Collected Short Fiction, page 695
By Fifteenth’s standards this man was fearsomely overdressed. His clothing covered nearly all of him. From waist to feet he wore a sort of bright yellow, loose second skin, which vanished under bright-colored soft boots. From waist to shoulders he wore a sleeveless tunic. His wrists were ornamented with broad, bright-colored bands that looked like leather, but were in colors—blues, greens and mauves. They dangled little pouches and bright shiny things that glittered and seemed to move. Even the man’s head was covered with a soft cap of bright orange color—with such apparel he could never hope to avoid being seen by org or watcher or game.
His costume and his strange proportions were not all that was different about him. Even his face was odd. He was surely much older than Fifteenth, two or three thousand sleeps at least. But his face did not show it. It was not weathered or lined from wind or storm. His teeth were bright and even, as perfect as Fifteenth’s own.
All this Fifteenth saw in the same photographic glance that told him that the man carried no weapon. None at all—neither bow nor knife. Not even a club. Even so, he might not be without danger. His squat frame had the look of strength.
The man took a step toward fifteenth. It was not menacing. It was comic. Fifteenth had never seen anything like it. The man’s sleep was grotesquely energetic—it propelled him into the air. He came down, stumbled, caught himself, fell again in overreaction and sprawled to the ground. The expression on his broad face was funnier than his ungainly tumbling act itself. Fifteenth could not help laughing. From the ground the man laughed, too.
Then the man stood up carefully. He spread his hands as though to show he had no weapons. Fifteenth already knew that. He made no move.
The man did something to the shiny baubles on his wrist. Then he spoke.
His voice came from two places at once. It came from his mouth and from the bauble on his wrist. The sounds from the thing on his wrist were not the same as the sounds from his mouth, but Fifteenth could understand neither of them. He bent his head in the gesture of negation.
The man seemed irritated with his toy. He touched it again and spoke once more.
This time Fifteenth thought he caught the suggestion of a word. Strangely, it came from the man’s wrist, not his mouth. And the rest was gibberish.
The man shrugged and let his arm fall to his side. Then he grinned, touched his chest and spoke a single word. The sound of it was Ben. The man waited inquiringly, as though expecting a response.
Fifteenth was not sure of what was expected of him, other than that the man seemed to want him to speak. The man gestured, pointed to his wrist and made several other sounds. One sounded like pmal, pronounced very slowly and carefully, but what it meant Fifteenth had no idea.
He said, “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
The man applauded, grinned, motioned for more.
“Well,” said Fifteenth, “I am Fifteenth of the men in my people.” He paused a little suspiciously, but the man urged him on. Hesitantly Fifteenth continued: “But I am far from my people and no longer one of them,” he soliloquized. “So perhaps I can have only a word-name, like an outlaw or a woman. Are you an outlaw? But I am going to get an org’s egg. I will hatch it and tame the org. Perhaps I will call myself Org Rider.” He finished and fell silent, listening to the pleasing sound of the name in his mind’s ear.
Excited, the man touched his wrist and spoke again. This time the words from his wrist made sense. They were poorly pronounced, but clearly enough they said: “I am Ben. You are Org Rider.”
The man saw that communication had begun. He spoke again and the thing on his wrist stuttered, emitted a few nonsense syllables and then, very clearly, said, “My people far.”
He gestured for Fifteenth to speak again.
But Fifteenth had heard something else. Frowning, he turned to search the sky.
The sound was strangely ominous, like the hum of a bee tree. His first thought was, Org! Yet the sound was wrong. It was not the harsh scream his mother had described, but something even more fearsome.
Then he saw it—a faint silvery glint high above.
Watcher!
IT WAS a spearpoint in the sky. It had no wings, but it moved so fast the boy could hardly realize what was happening. The man heard it, too. Astonishment spread across his broad face. He turned, bounced toward the silently hovering small watcher, fell clumsily but righted himself and touched the ship with quick, skillful hands.
At once one face of the small watcher glared with a bright golden flame and a bubble began to grow out of it.
