To Follow a Star

by Terry Carr

  Harkins felt uneasy. It wasn’t at all as primitive as it should be.

  They walked into the seemingly deserted town and had proceeded a few blocks when Hawsworthy suddenly stopped and pulled out his pistol. “Something’s coming, Lieutenant.”

  Harkins’ heart rose into his mouth. There was a measured tread of feet down a side street, and a moment later a procession marched into view. Four natives dressed in rich furs were in the van and behind them came an opulently decorated sleigh, pulled by a large, splay-footed animal. The procession halted and the four natives in front bowed low.

  For the first time, Harkins noticed that they were carrying what were obviously meant to be gifts. Huge, circular sheets of beaten copper with crude designs hammered in them, and hampers containing what looked like carcasses of not-too-recently slaughtered alley cats. The natives straightened up and proffered the gifts, then backed away, obviously expectant.

  Harkins accepted the gifts awkwardly, after which there was a long and increasingly heavy silence. Finally a voice from within the sleigh spoke.

  “Don’t just stand there—destroy the gifts, then hand them your pistols.”

  Harkins gasped. The voice spoke his own tongue excellently.

  Hawsworthy chewed his lower lip and looked belligerent. “If we do, sir, we’ll be unarmed and at their mercy. I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “Please show yourself,” Harkins said to the curtained sleigh.

  The curtains parted and a man stepped out. He was plump and betrayed the usual signs of easy living, but his eyes were alive and his face showed a familiar ruddiness. The Terran type, Harkins thought, amazed; he showed it distinctly.

  “Do as I tell you and nothing will happen to you,” the man urged.

  “We would like to see your ruler,” Harkins said stiffly, thinking of an alternative.

  The fat man put his hands on his hips and cocked his head at them. “You’re looking at him. The name’s Harry Reynolds and I run this planet—at least, this section of it.”

  Harkins digested this in silence, then awoke to his responsibilities as a representative of the Churchill and introduced himself and Hawsworthy.

  “You’re sure no harm will come of this?”

  “My word,” Reynolds said expansively.

  Harkins pondered for a moment, then flamed the copper shields and the hampers and handed over his pistol. Hawsworthy did the same. The natives smiled, stripped the cartridges from the pistols, broke the plastic barrels, and finally bowed low and withdrew.

  It was then that it occurred to Harkins that things were looking up. The natives were friendly, a Terrestrial was running things, and chances for planet leave looked highly probable.

  Then another thought hit him. He turned to Reynolds and saluted. “Sir, the officers and men of the Churchill would be highly complimented if you consented to celebrate Christmas with them on board ship.

  Reynolds accepted with alacrity and Harkins gestured to the sleigh. “I’d suggest using your sleigh, sir; we’d save time.”

  Later, seated on the warm cushions of the sleigh and skimming over the countryside, Harkins reflected proudly that his commandeering of the sleigh had been a master stroke. Not only was Hawsworthy duly impressed with his quick thinking, but it looked highly possible that they’d get back to the ship before Jarvis had had a chance to consume all the wassail.

  It was going to be a pleasant evening at that, he thought, and not the least of its pleasantness was going to be when he pinned Reynolds down and found out just how he happened to be running things.

  He looked at Reynolds’s ruddy face out of the corner of his eye. There was probably quite a story to it.

  Back in the Churchill, the junior grades soon had Reynolds surrounded.

  “What do you call this planet, Mr. Reynolds?” Jarvis asked, glass in hand. “Something quite different than the numbers and letters the star maps give it, I imagine.”

  Reynolds ran a finger down the side of his nose and looked thoughtful. “The first few weeks I was here, I thought that I would call it the ‘Santa Claus Planet.’ ”

  Jarvis looked puzzled. “The Santa Claus Planet?”

  “Yes. You see, the natives had made quite a ceremony out of giving gifts—but that’s all part of the story.”

  Harkins seized the opening. “Tell us about it. Back in the town, you said you ran this section of the planet. I couldn’t help but wonder just how you did it.”

  Reynolds filled his glass again. “You can chalk it up to imagination—and quite a dose of plain, dumb luck. It started about thirty years ago, when I was returning to Canopus from a business trip. My tubes blew and I had to make a forced landing on this planet. Naturally, I was stranded until I could make repairs . . .”

  Reynolds groaned and slowly opened his eyes. The cabin seemed to be spinning tightly around him and he fought for control of his stomach, then gave up the struggle and turned on his side and let everything come up. After that, the feeling of nausea gradually passed and the cabin settled down, but it settled at a thirty-degree slant. He vaguely recalled the crash and rolled his eyes slightly to take in all of the cabin. What loose equipment and furnishings there were had been swept down the inclined deck to come to a rest in a broken, jumbled mass against the far bulkhead; he couldn’t tell what other damage there might be but thin curls of blue smoke were drifting up from the engine room—the slightly acrid smoke of burning insulation.

  But the ship was still whole, he thought grimly, and he was still alive, which was a wonder considering that he had been juggled around the inside of the rocket like a pair of dice in a shaker. He moved one arm experimentally and then the other. They were stiff and sore and blood had dried on a few nasty-looking cuts, but no bones were broken.

  The feeling of nausea hit him again and he retched, then gathered his courage and staggered to his rubbery legs. The port on the side of the cabin nearest the ground was shattered and fresh, cool air was blowing through the opening. It smelled good and helped clear more of the cobwebs from his head. Inspection of the hatch a moment later showed that it was hopelessly stuck, so he found a broken handrail and laboriously battered out the fragments of quartz still in the port, then painfully crawled through and dropped to the grassy ground below.

  He lay where he had fallen, collecting his strength, then stumbled over to a stream not far from the ship. Half his shirt served as a washrag to help scrub off the grease and grime and clean his wounds; out of the other half he made crude bandages. He was gasping from weariness when he finished and slumped down on the bank to take stock of his situation.

  The task of repairing the ship wasn’t an impossible one—maybe two weeks, maybe less. In the meantime, he was stranded on the planet.

  He found a self-lighter cigarette in his pants and drew in on it, watching the tip turn to a cherry-red coal.

  Stranded.

  But he couldn’t have been stranded in a better place, he reasoned. He had crashed in a low, broad valley with the stream running through the center of it. A carpet of grass dotted with the pink of some alien flower covered most of the ground, while surrounding the valley were low hills and forests of huge, fernlike trees. The weather seemed warm and temperate and the sky was a rich, tropical blue, with fleecy shreds of clouds drifting slowly by.

  He brushed a lock of thinning black hair away from the bandage wrapped around his head and frowned. According to his star map, the natives were human—probably the degenerate remnants of those who had colonized the planet hundreds of years ago—but friendly.

  At least they’d better be, he thought; there weren’t any weapons on board ship to speak of.

  The warm sun made him drowsy and he let his thoughts wander where they would. Two weeks here and then off to Canopus, where a somewhat shrewish wife and his small, sickly daughter would undoubtedly demand a long and detailed explanation of what had kept him. They would probably refuse to believe a truthful story about blown tubes, so he would have to devote a part of his next t
wo weeks to fabricating a wildly implausible and slightly incriminating story that they would believe.

  But until then, he had two weeks of hard work and solitude ahead of him. In a way, a very pleasant vacation.

  He plucked a blade of green grass from the side of the bank and chewed on it for a while. The work could commence tomorrow; he’d have to rest and recuperate today.

  He turned on his side and dozed the rest of the day.

  The sun had barely risen the next morning when Reynolds was up and inspecting the damage done to the ship. The bottom jets were fused and crumpled, the generators would have to be rewound, and stanchions and handrails and brackets on the inside would have to be welded back in place.

  He got a shovel from inside the ship and walked around to the tube assembly, the dew on the grass dampening his canvas work shoes. It might be wise, he thought, to dig a hole under the rear jets, leaving the rocket balanced on a ridge of earth, so he could get at them. That would be the biggest job and the most difficult and, next to the generators, the most important.

