Analog SFF, October 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  Carde, Soyombo and Mixon were back before the crew had made much progress on a shelter.

  "The village is just on the other side of the river,” Carde said, “less than a kilometer."

  "How many people?” Nylund asked.

  "Many more than us—maybe a few hundred or so,” Carde said. “It's a bit hard to tell. It looks like every adult has his own little house. The village is laid out along the bank for a ways upstream, but it only extends back from the river a hundred meters or so."

  Carde glanced over at the group of crewmembers working to gather materials for a shelter. “Some of the houses—they're like huts, really—have these big flat leaves on top, like roofing shingles. The trees grow along the river bottoms. Soyombo can show the rest of the crew."

  The XO nodded, and Soyombo and Mixon trudged off to join the working party, their weapons slung upside down on their back to keep the everlasting rain out of the muzzles.

  Carde turned back to Wayfield. “I think we pissed off some of the locals while we were looking around, Captain,” he said. “There was a kind of cooking frame outside one of the little huts. It looked like metal, and Mixon picked it up to check it out. All of the natives looked at Mix like he slapped them. He put the thing down fast, but they still looked unhappy."

  "Was the thing made of metal?” French wanted to know.

  "Mix says no,” Carde said. “Some kind of wood, probably hardened by fire.

  "Anyway,” he went on, “We tried talking for a bit more, but there didn't seem much point in it. There aren't any structures big enough to house more than one or two people at a time. Boget showed us his little house—windows but no glass, rough plank roof and floor, but dry inside with tight joints. There was some wood furniture inside, a bed, table and stools, and some boxes, but we didn't touch anything, and I didn't see any tools or metal."

  Wayfield nodded. “Food?” he asked.

  "They didn't offer any, but we saw some local plants in the houses,” Carde said. “The big thing is that they have domestic cattle, Skipper. Shitloads of them west of the river. When you get close to the village you can smell meat cooking."

  The size of the settlement and the cattle were a good sign, Wayfield thought. Of course there was no way of testing whether the genetics were compatible, except with their stomachs. For the thousandth time that day he wished for more survey equipment, or at least access to Malagasy's libraries.

  "One thing that struck me as odd,” Carde said. “They were looking at our gear the whole time, especially the metal and synthetics, but they never tried to touch anything, even to feel the texture. They never even gestured as if they wanted to hold anything."

  Wayfield chewed this over. He was never a survey officer, but he'd touched down in some exotic places, including a handful of first—or re-contacts. Local manners varied widely, but he'd never seen any culture that wasn't wildly interested in any new technology, from portable reactors to mill-woven fabric. Some humanoid cultures would enthusiastically strip unarmed crewmembers naked to sample their gear.

  "Okay, that might have been in response to you stopping them from approaching the ship,” Wayfield said. “We don't have much to go on. Don't worry about their reaction to Mixon. This was a pretty successful contact. Good job."

  The natives were not overtly hostile, at least, and if it came to that, the ship's company appeared to have the upper hand in weapons. For the moment, the main job was still getting his crew sheltered and warm.

  * * * *

  The rain tapered off by nightfall of the first day. The sun rose hot and white the next morning, and by midday the temperature in the shade was just over thirty degrees. The only work Wayfield allowed was the spreading out to dry of wet gear and clothing, and gathering of more firewood. The shelter they'd erected the first day was inadequate, but he gambled the good weather would hold at least one more day against the certain advantages of letting the crew bake in the hot sun and sleep themselves out.

  Nylund charged two quartermasters with marking the times of sunrise, apparent noon and sunset. A local day was 39.7 standard hours, or about 1.7 Sols. That was close to the survey crew's guesstimate. The length of day and night appeared equal. That could mean they'd just happened to arrive at an equinox, or that the planet had a very long year, or a very small tilt of its axis relative to the elliptic plane, or some combination of the three.

  Boget and another native, one they'd not seen before, returned to the landing field on the second day, and Wayfield had the word passed to the ship's company that no one was to pick up or touch anything of local manufacture, or that appeared to belong to the natives.

  Boget spent most of his time with Carde. The other native stalked around looking at all the gear spread out to dry, observing the “look but don't touch” rule Carde had inferred from his trip to the village. Once they'd eyeballed all the gear, Boget's companion became visibly bored, and the natives left.

  The fine weather held, and no one appeared to sicken despite exposure to the new planet and natives of uncertain genotype. A few crewmembers were mildly sunburned from sleeping in the open, but otherwise the ship's company was healthy and was adapting to planetary gravity.

  The natives were obviously of ancestral stock, but Wayfield didn't have access to a DNA lab to know whether speciation had taken place. Of course, the answer to that question would be solved the old-fashioned way if they stayed on the planet long enough: sooner or later his crew would interbreed, or try to, with the native population.

  Likewise, they didn't know whether the flora and fauna were ancestral, exotic, or some combination of the two. This had the most dire implications for their mid—to long-term survival. With no way to preserve their deep-frozen foodstuffs, the ship's stores would run out in a few standard weeks. It seemed likely that if the human genotype was here, ancestral plants and animals had to be as well. But it was entirely possible that the native population and its food chain had evolved far enough from the baseline to render the local menu inedible for Wayfield's crew.

  * * * *

  It took an astonishingly short time for the crew and the natives to start conversing in a pidgin tongue that was mostly Standard, except for words to describe local geography. Carde tried to learn the local tongue. The natives weren't so much uncooperative as overwhelming in their enthusiasm for Standard.

  Each evening the officers met in the “wardroom,” a crude, three-sided shack with a leafed roof. Among other things, the nightly meeting generated the ever-expanding list of questions they needed to ask the natives.

  Carde was frustrated to report that he had not heard ten words of local dialect all day.

  "I point at something and I say the Standard word for it, and they all nod appreciatively and repeat it after me,” Carde said. “It's like I'm their language tutor."

  French arrived at the meeting with Petty Officer Soyombo in tow. “Skipper, I think you ought to hear what Nal thinks about the natives’ language abilities,” he said.

  "Yes?” Wayfield said. “What's on your mind, Soyombo?"

  The sailor was clearly ill at ease addressing the officers. “Sir, it's NLP, I think,” he began. “I read about it in a journal in the library."

  "What is, petty officer?” Nylund said, a little too sharply.

  "Why the natives can pick up Standard so fast, ma'am,” Soyombo said. “NLP is Neotenic Linguistic Plasticity. You know babies can learn a language faster than adults? NLP is a mutation of the Fox2P site; adults that have it can acquire new languages organically, the same way babies do.” He turned to Wayfield, “That's what ‘neotenic’ means, Captain, the retention of juvenile traits or characteristics in adults of a species."

  Wayfield had to suppress a smile at the easy way the technical terms rolled off the sailor's tongue. “Where did you learn this, Soyombo?” he asked.

  "In the Journal of Biological Anthropology, Captain. In the ship's library."

  Malagasy carried the Standard II Library
in her computers. Its 2.6 billion volumes didn't match the really big libraries the research boats had, but it covered a fair number of disciplines in some depth. Wayfield knew that on long patrols so-called Great Books reading clubs would sometimes spring up among the crew, but most sailors confined themselves to popular entertainment and novels (under his predecessor, books and entertainments about penal colonies were apparently quite popular). Of the many things he wished they could have salvaged from the ship, the library was near the top of the list.

  "Were you reading this for a course?” he asked.

  "No, sir. Just for fun,” Soyombo said. “I read a lot."

  "Anything else you can recall about this NLP?” Carde asked.

  "Uh, let's see,” he said. “It's rare, mostly confined to homogeneous outworld populations—that's what made me think of it, sir, the homogeneity. I think that's all. I read the article a long time ago,” he finished apologetically.

