New Writings in SF 21 - [Anthology]

by Ed By John Carnell

  Rockwell cringed as the sudden air-currents partially reversed their direction. As yet there was no sign of lightning, but the sign and intensity of the space-charge left him in no doubt of the seriousness of his position. A glance at the electrometer warned him that he was already as good as dead. With the local space-charge exceeding five kilo-volts per metre and rapidly rising, the chances of a lightning strike were very high. The danger was increased tenfold by the fact that the smooth bamboo-like trunks of the adjacent trees were natural insulators. They would drop very little electrical resistance even when wet. In such a terrain, the landcat would be the inevitable target for the main-stroke when it came.

  He brought the landcat to a halt and considered his chances. A small strike on the ‘cat would probably leave him unharmed. One of Baba’s mega-amp strokes would be a different matter. He had seen landcats reduced to solid slag in similar circumstances. He had the choice now as to whether to remain with the ‘cat or to take his chances in the open. Objectively, he knew the outcome would be the same. Instant carbonisation, he had called it, in a moment of jest. Only now, the humour had died from his lips.

  The preferred method of pedestrian locomotion when exposed to Baban storms was indicated by the emergency card on the ‘cat’s windscreen. The recommendations did not appeal to him. ‘Crouch low with legs together, and hop. Take extreme care not to approach the ground or other objects with the hands or other parts of the body.’ Dignity alone forbade him from considering such an ignoble mode of exit. In any case, Rockwell was more interested in retaining the ‘cat’s facilities than in abandoning them. He decided to take the chance and remain within the ‘cat.

  When the rain started, however, he knew he had been mistaken in his choice. The first blinding deluge changed swiftly to soft hail. Above him the sky grew bright momentarily with multiple pulses of diffuse sheet lightning taking place within the cloud itself. Things could not have been worse. The countercurrents of wind as registered by the writhing brush cautioned him that the maturing thunder-cell was now directly above him. There were perhaps five hundred thundercells maturing in this particular storm, but it was no coincidence that the first cell had risen with the landcat at its epicentre.

  Storms on Baba were not to be confused with acts of God.

  There was no action he could still take to secure his own personal safety. Having accepted this as a fact, his next priority was to ensure the continuance of the information he had risked his life to gain. No planetary circuits could be entrusted with the message. It was therefore to the supervising STA satellite circuits that he turned the ‘cat’s transmitter. Even as he set the tape loop to transmit the message, it came upon him that it was also, in a sense, his last will and testament. Despite the interference and the static, those same words frequently repeated could be reconstituted by coincidence-seeking computers. With this in mind, he chose his last words carefully.

  Then the storm broke with malevolent fury. Eight centimetres of rain in seven and a half minutes had to be experienced to be believed. Rockwell, of course, had no knowledge of the bright spear of the lead-stroke of lightning which searched the random atmosphere looking for the path of least resistance. It found its target, as Rockwell had known for certain it would. But it was the massive return stroke which vaporised the ‘cat...

  When the great hatches of the space ferry opened, Sector-Superintendent George Kinoul of the Space Territories Administration stepped out—and immediately found himself up to his crutch in tepid water. This discovery crinkled his shrewd face into a wreath of genuine amusement. It had been a long time since he had last landed at a spaceport so primitive that a concrete lagoon was used instead of the conventional landing bowl and sprays. His baptism in algae-green water was part of the price he must pay for having spent the last few years of Service life behind an office desk.

  Ruefully he waded towards the far bunkers of the spaceport installation. Nothing except a flat barge appeared on the lagoon. From this he concluded that his intention of arriving unannounced had been successful. Sector-Superintendents did not arrive at minor planets without major cause and Kinoul had been in the game too many years to miss the implications. Besides which, Professor Rockwell had been a very close friend of his.

  Around the extensive lagoon, a wealth of tropical vegetation edged over the concrete banks and sampled the waters with slim and abundant tendrils. Overall a ruthless tropical sun burned down and the rising heat and moisture from the shallow reaches of the lagoon caused potential mirages to appear and disappear. High above the rich greenness of the surrounding vegetation, a few giant birds circled lazily, carving great circles through the air against a white-hazed sky. Here, one could imagine, was the land of lotus-eaters, timeless, untroubled, and narcotically beautiful. That it had also been responsible for the destruction of one of the more astute of the STA consultants, was an injunction to be very wary.

  The spaceport Controller was surprised to see him. No passengers had been advised on the space ferry. This was a measure of Kinoul’s ability to influence the system. The spaceport Controller’s operations licence had been signed by Kinoul’s own hand. He too agreed to let the Sector-Superintendent’s presence pass unrecorded. He even volunteered a landcat and driver to take Kinoul to the STA Ecological Station some five kilometres away.