Fifteenth did not stay to observe this performance. He ran for his weapons. He did not know what good they would be against a watcher, but no other options were open to him than to use them.
A bright flash of light from above gave him a split second’s warning. Then something crashed nearby. Strange yellow flowers bloomed on the black rock and faded into pale smoke. A sharp reek of burning choked him.
The bubble from the side of the small watcher had grown tall now—abruptly it flared brightly golden. Fifteenth was staring directly at it when it happened. For a moment he was blinded. Bright lights were out of his experience entirely, except for lightning and the smoky glow of a campfire—the eyes of his people did not have quick recovery mechanisms. He could not distinguish just what was happening.
Then he saw that the man named Ben was clawing at the bubble, trying to drag out of it some glittering object that had appeared inside. Again there came that sudden crash. A flash of light flared behind and above him and yellow flame and smoke exploded on Ben. There was a terrible scream. Splinters of rock tore at Fifteenth’s flesh. A hot, choking odor took his breath.
Then blackness drowned him. His bow was in his hand, but he had not had time to raise it, or even to see what had killed Ben and was almost killing himself.
CONSCIOUSNESS returned out of a crazy pain-filled fantasy that was not a dream but a memory. He lay face down on hard, wet gravel. He was shivering in a cold, slow rain.
His first feeling was one of astonishment at being alive. His second made him wrap his wings around himself to cover his nakedness against the rain.
When he tried to move something tightened around his neck so that he could hardly breathe. Panic shook him. He tugged at the coil choking him, but it would not loosen. His hand flashed to his knife, but it was gone. He was tied by the neck like a food beast awaiting slaughter.
Sitting up more carefully, he managed to get to his feet. He saw that he was tethered to a great spearhead-shaped machine that lay on the gravel. It was mottled in brown and yellow, but underneath was the glint of silvery metal.
Ten paces away lay the butchered squat corpse of Ben. A faint mechanical squeal came from the silvery cube of the small watcher that had brought him. It would bring no one ever again, for the explosion had blasted it. It lay sparking feebly, cracked and broken, on the gravel.
“Good to see you awake, boy.”
THE booming voice caught Fifteenth by surprise. He moved abruptly and was jerked back by the choking coil around his neck. When he caught his balance he saw a man taller than himself, red-bearded, green-eyed, grinning and rocking on his feet by the small pile of weapons and wings.
“Who are you?”
“Why,” said the man, “you can call me Redlaw. You’re a long way from home, Fifteenth.”
The boy kept off his face the sinking astonishment that this man knew his name. “I am not Fifteenth any more,” he said suddenly, a little surprised at himself. “My name is Org Rider.” For some reason he knew this was now true. He had ceased being the Fifteenth among his people. He stood alone—a man.
Redlaw’s laugh boomed out. “An Org Rider without an org? Your brother was right, boy, you’re a fool.” Then he said, not unkindly, “Oh, don’t be surprised. The watchers don’t only watch. They listen, too. We’ve been listening to you for a long time.”
“How? I never saw you before.” Redlaw shrugged and smiled. “I’ve never seen a watcher,” said Org Rider. “And you have never been on our mountain, I am certain.”
“You’re making a wrong assumption,” Redlaw said. “I’m not a watcher. I work for them. As butcher in their galleys—” he gestured at the blood-stained apron he wore—“and sometimes as translator, when they want to know what people like you are saying. But I know you are truthful when you tell me you’ve never seen a watcher, because they don’t look a bit like you or me.”
“Then where are the watchers?”
“You’ll see them soon enough.” The man stirred the weapons on the rock with a foot and peered at Org Rider out of shrewd green eyes. “It’s not you they care about, you know,” he said suddenly. “It’s your dead friend here. What do you know about him?”
“Nothing,” said Org Rider proudly, fighting back the pain and dizziness that were tearing at him. Dried blood on his arms and in his hair showed where he had been struck. No one had troubled to do anything about his injuries while he was unconscious. “He appeared from nowhere. I do not know how.
