Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars

lock, and they went out into the idyllic countryside, feeling the lacy ground cover give beneath their feet. They did not question or discuss their direction. They seemed to know. They walked along by the stream, climbed beside a small waterfall to the high point of the valley. The view was breathtaking. Across another small glen ahead of them, a steep hill shot upward

almost vertically. Near the top, tucked under a glistening crystal overhang, blended into its natural surroundings was a building. In its construction the soft tones of an alabasterlike material blended with the pure tones of crystals. The bright, gay birds seemed to call to them as the three walked toward the hill. A cooling breeze wafted around them and stirred the perfume of the blossoms into a heady draft. They went forward in silence, their eyes

on the building at the crest of the hill. When they stood directly below it, no means of access was apparent until, with an almost imperceptible motion, they were lifted through the heady air. With a slight inward move, they were deposited onto an open balcony. In front of them a door opened. Plank led the way into a room of such beauty that Hara gasped in admiration. Sounds of running water from a trickling artificial brook dividing the room in two were mixed with the softness of music. The lighting seemed muted, but had no hint of dimness. Along the walls artistic constructions sparkled in crystals and colors. The ceiling was painted like a sky with pink and blue tinted clouds. Beside the brook was a sunken seating area. They stood, feeling almost out of place in the splendor, the quiet luxury. On the far wall a crystal panel shimmered, clouded, opened and the woman stepped through, flowed through, moving with a awe-inspiring grace. Her beauty made Plank's throat dry. Beside him, Hara sighed. «I did not intend that effect,» the woman said. «Would this make you more at ease?» Before the change she had been a creature out of a dream, tall, perfectly formed, her body barely covered by a silken sheath that fell to her shapely thighs in clinging glory. After the change the contrast was grotesque. Her face was now a thing from a nightmare, a bleached and shrunken skull from a charnel house, the eyes sunken, the cheeks cracked and dry, the upper teeth exposed in a horrible grin. «I want you to be at ease,» she said. Plank was not usually a man who used profanity, but the word he said was earthy in the extreme. «No matter,» the woman said. Her face resumed its heavenly beauty. She motioned them toward the seating area, leading them, sweeping down the wide steps to the sunken area to pivot and look at them as they glanced at each other. Then she sat. Although he felt a bit intimidated, Plank had been pushed to the limit. «You said you had removed the Eater from Earth.» «Yes.» «You said he was one of you,» Plank said, his voice low and intense. «Are we going to be your afternoon snack?» She smiled at him. «All this in a mere few million years?» «Lady, are you civilized?» Plank asked. «Please, John,» Hara said. «We like to think we are,» she said. «And is this the royal 'we' or are there more of you?» Plank asked. «We are many.» «Good for you,» Plank said. «Maybe there will be one among you who is possessed of a shred of common decency.» «You have reason to be angry, man,» the woman said. «I think so,» Plank agreed. «You see, we had no idea. We left your galaxy when there were giant reptiles on your Earth.» «Why didn't you eat the reptiles?» Plank asked, still fuming. «Even then we were beyond such practices,» she said calmly. «Would any of you like some refreshment?» «What we would like,» said Plank, «is the respect due to a living creature. What we want is our own freedom of choice without the interference of someone who can do mental tricks.» «Ah,» she said, laughing, «if you only knew how presumptuous you are.» She shifted, crossing one leg over the other. The effect was not lost on Plank and Heath. «All right, then. We will stop the preliminary chatter. You are here for a reason. I am tempted…» She smiled again. «Do you prefer the first person singular? You seem to object to our saying 'we.' Although, I assure you, it is much more descriptive.» «I am all in favor of knocking off the chatter,» Plank said. «I have told you that…» and she said a name, but it was a sound that was unintelligible to Plank's ears. The woman smiled again. «He is the one you think of as the Eater, or the monster. I have told you that he has been removed from your planet. Your people are no longer threatened by his childish game.» «Game?» Heath exploded.

