by Damon Knight
The day dragged wearisomely to a cold end. At dusk the Terrans were very tired; but the Konans seemed perfectly untouched by cold or fatigue, and equally incurious about the state of their visitors. Again, Hanna felt a stab of resentment toward them for their easy mastery of their environment, and wished illogically that one of them would shiver, or drop out and go to sleep, give any indication of something like human endurance. But they continued to sit their tall white horses easily, unhurriedly, apparently untiring.
Still, as she explained to Erring while they tramped back to the shuttle, they had made progress. It appeared that by “they,” the Konans meant the prewar survey team. They had made the Konans not to be with—Hanna thought—something like laser guns or flamethrowers. The Konans called it “flying flame.” All this had happened “many sun-turns” past, but the Konans seemed unable to say how many.
“But what do they want to know?” asked Erring. “Are they afraid we’ll start firing flamethrowers at them too?”
“Oh, I don’t think they’re frightened of us …” Hanna paused, and said at last, uncertainly, “I don’t know what they want. They say they don’t understand—over and over again, that they don’t understand.”
“What—they don’t understand aggression? That would make sense. The report says they’re nonaggressive.”
Hanna hesitated again. It was, as far as it went, a good and probably correct answer. “What did you think, Jon?” she asked finally.
Jon said sullenly, “I don’t think any of this talk is going to get us anywhere. I think we need the Dixon-Ehrmann approach.”
“Which is?”
“The practical nonverbal thing. You live with the people you’re studying twenty-four hours a day, and copy their every movement.”
Hanna was very tired from long hours of concentration, and very cold. The words snapped out before she could stop them. “Well, (a), if you’re going to follow their every movement, you’ll have to talk like crazy, and (b), what sort of a horseman do you think you are? Could you ride one of these bloody great brutes for forty hours at a stretch?”
Erring said brightly, “I wonder if Alissin and Gerry have found anything useful today?”
Alissin and Gerold had achieved nothing in their day’s work but fatigue and frustration; and Biren had conceived a great dislike of Kona. “Nasty place. Feels too big,” she said, cryptically but with decision.
“It can’t feel any bigger than it is, and it’s about the same size as Terra, so what are you babbling about?” said Gerold.
“Didn’t say it was bigger. It just feels bigger.”
Hanna said, “Actually, I know what you mean. It feels as if we can’t handle it. Every time I look at that blasted plain, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get anywhere if I start walking across it. And the people are the same. They’ve been sitting on those horses for a day and a half now, and they don’t even seem to be tired. It’s as if the whole thing’s on a bigger and stronger scale than we are. As if we were trying to talk to angels or something.”
“Back on the old immortality kick, are we?” said Gerold unpleasantly. But Alissin said, ignoring him, “Do you really mean that, Hanna? I mean, have you got any evidence, or are you just saying it?”
A pause; then Hanna said, “Fifty-fifty. It is the way I feel, but there are a few things it would fit in with. This language business —they don’t have a word for ‘die,’ or ‘death,’ or not one that I can find. It must be very rare, if there is one. And the language has hardly changed at all since those tapes were made. That’s odd. Even in a really highly literate society, it should have changed in a hundred and fifty years. And this thing they keep talking about. It must be the time of the first survey, because they keep saying ‘creatures like you,’ and they haven’t been visited since then. But they use ‘we’ all the time when they talk about it, and it really means personal involvement in Konan. They’ve got a different pronoun to mean ‘our group in general.’ And they just are stronger than we are. They’ve been on those horses for a day and a half nonstop, and they don’t look like wanting to rest. And they move faster, and they seem to have such a lot of time to talk, as if they know there’s no hurry at all. Things like that, that I suppose you can explain, but they make a funny impression overall. Why? Have you—?”
Alissin balanced a slide thoughtfully on one finger. “Oh, just a few odd things, as you say. I can’t find any plants with seeds, though it should be autumn-equivalent here. Well, there are lots of ways for plants to reproduce, but I wish I could find traces of some. I mean, if reproduction is at all frequent, there should be traces. And some of the cell structures are odd. I know I haven’t got the proper facilities here, but it does make you wonder.”
