Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “ ‘Mina, will you go to the window in the big lab? Call when you’re there, and I’ll turn off the outside lights.”

  “All right, Easy.” The long body crossed the men’s field of view and vanished again. Then his piping voice came from the other room, and the girl’s fingers flicked the light switches.

  “Is it dark outside now, ’Mina?”

  “Yes, Easy. I can’t see anything.”

  “All right. Tell me if you do; we’ll keep it dark for a while. Dr. Raeker, is ’Mina’s father there?”

  “Yes, Miss Rich.” Aminadabarlee answered for himself.

  “Perhaps you’d better tell me and Dr. Raeker how long it takes your people’s eyes to get used to the dark.” Not for the first time, Raeker wondered what combination of heredity and upbringing had given Rich such an amazing child. He had known students ten years her senior whose minds would have been lagging far behind—she was thinking of important points sooner than Raeker himself, and he didn’t have her worries . . .

  He brought his mind back to the present when she called his name.

  “Dr. Raeker, ’Mina couldn’t see anything. Maybe five minutes wasn’t enough for your sea animals to get over their scare, of course.”

  “Maybe,” admitted Raeker. “Maybe they’re just not interested in the bathyscaphe, for that matter. However, I think we’ll assume for the present that you haven’t reached the sea yet. It will be interesting to see whether you’re in a lake or stranded high and dry when the rain evaporates this morning. In either case, get us as complete a description of the country around as you possibly can.”

  “I know. We’ll do our best.”

  “We’re rigging up an arrangement that will let you talk more or less directly to Nick, when you’re in a position to give him directions, so you won’t have to trust my relaying of your reports. It should be ready soon.”

  “That’s good. I’ve wanted to talk to him myself ever since I saw you in the robot control room. It looked like fun. But can’t I talk to him without going through you, if he finds me? Doesn’t this ship have outside mikes and speakers?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Sakiiro will tell you how to turn them on. This is for the time before he finds you.”

  “All right. We’ll call you again as soon as the water’s gone. ’Mina’s hungry, and so am I.” Raeker sat back and dozed for a few minutes; then he realized that he, too, was hungry, and took care of the situation. By this time he really wanted to sleep; but a call on the intraship system informed him that the communication equipment he had requested was ready for use. Sleepy or not, he had to try it out, so he went back to the robot control room. It was a good many hours before he left it again.

  Nick and Fagin had just rejoined their friends at the new camping spot, and Nick was bringing the others up to date on events. Naturally, Raeker had to listen carefully; there was always the chance that Nick had seen things in a different light from the human observer. It had been known to happen; a human education had not given the Tenebrites human minds.

  This time Nick’s report showed no signs of such difference, but Raeker had still to learn what the others had done. Since this, as Nick had planned, involved a great deal of mapping, some hours were spent hearing the various reports. It was customary for the maps to be shown to the robot for photographing in the Vindemiatrix; then each was explained in detail by the one who had drawn it, since not all the information could be crowded onto the paperlike leaves or summarized in conventional mapping symbols. These verbal accounts were recorded as spoken, and as a rule immediately preempted by the geological crew. Since the present area was very peculiar in that it lay close to the sea and was largely submerged each night, a great deal of time was spent in bringing the men’s maps and charts up to date.

  Too much time, in fact.

  Raeker’s relief had not received, perhaps, a really clear idea of the current danger from Swift; and Raeker himself had not given the matter a thought since his return to the observation room. Neither had thought to advise Nick to have anyone on the lookout for danger, and it was sheer chance that the danger was spotted in time.

  Jane was telling her tale, and everyone else was listening and comparing her map with their own, then Betsey caught sight of something. It was just for ah instant, and some distance away, showing among the shrubs on a hilltop. She knew the teacher could not have seen it; she was aware that her own vision equipment had superior resolving powers to his, though she didn’t know the terminology. Her first impulse was to shout a warning, but fortunately before she yielded to it she got a better glimpse of the thing on the hill. That was enough for identification. It was a creature just like herself; and since all of Fagin’s community was standing around the teacher, that meant it must be one of Swift’s warriors. How he had gotten there so soon after things dried up she couldn’t guess at the moment.

  Speaking softly so as not to interrupt Jane, she called to Nick and John, who were closest.

  “Don’t make any move that would let him know you see him, but one of the cave men is watching us from the hill three quarters of a mile west northwest. What should we do about it?”

  Nick thought tensely for a moment.

  “Just one is all I see. How about you?”

  “Same here.”

  “You’ve been around here, and I haven’t. Is it possible to go down the south or east side of this hill we’re on and make a long circuit so as to get on the other side of him without being seen?” Both John and Betsey thought for several seconds, reconstructing in their minds the regions they had mapped in the last day and a half. They spoke almost together, and in almost the same words.

  “Yes, from either side.”

