The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I’m glad I’m alive now.”

  To that Varian made no reply, wondering if she was in accord. In an earlier time, when peoples were still struggling to a civilized level that spurned the eating of animal flesh; to a level that had learned not to impose its peculiar standards on any other species; to a level that accepted, as a matter of course, the friendships and associations with beings diverse and wonderful: a woman of only three hundred years ago would have had some occasion to cope with utter barbarianism. It was one matter entirely for beasts to fight and kill one another, following the dictates of an ecology (not that she was prevented from succoring the weaker when she could) but for one species, stronger, more flexible, basically more dangerous because of its versatility, to attack a stupid animal for the sporting pleasure was unspeakably savage.

  What were she and Kai to do about such behavior? Again she wished she hadn’t brought Bonnard. She’d been too clever, so she had, involving the boy. Perhaps scarring him with such evidence of wanton cruelty. But she hadn’t expected anything like this when she thought of investigating Bakkun’s special place. How could she? And once discovered, strong measures were indicated. Too late now to say that the heavy-worlders had been discreet in their vile pursuits. Too late to wish she’d never wanted to check into their activities.

  On the other hand, such aberrant behavior was better uncovered on a world where no other sentient species was comprised. She also found some measure of relief that the heavy-worlders had picked on the stupid herbivores and predators, rather than the lovely golden giffs. If they’d harmed them . . . Pure rage, such as she had never experienced before in her life, consumed her with an incredible force.

  Startled, Varian composed her thoughts. She must discipline herself if she wanted to control others.

  They were almost to the compound now, sweeping down the broad plain that led to their granite height. Varian found herself hoping that, for some unknown reason, Kai had returned early. That was the trouble with bad news: it didn’t keep. The intelligence was a sore weight in her mind, festering with speculation, such as what were the heavy-worlders doing right now?

  She landed, reminding Bonnard to say nothing, even to Cleiti or Terilla, most certainly not to Gaber.

  “You be not Gaber,” said Bonnard with a smile. “He talks an awful lot but he says so little . . . unless he’s talking about maps and beamed shots.”

  “Wait a minute, Bonnard.” Varian motioned him back, wondering about the wisdom of involving him further. She glanced toward the shimmering force-screen, the dance of dying insects registering blue across the field. She tried to think, calmly, whether there was anyone else in the compound she could trust. Then she glanced back at the boy, standing easily, his head slightly cocked as he awaited her command. “Bonnard, I’m taking the power pack from this sled. When the other sleds come in, I want you to remove the packs—hide them in the underbrush if you can’t bring them inside. If anyone questions you, say that your chore is checking them for lead drains. Yes, that’s logical. Do you understand me?” She was unclamping their sled’s pack as she issued her instructions. “You know where the packs are in the smaller sleds? And how to remove them?”

  “Portegin showed us. Besides, I just saw you do it.” He gave her the hand-lift which she attached to the heavy power pack and heaved it from the sled. “I’ll just get another hand-lift.”

  She could see in his expression that he had more questions he was eager to ask as he followed her to the veil lock where Lunzie now stood to admit them. As they passed her, the woman looked at the power pack Varian was trailing.

  “One of the leads is clogged,” Varian said.

  “Is that why you’re back so early? Good thing,” and Lunzie’s usually solemn face broke into a wide grin. She gestured toward Dandy’s pen. Trizein was leaning on the fencing, staring intently at the little creature who was, for a second marvel, peacefully munching at a pile of grasses, oblivious to the scrutiny.

  “Trizein’s out of his lab? What happened?”

  “I’ll let him tell you. It’s his surprise, not mine.”

  “Surprise?”

  “Here, Bonnard, take the power pack from Varian and put it where it belongs . . .”

  Varian indicated the shuttle to Bonnard, a gesture which brought a surprised glance from Lunzie.

  “Well, then,” she said, “in the shuttle and come straight back. You’ll want to hear about the probable ancestry of your pet, too.”

  “Huh?” Bonnard was startled.

  “Quick, to the shuttle with the pack.” Lunzie shooed him off with both hands. “The power pack leads, Varian? That’s a bit lame, isn’t it?”

  “Varian! Has Lunzie told you?” Trizein had looked away from Dandy and seen her. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I mean, I can speculate possibilities from disembodied tissues, but this . . . this creature from our prehistoric past . . .”

  His words were diversion enough, but the ringing tone in which he spoke made Varian move more quickly to him.

  “Prehistoric past? What do you mean, Trizein?”

  “Why, this little specimen is an excellent example of a primitive herbivore . . .”

  “I know that . . .”

  “No, no, my dear Varian, not just a primitive herbivore of this planet, but an Earth-type herbivore, of the group perissodactyl.”

  “Yes, I know it’s perissodactyl. The axis of the foot is through the middle toe.”

  “Varian, are you being dense on purpose to tease me? This,” and Trizein gestured dramatically to Dandy, “is the first step in the genotype of the horse. He’s a genuine hyracotherium, Earth type!”

  The significance of Trizein’s point gradually dawned on Varian. “You’re trying to tell me that this is not similar to an Earth-type horse, it is the lineal ancestor of an Earth-type horse?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Not trying. Telling!”

  “It isn’t possible.” Varian said that flatly, and her expression accused Trizein of teasing her.

  Trizein chuckled, preening himself by straightening his shoulders as he beamed at each member of his small audience.

  “I may seem to be the original absent-minded analytical chemist, but my conclusions are always provable: my experiments conducted efficiently and as expeditiously as equipment and circumstance allow. Lately I’ve been wondering if someone has been trying to fool me, to test my ability or my tendency to digress. I assure you that I do know when two totally different life forms are presented to me as coexisting on this planet. It is too bad of someone. And I inform you right now that I am aware of this subterfuge. All the tissues you and your teams have been giving me suggest a sufficient variety of creatures to populate several planets, not just one. Didn’t the Ryxi bring their own technicians? Is there life on the Thek planet that I’m being given such diverse . . .”

  “What about that animal tissue the Bakkun gave you about a week ago?” It was a chance, but she wasn’t surprised when Trizein answered her.

  “Oh, yes, the cellular level is remarkably comparable. A vertebrate, of course, which checks to ten decimal places, mitotic spindle, mitochondria all quite ordinary in a hemoglobin-based species. Like that fellow there!” And he jerked his thumb at Dandy. “Ah, Bonnard,” he said as the boy approached them. “I understand from Lunzie that you rescued the little fellow?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. But what is he?”

  “A hyracotherium, or I miss my guess,” said Trizein with the forced joviality an adult often displayed for the unknown quantity of a youngster.

  “Does that make Dandy special?” asked Bonnard of Varian.

  “If he is a genuine hyracotherium, unusually special,” said Varian in a strangled voice.

  “You doubt me,” Trizein said, aggrieved. “You doubt me! But I can prove it.” He grabbed Varian by the elbow and Lunzie by the shoulder and marched them toward the shuttle. “One is not allowed to bring much of a personal nature on a small short term expedition such as this, but
I did bring my own data disks. You’ll see.”

  As they were propelled into the shuttle, Varian knew what she would see. For all his erratic speech and mental mannerisms, Trizein was invariably accurate. She only wished his data disks would indicate how Dandy’s species got to Ireta. It was no consolation either to realize that Trizein was likely to prove that the warm-blooded pentadactyls were aliens to this planet and the fringes, with their cell construction of filaments, were native. It was all part of the total confusion of this expedition: planted or mislaid, exploring a planet already once cored, out of contact with the mother ship and in danger of a mutiny.

  Trizein had shoved them into his lab and was now rummaging in his carry-sack, which swung from a bolt in the ceiling, withdrawing a carefully wrapped bundle of data storage disks. He located the one he wanted and, with an air of righteous triumph, inserted it into the terminal’s slot. There was no indecision about the keys he tapped and, as he pressed the print-out tab, he turned toward them with an expectant look.

  Before their eyes was a replica, except for coloration, of Dandy. Neatly printed, the legend read HYRACOTHERIUM, TERRA-OLICOGENE AGE. EXTINCT. Where Bonnard’s pet had mottled reddish-brown fur, the creature on the screen was more dun and stripe: the difference necessitated by camouflage requirements, Varian realized, from one environment to another. An indication, also, that the creature had evolved to some extent here on Ireta. His presence made no sense yet.

  “I don’t understand about Dandy being like this old Earth beast. He’s extinct,” said Bonnard, turning questioningly to Varian. “I thought you couldn’t find duplicate life-forms developing independently on spatially distant planets. And Ireta isn’t even the same sort of planet as Earth. The sun’s third generation.”

  “We have observed several inconsistencies about Ireta,” said Lunzie in her dry comforting voice.

  “Is there any question in your mind about this creature’s similarity now?” asked Trizein, exceedingly pleased with his performance.

  “None, Trizein. But you were out in the compound before, why didn’t you notice Dandy’s similarity then?”

  “My dear, I was out in the compound?” Trizein affected dazed surprise.

  “You were, but your mind was undoubtedly on more important matters,” said Lunzie, a bit sharply.

  “Quite likely,” said Trizein with dignity. “My time has been heavily scheduled with analyses and tests and all kinds of interruptions. I’ve had little time to look around this world, though I have, you might say, examined it intimately.”

  “Do you have other extinct and ancient Earth-type animals on that disk as well as Dandy?”

  “Dandy? Oh, the hyracotherium? Yes, this is my Earth paleontological disk, I have ancient species from . . .”

  “We’d better stick to one set of puzzles at a time, Trizein,” said Varian, not certain she could absorb more conundrums today. If the fringes should turn out to be a life-form from Beta Camaridae, she’d go twisted. “Bonnard, the tape on the giffs is in the main console, isn’t it?”

  “I put it on data-retrieval hold when I showed it to Cleiti and Terilla. Under the date, and giffs, Varian.”

  Varian tapped up the proper sequence on the terminal and also transferred Trizein’s disk to the smaller screen and a hold. The terminal screen cleared to a vivid frame of a golden flier, its crested head tilted slightly, enhancing the impression of its intelligence.

  “Great heavens above! And furred. Definitely furred,” cried Trizein, bending to peer intently at the giff. “There has always been a great deal of controversy about that among my colleagues. No way to be certain, of course, but this is unquestionably a pteranodon!”

  “Pteranodon?” Bonnard squirmed, uncomfortable to hear such a ponderous name attached to a creature he liked.

  “Yes, a pteranodon, a form of dinosaur, misnamed, of course since patently this creature is warm-blooded . . . inhabiting ancient Earth in Mesozoic times. Died out before the Tertiary period began. No one knows why, though there are as many speculations about the cause . . .” Trizein suddenly warded off the face that flashed on the screen for Varian had tapped in another sequence from the data banks. The heavy jawed head of a fang-face snarled up at them. “Varian! It’s . . . it’s Tyrannosaurus rex. My dear, what sort of a crude joke are you attempting to play on me?” He was furious.

  “That is no joke,” said Lunzie, nodding solemnly.

  Trizein stared at her, his eyes protruding from his skull as his jaw dropped. He glanced back at the predatory countenance of the tyrant lizard, a name which Varian thought extremely well suited to its bearer.

  “Those creatures are alive on this planet?”

  “Very much so. Do you have this Tyrannosaurus rex on your data disk?”

  Almost reluctantly, and with a finger that noticeably trembled, Trizein tapped out a sequence for his own disk. The mild features and small body of hyracotherium was replaced by the upright haughty and dangerous form of fang-face’s prototype. Again there was a difference in coloration.

  “The force-screen,” said Trizein, “is it strong enough to keep it outside?”

  Varian nodded. “It should be. Furthermore, there aren’t any of his kind within a comfortable ten to fifteen kilometers of us. When we moved in, they moved out. They have other, more docile game than us.” The shudder that rippled down her spine was not for fear of Tyrannosaurus rex.

  “You’re sure it will keep its distance?” asked Trizein, concerned. “That creature ruled its millennia on old Earth. Why, he was supreme. Nothing could defeat him.”

  Varian recalled all too vividly a tree-branch of a spear inextricably lodged in a tyrant lizard’s rib cage.

  “He doesn’t like sleds, Trizein,” said Bonnard, not noticing her silence. “He runs from them.”

  The chemist regarded the boy with considerable skepticism.

