Fiction Complete, page 12
“Don’t you like them? They look like a great bunch. I bet that’s fun, what they’re doing.”
“Maybe it is, but it ain’t what they’re supposed to be doing.”
The mech pushed another button. Bill could hear nothing, but the wall vibrated to the noise of an outside speaker. The zaps paused in their merry activity and looked back at the Dome. They listened to some announcement, made gestures obviously derisive, accompanied by mouthings undoubtedly uttering jeering statements. They then proceeded to align tractors and trains, couple them together, and speed away in a matter of seconds. The mech watched, unmollified.
“Damn! If those creepers felt like it, they’d be the best construction workers in the universe in hot climates! But you can’t depend on ’em. They only work if they feel like it.”
“What did you do to get them going?”
“Broadcast on the PA system. Some spiel Chief Misner made up. I don’t talk their language, I don’t know what it says, but it moves ’em out. That Misner—he’s really something. He’s a top man. He doesn’t belong on a two-bit project like this, but I guess they hadda send a Class A expert to get the permanent construction under way. We were here nearly a year—they kept shipping bosses and engineers out, a new one every two or three weeks. Couldn’t get the zaps to pick up a pebble or even look at a crate. They wouldn’t do nothing. Then they sent Misner. I don’t know how he did it, but the buildings are starting to go up, finally. He’s really one great guy. Got his own way of doing things, though. He don’t go by the book. He said to help you out any way we could, if you came around, so if there’s anything you want that I could help you with, just say so.”
“I’d like to go out and see if I can find that native. Where do I get a heat-suit?”
“You go to Admin and get a release from Irma. Then bring it back here and I’ll give you one.”
“Why do I have to ask Irma?”
“I don’t make the rules, kid. I only stick to ’em. And don’t go asking me to slip you a suit without that little green paper, because I ain’t about to do it.”
“You mean if something went wrong with one of the tractors on the apron, for instance, you’d have to go to Admin and get authorization before you could put on a suit and go out and fix it?”
“I wouldn’t. I’m a mech. But you’re SciCom, and you go by SciCom’s book.”
Bill’s face fell. It was remotely possible that he might be able to charm Irma, given enough time to coax her dormant maternal instincts to the surface; but the prospect was not pleasing, and he was impatient. There ought to be some way around this. If the mechs could use suits without authorization . . .
“Where can I find Chief Misner?” he asked.
“He’s out at the construction site right now. I sure wouldn’t like his job, out there alone with them zaps all day.”
“Maybe he could use a helper!” Bill suggested, inspired.
The mech looked blank.
“Why don’t I go over and ask him?” he pursued, all zeal and eager to be helpful. “How do I get out?”
“The lock’s over there,” the mech answered absentmindedly. He seemed to be trying to figure out what he had missed, for the conversation was heading in an unexpected direction.
Bill walked over and opened the inner hatch of the personnel lock.
“Hey, you can’t go out there like that, without a suit!” The mech scrambled frantically to stop him.
“Why not?” Bill returned cheerfully. “It’s only 125° out now. If I can survive the sauna, I can certainly survive that.”
“You don’t know what it’s like out there! It’s a furnace, it’ll kill you! Don’t be stupid, kid. That’s one regulation makes sense.”
“The air’s breathable, isn’t it? I’m not likely to come down with any gruesome alien diseases, am I? So what’s to worry about?”
He stepped into the lock. The mech grabbed the handle and held the door open, genuinely distressed.
“It’s suicide!” he insisted. “You’ll dehydrate! I seen pictures of a guy who got caught out there without a suit. He was shriveled up like a mummy!”
“I won’t be out that long,” Bill soothed. “I’m only going over to talk to Chief Misner and come right back. I’ll be fine.”
He seized the inner handle and snapped the hatch shut, catching the mech unawares; opened the outer hatch; and stepped into Hell. A searing blast of heat smote him like a blow, heat so intense he shivered. He was afraid to breathe for a minute for fear his lungs would scorch, and the glare of the sun on the parched soil made his eyes water and sting. Behind him the mech was pounding on the inner hatch, and he could barely hear him shouting.
