Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  Such enclaves couldn’t have escaped our search mechanisms, which are designed precisely to locate such things. And besides, an advanced biological technology would have no need for hunting or spears.

  They could grow all the food they needed. Any damn fool knew that. Then why the noble savage act? For if our analysis was right, it must be an act. Why were they trying to hoodwink us? The only answer was that there was a high civilization here that was being deliberately hidden from us. The only mistake they had made was in underestimating us—the old story of civilized men sneering at savages, but in reverse.

  The trees, therefore, must be such old and primitive techniques that they thought nothing of them, deeming them so inconsequential that even savages like us would know of them and not be suspicious. At that, they probably didn’t have too much time after they detected us orbiting and intending to land. And if that were true, there could be only one place where their civilization was hidden.

  I TRIED to get to my feet, to warn the others—but I couldn’t move and no sound came from my flaccid vocal cords. I was paralyzed, helpless, and K’wan’s amused thought floated gently into my brain. “I told the others that you humans were an advanced race, but they couldn’t believe an obviously warlike species that depended upon machinery could be anything but savages. And your man Alex confirmed their beliefs. So we tried to meet you on your own ground—savage to savage, as it were. It seems as though we weren’t as good at being savages as we thought.” And K’wan stepped through an apparently solid section of tree trunk that parted to let him pass!

  This tree was nothing but a mousetrap, and we were the mice! Why hadn’t one of us carried the discussion a bit further? Any idiot should know that biological agents were fully as deadly as physical ones. And these people were self-admittedly predatory. Contempt at my stupidity was the only emotion that filled my mind—that we would be trapped like a flock of brainless sheep and led bleating happily to slaughter. Raw anger surged through me, smothering my fear in a red blanket of rage.

  K’wan shook his head. “Your reaction works against you. It’s primitive—and, I think, dangerous. We cannot risk associating with a race that cannot control themselves. You have developed too fast—too soon. We are an old race and a slow race, and our warlike days are far behind us. The council was right. Something must be done about you or there will be more of your kind on Lyrane—hard, driving, uncontrolled, violent.” He sighed—a very human sigh—half regret, half resignation.

  “And you promised no harm would come to us if we came with you,” I thought bitterly.

  “I said you would come to no harm, nor will you. You’ll just be changed a little.”

  “Like Alex?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do to him?” He grinned, exposing his long tusks. “You’ll find out,” he said. He sounded just like a villain in a cheap melodrama.

  He took the menticom circlet off my head and all communication stopped. Two other Lyranians stepped through the wall, lifted me and carried me out like a shanghaied drunk from a spaceport bar. I wasn’t particularly surprised at the laboratory that lay behind the wall. After all, an observation cage had to have its laboratory facilities.

  These were good—very good indeed. Even though I knew hardly anything about biological laboratories, there was no doubt that here were the products of an advanced technology. I hated to admit it, but it looked as though we had run into what we had always feared but had never found—a civilization superior to ours. From the windowless appearance of the place, it was probably underground, and K’wan’s look and nod seemed to confirm my guess.

  They laid me out on a table, took blood and tissue samples and proceeded to forget me while they ran tests and analyses. I kept trying to move, but it wasn’t any use.

  A group of about a dozen oldsters came in, looked at me and went away. The council, I guessed.

  In a surprisingly short time K’wan came back, distinguishable by the menticom circlet. He was holding something that looked like a jet hypo in his hand. The barrel was full of a cloudy red liquid that swirled sluggishly behind the confining glass.

  “This won’t hurt,” he said, his thoughts amplified by the circlet.

  He lifted my arm, examined it and nodded. There was a high-pitched, sibilant hiss as he touched the trigger of the syringe and I felt a brief sting near my elbow.

  “There—that’s that!” he said. “Now we’ll take you back and get the others.”

  I swore at him coldly and viciously.

  He smiled.

  Alex helped lay me back on my bed in the tree house. He looked down at me and grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant grin. It reminded me of a crocodile.