  "Soyombo, that was excellent work,” Wayfield said. “If anything else occurs to you from your reading, don't hesitate to bring it to Mr. French—even if you think it's not important."

  "Yes, sir,” Soyombo said, beaming.

  "Okay, well done, sailor,” Wayfield said.

  Soyombo saluted and left, making the officers smile. Outside of musters and ceremonies, saluting was a courtesy rare among cutter crews.

  "He reads biology journals just for fun,” Carde said, shaking his head.

  "Yeah, smart kid,” French said. “He couldn't get into a research rating because he took a short contract, so he's watching screens and cleaning the control room for me, instead. He's going back to school when he gets out."

  "Again I remind everyone to mind what you say around the natives,” Wayfield said. “They're soaking up everything we say. And pass the word again among the crew. Boget already knows a few more anatomical references than he needs to."

  The officers laughed. The natives treated new words like shiny souvenirs and would sometimes come out with crass sailor expressions unexpectedly.

  The most worrisome pattern that emerged, however, was that every attempt to trade, even trivial items, was stolidly rebuffed by the natives. When a crewmember looked at an item of local manufacture, the native it belonged to might offer it to them for inspection, but if the crewman dawdled with the artifact too long, or tried to move away with it, the native would physically take it back. Likewise, when offered crew-members’ gear for inspection, the natives would handle and inspect the item enthusiastically, then quickly hand it back to its owner.

  "If you show the least interest in learning, they'll try to teach you how to make anything,” Carde said. “They'll spend hours doing it. But they get very agitated if you try to take any little thing, even a flake of worked stone."

  "Well, we're not going to force the issue yet,” Wayfield said. “But we need to try and find something they'll trade for. Maybe water cans? It's got to be hard to make cans or buckets from local materials. Plastic would be better for storing cow's milk..."

  "They don't drink the milk, Skipper, or make cheese or butter,” Carde said. “Apparently it gives you bad, bad diarrhea."

  "Could they be gut-intolerant?” Nylund said. “A genetic thing, like the language?"

  French shrugged. “It's possible, XO, but the milk could also be full of bacteria,” he said. “I'd hate to experiment with it, unless we were in a really tight squeeze, food-wise."

  "Well, there's a lot of other options we need to explore first,” Wayfield said. “Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

  * * * *

  The real trouble began as soon as the natives learned enough Standard to move beyond simple descriptions of objects. Boget pointed at Wayfield's uniform coverall and asked, “Who is that from?"

  Wayfield was stymied. He looked at Carde, who was ahead of everyone on understanding the natives’ pidgin Standard, but the Lieutenant just raised his palms in a “who knows?” gesture.

  "From?” Wayfield repeated. “Who gave it to me?"

  Now Boget looked puzzled. He turned to Carde. “What is gave?"

  Carde took a wetpen from the pocket of his coverall and handed it to the native. “I gave you the pen,” he said. When Boget still looked puzzled, Carde picked up a stone and handed it to Wayfield.

  "I gave the captain the rock,” he said, pantomiming the giving motion while he said “gave."

  The native considered this for a moment, then appeared to dismiss his thoughts with a shake of the head, a gesture he'd picked up from the crew. He handed the pen back to Carde.

  "No, who taught Wayfield to made the clothes,” Boget said carefully, pointing to the captain's garment.

  "Ah,” Wayfield said. “I didn't make—made—the clothes,” he said to Boget. “It was made on ... In another place, by somebody else. I don't know who."

  Boget looked at Wayfield, then at Carde, obviously confused. “Another person made the clothes?” he said, going as far as taking a fold of fabric between his fingers to make the point.

  "Yes,” Wayfield said. “Another person made this. Why?"

  Boget looked at Carde's coverall. “Who is that from?"

  Carde and Wayfield exchanged slightly troubled glances; from the native's tone he was obviously upset.

