With Other Eyes Read online

  Within minutes I grew aware of a welcome feeling: increasing pressure against the soles of my feet again as we moved down into the pyramid. Steadied by the return of gravity and prompted by curiosity, I opened my eyes.

  As we plunged into the tree tops we stared out in awe, admittedly a little nervous, but also fascinated by the organic tapestry weaving itself through the air around us. An invisible barrier kept the lush growth at bay, several meters from the path of our lift. Apparently the top of this pyramid—and also the others? I wondered—was reserved for vegetation that grew almost unchecked in the low gravity this high up. I also noticed a fine network of wires laced through the branches and realized that they were there to support the jungle during acceleration and deceleration since the entire pyramid would be under gravity during those times.

  Edging carefully forward, I moved closer to the edge and tried to spot the floor of the jungle below us, but I only saw increasingly dense and interwoven branches that grew more disciplined the further we dropped from the central shaft of the ship. I was starting to wonder if there was anything in this pod but forest. I tried to spot movement, curious to see if there would be any animal life up here, and Lazz must have guessed what I was thinking.

  “There!” He pointed at a swarm of tiny shapes that were making flying leaps from branch to branch. They had small glistening bodies shaped a little like a pair of dumb-bells, large antennae-like fronds on the top of the front body bulge, and an indeterminate number of legs.

  “Traveler monkeys,” I decided.

  “Kinda’ purty,” Lazz drawled with a New England twang that made me cringe.

  “True.” I looked around. “But all this makes me wonder how long this ship has been traveling.”

  “You think it’s a generation-ship?” Lazz looked dubious. As big as these pods are, if they’re like this, I don’t think the ship’s big enough.”

  “Maybe not, but we don’t know what the other pyramids hold. Maybe cryo-chambers? Maybe these guys just woke up. It could be an automatic sleeper-ship and this is some sort of recreational area they use when awake. Who knows how many solar systems they’ve explored?”

  Lazz yielded and looked at our hosts with new interest. “Want to ask them?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. These two are only crew. I want to wait until we meet the ones I originally contacted.”

  A sudden shift in movement interrupted me and I realized that our ride was over. The platform had landed on top of a metal pad in the middle of a jungle. There were no buildings, paths or artificial structures in sight, other than our elevator platform and the guide-rails disappearing up to merge with the shaft we had come out of.

  I looked up, trying to guess the distance we had descended. “How far did we come?” I asked Lazz, since he was more experienced with the eyes and had a good sense of distance.

  “One hundred-fifty meters,” he answered immediately. “Which means that there are another twenty below us. Support infra-structure for the jungle? Or living quarters?”

  An abrupt squeal interrupted, and then we heard: “Follow.” Our bowling-pin escorts walked off the metal platform, somehow managing to walk right out of their magnetic shoes as they stepped onto the gently rolling ‘grass’ that covered the ground between massive one to two meter-thick tree trunks. Seen through my eyes, I could see that the trees were highly dense but covered with a rippling bark-like covering that was the consistency of foam rubber.

  Kneeling, I inspected the grass, cursing my still variable control of the eyes. But after struggling to focus at this close distance, I saw that the tubular ‘grass’ stalks were crowned with a fine network of fibers that seemed to flex to reach the light as my shadow blocked the powerful, but diffuse illumination from above. My sensitivity to visible light was marginal with my eye set, and it dawned on me that if I was able to see such a difference, the light above us had to be bright! I started to mention it to Lazz, but he was already stumbling after our guides, almost tripped by the unfamiliar roughness of the terrain and the lower than normal gravity. I hurried after them, almost falling flat on my face myself.

  As I caught up with them, I tried to mentally trace our movements, concluding that we were heading for the leading edge of the pyramid—literally an edge given the orientation of the three pods slicing through space. It took several minutes of weaving our way through the dense… forest—down here the growth was much more disciplined than above—but before too long we broke out into a large clearing that took our breath away.

  It was obvious from the way the walls were closing in and getting closer to our heads that we were nearing the front of the pyramid, but where we should have faced a sharp corner, we found instead a flat, triangular wall about twenty meters high at its peak, filling in the front corner of this pod. The location of the control room and quarters for other ship’s functions? But what had made me stop and stare was the way the wall was decorated. Seen with my new eyes, the entire wall was a giant work of art combining different textures and shapes. Without any off-set lighting to highlight the subtle bas-relief sculpturing, most people with normal vision would probably not have noticed the beauty of the wall—I instinctively knew that Liza would not even have done more than glance at it. The true nature of the wall was visible only to eyes like the Travelers’, and to the eye sets Lazz and I were wearing.

  I suddenly realized Lazz’s hand was clamped around my arm with a vice-like grip and that the sound of his breathing was harsh and strained. I had been so distracted by the wall that I had not noticed.

  I took his hand. “What’s wrong?”

  He eased his grip and his breathing relaxed.

  “Sorry ’bout that, buddy. Just a momentary flashback.”

  “To what?”

  “Did I ever tell you how I was blinded?” he asked.

