James Blish - Seedling Stars 2 - Thing In the Attic

VIP免费

2024-12-18 2 0 145.2KB 31 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE SEEDLING STARS

JAMES BLISH

BOOK TWO

THE THING

IN THE ATTIC

. . . And it is written that after the Giants came to Tellura from

the far stars, they abode a while, and looked upon the surface of the

land, and found it wanting, arid of evil omen. Therefore did they

make man to live always in the air and in the sunlight, and in the

light of the stars, that he would be reminded of them. And the Gi-

ants abode yet a while, and taught men to speak, and to write, and

to weave, and to do many things which are needful to do, of which

the writings speak. And thereafter they departed to the far stars,

saying. Take this world as your own, and though we shall return,

fear not, for it is yours.

THE BOOK OF LAWS

Honath the Purse-Maker was haled from the nets an hour before

the rest of the prisoners, as befitted his role as the arch-doubter of

them all. It was not yet dawn, but his captors led him in great

bounds through the endless, musky-perfumed orchid gardens,

small dark shapes with crooked legs, hunched shoulders, slim

hairless tails, carried, like his, in concentric spirals wound clock-

wise. Behind than sprang Honath on the end of a long tether, tim-

ing his leaps by theirs, since any slip would hang him summarily.

He would of course be on his way to the surface, some 250 feet

below the orchid gardens, shortly after dawn in any event. But not

even the arch-doubter of them all wanted to begin the trip - not

even at the merciful snap-spine end of a tether a moment before the

law said. Go.

The looping, interwoven network of vines beneath them, each ca-

ble as thick through as a man's body, bellied out and down sharply

as the leapers reached the edge of the fern-tree forest which sur-

rounded the copse of horsetails. The whole party stopped before

beginning the descent and looked east-ward, across the dim bowl.

The stars were paling more and more rapidly; only the bright con-

stellation of the Parrot could still be picked out without doubt.

"A fine day," one of the guards said, conversationally.

"Better to go below on a sunny day than in the rain, Purse-

Maker."

Honath shuddered and said nothing. Of course, it was always

raining down below in Hell, that much could be seen by a child.

Even on sunny days, the endless pinpoint rain of transpiration,

from the hundred million leaves of the eternal trees, hazed the for-

est air and soaked the black bog forever. He looked around in the

brightening, misty morning. The eastern horizon was black against

the limb of the great red sun, which had already risen about a third

of its diameter; it was almost time for the small, blue-white, furi-

ously hot consort to follow. All the way to that brink, as to every

other horizon, the woven ocean of the tree tops flowed gently in

long, unbreaking waves, featureless as some smooth oil. Only

nearby could the eye break that ocean into its details, into the world

as it was: a great, many-tiered network, thickly over- grown with

small ferns, with air-drinking orchids, with a thousand varieties of

fungi sprouting wherever vine crossed vine and collected a little

humus for them, with the vivid parasites sucking sap from the

vines, the trees, and even each other. In the ponds of rainwater

collected by the closely fitting leaves of the bromelaids, tree-toads

and peepers stopped down their hoarse songs dubiously as the light

grew. and fell silent one by one. In the trees below the world, the

tentative morning screeches of the lizard-birds - the souls of the

damned, or the devils who hunted them, no one was quite sure

which took up the concert.

A small gust of wind whipped out of the hollow above the glade of

horsetails, making the network under the party shift slightly, as if

in a loom. Honath gave with it easily, automatically, but one of the

smaller vines toward which he had moved one furless hand hissed

at him and went pouring away into the darkness beneath - a chlo-

rophyll-green snake, come up out of the dripping aerial pathways in

which it hunted in ancestral gloom, to greet the suns and dry its

scales in the quiet morning. Farther below, an astonished monkey,

routed out of its bed by the disgusted serpent, sprang into another

tree, reeling off ten mortal insults, one after the other, while still in

mid-leap. The snake, of course, paid no attention, since it did not

speak the language of men; but the party on the edge of the glade of

horsetails snickered appreciatively.

"Bad language they favor, below," another of the guards said. "A

fit place for you and your blasphemers, Purse-Maker. Come

now."

The tether at Honath's neck twitched, and then his captors were

soaring in zig-zag bounds down into the hollow toward the Judg-

ment Seat. He followed, since he had no choice, the tether threat-

ening constantly to foul his arms, legs, or tail, and - worse, far

worse - making his every movement mortally ungraceful. Above, the

Parrot's starry plumes flickered and faded into the general blue.

Toward the center of the saucer above the grove, the stitched

leaf-and-leather houses clustered thickly, bound to the vines them-

selves, or hanging from an occasional branch too high or too slen-

der to bear the vines. Many of these purses Honath knew well, not

only as visitor but as artisan.