  NAKED, I was standing on an endless sandy plain. Off in the distance the Two Two Four stood on her landing jacks, a tall, needle-pointed tower of burnished silver metal. The sun beat down from a cobalt sky burning my bare back as I trudged painfully across the hot shifting sand. My feet, scorched and blistered, sent agony racing through me with every step I took toward the tall silver column that seemed to recede from me as fast as I approached. My throat was choked with dust and my mind filled with fear and pain.

  I had to reach the ship. I had to. Yet I knew with dreadful certainty that I would not.

  He came at me from a hollow in the sandy ground, a huge, furry Lyranian—bigger than any I had seen. His white tusks glittered in the sunlight as he leaped at me.

  Twisting, I avoided him and turned to run. To fight that mountain of fanged flesh was futile. He could rip me apart with one hand. But I moved with viscid slowness, stumbling through the shifting sands.

  In a moment he was upon me, clutching with his huge hands, snapping at my throat with his tusked mouth. Fear pumped adrenalin into my system and I fought as I had never fought before, breaking his holds, throwing jarring punches into his fanged face as he clawed and bit at me.

  With a violent effort I broke away and ran again toward the safety of the distant ship. For a moment I left him behind as he scrambled to regain his feet and came running after me. He was on me again, hands reaching for my throat. I couldn’t get away. And again we fought, battering and clawing at each other, using fists, feet and teeth, biting and gouging. His strength was terrible and his hot, fetid breath was rank in my nostrils. With a grunt of triumph he tripped me and I fell on my back on the blazing sand. I screamed as my back struck the searing surface, but he held me helpless and immovable, pinned beneath his massive, crushing weight.

  And then he began to eat me!

  I felt his sharp fangs sink into my shoulder muscles and meet in my flesh. With a rush of frantic strength I threw him off again and again, ran stumbling across the plain. Once more he caught me and again we fought.

  It went on endlessly—the fight, the temporary breakaway, the flight, the pursuit, and the recapture. I wondered dully why no one on the ship had seen us. Perhaps they were looking in the wrong direction, or perhaps they weren’t even looking. If I survived this and found that they hadn’t been on watch—I snarled and slammed my fist into the Lyranian’s face.

  Both of us were covered with blood, but he was visibly weaker. It was no longer a fight; we were too exhausted for that. We pawed at each other feebly, and I could detect something oddly like fear in him now. He couldn’t hold me—but neither could I finish him.

  I gathered my last remaining strength into one last blow. My torn fist smashed into his bloody face. He toppled to the ground and I fell beside him, too spent to move. I lay there panting, watching him.

  He rose to his hands and knees and came crawling toward me, trembling with weakness. I felt his smothering weight pinning me as he fell across me. He twisted slowly, his fanged mouth gaping to bite again. His jaws closed on my arm. I was done—beaten—too weary and bruised to care. He had won. But his teeth couldn’t break my skin. Like me, he was finished.

  We lay there as the sun beat down, glaring at each other with fear and hate. And suddenly—over us—loomed the familiar
faces of my crew and the tall tower of the Two Two Four.

  Somehow I had reached the ship and safety!

  I AWOKE. I was bathed with sweat. My muscles were aching and my head was a ball of fire. I looked around. Everything seemed normal. My menticom was on my head and I was lying on the bed in the tree house. Painfully I rose to my feet and staggered into the main room.

  “My God! Skipper, you look awful!” Allardyce’s voice was sharp with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. “My head’s splitting.”

  “Here, sit down. Let me take a look at you.” Allardyce produced a thermometer and stuck it in my mouth. “Mmmm,” he said worriedly. “You’ve got fever.”

  “I feel like I’ve been through the mill,” I said.

  “We’d better get back to the ship. Doc should have a look at you.”

  I wanted nothing more than the familiar safety of the ship, away from these odd natives and exotic diseases that struck despite omnivaccination. And we should get back before the others fell sick.

  “All right, Pat,” I said. “Contact Dan. Have him send the big ’copter. We’ll leave at once.” I discounted the experience of last night as delirium, but just to make sure, I checked with Allardyce and Barger when they, came in.

