A World Named Cleopatra

by Poul Anderson

  Here too were hands. They were not hominid. Instead of a thumb, four claw-tipped fingers radiated in a half-circle from the palm. But they worked as well. The Cleopatran was making a coup-de-poing.

  Janne had studied a little prehistory. She recognized the technique. A bone held in one hand struck pieces off a chunk of rock which the other gripped. The labor went fast, in clash and sparks. The resulting outline would be a thin spear, pointed, sharp-rimmed, about twenty centimeters in length. It would be an all-purpose weapon and tool; the user could throw it to knock down small game, or cut, crush, flense, butcher, scrape, slice, carve. When it grew dull, a new edge was easily put on; when it broke or was lost, a replacement was quickly made. Shards heaped on the pseudomoss showed that generations had used this site.

  Hand axes, scarcely to be told from the one taking shape, had been found throughout Earth’s eastern half by the many thousands—man’s main reliance through tens of millennia.

  Man: the tool-bearing animal. Then how can we deny the spirit yonder?

  The Cleopatran raised its head and stared. Its tail switched. Fielding joined Janne, his gun held steady. A single explosive bullet could blow the stoneworker in two.

  “Don’t shoot,” she breathed.

  “If it acts threatening, I will,” he answered. “You’re worth more than any glorified snake.”

  The Cleopatran rose, hefting the almost finished ax and the bone shaper. Despite herself, Janne tensed to duck. However, the being merely regarded them. A breeze brought its musky odor.

  She held out her open hands. “Vi er venner,” she said. At once the humor of stating “We are friends”—in Norwegian!—kicked a giggle from her, half hysterical.

  “He can’t know we’re not some funny kind of beast,” Fielding muttered. “In fact, we are.”

  “Until we communicate,” Janne replied. The thought flitted: Yes, let’s say “he.” Cleopatran life has two sexes like ours. I’m not sure which this person is, but “it” isn’t right. She stooped, with an idea of scratching patterns in the ground. The being retreated, vanished in brake and shadows.

  “Cautious,” Fielding opined. “After all, we’re two to one. Maybe he figured you were about to throw a flinder at him. Or maybe he’s gone after his buddies. I think we’d better head straight for camp.”

  Reluctant and disappointed, Janne nonetheless had to agree. She rose and they began walking. “I don’t expect they’ll be hostile,” she argued. “Why should they? The lower animals don’t fear us; they’ve never learned to…Still, I could imagine—well, being trampled by a horde of eager curiosity-seekers.”

  “Or whatever. I’d feel more trustful if they were mammals.”

  “Theroids,” Janne corrected automatically. “There don’t seem to be any true mammals around, just primitive little animals that don’t even lactate.”

  “A cold-blooded, egg-laying thinker…It feels wrong.” The engineer grimaced.

  “Why? Remember, the reptiloids of Cleopatra—many of them—are further evolved than reptiles on Earth. They have efficient hearts, for instance. I suppose the planet’s being warmer, probably never having had an ice age, gives less relative advantage to homeothermic over poikilothermic organisms, so the latter have had more chance to develop onward.”

  “Homeo—huh?” Fielding scowled. “Never mind. I admit to being prejudiced in favor of mammals. You, no doubt, consider this the most wonderful thing we could have found.”

  “Of course.” Janne hesitated. “Or the most dreadful.”

  “How that? You don’t imagine men have much to fear from a bunch of savages, do you?”

  “Yes. They have to fear what they’ll be tempted to do.” Janne told him her forebodings.

  His air of distaste turned to one of reined-in-fury. “And de Barros encouraged you in that sentimentalism? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’d make a nice additional excuse—protecting natives—for aristos to keep their feet on settlers.”

  “What do you mean, Arch?” she exclaimed. “That men should come and…take their world away from these people…destroy them?”

  “If need be. When you’ve seen, lived with, slum children whose faces were gnawed by rats—and I have—you won’t let a bunch of scaly, lipless things stand between them and a chance at a decent existence.” After a moment: “Oh, I don’t advocate extermination, unless we must. We can maintain preserves.”

