The Alien Way

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Krott uncovered part of a feeding pattern in some bears he raised. Bears are omnivores. Midway between herbivores and carnivores. Herbivores aren’t fed by their parents when they’re young. Carnivores are. But herbivores don’t attack to get their food. Bears do. The bear has a herbivore’s feeding reflex and the offensive equipment of a carnivore—so he attacks any moving food he encounters. And it’s not a conscious thing. It’s a reflex, one that will operate even against a human he likes if the human waves, say, a chunk of bacon before him. If he does, the bear will attack—the bacon and coincidentally the human holding it. And the fact of the attack will have nothing to do about the bear’s higher feelings or thoughts about the human.”

  “Well, what if that’s true?” said Mele. “You’re talking about bears, not Ruml—or human beings.”

  “But human beings have reflexes, too!” said Jase, desperately. “Not feeding reflexes comparable to the bears—but a young human child, able to walk but not yet able to defend itself, will run to and try to climb up on the nearest adult in case of out and out danger. In large groups or crowds, the herd instinct to escape—such as from a burning building—or to attack—as in the case of mob riots—will override the intellectual processes that otherwise would check such behavior.”

  “Oh, Jase…” Mele opened a drawer of her desk and exposed a box of paper tissues. She took several from the box and gently began to wipe Jase’s forehead, where the sweat of exhaustion was mingling with the dust of the stacks. “Jase, you’re exhausted. Why can’t you leave such things to those men in there—” She nodded at the next room. “They’re experts. Let them handle it—”

  “But they’re handling it all wrong!” said Jase. “Our confrontation with the Ruml isn’t a situation that’s political—or even sociological. We’re right back for practical purposes a hundred million years ago, meeting like two primitive, different animals on a hillside! I tell you in a case like this, the intellectual process of civilization gets swept aside. It’s the root character of one race—the animal character of one race—face to face with the animal character of the other. And these animal characters override the decisions of our upper brains. We don’t act like thinking individuals. We act like primitive representatives of our own particular kind of being. These basic reflexes are tied in directly to the survival instinct—the racial survival instinct—and they override, I tell you, the intellectual, individual decision—”

  “Well, they don’t override mine,” said Mele, firmly, throwing the dampened, soiled tissues into the pile of waste paper Jase had dumped from the wastebasket “Now, Jase, you’re going to get some sleep— “

  “They will,” he interrupted her grimly. “You’ll see. Someday—”

  “No, I won’t,” said Mele with decision. “I’m not some silly ground-down woman out of the nineteen centuries, thank you. I’m in control of myself like any modern woman, and I’ll continue to be so—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with being modern—

  Jase’s desperate voice was cut off sharply, as the door from the library room banged open and Swanson stood filling the entrance, his spectacles dangling from one hand.

  “Mele!” he said. “Have you seen Jase anywhere— Oh, there you are, Jase. Come in here. Both of you come in!”

  Jase pulled himself up, his legs trembling with tiredness, by gripping a corner of Mele’s desk. He went into the library, blundering against the frame of the door. Mele’s arm caught his elbow and steadied him from behind.

  “Sit down,” she said to Jase. Over his shoulder, as she steered him into a chair, she spoke angrily to Swanson. “He needs to sleep. Can’t you see that? Can’t you talk to him later?”

  “No,” said Swanson, briefly without exaggeration. From the chair, Jase looked up at him, seeing behind him the face of Bill Coth, today not wearing his Air Force uniform, and the faces of the other men who never spoke when Jase was in the room.

  “What is it?” asked Jase.

  Swanson looked at him for a second as though debating what—or how much—to say.

  “They’ve found something,” he said, finally. “Kator’s bunch. With their collectors. They’ve penetrated into an area we didn’t want them to get into.”

  “When?” asked Jase.

  “Twenty minutes—half an hour ago,” said Swanson. “One of their rat-shaped collectors got right onto the threshold of a secret installation. They blew it up before we could capture it.”