  “He does,” Bonnard repeated. “I’ve seen him. Only today . . .” Then he caught Varian’s repressive glance but Trizein hadn’t noticed.

  The man sank slowly to the nearest lab bench.

  “Varian might tease me, and so might the boy, but Lunzie . . .”

  It was as if Trizein, too, wished to hear a negative that would reassure him, restore matters to a previous comfortable balance. Lunzie, shaking her head, confirmed that the creatures did exist, and others of considerable size and variety.

  “Stegosaurus, too? And the thunder lizard, the original dinosaur? And . . .” Trizein was torn between perturbation and eager excitement at the thought of seeing live creatures he had long considered extinct. “Why was I never told about them? I should have been told! It’s my specialty, my hobby, prehistorical life forms.” Now Trizein sounded plaintive and accusatory.

  “Believe me, my friend, it was not a conscious omission,” said Lunzie, patting his hand.

  “I’m the true xenob, Trizein,” said Varian in apology. “It never occurred to me that these weren’t unique specimens. I’d only started considering that an anomaly must exist when you analyzed the fringe types and found them to be on such a different cellular level. That and the grasses!”

  “The grasses? The grasses! And tissue slides and blood plates, and all the time,” now outrage stirred Trizein to his feet, “all the time these fantastic creatures are right . . . right outside the force-screen. It’s too much! Too much, and no one would tell me!”

  “You were outside the compound, Trizein, oh, you who look and do not see,” said Lunzie.

  “If you hadn’t kept me so busy with work, each of you saying it was vital and important, and had top priority. Never have I had to deal so single-handedly with so many top priorities, animal, vegetable and mineral. How I’ve kept going . . .”

  “Truly, we’re sorry, Trizein. More than you know. I wish I had pried you out of the lab much earlier,” said Varian so emphatically that Trizein was mollified. “On more counts than identifying the beasts.”

  Nevertheless, would that knowledge and identification have kept the heav
y-worlders from their bestial game? Would it matter in the final outcome, Varian wondered.

  “Well, well, make up for your omissions now. Surely this isn’t all you have?”

  Grateful for any legitimate excuse to delay the unpleasant, Varian gestured Trizein to be seated on something more comfortable than a bench and tapped out a sequence for her survey tapes, compiled when she and Terilla were doing the charts.

  “It is patently obvious,” said the chemist, when he had seen all the species she had so far taped and tagged, “that someone has played a joke. Not necessarily on me, or you, or us,” he added, glancing about from under his heavy brows. “Those animals were planted here.”

  Bonnard gargled an exclamation, not as controlled in his reaction to that phrase as Lunzie or Varian.

  “Planted?” Varian managed a wealth of amused disbelief in that laughed word.

  “Well, certainly they didn’t spring up in an independent evolution, my dear Varian. They must have been brought here . . .”

  “Fang-face, and herbivores and the golden fliers? Oh, Trizein, it isn’t possible. Besides which, the difference in pigmentation indicates that they evolved here . . .”

  “Oh yes, but they started on Earth. I don’t consider camouflage or pigmentation a real deterrent to my theory. All you’d need is one common ancestor. Climate, food, terrain would all bring about specialization over the millennia and the variety of types would evolve. The big herbivores, for instance, undoubtedly developed from Struthiomimus but so did Tyrannosaurus and quite possibly, your pteranodon. The possibilities are infinite from one mutual ancestor. Look at humans, for instance, in our infinite variations.”

  “I’ll grant it’s possible, Trizein, but why? Who would do such a crazy thing? For what purpose? Why perpetrate such monstrosities as fang-face? I could see the golden fliers . . .”

  “My dear, variety is essential in an ecological balance. And the dinosaurs were marvelous creatures. They ruled old Earth for more millennia than we poor, badly engineered Homo sapiens have existed as a species. Who knows why they faded? What catastrophe occurred . . . More than likely a radical change in temperature following a magnetic shift—that’s my theory at any rate, and I’ll support it with the evidence we’ve found here. Oh, I do think this is a splendid development. A planet that has remained in the Mesozoic condition for untold millions of years, and likely to remain so for unknown millennia longer. That thermal core, of course, is the factor that . . .”