The Alien MEGAPACK®

by Talmage Powell

  “We friends,” Gorman called to the savages.

  They disregarded him and muttered in a soft guttural back and forth, too rapidly for us to understand what they said.

  “We come in peace,” Gorman spoke slowly, distinctly. In an aside to me he said, “They’re supposed to be more intelligent than the Pinks.”

  At that moment one of the savages pointed urgently to where a bolder Pink had shown himself at the edge of the woods and both bounded off in pursuit. I breathed a sigh of released tension.

  * * * *

  We saw the Uglies several times the next day. However, they paid no attention to us, but each time disappeared chasing the fleeing Pinks.

  In the afternoon I decided to go hunting. Both of us would welcome a meal of fresh meat. I took along a compass and was careful not to go too far from the ship. I was unable to scare up even one animal. Twice I thought I had, but both times what I thought were animals turned out to be only large native insects, and not edible.

  I returned to the ship just in time to see a party of three Uglies chasing a female Pink—by her markings I recognized her as our visitor of the second day on the planet—across the clearing. As I watched, the Pink disappeared over a ridge, closely followed by the brown savages. Thirty or so yards behind them ran Pastor Gorman. He was shouting, “Stop that! Stop that! Let her alone!”

  I ran across the clearing at an angle that would intersect his path. He stopped, gasping for breath, as I came up to him. We both looked down into the shallow gorge below us. The Pink female was lying on her stomach, with a long spear sticking out through her back.

  Gorman was too winded, and I too shocked by what I saw, to move as an Uglie turned the female over on her side, pushed her head back, and slashed open her throat with his knife. Her limbs still jerked feebly as he slit her stomach and disemboweled her.

  It was all over in a brief minute. Two of the Uglies boosted the body of the female onto the shoulder of the largest and they carried her up and over the hill on the far side of the gorge.

  I heard Pastor Gorman being sick beside me as I turned away. I was not feeling at all well myself.

  I had to give the old boy credit—he had nerve. His face still hadn’t regained its natural color a few minutes later as he said resolutely, “I’m going after them.”

  “Good Lord, they’ll kill you, too,” I protested.

  He gently but firmly took my hand from his arm. “That killing cannot be permitted to continue,” he said. He paused. “If I accomplish nothing else while I’m here, I’ve got to stop that.”

  I saw that it would do no good to try to dissuade him. “Take a gun then,” I said. I offered him my pistol.

  He shook his head.

  I did get him to take my compass, and the lunch I had packed for my hunting trip, but that was all. I never expected to see him alive again.

  * * * *

  He returned shortly before dusk that same day. But he would not talk. He was a sick man—mentally sick. He prayed late into the night, and once toward daylight when I woke I heard him muttering to himself. I doubt that he slept at all that night.

  In the morning he was more calm. He would eat nothing—took only a cup of coffee—but he talked quite freely.

  “They’re cannibals, Johnny,” he said. “They eat those poor Pinks.”

  I had suspected as much, but I said nothing: I knew he would go on. “I tried to reason with them,” he resumed, “but it did no good. They answered my questions, but wouldn’t argue. Their attitude seemed to be that what I talked about was too absurd even to discuss. I got nowhere.” He bowed his head.

  “I was afraid they’d kill you,” I said, trying to take his mind from his grief.

  He put down his cup of coffee. “That’s a funny thing,” he commented. “I was almost certain they would, too—but they weren’t the slightest bit hostile. After awhile, I think I figured out the reason why. Their young are white until about a third grown, I found, and I have a theory they thought I was one of them; one who had never lost his youthful whiteness. I suppose that must happen sometimes. Probably about as often as an albino human.” His thoughts returned to his earlier distress. “We’ve got to convince them to stop that slaughter, Johnny,” he said.

  “Maybe this is a season when their natural game is scarce,” I tried again to console him. “I didn’t see a sign of an animal in the woods yesterday. Maybe they killed and ate the Pink only because they were starving.”

  I had said the wrong thing.

  Pastor Gorman rose abruptly and paced the room several times before he was able to resume our conversation. Finally he stopped and rested both palms on the eating board. “I saw the bodies of a dozen Pinks, Johnny;” he choked out. “They were hanging from tree limbs—like the carcasses of animals.”

  * * * *

  Sometime during the next night, Pastor Gorman decided that his immediate work must still be with the Pinks. “The Uglies’ chieftain gave me his word they would not hunt near the ship,” he said. “That was the most I could get him to agree to. But at least we can continue our work.”

  I’m afraid that for the next several weeks his work was not very rewarding. The Pinks soon lost all fear of us, but that created other, more serious problems. The worst nuisance, probably, was their curiosity and acquisitiveness. They would steal tools, or any other articles we were unwise enough to leave where they could be found. Most of what they took was useless to them.

  One curious female touched Gorman’s shirt, and when he made no protest, continued the inspection of the remainder of his garments, becoming more bold all the time. Soon a dozen others joined in the game of pulling at his clothing.

