midwinter bonfire which marked Highest Full Moon the wooden image of a human being was cast into the flames. So the argument about the human was not over whether it should be killed, but how it should be killed.
The people were divided into the supporters of two different strategies. The majority, favoring the “defensive” strategy, wanted to set traps for the human to walk into when it reached Homeground, and the minority wanted to go south and attack the human while it was still coming up the valley. The supporters of the “defensive” policy pointed out that their plans gave them more time to make their preparations, besides enabling them to work in Homeground. After much discussion, the elders adopted the “defensive” strategy. The people of Homeground would let the human come to them.
Before the assembly began to discuss the traps to be constructed, the White Lady made a suggestion.
“Our ancient enemy was always a creature of limited powers, and it must be vulnerable in many ways. If we knew which part of its mind to strike, we would be able to direct its thought processes to suit our purposes. Perhaps we could even control its body and thus remove all risks to ourselves. However, we cannot make the necessary probes from here. Someone must go near our enemy and probe its mind to discover its weakness.”
“If the human is indeed vulnerable, its death will be an easy matter for us,” said a dwarf. “The spellmasters control powerful forces which we can use in the assault on the monster when it reaches Homeground. But who can discover its weaknesses for the spellmasters? Who can venture that close to the human and survive?”
“I shall go,” said the dryad. Ignoring the response from the startled creatures around her, she went on: “With my years of experience and my knowledge of the mental sciences, I would surely learn more than the average person would learn from a probe of the human. You cannot send any other but me.”
The fur-sprites, who had a special affection for the White Lady, were shocked and dismayed. “Lady, it is not right that you should risk your life in this way. Let some other go in your place.”
“You cannot send any other but me,” she said again.
They tried to dissuade her, but failed, and they realized that she was determined to go. The fur-sprites made a last attempt to ensure the safety of their White Lady.
“Do not go alone, Lady. Let others accompany you, to protect you. Any information you gain will be useless if you die without sending it to the spellmasters.”
“I agree with the fur-sprites,” said the oreade. “I shall go with you, White Lady. If you die alone your sacrifice is in vain.”
The oreade was an old mountain-spirit who had made her home in the valley. If she said she would go with the dryad, nothing would stop her.
So the dryad submitted to the will of the creatures who loved her, and took four companions with her. The oreade came, and two fur-sprites, and a mournful gnome who bore an axe of human steel. The White Lady bowed formally to them, and raised her hands to the sky hanging dark and cold above the valley. “We have no favorable stars for our quest, my friends. There is no moon, and only one satellite that is passing through an evil constellation.”
“The more reason for us to aid and protect you, Lady,” said one of the fur-sprites.
“As you wish it, so be it,” said the dryad. “Let us depart”
III
As they set out, a beacon glowed with white fire on top of the living-rock bluff. A spellmaster was throwing magnesium powder onto the coals as a good omen offering for the travellers.
The White Lady and her companions would meet the human—and have time to probe it—well before the lesser wind started; so they could send their messages to the spellmasters by letting their thoughts drift up to Home-ground on the lesser wind. The valley creatures were accustomed to long journeys because they sometimes made purposeless safaris far away from Homeground, out onto the Polar plateau where simian giants far larger than humans roamed through the night. This march to meet and probe Josef Somes was a relatively minor affair.
Traveling so closely together, they could not help overhearing stray thoughts from each other, despite their rigid mental control. The dryad gradually absorbed the basic personalities of her companions—the unemotional maternalism of the oreade; the earnest passions of Jaerem and Moera, the two fur-sprites; and the comforting stolid strength of the gnome. Before an hour had passed she knew them as well as she knew her closest friends. This intimacy was a feature of all journeys made by a small number of people.
Slightly later than anticipated, the five travelers came within telepathic range of the human. It was walking steadily northwards up the valley, and it would soon reach their present position. The dryad pictured the human plodding onwards, encased in its metal suit, the lamp on its helmet sending a beam of yellow light onto the snow ahead. She marveled at the strength of the ambition which had brought the plunderer so far from its home in the sunlit lands of the south.
Here the valley walls were tall and steep, and curved round sharply to the left, skirting a small hill of extremely hard rock. Normally this hill was inhabited by seven oreades, but they had all fled to Homeground during the greater wind. The site was perfect for the White Lady’s purpose.
“We shall await the human here,” said the dryad. “I shall remain here in the centre of the valley floor, but you four had better conceal yourselves at the sides—
Jaerem and Moera to my left, and the others to my right. The human is moving from side to side, checking the entire valley in case the position of the living-rock is given incorrectly on its map, so I have a higher probability of meeting it here in the center than anywhere else. You four will be safer at the sides.”
While her companions moved out across the snow to their positions on either side of the valley, the dryad remained standing like a tall exquisitely sculptured column of ice. She was cautiously tasting the thoughts of the approaching human, accustoming herself to the human’s overall psychological pattern in preparation for her coming task.
The others burrowed into the snow, covering themselves by using light camouflage spells which spread the snow thinly above them. The human would never notice them, being dependent on sight for perception of its surroundings.
The White Lady finished sampling the human’s thoughts. She swiftly followed the example of her friends and dug herself a hole in the snow. When the hole was deep enough, she slid inside and cleared away the disturbed snow with a camouflage spell. Now the valley appeared empty of life to the human eye.
A small patch of yellow light moved out from behind the curving cliff of the hill. The pale glow was followed by a dark shadowy mass that was Josef Somes. The human was over a foot taller than the dryad, and it was far thicker in proportion. Its dull brown atmosphere suit still bore a few flakes of its original orange paint. The dryad was receiving all the humans thoughts, uninterrupted now by any intervening substance. With a shock she realized that the monster’s mind was almost empty of surface mental processes. Below the shallow layers of surface thought its mind was a dreadful thing. The finding of the living-rock was equated with the concepts of wealth, sexual achievements, social power and status.
