He caught a movement on his right, but when he turned his head, again concluded that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Whatever he was looking at seemed to be a shape without any definite form, like smoke from a fire. But since he felt no sense of danger, it was easier to close his eyes again. This time, the oblivion was more like normal sleep.
When he was awakened again, it was by the discomfort of his wet clothes; when he moved his head, the pain made him gasp. He reached up and touched the back of his skull; it hurt, and when he looked at his fingers, they were stained with blood. A glance at the sky beyond the overarching branches told him that it was close to dusk. He forced himself into a sitting position, and realized that his head had been propped on a pile of leaves, one of which was still sticking to his bloodsoaked hair. In the distance, perhaps a hundred paces away, he could hear the sound of the river. Clearly, someone had dragged him out of the water, and placed the leaves under his head. That argued some intelligent and well-disposed being. But where had his rescuer gone?
A movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn his head, and what he saw made him cry out with shock. It was so unlike anything he had ever seen or experienced that he had difficulty taking it in. The creature seemed to be a man, or at least a human-shaped figure, but its outlines were so blurred and indeterminate that he felt there was something wrong with his eyes. What he was looking at changed from moment to moment, as if it refused to come into focus. Just as he had decided that it was semitransparent, like a creature made of a clear jelly, the face became solid, and once again seemed to be formed out of ice or glass. This made the rest of the body almost invisible, as if the head was floating in the air.
Then, to his relief, the creature’s color darkened to a greeny-blue, and Niall suddenly was able to see the whole body. He realized at once that this was not a man. The forehead was out of all proportion to the rest of the face, being twice as high, and had a hole like a mouth in its center. The features were like those of human beings, but more simian, with enormous nostrils, while the wide, downturned mouth reminded him of a fish. The ears were also enormous, extending the full length of the head; but instead of terminating in lobes, they joined the neck slightly above the shoulders. The eyes were large, like those of a night creature, and pale green, with tiny flecks of brown. The thin body had muscles like whipcords, so that the arms and legs looked almost like illustrations of muscular structure from some book of anatomy. Its color seemed to ebb and flow between green and blue, and Niall had the impression that it was maintaining its color with an effort of will that was like balancing on a wire.
A moment later, he felt a strange and almost painful sensation inside his head, which made him wrinkle his face as if he had been deafened by some high, piercing whistle. This was followed by a kind of crackling that was equally unpleasant. It took Niall some moments to realize that the being was trying to communicate telepathically, but that its thoughts were somehow on the wrong wavelength.
Controlling his discomfort, Niall asked hoarsely: “Can you speak?”
The answer was a sudden change of color, from green to a shimmering brown, which Niall felt instinctively to be an expression of frustration. The hole in the enormous forehead opened, but what came out was a sound so deafening that it made him wince. It was like nothing so much as the thunderous roar of a high wind in the treetops. And because it was impossible that any mouth could have produced such a volume of noise, Niall deduced that it was due partly to telepathy, or was somehow amplified by the creature’s mind.
Now Niall became aware that they were no longer alone. A dozen or more of these beings had slipped out of the dusk, and were watching him with obvious interest. Like the first one, they were semitransparent, and often seemed to vanish altogether. Niall realized intuitively that the one who was trying to communicate was showing immense courtesy in remaining visible, and not sinking into his natural condition of transparency.
It was clear that this being was trying to speak to Niall, but in what might have been a kind of foreign language that was totally unlike human communication. Periodically, something happened in Niall’s brain that intensified the pain of his bruised head and made his ears buzz with a sensation like static.
He did his best to transmit thought images, as he did when communicating with the spiders. This produced a lengthy silence, as if the transparent beings were trying to understand what he said — he had no doubt that everyone present was in constant communication. Then the “static” began inside his head, but on a slightly different note, as if the beings around him were experimenting in communication.
What puzzled — and slightly disturbed — him was there was no deeper sense of exchange. When human beings communicate with one another, they are aware of a “listening” atmosphere, as if each is awaiting what the other has to say. Only if two people are hostile to each other is this “listening” atmosphere absent, in which case they translate the absence as dislike or suspicion. In this present situation, the “listening” atmosphere was nonexistent; these jellylike beings might have been machines.
Even with the spiders and the bombardier beetles, Niall had soon developed this basic sense of waiting to communicate, which was a kind of listening. Could these semitransparent creatures be so unlike any form of life he had so far encountered?
Another burst of “static” caused such a splitting pain that he gasped, and buried his face in his hands. He felt something wet on the back of his neck, and when he raised his hand, it came away wet with blood.
The creature reacted immediately, making signs for Niall to stand up. Niall did so cautiously, afraid of more pain, and leaned against the tree. He was still tempted to rub his eyes as the shapes around him seemed to shimmer in and out of visibility. But now he became aware that this was partly because they took on the coloration of whatever was behind them — a tree, a shrub, even the fading sky. They were, he realized, a kind of humanoid chameleon.
The leader, whom he could see quite clearly, turned and walked into the shadows of the undergrowth. Niall followed unsteadily, and immediately tripped over a root and fell onto his hands and knees. By the time he stood up, the others had vanished. For a tense moment he was afraid he had been deserted. Then he experienced a rush of relief as he saw that the leader was waiting for him, almost invisible against the dusky green background.
A moment later, as if recognizing his anxiety, the chameleon man began to change color, first to a paler green, then to a yellow that made him clearly visible. As he walked on into the trees, he seemed to change shape like a candle flame. Niall was puzzled. If the chameleon man had read his mind, then why was he unable to understand when Niall tried to communicate telepathically? Then he saw the answer. It was his thoughts that these creatures were unable to understand. Emotions — like fear and relief — were a different matter.
As weak as he was, Niall was finding it hard to keep up. Although his guide was moving at walking pace, the ground underfoot was uneven, and he frequently tripped over roots and broken branches — there evidently had been a storm recently — or had to drag his feet through a carpet of dead leaves. His head was throbbing, and when a rebounding branch caught the back of his head, it made it bleed again.
Just as he was beginning to feel he could go no farther, they came to a large clearing, across the center of which lay a great fallen tree covered with ivy, its massive roots exposed like some tentacled monster. Here they all paused for a while, and Niall was glad to sit on a root until his strength returned.
Beyond the clearing the ground began to rise. They now plodded uphill for about fifty yards, through bushes that were so close together that Niall had to push aside clinging branches. Always the yellow figure like a candle flame continued to flicker ahead, and since it was now almost dark, he was glad of this. Suddenly, the figure halted, turned toward Niall, and made a gesture to come closer. Then he bent double, brushed aside a leafy cluster of branches, and disappeared. Following him cautiously, Niall found himself in a low tunnel where he was plunged into total darkness. Yet there must have been some faint light, for he could still see the chameleon man, still bent double, glimmering in the darkness ahead.
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