Young Flandry

by Poul Anderson

"The more if we can help you with your transportation," the leader offered.

  The Dom hesitated. A primitive's conservatism, Flandry recognized. He can't be sure airlifts aren't unlucky, or whatever. Finally: "Come to us."

  That was not quickly done. First everybody aboard must get into his heat suit. One had been modified for Flandry. It amounted to a white coverall bedecked with pockets and sheaths; boots; gauntlets—everything insulated around a web of thermoconductor strands. A fishbowl helmet was equipped with chowlock, mechanical wipers, two-way sonic amplification, and short-range radio. A heat pump, hooked to the thermoconductors and run off accumulators, was carried on a backpack frame. Though heavy, the rig was less awkward than might have been expected. Its weight was well distributed; the gloves were thick and stiff, but apparatus was designed with that in mind, and plectrum-like extensions could be slipped over the fingers for finer work. Anyway, Flandry thought, consider the alternative.

  It's not that man or Merseian can't survive a while in this sauna. I expect we could, if the while be fairly short. It's that we wouldn't particularly want to survive.

  Checked out, the party set down its vehicle and stepped forth. At this altitude, relay to base continued automatically.

  Flandry's first awareness was of weight, enclosure, chattering pump, cooled dried air blown at his nostrils. Being otherwise unprocessed, the atmosphere bore odors—growth, decay, flower and animal exudations, volcanic fumes—that stirred obscure memories at the back of his brain. He dismissed them and concentrated on his surroundings.

  The river boomed past a broad meadow, casting spray and steam over its banks. Above and on every side loomed the jungle. Trees grew high, brush grew wide, leaf crowding serrated blue leaf until the eye soon lost itself in dripping murk. But the stems looked frail, pulpy, and the leaves were drying out; they rattled against each other, the fallen ones scrittled before a breeze, the short life of summer's forest drew near to an end.

  Sturdier on open ground was that vegetable family the Merseians called wair: as widespread, variegated, and ecologically fundamental as grass on Terra. In spring it grew from a tough-hulled seed, rapidly building a cluster of foliage and a root that resembled a tuber without being one. The leaves of the dominant local species were ankle height and lacy. They too were withering, the wair was going dormant; but soon, in fall, it would consume its root and sprout seeds, and when frost cracked their pods, the seeds would fall to earth.

  Darkling over treetops could be glimpsed Mt. Thunderbelow. A slight shudder went through Flandry's shins, he heard a rumble, the volcano had cleared its throat. Smoke puffed forth.

  But the Domrath were coming. He focused on them.

  Life on Talwin had followed the same general course as on most terrestroid planets. Differences existed. It would have been surprising were there none. Thus, while tissues were principally built of L-amino proteins in water solution like Flandry's or Cnif's, here they normally metabolized levo sugars. A man could live on native food, if he avoided the poisonous varieties; but he must take the dietary capsules the Merseians had prepared.

  Still, the standard division into photosynthetic vegetable and oxygen-breathing animal had occurred, and the larger animals were structurally familiar with their interior skeletons, four limbs, paired eyes and ears. Set beside many sophonts, the Domrath would have looked homelike.

  They were bipeds with four-fingered hands, their outline roughly anthropoid except for the proportionately longer legs and huge, clawed, thickly soled feet necessary to negotiate springtime swamps and summer hardpan. The skin was glabrous, bluish, with brown and black mottlings that were beginning to turn gaudy colors as mating season approached. The heads were faintly suggestive of elephants': round, with beady eyes, large erect ears that doubled as cooling surfaces, a short trunk that was a chemosensor and a floodtime snorkel, small down-curving tusks on the males. The people wore only loincloths, loosely woven straw cloaks to help keep off "insects," necklaces and other ornaments of bone, shell, horn, teeth, tinted clay. Some of their tools and weapons were bronze, some—incongruously—paleolithic.

  That much was easily grasped. And while their size was considerable, adult males standing over two meters and massing a hundred or more kilos, females even larger, it was not overwhelming. They were bisexual and viviparous. Granted, they were not mammals. A mother fed her infants by regurgitation. Bodies were poikilothermic, though now functioning at a higher rate than any Terran reptile. That was not unheard of either.

  Nonetheless, Flandry thought, it marked the foundation of their uniqueness. For when your energy, your very intelligence was a function of temperature; when you not only slept at night, but spent two-thirds of your life among the ghostly half-dreams of hibernation—

  About a score had come to meet the xenologists, with numerous young tagging after. The grownups walked in ponderous stateliness. But several had burdens strapped on their backs; and behind them Flandry saw others continue work, packing, loading bundles onto carrier poles, sweeping and garnishing soon-to-be-deserted houses.

  The greeting committee stopped a few meters off. Its leader elevated his trunk while dipping his ax. Sounds that a human palate could not reproduce came from his mouth. Flandry heard the computer's voice in his radio unit. "Here is Seething Springs. I am"—no translation available, but the name sounded like "G'ung"—"who speaks this year for our tribe." An intonation noted, in effect, that "tribe" (Eriau "maddeuth," itself not too close an equivalent of the Anglic word by which Flandry rendered it) was a debatable interpretation of the sound G'ung made, but must serve until further studies had deepened comprehension of his society. "Why have you come?"

  The question was not hostile, nor was the omission of a spoken welcome. The Domrath were gregarious, unwarlike although valiant fighters at need, accustomed to organizing themselves in nomadic bands. And, while omnivorous, they didn't make hunting a major occupation. Their near ancestors had doubtless lived entirely off the superabundant plant life of summer. Accordingly, they had no special territorial instincts. Except for their winter dens, it did not occur to them that anyone might not have a perfect right to be anywhere.

  The Seething Springs folk were unusual in returning annually to permanent buildings, instead of constructing temporary shelters wherever they chanced to be. And this custom had grown up among them only because their hibernation site was not too far from this village. No one had challenged their occupation of it.

  Quite simply and amiably, G'ung wondered what had brought the Merseians.

  "We explained our reasons when last we visited you . . . with gifts," their leader reminded. His colleagues bore trade goods, metal tools and the like, which had hitherto delighted all recipients. "We wish to learn about your tribe."

  "Is understood." Neither G'ung nor his group acted wildly enthusiastic.

  No Domrath had shown fear of the Merseians. Being formidable animals, they had never developed either timidity or undue aggressiveness; being at an early prescientific stage, they lived among too many marvels and mysteries to see anything terrifyingly strange about spaceships bearing extraplanetarians; and Ydwyr had enforced strict correctness in every dealing with them. So why did these hesitate?

  The answer was manifest as G'ung continued: "But you came before in high summer. Fastbreaking Festival was past, the tribes had dispersed, food was ample and wit was keen. Now we labor to bring the season's gatherings to our hibernation place. When we are there, we shall feast and mate until we drowse off. We have no time or desire for sharing self with outsiders."

  "Is understood, G'ung," the Merseian said. "We do not wish to hamper or interfere. We do wish to observe. Other tribes have we watched as fall drew nigh, but not yours, and we know your ways differ from the lowlanders' in more than one regard. For this privilege we bid gifts and, can happen, the help of our flying house to transport your stores."

  The Domrath snorted among themselves. They must be tempted but unsure. Against assistance in the hard job of moving st
uff up toward Mt. Thunderbelow must be balanced a change in immemorial practice, a possible angering of gods . . . yes, it was known the Domrath were a religious race . . . .

  "Your words shall be shared and chewed on," G'ung decided. "We shall assemble tonight. Meanwhile is much to do while light remains." The darkness of Talwin's clouded summer was pitchy; and in this dry period, fires were restricted and torches tabooed. He issued no spoken invitation, that not being the custom of his folk, but headed back. The Merseians followed with Flandry.

  The village was carefully laid out in a spiderweb pattern of streets—for defense? Buildings varied in size and function, from hut to storage shed, but were all of stone, beautifully dressed, dry-laid, and chinked. Massive wooden beams supported steeply pitched sod roofs. Both workmanship and dimensions—low ceilings, narrow doorways, slit windows with heavy shutters—showed that, while the Domrath used this place, they had not erected it.

  They boiled about, a hundred or so of every age; doubtless more were on the trail to the dens. Voices and footfalls surged around. In spite of obvious curiosity, no one halted work above a minute to stare at the visitors. Autumn was too close.

  At a central plaza, where the old cooked a communal meal over a flrepit, G'ung showed the Merseians some benches. "I will speak among the people," he said. "Come day's end, you shall receive us here and we shall share self on the matter you broach. Tell me first: would the Ruadrath hold with your plan?"

  "I assure you the Ruadrath have nothing against it," Cnif said.

  From what I've studied, Flandry thought, I'm not quite sure that's true, once they find out.

  "I have glimpsed a Ruad—I think—when I was small and spring came early," said an aged female. "That you see them each year—" She wandered off, shaking her head.

  With Cnif's assent, Flandry peeked into a house fronting on the square. He saw a clay floor, a hearth and smokehole, daises along two sides with shelves above. Bright unhuman patterns glowed on walls and intricately carved timbers. In one corner stood a loaded rack, ready to go. But from the rafters, with ingenious guards against animals, hung dried fruits and cured meat—though the Domrath were rarely eaters of flesh. A male sat carefully cleaning and greasing bronze utensils, knives, bowls, an ax, a saw. His female directed her young in tidying the single room while she spread the daises with new straw mats.

  Flandry greeted the family. "Is this to be left?" he asked. It seemed like quite a bit for these impoverished savages.

  "In rightness, what else?" the male replied. He didn't stop his work, nor appear to notice that Flandry was not a Merseian. In his eyes, the differences were probably negligible. "The metal is of the Ruadrath, as is the house. For use we give payment, that they may be well pleased with us when they come out of the sea." He did pause then, to make a sign that might be avertive or might be reverent—or both or neither, but surely reflected the universal sense of a mortal creature confronting the unknown. "Such is the law, by which our forebears lived while others died. Thch rar."

  Ruadrath: elves, gods, winter ghosts.

  Chapter Ten

  Djana stumbled to bed and did not wake for thirty-odd hours. Flandry needed less rest. After breakfast he busied himself, languidly at first but with increasing energy. What he learned fascinated him so much that he regretted not daring to spend time exploring in depth the history of these past five centuries on Wayland.

  He was in the main control room, holding technical discussions with the prime computer, when the speaker in its quaint-looking instrument bank said in its quaint-sounding Anglic: "As instructed, I have kept your companion under observation. Her eyelids are moving."

  Flandry got up. "Thanks," he said automatically. It was hard to remember that no living mind flickered behind those meters and readout screens. An awareness did, yes, but not like that of any natural sophont, no matter how strange to man; this one was in some ways more and in some ways less than organic. "I'd better go to her. Uh, have a servitor bring hot soup and, uh, tea and buttered toast, soon's it can."

  He strode down corridors silent except for the hum of machines, past apartments that held a few moldering possessions of men long dead, until he found hers.

  "Nicky—" She blinked mistily and reached tremulous arms toward him. How thin and pale she'd grown! He could just bear her. Bending for a kiss, he felt her lips passive beneath his.

  "Nicky . . . are we . . . all right?" The whisper-breath tickled his ear.

  "Assuredly." He stroked her cheek. "Everything's on orbit."

  "Outside?"

  "Safe as houses. Safer than numerous houses I could name." Flandry straightened. "Relax. We'll start putting meat back on those lovely bones in a few minutes. By departure date, you ought to be completely yourself again."

  She frowned, shook her head in a puzzled way, tried to sit up. "Hoy, not yet," he said, laying hands on the bare slight shoulders. "I prescribe lots of bed rest. When you're strong enough to find that boring, I'll arrange for entertainment tapes to be projected. The computer says there're a few left. Ought to be interesting, a show that old."

  Still she struggled feebly. The chemical-smelling air fluttered fast, in and out of her lungs. Alarm struck him. "What's the trouble. Djana?"

  "I . . . don't know. Dizzy—"

  "Oh, well. After what you've been through."

  Cold fingers clutched his arm. "Nicky. This moon. Is it . . . worth . . . anything?"

  "Huh?"

  "Money!" she shrieked like an insect. "Is it worth money?"

  Why should that make that much difference, right now? flashed through him. Her past life's made her fanatical on the subject, I suppose, and—"Sure."

  "You're certain?" she gasped.

  "My dear," he said, "Leon Ammon will have to work hard at it if he does not want to become one of the richest men in the Empire."

  Her eyes rolled back till he saw only whiteness. She sagged in his embrace.

  "Fainted," he muttered, and eased her down. Rising, scratching his scalp: "Computer, what kind of medical knowledge do you keep in your data banks?"

  Reviving after a while, Djana sobbed. She wouldn't tell him why. Presently she was as near hysteria as her condition permitted. The computer found a sedative which Flandry administered.

  On her next awakening she was calm, at any rate on the surface, but somehow remote from him. She answered his remarks so curtly as to make it clear she didn't want to talk. She did take nourishment, though. Afterward she lay frowning upward, fists clenched at her sides. He left her alone.

  She was more cheerful by the following watch, and gradually reverted to her usual self.

  But they saw scant of each other until they were again in space, bound back to the assigned round that was to end on Irumclaw where it began. She had spent most of the time previous in bed, waited on by robots while she recovered. He, vigor regained sooner, was preoccupied with setting matters on the moon to rights and supervising the repair of Jake. The latter job was complicated by the requirement that no clue remain to what had really taken place. He didn't want his superiors disbelieving his entries in the log concerning a malfunction of the hyperdrive oscillator which it had taken him three weeks to fix by himself.

  Stark Wayland fell aft, and mighty Regin, and lurid Mimir; and the boat moved alone amidst a glory of stars. Flandry sat with Djana in the conn, which was the single halfway comfortable area to sit. Rested, clean, depilated, fed, liquored, in crisp coverall, breathing ample air, feeling the tug of a steady Terran g and the faint throb of the power that drove him toward his destination, he inhaled of a cigarette, patted Djana's hand, and grinned at her fresh-born comeliness. "Mission accomplished," he said. "I shall expect you to show your gratitude in the ways you know best."

  "Well-l-l," she purred. After a moment: "How could you tell, Nicky?"

  "Hm?"

  "I don't yet understand what went wrong. You tried to explain before, but I was too dazed, I guess."

  "Most simple," he said, entirely willing to par
ade his cleverness anew. "Once I saw we were caught in a chess game, everything else made sense. For instance, I remembered those radio masts being erected in the wilds. An impossible job unless the construction robots were free from attack. Therefore the ferocity of the roving machines was limited to their own kind. Another game, you see, with more potentialities and less predictability than chess, even the chess-cum-combat that had been developed when the regular sort got boring. New types of killer were produced at intervals and sent forth to see how they'd do against the older models. Our boat, and later we ourselves, were naturally taken for such newcomers; the robots weren't supplied with information about humans, and line-of-sight radio often had them out of touch with the big computer."

  "When we tried to call for help, though—"

  "You mean from the peak of Mt. Maidens? Well, obviously none of the wild robots would recognize our signal, on the band they used. And that part of the computer's attention which 'listened in' on its children simply filtered out my voice, the way you or I can fail to hear sounds when we're busy with something else. With so much natural static around, that's not surprising.

  "Those masts were constructed strictly as relays for the robots—for the high frequencies which carried the digital transmissions—so that's why they didn't buck on my calls on any other band. The computer always did keep a small part of itself on the qui vive for a voice call on standard frequencies. But it assumed that, if and when humans came back, they would descend straight from the zenith and land near the buildings as they used to. Hence it didn't make arrangements to detect people radio from any other direction."

  Flandry puffed. Smoke curled across the viewscreen, as if to veil off the abysses beyond. "Maybe it should have done so, in theory," he said. "However, after all those centuries, the poor thing was more than a little bonkers. Actually, what it did—first establish that chess game, then modify it, then produce fighters that obeyed no rules, then extend the range and variety of their battles further and further across the moon—that was done to save most of its sanity."