  "I didn't make this,” Carde said. “It was made in another place, by other people. That's their work, to make the clothes.” He didn't go into the idea of factories, or the likelihood that the garments were made entirely by machines, which were made by other machines, which were made by still other machines. Somewhere up the chain was another person or persons, and that was clearly the sense of Boget's question.

  Boget pointed at a water can. “Who made that?"

  "Another person, back home,” Carde said.

  Boget pointed at Malagasy, shut off behind an impromptu safety barrier. “Who made the ship?"

  "Many people,” Wayfield said, “Not people here; people back in another place."

  This was apparently too much for Boget, who stared incredulously at Wayfield for a moment, then turned on his heel and headed for the river.

  "Could they really think we made all this stuff?” Nylund said.

  "They make all of their own tools and implements and whatnot,” Carde said. “As unimaginable as it is to us to build a starship—or even a water can—I guess they assumed we did, too."

  "I think our friend there just got the impression that we're idiots,” Wayfield said. “Is it possible they don't use anything they can't make themselves?"

  "Explains their low level of technology, compared to their linguistic sophistication,” Nylund said. “And why they get upset if we pick up any of their gear, even just to move it out of the way."

  Wayfield nodded. “The reality is that we need them more than they need us,” he said. “This just underscores it. Let's hope Boget gets over his mad, and doesn't get the others turned against us."

  Without the natives’ help, the crew—by and large technical people who'd never lived on a world where anyone actually grew or hunted their own food—would have to learn which plants were edible and which game could be hunted, to feed themselves when the ship's stores ran out. So far, no one had seen any large game. There were birds aplenty, shy nocturnal mammals that lived in the trees, and a ubiquitous small lizard, but no one knew if their protein was digestible. For that matter, they didn't know whether the cattle were edible, either.

  They would have to start sampling the local produce in small amounts, Wayfield decided. And they'd have to try capturing larger game, if any existed—he hoped their absence locally was merely due to the presence of the natives and their domestic grazers.

  Wayfield had read too many accounts of first colonies that had starved or frozen to death or succumbed to disease between resupplies. In most ways the crew of Malagasy had less experience and fewer implements with which to make a living.

  * * * *

  French turned out to have an aptitude for hunting. Normally a taciturn man who tended to d
ampen conversations with his long face, he was grinning from ear to ear when he came back into camp with a small antelope slung over his shoulders. Even Boget seemed impressed. He said the antelope were tasty, but rare.

  Wayfield allowed only three volunteers to try small portions of the antelope meat. After the three crewmembers seemed to suffer no ill effects, he allowed the rest of the butchered animal to be cooked and distributed as fairly as possible. Wayfield took a few bites of the game, which was dense and strongly flavored, but palatable.

  Whether the crew could get nutrition from the exotic game, and whether it harbored any parasites that might not be destroyed by cooking, would only be answered in time.

  * * * *

  Boget gestured to the chronometer Wayfield was recalibrating to the local day. “How can you say this is yours, if you did not make it?” he wanted to know.

  As always with an alien culture, it was hard to judge the depth of explanation suited to the question. The chronometer didn't belong to Wayfield personally, of course—it was property of the service—but that didn't get to the heart of what Boget was asking.

  "I did not make this,” he said, “but I did things for other people, who gave me this in return. A ‘trade.’ I know Lieutenant Carde has told you about trades."

  "Why would you not learn to make the thing yourself?” Boget asked. “It makes you like a child to use things without understanding them. What will happen if this thing breaks?"

  It was a shrewd question, and from Boget's point of view, absolutely correct. In a non-industrial society, depending upon technology you couldn't make or repair yourself was a recipe for disaster in the long term. Wayfield hoped they'd be rescued in the short term, but hope wasn't a plan. Of course the natives here took self-sufficiency to ridiculous extremes, he was beginning to realize. They passed up tremendous rewards in time, labor, and material well-being by not cooperating on tasks, even within families.