by Larry Niven
"Here are the pictures they sent back. Well, what do you think of the Outsiders they've dreamed up? Pleasant-looking sons of bitches, aren't they?”
There were humans in the pictures, evidently in order to give some idea of scale. The humans were less than shoulder-high to the other creatures, orange colored, fanged almost like ancient saber-toothed tigers, but with odd differences: four-digited forepaws like clawed hands, shorter bodies and longer legs than real tigers, and triangular heads with bigger crania above feline faces. Distorted ears. The effect was of a monstrosity.
They appeared to be three-dimensional objects. "Jenny Hannifers," said the controller. "Sailors in ancient times sewed together dead monkeys and fish to sell as mermaids. These are a sophisticated version of the same thing.”
I looked down at the little mammoths, whose DNA had come from specimens preserved in the Siberian permafrost. "The tissue was grown in tanks, you mean?”
"No, I don't think so. It's possible perhaps. As a colony ship they had a lot of animal cell cultures and they had plenty of advanced facilities for DNA sewing machines. But there are much easier ways. They had every kind of virtual reality simulator and program.
"We've checked what records there were of the loading of the Angel's Pencil, of course. They weren't complete because a lot of personal property of crew members was never itemized.
"In any case the requirements of a colony ship are enormously complex. Some of the containers loaded might have held fake alien body parts. Some cargo had come from the Belt and we have no inventories of that. As you know, Belters hate keeping nonessential bureaucratic records and they hate any intrusions on their citizens' privacy. But they didn't need to carry physical props: Their computers would do the job. Entertainment programs and computer space are things no deep-spacer — especially no colony ship — is short of.”
"It seems a very queer sort of joke.”
"Exactly. Normal minds wouldn't do such a thing. Which means, obviously that we've got problems whatever the motive for producing them was.
"They say that these Outsiders approached them at an impossible speed, stopped dead in space in defiance of elementary laws of physics, and then tried to kill them by some sort of invisible heat ray after giving them all headaches. You can see how crazy it is. They haven't even bothered getting the basic science right, let alone the sociology.
"Then, they say, in trying to turn away they pointed their com-drive laser at the Outsider ship and a Belter crewman activated it. In one way we can be thankful: Suppose such a thing had really happened! When they examined the wreckage of the alien, so the message goes, they found it loaded with bomb-missiles, laser-cannon, ray-projectors: weapons, not signaling devices. Fusion-generators deliberately designed to destabilize at a remote command — sick, nightmarish things like that.”
"You're right," I said heavily after the implications of what he said had sunk in. "There's real illness here. Something deeper than I've encountered or read of." Then, knowing my words sounded somehow lame in the context of such madness, "It makes no sense.”
"No. It makes no sense. And you would think the crew of a spacecraft would know better than to tell us another spacecraft matched course with them at eighty percent of light-speed, and changed course instantaneously. As if anything organic wouldn't be killed by inertia. What about delta-v? It's as preposterous as expecting us to believe such an insanely aggressive culture would get into space at all!”
He projected another holo.
"Look at this. It's meant to be the Outsider ship.”
Two main pieces of wreckage tumbling in space, leaking smaller fragments of debris. Cables, ducting, unidentifiable stuff. I had the unpleasant thought that a living body chopped with an ax might leak pieces in the same way. There were tiny space-suited dolls maneuvering objects that included shrouded alien cadavers. There were other pictures, apparently taken from aboard the Outsider wreckage with the Angel's Pencil hanging in the background. But photographs taken in space have no scale. The objects could have been a mile across or the size of a man's hand. The EV humans could have been OO-scale figures from a child's model kit. But as he said, they were more probably electronic impulses than models. There were a lot of ways VR had already become a forensic problem.
"Can't we check it out? We've got good computers.”
"So have they.”
"I don't see anything that looks like a drive on it," I said. "Nothing like a ramscoop, no jets, no light-sail, no hydrogen tanks, no fusion bottles, nothing.”
"That's right. Rather an elementary error to design an extraordinarily maneuverable spacecraft without a drive. I told you they've ignored the science. But we know the things are fakes. What we want to know is why they were faked." He paused and contemplated his cigar, frowning. Then he switched his gaze to the pictures again.
"These things could be rather... disturbing, somehow?”
"Somehow, yes," I said, "I don't like them.”
"No. Only a few people have seen these things yet, all trained ARM personnel and a few of the Belter security people, and everyone has the same response. There's art gone into this.
"We're descended from creatures that were hunted by felines, Karl. It's almost as if whoever made up the morphology of these things has tapped into some sort of ancestral memory.”
"I still don't see exactly how I come into it." I did to some extent, though. And I saw another thing: If these holos of the alleged aliens became public, it was possible some gullible people might actually believe in them. Not as the symptoms of a space madness, though that would be bad enough, but as being real in themselves.
There were, I knew, plenty of people around bored and stupid enough to believe anything. Indeed, that was already a major social problem in itself. I understood why he had sent for me.
All right. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. Let something come. Start with tigers.
"Tigers are Indian, aren't they?”