  “Obviously fever,” Barger said. “Nothing happened to me like you describe.”

  “Nor to me,” Allardyce said.

  I nodded. They were right, of course, unless the Lyranian in their dreams had eaten and absorbed them. Then—but that was sheer nonsense. I was being a suspicious fool.

  But that dream—all of it—had been damnably real.

  We made our excuses to K’wan as the ’copter fluttered down into a nearby clearing.

  “I’m sorry about this,” K’wan said apologetically, “but I never thought of the possibility of diseases. We are all immune. We do have some biological skill, as you’ve surely guessed, but our engineering technology is far inferior to yours. We thought it would be better not to let you know about us until we had a chance to observe you. But you undoubtedly have seen enough to deduce our culture.” He grinned—a ferocious grimace that exposed his long tusks. “I suppose we are rather bad liars. But then we’re not accustomed to deception.”

  “I understand,” I said. “You had no way of knowing what we were really like. We could have been the advance guard of a conquering space armada. You showed great courage to open relations with us.”

  “Not as great as yours. We had the opportunity of examining your man Alex. You had only his untried opinions to go by.”

  The ’copter came down with a flutter of rotor blades, and I shook hands with K’wan. For a moment I was tempted to call Dan and tell him to turn our hostages loose, but on second thought decided that could wait. I slipped my menticom off. There was no point in broadcasting my thoughts, and without the gadget K’wan couldn’t intercept them unless they were directed. After all, we were a minority on this world and Earth didn’t even know where we were yet. A ship can cross hyper-space far more easily and quickly than the most powerful transmitter can broadcast across normal space. It would be a thousand years before Earth could hear from us by radio, even if they could distinguish our messages from stellar interference. While I felt oddly friendly, there was no reason to take chances, especially if there was any truth in that dream.

  “You will be leaving soon?” K’wan asked. “You and the ship?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We have done all we can do here.”

  I looked up at him. He was standing there—holding the menticom in his hand—yet I understood him!

  I didn’t let the astonishment show on my face, nor the shock that coursed through my mind when the Lyranian in my brain tried vainly to scream a warning! Instead I took the circlet and turned to go.

  “Remember what you are to do; the others will help,” K’wan said.

  “I will remember,” I replied. You’re damn well right I’ll remember, I thought grimly. The Lyranian was supposed to wreck the ship.

  HE WAVED farewell as I turned to enter the ’copter. “Our thoughts go with you for your success,” he said.

  The Lyranian in my brain screamed and struggled, but I held him easily. I was his master, not he mine. There would be no sabotage on the Two Two Four. He wouldn’t wreck my ship.

  “Dan,” I said as we went into orbit, “did Alex come aboard?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Down in the engine room, I suppose, or in his bunk. It’s not his watch.”

  “Maybe you’d better check. But before you do—”

  He waited for me to continue, and finally I was able to.

  “Put Allardyce, Barger, and myself in the brig,” I said. “Set a guard over us with instructions to shoot if we try to make a break. Then get Alex, if he’s aboard. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll find him. They didn’t need a ship’s commander, a sociologist or a biologist, but they did need an engineer. Now get going. This is an order!” Warren stiffened. “Yes, sir—sorry, sir!”

  Inside my skull, the Lyranian came to life—struggled briefly—and then quit. Barger, Allardyce and I spent the rest of the trip home in the air-conditioned, radiation-resistant, germproof, dustproof, escape-resistant brig. Alex, of course, wasn’t aboard. There aren’t many places on a starship where a man can hide, and the crew searched them all.

  Even so, I kept worrying about the ship’s safety all the way back. It was a miserable trip. I suppose it was just as miserable for the Lyranians in my two companions who kept worrying about how to destroy us. It didn’t do them any good either. They never got a chance, and ultimately we reached Decontamination.

