by Brian Lumley
Well, what could I say or do after that? Nothing that they’d understand, for sure. So letting the four pinks get on with it, I went back for Gentry’s body. By the time I returned the sling was back in position and the four volunteers were out of there. They’d gone below and were working with the rest of the tribe, digging for all they were worth.
I might have liked to find a way to express my gratitude—to this quartet at least—but couldn’t see how to do it. These creatures looked so much of a muchness to me, there was no sure way to tell my four apart from the rest of them. Ah, well…
Day Four: (midday.)
I slept well last night; I suppose I was sort of exhausted. But I was also easier in my mind after letting the man-likes finish off burying the dead…well, except for Scot and Daniel. They wouldn’t bury those last two until they’d sat with them through the night, their heads in their laps. A kind of ritual—a wake of sorts, a vigil—that they go through with their dead. Also with mine, apparently. It isn’t a job I would have cared to do. After four or more days dead, Scot and Dan weren’t looking very pretty. They weren’t smelling too good either. Could be the man-like pinks do it to keep the buzzards and hogs from scavenging, which is something else I don’t much care to think about.
This morning, their yelping, rattling and piping woke me up just as they were finishing with filling in the last two graves. As I put up my awning I saw—just outside my habitat, outside the electric perimeter—one of the pinks sitting there watching me. Now I know I’ve said they don’t have much in the way of facial expressions, but this one was cocking its head first one way and then the other, and if anything looked curious as hell. I mean curious about me. He, she, or it kept watching me while I boiled water, shaved, made and drank coffee and ate a ship’s-rations facsimile homeworld breakfast.
I tossed the pink a sweet biscuit which it sniffed at, then carefully bit into, then got up, went unsteadily to the side of the clearing, leaned on a tree and threw up. Credit where credit’s due for perseverance, though, if for nothing else, because when it was done throwing up it came right on back and sat down again, watching me like before but just a shade less pink. Then when I set out to have a look around, explore the place, damned if he, she, it didn’t come gliding after, albeit at a discreet, respectful distance.
As for why I wanted to go walkabout: long before we discovered that the galaxy was a pretty empty place, someone wrote in the survival handbook that if you get stuck on a world and want to know if there are any higher civilizations, just take a walk along a coastline. Because if there is intelligent life, that’s where you’ll find its flotsam and jetsam. Doesn’t say a hell of a lot for intelligence, now does it? Anyway, ever since I clambered from the wreckage of the Albert E. I’ve been hearing this near-distant murmur. And no matter where you are, the sound of small waves breaking on a beach is unmistakeable.
I followed a man-like track through the woods until I came across a fresh-water stream, then followed the stream and track both for maybe a quarter mile…and there it was, this beautiful ocean: blue under an azure sky, turning turquoise where it lapped the white, sandy beach; gentle as a pond and smelling of salt and seaweed. All that was missing was the cry of seagulls. Well, no, that’s not all that was missing; there was no flotsam and jetsam, either. No ships on the horizon, no smoke rising in any direction, and no footprints in the sand except my own. But I did have my Man, Woman, Thing Friday, following dutifully behind me.
Sitting on a rock looking at all the emptiness, I told him, her, it: “You know something, you’re sort of indecent? Well you would be, if you had a dick or tits or something!” There was no answer, just those huge limpid eyes watching me, and that small pink head cocked on one side, displaying—or so I thought—a certain willingness to at least try to understand what I’d said…maybe. And because of that, on impulse, I took off my shirt and put it on Friday, who just stood there and let me. The pink being small, that big shirt would have covered its naughty bits easily—if there had been any to cover! Anyway, it made Friday look just that little bit more acceptable.
We walked perhaps half a mile along the beach, then turned and walked back. But as we approached the stream and the forest track, that was when I discovered that there was a fourth variety of pinks. And as if to complement the others—the bipeds, the quadruped grubbers in the woods, and the soaring aerials in the treetops—this time it was the swimmers, where else but in the sea?
These two dolphin-like pinks were hauling a third animal—for all the world a real dolphin, or this world’s equivalent—up from the deeper water into the shallows. The “real” dolphin was in a bad way, in fact on its way out; something big and, I have to assume, highly unpleasant had taken a very large chunk out of it. Almost cut in half, its plump body was gaping open, leaving a long string of guts trailing in the water behind it. I suppose that no matter where you are, if you have oceans you have sharks or things much like them. It did away with an idea I’d been tossing around that maybe later I would go for a swim. Reality was closing in on me again, and it was all pretty sick-making.
I moved closer, and Friday, oddly excited, came with me.
The ocean-going pinks didn’t seem concerned about our nearness; preoccupied with pushing the “real” dolphin up out of the water, they more or less ignored us and I was able to get close up and take a good look at them. First the fishy dolphin:
Even as I watched it the poor thing expired. It just lifted its bottle nose out of the water once, gave a choked little cry and flopped over on its side. It was mammalian, a female, slate-grey on its back, white on what was left of its belly. If I had seen it in a Sea-World on homeworld I would have thought to myself: dolphin, probably of a rare species.
As for the sea-pinks: if I had seen them in a Sea-World I’d have thought to myself, weird! From the waist up they were much the same as the bipeds, even to the extent of having their thin rubbery arms. Maybe in their upper bodies they were more streamlined than the land-dwelling variety, but that seemed to be the only difference. Oh, wait; they also had blowholes, in the back of their necks. From their middles down, however, they were all dolphin, the pink merging into grey. And I could see just looking at them that they weren’t stupid.
Meanwhile Friday had taken out a bamboo flute from a little bag on a string round his (let’s for the moment say his) waist, and had begun tootling away in a high-pitched register that was almost painful. And before I knew it a half-dozen man-likes had come down the track to join us on the beach. Keeping their distance from me—almost ignoring me—they hurried to the water’s edge and very carefully began to drag the dead dolphin creature up the beach into the shade at the rim of the forest. And while one of them sat cradling the dead thing’s head the rest of them set to work scooping out a grave. Astonishing! But—
—Well, I thought, don’t people have this special affinity with dolphins back on Earth? Sure they do. And as Friday and me headed back along the forest track toward the Albert E. and the clearing, already I could hear the mournful singing, the rattling and banging of the pink burial party on the beach. What was more, back at the wreck, I saw that they’d even been decorating the graves of my shipmates, putting little markers on them with various identifying squiggles.
Damn, but these guys revere the dead!
Later:
This afternoon I went back into the ship searching for anything that might make my life here just that little bit more comfortable, more familiar, and—what the hell—homeworldly? I took a small stack of Daniel’s girlie magazines that I’d been coveting for God knows how many light-years, a photograph album with pictures of some ex-girlfriends of mine, some busted radio components I might try tinkering with, and various bits and pieces like that. Friday climbed up there with me, then went exploring on his own…
Later:
It’s evening now and raining. Even though the stream looks pure enough, I’m using my awning to collect the rain. Friday appears pretty fixated with me. He’s taken to
me like a stray dog. So I switched off the perimeter and let him in out of the rain. He’s sitting there in one corner, not doing much of anything. When I ate I didn’t offer him any; as we’ve seen, ship’s rations don’t much agree with him.
Speaking of rations, what I didn’t realize till now is that most of the stuff I took from the Albert E.’s galley was damaged in the crash. I’ve preserved what I could but at least seventy-five per cent of it is wasted. I’ll burn it tomorrow.
Which means, of course, that some time in the not too distant future I’ll have to start eating local. Maybe I should keep an eye on the pinks, see what they eat. Or maybe not. If Friday can’t eat my stuff, it seems unlikely that I can eat his.
It’s all very worrying…
Day Five: (mid-morning.)
When I woke up this morning I caught Friday going through Dan’s soft porn mags. My old photograph album was lying open, too, so it looks like Friday’s curiosity knows no bounds! Alas, he also appears to be disrespectful of my personal property. Thoroughly PO’d with him, without really knowing why (I suppose I was in a bad mood,) l switched off the perimeter and shooed him the hell out of here, then went walkabout on my own. The last time I saw him he looked sort of down in the mouth—about as far down as a pink is able to look, from what I’ve seen of them so far—as he went drifting off in the general direction of the Albert E.
Something entirely different:
I’ve discovered that the man-likes go hunting, with spears. I saw a bunch keeping very low and quiet, sneaking off into the thick of the forest. There was a second bunch, too, with half a dozen members who were watching me just a little too closely as I moved around the clearing. It seemed to me they were interested in my interest in these graves I‘ve been discovering. I can tell that these mounds in the forest’s fringing undergrowth are graves because of the markers on them. But not all of them have markers, only the more recent ones, which are easily identified by the freshly turned earth. I don’t know if that’s of any real significance.
Anyway, this second party of hunters kept looking at me, at each other, and at their spears, as if wondering if they should—or if they dare—have a go at me! Maybe they didn’t like me looking at the graves because I wasn’t showing sufficient reverence or something; I don’t know, can’t say. But it was as I was examining the more recent graves that these hunter pinks became especially disturbed. Then, as I knelt to examine a thick-stemmed cactus or succulent that was sprouting in a marked mound—a fleshy, sickly-looking green thing with a pinkish head, something like a bulbous great asparagus spear—that was when the hunters displayed the most anxiety, even to the extent of looking more than a little hostile.
However, whatever might have happened next was averted when the first party of hunters came bursting from the forest in hot pursuit of a hairy black hog who was also in pursuit of a small pink grubber. The big black was rampant so I could only suppose that the small pink was on heat; but however that might be, the hunters were only interested in the black. And again I supposed they’d been using the little pink as bait. Well, right or wrong in that respect, at least I now knew what they had been hunting and could reasonably assume that this was what they ate—that it was one of their staples, anyway.
In the confusion, as the big horny hog tore round the clearing after the small scurrying pink, I tried to make it back to my habitat. Bad idea. In rapid succession the hog took three or four long thin spears in his back and flanks, lost all interest in the small pink grubber and went totally crazy! Squealing and trying to gore everything in sight, with both parties of hunter pinks now getting in their best shots as they glided after him, he turned, saw me, came slavering and snorting straight at me!
Of course I shot him; my bolt stopped him dead, exploded in his skull, sent blood and brains flying. He immediately bit the dust, twitched once or twice, and lay still…following which there was total, motionless silence; so that even with the hunters all over the place, they’d become so frozen into immobility that the clearing looked like nothing so much as an alien still-life!
And that’s the way it stayed, with nobody moving so much as a muscle until I broke the spell, holstered my weapon, and made my way stiff-legged and head high right on back to my habitat.
Friday was already in there, sitting in his corner on a box of old clothes he’d rescued from the Albert E. Probably figured he was doing me a favour bringing stuff out of there. Anyway, I was glad to see he was still my pal, and maybe even my only pal in these parts now.
Looking out from under my awning, I watched the end of this business with the hog. Finding their mobility again, several of the hunters hoisted the dead tusker and carried their trophy in a circle round the clearing in an odd, paradoxically muted celebratory procession. At least I’m supposing that’s what it was. But when they passed out of sight, that was the end of that and I haven’t seen the hog since. But I imagine there’ll be a merry old feast in the clearing tonight.
Later:
Toward evening I ventured out again. There was no sign of festive preparations, no fires, nothing. Come to think of it, I’ve never yet seen a fire. Maybe they don’t have fire. Me, I can’t say I fancy raw hog!
Anyway, there was no sign of the spearsmen, and the handful of pinks who were out and about seemed as bland and harmless as ever; they paid little or no attention to me. But in any case I wasn’t out too long before it started in to rain again, so that was the end of tonight’s excursion.
