The Millennium Express: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Nine Read online

  Then there are chambers where I built canopies and draperies all of a much finer white stone cut with a myriad little openings, so that they have the appearance of the most costly of woven fabrics; and also I constructed reflecting pools and walls that have the gleam of mirrors, and long mysterious openings in the ceilings of the lower rooms that seem to look upward into other worlds, and many another decorative feature that gives evidence of my skill as an artificer. And the entire structure is run through with ventilating pipes and concealed sources of illumination, all of the most artful inventiveness. I also designed a system of speaking-tubes by which those outside the maze can communicate with the Alien, and he with us. There is nothing like these tubes anywhere else in the world, not even at the king’s own Citadel.

  The apartments of the Alien are at the very center of all this, and they are comfortable enough, essentially the sort of lodging one might provide for a prince of the royal house. His spacious rooms are arranged on five levels, forming a discrete structure within the structure that rises up like a thrusting arm through the heart of the maze and culminates in a flat peak surrounded by an open circular gallery, thus giving him a lofty promenade where he can enjoy a fresh-air stroll, or look outward on the joyous light of day and the brilliance of the stars. It is possible to see him from outside the wall of the maze when he appears on his balcony, a distant tiny figure outlined against the sky, and when he does so appear the people often gather to peer at him, though by this time he is far from a novelty here.

  I used six different sub-architects to build the maze, and each one employed his own team of workmen, and no members of any team were given any knowledge of the plans that the other five groups were following. As a result, no one understands the secret of how to reach the inner apartments, except for three people. I am one and the king is another—Thalk insisted on that—and the third is the official known as the Guardian of the Alien, who is the blind eunuch Kataphrazes. I taught Kataphrazes the route myself, placing his probe-fingers on each key landmark along the way until he knew them all by touch-memory. His sense of hsorn is exceedingly powerful, very likely because of his blindness: he was amazingly quick to master the correct path and was able almost at once to make his way through the passages errorlessly and with unfaltering step.

  Each morning Kataphrazes leads the servitors who bring the Alien his food to the inner barrier, never taking the same approach twice the same month, nor using the same servitors. If the Alien is to have guests, Kataphrazes will lead them inward in the same ever-varying fashion, and they are blindfolded besides, more for the theatrical pomp of the thing than as a real precaution, for nobody could ever learn the way simply by observing it just one single time.

  There was a fourth who knew the route, who was Theliane. With King Thalk’s permission I taught it to her when she was a child, at her urgent request, for there was little I would ever refuse Theliane.

  The Alien’s inner apartments are surrounded by a gated wall of sharp-tipped iron spars: the Alien alone has control over who passes through that gate. It is a little privilege that we bestowed on him to preserve the fiction that he is our guest, not our prisoner. When he feels gloomy and withdrawn, which is often, he denies entry to those who desire access to him, and so be it.

  In any event he does not ordinarily have many visitors other than Theliane, who has been by far his most frequent guest, and myself; until his recent spell of unsociability I had gone to him every few weeks, and we had enjoyed long, far-ranging talks about the nature of the world and the cosmos. Other than us, he has had little company. The four high priests of the city pay him ceremonial calls every now and then, since he is regarded officially as an emissary from the gods. For the same reason King Thalk used to go to him every month or two; King Hai-Thelkon, though, finds him troublesome to look upon, indeed, downright hideous, and I think has entered the maze no more than twice in the five years of his reign. And sometimes high priests from other cities, when their travels bring them to us, are taken by Kataphrazes to see the Alien, by way of reminding them that his presence among us confers on us the status of a city honored above all others in the world.

  It was months since I had last visited the Alien and this day, when I went to him, I was startled by the changes in his appearance. He is, obviously, not very much like us in form, other than in such superficial ways as having two legs on which he stands upright, and two arms, and a head set between his shoulders to bear his eyes and breathing-holes and mouth. I have long since grown accustomed to all the little oddities of his appearance, the flatness of his face, and the fact that his fingers are more or less all of the same size and so are his toes, and that his skin is pale and soft, and that his head is shaped the way it is and his eyes are the color and shape that they are, and so forth and so forth.

  But the fur atop his head, which had changed its color from black to gray in the past few years, now seemed suddenly much more sparse than I remembered. I found that pleasing; it made him seem less like a beast of the fields. His face looked broader, as though the soft flesh of it were spreading and sagging. His flat inhuman eyes had a new look that seemed to me to speak not merely of the sadness of his soul but of a deep, inescapable weariness. Even his posture was different, his shoulders now slumping forward as if he found it an increasing effort to stand erect.

  “Well, what do you expect, Kell?” he said, as I stood there gaping at him while he opened the gate that gave admission to his private apartments. There was an abruptness in his tone, a whipcrack rhythm, that I knew connoted anger. “Do you think I’m going to look the same way forever? I’ve spent a quarter of my entire life living in this labyrinth of yours. And now I’m starting to get old.”

  I had not said a thing, only stared. He often responds to unspoken statements that way, as though he can see into your mind and read your hidden thoughts.

