The Muralist

Startling Stories - May 1952

(1952) *

Margaret St. Clair

To be complete, Tzzzu Tssssi n’s painting of the History of Civilization must include dark, hunarv little shadows!

-

I T WAS a long, long time ago that Tzzzu Tssssin landed on the aster oid. The asteroid now called Vesta was known as Szdrytho in those days, and its albedo was no higher than that of Ceres or Pallas, since its surface was dark and pitted and rough.

Tzzzu Tssssin came waddling out of the ship’s airlock onto the asteroid’s su r face, his tail trailing behind him in his spacesuit. He rose to his full height, some ten or twelve feet, and looked around him with satisfaction. This as teroid was exactly the right size. Not too big, like Ceres and Pallas, not too small, as Juno was. Just the right size.

He waddled back into the ship and got out the three cement-laying machines. They were of a type which a later age would know as “Partial Robots,” since they were equipped with some feed-back and individual response, but they had no fun ction beyond that of laying a fine grained , stone-hard cement. The cement was porous at first, but dried as smooth as enamel after it was laid.

Tzzzu Tssssin adjusted the dials on the machines carefully. With cement the price it was at present, he didn’t w ant to waste it. Cement had gone sky-high since the destruction of the big cement plants near Deet by an unprecedented eruption of volcanic magma. And yet he had to have a perfect coverage. He put the regulated machines down on the surface and watched them with his three eyes as they moved slowly away, le aving broad tracks of gleaming white cement behind them. It would, he figured, take them about a week to cover the asteroid. In the meantime, he could be checking over his designs.

He went in the ship and pulled out his portfolio of xyla wood. Critically h e looked over the designs it contained, shaking his heavy, bony head with satis faction from time to time. Yes, they were really good. And when they were drawn full scale on the surface of the asteroid ... well, his egg-brood siblings would be sorry they hadn’t been more respectful and polite to him, more inter ested. It takes a big lizard to have big ideas. What other of the Szabor Szor would have thought of painting murals on an asteroid? He was sure he’d win the prize.

-

TIME passed. The robot cement-l ay—ers went steadily ahead with their cementing. Tzzzu Tssssin, in the ship, ate slices of ichthyosaur from the deep freeze, studied his drawings, and kept the temperature of the cabin up to a comfortable 110 degrees. He liked a living room cozy, with enou gh steam in the air to keep his skin from drying out. From time to time he would visit the rear of the ship to see that the eggs he had laid two years ago, when he had been a female, were getting along nicely in the incubator. They always were.

On the four th day he grew dissatis fied. The abstract character of his de signs began to bother him. Back home, on earth, they’d seemed just the thing, but out here … Oh, they were fine, in a way. Fine grasp of plastic value, lots of mood. But they didn’t seem t o say enough.

Was he getting academic and con ventional? Certainly not. The academic type of thing—m arshscapes of tree ferns, reeds, grasses, with the glint of water and puffs of steam in the distance —revolted him just as much as ever. But For a day he b rooded. He thought so hard that he got nervous and fidgety; when he went in to look at his eggs, he even imagined he heard tiny scratchings and squeakings and slitherings in the hold. He developed an irritable trick of picking at the loose scales on the sk in around his neck. But at last he came up with an idea whose epic simplicity and grandeur astonished him. He would paint the History of Civilization on the cement of the asteroid.

The history of civilization! The rise of his people, the Szabor Szor, from their humble cotylosaurian beginning to their present dizzy, unchallenged emi nence. (They had some small troubles, of course, but he didn’t need to put them in the mural.) What an idea! How had he ever thought of it? There must be more to him than he had ever sus pected. He was astonished at himself.

For a moment after the idea struck him he stood motionless in the steamy cabin, breathing hard. Then he tucked his tail up over his shoulder, out of harm’s way. He grabbed a stick of mnoo-vine carbon. He began to draw.

The cement-laying machines had been done with their work for over a week when he emerged again from the cabin. The nictating membranes of his eyeballs were sticky with sleeplessness. He had hardly eaten or bothered to look at his eggs, he had bee n so busy. But in one hand he held the completed sheaf of drawings for his great work.

