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bathed in cold fire. Overhead, growths that were not plants shivered with ecstasy beneath the rain of lambent moonbeams. Some moaned softly while others were silent. He felt himself 214 Alan Dean fester adrift in visual Debussy. Only something like gravity kept him bound to the earth; otherwise he felt certain he would have taken flight, soaring skyward while born aloft on streamers of scintillating aurora. Alerted by some subtle shift in his companion's man-ner, Oelefse glanced up from his work. "Beauty kills," he reminded Cody curtly. "In this place even daydreaming can be deadly." His thoughts wrenched back to reality by his com-panion's cool tone, the archaeologist blinked away incipient fantasies. "I'm on it, Oelefse. Tend to your snipping. How much longer?" "Almost done. Almost have enough." He resumed his horticultural cropping. It was a song that finally snared Cody. Not some beauteous wayward shape, not something glistening on the ground that dropped diamonds in its wake, but a melody. A hymn so pure it could only arise from a source im-maculate and unsullied. Entranced, he stepped forward, certain that as long as he kept Oelefse in sight neither of them was in any real danger. He had to find the Page 100 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html source of that unearthly music. It hung in the air behind a baobab-shaped organic tower through which lights ran from bottom to top before sparking off into the enchanted sky. In outline the singer was amorphous, a hovering mass of shifting transparent silk some ten feet tall. Within its core, chanting crystals swam like bioluminescent squid on a dark Pacific night. Each emitted a slightly different tune and color. Combined, they melded to create a transcendent harmony that tantalized both ear and mind. A chorus of trained angels could not have generated so euphonious a sound. Later, he was not sure if he fell into it, or it ate him. He was suddenly and unexpectedly engulfed. A thickness, rancid and cloying, clogged his nostrils and threatened to fill his throat with mephitic glue. The singing crystals had become small round suckers lined with barbed teeth. They were drifting toward him, opening and closing with a horrid pulsing that suggested the muscular action of unmentionable orifices. Abruptly frantic, he tried to get away, only to find that he could hardly move. He was trapped in something like glistening, transparent gelatin. It severely inhibited his movements and restricted his ability to defend himself. He could not even bring the weapon he still held tightly in one hand to bear on the vicious, degenerate mouth-shapes that were advancing inexorably toward him. A ringing filled his ears. It was loud and insistent, but not unbearable. He felt himself beginning to torque as the protoplasmic material in which he was embedded responded to the rising whine. There was nothing he could do to stop it. His body curved, then bent in the middle, forcing him to arch backward until he thought his spine would snap. The fanged suckers had ceased their movement toward him and were swirling about in aimless confusion. Still the whine intensified, until it reached a profound level of auditory disturbance. Then the world exploded. Or rather, the Interloper that had engulfed him did. Coated with clamminess, he found himself sprawled upon the ground. Their internal glow muted, the brilliant singing crystals were crawling away in all directions, seeking shelter in the surrounding scintillating growths. Whenever he blinked, they would change from exquisite crystals to obscenely pulsating fanged suckers, and back again. Oelefse was standing over him, briefcase in one hand and a most peculiar-looking tuning fork in the other. It was the source of the ascending whine that had disturbed Cody but had proven fatal to the organism that had enveloped him. Abashed, he rose slowly and tried to wipe the clamminess from his exposed skin. 216 "I'm sorry. It was distracted me." "The chant of the Acryalaq is lulling, but it is an In-terloper like any other." The older man indicated their fairy-tale surroundings. "In their own dimension, or what-ever place this is and however one chooses to label it, they take on a beauty that is as striking as it is false. Here, only our being alien protects us. If we react, or draw too much attention to ourselves, then our intrusion becomes magnified, like the beating of a drum. We be-come to the Interlopers in their world something like what they become to us in Ours-" He held up the tuning fork. It had a visually disorienting shape, as if there were three bars to the fork instead of the usual two. The optic con-fusion tormented Cody's eyes. Oelefse smiled. "People have sketched this little de-vice for years, thinking it no more than an optical illu-sion. Only the master craftsmen of the Society know how to actually make one. The vibrations can be Page 101 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html deadly to Those Who Abide. They are more profoundly affected by sound than by the usual variety of prosaic physical as-saults. " - [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |