Possible Worlds of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  The doctor in charge was a haggard, sallow man with woebegone eyes. His hopeless expression did not change while Maxwell was outlining his theory. When he stopped, the doctor shook his head.

  “A chimera,” he said, “a waste of work. Others have come to Venus with the notion that it was something the Tombovs ate or drank that made them immune to jitters. Every item of their diet has been analyzed many times, even the foul fen air they breathe. The results were always negative. Nor is there any appreciable difference between Tombov blood types and ours, or their vitamin reactions. We think now that the so-called Tombov immunity is due to nothing more mysterious than natural selection. The ones now in the swamps are descendants of those who simply could not be killed by the disease, and therefore have great resistance.”

  “Nonsense,” said Maxwell, nettled by the negativeness of the man. “What becomes of their natural resistance when they are converted? Baptism has no effects on antibodies. Did it ever occur to you that there may be something they do at their secret rites which makes the difference?”

  “Religion,” said the doctor stiffly, “is a subject I never discuss, and the less said about the abominable rites of the swamp savages the better. I assure you, sir, if you knew the Tombov as well as we here do—”

  Maxwell snorted and turned away.

  “Let’s go, Parks. It’s the ‘old China hand’ story all over again. When a scientist lets himself be blinded by prejudice, he isn’t a scientist any more.”

  At the dispensary they asked the whereabouts of Hoskins’ former scout, Shan Dhee. According to Hoskins, Shan Dhee was a convert who backslid after living with the whites a while, and turned native again. It was because he had promptly contracted the jitters and had had sense enough to run away. The result of being apostate from both camps was that he became a sort of pariah, tolerated, but distrusted, by both races. Yet he served well as a go-between because he was the one heathen Tombov who knew the ways of Earthmen and spoke their language, though Hoskins warned it would be in a variety of code.

  “Shan Dhee?” said the interne, lifting an eyebrow in surprise that a respectable person should inquire about one so shifty and disreputable. “Why, in jail, probably. If not, you’ll find him hanging around one of the dives down at the Edge, loaded to the gills with zankra. Take my advice and have a patrolman go along, if you have to see him. When a convert goes bad, he’s bad.”

  “Oh, we’ll manage,” said Maxwell. The anti-Tombov prejudice seemed well distributed. He was still inclined to rely on Hoskins’ recommendation.

  ~ * ~

  The zankra joint was not a savory place. It was dark and dirty and very, very smelly. Its patrons, white men who couldn’t stand the gaff and had been barred from going home by reason of their condition, lay all about on dirty mats. They were dead to the world, even if their muscles did occasionally knot up in spasmodic twitchings. This was the way they chose to ease their doom—they had gone the zankra route. For zankra, though not a cure for anything, brought blissful anesthesia, being as it was a natural elixir—a blend of protomezyl alcohol and a number of potent alkaloids. It was cheap, too, since the gourds of which it was the juice could be had for a copper coin or so. A gourd of it was just being broached as Maxwell and Parks walked in. They saw a native squat by the door and jab a hole in the fruit so he could insert a sucking quill.

  “We’re Mr. Hoskins’ friends,” Maxwell said to him. “Where can we find Shan Dhee?”

  The Tombov studied him shiftily. There was some hesitation, and then,

  “Me Shan Dhee.”

  Maxwell had also been studying him. He was gratified to note that the fellow seemed to be magnificently healthy. There was none of the residual tremor that persists even after paracobrine shots. Yet Shan Dhee’s shoulders and arms bore mute testimony that he had been a fitters’ victim at one time. They were covered with the scars of self-inflicted bites, usually a sure sign of an untreated case. The scars were very old and confirmed, in a way, what Maxwell wanted to believe. The man had evidently been cured—a thing believed to be impossible. But how? By his reversion to his former pagan practices?

  Shan Dhee turned out to be a poor subject. It was bad enough that he spoke the barbarous pidgin brought by the first missionaries, but he was also suspicious, stubborn, and evasive. By Maxwell’s questions Shan Dhee at once divined that Maxwell knew that he had once robbed a temple, and he knew that if other Tombovs ever found that out he was sure to die horribly.

