The Winds of Altair

by Ben Bova

  Foy sat hunched behind his massive desk, looking smaller and grayer than ever, his bony skull of a face drawn and wan.

  "You wanted to see me?" Carbo asked, as cheerfully as he could manage.

  Foy nodded and gestured for Carbo to sit in the straight-backed wooden chair in front of the desk.

  "I appreciate your coming immediately," the Bishop said, in his rasping wheeze of a voice.

  Politeness? Carbo was instantly wary. Something is in the wind.

  Tapping a flimsy sheet of paper that rested on the desktop before him, the Bishop said, "I have received a communication from the Mother Church . . ."

  "From Earth?" Carbo blurted.

  "Yes, from Earth."

  Startled, Carbo thought of how much it must have cost to send the message. Radio or laser beams would take seventeen years to traverse the distance between Earth and Altair. The Church had to send a communications ship, an unmanned radio beacon, by gravity warp drive; that must have cost an immense sum.

  "Why . . . what does it say?"

  "The news is not good," Bishop Foy muttered.

  Carbo held his breath. Until this moment he had not realized how much he had felt cut off from Earth. But a message—even a terrible message—suddenly gave him a feeling that Earth still existed, that he could return to his native land someday, if he wished.

  Foy went on bleakly, "Famine has struck Asia again. The monsoon rains failed and billions are starving from India all the way along the southeastern crescent to Japan."

  Carbo remained silent. Bad news, yes; but what did this have to do with him? Or the Village?

  "Riots have broken out all over the area, and spread to parts of Africa and South America. Virtual civil war in some places. The world government has sent in troops. Millions have been tranquilized and await neuro probe implants to control their violent behavior."

  "Oh no . . ." Carbo's heart sank. "Not more . . ."

  Foy raised a bony finger. "That is not the worst of it. The world government has forced the Church to accept immediate shipment of several hundred thousand colonists to Altair VI."

  "Here? They're sending colonists here already?"

  "They have to. The Church was given no choice. The colonists will all be officially converted to the Faith of Nirvan and implanted with neuro probes to assure their behavior."

  Carbo wanted to scream, but not a sound could force its way out of his throat. He was choking on the Bishop's words.

  "This puts increased pressure on you and Dr. Peterson, I realize," Foy said.

  "When?" Carbo managed to gasp out. "When will they send these poor wretches?"

  Fov's bloodless lips pulled back in what could have been either a bitter smile or a bitterer grimace.

  "They are already on the way," he said tonelessly. "They were packed aboard several vessels and sent out weeks ago, according to this message. The pris . . . I mean, colonists, are being implanted with neuro probes in transit. The first ship should arrive here within three months."

  CHAPTER 15

  The news of the colonists' approach spread through the Village like a cold whispering wind.

  Bishop Foy ordered a mass convocation in the Tabernacle; every student was required to attend. They all renewed their vows, under the Bishop's stern eye, promising themselves and each other and their God to work even harder than before, to tame the planet they had sworn to redeem for the Church, to prepare Altair VI as a fit home world for the thousands of newly-converted Faithful who were on their way.

  Carbo and the scientists held their own meeting, crammed into the conference room in the dome that housed the laboratories and medical center. They had to take the long conference table out into the corridor to make room for everyone. Still, there were not enough chairs for them all, even though the scientists sat literally shoulder to shoulder. Almost half of them squatted on the floor or stood along the walls of the long, narrow room.

  Carbo paced nervously at the front of the room as he spoke to them. No one had appointed him the leader, yet no one had expected anyone else to assume leadership. He had called the meeting, and they all had come to the conference room. It was that simple.

  Now he paced, thinking in the back of his mind that humans and wolfcats shared a few traits in common as he strode nervously, impatiently from where Amanda sat crosslegged on the floor at his left to the spot where one of the young Japanese biologists knelt placidly, sitting on his heels.