The finest of them, the inverted flowers which opened automati-

cally as the morning dew bathed them, yet which could be closed

tightly and safely around their occupants at dusk by a single draw-

string, were his own design as well as his own handiwork. They had

been widely admired and imitated. The reputation that they had

given him, too, had helped to bring him to the end of the snap-spine

tether. They had given weight to his words among others - weight

enough to make him, at last, the arch-doubter, the man who leads

the young into blasphemy, the man who questions the Book of

Laws. And they had probably helped to win him his passage on the

Elevator to Hell.

The purses were already opening as the party swung among

them. Here and there, sleepy faces blinked out from amid the exfo-

liating sections, criss-crossed by relaxing lengths of dew-soaked

rawhide. Some of the awakening householders recognized Honath,

of that he was sure, but none came out to follow the party - though

the villagers should be beginning to drop from the hearts of their

stitched flowers like ripe seed-pods by this hour of any normal day.

A Judgment was at hand, and they knew it - and even those who

had slept the night in one of Honath's finest houses would not

speak for him now. Everyone knew, after all, that Honath did not

believe in the Giants.

Honath could see the Judgment Seat itself now, a slung chair of

woven cane crowned along the back with a row of gigantic mottled

orchids. These had supposedly been transplanted there when the

chair was made, but no one could remember how old they were;

since there were no seasons, there was no particular reason why

they should not have been there forever. The Seat itself was at the

back of the arena and high above it, but in the gathering light Ho-

nath could make out the white-furred face of the Tribal Spokesman,

like a lone silver-and-black pansy among the huge vivid blooms.

At the center of the arena proper was the Elevator itself. Honath

had seen it often enough, and had himself witnessed Judgments

where it was called into use, but he could still hardly believe that he

was almost surely to be its next passenger. It consisted of nothing

more than a large basket, deep enough so that one would have to

leap out of it, and rimmed with thorns to prevent one from leaping

back in. Three hempen ropes were tied to its rim, and were then

cunningly interwound on a single-drum windlass of wood, which

could be turned by two men even when the basket was loaded.

The procedure was equally simple. The condemned man was

forced into the basket, and the basket lowered out of sight, until the

slackening of the ropes indicated that it had touched the surface.

The victim climbed out - and if he did not, the basket remained be-

low until he starved or until Hell otherwise took care of its own -

and the windlass was re- wound.

The sentences were for varying periods of time according to the

severity of the crime, but in practical terms this formality was

empty. Although the basket was dutifully lowered when the sen-

tence had expired, no one had ever been known to get back into it.

Of course, in a world without seasons or moons, and hence without

any but an arbitrary year, long periods of time are not easy to count

accurately. The basket may often have arrived thirty or forty days to

one side or the other of the proper date. This was only a technical-

ity, however, for if keeping time was difficult in the attic world, it

was probably impossible in Hell.

Honath's guards tied the free end of his tether to a branch and

settled down around him. One abstractedly passed a pine cone to

him, and he tried to occupy his mind with the business of picking

the juicy seeds from it, but somehow they had no flavor.

More captives were being brought in now, while the Spokesman

watched with glittering black eyes from his high perch.

There was Mathild the Forager, shivering as if with ague, the fur

down her left side glistening and spiky, as though she had inadver-

tently overturned a tank plant on herself. After her was brought

Alaskon the Navigator, a middle-aged man only a few years younger

than Honath himself; he was tied up next to Honath, where he set-

tled down at once, chewing at a joint of cane with apparent indiffer-

ence.

Thus far, the gathering had proceeded without more than a few

words being spoken, but that ended when the guards tried to bring

Seth the Needlesmith from the nets. He could be heard at once, over

the entire distance to the glade, alternately chattering and shrieking

in a mixture of tones that might mean fear or fury. Everyone in the

glade but Alaskon turned to look, and heads emerged from purses

like new butterflies from cocoons.

A moment later, Seth's guards .came over the lip of the glade in a

tangled group, now shouting themselves. Somewhere in the middle

of the knot Seth's voice became still louder; obviously he was cling-

ing with all five members to any vine or frond he could grasp, 'and

was no sooner pried loose from one than he would leap by main

force, backwards if possible, to another. Nevertheless, he was

being brought inexorably down into the arena, two feet forward,

one foot back, three feet forward ...

Honath's guards resumed picking their pine cones. During the

disturbance, Honath realized, Charl the Reader had been brought

in quietly from the same side of the glade. He now sat opposite

Alaskon, looking apathetically down at the vine-web, his shoulders

hunched forward. He exuded despair; even to look at him made

Honath feel a renewed shudder.

From the high Seat, the Spokesman said: "Honath the Purse-

maker, Alaskon the Navigator, Charl the Reader, Seth the Needles-

mith, Mathild the Forager, you are called to answer to justice."