  “No know what lily flower good for,” he would say, averting his eyes. “Tombov no eat. Tombov wear. Lily flower no good Earthfel-low. Kankilona come out of lily flower. Earthfellow kankilona no like. Earthfellow priestfellow say kankilona horres . . . horrejwous monster. Earthfellow priestfellow wantchee kill all kankilona. Kankilona die, Tombov die. Die no good for Tombov. More better Earthfellow no see kankilona.”

  That was that. No amount of questioning could elicit more. They had to guess at what sort of “horrendous monster” a kankilona might be. On Venus it could be anything from an ambulatory flytrap to a fire-breathing dragon. All that was clear was that there was a relation between the lilies and the monsters, that the missionaries did not approve of them, and that the monsters were somehow necessary to Tombov well-being.

  Questions as to the iridescent, gas-filled spheres brought little that was comprehensible, though much later it did come to have meaning. Shan Dhee tried desperately to duck the question, for evidently he had lied about them to Hoskins.

  “Littily shiny balls no gems,” he confessed at last. “Littily shiny ball no good at all. Littily shiny ball one day pretty . . . six, eight, day more ... no more littily shiny ball. All gone. Maybeso litilly shiny ball papa-papa-fellow kankilona.”

  “He’s lying,” said Parks. “We’ve got eighteen of ‘em at home in our vault. We studied ‘em a lot longer than a week, and none of them vanished. I’d call ‘em pretty permanent.”

  Shan Dhee refused to amplify. Maxwell noted the hinted link to the mysterious kankilona but let it pass and went straight to the purpose of his call. Would Shan Dhee fix it so they could attend a Tombov orgy?

  Shan Dhee’s reaction was close to terror. Tombov temples were strictly taboo to Earthmen at all times. They were even taboo to Tombovs, including the priesthood, except during the days of actual festival. The Tombovs would hardly dare slaughter the Earthmen if they were found desecrating the place—the Tombovs had learned that hard lesson long before—but what they would do to Shan Dhee was too dreadful to think about. Shan Dhee would steal, smuggle, even murder for them—if enough tobacco was to be had—but not that.

  “Don’t Tombov priests like tobacco, too?” Maxwell asked softly.

  It was a lucky question. It rang the bell. Shan Dhee reconsidered. He sipped zankra and made calculations on his fingers. In the end he yielded.

  “Maybeso can do,” he admitted uneasily. “Maybeso Tombov priest-fellow letchee Shan Dhee hidum Earthfellow godhouse-side, but priest-fellow no likee Earthfellow in Tombov godhouse. Earthfellow no likee see Tombov eatchee kankilona. Earthfellow get sick. Earthfellow pukum. Earthfellow get mad. Earthfellow smashee Tombov godhouse. Earthfellow in godhouse no good. More better Earthfellow hidee outside.”

  Both investigators promised faithfully they would watch unseen. They would be the soul of discretion. And they would pay any reasonable price. They were not scoffers or reformers. They wanted only to know the secret of Tombov health. Shan Dhee relaxed. He even grinned a crooked grin.

  “Tombov priestfellow more better Earthfellow priestfellow. Tombov wantchee long life now, swampside. Tombov no wantchee long life bimebye, Heavenside. Heavenside no good. Too far. Swampside more better.”

  Parks and Maxwell smiled. After all, they couldn’t blame the poor devil. How could the warped missionary doctrine preached them be any solace for hard labor and suffering? Better good health now, and let them take their chances on Heaven. So they argued no further, but tolled up the quantities of tobacco Shan Dhee said woul
d be required.

  It took three weeks of dreary slogging over slimy mud, sometimes proceeding by dugout canoe, before they came to the place of the Festival of Long Life. Shan Dhee showed them the markers that set off the sacred areas. Until they were removed three days later, it was forbidden for ordinary Tombovs to pass them. But Shan Dhee shot the clumsy craft ahead. His coming had been arranged. He directed the canoe past the tripods of saplings with their warning plumed skulls. The sluggish lagoon narrowed. Presently they came in between two lily fields. Shan Dhee explained that there were only a few places where such lilies grew and that the penalty for taking one off holy ground was death.

  Maxwell studied the plants with interest but saw little to distinguish them from the Terran variety except their great size and yellow color. And then he was startled to see monstrous hairy creatures crawling around among them. For a long time he got only glimpses, and then he saw one entire. It was a sort of giant tarantula—a horror of mottled silky hair hanging from a bulbous, palpitating body as large as a basketball. There seemed to be a score of arching legs, each hairy and clawed at the tip. There were ugly, knifelike fangs, too, from which a greenish poison drooled. A cluster of luminous eyes were set above them, glaring venomously in shifting reds and violets.

  “Kankilona,” said Shan Dhee.

  Parks shuddered. It was upsetting even to look on one. Had Shan Dhee said that the Tombovs ate them?

  The lagoon shoaled and narrowed. In a moment Shan Dhee drove the dugout nose up onto a muddy bank. It was the island hummock of the temple grounds. They climbed out and dragged the canoe into the underbrush and hid it under broad leaves. Then they gathered up their baggage and went up onto the hummock.

  It was a glade surrounded by heavy cypress, and under the trees were hundreds of little huts. In the distance stood the temple—an astonishing structure of gray stone, astonishing because the nearest solid ground was more than a hundred miles away. Only stubborn devotion could have carried those massive stones to where they were. But the temple’s great portal was closed and barred. The whole place was deserted.

  Shan Dhee disregarded everything until he could build their hiding place. It was a two-roomed hut he made for them, considerably apart from any other. As a tolerated outcast Shan Dhee said he was permitted to attend the festival, but he must keep his distance from the truly faithful. As it happened, his status was most convenient, for the two Earthmen could live in the rear, watching the show through peepholes, while Shan Dhee sat stolidly in the doorway, sure that no wild Tombov would venture near an untouchable. Shan Dhee said they could see all there was to see from there until the night of the culmination of the revels. By then the Tombovs would be blind drunk and would not notice if they were being spied on from the darkness outside the temple door.

  Maxwell and Parks laid out their gear. There were their food pellets and their store of tobacco twists that must be given to the priests. There was also their scientific paraphernalia—beakers and test tubes and reaction chemicals, and their all-purpose spectrographs camera. But the most essential item was their supply of precious paracobrine, for Parks was slipping fast and needed shots at hourly intervals. They stowed that safely and settled down to wait.

  The subsequent week was not especially instructive, nor was it entertaining. During the first days the Tombovs began straggling in, filthy with swamp mud encrusted on them. They brought their women and children with them, and a tremendous number of zankra gourds. Each family settled into its own hut and then proceeded to the tribal reunion. The affair was much like barbaric gatherings anywhere in the Solar System—attended by the monotonous banging on tom-toms, by wild, uninhibited dancing, by gorgings with food and drink. There were scenes of reckless drunkenness, but until the beginning of the fifth day it was essentially a social gathering. It was not until the fifth day that the priests showed up.

  The activities thereafter took on a different tinge. No longer did the Tombov braves lie around in drunken stupor until midafternoon. They were put to work. And their women were put to work.

  They went out into the swamp, paddling along on their splayed, webbed feet. The men carried curious nets made of twisted small lianas. The boys trailed them, bearing roomy cages made of a sort of wicker. For the women’s part, their job seemed to be the gathering of lilies. They stripped the plants methodically, taking blooms and leaves alike, leaving little more than pulpy stubble behind. It was not until evening came and the men came back that Maxwell knew what they had gone for. They returned triumphantly with scores upon scores of captured kankilonas, the trapped arachnids ululating horribly in protest at their restricted movement. The priests opened the temple doors long enough to receive the spiders, and then closed them again.

  ~ * ~

  That went on for three days more, but as the swamps were stripped of their leafy covering and crawling monsters, Maxwell made an astounding discovery. For a few minutes one day the sun came through —a rarity on cloudy Venus—and as it did a miracle seemed to happen. The dull mud flats became beds of scintillating fire. What he had bought from Hoskins as jewels lay thick everywhere. They were as numerous as the dead leaves of fall. Then the clouds took over again and the glow died.

  “What do you make of it?” asked Parks, who was looking on in wonder. “Could they be lily seed?”