  It scarcely eased the horror in her. She had nothing to say while they returned.

  Their route was different from before. Near the coast Fielding halted. A stand of dactylophytes, looking like fleshy shrubs, glowed golden-green. “Hey!” he said. Porkplant.”

  Janne roused from her mood to answer, “Or a close relative.”

  “Well, for heavens sake, let’s collect a bundle and come back after more. Now our bellies won’t growl.”

  Analysis and experiment on Base Island had shown that the fronds were tasty as well as nutritious to man—not a complete diet, of course, but a welcome supplement.

  “I don’t know,” Janne said. “We haven’t a biochemical laboratory along.”

  “Why should we need any, for this? Sure, first you put a sample under your microscope and check if it’s the exact same species, free of parasites or whatever. I’ll bet you a month’s pay you’ll report positive.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t eat it, Arch.”

  She failed to dissuade him. In camp, she found he was right about the classification. Nonetheless, she refused a share. De Barros smiled wryly and said, “You may guess whether or not I am disguising cowardice when I declare that if a lady is to go hungry, so will I.”

  Fielding, his pleasure dashed, glowered at them and grumbled, “Well, at least one of us will keep his strength up.” At dinner he feasted ostentatiously.

  Next morning a Cleopatran appeared on the beach. It wasn’t the same as yesterday’s, being of lesser size and having only a rudimentary crest. Janne guessed it was a female, while her previous encounter had been with a male. The creature carried a hand ax of her own. She poised a distance from the aircraft and, when Janne drew slowly near, hissed and made as if to cast the weapon. Janne halted. They exchanged stares for a minute, until the girl tossed a gift of porkplant. The Cleopatran took it up, ate it, and sidled back into the forest.

  To de Barros, who had guarded her, Janne remarked, “They really are shy, aren’t they? I suppose they think we’re supernatural.”

  “Let us do the traditional thing,” the Brazilian suggested: “set forth some trinkets for the next visitor.”

  Having brought none, they improvised, deciding what could be sacrificed in the way of bright cloth, buttons, a hand mirror, a diffraction grating. It was fun. Janne wondered if they might not be a touch light-headed from hunger, they laughed so much. No, she concluded; it was de Barros’ considerable stock of dry humor. The pangs weren’t bad, just a continuous reminder that she had a stomach. Tight rationing was not the same as starvation.

  It struck them that colored polaroid photographs should make ideal gifts, and they went about looking for good subjects. Fielding found them at that.

  In well-fed vigor, he had gone off to try his luck fishing. (The proper word, “ichthyoiding,” was unlikely ever to become popular.) His catch had been abundant; one needed merely drop a hook or sweep a net through these swarming waters. When he saw Janne and de Barros side by side, composing a picture of pseudoblooms, he flung his creel at her feet. “There you are,” he snapped.

  “What do you mean, Arch?” she asked uncertainly.

  His gaze smoldered. “I wanted as many different new species as I could snag for you,” he said. Seems like you’d rather hang around camp playing games.”

  “That isn’t fair,” de Barros protested. “We are trying to establish communication with the natives.”

  “Yah, yah, yah.” Fielding stalked from them.

  Janne spoke in pain: “That isn’t like him.”

  “He does not care for me,” said de Barros
.

  “But he’s never been this…childish.”

  “Let him sulk.”

  The enjoyment was gone from her undertaking. She and the planetologist finished it, though, laying forth their offerings at the spot where the Cleopatran had twice emerged (if it was the same they had spied the night before last). Thereafter they waited. Fielding ate a big lunch, and later sought his sleeping bag for a nap. That wasn’t characteristic either.

  The return of the being drove concern about him from Janne’s mind. The slender, sheening form trod daintily from behind the dactylophytes. Grown less wary of aircraft, tent, and humans, she stopped, peered their way, and neither retreated nor threatened when Janne advanced. “Hasn’t she seen our presents?” the girl wondered aloud. She tossed a chunk of porkplant in among them. The Cleopatran promptly went after it, picked it up, and stuffed it in her mouth. When no more was forthcoming, she wandered on down the beach. Bewildered, Janne and de Barros stared after her.

