C. L. Moore - The Tree of Life

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THE TREE OF LIFE

Over time-ruined Illar the searching planes swooped and circled.

Northwest Smith, peering up at them with a steelpale stare from the shelter of

a half-collapsed temple, thought of vultures wheeling above, carrion. All day

long now they had been raking these ruins for him. Presently, he knew, thirst

would begin to parch his throat and hunger to gnaw at him. There was neither

food nor water in these ancient Martian ruins, and he knew that it could be

only a matter of time before the urgencies of his own body would drive him out

to signal those wheeling Patrol ships and trade his hardwon liberty for food

and drink. He crouched lower under the shadow of the temple arch and cursed

the accuracy of the Patrol gunner whose flame-blast had caught his dodging

ship just at the edge of Illar’s ruins.

Presently it occurred to him that in most Martian temples of the ancient

days an ornamental well had stood in the outer court for the benefit of

wayfarers. Of course all water in it would be a million years dry now,’ but

for lack of anything better to do he rose from his seat at the edge of the

collapsed

central dome and made his cautious way by still intact corridors toward the

front of the temple. He paused in a tangle of wreckage at the courtyard’s edge

and looked out across the sun-drenched expanse of pavement toward that ornate

well that once had served travelers who passed by here in the days when Mars

was a green plan~et.

It was an unusually elaborate well, and amazingly well preserved. Its rim had

been inlaid with a mosaic pattern whose symbolism must once have borne deep

meaning, and above it in a great fan of time-defying bronze an elaborate

grille-work portrayed the inevitable tree-of-life pattern which ‘so often

appears in the symbolism of the three worlds. Smith looked at it a bit

incredulously from his shelter, it was so miraculouslypreserved amidst all

this chaos of broken stone, casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the sunny

pavement as perfectly as it must have done a million years agO when dusty

travelers paused here to drink. He could picture them filing in at noontime

through the great gates that— The vision vanished abruptly as his questing

eyes made the

circle of the ruined walls. There had been no gate. He could not find a trace

of it anywhere around the outer wall of the court. The only entrancç here, as

nearly as he could tell from the foundations that remained, had been the door

in whose ruins he now stood. Queer. This must have been a private court, then,

its great grille-crowned well reserved for the u~e of the priests. Or wait—had

there not been a priest-king Illar after whom the city was named? A

wizard-king, so legend said, who ruled temple as well as palace with an iron

hand. This elaborately patterned well, of material royal enough to withstand

the weight of ages, might well have been sacrosanct for the use of that

long-dead monarch. It might— Across the sun-bright pavement swept the shadow

of a

plane. Smith dodged back into deeper hiding while the ship circled Jow over

the courtyard. And it was then, as he crouched against a crumbled wall and

waited, motionless, for the danger to pass, that he became aware for the first

time of a sound that startled him so he could scarcely credit his ears—a

recurrent sound, choked and sorrowful—the sound of a woman sobbing.

The incongruity of it made him fotgetful for a moment of the peril

hovering overhead in the sun-hot outdoors. The dimness of the temple ruins

became a living and vital place for that moment, throbbing with the sound of

tears. He looked about half in incredulity, wondering if hunger and thirst

were playing tricks on him already, or if these broken halls might be haunted

by a million-year-old sorrow that wept along the corridors to drive its

hearers mad. There were tales of such haunters in some of Mars’ older ruins.

The hair prickled faintly at the back of his neck ashe laid a hand on the butt

of his force-gun and commenced a cautious prowl toward the source of the

muffled noise.

Presently he caught a flash of white, luminous in the gloom of these

ruined walls, and went forward with soundless steps, eyes narrowed in the

effort lo make out what manner of creature this might be that wept alone in

time-forgotten niins~ It was a woman. Or it had the dim outlines of a woman,

huddled against an angle of fallen walls and veiled in a fabulous shower of

long dark hair. But there was something uncannily ódd about her. He could not

focus his pale stare upon- her outlines. She was scarcely more than a luminous

blot of whiteness in the gloom, shimmering with a look of unreality which the

sound of her sobs denied.

Before he could make up his mind just what to do, something must have

warned the weeping girl that she was no longer alone, for the sound of her

tears checked suddenly and she lifted her head, turning to him a face no more

distinguishable than her body’s outlines. He made no effort to resolve the

blurred features into visibility, for out of that luminous mask burned two

eyes that caught his with an almost perceptible impact and gripped them in a

stare from which he could not have turned if he would.

They were the most amazing eyes he had ever met, colored like moonstone,

milkily translucent, so that they looked almost blind. And that magnetic stare

held him motionless.

In the instant that she gripped him with that fixed, moonstone look he felt

oddly as if a tangible bond were taut between them.

Then she spoke, andhe wondered if his mind, after all, had begun to give

way in the haunted loneliness of dead Illar for though the words she spokelcil

upon his ears in a gibbefishof meaningless sounds, yet in his brain a message

formed with a clarity that far transcended the halting communication of words.

And her milkily colored eyes bored into his with a fierce intensity.

“I’m lost—I’m lost—” wailed the voice in his brain.

A rush of sudden tears brimmed the compelling eyes, veiling their

brilliance. And he was free again with that clouding of the moonstone

surfaces. Her voice wailed, but the words were meaningless and no knowledge

formed in his brain to match them. Stiffly be stepped back a pace and

looked down at her, a feeling of helpless incredulity rising within him. For

he still could not focus directly upon the shining whiteness of her, and

nothing save those moonstone eyes were clear to him.

The girl sprang to her feet and rose on tiptoe, gripping his shoulders

with urgent hands. Again the blind intensity of her eyes tOok hold of his,

with a force almost as tangible-as the

clutch of her hands; again that stream of intelligence poured into his brain,

strongly, pleadingly.

“Please, please take me back! I’m so frightened—I can’t find my way—oh,

please!”

He blinked down at her, his dazed mind gradually realizing the basic

facts of what was happening. Obviously her milky unseeing eyes held a magnetic

power that carried her thoughts to him without the need of a common speech.

And they were the eyes ofapowerful mind, the outlets from which a stream of

fierce energy poured into his brim. Yet the words they conveyed were the words

of a terrified and helpless girl.

A strong sense of wariness was tisinginhim~as he considered the incongruity of

speech and power, both of which were beatin~upon him more urgently with every

breath. The mind

of a forceful and strong-willed woman., carrying the sobs of a

frightened girl. There was no sincerity in it. - -

“Please, please!” cried her impatience in his brain. “Help me! Guide me

back!”“Back where?” he heard his own voice asking.

“The Tree!” wailed that queer speech in his brain, while gibberish was

all ~bis ears heard and the moonstone stare transfixedhim sti~e~-y~ “The Tree

of Life! Oh, take meback to the shadow of-the Tree!”

A vision of the grille-ornamented well leaped into his memory. It was

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C. L. Moore - The Tree of Life

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