Lower than Angels

by Algis Budrys

  “Certainly.” lano’s voice and manner were still cautious. “The Ihoni are animals which live in the sea or on the beaches, as they choose. They leave their eggs on the beaches, but they rear their young in the sea. They are fishers, and they are very wise. Many of them are ancestors. He said it with unusual respect and reverence.

  Imbry sat quietly again. The god who was the-father-of-all-the-lhoni would not only be the father of many ancestors, who were themselves minor gods, he would also control the sea, everything pertaining to the sea, the beaches, probably all the islands, and the fates of those whose lives were tied to the sea, who were themselves fishers, like the villagers. Imbry wondered how much geography the villagers knew. They might consider that the land was always surrounded by ocean—that, as a matter of fact, the universe consisted of ocean encircling a relatively small bit of land.

  If Iano thought that was who Imbry might be, then he might very well be thinking that he was in the presence of the greatest god there was. A typical god, of course—there wasn’t a god in the world who didn’t enjoy a joke, a feast, and a good untruth-for-the-fun-of-everybody at least as much as anybody else—but still, though you might not expect too much of the household lares and penates, when it came to Jupiter himself…

  Imbry couldn’t let that go on. Almost anything might happen. He might leave a religion behind him that, in a few generations of distortion, might twist itself—and the entire culture—into something monstrous. He might leave the way open for the next Corporation man to practice a brand of exploitation that would be near to unimaginable.

  Imbry remembered what the conquistadores had done in Central and South America, and his hackles rose.

  “No!” he exploded violently, and Iano recoiled a little, startled. “No, I’m not a god. Not any kind. I’m a man—a different kind of man, maybe, but just a man. The fact that I have a few machines doesn’t prove anything. The fact that I know more about some things than you do doesn’t prove anything. I come from a country where the people can keep records, so nothing’s lost when a man who has some wisdom dies. I’ve been taught out of those records, and I’m helped by machines built by other men who study other records. But you think my people are any better than yours? You think the men I have to work with are good or brave or kind? No more than you. Less. We kill each other, we take away from other people what isn’t ours, we lie—we tell untruths-for-unfair-advantage—we leave bad where we found good—we’re just men, we’re not anything like gods, and we never will be!”

  Iano had recovered his composure quickly. He nodded.

  “No doubt,” he said. “No doubt, to one god other gods are much like other men are to a man. Possibly even gods have gods. But that is not for us to say. We are men here, not in the country of the gods. There is the jungle, the sky, and the sea. And those who know more places than that must be our gods.” He looked at Imbry with quick sympathy. “It’s sad to know that even a god must be troubled.”

  The odds were low that any of the food served at the feast could hurt him. Aside from the fact that the ecology was closely parallel to Earth’s, Imbry’s system was flooded with Antinfect from the precautionary shot he’d gotten aboard the mother ship. But he couldn’t afford to take the chance of getting sick. It might help destroy the legend gathered around him, but it would also leave him helpless. He had too much to do in too short a time to risk that. So he politely faked touching his tongue to each of the dishes as it was passed to him, and settled for a supper of rations out of his suit, grimacing as he heard someone whisper behind him that the god had brought his own god-food with him, because the food of men could not nourish him in this attribute.

  No matter what he did, he couldn’t shake the faith of the villagers. It was obvious at a glance that he was a god; therefore, ipso facto, everything he did was godlike.

  He sat beside Iano and his wives, watching the fire roar in the communal pit and listening to the pounding beat of the musicians, but, even though the villagers were laughing happily and enjoying themselves immensely, he could not recapture the mood of easy relaxation he had borrowed from them and their world this afternoon. The Sainte Marie pressed too close to him. When he left here, he’d never be able to come back—and a ravaged world would haunt him for the rest of his Me.

  “Hey! Imbry! Look what I’ve got to show you!”