  The landcat edged out of its shadowed portico and headed across the extravagantly tropical countryside. It had been on the tip of Kinoul’s tongue to ask why a tracked landcat was preferable to a wheeled vehicle for transport. The unbroken sweep of lush vegetation gave its own answer. Baba had no use for roads. Save for the few tracks made by Terran vehicles, no paths existed. Although there were vast plantations filled to the brim with cultivated flora, nothing disturbed the lineless contours devised by Nature.

  Their way led uphill and down; through valleys and over high ridges purple with florid poppies; and through green and sheltered tunnels beneath huge palmaceous fronds. Kinoul was impressed and enthralled. He sensed the thrusting vitality and richness of the indigenous life of Baba; the urgent insistence on a place in the sun, and the repayment of this right by a display of consummate and colourful beauty. This was the background to the dedicated and passionately enthusiastic researchers of the late Professor Rockwell.

  At the Ecological Station, the resident-in-charge was a slight and frail young female ecologist. She viewed Kinoul’s unheralded arrival with the degree of consternation normally reserved for a major earthquake. Janice Howell had been Rockwell’s assistant. She presumably knew more than anyone on Baba the interests that the professor had been following immediately before the time of his death. Janice led Kinoul into a cool, dark office, shielded from the worst effects of the Baban sun, and sat with fierce concentration waiting for the dreaded Sector-Superintendent to begin his examination.

  Kinoul tried to put her at her ease.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering what I’m doing here,’ he said kindly. ‘Well, Professor Rockwell was a long-standing friend of mine. I don’t need to say that his death has touched me deeply. I had the usual communication from the civil authorities on Baba and I’ve no reason to doubt their findings that he was the victim of a storm. But before he died, the professor took the unusual step of transmitting some information directly into the STA satellite circuits.’

  Far from growing at ease, Janice’s frown tautened into a band which must have hurt her forehead, but she volunteered no reply. Kinoul continued his explanation.

  ‘Exactly what his message was, we shall probably never know. The signal was too corrupted by static to be decipherable. We think it was a repetitive message, probably from a tape loop. But it continued for too short a time for us to be able to reconstitute the sense. The only coherent phrase we could regain contained the words “...the thunder said...” And that’s what brings me here. I need to know what he was trying to tell us.’

  ‘Need it have been that important?’ Her voice was moulded logic, equally as cool as the room in which they
sat.

  ‘I think it was.’ Kinoul followed the idea with certainty. ‘Satellite circuit frequencies are used only by STA executives in cases of extreme emergency. Even then, they’re used only when other means of communication aren’t available or advisable. The fact of his sending the message has two implications. The first is that Professor Rockwell believed the information was sufficiently important to merit the use of the emergency circuits. The second is that he was quite certain he wouldn’t get the chance to impart the information any other way.’

  She screwed up her face in concentration. ‘I don’t really know what the Professor was doing that morning. He was engaged in one of his interminable rows with the Terran Trade Consortium. Some sort of field trial had been arranged. He wasn’t explicit about the details. He was completely certain it was all going to be a waste of time.’

  ‘Yet by the time he contacted the satellite he knew he was going to die. Tell me, Miss Howell, how could he-know he was in danger of being destroyed by lightning?’

  She did not think she was meant to answer the question, and she did not attempt to do so. For the first time a slight relaxation crept into her puzzlement. The problem became more important than the circumstances surrounding it. She went to the cabinet and consulted the files, not so much because there were things she could not remember, but because the act of searching helped her to remember associated details which might otherwise have escaped her notice. It also gave her time to think.

  ‘How much do you already know?’ she asked. ‘The Professor had a theory that some of the indigenous life on Baba has a level of intelligence on the Manneschen Scale sufficient to make Terran exploitation illegal. He was thinking of the birds.’

  ‘I’ve seen it mooted in his reports, but the case has never seemed too clear. I’ve also read the official counterblast by the Terran Trade Consortium, which appeared to make the Professor’s speculations seem rather academic’

  She smiled wanly. ‘On the contrary, the initial impetus was based on no more than a hunch. The academics came later. We’d noticed that the larger Baban birds appeared to have a strong system of social hierarchy.’

  ‘So have many insects,’ said Kinoul, ‘but that doesn’t prove the presence of intelligence.’

  ‘In itself, no. But it does imply some mechanism of social regulation. In many classes of creature, the regulating mechanism can be right down at the hormone-exchange level. This was found not to be true for the birds of Baba. We examined their class-structure more closely—and finally identified the king.’

  ‘King?’

  ‘Boss-bird, flock leader—call him what you will. There’s one bird out there who appears to direct and co-ordinate the activities of the others. But in observing him, we got a shock ourselves.’

  ‘What sort of a shock?’

  Janice Howell summed him warily for a few seconds before replying.

  ‘I don’t know if you’re going to believe this, Superintendent. It took us a little while to accept it ourselves. But while we were observing the king we gradually became aware—that he was observing us.’

  ‘How long is it since you last went home on leave?’ asked Kinoul sharply.

