‘I’ll tell you something else as well,’ I went on. ‘What Caradoc has here isn’t the ordinary pawn in the Paradise Game at all. This is Paradise, Titus—right down to the bones. It’s the perfect model—the kind of primitive Earth that never really was. The unspoiled world. Eden, if you like. And I don’t know about you, but that touches a spring somewhere in my cold and calculating mind. I know there just has to be something wrong and I keep expecting it to walk right out of the trees. Unless, of course, it has already.’
By which, of course, I meant us. There were things on this world that no one could have expected to find here. The fact that it was a real Paradise instead of a fake meant absolutely nothing in terms of Aegis philosophy, of course, but it might conceivably make a hell of a difference to Caradoc. When Titus wandered in here looking for an excuse to turn Caradoc out on its collective ear, he couldn’t have expected anything like this. No doubt he had good and adequate reason for expecting Caradoc to back down. The rules of the Paradise Game were all laid down, even if it did need a super-economist to use them to make predictions. But how could those expectations still apply? How could anyone estimate the commercial value of the real thing? What were the political—not to say the religious—implications? Who, in the political near-chaos of galactic civilisation, could possibly take over responsibility for this world? More important, who had the power to take it away from Caradoc?
On the basis of what we’d found so far, it was a whole new ballgame.
All this, of course, I left unsaid. There were anxious ears all around us. But Charlot knew the way my brain was taking me, because his was surely escorting him down the same staircase to trouble.
‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘We’re in much deeper water than I thought. There’s something here that we haven’t even got close to yet, even in our guesses. It might be something very simple, but....’ His voice trailed away into silence.
Exactly, I thought. But....
CHAPTER SEVEN
I spent the afternoon in pretty much the same way that I had spent the morning, and I was soon heartily sick of it. There was important information contained somewhere in the welter of paperwork, I was sure. But being sure of it only made the job of sifting carefully through endless details that much more onerous. Long before I was due for a second break I found myself unable to concentrate. Eventually, I had to salve my conscience by deciding that a little more research at ground level was called for, so that I could take a walk. As I walked over the area of clear ground separating the river from the forest, three of the natives decided to follow me. I slowed down to let them catch up, and we walked into the trees together.
I could think of no reason for their action in accompanying me. Surely they could not be curious about humans after all this time living in close proximity. It seemed as though their decision to take a walk arose out of pure and simple gregariousness.
They didn’t talk—not to each other, nor to me. I remembered what Charlot said about their spontaneous demonstration of their language to the Caradoc people. Apparently, they had given that up. Why? Perhaps they thought it was no longer necessary—but why had they considered it necessary in the first place? Perhaps they had expected their teaching to have some specific result, and had been disappointed. I was tempted to try to play their own game, and begin pointing at things and naming them, and demonstrating verbs. But I could hardly imagine that the Caradoc linguists wouldn’t have tried that, and I didn’t suppose for a moment that the aliens could begin to make sense of our languages, which were, after all, much more complex than theirs.
For some time, in fact, I could think of no way to take advantage of the fact that the aliens were with me. I looked at them closely, but got no more out of that than I already knew. They all looked alike—so alike that the similarity was almost preternatural. The unfamiliar forms of alien beings tend to make them all alike to the unpractised human eye, but this likeness went far beyond that. The aliens were identical.
They did not shy away from my touch—they allowed me to stroke their fur and inspect their tiny hands. But they did not try to examine me with touch. They were content to stare from their large, circular eyes. They seemed so very thoughtful that I could not help but wonder what was going on in their minds.
When I flicked my fingers in front of their eyes they blinked reflexively, but I could not seem to elicit any conscious reaction from them. I didn’t entertain for a moment the thought of striking one, but it did occur to me to try to shock them by violating their unwritten law of existence by picking some of the brightly-coloured flowers from the bushes and the creepers, and from the forest floor itself. I assembled a bunch of about seven, with moderately long stalks. They watched me, but did not show surprise. Finally, I held out the bunch, offering it to one of them. When she made no move at all, I reached out to take her hand so that I could put the flowers into her palm. She must have realised what I intended, because she finally reacted. I had barely touched her when she had gone. She just stepped back and with bewildering speed she vanished into the green cage of the forest. The others were gone too, in the same instant.
I smelled each flower in turn. They were all scented. Then I dropped them, feeling slightly guilty for having picked them in the first place. The scent lingered strongly on my hands, and wiping them vigorously on my trousers had no noticeable effect.
I then set about following a second line of thought. Having discovered that morning that the local fauna seemed to subsist on a diet which was exclusively liquid, I began to search for a source of supply. I could find nothing near ground level, but I had already observed the arboreal acrobatics of the natives, and I had been half-expecting that their food supply might be up in the treetops.
There was an abundance of small branches low down on the tree trunks, not to mention smaller woody plants, but there was very little that could possibly support my weight. I would have to climb the creepers.
