THAT SILLY OLD thing on the beach couldn't be important —
it just came from Earth!
Gara slapped her pink flipper-foot against the coarse damp red sand as if it were a kingsize flyswatter. “Come back, Feddi,” she commanded, “and spool seaweed like a good sane blobber. dutiful to his wife and his stomach.”
“But they have discovered a new thing at North Beach,” Feddi protested, his own fondlike feet rutching the sand softly as he edged away. “All the blobbers are going.” He pointed his ring-ridged tri-branched hand behind him toward a few tiny forms converging like pink fleas across the red sand toward a gully in the coral upland newly drained by evaporation. “A new thing, Gara,” he pleaded. “There will be dreams in it. True dreams.”
“Feddi,” Gara stated, “The only truth in the world is that all things shrink like the sea — and the shrinking things include our stomachs. Spool seaweed!”
“But a new thing, Gara,” Feddi repeated. “New things stir me.”
“And old things do not — such as your wife?” Gara planted her tri-branched hands on her hips. “A new thing!” she gargled scornfully. “First it was that the silly orbs swarm for a while together.” She pointed out over the sea where there clustered in conjunction the Ringed Orb and the Old Lie-On-His-Sideand Sister and even Tiny, all palely gleaming low in the dim day sky. “You had to watch them, while I kept the seaweed damp — as much with my sweat as with water. And now, after only a half spool cranked, you must be running off after some new thing — at which you guess only by the scampering of other undutiful husbands.” She croak-croaked contemptuously. “And while you make love to this new uselessness with your eyes, the seaweed which should be standing spooled in the damp cave will dry and rot and crumble into brown dust unfit to taste!”
She shook wildly the hood that was her pink caul and rapidly stamped her scalloped flipper-feet like a maniac assaulting a drove of invisible flies crawling on the floor. Quietening, she added, “And then you’ll come whining to me, ‘I’m hungry, Gara,’ and there’ll be no food.”
“Then I’ll eat dreams!” Feddi protested desperately. “A conjunction is a great rarity, Gara — it may be the last before we all dive into the little red sun or shatter like the Ringed Orb’s ring. And this new thing is an even greater rarity, rich in dreams of unimaginable excitement. They are radiating out from the new thing through the air. They are all blurred, but I can sense them here.” He tapped the top of his caul with his tri-branched hand, then cried in anguish, “Oh, slap-slap-slap-slap — slap-slap — slap-slap,” beating in the same rhythm with his other hand on the red grainy sand — for it was by such drummings that Feddi expressed his strongest emotions, though he had never used this seven-beat stroke before. Perhaps, he thought, it came from the new thing.
“So you will eat dreams and drink conjunctions…” Gara began sternly.
“Gara, I must go,” Feddi crooned ashamedly, ducking his face as his pink caul hid it. Then he turned instantly and hopped off in long low hops down the beach.
Gara shook her head slowly, sighed angrily, and strainingly turned the spool a few more turns. She stopped and was motionless for a while. For another while she chomped a short length of the crispy weed. Then with a grunt she heisted the spool from its stake and dropped it in a diminishing pool of sea water, which was enlarged for the moment. After sketchily splashing water on the exposed section of the strand of weed leading into the sea, she hopped off sedately, following the infrequent V-marks made by Feddi’s far-leaping flippers.
“Dreams for dinner!” her mouth said bitterly, but her mind remembered how Feddi, napping at work, had once dreamed of a sand dragon and how a sand dragon had come and how the tribe had been ready. But most of Feddi’s dreams were of useless far-off things, like the markings on Old Lie-On-His-Side, which Feddi said were seas — yet who would even nibble the weed along their shores? That orb was called Old Lie-On-His-Side because his markings moved slowly from top to bottom, instead of from side to side, as did the markings of the three other orbs.
Though tempted a little against her will by the prospect of Feddi’s wild mind-stirring chatter about his dreams — for Feddi always described them — Gara still went reluctantly. But whenever Feddi recited his dreams, he would be drawn afterward to the slimmer younger, paler blobber maidens and they to him. And that must be dealt with.