  He shifted awkwardly in his overalls, then pushed the shovel into the ground, heaved, and threw the dirt over his shoulder. It was rich, fertile-looking loam which looked as if it had never been farmed. The people were probably strictly a hunting society . . .

  The sun was hot and he found he had to take frequent rests from the digging. He had never been the muscular type in the first place and with his arms as sore as they were, it was tough going. But by noon, he had worked himself into a pit about waist-level and by late afternoon, he was shoulder-deep. He had long since taken off his heavy twill work shirt and the sweat had soaked into the undershirt and burned into some of the cuts that hadn’t healed yet.

  There were two feet to go before the tubes would be completely unearthed, but he had to rest. He ached in a million places and blisters had formed, broken, and reformed on his swollen hands. He put the shovel to one side and sank quietly down on the cool dirt.

  Five minutes later there was the quiet pad of feet above him and a soft voice said: “We bring presents for the man from the rocket.”

  He looked up, startled, his hand clutching the shovel for a possible weapon.

  There were three of them at the top of the pit. Two of them were alert-eyed, bronzed men, dressed in richly decorated animal hides. They were inspecting him curiously, but not with the curiosity of natives who had never seen strangers before. Reynolds guessed, and rightly, that there had been visitors to the planet in the past.

  The third member of the party—the one who had spoken to him and apparently the only one who understood his language—was a rather pretty girl with the soft, rounded features that so many native girls seem to have. He looked at her with more than casual interest, noting that her skirt was of machine-made cloth, probably the bottom half of a mother hubbard that wandering missionaries among the stars liked to clothe their heathen charges in. She had cut off the upper half of the garment, apparently preferring the sunshine and freedom.

  Reynolds climbed to the top of the pit and made a half bow, then showed that his hands were empty. (What the devil did you do in a case like this?) The men were carrying what he supposed were gifts: thin shields of beaten copper with crude native designs hammered on them, a few blankets made up of thick furs, and baskets full of freshly slaughtered meat that didn’t look at all appetizing.

  The men set the gifts on the ground in front of them, then stepped back with malicious smiles on their faces. They chattered for a moment to the girl in their native language.

  “These are the challenge gifts of my people, the Mantanai,” she intoned ritualistically, her face solemn. “We shall return tomorrow to accept what you give in return.”

  Reynolds had a feeling that he wasn’t supposed to benefit by the gifts.

  “What do you mean ‘challenge gifts’?” he asked.

  She looked as if she were going to explain, then changed her mind and gave a short shake to her head.

  Reynolds felt the tension build up in him. Her attitude confirmed his opinion that he was going to be in for a difficult time.

  The girl turned to leave with the men.

  “Wait a minute,” Reynolds asked softly. “Is there a Father around?”

  She shook her head again and Reynolds thought there was a trace of pity in her eyes.

  “No,” she said. “The good Father has returned to the skies.”

  He suspected that she didn’t mean the Father had left the planet in the usual manner.

  “What happened to him?”

  She hesitated a moment and he could feel the slow ooze of sweat on his forehead. Behind her, the other two natives were frowning and shaking their heads with impatience.

  “He—he didn’t win the game of the Giving of Gifts.”

  Reynolds cooked his supper over a campfire beside the ship but he had lost most of his appetite and didn’t eat much. The gifts from the natives were Greek gifts, he thought. There was something ominous about them, something far different from the friendliness that usually prompted gift giving.

  He worried about it for a while, then turned into his crude bed of blankets and air mattress. There was a lot of work to be done the next day, natives or no, and he needed his sleep.

  He had just started to doze off when he heard the stealthy footsteps of something moving just beyond the dim circle of light cast by the glowing coals of the fire. The sounds came nearer and he pointed his electric torch in the direction of the quiet rustling and flicked the switch.

  The girl stood there, blinded by the glare of the light.

  “What do you want?” he asked harshly.

  She wet her lips nervously. “The good Father was kind to me,” she said, almost in a whisper. “You reminded me of him.”

