Fiction Complete, page 11
He spoke a few words in halting, villainously mispronounced Irdran, then held a recorder mike toward the native, who expressed himself into it with speed and vehemence. The tech played his speech back, slowing it down so the words became distinguishable.
“Wow,” Bill remarked admiringly. Even the Advanced Colloquial tapes had contained little of the vocabulary being used, and it was clear that the Bio teams had just been cussed out by an expert. They looked at each other, baffled.
“Does that mean he’s not going to cooperate?” one of them asked.
“Maybe I didn’t explain what we want well enough,” the other replied. “I didn’t understand most of what he said, but he sounded annoyed. I’ll try again.”
He started to speak, but before he had completed his first sentence, Gort snapped fully erect and extended his arms in a posture unmistakably warlike; and at the ends of those arms were clublike fists which opened into sturdy-looking three-pincered claws, now fanned apart in an unpleasantly suggestive manner.
“You look soft, Glaxies,” he said, slowing his speech to ominous distinctness for them. “Suppose I take tissue samples from you? Shall I test your reflexes? Why? I know how slow you are.”
He wove his torso from side to side at blurring speed, snipping the air in front of their noses, forcing them back against the ’port.
“Wait a minute!” Bill blurted, grabbing his arm. “You don’t understand! They don’t mean to hurt you. They only want to give you a physical examination to make sure you’re all right!”
“Yeah, you tell him,” one of the team panted, sweating more than the sauna’s atmosphere warranted. “You certainly speak zap a lot better than I do. Maybe you can explain.”
“I know what they want,” Gort growled, and proceeded to name portions of their own anatomies from which they could collect cells for examination.
“Did you get that on tape?” one of them asked excitedly, the scientist in him leaping to the fore. “If we only knew what he was talking about ‘Zifodo,’ for instance—I wonder what that is?”
“From the context, I bet my guess is right!” His colleague was equally enthused. “I bet they do have specialized glands for removing water from the excreta before eliminating it. I told you they must have, didn’t I?”
“That’s only a guess, and you know it. We won’t be sure of anything about them until we get one to dissect.”
They turned lustful eyes on the native.
“These thrips are muddy,” Gort said to Bill. “Let me out of here.”
“Stun him? Hypnospray?” one medic suggested, loth to give up.
“Stunners don’t affect them, remember? And we couldn’t get close enough for a hypnospray. It breaks my heart to do it, but I guess we’ll have to release him. Okay, junior, you might as well take him back to the storage area. You know how to run the stretcher?”
“Why does he need a stretcher? He doesn’t look sick.”
“It’s too cold inside the station for him. He’ll be unconscious about a minute after he leaves the sauna. The stretcher’s right outside.”
They rolled the ’port away from the door.
“Hurry up,” Gort said fretfully, twisting his head around like a praying mantis to inspect the design on his back. “Edris’ paints aren’t the best, and it’s so wet in here. Look! All the colors are running together! You expect me to walk around in public like this? Come on, come on, let’s move!”
As Bill opened the door, he darted out, made for the stretcher, and fell across it.
“Sorry—can’t get my legs up,” he mumbled, his diction slowed to human normal with his increasing torpor. “Too cold now.”
Bill heaved him up. Gort closed his big green eyes, and several openings along the sides of his upper thorax opened, sucking in a last breath of air. The biologists watched, fascinated.
“Spiracles and tracheae,” one of them declared.
“Sphincters and lungs,” the other countered, belligerent.
They glared at each other. Gort managed to force one eyelid partly open. He looked blearily at them, shrugged quite humanly, and attempted to wink at Bill.
“G’night . . .” he murmured, and surrendered to unconsciousness.
“God, do we need stiffs!” one of the team sighed. “If I could only get my hands on one lousy cadaver! Just one!”
They grouched off, differences forgotten.