I am not an accomplished rope-climber, and I found that a good many of the hanging fronds were either inadequately secured up above, or had insufficient tensile strength to take my weight for the length of time I required to ascend to the heights. All in all, it took me the best part of an hour to finally make my way up into the main branches of one of the trees. Once there it was an easy matter to make my way high into the crown of the forest.
I had chosen a very large tree, in the hope of being able to get up high enough to look out along the forest roof, but I found that the top of the tree was as heavily infested with accessories and hangers-on as the region close to the forest floor. The sheer profusion of the vegetation was a little strange. Virtually all the leafy material was made up of tiny leaflets in great numbers, and despite the great multiplicity of plants, the bright sunlight was not filtered out to anywhere near the extent that one might expect in a subtropical forest. The branches of the trees and the stems of the creepers were all relatively thin, and not nearly as turgid as I had expected to find them.
But I was sure that the aliens, and the rest of the local wildlife, milked these plants in some way and I was determined to find the method. I spent some time in a fruitless search for organs like teats, long after logic should have told me that a mass flow of any magnitude was impossible owing to the anatomy of the plants involved. Not until I realised that the majority of the supple strands which festooned the branches were not creepers at all, but parts of the tree, did I guess how the animals were nourished by the plants. The natives must swallow the filaments to a considerable length, so that the leafleted stem was taken into the gut. The photosynthetic surface then disgorged, in liquid form, a fraction of the produce of its photosynthesis, over a very large surface area. The natives would then reel the stems unharmed out of their gut and allow them to continue photosynthesising.
But if the plants fed the animals with a substantial fraction of what they took from the sun, yet had not evolved more efficient processes for taking up solar energy, how did the trees provide their own
growth and reproductive needs? And the answer, of course, was that they didn’t. Another fact, which ought to have been obvious to me before, was revealed by a quick check. The flowers bore only one type of reproductive organ. Not only the animals, but also the plants, were exclusively female. Then why have flowers and nectar at all? Probably, as I had already suggested, some types of animal or bird fed on the nectar. But what did the plants get out of it?
None of it made sense. Except as somebody’s dream of Paradise.
I told Charlot so when I met him again later. He did not seem impressed, nor did he seem particularly interested. He just looked tired. When we returned to the ship together we did not talk. We had already exhausted all our complaints and our bewilderment on ourselves. We were frustrated.
On the way back, as we passed through the town, we were accosted no less than three times. The first person to approach us was David Holcomb, who started off asking sweetly enough for a personal interview with Charlot so that he could explain his side of the dispute. When Charlot told him, fairly shortly, that he (Holcomb) didn’t have a side in the dispute and that he was welcome to say anything he had to say to the monitor or to one of the crew members, but otherwise just stay out of the way, he began to build up a fit of righteous indignation. Charlot stopped that dead with a few well-chosen insults that were quite alien to his usual style in such matters. Holcomb then retreated, swearing blind that if he didn’t get his proper hearing, New Alexandria was going to hear a great deal more about the Aegis movement.
The second man who stopped us was the fat man, Frank Capella. I thought when I saw him approach that he was going to say exactly the same thing that Holcomb had, and I was all prepared for vitriolic words, but he was a far better diplomat. He only wanted to help us. He wanted to assure himself that we were getting all possible co-operation from his scientific staff, to apologise for the unpleasantness concerning one of his men and one of ours, and to tell us that we only had to ask for anything we wanted. Charlot spent the whole interview nodding and grunting and generally radiating utter boredom.
Finally, Keith Just passed us by, in a carefully contrived accidental fashion, and asked how we were getting on and what possibility there might be of Charlot’s reaching a decision in the relatively near future. Charlot was at least polite to Just, and when the man had passed by he commented that Just was a man who might possibly be able to give us a new perspective. He suggested that I should talk to the peace officer in the reasonably near future.
Once we were on the road again, and relatively free from the danger of interruption, I asked him what was wrong.
‘You’ve been looking like something six weeks dead ever since the first night,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen you handle people like this before. You’re showing about as much diplomacy as I usually do. What’s the matter?’
‘The lack of diplomacy is partly calculated,’ he said. ‘We have a real job to do here, and I can’t spare the time to oil all the wheels as I usually can. I’ve delegated as much of the liaison work as possible to Captain delArco and Miss Lapthorn purely and simply so that I can free myself for study. Possibly I should have brought a diplomatic staff out from New Alexandria, but I knew full well they’d plague me almost as much as these people would if I allowed them to. I feel more comfortable working with the people I have here. Even with you.
‘But you’re right in that I am ill. It was a very minor affliction before I arrived here, but the slight effect that the air here has on metabolic processes is aggravating the illness.’
‘Surely it’s nothing incurable?’ I asked, deeming the question virtually rhetorical in an age where disease—though widespread—never stands a chance against medicine.
