Pet Farm
Page 3
follow the samecycle, I'd say there's a definite relationship."
* * * * *
For once Farrell's cubicle, soundproofed and comfortable, brought himonly a fitful imitation of sleep, an intermittent dozing that waveredendlessly between nightmare and wakefulness. When he crawled out again,hours later, he found Xavier waiting for him alone with a thermo-bulb ofhot coffee. Stryker and Gibson, the mechanical said blandly, had seen noneed of waking him, and had gone out alone on a more extensive tour ofinvestigation.
The hours dragged interminably. Farrell uncased his beloved accordion,but could not bear the sound of it; he tried his sketch-book, and couldsummon to mind no better subjects than drab miasmic bogs and steamingmudflats. He discarded the idea of chess with Xavier without evenweighing it--he would not have lasted past the fourth move, and both heand the mechanical knew it.
He was reduced finally to limping about the ship on his bandaged foot,searching for some routine task left undone and finding nothing. He evenwent so far as to make a below-decks check on the ship'smatter-synthesizer, an indispensable unit designed for the conversion ofwaste to any chemical compound, and gave it up in annoyance when hefound that all such operational details were filed with infallibleexactness in Xavier's plastoid head.
The return of Stryker and Gibson only aggravated his impatience. He hadexpected them to discover concealed approaches to the maze of bridgingoverhead, tunnelings in the cliff-face to hidden caverns complete withbloodstained altars and caches of sacrificial weapons, or at least someominous sign of preparation among the natives. But there was nothing.
"No more than yesterday," Stryker said. Failure had cost him a share ofhis congenital good-humor, leaving him restless and uneasy. "There'snothing to find, Arthur. We've seen it all."
Surprisingly, Gibson disagreed.
"We'll know what we're after when darkness falls," he said. "But that'sa good twelve hours away. In the meantime, there's a possibility thatour missing key is _outside_ the crater, rather than here inside it."
* * * * *
They turned on him together, both baffled and apprehensive.
"What do you mean, outside?" Farrell demanded. "There's nothing therebut grassland. We made sure of that at planetfall."
"We mapped four Hymenop domes on reconnaissance," Gibson reminded him."But we only examined three to satisfy ourselves that they were empty.The fourth one--"
Farrell interrupted derisively. "That ancient bogey again? Gib, thedomes are _always_ empty. The Bees pulled out a hundred years ago."
Gibson said nothing, but his black-browed regard made Farrell flushuncomfortably.
"Gib is right," Stryker intervened. "You're too young in ColonialReclamations to appreciate the difficulty of recognizing an alien logic,Arthur, let alone the impossibility of outguessing it. I've knockedabout these ecological madhouses for the better part of a century, andthe more I see of Hymenop work, the more convinced I am that we'll neverequate human and Hymenop ideologies. It's like trying to add quantitiesof dissimilar objects and expressing the result in a single symbol; itcan't be done, because there's no possible common denominator forreducing the disparate elements to similarity."
* * * * *
When Farrell kept silent, he went on, "Our own reactions, andconsequently our motivations, are based on broad attributes of love,hate, fear, greed and curiosity. We might empathize with another speciesthat reacts as we do to those same stimuli--but what if that otherspecies recognizes only one or two of them, or none at all? What iftheir motivations stem from a set of responses entirely different fromany we know?"
"There aren't any," Farrell said promptly. "What do you think they wouldbe?"
"There you have it," Stryker said triumphantly. He chuckled, hisgood-nature restored. "We can't imagine what those emotions would belike because we aren't equipped to understand. Could a race dependingentirely on extra-sensory perception appreciate a Mozart quintet or aBotticelli altar piece or a performance of _Hamlet_? You know itcouldn't--the esthetic nuances that make those works great would escapeit completely, because the motives that inspired their creation arebased on a set of values entirely foreign to its comprehension.
