The Silkie Read online

  (E-book Version 1.0 — first release. Scanned, Spellchecked & Checked against D.T. June 2003)

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  (Back Blurb)

  The Silkie — a living spaceship, impervious to heat and cold, virtually indestructible and capable of travelling at supersonic speeds.

  The Silkie — similar to a human being, but not the same. Highly intelligent.

  The Silkie — able to live under the oceans with the ease of a dolphin and the speed of a shark.

  The Silkie — a modern angel or a computerised demon?

  The Silkie — friend of Earth, or a pitiless, alien destroyer?

  * * *

  Other books by this author available from New English Library:

  WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER

  THE WEAPON MAKERS

  QUEST FOR THE FUTURE

  CHILDREN OF TOMORROW

  THE FAR-OUT WORLDS OF A. E. VAN VOGT

  EMPIRE OF THE ATOM

  THE WIZARD OF LINN

  MORE THAN SUPERHUMAN

  * * *

  The Silkie

  A. E. Van Vogt

  NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY

  TIMES MIRROR

  * * *

  First published in the United States of America by Ace Books in 1969

  © 1969 by A. E. Van Vogt

  *

  FIRST NEL PAPERBACK EDITION FEBRUARY 1973

  Reprinted June 1973

  This new edition October 1977

  *

  Conditions of sale: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not. by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  NEL Books are published by

  New English Library Limited from Barnard's Inn, Holborn, London EC1N 2JR.

  Made and printed in Great Britain by Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd., Aylesbury, Bucks.

  45003549 2

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  1

  THE STREET of the Haitian city had been excruciatingly hot to Marie's feet, like walking over sheets of heated metal. It was cooler in the garden, but she had to come out from under the shady trees into the sun where the old man sat. Now he laughed unpleasantly, showing his even white false teeth.

  He said, 'Put up money to raise a sunken treasure ship? Think I'm a fool!'

  He laughed again, then blinked his eyes at her with a weary lasciviousness. He added significantly, 'Now, of course, if a pretty young thing like you could be nice to an old man...'

  He waited, sunning himself like a wrinkled toad, soaking the heat into bones that seemed no longer capable of warming themselves. Despite the sun, he shivered as if he were cold.

  Marie Lederle studied him with curious eyes. She had been brought up by a sea captain with a lusty sense of humor, and now she was merely surprised that this old lecher could still get a moist gleam in his eye at the sight of a young woman.

  She said steadily, 'The ship went down during the war near an island off Santa Yuile. It was my father's last command, so when the company refused to sponsor an expedition, he decided to go after private capital. A friend suggested you.'

  That was a lie; she had made inquiries. He was merely the latest of a long list of prospects. She went on quickly, 'And for heaven's sake, don't get outraged. There are still people who have the adventurous spirit. Why shouldn't an old gambler like you, Mr Reicher, spend his last days doing something exciting?'

  The perfect teeth showed in a grin behind the almost lipless mouth. 'There you have the answer, my dear.' His tone was more pleasant. 'My spare money is going into medical research. I'm still hoping a discovery will be made.... ' He shrugged his thin shoulders, and naked fear showed on his face. 'I don't long for the grave, you know.'

  For a moment, Marie felt sorry for him. She thought of the time when she, too, would be old and rickety. The thought passed by like a cloud in a summer sky. She had a more pressing problem.

  'Then you're not interested?'

  'Not in the slightest.'

  'Not even a little bit?'

  'Not even one-tenth of one per cent,' said Reicher unpleasantly.

  She left him with a final, 'If you change your mind, you'll find us tied up to pier four in the Golden Marie.'

  She walked back to the harbor, where the small cabin cruiser baked in the sun alongside an uneven row of similar boats. They were mostly seagoing vessels, many of them pleasure craft from the United States. Aboard them were people who played bridge and danced to music from expensive phonographs and lolled in the sun. Marie found herself disliking them because they had ample money and were not like herself and her father, nearly broke and beginning to feel desperate.

  She climbed aboard, burning her fingers on the hot wood. Angrily, she slapped her hand against her thigh, stinging the heat pain out of them.

  'That you, Marie?' Her father's voice came from somewhere in the bowels of the vessel.

  'Yes, George.'

  'I've got an appointment with a fellow named Sawyer. There'll be quite a few retired bigshots there. One more chance, you know.'

  Marie said nothing but watched him silently as he came into view. He had on his best uniform, but time had done subtle things to him, and he was no longer the strong, handsome man of her childhood. His temples were gray, and his nose and cheeks were marked indelibly with the wordless trademark of many vintners.

  He strode over and kissed her. 'I'm hoping particularly to talk to a wealthy old codger — Reicher — who'll be there.'

  Marie parted her lips to tell him that it would be no use. She changed her mind. She had noticed that his uniform still impressed people. Reicher might not find it so easy to turn down a mature, cultured man.

  Not till he had gone did she wonder suddenly what kind of meeting could bring Mr Reicher out of his hideaway.

