Unearthly Neighbors

by Chad Oliver

  “Wake up! You’re dreaming. It’s okay. You’re safe. Everything’s okay. Wake up!”

  The screaming stopped. Charlie snorted and opened his eyes. The eyes were wild with terror, filled with a nameless fear.

  “It’s okay, Charlie. You’ve been dreaming. It’s just me, Monte. Easy does it, boy. Relax. Take it easy.” Charlie looked at him. Gradually, the light of recognition dawned in his eyes. His arms dropped to his chest. He shook his head, licked his lips.

  “It’s all over, Charlie. Don’t let it get you. Look—see the sun shining out there? We’re okay.”

  Charlie stared at Monte’s nakedness. Suddenly, he smiled. “What is this, a nudist colony? Now I know I’m nuts!”

  Monte laughed with relief. Charlie seemed to be himself again. “I just couldn’t stand that damned suit any longer. Come on outside and get yours off. You’ll feel better.”

  Charlie didn’t move.

  “Come on, get up. We’ll get us some food…” Charlie shuddered and seemed to withdraw into his suit as a turtle will pull its head back into its shell. Monte reached out and touched his shoulder, trying to pull him back from wherever he was going.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of now. Don’t let it get you again. Fight it!”

  “No.”

  “Man, you can’t give up! Look out there—the sun is shining—”

  “Damn the sun. What difference does it make? Not our sun.”

  “What’s wrong with you? What’s the matter? Let me help…”

  Charlie closed his eyes. His breathing was very shallow. “I tried to kill you, Monte. Have you forgotten that?” Monte waved his hand irritably. “We were sick. They did something to us. We weren’t responsible. That wasn’t us fighting. Don’t you know that?”

  “Words.” Charlie opened his haunted eyes. “My God, the things I saw in my mind! The dreams I had! Am I like that?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Those things came out of my mind. Things about you and Louise. Even about Helen. Slime! Sick? Lord, the sickness is inside us. I don’t know myself. All the things you keep bottled up inside of you and then somebody takes the lid off. We tried to kill each other! And you say that everything is fine. Mad! We’re both mad!”

  “Maybe so. But this won’t get us anywhere. We’ve got to fight!”

  “Fight what? Shadows? Dreams? A planet? Ourselves? Go away. Let me alone. I don’t want to do anything else, ever.”

  “Come on outside. The fresh air will do you good.” Charlie laughed—a bitter, hollow, broken laugh. “Fresh air! That’s funny.”

  “Dammit, I’m trying to help you! Charlie, we’re all alone here. We can’t quit. There’s too much at stake.”

  “Garbage, garbage. Idiocy. We should have quit before we started. Helen’s dead. Louise is dead. Ralph is dead. We’ll be dead soon. And for what? For what? Hang the Merdosi! They’re not like us, never have been, never will be. They’re monsters. We’re monsters!”

  “You’re contradicting yourself. Come on now…”

  A look of cunning came into Charlie’s sunken eyes. “No. They’re out there. All around us. I can feel them. They’re after me, inside my head.”

  Monte was baffled in the presence of the sickness that he saw in the other man. It was like talking to a lunatic. “I’ve been out there. I’ve looked. We’re all alone.”

  “I can feel them, I tell you! Do you really think you can get away from them by splashing across a river? This is their world, not ours. We’re finished!”

  Monte searched desperately for some magic words that would get through to him. There were no words.

  Charlie sighed, closed his eyes again. He went down into the depths of some profound depression. He began to mumble, to whisper, to cry. “No good. I’m no good. The things I saw—in my own mind—I’m sick, so sick…”

  “Do you want me to contact the ship?” Monte asked quietly. “You can’t go on like this—it’s asking too much of any man. Maybe it would be best—”

  “No, no. Can’t go back, nothing there. Can’t leave you here. Just let me alone, can’t you? Let me rest—think…”

  Monte got to his feet. “You need something to eat. I’ll get some.”

  “Don’t go out there! Don’t leave me! Stay here!”

