that they were truly the most civilized people I have ever met.
I have said they glowed and I think by that I mean they glowed in
spirit. It seemed that they were accompanied, somehow, by a sparkling golden
haze that made happy everything it touched-almost as if they moved in some
special world that no one else had found. Sitting at the table with them, I
seemed to be included in this golden haze and I felt strange, quiet, deep
currents of happiness flowing in my veins. I wondered by what route they and
their world had arrived at this golden state and if my world could, in some
distant time, attain it.
But back of this happiness was a great vitality, the bubbling
effervescent spirit with an inner core of strength and a love of living that
seemed to fill every pore of them and every instant of their time.
They had only two hours’ time and it passed so swiftly that I had to
finally warn them it was time to go. Before they left, they placed two
packages on the table and said they were for me and thanked me for my table
(what a strange way for them to put it) then they said good bye and stepped
into the cabinet (extra-large one) and I sent them on their way. Even after
they were gone, the golden haze seemed to linger in the room and it was
hours before all of it was gone. I wished that I might have gone with them
to that other planet and its festival.
One of the packages they left contained a dozen bottles of the
brandy-like liquor and the bottles themselves were each a piece of art, no
two of them alike, being formed of what I am convinced is diamond, but
whether fabricated diamond or carved from some great stones, I have no idea.
At any rate, I would estimate that each of them is priceless, and each
carved in a disturbing variety of symbolisms, each of which, however, has a
special beauty of its own. And in the other box was a-well, I suppose that,
for lack of other name, you might call it a music box. The box itself is
ivory, old yellow ivory that is as smooth as satin, and covered by a mass of
diagrammatic carving which must have some significance which I do not
understand. On the top of it is a circle set inside a graduated scale and
when I turned the circle to the first graduation there was music and through
all the room an interplay of many-colored light, as if the entire room was
filled with different kinds of color, and through it all a far-off
suggestion of that golden haze. And from the box came, too, perfumes that
filled the room, and feeling, emotion-whatever one may call it-but something
that took hold of one and made one sad or happy or whatever might go with
the music and the color and perfume. Out of that box came a world in which
one lived out the composition or whatever it might be-living it with all
that one had in him, all the emotion and belief and intellect of which one
is capable. And here, I am quite certain, was a recording of that art form
of which they had been talking. And not one composition alone, but 206 of
them, for that is the number of the graduation marks and for each mark there
is a separate composition. In the days to come I shall play them all and
make notes upon each of them and assign them names, perhaps, according to
their characteristics, and from them, perhaps, can gain some knowledge as
well as entertainment.
15
The twelve diamond bottles, empty long ago, stood in a sparkling row
upon the fireplace mantel. The music box, as one of his choicest
possessions, was stored inside one of the cabinets, where no harm could come
to it. And Enoch thought rather ruefully, in all these years, despite
regular use of it, he had not as yet played through the entire list of
compositions. There were so many of the early ones that begged for a
replaying that he was not a great deal more than halfway through the
graduated markings.
The Hazers had come back, the five of them, time and time again, for it
seemed that they found in this station, perhaps even in the man who operated
it, some quality that pleased them. They had helped him learn the Vegan
language and had brought him scrolls of Vegan literature and many other
things, and had been, without any doubt, the best friends among the aliens
(other than Ulysses) that he had ever had. Then one day they came no more
and he wondered why, asking after them when other Hazers showed up at the
station. But he had never learned what had happened to them.
He knew far more now about the Hazers and their art forms, their
traditions and their customs and their history, than he’d known that first
day he’d written of them, back in 1915. But he still was far from grasping
many of the concepts that were commonplace with them.
There had been many of them since that day in 1915 and there was one he
remembered in particular-the old, wise one, the philosopher, who had died on
the floor beside the sofa.
They had been sitting on the sofa, talking, and he even could remember
the subject of their talk. The old one had been telling of the perverse code
of ethics, at once irrational and comic, which had been built up by that
curious race of social vegetables he had encountered on one of his visits to
an off-track planet on the other side of the galactic rim. The old Hazer had
a drink or two beneath his belt and he was in splendid form, relating
incident after incident with enthusiastic gusto.
Supenly, in mid-sentence, he had stopped his talking, and had slumped
quietly forward. Enoch, startled, reached for him, but before he could lay a
hand upon him, the old alien had slid slowly to the floor.
The golden haze had faded from his body and slowly flickered out and
the body lay there, angular and bony and obscene, a terribly alien thing
there upon the floor, a thing that was at once pitiful and monstrous. More
monstrous, it seemed to Enoch, than anything in alien form he had ever seen
before.
In life it had been a wondrous creature, but now, in death, it was an
old bag of hideous bones with a scaly parchment stretched to hold the bones
together. It was the golden haze, Enoch told himself, gulping, in something
near to horror, that had made the Hazer seem so wondrous and so beautiful,
so vital, so alive and quick, so filled with dignity. The golden haze was
the life of them and when the haze was gone, they became mere repulsive
horrors that one gagged to look upon.
Could it be, he wondered, that the goldenness was the Hazers’ life
force and that they wore it like a cloak, as a sort of over-all disguise?
Did they wear that life force on the outside of them while all other
creatures wore it on the inside?
A piteous little wind was lamenting in the gingerbread high up in the
gables and through the windows he could see battalions of tattered clouds
fleeing in ragged retreat across the moon, which had climbed halfway up the
eastern sky.
There was a coldness and a loneliness in the station-a far-reaching
loneliness that stretched out and out, farther than mere Earth loneliness
could go.
Enoch turned from the body and walked stiffly across the room to the
message machine. He put in a call for a connection direct with Galactic
Central, then stood waiting, gripping the sides of the machine with both his
hands.
GO AHEAD, said Galactic Central.
Briefly, as objectively as he was able, Enoch reported what had
happened.
There was no hesitation and there were no questions from the other end.
Just the simple directions (as if this was something that happened all the
time) of how the situation should be handled. The Vegan must remain upon the
planet of its death, its body to be disposed of according to the local
customs obtaining on that planet. For that was the Vegan law, and, likewise,
a point of honor. A Vegan, when he fell, must stay where he fell, and that
place became, forever, a part of Vega XXI. There were such places, said
Galactic Central, all through the galaxy.
THE CUSTOM HERE [typed Enoch] IS TO INTER THE DEAD.
THEN INTER THE VEGAN.
WE READ A VERSE OR TWO FROM OUR HOLY BOOK.
READ ONE FOR THE VEGAN, THEN. YOU CAN DO ALL THIS?
YES. BUT WE USUALLY HAVE IT DONE BY A PRACTITIONER OF RELIGION. UNDER
THE PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, HOWEVER, THAT MIGHT BE UNWISE.