  “All right, do it. Leave the group here casually—you’d both better go together; the herd is on the south side of the hill, and I would judge that some of the beasts are in his line of vision. You can go down and drive them around out of his sight, and we’ll hope he thinks you’re just doing an ordinary herding job. Once you and the cattle are out of his sight, get around behind him as best you can, and bring him here, preferably alive. I’d like to know how he got here so soon, and so would Fagin, I’m sure.”

  “Are you going to tell him, or the others?”

  “Not yet. They’ll act more natural if they don’t know. Besides, there are still a couple of reports to be given, and Fagin never likes that to be interrupted, you know.”

  “I know he usually doesn’t, but this seemed a sort of special case.”

  “Special or not, let’s surprise him with your prisoner. Take axes, by the way; they seemed to impress those folks a lot, and maybe he’ll give up more easily.”

  “All right.” John and Betsey pulled up their resting legs and started casually downhill toward the herd. None of the others appeared to notice them, and Nick did his best to imitate their attitude as the two scouts disappeared from sight.

  VII

  Neither Raeker nor his assistant paid any attention to the departure of John and his companion. They were much too busy operating cameras and recorders, for one reason. Easy and her companion could now watch the group on the surface indirectly, but neither of them was familiar enough with the routine activities of Fagin’s pupils to notice anything out of the ordinary. Besides, they were paying very close attention to the geographical reports, in the somewhat unreasonable hope of being able to recognize part of the land described.

  For the bathyscaphe was now high and dry. The river down which it had been carried had vanished with the coming day, and the ship had rolled rather uncomfortably—though fortunately, very slowly—to the foot of a hillock which Easy had promptly named Mount Ararat. The children were having a little trouble, since they not only had their first visual contact with natives, via the observation room of the Vindemiatrix, but also their first look at the solid surface of Tenebra—if one excepts the bottom of a lake and a river. They were covering both scenes as well as they could, one at the windows while the other was at the plate, but each
was trying to keep the other filled in verbally on the other part, with confusing results. Their shouted words were coming through to Raeker and the others in the observation room, and were adding their little bit to the confusion there. Raeker didn’t dare cut them off, partly for reasons of their own morale and partly because it was always possible that the one at the windows would have something material to report. He hoped the recording of the native reports would be intelligible to the geologists.

  Jane finished her account, was asked a question or two by Raeker on points he had not fully taken in, and then settled back to let Oliver show his map. Raeker’s assistant photographed it, Raeker himself made sure that the recording tape was still feeding properly, and the two relaxed once more—or came as close to relaxing as the local confusion permitted. Raeker was almost ready to decide that he needn’t stay, and to catch up on his overdue sleep.

  He had not actually said anything about it, though, when the cave scout caught sight of John. Within three seconds after that, the biologist lost all intention of leaving.

  The scout reacted practically instantaneously. He had been crouching as low in the vegetation as his anatomy permitted; now he leaped to his walking legs and started traveling. John was south and west of him, Fagin and the rest south and east; he headed north. Immediately Betsey rose into view in that direction, and he stopped in momentary confusion. Nick, who had never lost sight of the fellow’s crest since Betsey had first pointed him out, interpreted the situation correctly even though he could not see John and Betsey. He sprang to his walking legs, interrupting Oliver unceremoniously, and began issuing orders. The others were surprised, but reacted with relatively little confusion; and within a few seconds the whole group was streaming down the hillside toward the point where the cave dweller had vanished, leaving the human observers to shout futile questions through the speakers of their robot.

  Seeing that words were useless, Raeker started the robot in the same direction as his pupils, and used language which made Easy raise her eyebrows as the machine was steadily left farther and farther behind. Nick and his friends disappeared over the hilltop where the scout had been hiding, and not even their shouts could be heard over Raeker’s voice in the control room.

  It was Easy who turned his words into more constructive channels, less because she was shocked than because she was curious.

  “Dr. Raeker! Did I hear one of them say that there was a cave dweller to catch? How did one get there so soon? I thought you said you’d left them behind at that river.” Her question was so exactly the one Raeker had been asking himself that he had nothing to say in reply for a moment; but at least he stopped talking, and had the grace to turn slightly red.

  “That’s what it sounded like to me, Easy. I don’t know the way they found us any more than you do; I have always supposed this was a long way outside their home grounds, so I don’t see how they could have known a short cut around the river—for that matter, I don’t see how there could be such a thing; that river was over a mile wide. We’ll have to wait until Nick and the others come back; maybe they’ll have a prisoner we can question. I suppose that’s his idea; I think he said ‘catch,’ not ‘kill.’ ”

  “That’s right; he did. Well, we’ll be able to see them in a minute or two, when the robot gets up this hill, unless they’ve gone over another one in the meantime.”

  It turned out that they hadn’t; the human watchers had a very good view of the chase, not that it was much to see. The valley into which the cave scout had fled was almost entirely ringed with the low, rounded hills so typical of much of Tenebra; John and Betsey had managed to get to the tops of two of these before being seen, so that they had a considerable advantage on the cave man when it came to running. He had made one or two attempts to race out through the wide gaps between Betsey and John and between them and the main group, but had seen after only a few moments on each dash that he was being headed off. When the robot came in sight he was standing near the center of the valley while Fagin’s people closed in slowly around him. He was rather obviously getting ready for a final dash through any gap that might present itself, after his pursuers were close enough to have sacrificed their advantage of elevation. He might also be planning to fight; he was two feet taller than Nick and his friends, and had two efficient looking short spears.

