A World Called Crimson Part 2

"Are there any cowboys here?" Robin asked hopefully.

"No, sir. No cowboys," Charlie said very definitely.

"I'm hungry," Robin said. "I wish we had something."

With a little squeal of delight, she looked down at her feet. Two platters of fried chicken, with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Her favorite. They ate ravenously, not hearing the Indians any more. They watched the longboat return to the pirate s.h.i.+p. All this way, they could see little Crimson's dress as Blackbeard took her aboard. Robin finished her fried chicken and started to cry.

"Girls," said Charlie in disgust.

"I can't help it. Poor Crimson."

"Is she dead?"

"Blackbeard the pirate took her."

"Charles was my grandfather's name. My grandfather died and they named me Charles."

"I want Crimson!"

"Get down! The Indians will see you."

"The Indians went away. I want Crimson!"

"We could name this beach after Crimson."

"Aw, what do you know? It's only a beach."

"We could name the whole wide world." Charlie gestured expansively.

The green sand of the beach became crimson. The sky had a crimson glow.

"It sure is a funny world," Charlie said. Laughter loud as thunder echoed in the sky. "A world called Crimson," he added.

The tide came in. Spray and surf bounded off the rocks, wetting them.

"We better go up the hill," Robin said. By hill she meant the perpendicular cliffs behind them.

The tide thundered in. They were sodden. They clung to the rocks.

"We need an elevator or something," Charlie said.

Golden cables flashed in the sunlight. The gilt elevator cage came down.

They climbed in as a big wave came and battered the rocks. The elevator went up, up to the top of the cliff. They could see a long way across the water. They could watch the pirate s.h.i.+p sailing away, the skull black as night on its sail.

They got out of the elevator at the top of the cliff. They didn't see any Indians, but they saw the ashes of a campfire.

"Are there lions and tigers and everything?" Robin asked in wonder, gazing out over the beach and the sea and then turning around to see the green forest which began fifty yards beyond the edge of the cliff.

"Sure there are lions and tigers," Charlie said matter-of-factly.

Off somewhere in the woods, a big cat roared. Robin whimpered.

"I w-was only fooling," Charlie said, vaguely understanding that you could somehow make things happen on this world called Crimson.

But he learned a lesson that night. You could make things happen on Crimson, but you couldn't unmake them.

The tiger roared again. But they were downwind from it and it went elsewhere in search of prey. Huddled together near the embers of the Indian campfire, the two children slept fitfully through the cold night.

Then the three suns finally came up on three different sides of the horizon. Crimson was deadly, but beautiful....

_Although credit for the discovery of _Aladdin's Planet_ goes to the explorer Richard Purcell of Earth, two Earth children actually were s.h.i.+pwrecked there twenty years before Purcell's expedition. But instead of paving the way for Purcell, they actually made the exploration more difficult for him. In fact, it was positively fraught with peril. But since _Aladdin's Planet_ had become the galaxy's a.r.s.enal of plenty, it was well worth Purcell's effort. As any schoolboy knows in this utopia of 24th century plenty, _Aladdin's Planet_, almost exactly at the heart of the galaxy, where matter is spontaneously created to sweep out in long cosmic trails across the galaxy, is the home not merely of spontaneous creation of matter, but spontaneous _formed_ creation, with any human psyche capable of doing the handwork of G.o.d. A planet of great import ..._

_--from The ANNALS OF s.p.a.cE, Vol. 2_

She stood poised for a glorious moment on the very edge of the rock, the bronze and pink of her glistening in the sun, the spray still clinging to her from her last dive. Then, grace in every line of her lithe body, she sprang from the rock in a perfectly executed swan dive.

Charlie helped her out, smiling. "That was pretty," he said.

"Well, you taught me how." Her figure was not yet that of a woman, but far more than that of a girl. She was very beautiful and Charlie knew this although he had no standards to judge by, except for the Indian women they occasionally saw or Blackbeard's slave girls when the pirate s.h.i.+p came in to trade.

Unselfconsciously, Robin climbed into her gold-mesh shorts. Charlie helped her fasten the gold-mesh halter. Long, long ago--it seemed an unreal dream, almost--he had been a very small boy and his mother had taken him to a show in which everyone danced and sang and wore gold-mesh clothing. He had never forgotten it, and now all their clothing was gold-mesh.

Robin spun around and looked at him. Her tawny blonde hair fell almost to her waist, and he helped her comb it with a jewel-encrusted comb he had wished into being a few days before.

"I so like Crimson!" she cried impulsively.

Charlie smiled. "Why, that's a funny thing to say. Is there any other kind of a place?"

"You mean, but Crimson?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. It is funny. Sometimes I think--"

Charlie smiled at her, a little condescendingly. "Oh, it's the book again, is it?" he asked.

"All right. It's the book. Stop making fun of me."

Many years ago, when they'd been small children, they had returned to the ruined s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p which had brought them to Crimson. It had been empty except for the book, as if the book had been placed there for them by whatever power had put them in the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. Naturally, they had not been able to read, but they kept the book anyway. Then one day, years later, Robin had wished to be able to read and the next time she lifted the book and opened it, the magic of the words was miraculously revealed to her. The book was called A ONE VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIC HISTORY and it told about just everything--except Crimson. There was no mention of Crimson at all. Robin read the book over and over again until she almost knew it by heart. Even Charlie had listened to it twice all the way through when she read it, but he had never wished for the ability to read himself.