Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

“They’re well out of range of my bow,” Quarl said in frustration. “Are they coming on, or not?”

“I’m not sure,” Hono responded, “but this is getting on my nerves. I wish they’d do. something.”

“They are,” I said softly. “They’re showing us what they can do, more or less. I don’t think they are coming—I think they’re just giving us a demonstration that they’ll still be there when we come back.”

Hono shook her head in wonder. “What creatures can these be that are so insane? Part creature of the sea, part insect that flies and crawls, and is that thing hanging down a tentacle or some sort of tail?”

“They’re all of it, and probably more,” I responded. “They’re living, breathing, thinking creatures that look as if they were put together by a committee, but put together for every environment, every weather or climactic condition, every land form or sea type. Given the kinds of air and temperatures within our broad range, I think they could live on any world I’ve ever seen. They sure scare the hell right out of me.”

“Those are no demons,” Hono said flatly, surprising me. “I don’t know what they are, but they are no demons.”

I nodded. “You’re right on that. They’re a smart, tricky, clever race from out there in the stars somewhere.”

Ching looked at me in mixed shock and surprise. “Then those are the aliens we were told of?”

“Some of them, anyway. I suspect these are bred for just this kind of job. Manufactured to survive up here and kill anybody who comes along. If we can genetically breed what we need, there’s no reason they can’t go one step further.”

“But then they should have the city weapons, or worse,” Sitzter noted. “If they have such things, why do they not just sit back where they are and blast us off of here?”

I was wondering that myself. It didn’t make sense for them to expose themselves like this and yet have no backup of their own equivalent of laser pistols and whatever, which would make short work of us. “Maybe—I know this sounds crazy, but just maybe it isn’t allowed around here,” I suggested. “It looks like they don’t like to come on the mountain for some reason, either, so I think we’re safe for now—until we start back, anyway.” I turned and looked at the imposing Mount of God, most of it hidden in cloud. “Shall we see what’s so special about this mountain, then?”

Hono grinned. “As long as we are in the area, why not?”

We climbed up and away from the aliens, and soon the buzzing faded then stopped altogether. What they were going to do I had no idea, but I had new respect for those Free Tribesmen who’d made it here and back. No wonder most of them became highly respected priests and shamans of their tribes.

Once anybody reached the sacred mountain the instructions became pretty vague—just climb away from the flats a bit, everybody had said, then spend one night there, and that would be it.

We had lost just about everything except those weapons we retained and the hair skirts and snowshoe boots we wore, and which we now had to discard to climb. It took less than two hours before we came on an area that was small, reasonably flat, and had, surprisingly, some exposed rock, rock that looked far darker and mineral-rich than the usual stuff found on Medusa. But it provided a sheltered area, with something of a rock overhang—if we trusted the ice on top to stay put—and seemed as good a place as any to camp out. The wind and snow were whipping themselves up anyway, and there didn’t seem much point in further exploration during the few remaining hours of daylight. We did, however, look around the small redoubt and found some signs that we were far from the first to ever reach it or spend the night there. In some of the exposed rock, for example, were carved designs, petroglyphs of some sort, although most of them were pretty obscure and it was impossible to take any meaning from them.

Ching examined the drawings with fascination. “What do you think they used to carve them? The lines are so deep and smooth it almost looks as if they were carved by some weapon or machine.”

I nodded, but hadn’t a clue.

The petroglyphs were useful for an hour’s diversion, but that was about it. The wind was up, the snow blowing all around us, and it was growing dark. We eight survivors gathered around mostly for comfort rather than conversation.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about these aliens,” Ching commented, snuggling up to me.

“Who hasn’t?”

“No, I mean those retractable tentacles on their heads. Remind you of anything?”

For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about, then, suddenly, it hit me. Medusa. The symbol of the planet and its government, taken from some ancient human religion. The woman with live snakes for hair. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” I told her. “But if I remember right, you were supposed to turn to stone if you looked at Medusa. They finally killed her by making her look at her own face in a mirror or something.”

And that, oddly, was very appropriate to me, in a perverse sort of way. Medusa, the planet, had been my mirror; it had reflected all that was wrong or corrupt in me and all that was wrong or corrupt in my society. How odd that such an effect would happen here, on a world filled with those kicked out of my old society and their offspring. I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole Warden system didn’t have that effect. This was a bad world indeed, an evil world, far worse than the banal sameness of the civilized worlds, yet it served, it served…

Sitting there, holding Ching close to me and reflecting on all of life as one was supposed to on a holy mountain, I drifted off into sleep. It was a deep, almost hypnotic sleep, partially a result of the release of tension from the day’s horrors, but it was not dreamless. In fact, it was filled with images, stray thoughts, and odd sensations that made no sense.

I dreamed that I was in the presence of something great, something that was very, very young yet eons old —an alien force that was neither friendly nor unfriendly, neither monstrous nor beautiful, but strangely detached and indifferent to all around it.

There was a great energy and vitality to it, and a tremendous sense of self-importance. It was a believer in gods, for it was a god and a true one, as its very existence proved—for did not all else in the universe, both matter and energy, exist to serve, feed, and nurture it? It was worshiped, yes, by lessors with some small gram of intelligence, yet had no sense of obligation or caring for those who worshiped it. It was worshiped because it was a god, and gods were so far above mortal beings that worship was simply the natural way of things. All who did not recognize this and worship and serve would die, of course, as it never died; but the inevitability of their death was not so much a threat as a matter-of-fact statement of belief. Ultimatums were for lessers and were, in fact, not really understood by it, nor were threats or any other petty human emotions. These things would be because that was the natural order, the way things were.

I had no sense of the thing’s shape or form, and calling what I perceived thoughts was not really correct. Rather, these attitudes were simply radiated from its mind into mine, and translated there— inadequately—into terms I could grasp.

Beyond that initial perception, the impressions were beyond any hope of translation by my mind; here were concepts too alien, too complex, too fast for me to grab hold of, let alone understand. Only the vastness of its intellect, and that curious feeling of ancient newness pervaded my consciousness. I had the feeling of failing, falling into the mind of the thing itself, and there was a danger of being engulfed, swallowed by that which was totally incomprehensible. My mind shut it out, refused to allow the tremendous onrush of sensory input so alien to humanity that it could not even be correlated. In a sense, I had the feeling that the thing was aware of me, yet mostly indifferent to my existence. Or—maybe not. I felt a gentle nudge, a mental shift from it that swept me away from its tremendous, unfathomable presence, and I found myself shrinking, shrinking into nothingness, into a microbial world. No, I was not merely swept there—I was relegated to it by imperious decree.

And, slowly, I became aware once more of my.body, but not in the normal way. It was as if, suddenly, a new sense was opened to me, allowing me somehow to see, hear, feel every single part of my body.

I heard the Warden colonies within me sing to one another, and while the sound was incomprehensible the sensation was pleasing and powerful. The Wardens, I realized, were in constant communication, cell to cell, throughout my entire body, yet they were not, in any normal sense, alive. Information was flowing in their song, though, information flowing into my body and into the Wardens from some source I. could not trace.

I knew I was still dreaming, yet, strangely, I felt wide awake, my mind never clearer or more sensitive.