"Justice!" Seth shouted, springing free of his captors with a tre-

mendous bound, and bringing up with a jerk on the end of his

tether. "This is no justice! I have nothing to do with"

The guards caught up with him and clamped brown hands firmly

over his mouth. The Spokesman watched with amused malice.

"The accusations are three," the Spokesman said. "The first, the

telling of lies to children. Second, the casting into doubt of the di-

vine order among men. Third, the denial of the Book of Laws. Each

of you. may speak in order of age. Honath the Purse-Maker, your

plea may be heard."

Honath stood up, trembling a little, but feeling a surprisingly re-

newed surge of his old independence.

"Your charges," he said, "all rest upon the denial of the Book of

Laws. I have taught nothing else that is contrary to what we all be-

lieve, and called nothing else into doubt. And I deny the charge."

The Spokesman looked down at him with disbelief. "Many men

and women have said that you do not believe in the Giants, Purse-

Maker," he said. "You will not win mercy by piling up more lies."

"I deny the charge," Honath insisted. "I believe in the Book of

Laws as a whole, and I believe in the Giants. I have taught only that

the Giants were not real in the sense that we are real. I have taught

that they were intended as symbols of some higher reality, and were

not meant to be taken as literal Persons."

"What higher reality is this?" the Spokesman demanded. "De-

scribe it."

"You ask me to do something the writers of the Book of Laws

themselves couldn't do," Honath said hotly. "If they had to embody

the reality in symbols rather than writing it down directly, how

could a mere pursemaker do better?"

"This doctrine is wind," the Spokesman said. "And it is plainly

intended to undercut authority and the order established, by the

Book. Tell me, Purse-Maker, if man need not fear the Giants, why

should they fear the law?"

"Because they are men, and it is to their interest to fear the law.

They aren't children, who need some physical Giant sitting over

them with a whip to make them behave. Furthermore, Spokesman,

this archaic belief itself undermines us. As long as we believe that

there are real Giants, and that some day they'll return and resume

teaching us, so long will we fail to seek answers to our questions for

ourselves. Half of what we know was given to us in the Book, and

the other half is supposed to drop to us from the skies if we wait

long enough. In the meantime, we vegetate."

"If a part of the Book be untrue, there can be nothing to prevent

that it is all untrue," the Spokesman said heavily. "And we will lose

even what you call the half of our knowledge - which is actually the

whole of it, to those who see with clear eyes."

Suddenly, Honath lost his temper. "Lose it, then!" he shouted.

"Let us unlearn everything we know only by rote, go back to the

beginning, learn all over again, and continue to learn, from our own

experience. Spokesman, you are an old man, but there are still

some of us who haven't forgotten what curiosity means!"

"Quiet!" the Spokesman said. "We have heard enough. We call on

Alaskon the Navigator."

"Much of the Book is clearly untrue," Alaskon said flatly, rising.

"As a handbook of small trades it has served us well. As a guide to

how the universe is made, it is nonsense, in my opinion; Honath is

too kind to it. I've made no secret of what I think, and I still think

it."

"And will pay for it," the Spokesman said, blinking slowly down

at Alaskon. "Chart the Reader."

"Nothing," Charl said, without standing, or even looking up.

"You do not deny the charges?"

"I've nothing to say," Charl said, but then, abruptly, his head

jerked up, and he glared with desperate eyes at the Spokesman. "I

can read. Spokesman. I have seen words of the Book of Laws that

contradict each other. I've pointed them out. They're facts, they ex-

ist on the pages. I've taught nothing, told no lies, preached no un-

belief. I've pointed to the facts. That's all."

"Seth the Needlesmith, you may speak now."

The guards took their hands gratefully off Seth's mouth; they

had been bitten several times in the process of keeping him quiet

up to now. Seth resumed shouting at once. "I'm no part of this

group! I'm the victim of gossip, envious neighbors, smiths jealous of

my skill and my custom! No man can say worse of me than that I

sold needles to this pursemaker - sold them in good faith! The

charges against me are lies. all of them!"

Honath jumped to his feet in fury, and then sat down again,

choking back the answering shout almost without tasting its bitter-

ness. What did it matter? Why should he bear witness against the

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THESEEDLINGSTARSJAMESBLISHBOOKTWOTHETHINGINTHEATTIC...AnditiswrittenthataftertheGiantscametoTellurafromthefarstars,theyabodeawhile,andlookeduponthesurfaceoftheland,andfounditwanting,aridofevilomen.Thereforedidtheymakemantolivealwaysintheairandinthesunlight,andinthelightofthestars,thathewouldberemind...

展开>> 收起<<

James Blish - Seedling Stars 2 - Thing In the Attic.pdf

共31页,预览7页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

James Blish - Seedling Stars 2 - Thing In the Attic

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: