‘I’ll give it to the witch-doctor,’ said Weston during the moment of silence which Devine’s action had produced among the mystified spectators; and before anyone could stop him he took a step forward and attempted to drop the string of beads round the elderly hross’s neck. The hross’s head was, however, too large for this operation and the necklace merely settled on its forehead like a crown, slightly over one eye. It shifted its head a little, like a dog worried with flies, snorted gently, and resumed its sleep.
Oyarsa’s voice now addressed Ransom. ‘Are your fellow-creatures hurt in their brains, Ransom of Thulcandra?’ it said. ‘Or are they too much afraid to answer my questions?’
‘I think, Oyarsa,’ said Ransom, ‘that they do not believe you are there. And they believe that all these hnau are—are like very young cubs. The thicker hmān is trying to frighten them and then to please them with gifts.’
At the sound of Ransom’s voice the two prisoners turned sharply around. Weston was about to speak when Ransom interrupted him hastily in English:
‘Listen, Weston. It is not a trick. There really is a creature there in the middle—there where you can see a kind of light, or a kind of something, if you look hard. And it is at least as intelligent as a man—they seem to live an enormous time. Stop treating it like a child and answer its questions. And if you take my advice, you’ll speak the truth and not bluster.’
‘The brutes seem to have intelligence enough to take you in, anyway,’ growled Weston; but it was in a somewhat modified voice that he turned once more to the sleeping hross—the desire to wake up the supposed witch-doctor was becoming an obsession—and addressed it.
‘We sorry we kill him,’ he said, pointing to Hyoi. ‘No go to kill him. Sorns tell us bring man, give him your big head. We go away back into sky. He come (here he indicated Ransom) with us. He very bent man, run away, no do what sorns say like us. We run after him, get him back for sorns, want to do what we say and sorns tell us, see? He not let us. Run away, run, run. We run after. See big black one, think he kill us, we kill him—pouff! bang! All for bent man. He no run away, he be good, we no run after, no kill big black one, see? You have bent man—bent man make all trouble—you plenty keep him, let us go. He afraid of you, we no afraid. Listen——’
At this moment Weston’s continual bellowing in the face of the hross at last produced the effect he had striven for so long. The creature opened its eyes and stared mildly at him in some perplexity. Then, gradually realizing the impropriety of which it had been guilty, it rose slowly to its standing position, bowed respectfully to Oyarsa, and finally waddled out of the assembly still carrying the necklace draped over its right ear and eye. Weston, his mouth still open, followed the retreating figure with his gaze till it vanished among the stems of the grove.
It was Oyarsa who broke the silence. ‘We have had mirth enough,’ he said, ‘and it is time to hear true answers to our questions. Something is wrong in your head, hnau from Thulcandra. There is too much blood in it. Is Firikitekila here?’
‘Here, Oyarsa,’ said a pfifltrigg.
‘Have you in your cisterns water that has been made cold?’
‘Yes, Oyarsa.’
‘Then let this thick hnau be taken to the guesthouse and let them bathe his head in cold water. Much water and many times. Then bring him again. Meanwhile I will provide for my killed hrossa.’
Weston did not clearly understand what the voice said—indeed, he was still too busy trying to find out where it came from—but terror smote him as he found himself wrapped in the strong arms of the surrounding hrossa and forced away from his place. Ransom would gladly have shouted out some reassurance, but Weston himself was shouting too loud to hear him. He was mixing English and Malacandrian now, and the last that was heard was a rising scream of ‘Pay for this—pouff! bang!—Ransom, for God’s sake—Ransom! Ransom!’
‘And now,’ said Oyarsa, when silence was restored, ‘let us honour my dead hnau.’
At his words ten of the hrossa grouped themselves about the biers. Lifting their heads, and with no signal given as far as Ransom could see, they began to sing.
To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within. For Ransom, this moment had now come in his understanding of Malacandrian song. Now first he saw that its rhythms were based on a different blood from ours, on a heart that beat more quickly, and a fiercer internal heat. Through his knowledge of the creatures and his love for them he began, ever so little, to hear it with their ears. A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows eternally consoled, of he knew not what and yet what he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bars of the deep-mouthed dirge, and bowed down his spirit as if the gate of heaven had opened before him.
‘Let it go hence,’ they sang. ‘Let it go hence, dissolve and be no body. Drop it, release it, drop it gently, as a stone is loosed from fingers drooping over a still pool. Let it go down, sink, fall away. Once below the surface there are no divisions, no layers in the water yielding all the way down; all one and all unwounded is that element. Send it voyaging it will not come again. Let it go down; the hnau rises from it. This is the second life, the other beginning. Open, oh coloured world, without weight, without shore. You are second and better; this was first and feeble. Once the worlds were hot within and brought forth life, but only the pale plants, the dark plants. We see their children when they grow to-day, out of the sun’s light in the sad places. After, the heaven made grow another kind on worlds: the high climbers, the bright-haired forests, cheeks of flowers. First were the darker, then the brighter. First was the worlds’ brood, then the suns’ brood.’
This was as much of it as he contrived later to remember and could translate. As the song ended Oyarsa said:
‘Let us scatter the movements which were their bodies. So will Maleldil scatter all worlds when the first and feeble is worn.’
He made a sign to one of the pfifltriggi, who instantly arose and approached the corpses. The hrossa, now singing again but very softly, drew back at least ten paces. The pfifltrigg touched each of the three dead in turn with some small object that appeared to be made of glass or crystal—and then jumped away with one of his frog-like leaps. Ransom closed his eyes to protect them from a blinding light and felt something like a very strong wind blowing in his face, for a fraction of a second. Then all was calm again, and the three biers were empty.
‘God! That would be a trick worth knowing on earth,’ said Devine to Ransom. ‘Solves the murderers’ problem about the disposal of the body, eh?’
But Ransom, who was thinking of Hyoi, did not answer him; and before he spoke again everyone’s attention was diverted by the return of the unhappy Weston among his guards.
Chapter Twenty
The hross who headed this procession was a conscientious creature and began at once explaining itself in a rather troubled voice.
‘I hope we have done right, Oyarsa,’ it said. ‘But we do not know. We dipped his head in the cold water seven times, but the seventh time something fell off it. We had thought it was the top of his head, but now we saw it was a covering made of the skin of some other creature. Then some said we had done your will with the seven dips, and others said not. In the end we dipped it seven times more. We hope that was right. The creature talked a lot