“Yes, doesn’t it.”
Gerold said, “When we’ve quite finished the wish-fulfillment, could we possibly get down to possibilities?”
Alissin said tartly, “It’s quite possible, and it’s not wish-fulfilment. Life extension’s been a theoretical possibility since the twentieth century on Terra, and the only reason we haven’t got it now is that when it came to the point of doing it commercially, people apparently weren't willing to risk it.” She added thoughtfully, “They did it by lowering the temperature, too, and this is a coldish planet.”
Gerold said, “You’re just being unscientific about this, Hanna. Are you suggesting these locals are some kind of spirits—don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t rest, don’t shit—”
Alissin said calmly, “We didn’t say anything of the sort. They probably do all those things—though I suppose they might do them at much longer intervals than we expect—but at the moment we simply don’t know. I expect Hanna will find out later.”
Gerold said loudly, “Well, I’ll believe in immortality when I see it.” No one answered him, but Hanna heard Alissin mutter, “You could try opening your eyes.”
On the third day, Jon refused to go out of the shuttle, on the ground that Hanna was making no progress in talking to the Konans, and would make none until she came round to the Dixon-Ehrmann method. Alissin said she would not go out with Gerold because he talked too much. Erring promptly offered to go with Gerold, and Hanna and Alissin set out together. Hanna found herself almost hating the plains, wondering half-savagely if even an Enemy bombardment could have shrivelled their aloof expanses down to a manageable condition.
Today the Konans had moved a little farther from the shuttle. Hanna moved delicately around to asking them why, and was informed by several voices that this was a settlement. Hanna and Alissin looked round them, but could see nothing but a few humps and hollows, evenly covered with the tough Konan grass. The sequence teased up another memory in Hanna’s mind; again, too faint a one for instant reference, but demanding to be shelved for further thought.
In the midst of a long Konan disquisition on the incomprehensibility of the Terran prewar survey, Alissin nudged Hanna’s arm. “Do you know what’s strange about their faces?” she said.
“No.”
“They’re all quite symmetrical.”
Hanna said irritably, “Of course they are. If they only had one eye, maybe we wouldn’t call them humanoids.”
“No, I don’t mean that. It’s what makes them look nonhuman, actually. I mean their faces are perfectly regular. One side’s a mirror image of the other.”
Hanna looked at the Konans, rapt in saying repeatedly, “Why did they cease to be? It cannot be understood.” She saw that Alissin was right. All the faces were as regular as that of a classical statue; it made them look curiously immobile. She thought, Even in little things they are perfect. Not so much as a quirked eyebrow among them. Alissin said, “Biological engineering at some stage, perhaps.”
That day, Hanna gathered that some of the prewar team had died trying to follow the Konans up the mountains (which had bewildered and distressed the Konans a good deal), but that some had died in even more distressing—but unspecified—circumstances. Yes, they said repeatedly, they themselves, t
hese people now talking, had seen and spoken with members of the prewar team—“they who looked and talked like you.” And at that, some of the Konans began to run their fingers up and down their forearms, in a quick tattoo, and the chant became “Like you, like you, little and short and quick like you.” By the end of the day, Hanna’s stomach was aching with tension.
She said to Alissin as they tramped back, “You don’t remember ever reading about people—I think they’re legendary, and I have a feeling it’s old British—who outlived their towns, and lived on for centuries as spirits among overgrown heaps of rubble?”
Alissin said, “Not my field, but you wouldn’t be thinking of the Danaans, would you? Irish? I had a really old micro of Irish legends when I was a kid.”
Hanna nodded slowly. “That would be it. Remind you of anything?”
Alissin indicated the Konans with her chin.
“They were immortal too.”
Alissin said flatly, “Only an analogy.”
When they got back to the shuttle they found Jon holding forth on the Dixon-Ehrmann method as if it were the key to an eternal paradise.
On the fourth day Hanna raised the problem of a report. As she pointed out, they were halfway through their first week on Kona, and the preliminary report on an eight point five priority planet would be expected very shortly after that.
Gerold said shortly, “We can’t file one. Haven’t had any opportunity to move around, so the data’s too limited.”
“That’s silly. We have to put in a report,” said Biren.
Alissin said, “I did once hear of a team that didn’t. They got all their leave cancelled, and were told to get one out double quick. Then they didn’t manage that either.”
“What happened to them?” asked Jon, not quite carelessly. “Oh, they just got told to go back and try again. Well, it was a hell of a planet, and they couldn’t communicate with the locals, and there were all sorts of funny things wrong with the balance of the elements. So they flipped on and off it every month for three years before they finished.”
There was complete silence in the shuttle. Alissin added apologetically, “It was meant to be a funny story, but it was quite true. I looked up the reports on it.”
Everyone looked studiously at the floor. Finally Gerold said, “All right then, we’ll put out a report that it’s a suitable planet as far as we know.”
His words tripped and fell miserably into the general stillness. Hanna and Alissin looked at each other. Both shook their heads, infinitesimally. Gerold said loudly, “All agreed on that?”
Jon said, “Do we all have to write a section as usual?"
“Well, if you think I’m going to use my best forged identiprint just for you—”
“Of course we’ll have to put in a caution about the temperature and so on,” said Erring hastily.
“And what do you mean by ‘and so on’?”
“Well, I do think—”
“Wonderful! What else can you do?”
Hanna said, “You may as well stop squabbling. I won’t contribute to any report like that one, or have my identiprint on it. Alissin, will you—?”
“No, I won’t either.”
Gerold hesitated, decided visibly on bluff, and shouted, “Why not? Give me one good reason why not!”
Hanna felt suddenly detached and exhilarated by the need to speak the clear truth. “You’ve got a lot more than one reason. Look at us—we haven’t been here a week, and we’re all on razor-edges, and you’re willing to send in a false report just to get off the place as quickly as you can. How would you feel if you were a colonist, stuck here for a lifetime? And we know the first survey ran into trouble, and we don’t yet know how, and we think we may be dealing with immortals, or at least incredibly long-lived and hardy people—”
“You’ve got no evidence for that—”
“What about the linguistic evidence? What evidence would you accept if you don’t accept that?”
"Any solid biological stuff—only I notice your tame biologist hasn’t produced any yet, trying to make us believe these local bastards are some kind of spirit, don’t need any source of energy, anything to eat—”
Alissin started to speak, but Hanna, her detachment submerged in anger, was too intent on answering to let her into the interchange. “We haven’t had time to make the necessary communications to carry out biological tests on the Konans and that itself backs up the linguistic evidence for longevity—”
“That's a lie—”
“It’s damn good evidence at the very least—”
“In your mind, perhaps—”
“And yours—”
Suddenly the whole cabinful seemed to be shouting, dividing to take sides for and against Hanna. She shouted above the noise, “And you can’t accept it—”
Gerold looked round for something to throw, found a pile of Alissin’s plastiglas slides, and hurled them straight at Hanna’s face. Hanna ducked, and the slides clattered sharply down the wall in the sudden silence.
Hanna said, “Not to be overdramatic, but do you see what I mean about unusual degrees of tension?”
Gerold said stiffly, “No, I do not.”
“Anyway,” said Alissin, “there’s the food problem. I haven’t found any grain or fruit crops here, and that means importing a lot, at least to start off with. And if Terra had enough resources to do that, we wouldn’t be racing around looking for ideal planets.”
“We can put any reasonable caution in the report. All I object to is this silly talk of immortal locals.”
Erring said, “Gerold, do you have some interest in not believing in immortality?” (That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Erring try to be unkind, thought Hanna uneasily.)
Gerold grinned savagely, and said, “Not half the interest you have in thinking I have,” and added for good measure, “Little group-therapy specialist.”
In the silence, they listened to one another’s breathing, and heard, unwillingly, the faint chanting of the Konans, far over the plain.
On the fifth and sixth days, Jon came out with Hanna again, evidently impelled by the need to write up his preliminary report. “After all,” he said, “they’ll want it pretty soon now, don’t you think?”
Hanna did not reply. The elation of telling Gerold unwelcome truths had worn off long ago. She felt depressed, guilty, and uncertain.