  Abruptly she must have noticed signs, for she squatted. Sand flew beneath her scooping hand ax. Soon she reached into the hole she had made and drew forth some equivalent of a clam. With the tool she pried it open and severed meat from the shell. Having eaten, she returned inland.

  Man and woman did not speak for a long time.

  “I’ve got to learn more,” Janne said, over and over, that evening. “Track our visitor down to her community or…or whatever we find. It’ll be safe, I’m sure. They’ve been gentle, even timid. But don’t you see, this is an impossible paradox, toolmakers who ignore new artifacts. If we don’t come to understanding it, who knows what surprises may be sprung on us—back at Base too? Besides, as short of manpower as the whole expedition is, we have a duty to use what time we’re bound to spend here.”

  De Barros opposed her going herself. In the end he yielded, on condition he accompany her. She was much the best suited for such an investigation. He adapted a portable gas detector. Given a fresh scent—the natives left a strong one—and duly adjusted, its meter’s needle was as good a tracker as the bloodhounds of history.

  Fielding had said little, except to complain that he felt poorly. During the night his illness rocketed.

  A sound of vomiting roused Janne. She hastened from her bag and out of the tent. Under the stars, meteors, ring, and aurora, Fielding crouched on the sand. He heaved and shuddered. When she laid arms around him, she felt sweat upon icy skin.

  “Roberto!” she wailed. “Wake up, help, help!”

  Between them, they got the North American cleansed and brought back into shelter. By the light of their flashbeams, his eyeballs rolled white. Lips pulled parched away from teeth. “Here,” de Barros said, “here is a cup of water.”

  “Not from you,” Fielding mumbled. “You poisoned me. Or she did. Lied to me…so I wou’n’ connerdic’ whatever lie she’ll tell ‘bout this planet to save her damn snakes…Murderers, both o’ you—”

  Dawn walked russet over the mountains. Waves glittered and whooshed beneath a salt breeze. Winged life went aloft in its thousands.

  Outside the tent, where Fielding lay in feverish sleep, Janne and de Barros traded looks. “You didn’t believe what he accused me of, did you?” the man rasped.

  “Of course not.” She shook his hands.

  “I am not…ruthless. Neither are my kinfolk. He sees us as tyrants and schemers. He cannot see troubled people trying their clumsy human best to cope with a worsening world.”

  “I can, Roberto. I don’t think your way of coping is always right, but your good will I’ve never doubted—nor that of the Japanese.” In a rush: I’m the one who poisoned him! I told him those plants were probably safe.”

  “If that is the trouble.”

  “What else could it be? And they seemed so—so identical in every way with—”

  De Barros frowned and chewed his mustache. “Precisely. I admit to thinking you were overcautious, and only followed your example because—Bem, never mind why. Don’t blame yourself. You did your best, short of telling him a falsehood. Besides, it may well be something else. He may have picked up an infection. We have not absolutely proved that no indigenous germ can affect us. Or he may have been exposed to a factor that we were too, but had an idiosyncratic reaction. Without intensive clinical study, there is no telling.”

  “Then there’s no treatment.” She swallowed hard. He nodded. “Nothing but supportive treatment, and prayer that his body can throw off the effects by itself.”

  “We have a whole damn pharmacy along.”

  “But what drug to use?” de Barros reminded her. ‘What antibiotic might work on a Cleopatran microbe? Or if this is an allergy, do we want antihistamine, antivenin, or, what? If it is an organ-specific toxin, which does it attack and what is the antidote?” He clenched his fists. “We dare not medicate on a guesswork basis. Most drugs have side effects. We could too easily touch off a synergism, where between them the disease and the ‘cure’ kill him. And while this radio blackout lasts, we can’t even get professional advice.”

  “How does he seem to be doing—honestly?” Janne made herself ask. As a venturer onto several different worlds, de Barros had acquired a good deal of practical knowledge.

  The Brazilian’s tone bleakened further. “Not well. Pulse, respiration, temperature, nausea, diarrhea, and the resulting dehydration…he is sinking.”

  “O God, O God.” Jmne almost cast herself upon his shoulder. But instead—she didn’t quite know the reason—she went off to weep alone.