  Nick seemed to have picked up a smattering of military tactics, not to mention diplomacy, however. He halted his people a good fifty yards from the big cave dweller, and spread them out into an evenly spaced circle. With this completed to his satisfaction, he shifted to Swift’s language.

  “Do you think you can get away from us?”

  “I don’t know, but some of you will be sorry you tried to stop me,” was the answer.

  “What good will that do you, if you are killed?” The scout seemed unable to find an answer to this; in fact, the very question seemed to startle him. The matter had seemed so obvious that he had never faced the task of putting it into words. He was still trying when Nick went on, “You know that Fagin said he was willing to teach Swift whatever he wanted to know. He doesn’t want fighting. If you’ll put your spears down and come to talk with him, you won’t be hurt.”

  “If your teacher is so willing to help, why did he run away?” the other shot back. Nick had his answer ready.

  “Because you had taken him away from us, and we want him to teach us, too. When I came to your caves to get him, he came with me to help me get away. He carried me through the river, where I could not have gone alone. When you first attacked our village, he wanted us to talk to you instead of fighting; but you gave us no chance.” He fell silent, judging that his antagonist would need time to think. However, another question came at once.

  “Will you do anything your teacher tells you?”

  “Yes.” Nick didn’t mention the times he had hesitated about obeying Fagin’s commands; quite honestly, he didn’t think of them at that moment.

  “Then let me hear him tell you not to harm me. He is coming now. I will wait here, but I will keep my weapons, until I am sure I won’t need them.”

  “But you don’t know his language; you won’t know what he’s telling us.”

  “He learned a few of our words while he was with us, though he couldn’t say them very well. I think I can ask him if he is going to hurt me, and I’ll know if he says yes or no.” The scout fell silent and stood watching the approach of the robot, still keeping a firm grip on his spears with two hands each. He was ready to stab, not throw.

  Even Raeker could see that readiness as the robot glided into the circle, and felt a little uneasy; he would be a good two seconds slow in reacting to anything that happened. Not for the first time, he wished that the Vindemiatrix were orbiting just outside Tenebra’s atmosphere, with three or four relay stations to take care of horizon troubles.

  “What’s happened, Nick? Is he going to fight?”

  “Not if you can convince him it isn’t necessary,” replied Nick. He went on to give a precis of the scout’s recent statements. “I don’t quite know what to do with him myself, now that we have him,” he finished.

  “I wouldn’t say you really had him, yet,” was Raeker’s dry rejoinder, “but I see the problem. If we let him go, Swift will be on us in a matter of hours, or in a day or so at the outside. If we don’t, we’ll have to keep a continuous watch on him, which would be a nuisance, and he might get away anyway. Killing him would of course be inexcusable.”

  “Even after what happened to Alice and Tom?”

  “Even then, Nick. I think we’re going to have to put this fellow to a use, and face the fact that Swift will know where we are. Let me think.” The robot fell silent, though the men controlling it did not; plans were being proposed, discussed, and rejected at a great rate while the natives waited. Easy had not been cut off, but she offered no advice. Even the diplomats, able to hear from the communication room which they still haunted, kept quiet for once.

  The cave dweller, of course had been
unable to follow the conversation between Nick and the teacher, and after the first minute or so of silence he asked for a translation. Somehow he managed to make the request in such a way that Nick felt he was repairing an omission rather than granting a favor when he provided the requested information.

  “Fagin is deciding what is best to do. He says that we must not kill you.”

  “Have him tell me that himself. I will understand him.”

  “One does not interrupt the teacher when he is thinking,” reproved Nick. The cave dweller seemed impressed; at least, he said nothing more until the robot came back on the air.

  “Nick.” Raeker’s voice boomed into the dense atmosphere, “I want you to translate very carefully what I have to say to this fellow. Make it word for word, as nearly as the language difference will allow; and think it over yourself, because there will be some information I haven’t had time to give you yet.”

  “All right, teacher.” Everyone in the circle switched attention to the robot; but if the scout in the center realized this, he at least made no effort to take advantage of the fact. He, too, listened, as intently as though he were trying to make sense out of the human speech as well as Nick’s translation. Raeker started slowly, with plenty of pauses for Nick to do his job.

  “You know,” he began, “that Swift wanted me at his place so that I could teach him and his people to make fires, and keep herds, and the other things I have already taught my own people. I was willing to do that, but Swift thought, from something Nick said, that my people would object, so he came fighting when it wasn’t necessary.

  “That’s not really important, now, except for the fact that it delayed something important to Swift as well as to us. Up until now, all I’ve been able to give is knowledge. I was the only one of my people here, and I can never go back where I came from, so that I couldn’t get more things to give.