by Algis Budrys
Lower than Angels
Algis Budrys
From Robert Silverberg’s “Earthmen and Strangers” anthology, 1966:
When we meet the aliens, how will we communicate with them? A standard piece of s-f equipment is generally offered as the answer: the “thought-converter.” Most writers are content to haul the thought-converter from the closet, put it on their characters’ heads, and let the conversation commence. One of the special features of this story is the care with which its author has depicted the communication problems that will be cropping up even when the handy thought-converter is available. He examines a deeper problem, too: how, when we drop down from the heavens to visit the inhabitants of other worlds, can we keep them from thinking of us as gods?
Algis Budrys, who has the general dimensions of an outstanding fullback and the story-telling ability of a master, was born in Lithuania in the decade before the outbreak of the Second World War and has spent most of his life in the United States. Since 1952 s-f readers have relished scores of his short stories and such thoughtful, searching novels as Rogue Moon and Who?
Lower Than Angels
by Algis Budrys
This was almost the end: Fred Imbry, standing tiredly at the jungle’s edge, released the anchoring field. Streaming rain immediately began coming down on the parked sub-ship on the beach. The circle of sand formerly included in the field now began to splotch, and the sea dashed a wave against the landing jacks. The frothing water ran up the beach and curled around Imbry’s ankles. In a moment, the sand was as wet as though nothing had ever held that bit of seashore free.
The wind was still at storm force. Under the boiling gray sky, the craft shivered from half-buried landing jacks to needle-nosed prow. Soggy fronds plastered themselves against the hull with sharp, liquid slaps.
Imbry trudged across the sand, slopping through the water, wiping rain out of his face. He opened the sub-ship’s airlock hatch and stopped, turning for one look back into the jungle.
His exhausted eyes were sunk deep into his face. He peered woodenly into the jungle’s surging undergrowth. But there was no sign of anyone’s having followed him; they’d let him go. Turning back, he hoisted himself aboard the ship and shut the hatch behind him. He opened the inside hatch and went through, leaving wet, sandy footprints across the deck.
He lay down in his piloting couch and began methodically checking off the board. When it showed green all around, he energized his starting engines, waited a bit, and moved his power switch to Atmospheric.
The earsplitting shriek of the jet throats beat back the crash of the sea and the keening of the wind. The jungle trees jerked away from the explosion of billowing air, and even the sea recoiled. The ship danced off the ground, and the landing jacks thumped up into their recesses. The sand poured out a shroud of towering steam.
The throttles advanced, and Imbry ascended into Heaven on a pillar of fire.
Almost at the beginning, a week earlier, Fred Imbry had been sitting in the Sainte Marie’s briefing room for the first time in his life, having been aboard the mother ship a little less than two weeks. He sat*there staring up at Lindenhoff, whose reputation had long ago made him one of Imbry’s heroes, and hated the carefully schooled way the Assignment Officer could create the impression of a judgment and capacity he didn’t have.
Around Imbry, the other contact crewmen were listening carefully, taking notes on their thigh pads as Lindenhoffs pointer rapped the schematic diagram of the solar system they’d just moved into. Part of Imbry’s hatred was directed at them, too. Incompetents and cowards though most of them were, they still knew Lindenhoff for what he was. They’d all served under him for a long time. They’d all been exposed to his dramatics. They joked about them. But now they were sitting and listening for all the world as if Lindenhoff was what he pretended to be—the fearless, resourceful leader in command of the vast, idealistic enterprise that was embodied in the Sainte Marie. But then, the mother ship, too, and the corporation that owned her, were just as rotten at the core.
Lindenhoff was a bear of a man. He was dressed in iron-gray coveralls; squat, thick, powerful-looking, he moved back and forth on the raised platform under the schematic. With the harsh overhead lighting, his close-cropped skull looked almost bald; naked and strong, a turret set on the short, seamed pillar of his neck. A thick white scar began over his right eye, crushed down through the thick jut of his brow ridge, the mashed arch of his blunt nose, and ended on the staved-in cheekbone under his left eye. Except for the scar, his face was burned brown and leathery, and even his lips were only a different shade of brown. The bright gold color of his eyebrows and the yellow straw of his lashes came close to glowing’ in contrast.
His voice was pitched deep. He talked in short, rumbled sentences. His thick arm jerked sharply each time he moved the pointer.
“Coogan, you’re going into IV. You’ve studied the aerial surveys. No animal life. No vegetation. All naked rock where it isn’t water. Take Petrick with you and do a mineralogical survey. You’ve got a week. If you hit anything promising, I’ll extend your schedule. Don’t go drawing any weapons. No more’n it takes to keep you happy, anyhow. Jusek’s going to need ’em on VII.”
Imbry’s mouth twitched in disgust. The lighting. The platform on which Lindenhoff was shambling back and forth, never stumbling even when he stepped back without looking behind him. The dimensions of that platform must be clearly imprinted in his mind. Every step was planned, every gesture practiced. The sunburn, laid down by a battery of lamps. The careful tailoring of the coveralls to make that ursine body look taller.
Coogan and Petrick. The coward and the secret drunkard. Petrick had left a partner to die on a plague world. Coogan had shot his way out of a screaming herd of reptiles on his third contact mission—and had never gone completely unarmed, anywhere, in the ten years since.
The rest of them were no better. Ogin had certified a planet worthless. A year later, a small scavenger company had found a fortune in wolfram not six miles away from his old campsite. Lindenhoff hadn’t seen fit to fire him. Kenton, the foul-minded pathological liar. Maguire, who hated everything that walked or flew or crept, who ripped without pity at every world he contacted, and whose round face, with its boyish smile, was always broadcast along with a blushingly modest interview whenever the Sainte Marie’s latest job of opening up a new solar system was covered by the news programs.
Most of those programs, Imbry’d found out in the short time he’d been aboard, were bought and paid for by the Sainte Marie Development Corporation’s public relations branch.
His thin hands curled up into tight knots.
The mother ships and the men who worked out of them were the legends of this generation—with the Sainte Marie foremost among them. Constantly working outward, putting system after system inside the known universe, they were the bright hungry wave of mankind reaching out to gather in the stars. The men were the towering figures marching into the wilderness—the men who died unprotestingly in the thousand traps laid by the unknown darkness beyond the Edge; the men who beat their way through the jungles of the night, leaving broad roads behind them for civilization to follow.
He had come aboard this ship like a man fulfilling a dream—and found Coogan sitting in the crew lounge.
“Imbry, huh? Pull up a chair. My name’s Coogan.” He was whipcord lean; a wiry, broad-mouthed man with a tough, easy grin and live brown eyes. “TSN man?”
Imbry’d shaken his hand before he sat down. It felt a little unreal, actually meeting a man he’d heard so much about, and having him act as friendly as this.
“That’s right,” Imbry said, trying to sound as casual as he could under the circumstances. Except for Lindenhoff and possibly Maguir
e, Coogan was the man he most admired. “My enlistment finally ran out last week. I was a rescue specialist.”
Coogan nodded. “We get some good boys that way.” He grinned and chuckled. “So Old Smiley slipped you a trial contract and here you are, huh?”
“Old Smiley?”
“Personnel manager. Glad hand, looks sincere, got distinguished white hair.”
“Oh. Mr. Redstone.”
Coogan grinned. “Sure. Mr. Redstone. Well—think you’ll like it here?”
Imbry nodded. “It looks like it,” he said carefully. He realized he had to keep his enthusiasm ruthlessly under control, or else appear to be completely callow and juvenile. Even before he’d known what he’d do after he got out, he’d been counting the days until his TSN enlistment expired. Having the Corporation offer him a contract on the day of his discharge had been a tremendous unexpected bonus. If he’d been sixteen instead of twenty-six, he would have said it was the greatest thing that could have happened to him. Being twenty-six, he said, “I figure it’s a good deal.”