Friday is already asleep (I think) on a layer of old clothing in his corner. Not a bad idea.
So it’s goodnight from me, Jim lad…
Day Six: (mid-morning.)
Didn’t sleep too good and it’s left me grumpy. Late last night the pinks were at it again, howling, thumping and rattling, and that includes Friday. I woke up (very briefly) to find him gone and my defensive perimeter switched off—the little pink nuisance! I got up long enough to switch it on again then went back to sleep. But I must find a way to get through to him, warn him against doing that. It’s either that or simply ban him from the habitat altogether.
Everything tastes lousy this morning, even the coffee. Must be the water: it’s too clean, too sweet! My poor old taste buds are far more accustomed to the recycled H2O aboard the Albert E. Maybe I should climb up there one last time and drain off whatever’s left in the system. Also, I should look for a remote for my defensive perimeter switch; the habitat didn’t have one.
Actually, there are several items in the handbook that the habitat doesn’t have: inexcusable deficiencies! Some dumb QM’s assistant storeman on the Greater Mars Orbital should have his ass kicked out of an airlock!
As for last night’s ceremonial rowdyism:
There’s a new grave under the low vegetation at the rim of the clearing. I reckon it’s the hog. Having eaten the thing—or at least the parts they wanted—the pinks must have buried whatever was left. So their rituals extend even to their prey. This is all conjecture, of course; but again, as with the dolphin, I can’t find this practice altogether strange. I seem to remember reading somewhere that many primitive tribes of Earth had a similar attitude toward Ma Nature’s creatures: an understanding, appreciation and respect for the animals they relied upon for food and clothing.
Later:
I’ve managed to fix up a remote from some of the electrical kit I took from the Albert E. Now I can switch on my defensive perimeter from outside. Not that the man-likes have been intrusive—well, except for my man Friday—but I like to think that my few personal possessions are secure, and that I’m retaining at least a semblance of privacy…
Today I went fishing with a bamboo pole and line I managed to fix up. Friday went with me, showed me the grubs in the sand that I could use as bait. I brought in an eight-inch crab-thing that Friday danced away from. It had an awful lot of legs and a nasty stinger, so I flipped it back into the sea. The fish that I caught were all small and eel-like, but they taste fine fried and make a welcome change from ship’s
rations. I offered one to Friday, which he didn’t hesitate to accept and eat. So it seems these small fish are another pink staple.
Later: (evening.)
I had a sleep, woke up in the afternoon feeling much refreshed, and went walkabout with Friday. We chose to walk a forest trail I never used before; Friday seemed okay with it so I assumed it was safe enough. When we passed a group of pinks gathering root vegetables, I paused to point at a small pile of these purplish carrot-like things and raise a questioning eyebrow. Friday must have understood the look; he pointed to his mouth and made chewing motions. Going to the pile, he even helped himself to three of the carrots. None of the gatherers seemed to mind. So I have to assume that these tubers are yet another pink staple.
Then, because it was getting late, we headed for home. But, did I say home? I must be going native!
Back at the habitat as we were about to enter, I witnessed something new. Or if not exactly new, different. First off, as I went to use the remote to cancel the electrical perimeter, I noticed Friday looking up into the sky above the clearing. And Friday wasn’t the only one. As if suddenly aware of some imminent occurrence, all the other man-likes were sneaking back into the shadows to hide under the fringing foliage. Several of them had taken up spears from somewhere or other, and they were all peering up into the sky.
I went into the habitat with Friday, and we both looked out from under the awning. At first I couldn’t see anything of interest. But then, on a level with the highest of the treetops, I saw a small shape drifting aimlessly to and fro. It was a young aerial pink; (I immediately thought of it as a fledgling, which if it had any feathers I suppose it would have been.) Whatever, it was a pink flyer getting nowhere fast, looking all confused and lost up there.