“Close the door! I can’t get this one open unless you close the other one!”
“A good thing to know,” Bill replied politely, propping the hatch open with a rock. He straightened up and began to feel the misgivings a sensible person would have felt earlier.
“It’s the contrast,” he assured himself with false conviction. “It isn’t really that hot, it’s only coming out of the air conditioning makes it seem so bad. 125° is nothing, really. Anybody can survive that, let alone a strong, healthy young Thygnan. Come on, Judson—pull yourself together. You won’t dehydrate in the time it’ll take you to walk to the construction site. It’s not even a mile.”
He was sweating, but the parched air sucked the moisture off his skin as soon as it appeared. Dehydration might take place faster than he had thought, and be a greater hazard than he had realized. He struggled to subdue his panic and get his emotions in hand. It wasn’t that bad, he coaxed himself. He could make it easily. Of course he could.
He moved forward with slowly increasing assurance, reminding himself that he had nothing to fear, after all. During the day the vot-vines withdrew underground and the chichis clammed into their shells to avoid the noonday sun, which cooked up to a toasty 190° or better. No other dangerous life forms had been reported, so far. He was undoubtedly perfectly safe as long as he didn’t lose his head and do something stupid—like coming out here in the first place. He was committed now, however, and he made up his mind to enjoy it if he could.
VIII
At the edge of the apron he picked up the tracks of the dolly-trains and followed them, forcing himself not to hurry, squinting against the sun. He had never seen the planet in daylight before except through the darkened windows of the station. The sun-smashed landscape had a harsh, glaring beauty uniquely its own. Colors shrieked at him: the incandescent brilliance of the orange soil, the fiery crimsons and yellows of the boulders and chichi shells, the puddles and pools and splashes of purple-blue shadow looking almost solid in the desert air. Gentle hills rose plumcolored in the distance, with streaks of white along their flanks like bleached, exposed bones. Even the blue of the sky was dazzlingly deep, unreal, and its contrast to the tender, cloud-washed heaven of Thygnos was most alien of all the strangenesses.
At first it seemed that nothing lived. The skeletons of the pliquot trees clutched their leaves so tightly to them they formed a solid surface, etched by lines like scales. The twin shells of the chichi vines were so tightly squeezed together, a piece of paper would not slip between them. He saw no trace of vot-vines. Where did they lurk? As interest and wonder grew, his attention sharpened. He began to notice small movements in the shadows, and darting things that flashed in the air like jewels, emerald and ruby and sapphire. One landed on a pliquot tree nearby, and he moved toward it to examine it, slowly, so as not to frighten it. Like a tiny enameled toy, it clung to its perch with two legs and a threadlike tail, settling its layered wings, patting the surface beneath it with its forelimbs, preening itself and twisting as if for his admiration. Delighted, he leaned forward to look at it more closely. A sticklike arm shot over his shoulder; claws snatched it up and crushed it.
He turned, indignant, to face a zap which now held the dead creature out to him. The shields over its mouth-parts slid aside, and it twiddled its palps at him in friendly greeting. It pushed the corpse of the flying thing closer to him, and he stared at it in horror.
“Don’t want?” That much he caught of what it said. It shrugged, popped the victim into its mouth, politely closed its mouth-shields and enjoyed its snack before addressing him again. Its speech was of course too rapid for him to follow, and he told it so. It sized him up in a flash.
“Thirst-shock,” it diagnosed confidently, unhooking a canteen made of something like ceramic from a belt around its waist and holding it out to him. “Drink!” Before he thought, he downed a couple of swallows. “All, all!” the zap urged, snapping its claws impatiently.
Ever obedient to a direct order, he emptied the flask. Whatever the stuff in it was—and it hadn’t been water, as he had expected it to be—it was a pleasant-tasting and refreshing beverage, aromatic, with a hint of sweetness. A light fragrance touched his memory: the scent of the night air.
