Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds

by Joe Haldeman

  I suggested we make it three pairs rather than six loners, but Maria pointed out that two of us really didn’t stand a much better chance against an armed Plathy than one; in either case, the only way we could kill them would be by stealth. Murder. I told her I didn’t think I would be able to do it, and she nodded. Probably thinking that she would have said the same thing a few days ago.

  We stopped for a few minutes to rest on a plateau overlooking the veldt, where Maria pointed out the paths she wanted each of us to take. Herb and Derek would go the most direct route, more or less north, but twining in and out of each other’s path so as to throw off the scent. Gab, being the fastest, would run halfway around the mountain, then make a broad arc north. She would go straight northeast for about half the distance and then cut back; Martin would do the opposite. I was to head due west, straight for the stream, and follow it down, in and out of the water. All of us were to “leave scent” at the places where our paths diverged the most from straight north.

  A compass would have been nice. At night we’d be okay if it didn’t cloud up again, but during the day we’d just have to follow our direction bump through the tall grass. I was glad I had an easy path.

  Not all that easy. The three water bladders went to the ones who would be farthest from the stream, of course. So I had to go a good half day without water. Assuming I didn’t get lost. We divided the food and scrambled down in six different directions.

  Maria

  Where was I? Coming here, we got around the crater lake without incident, but the descent to the shore was more difficult than I had anticipated. It was not terribly steep, but the dense undergrowth of vines and bushes impeded our progress. After two days we emerged on the shore, covered with scratches and bruises. At least we’d encountered no large fauna.

  (By this time I had a great deal of sympathy for the lazybones minority on the Planning Committee who’d contended that we were being overly cautious in putting the base so far from the Plathy island. They’d recommended we put it on this island, with only 80 kilometers of shallow sea separating us from our destination. I’d voted, along with the majority, for the northern mainland, partly out of a boneheaded desire for adventure.)

  What we faced was a chain of six small islands and countless sandbars, in a puddle of a sea that rarely was more than a meter deep. We knew from Garcia’s experience that a boat would be useless. With vine and driftwood we lashed together a raft to carry our weapons and provisions, filled the water jugs, and splashed south.

  It was tiring. The sand underfoot was firm, but sloshing through the shallow water was like walking with heavy weights attached to your ankles. We had to make good progress, though; the only island we were sure had fresh water was 40 kilometers south, halfway.

  We made a good 25 kilometers the first day, dragging our weary bones up onto an island that actually had trees. Marcus and Gab went off in search of water, finding none, while the rest of us gathered driftwood for a fire or tried lackadaisically to fish. Nanci speared a gruesome thing that no one would touch, including her, and nobody else caught anything. Susan and Brenda dug up a couple of dozen shellfish, though, which obediently popped open when roasted. They tasted like abalone with sulfur sauce.

  As we were settling in for the night, we met our first Plathy. She walked silently up to the fire, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to happen upon a dozen creatures from another planet. She was young, only a little larger than me (now, of course, we know she was on her Walk North). When I stood up and tried to say “Welcome, sister” in the female language, she screamed and ran. We heard her splashing away for some time, headed for the next county.

  The next day was harder, though we didn’t have as far to go. Some geological gremlin had raked channels across our path, new features since Garcia’s mission, and several times we had to swim as much as 200 meters before slogging again. (Thank the gods for Gab, who would gamely paddle out toward the horizon in search of solid ground, and for Marcus, who could swim strongly enough one-handed to tow the raft.)

  It was dark by the time we got to the water hole island, and we had lost our coals to an inopportune wave. We were cold, and terminally wrinkled, but so parched from sucking salt water that we staggered around like maniacs, even laughing like maniacs, searching blindly for the artesian well that Garcia’s records said was there. Finally Joanna found it, stumbling in headfirst and coming up choking and laughing. We all gorged ourselves, wallowing. In my case the relief was more than mouth and throat and stomach. At sundown I’d squatted in the shallows and squeezed out piss dark with stringy blood. That scared me. But the fresh water evidently cleared it up.

  There were no more surprises the next two days of island-hopping, except the pleasant one of finding another water source. We couldn’t find any wood dry enough to start a fire with, but it didn’t get all that cold at night.

  Late afternoon of the second day we slogged into the swamp that was the northern edge of the Plathy island. The dominant form of life was a kind of bilious spotted serpent that would swim heavily away as we approached. We were out of food but didn’t go after them. Before nightfall the swamp had given way to rather damp forest, but we found dry dead wood suspended in the branches and spun up a bright fire. We dug up a kind of tuber that Garcia’s group had identified as edible and roasted them. Then tried to sleep in spite of the noises in the darkness. At first light we moved out fast, knowing that in 30 or so kilometers the forest would give way to open grassland.

  The change from forest to veldt was abrupt. We were so happy to be out of the shadow of it—funny that in my present situation I feel exactly the opposite; I feel exposed, and hurry toward the concealment of the thick underbrush and close-spaced heavy trunks. I feel so visible, so vulnerable. And I probably won’t find water until I get there. I’m going to turn off this tooth for a few minutes and try not to scream.