But he replied ‘Yes,’ and he added: ‘Old age.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
I knew that something had to happen sooner or later, and it was that night that the plot sickened considerably. I was back at the ship, feeling restless, and wondering whether it was a good idea to go into town to talk to Just, or maybe to have a drink instead. Charlot had managed to seize some paperwork from Merani, and he was closeted in his cabin searching it for inspiration. Eve and Nick were in town, where they had stayed for the evening meal, and were presumably still involved in the thankless task of collecting meaningless opinions from meaningless people for their meaningless record of procedure.
Johnny and I were together in the control room. He had been on the spacefield all day, and he was looking somewhat sulky—not to say bruised—as a result of his exploits on the previous day.
‘There’s a couple of things you ought to check on while you’re here,’ he told me.
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘I was checking some of your instruments,’ he said hesitantly.
‘You leave my instruments alone,’ I said. ‘You know bloody well that your interest in this ship starts below this deck. You keep out of the cradle and away from this panel. Now what the hell do you mean by there being something I ought to know about?’
‘Take a look in the hood,’ he advised.
I was angry. The hood is the most sacrosanct element in a pilot’s paraphernalia. I would have objected to Eve’s touching the hood, even though she was a pilot herself, had flown the ship, and might have to again one day. For Johnny to play about with it was a considerable violation of principle.
‘What the hell have you been doing?’ I demanded, my right hand reaching for the hood, but making no attempt to swing it across and locate it.
‘I was looking,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Hell, I knew I shouldn’t, but I just wanted to see what things looked like—to help me to understand what goes on up here while I’m keeping the flux balanced in the belly. I wouldn’t have told you, except that I think there’s something odd out there.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ I demanded. ‘We’ve been sitting here for half an hour.’
‘Because it should be rising about now. In the east. For God’s sake, look. You can give me the lectures later.’
I located the hood. The ship’s instrument panel wasn’t dead, of course, but it didn’t volunteer information unless it was asked. The panel was primarily for input. The hood was mostly for observation and sensory functions.
I looked to the east, expecting to see one of the planet’s two tiny moons rising. But it wasn’t a moon. At least Johnny hadn’t walked himself into trouble for nothing. It was a ship, orbiting the world, where no ship had any right to be.
It couldn’t be the Caradoc supply ship—which was the only ship legally entitled to land here while our investigation was going on—because that wouldn’t hang around in orbit wasting company money.
‘Well?’ said Johnny, after a decent pause.
‘It’s a ship,’ I said.
‘I was right,’ he said, sounding very relieved. ‘It’s perhaps as well I looked.’
‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘You know bloody well that finding a ship doesn’t justify your being where you had no right to be. I don’t give a damn if you find a twenty-ton meteorite that’s going to drop right on top of us, I don’t want you playing with my equipment.’
‘But it could be important,’ he complained.
‘Not that important,’ I assured him. But I was thinking hard, and the venom had drained out of my voice. I was very curious about that ship.
‘Should I get the boss?’ he asked.
‘You can leave him alone, too,’ I said. ‘I haven’t a clue why he hired you in the first place—if it was just to pry me loose from your back room I’d just as soon he hadn’t bothered—but the least you can do is to keep him from regretting it. He already has one score against you for pulling idiot jailbreaks on Rhapsody. Don’t give him any more.’
‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I only suggested telling him there was a ship in orbit.’
‘Yeah, well he’s ill,’ I said, ‘and he doesn’t want any more pieces of jigsaw dropped on his plate without knowing where they fit.’
‘You’re ver
y conscientious all of a sudden,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought your dearest wish was to give the old man a permanent heart attack.’
‘Some other time,’ I said, still paying only half a mind to the conversation. ‘At the moment he’s one of my favourite people...I wonder if I can pick up his beam. How long is it since he was last in the sky?’
‘Not too long. Four hours plus, I guess.’
‘But people were busy, then. If somebody’s keeping him up-to-date on what’s happening down here, they’ll probably be doing it right now, while they drink their after-dinner cup of tea, or smoke their after-dinner joint, or whatever.’
He moved from his chair, and dared to come over to stand beside the cradle. But he kept his hands behind his back.
‘You think you can tap their call beam?’ he asked.
‘Should be easy,’ I said. ‘Wherever the beam starts, it can’t be more than a mile from here. I don’t care how tight it is, they’ve got to allow a certain amount of spray. It’s only a matter of tuning. But I’ll have to open right up or I’ll only get one end of the chit-chat. So you keep quiet. Don’t breathe too loud. And if you sneeze I’ll brain you.’
Gently, I began to caress the pickup on the call circuit, trying to infiltrate the hypothetical beam link between ship and ground. I had to keep the energy low, so that if I did suddenly manage to augment their beam, I wouldn’t contribute a sudden energy boost and reveal the presence of an eavesdropper.
A few tense, silent minutes passed while my fingers twiddled the dials with great delicacy.
Then we heard the voice.
The Paradise Game Page 6