“Of course, you won’t have to write much. The language report from the first survey was so good.”
“I won’t write anything. I told you, I’m not putting in a report. At least not if Gerold writes what I think he will.”
Jon glanced at her uneasily,*and said “Oh, Gerold will be all right. I’ll have a talk with him, shall I?”
No answer. Hanna was thinking, Another thing. On any other planet we’d be out of the shuttle and in tents by now. Even on Achwa we were so tired of the shuttle we went outside as soon as we could. But no one’s even suggested it here. But of course the tents were army guerrilla ones, from the closing stages of the war, with walls providing one-way vision, and excellent transmission of outside sounds. In brief, very good for observation; but not for giving the secure sense of an environment shut out.
“Shall I?” asked Jon again.
“What? Oh yes, sure.” She said, testing, “How about fixing up the tents tonight? Should be all right now.”
Jon stared straight in front of him; he muttered quickly, “Too cold,” then, more loudly, “Shall I try talking to some of the locals today? It’d be easier on you if they were split into two groups. I mean, we might get on quicker.”
“If you think you can manage it,” said Hanna, hardly hearing her own reply. For Jon knew as well as she did that the tents were set to keep a steady temperature of twenty-two degrees inside, in outside temperatures ten times lower than anything they had found on Kona.
Jon was saying indignantly, “Of course I can manage it. I may not have had your experience, but I have been working two years, you know.”
“I’m sorry.” Hanna remembered now that Jon had for many years been the youngest in his child-troop. She wondered how many times, as a little boy, he had had to say “I can do it. I am big enough.”
Whatever his motives, Jon successfully detached a group of Konans from the main body, and worked steadily all the two days, though at the end he had little to report. Hanna was not surprised. She herself had finally concluded that the Konans could not, or would not, tell her any more about the deaths of the first Terran survey, and had turned belatedly to more standard enquiries about Konan life-style. She felt, guiltily, that Gerold had been partly right—they did need to know more about Konan physiology. Yet she herself, engrossed in linguistics, had neglected to make the proper enquiries.
Now, trying to make good the omission, she found again that there was no quick information to be obtained from the Konans. One morning, for instance, she elicited the statement that “We eat many things, of which the grass is one.” But it took her the rest of the day, battling through long discourses on the quality of the grass, and the proper ways of gathering it, to establish that the Konans were actually talking of the plains grass surrounding them, and that they did not eat it every day. And that still left unanswered the questions of how often, and what else, they might eat. She did try, experimentally, to pluck some grass, but though she threw her whole weight against it, not a stalk broke; which only appeared to affirm the perfection of the Konans’ digestive systems.
She and Jon returned to the shuttle on the sixth evening to find Gerold busy writing a cautious but smugly favourable report, from which he occasionally read extracts to the rest of the group. Biren, tinkering with the transmitter, announced that the relief shuttle was expected to land sometime after Kona noon the next day. Gerold said, “Good, they can take this report back, and beam it off right away.” He and Erring and Jon went into a huddle; they talked—irritatingly—too softly for the others to hear the whole conversation, but too loudly to be ignored. Alissin and Biren worked; Hanna sat and worried. It occurred to her for the first time that in raising the subject of immortality, she might well have produced the uneasiness she had used as evidence for her theory. And what other evidence had she? Conversations with a completely alien people whose language she knew only through short-term study? Her own feelings, helped by a dangerously ready facility to draw literary comparisons? I could have made a mistake, she thought. We’ve all been trained so hard to make our decisions quickly, to sum up a planet a month; we’d almost rather make a wrong decision than no decision. What if I’ve built up this tension for nothing? But all the time, the feel of the unyielding planet pressed through the walls of the shuttle at her. She could not forget the great silent plains, and the solid bar of the mountains behind. She wondered suddenly if some of the first survey had died from sheer exhaustion, trying to follow the Konans up the mountains. The plain was bad enough; every day, one tramped until one was tired, and when one turned around, the shuttle looked no distance away in the clear air, and the stretch of grass in front seemed still limitless. What then would it be like to climb a Konan mountain?