  All right. Let me see. On our way to the Plathys, we walked across the veldt for two days. Food was plentiful; the zamri are like rabbits, but slow. For some reason they like to cluster around the ecivrel bush, a thorny malodorous plant, and all we would have to do to bag several of them was form a loose circle around the bush and move in, clubbing them as they tried to escape. I would like to find one now. Their blood is sweet.

  There’s a Plathy song:

  Sim garlish a sim garlish farla tob—!ka.

  Soo pan du mairly garlish ezda tob—!ka.

  Oe vairly tem se garlish mizga mer—!ka.

  Garlish—!ka. Tem se garlish—!ka.

  Translating it into my own language doesn’t work well:

  Sacar sangre y sacar sangre para vivir—sí.

  En sangre damos muerte y sacamos vida—sí

  Alabamos la sangre de uida que usted nos da—sí.

  Sangre—sí. Sangre de vida—sí.

  Herb, who’s a linguist, did a more accurate rendering in English:

  Take blood and take blood for living—yes.

  In blood we give death and take living—yes.

  We worship the blood of life you give us—yes.

  Blood—yes. Blood of life—yes!

  But there is really no translation. Except in the love of sweet blood.

  I’ve become too much like them. My human instinct is to keep running and, when I can’t run, to hide. But a strong Plathy feeling is to stand in a clearing and shout for them. Let them come for me; let me die in a terrible ecstasy of tearing flesh and cracking bone. Let them suck my soft guts so I can live in them—

  God. I have to stop. You’ll think I’m crazy. Maybe I’m getting there. Why won’t it rain?

  Gabriel

  Turned on the tooth while I sit by the water and rest. Maria wants us to record as much as we can, in case. Just in case.

  Why the hell did I sign up for this? I was going to switch out of xenology and work for an advanced degree in business. But she came on campus recruiting, with all those exotic Earth women. They’re just like women anywhere, big surprise.
Except her. She is truly weird. Listen to this, tooth: I want her. She is such a mystery. Maybe if we live through this I’ll get up the courage to ask. Plumb her, so to speak; make her open up to me, so to speak; get to the bottom of her, so to speak. A nice bottom for a woman of her advanced years.

  How can I think of sex at a time like this? With a woman twice my age. If somebody on a follow-up expedition finds this tooth in a fossilized pile of Plathy shit, please excuse my digression. If I live to have the tooth extracted and played back, I don’t think it will make much difference to my professional reputation. I’ll be writing poetry and clerking for my father’s export firm.

  I ran around the mountain. Collapsed once and slept for I don’t know how long. Got up and ran to the river. Drank too much. Here I sit, too bloated to move. If a Plathy finds me I won’t be a fun meal.

  I was really getting to like them, before they turned on us. They seemed like such vegetables until it started to get cold. Then it was as if they had turned into a different species. With hindsight, it’s no big surprise that they should change again. Or that they should be capable of such terrible violence. We were lulled by their tenderness toward each other and their friendliness toward us, and the subtle alien grace of their dancing and music and sculpture. We should have been cautious, having witnessed the two other changes: the overnight transformation into completely sexual creatures and the slower evolution from lumpish primitives to charming creators, when the snow started to fall.

  The change was obvious after the first heavy snowfall, which left about half a meter of the stuff on the ground. The Plathys started singing and laughing spontaneously. They rolled up their maffas and stored them in a cave and began playing in the snow—or at least it seemed like play, they were so carefree and childlike about it. Actually, they were building a city of snow.

  The individual buildings, lacules, were uniform domes built up from blocks of snow. Maria called them igloos, after a similar primitive structure on Earth, and the name stuck. Even some of he Plathys used it.

  There were twenty-nine domes arranged in a circle, eventually connected by tunnels as the snow deepened. The inside of the circle was kept clear, the snow being constantly shoveled into the spaces between the domes. The net result was a high circular wall that kept the wind out. Later we learned it would also keep people in.

  They had a fire going most of the time in the middle of the circle, which served as a center for their daytime activities: music, dance, tumbling, athletic competition, and storytelling (which seemed to be a kind of fanciful history combined with moral instruction). Even with the sun up, the temperature rarely got above freezing, but the Plathys thrived in the cold. They would sit for hours on the ice, watching the performances, wearing only their kilts. We wore leggings and boots, jackets, and hats. The Plathys would only dress up if they had to go out at night (which they often did, for reasons they couldn’t or wouldn’t explain to us), when the temperature dropped to forty or fifty below.

  I went out at night a couple of times, but I didn’t go far. Too easy to get lost. If it was clear you could see the ring of igloos ghostly in the starlight, but if there was any weather you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face.

  The igloos were surprisingly warm, though the only source of heat was one or two small oil lamps, plus metabolism. That metabolism also permeated everything with the weird smell of Plathy sweat, which resembled rotten bananas. Our own dome got pretty high with the aroma of unwashed humans; Plathys would rarely visit for more than a minute or two.