  The question produced the kind of reaction he had expected. She flushed with sudden anger.

  ‘I said you’d not believe me! But you’ll find the fact well documented in Professor Rockwell’s notes. And if there’s further proof you want, you can see it for yourself.’

  She reached for the shutters and flung them back from the windows to admit the bright glare of Baban midday.

  ‘There’s the king, out there. He’s been watching this place all morning. Could it be that he’s trying to figure out the reason for the arrival of a Sector-Superintendent ?’

  Kinoul approached the window and looked out. Looking back at him from the lower branches of a nearby tree was one of the beautiful light-grey birds of Baba. The magnificence of this particular bird was much enhanced by its size, which greatly exceeded that of the largest Terran eagle. Its appearance was that of a bird of prey, with long clawed, zygodactyl feet, and a curved, hooked bill which was turned towards the Terran with an expression Kinoul could only interpret as one of great acumen.

  The Superintendent watched it speculatively for many minutes, then turned and closed the shutters after him.

  ‘And Professor Rockwell believed that these creatures have a high level of intelligence?’

  ‘He did. But he found it an uncommonly difficult thing to prove. They’re so well adapted to their environment that almost any of their action can be ascribed to instinct rather than intelligence. It’s never been possible to capture one alive, so we’ve been unable to measure their performance in the laboratory. Nor have we been able to encourage one to grow tame as a pet. In fact, all our knowledge of them has had to come from the dissection of dead carcases and from remote observations in the field. And as you probably saw for yourself just know, one tends to project one’s own feelings into the encounter, and that spoils the objectivity.’

  ‘Is there any micro-biological evidence to support the idea of high intelligence?’

  ‘On a cellular level, no. They’ve a larger brain than any Terran aviform, but superficially not more complex. But our understanding of Baban biological structures is still in its infancy. There are organisational differences in their brain-structure, the implications of which we can’t even begin to understand.’

  ‘So it’s still anybody’s guess,’ said Kinoul. ‘Do you think they’re intelligent?’

  ‘I don’t have any doubt of it.’

  ‘Then you’re to take the next ferry offworld for three months leave regardless of your entitlement. That’s an order.’

  ‘But why...?’ She seemed suddenly near to tears. ‘Don’t you think I know my job?’

  ‘I never questioned your job ability. I look at it this way. If you’re wrong about the birds, you’re wasting STA money by not approaching the subject with an open mind.’

  ‘And if I’m right?’ she asked, with a sudden flare of spirit.

  “That’s the rub,’ said Kinoul. ‘If you’re right, you’re logically in the same danger as was Professor Rockwell. I should hate for you to be struck by lightning. You’re much too pretty and much too earnest to deserve a fate like that.’

  In the humid and breathless air, the tremble of thunder sounded distantly. The evening had grown progressively more clouded and more threatening. Once Kinoul had seen the ferry bearing Janice Howell safely offworld, he had been able to relax. He stood at the porch of the Ecological Station and listened to the thunder echoing now from the untamed forests and now from the great plantations covering the low hills. At least two thundercells were active, about fifteen kilometres apart and still well distant, but they had a common origin in the mass of Baba-cumulus cloud which covered the whole storm area. From his position on the edge of the storm Kinoul could see where the upthrusting air-currents were being drawn into the cloud, raising cauliflower-heads of Baba-cumulonimbus like towers above the massing cloud. Where the thundercells were active, the cloud-tops were even higher, being dragged into great anvils by the upper winds. It was appropriately from the direction of these anvils that the sound of the hammers of wrath came distantly across the extravagant terrain.

  Kinoul was full of silent speculation. The focus of the thundercells depended on a very delicate balance of Nature —the existence of a dynamic balance in the lower air which caused great upthrusting currents to form massive cylinders of rising air ten kilometres in height and possibly as much in diameter. These were the origin of the dreaded thundercells of Baba, many times more destructive than their Terran counterparts. But the sheer randomness and instability of the dynamic process appeared to make it impossible to determine where the new cells would be maturing while their brothers spent their energy and decayed.

  Inside the still-open door there was piled on the table the masses of statistics and notes culled from Rockwell’s files. The radio-facsimile printer
in the corner was occasionally issuing yet more sheets of data from its on-line link with the STA data banks. But the most interesting document of all was one which Kinoul held in his hand. It was a fragment torn from a scribble pad. In Rockwell’s own hand it asked simply: ‘Why do the birds attend a storm?’

  The question was relevant. The onset of the storm had been heralded by the arrival of great flocks of the giant birds, wheeling and calling and darting together low over the verdant bush. It was possible to speculate that the presence of a storm presented an opportune time for gathering some favoured article of food and that it was this which attracted them. Or else the birds, recognising danger, had evacuated the storm centre and had retired to its perimeter waiting until it was safe to return. Neither of these explanations satisfied Kinoul.