"I don't know. Someone downstairs could tell you." A lot of the museum below us was gallery and display rooms, and I knew Arthur Guthlac, the head guide and Assistant to the Museum's Chief of General Staff.
"Were there any Indians in the crew?”
He handed me a wafer. "Complete dossiers and pictures." I dumped it in my wrist-comp.
"Any more pictures of the... things?”
"Hundreds. They've been sending them back continually. This will give you the general idea. You see they remembered to give them thumbs.”
He began flicking them up. No, I didn't like them. None of the Jenny Hannifers were whole, just as if they really had been burned or suddenly exposed to explosive decompression in space. Some were only fragments. Big catlike beings with thumbs. They were colored orange with some variations of shade from near red to near yellow and darker markings. One was smaller than the others. I was fairly experienced in dealing with sickness, pathology even, that was part of the job, but this was something different.
It was wrong that someone should have gone to so much care to concoct a hoax, and shown such ingenuity in its details. I thought again of what years in space might do to human beings — really thought about it — and realized for the first time how brave those first colonists of Wunderland and Plateau and Jinx and the rest had been.
There were holos of allegedly dissected 'aliens', too: cartilaginous ribs that covered the stomach region, blood that varied in color between purple and orange, presumably an analogue for arterial and venous, streams of data that purported to be DNA codings, skeletons, analysis of alien alimentary-canal contents and muscle tissue purporting to contain odd proteins, sheets of what was allegedly alien script, looking like claw marks. There were also holos of what purported to be alien skulls.
"There's possibly a connection with your other work," the controller went on. "Or in any case, it seems to fall into our area as much as anyone else's. Your clearance has been upgraded one threshold in case you need special information. With our own people, normal need-t
o-know should be enough.”
I was getting signals that Alfred O'Brien was a nervous man taking a risk, and perhaps carrying me with him. I guessed opinion in the higher reaches was still divided on how to deal with this. A wrong decision, and early retirement; a very wrong decision, and... because, bizarre as it was, it could be serious.
Colonists were all volunteers, and could hardly be anything else. But they also went through rigorous screening and selection. It was quite right that rumors or reports of odd mental diseases in space could kill enthusiasm for colonizing ventures. And, yes, the ferocious three-meter tiger-cat images, however created, did have a disturbing quality about them. Somehow too many of them were difficult to look at for too long, whole or in pieces. But were they utterly unfamiliar? Why did I ask myself that question?
Deep, deep in memory, something stirred. What? I'd never seen anything much like these supposed aliens before, but... I looked at the dissection pictures again. There was the tiniest suggestion, somewhere in the back of my mind...
"The skulls might be a starting point," I said.
"Oh. How so?”
"I feel they look... familiar somehow.”
"Good. It's good if you've got a starting point, I mean.”
"Can I tell Arthur Guthlac about it? I know he's been interested in biological history.”
"If you think so. But only what he needs to know.”
"Its an odd job.”
"That's why we need you.”
"It's needle-in-a-haystack territory.”
"I know." He picked up a sheet of paper and passed it to me. "I don't know if its much of a start, but I've had the computers search for literary references to 'space' and 'cat' together. There isn't much. Here's one you might not know: An ancient Australian poem by an author Gwen Harwood, called 'Schrödinger's Cat Preaches to the Mice':”
Silk whisperings of knife on stone, due sacrifice, and my meat came. Caressing whispers, then my own choice among leaps by leaping flame.
What shape is space? Space will put on the shape of any cat Know this: my servant Schrödinger is gone before me to prepare a place...
I looked down to the end: Dead or alive? The case defies all questions. Let the lid be locked. Truth, from your little beady eyes, is hidden. I will not be mocked.
Quantum mechanics has no place for what's there without observation. Classical physics cannot trace spontaneous disintegration.
If the box holds a living cat no scientist on earth can tell. But, I'll be waiting, sleek and fat. Verily all will not be well if, to the peril of your souls you think me gone. Know that this house is mine, that kittens by mouse-holes wait, who have never seen a mouse.
He handed me a card embossed with the symbol of a level of authority I had encountered only two or three times before.
"Stay away from 'docs," he said. "That's your permit to do so. In fact your order to do so. No medication till further notice. We're turning you loose exactly as you are.”
"You do believe in taking risks, don't you?”
"You're not a schizie. You won't kill anyone. At least, I don't think so. But this is an intellectual problem. You'll need that intuition of yours as sharp as you can get it. And your wits sharp, too.
" 'Space will put on the shape of any cat... ' " he quoted again as I left him. "It was written four hundred years ago.”
·CHAPTER 2
My first-year politics tutorials this week dealt with Nazi foreign policy and the lead-up to the war. I decided to loosen things a bit and just generally chat... How strange that university politics students should never have heard of the little ships that took the British Expeditionary Force off the beaches in May 1940. Or de Gaulle. Or a Spitfire. No knowledge of any of it... This was the stuff that was supposed never to be forgotten thirty, forty years ago. Next week we do the Holocaust...
— Letter to the author, October 10,1991
Snow whirled round. A snarling roar shook the eardrums. Over the crest of a snow-covered ridge a saber-toothed head appeared, fangs dripping. With a single fluid motion the feline leaped to the top of the rock, poised for a moment, the eyes in its flat head blazing at us.