«He thinks of it as that, not I,» she said. «Now, I believe it would be wise if you listen and let me talk.» She smiled and waited for comment. Plank shifted in the soft seat and looked at her. In his mind was a conflict. He kept seeing, in her beautiful face, the death's skull she had shown them. «You have reason for pride, for you have come a long way. There is reason, also, for humbleness, because you are, after all, only an accident. When we left your galaxy your ancestry was eating vegetation on a thousand planets.» «Sorry,» Plank said, «I don't buy that.» «You yourself ran tests on the planet you call Plank's World. You noted the amazing—that's the way you expressed it—similarity between your cells and the cells of the slugs.» «May I ask how you know all this?» Plank asked. She laughed. «You made it rather difficult,» she said. «We had to search through the remains of…» Once again there was that ear-twisting name. «…'s planet. Fortunately the data banks were rather well protected and were still intact. You will see just how fortunate that was for you later.» «Yes,» Plank said, «the cellular construction was similar.» «But still you doubt that you evolved from our food creatures.» «There's a body of pretty firm evidence on Earth that life was spontaneous on our planet. You mentioned the giant reptiles. Were they evolved from your creation?» «Life arises in many ways in the universe. However, advancement to intelligence is quite rare. Without a head start your rapid rise would have been impossible.» «Is that crucial to our discussion?» Plank asked. «Not really. Actually, we are very impressed by you. Only one other race we know of has shown such development.» «Yours,» Plank said. «Ours. There are vague similarities. We are very old and no race can trace itself to the beginning, but when your planet was the home of the giant reptiles we had achieved the ultimate state of development and were in the process of changing. We had, then, been in deep space for a million years.» «Why were you so slow?» Plank asked. For the first time an unpleasant expression marred the beauty of the woman's face. «Please do not try to antagonize me. You are, at best, an annoyance. We are being generous to give you our time to explain to you. There is a question to be resolved. First let me confirm one of your

suspicions. The Eater, as you call him, is of us, but he is, how can I say it,

to use your term, retarded. He is a great rarity. Of all the people, he alone was incapable of development. He was not at home with us. It was best for him, and for us, to give him a place of his own. We looked and found your galaxy. It, as you may know, was largely unpopulated. There were a few signs of developing life, but so primitive that he would live out his life span—since he is what you think of as mortal—» «Where you are not?» Hara asked. «Our existence is not limited. His is. He would, we reasoned, die before he could endanger the developing forms of life on the scattered planets. We established him, gave him ways to amuse himself. To give him every opportunity, in case we were wrong and the centuries would effect a change in him, we left him the necessary history of our people to guide his development, if any.» «And you fenced him in with the barrier around the galaxy,» Heath said. «You anticipate,» she said. «But yes, we fenced him in. We provided him with his food creatures, things out of our primitive history. We gave him the basic tools to build. He loved toys.» «A retarded child with a galaxy all his own,» Plank said. «How did you happen to come back just at the time you did?» Hara asked. «He was capable of self-destruction,» she said. «We were notified of the destruction of his planet.» She looked at them with a smile. «You must understand that he is not bad. He is merely afflicted.» «Depopulating a planet in a game not even necessary to his survival is not bad?» Plank asked. «No,» she said, «you judge him too harshly.» «What is the question to be decided?» Plank asked. «We simply must decide whether to leave the galaxy to him or to you,» she said, with a delicate little movement of her shoulders. Plank smoldered for a moment. «All right, what do we have to say about it?» «Whatever you please,» she said. «I am here to evaluate our knowledge of you. We know that you have developed a rather primitive technology. We know that you now understand the principle of the drive aboard the ship you call Pride and, although that drive is still primitive and mechanical, it is a rather sophisticated work. To know that you could so easily understand it is surprising. That, more than anything else, is the reason why you are here to speak for yourselves.» «You know, then, that we developed the blink drive independently,» Heath said. «There was insufficient data on the tapes, but there was evidence that the trips were based on the buildup of power during a turnaround from your ships, which use hydrogen power. Please don't try to impress me. You know and I know that it is quite impossible for you to create a device as sophisticated as the drive.» «No,» Plank said, looking warningly at Heath, «Let's not try to lie to her.» But there was an unanswered question. With all her mental powers, couldn't she read their minds? He sent, with his thoughts, insulting things, rude things. She smiled, looking at Heath. «He is right,» she said. «Your advancements are worthy, without lying about them. Knowledge of our drive will be cleared from your mind before you leave here.» «We are to be allowed to leave, then?» Plank asked. «You would be out of place here,» she said. «More retarded children?» Plank asked. «You bore me, man. But yes, and worse, for you have seen the abilities of what you call the Eater. Can you match even one of them? You are worse than a retarded child; let me assure you that your continued existence depends entirely on what I decide here.» Plank made a low bow. «I ask your forgiveness.» «Now that you are more calm, perhaps you would like to tell me of your race. Your goals, your aspirations.» «We aspire, more than anything else, to perfection,» Hara said. «Rather noble,» the woman said. «Perfection by whose standards?» «Our own, the only standards we've known,» Hara said. «John Plank went into space for money,» the woman said. «But even as he went into space for money,» Hara said, «he was trying