The Space Trilogy

‘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.

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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 recognise. 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 very 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 realised 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 hmãna 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 hnakra. 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 hnakrapunt 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 medicine-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 powers 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.’

On Weston’s hypothesis his action ought to have been impressive. Unfortunately for him, no one else shared his theory of the elderly hross’s behaviour. The hross – who was well known to all of them, including Ransom – had not come with the funeral procession. It had been in its place since dawn. Doubtless it intended no disrespect to Oyarsa; but it must be confessed that it had yielded, at a much earlier stage in the proceedings, to an infirmity which attacks elderly hnau, of all species, and was by this time enjoying a profound and refreshing slumber. One of its whiskers twitched a little as Weston shouted in its face, but its eyes remained shut.

The voice of Oyarsa spoke again. ‘Why do you speak to him?’ it said. ‘It is I who ask you, why have you killed my hnau?’

‘You let us go, then we talkee-talkee,’ bellowed Weston at the sleeping hross. ‘You think we no power, think you do all you like. You no can. Great big headman in sky he send us. You no do what I say, he come, blow you all up – Pouff! Bang!’

‘I do not know what bang means,’ said the voice. ‘But why have you killed my hnau?’

‘Say it was an accident,’ muttered Devine to Weston in English.

‘I’ve told you before,’ replied Weston in the same language. ‘You don’t understand how to deal with natives. One sign of yielding and they’ll be at our throats. The only thing is to intimidate them.’

‘All right! Do your stuff, then,’ growled Devine. He was obviously losing faith in his partner.

Weston cleared his throat and again rounded on the elderly hross.

‘We kill him,’ he shouted. ‘Show what we can do. Everyone who no do all we say – pouff! bang! – kill him same as that one. You do all we say and we give you much pretty things. See! See!’ To Ransom’s intense discomfort, Weston at this point whipped out of his pocket a brightly coloured necklace of beads, the undoubted work of Mr Woolworth, and began dangling it in front of the faces of his guards, turning slowly round and round and repeating, ‘Pretty, pretty! See! See!’

The result of this manoeuvre was more striking than Weston himself had anticipated. Such a roar of sounds as human ears had never heard before – baying of hrossa, piping of pfifltriggi, booming of sorns – burst out and rent the silence of that august place, waking echoes from the distant mountain walls. Even in the air above them there was a faint ringing of the eldil voices. It is greatly to Weston’s credit that though he paled at this he did not lose his nerve.

‘You no roar at me,’ he thundered. ‘No try make me afraid. Me no afraid of you.’

‘You must forgive my people,’ said the voice of Oyarsa – and even it was subtly changed – ‘but they are not roaring at you. They are only laughing.’

But Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language. Ransom, biting his lips with mortification, almost prayed that one experiment with the beads would satisfy the scientist; but that was because he did not know Weston. The latter saw that the clamour had subsided. He knew that he was following the most orthodox rules for frightening and then conciliating primitive races; and he was not the man to be deterred by one or two failures. The roar that went up from the throats of all spectators as he again began revolving like a slow motion picture of a humming-top, occasionally mopping his brow with his left hand and conscientiously jerking the necklace up and down with his right, completely drowned anything he might be attempting to say; but Ransom saw his lips moving and had little doubt that he was working away at ‘Pretty, pretty!’ Then suddenly the sound of laughter almost redoubled its volume. The stars in their courses were fighting against Weston. Some hazy memory of efforts made long since to entertain an infant niece had begun to penetrate his highly trained mind. He was bobbing up and down from the knees and holding his head on one side; he was almost dancing; and he was by now very hot indeed. For all Ransom knew he was saying ‘Diddle, diddle, diddle.’

It was sheer exhaustion which ended the great physicist’s performance – the most successful of its kind ever given on Malacandra – and with it the sonorous raptures of his audience. As silence returned Ransom heard Devine’s voice in English:

‘For God’s sake stop making a buffoon of yourself, Weston,’ it said. ‘Can’t you see it won’t work?’

‘It doesn’t seem to be working,’ admitted Weston, ‘and I’m inclined to think they have even less intelligence than we supposed. Do you think, perhaps, if I tried it just once again – or would you like to try this time?’

‘Oh, Hell!’ said Devine, and, turning his back on his partner, sat down abruptly on the ground, produced his cigarette case and began to smoke.

‘I’ll give it to the witch-doctor,’ said Weston during the moment of silence which Devine’s action had produced among the mystified spectators; and before anyone could stop him he took a step forward and attempted to drop the string of beads round the elderly hross’s neck. The hross’s head was, however, too large for this operation and the necklace merely settled on its forehead like a crown, slightly over one eye. It shifted its head a little, like a dog worried with flies, snorted gently, and resumed its sleep.

Oyarsa’s voice now addressed Ransom. ‘Are your fellow-creatures hurt in their brains, Ransom of Thulcandra?’ it said. ‘Or are they too much afraid to answer my questions?’