  “What installation?” demanded Jase. “What’s at it that’s so secret?”

  Swanson hesitated.

  “I’m not authorized to tell you,” he said. "I'm sorry.”

  Jase stared at him for a second, speechless.

  “Why, you—incredible people!” he burst out, when he found his voice. “Are you going to play coy with me? I’m the one person who can save your necks. In fact, I’ve just found something— “

  "I'm sorry,” said Swanson, doggedly. "I'm simply not authorized to tell you.”

  Jase felt the fury in him burn his foggy brain clear for an instant and give him strength, for which he was grateful.

  “Not authorized!” he said. “I can probably guess—what else could it be but something you could use against the Ruml. What is it—ground to air missiles? Something to do with telescopic observation of the Ruml area of space? Space warships of some—“

  Swanson’s eyelids nickered uncontrollably. His face, like Jase’s, was haggard with tiredness.

  “Space warships!” repeated Jase, staring at the man now fumbling his spectacles back on to his nose. “You do have such things! I was just striking out at random.”

  “It’s an underground installation. Under what looks like an abandoned factory,” said Swanson, harshly. ‘1 don’t understand how they found it.”

  “They knew what to search for,” said Jase, “—probably. How much did the collector’s filming device see?”

  “It didn’t get into the underground ship parking area—just into the elevator shaft leading down there. Then it blew up before any of our people could get to it to stop it. That’s what makes us think the Ruml knew what they’d found. There was no reason to destroy the collector, otherwise. They just didn’t want to take chances on our finding out they knew about it.”

  “Yes…” said Jase. He pushed himself up out of the chair on to his feet. Thoughts were racing through his brain. “That’s what he’d do.”

  “He?”

  “Kator.” Jase thought hard. His mind was working furiously and brilliantly, like the mind of a man in a high fever just before the collapse into delirium. Jase was conscious of the abnormal clarity, like the final upflare of illumination before a light bulb burns itself out. But grateful for it. “This couldn’t come at a better time.”

  “Better time?” said Goth. Jase saw the faces of the men staring at him. Mele, behind his back, was no doubt staring also.

  “I told you—I just found what I’ve been hunting for from the beginning of my contact with Kator—” Jase looked down at his hands for the copy of the magazine containing Krott’s article, and then remembered he had left it on Mele’s typewriter. “I’ve got the key to the basic Ruml character. Now I’ve got to meet one of them.”

  “Never mind that,” interrupted Swanson. “Let’s get back to the important problem. How do we keep further collectors from getting down into the warship parking area itself? There must be some detection device the Ruml themselves know about that will warn us when one of those damn gadgets gets close—”

  “Why don’t you want their collector to see that the human race has space-going armament, too?” asked Jase. “They already know from the artifact what the stage of our spaceship development is—I see,” Jase broke off, the final, brilliant clarity of his mind giving the answer. “You’ve taken the ships out of there—that’s what you don’t want them to see, isn’t it? You think if they see what’s obviously a place where space warships could be, and there’s only a few broken down ones still there,
that they’ll realize we’re aware of them.”

  He felt the wideness of his eyes, blazing on Swanson and the others.

  “You shortsighted—” He broke off. “Where are the ships, then?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Swanson. “I’m not in any position to discuss any of this—”

  “You want me to guess?” snarled Jase. “You’ve sent them out where they’ll be in space, within striking distance of the Ruml Homeworld. It’s the sort of thing you’d do. That’s where they are, aren’t they? Aren’t they?”

  “I can’t—,” began Swanson.

  “Never mind,” said Jase.” “You don’t have to admit it. It’s exactly what the human basic pattern would drive you to do, just like their pattern—Never mind.” Jase’s mind was racing too fast for his tongue to keep up. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll come himself. Yes, that’s what he’ll have to do.”

  “What’re you talking about?” demanded Coth, behind Swanson.

  “Kator. Hell come himself,” muttered Jase. “Yes, it all makes sense now.—It’s all right. I can handle it now. Only, I’ve got to meet him.”

  “Meet who?” demanded Swanson.

  “Kator. He’ll be coming down to look inside your underground spaceport himself. I want to meet him when he comes. You’ve got to arrange it so I’ll be there.” He looked at Swanson. “You can do that, can’t you? I tell you, I’ve got the solution now. I just found it in the stacks. We can handle both.”

  “Both what?” said Coth.

  “Both the human and Ruml pattern. They’d clash head on otherwise. Well—” He stared at Swanson. “You didn’t answer me. I said, Can you arrange to have me there?”

  Swanson looked back and shook his head, slowly.

  “No,” he said, calmly. “You must know by this time that very few people—if any—think you’re free from infection by the alien mind you’ve been dealing with. I’m afraid we don’t trust you. I’m afraid you won’t be allowed near the place—and particularly if your friend Kator is due.”

  Jase stared at him. The room seemed to rock suddenly, but he fought it back to steadiness. Got to hold on a minute longer, he thought.

  “Ill make a deal with you,” Jase said. “You’d like to do without me, wouldn’t you? You’d all like to be able to keep track of Kator and the rest without using me?”

  Swanson met his gaze unapologetically.

  “Yes,” said Swanson, briefly.

  “See I’m there when Kator comes,” said Jase. “See I have a chance to meet him face to face and speak to him, on his way in. On his way out, I’ll help you to capture him. I'll guarantee you’ll be able to capture him alive and fit him with instruments without his knowing it. You can put your own transmitter on him and bypass me. You can even fit him with a device to blow him up if you want to stop him later.”

  Swanson stood for a second without answering.

  “I haven’t got the authority to make that kind of agreement with you,” he said at last. “I’m not empowered—”

  “You’ll agree,” said Jase. “You’ll all agree because it’s part of your pattern, and, like the Rural, humans react according to their basic pattern when the chips are—“

  The room rocked once more around him. Only this time it kept going. It went all the way over. He was conscious of the faces of Swanson and the rest whirling, the room whirling circularly before him. And then nothing…

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jase allowed the Expedition a shift in which to celebrate. He did not join in the celebration himself or swallow one of the short-lived bacterial cultures that manufactured ethyl alcohol in the Ruml stomachs from carbohydrates the Expedition members had feasted on earlier. Jase wanted neither the momentary exhilaration nor the quick oblivion of unconsciousness that followed intoxication by such cultures. The intoxication that he desired most was a subtler thing that had sung in his mind and body since he had first made the great decision to try and Found his Kingdom. He called the Captain into conference in the Keysman’s private quarters aboard the ship.

  “The next stage,” Jase told the Captain, “is, of course, to send a man down to examine this underground, and obviously secret, area.”

  “Of course, sir,” said the Captain. The Captain, the rest of the Expedition, had swallowed one of the bacterial cultures already but, because of his responsibility aboard, would not eat until the rest had recovered from their drunkenness. He thought of the rest of the Expedition gorging themselves now in the gym, and his own hunger came sharply on him to reinforce the anticipation of intoxication.

  “So far,” said Jase, “the Expedition has operated without mistakes. Perfection of operation must go on. The man who goes down to the planet of the Muffled People in person must be the one man on whom I can absolutely depend to carry the job through to success. There’s no question who that man must be.”

  “Sir?” said the Captain, forgetting his hunger suddenly and becoming alert. His stomach contracted. “Are you thinking of me, Keysman? If there’s someone who can take over my job, here—“

  “I’m not thinking of you.”

  “Oh,” said the Captain. The excitement left him, and his stomach expanded in disappointment. “Well, it was just a stray hope, sir. Naturally, I know you’d want a younger, more physically apt man—”

  “Exactly,” said Jase. “Myself.”

  “Keysman!”

