Planet Probability

by Brian N Ball

  Hawk scowled at the stiff Director.

  “Now, ye rogue, have ye any military training?”

  “What!”

  “Can ye handle a musket or a bomb, gut-belly!” the impatient soldier demanded. “Ye don’t think we’ve seen the last of the boggarts, do ye? Have ye no acquaintance with the management of arms?”

  “No, Sergeant, I’m sorry, I haven’t!” Marvell gasped. “I’m a peace-loving civilian—”

  “Argh!” snarled Hawk. “It’s a foppish Frog dancing master, all airs and graces!”

  “You think there’s more danger?” said Marvell, unashamed. “More of those?” He indicated the great, steaming corpse.

  “Aye!”

  “It’s entirely possible,” said the robot.

  “Then get me out of here, Horace!”

  Liz called as an altercation seemed likely among the three ill-assorted figures. Her voice was loud with impatience. When they looked toward her, they saw that she was pointing to a small depression which none of them had noticed.

  “Look! Come on!”

  “I’d rather not—” Marvell shivered.

  “Lead on, lard-guts!” snarled Hawk. “What is it, wench?”

  “Horace!” whispered Marvell. “I’ll put in a good word for you with the Guardians—I could get you back to umpiring on Time-outs!”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Horace said discreetly so that Hawk would not hear. “It’s quite outside my terms of reference.”

  “Buffoon!”

  “March!”

  Liz was waiting with mounting impatience as they crossed to her. They looked and saw a pit full of bones. There were the split and mangled bones of creatures of their own size, but others, too. Marvell saw long, reptilian skulls, immense vertebrae, strange prehensile claws, gigantic tusks, as well as skulls that could only have belonged to creatures that walked upright. It was a charnel house of mixed remains.

  “Horace, what do you make of it?” demanded Liz.

  “Aye, the boggarts’ bone-yard!” interrupted Hawk, with satisfaction. “Didn’t I tell ye the beasts were waiting on the other side of Hell Gates! Aye, many’s the time I’ve seen the fearsome creatures waiting for any that had the misfortune to be drawn to the Pit! And many came, many came!”

  Liz tried to imagine the long procession of such creatures, as Hawk insisted he had seen it, but the image would not come: Hawk, waiting in his little oasis, as Talisker’s inhabitants, already the victims of random cell-fusion, passed through the entrance to the Alien’s Possibility Space? But Hawk hadn’t entered! Why not?

  “Liz!” whispered Marvell. “Get Horace to tie the madman up!”

  Liz scowled at the frightened man. What a nervous and disappointing weakling he was. Here they were, poised on the edge of a tremendous, unresolved mystery, and all he could think of was getting back to Center!

  “Horace?” she snapped.

  “Very curious indeed,” the robot said.

  “Curious? Eh, monkey? What’s curious? Ye know the ways of the Devil! They’re not fathomable by mortals!”

  Marvell repressed a groan. An inscrutable robot, a demented Primitive, an obsessed Plot assistant! He knew he would need a year to recover. Perhaps a spell in a Protracted Hypno-Sleep Frame? Gray peace for a year!

  “You must have some notion!” Liz demanded. “Even I can see that there’s something very wrong here!”

  “Agreed!” muttered Marvell. “Dear Christ, yes!”

  “Aye!” said Hawk. “And worse to come, if I know the workings of Satan!”

  “Well, perhaps I can offer some partial theory, miss? Sergeant, I have some scientific knowledge that may be of assistance, that is, I am of a philosophical bent and have studied at the University—”

  “Aye? Ye say? Then your brains must be addled!” Nevertheless; the sergeant was impressed, and Marvell could admire the robot’s tact and understanding of the Primitive mind. Hawk belonged to a time when learning was prized as a tangible asset.

  “Well?” asked Liz.

  “I think the sergeant may have made observations at several points in time of the functioning of the transition stage between Talisker and the space we occupy now. Sergeant Hawk has apparently witnessed the entry of numerous humans into this Possibility Space.” To Hawk, the robot said: “I take it, Sergeant, that you saw many folk go into the, ah, Gates of Hell?”

  “Aye, aye, didn’t I tell ye? Eh? Philosopher! Monkey-machine!”

  “Very well. And undoubtedly the sergeant also witnessed the dinosaur’s reception of certain unfortunate Time-outers?”

  “Aye?”

  The robot rephrased the question for Hawk’s benefit.

  “No doubt you saw how the, ah, boggart attacked the people who crossed into Hell, Sergeant?”

  “Aye! And the crocodileys! Aye, the other things too— veritable tigers as big as stallions! And a snake with the body of a boggart, though none so bad as the one old Hawk bombarded!”

  Hawk surveyed the immense corpse with pride.

  “It was waiting for them!” said Liz. “I knew it—it came down from up there,” she indicated, pointing to the red-black cliff. “It came when it knew there was a reason!”

  “Feeding time,” said Marvell, who had followed the robot’s questions and Hawk’s answers. He determined to listen with more care to the overintelligent bitch’s guesses.

  “Well, that tells us something,” she said, too confidently for Marvell’s liking. “But where are we? What’s up there? Where are all the other creatures Hawk saw? And why all those?”

  Marvell looked at the Pit full of bones with more care. It was difficult to discount Hawk’s ravings about more strange beasts: these bones were real! He saw one great outline of a scaled wing, now only white bone. What creature must that have belonged to? Marvell’s head ached miserably. There was also a curious prickling sensation at the base of his skull, partly painful, part soothing. He put it down to the effects of long exposure to the blinding sun in the desert regions about the oasis on top of the blow from Hawk’s musket.

  “Well, Horace?” he asked, with an attempt at amiability. “You think the dinosaur was waiting for the Time-outers? Liz is right again?”

  “The Probability Quotients are extremely high for such a theory,” the robot said. “Yet there is a discrepancy here too. There is no converging series among the coefficients.”

  “Of course there is!” Liz said. “A discrepancy, I meant.”

  “Yes,” agreed Marvell quickly. There would be another if only he could escape! Marvell would be a yawning hiatus, if only there was somewhere to go!

  “Quite,” the robot said. Hawk listened with suspicion, but he made no comment. “It would seem, from the present evidence, that there is some kind of evolutionary incompatibility here. I recognized various remains which point to the presence here of several species of Terran life which died out on that planet at anything from a hundred and fifty million years ago on. There are the remains of a flying reptile quite near Mr. Marvell.” Marvell looked again at the claw and shuddered. “There are warmblooded creatures too—mammalian and others. And I have identified six different forms of upright anthropoidal creatures, two of them with the characteristics of humans. All have the same building blocks of complexes of chemicals.”

  “Yes?” said Liz, and Marvell could see that her eyes were alive with curiosity. The orange flecks glittered like fire in the green depths. She had looked like this when she had returned with the bit of flying film, he recalled. Waiting for Comp’s estimate had almost destroyed her. How had he tolerated her? If only he had found out what she was really like—

  The robot went on: “None of these remains is more than a year and a half in age. We have here, in this collection, bones which span a hundred and fifty million years of evolutionary history on Terra. And all of the animals were killed during the past eighteen months.”

  “Aye! I seed the crocodileys and the boggarts! I saw me old captain too—”

  Liz interru
pted him: “Sergeant, you saw only human beings—people like me and you and Marvell here—real people going into the Possibility Space? I mean, through Hell Gates, as you call it?”

  “Aye, wench! And scaly monsters there in the Pit! And tigers like raging devils!”

  Liz shrugged.

  “Horace, it’s clear that only one hypothesis can account for these circumstances!”

  Marvell felt vaguely relieved. At least he would know what it was all about.

  “One product of the extrapolation of a series of Probability Curves would give an accurate reading,” agreed Horace.

  “Speak English, not the Frogs’ jargon or the Lowlanders’ gibberish!” bawled Hawk. “I’ve a mind to—”

  He stopped. Marvell, who was listening to the robot until Hawk’s expostulation, saw that the madman’s fierce blue eyes were staring at a point behind him. And the crazy Primitive-fixated persona was gibbering silently.

  Liz continued with her infuriating appraisal. “We’re agreed, then? There’s obviously some form of genetic restructuring that’s based on a knowledge of Terran evolutionary cycles.”

