by James White
“They are not playing with wooden swords and spears as many children do,” the Captain insisted, “because neither they nor their instructor are treating the exercise as a game. It is much too serious. They are the oldest of the children and they might have real, metal-tipped weapons among the farming implements out there. At this range my sensors can’t tell the difference. But if anything goes sour with the Tawsar contact your retreat to the ship could be cut off.”
Prilicla did not reply until they were within a few minutes of reaching the mine entrance, and when it spoke Gurronsevas had the feeling that its words were aimed at reassuring the medical team as well as the Captain. It said, “The emotional radiation of the adults and children who surrounded us yesterday bore no trace of hostility, especially the concealed hostility of beings who are pretending to be friendly. Although they are decidedly not our friends, their feelings towards us are not antagonistic enough to make them want to commit acts of physical violence. Tawsar is controlling or at least trying to ignore its dislike for us, but it is feeling much more than a simple curiosity regarding strangers. I cannot be more precise, but I have the feeling that it wants something from us and, until we discover what it is, we are quite safe here.
“Besides,” the empath went on, “we have friends Danalta and Gurronsevas with us. Our shape-changer can take many forms that would discourage an attack by unruly children, and the Chief Dietitian has a near-impervious skin and the body mass and muscles to do the same.”
“Doctor Prilicla,” said Fletcher, “this is a first contact situation so far as the medical team is concerned. One of you could do or say something that could change Tawsar’s feelings about you, suddenly and drastically. So why not talk in the open where I can keep you under observation and pull you out with tractors if there is any trouble? I am worried about you going inside their mine.”
At that moment the party came to a halt outside the dark mouth of the entrance tunnel and the litter drifted gently to the ground. Tawsar looked up suddenly at Prilicla and said, “I am worried about you going into our mine.”
Danalta’s body twitched and it said, “In a steep valley like this one, echoes are not uncommon.”
Prilicla ignored it and asked, “Why, friend Tawsar?”
The Wem looked at each one of team in turn before returning its attention to the empath. It said, “I know nothing about you people, your life habits, your feelings about strange places or people, the food you eat, nothing. Suddenly I have realized that you might not want to visit our home. The connecting tunnels are narrow and low-ceilinged, and only our places of gathering are adequately lit, and then only for a limited period each day. Even among the Wem there are those who become distressed in enclosed spaces, or at the thought of the great weight of rock that is pressing down on them.
“But you in particular,” Tawsar went on, “are a free-flying creature of the air. I fear that your fragile body and wide-spreading wings are unsuited to crawling about inside a mountain.”
“I am grateful for your feeling of concern, friend Tawsar,” said Prilicla, “but it is unnecessary. All of us are used to working in a structure that is like a metal mountain, filled with tunnels of different sizes connecting its rooms. All are well-lit but, if yours are too dark for us, we carry our own sources of illumination. If anyone should feel distressed, it will be free to return to the outside. But I do not think that anyone will have such feelings …”
There was nobody better at reading feelings than Prilicla, Gurronsevas knew, but he was not as sure as the empath was about his own. He hated dark, cramped spaces but, after being named as one of the team’s protectors in case of trouble, he could not act like a coward by refusing to enter the mine before first finding out what it was like inside.“… As for myself,” Prilicla went on, “I sleep in a coccoon-like room without light. My wings and over-long limbs fold so that, if you have no objections, I will be able to ride on the litter with you. How restricted is the space in your tunnels? Will they allow free passage for everyone here?”
“Yes,” said Tawsar. It looked at Gurronsevas and added, “Just barely.”
A few minutes later Naydrad guided the litter with Tawsar and Prilicla on board into the entrance, preceded by Danalta and followed by Naydrad and Murchison with Gurronsevas forming what the Captain so worryingly referred to as the rear guard and the pathologist as a mobile, organic thrombosis.
But the plug, he was pleased to discover, was a loose fit because the tunnel was wider, than he had expected and better lit so that he had no need of his image enhancer. Perhaps Wem vision was less sensitive than that of a Tralthan, for it had been apologizing in advance for the shortcomings of its technology. Prilicla and Tawsar were talking together quietly, but the constant pattering of Naydrad’s many feet kept him from hearing what they were saying, and the Captain was filling the gaps in their conversation by worrying aloud.“… The deep sensor indications,” Fletcher was saying, “are of an exhausted and long-abandoned copper mine. It could be centuries old, judging by the condition of the tunnel support structure, but shows signs of recent repair. Many of the deeper galleries have been sealed off by rock-falls, and even if the Wem don’t mean you any harm, you can’t talk your way out of a collapsed tunnel. Please reconsider and ask Tawsar to do the talking outside.”
“No, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied on the ship frequency. “Tawsar wants to talk inside the mine. It has strong feelings of embarrassment which suggest that it prefers our conversation to be private. It is not feeling the anxiety characteristic of impending tunnel collapse.”
“Very well, Doctor,” said the Captain. “Are you having any difficulty with breathing? Is anyone aware of smells that might indicate the presence of flammable gas?”
“No, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “The air is cool and fresh.”