  “Starving never appealed to me much,” Monte said firmly. “We have to get food. You wait here, do you understand? I’ll be back.”

  Charlie began to cry again.

  Monte walked out into the sunlight and put on his warm, dry clothes. He unhooked the spare canteen from the spacesuit and fastened it to his belt. He tried not to listen to the wretched sobbing from the cave.

  He started down the trail toward the green world below.

  The whispering grasslands surrounded him and the smell of the rain-washed air was sweet. The land sloped gently toward the river and the sky above his head was warm and blue and comforting. In spite of himself, in spite of everything, Monte felt a sudden surge of confidence.

  He could take it. He knew that now, and it was a valuable thing to know. A man could go all through his life and never meet the final test that would tell him what he was. When all the horrors are behind you there is nothing more to fear.

  How in the devil was he going to get his hands on some food? The water was easy; he could simply go on to the river and fill his canteen. But he had no weapons. He was not eager to go back to the clearing and pick up some cans, although it might come to that in the end. He might build a trap of some sort, but that was a slow and uncertain technique at best.

  He remembered that Ralph had run some tests on a batch of red berries that he had picked. If he could find some of those it might help. But a man couldn’t live on berries. Roots? Fish?

  Well, first things first. He kept on toward the river, enjoying the walk, strangely at ease. The world of Walonka no longer seemed alien to him; it was even beautiful, once you got used to it. Perhaps all worlds were beautiful to appreciative eyes. Planets were not alien, at least not the ones a man could walk on without an artificial air supply. People were the problem. It was far easier to adjust to a new world than to a new human being.

  He stepped out of the grass and saw the river gliding before him, quiet and peaceful in the bright sunlight. It was a far cry from the wild torrent of the night before; even the upthrust rocks looked dry and inviting. He stretched out on the cool bank and put his mouth in the water. He drank. It tasted clean and fresh. He filled his canteen and wished fervently that he had not left his pipe and tobacco back in the tent. He could do with a smoke. In fact, despite his empty belly, he would have been completely content with his pipe. He had always loved the land, any land that had not been spoiled by the stinks of civilization, and a man could ask for very little more than a clean river and a blue sky and a warm sun.

  He felt completely at peace with himself.

  Perhaps the river was the answer. There had to be fish in it, hanging in those dark pools by the rocks. As an old fisherman, he could almost smell fish. He could rig up a line of some sort, bait it with insects or even berries, catch himself a mess of fish…

  And he suddenly remembered the birds. It should not be too difficult to locate some nests, swipe a few eggs. He smiled. If only that was all there was to life! Enough to eat, enough to drink, a fire to keep you warm, a shelter to keep you dry, a little love…

  How did the lives of men get so complicated? Why did men insist on cluttering up their lives with all the little irritations that made a man old before his time? Why couldn’t a guy just sit in the sun and fish and smoke his pipe?

  He didn’t know. But he was not simple enough to believe in his own lotus dream. He recognized it for what it was: a reaction to all the hell he had been through, a fantasy of all the Good Old Days that never had been. There was some truth in it, sure. Maybe even a little wisdom. But a man was what he was. He had a brain and he couldn’t switch it on and off at will.

  Louise was dead. Charlie was sobbing in a cave in s
ome nameless cliff. He, Monte, had failed in his job. The Earth and Sirius Nine had touched across the dark seas of space, and their destinies were bound together forever—no enchanted Excalibur could cut the chains that tied them. There was a vast and intricate play of forces at work here and now, by this peaceful river, and they all centered on him. He had to do what he could, or forget about calling himself a man.

  He got to his feet, then froze.

  There was an animal drinking from the river not twenty yards downstream from him. It was a lovely creature, not unlike a deer, but it was small and its legs were short. It was not built for speed like a deer. There were no horns on its head. Its coat was a soft brown with flecks of white. It was very dainty, and it was—helpless.

  The animal looked up at Monte, took him in with gentle liquid eyes, and did not move. It didn’t seem frightened. It nibbled at the green shoots of a bush that grew along the river bank and twitched its short tail lazily.

  Probably, Monte thought, the animal had confused him with one of the natives. The wind was blowing in Monte’s face, and without the clue of scent the animal did not realize that he was anything strange. And the natives always hunted with the Merdosini…

  If he could catch him, break his neck—or even stun him with a rock…

  Monte took a step toward the animal. The animal eyed him curiously and continued to munch on the grass. Monte moved closer, careful to make no sudden motions. The creature sniffed the air. Its mule ears cocked forward along its head.

  Monte held his breath. Fifteen yards to go. Ten.

  The animal backed away. It gave a kind of whistling snort, turned, and trotted off through the high grass. It wasn’t really running. Just keeping its distance.

  Monte suddenly realized that he was very hungry. There was a lot of meat on that critter. He picked up a stone about the size of a baseball. If he could just get a little closer…

  Monte broke into an easy run, bringing his feet down as softly as he could. The animal didn’t look back, but matched his pace. Monte braced himself, deciding that a quick sprint was his only chance. He gripped the stone firmly. Now…

  Just as he started to race forward, he saw it.

  He dropped like a shot, hiding himself in the tall grass.

  He was not the only one hunting that animal. One of the wolf-things, belly low to the ground, swift and silent as death itself, was cutting across the trail.

  Monte parted the grass and watched. How could he have been so careless? He was completely helpless without the protection of his suit—as helpless as that runt deer. But the wolf-thing didn’t seem to be interested in him; he went after his prey with a single-minded concentration that was frightening to observe.

  The little animal never knew what hit him. The Merdosini struck like a blur, like a soundless shadow. The great white fangs ripped at the jugular and there was a spurt of crimson blood that reddened the muzzle of the killer. It was all over in seconds.

  That was when the man stepped out of the grass and whistled. Monte’s eyes widened in surprise. He knew that man. He was an old man, tall and long-armed and naked with vertical stripes of vermilion on his chest. His skin was copper in the sunlight and the fine hair on his head was a fuzz of gold. And his eyes, those dark and tortured eyes—Monte couldn’t forget them.

  It was the same old man that they had first tried to contact after the landing on Sirius Nine. The old man who had fled from his hollow tree when they had tried to talk to him—how long ago? What was he doing here, on this side of the river?

  The man called off the wolf-thing. The beast whined and rubbed up against the old man’s legs in an oddly dog-like gesture. The man patted his head absently, then reached down, gathered up the dead animal, and hoisted it to his shoulders. From where he lay in the grass, Monte could distinctly see the red blood trickling down over the copper skin.

  Side by side, the man and the wolf-thing set off through the high grass.

  They were headed straight for the cliff where the cave was. Coincidence? Monte hardly thought so.

  He thought fast. It wouldn’t do to make any foolish mistakes this time. The old man wasn’t much of a threat to them as long as he was alone. And the wolf-thing was probably safe enough as long as the old man controlled him. If Monte let himself be seen, he might scare the old man away. He didn’t want that. It was just possible…

  He waited until they had a good lead on him. He waited until he was sure that the long grass would conceal his movements. Then he got to his feet and silently followed their trail.

  He walked through the green world under the white sun.

  Hope was reborn in him.

  He followed the trail of the old man and the killer. Each step he took brought him closer to the foothills of the mountains where Charlie waited in the cave.

  And each step he took filled him with wonder.

  14

  The old man walked steadily beneath his burden, the long muscles of his body seeming to flow as he moved. He did not stop to rest. The wolf-thing padded along at his side, occasionally even frisking in front of its master.

