It lay there, canted a little and staring up with its small round, seeming eyes with a look of unimpassioned expectancy. Small boats roved overhead. Once engines rumbled, and a wooden-hulled craft swam on the surface of the water to the very dock whose pilings the Wabbler had seen. Then creaking sounds emanated from those pilings. The Wabbler may have known that unloading-cranes were at work. But this was not its destiny, either.
There came other sounds of greater import. Clankings of gears. A definite, burbling rush of water. It continued and continued. The Wabbler could not possibly be expected to understand, of course, that such burbling underwater sounds are typical of a drydock being filled—the filling beginning near low tide when a great ship is to leave at high. Especially, perhaps, the Wabbler could not be expected to know that a great warship had occupied a vastly important drydock and that its return to active service would restore much power to an enemy fleet. Certainly it could not know that another great warship waited impatiently to be repaired in the same basin. But the restless tick-tick-tick-tick which was the Wabbler’s brain was remarkably crisp and incisive.
When flood tide began once more, the Wabbler jetted water and wabbled to and fro until it broke free of the bottom. It hung with a seeming impatience—wreathed in seaweed and coated with greenish slime—above the tail which dangled down to the harbor mud. It looked alive, and inhuman, and chinless, and it looked passionately demoniac, and it looked like something out of a submarine Gehenna. And presently, when the flood tide began to flow and the eddy about the docks and the drydock gates began, the Wabbler inched as if purposefully toward the place where water burbled through flooding valves.
Sounds in the air did not reach the Wabbler. Sounds under water did. It heard the grinding rumble of steam winches, and it heard the screeching sound as the drydock gates swung open. They were huge gates, and they made a considerable eddy of their own. The Wabbler swam to the very center of that eddy and hung there, waiting. Now, for the first time, it seemed excited. It seemed to quiver a little. Once when it seemed that the eddy might bring it to the surface, it bubbled impatiently from the vent which appeared to be a mouth. And its brain went tick-tick-tick-tick within it, and inside its brainpan it measured variations in the vertical component of terrestrial magnetism, and among such measurements it noted the effect of small tugs which came near but did not enter the drydock. They only sent lines within, so they could haul the warship out. But the tugs were not the Wabbler’s destiny, either.
It heard their propellers thrashing, and they made, to be sure, a very fine noise. But the Wabbler quivered with eagerness as somewhere within itself it noted a vast variation in the vertical magnetic component, which increased and increased steadily. That was the warship moving very slowly out of its place in the drydock. It moved very slowly but very directly toward the Wabbler, and the Wabbler knew that its destiny was near.
Somewhere very far away there was the dull, racking sound of an explosion. The Wabbler may have realized that another of its brothers had achieved its destiny, but paid no heed. Its own destiny approached. The steel prow of the battleship drew nearer and nearer, and then the bow plates were overhead, and something made a tiny click inside the Wabbler. Destiny was certain, now. It waited, quivering. The mass of steel within the range of its senses grew greater and greater. The strain of restraint grew more intense. The tick-tick-tick-ticking of the Wabbler’s brain seemed to accelerate to a frantic—to an intolerable—pace. And then—
The Wabbler achieved its destiny. It turned into a flaming ball of incandescent gasses—three hundred pounds of detonated high explosive—squarely under the keel of a thirty-five-thousand-ton battleship which at the moment was only halfway out of a drydock. The watertight doors of the battleship were open, and its auxiliary power was off, so they could not be closed. There was much need for this drydock, and repairs were not completed in it. But it was the Wabbler’s destiny to end all that. In three minutes the battleship was lying crazily on the harbor bottom, half in and half out of the drydock. She careened as she sank, and her masts and fighting tops demolished sheds by the drydock walls. Battleship and dock alike were out of action for the duration of the war.
