Out Of The Silent Planet (17 page)

Oyarsa spoke - a more unhuman voice than Ransom had yet heard, sweet and seemingly remote; an
unshaken voice; a voice, as one of the hrassa afterwards said to Ransom, 'with no blood in it.
Light is instead of blood for them.' The words were not alarming.

'What are you so afraid of, Ransom of Thulcandra?' it said.

'Of you, Oyarsa, because you are unlike me and I cannot see you.'

'Those are not great reasons,' said the voice. 'You are also unlike me, and, though I see you,
I see you very faintly. But do not think we are utterly unlike. We are both copies of Maleldil.
These are not the real reasons.'

Ransom said nothing.

'You began to be afraid of me before you set foot in my world. And you have spent all your time
since then in flying from me. My servants saw your fear when you were in your ship in heaven.
They saw that your own kind treated you ill, though they could not understand their speech. Then
to deliver you out of the hands of those two I stirred up a hnakra to try if you would come to
me of your own will. But you hid among the hrossa and though they told you to come to me,
you would not. After that I sent my eldil to fetch you, but still you would not come. And in
the end your own kind have chased you to me, and hnau's blood has been shed.'

'I do not understand, Oyarsa. Do you mean that it was you who sent for me from Thulcandra?'

'Yes. Did not the other two tell you this? And why did you come with them unless you meant
to obey my call? My servants could not understand their talk to you when your ship was in heaven.'

'Your servants ... I cannot understand,' said Ransom.

'Ask freely,' said the voice.

'Have you servants out in the heavens?'

'Where else? There is nowhere else.'

'But you, Oyarsa, are here on Malacandra, as I am.'

'But Malacandra, like all worlds, floats in heaven. And I am not "here" altogether as you are,
Ransom of Thulcandra. Creatures of your kind must drop out of heaven into a world; for us the
worlds are places in heaven. But do not try to understand this now. It is enough to know that
I and my servants are even now in heaven;' they were around you in the sky-ship no less than
they are around you here.'

Then you knew of our journey before we left Thulcandra?'

'No. Thulcandra is the world we do not know. It alone is outside the heaven, and no message
comes from it.'

Ransom was silent, but Oyarsa answered his unspoken questions.

'It was not always so. Once we knew the Oyarsa of your world - he was brighter and greater than I -
and then we did not call it Thulcandra. It is the longest of all stories and the bitterest. He
became bent. That was before any life came on your world. Those were the Bent Years of which we
still speak in the heavens, when he was not yet bound to Thulcandra but free like us. It was in
his mind to spoil other worlds besides his own. He smote your moon with his left hand and with
his right he brought the cold death on my harandra before its time; if by my arm Maleldil had
not opened the handramits and let out the hot springs, my world would have been unpeopled. We did
not leave him so at large for long. There was great war, and we drove him back out of the heavens
and bound him in the air of his own world as Maleldil taught us. There doubtless he lies to this
hour, and we know no more of that planet: it is silent. We think that Maleldil would not give it
up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stories among us that He has taken strange counsel
and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less
than you; it is a thing we desire to look into.'

It was some time before Ransom spoke again and Oyarsa respected his silence. When he had collected
himself he said: 'After this story, Oyarsa, I may tell you that our world is very bent. The two
who brought me knew nothing of you, but only that the sorns had asked for me. They thought you
were a false eldil, I think. There are false eldila in the wild parts of our world; men kill
other men before them - they think the eldil drinks blood. They thought the sorns wanted me for
this or for some other evil. They brought me by force. I was in terrible fear. The tellers of
tales in our world make us think that if there is any life beyond our own air, it is evil.'

'I understand,' said the voice. 'And this explains things that I have wondered at. As soon as
your journey had passed your own air and entered heaven, my servants told me that you seemed to
be coming unwillingly and that the others had secrets from you. I did not think any creature
could be so bent as to bring another of its own kind here by force.'

'They did not know what you wanted me for, Oyarsa. Nor do I know yet.'

