Collected Short Fiction, page 702
To his surprise, Babe understood at once—so quickly that before Org Rider had reached his goal, Babe came sailing over him on quivering wings.
Org Rider shouted in delight—but his delight faded and congealed into panic, as the org kept going, past him and up, up over the sheltering leaves of the forest screen. It wheeled in a climbing spiral, and screamed with a sound the boy had never heard it make.
Fear took the boy’s breath. Was Babe calling to the wild orgs above the cliffs? He looked back to his companions for help. Redlaw sound asleep under a mossy rock. Ben Yale Pertin was watching apathetically. Without thinking, Org Rider crouched and kicked himself into the air, using every bit of strength in his legs and body, leaping a dozen times his own height, straight at the wheeling org.
Babe saw him and joyously dove to meet him. His young clumsiness made them collide, spinning Org Rider off balance, knocking the breath out of him. But the org was up to the needs of the moment. Org Rider felt the velvet trunk coil around him protectingly. Strong and supple, it held him, then lifted him to the org’s sleek-furred back, just above the rippling wings.
Org Rider raised his voice in a shout of triumph. “Now I am truly Org Rider! Faster, Babe! Faster and higher!”
The org echoed in its piping voice: “Faster, Babe! Faster, faster!”
Org Rider clung with his knees, fists locked in the golden fur, leaning against the wind of their flight. The throb of wings became a purr as Babe dived across the treetops, climbed again and wheeled toward a clearing, so close above the yellow-bladed shrubs that Org Rider saw the giant moths fluttering about in terror. His first alarm became a wild elation. His own wings had never lifted him with such speed or strength. He clapped the org’s golden flank and called into the wind, “Good, Babe—good!”
And the org piped happily, “Good Babe!” as it circled and dived again.
Org Rider found that Babe would respond to voice and tug of fists and kick of heels. Thoughtfully he drove the org back toward the clearing where the giant moths fluttered and cried, “Food, Babe! Get it!”
“Food Babe!” echoed the org and showed its understanding by diving at one of the moths to catch it in spread talons. “Home Babe?” it piped questioningly.
Org Rider cried, “Yes, Babe, home! We’ll cook it and eat it. You’ve earned your food this time!”
They flew high while Org Rider searched the flank of the mountain for the place where they had left Redlaw and Ben Yale Pertin. All the trees looked alike to him, all the clearings much the same. He caught a glimpse of something metallic high on an outcropping, but it was not small enough to be Redlaw’s cleaver or one of the stranger’s peculiar instruments. He began to feel dismay—and then realized that Babe knew better than he. The org had already zeroed in on the campsite and was beating toward it powerfully.
When they landed he got of his org’s back and said solemnly, “Now I am truly Org Rider.”
Redlaw stared at him with anger and a touch of wry admiration. “Org Rider, yes,” he rumbled. “But also a fool. Listen, Org Rider. What do you hear?”
Org Rider, perplexed, stood still, ears tuned to—what? A distant shrill whistle?
“Do you hear it? Do you see it?” demanded Redlaw. “Over there—beyond the trees. High in the sky.”
Org Rider looked. He had not heard it because of the whistle of wind in his own ears, but now he heard it clearly and saw it, too, falling like a thick, blunt spear toward the slope of the mountain—a ship of the watchers.
“If they saw you,” muttered Redlaw, “you will not live to be truly Org Rider very long.”
THE sputtering pmal translator on Ben Yale Pertin’s wrist caught only a few words, but they were enough to warn him. The watchers were nearby.
Pertin did not need to hear more, he had encountered the watchers. They were the ones who had shot his ship out of the sky of Cuckoo. In any other world they would have killed him, for he had fallen more than a mile, but in Cuckoo’s gentle surface gravitation he had survived with only cuts and bruises. And would have missed those if he had been less panicked and in better shape, he knew.
That kind of knowledge was no comfort. Pertin feared the watchers. He feared dying, even when intellectually he welcomed it—there was no kind of future that looked good to him, unless by some miracle Zara should appear and offer a new life here. That was fantasy. Reality was that he would die here and would hate it.