  Barger and Allardyce are up there now. The medics think they can erase the Lyranians with insulin shock, but it’ll take time. Mine, being a nice, tame one, was considered to be more valuable in me than out. We’re going to have to know a lot about Lyrane in a hurry if we’re going to do anything about those people, and my Lyranian can tell us plenty.

  But I’ll bet we’ll find things different on Lyrane when we go back. They’ll have at least ten years, and with the brains they’ve got—and Alex’s brain to pick—they’ll do just fine from an engineering point of view. I’ll bet they’ll even have spaceships.

  From what I can gather from my alter ego, they checked Alex’s brain and didn’t like what they saw. That’s the trouble with romantics. They always remember the wars and the fighting, never the stodgy, peaceful interims. But you simply don’t spring that sort of stuff on a culture like Lyrane’s. And I suppose my anger didn’t help things any, but if not for that anger and my primitive bull-headedness, we might not be here.

  III

  CAPT. Halsey hurriedly downed the rum. “Skippers are picked because they’re tough-minded and authoritarian. In space you need it occasionally. Fortunately I lived up to specifications. A peaceful sort like my Lyranian just couldn’t take it—fortunately.”

  “Fortunately?” I asked. “Sure. What else? Possibly those natives we conditioned would help our case, possibly not. And in the meantime the Lyranians would suck Alex dry. And with the Two Two Four gone it’d be maybe a couple of hundred years before we ran into them again, and by then they’d really be ready—loaded for bear with itchy trigger fingers—and we just might have a war on our hands. As it is we’ll send out a battle fleet to give some authority to our negotiators so no one will get hurt. They just shouldn’t have picked Alex as typical of us. With his attitude and our weapons, they naturally got a lot of wrong ideas.”

  “Wrong?” I prompted the skipper.

  Halsey chuckled. “Yes, that’s what I said—wrong ideas,” he said in that remote second voice. “Just because you’ve forgotten self-defense doesn’t mean that other peaceful civilizations don’t remember it.”

  THE END

  THE ISSAHAR ARTIFACTS

  Lincoln said it eons ago . . . It took a speck of one-celled plant life on a world parsecs away to prove it for all the
galaxy.

  THE following manuscript was discovered during the excavation of a lateral connecting link between the North-South streamways in Narhil Province near Issahar on Kwashior. The excavator, while passing through a small valley about 20 yursts south of the city, was jammed by a mass of oxidized and partially oxidized metallic fragments. On most worlds this would not be unusual, but Kwashior has no recorded history of metallic artifacts. The terrestrial operator, with unusual presence of mind, reported the stoppage immediately. Assasul, the District Engineering monitor, realized instantly that no metallic debris should exist in that area, and in consequence ordered a most careful excavation in the event that the artifacts might have cultural significance.

  The debris proved to be the remnants of an ancient spaceship similar to those described in Sector Chronicles IV through VII, but of much smaller size and cruder design—obviously a relic of pre-expansion days. Within the remnants of the ship was found a small box of metal covered with several thicknesses of tar and wax impregnated fabric which had been mostly destroyed. The metal itself was badly oxidized, but served to protect an inner wooden box that contained a number of thin sheets of a fragile substance composed mainly of cellulose which were brown and crumbling with age. The sheets were covered with runes of lingua antiqua arranged in regular rows, inscribed by hand with a carbon-based ink which has persisted remarkably well despite the degenerative processes of time. Although much of the manuscript is illegible, sufficient remains to settle for all time the Dannar-Marraket Controversy and lend important corroborating evidence to the Cassaheb Thesis of Terrestrial migrations.

  The genuineness of this fragment has been established beyond doubt. Radiocarbon dating places its age at ten thousand plus or minus one hundred cycles, which would place it at the very beginning of the Intellectual Emergence. Its importance is beyond question. Its implications are shocking despite the fact that they conform to many of the early legends and form a solid foundation for Dannar’s Thesis which has heretofore been regarded as implausible. In the light of this material, the whole question of racial origins may well have to be reevaluated. Without further comment, the translated text is presented herewith. You may draw your own conclusions. Go with enlightenment.