Fddi peered up the narrow gully newly uncovered by the receding ocean and he whistled with wonder. Jammed between the fierce multiple-jawed coral walls toothed with shells was a silver sphere taller than a blobber on flipper tips and thicker than a blobber’s arm, to judge by the depth of the strange narrow slits in it.
Around the sphere was gathered, at a respectful distance, most of the tribe — including, Feddi noted with approval, all the slim, pale blobber youths and — ah! — maidens.
But his excitement at this thought and the fearful delighted excitement he sensed in their minds were both washed away by the great white excitement pouring from the sphere itself — an excitement a-swim with gleaming dreams almost seen clear, almost hooked and caught.
He took two vertical leaps to put tension in his muscles, then one gigantic spring which carried him over the nearest blobbers’ cauls and landed him with a great slap a-top the silvery sphere.
The encircling blobbers shrank back in startlement.
But two things overrode his conceit at this sign of respect or fear: First, to crouch on the sphere was like squatting on the top of a kettle boiling with little dreams around one great dream bobbing in the center like the silvery savoury carcass of a sea-skimmer; the white cold boiling was almost more than his mind could bear and it was all he could do not to leap off. Second, at the slap of his landing it had seemed to him that the top of the sphere had turned a flipper’s width — he could tell that the rest of the sphere had not turned because the vertical slits hadn’t. He tried to poke a branch in the nearest, but this was stopped by a hard smooth invisibility smoothly even with the sphere’s surface — these were glazed windows such as he once dreamt of, windows thick as the sphere.
Dragging back his branch-tip, it clicked as it crossed a barely noticeable tiny sharp ridge. The ridge went around him in a perfect circle.
Here and there on the silvery metal were faint characters, imperceptibly raised, spelling the words “impervium” and “aerobathy-sphere,” but they symbolized less to Feddi than the claw tracks in the sand of a sea-skimmer.
The great dream was swirling wildly round his mind now, full of strange orbs and flashes of bright and altering star-shapes and monstrous creatures.
Meanwhile his tribal companions had recovered from their shock. The younger of them were even growing jaunty.
“What is it, Feddi? A sea-castle of the seven-leggers washed ashore?” “Or a haunt of the ribbon-folk? Those doors would fit.”
“Is it a ship from the stars, such as you’ve told us of, Feddi? A ship from Old Lie-On-His-Side?”
“Is it one of the pearly grains you say make up the Ringed Orb’s ring?” Feddi answered none of these questions. A slim blobber maiden, greatly daring, called, “What’s the matter, Feddi? Have you gone to sleep up there?” Her question ended in a high-pitched gurgle.
Feddi decided it was time. Moreover the great dream was coming up to him in such strength now through the thick silvery metal that he hardly could have chosen to wait longer. He thrust a stiff branch at the gurgling girl and cried out, “I have not slept, but I have feasted. I have eaten a dream. Served me from here,” he added, lightly slapping the sphere. Once again the top seemed to turn, just a branch’s width. For a moment Feddi was frightened. Then the dream possessed him utterly.
“Long, long ago,” he cried, lifting his tri-branched hands, “our red ember-sun was a flaming yellow king with twice as many princely children — ten, not five. And each had a great estate — a domain so vast that each looked to the others like a star — one more glittering sand grain in the sky.
“The five princes closest to their father were small and matured swiftly in his warmth. The five farthest were large and swung slowly in frigid sleep, shrouded by strange air thick and stormy as the sea and high as the sky. Of the shrouded ones we were closest to the king and sixth of all.”
The other blobbers goggled up at him entranced. This was what lazy Feddi was for. No good for fighting sand dragons or diving for worms or working magic, but when it came to telling tales —
The fifth of the smaller princes grew swiftly in might and wisdom, but also in pride. He was shattered, but whether of his own doing, or by his father’s wrath, or because he had an equally proud and jealous twin sister, the dream does not tell. Suffice it that he was shattered — and perhaps his haughty sister with him — and scattered wider than the Ringed Orb’s ring.
“The first and second smaller princes, too close to their there’s heat, shriveled and stifled and died.
“The fourth smaller prince lived quietly, obedient to his father.
“The smaller prince had something in his nature of both the fifth and fourth. He became an adventurer. He sent ships to all his brothers and to all the stars in the sky. Some came back, some were lost.