  My own attention was taken by several Pinks who began tugging at my clothing in the same game. I brushed them urgently aside, but they came gleefully back, and the adults proved stronger than I. Drawing my sidearm, and squeezing its grip to half charge, I set them back on their rumps.

  I turned to see how Gorman was making out. The Pinks had him on the ground beside the ship, and were tearing the last of the clothes from his body. They were jabbering excitedly and giving out with a kind of chirping laugh. I sprayed the gun’s charge across them and they fell in a half circle around him.

  He climbed slowly to his feet and limped past me. He’d had a rough few minutes. “Thanks, Johnny,” he mumbled as he went by.

  When he came out of the ship he still did not wear a gun, but he made no protest when I gave a taste of the shock to any Pinks who came too near either of us the rest of the day. By evening we were left strictly alone. I found myself able to work up little fondness for the Pinks.

  * * * *

  During the following days, Pastor Gorman tried often to talk to them about his God, but with no more result than if he had been preaching to a colony of baboons. It was impossible to carry on any semblance of a constructive conversation with them. “Maybe they just aren’t intelligent enough to understand what you’re trying to tell them,” I suggested once. “They remind me more of animals than people.”

  “The linguists, who studied the tapes the survey crew made, estimated their intelligence at about 60 percentile—on the human scale, that is,” he replied. “They’re definitely not animals.”

  “I’ve often wondered,” I said. “Just where do you draw the line? When are they classed as animals, and when as an intelligent species? In other words, when do you decide they have souls to be saved?”

  “There’s been a great deal of theological debate on that question,” Gorman answered thoughtfully, “but mostly we’re inclined to agree with the civilian authorities in their standard of rating a planet’s races. If they have a language, they’re intelligent—and to us they have souls.”

  * * * *

  The Pinks soon spoiled our yam digging. When we came out in the mornings they were always waiting. They would follow us into the forest a
nd grab the yams as soon as we dug them up, most of the time impeding our work as they fought for the food. I lost my enthusiasm for the digging then. The yams were quite easily found, and easily dug. The Pinks could dig their own, and did, when hungry enough. The fact was, they were too lazy to do it for themselves, unless they had no other choice. And there was little point to our efforts, as I saw it. We had as much of their friendship as they had to give, and they would never stay still long enough for Pastor Gorman to tell them about his God. Soon he, too, began to wonder if it were not a forlorn task.

  We had noticed early that all the adults we saw were females, while the young were all males, but this did not puzzle us long. Soon after Gorman returned from the Uglies’ village, we passed a young male as he wrapped his arms around a female and playfully pulled her to the ground. Gorman stopped to watch them with a smile. “Affectionate little fellow, isn’t he?” he remarked.

  Abruptly he turned aside, his face reddening slowly with embarrassment. The young male’s affection had proven to be more mature than Pastor Gorman had anticipated.

  It did help solve the puzzle for us however. The Pinks, we learned, were born male, and remained so until shortly after puberty period. They then underwent a biological transformation and became females. We could readily single out many older children whose male accouterments were in the evident process of atrophy, and whose female contours were beginning to emerge.

  * * * *

  The Pinks seemed to understand that they were safe from the Uglies when they were in our clearing and it was cluttered with them everyday. Their droppings, and natural fetid odor, made the place smell like a particularly odiferous stable.

  The pregnant females took to giving birth to their young beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing. There were always six to a litter—never more and never less—and the young were on their own from a few weeks after birth. Their mothers gave them little care.

  They were born small, hardly more than six inches long. A moment after birth they would raise themselves on their hands and feet, shake their small wet bodies, and crawl on all fours over the prostrate body of their parent, struggling with other newborn for a place at the pendulous udders. A month later they could be found nibbling at the bark of small trees. Judging by the observed number of pregnant females, they probably bred several times a year.

  The young added to the clutter of the clearing, and to our problems. They seemed to love to scamper about the feet of their older kin, and had no more sense of keeping clear of a walking adult than an Earth cat. Often they were stepped on, frequently with fatal results. Every day I had to carry small bodies into the woods and bury them. If I had not, the additional stench would have driven us away.

  After a month of fruitless effort Pastor Gorman gave up trying to teach his religion to the Pinks. “We’ll have to help them advance culturally,” he said. He tried, by example, to induce them to cultivate a plot of land, and to plant it with yams.

  The Pinks only ate his seed.

  By the third month, he was thoroughly discouraged. “Perhaps we’d better see what we can do with the Uglies,” he said. “If we can convert them, we will at least be able to save the lives of many Pinks. That way we will give something to both races.”

  I decided to go along with him this time. He was impractical, but kind old fellow, and I had developed a deep affection for him. We packed a tent, provisions for a month—I took along a spare pistol and ammunition—and set out for the Uglie village.

  * * * *

  The Uglies did not welcome us, but neither did they interfere as we set up our tent near their village and unpacked our provisions. For several hours a crowd of them watched, but when we did nothing unusual they wandered back to their village.

  The Uglie village was on the banks of a deep, muddy river. The huts were primitive reed structures, built around a wooden framework, but they were surprisingly clean.