  **

  She ate a leisurely lunch of fruit from the refrigerator and then composed a poem that sang of the cool delights of the tropical seas where the sun was as hot as a murderer's ire. After filing the poem away in a drawer filled with other bits and pieces of verse, she sat on deck under an awning and watched the sea and the harbor scene around her. The waves glittered in the afternoon sunlight and reflections sparkled or glared from the white bows of the small craft and from the white walls of the town buildings. It was a scene that still fascinated, but she wasn't sure any more whether she loved it or hated it.

  It's beautiful here, she thought, but dangerous for a penniless father and daughter.

  She shuddered at the extent of that danger, then shrugged defiantly and thought, At worst I could always do something.

  She wasn't exactly sure what.

  She went below decks finally and put on her bathing suit, and presently she was paddling around in the warm, gently pulsing sea. The swimming was euthanasia, of course — another day gone the way of a hundred like it, each like a little pebble dropped into the ocean of time, sunk without a trace.

  She looked back over that avenue of sun-brightened days, individually delightful, collectively disturbing since she was wasting away her life.

  And she was, for the nth time, about to make some worthy resolve about her future, when she grew aware that over on the fancy sailing yacht moored a hundred feet away, Sylvia Haskins had come on deck and was beckoning to her.

  Dutifully, Marie swam over and climbed wetly and reluctantly aboard. She detested Henry Haskins, Sylvia's husband, so she was relieved when Sylvia said, 'Henry has gone to a meeting in connection with a big medical discovery, and we're going out to some island near here to have a look at something or somebody on whom it's been success
fully used.'

  Marie said, 'Oh!'

  Her picture of Henry Haskins probably differed from his wife's. A cold-blooded bedroom athlete — as described by himself — Henry had several times tried to corner Marie. He had desisted only when confronted with the pointed edge of a knife presented and manipulated with a firmness that convinced him that here was one 'crow' he was not going to get.

  Henry called women crows, and they pretended that this was a cute way he had of being different. Compared with her husband, Sylvia was mild, friendly, ineffectual, good-hearted — traits made much of by Henry. 'Silly is such a good-hearted crow,' he would say in a fond tone.

  To Marie, the possibility that someone had found a method of prolonging Henry's life was a shuddery idea. But what interested her was the information that he was at a meeting. It seemed instantly certain — in a town the size of Santa Yuile — that it was the same meeting her father had gone to. She said so.

  Sylvia exclaimed, 'Maybe then it isn't goodbye. I believe Mr Peddy and old Grayson and the Heintzes and Jimmy Butt and at least two or three others are in on it.'

  And old Reicher, thought Marie. Oh, my God!

  'Here comes your father now!' said Sylvia..

  Captain Lederle saw where she was and stopped. He looked up at the women, rubbing his hands and exuding enthusiasm. 'Get my room cleaned up, Marie, as soon as you can. Mr Reicher is coming aboard this evening, and tomorrow at dawn we leave for Echo Island.'

  Marie asked no questions before the eager-eared Sylvia Haskins. 'Okay, George,' she said cheerfully.

  She dived back into the water, and presently she was heading belowdecks to her father's cabin.

  Her father followed her, and as she turned to look at him, she saw that his happy mood had faded. 'We're just hired,' he said. 'I put that act on for Sylvia.'

  Marie said nothing, and he evidently construed her silence as an accusation, for he defended himself. 'I couldn't help it, honey. I couldn't let even a remote chance go by.'

  'Tell me the whole story, dear,' Marie said soothingly.

  Her father was disconsolate. 'Oh, some old fraud claims he's got a method of rejuvenation, and these elderly roués are grabbing at the hope. I pretended an interest in the hope of getting something out of it, and I did.'

  Actually, it was a victory of sorts. From the wreck of his own plans, George had salvaged that magical relationship, further contact. Just what it would mean to have Reicher on board was obscure. But here Reicher would be.

  'Do we take along the diving equipment?' she asked matter-of-factly.

  'Naturally,' said her father.

  The thought seemed to cheer him.

  * * *

  2

  FOR THE sea it was another day of many. The water felt its way with practiced skill among the rocks and coral of that remote island. Here, on the sand backwater, it whispered a soft sound. There, on a reef, it roared at the resistance of the hard rock. But all its noisier emotions were on the surface. In the depths off shore, the ocean was quiet.

  Marie sat on the deck of the somewhat dilapidated cruiser and felt at one with the sky, the sea, and the island where the men had gone ashore. She was glad that nobody had suggested bridge for the ladies while they waited for the men to return. It was midafternoon, and the ladies were probably all napping, so she had the ocean universe to herself.

  Her idle gaze caught a movement in the water, and she glanced down. And then she leaned forward, gazing downward, startled.

  A human figure was swimming far down in the water below her — at least forty feet down.

  The sea was singularly transparent, and the sandy bottom was visible. A number of colorful parrot fish wheeled in those crystal-clear depths and sped out of sight into the shadows of the cliffside closer to the shore.

  The man was swimming with great ease. But what was amazing was that he was so far down and that, distorted by water movement, his body looked strange, not quite human.

  Even as she had that thought, he glanced up, saw her, and swiftly, with enormous power, darted up toward her.