VI
Bill returned the unconscious native to the storage area, where the mechs put him out on the apron to wake up as it suited him. Then he went to the library. Going into things cold might or might not be a good idea, but it occurred to him that he was overdoing it. The reports filed by the SciComs would contain all they had learned so far; and after he had looked through them, he knew what F-3 meant by “unsatisfactory.” There was enough information about the planet itself, but virtually nothing about its inhabitants. It was known that they lived in holes in the ground, for instance, but no one had ever been in one, and no one knew what they were like inside. No one knew what the zaps were like inside, either, either physically or mentally. The biologists wrote elegant dissertations on their reasons for deducing that the Irdrans were not mammals, or insects, or reptiles, or birds, though they might be a combination of all of these; or something else entirely, which would be reported on at a later date, when a sufficient number of cadavers had been examined. The psychologists contributed soundly reasoned explanations of the probable personality and character structure of the natives which accounted neatly for their uncooperative behavior, though they had as yet devised no way to utilize this knowledge in manipulating the zaps into tests to verify its accuracy.
As he worked his way through the reams of paper, one fact became ever more clear: The Survey Mission to Irdra had been completely shut out by the locals, and nobody knew why, or how to get around it, or even whether or not it was deliberate. Only one man had established contact with a real live zap and was making minuscule progress, and he was an expert on government and politics, fields in which Bill had never been interested. Lucas D. Elphinstone, D.C.L., J.D., Ph.D. PoliSci., LL.D., etc., etc., had been a member of the initial landing party as an expert in protocol and related matters. Among the handful of zaps who had assembled to watch the arrival of the space ship was their World Coordinator himself; and although problems of communication made face-to-face conversation clumsy and unpleasant for both sides, Dr. Elphinstone had (in his own words) “succeeded in establishing rapport with Coordinator Zletz and in enlisting his cooperation in the difficult task of recording and analyzing legal and political procedures and the structure of government on Irdra,” a task rendered even more difficult in that there were no written documents on these subjects. The facts had to be ferreted out from the mass of myths, legends, folklore, and other material being supplied by Coordinator Zletz in rather haphazard fashion. Dr. Elphinstone had given the Coordinator a heat-protected recorder, and the two exchanged reels of microwire through a mail drop checked at regular intervals. The situation was far from ideal, Dr. Elphinstone admitted; but he was making some progress and confidently expected to find the going easier once he had deciphered the basic principles of Irdran government. . . .
Bill dropped the folders into the “Refile” hopper and headed for the lounge. These reports were for official consumption. Latrine rumor and off-the-record griping might prove more informative—and a swift glance around suggested that there would be a generous amount of the latter. For those who kept to GS time, as most of SciCom did, it was the predinner Happy Hour, and those who were participating gave indication of needing its restorative influence badly. As Bill eavesdropped his way toward the drink dispenser, he heard nothing but complaints and whines of self-pity. He paused on the outskirts of an articulate group.
“What’s the use of applying for a transfer?” one disgruntled soul was saying. “You know it’ll come back ‘Request Denied.’ ”
“What else is there to do? If I apply often enough, maybe I will get one. And if I can’t get a straight transfer, I’ll get psyched out. It won’t be a fake, either. What are we supposed to do? Work miracles? I know damned well I’m not going to get anywhere in the next month, or the month after that, or the one after that, either. What can I report? ‘Nothing to report’ ?”
“That’s an idea. Maybe I’ll try that next time.”
“And get lifted for incompetence.”
“It’s not incompetence. The job’s impossible, that’s all.”
“Tell that to AMPAC. Or Willoughby. ‘Marchak’s doing his job. Horton’s doing his job—’ ”
“ ‘Elphinstone’s doing his job.’ ” A new voice took over the mimicking as its owner joined the gathering. “The trouble with you poops is you’ve made up your minds your jobs can’t be done. You’ve given up.”
“It’s different for you and Horton and Marchak,” the previous speaker defended himself. “Rocks and plants just sit there, you don’t have to talk to them, and you were lucky enough to meet the head of the whole shebang first crack out of the barrel and get chummy with him right away; but what about the rest of us? The zaps couldn’t take less interest in us if they made a career of it. If you try to talk to one, he won’t even stand still and listen. Who said they were intelligent, anyway? I’m willing to bet they’re not.”