  We stayed until our provisions ran out. Each day Pastor Gorman went into the village and waited in a square near the center until he had a chance to talk with any Uglies passing by. At first he talked about anything that might seem to be of interest to them, gradually leading the conversations around to his God. The Uglies, in their restrained way, were a courteous people, and always listened to him. Especially in the evenings. Often most of the population would gather in the square to listen to his preachings. And he did what I thought was a very good job. But whether or not he made any real progress I could not tell.

  “How intelligent are they?” I asked him one night as we lay in our sleeping bags.

  “The linguists figured about 80 percentile.” He was tired and beginning to grow discouraged again.

  “That should be intelligent enough. Do you think they understand what you’re telling them?”

  “I’m quite certain they do,” he answered listlessly, “but I’m afraid words aren’t very convincing to them. If only I had a way to give them some kind of practical demonstration. But of course I can’t expect God to perform a miracle for me. I’ll just have to do the best I can.”

  “I notice they won’t discuss your teachings with you,” I said. “I wonder why not.”

  He shrugged. “That I don’t understand either. Probably some tribal mores. I suppose it would take years to really understand any alien culture, even one as primitive as this. But it’s very frustrating.”

  He rolled over on his side to face me. “This may sound vain, Johnny, but I’m certain they respect me—perhaps even like me. A few discussed their own rudimentary religion with me. It seems they have a vague kind of pantheism: Every object—every tree, rock, and insect—has its individual god. The gods have a definite order of greatness—what that order is I haven’t bothered to learn. But theirs isn’t a fanatical belief; they take it quite casually. I’m certain I could convert them, if I could only think of the proper method.” He returned to the problem that was always close behind his desire to convert the Uglies. “I’ve got to stop that killing of the Pinks, Johnny.”

  * * * *

  Pastor Gorman had his work to keep him occupied, but I was at loose ends. I was becoming more bored every day. I still had no luck hunting, and as a last resort I took to wandering among the Uglies, observing the way they lived, and talking to them—about anything, just to be occupied.

  They led lives much like the tribes of old Africa, with a family life, affection between children and parents, and respect for community laws and mores.

  The purple shading of their light tan complexions, that we had noticed earlier, was caused by the blood that coursed just beneath the surface of their translucent skin. When one observed closely enough the veins could be readily traced. The hide cloaks they wore were made of the cured skins of Pinks.

  Gorman avoided them during their meal preparations, but I had less reluctance. I found that they tied the carcasses of the slain Pinks to short vine-ropes and let them float in the river for several days before cooking. Perhaps to remove the salt. The carcasses were then placed in prepared clay pits, a square-cornered species of leaf was stuffed into the stomach cavities and more clay packed around the outside. Fire was built around the crypts and the meat baked. At first they offered portions to me, but of course I refused. Every day the hunters brought in more dead Pinks. Whenever Gorman happened to see them he suffered renewed agonies of grief.

  Near the end of our month in the village I learned something that startled me, though I might have guessed it earlier: They believed that Gorman—and probably I also—was mad!

  I had read that primitive tribes often have a peculiar respect for their madman, usually believing them to be inhabited by spirits. That probably was the biggest reason we still remained unharmed.

  * * * *

  We returned to the ship when our supplies ran out. We spent two days and two nights there. Pastor Gorman seemed to be having a mighty inward struggle. By the third morning, he
had come to a decision. He explained it to me as we packed more provisions.

  “If I were at all wise, I’d be able to convert at least one of those races,” he said, “but I’m afraid it’s a task bigger than I’m capable of handling, Johnny. Oh, I’m going to keep trying,” he went on as he saw that I intended to protest, “but to be honest, I doubt that I will ever be successful.

  “So I’ve decided to give the Pinks a means of defending themselves. The decision was not easy. I’m not even certain that what I intend doing is God’s way, but I can only do what I think best. I’m going to teach the Pinks to use the bow and arrow. With that weapon they can defend themselves against the Uglies’ spears and knives. If it works the way I hope, each side will learn respect for the weapons of the other, and the killings will stop.”

  Something about his decision disquieted me, but I couldn’t place exactly what it was. I thought for several minutes before I said, “I can’t give you a reason, but I don’t think you’re doing the right thing. Maybe it’s because I’ve come to admire the Uglies, while I despise the Pinks. The Uglies have more of the traits we have always thought of as desirable in a race. Such as family integrity, tolerance and respect for the rights of others, and honor. While the Pinks are shiftless and selfish, with none of the better traits, as far as I can see. It doesn’t seem right that you should help them against the Uglies.”

  “I understand how you feel, Johnny,” Pastor Gorman answered. “But don’t you see, what you admire in the Uglies—and what the Pinks lack—is only the result of a greater intelligence and higher cultural development? That greater advance cannot be allowed to compensate for their murder of the Pinks. Surely you understand that.”

  “I don’t know.” I could think of no valid argument, but I still felt he was making a wrong decision.

  “This I am sure of,” Gorman said earnestly, “if I’m to follow God’s way, I must do everything I can to stop that killing!”

  * * * *