Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis [57]
"What are you so afraid of, Ransom of Thulcandra?" it said.
"Of you, Oyarsa, because you are unlike me and I cannot see you."
"Those are not great reasons," said the voice. "You are also unlike me, and, though I see you, I see you very faintly. But do not think we are utterly unlike. We are both copies of Maleldil. These are not the real reasons."
Ransom said nothing.
"You began to be afraid of me before you set foot in my world. And you have spent all your time since then in flying from me. My servants saw your fear when you were in your ship in heaven. They saw that your own kind treated you ill, though they could not understand their speech. Then to deliver you out of the hands of those two I stirred up a hnakra to try if you would come to me of your own will. But you hid among the hrossa and though they told you to come to me, you would not. After that I sent my eldil to fetch you, but still you would not come. And in the end your own kind have chased you to me, and hnau's blood has been shed."
"I do not understand, Oyarsa. Do you mean that it was you who sent for me from Thulcandra?"
"Yes. Did not the other two tell you this? And why did you come with them unless you meant to obey my call? My servants could not understand their talk to you when your ship was in heaven."
"Your servants ... I cannot understand," said Ransom.
"Ask freely," said the voice.
"Have you servants out in the heavens?"
"Where else? There is nowhere else."
"But you, Oyarsa, are here on Malacandra, as I am."
"But Malacandra, like all worlds, floats in heaven. And I am not 'here' altogether as you are, Ransom of Thulcandra. Creatures of your kind must drop out of heaven into a world; for us the worlds are places in heaven. But do not try to understand this now. It is enough to know that I and my servants are even now in heaven; they were around you in the sky-ship no less than they are around you here."
"Then you knew of our journey before we left Thulcandra ?"
"No. Thulcandra is the world we do not know. It alone is outside the heaven, and no message comes from it."
Ransom was silent, but Oyarsa answered his unspoken questions.
"It was not always so. Once we knew the Oyarsa of your world - he was brighter and greater than I - and then we did not call it Thulcandra. It is the longest of all stories and the bitterest. He became bent. That was before any life came on your world. Those were the Bent Years of which we still speak in the heavens, when he was not yet bound to Thulcandra but free like us. It was in his mind to spoil other worlds besides his own. He smote your moon with his left hand and with his right he brought the cold death on my harandra before its time; if by my arm Maleldil had not opened the handramits and let out the hot springs, my world would have been unpeopled. We did not leave him so at large for long. There was great war, and we drove him back out of the heavens and bound him in the air of his own world as Maleldil taught us. There doubtless he lies to this hour, and we know no more of that planet: it is silent. We think that Maleldil would not give it up utterly to the Bent One, and there are stones among us that He has taken strange counsel and dared terrible things, wrestling with the Bent One in Thulcandra. But of this we know less than you; it is a thing we desire to look into."
It was some time before Ransom spoke again and Oyarsa respected his silence. When he had collected himself he said:
"After this story, Oyarsa, I may tell you that our world is very bent. The two who brought me knew nothing of you, but only that the sorns had asked for me. They thought you were a false eldil, I think. There are false eldila in the wild parts of our world; men kill other men before them - they think the eldil drinks blood. They thought the sorns wanted me for this or for some other evil. They brought me by force. I was in terrible fear. The tellers