'I will tell you. Two years ago - and that is about four of your years - this ship entered the
heavens from your world. We followed its journey all the way hither and eldila were with it as
it sailed over the harandra, and when at last it came to rest in the handramit more than half
my servants were standing round it to see the strangers come out. All beasts we kept back from
the place, and no hnau yet knew of it. When the strangers had walked to and fro on Malacandra
and made themselves a hut and their fear of a new world ought to have worn off; I sent certain
sorns to show themselves and to teach the strangers our language. I chose sorns because they are
most like your people in form. The Thulcandrians feared the sorns and were very unteachable.
The sorns went to them many times and taught them a little. They reported to me that the
Thulcandrians were taking sun's blood wherever they could find it in the streams. When I could
make nothing of them by report, I told the sorns to bring them to me, not by force but courteously.
They would not come. I asked for one of them, but not even one of them would come. It would have
been easy to take them; but though we saw they were stupid we did not know yet how bent they
were, and I did not wish to stretch my authority beyond the creatures of my own world. I told
the sorns to treat them like cubs, to tell them that they would be allowed to pick up no more
of the sun's blood until one of their race came to me. When they were told this they stuffed as
much as they could into the sky-ship and went back to their own world. We wondered at this, but
now it is plain. They thought I wanted one of your race to eat and went to fetch one. If they had
come a few miles to see me I would have received them honourably; now they have twice gone a voyage
of millions of miles for nothing and will appear before me none the less. And you also, Ransom
of Thulcandra, you have taken many vain troubles to avoid standing where you stand now.

'That is true, Oyarsa. Bent creatures are full of fears. But I am here now and ready to know
your will with me.'

'Two things I wanted to ask of your race. First I must know why you come here - so much is my
duty to my world. And secondly I wish to hear of Thulcandra and of Maleldil's strange wars there
with the Bent One; for that, as I have said, is a thing we desire to look into.'

'For the first question, Oyarsa, I have come here because I was brought. Of the others, one cares
for nothing but the sun's blood, because in our world he can exchange it for many pleasures
and powers. But the other means evil to you. I think he would destroy all your people to make
room for our people; and then he would do the same with other worlds again. He wants our race
to last for always, I think and he hopes they will leap from world to world ... always going
to a new sun when an old one dies... or something like that.'

'Is he wounded in his brain?'

'I do not know. Perhaps I do not describe his thoughts right. He is more learned than I.'

'Does he think he could go to the great worlds? Does he think Maleldil wants a race to live
for ever?'

'He does not know there is any Maleldil. But what is certain, Oyarsa, is that he means evil
to your world. Our kind must not be allowed to come here again. If you can prevent it only by
killing all three of us, I am content.'

'If you were my own people I would kill them now, Ransom, and you soon; for they are bent beyond
hope, and you, when you have grown a little braver, will be ready to go to Maleldil. But my
authority is over my own world. It is a terrible thing to kill someone else's hnau. It will
not be necessary.'

'They are strong, Oyarsa, and they can throw death many miles and can blow killing airs at
their enemies.'

'The least of my servants could touch their ship before it reached Malacandra, while it was in
the heaven, and make it a body of different movements - for you, no body at all. Be sure that
no one of your race will come into my world again unless I call him. But enough of this. Now
tell me of Thulcandra. Tell me all. We know nothing since the day when the Bent One sank out
of heaven into the air of your world, wounded in the very light of his light. But why have
you become afraid again?'

'I am afraid of the lengths of time, Oyarsa ... or perhaps I do not understand. Did you not say
this happened before there was life on Thulcandra?'

'Yes.'

'And you, Oyarsa? You have lived... and that picture on the stone where the cold is killing them
on the harandra? Is that a picture of something that was before my world began?'

'I see you are hnau after all,' said the voice. 'Doubtless no stone that faced the air then
would be a stone now, The picture has begun to crumble away and been copied again more times
than there are eldila in the air above us. But it was copied right. In that way you are seeing
a picture that was finished when your world was still half made. But do not think of these
things. My people have a law never to speak much of sizes or numbers to you others, not even
to sorns. You do not understand, and it makes you do reverence to nothings and pass by what
is really great.. Rather tell me what Maleldil has done in Thulcandra.'