"There's a digger wasp on Earth whose female singles out a particularspecies of tarantula to feed her larvae--and the spider stands patientlyby, held by some compulsion whose nature we can't even guess, while thewasp digs a grave, paralyzes the spider and shoves it into the hole withan egg attached. The spider could kill the wasp, and will kill one ofany other species, but it submits to that particular kind without aflicker of protest. And if we can't understand the mechanics of such arelationship between reflexive species, then what chance have we ofunderstanding the logic of an _intelligent_ race of aliens? The resultsof its activities can be assessed, but not the motivations behind thoseactivities."
"All right," Farrell conceded. "You and Gib are right, as usual, and I'mwrong. We'll check that fourth dome."
"You'll stay here with Xav," Stryker said firmly, "while Gib and Icheck. You'd only punish yourself, using that foot."
* * * * *
After another eight-hour period of waiting, Farrell was nearing the endof his patience. He tried to rationalize his uneasiness and came finallyto the conclusion that his failing hinged on a matter of conditioning.He was too accustomed to the stable unity of their team to feelcomfortable without Gibson and Stryker. Isolated from their perpetualbickering and the pleasant unspoken warmth of their regard, he waslonesome and tense.
It would have been different, he knew, if either of the others had beenleft behind. Stryker had his beloved Reclamations texts and hismicrofilm albums of problems solved on other worlds; Gibson had hiscomplicated galactic charts and his interminable chess bouts withXavier....
Farrell gave it up and limped outside, to stand scowling unhappily atthe dreary expanse of swampland. Far down under the reasoning levels ofhis consciousness a primal uneasiness nagged at him, whispering inwordless warning that there was more to his mounting restlessness thansimple impatience. Something inside him was changing, burgeoning instrange and disturbing growth.
A pale suggestion of movement, wavering and uncertain in the eddyingfog, caught his eye. A moment of puzzled watching told him that it wasthe bedraggled young woman they had seen earlier by the lake, and thatshe was approaching the ship timorously and under cover.
"But why?" he wondered aloud, recalling her bovine lack of curiosity."What the devil can she want here?"
A shadow fell across the valley. Farrell, startled, looked up sharply tosee the last of the Falakian sun's magenta glare vanishing below thecrater's southern rim. A dusky forerunner of darkness settled like atangible cloud, softening the drab outlines of bramble thickets andslime pools. The change that followed was not seen but felt, a swellingrush of glad arousal like the joy of a child opening its eyes fromsleep.
To Farrell, the valley seemed to stir, waking in sympathy to his ownrestlessness and banishing his unease.
* * * * *
The girl ran to him through the dusk on quick, light feet, timidityforgotten, and he saw with a pleasant shock of astonishment that she wasno longer the filthy creature he had first seen by the lakeside. She waspretty and nubile, eyes and soft mouth smiling together in a childlikeeagerness that made her at once infinitely desirable and untouchablyinnocent.
"Who are you?" he asked shakily.
Her hesitant voice was music, rousing in Farrell a warm and expectanteuphoria that glowed like old wine in his veins.
"Koaele," she said. "Look--"
Behind her, the valley lay wrapped like a minor paradise in soft pearlymists and luminous shadows, murmurous with the far sound of runningwater and the faint chiming of voices that drifted up from the littleblue lake to whisper back in cadenced echo from the fairy maze ofbridging overhead. Over it all, like a deep, sustained cello note, rosethe muted humming of great fl
ame-winged moths dipping and swaying overbright tropical flowers.
"_Moths?_" he thought. And then, "_Of course._"
The chrysalids under the sod, their eclosion time completed, were cominginto their own--bringing perfection with them. Born in gorgeousiridescent _imago_, they were beautiful in a way that hurt with theyearning pain of perfection, the sorrow that imperfection existed atall--the joy of finally experiencing flawlessness.
An imperative buzzing from the ship behind him made a rude intrusion. Afamiliar voice, polite but without inflection, called from an open port:"Captain Stryker in the scoutboat, requesting answer."
Farrell hesitated. To the girl, who followed him with puzzled,