  A man and his dog, Monte thought. A man and his dog packing out a deer. How easy it was to transpose this scene into an earthly parallel! Psychologically, it was a dangerous line of reasoning—and yet it had a certain validity to it. Offhand, to someone who had never been there, it might seem that the life-forms of Sirius Nine should be totally different in appearance from those of Earth. But wasn’t that notion violently contradicted by all the facts of evolution? It was one of those insidiously logical ideas that suffered from one minor flaw: it wasn’t true. Even a nodding acquaintance with terrestrial evolution should have been enough to puncture that particular bubble. One of the most arresting facts of evolution was the principle of parallelism or convergence. Life-forms that had been separate for millions of years often showed striking similarities. He thought of the classic example of the marsupials and the placentals. There were marsupial bears, cats, dogs, squirrels—everything. There were creatures that looked like elephants but weren’t. And even the history of man illustrated the same idea. Man had almost certainly developed not once, but several times. There were types like Pithecanthropus in Java and China and Africa. There were classic Neanderthals living at the same time as Homo sapiens, and even interbreeding with them in Palestine and Czecho-Slovakia. There were many different groups of Miocene primates, such as the Dryopithecines, who were evolving in man-like directions. Perhaps there were only a limited number of solutions to the problems of survival. Perhaps a given type of life, such as a mammal, would of necessity develop along parallel lines, no matter where the evolution took place. Perhaps the twin mechanisms of mutation and natural selection would always ensure the survival of basically efficient types: fish and birds, turtles and rabbits, butterflies and men. Perhaps on all the Earth-like planets in the universe, given the proper conditions of air and sunlight and water, man would find only variations on a single master plan…

  Alien? Sure, the life on a planet could be alien—Monte had found that out in the nightmare with the Merdosi. But wasn’t it alien in its nuances, in its shadings, in its almost-but-not-quite quality? Wasn’t it alien because it was subtly different? And wasn’t that more truly alien, say, than something that looked like an octopus but had thought patterns just like a modern American?

  Take that old man there, walking along under a white sun with a carcass on his back. His bodily proportions were different from Monte’s, but so what? The puzzle lay elsewhere. Why was he doing what he was doing? What was he thinking about? What had motivated him to kill that animal and carry it toward the cave? What had it cost him in pain and worry and courage?

  What was he doing?

  Wait and see, boy. Wait and see.

  Without hesitation, the old man started up the trail that led to the cave. There could be no doubt that he was familiar with the place; their sanctuary had not been as safe as they had imagined. Monte hung back, not wishing to expose himself. H
e wanted to see what would happen. He listened carefully, but he could not hear Charlie. Asleep? Watching?

  Moving quickly from rock to rock, Monte moved up the cliff. He angled off to the left so that he would come out just above and to one side of the cave.

  Holding his breath, he wriggled forward and looked down. The old man was standing on the ledge just in front of the cave. The wolf-thing was whining and sniffing at the discarded spacesuit. The man put the dead animal down at the mouth of the cave. For the first time, he hesitated. He backed off a few steps. He folded his long arms across his vermilion-striped chest. He took a deep breath.

  The old man spoke. There was a tremor in his voice. He was afraid, but he was determined to do what he had come here to do. He spoke slowly and distinctly, choosing his words with care. Monte had no trouble in understanding him.

  “Strangers!” (Literally: “People-Who-Are-Not-Merdosi.”) “I speak to you as once you spoke to me. I bring you a gift of food as once you brought me a gift of food. I speak my name: Volmay. There has been much trouble since you first spoke to me. Much of it has been due to my own cowardice. It is time for a beginning-again. I tell you my name: Volmay. Will you speak with me?”

  He was answered by silence. Charlie said nothing at all.

  Monte cursed to himself. This was the chance they had been waiting for. Couldn’t Charlie see that? He wanted to show himself, call down to Volmay. But if he startled him now…

  “Strangers! Are you there? I speak my name again: Volmay. I have brought food to you. I am alone. Do you no longer wish to speak?”

  Words! First it was the men of Earth calling out to the Merdosi. Then it was Volmay calling out to the men of Earth. And there were never any replies. The gap was never bridged.

  Come on, Charlie! Give him a chance!

  The old man stood alone on the ledge of rock, surrounded by the ancient mountains and the sweep of the sky. The warm wind whispered in the silence.