  ". . . slightly more than thirty-two thousand colonists," Carbo was saying. "Naturally, they are being converted to the Church of Nirvan during their flight here."

  "They're scheduled to arrive here in three months?" a voice from the crowd asked.

  With a nod, Carbo said, "We should be able to see their ship in four or five weeks, when it warps back into normal space out at the edge of the Altair system."

  "That doesn't give us enough time . . ."

  "For anything," a woman's voice interjected.

  Carbo swallowed hard. "The colonists are being fitted out with neuro probes to ensure their good behavior while they're on their transit ships. The ships will take up orbit around Altair VI, just as we have. I assume there will be enough supplies aboard to take care of them for two or three years—just as we have here."

  No one spoke. A few people cleared their throats, coughed nervously; feet shifted on the carpeting, hands fidgeted. But no one had a word to say.

  "I . . . uh . . . I wanted you to know the entire story," Carbo stammered. "I wanted you to understand the magnitude of the task facing us."

  "Nothing's changed, really," said Dr. Peterson, who was sitting in the front row of chairs. "We still have the same job of taming the planet."

  "Maybe so," said Lana Polchek, the zoologist's wife, "but knowing that thirty-two thousand colonists are already on their way makes it all—well, more urgent. Don't you think?"

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the scientists.

  "And this is just the first batch of colonists," someone else pointed out.

  "What'll they do if we can't tame the planet? If we fail?"

  "We won't fail," a man's voice replied. "Given time, we can convert the planet to a fully Earth-like ecology."

  "How much time? Is three years enough?"

  "It should be."

  "But if it's not? What happens to these colonists if we haven't succeeded in three years? What happens to us?"

  Total silence answered that question.

  Finally Carbo clapped his hands together sharply, startling them all out of their frightened musings.

  "All right," he said. "It is a very large task that we face. But we can do it . . . if we all work our best and hardest."

  Amanda unfolded her long slim legs and rose to her feet. "Okay. So why are we sitting around here instead of getting on with it?"

  They all laughed, the tension broke, and the scientists began to leave the meeting and head toward their jobs.

  Crown awoke feeling stiff with cold. A biting wind was cutting across the beach, driving sand against the buildings and machines of the humans. The sea looked gray and chill, the sky even grayer. Altair was a dim glow just above the ocean horizon.

  It had snowed during the night, the first dark brittle snow of winter. Crown climbed slowly to his paws and shook the sooty clinging flakes off his body. He knew that if the flakes stayed on him for very long, they would eat through his fur and burn his skin.

  The apes were still sleeping. The grayish flakes covered them lightly. Crown growled at them, and they instantly snapped awake. There were more than a dozen apes in the camp now. They slept in the scant shelter of an old building that had partially collapsed. It had no roof anymore, and its remaining walls leaned precariously.

  The biggest of the apes pulled himself up to a sitting position, his legs poking out awkwardly before him. He shivered and patted his body with his fore-paws to dust the flakes away. His actions bumped the apes next to him, who also slowly sat up and began cleaning the sooty flakes fr
om their fur. And so on down the line, until all the apes were poking and rubbing themselves. Not one of them tried to help another, though.

  The biggest ape snarled at Crown, his lips pulled back to bare his teeth. He got up on all fours, staring at Crown, growling. Then his body twitched, jerked, in a convulsive spasm that rocked him from muzzle to tail like a private earthquake shock. The ape's growl changed to a snuffle, almost a whimper. He shook his head as if trying to escape something that was buzzing inside his skull. Then he turned away from Crown.

  The ape was under control now. One by one, the others twitched and whimpered, then docilely rose to all fours and headed off to begin their day's work.

  Crown watched them as they slowly gathered themselves together and trundled off to the hillside where there were shrubs and roots and crawling little insects for their morning meal. Even under human control, the apes stayed as far away from the new buildings as possible.

  Bright and gleaming, the new buildings throbbed with the energy of the machines inside them. Night and day, the machinery hummed and rumbled and gave off strange, sickening odors. Even though the walls of these buildings were warm to the touch, and the nights were getting constantly colder along the beach, neither the apes nor Crown and the other wolfcats would go near the buildings unless they were forced to by their human controllers. They all slept as far from the grumbling machines as their controllers would allow.

  Crown knew that since the apes were under control, the other wolfcat families up in the hills would be, also. His own tiny family—Thunder, Brightfur, Tranquil and the cubs—were still normal, still untainted by the invading aliens. Crown was grateful for that, even though he rarely saw his family anymore. He stayed down here on the beach almost all the time now. He even slept within a few bounding leaps of the nervous, frightened apes. He got up into the forested hills only to hunt.

  He started his morning's trek up the hillside, past the peacefully-munching apes—who shied away from him instinctively—to find his family and share in the hunting. Halfway up the hill he paused and looked back for a moment at the camp along the beach.

  The apes had finished eating and were starting in to work. Standing uncertainly on their hindlegs, slow and hesitant because of the fear that no amount of human control could fully overcome, they were marching off to the crates that had been left next to the new buildings and their humming machinery. Carefully, reluctantly, they reached into the crates and pulled out strange shapes of gleaming metal. Awkwardly, they began to put the shapes together, one piece fitting into another. Crown had watched them build the new machines that way. How many more machines would the apes build? he wondered.

  Crown snarled at the scene. These strange things of the aliens were not alive, yet they seemed to breathe and grow like living animals. Far more frightening, though, was the fact that it was becoming difficult, even dangerous, to stay near the machines once they began to hum and vibrate. A few days ago one of the worker apes had collapsed and died, for no apparent reason. The other apes panicked and tried to flee from the beach, but Crown and the other controlled wolfcats outraced them and—snarling and roaring—had herded them back to the camp. The dead ape was dragged away by two wolfcats before the sun went down, but still the other apes were obviously terrified to be near the throbbing, pulsating buildings of the aliens.

  Crown himself stayed as far from the new buildings as he could. He found that there was something about them that made him feel weak, drowsy, dizzy.

  It's the oxygen The machines are breaking down the methane and sulfur oxides of the air and pumping out oxygen and nitrogen.

  Crown grunted angrily. Even here, up near the crest of the hills, the scent of the machines was strong. It grew stronger each day.

  He spent the morning hunting. Thunder greeted him with an affectionate roar, while Brightfur and Tranquil stayed shyly behind their leader, as they should. The cubs scampered playfully around Crown, though, and he learned that they had at last been named: Strong was the cub with the white fur on her forepaws; Dayrise was the friskier and leaner of the two.

  For several happy hours Crown was nothing more than a wolfcat, hunting with his family for their day's meal. There were still antelope in the woods, although they were getting fewer as the days grew colder. Thunder and two females trotted off to hide in the underbrush while Crown and the cubs headed in the other direction. Once they spotted a few straggling antelope, they slinked around their flank—the cubs watching Crown intently and imitating his every move. Eventually the deerlike animals would catch the wolfcats' scent and flee, leaping and bounding, for safety. Crown and the cubs gave chase, forcing the antelope to run straight toward the waiting Thunder and his females.

  Each day the wolfcats brought down two or three antelope this way. The beasts never seemed to learn. Every day it was the same, and every day they raced straight into the ambush. Crown and his family could have killed as many as they liked, but a couple of fat antelope were enough for the family to gorge themselves.

  Crown knew that the other wolfcats in the area, the ones under human control, were also hunting antelope; not only for themselves, they brought kills back to the beach, for the apes to eat at the end of each day. But every day the number of antelope they saw was smaller. And farther off to the south. The antelope were migrating southward for the winter, just as the apes had been before the humans had gained control of them. Just as the wolfcats would, under normal circumstances. The antelope migration was slow, measured. The animals were in no hurry to quit these wooded hills, as long as there was shrubbery for them to nibble.

  Still, they were edging steadily southward, and each day the wolfcats had to drag their kills a little farther to the camp where the apes worked. Despite the food that the wolfcats provided, though, the apes seemed to be wasting away. They got thinner and slower every day.

  This day, as Crown reluctantly headed back toward the beach, it snowed before sundown for the first time. The dark sooty flakes sifted through the trees late in the afternoon as Crown was helping a human-controlled wolfcat to carry one of the day's kill through the forest underbrush. Both wolfcats growled at the snow. It would kill the shrubbery of the undergrowth, Crown knew, forcing the antelope to move even further southward. Even now, it took almost the whole day to find the herd, make the kills, and bring the food back to the beach.

  As he got to within sight of the camp, panting and growling from the effort of half-carrying, half-dragging the still-warm antelope alongside the other wolfcat, Crown saw that two of the apes were down on the sand. The others were circling crazily around their two dead companions, neither working nor running away, just milling about on their hindlegs, throwing their long arms over their heads as if in fear or despair.

  The wolfcats would usually stay close to the woods up at the crest of the ridge line; Crown was the only one who actually slept down on the beach. The apes feared the wolfcats so much that the cats normally left their kills partway down the grassy slope of the hills and then returned to the woods. The apes would scramble up the hillside to get the meat.

  But now Crown dropped his kill. So did the other wolfcat. They both stared down at the camp, standing stock-still, the wind ruffling their gray fur. Crown saw that the other wolfcat dug his claws into the dying grass, growling and rumbling to himself as if fighting against something inside his own skull. Crown started down the hillside, heading toward the apes and the strange, evil-smelling human machines. He turned his head and growled at the other wolfcat. Slowly and very reluctantly, the wolfcat followed Crown.

  Other wolfcats appeared out of the trees, growling, snarling at the empty air as they hesitantly made their way down the hillsides toward the beach. Their muscles twitched, as if they wanted to go in two different directions at once.

  Crown took command of the wolfcats. With grunts and pushes he directed some of them toward each end of the camp, to make certain that the apes could not bolt and run away. Then he pushed two of the younger males toward the dead ape
s. Even under human control, they did not want to go. Crown led them himself, walking calmly to the dead bodies, sniffing at them for a few moments, and then turning toward the other apes, who had retreated into a frightened shivering mass back toward the ramshackle shelter where they slept.

  The dead bodies lay near the new buildings and their rumbling, evil-smelling machines. The air was hard to breathe. Crown's chest began to hurt, as if there was fire inside him. Quickly, he grabbed at one of the dead apes with his teeth and forepaws and started dragging it away. The other two wolfcats watched him, then slowly went for the other body.

  Painfully, with little sparkling flashes of light dancing in front of his eyeplates, Crown dragged the dead ape up the slope and away from the hated machines. It was dark before he had pulled the carcass far away enough so that the other apes seemed to settle down for sleep. Crown watched them huddle together in their sagging shelter, whimpering, clinging to each other as closely as they could manage.

  Three meters tall, two and a half tons each, and they're whimpering.

  They're frightened, Frank. Frightened out of their wits. It's a wonder the kids could control them at all.

  Jeff awoke feeling Crown's weariness. And something deeper, something he did not quite understand but which troubled him like the dark edge of an unknown, barely-realized fear.

  After Amanda unstrapped his cuffs and helped him up to a sitting position on the couch, she turned to Dr. Carbo.

  "Frank, this is too much. Jeff's working too hard. This has got to stop."

  Carbo and Jeff snapped at the same instant, "No!"

  Standing in the doorway between the contact chamber and the control room, Carbo shook his head adamantly. "We can't stop now. We need Jeff more than ever."

  "He's losing weight, his vital signs degrade a little more every day," Amanda insisted. "We've reached the danger point. His health . . ."

  "I'm okay," Jeff said, sounding weak even to himself. "I'll be all right."