Org Rider, ignoring the danger from the sky, was splitting and skinning the body of a golden-furred creature like a moth, spitting it over the fire. The yellow dust from the creature’s fur gave Pertin a fit of sneezing, but soon the aroma of its roasting meat reconciled him to the dust. When it was done, Pertin humbly waited his turn. The best bits went to the org. Redlaw had second choice, then Org Rider. Pertin came last. But there was still plenty left, and it was delicious.
When they had finished eating rain had begun to fall, great fat slow drops that touched the fire and extinguished it. Gray clouds fell to the tops of the trees.
The red-haired giant bounded over to Pertin and shouted something that the pmal translator rendered as: “Rainclouds hide us from watchers. Now we go! Org Rider has seen your ship. We find it—get weapons to kill watchers.”
“But you have been to the wreckage of my ship,” objected Pertin, perplexed. “I had no weapons—”
“Not your ship—like your ship—” crackled the pmal. Pertin gave up the struggle to understand—it did not matter. What mattered was that they were to move again. This time Org Rider did not have to worry about his org, who flew above them, so he and the giant, unfettered, made fast time. It was all Pertin could do to keep up with them. They kept on and kept on. They did not even stop to eat, paused only long enough to pass around handfuls of roasted moss-nuts, now cold and almost tasteless—the trio munched them as they continued traveling. Three times they ate, pausing once to drink at a vine-covered stream and to relieve their bowels and bladders, then hurrying on.
Finally Redlaw and Org Rider stopped and waited for Pertin to reach them.
The giant said, “Look—beyond the gray moss, between the boulders. What do you see?”
Pertin tried to focus his eyes, dizzy with weariness. See? Yes, there was something there, something bright that caught his eye.
The glint of light was metal. He glanced at the others, then joined them in a stumbling, hopping run up the gentle slope. And there, partly hidden by purple-flowered moss, was the wreck of a machine.
It was not his ship. It was smaller and it clearly had been there for a long time. The moss had overgrown it completely, except for a few outjuttings of metal.
Metal? Yes, clearly it was metal. But something was strange about it. The color was not clean. It was stained with a watery bluish radiance that looked unfamiliar and vaguely ominous.
He scurried toward it. It must have been a man-carrying vehicle. Perhaps a machine one of his predecessors had used. He could not say. It was so broken that he could not be sure. He tore at the moss, peering inside through a dark opening rimmed with shattered crystal. A sharp scent stung his nostrils—it did not seem to be coming from the moss, but from the bluish coating on the metal. Now that he touched it, it felt slick, slippery, moist—oddly repellent . . .
A bellowing came from behind him and his pmal rapped out: “Do not touch—not—not—”
Confused, he stood up. Redlaw and Org Rider were coming toward him, anger and concern on their faces. “What’s the matter?”
They stared at him curiously. They seemed to be looking mostly at his hands. For a moment neither said anything. Then Redlaw’s voice sounded oddly gentle. “Clean hands,” rapped the pmal translator without emotion. “Wipe on moss. Do not touch metal.”
Pertin shrugged, not understanding. He seemed to have gotten some of the blue slime on his fingers. Obediently he bent and rubbed his hands on the soft gray moss . . .
What he was rubbing against, he suddenly realized with a heartstopping sensation of nausea, had the shape and texture of a human skull.
He clawed at the moss. It was a skull! A whole skeleton, in fact, the flesh rotted away, but the bones still strangely dressed, under the moss, in the imperishable plastics of an explorer’s jungle garb, red top, orange-and-yellow pants, great white gauntlets, and on the shrunken forearm bones the coils of translator, recorder, direction-finder, timekeeper and all the other regulation instruments.
The giant spoke, and the pmal chattered: “Danger. Do not touch bones. Serious. Be warned.”
Pertin looked up at them, aware of the bluish radiance that clung to the bones, aware that it still befouled his fingers, in spite of his efforts to rub them clean.
“Danger?” he repeated dully. “Yes, I suppose so, if you say so. But you’re wrong about one thing. They’re not a stranger’s bones. I know those bones very well, and I know the clothes they wear, too. I ought to. They’re mine.”
