The Shrouded Planet
Randall Garrett & Robert Silverberg
(as Robert Randall)
Nidor.
Nidor, one of two continents on a water-covered planet.
Nidor, a planet, a people, a nation. Nidor, a religion.
The primary was a B class star, a huge, blue-white stellar engine, pouring out its radiation at a rate that made Earth's yellow Sol look picayune by comparison. The planet Nidor swung round its sun at a distance so great that it took nearly three thousand years for the world to complete one revolution—and even so, the planet was hot. The continents, on the Eastern hemisphere just south of the equator, had a mean temperature of 110° Fahrenheit, and continually sweltered beneath the eternal cloud layer that swathed the planet.
Of solid land there was little; more than eighty-five percent of the planet's surface was covered by the shallow sea.
It had not always been so. Geological evidence indicated that the planet had recently gone through a period of upheaval, during which whole continents had sunk beneath the waters.
It had happened within historical time, some four or five thousand years previous to the planet's discovery by Earth. It was upon the legend of the happenings at the time of the Cataclysm that the religion of the surviving Nidorians was based. Before the Cataclysm, the planet had evolved humanoids very similar physically to man: to the eye the only major difference was that instead of the irregular distribution of hair over the human body, the Nidorian was fairly evenly covered with light, curly down that ranged in color from platinum blonde to light brown.
When the Cataclysm occurred, the sole remaining group of civilized beings on the planet were on the continent of Nidor—and they had carried with them a myth of the terror of the Great Cataclysm, and of demons that lived beyond the sea.
And thus they were when they were discovered by the roving interstellar scout ships of Man— Earthman.
240th CYCLE
I
The Cyclic Day of the Great Cataclysm had arrived once again. Sixteen periods of sixteen days constituted a Nidorian year. And sixteen years made a full cycle, when each of the sixteen Clans of Nidor had been named.
And traditionally, each cycle began with the first day of the first period of the Year of Yorgen—according to the Scripture, the Day of the Great Cataclysm.
Grandfather Kinis peCharnok Yorgen, Elder Leader, Priest-Mayor of the Holy City of Gelusar, Supreme Councillor of the Elders—and therefore the highest secular authority on Nidor—stood before the high altar of the Great Temple of the Great Light, raised his golden-haired arms, crossed them at the wrists in benediction, and intoned:
"And thus, on the day of the Great Cataclysm, we both rejoice and mourn. We mourn that the Great Light felt it necessary to kill so many of His people, but we rejoice that the unrighteous were taken from Nidor and the righteous remained, to be led to Holy Gelusar by the Lawyer Bel-rogas Yorgen.
"And because of the Holy Righteousness of our Ancestors, I, a Priest of the Great Light, give you, on this solemn day, a most solemn blessing."
He had timed it perfectly. At exactly that moment, the beams of the Great Light, bursting through the thick cloud layer and collected and focused by the huge lens in the roof of the Temple, struck the central pit of the high altar and the aromatic herbs began to smoke. Within a few seconds, as the heat's intensity increased, the herbs burst into flame. When the flames died, after a short space of time, the Celebration of the Great Cataclysm was over for another sixteen years, and the two hundred and fortieth Year of Yorgen had begun.
While the great crowd of participants in the Temple—and the even greater crowd gathered in the Square of Holy Light outside the Temple—murmured their final prayers, Grandfather Kinis peCharnok, Elder of the Clan of Yorgen, strode away from the high altar, his arms folded in reverence.
He walked down the aisle, his head held high, as the people chanted their prayers, repeating them, as tradition demanded, sixteen times. As each Clan was remembered, the Elder Grandfather raised his arms and crossed his wrists in benediction, and as the final Clan, Tipell, was mentioned, he found himself at the door of the Great Temple, facing outward toward the people gathered in the Square of Holy Light.
Again he raised his arms. "May we obey the Scripture and the Law, and may we follow in the Way of our Ancestors," he said sonorously.
"In the Way of our Ancestors," the crowd repeated.
And then something happened which had never be-fore been seen on Nidor—a planet which doted on tradition, and shunned unprecedented events. The figure of the Elder Leader suddenly was wrapped in a nimbus of blue-white light, and, his hands still raised in benediction, he floated into the air and rapidly vanished into the cloud-laden sky.
The worshippers, stricken dumb with religious awe, could do nothing but stare at their disappearing Elder Leader.
Grandfather Kinis peCharnok was badly frightened. He didn't know what was happening to him. Suddenly, without warning, his limbs had become frozen, his body weightless.
Like a leaf from a peych-bean plant lifted by the morning wind, he found himself drifting upwards toward the cloud layer that glowed above him—upwards toward the Great Light.
It was too much for him; even though he was unable to move a muscle of his body, he still was not an absolute prisoner. He could still react, in the one way he had left open to him. He did so.
He fainted.
Later, words drifted through his mind.
"Kinis peCharnok, open your eyes!"
Grandfather Kinis heard the words, but at first they made no sense. All he could feel was the sheer terror of weightlessness and the awful horror of unsupported floating.
Then he realized that he was not floating. His back was solidly supported by a soft padding, not unlike the bed in the Temple to which he was used.
He took a deep breath. Still, he kept his eyes firmly closed.
Demons? Who knows?
"Kinis peCharnok," said a soft, gentle, definitely strange voice, "We are your friends. There's no reason to be afraid of us."
Kinis peCharnok gingerly opened his eyes—just the barest slit. And then he closed them again, frightened, unsure of what he had seen.
What were they? Were they men? No. Not, at least, good, honest, Nidorian men. Their faces were bare— pink and shiny—except for the curious tufts of hair on their chins and the tops of their heads.
"Kinis peCharnok, we are your friends," the voice repeated.
The old priest opened his eyes in time to see who was speaking.
"Who—who are you?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
"My name is McKay," the weird being said, speaking with barely a trace of accent. "I am an Earthman.''
"Earthman? A man of the soil?"
The strange one chuckled softly. "I guess that's about as close as we can come."
Kinis peCharnok was an old man; he had served his people as Elder Leader for more than two cycles. He was learned, for in nearly forty years—two cycles and a half—he had learned nearly all that was necessary for an Elder of the Council to learn. And yet, the self styled "Earthman" simply did not speak sense; he was as foolish and undecipherable in his speech as the two-year-old child of a deestkeeper.
"As close as you can come?" Kinis repeated un-comprehendingly.
"There's no better way of saying it with the words you know," explained the thing that had called itself McKay. "In our own language, it's—" And he spoke two short syllables.
"Four language? You have your own? There is but one language! But—" Suddenly the priest grew angry. "Why have you taken me away from my people and my Temple?" he asked with dignity.