  “A plane crash, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah… in South America. I was nineteen; a spoiled little rich boy on a treasure-hunting expedition looking for ruins and hidden gold. There were four of us in a small Beech Hover-Jet, and we lost power over the jungle. We were going pretty fast, too fast, and we went ripping through the tops of the rain forest… until we broke out into the open at the edge of a canyon, and we went smashing into the opposite wall. I woke up in the hospital four days later; the only survivor, and blind, courtesy of massive head trauma. A piece of metal went right through my brain. A sixteenth of an inch to one side and I would have been dead on the spot.”

  He looked up at the massive wall facing us. “Breaking through this jungle,” he waved around us, “and then coming up on this all at once—”

  “Brought it all back,” I finished with a shudder.

  “With a vengeance!” He let go of my arm with a weak chuckle. “Like a couple of bad dreams I had after starting to work with you—”

  “Gee, thanks a lot.”

  “Well, you’ve shaped up okay, finally,” he teased me, and then turned serious. “But like I said, when they first asked me to work with you, it brought back a lot of bad memories of when I lost my sight. Both the accident and the years of denial and self-pitying isolation afterwards where I blamed everybody but myself.”

  “What changed your attitude?”

  Lazz laughed. “Believe it or not, it got boring. I had always loved to read all sorts of trashy horror and enjoyed writing it for fun, but after the accident I couldn’t do it anymore—”

  “But what about—”

  “I know: what about all the adaptive systems there are?” I could hear a strong vein of bitterness in his voice. “But to learn how to use those, I had to admit my problem.” He relaxed. “But, once I did that, it was a breeze. I took to computers like the proverbial duck to water when I realized that it was fun. Beat the hell out of the gold-plated pity-palace I was living in. And computers led to other research fields, and eventually to moving out and living on my own. I was never stupid. Just lazy,” he admitted. “I hadn’t thought of those years for a long time, until I started training
you.”

  “And I brought it all back to mind?” I felt almost guilty as I remembered my own bitching and moaning after the operation, when I had realized that I didn’t have the near approximation of normal sight I had conned myself into believing I would have.

  Lazz shook his head. “Just at first, Kimosabi. I was getting over it fine—”

  “Until you found yourself face to face with this.” I nodded towards the sculptured wall, mentally seeing a small Hover-jet smashing into it, bits of flaming wreckage sprinkling down to burn the odd grasses at the base of the wall as crumpled metal buckled and spilled battered bodies…

  I blinked to clear the vivid image that had overwhelmed me.

  “Are you okay?” Lazz’s turn to be concerned. “I thought I was the over-reacting one, here.”

  “I’m fine.” I felt my face burn as I moved forward. “Just an over-active imagination.”

  The Travelers had moved aside to give us a good view, and I had a feeling that they were observing us very carefully as we approached the wall. The closer we got, the more detail revealed itself and I hoped that the recording circuits built into our suits were working. Everything we saw was also being recorded by the eye-set computers for later review, synchronized with the audio signal from the external suit microphones and my translation system.

  We didn’t disappoint our hosts as we stared in fascination.

  It was clear now that the wall was actually a collection of triangular picture frames, alternating vertical orientation to fill the large wall. I had focused immediately on the very top picture, which depicted a large number of space ships like the one we were in departing from a planet orbiting an angry looking star. The implications intrigued me and I studied it intently, until Lazz tapped me on the shoulder.

  “You’re looking at them wrong. It’s reversed.” He pointed to the bottom right picture. “Bottom to top, right to left.” He shrugged. “Sue me. I always check out the last screen or page of a book, too. That’ll teach me.”

  Now that I knew where to start, I appreciated the symmetry of the historical mural. The picture I had been looking at was the final in the series. I wondered if it was the beginning of exploration, or an exodus; a flight from a dying star? I looked back up at the frame. Unlike the highly realistic images in all the other frames, the star in that final picture looked almost abstract. It was menacing to be real.

  I went back to the beginning: a roiling ocean that seemed to cover nearly an entire planet. Moving over to the next pictures, I saw the ocean begin to fill up, first with tiny, unidentifiable shapes, and then with small jellyfish-like shapes that swam in pairs. Gradually, the jellyfish grew in size and complexity, and by the fourth frame, I could see the beginnings of the round sense-organ in the middle of the body.

  Lazz had been following along with me. “Early sonar, like dolphins.”

  I nodded. “Once they left the ocean, the organ evolved.”

  Gradually, the Travelers—I couldn’t think of them as jellyfish anymore—grew larger and lost their earlier etherial look. The oceans were shrinking, too. Comparing pictures, I realized that the sun was growing larger in the pictures. Only in small increments, but it was noticeable. Apparently that was the impetus for a migration to the land, because one of the next frames showed denser Travelers making their first forays onto land, struggling to move as they were propelled by dozens of thick tentacles.

  I glanced over at Lazz. “Increasing mineral concentrations in the water, less living space—”

  “Less food, etc.,” he continued. “Classic evolutionary forces.” He looked back at the patiently waiting Travelers.