X
FAR away, around the great bulk of Cuckoo, the orbiter was preparing to transmit its observer along the tachyonic path FARLINK had charted to the source of the interfering transmission in the galaxy. They still didn’t know how far it was, exactly. Roughly in the direction of Earth, yes—but at extragalactic distances that could place the source anywhere from Rigel to Canoopus and farther than that in the line of flight from Cuckoo.
Distance was only one of the unknown factors. Would the transmitted duplicate find breathable air and bearable temperatures when he stepped out of the receiving box—or sphere, or inflatable bag, or whatever sort of enclosure might contain an uninvited guest? Convenience alone dictated that all the intercommunicating galactic races use essentially the same sort of equipment. This wild card might take any form.
“I’m glad I’m not going,” announced Ben Line Pertin gloomily. He didn’t sound glad even to himself. He found precious little to be glad about these days and looked forward to not much better.
Venus chimed softly, “I’m glad for you, too, Ben Line. Replication is less hazardous for an edited form like myself.”
Ben Line Pertin in quick confusion said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just thinking—”
“That the mission is dangerous and unsure—yes. But it is less so for me. In any event,” she continued melodiously, “FARLINK has chosen me and I have consented.”
He said miserably, “I am sorry, Venus. I’ve been into my own troubles and not thinking about yours. I know how it tears one up to send a self away to suffer or die somewhere—I’ve done it often enough.”
The silvery girl looked at him curiously. “That is so, Ben Line. But—forgive me—in this form it is less painful for me. If I were in my own true form I would feel there was more to lose.”
“Wait,” the sentient ape named Doc Chimp II said, holding up a hand that contained a banana.
“Here’s a message just coming in—”
It was from FARLINK. The recreation room of the orbiter had no screens, but a signal light next to the wall speakers announced the source of the message and was followed by the computer’s electronic voice: “Stand by—”
The pmal of each being translated the words.
“Wonder what’s up,” mused Doc Chimp. “Well, cheers—” He held up his banana in a sort of toast. Pertin responded with his tumbler, while the silvery girl sniffed at cloudlets of luminescent mist she sprayed out of an atomizer.
“Orders,” rapped FARLINK’s voice. “The transmission of Replicate 4182, known as Venus, is canceled. A newly detected singularity in the incoming signals has altered the estimate of requirements. Stand by for assignment of replacement.”
“Congratulations, Venus.” Pertin again raised his tumbler.
“Orders,” rasped the wall speaker. “The substitute for transmission is required to proceed at once to the tachyon station for replication. He is Replicate 5153, known as Ben Line Pertin.”
“Oh, no!” cried Doc Chimp.
“Communication of regret,” shrilled the T’Worlie, Nimmie.
“I’m sorry, Ben Line,” whispered the silvery girl.
Pertin stood numb. He had not expected this—he did not know how to respond.
“Replicate 5153,” growled FARLINK from the wall speakers. “There is great time pressure. Proceed at once for replication.”
“Come on, Ben Line,” said Doc Chimp as gently as he knew how, taking Pertin’s arm. Venus took the other, and the two of them walked the unresisting Ben Line Pertin along the corridors to the radial shaft that led to the tachyon transmitter. He let them. He felt nothing . . .
Nothing while he was on his way to the transmitter.
Nothing (except the sudden, surprising, hard metal lips of Venus against his own, just before he went inside) as he entered the transmitter and stood through its silent omniscient scan.
Nothing when he looked around, and realized he was that he who had remained behind.
Nothing while the chimp and the silvery girl escorted him back to the recreation room, the T’Worlie fluttering behind. They chattered doubtfully among themselves, then pooled their small quotas of open-choice mass to buy him two more tumblers of his favorite drink. He gulped them down, hardly tasting them. He was still here, as though nothing had happened. But he was also there.
And he could never come back.
Later—he was not sure how much later—came a final message of progress from FARLINK. “The transmission,” rasped the speakers, “has been successful. First acknowledgment of arrival has been received, along with samples for environmental analysis. Unfortunately they are not life-sustaining beyond a fairly short period.”
