John Racham (12 page)

and
strong. It has taken much of my life force
to bring you to this point. Now you must yield it back to me and regain your
own!

He
didn't understand her altogether, but enough to know that she seemed to know
what she was doing, and why, and that there was nothing wrong. Time ceased to
have any meaning for him. Quickly forgotten was his first overwhelming impression
of her
statuelike
imperiousness, her remote
perfection. She was as warm and human and demanding as any woman might be, and
all the more perfect for that, growing lovelier every moment in his sight
And
she had humor. She learned to play tricks with his words
and ideas, to joke with him and trap him into inconsistencies and
contradictions.
And to laugh, gloriously, at his confusion,
but never with malice.

She
was full of questions, too; keen and shrewd questions sometimes, naive and
wondering ones at other times. It was his pleasure, once he had learned how, to
let her see through his thinking such of humanity's gifts and accomplishments
as he had seen, either in the flesh or in pictures. By the mere touching of
hands he could take her through the great galleries and museums and palaces,
show her scenery such as she had never seen, and vast cities as he had seen
them from the air.
And music.
Always a lover of great
music, he was able to re-create for her and share with her the great
masterworks of the past, and she could never have enough of it. When he saw her
eyes shine and her whole superb body quiver and -glow rose red to the soaring
chords of some mighty orchestra, he was quietly amazed that he had ever thought
her stem and white and aloof. She was the most vibrantly alive person he had
ever known.

And he came to know her a little, to ask
questions of her about her people, her kind,
her
life.
He learned to look into her mind just a little, to catch just something of the
wonder of it as she told him things, carefully so that he could understand. Her
people had lived in and with trees ever since anyone could remember. They were
many, but they were widely scattered, in isolation, all over the planet
They
could be in touch with each other at any time,
instandy
. They were always in touch with the living force
of any growing thing, sharing something with it He learned

84 something of that
, how to know a plant, a bush, a tree, and
how to persuade it to respond to his wish as far as it had the power. There was
wisdom in her beyond all words and that he learned, in part, without words. But
there were, too, whole areas of thought in her that he didn't touch and didn't
ask about, sensing in some way that they were not for him, that he was not yet
ready. And in that there was more than a hint of sadness, of time that had to
run out.

One
delight, and a great frustration at the same time, was her power to fly. She
took him flying often, with no more effort than the firm touch of her hand in
his. He was nervous only the first time, for the first giddy, breathtaking moment
that they stood off from the branch outside her door and swooped away through
the forest. After that, it was sheer delight to race in the mist, hand in hand,
to plunge dizzily deep down into the gloom and then soar up again, up and up
until the air was thin and chill and full of a red glow that was the furthest
the sun could penetrate. She confessed to him frankly that to share his delight
in this was to recapture something for herself, that she had been able to do it
so long and had taken it for granted, but now she was learning the thrill of it
all over again through him.

"In
learning about you," she said, "I have learned about myself, too, and
for that I owe you very much." But he couldn't
leam
the trick of lifting himself like a feather through the air no matter how he
tried. And he did try, as hard as he knew how. But that was a minor flaw among
such a wealth of delight, and he didn't complain about it Most of all, and with
no reservations at all now, he treasured those moments, and there were very
many of them, when the quick flame would rise in her, the blushing color would
come to warm and suffuse her loveliness, and instantly light the same eager
fire in him. Then her eyes would glow and she would stretch out her arms to
take him and hold him close. No words were ever needed now. There was total
understanding and sharing between them, a complete sharing of need and
surrender, of delight and interplay, stirring and stimulating each other to a
pitch of rapture that always seemed too wonderful to be real, but was always
even more wonderful with each eager renewal

85

Until the time came when her leaping ardor
seemed to break every restraint and swept him away into a madness that was
beyond anything he had ever imagined, a height that was terrifying and yet
wonderful, so that he lost all sense of reality and was reluctant to
drift
back when at long last the fury was
spent in both of them. It was as if some ultimate bond had broken, some new
level of understanding had opened up. He lay by her side a long while, just
content to be at peace. But there was something he had to say, now, like it or
not. "
Azul
," he whispered, "there's a
purpose in all this.
A reason.
Isn't it time that I
knew what it is?"

"Yes," she
sounded sad, "it is time.
Now."