“You don’t surprise me,” said Fletcher. “Only the upper galleries are occupied and the Wem have drilled themselves a neat system of natural ventilation tunnels which require no power. They have a small electricity generator which produces enough current for lighting, powered by a subterranean river which exits at the base of the other side of the mountain. We have also detected a few hot spots that are probably cooking fires or ovens, and associated combustion byproducts, but the pollution level is not life-threatening. Be careful anyway.”
“Thank you, we will,” said Prilicla, and resumed its conversation with Tawsar.
They passed the openings into many side-tunnels and small, unlighted chambers, and in several places Gurronsevas’ head and flanks scraped against the tunnel walls and roof, but the air that blew gently past him was cool and fresh and polluted only slightly with an odor which Murchison identified as a combination of wood smoke with trace odors of the kind associated with food preparation. A few minutes later they moved past the entrance to a kitchen.
“Friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla, using voice amplification so that its words would carry back to him, “I feel your intense curiosity and I think I understand the reason for it, but at present it would be better for the team to stay together.”
As the odor grew fainter with distance, Gurronsevas used the olfactory sense that had been sharpened by a lifetime of experience in the culinary arts in an attempt to isolate and identify the constituents of a smell that was totally beyond his previous experience. Or was it?
Carried on a fine mist of water vapor containing trace quantities of dissolved salt there was the unmistakable odor of vegetation, several different varieties, that were being boiled or stewed together. One of them had a sharp, heavy smell that reminded him of the cooked somrath plant or the Earth cabbage leaf favored by some Kelgians, but the other odors were too bland for him to make off-world comparisons. These included a faint, hot smell of what was almost certainly coarse flour baking in an oven. But the most surprising part of this Wem olfactory cocktail was the things that were not in it.
Charitably, Gurronsevas reminded himself that there were several member species o
f the Federation who had developed high technology and an artistically enlightened culture while remaining in a culinary wilderness.
CHAPTER 21
A few minutes later the tunnel opened into a compartment whose wall-mounted lighting fixtures failed to illuminate the high and unsupported roof while showing the rock walls and sloping, uneven floor of a large, natural cavern. Plainly it had been utilized as an extension to the mine rather than a compartment hollowed out by Wem hands.
About two hundred yards ahead there was a wall, built from large, unfinished stones bound together by cement, sealing off the mouth of the cavern. The wall was pierced by ten large window openings, three of which still retained their glass while the others looked as if they had been boarded up for a very long time. Enough daylight came through the windows to bleach the artificial lighting to a dull, yellow glow and illuminate the rows of high, bench-like Wem tables that were separated by wide aisles into groups of twenty or more.
This was the communal dining area, Gurronsevas thought, then immediately corrected himself. Facing every rectangular group of tables there was a piece of equipment whose basic design, modified to suit the size and shape of its users, was common to virtually every intelligent species in the Federation — a blackboard and easel. Ranged against the cavern walls were side tables, some of them stacked with platters and eating utensils and others with books that looked as if they were disintegrating with age. Hanging from spikes driven into the rockface were a number of large, framed wall-charts which were cracked and faded almost to illegibility.
It was a school classroom as well as a dining area.
Fletcher was seeing everything that the team was seeing through their vision pick-ups, but the Captain kept talking about it anyway because the material was probably being recorded for onward transmission to Tremaar.“… The furniture and equipment is old,” Fletcher was saying. “You can see the corrosion stains where the original metal legs were attached, and the replacement wooden structure is not all that recent, either. The wall-frame supports are solid with rust, as well. They must be short of glass, too, otherwise they would not have boarded up the window frames in an area where daylight is available for classroom work.
“I missed seeing that wall on the cliff face,” Fletcher continued, a hint of apology creeping into its tone, “because it is built from local, weathered stone that is difficult to see because it is recessed and shaded by a rock overhang. I would say that the purpose of the wall is to protect rather than confine the younger inhabitants, because the cavern mouth opens onto a sheer cliff some five hundred feet above the valley floor. But we have the wall clearly in sight now. If an emergency withdrawal becomes necessary, Danalta and Gurronsevas can easily break through the boarded-up window frames. Doctor Prilicla can fly down and the rest of you can escape using the—”
“Not on the anti-gravity litter!” Naydrad broke in, its fur spiking in agitation. “That is primarily a ground-effect vehicle. At anything over fifty feet altitude it balances like a drunken Crrelyin!”
“—Using the tractor-beam,” Fletcher continued, “The ship is close enough for it to reach you and lift you down one at a time.”
“Captain,” said Prilicla, “the possibility of a life-threatening emergency occurring is very small. The emotional radiation of Tawsar and the other Wem in the mine we have not yet met was not hostile, and they are the beings with authority in this establishment. Our friend is radiating a mixture of shame, embarrassment and intense curiosity. It wants something from us, possibly only information. But it does not, as your colorful but anatomically inexact Earth saying has it, want our guts for garters. Please return to translation mode or Tawsar will think we are talking about it.”