  For a long while I wondered whether the Alien might actually have that ability; since he has little or no hsorn, perhaps other senses of his are correspondingly hyper-keen. But later I realized that he merely has a highly developed capacity for interpreting facial expressions. It is, I suppose, a skill that his race cultivates and we do not, though I have given some effort to mastering it since learning from him that one can discover a great deal about the thoughts of others simply by studying their faces while they speak to you.

  I told him that I knew that something had been troubling him lately which had caused him to shun my company and that of my daughter, and I asked whether it could be this, the onset of age, the distress that that was causing in him.

  He merely lifted his shoulders a little way at that and turned his hands outward, the gesture he calls a “shrug,” which is meant to convey indifference.

  Why, he asked, did I think that growing old would be upsetting to him? To the contrary: the older he became, the closer he was to dying; and death for him meant only the end of captivity, the end of exile.

  To these words I made no direct reply. They had been spoken in a flat, emotionless way that seemed to me to connote just as much anger as his earlier harshness. And I could see from his stance and a certain look about his mouth and eyes that he was speaking insincerely. A long silence prevailed between us.

  “Is it the coming of the visitor star, then?” I asked, finally.

  “You mean the comet?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen you on the roof gallery, staring at it for hours.”

  “Well, why not? It’s a colossal sight, a comet that brilliant. I’ve never seen one quite that grand. But what would be troublesome to me about a comet?” We had reached his sitting-room, now. In shelves on every wall were the multitude of things we had brought to him from his Tower, his books, his entertainment-cubes, the various machines with which he looks after his medical needs, and so forth. We are a civilized nation; we had tried to make his captivity as tolerable as possible. He beckoned me to my usual seat and said, “Do you people know what comets are, Kell?—You understand that they aren’t actually st
ars, don’t you?”

  “We call them ‘visitor stars,’ but only because they are so conspicuous and move so much faster than true stars. But we know that comets are different from stars in some way, or we would not have the other word for them. For my own part, I think a comet is more like a little planet, is that not so?”

  “Bravo, Kell! A little planet, yes! One that travels around and around the solar system just as the big planets do, only in a much more eccentric orbit.”

  “But the big planets will endure for all eternity,” I said. “Comets must eventually exhaust their substance and disappear, or else falter in their orbits and tumble into the sun.”

  “You know that much, do you, Kell?”

  “Am I not correct?” I asked him.

  I knew that I was, but I was holding my breath all the same while awaiting confirmation from him. And I was leaning forward in the posture of expectation, pupil to master. Thirty years had gone by since I had last adopted that posture toward any person of my own species; but when in the company of the Alien I usually found myself taking such a stance within a matter of moments.

  He said, “I’ve read your textbooks of astronomy. They’re full of myth and fantasy.”

  “My ideas do not come from textbooks, but rather from direct observation of the phenomena.”

  “Ah, Kell, Kell, you’re a special one, aren’t you? Then tell me: why is it that you think comets will—what did you say?—exhaust their substance and disappear?”

  “Because,” I said, “they seem to be small hard balls of solid matter with a great cloak of light streaming out behind them. That cloak grows brighter and longer as the comet approaches the sun. What else can it be, but the comet’s own substance, boiling forth from it in the form of gas as the sun’s energy heats it? That substance can never be replaced, and so the comet must inevitably dwindle with each of its journeys around the sun, until there is nothing left of it.”

  I knew from the gleam of approval in his eyes that what I was saying was correct. Not that I had had any serious doubt of it.

  “And as for how I know that the comets travel around the sun like planets, why, I have consulted the records. Not all of our astronomy is myth and fantasy, Alien. There are comets that have come back again and again, always at regular intervals for many centuries, and thus must be locked into permanent orbits as planets are. One comet has come every fifty years, one every sixty-two, and so on. It is in the records.”

  He pointed toward the ceiling. “This one, too?”

  “Not this one. It has never been seen by us before.”

  “Causing great excitement out there, is it?”

  “The people find it terrifying. They’re afraid that it’s going to collide with us and destroy the world. It looks like a tree to them, a huge tree that’s falling from the sky, perhaps as a manifestation of the anger of the gods against us. I know that they’re wrong, but when an irrational idea like that takes possession of people’s minds, nothing I could say or do will lift it from them. They’ll simply have to wait and see that nothing bad is going to happen.”

  “It’s a lonely business, isn’t it, Kell, to be as smart as you are.”

  I imitated his shrug-gesture. “I have adapted to it. I will accept the loneliness, if that’s the price of the intelligence.”

  “And you aren’t completely lonely. Apparently you’ve managed to find a wife, at any rate.”

  “I have had several wives. What I have never had is a mate.”

  He considered that for a moment.

  “You’ve been blessed with a wonderful daughter, at least,” he said, after a little while.

  “So I have, yes. I thank the gods for her each day.”

  We fell into another spell of silence.

  Then the Alien said, “Some comets do collide with planets, you know.”

