Edmund Cooper: Seahorse in the Sky

“Samples were taken and distributed to worlds where the original quickening had yet to yield a form of such potential. Samples were taken and left to flourish. Now, on this world, samples of the original stock and also of the samples have been brought together, each in a familiar microcosm, so that the Vruvyir may observe their children and consider their destiny, and so that the children may discover one another… And in such discovery, fashion their own destiny… For, as children will, each has flourished at a different pace and in a different way. For some, the day of understanding has already dawned, while-some still live in the pre-dawn light… Thus, the Vruvyir grant you the burden of knowledge. Make of it what you will.”

There was silence.

There was a silence so profound that it seemed louder even than the voice that had rolled across the sky.

Russell looked at the ranks of the Vruvyir. Their wings remained still, their sea-horse faces expressionless. There were not so many of them as he had at first thought—forty, perhaps. They looked many, but their numbers were few.

There was something at the back of his mind. Something important. If only he could think! If only his wits had not been bludgeoned into uselessness by such a fantastic encounter and such a fantastic revelation!

Then, suddenly, irrationally, intuitively, Russell made the mental leap. The empty roosts, the silent city, the smallness and the greatness… All pointed to one mad conclusion.

He looked at Anna and Farn, exhausted with wonder, traumatized with knowlege. He thought of all his companions in the zoo—brought there and kept there because of the whim of the Vruvyir, the master race, the source of life, the lords of the galaxy.

And he took the gamble.

It was a crazy thought. But then, was anything sane in a nightmare such as this? Surely, only the unreasonable could be reasonable? Only the absurd could have any bearing on reality.

He spoke.

“You have called us your children. And, if there is truth in what you have said—and, strange though it may be there is the ring of truth—you must realize that children sometimes stumble on the answer to a question that has not been asked.”

Again the laughter. Again the voice that filled the sky.

“What, then, is the answer to this question that has not been asked?”

Russell gazed at the expressionless faces that confronted him.

And took a deep breath. “You brought us—the samples, as you call us—together because there is little time left. We have seen your city. It is a city of ghosts… The Vruvyir are dying.”

It was a crazy thought, prompted by many things—the lack of previous contact, the number of poles in the ‘chicken roost’, the sense of emptiness that seemed to pervade the entire landscape surrounding the city…

Laughter seemed to shake the firmament.

Again there was the voice of the Vruvyir, the voice of the world.

“A valiant guess, little one. A proposition of some interest—but wrong. The Vruvyir are not dying.

They are already dead.”

“LOOK UP, CHILDREN,” continued the voice. “Look up at the last Sphere of Creation in the known worlds. It is beautiful, is it not?”

Russell’s mind was reeling. He was no longer aware of Anna and Farn zem Marur. They might never have existed—except perhaps as phantoms in some half-forgotten dream. He was alone in a world of aliens. He was alone with sea-horses, fairies, demons, dragonflies and the secret of the ages. He knew that he was on the verge of madness, and the knowledge made him unnaturally calm. It was as if someone had poured iced water into his brain. As if someone—or something—had taken control of volition, emotion, reasoning, acceptance, credulity. As if someone—or something— was holding him in case he should fall.

He looked up the great column—smooth, hypnotic, awe-inspiring, beautiful. He looked up the great column at the green translucent bubble, the Sphere of Creation that seemed now to cast its green penumbra over the entire world.

“It is beautiful,” whispered Russell, unaware even of his whispering. “It is surely the most beautiful thing there is.”

“It is the last of the great machines,” went on the voice, “the last refuge of the Vruvyir. When the kinetic fails, the ghosts of the ghosts will fail, one by one, and the Vruvyir will live only in those who come after… Be afraid, little ones, but not too much afraid. The burden of knowledge is heavy.”

Russell tried desperately to marshal his tumbling thoughts. “You say the Vruvyir are dead. Yet we have seen them—or what is left of them. They—you—are here, speaking to us, telling us the strangest of all the stories of creation. You are presuming to be gods, yet you also say that the gods are dead.”

The laughter—touched now, so Russell thought, with an immense sadness—rolled once more.

“Little one, we are ghosts speaking to ghosts. Thus far, you have come. There is a little farther to go. The price you must pay is measured in biological time. Are you willing to pay such a price?”

“We wish to know,” said Russell, almost hysterically. “We wish to know. We have endured much, we have risked death to discover why we are here and what you, our jailers, are like… We wish to know!

How did we come here? Why do you say that we are ghosts also?”

“Children, you have presumed. But your presumption is interesting. The answers you seek lie in the Sphere of Creation. Find them, and be content.” Suddenly, momentarily, the world became dark. Then the darkness lifted.

It lifted upon a soft green light. It lifted upon a soft green hum of energy. It lifted in the Sphere of Creation.

Russell was falling or drifting or swimming. He had no sense of direction, no sense of time, and little sense of identity. He was in a green ocean or a green cloud or a green void. He did not know whether he was alone or not alone. He knew only that he existed.

He could not see himself—his hands, his arms, his body. He could not see his companions. He knew only that he existed.

The greenness deepened. It became a blueness. The blueness deepened. It became a blackness.

And there were stars—known stars. The constellations seen from Earth.

And then the constellations were blotted out as a great discus—black in shadow, blinding in sunlight—swung silently out of the void.

He was inside the discus, and it was not a discus but some tremendous vehicle of space, cavernous, complex, alien. He was in a chamber where strange machinery seemed to produce a muted, melancholy throb of music. He was in a chamber where spider robots scuttled about their tasks oblivious of his invisible and insubstantial presence.

Suddenly, part of the floor of the chamber turned to glass—or so it seemed. There, spread out below, still and colourful as a contour map lay Northern Europe, the North Sea and the islands of Britain.

The discus fell like a stone. The North Sea zoomed up to swallow it. Then, instantly, without shock or vibration the fantastic fall was annihilated. Beneath the transparent floor, a hundred metres below, a passenger aircraft hung as if suspended from the discus by invisible wires.

The sea moved. The jet seemed motionless. Velocities had been matched.

The transparent floor rolled noiselessly away. The spider robots hauled a mounted tube, oddly like a small astronomical telescope, into position. The tube was depressed on its mounting until it was aligned with the aircraft.

He recognized the aircraft.

The passenger jet from Stockholm to London.

A green radiance, a bar of radiance that seemed as solid as a rod of crystal, shot down to the aircraft, danced about it, englobed it.