12
The wind from the sea was fresh, with an invigorating tang. I looked at Nova just as she realized we were naked, but neither of us thought that was important. It was warm, and the sea breezes rippled the vast grassland and bent the tiny surfaces of the small flowers. The gravity was a tenth or so less than Earth’s, and comfortable. Looking into the big bowl of sky we could see pale discs and paler veils, even in the bright sunlight.
Nova’s first stunned questions died away. “Brian, what have we done? Where are we?” I said I wasn’t sure, exactly, but we would soon find out. I felt a confidence that, upon examination, was based on very little. But I knew it was where I had wanted to go and that the forces within me, and the forces to which we had linked, had brought us here. We rested twice before we got to the rocks, which were much bigger than I had thought. A fringe of leafy green trees surrounded them and ran up into the crevices and small canyons. They were filled with feathered bird-like creatures that had small mouths instead of beaks, and were very beautiful.
We rested under a large gnarled tree hung with melon-sized blue fruit. I broke one open to find a scented rose-colored interior and a small, polished bead-like seed. We didn’t eat it, but it somehow felt safe.
“Brian,” Nova said. “The sky is—different. We are nowhere near the Solar System.”
“Yes, I know. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? I’m not even sure what we did, Brian. It was so strange, so . . . unique. But we’re here, and naked, and some monster could come over that rock and have us for lunch. All that—sensation—is fading, becoming unfocused, sort of. Can we—get back?”
“I think so. Come on. We’ll go over the rocks to the sea.”
We climbed a cleft and startled something in the long thick grasses, which sprang away, running hard. I saw only a golden-tan blur through the blue-green grass, but I knew that there was some kind of life here.
From the cleft in the rocky spine we could soon see the vast red-violet sea, and the pale pink waves crashing on the rocks below. We went down carefully, and there seemed to be a faint animal trail, which we followed.
We came again into the jungle belt around the rocks and along through the dappled light until we could see and smell the ocean. We went through a small grove of black-limbed trees with purple fruit and crimson flowers, and walked cautiously toward the water. There was a ring of blackened firestones just back of the treeline, and a collection of curious fish bones were laid out on a rock to dry.
“Look!” said Nova, and pointed down the beach.
There were two figures, human and naked, their bodies gleaming wetly, and they were running toward us. The man was bearded and carried a wooden spear with a broad fish-bone point, and the woman was swinging a large popeyed black fish by the gills.
They were Madelon and Mike.
“My god, it’s Brian!” Madelon said, dropping the fish to run to me. She hugged me tightly, pressing our bodies together, kissing my face. Her eyes were wet and shining and wholly incredulous. “Brian! My god, how did you get here? Mike, it’s Brian!”
Michael Cilento stood looking at us, grinning and not seeming surprised. He looked at Nova. “Hi. I’m Mike Cilento.”
Nova looked from him to Madelon, who was kissing me in a hundred small hungry pecks. “Brian . . . ?”
I pushed Madelon back and put my arm around her. “Nova, this is Madelon and Mike. Lady and gentleman, this is Nova Sunstrum.”
“Doctor Livingston, honey, are we glad you are here!” Madelon gave a joyous whoop and ran to hug Mike. “Darling, I can’t believe it!”
She turned to look at the two of us with shining eyes. “How did you ever—?”
“We followed the trail that Mike left,” I said. “We just took a different way to get here.”
“Brian,” Nova said, “will you tell me what is going on?”
I put my arm around Nova. “These are . . . old friends. Mike is an artist. Michael Cilento, remember?” I saw the astonishment in her eyes.
“But you’re dead—or something!” she said.
“Or something,” Mike grinned.
“Mike found a way to . . .” I hesitated. “How do I say it?”
“Slip through space?”
“But what did we do?” asked Nova. “I’ve never experienced anything like that!”
“Oh, never mind that,” Madelon said. “You did it, we did it, we’re all here.” She started walking and we went along. “Our cave is over there,” she said.
“What do you call—this place?” Nova asked.
“We haven’t really decided,” Mike said. “Most of the time we just call it Here. But since man seems compelled to label we’ve considered New Earth, or Terra, which neither of us likes. Starholm, Grassworld, Thor, oh, what else?”
“Flowerworld,” Madelon said. “Pacifica. But mostly it’s Here.”
“A world by any other name would be just as sweet,” I said.
“It’s beautiful.”
Nude, the four of us walked up the golden beach and around a rock to find the cave house they had created. A border of flowers edged a sand terrace, and an arbor of poles supported a growth of red pear-shaped grapes. The cave was long and twisting and there were beds of moss and, back in the coolness, a carcass of some kind of meat animal.
“We came through naked,” Mike said. “Not even our tooth fillings made it. Luckily we only had a couple. We came down here and caught fish bare handed and used their bones for tools. I made spears and tracked the jumpers for meat. They’re a bit like deer, but they can jump unbelievably high. There’s a kind of grain that grows south of here, and there is the fruit.”
His voice petered out and I felt a sudden empathy for him. This Eden-like life was like a vacation, easy and fun, but not a man’s world, certainly not Michael Cilento’s. I noticed the sun-dried clay sculptures, the fire-hardened pots, the unfinished mural he was scratching into a smooth spot on the rock wall. An artist will always create art, but Mike had known better tools, and he was unsatisfied with the primitive ones he had.
“Do you want to go back?” I asked.
All three looked at me. “Can we?” asked Madelon.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think so.” I looked at Nova. “I’m not certain we can do it without . . . them.” Mike and Madelon looked at each other questioningly.
“It’s the Martians,” Nova said, “or something they left behind. I’m not really certain. Brian . . . contacted them, in the Star Palace. We merged with them, somehow. Brian wanted to come here and focused us
. . . and we just . . . came.” She looked at me confidently. “We can do it.”
I was not quite so confident. Some of the sureness was dissipating with new doubts. To avoid thinking of it for awhile, I asked about the fruit in a woven basket, then about the planet in general. Mike told me that from what he could determine it appeared to be an ocean world and the land a vast prairie, although he had seen only a small portion of it.
“Brian, come see the sunset,” Nova said and we all joined her at the entrance to the cave. The western sky was red-orange and the underlit clouds were magnificent far out to sea.
A whirring insect as large as a canary came at me from the eastern darkness, and I raised a hand to bat at it, but Mike caught my wrist. “They won’t hurt you unless you hurt them,” he laughed. “Believe me, I learned the hard way. There are no tiny annoying buggies here, just three or four species of big ones, sort of all purpose types, to fertilize the trees and flowers. We all—co-exist here.”