  The native came back.

  Janne, huddled on a rock, was first aware of it when sand scrunched. Looking up, she saw the neat dinosaurian shape close to her, ax loosely held, mouth smiling wide as if in anticipation.

  “Why—why, Cleo,” she stammered, and scrambled to her feet.

  The other being stood a minute longer. Receiving no food, she turned and departed. Her stride took her right over the gifts which lay, gaudy and forgotten, on the shore of the sea which had no name.

  It struck through Janne: Couldn’t I follow, observe? It may not be entirely wise to go alone. Still, anything’s better than waiting useless for Arch to die.

  She hastened to fetch the sniffer. De Barros had barely noticed what went on. Hands caught white-knuckled behind his back, he paced in circles around the tent. His face seemed well-nigh as haggard as that of the unconscious man within.

  “I’m going after Cleo,” Janne said.

  De Barros surfaced from his broodings. “No, you mustn’t without a partner, and we can’t leave our comrade.”

  “One can tend him as well as two for a short while. I’ll be careful. There isn’t any danger, really. I can’t get lost in those open woods, with the sun for a guide. If I should be attacked, besides my gun, I have my legs. I can outrun any reptiloid.” In a surge of gallows mirth: “Remember, nature designed me to weigh ten kilos more than I do here.”

  “Nevertheless—” De Barros broke off. It was as if suddenly he no longer saw or heard her.

  “I won’t be gone long,” said Janne hastily into the silence that she took for consent. She hurried off in pursuit of the native. Once she cast a glance behind. The Brazilian stood motionless, staring out over the ocean.

  She wondered briefly what had entered him, but dropped that question in the excitement of the chase.

  Though Cleo had disappeared, where tracks in sand met vegetable mat, the detector needle pointed straight inland. Movement was swift through that parklike forest. Presently she saw the being’s head bob and sway above a row of fronds.

  Cleo glimpsed her in turn and halted. For a dizzy moment Janne thought, Maybe at last she’ll give me a sign. The creature wandered on. Frustration tasted harsh in Janne’s throat. She followed at a discreet distance.

  Why do they all but totally ignore us? Maybe they believe that’s how to treat gods or demons…

  No. They’ve been careful about us, but not frightened. She took food from me. Why did she spurn our other offerings?

&nb
sp; Cleo drifted in no special direction. She dug up and ate a sugarroot She spied a small theroid on a branch overhead and cast her ax. It missed; the animal scuttled off; she retrieved the weapon and continued her stroll.

  Where is the male we met? Where are any more whatsoever?…Oh!

  Cleo stopped dead. Her tail stiffened. Out from a clump of bushes, jerky, jaunty, shining in sunlight, came a young one of her kind. It could be nothing else, a miniature, half a meter tall, carrying its own doll ax.

  The darling!

  Jannne screamed.

  Cleo had hissed and hurled. The baby saw. Barely in time, it sprang aside, wheeled, and fled. Cleo bounded after. She grabbed her weapon on the run. Stems bent, branches snapped. Jaws agape, she bounded in chase.

  Horror roared around Janne.

  Comprehension exploded it. She sank to the ground and shrieked forth laughter like a woman gone crazy.

  Caesar, blazing its rapid way across heaven, stood to westward. The ocean flashed gold above sapphire, turquoise, and arabesqued alabaster. Sands shone, forest glowed, snowpeaks lifted in purity. Wings rode upon crystalling, flowing air.

  In that hugeness, vehicle and camp seemed flecks which a stray wind had blown in and would soon blow away again forever. Janne’s heart twisted when she saw how de Barros had erected instruments to observe the sun. Poor haunted man, he needs his own place to hide, she thought, and quickstepped toward him.

  Yet, spying her, he dropped the screen on which he had been projecting a magnified disc. He ran. His hair tossed gray and wild. He grabbed her to him and kissed her. “Janne, it worked, it worked!” jubilated in her ear. “Already he is conscious, clear in the brain, sim, he has a little strength and—you did it, you, you, you!” He let her go, save for taking her hand. “Come. He would like to see you.”