“What is this?” he asked, handing the empty canteen back.
“Vot-juice. What else would it be?” the zap replied, looking him over carefully. “Not enough. Come on.”
It skittered away, expecting to be followed. Bill hesitated. He shouldn’t be out without a heat-suit, but he seemed to be adjusting to the temperature. He wasn’t much more uncomfortable than he would have been on a record-breaking hot day back home, and if it wasn’t any worse than that, why shouldn’t he follow this amiable fellow? Particularly since he was apparently inviting him to partake of more vot-juice, which was probably the “beer” Elphinstone had referred to, and not bad stuff at all. Little ripples of coolness were spreading out from his stomach, and a sense of heightened well-being permeated his tissues. He felt good, and if this was the effect the native brew produced, he was not averse to knitting the bonds of good fellowship with more. He set out confidently to catch up with the zap, who was bouncing in place waiting for him.
“I’m called Ixot,” he presented himself.
“I’m Bill Judson,” he returned, with his best glad-to-meet-you smile.
The zap leaped back, raising his claws defensively. When Bill made no hostile move, he edged gingerly forward.
“Do that again,” he requested.
“Do what again?”
“That—what you just did with your mouth-parts.”
Bill obligingly smiled once more.
“Wow, is that ever ugly,” Ixot commented. “No wonder you Glaxies walk around with bags over your heads! Still, if that’s the way you look, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We probably look pretty funny to you, too. Do we?”
“No,” Bill decided after reflecting on the matter. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re handsome. Lean and elegant.”
Ixot looked gratified.
“You’re the first Glaxie I ever saw that wasn’t all wrapped up,” ho said. “You are kind of a slugly beast, but you don’t look as horrible as I thought you would. Let’s go, you’re still not up to normal.”
They started off. Ixot had some difficulty keeping back with Bill; but even so, Bill managed to keep the pace much better than he had expected to.
“Here we are,” Ixot announced unexpectedly.
Bill glanced around, wondering where “here” was. The landscape still stretched bare and deserted for miles, dotted here and there with boulders, pliquot trees, and other natural features, but nothing else, no construct other than the huddle of domes that made up the station.
Ixot stamped on the ground in front of a boulder decorated with a tastefully carved bas-relief depicting vot-vines and flying things, then stepped back and slipped his claws under the edge of a trap door, noticeable only if you knew enough to seek its outline in the dirt. He raised the door, revealing a tunnel sloping down with steps on one half of it and a slide on the other. He beckoned Bill to follow, seated himself on the slide, pushed off, and swooped out of sight. Bill bravely did the same, debouching into a large room flat on his back with arms and legs flailing the air like an overturned beetle. It was an ignominious entrance, and his aplomb was not restored by the four or five zaps who stared at him in a way that would have been considered extremely impolite on Thygnos.
“Thirst-shock,” Ixot explained, grabbing the front of Bill’s shirt and hauling him to his feet.
“Ah,” the onlookers commented, and lost interest.
Bill gawked around, taking in every detail of the first alien habitation he had ever seen. Since the natives were at least superficially humanoid, it was bound to have some resemblance to what he already knew, but what he saw was. just familiar enough to seem more strange: a bar, like any bar on Thygnos, with tables and chairs and customers sitting around talking and drinking and snacking on what appeared to be dried flyers—but the chairs were padded easels, upholstered in violent colors, and the zaps leaned against them rather than sat on them; the tables were too small and too high, like ordinary tables squeezed and stretched into new proportions; and there were no light fixtures or windows. The walls themselves were luminous. The illumination they provided seemed dim only in contrast to the dazzling sunlight, and as his eyes adjusted he found it completely adequate. The place smelled of vot-juice and other, unfamiliar things, but the air was fresh enough and agreeably moist to his skin. As long as he stayed inside, he need have no worries about dehydrating.
