Cuziz Zine Nea. These were the only capitalised letters. Could they stand for Ulysses Singing Bear? The initialy phoneme in Ulysses had become affricated for some reason, perhaps because of a word-final affricate preceding it? Maybe, in some cases, the word-final sound immediately preceding the word-initial sound of the next word influenced it if it were in a certain class. Just asZine may have beenSinging at one time, and thes became voiced when preceded by a voiced sound. Theing had becomeen, and then then became a nasalisation of thee, but during the evolution of the language it had influenced all words which, following it, began with a bilabial or labiodental phoneme. So that, though the finaln ofZine had disappeared, Bear (onceBer, thenBe) wasNe when it followed any word that had once had a finalm orn.
If he proceeded on this theory. he whistled and murmured then, "I think I got it!"
There was some sense in the words. The letters were evolved from the IPA or something like it. The language had been English, but it had changed to something analogous to the structure of the Celtic languages of his time. There were words that he could not translate at all or could only guess at. After all, new words come into every language almost every year, and some become more or less permanent. And there were elisions and intrusions for which to account.
But there it was. TO HERE. ULYSSES SINGING BEAR, FAMOUS PETRIFIED MAN, ACCIDENTALLY. TO HIM. MOLECULAR STASIS DURING SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT IN SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, TO OLD NATION OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. "PETRIFIED" STATE SINCE.
The date was unintelligible. For some reason, the Arabic numbers were not used. But the date had to be the equivalent of 1985 A.D. The date given for the erection of the exhibit was also unreadable.
It did not matter whether it was 6985 A.D. or 50,000 A.D., though it was probable that the earlier date was more correct. In fifty thousand years, the language would have become absolutely unrecognisable.
It did not matter. What did was that he had once sat on this metal, or plastic, platform with the affixed plate and many visitors, perhaps millions, had filed by and read these words (in various forms as the language changed) and gazed at the immobile features with awe. And also with amazement, since humans could not keep from making witticisms even in the presence of death. They would have looked at him with jealousy, too, if they had known that he would be living when they had been dust a hundred thousand times over.
He wondered what had happened to him. Had someone stolen him? Or, more likely, had he and the platform been located somewhere else, and then taken here? Had he been separated from the platform en route? Who knew what had happened? It had taken place so long ago that it would always be a mystery.
He straightened up, and Zhishbroom walked on ahead. They went down many corridors, and at last the Neshgai halted before a blank wall. He spoke one word, and the wall seemed to melt and then become fuzzy, and there was an open doorway. He followed the giant into a small room shaped like the interior of a ball. A silvery reflecting substance coated the interior and, in the middle of the room, suspended on nothing, was a huge silvery disk. Zhishbroom took Ulysses' hand and guided him to a spot before it. The disk hung vertically before him and reflected his image.
But it did not reflect Zhishbroom, who was standing directly behind him.
"I can read nothing in the Book," Zhishbroom said sadly.
He added, "Call out when you are finished reading. The door will open. I will then conduct you to Kuushmurzh, and you can tell him what you read."
Ulysses did not hear the Neshgai walk away. He continued to stare at his reflection, and then it disappeared. Evaporated, rather. Layer after layer of his flesh faded; his bones stood before him; they, too, slid into nothing; only the disk was left.
He stepped forward, thinking that he could not possibly step into the solid material — but did he know that it was solid? — and then he was inside. Or he thought he was. Like Alice through the mirror.
Things appeared around him as if they had been hidden by an invisible fog which had melted with the sun of his coming.
He walked forward and put out his hand and could touch nothing. He went through the great tree before him, passed through darkness, and was out on the other side. A woman, a beautiful brown woman wearing only earrings, a nose ring, finger rings, beads, and painted designs over half of her body, walked through him. She moved swiftly, as if she were in a speeded-up movie.
Things sped by. Somebody increased the speed of the movie even more. Then it slowed down, and he was standing by another gigantic tree in the light of the moon. The full moon was the moon he had known before he became stone. The tree was three times as large as the largest sequoia of California. Its base contained several entrances out of which a "soft" light fell. A youth of about sixteen, wearing ribbons and tassels in his bushy hair and around his ears, fingers, toes and other appendages, came through the well-tended park and entered the tree. Ulysses followed him up the staircase. He did not understand how he could walk up this and yet not be able to touch it. Nor why his hand went through the youth when he tried to touch him.
The youth lived inside the tree with a dozen others. The apartments, or cells, of the tree had a few decorations and belongings. There was a bed of some moss-like material, some tables not more than six inches off the floor, a tiny stove, some pots, pans and tableware. There was a wooden box, painted by some amateur, in a corner. This held food and various liquids. And that was all.
He left the tree and wandered through the park, which began to fade away. He had a sense of the passage of time. Much time. It was still night when things stabilised. The moon was changing. It evidently had an atmosphere and seas but it did not have the complete-planet look that it had in the world in which he had awakened. Trees, much larger than the sequoia-types, grew all over the land, through which he passed like a ghost. These had a Brobdingnagian central trunk and massive branches that radiated outward and sent down vertical shoots to support them and finally bent to plunge into the earth. They were much smaller versions of The Tree that he knew. They formed small towns, and on them grew trees which furnished all the food, except for meat, that the citizens needed.
There were also trees containing experimental laboratories. These housed cats and dogs with much larger braincases than the animals of his time. And there were monkeys which had lost much of their hair and all of their tail and walked upright. And many more animals that had obviously been mutated by geneticists.
The world began to move fast and then he was on the moon with no sense of transition. The brown Earth hung near the horizon; despite the cloud masses he could recognise the eastern end of Asia.
The moonscape was fair and gentle. There were great trees, many bright plants, birds and little animals. To the east was the first intrusion of dawn. And then the sun came up and lit up the western slope of a mountain — once the wall of a crater, he supposed, that had been softened by erosion of wind and water. Or perhaps it had been changed by the godlike powers of the beings that had given the moon an atmosphere and oceans and transmuted the stony floors to a dark rich soil.
The godlike beings must also have given the moon a faster spin, because the sun rose swiftly and, in an estimated twelve hours, had set again. By then he had scudded across the park-like land and seen the trees that grew here and housed men and many different genera and species of sentients. All the nonhuman peoples, except one, seemed to be descended from terrestrial animals.
The exception was a tall pinkish-skinned biped with kinky hair from the neck up, under the armpits, on the pubic regions, and on the back of his legs. His face was human enough except for the fleshy excrescence, like that of a starnosed mole, which adorned the tip of his retrousse nose. There were many of these beings, obviously visitors from a planet of some distant star. If they had spaceships, there were none in sight.