I had never seen him before. This is true.”
“Oh,” said Redlaw, “I believe you. Whether the watchers will or not is something else. But you’ll find out—one way or another—because here they come now.”
A section out of the middle of the ship dropped flat to make a wide door and a ramp. Five creatures came flapping out and dropped to the rock around Redlaw, staring from a distance at Org Rider.
Though they waddled on two legs when they were not flying, they did not look human. They were squat and powerful-looking, like the man who had died so quickly and uselessly. Even more so—they were barely half the height of Org Rider or Redlaw. But the ways in which they differed from humans were extreme.
They wore slick bright armor that looked as though it grew on them. Their armored arms looked thick and muscular, and their wings were yellow-streaked leather—it looked frighteningly like tanned human skin to Org Rider—and stretched from their arms to their stubby legs. Their faces were beaked. They had no necks. Wide black flexible ears spread out from each side of their beaks. Their multiple eyes were greenish bulges, proruding from each side of the head.
Their hands horrified Org Rider. The fingers resembled squirming pink food worms as they palped every seam of Org Rider’s tented wings, every strap of his flying gear.
They emitted a foul odor that struck him in a suffocating wave. It took his breath and stung his eyes like death-weeds burning. Even Redlaw, who clearly had had opportunity to get used to these beings was wrinkling his nose and showing distaste.
The creatures squeaked to each other and then paused, big ears spread. One of them was holding the needled guide that had been Org Rider’s mother’s gift, the direction-showing trinket. Org Rider started to try to break free.
“Easy, boy,” said Redlaw tightly. “You’re very close to being dead right now. Don’t push it.”
THE watchers squeaked to each other, then once again went through the routine of palping his wings, his garments, his waterskin, his firepot, knife, coils of rope, empty pots. Then they moved like stumps rocking across the graveled rock to where the dead man lay.
They did not touch him, but they squeaked again, this time peremptorily.
Redlaw scowled uneasily and puckered his lips to whistle some sort of message. It was not very much like the squeaks of the watchers but it was as close as a human could come, Org Rider thought, and the watchers seemed to understand it. They replied.
Redlaw nodded and turned to Org Rider. “I’ve told them what you say. Two of them think you are lying. One thinks you are too stupid to lie. The other two have not yet made up their minds.”
Org Rider was silent, letting that information soak through his brain.
“You see,” said Redlaw, “this strange-looking fellow here is very disconcerting to them.” He squinted thoughtfully at the racked body that lay staring sightlessly at nothing. “In a way they know that what you say is true. In another way they are not sure. Why did he come to you, boy? By accident? They’ll never believe that.”
“I know nothing more than I’ve told you,” said Org Rider stubbornly. “If I die for it.”
“You just might,” observed Redlaw mildly, then started as a blast of whistling came from the watchers.
His tone was suddenly harsh. “They want to know why you don’t carry the watchman’s eye.”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“The talisman of their service.”
Redlaw touched a sort of medallion he wore around his own neck. “Like this—to show you’re their friend and servant.”
“My people are not servants.”
“Maybe that used to be true,” acknowledged Redlaw. “Your people lived almost out of range. But times are changing. This friend of yours here—what’s left of him—is making them change. I think you’ll go away from here wearing an eye if you go away at all, Org Rider.”
A burst of peremptory whistling and two of the watchers waddled toward the boy. The yellow coil around his neck tightened, strangling him, forcing him to his knees. The man warned, “Don’t fight them—it’s your life.”
The bitter reek set him sneezing even while he gasped for breath. A leather wing slapped him into silence, knocked him down. A hot, hard-armored body fell on him and those pink, writhing fingers searched his body, prying into mouth and nostrils—every orifice and indentation. The weight, the pain, the indignity, the lack of air all combined to fill Org Rider with a helpless fury. He could not cope with it—he could only rage inside himself until at last the weight rose from him and the watchers took their foul reek away.