XI

H
e
raised himself
on
an arm to look down into her lovely face, one finger lightly caressing the
chiseled perfection of her shoulder.

"I
think I've known all along that you had some reason for bringing me here other
than just simple curiosity. You've never spoken of it, and I haven't asked,
because I wanted to go on pretending to myself for a bit more time. You're not
just curious about me and my kind, in the general sense. There's more to it
than that. What?"

He
knew beyond all doubt that he was touching something cloudy in her mind, a
region obscure to him. In everything else he was free to walk in and out of her
mind at will.
But not this.
She smiled up at him, but
there was a tinge of regret in her expression, almost
a
sadness
.

"You
are strong now.
Strong and clear.
Strong enough, and
ready, as I knew you would be. Truly, I, too, have been surrendering a little
to pretense, to dreams, to happiness for its own sake, and the time for that
is over. It is true, Stephen,
tiiat
I brought you
here to study you, originally from sheer curiosity. I have learned much about
you and your kind, some good, some bad. Much of what I have learned puzzles me,
some delights me."

"I've had delights,
too."

"I'm glad of that. If I have been able
to give you strength, health, some knowledge, a little pleasure, you have given
me back much more than I gave you. I needed the strength in you, the truth in
you, and that has helped to make me whole again. In that there is a kind of
justice."

"Justice?
I don't understand you."

"You
will" She became frighteningly remote and stem now, all without so much as
a breath of change in her appearance. "Tell me
...
I ask you for the first time . . . about that spot on our
planet that you of Earth have made your private place. Tell me about it."

In
that instant Query switched from living in Paradise to being just an ordinary
man, a trained man in a military service. Caution bloomed in him.

"I can't tell you
that,
Azul.
You shouldn't ask."

"I could compel
you."

"You'd
have to, but I don't think you will. I think I've learned to know you that
well. If you do compel me, force me to tell the things I have no right to tell,
then what happens to the understanding we have, and all the fine talk about you
not being able to enter anywhere in my mind that I don't want to admit
you?"

"Tell me, Stephen."

"I
can't. I don't expect you to understand what a military secret is, and Lord
knows I've no special reason to support military ethics, but there are men in
there. Men, like me. I have to think of them, not just myself."

"You would consider
the many in preference to yourself?"

"I
have to. I don't know why. Part of being human, I suppose. I've no choice,
Azul."

"Nor
have I," she said and smiled, again with a touch of sadness, "as you
may discover. But now it is time for the Thing. It has been held off too
long." She closed her eyes a moment and "went away," to return
just as
instantíy
and
mysteriously. "It is time. The
family are
at
feast, just as they were when I first found you."

"That's something you've never
explained."

"It
is part of our function, each one of us
Helsee
, to
watch over a family or, as you call it, a tribe. We watch over, guide and
advise and help. And, rarely but very preciously,
we
sometimes find the newborn that is destined to become one of us."

"Don't you, the
Helsee
,
have children of your own?"

"It
has happened but very rarely indeed. For us, Stephen, it has to be the perfect
matching of minds, and that is so rare as to be almost impossible. You see, it
is a question of ego again. The fully developed ego is a unique thing, a
complete identity, and thus almost inevitably different from any other."
She smiled again, clasped his hand to her breast warmly. "Sharing our
bodily delights is good, is re-creating energy and life force. That is within
the capacity of any healthy organism. But a complete sharing and polarization
of minds is infinitely more wonderful.
And rare.
You
and I could never create a child
...
in that much we are forever alien . . . but you have come into my mind and
fired it and filled it in a way that I would never have dreamed of . . . but I
must say no more of that, for there is a decision to be made that is not for me
to prejudge. How I found you? I was watching over my family. I sensed
strangers. In a while I grew so curious that I had to look closer. And there
you were. It is enough."

She
stirred now, put away his arms gently and stood, holding out her hand to him.
Again he had that awareness that she had "gone away" just for a
moment. And then she smiled. "Come," she said, "it is time. We
will go and collect your friends from the feasting."

