millions of miles deep where I can never, never get back to it, there’s a place I know, and flowers at that very moment growing over Meldilorn, and friends of mine, going about their business, who would welcome me back. No. No such luck. It’s not Malacandra I’m being sent to. It’s Perelandra.’
‘That’s what we call Venus, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you say you’re being sent.’
‘Yes. If you remember, before I left Malacandra the Oyarsa hinted to me that my going there at all might be the beginning of a whole new phase in the life of the Solar System – the Field of Arbol. It might mean, he said, that the isolation of our world, the siege, was beginning to draw to an end.’
‘Yes. I remember.’
‘Well, it really does look as if something of the sort were afoot. For one thing, the two sides, as you call them, have begun to appear much more clearly, much less mixed, here on Earth, in our own human affairs – to show in something a little more like their true colours.’
‘I see that all right.’
‘The other thing is this. The black archon – our own bent Oyarsa – is meditating some sort of attack on Perelandra.’
‘But is he at large like that in the Solar System? Can he get there?’
‘That’s just the point. He can’t get there in his own person, in his own photosome or whatever we should call it. As you know, he was driven back within these bounds centuries before any human life existed on our planet. If he ventured to show himself outside the Moon’s orbit he’d be driven back again by main force. That would be a different kind of war. You or I could contribute no more to it than a flea could contribute to the defence of Moscow. No. He must be attempting Perelandra in some different way.’
‘And where do you come in?’
‘Well – simply I’ve been ordered there.’
‘By the – by Oyarsa, you mean?’
‘No. The order comes from much higher up. They all do, you know, in the long run.’
‘And what have you got to do when you get there?’
‘I haven’t been told.’
‘You are just part of the Oyarsa’s entourage?’
‘Oh no. He isn’t going to be there. He is to transport me to Venus – to deliver me there. After that, as far as I know, I shall be alone.’
‘But, look here, Ransom – I mean …’ my voice trailed away.
‘I know!’ said he with one of his singularly disarming smiles. ‘You are feeling the absurdity of it. Dr Elwin Ransom setting out single-handed to combat powers and principalities. You may even be wondering if I’ve got megalomania.’
‘I didn’t mean that quite,’ said I.
‘Oh, but I think you did. At any rate that is what I have been feeling myself ever since the thing was sprung on me. But when you come to think of it, is it odder than what all of us have to do every day? When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting.’
‘Oh, I dare say,’ said I. ‘But that’s rather different. That refers to a moral conflict.’
Ransom threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Lewis, Lewis,’ he said, ‘you are inimitable, simply inimitable!’
‘Say what you like, Ransom, there is a difference.’
‘Yes. There is. But not a difference that makes it megalomania to think that any of us might have to fight either way. I’ll tell you how I look at it. Haven’t you noticed how in our own little war here on earth, there are different phases, and while any one phase is going on people get into the habit of thinking and behaving as if it was going to be permanent? But really the thing is changing under your hands all the time, and neither your assets nor your dangers this year are the same as the year before. Now your idea that ordinary people will never have to meet the Dark Eldila in any form except a psychological or moral form – as temptations or the like – is simply an idea that held good for a certain phase of the cosmic war: the phase of the great siege, the phase which gave to our planet its name of Thulcandra, the silent planet. But supposing that phase is passing? In the next phase it may be anyone’s job to meet them … well, in some quite different mode.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t imagine I’ve been selected to go to Perelandra because I’m anyone in particular. One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications. I rather fancy I am being sent because those two blackguards who kidnapped me and took me to Malacandra, did something which they never intended: namely, gave a human being a chance to learn that language.’
‘What language do you mean?’
‘Hressa-Hlab, of course. The language I learned in Malacandra.’
‘But surely you don’t imagine they will speak the same language on Venus?’
‘Didn’t I tell you about that?’ said Ransom, leaning forward. We were now at table and had nearly finished our cold meat and beer and tea. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t, for I found out two or three months ago, and scientifically it is one of the most interesting things about the whole affair. It appears we were quite mistaken in thinking Hressa-Hlab the peculiar speech of Mars. It is really what may be called Old Solar, Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I mean that there was originally a common speech for all rational creatures inhabiting the planets of our system: those that were ever inhabited, I mean – what the eldila call the Low Worlds. Most of them, of course, have never been inhabited and never will be. At least not what we’d call inhabited. That original speech was lost on Thulcandra, our own world, when our whole tragedy took place. No human language now known in the world is descended from it.’
‘But what about the other two languages on Mars?’
‘I admit I don’t understand about them. One thing I do know, and I believe I could prove it on purely philological grounds. They are incomparably less ancient than Hressa-Hlab, specially Surnibur, the speech of the sorns. I believe it could be shown that Surnibur is, by Malacandrian standards, quite a modern development. I doubt if its birth can be put farther back than a date which would fall within our Cambrian Period.’
‘And you think you will find Hressa-Hlab, or Old Solar, spoken on Venus?’
‘Yes. I shall arrive knowing the language. It saves a lot of trouble – though, as a philologist, I find it rather disappointing.’
‘But you’ve no idea what you are to do, or what conditions you will find?’
