“I’m surrounding you with a flux of neutrons, that’s all.” Ambrose sounded calm. “I’m making you neutron-rich.”
Incredibly, Snook found he was still capable of thought. “But parts of a nuclear plant are bombarded with neutrons for years, and they just stay put. Don’t they?”
“It isn’t the same thing, Gil. In a power plant the neutrons don’t exist long enough, or else they’re manifested in other reactions.” Ambrose went on speaking in the same reassuring monotone as the figures of Felleth and other Avernians and their equipment rose up around him. “This is mainly Felleth’s show, of course—he’s got all the work of synthesising your body with his elements. All we know is that the free neutrons to which you’re being converted will decay into protons, electrons and anti-neutrons. And Felleth will ensure that the anti-neutrons are preserved…”
Snook ceased listening to the incantation as the insubstantial framework of a cabinet was manoeuvred into place around him by Avernians who had luminous mist-pools for eyes. He looked for Prudence, but she had covered her face with her hands. There was just enough time for him to hope that she was crying for his sake…
Then he journeyed beyond the stars.
Chapter Fourteen
The room was about ten metres square, but seemed smaller because of the amount of equipment it contained—and because of the presence of the Avernians.
Snook looked at them in silence, without trying to move, while his body recovered from the sensation of having been jolted. He was breathing normally, and his physical functions seemed to be continuing as they always did, but his nerves felt as though they were vibrating in the aftermath of a paralysing shock, like tunnels in which there lingered the echoes of a scream.
The Avernians stared back at him with brooding concentration, also in silence, their eyes watchful. Snook discovered that his growing familiarity with their general appearance as seen from Earth, the sketches in luminous mist, had not prepared him for the solid, three-dimensional reality. In previous encounters he had been impressed by their similarity to human beings; now he was in a room with them, breathing the same air, and his overwhelming impression was one of alienation.
One part of his mind felt a numb gratitude over the fact that he was alive, but with each passing second that consideration seemed less and less important, or even relevant. The only truth which retained any significance was that he was alone in a world peopled by unknown and unknowable beings whose eyes and noses were clustered too close to the tops of their heads, and whose mouths twitched and pursed and flowed with frightening mobility. The skin of the Avernians shaded from a pale yellow around the eyes and mouths to a coppery brown at the hands and feet, and had a waxy sheen to it. They were surrounded by an unnameable odour, suggestive of formaldehyde and perhaps cardamom, which added to their strangeness and caused an upward lift of Snook’s stomach muscles.
Five seconds gone—thirty years to go, he thought, and with the thought came claustrophobic panic. Why doesn’t Felleth speak? Why doesn’t he help me?
“I have been…talking to you, Equal Gil,” Felleth said in a laboured, husking voice. “We have an unfortunate situation ‘…we have access to your mind…but we are screened from yours…and you would not wish for me…to come closer.”
“No!” Snook jumped to his feet and stood swaying. His shoulder struck an open-fronted cabinet which had been enclosing him on three sides and it rolled backwards on castors. He looked down and saw that the wooden box on which he had been sitting was itself resting on an irregularly shaped section of wet timber which contrasted with the polished white floor beneath it. The words, JENNINGS ALES, stencilled on the side of the box might have been chosen for their homeliness, as a reminder that everything he knew had been left on the far side of infinity.
“I have to go back,” he said. “Send me back Felleth. Anywhere on Earth.”
“That is not possible…energy relationships not favourable…no receiving station for you.” Felleth’s chest heaved, apparently from the strain of reproducing human speech. “You need time…to adjust.”
“I can’t adjust. You don’t know…”
“We do know…we have access…we know that we are…repellent to you.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Try to remember…you impose greater strain on us…we have access…and you have killed.”
Snook looked at the robed figures of the Avernians, and there came a glimmer of understanding of the fact that they had needed courage to remain in the same room with him. The Avernians, he recalled, were a gentle, pacific race, and this particular group were bound to feel that they had conjured up a dangerous primitive. He glanced instinctively at his right hand and saw that it still bore traces of George Murphy’s blood. His xenophobia began to be swept aside by a sense of shame.
“I’m sorry,” Snook said.
“I think it is important that you should rest…to recover from the mental and physical effects…of the transfer.” The breath whistled and sighed in Felleth’s throat as he vocalised the words being taken from Snook’s mind. “This is not a dwelling place…but we have prepared a bed…in the adjoining apartment…follow me.” Felleth walked with a stately gliding movement to a doorless opening which was narrower at the top than at the floor level.
Snook gazed after him for a few seconds without stirring. The notion of falling asleep was ludicrous, then he understood he was being given the chance to be alone. He started after Felleth, then turned, picked up the beer crate and took it with him. Felleth led the way along a short corridor which, at the far end, had a window giving a view of grey sky and grey ocean growing lighter with dawn. Snook followed his guide into a small room containing nothing but a simple couch. The room had a single window and the walls were decorated with horizontal strips of neutral colour, seemingly in a random pattern.
“We will meet again,” Felleth said. “And you will feel better.”
Snook nodded, still holding the crate, and waited until Felleth withdrew. The doorway was of the same trapezoid shape as the first, but vertical leaves slid from recesses in the wall to seal it. Snook went to the window and looked out at the world which was to be his home. There was a descending vista of brown-tiled roofs, with occasional views of alleys and squares in which the People could be seen going about their unhurried, enigmatic affairs. They wore flowing, draped garments of white or blue, and from a distance they resembled citizens of ancient Greece. There were no vehicles in sight, no light standards or telephone poles, no antennae.
The ocean began without intervention of open land, stretching to the horizon, and a hundred islands were ranged across it like ships at anchor. Most of the islands rose to central low peaks, creating—with their reflections—elongated diamond-shapes, but in the middle distance a pair were made into one by a massive double-spanned arch. Snook had seen it before, in a vision implanted by Felleth.
He turned away from the window, his mind sated with strangeness, and went to the couch. He placed the orange-dyed wooden crate beside it, then took off his wrist watch and set it on top, establishing his own little island of the commonplace. Next, he removed his blue raincoat—which was still spattered with the moisture of Earth—rolled it up and placed it beside the crate. When he lay down he discovered an unutterable weariness coiling through his limbs, but it was a long time before he escaped into sleep.