He got a tractor, a pot of black paint, and a long-handled brush from the store room. He trundled the tractor outside, set it going, and sat down on it. He pressed a stu d. At the speed of about a quarter of a mile an hour, he began to move over the surface of the asteroid.

He speeded up the tractor after the first hour, but even at that it took him thirty-six days to transfer his design from the cartoon in mnoo carbon to the cement. He could have made better time if he had used an ipsifex with an enlarger attachment, but he considered that the freehand method of reproduc tion he was using would give his paint ing more character. Mechanization was one of the curses of modern life, any how.

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WHEN the design was all laid out, he took the life-craft from his ship and cruised arou nd the asteroid slowly, looking at it. It was—well, he was proud of himself. The simplicity and grandeur of the theme, combined with the sub tlety of the execution, seemed to embody all that was meant by the proud word “Lizard-like.” But there was a flaw i n the thing; and it was a flaw which, as the life craft floated ten or twelve feet above Vesta’s surface, became glaringly appar ent. There wasn’t enough of the design.

Somehow Tzzzu Tssssin had miscalcu lated. The History of Civilization did not quite gir dle the asteroid. He was short about four and a quarter miles.

It was then that he had his great idea —his great, great idea, as distinguished from the merely great idea he had had before. It excited him so much that his front paws shook on the life craft’s con trols. It was simply this: why stop with the History of civilization on the aster oid.

He would continue the history on into the future, the wonderful future of the Szabor Szor. He would bring the ends of the girdle of painting together and then go o n spiraling up over the aster oids pole in an ever-ascending helix of glorious prophecy. Glory on glory! Won der on wonder! On, on and up!

Despite his excitement, he managed to land the life-craft safely. He made for the spaceship’s airlock at a waddling r un. Once more he settled himself be fore his drawing board with sheets of xylem and sticks of mnoo.

This part of the design took a lot of time. For one thing, he wasn’t quite certain, when he came down to it, just what form the future glory of the Sza bor Szor would take. When one consid ered their present achievements, it was almost too wonderful to contemplate. But he had some hints to go on. He could assume, for example, that they would overcome their present small diffi culties. (They did have diffi culties, there was no use denying it. The disgusting change in the climate, so that it grew constantly colder, the incessant destruc tive vulcanism coupled with the emer gence of new mountain ranges, even the extinction of favorite food plants. How long ha d it been since Tzzzu Tssssin had had a good feed of delicious garozza grass?) But those difficulties could be viewed, really, as stimulating challenges. And once they were overcome …

Well, it was reasonable to assume that eventually his people would colonize the second planet. Of course, at present it was a little too hot. After that, there might be settlements on the first planet, in the twilight zone. It was a pity that all the other planets were too cold to support intelligent life. And after that …

Probably the Szabor Szor themselves would change. They’d become bigger, nobler Szabor Szor. They’d have extra thumbs, auxiliary brains in their hips, longer tails. They might end by having four eyes, or would that be really sau rian ? He’d have to t hink it over. But he was positive about the tails.

All these considerations, apart from the drawing itself, were time consum ing. And in order to keep the main theme of the mural consistent, he had to go back and change the historic por trayals several tim es. He was staying on the asteroid much longer than he’d intended. Not that it really mattered— he had plenty of air, plenty of food, plen ty of drink, and the mural contest didn’t close for more than eight months. His eggs were coming along nicely. They’d be hatching soon. It would be fun hav ing twenty or thirty children to play with.

It was two weeks later that he looked in the incubator and saw that his eggs had been spoiled.

-

HE HUNG over the incubator, gog gling. He couldn’t bel ieve his three eyes. What could have happened? The yolks of his poor eggs had been eaten through in the most savage, brutal man ner. Tzzzu Tssssin felt like crying. Tzzzu Tssssin felt quite sick.

What was the matter? Flies some times laid maggots in unprot ected eggs, but there were no flies in the spaceship. And sometimes the chicken-sized mmips bothered eggs that were hatching in the open. But they couldn’t have caused this, either.