'According to our traditions -' Ransom was beginning, when an unexpected disturbance broke
in upon the solemn stillness of the assembly. A large party almost a procession, was approaching
the grove, from the direction of the ferry. It consisted entirely, so far as he could see,
of hrossa, and they appeared to be carrying something.

AS THE procession drew nearer Ransom saw that the foremost hrossa were supporting three long
and narrow burdens. They carried them on their heads, four hrossa to each. After these came a
number of others armed with harpoons and apparently guarding two creatures which he did not
recognize. The light was behind them as they entered between the two farthest monoliths. They
were much shorter than any animal he had yet seen on Malacandra, and he gathered that they
were bipeds, though the lower limbs were so thick and sausage like that he hesitated to call
them legs. The bodies were a little narrower at the top than at the bottom so as to be veiy
slightly pear-shaped, and the heads were neither round like those of hrossa nor long like
those of sorns, but almost square. They stumped along on narrow, heavy-looking feet which
they seemed to press into the ground with unnecessary violence. And now their faces were
becoming visible as masses of lumped and puckered flesh of variegated colour fringed in some
bristly, dark substance.... Suddenly, with an indescribable change of feeling, he realized
that he was looking at men. The two prisoners were Weston and Devine and he, for one privileged
moment, had seen the human form with almost Malacandrian eyes.

The leaders of the procession had now advanced to within a few yards of Oyarsa and laid down
their burdens. These, he now saw, were three dead hrossa laid on biers of some unknown metal;
they were on their backs and their eyes, not closed as we close the eyes of human dead, stared
disconcertingly up at the far-off golden canopy of the grove. One of them he took to be Hyoi,
and it was certainly Hyoi's brother, Hyahi, who now came forward, and after an obeisance to
Oyarsa began to speak.

Ransom at first did not hear what he was saying, for his attention was concentrated on Weston
and Devine. They were weaponless and vigilantly guarded by the armed hrossa about them.
Both of them, like Ransom himself had let their beards grow ever since they landed on
Malacandra, and both were pale and travel stained. Weston was standing with folded arms,
and his face wore a fixed, even an elaborate, expression of desperation. Devine, with his
hands in his pockets, seemed to be in a state of furious sulks. Both clearly thought that
they had good reason to fear, though neither was by any means lacking in courage. Surrounded
by their guards as they were, and intent on the scene before them, they had not noticed Ransom.

He became aware of what Hyoi's brother was saying. 'For the death of these two, Oyarsa, I do
not so much complain, for when we fell upon the hmana by night they were in terror. You may
say it was as a hunt and these two were killed as they might have been by a hnahra. But Hyoi
they hit from afar with a coward's weapon when he had done nothing to frighten them. And now
he lies there (and I do not say it because he was my brother, but all the handramit knows it)
and he was a hnadrapunt and a great poet and the loss of him is heavy.'

The voice of Oyarsa spoke for the first time to the two men.

'Why have you killed my hnau?' it said.

Weston and Devine looked anxiously about them to identify the speaker.

'God!' exclaimed Devine in English. 'Don't tell me they've got a loudspeaker.'

'Ventriloquism,' replied Weston in a husky whisper. 'Quite common among savages. The witch-doctor
or medicine-man pretends to go into a trance and he does it. The thing to do is to identify the
medieme-man and address your remarks to him wherever the voice seems to come from; it shatters
his nerve and shows you've seen through him. Do you see any of the brutes in a trance? By Jove -
I've spotted him.'

Due credit must be given to Weston for his power of observation: he had picked out the only
creature in the assembly which was not standing in an attitude of reverence and attention. This
was an elderly hross close beside him. It was squatting; and its eyes were shut. Taking a
step towards it, he struck a defiant attitude and exclaimed in a loud voice (his knowledge of
the language was elementary): 'Why you take our puff-bangs away? We very angry with you. We
not afraid.'