  “Quite, miss.”

  “D-d-d-d-do ye see?” Hawk got out.

  “What?” asked Liz, eyes still shining with the joy of discovery. “What, Sergeant?”

  She looked, and Horace turned too.

  “The crocodileys!” Hawk yelled. “It’s the crocodileys come for poor old Hawk!”

  “Oh, no!” yelped Marvell.

  Liz looked. Crocodiles? Was the Primitive right about this too? Then she saw them. Her analytical mind immediately condemned Hawk’s report as inaccurate; whatever the reptiles were, there was perhaps fifty million years of evolution ahead of them before they could be called crocodiles. Larger than the Terrestrial reptile of that name, they were more fearsome, slower, more basic things. Their malevolent intent was unquestionable.

  It took Liz only perhaps a second to note Hawk’s error and make her own guess about the creatures’ age; meanwhile, she was screaming and rushing to Marvell for protection; he was ahead of her, despite his cramp and fright, heading for the steep slope up which the dinosaur had scrambled. One look had triggered off the most immediate of human responses to danger. He had run for a height.

  “Interesting,” said Horace, as Hawk eased two grenadoes from his pack. “They must have sensed the presence of humans! Quite an extraordinary intelligence, to move in this way!”

  The reptiles had crept up silently. They formed a semicircle around the base of the cliff. Within the semicircle was the dead body of the dinosaur and the little party of refugees from Talisker.

  “A match!” Hawk bawled. “I need a slow match! The tinder’s gone—I’ve no means of firing the fuses! Monkey— d’ye have the means of making fire? Quick, or Hawk’s a dead Pioneer!”

  “Run, Sergeant!” shrieked Liz from a dozen yards up the cliff. “Hurry!”

  Black, unwinking eyes moved closer. The beasts were heavily armored, heavy-bodied, with short legs and webbed feet. Their snouts were short, though when their mouths opened in anticipation of food, they disclosed surprisingly long, clashing teeth. The sight of the teeth clashing was enough to make Hawk change his plans.

  “Aye, aye!” he roared, “A withdrawal is the better part for now! Damn ye, Marvell, why did ye not stay to make a fight of it? And you, machine-ape, where’s your valor? Ye had enough of courage when the captain and the giants had their contest!”

  Then the reptiles came with a rush, concertedly. Hawk leaped upward and scrambled toward where Liz was recovering her breath. The robot effortlessly stepped upward with easy movements of its skeletal legs. There was a wild scrambling at the base of the slope, and Marvell stopped hauling his thick body upward.

  Terrible sounds came to the panting humans. The beasts were fighting for their share of the great mass of the dinosaur.

  “Aaaargh!” said the bloodthirsty Hawk. “If ye’d only stayed! If ye’d only helped me bombard the crocodileys!”

  Liz looked down, horrified. It was all the worse when you realized just what the dinosaur had been. Great gobbets of its flesh were stripped. There was a snarling rush for the intestines. Over twenty powerful reptiles disputed with one another for the vast delicacies that were dragged from the dead beast.

  What eerie intelligence had brought all this about?

  “Come up, Liz!” Marvell was yelling to her. He was climbing once more. “Let’s get out of it!”

  His Steam Age impresario’s clothes were in tatters. She could see one plump leg naked to the thigh. Half a patent leather shoe was gone. The cravat had been used to bind a wound on his wrist. The black moustaches straggled wetly down his face. Against the Alien’s Possibility Space he looked less and less like a suitable companion for her; all of her earlier distaste for him returned.

  “Liz!”

  “Oh, go by yourself!”

  “Be on your guard!” bawled Hawk up at the climbing figure. “Ye Frog coward, ’ware monsters!” He panted to Liz: “D’ye see him run? Why, he’s a poor creature, your man!”

  Liz retorted without thought: “My man! Him! He’s no man of mine!” Then she recalled that she was speaking to a destroyed psyche, a Primitive. “That is, we’re companions, no more.”

  “Aye?”

  Liz felt the sergeant’s gaze take in her appearance. Blushing, she wrapped a torn edge of silken fur around her bosom; she knew it was an utterly incongruous thing to do, when the monsters from Earth’s past devoured an even more ancient beast, but she could not help herself. Much that was part of Liz Hassell’s personality was being shredded away in this frightful place.