She led him away through a door that was
curtained with creepers and out on to the broad branch from which they had
started out on many a flight. But this was different. All at once he realized
just how much of a prisoner he was. The ground was unthinkably far below. He
could" never have climbed down there unaided, and even if he could have
managed it, where would he run to? With her hand in his he could fly better
than any bird, but by himself he was helpless.
Trapped.
He held her hand tight, felt lightness flow into him, and they lifted away and
up. Her face was calm now, indrawn and inscrutable, and once again she was
pearly white, all aglow. He felt fear but not from the whirling flight, the
swift cleaving of the mist. That was familiar and a delight. The forest slid
past They spun high and swooped,
arrowing
down like
striking falcons, deep into the dark steam heat of the jungle, into the
coiling, swirling mist, following the invisible thread of her mind.

And now he could sense it, the many minds in
concert, the rhythm of the beat and the chant. And there in a distant glow of
rainbow color, a many hued
fire,
was the steep
hillside and the caves, the rippling pool, and the jungle people all gathered
in that ritual semicircle, chanting and clapping, bathed in the colorful glow.
Query felt a strange pang. How long had it been since he had sat there and been
awed by that native miracle?
Azul
slowed
now,
and her pearly radiance spread out to wrap both of them
in a blaze of cold light.

"When
we go down," she said, "you will call your friends.
I
still cannot reach into them as I do with you. I can compel them by
physical force, but
I
would rather not do that. You will call
them."

And
once again he heard that awed, many throated cry as the damp, warm turf became
solid under his feet

"Hel-
seeeeeel
Helseeeeeel
"

Azul
released his hand, stood a moment, then spread her arms. The adulation ceased
at once. The silence was absolute.

"Call them," she
said softly.

"For
what?" he muttered. "What are you going to do to them?"

"There
is to be a judgment.
A fair judgment, Stephen.
Trust
me."

"That's easy to say, but what's going to
happen?" "First I must undo what
I
have already done."
"To them?
You've
done something to them? You told me
..."

"That I could not reach them as
I
do you. That is true. But I was able to cushion things for them a
little." "What's that mean?"

"I
was able to cast a blanket over those parts of their minds and memories to do
with your kind of civilized life.
This to protect them from
constant humiliation and strain.
To make them happy
with their lot."

"My God, you've made them into
animals!"

"Not
so!" she was stern. "My people are not animals. They are simple and
unspoiled primitives, yes, but not animals. They have a dignity which your
kind lacks. They have a zest for life which your kind seems to lack also."

Query had to be honest. Thinking back to his
own ad-

89
miration
for the happy native peoples he felt a trifle
ashamed of his anger. But he couldn't feel happy about any kind of mental
tampering. She must have sensed what he thought to a degree.

"There
has been no harm, Stephen. It has been as if their civilized minds were asleep,
nothing more than that. Otherwise they could not have integrated happily into
the family. But now, when you call them, I will lift the veil from their minds
and they will be as they were before. They will be pleased to see you
again."

"Maybe.
You still haven't said what it's all for, this judgment."

"Only for good, Stephen.
On that you must trust me. I cannot tell you
more. I have my rules also. Trust me, Stephen!"

"It
doesn't look as if I have any choice!" he sighed, and stood away from her,
peering into the gloom, the blue green light that was darker than he had
remembered it. But he had developed more senses than just sight, and he was
soon able to pick them out.

"Admiral
Evans! Christine! It's me, Stephen Query. Would you come here, please?"

He watched as Evans gently disengaged himself
from the embrace of an awed native woman and came slowly forward, staring. An
old man still but not flabby anymore; he was lean and with a spring in his step
and a glow of health to his skin. And here came Christine, strikingly tall and
rounded against the slighter native women. She, too, was
vibrant
.
with
good health and lovelier than he had
ever imagined her.

"Query?
Is it you?" The old man stuck out a
fist. "By God, it's a pleasure to see you and to hear civilized speech
again.
Looking fit.
We thought you were dead long ago.
Dead.
Carried off.
Eh?"

"Not dead, sir.
Flesh and blood, as you can
feeL
You're
looking well, too.
Years younger and fit!"

"Hah!" the old man grinned, not
displeased. "It's a rough life, takes a bit of getting used to, but there
wasn't much choice. We had to muck in with the rest. They're a good bunch. Live
hard, play hard. It would be damned dull if the people weren't so friendly, eh,
Christine?"

"Hello,
StephenI
"
she said, taking his hand and gripping