And the Wabbler—
A long, long time afterward—years afterward—salvage divers finished cutting up the sunken warship for scrap. The last irregularly cut mass of metal went up on the salvage slings. The last diver down went stumbling about the muddy harbor water. His heavy, weighted shoes kicked up something. He fumbled to see if anything remained to be salvaged. He found a ten-foot, still-flexible tail of metal. The rest of the Wabbler had ceased to exist. Chronometer, tide-time gear, valves, compressed-air tanks, and all the balance of its intricate innards had been blown to atoms when the Wabbler achieved its destiny. Only the flexible metal tail remained intact.
The salvage diver considered that it was not worth sending the sling down for, again. He dropped it in the mud and jerked on the life line to. be hauled up to the surface.
At least among humans in historic times, wars have been conflicts of governments. Might something inherent in the very concept of “government” be a fundamental cause of war? For us, the concept is so deeply ingrained that government and civilization tend to seem inseparable, and it’s hard to imagine alternatives. But when we meet other intelligences, they may begin to show us just how narrow our preconceptions are—and vice versa.
THIS ALL happened a long time ago, and almost twenty light-years from where we’re standing now. You honor me here tonight as a humanitarian, as a man who has done something to bring a temporary light to the eternal darkness that is our universe. But you deceive yourselves. I made the situation just civilized enough so that its true brutality, shed of bloody drapery, can be seen.
I see you don’t believe what I say. In this whole audience I suspect that only aMelmwn truly understands—and she better than I. Not one of you has ever been kicked in the teeth by these particular facts of life. Perhaps if I told you the story as it happened to me—I could make you feel the horror you hear me describe.
Two centuries ago, the Pwrlyg Spice & Trading Company completed the first interstellar flight. They were thirty years ahead of their nearest competitors. They had a whole planet at their disposal, except for one minor complication…
The natives were restless.
My attention was unevenly divided between the beautiful girl who had just introduced herself, and the ancient city that shimmered in the hot air behind her.
Mary Dahlmann. That was a hard name to pronounce, but I had studied Australian for almost two years, and I was damned if I couldn’t say a name. I clumsily worked my way through a response. “Yes, ah, Miss, ah, Dahlmann, I am Ron Melmwn, and I am the new Company anthropologist. But I thought the Vice President for Aboriginal Affairs was going to meet me.”
Ngagn Chev dug me in the ribs, “Say, you really can speak that gabble, can’t you, Melmwn?” he whispered in Mikin. Chev was vice president for violence—an O.K. guy, but an incurable bigot.
Mary Dahlmann smiled uncertainly at this exchange. Then she answered my question. “Mr. Horlig will be right along. He asked me to meet you. My father is Chief Representative for Her Majesty’s Government.” I later learned that Her Majesty was two centuries dead. “Here, let me show you off the field.” She grasped my wrist for a second—an instant. I guess I jerked back. Her hand fell away and her eagerness vanished. “This way,” she said icily, pointing to a gate in the force fence surrounding the Pwrlyg landing field. I wished very much I had not pulled away from her touch. Even though she was so blond and pale, she was a woman, and in a weird way, pretty. Besides, she had overcome whatever feelings she had against us.
There was an embarrassed silence, as the five of us cleared the landing craft and walked toward the gate.
The sun was bright—brighter than ours ever shines over Miki. It was also very dry. There were no clouds in the sky. Twenty or thirty people worked in the field. Most were Mikin, but here and there wer
e clusters of Terrans. Several were standing around a device in the comer of the field where the fence made a joint to angle out toward the beach. The Terrans knelt by the device.
Orange fire flickered from the end of the machine, followed by a loud guda-bam-bam-bam. Even as my conscious mind concluded that we were under fire, I threw myself on the ground and flattened into the lowest profile possible. You’ve heard the bromide about combat making life more real. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly true that when you are flat against the ground with your face in the dirt, the whole universe looks different. That red-tan sand was hot. Sharp little stones bit into my face. Two inches before my face a clump of sage had assumed the dimensions of a vola tree.