  It was almost an explosion from the Captain’s lips. His whiskers flattened back against his cheeks.

  “I… I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Of course, it’s your responsibility and your authority. You can select whoever you want. But… do you want me to be acting Keysman while you’re down there?”

  Jase looked squarely at him.

  “No,” he said.

  The Captain’s face stiffened slightly. But his voice remained impassive.

  “Then… who, sir?”

  “No one.”

  This time the Captain did not explode. He merely stared blankly, almost blindly, at Jase.

  “No one,” repeated Jase, slowly. “You understand me, I hope, Captain. I’ll be taking the Keys of the ship with me.”

  “But sir—” The Captain’s voice broke off. He took a breath deeper than usual. “For the record, sir, I must point out that it would be extremely difficult to get home safely with the ship’s Keys in the hands of an acting Keysman who has already formed likes and dislikes among the other members of the Expedition Crew.”

  “It would probably be impossible,” said Jase. “For that reason, I intend to lock ship before leaving and take the keys with me. That way, there will be no danger of mutiny or riot destroying all hands on the return voyage. And the valuable information about the Muffled People we have already gathered will not risk being lost forever, on a dead ship drifting through space. In case I and the keys are lost, a later ship will find this one of our Expedition safely buried here, with the information on it intact and available.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the Captain. He saluted with respect.

  “You’d better inform your officers about this decision of mine after I’ve left. Then you can inform the Expedition as a group.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll let you get back to the celebration then,” said Jase. The Captain turned toward the door. “And, Captain—”

  The Captain halted with the door half open and looked back. Jase nodded approvingly and with commendation.

  “Tell them,” said Jase, “to enjoy themselves—this shift.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Captain went out, closing and locking the door behind him. Jase turned and walked over to the table holding his Keys, his model of the artifact, and the cube containing the dirtworm. He picked up the cube and gazed at it for a moment, holding it tenderly.

  “First of my Kingdom,” he said to it, “you’ll go back now to the soil from which you came.”

  Gently he returned it to the table. Sinking on his haunches, he sat gazing at it. And through his
mind moved the pictures of his sons, his grandsons-all the members of his Founded Family, playing and growing under the alien sun. And from among them, perhaps, one day would come not one other, but several who in their time would Found Kingdoms too…

  The shift after the celebration, Jase set most of the Expedition Members to work constructing collectors who could burrow, examine, and report on the surroundings of the secret underground area of the Muffled People. But these, when they were sent down, were strictly programmed to avoid any movement critically close to the critical area. That would remain for him, to penetrate, alone.

  Meanwhile, he himself, with the help of the Captain and two specialists in such things, attacked the problem of making him bear at least a passable resemblance to one of the Muffled People—not only in appearance, but in speech and action.

  It was an ambitious task.

  The first and most obvious change was the clipping off of Jase’s long, stiff mouth whiskers. There was no pain or discomfort associated with this, but the emotional shock was considerable, since criminals, those suffering birth defects, and hospital patients requiring surgery in the facial area were the only male Rumls ever seen without whiskers. Oddly, Jase found that the fact he knew they would grow out again within a few months—if not a matter of weeks—did not help. Without his whiskers he felt emasculated.

  The fact that the whiskers had been clipped by his own hand somehow made it worse.

  The clipping and shaving of the fur on his face and head was otherwise a minor operation. After the shock of losing the whiskers, Jase had been tempted to simply dye brown the close, inhumanly glossy black fur covering the skull between his ears like a mat. But that would have been too weak a solution to the fur problem. Even dyed, his natural head covering bore no relationship in appearance to human hair.

  Still, dewhiskered and shaved, Jase’s reflection in a mirror presented him with an ugly sight. Luckily, he did, now, look like one of the Muffled People after a fashion-from the neck up. The effect was rather like that of a pink-skinned oriental with puffy eyelids over unnaturally wide and narrow eyes, and with a flat and unusually narrow jaw. But he was undeniably native-like.