  “Hardly,” said Maxwell. “They are too light and airy. Seeds have to sink into the soil to germinate. Those things won’t even sink in water.”

  At last the final day of the festival came. Men and women dressed themselves in gala garments made from lilies. There were chaplets and leis, garlands and leafy headdresses. And they were drinking zankra in colossal doses. All afternoon there was unrestrained dancing, and toward dark the drunken choruses became a bedlam of hideous howling. Then the temple doors were thrown open wide and torches lit inside.

  “Pretty soon you Hoskins friendfellow see kankilona feast,” remarked Shan Dhee. He looked worried, as if repenting the deal. “No letchee priestfellow catchee looksee,” he warned. Maxwell and Parks repeated their promise.

  It was near midnight when they decided the worshipers were so drunk that nothing would matter. Maxwell and Parks stole out of their hut and across the glade, being careful not to step on the many Tombovs who had already passed out. They stopped close to the great door and looked in. The orgy was at its height. They saw now how the feast was conducted. Two acolytes would hand up a squirming kankilona, stripped of its legs. The high priest would receive it and then defang it with two swift jerks. The slimy fangs he would hurl into a basket at the foot of the chief idol; the carcass he would throw to the yelling celebrants. There would be a scramble for it, then a howl of disappointment as the unlucky ones watched the Favored sink his teeth into the soft venom sac of the mangled tarantula.

  Parks gripped Maxwell’s arms.

  “I . . . I’ve got to go back to the hut,” he gasped.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Maxwell sharply. “Can’t you take it? We’re not squeamish missionaries.”

  “T-that’s not it. I forgot my shot. See how I’m jumping? But you stick around. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Maxwell let him go. It was routine, more or less, and he did not want to miss any unexpected feature of the rites before him. He watched Parks disappear into the dark, and then started to turn his gaze back to the orgies.

  He did not complete the movement. A surprisingly strong arm encircled him, and a husky knee entwined and gripped his. He knew from the wide flat foot that it was a Tombov that assailed him. Then there was a mocking voice in his ear—it was Shan Dhee’s voice, and Shan Dhee was crazy drunk. His breath stank of zankra, and worse.

  “Earthfellow wantchee long life, huh?” he taunted. “Okeh, okeh. Earthfellow catchee long life. Earthfellow catchee kankilona juice.”

  Maxwell felt himself being bent irresistibly backward, to the peals of the maddened Tombov’s maniacal laughter. A disgusting gob of hairy, mushing something was slapped down on his face. He
could not get his breath. He struggled and tried to cry out. It was what Shan Dhee wanted him to do. His teeth broke the tender membrane of the kankilona’s venom sac. There was a gush of indescribably nauseating oily stuff. It stung his cheeks and shoulders. Maxwell felt utterly defiled and ashamed. He wanted to die then and there. And then something happened to him.

  In one swift instant all the nausea and revulsion was swept away. In its place there was heavenly exhilaration, an exaltation that exceeded any ecstasy he had ever known. He was no longer a sick man; would never be one again. He was strong, well—a champion among champions. Life was wonderful. It had to be expressed. Maxwell cut loose with a war whoop that shook the glade. Then things went madly round and round. Lights flared up and faded. The howling within the temple died, dwindling into an infinitude of distance. After that, Maxwell did not remember.

  ~ * ~

  He awoke in what he thought must be the gray dawn of the morning after. He was lying face down in the muck outside the temple door. He lay very still for a moment, wondering when the inescapable headache would begin to rack him, for after the heady intoxication he now faintly remembered, it was unthinkable that there would not be one—and a super one at that. But there was no headache. There was no foul taste in the mouth. Maxwell had to admit he felt fine, which, under the circumstances, was humiliating. He wondered if he was altogether sane. He started gingerly to get up, expecting to find himself full of Charley horses. There weren’t any. He was fit as a fiddle. He quit worrying and arose briskly, but promptly regretted it. His head thumped into something, and there was a crash. He stood amazed and aghast at what fell. It was three long sticks of wood lashed together and tied with a bunch of plumes. A skull lay grinning at him from the wreckage. During the night someone had erected that dire symbol over him—the warning that he was taboo—under a curse!