It seems unnecessary to say that my story began a long time ago, but I
do not intend to be subtle. I am not clever and my lying is unpolished,
almost amateurish. So I certainly could not be subtle, which requires
both cleverness and an ability to tell the truth and a lie in the same
breath.
Let us turn back the clock a few ages. I was lying in the sun thinking
of love. I understand that you human beings have an aversion to
biological discussion, so I will not go into detail. But I must remind
you that my love life is quite different from yours, for I am from
another planet. At the time under discussion, I was most deeply in love.
My heart's desire had no shape, the lovely creature. She had no
intelligence, the divine soul. But she was the greatest bit of
protoplasm in any galaxy you could name. By our standards, I probably
might be called handsome. I was young and healthy. I had all of my genes
and chromosomes. My color was the dirty green that is associated with
beauty.
The sun warmed my body and the tidal undulation of my planet's surface
rocked me gently. And then she came into my life. She floated gently in
the breeze, her dainty figure held aloft by a mere hint of levitation.
Sparks of static electricity shot from her tender cilia so brightly that
I was forced to exude a layer of protective fibre to protect my visual
buds. She sucked a deep breath of cyanic gas into her pulmonary pouch
and spoke to me sweetly with a voice like distant thunder.
"My dear Yljm, the world is coming to an end."
I could not believe her, for she had no intelligence. She only loved to
talk. "Perhaps," I said, "but not today."
"Very soon, then," said she. Her name was Mjly.
I watched her with patronizing amusement. The static electricity showed
that she was nervous and upset, but people often get nervous and upset
over trivial matters. "Now, how," I reasoned, "could our world come to
an end? The other planet has gone on for thousands of years without
colliding with us. We circle it, in fact."
"No," Mjly said, "that is not our doom. Actually our world will not
cease to exist. Life will end here, that is all."
"Ah," I said. "Our atmosphere is escaping into space." I sucked air,
viciously. True, the air was thin. True, the atmosphere was escaping.
But there would be breathable amounts for many thousands of centuries
yet to come.
"Not the air. The food is all gone. Things we eat have ceased to exist."
I levitated myself and looked out over the throbbing land. A few years
ago, this land had been covered with vegetation. I had come to take
vegetation so much for granted that I'd ceased to notice it. Now it was
gone. There were no round fruits growing from tender grasses, no tubers
dangling from the fungus trees, no legume vines sprawling over the
rocks. Everywhere lay desert, barren dunes shaking their crests with
tidal motion.
I lowered myself to the ground and dug my big fibrosities into the sod.
No green leaves grew there beneath the surface. The soil was dead. "This
will seriously interfere with our future, Mjly," I said.
"We might eat each other," she replied, "but then there would be no one
left."
"No one? There are many others here."
"The others are dying," said Mjly, blinking her otic nerves eerily. "We
soon will be the only ones left."
It was indeed a senseless thing to do, to die just because there was no
means of going on living. But I must admit that I was tempted for a
moment. But I hung onto myself, for there was Mjly, and as long as she
lived, there was a reason for me to live too.
"It's not a cheerful prospect," I said, "but I suppose death by
starvation is the best way out. We will face death as we have lived,
cheerfully and fortuitously."
"And why should we die, when there is another world so close?" she
asked.
"Are you suggesting interplanetary flight, my dear?" I was amused again,
even though there was little enough left to be amused at.
She crinkled her sense of smell in reply, and I realized I was not being
amused at the right time. Anchoring herself by magnetic processes, she
began to weave the atmosphere delicately with her taste-bud tendrils.
Quickly she hollowed the air molecules into a reflective mirror, and
brought it to focus on our neighboring world. I levitated myself into a
position so that I could look into the mirror.
The near planet was quite satisfactory. It was the one you know as the
earth. It was young. It was green. Huge fern-like plants grew abundantly
on its surface. It was full of food. And near.
"The trip could be made by levitation," Mjly said.