"A. E. Van Vogt - Enchanted Village (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Vogt A E)

A. E. van Vogt

ENCHANTED VILLAGE

Explorers of a new frontier" they had been called before they left for Mars.
For a while, after the ship crashed into a Martian desert, killing all on board except -- miraculously -- this one man, Bill Jenner spat the words occasionally into the constant, sand-laden wind. He despised himself for the pride he had felt when he first heard them.
His fury faded with each mile that he walked, and his black grief for his friends became a gray ache. Slowly he realized that he had made a ruinous misjudgment.
lie had underestimated the speed at which the rocketship had been traveling.


He'd guessed that he would have to walk three hundred miles to reach the shallow, polar sea be and the others had observed as they glided in from outer space. Actually, the ship must have Bashed an immensely greater distance before it hurtled down out of control.
The days stretched behind him, seemingly as numberless as the hot, red, alien sand that scorched through his tattered clothes. A huge scarecrow of a man, he kept moving across the endless, arid waste -- he would not give up.
By the time he came to the mountain, his food had long been gone. Of his four water bags, only one remained, and that was so close to being empty that he merely wet his cracked lips and swollen tongue whenever his thirst became unbearable.
Jenner climbed high before he realized that it was not just another dune that had barred his way. He paused, and as he gazed up at the mountain that towered above him, he cringed a little. For an instant he felt the hopelessness of this mad race he was making to nowhere -- but he reached the top. He saw that below him was a depression surrounded by hills as high as, or higher than, the one on which he stood. Nestled in the valley they made was a village.
He could see trees and the marble Boor of a courtyard. A score of buildings was clustered around what seemed to be a central square. They were mostly low-constructed, but there were four towers pointing gracefully into the sky. They shone in the sunlight with a marble luster.
Faintly, there came to Jenner's cars a thin, high-pitched whistling sound. It rose, fell, faded completely, then came up again clearly and unpleasantly. Fven as Jenner ran toward it, the noise grated on his ears, eerie and unnatural.
FIe kept slipping on smooth rock, and bruised himself when he fell. He rolled halfway down into the valley. The buildings remained new and bright when seen from nearby. Their walls Bashed with reBeetions. On every side was vegetation -- reddish-green shrubbery, yellow-green trees laden with purple and red fruit.
With ravenous intent, Jenner headed for the nearest fruit tree. Close up, the tree looked dry and brittle. The large red fruit he tore from the lowest branch, however, was plump and juicy.
As he lifted it to his mouth, he remembered that he had been warned during his training period to taste nothing on Mars until it had been chemically examined. But that was meaningless advice to a man whose only chemical equipment was in his own body.
Nevertheless, the possibility of danger made him cautious. He took his first bite gingerly. It was bitter to his tongue, and he spat it out hastily. Some of the juice which remained in his mouth seared his gums. He felt the fire on it, and he reeled from nausea. His muscles began to jerk, and he lay down on the marble to keep himself from falling. After what seemed like hours to Jenner, the awful trembling finally went out of his body and he could see again. He looked up despisingly at the tree.
The pain finally left him, and slowly he relaxed. A soft breeze rustled the dry leaves. Nearby trees took up that gentle clamor, and it struck Jenner that the wind here in the valley was only a whisper of what it had been on the Bat desert beyond the mountain.
There was no other sound now. Jenner abruptly remembered the high-pitched, ever-changing whistle he had heard. He lay very still, listening intently, but there was only the rustling of the leaves. The noisy shrilling had stopped. lie wondered if it had been an alarm, to warn the villagers of his approach.
Anxiously he climbed to his feet and fumbled for his gun. A sense of disaster


shocked through him. It wasn't there. His mind was a blank, and then he vaguely recalled that he had first missed the weapon more than a week before. I-Ic looked around him uneasily, but there was not a sign of creature life. He braced himself. He couldn't leave, as there was nowhere to go. If necessary, he would fight to the death to remain in the village.
Carefully Jenner took a sip from his water bag, moistening his cracked lips and his swollen tongue. Then he replaced the cap and started through a double line of trees toward the nearest building. He made a wide circle to observe it from several vantage points. On one side a low, broad archway opened into the interior. Through it, he could dimly make out the polished gleam of a marble floor.
Jenner explored the buildings from the outside, always keeping a respectful distance between him and any of the entrances. He saw no sign of animal life. He reached the far side of the marble platform on which the village was built, and turned back decisively. It was time to explore interiors.
He chose one of the four tower buildings. As he came within a dozen feet of it, he saw that he would have to stoop low to get inside.
Momentarily, the implications of that stopped him. These buildings had been constructed for a life form that must be very different from human beings.
He went forward again, bent down, and entered reluctantly, every muscle tensed.
He found himself in a room without furniture. However, there were several low marble fences projecting from one marble wall. They formed what looked like a group of four wide, low stalls. Each stall had an open trough carved out of the floor.
The second chamber was fitted with four inclined planes of marble, each of which slanted up to a dais. Altogether there were four rooms on the lower floor. Froi-n one of them a circular ramp mounted up, apparently to a tower room.
J enner didn't investigate the upstairs. The earlier fear that he would find alien life was yielding to the deadly conviction that he wouldn't. No life meant no food or chance of getting any. In frantic haste he hurried from building to building, peering into the silent rooms, pausing now and then to shout hoarsely.
Finally there was no doubt. He was alone in a deserted village on a lifeless planet, without food, without water -- except for the pitiful supply in his bag -- and without hope.
He was in the fourth and smallest room of one of the tower buildings when he realized that he had come to the end of his search. The room had a single stall jutting out from one wall. Jenner lay down wearily in it. He must have fallen asleep instantly.
When he awoke he became aware of two things, one right after the other. The first realization occurred before he opened his eyes -- the whistling sound was back; high and shrill, it wavered at the threshold of audibility.
The other was that a fine spray of liquid was being directed down at him from the ceiling. It had an odor, of which technician Jenner took a single whiff. Quickly he scrambled out of the room, coughing, tears in his eyes, his face already burning froin chemical reaction.
He snatched his handkerchief and hastily wiped the exposed parts of his body and face.
He reached the outside and there paused, striving to understand what had happened.


The village seemed unchanged.
Leaves trembled in a gentle breeze. The sun was poised on a mountain peak. J enner guessed from its position that it was morning again and that he had slept at least a dozen hours. The glaring white light suffused the valley. Half hidden by trees and shrubbery, the buildings Bashed and shimmered.
He seemed to be in an oasis in a vast desert. It was an oasis, all right, Jenner reflected grimly, but not for a human being. For him, with its poisonous fruit, it was more like a tantalizing mirage.
He went back inside the building and cautiously peered into the room where he had slept. The spray of gas had stopped, not a bit of odor lingered, and the air was fresh and clean.
He edged over the threshold, half inclined to make a test. He had a picture in his mind of a long-dead Martian creature lazing on the floor in the stall while a soothing chemical sprayed down on its body. The fact that the chemical was deadly to human beings merely emphasized how alien to man was the life that had spawned on Mars. But there seemed little doubt of the reason for the gas. The creature was accustomed to taking a morning shower.
Inside the "bathroom," Jenner eased himself feet first into the stall. As his hips came level with the stall entrance, the solid ceiling sprayed a jet of yellowish gas straight down upon his legs. Hastily Jenner pulled himself clear of the stall. The gas stopped as suddenly as it had started.
He tried it again, to make sure it was merely an automatic process. It turned on, then shut off.
Jenner's thirst-puffed lips parted with excitement. He thought, "If there can be one automatic process, there may be others."