Prilicla and Tawsar resumed talking, with occasional interjections from the other team members, but their conversation was becoming too medical to hold Gurronsevas’s interest. He moved over to the windows to look down on Rhabwar shimmering inside the dome of its meteor shield, and beyond it to the valley floor and the scattered groups of young Wem who were working there. The most distant group had formed into a line and was beginning to walk back towards the mine.
The ship had not yet reported the incident. Lacking Gurronsevas’s greater elevation, the watch-keeping officer would not have seen them.
He bent an eye to look behind him where Prilicla and Murchison were demonstrating the uses of the litter’s handheld scanner on Naydrad and each other, but not on Danalta whose internal organs were voluntarily mobile and far too confusing for a simple first lesson in other-species anatomy. Surprisingly, for a being of its advanced age and the inflexible habits of thought which usually accompanied that condition, Tawsar was quick to grasp the idea of making a non-invasive and painless internal investigation of a living body. It stared entranced at the internal organs, the beating hearts, the lungs in their different respiration cycles and the complex skeletal structures of the Cinrusskin Senior Physician, the Earth-human Pathologist and the Kelgian Charge Nurse.
It was inevitable that Tawsar became curious and wanted to look into its own internal workings, which gave Prilicla the opening it needed to ask more personal medical questions.“… If you look closely at the hip and knee, here and here,” the Senior Physician was saying, “you can see the layers of cartilage which separate the joints and which are supposed to form a thin, frictionless pad between them. In your case, however, the joint interfaces are no longer smooth. The bone structure has deteriorated and become uneven, and the movement of the limb, combined with the pressure of your body weight on surfaces which are no longer smooth, has torn and inflamed the cartilage and generally worsened the condition, making physical movement both restricted and painful …”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Tawsar.
“I will,” Prilicla replied gently. “But before I do that you must be told something that you do know, that your condition is due to the aging process that is common to all species. In time, in varying lengths of time, because our life-expectancies are not the same, all of the beings you see around you will age, our physical and sometimes mental capabilities will deteriorate until eventually we will die. None of us can reverse the natural aging process, but with the proper medication and treatment the symptoms can be reduced, or their onset delayed, and the physical discomfort removed.”
Tawsar did not respond for a moment, and Gurronsevas did not need to be an empath to feel the Wem’s disbelief, then it said, “Your medication would poison me, or give me some foul, off-world disease. My body must remain healthy and clean, despite its infirmities. No!”
“Friend Tawsar,” said Prilicla, “we would not even try to help if there was the slightest risk to yourself. You do not realize, because until now you had no way of knowing, that there are many similarities between the Wem and the off-worlders represented here. With minor differences in composition we breathe the same air and eat the same basic types of food …”
The Cinrusskin’s pipe-stem legs and slow-beating wings began quivering, but only for a moment. It did not stop talking.“… Because of this, the ways that our bodies work, the processes of respiration, ingestion and waste elimination, procreation, and physical growth are all very similar. But there is one important and unique difference: we cannot catch a disease from you or from each other, or you from one of us. This is because the pathogens, the germs, which have evolved on one world are powerless to affect life-forms from another. After centuries of close and continuous contact on many worlds, this is a rule to which we have found no exception.”
Prilicla bypassed the translator again and said quickly, “There was a strong emotional reaction to the mention of food. I detected the same feelings of shame, curiosity and intense hunger. Why should a native of a famine-stricken world be ashamed of feeling hungry?”
Switching back to Tawsar it went on, “We cannot promise that you will be able to run and hop like a young Wem. If we are able to treat you, there will be a marked alleviation of your discomfort. If not, no chang
e in your condition or additional pain will be apparent. Withdrawal of the specimens we need to ensure that our medication will not harm you is also painless.”
It was not just another therapeutic lie, Gurronsevas knew, because in this case the doctor was feeling everything that its patient felt. Judging from the faint tremor visible in Prilicla’s limbs, it was also feeling the patient coming to a difficult decision.
“I must be damaged in the head,” said Tawsar suddenly. “Very well, I agree. But don’t take too long about it or I may change my mind.”
The medical team gathered around the Wem who was still lying on the litter. Prilicla said, “Thank you, friend Tawsar, we will not waste time.” Murchison said, “The scanner is on record,” and after that the conversation became densely technical. Gurronsevas turned his back on the massively boring medical proceedings and returned to the windows.
The four most distant working or teaching parties had merged on their way back to the mine and presumably their midday meal, and the closer groups would join them so that they would all arrive at the same time. They were maintaining the slow walking pace of their teachers rather than running and hopping ahead, and he estimated their arrival time at just under an hour. Rhabwar would have them in sight very soon. He wondered whether their lack of haste was due to teacher discipline or disinterest in the meal awaiting them. He was increasingly curious about the kitchen smells that were drifting in from the entry tunnel.
He became suddenly aware that Prilicla was talking about him.“… It moving away from us means no disrespect,” the empath was saying. “Because of its specialty Gurronsevas is more curious about what you put into your body than in what we are taking out and, whenever you can spare the time, it would be much more interested in investigating the Wem cooking arrangements than in—”
“It is welcome to look at our kitchen now,” Tawsar broke in. “The First Cook knows of the visit by off-worlders and will be pleased to see Gurronsevas. Does it require guidance?”