A small silence fell in the rec room before Doc Chimp said, “Well, anyway, Ben Line, congratulations. You arrived.”
“I arrived,” Ben Line agreed. “And I’m dead.”
DOWN inside the atmosphere of Cuckoo, nearly two hundred million miles from the orbiter on Cuckoo’s far side, the exploring team was practicing its flying skills.
The expedition, so far, was going well. From its altitude, miles above Ground Station One, miles out from the slope of the enormous mountain, even Cuckoo looked almost small—not the great sweep of its surface, to be sure, but the detail on it: tiny trees, winking bright puddles of lakes, silvery threads of river. The scene was broken by strange bright clouds that sailed above it, each seeking its own level and seeming to drop glowing spores that gave Cuckoo almost the only light it had, bar the glow of plants and animals on the surface itself.
The explorers did not know these glowing clouds to be dangerous, but gave them a wide berth. Anyway, there was plenty of room in the sky, not only to travel to a destination, but for pleasure, too.
Valkyrie and Zara and the T’Worlie took joy in doing loops and barrel rolls, soaring far off from the little procession of Arcturan robot, Sirian eye and husband and returning. Zara found herself laughing from sheer physical joy. She weighed so little in Cuckoo’s air that it was almost irrelevant whether she was flying head up or down. She followed the piping, frolicking T’Worlie up in a loop. Below her the great sloping flank of the mountain seemed to subside into a plain. Then the plain tipped and became a slope that rose in the other direction—next it passed out of sight completely as she topped out her loop and began to come down.
In her earplug communicator her husband’s voice, faintly amused and faintly annoyed, said, “Will you three please stop playing? We’d better stay close together. This is dangerous territory.”
Rebuked, Zara flopped over and flailed her wings to get her bearings. The T’Worlie, used to flight, darted back and hung before her, its batlike face wearing what she had to recognize as an expression of rueful embarrassment. She burst out laughing.
She caught sight of the silver girl, far overhead, power diving toward her with great, strong strokes. Zara cried, “Come on—race you back!”
She let them signal agreement and start their powerful, effortless flight back toward the sober, sedate members of the party. Then she aimed herself head-first toward the three distant dots, folded her wings except for a tiny web from wrists to hips for control, and activated her athodyd. Thrump, thrump. thrump thrump . . . The radioisotopes poured heat into measured slugs of water, flashed them into steam, expanded them into the pulse-jet and she arrowed toward her husband at a hundred miles an hour, easily passing the gallant but small T’Worlie, catching up with Valkyrie and leaving her behind. Stopping was the problem.
She shut off the jet and tried to lose speed by zooming up sharply, but in Cuckoo’s wan grip the loss to gravity was so small she found herself looping the loop again, involuntarily, before, laughing and dizzy, she was properly back in line with the rest of the party.
Her husband turned to look disapprovingly at her over his shoulder.
“About time you got here,” he grumbled.
Zara, who was concentrating on an even, rippling flow of her wings, gave him a docile, absent-minded smile. What a butterball he was, she thought dispassionately, even in his stretched-out edited version. His round body and pipestem legs made him look like a stork.
“The Arcturan’s getting a strong signal from one of the spotters,” Jon added. “That means we are getting near one of our objectives—
probably a downed explorer ship.”
“How nice,” said Zara, winking at the silver girl. Valkyrie did not wink back; her copy of Earthly human anatomy was not accurate enough for such intimacies. But Zara could hear her tinkling laughter.
Three places ahead of her in line, the Sirian eye raised itself out of the file on its crackling spread of electric forces and turned to confront her. It had no expression, but she read reproof in its stare. The tiny sphincter mouth worked convulsively. Zara could hear no sound from it—Sirians used sound for communication, but the frequencies were far higher than those audible to humans. Twenty thousand Hertz was a low basso-profundo note for them. But the pmal caught it and rapped reprovingly in her ear: “Estimate: Your use of jet propulsion has increased our risk. Assumption: Such sounds in past have attracted predators. Validation: Air-palping reveals three unidentified traces moving toward us at three hundred and seventeen degrees right ascension, minus six degrees declination.”
