Short Fiction - Algis Budrys (chrysanthemum read aloud .TXT) 📗

And of all these Earthly things, the Veld made men not entirely Earthly, for the Veld is a Veld.

Now soon, the new transporter would take the Veld away⁠—in ways I wondered were perilous⁠—and it would be Charpantier and I who stayed to see the world restored.

Charpantier and I, who called ourselves, but had no names.

He commanded us to go and we went, I East, Charpantier West. I saw Charpantier hurry down his side of the hill, handsome and hasty under the stars. I walked⁠—for me, to run is to risk⁠—and I trembled, for me to feel is to know, and the Veld was desperate. He slept at night, secure from questions even though he slept, for his power once exercised was irrevocable so long as he existed. But tonight he did not sleep; he made.

I thought of my assumed man, on his assumed island, red-eyed and tremulous of hand, bent over his pot, stirring, stirring, unable to wait for morning. I thought of the light from his fire, shining on the dumb eyes of his faithful messengers waiting at the edge of his clearing. The messengers are dismissed from service, yet not quite sure they are dismissed. And I thought of this Earth, and the Veld’s old promise to us that tomorrow it would wake knuckling its eyes, and need a loving voice to say there was an end to nightmares.

I would speak and Charpantier would speak, but what would we say? And in what voices, born of the Veld’s touch on the Waldos? And would there be more than speaking to do?

I did not think there was much I could do but speak. Charpantier lacks a finger, but I⁠ ⁠… I have hands, but I lack them.

Oh, but the stars were cold! The Moon in this season was a day Moon, and now below the horizon. Stars, stars and galaxies, but beyond them, where the Veldish beings lived, nothing I could see, and below the stars, too, here where I reached the brow of the hill and clumsily opened my wings, here, too, nothing, as I lurched into the night and in great strain beat toward the places of men.

I had a favorite place; the place I had chosen to begin to speak from. It was small, as men measure things⁠—a few lights in the darkness, here the sheen of a lake, there the tiered wooliness of trees⁠—a town in which I had disposed those men who must first unbind themselves from the years of no questioning. For unlike the Veld and his transporter⁠—and even the Veld needed a transporter⁠—Charpantier and I could not be everywhere.

It was my thought to reassure these men first, and have them go out and reassure others, as older brothers will soothe the younger in the night. I knew from an old argument that Charpantier planned the same. But, of course, they would not be the same sort of men for Charpantier as for me.

Still, they were all men. Once they had all rubbed the sleep from their eyes they would tell each other what they saw, and in the end and all men would have agreed on the shape of the world, so it would not matter what imperfections Charpantier pointed out, or what implicit glories I perceived.

If the Veld’s hand did not tremble as he stirred his pot.

And yet it had⁠—it had; Charpantier had said more than he thought, when he thought to stop up my mouth with myself.

I faced away from the Foundation, now mile on mile behind me. But my eyes turned inward, and in me my mind hovered over the Veld. I had no actual distant eye⁠—no way of seeing beyond the curve of the world or through the haze of the air; no ear to listen to a sound so far away it cannot urge the molecules of air my pinions grope at. But often it is well enough to think, for any thought seems accurate enough to act on, and in time thoughts grow so practiced that they might well be eyes. And so I saw the Veld, though I did not see him, and I saw him falter.

In me, the Veld suddenly told: “I have made, and I go. Forgive me for your sorrow.” And I forgave him, as I had forgiven him long ago. For his duty was to men, not to ourselves who were part of that duty. And Charpantier, I knew, had nothing to forgive, for he was glad of his sorrow.

The wind numbed my eyes. I wept.

Under the cold stars, my crude cheeks glistened. I hovered over the town, where some men slept and some men worked, because some machines run during the day and some run at night, and I listened for anything else the Veld might have to tell, for he was my irrevocable commander as long as he existed on this Earth. I also listened with the ear of habituated thought.

And I heard. In my mind’s eye, I saw the Veld use the Earthly transporter, but it was not with my mind’s ear alone that I heard what I heard.

The pot erupts. The stranded man claws back in agony so great he cannot even scream, arms, legs and face smoldering, and jounces on the ground, to lie, to moan, to be a long mindless time dying. And at the clearing’s edge the little messengers have no one to say what could be done to soothe him.

What now? Where to go, what to do, how to repair?

Oh, Veld, Veld, long-living Veld, what truly eternal sorrow!

I sank down through the air, bereft and graceless. What could I do for the Veld? All that remained to me was what I could say to men. But I knew as I landed among them that the Veld’s promise could not be kept, since the Veld was still here.

I cried out to the men: “Awake! Arise!” They stumbled out of their houses, but when I said to the first of them: “Question