“Come, come,” Elphinstone chided, for the newcomer was clearly he. “Let’s not overindulge in sour grapes, my friend. Of course they’re intelligent. They have a highly developed linguistic system, music, art, history, an organized social system—they even make beer.”
“It’s not beer,” someone contradicted, “and there are ants that do that.”
“Why don’t you get your buddy, Coordinator Zletz, to help us out?” someone else said nastily. “Or do you want to be the only one who makes it while the rest of us stand around with egg on our faces?”
“Now, that’s uncharitable of you,” Elphinstone mourned, his pudgy face taking on an expression of condescending pity. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been trying to do just that, but Zletz doesn’t seem to grasp what I’m driving at. At least, he never comments on it in a meaningful way. After all, if his people don’t want to talk to us, I daresay he can’t force them to do so.
“Why not?” Bill forgot himself enough to ask. As one entity, the group turned to stare at him. “Ah,” Elphinstone remarked, and the others drew back. He and Bill stood face to face, like potential opponents measuring each other’s strength and skill. Bill was certainly outweighed, but though Elphinstone was fat, there was muscle under the flab. His arms and legs were short, however, and his feet and hands tiny. Bill decided he could lick him, then wondered why he was thinking in such terms. It wasn’t his usual manner of reacting to strangers. Perhaps the aggressiveness and arrogance of the other’s demeanor had brought it on.
“You must be the new addition,” Elphinstone stated, not quite sneering, but too close to it for pleasantry. “Do tell us about yourself. Your name and provenance?”
His small black eyes were cataloguing Bill with the calculating-machine thoroughness of a dedicated pointworshiper. Bill put his hands in his pockets, clenched his fists, counted to ten, then smiled cherubically. He gave the information in honeyed tones.
Elphinstone took it all in.
“Thygnos, eh? Quite primitive, as I recall. High incidence of rejects, too. . . . What’s your specialty? Who among us will have the good fortune to enlist your assistance in his endeavors? I’m sure it will be invaluable.”
“I don’t have a specialization,” Bill confessed, grinning as though he had fifty-six teeth and wanted to show them off. The vacuous idiocy of this grimace usually threw cross-examiners off balance, but Elphinstone kept to his purpose.
“No specialization?” He seemed unwilling to accept that. “You are officially assigned to the station, aren’t you? You didn’t arrive on a world under evaluation by accident. What are you supposed to occupy yourself with while you’re among us?”
Bill thought fast, recalling Misner’s advice.
“I’m kind of an experiment,” he hedged.
“In genetics, I presume.” Elphinstone’s laugh was like the bark of a small, bad-tempered dog.
“It’s an educational experiment,” Bill elaborated unwillingly. “I don’t know too much about it—it wasn’t explained to me. I have this kind of eclectic background, and I’m supposed to study and learn everything I can about as wide a variety of subjects as possible.”
Elphinstone’s eyes narrowed, his point-estimating gaze even more intense.
“What’s your Life Assignment? Status rating? . . . Remarkable. Possibly you were sent here as a mascot?”
Bill smirked ingratiatingly and volunteered no further information. Another piercing stare, and he was apparently dismissed; but he had an uncomfortable suspicion that he had been filed, not for forgetting but for further investigation. He backed quietly away as attention shifted to a member of the group who wished to change the subject, and added Elphinstone to his list of People To Be Avoided, on par with Willoughby and well ahead of Irma.
VII
After nosing quietly about the station piecing together what scraps of information he could collect, Bill was puzzled and increasingly affected by the prevailing atmosphere of gloom. Few people in SciCom seemed to be doing anything at all. The mechs lived in their own little world; AdminComs and Willoughby played their game of musical paperwork; but the majority of the supposed researchers were sunk in apathy. Elphinstone had been right in stating that they had given up, and the question, “Why?” kept nagging Bill. The natives weren’t hostile, merely crushingly, insultingly indifferent. There must be a reason, and it didn’t seem possible that it couldn’t be found out.
