Enchanted Village - A. E. Van Vogt

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Enchanted Village
A. E. van Vogt
Explorers of a new frontier" they had been called before they left for Mars.
For a while, after the ship crashed into a Martian desert, killing all on board except-miraculously-this one
man, Bill Jenner spat the words occasionally into the constant, sand-laden wind. He despised himself for
the pride he had felt when he first heard them.
His fury faded with each mile that he walked, and his black grief for his friends became a gray ache.
Slowly he realized that he had made a ruinous misjudgment.
lie had underestimated the speed at which the rocketship had been traveling.
He'd guessed that he would have to walk three hundred miles to reach the shallow, polar sea be and the
others had observed as they glided in from outer space. Actually, the ship must have Bashed an
immensely greater distance before it hurtled down out of control.
The days stretched behind him, seemingly as numberless as the hot, red, alien sand that scorched
through his tattered clothes. A huge scarecrow of a man, he kept moving across the endless, arid
waste-he would not give up.
By the time he came to the mountain, his food had long been gone. Of his four water bags, only one
 remained, and that was so close to being empty that he merely wet his cracked lips and swollen tongue
whenever his thirst became unbearable.
Jenner climbed high before he realized that it was not just another dune that had barred his way. He
paused, and as he gazed up at the mountain that towered above him, he cringed a little. For an instant he
felt the hopelessness of this mad race he was making to nowhere-but he reached the top. He saw that
below him was a depression surrounded by hills as high as, or higher than, the one on which he stood.
Nestled in the valley they made was a village.
He could see trees and the marble Boor of a courtyard. A score of buildings was clustered around what
seemed to be a central square. They were mostly low-constructed, but there were four towers pointing
gracefully into the sky. They shone in the sunlight with a marble luster.
Faintly, there came to Jenner's cars a thin, high-pitched whistling sound. It rose, fell, faded completely,
then came up again clearly and unpleasantly. Fven as Jenner ran toward it, the noise grated on his ears,
eerie and unnatural.
FIe kept slipping on smooth rock, and bruised himself when he fell. He rolled halfway down into the
valley. The buildings remained new and bright when seen from nearby. Their walls Bashed with
reBeetions. On every side was vegetation- reddish-green shrubbery, yellow-green trees laden with
purple and red fruit.
With ravenous intent, Jenner headed for the nearest fruit tree. Close up, the tree looked dry and brittle.
The large red fruit he tore from the lowest branch, however, was plump and juicy.
As he lifted it to his mouth, he remembered that he had been warned during his training period to taste
nothing on Mars until it had been chemically examined. But that was meaningless advice to a man whose
only chemical equipment was in his own body.
Nevertheless, the possibility of danger made him cautious. He took his first bite gingerly. It was bitter to
his tongue, and he spat it out hastily. Some of the juice which remained in his mouth seared his gums. He
felt the fire on it, and he reeled from nausea. His muscles began to jerk, and he lay down on the marble to
keep himself from falling. After what seemed like hours to Jenner, the awful trembling finally went out of
his body and he could see again. He looked up despisingly at the tree.
The pain finally left him, and slowly he relaxed. A soft breeze rustled the dry leaves. Nearby trees took
up that gentle clamor, and it struck Jenner that the wind here in the valley was only a whisper of what it
had been on the Bat desert beyond the mountain.
There was no other sound now. Jenner abruptly remembered the high-pitched, ever-changing whistle he
had heard. He lay very still, listening intently, but there was only the rustling of the leaves. The noisy
shrilling had stopped. lie wondered if it had been an alarm, to warn the villagers of his approach.
Anxiously he climbed to his feet and fumbled for his gun. A sense of disaster
shocked through him. It wasn't there. His mind was a blank, and then he vaguely recalled that he had
first missed the weapon more than a week before. I-Ic looked around him uneasily, but there was not a
 sign of creature life. He braced himself. He couldn't leave, as there was nowhere to go. If necessary, he
would fight to the death to remain in the village.
Carefully Jenner took a sip from his water bag, moistening his cracked lips and his swollen tongue. Then
he replaced the cap and started through a double line of trees toward the nearest building. He made a
wide circle to observe it from several vantage points. On one side a low, broad archway opened into the
interior. Through it, he could dimly make out the polished gleam of a marble floor.
Jenner explored the buildings from the outside, always keeping a respectful distance between him and
any of the entrances. He saw no sign of animal life. He reached the far side of the marble platform on
which the village was built, and turned back decisively. It was time to explore interiors.
He chose one of the four tower buildings. As he came within a dozen feet of it, he saw that he would
have to stoop low to get inside.
Momentarily, the implications of that stopped him. These buildings had been constructed for a life form
that must be very different from human beings.
He went forward again, bent down, and entered reluctantly, every muscle tensed.
He found himself in a room without furniture. However, there were several low marble fences projecting
from one marble wall. They formed what looked like a group of four wide, low stalls. Each stall had an
open trough carved out of the floor.
The second chamber was fitted with four inclined planes of marble, each of which slanted up to a dais.
Altogether there were four rooms on the lower floor. Froi-n one of them a circular ramp mounted up,
apparently to a tower room.
J enner didn't investigate the upstairs. The earlier fear that he would find alien life was yielding to the
deadly conviction that he wouldn't. No life meant no food or chance of getting any. In frantic haste he
hurried from building to building, peering into the silent rooms, pausing now and then to shout hoarsely.
Finally there was no doubt. He was alone in a deserted village on a lifeless planet, without food, without
water-except for the pitiful supply in his bag- and without hope.