I cocked my head microscopically to see how the others were doing. They were all down, too. Correction: that idiot Earthgirl was still standing. More than a second after the attack she was still working toward the idea that someone was trying to kill her. Only a dement or a Little Sister brought up in a convent could be so dense. I reached out, grabbed her slim ankle, and jerked. She came down hard. Once down, she didn’t move.
Ngagn Chev and some accountant, whose name I didn’t remember, were advancing toward the slug-thrower. That accountant had the fastest low-crawl I have ever seen. The Terrans frantically tried to lower the barrels of their gun—but it was really primitive and couldn’t search more than five degrees. The little accountant zipped up to within twenty meters of the gun, reached into his weapons pouch, and tossed a grenade toward the Earthmen and their weapon. I dug my face into the dirt and waited for the explosion. There was only a muffled thud. It was a gas bomb—not frag. A green mist hung for an instant over the gun and the Terrans.
When I got to them, Chev was already complimenting the accountant on his throw.
“A private quarrel?” I asked Chev.
The security chief looked faintly surprised. “Why no. These fellows”—he pointed at the unconscious Terrans—“belong to some conspiracy to drive us off the planet. They’re really a pitiful collection.” He pointed to the weapon. It was composed of twenty barrels welded to three metal hoops. By turning a crank, the barrels could be rotated past a belt cartridge feeder. “That gun is hardly more accurate than a shrapnel bomb. This is nothing very dangerous, but I’m going to catch chaos for letting them get within the perimeter. And I can tell you, I am going to scorch those agents of mine that let these abos sneak in. Anyway, we got the pests alive. They’ll be able to answer some questions.” He nudged one of the bodies over with his boot. “Sometimes I think it would be best to exterminate the race. They don’t occupy much territory but they sure are a nuisance.
“See,” he picked up a card from the ground and handed it to me. It was lettered in neat Mikin: MERLYN SENDS YOU DEATH. “Merlyn is the name of the ‘terrorist’ organization—it’s nonprofit, I think. Terrans are a queer lot.”
Several Company armsmen showed up then and Chev proceeded to bawl them out in a very thorough way. It was interesting, but a little embarrassing, too. I turned and started toward the main gate. I still had to meet my new boss—Horlig, the Vice President for Abo Affairs.
Where was the Terran girl? In the fuss I had completely forgotten her. But now she was gone. I ran back to where we stood when the first shots were fired. I felt cold and a little sick as I looked at the ground where she had fallen. Maybe it had been a superficial wound. Maybe the medics had carried her off. But whatever the explanation, a pool of blood almost thirty centimeters wide lay on the sand. As I watched, it soaked into the sand and became a dark brown grease spot, barely visible against the reddish-tan soil. As far as appearances go, it could have been human blood.
Horlig was a Gloyn. I should have known from his name. As it was, I got quite a surprise when I met him. With his pale gray skin and hair, Herul Horlig could easily be mistaken for an Earthman. The vice president for aboriginal affairs was either an Ostentatious Simplist or very proud of his neolithic grandparents. He wore wooden shin plates and a black breech-clout. His only weapon was a machine dartgun strapped to his wrist.
It quickly became clear that the man was unhappy with me as an addition to his staff. I could understand that. As a professional, my opinions might carry more weight with the board of directors and the president than his. Horlig did his best to hide his displeasure, though. He seemed a hard-headed, sincere fellow who could be ruthless, but nevertheless believed whatever he did was right. He unbent considerably during our meal at Supply Central. When I mentioned I wanted to interview some abos, he surprised me by suggesting we fly over to the native city that evening.
When we left Central, it was already dark. We walked to the parking lot, and got into Horlig’s car. Three minutes later we were ghosting over the suburbs of Adelaide-west. Horlig cast a practiced eye upon the queer rectangular street pattern below, and brought us down on the lawn of a two-story wood house. I started to get out.