  “Don’t you think we should go up there?” she asked Hawk.

  “Ye’re safe from the crocodileys!”

  “Horace, what do you think?”

  Horace pointed to the top of the cliff, where Marvell was hoisting himself over the last ledge.

  “I think Mr. Marvell might well follow the sergeant’s advice,” he said. “He seems to have run into more trouble.”

  “Marvell!” screamed Liz.

  She was frozen with shock. The awful wrenching, smashing and snarling below were forgotten. For, as Marvell’s hands were on the topmost rock, she could see a head slowly appearing over the rim of the cliff.

  Marvell heaved.

  He saw the black-striped yellow head.

  Horace said to Liz: “Don’t you have the feeling, Miss Hassell, that we are getting somewhere now?”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TEN

  Marvell was a grimly determined man by the time he placed his hands in position to gain the summit of the cliff. It was obvious that the robot held the key to the situation; it had tremendous resources in terms of pure energy, while its analyses of the unpleasant events that had caught up with him were of inestimable value. Horace, then. The robot had to be persuaded that Hawk could be abandoned. And perhaps Liz Hassell too. The robot would know the way out. Wasn’t it even now pondering some theory to account for Talisker and its mysterious Alien?

  Marvell knew that when the time came he would be able to reason with the infuriating automaton. The machines had to obey, eventually. Meanwhile, he told himself, he had to ensure his personal survival. Hawk could conduct his own battles, Liz could moon about with her head in the clouds. He, Marvell, owed only one allegiance. To Marvell.

  Well, the monsters were now well out of range. Safety lay above. The hell with speculations about Aliens and their Possibility Space.

  Marvell grunted, heaved, and looked up.

  “Waaaah!” he screamed.

  He almost allowed his fingers to slip off the rough sandstone. The great jaws were six inches from his nose. The stench of tiger was overpowering. A trickle of saliva ran from its mouth. Twin flashing green eyes stared with an expression of calculating amazement at him. Marvell made out the gold in the cat’s mask, the glossy brown-black stripes. The eyes were yellow as well as green.

  Man and enormous cat waited.

>   “Marvell!” someone screamed from below, but the warning was ten thousand aeons too late!

  “Don’t—” whispered Marvell, his native cunning once more urging him to attempt to reason even with a beast such as this. But his mouth was as dry as the red stone his fingers clutched, and his brain couldn’t flash messages anymore. He was paralyzed with shock.

  The sheer size of the beast!

  Dinosaurs on the rampage, crocodiles from fifty million years ago forming a half-circle of clashing, greedy teeth: and now this slavering thing! All it had to do was reach out one taloned paw—

  “No,” said Marvell, finding his words. “No, I’m Marvell! I wanted Time-out,” he pleaded. “It’s all a mistake!”

  The lamp-like green eyes were hooding. Amazingly, the green depths seemed to hold puzzlement. Marvell, never one to miss the signs of reason in any creature, tried again.

  “There’s a boy, there’s a fine tiger! If you’ll just let me go down to join the sergeant?”

  He loosened his hold. The tiger moved, lightning fast.

  “Aaaargh!” he screamed, for a massive paw had flicked out to cover his hand. He realized that the talons were sheathed.

  It was playing a game with him! It reeked of the wild. The mouth was open now.

  “Marvell!” He heard Liz Hassell calling again. “It all makes sense—come down!”

  “Down!” squealed Marvell. He could smell his own fear. The green eyes held him in utter fascination. It must be delaying the kill for some sadistic reason of its own. What fearsome creatures haunted this hell-hole!

  There was a scrambling sound near him. Marvell caught a glimpse of the scarlet fur of the robot.

  Was it going to help?

  “Horace!” Marvell whispered, mouth cracking, the skin rasping against his tongue. “It’s a tiger!”

  “Yes, sir!” the robot answered. “Miss Hassell and I are agreed!”

  Marvell groaned silently. The bitch and the robot were agreed! While he faced the terrifying mask of the tiger, they were holding a ratification assembly!