Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (28 page)

Her hair hid most of her. It had black night
in it, and moonbeams, and glints of fire like a humming-bird's breast. Hair you
dream about. Hair you could smother yourself in, and die happy.

She raised her head slowly, letting the veil
of warm darkness fall away from her. Her eyes were shadowed, hidden under
thick lashes. She raised her hands to Lundy, like a child praying.

But she wasn't a child. She was a woman,
naked as a pearl, and so lovely that Lundy sobbed with it, in shivering
ecstasy.

"No,"
he said hoarsely. "No.
Nol
"

She held her arms up to be free, and didn't move.

Lundy tore the net loose from his belt and
flung it on the altar block. He got up and went lurching to the door, but the
kelp-things were still there, still hungry. He sat down again, in a corner as
far away from both places as he could get, and took some
benzedrine
.

It was the wrong thing to do. He'd about
reached his limit. It made him lightheaded. He couldn't fight her, couldn't
shut her out. She knelt on the altar with her hands stretched out to him, and a
shaft of golden light falling on her like something in a church.

"Open your eyes," he said.
"Open your eyes and look at me."

Let me free. Let me free!

Freedom Lundy didn't know anything about. The
freedom of outer space, with the whole Milky Way to play in and nothing to
hold you back.
And with the longing, fear.
A blind,
stricken terror. . . .

"No!"
Lundy said.

Things got dark for Lundy. Presently he found himself at the altar
block, fumbling at the net.

He wrenched away and went stumbling back to
his corner. He was twitching all over like a frightened dog.

"Why do you want to do it? Why do you
have to torture me—drive them crazy for something they can't have—kill
them?"

Torture?
Crazy?
Kill? I don't understand. They worship me. It is
pleasant to
he
worshiped.

"Pleasant?" Lundy was yelling
aloud, and didn't know it.
"Pleasant, damn you!
So you kill a good guy like Farrell, and drown Jackie Smith. . . ."

Kill?
Wait—give me the thought again. . . .

Something inside Lundy turned cold and still,
holding its breath. He sent the thought again.
Death.
Cessation.
Silence,
and the dark.

The tiny glowing figure on the black stone bent over its knees again,
and it was sadder than a seabird's cry at sunset.

So
will I
be
soon. So will all of us. Why did this planet take us out of space? The weight,
the pressure breaks and crushes us, and we can't get free. In space there was
no death, hut now we die. . . .

Lundy stood quite still. The blood beat like drums in his temples.

"You mean that all you creatures out of
space are dying?
That the—the madness will stop of
itself?"

Soon.
Very soon.
There
was no death in space! There was no pain! We didn't know about them. Everything
here was new, to be tasted and played with. We didn't know. . . .

"
Helll
"
said Lundy, and looked at the creatures beating at the crack of the stone door.
He sat down.

You, too, will die.

Lundy raised his head slowly. His eyes had a
terrible brightness.

"You like to be worshiped," he
whispered. "Would you like to be worshiped after you die?
Would you like to be remembered always as something good and
beautiful—a goddess?"

That would be better than to be forgotten.

"Will you do what I ask of you, then?
You can save my life, if you will. You can save the lives of a lot of those
litde
flower-people. I'll see to it that everyone knows
your true story. Now you're hated and feared, but after that you'll be
loved."

Will
you let me free of this net? "It
you promise to do what I ask?"

I
would rather die
at
least free of
this net.
The
tiny figure trembled and shook back the veil of dark hair.
Hurry.
Tell
me....

"Lead these creatures away from the door. Lead all of them in the
city away, to the fire in the mountain where they'll be destroyed."

They
will worship me. It is better than dying in a net. I promise.

Lundy got up and went to the altar. His feet
were not steady. His hands were not steady, either, untying the net. Sweat ran
in his eyes. She didn't have to keep her promise. She didn't have to. . . .

The net fell away. She stood up on her tiny pink feet.

Slowly,
like a swirl of mist straightening in a little breeze. She threw her head back
and smiled. Her mouth was red and sulky, her teeth whiter than new snow. Her
lowered lids had faint blue shadows traced on them.

She began to grow, in the golden shaft of
light, like a pillar of cloud rising toward the sun. Lundy's heart stood still.
The clear
glearn
of her skin, the
line of her throat and her young breasts, the supple turn of her flank and
thigh.
...

You
worship me, too.

Lundy stepped back, two lurching steps.
"I worship you," he whispered. "Let me see your eyes."

She smiled and turned her head away. She
stepped off the altar block, floating past him through the black water. A
dream-thing, without weight or substance, and more desirable than all the women
Lundy had seen in his life or his dreams.

He followed her, staggering. He tried to
catch her. "Open your
eyesl
Please
open your eyes!"

She floated on, through the crack of the
stone door. The kelp-things didn't see her. All they saw was Lundy coming
toward them.

"Open
your eyes!"

She turned, then, just before Lundy had
stepped out to death in the hall beyond. He stopped, and watched her raise her
shadowed lids.

He screamed, just once, and fell forward onto
the black floor.

He never knew how long he lay there. It
couldn't have been long in time, because he still had barely enough oxygen to
make it to the coast when he came to. The kelp-beasts were gone.

But the time to Lundy was an eternity—an eternity he came out of with
whitened hair and bitter lines around his mouth, and a sadness that never left
his eyes.

He'd only had his dream a little while.
A few brief moments, already shadowed by death.
His mind
was drugged

and
tired, and didn't feel things as deeply and
clearly as it might. That was all that saved him.

But he knew what Jackie Smith saw before he
drowned. He knew why men had died or gone mad forever, when they looked into
the eyes of their dream, and by looking, destroyed it.

Because, behind those shadowed, perfect lids,
there was—
Nothing
.

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