He examined the incubator carefully. Where the heating cable led into the steam chamber there was a gap, about three-quarters of an inch wide, where something might have entered. Some thing evidently had. What?

He remembered the scurryings he had heard, or had thought he heard, earlier. Could that be it?

He decided to wait quietly beside the incubator and see if he could detect any thing. He waited. Five or six hours passed. Then something scurried past him, moving with uncanny rapidity. It was about half an inch long, with a pointed nose and a tiny scalel ess tail, and it was covered with an integument which Tz z zu Tssssin could not identify. It was soft-looking and brownish gray. If a member of the genus Homo had been around to give his opinion of the covering of the animal, he would unhesi tatingly have sai d it was fur. He might even have added that the animal looked a little like a mouse.

Tzzzu Tssssin was cramped, stiff, and heart-sick. There was no use in con tinuing his vigil. He got to his feet. The repulsive little creatures — what could they be ? He’d never seen anything like them. They moved too quickly for him to attempt to catch them. Blinking from time to time and shaking his head mournfully, Tzzzu Tssssin waddled back to his living quarters.

He’d have to forget it. After all, other people had lost eggs. It was his own personal tragedy, and it mustn’t be al lowed to interfere with his own personal work, which was art. Glumly Tzzzu Tssssin got into his spacesuit and went outside. It would help him forget if he painted a bit.

His heart wasn’t in it. He’d keep stopping between jets of the air-brush to think, trying to figure out what could have happened. He’d come direct from earth to the asteroid. That meant that the things, whatever they were, that had eaten the yolks of his eggs must have stowed away on the ship. They must have come with him from earth.

For some reason, he felt frightened. It was unreasonable, of course, that any thing as small as the animal he had seen near the incubator could menace the lordly Szabor Szor. But …

For a day, grow ing more and more apprehensive, he tried to convince him self that the destroyers might be native to Vesta. It was foolish, and he knew it. Vesta was too cold, too airless, too generally inhospitable, to harbor any life that could be interested in feed ing on terrestrial life. He couldn’t sleep at all that night … He must have brought the pests with him from earth.

Abruptly he couldn’t stand it any longer. He stopped in the middle of next morning’s painting and began feeding course-data into the computin g ma chines. By noon he was ready to leave. If what had happened to his eggs was typical … if the Szabor Szor were being confronted with a ghastly new threat in addition to their other serious difficulties … well, it didn’t seem to matter whether he fin ished his mural on Vesta or not. Maybe the prize would never be award ed. He was going to go home and see what was happening.

As he sent the ship jetting up from Vesta’s marmoreal surface, he had a premonition of personal disaster, as if going home to eart h might be dangerous to him personally. He ignored it. He was consumed with apprehension and curiosity and a dull fear but in spite of these he managed to read a little, and make himself fairly comfortable.

The proto-mice, whose brothers and sisters on Ear th had already eaten so many Szabor Szor eggs were quite com fortable and happy on their trip back to earth, too. They were even happier when the ship landed; for, as Tzzzu Tssssin had correctly surmised, they were native to Earth. They had wandered into t he ship before Tzzzu Tssssin had taken off for Szdrytho. Now they ran out and joined their brothers and sisters. They multiplied, and multiplied again. The voracious food migrations began, sweep ing over continents like giant brooms. They had evolved in a very short time, the proto-mice; it took them an even shorter time, on their fast little legs, to bring the dizzy, unchallenged emi nence of the Szabor Szor to a crashing downfall, to consign it to prehistory.

After that, nobody landed on Szdrytho —Vesta—f or a good many millenia . When human beings finally touched there, Tzzzu Tssssin’s coating of cement puzzled them very much. The lines of paint he had drawn for his mural had evaporated into space long ago, and there was nothing at all to provide a clue to the meaning of the cement. The members of the expedition prodded it and punched it and chipped at it with geologists’ hammers. They had no idea at all that they were walking over an incomplete History of Civilization and a Prophecy of the Future Greatness of the Szabor Szor.

The End

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The Muralist