The Three Suns of Amara

“How can I tell? I’m here, not there.”

Sherret laughed and abandoned the attempt. Such crosstalk could go on indefinitely. In trying to learn something of the nature of the flora and fauna of Amara by questioning the dour Paddies, the Earthmen had achieved a state of utter confusion. Lifeforms here were weird, certainly. Maybe the Paddies had the right approach in describing them in terms of Irishisms.

He bade the Paddy good-bye and walked on.

He ran into the Jackie a mile further on. When a Jackie stood upright he was, on the average, eight feet tall. As his spine was rubbery he seldom stood upright. Jackies were fleshless and gangling, hinged at every point. The jaw hinge was particularly notable. When a Jackie laughed, the top half of his head lifted clear away. And Jackies always laughed.

Jackie was a diminutive of jackass.

“Good morning,” said Sherret.

The Jackie at once became convulsed with laughter. Jackies laughed at the slightest thing. At first you thought they were laughing at nothing at all. Then you tended to re-examine what you’d said. Perhaps you had said something funny. Or, at any rate, foolish.

Come to think of it, Sherret reflected, it was foolish to wish anyone good morning on Amara, where there was no morning. Nor afternoon, nor evening, nor night. It was always day—of a kind.

The laugh continued to saw through the still air, and Sherret reflected further that there was something disturbing about a Jackie’s laugh. It was more than a mere ass bray. There was a maniacal strain, like the release of the hysteria of a sex-killer at the moment of consummation. And yet there was more irony than cruelty in it. The laugher knew you were a fool, but knew that he was too. He was laughing at the nture of things which made sport of him and of you.

There was bitterness because he had been formed as he was. But this was countered by a note of triumph because in some non-human way he knew more about destiny than you could guess.

It was a devilishly knowing laugh. When it had died away, the Jackie asked in his peculiarly twanging voice, as though his vocal cords were of thin steel wire, “Where are you going, human?”

“Na-Abiza.”

Again Sherret waited patiently for the laugh to end. “Abiza,” in what seemed to be the common language of Amara (for even the Bird-Amarans shrilled it) was a verb as well as a place name. The verb described a bodily function. “Na” meant, variously, no, negative, or unable.

“Na-Abiza” could mean constipation. Naturally, the Jackie chose to see it that way. When he had laughed his fill, and become untwisted and a recognizably humanoid shape again, the Jackie said, “I wish you an interesting journey. But beware of those who have only two, of those two become three, of that which becomes many.”

“Well, thanks a lot,” said Sherret. “But do you have to be so cryptic?”

Even on second thought he could see nothing particularly humorous in this question. But immediately the Jackie was again overtaken by helpless mirth. With repetition, this sort of reaction could become irritating.

“One day you’ll die laughing,” said Sherret, with a touch of impatience, and strode on.

It was some time before the unsettling sound was finally lost in the horny brush behind him.

Eventually he left the thorn belt, crossed an ankle-twisting area of loose rock, then climbed the ridge from which the rocks had rolled. It was there he paused for a parting look back at the ship—if it was the ship.

He’d come this far in this direction before, but he had only a rough notion of the terrain beyond the ridge. Somewhere there was a lake whose western edge he would have to skirt. He went onto the crest and then along it for some distance until he came to a high promontory. He scaled it.

From the summit he took survey. A plain stretched to the horizon. A small section of the horizon was thickened by a bright orange streak. That was the lake. He took a bearing, then picked his way down to the plain.

It was featureless and seemed interminable. Coarse grass matted it. Sometimes he walked springily over the thick tangle. Sometimes his foot sank into a loose patch of it and the grass wound itself around his boot as if it were trying to drag him below ground.

A breeze sprang up and rapidly strengthened to a wind. The grass stirred like the fur on a moving beast and the wind extracted a whistling tune from the rough stalks. From over the ridge behind him came sailing on the wind a ball of cloud, like an immense balloon. In Amara’s skies the rare clouds almost always formed compact balls. No one could explain why.