What might happen next was at that moment of no interest to Org Rider. He was preoccupied inside himself. He had never been so treated. He had never been so helpless, not even when the girl he was interested in had whispered to him that she had pledged to marry his brother.
In pain and anger, Org Rider was conscious of one certainty. He would see the watchers paid for this.
AT LENGTH Redlaw’s voice boomed: “You can stand up, boy. I’ve made a deal for you.”
He whistled sharply and the yellow rope fell away from Org Rider’s neck.
“You’re going to wear the watchman’s eye,” Redlaw ordered. “It will show them everything you see. If you have any further contact with funny-looking fellows like your dead friend here, they want to know about it.”
“What if I say no?”
Redlaw scowled. “I don’t care.” He tapped the square-bladed knife at his waist. “Maybe I didn’t tell you that they have a taste for human flesh. To them you’re an animal to be used one way or another. What you do is your gamble, not mine.”
He paused, looking toward the ship. From the gaping hatch a sixth watcher flapped down. It was darker than the others as well as bigger, its stubby wings almost black. It flew directly to Org Rider and caught him in a reeking hug, clasping something around his neck. The contact lasted only a moment—then the large watcher fell away.
The object was a heavy black globe, twice the size of the ball of Org Rider’s thumb. A slick black cord of some sort of leather held it around his neck.
“Our captain asked me to tell you,” said Redlaw, “that if you lake it off he will do you the honor to eat you himself.” He glanced over his shoulder. The captain of the watchers had already returned to the ship. The others were flapping slowly after him.
“Goodbye, Org Rider,” said Redlaw.
He turned and entered the ship. The hatch closed. At once a small curved shell tipped down along the length of the ship. Something whined. A gust of warm wind sent Org Rider staggering across the gravel and onto the moss.
The ship rose and whined away through the sky. Org Rider watched it until he was sure it was not coming back.
Then he set about gathering his lost gear. None of it was lost or badly damaged, though it was scattered all over the rock and all of it stank of the death-weed reek of the watchers.
As soon as he had it he strapped on his harness, loaded himself with what he had to carry. His torn body was sending messages of pain from the crusted wounds in scalp and arms and his stomach fought against the clinging reek of the watchers. He put them out of his mind. He did not even look again at the dead creature who had emerged from the bubble, or the glittering, broken toy that had brought him.
He launched himself into the air, turned and with great, painful strokes continued toward the distant peak of Knife-in-the-Sky. He did not look back.
IV
MORE than a hundred million miles away, far beyond the great broad curve of the horizon, the spinning wheel of the orbiter marched through its endless sweep.
Ben Pertin turned away from the monitor screen. The image on it was cracked and shattered. What showed clearly was a ghastly view of Ben’s own dead, staring eye, peering emptily forever into the gaudily clouded sky of Cuckoo.
Ben looked guiltily at the silvery girl he called Venus. He did not think even an alien like her would fail to see the emotions reflected on his face and he was not proud of how he felt. To see oneself die was unsettling. The Ben Pertin who had just had his skull smashed and his body blasted on the distant surface of Cuckoo was as much himself as this other body he was inhabited here.
I’m sorry, Venus,” he said. “Sorry?”
He said, “I guess the mission down there was a bust. Still, we’ve learned something from it. First and most important—next time we send somebody down we’d better arm him for bear. No more waiting till he asks for weapons and trying to get them to him in a hurry.”
“Concurred,” said Venus. “Also editing appears necessary due to the gravity differential.”
“Right. That light gravity is tricky. I—he was falling down all over the place. I’ve never been transmitted in an edited form before,” he said. “I don’t know how well I like the idea.”
“It does not hurt, Ben Line.”
“Of course not.”
The silvery girl curled one wing and moved closer to him, studying him carefully. “It is established,” she said in her chiming voice, “that my people and Arcturan robots, for example, experience less ego-displacement in transmission than do you or, for example, the T’Worlie. Suggestion. One of us can go on the next transmission to the surface of Cuckoo.”