  “I wonder if this is why they wanted you to have the same type of vision: so you could see this? It seems like we’re expected to study this.”

  “I have the same feeling,” I agreed, looking back at the mural.

  Subsequent panels showed various stages in Traveler evolution, social and technical. One thing I found interesting was that it was not until after the beginning of an industrial age that any type of buildings appeared. Shelter from rain was apparently not a concern, but with the advent of scientific experimentation in chemistry and metallurgy, buildings began to appear. Almost exclusively to house laboratories at first, it seemed. And even after population density increased, the dwellings I saw depicted were minimal and very open to the elements.

  “This is starting to make sense.” Lazz waved around us. “They’re not used to living inside.”

  “Apparently not,” I agreed. The Travelers stood motionless, patiently waiting… No! Just waiting. I would have to be careful not to anthropomorphize their actions. I turned back to the wall.

  Water still covered large parts of the planet, though islands and sections of land were more and more in evidence. But the Travelers never ventured far from the water. The first vehicles I saw evidence of were ships, and commerce and transportation seemed to be exclusively by water. Then I saw the Travelers return to the depths of the ocean, but this time in diving suits and submarines.

  Skipping a few frames, I saw the sun continue to grow and the oceans to shrink. Now the Travelers were turning their attentions upwards. Telescopes, at first, then crude exploratory rockets, and finally, the first Travelers in space. More and more telescopes appeared, evenly divided between examining the sun, and searching deep space. And simultaneous with their first steps into space, huge floating dishes appeared on the seas and on the highest land areas available. Radio-astronomical observatories to scan the skies, I presumed, and Lazz mumbled an agreement.

  “Looks like they’re figuring out that something’s going wrong with their sun, and they’re also trying to see if anyone else is out there. They’re probably trying to call for help.”

  We both glanced up at that final frame momentarily, eyes skipping away as the finality of what we were seeing sank in.

  The succeeding frames showed an increasing focus on space, with larger and more complex space ships, reaching out to plant bases on the two moons, and then on larger asteroid bodies scattered through the system. There were no other planets to colonize. Then a framework appeared in space: a monumental manufacturing facility floating at what had to be one of their Lagrange points. The resources of the whole world were apparently focused on it, and construction began on a vast fleet of ships such as the one we were in. Frame by frame, I saw the world change as the oceans continued to recede.

  The final picture was the one I had focused on first, where the exodus from the Travelers’ home world had begun, and my eyes returned there. But with my new perspective, I noticed something else as my eyes brushed its way to the apex of the triangle: I had thought that the last dozen frames were decorated with a border along the base, but I realized now that there was a much more somber reason for the detailing. Focusing until my eyes hurt—or were those tears trying to come out but finding no place to go?—I saw that the border decorations consisted of long rows of tiny stylized Traveler pairs. But panel by panel, approaching the final picture on the top, the number of rows diminished. From twelve rows of tiny figures on the first panel to use the population census, the final one had only a fraction of a single line.

  My chest was hurting in a way I had not felt since Ellen died as I realized that that final frame probably was showing an exodus. There were a huge number of ships launched, but only a tiny percentage of the population remaining, so perhaps everyone was leaving?

  “I wonder how many were left at the end?” Lazz asked, his voice choked.

  I looked at him a bit surprised. The whole time I had known him, he had always been a split second from a wise-crack; never serious, except where Liza was concerned.

  “Not many,” I answered, realizing my own voice was as broken as his. “God! Can you imagine what it must have been like, living all your life with that sun overhead, the radiation getting stronger and stronger, baking away the ocean and the life around you?”

  “No,” Lazz answered quietly. “But it sure makes me ashamed when
I remember the things I’ve bitched about!”

  “At least we know why they’re here.” I looked back at our guides. They were still standing motionless, waiting. “They’re looking for a new home!”

  “Boy, did they come to the wrong neighborhood!” Lazz shook his head. “They obviously can’t come down to Earth, even if the politicians would let ’em, and what else can we give them? Venus is too hot, and Mars is too cold. Never mind their atmospheres.”

  “I don’t know.” I looked around. “They’re ahead of us, technologically, maybe they can do something. But, boy, do I wish I had a line to Liza right now. If the Travelers want me to negotiate some kind of landing rights somewhere, I am in deep… shit.”

  “About time you loosened up,” Lazz teased, trying to fight the gloom that had overwhelmed us. “But you’re right: you can’t okay anything like that.”

  We both turned to the Travelers as I reached down shakily for my Braille pad. On the one hand I was still close to crying for the Travelers, but on the other hand, I was feeling dizzy and excited by everything that was happening. From a sheltered university teaching position to having my eyes cut out and being picked as mankind’s sole… well almost sole, representative to meet aliens—what a change of life! Part of me wanted to crawl back in a hole and zip it shut, but the other part wanted to climb up on a building and shout. I felt moved by forces greater than me to find out about our visitors. All through history, the mass perception of aliens had either been as God-like saviors or as conquering demons; both views doing little to flatter us as a species. But here was a chance to redeem ourselves in our own eyes and I didn’t want to screw it up.