Ixot summoned him to the bar, where their drinks were waiting: two crystal cups, fragile and iridescent as soap bubbles, filled with a green-gold liquid with golden sparkles winking invitingly in its depths. The cups were beautiful objects, but how could zap claws handle anything so delicate? He reached for one of them, covertly watching to see how Ixot managed; forgot subtlety and stared as the claws separated to reveal three ropy-looking fingers which uncurled from niches inside the claws and picked up the vessel with all the dexterity anyone could need. Embarrassed to realize that his mouth was hanging open, he glanced guiltily at his companion and discovered that his own hand, holding the cup, was equally fascinating to Ixot. Their marveling eyes met, and Ixot burst into a rattle Bill recognized instinctively as laughter, in which he joined. They raised their cups, each offered a toast in his own tongue, and they drank.
“You’re okay now,” Ixot decided. “Couple friends of mine over there. Let’s join ’em.”
They went over to a table where two zaps were chatting, pulled up leaners, and lay back without ceremony. Bill adjusted his buttocks to the ledge against which the natives’ lower back-plates rested, and found himself quite comfortable.
“This is Bill Judson,” Ixot informed his friends, who waved their palps in welcome.
“Call me Bill. Great to meet you,” he said, not smiling.
“Tikvol,” one answered.
“Edris,” the other contributed. “You different from the other Glaxies?”
“Dumb question,” Tikvol observed. “Of course he’s different. He talks like a person. Doesn’t drag himself around like an elder after vot-flower night. Only hiding part of himself with fabric.”
“Yeah, why do they wrap themselves up like that?” Edris asked. “They ashamed to be seen?”
“Those are heat-suits,” Bill explained. “We have to wear them because your climate’s too hot for us. They have heat-exchange units on them that keep us cool.”
“How come you’re not wearing one, then?”
“I was on my way to get one when I met Ixot.”
“What’ll happen to you without it? You gonna melt on us?” Tikvol seemed to be looking forward to this interesting spectacle.
“No, I’ll just be uncomfortable. . . . That is, I thought I would be. It’s fine in here, though.” He was amazed. “I don’t feel hot at all!”
“Thirst-shock,” Ixot said complacently. “Told you all along. All that’s wrong with those Glaxies was thirstshock. They were just too dumb to know it. Wouldn’t take a sip of vot-juice, though.”
“I still claim they’re night-creatures,” Tikvol opined. “Never mind all that hooey their talk-boxes kept dishing out about them being from another world—they act just like night-creatures.”
“How do you know? You ever been out at night to see how night-creatures act?” Edris scoffed.
“It’s in the legends from Before the Change,” Tikvol defended himself.
“Sure,” Ixot said eagerly. “And what happened to the night-creatures in the legends when they drank vot-juice? They turned into day-creatures, like us.”
“True,” Edris conceded. “Glaxies are still stupid, though.”
“Why do you say we’re stupid?” Bill asked, nettled.
“Us Godlike beings come from sky, tell ignorant savages how to live,” Tikvol sneered in contemptuous imitation of the flat tones of a portable vox-box. “Who do they think they are? We know how to live, all right. Been doing it all our lives. What nerve! Hanging around pestering people with their thrippy little talk-boxes and sticking their noses into things that are none of their business—or trying to. We don’t need them to teach us to catch flyers!”
“Is that why you won’t talk to them?”
“Partly. They can’t talk, anyway. The boxes do the talking, and they don’t say anything worth listening to.”
“What are you doing out here?” Edris asked.
“Exploring,” Bill said. “I wanted to see what it was like, meet some of you, have fun. There’s nothing to do in the Station. I don’t have a job there yet.”
“Oh. Hacking around before you get your back paint,” Edris decided.
“If he’s out to have a good time, why don’t we take him over to Copta’s?” Tikvol suggested.
“Eley, yeah!” Edris agreed. “We haven’t had a party in a while.”
“Great!” Ixot enthused. “Copta’s band has some new pieces, and there’s one of mine I haven’t heard them do yet. How about you, Glaxie? You like music and dancing?”