  Primitive tribes usually had little regard for their women, he thought, outside of the children they might bear or the work they could do in the fields or in making clothing for the men. The Father’s kindness had apparently made quite an impression on her.

  “What’s that got to do with you coming here?”

  “I thought that I would tell you about the Giving of Gifts,” she said. “I thought that you would like to know.”

  That was damn sweet of her, he thought cynically—then softened a bit. She was probably running quite a risk in coming to him.

  “Tell me about it,” he said gently.

  She sat down beside him, the light from the coals catching the highlights of her body.

  “Father Williams used to say that my people, the Mantanai, were the original capitalists,” she started, pronouncing the word uncertainly. “That to us, coppers and furs and grain weren’t the means to an end, but an end in itself. That we liked to accumulate wealth merely to play games with it and because it brought prestige.”

  She was parroting Father Williams’ words, she realized; they meant little to her but she was confident that they meant a lot to him.

  “What kind of games?”

  She thought for a minute, trying to find a way to phrase it. “We use our coppers and furs in duels,” she said slowly. “Perhaps one chief will give a feast for another and present him with many coppers and blankets. Unless the other chief destroys the gifts and gives a feast in return, at which he presents the first chief with even greater gifts, he loses honor.” He was beginning to see, Reynolds thought. The custom of conspicuous waste, to show how wealthy the possessor was. Enemies dueled with property, instead of with pistols, and the duel would obviously go back and forth until one or the other of its participants was bankrupt—or unwilling to risk more goods. A rather appropriate custom for a planet as lush as this.

  “What if one of the chiefs goes broke,” he said, explaining the term.

  “If the winning chief demands it, the other can be put to death. He is forced to drink the Last Cup, a poison which turns his bones to jelly. The days go by and he gets weaker and softer until finally he is nothing but a—ball.” She described this with a good deal of hand waving
and facial animation, which Reynolds found singularly attractive in spite of the gruesomeness of the topic.

  “What if a stranger like myself is concerned?”

  She looked at him sadly. “Then the pride of the tribe is at stake—and the penalty for losing is always death.”

  He digested this in silence. “Is that the only way they use their wealth?”

  She shook her head. “No. They use it for buying a wife or a house or in paying for a grandson.”

  She started looking anxiously over her shoulder and he could sense her fear of discovery growing, overcoming her memories of the kindnesses of Father Williams. He quickly steered the conversation into other channels and found out, among other things, that Father Williams had given her the Christian name of Ruth. He idly wondered what it would have been if Father Williams had been a Buddhist or a Mohammedan. At length, she arose to go.

  “You’ll come back again some other night, won’t you?” Reynolds asked wistfully, suddenly realizing how lonely it was to be in a dangerous situation and have nobody to talk to.

  She hesitated, then flashed him a quick smile and fled into the darkness.

  After she had left, Reynolds mused about his position with a sinking heart. They’d be back tomorrow and he’d have to present them with gifts that they considered superior to what they had given him. But he had nothing extra, nothing that he could actually spare.

  The only solution—and it was only a stop-gap solution, he realized somberly—was to gradually strip the ship and hope that he had her fixed and ready for flight before the deadly game had reached its climax.

  The native representatives and Ruth were back the next day, along with a large crowd of curious onlookers. Reynolds waited inside the ship until they had begun to grow restless, then stepped out carrying his presents.

  But there was a ritual to be followed first. He had built a bonfire earlier that morning and he now lighted it. Then he dragged forth the furs and the hampers of meat and the coppers that had been given to him the previous day. He faced the crowd and held up the meat contemptuously, then flung it on the fire. The representatives flushed, but there was an approving murmur from the crowd. The furs he looked at scornfully, then tore the stitches where they had been sewn together and tossed them into the flames. The sheets of beaten copper, which he had previously weakened with acid, he broke into small pieces over his knee and cast them after the furs. The crowd roared approval but Reynolds had no illusion as to their temper. They liked a good “game” but they had no doubt as to what its conclusion would be.