Coogan winked at him. “You’re not just kiddin’, friend. We’re on our way out to a system that looks pretty promising. Old Sainte Marie’s in a position to declare another dividend if it pays off.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “And how I do enjoy those dividends! Do a good job, lad. Do a bang-up job. Baby needs new shoes.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Buddy, I got half of my pay sunk into company stock. So do the rest of these guys. Couple years more, and I can get off this barge, settle down, and just cash checks every quarter for the rest of my life. And laugh like a fool every time I hear about you birds goin’ out to earn me some more.”
Imbry hadn’t known what to make of it, at first. He’d mumbled an answer of some kind. But, listening to the other men talking—Petrick, with the alcohol puffing out on his breath; Kenton, making grandiose plans; Maguire, sneering coldly; Jusek, singlemindedly sharpening his bush knife—he’d gradually realized Coogan wasn’t an exception in this crew of depraved, vicious fakes. Listening to them talk about the Corporation itself, he’d realized, too, that the “pioneers of civilization” line was something reserved for the bought-and-paid-for write-ups only. He wasn’t dewy-eyed. He didn’t expect the Corporation to be in business for its health. But neither had he expected it to be totally cynical and grasping, completely indifferent to whether anyone ever settled the areas it skimmed of their first fruits.
He learned, in a shatteringly short time, just what the contact crew men thought of each other, of the Corporation, and of humanity. They carped at, gossiped about, and despised each other. They took the Corporation’s stock as part of their pay, and exploited all the more ruthlessly for it. They jockeyed for favored assignments, brought back as “souvenirs” anything valuable and sufficiently portable on the worlds they visited, and cordially hated the crews of all the rival mother ships. They weren’t pioneers—they were looters, squabbling among themselves for the biggest share, and they made Imbry’s stomach turn.
They were even worse than most of the TSN officers and men he’d known.
“Imbry.”
He looked up. Lindenhoff was standing, arms akimbo, under the schematic at the head of the briefing room.
“Yes?” Imbry answered tightly.
“You take II. It’s a rain-forest world. Humanoid inhabited.”
“I’ve studied the surveys.”
Lindenhoff’s heavy mouth twitched. “I hope so. You’re going alone. There’s nothing the natives can do to you that you won’t be able to handle. Conversely, there’s nothing much of any value on the planet. You’ll contact the natives and try to get them started on some kind of civilization. You’ll explain what the Terran Union is, and the advantages of trade. They ought to be able to grow some luxury agricultural products. See how they’d respond toward developing a technology. If Coogan turns up some industrial ores on IV, they’d make a good market, in time. That’s about the general idea. Nobody expects you to accomplish much—just push ’em in the right direction. Take two weeks. All straight?”
“Yes.” Imbry felt his jaws tightening. Something for nothing, again. First the Corporation developed a market, then it sold it the ores it found on a neighboring world.
No, he wasn’t angry about having been given an assignment that couldn’t go wrong and that wouldn’t matter much if it did. He was quite happy about it, because he intended to do as little for the Corporation as he could.
“All right, that’s about it, boys,” Lindenhoff finished up. He stepped off the platform and the lights above the schematic went out. “You might as well draw your equipment and get started. The quicker it all gets done, the quicker we’ll get paid.”
Coogan slapped him on the back as they walked out on the flight deck. “Remember what I said,” he chuckled. “If there’s any ambition in the gooks at all, shove it hard. Me, I’m going to be looking mighty hard for something to sell ’em.”
“Yeah, sure!” Imbry snapped.
Coogan looked at him wide-eyed. “What’s eating you, boy?”
Imbry took a deep breath. “You’re eating me, Coogan. You and the rest of the setup.” He stopped and glared tensely at Coogan. “I signed a contract. I’ll do what I’m obligated to. But I’m getting off this ship when I come back, and if I ever hear about you birds again, I’ll spit on the sidewalk when I do.”
Coogan reddened. He took a step forward, then caught himself and dropped his hands. He shook his head. “Imbry, I’ve been watching you go sour for the last week. All right, that’s the breaks. Old Smiley made a mistake. It’s not the first time—and you could have fooled me, too, at first. What’s your gripe?”
“What d’you think it is? How about Lindenhoff’s giving you Petrick for a partner?”
Coogan shook his head again, perplexed. “I don’t follow you. He’s a geologist, isn’t he?”
Imbry stared at him in astonishment. “You don’t follow me?” Coogan was the one who’d told him about Petrick’s drinking. He remembered the patronizing lift to Coogan’s lip as he looked across the lounge at the white-faced, muddy-eyed man walking unsteadily through the room.
“Let’s move along,” Lindenhoff said from behind them.
Imbry half turned. He looked down at the Assignment Officer in surprise. He hadn’t heard the man coming. Neither had Coogan. Coogan nodded quickly.
“Just going, Lindy.” Throwing another baffled glance at Imbry, he trotted across the deck toward his sub-ship, where Petrick was standing and waiting.
“Go on, son,” Lindenhoff said. “You’re holding up the show.”
Imbry felt the knotted tension straining at his throat. He snatched up his pack.
“All right,” he said harshly. He strode over to his ship, skirting out of the way of the little trucks that were humming back and forth around the ships, carrying supplies and maintenance crewmen. The flight deck echoed back to the clangs of slammed access hatches, the crash of a dropped wrench, and the soft whir of truck motors. Maintenance men were running back and forth, completing final checks, and armorers struggled with the heavy belts of ammunition being loaded into the guns on Jusek’s ship. In the harsh glare of work lights, Imbry climbed up through his hatch, slammed it shut, and got up into his control compartment.
The ship was a slightly converted model of the standard TSN carrier scout.
He fingered the controls distastefully. Grimacing, he jacked in his communication leads and contacted the tower for a check. Then he set up his flight plan in the ballistic computer, interlocked his AutoNav, and sat back, waiting.
Lindenhoff and his fearsome scar. Souvenir of danger on a frontier world? Badge of courage? Symbol of intrepidness?
Actually, he’d gotten it when a piece of scaffolding fell on him during a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, well before he ever came aboard the Saint Marie.
The flight deck cleared. Imbry set his ship’s circulators. The flight-deck alarm blasted into li
fe.
The deck canopy slid aside, and the flight deck’s air billowed out into space. Imbry energized his main drive.
“Imbry clear for launch.”
“Check, Imbry. Launch in ten.”
He counted down, braced back against his couch. The catapult rammed him up off the deck, and he fired his engines. He rose high above the Sainte Marie, hovering, and then the ship nosed down and he trailed a wake of fire across the spangled night, in toward the foreign sun.
Almost from pole to pole, World II was the deep, lush color of rain-forest vegetation. Only at the higher latitudes was it interspersed with the surging brown-green of prairie grass and bush country, tapering into something like a temperate ecology at the very “top” and “bottom” of the planet. Where there was no land, there was the deeper, bluer, green of the sea. And on the sea, again, the green of islands.
Imbry balanced his ship on end, drifting slowly down. He wanted a good look and a long look.
His training in the TSN had fitted him admirably for this job. Admirably enough so that he depended more on his own observation than he did on the aerial survey results, which had been fed raw into a computer and emerged as a digested judgment on the planet’s ecology and population, and the probable state and nature of its culture. The TSN applied this judgment from a military standpoint. The Corporation applied it to contact work. Imbry’s experience had never known it to go far wrong. But he distrusted things mechanical, and so he hung in the sky for an hour or more, checking off promising-looking sites as they passed under him—and giving his bitterness and disillusion time to evaporate.
Down there was a race that had never heard of any people but itself; a race to which large portions of even its own planet must be unknown and enigmatic. A fairly happy race, probably. And if the Corporation found no significance in that, Imbry did. He was going to be their first touch with the incredible vastness in which they floated, and whatever he could do to smooth the shock and make their future easier, he meant to do, to the best of his ability. And if the Corporation had no feelings, he did. If there was no idealism aboard the Sainte Marie, there was some in him.