He was in the fourth and smallest room of one of the tower buildings when he realized that he had come
to the end of his search. The room had a single stall jutting out from one wall. Jenner lay down wearily in
it. He must have fallen asleep instantly.
When he awoke he became aware of two things, one right after the other. The first realization occurred
before he opened his eyes-the whistling sound was back; high and shrill, it wavered at the threshold of
audibility.
The other was that a fine spray of liquid was being directed down at him from the ceiling. It had an odor,
of which technician Jenner took a single whiff. Quickly he scrambled out of the room, coughing, tears in
his eyes, his face already burning froin chemical reaction.
He snatched his handkerchief and hastily wiped the exposed parts of his body and face.
He reached the outside and there paused, striving to understand what had happened.
 The village seemed unchanged.
Leaves trembled in a gentle breeze. The sun was poised on a mountain peak. J enner guessed from its
position that it was morning again and that he had slept at least a dozen hours. The glaring white light
suffused the valley. Half hidden by trees and shrubbery, the buildings Bashed and shimmered.
He seemed to be in an oasis in a vast desert. It was an oasis, all right, Jenner reflected grimly, but not for
a human being. For him, with its poisonous fruit, it was more like a tantalizing mirage.
He went back inside the building and cautiously peered into the room where he had slept. The spray of
gas had stopped, not a bit of odor lingered, and the air was fresh and clean.
He edged over the threshold, half inclined to make a test. He had a picture in his mind of a long-dead
Martian creature lazing on the floor in the stall while a soothing chemical sprayed down on its body. The
fact that the chemical was deadly to human beings merely emphasized how alien to man was the life that
had spawned on Mars. But there seemed little doubt of the reason for the gas. The creature was
accustomed to taking a morning shower.
Inside the "bathroom," Jenner eased himself feet first into the stall. As his hips came level with the stall
entrance, the solid ceiling sprayed a jet of yellowish gas straight down upon his legs. Hastily Jenner pulled
himself clear of the stall. The gas stopped as suddenly as it had started.
He tried it again, to make sure it was merely an automatic process. It turned on, then shut off.
Jenner's thirst-puffed lips parted with excitement. He thought, "If there can be one automatic process,
there may be others."
Breathing heavily, he raced into the outer room. Carefully he shoved his legs into one of the two stalls.
The moment his hips were in, a steaming gruel filled the trough beside the wall.
He stared at the greasy-looking stuff with a horrified fascination-food-and drink. He remembered the
poison fruit and felt repelled, but he forced himself to bend down and put his finger into the hot, wet
substance. He brought it up, dripping, to his mouth.
It tasted flat and pulpy, like boiled wood fiber. It trickled viscously into his throat. His eyes began to
water and his lips drew back convulsively. He realized he was going to be sick, and ran for the outer
door-but didn't quite make it.
When he finally got outside, he felt limp and unutterably listless. In that depressed state of mind, he grew
aware again of the shrill sound.
He felt amazed that he could have ignored its rasping even for a few minutes. Sharply he glanced about,
trying to determine its source, but it seemed to have none. Whenever he approached a point where it
appeared to be loudest, then it would fade or shift, perhaps to the far side of the village.
He tried to imagine what an alien culture would want with a mind-shattering noise-although, of course, it
would not necessarily have been unpleasant to them.
 He stopped and snapped his fingers as a wild but nevertheless plausible notion entered his mind. Could
this be music?
He toyed with the idea, trying to visualize the village as it had been long ago. Here a music-loving people
had possibly gone about their daily tasks to the accompaniment of what was to them beautiful strains of
melody.
The hideous whistling went on and on, waxing and waning. Jenner tried to
put buildings between himself and the sound. He sought refuge in various rooms, hoping that at least one
would be soundproof. None were. The whistle followed him wherever he went.
He retreated into the desert, and had to climb halfway up one of the slopes before the noise was low
enough not to disturb him. Finally, breathless but immeasurably relieved, he sank down on the sand and
thought blankly:
What now?
The scene that spread before him had in it qualities of both heaven and hell. It was all too familiar
now-the red sands, the stony dunes, the small, alien village promising so much and fulfilling so little.
Jenner looked down at it with his feverish eyes and ran his parched tongue over his cracked, dry lips. He
knew that he was a dead man unless he could alter the automatic food-making machines that must be
hidden somewhere in the walls and under the Boors of the buildings.
In ancient days, a remnant of Martian civilization had survived here in this village. The inhabitants had
died off, but the village lived on, keeping itself clean of sand, able to provide refuge for any Martian who
might come along. But there were no Martians. There was only Bill Jenner, pilot of the first roeketship
ever to land on Mars.
He had to make the village turn out food and drink that he could take. Without tools, except his hands,
with scarcely any knowledge of chemistry, he must force it to change its habits.
Tensely he hefted his water bag. He took another sip and fought the same grim fight to prevent himself
from guzzling it down to the last drop. And, when he had won the battle once more, he stood up and
started down the slope.
He could last, he estimated, not more than three days. In that time he must conquer the village.
He was already among the trees when it suddenly struck him that the "music" had stopped. Relieved, he
bent over a small shrub, took a good firm hold of it- and pulled.
It came up easily, and there was a slab of marble attached to it. Jenner stared at it, noting with surprise
that he had been mistaken in thinking the stalk came up through a hole in the marble. It was merely stuck
to the surface. Then he noticed something else-the shrub had no roots. Almost instinctively, Jenner
looked down at the spot from which he had torn the slab of marble along with the plant. There was sand
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