  He looked up, and there was Tylus, coming toward him hand in hand with a quietly beautiful girl, and holding a baby just into the toddling stage. The child was being half led, half dragged, and seemed to be enjoying it.

  Imbry smiled broadly. There was no getting away from it. Tylus enjoyed life so hugely that nobody near him could quite escape the infection.

  “This is my woman, Pia,” Tylus said with a proud grin, and the girl smiled shyly. “And this one hasn’t got his name yet.”

  He reached down and slapped the baby playfully, and the boy grinned from ear to ear.

  Everyone around the fire chuckled. Imbry grinned despite himself and nodded gravely to Tylus. “I’m glad to meet them.” He smiled at Pia. “She must have been blind to pick you when she could have had so much better.” The girl blushed, and everyone burst into laughter, while Tylus postured in proud glee. Imbry nodded toward the boy. “If he didn’t look so much like his father, I’d say he was a fine one.”

  There was fresh laughter, and Imbry joined in it because he almost desperately needed to; but after it trailed away and Tylus and his family were gone back into their hut, after the fire died and the feast was over, when Imbry lay on the mat in lano’s house and the wind clashed the tree fronds while the surf washed against the beach—then Imbry lay tightly awake.

  Given time—given a year or two—he might be able to break down the villagers’ idea about him. But he doubted it. Iano was right. Even if he threw away his suit and left himself with no more equipment than any of the villagers possessed, he knew too much. Earth and the Terran Union were his heritage, and that was enough to make a god of any man among these people. If he so much as introduced the wheel into this culture, he was doing something none of these people had conceived of in all their history.

  And he had nothing like a year. In two weeks’ tune, even using eidetic techniques, he could barely build up enough of a vocabulary in their language to do without his translator for simpler conversations. And, again, it wouldn’t make a particle of difference whether he spoke their language or not. Words would never convince them.

  But he had to get through to them somehow.

  The cold fact was that during a half day’s talk, he hadn’t gotten anyone in the village to take literally even the slightest thing he said. He was a god. Gods speak in allegories, or gods proclaim laws. Gods do not speak man to man. And if they do, rest assured it is part of some divine plan, designed to meet inscrutable ends by subtle means.

  What was it Lindenhoff had told him?

  “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. See how they’d respond toward developing a technology.”

  It couldn’t be done. Not by a god who might, at worst, be only a demigod, who might at best even be the god, and who could not, under any circumstances, possibly be considered on a par with the other travelers-for-pleasure who occasionally turned up from over the sea but who were manifestly only other men.

  He wasn’t supposed to be a stern god or an omnipotent god or a being above the flesh. That kind of deity took a monotheist to appreciate him. He was simply supposed to be a god of these people—vain and happily boastful at times, a liar at times, a glutton at times, a drunkard at times, timid at times, adventurous at times, a hero at times, and heir to other sins of the flesh at other times, but always powerful, always above the people in wisdom of his own kind, always a god. Always a mute with a whispering ancestor on his shoulder.

  But if he left them now, they’d be lost. Someone else would come down, and be a god. Kenton, or Ogin or Ma
guire the killer. And when the new god realized the situation, he’d stop trying to make these people into at least some kind of rudimentary market. They wouldn’t even have that value to turn them into an interest to be protected. Lindenhoff would think of something else to do with them, for the Corporation’s good. Turn them into a labor force for the mines Coogan would be opening up on IV, perhaps. Or else enslave them here. Have the god nudge them into becoming farmers for the luxury market or introduce a technology whether they understood it or not.

  That might work. If the god and his fellow gods found stones for them to dig and smelt into metal, and showed them how to make machines, they might do it.

  To please the god by following his advice. Not because they understood or wanted machines—or needed them—but to fulfill the god’s inscrutable plan. They’d sicken with the bewilderment in their hearts and lose their smiles in the smelter’s heat. The canoes would rot on the beaches, and the fishing spears would break. The houses would crumble on the ocean’s edge until the sea reached up and swept the village clean, and the Ihoni eggs would hatch out in the warming sun. The village would be gone, and its people slaving far away, lonesome for their ancestors.

