Encounter With Tiber

by Buzz Aldrin

  We didn’t, of course. I was going to wonder a lot later what might have happened if we had. But I know my heart was starting to sink; there’s only so much you can see on a probe camera, and the one thing you can’t see is the way they look at you, the way they clearly want to communicate. I wanted nothing so much as time to think, and time to think was the one thing we did not have—unless, as Kekox said, we wanted to stop, right there in that dusty public courtyard, and conduct a debate. The Creator alone knew what they might make of that—But then, a little voice in the back of my mind said, the Creator alone knows what they will make of the next thing we’re going to do, anyway. I hope this works the way we thought it would.

  Too late now. Kekox had gone through the open gate, and we followed him toward the temple at the center of the compound.

  It was a two-story building, of a sort, made of logs with a mud-brick facing on the vertical walls. The first story was short and had no windows or doors; a broad flight of mud-brick steps ran up to a sort of porch that stuck out of the second story, and a doorway opened onto that porch. On the porch itself there was a simple mud-block table, on which we had seen them sacrifice animals, and on top of which now lay the remains of the first probe that we had sent on ahead of us. Behind it was a large clay statue of a Seteposian female sitting cross-legged.

  We halted. There was no one between us and the temple. Priekahm and I nodded to each other and raised our incendiary throwers, when abruptly one of the Seteposians came out the door of the temple.

  The thick thatch of hair surrounding his head was a deep gray, and his face was lined and brown. Perhaps because it was a common color change everywhere—as animals get older they make less pigment—or perhaps because of the slow, shuffling way he walked, we knew at once that he was old.

  He raised his hands over his head and started shouting at us. We didn’t know if it was greeting, or exorcism, or what. “Anyone got any ideas?” Kekox said.

  “He’s got to be the priest of the old god,” Mejox said. “Who we’re getting rid of.”

  “So do we recruit him or make him a martyr?” Otuz said.

  “This is turning into a debate,” Kekox said.

  All of them were staring expectantly at us. Clearly it had been some kind of challenge, or at least they were trying to see what would happen. There wasn’t a breath of air, and no sound but the drone of distant insects; every Seteposian was motionless. “We have no idea how to recruit him,” I pointed out, “and I think he just called us out. So if he’s the old god’s priest, he gets to be the old god’s martyr.”

  “Makes sense,” Kekox said, raised his steam rifle, and fired.

  The steam rifle made a little phht! A gush of blood, red like ours, sprayed out of the old Seteposian’s back, and he fell over on his face, dead. We had loaded the steam rifles with expanding slugs, intended originally for maximum stopping power against big, fast predators, and the result was that when they hit the Seteposian in the chest, they tore whatever internal organs were nearby to jelly.

  There were murmurs and cries among the crowd. I raised my incendiary thrower and fired it, sending the little fire-starter canister in through the temple door. By sheer good luck it hit the female statue and caused flames to leap up from it; the Seteposians screamed and fell to their bellies around us.

  Priekahm’s shot arced higher, landing in the heavy thatch of the roof, and burst against a rafter there, setting the whole roof on fire. Flames leaped up, billowing bodylengths tall within the span of two breaths.

  There were screams and cries from the crowd around us, and the more distant of them turned and ran.

  “The tall ones that greeted us at the ship are right over there,” Priekahm said, pointing. “And whatever they’re chanting, others seem to be picking it up.”

  “More martyrs for the old faith,” Otuz remarked; and shot the three leaders and several Seteposians around them.

  “Get the ones with spears,” Kekox said. “Spare anyone who doesn’t have a weapon.” He and Mejox shot with a steady, even rhythm, raising steam rifles and killing Seteposians who had their hands on spears or axes, about one per breath; one more way to tell that these people were smart enough was that before ten more of them died, the rest were throwing away their spears and axes, and then prostrating themselves.

  By now Priekahm and I had reloaded, and we fired again, this time hitting the outside walls of the temple, down low, and sending fire licking up the wall. “Cover me, I’m going to finish it,” I said to Kekox. I set down my incendiary thrower, pulled the construction blasting charge from my pack, set the timer for a hundred-twenty-eighth of a day, and dashed forward to the temple. One of the small spears they threw with the bent stick hissed by me, a wild shot, and I heard several shots from the steam rifles behind me.

  Then I was close enough to the temple to feel the blazing heat singeing my skin; I wanted to get close enough to make sure I got the charge well inside. I armed it as I looked for the right place to toss it—saw the trapdoor with its ladder right behind the porch—and lightly lobbed it in there. Probably I had just tossed the charge down into the center of the secret rites; so much the better for what we were trying to do.

  I turned and ran zigzagging back to them, not taking any chances this time. Now that I had done what I was supposed to, I had time to remember the evil hiss of that little spear and to think what a nasty hole it could have made in me—or I suppose, if it had somehow gotten through the weak ribs by the lower spine, when I was bending over, and into my blood mixer, it might have even killed me.

  When I was back between my companions I grabbed up my incendiary thrower. Priekahm had already reloaded it. “Let’s start something on the other side of the compound,” she said, aiming hers in a high arc. I did, too, and we fired simultaneously, sending the cans arcing over the temple and into the back of the compound. To judge from the shrieks there, we had probably splashed at least one of them with burning methanol, and from the way smoke and flames leapt up, their construction had been no more fireproof on their palisade and houses.

  “Okay, we’ve done the job,” Kekox said. “Back to the Gurix. Nice and slow, but keep moving. We’ve only got about a two-hundred-fifty-sixth left till that charge blows.”

  We all backed up slowly, keeping an eye on the crowd. “The one with the little spear-launcher just popped up out of one of the houses,” Priekahm said, “and he was fitting another little spear onto the string when Mejox got him. And we had two more pop out with spears; they’re pretty brave, or some of them are, anyway.”

  We had backed about 256 bodylengths, a third of the way back to the Gurix, when the charge I had tossed into the temple blew. We saw the blazing thatch and timbers fly up above the walls of the little settlement, some of it landing all the way outside, and an instant later felt the shock in our feet and heard the boom of the concussion. Many more of the Seteposians ran out the gate, turning so as not to run in our direction, and fled off across the fields. Mejox raised his steam rifle and shot three times; two females and a small child fell.

  “Why did you—” Kekox started to ask.

  “Gods get more respect if they’re capricious,” Mejox said. There was something unpleasant about the way he was smiling; I had a sudden sense that he might be enjoying all this.

  When it became clear there would be no pursuit, we turned and walked back toward the Gurix more quickly, Otuz leading, with Mejox and Kekox keeping watch behind. “Well, that’s that,” Soikenn said suddenly. “You’ve made sure we can’t be friends for a long time. Did you see how excited they were, how much they wanted to meet us? And then when you were done how frightened they looked? We’ve chosen to be enemies.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Priekahm said. “Our grandchildren can debate the morality. Right now it’s time to be practical. You’re not going to complain when we’ve got a nice big town going here, with hundreds of us building up a place for all of Nisu to settle, are you? We’ve got a lot to do and this is the way to get it
done.”

  “Shut up back there, both of you, until we’re on the Gurix,” Otuz said. “We don’t know that there won’t be six of them waiting in ambush. As you said, Priekahm, they’re smart and they’re brave.”

  I’m sure she said it only to quiet the annoying argument, because to judge from the screams and shouting coming from behind us, the Seteposians had many other things on their minds. Finally, we reached the Gurix and climbed inside, Mejox and Kekox last. The door closed and the air cycled once to capture, on filter, anything interesting that might have come in on us.

  “Check the long-distance viewer,” Mejox said, and I jumped to do it.

  “Well, looks like fifty or so of them are still on their faces in the burning village. Fifty or so live ones, I mean. The rest have all run off into the fields. Looks like mostly they’re heading for the woods and the hills.”

  “That’s evolution for you,” Soikenn commented. “The smartest ones are up there surviving. And just possibly figuring out better ways to fight us than face-to-face.”

  Kekox snorted agreement. “Selecting their smartest ones for them is probably the last favor we’ll ever do the poor bastards, and even if they think we’re gods right now, in a generation they’re going to know how much we’re not their friends. We’ll have to watch our backs right from the start, just to get the habit, but that’s the way it goes. Let’s get on with it.”

  Mejox brought up the engine; a pool of flame roiled across the burnt field around us, and we lifted gently. He opened the throttle more and we climbed upward until our tail of flame was well above the ground. Then he brought us to hover and fired the side jets, just barely, so that we moved sideways, drifting as slowly as anyone might walk across the fields toward the burning village.

  The plan had been that if the Seteposians turned out to be people, and we were displacing the old gods, we would take their place physically, by parking the Gurix where the temple had stood. With nothing else to do, Otuz and I watched the screens; now that we were up high we had a much better view. There were now many of them lying prostrate out in the fields, too, all facing the Gurix. Some were running madly about in the burning village, dashing in and out of the burning houses, some carrying small bodies. “I think when we fired the houses we killed a lot of infants,” Otuz said. “Bad idea if we want breeding stock. They must be more afraid than any of us has ever been.”

  “Wasn’t that the idea?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “I didn’t say I disapproved, or even that we had any other choices. I just said they must be frightened.”

  The Gurix swept in over the walls, still far up in the sky from the perspective of those poor creatures cowering in the burning wreckage. The temple, directly below us, was already a scattered pile of burning timbers and ashes. “You know,” Mejox said, “it’s really no danger to the lander—we’re proof against temperatures a lot higher than what’s down there—but if we were to set a foot down on a burning log or something, that could give us a nasty bump. I’d rather err on the side of caution. I think I’ll try to blow that area clear before we touch down on it.”

  “There are still quite a few of them inside the village,” Otuz said.

  “Their bad luck,” Priekahm replied impatiently. “The whole idea is to give them such a taste of death and terror that they can never even consider disobeying—isn’t it?”

  Mejox gestured agreement but added, “Still, I can come down in bursts. That ought to get at least some of them running. The survivors are going to be valuable, so we might as well have as many of them as we can.”

  He popped the throttle three times, so that we would lurch downward in free fall and then slow to a stop before rising again at about two gravities. It was sickening and dizzying, but it did what he wanted it to: many of the villagers, startled out of their paralysis by the motion, the noise, and the great bursts of flame, got up and ran out through the gate, leaving behind the burning log palisade of their village. A few remained prostrate, because they were too stubborn, too scared, or perhaps just too determined to placate the new gods.

  One of them seemed to split the difference, getting up and running around aimlessly within the compound. Soikenn popped her viewer up to look more closely, and we saw that it was a female chasing a little one who was running back toward one of the burning houses. She was getting closer to the little one, but it looked like the child would reach the burning house before she could catch it.

  “Here we go,” Mejox said. He gave us a big drop and then hit boost at two gravities to bring us to a landing. It shoved us all hard, but we were braced. We were so close to the ground now that the blast of flame shot down into the glowing embers of the temple, washed in a white-hot flood across the village, and knocked down whatever houses were still standing, along with most of the palisade wall; the flood of fire was encircled by a dark billow of blowing gray ash and dust. I saw the child ignite and roll like a paper doll in a fireplace, and the mother, diving for the child, flipped end over end, then ignited, herself, in the instant before the black curtain of dirt and smoke whisked across them and they vanished in the white blast.

  The burning houses and palisades tumbled out into the fields around, like toys in a high wind. Then Mejox throttled us back to eight-ninths of a gravity, just enough so that we drifted toward the ground, the flames retreating from the village they had eaten. I saw the dark spots where the ashes of the mother reached toward the burnt child, and shuddered. Some things were necessary, but—

  I didn’t have time to finish the thought. The lander bumped to a stop in the middle of the cleared, burnt-black area, right where the temple had stood. The thunder beneath our feet stopped. All around us, at a distance of fifty bodylengths or more, lay a ring of smoldering rubble that was all that was left of the Seteposian village. The outside temperature gauge showed that we were sitting in air hot enough to boil water, but the Gurix’s cooling system would have allowed us to land and take off in a puddle of liquid lead, so we did not feel it inside.