“This ship — ” (Again Feddi tapped the sphere unintendedly; again the top turned, as if forced by the pressure of the great dream boiling inside; again Feddi, though for only a moment, knew fear.) “This ship was one of those he sent us, long before we lived, long before anything lived here. It came dropping down through the strange frigid air, thick and stormy as the sea. After many an adventure it was lost and lay brightly at the bottom of that sea. That sea ate everything yet it could not eat this, so packed with dreams, so bright. The air-sea’s sours and bitters only toughened it.
“Ages passed. The yellow sun-king became angry with the failures of his smaller sons, or perhaps he only wanted to breath life into us, the frozen ones. He swelled in his wrath or creativity. He grew a hundred, a thousand times as bright and sent out destroying flames. His smaller sons were all destroyed. The thick frigid blankets of air were blown from us and from the Ringed Orb, which yet kept a part of its ring, and from Old Lie-On-His-Side and from Sister and even Tiny. With the warmth and thinner air, life could grow on all of us larger ones. And now after the passage of ages unutterable, we who swam near the stars and lived out our destiny, who built our cities and sent out our ships in turn, now return spiralling in toward our red ember-father, who is dying from his labors and angers. Yet even now we find this new silver thing to tell us of the great mind-daunting age of our father and of our brothers. Through the eons, buffeted by changes innumerable, it has remained bright. Oh, the wonder of it! Oh, the sad grandeur of it! Oh, slap-slap-slap — slap-slap-slap — slap-slap!
With his unintended rhythmic pounding which matched that of his bleeping voice and which Feddi could no more have controlled than the other, the silver sphere rang softly, like a muted bell, and its top began to rotate, slowly at first, then a little faster.
Feddi rotated with it as if rooted to the metal. His eyes wagged from side to side, swiftly with the rotation, slowly against it, back and forth.
The encircling bloppers shrank back, but from under their cauls their eyes veered bright with excitement.
The ridge that Feddi’s branch-tip had barely clicked now grew higher, became a vertical wall with spiraling grooves in it.
There was a faint pop, a puffing of dust, sudden spread of a faint musty odor, and then the circular top of the sphere began to tilt off to one side supported and moved by a curved metal arm that emerged from the new round mouth of the sphere and joined the Inner side of the circular top at its very center.
Feddi dropped from the top before it was fully vertical and caught hold of the edge of the mouth and chinned himself on it so that he was peering dizzily down inside.
One by one, other blobbers joined him.
The sphere was lined with odd geometric forms, which light striking through the slitlike windows made odder still. There were many circles, some with a slim finger standing in them. There were squares and octagons and hexagons and pentagons. There were tiny windows through which odd characters, or symbols, or skimmer-tracks showed.
The bottom of the sphere consisted of two reclining chairs into which were strapped two monsters.
They were the size of blobbers and had the same number of feet and arms and ears and eyes, but there most resemblance ceased. Their sallow heads were without cauls but thick with short threadworms, their sallow swollen hands ended in five fat worms conjoined, their black flippers were thick and stunted. Their skins were dull green, though this, Feddi sensed, might be an artifical covering, for on their green necks were strange tracks or characters — but Feddi could no more have called them “T.S.” and “E.J ” than he could have expanded those characters to “Terran Space Force” and “Expedition Jove.”
For moments it seemed that the monsters, though motionless, were not dead, but peering intently at the circles, fingered and unfingered, and at the other shapes at the tiny windows, as if they read meanings there.
Then, slowly at first but soon more swiftly, with many a miniature musty avalanche, they crumbled into brown dust, just like dry seaweed.
Feddi let out a great sigh as all dreaming died in his head at once.
The slim blobber maid hanging at his left — the same one that had gurgled at him — whispered, “Oh that was scary. Feddi, you were wonderful.”
And she shivered against him deliciously.
A harsh familiar tri-branched-hand fastened firmly on his right shoulder.
“Come, Feddi, spool seaweed,” Gara said. “They’re all dead.”
“They escaped in their ships,” Feddi said softly. “They still ride the stars.”
Gara shook her caul. “They’re dead, Feddi, as any seaweed left in your sole care. Come.”