  He had to do it. Somehow, within these two weeks, he had to give them a chance of some kind.

  It would be his last chance, too. Twenty-six years of life and all of it blunted. He was failing here, with the taste of the Corporation bitter in his mouth. He’d found nothing in the TSN but brutal officers and cynical men waiting for a war to start somewhere, so the promotions and bonuses would come, and meanwhile making the best they could out of what police actions and minor skirmishes there were with weak alien races. Before that, school, and a thousand time-markers and campus wheels for everyone who thought that some day, if he was good enough, he’d have something to contribute to Mankind.

  The god had to prove to be human after all. And the human could talk to these other men, as just another man, and then perhaps they might advance of themselves to the point where they could begin a civilization that was part of them and part of some plan of theirs, instead of some god’s. And someday these people, too, would land their metal canoes on some foreign beach under a foreign sun.

  He had to destroy himself. He had to tear down his own facade.

  Just before he fell into his fitful sleep, he made his decision. At the first opportunity to be of help in some way they would consider more than manlike, he’d fail. The legend would crumble, and he could be a man.

  He fell asleep, tense and perspiring, and the stars hung over the world, with the mother ship among them.

  The chance came. He couldn’t take it.

  Two days had gone by, and nothing had happened to change the situation. He spent two empty days talking to Iano and as many other villagers as he could, and the only knowledge they gained was an insight into the ways of gods, who proved, after all, to be very much like men, on their own grander scale. One or two were plainly saddened by his obvious concern over something they, being unfortunately only men, could not quite grasp. Iano caught something of his mood and was upset by it until his face fell into a puzzled, concerned look that was strange to it. But it only left him and Imbry further apart. There was no bridge between them.

  On the third day, the sea was flat and oily, and the air lay dankly still across the village. The tree fronds hung down limply, and the clouds thickened gradually during the night, so mat Imbry woke up to the first sunless day he’d seen. He got up as quietly as he could and left lano’s house, walking slowly across the compound toward the sea. He stood on the beach, looking out across the glassy swells, thinking back to the first hour in which he’d hung above that ocean and slowly come down with the anticipation burning out the disgust in him.

  He threw a shell as far out into the water as he could, and watched it skip once, skip twice, teeter in the air, and knife into the water without a splash. Then he turned around and walked slowly back into the village, where one or two women were beginning to light their cook-fires.

  He greeted them listlessly, and they answered gravely, their easy smiles dying. He wandered over towards Tylus’s house. And heard Pia crying.

  “Hello!”

  Tylus came out of the house, and for the first time Imbry saw him looking strained, his lips white at the corners. “Hello, Imbry,” he said in a tired voice.

  “What’s wrong, Tylus?”

  Tylus shrugged. “The baby’s going to die.”

  Imbry stared up at him. “Why?”

  “He cut his foot yesterday morning. I put a poultice on it. It didn’t help. His foot’s red today, and it hurts him to touch it. It happens.”

  “Oh, no, it doesn’t. Not anymore. Let me look at him.” Imbry came up the short ladder to Tylus’s porch. “It can’t be anything I can’t handle.”

  He knew the villagers’ attitude toward death. Culturally, death was the natural result of growing old, or being born weak, and, sometimes, of having a child. Sometimes, too, a healthy person could’ suddenly get a pain in the belly, lie in agony for a day, and then die. Culturally, it usually made the victim an ancestor, and grief for more than a short time was something the villagers were too full of living to indulge in. But sometimes it was harder to take; in this tropical climate, a moderately bad cut could infect like wildfire, and then someone died who didn’t seem to have been ready for it.

  Tylus’s eyes lighted up for a moment. Then they became gravely steady.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Imbry. Suppose some other god wants him? Suppose his ancestors object to your stepping in? And—and besides—” Tylus dropped his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re not a god.”