  “They do?”

  “It’s been known to happen. For one thing, their orbits are dynamically unstable. Gravitational perturbations can make changes in a comet’s path as it travels, and send it heading off on a collision course with something nearby. Do you know what I’m talking about, Kell? And even without that happening, the fact remains that the orbits of comets cross those of the planets. It’s altogether possible, sooner or later, for a comet and a planet to arrive at the same place at the same time as they make their separate orbital journeys around the sun.”

  “This comet will not hit us,” I said.

  The Alien made his alien equivalent of a smile. “You say that with absolute confidence.”

  “I feel absolute confidence.”

  “Yes. It’s the mark of a superior mind, isn’t it? But also the mark of a completely closed and rigid one.”

  “I have calculated the orbit of this comet. Bright and large as it is, it will pass by us at a safe distance.”

  “I’d like to see those calculations,” he said.

  “I have brought them with me,” I told him, and presented my portfolio of nightly observations.

  That amused him, that I should be so well prepared for this discussion. For what seemed like a very long time he looked through my pages of notes, whistling occasionally, tapping the tips of his stubby little fingers against his teeth. I will not say that I felt serious self-doubt during this time, for I was sure that I had done my calculations properly; but I am not so foolish as to think I am a perfect being, and, as I have already said, this man’s knowledge of the stars and heavens must by definition be greater than mine, because he has had direct experience of interstellar travel. So I allowed for the possibility that he would find some qualitative error in my assumptions, something that stemmed not from my observations and calculations (which I knew to be correct) but from some lack of understanding in me of the fundamental workings of the universe.

  Then he looked up and said, “Very nice, Kell. You never cease to astonish me.”

  “The savage who walks on his hind legs once more demonstrates his unexpectedly capable mind, eh?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. I feel great affection for you, do you know that? We’re two of a kind, you and I. You’re nearly as much out of place here as I am.”

  A curious remark. But I saw the truth in it, and I could not help but be flattered.

  We talked then for a time about the nature of comets. He confirmed much that I had discovered on my own, and told me a few things I had not known, such as the existence of great swarms of comets at the outer edges of most solar systems, millions and millions of them clustering together far beyond the outermost planets. Only a few of these comets, he said, ever detach themselves from their fellows and undertake journeys past the inner worlds. Which explained to me why, since the world is at least half a million years old and perhaps very much older than that, there still are comets for us to see. The ones our remote ancestors saw have long since evaporated and vanished, but there are always new ones breaking loose from that enormous population of them out beyond the orbit of the farthest planet and coming our way.

  We became silent yet again, after we had talked awhile.

  Then abruptly he said, “What I told you when you arrived was untrue. The thing that’s been troubling me is the comet.”

  His sudden reversal mystified me. “It is? And why is that?”

  “I don’t mean that it’s the comet itself that’s troublesome to me. As I told you, it’s the most spectacular one I’ve ever seen, an extraordinary thing, and so I’ve been up there looking at it most nights like everybody else. But I’m not like everybody else. When I look up at the comet, I also see the stars.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’ve tried not to think about the stars, Kell. Or the planets that go around them. Especially the one I came from.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “My native star isn’t visible from this hemisphere, anyway. But, all the same, when I look toward the heavens—”

  “I understand.”

  The terrible anguish of his solitude leaped out at me like a beacon-light shining from hi
s flat alien eyes.

  I tried, as I had tried a million times before, to imagine what his home world was like, the world he had left so long ago and never would see again. To me it seemed outlandish, fantastic, even frightening. But to him it was home.

  He had described it all to me again and again, so that I sometimes could almost make myself believe I had been there myself. But I knew that that was a delusion. I had no real idea of the nature of his world. I never would. My mind stretches farther than that of anyone I have ever known; but the home world of the Alien would always be inconceivably other to me. All those myriads of flat-faced people; the remarkable green trees; the unthinkably bizarre animals; the vast seas of blue-green water. A host of great cities, each one made up of buildings taller than our mountains, and having more people in it than we have on our entire world; machines beyond my comprehension, machines that sent pictures instantly from continent to continent, machines that enable one to fly from one planet to another and one star to another, all manner of miraculous machines.

  They were like gods, those people, if his tales of his home world had any truth to them.

  He said, “This was supposed to be a three-year exploratory mission. Three of my years—that’s only two of yours. Come out, look around, go home and file my report. Equipment failure wasn’t part of the mission plan. Neither was shipwreck. Neither was capture and imprisonment by an alien species.”

  “You are not our prisoner. You are our guest.”

  “Spare me the sophistry, Kell. We know each other too well for that. Sweet old King Thalk was well aware that the priests would hang his skin on the balcony of his palace if he let me get away from here, because I am the messenger of the gods, and so long as I’m here, the gods will smile on your city. How that fits together with the notion that the gods are currently in the process of dropping a celestial tree on your city because I’m a resident in it is not something that needs close examination, is it?—Kell, I’m not going to live forever. I want to go home.” The last few words came forth in a desperate blurt.