I caught myself flinching, sudden instinctive terror mixing with awe at the size and malevolence of the thing. Shrieking, the great cat launched itself through the air at us, its body suddenly seeming to elongate to an impossible narrowness.
It passed between us and there was a scream of animal pain and terror as its huge incisors sank into its prey. Blood spurted.
Arthur Guthlac turned off the holo, and the Pleistocene gallery faded.
"Kids love it," he said. "For some reason the Smilodon's even more popular than Tyrannosaurus Rex these days.”
"Love it! It actually scared me!”
"Preschool children still have vestiges of the savage in them. You of all people should understand that. They like to be scared. They like a bit of bloodshed too.”
"I'm aware of it," I told him. "Part of my job is to detect antisocial behavior early. And I don't particularly like to be scared.”
Guthlac laughed. A laugh with an edge in it.
"But you, my dear Karl, are a mature, adjusted human being. Not one of our little savages.”
Warm air flowed gently round as the gallery returned to its normal temperature. A voice announced the museum would be closing in ten minutes as we stepped out of the gallery into the corridor.
I wondered if he was aware of the real meaning of the word 'adjusted' in my case. It probably didn't matter.
"That's better," I told him. "You make this place a lot too cold for comfort.”
"The Pleistocene was cold. That's why you had the mammoth and mastodon, the cave bear and the dire wolf and the saber-toothed tiger. Big bodies save heat. An age of giants and ice. Then a monkey adapted to the cold by growing a big brain and that was the end of the story.”
"I know that. But we're not in the Pleistocene now. I don't know how you can choose to work in these conditions.”
"Well, the idea is we should at least know our planets past. What's the point of a historical display if it isn't real? Nature really was red in tooth and claw once. Remember the Africa Rover.”
"A good deal too red in tooth and claw for me to want to know about, thanks. I'll leave that to the children. But you know I don't mean you putting up with cold air currents and nasty holograms. I mean spending your life here.”
"Look at this," said Arthur. He touched a display of letters below a permanent reproduction of a great felinoid. "It's a poem from an ancient children's book on paleontology called Whirlaway: 'The Song of the Saber-Tooth':”
On all the weaker beasts I work my sovereign will. Their flesh supplies my feasts, my glory is to kill. With claws and teeth that rend, with eyes that pierce the gloom I follow to the end my duty and my doom. For I shall meet one day a beast of greater might, And if I cannot slay I'll die in rapturous fight
"Don't you think it's got a sort of ring to it?”
It was my job, but I still found myself rather shocked, not just at the antisocial content of the poem, but because it seemed unpleasantly close to holos and flats I had been studying. Why had he chosen it to quote? "Do you think that's really suitable for children?" I asked.
"I don't think it can do any harm to show what prehistory — prehuman history — was like. You don't feel any sense of wonder looking back at the mammoth, the cave bear and the dire wolf?”
"Well, a bit, I suppose.”
"You can be creative here.”
Arthur turned to a smaller holo in a cabinet by the door leading into the main diorama space. A hominid on the shore of an alkaline lake screamed and ran from another great cat. Other hominids jerked up from their clam gathering to scatter before it. Long-extinct birds rose in a screaming cloud. This time the saber-tooth was foiled. Geological and evolutionary time had passed since the first scene. The hominids were taller and some of them had sticks.
The guard operated another switch and the scene changed agai
n.
"We have a lot of things to do here. This is a new one for the children. Our might-have-beens." He spoke to a pane! and a succession of prehistoric animals appeared, altered.
"You can do your own genetic engineering here: These are how our friends might have developed had conditions been different." He turned a dial and the holos changed. "Look! Here other creatures got the big brains.”
Tigerlike creatures walked improbably erect, with fanciful tigerish cities in the background.
"It's been worked out what might have happened.”
There was something here. I didn't understand it, but there was a hint of a scent. Had something been planted here?
Not, I thought, by Arthur Guthlac. All that was marked in his file was a certain interest in unsuitable games and reading, perhaps an occupational risk for someone in his job, and a general restlessness and reluctance to apply himself (apply himself to what?). Further, I had already checked that he had no conceivable financial or other links with anyone or anything that might profit from stories of space madness. I kept my voice casual.
"Yes, I'm sure the children love it. But all the same, you must get sick of it, day after day. I don't know why you bother with such a job. If you want to work, there are plenty of better things to do.”
"No," he said, "I don't really get sick of it. It can be fun working with the holos. The children can make it fun, too. In any case, what else should I be doing? Nobody's going to send me into space, are they?" There was resentment buried somewhere there, I noted. Buried none too deeply, at that.
"This wing is largely a children's museum, as far as display goes," he continued. "Which is why they have human guides, of course. You know it's impossible to make anything child-proof if they're left to run loose without supervision. A lot of the equipment here is expensive.”
Arthur paused and then added, "And, after all, Karl, history is important.”
"Of course it is. But the world is full of people telling themselves their hobbies are important. We've all got a great deal of leisure time to fill. All right, I agree we need people doing what you are doing. But you wanted to go into space once.”