  Imbry couldn’t stop to argue. “I’d like to look at him anyway. No matter what might happen.”

  The hopelessness drained out of Tylus’s face. He touched Imbry’s arm. “Come into my house,” he said, repeating the social formula gratefully. “Pia! Imbry’s here to make the baby well!”

  Imbry strode into the house, pulling his medkit out of his suit. Pia turned away from the baby’s mat, raising her drawn face. Then she jumped up and went to stand next to Tylus, clenching his hand.

  The baby was moving his arms feverishly, and his cheeks were flushed. But he’d learned, through the night, not to move the bandaged foot.

  Imbry cut the scrap of cloth away with his bandage shears, wincing at the puffy, white-lipped gash. He snapped the pencil light out of its clip and took a good look into the wound.

  It was dirty as sin, packed with some kind of herb mixture that was hopelessly embedded in the tissues. Cleaning it thoroughly was out of the question. Cursing softly, he did the best he could, not daring to try the anesthetic syrette in the kit. He had no idea of what even a human child’s dose might be. He had to leave a lot of the poultice in the wound. Working as fast as he could, he spilled an envelope of antibiotics over the gash, slapped on a fresh bandage, and then stood up. Antipyretics were out. The boy’d have to have his fever. There was one gamble he had to take, but he wasn’t going to take any more. He held up the ampule of Antinfect.

  “Universal Antitoxin” was etched into the glass. Well, it had better be.

  He broke the seal and stabbed the tip of his hyposprayer through the diaphragm. He retracted carefully. It was a three cc ampule. About half of it ought to do. He watched the dial on the sprayer with fierce concentration, inching the knob around until it read “1.5,” and yanking the tip out.

  Muttering a prayer, he fired the Antinfect into the boy’s leg. Then he sighed, repacked his kit, and turned around.

  “If I haven’t killed him, he’ll be all right.” He gestured down at the bandage. “There’s going to be a lot of stuff coming out of that wound. Let it come. Don’t touch the bandage. I’ll take another look at it in a few hours. Meanwhile, let me know right away if he looks like he’s getting worse” He smiled harshly. “And let me know if he’s getting better, too.”

  Pia was looking at him with an awestruck ex
pression on her face. Tylus’ glance clung to the medkit and then traveled up to Imbry’s eyes.

  “You are a god,” he said in a whisper. “You are more than a god. You are the god of all other gods.”

  “I know,” Imbry growled. “For good and all now, even if the boy dies. I’m a god now no matter what I do.” He strode out of the house and out across the village square, walking in short, vicious strides along the beach until he was out of sight of the village. He stood for a long time, looking out across the gray sea. And then, with a crooked twist to his lips and a beaten hopelessness in his eyes, he walked back into the village because there was nothing else he could do.

  Lord knew where the hurricane had been born. Somewhere down the chain of islands—or past them—the mass of air had begun to whirl. Born out of the ocean, it spun over the water for hundreds of miles, marching toward the coast.

  The surf below the village sprang into life. It lashed along the strand in frothing, growling columns, and the Ihoni eggs washed out of their nests and rolled far down the slope of the beach before the waves picked them up again and crushed them against the stones and shells.

  The trees tore the edges of their fronds against each other, and the broken ends flew away on the wind. The birds in the jungle began to huddle tightly into themselves.

  “Your canoe,” Iano said to Imbry as they stood in front of the head man’s house.

  Imbry shook his head. “It’ll stand.”

  He watched the families taking their few essential belongings out of their houses and storing them inside the overturned canoes that had been brought high inland early in the afternoon.

  “What about this storm? Is it liable to be bad?” Iano shook his head noncommittally. “There’re two or three bad ones every season.”

  Imbry grunted and looked out over the village square. Even if the storm mashed the houses flat, they’d be up again two days afterward. The sea and the jungle gave food, and the fronded trees gave shelter. He saw no reason why these people wanted gods in the first place.