  “Well, we’re home,” Captain Osepok said. “This should add to the awe—not only do we come from the sky, destroy their temple, kill them at a distance—we come living out of fire. I’d say our godhood is well established and that it’s high time to get a meal and some sleep. We’re going to be busy little gods tomorrow.”

  12

  THE GURIX HAD BEEN designed to serve as our home for up to a year after landing, so though its bunk room was small, it wasn’t uncomfortable. Still, I had a restless night. It was the first time in more than twenty years I had slept for the night in a room other than my chamber on Wahkopem Zomos. I missed the way my bunk felt, the background sounds of the ship in normal operation, the wheel of stars by my viewport. I missed Poiparesis terribly, as well, and wished these little bunks were big enough for two so I could curl up with Otuz.

  Eventually I drifted into a doze, but I didn’t sleep well. Nobody seemed to, to judge by the tossing and turning. As soon as I woke to see the chronometer display showing it was near local sunrise, I got up and started to put breakfast together. I found Priekahm and Otuz sitting at a viewport; they had gotten up a twenty-fourth of a day earlier.

  “They haven’t come back yet,” Priekahm whispered. “I thought a few of them might. With the infrared scan I’ve been checking the woods; there’s a few campfires up in the hills, a few Seteposians around each fire. A lot more are in huddles out in the brush.”

  “If we were serious about improving the breed, we’d bomb the campfires,” Otuz said, “leaving the ones smart enough not to show a light at night.”

  The joke fell flat. I don’t know about Priekahm, but for me it was the thought that two nights before I had been snug in the only world I had ever known, and now I was on a hostile planet with a whole new life to make, missing that old world terribly—it was too much like what the Seteposians had just gone through, and I imagined being huddled in terror in the cold, wet dark, and it seemed to me that I would have built a fire, dang
er or not. I didn’t like identifying with terrorized savages, but I did.

  Priekahm spoke softly. “You know, I have a thought, but I don’t know if it’s a good one. But I wanted to say … well, we could just give it all up as a bad deal. If we hate doing this, I mean. We could just fly right out of here, back to Wahkopem Zomos. Then they’d just decide the gods were mad at them for smashing up the probe, or whatever it’s appropriate for a Seteposian god to be angry about, and in twenty years we’d be purely legend, and that would be the end of us as far as they were concerned. Then meanwhile we’d reoutfit and go to one of the big islands, like we talked about. There are several that are beautiful and probably have undergone ecological detente—nothing big, aggressive, or venomous on them. There’s really nothing to stop us from doing it.”

  “Except that our grandchildren would live like we found these savages living,” Kekox said, coming out of the sleeping cabin. “No doubt with cleaner habits and a bigger and better library, but still like that. Maybe by the time Imperial Hope got here they’d have a city a bit like Sixth Dynasty Kratareni—wide stone streets, comfortable passive solar buildings, running water, public sewers, some electricity. But could they even hope to have room for an added two million people? And just think about how different the two groups of Nisuans would be. There’s going to be trouble enough when they come here and find we’ve hybridized, I’m sure.” He sighed. “I know I was opposed to the idea of slavery before, but now that I’ve seen what they live like—and smelled that town of theirs, and seen what an ugly bunch of brutes they are—”

  “So you think they’re animals now?” I asked. “I was just realizing how shocked I was that they turned out to be people.”

  Kekox gestured impatience. “Oh, they’re people, Zahmekoses. No animal would keep a nest as foul as this one. For that matter look at the blood sacrifice and the crude way they do things when better alternatives are obvious. The kind of failure of evolution and refusal to pay attention to their surroundings is what you get when you have people, who can be ruled by their thoughts, instead of animals, who are ruled by the real world. Though I grant you that with a good costume, some of them might make politicians back home.