“Just a minute, Melmwn,” said Horlig. He grabbed a pair of earphones and set the TV on pan. I didn’t say anything as he scanned the quiet neighborhood for signs of hostile activity. I was interested: usually a Simplist will avoid using advanced defense techniques. Horlig explained as he set the car’s computer on sentry and threw open the hatch:
“Our illustrious board of directors dictates that we employ ‘all security precautions at our disposal.’ Bunk. Even when these Earth creatures attack us, they are less violent than good-natured street brawlers back home. I don’t think there have been more than thirty murders in this city since Pwrlyg landed twenty years ago.”
I jumped to the soft grass and looked around. Things really were quiet. Gas lamps lit the cobblestone street and dimly outlined the wood buildings up and down the lane. Weak yellow light emerged from windows. From down the street came faint laughter of some party. Our landing had gone unnoticed.
Demoneyes. I stepped back sharply. The twin yellow disks glittered maniacally, as the cat turned to face us, and the lamps’ light came back from its eyes. The little animal turned slowly and walked disdainfully across the lawn. This was a bad omen indeed. I would have to watch the Signs very carefully tonight. Horlig was not disturbed at all. I don’t think he knew I was brought up a witch-fearer. We started up the walk toward the nearest house.
“You know, Melmwn, this isn’t just any old native we’re visiting. He’s an anthropologist, Earth style. Of course, he’s just as insipid as the rest of the bunch, but our staff is forced to do quite a bit of liaison work with him.”
An anthropologist! This was going to be interesting, both as an exchange of information and of research procedures.
“In addition, he’s the primary representative chosen by the Australian gowernmen’ … a gowernmen’ is sort of a huge corporation, as far as I can tell.”
“Uh-huh.” As a matter of fact, I knew a lot more about the mysterious government concept than Horlig. My Scholarate thesis was a theoretical study of macro organizations. The paper was almost rejected because my instructors claimed it was an analysis of a patent impossibility. Then came word that three macro organizations existed on Earth.
We climbed the front porch steps. Horlig pounded on the door. “The fellow’s name is Nalman.”
I translated his poor pronunciation back to the probable Australian original: Dahlmann! Perhaps I could find out what happened to the Earthgirl.
There were shuffling steps from within. Whoever it was did not even bother to look us over through a spy hole. Earthmen were nothing if not trusting. We were confronted by a tall, middle-aged man with thin, silvery hair. His hand quavered slightly as he removed the pipe from his mouth. Either he was in an extremity of fear or he had terrible coordination.
But when he spoke, I knew there was no fear. “Mr. Horlig. Won’t you come in?” The words and tone were mild, but in that mildness rested an immense confidence. In the past I had heard that tone only from Umpires. It implied that neither storm, nor struggle, nor crumbling physical prowess could upset the mind behind the voice. Tha
t’s a lot to get out of six quiet words—but it was all there.
When we were settled in Scholar Dahlmann’s den, Horlig made the introductions. Horlig understood Australian fairly well, but his accent was atrocious.
“As you must surely know, Scholar Dahlmann, the objective voyage time to our home planet, Epsilon Eridani II, is almost twelve years. Three days ago the third Pwrlyg Support Fleet arrived and assumed a parking orbit around the Earth. At this instant, they soar omnipotent over the lands of your people.” Dahlmann just smiled. “In any case, the first passengers have been unfrozen and brought down to the Pwrlyg Ground Base. This is Scholar Ron Melmwn, the anthropologist that the Company has brought in with the Fleet.”
From behind his thick glasses, Dahlmann inspected me with new interest. “Well, I certainly am happy to meet a Mikin anthropologist. Our meeting is something of a first, I believe.”
“I think so, too. Your institutions are ill-reported to us on Miki. This is natural, since Pwrlyg is primarily interested in the commercial and immigration prospects of your northern hemisphere. I want to correct the situation. During my stay I hope to use you and other Terrans for source material in my study of your history and, uh, government. It’s especially good luck that I meet a professional like yourself.”
Dahlmann seemed happy to discuss his people and soon we were immersed in Terran history and cultures. Much of what he told me I knew from reports received, but I let him tell the whole story.
War and Peace Page 13