  Seems odd to me that the Plathys didn’t continue some of their activities, like music and storytelling, during the long nights. Some of them did routine housekeeping chores, mending and straightening, while others concentrated on sculpture. The sculptors seemed to go into a kind of trance, scraping patiently away at their rock or wood with teeth and claws. I never saw one use a tool, though they did carve and whittle when making everyday objects. I once watched an elder through the whole process. He sorted through a pile of rocks and logs until he found a rock he liked. Then he sat back and studied it from every angle, staring for ore than an hour before beginning. Then he closed his eyes and started gnawing and scratching. I don’t think he opened his eyes until he was done working. When I asked him if he had opened his eyes, he said, “Of course not.”

  Over the course of six nights he must have spent about sixty hours on the stone. When he finished, it was a delicate lacy abstraction. The other Plathys came by, one at a time, to compliment him on it—the older ones offering gentle criticism—and after everyone had seen it, he threw it outside for the children to play with. I retrieved it and kept it, which he thought was funny. It had served its purpose, as he had served his purpose for it: finding its soul (its “face inside”) and releasing it.

  I shouldn’t talk about sculpture; that’s Herb’s area of expertise. The assignment Maria gave me was to memorize the patterns of the athletic competitions. (I was an athlete in school, twice winning the Hombre de Hierro award for my district.) There’s not much to say about it, though. How high can you jump, how fast can you run, how far can you spit. That was an interesting one. They can spit with great force. Another interesting one was wood-eating. Two contestants are given similar pieces of wood—kindling, a few centimeters wide by half a meter long—and they crunch away until one has consumed the whole thing. Since the other doesn’t have to continue eating afterward, it’s hard to say which one is the actual winner. (When I first saw the contest, I thought they must derive some pleasure from eating wood. When I asked one about it, though, he said it tastes terrible and hurts at both ends. I can imagine.)

  Another painful sport is hitting. It’s unlike boxing in that there’s no aggression, no real sense of a fight. One contestant hits the other on the head or body with a club. Then he (or she) hands the club to the opponent, who returns the blow precisely. The contest goes on until one of them drops, which can take several hours.

  You ask them why they do this and most of them will not understand—“why” is a really difficult concept for Plathys; they have no word for it—but when you do get a response it’s on the order of “This is part of life.” Which is uninformative but not so alien. Why do humans lift heavy weights or run till they drop or beat each other senseless in a ring?

  Oh my God. Here comes one.

  Maria

  Finally, water. I wish there were some way to play back this tooth and edit it. I must have raved for some time, before I fell unconscious a few kilometers from here. I woke up with a curious zamri licking my face. I broke its neck and tore open its throat and drank deeply. That gave me the strength to get here. I drank my fill and then moved one thousand steps downstream, through the cold water, where I now sit concealed behind a bush, picking morsels from the zamri’s carcass. When I get back to Earth I think I’ll become a vegetarian.

  This is very close to the place where we met our first cooperative Plathy. There were three of them, young; two ran away when they spotted us, but the third clapped a greeting, and when we clapped back he cautiously joined us. We talked for an hour or so, the other two watching from behind trees

  They were from the Tumlil family, providentially; the family that had hosted Garcia’s expedition. This male was too young to actually remember the humans, but he had heard stories about them. He explained about the Walk North. In their third or fourth year, every Plathy goes off on his own, going far enough north to get to where “things are different.” He brings back something odd. The elders then rule on how powerful the oddness of the thing is, and according to that power, the youngster is assigned his preliminary rank in the tribe.

  (They know that this can eventually make the difference between life and death. The higher up you start, the more likely you are to wind up an elder. Those who aren’t elders are allowed to die when they can no longer provide for themselves; elders are fed and protected indefinitely.)

  Most of them travel as far as the crater lake island, but a few
go all the way to the northern mainland. That was the ambition of the one we were talking to. I interrogated him as to his preparations for a boat, food, and water, and he said a boat would be nice but not necessary, and the sea was full of food and water. He figured he could swim it in three hands of days, twelve. Unless he was chaffing me, they can evidently sleep floating and drink saltwater. That will complicate our escape, if they keep pursuing.

  I take it that the three of them were cheating a bit by banding together. He repeatedly stressed that they would be going their separate ways as soon as they got to the archipelago. I hope they stayed together the whole way. I’d hate to face that forest alone. Maybe I’ll have to, though.

  Before he left he gave us directions to his family, but we’d decided to at least start out with a different one from Garcia’s in the interests of objectivity and to see how much information traveled from family to family. Little or none, it turned out. Our Camchai family knew about the Tumlils, since they shared the same area of veldt during the late summer, but none of the Tumlils had mentioned that ten hairless dwarfs had spent one winter with them.

  After two days of relatively easy travel, we found the Camchais in their late-summer habitat, the almost treeless grassland at the foot of the southern mountains. Duplicating the experience of Garcia’s group, we found ourselves unexcitedly welcomed into the tribe: we were shown where the food was, and various Plathys scrounged up the framework and hides to cobble together a maffa for us. Then we joined the family in their typical summertime activity, sitting around.

  After a few weeks of trying to cajole information out of them, we witnessed the sudden explosion of sexual activity described earlier. Then they rested some more, five or six days, and began to pull up stakes.