This, he decided, was the kind of thing F-3 would want investigated, and the answer wouldn’t be discovered in the station. It was outside, and he would have to go outside to get it. He made up his mind to do so at once, needing only an excuse to explore. After all, he hadn’t come to a brand-new, different, unassimilated world to sit around in a temporary dome reeking of plastic and watch a bunch of incompetents have nervous breakdowns.
He reminded himself of the zap he had rescued. Gort’s manner had been crisp, but not necessarily unfriendly, and he ought to feel some gratitude for having his life saved. If the Irdran dawn were not too far advanced, he might still be snoozing on the apron. He checked the time. It was only 14: 30 a.m. Irdran. The temperature should be around 120°, and the biologists’ reports said that the zaps came to life at 140°—yes, Gort should still be there.
He hurried back to Storage and Supply and found the place where he thought he had left the port last night; but it wasn’t there any more. It was not only closed, it was hermetically sealed. There had to be another way out, and he followed the wall, seeking it, until he came to a glassed-in lean-to built against the Dome’s skin. It reminded him of the shacks of the rejects leaning against the masonry of the pre-Galactic ruins of his own world. Inside it, a mech was lackadaisically punching a file console. As Bill came in, he looked up, nodded, and waited for the newcomer to account for his presence.
“I left a zap here last night,” Bill explained. “Where is he?”
“Left,” the mech grunted, turning back to the file.
The thermometer set in the wall above the desk registered the outside temperature as 123°.
“I thought zaps only woke up at 140°,” Bill said, bewildered.
“Not all of ’em. Depends how fast they are,” the mech explained, bored. “Whizzers come to at 140°, but vot-pickers are the slowest, they can stand a lot more cold. They can get going at 100° if they really want to. That one wanted to. I looked, just in hopes he might’ve kicked off during the night.”
“Did he leave a message for me?”
The mech tore his attention from the filer and inspected him curiously.
“You expect one? From a zap?”
“Well, I did save his life. I thought he might have told me where to get in touch with him, or something. I thought maybe I could make friends with him.”
The mech put down his list and abandoned the file.
“You don’t know much, do you? You can’t make friends with a zap.”
“Why not?”
“Bunch of nuts, that’s why not. Anyway, you can’t talk to ’em without a machine, and they hardly ever stand still long enough for you to talk to ’em, even with a machine. They go stiff when the weather’s cool enough for us to stand it, and when they’re moving around it’s too hot for us, so how’re you gonna make friends with ’em? The creepers should be starting to work about now. Take a look.”
He pushed a button, a panel in the wall slid aside. He pushed another button and the thick window became transparent enough to allow a murky view of the apron. Bill pressed his nose against the glass and strained to see. Twenty or thirty zaps (they whipped around so fast it was impossible to count them) were doing something with the dolly trains the mechs had loaded and left on the apron the night before. Or maybe they weren’t. The trains were there, ready to be hauled away. The tractors were there, too, but the natives driving them seemed to be engaged in a game of tag. They drove the little machines full tilt at each other, aiming at head-on collisions which they avoided with astonishing dexterity at the very ultimate second, they wove around and through the dolly trains in pursuit of each other and the dismounted zaps, who made incredible leaps over the tops of the oncoming tractors or last-minute dashes to one side, like bullfighters. They appeared to be having a whale of a good time. Though no sound came through the window, their gesticulating arms and antennae and their fluttering mouth-shields implied that they were shouting and encouraging each other.
“Bunch of nuts,” the mech repeated sourly. “I keep hoping one of ’em’ll get clobbered someday so we could collect the bonus from Bio, but they never will. They move too ruddy fast. Those tractors have governors on them, and the zaps can outrun them anytime, or jump over ’em like that one just did. Maybe one day the timing’ll be off for one of them, and then—pow!” His eyes sparkled hopefully.