  And only then, as he broke free of the sea, did Marie realise.

  He was not human.

  The creature that had come out of the water had a humanlike body. But the skin on his face and elsewhere was unnaturally thick, as if it had fat layers and other barriers against cold and water.

  And Marie, who had seen a great many variations in sea life, recognised what was under his arms instantly — gills.... His feet were webbed, and he was at least seven feet long.

  For years now, fear had been her least emotion, so she pulled back a little, shrank inwardly — a little — and held her breath for a few seconds longer than normal.

  Because her reactions were that tiny, she was looking at him when he... changed.

  He was still in the water when it happened. And he was in the act of reaching for the gunwale of her little craft.

  The long, strong body shortened; the thick skin grew thin; the head became smaller. Within the space of seconds Marie was aware that his muscles were twisting, writhing, working under a strangely mobile skin. Light reflections and the roiling of the sea obscured some of those motions, but what she saw was a seven-foot 'fish' being transformed in a matter of seconds into a completely naked young man.

  This being, human in every way, vaulted aboard her craft with effortless strength. He was, she saw, six feet tall and very matter-of-fact. He said in a pleasant baritone, 'I'm the person whom all the fuss is about. Old Sawyer has really outdone himself in producing me. But I realise you must be shocked. So get me a pair of trunks, will you?'

  Marie didn't move. His face was vaguely familiar to her. Long ago — it seemed long — there had been a young man in her life ... until she discovered that she was but one of a dozen girls, with most of whom he carried on a far more exotic existence than she had ever permitted.

  The young man looked like that young man.

  'You're not — ' she said.

  He seemed to know what she meant, for he shook his head smiling. 'I promise to be completely faithful,' he said.

  He continued, 'We need — Sawyer and I need — a young woman who will bear my child. We think we can reproduce what I can do, but we have to prove it.'

  'B-but what you can do is so perfect,' Marie protested, only vaguely realising that she was not resisting his proposal at all. Somehow, she already had a strange feeling of fulfillment as if at last she could do something that would remedy the wasted years.

  'You saw only a portion of what I can do,' said the young man. 'I have three shapes. Sawyer not only reached back into the sea history of man, but he reached forward into its future potentiality. Only one of my shapes is human.'

  'What's the third?' Marie breathed.

  'I'll tell you later,' was the reply.

  'But the whole thing is fantastic,' said Marie. 'What are you?'

  'I'm a Silkie.' he answered. 'The first Silkie.'

  * * *

  I

  NAT CEMP, a class-C Silkie, awakened in his selective fashion and perceived with those perceptors which had been asleep that he was now quite close to the spaceship whose approach he had first sensed an hour before.

  Momentarily, he softened the otherwise steel-hard chitinous structure of his outer skin, that the area became sensitive to light waves in the humanly visible spectrum. These he now recorded through a lens arrangement that utilised a portion of the chitin for distance viewing.

  There was a sudden pressure in his body as it adjusted to the weakening of the barrier between it and the vacuum of space. He experienced the peculiar sensation that came whenever the stored oxygen in the chitin was used up at an excessive rate, for vision was always extremely demanding of oxygen. And then, having taken a series of visual measurements, he hardened the chitin again. Instantly, oxygen consumption returned to normal.

  What he had seen with his telescopic vision upset him. It was a V ship.

  Now the V's. as Cemp knew, did not normally a
ttack a full-grown Silkie. But there had been reports recently of unusual V activity. Several Silkies had been psychologically harassed. this group might conceivably discover where he was going and use all their energy to prevent his arrival.

  Even as he considered whether to avoid them or to board them — as Silkies often did — he sensed that the ship was shifting its course ever so slightly toward him. The decision was made for him. The V's wanted contact.

  In terms of space orientation, the ship was neither up nor down in relation to him, of course. But he sensed the ship's own artificial gravity and adopted it as a frame of reference. By that standard its approach was somewhat below him.

  As Cemp watched it with upper-range perception that registered in his brain like very sharp radar blips, the ship slowed and made a wide turn, and presently it was moving in the same direction as he but at a slightly slower speed. If he kept going as he was, he would catch up with it in a few minutes.

  Cemp did not veer away. In the blackness of space ahead and below, the V ship grew large. He had measured it as being about a mile wide, half a mile thick, and three miles long.

  Having no breathing apparatus, since he obtained his oxygen entirely by electrolytic interchange, Cemp could not sigh. But he felt an equivalent resignation, a sadness at the bad luck that had brought him into contact with such a large group of V's at so inopportune a time.

  As he came level with it, the ship lifted gently until it was only yards away. In the darkness on the deck below, Cemp saw that several dozen V's were waiting for him. Like himself, they wore no spacesuits; for the time being, they were completely adjusted to the vacuum of space. In the near background, Cemp could see a lock that led into the interior of the ship. The outer chamber was open. Through its transparent wall he saw the water inside.

  A basic longing in Cemp twinged with anticipatory pleasure. He reacted with a startled shudder, thinking in dismay, Am I that close to the change?