by Jerry
Virtually all wild animals feared fire. It seemed reasonable that savages who had not yet learned to control and use it would also fear it. By kindling a bonfire, Ngasik hoped to get his captors so confused and excited that they wouldn’t notice if he bolted into the forest.
Kindling a bonfire might not be easy. Because of the watchdog, he would have to do it right in the middle of the floor. There was practically no fuel available—unless the fungus itself burned easily, which Ngasik was a little afraid it might. But it might not take much. He could spare some of the uncomfortable clothes the Reska wore here as protection against the alien environment . . .
His lighter worked well. Darkness had barely become complete outside when the small pile of fabrics burst into leaping orange flames, crackling loudly and filling the room with smoke. For a tense moment Ngasik thought the floor was going to catch, but then he saw it turning dark and wet around the fire. The watchdog leaped up, yelping wildly, and shut the dark membranes over its eyes. It glared menacingly at Ngasik, then glanced at the fire and dashed noisily out the front door.
Ngasik tried to follow, but as he started the painful crawl through the unyielding guard bushes he met several tsapeli on the run. He backed into the room, choking on the smoke, and stood aside as two of the tsapeli came in, following by a lumbering, armor-skinned quadruped with a huge pointed snout. At a signal from one tsapeli, the quadruped walked up and methodically sprayed the fire with white foam from its snout. The other tsapeli walked—walked, not ran—around the fire and did something to the still-motionless bird’s head. Immediately the bird flapped its stubby wings and moved onto the tsapeli’s shoulder. Almost without stopping, the tsapeli continued around the dying fire. He stopped in front of Ngasik, looked straight at him and gabbled something.
The bird squawked, “That’s a no-no.”
Ngasik blinked, then shrugged. If one intelligent species here, why not another, physically capable of both tsapeli and Reska speech and for some reason willing to act as a go-between? But then, how had it learned Resorka?
Ngasik hoped to get a chance to speak to the bird alone. For now, he would have to be content with conversing through it.
The Resorka-speaking bird was only one of two surprises of the moment. Ngasik commented wryly on the other. “You guys didn’t seem exactly terrified of my fire.”
The bird chattered like a tsapeli, then the tsapeli himself chattered for a while, then the bird spoke again in Resorka. “No. We don’t use it any more—outlawed it long ago as dangerous and unnecessary—but that’s hardly cause for irrational fear of it. When one gets started accidentally, we put it out and go about our business. Yours wasn’t accidental.”
The other tsapeli said something which the bird didn’t translate and went back to the dark comer where they had dumped their dead—or at least mortally wounded—compatriot. The one with the bird on his shoulder went along.
Ngasik didn’t, since nobody dragged him and he had seen more than enough of what was in that comer. He looked toward the door and toyed with the idea that this might be his chance to escape. Then the armor-plated animal, finished putting out the fire, lumbered out. The bushes parted for it and Ngasik saw his watchdog pacing back and forth outside. He dropped the idea of running for now. He started mulling over what the bird had said about not using fire “anymore,” but then he was startled by a third tsapeli voice behind him.
He whirled and stared. A tsapeli with a familiar white crescent on his face stood in front of the niche in the wall, chattering away with the others. His fur was wet, but he looked unscarred and in robust health. Ngasik recognized dizzily that his idea of what went on in that sack was in for some drastic revision.
The three tsapeli stood talking incomprehensibly, with frequent obvious allusions to Ngasik, for some minutes. Meanwhile another came in the front door and offered Ngasik a tray of uncooked local food. Ngasik looked at it with a mixture of disgust and hunger, noticed that this was the same tsapeli who had introduced him to the leech and the watchdog, and decided not to eat. He had found a potable spring in a comer, which the watchdog was willing to share with him, and for a while that would be enough.
The one with the food put the tray down but stayed where he was. He said something to the others and they came over to join him. The wet one with the crescent stepped forward and scrutinized Ngasik with the aid of his eyelights. When he finished, he looked into Ngasik’s face, his eyes still glowing dull green, and demanded—through the bird—“Where did you creatures come from?”
Ngasik resented being called a creature by this creature, but nevertheless started trying to phrase an answer that would convey a modicum of truth to these primitives. “You’ve seen the stars in the sky?” he began. “Each of them is a giant ball of fire, very far away. Around many of them revolve worlds, like yours. My people come from such a world, so far away it takes light almost seventy years to get here from there—”
“O.K., O.K.!” the crescent-faced tsapeli interrupted. “Another planet of another star. Why not just say so? You’ve got it backwards, anyway—the stars go around the planets. Anyway ours does.”
“How do you know that?” Ngasik asked.
The tsapeli jabbered among themselves. Finally one of them announced authoritatively, “It is taught by our philosophers. As for planets associated with other stars, we’re not sure there are such things. Yet I suppose it is reasonable that if our sun goes around a planet, others could, too. Although they would have to be exceedingly far away, since we can’t see such motion . . .”
“I said ours was seventy light-years away. That’s pretty far.”
“That’s confusing, too. How can light take time to go anywhere? Vision is instantaneous. Anyway, suppose we buy your story. Then how did you get here?” Ngasik groaned. How could he possibly hope to explain space warp to beings with no technology at all—beings who thought light traveled instantaneously? He could remember the concise rote definitions given to young Reska during dlazol, but even they would help little. Some of the words probably were not even translatable. But it was all he could do.
“Our ships,” he began, “bend space around themselves to provide more convenient geodesics . . .”
Mild furor broke out among the tsapeli. As Ngasik had expected, not much was getting through. The remainder of the night’s interrogation was a spectacular exercise in futility, one big conversational impasse with only a few welcome leaks. But though little was accomplished, it went on until a couple of hours before dawn.
When the tsapeli finally left, and the watchdog came back in, Ngasik fought down his desire for sleep. Now was his chance to talk to the “parrot.” He moved close to its perch and whispered, “Are you a prisoner of theirs, too?”
But the bird just spouted a tsapeli sentence of the same length and waited for a reply, though no tsapeli was present. Ngasik gave up and went to sleep, despite the renewed howling outside.
The parrot understood nothing. All it could do was translate.
Ngasik’s morning call came later than expected. Kirlatsu, agitated by the events of yesterday and this morning, was tremendously relieved when he finally heard it. He listened with disappointment as Ngasik told how his fire trick had flopped, but he hardly heard the details. He was too brimming with his own startling news. As soon as he felt an opening in the conversation, he burst out, “Ngasik, there is intelligent life on the planet!”
“Oh, really?” Ngasik said calmly. “Do tell.”
Kirlatsu did. ‘ ‘Yesterday morning we found some new things growing on the ground, mushroom-shaped with flat tops that turn out to be loudspeakers. They started talking to us!”
“Hm-m-m? What did they say?”
“You certainly are taking this calmly,” Kirlatsu observed.
“Sorry. Afraid I’m getting blasé in my old age. Well, what did the mushrooms have to say for themselves?”
“A lot of it was gibberish at first, but it improved. When we got over the first shock and started ans
wering them, they seemed to learn from what we said and changed their approach accordingly. The slant, that is, the way they presented it. As for the content, they seemed to know what they wanted to say and they weren’t going to be swayed from it. The gist of it was that we don’t belong here and we’d better get off the continent or something terrible will happen to us.”
“Like what?”
“They’re very vague on that. They also had the cheery news that if we do leave this continent and go to another one we’ll probably run into the same kind of threats, but that’s our problem. Then this morning they changed their tune. Instead of the continent, now they want us to get off the planet. They demand an immediate promise to that effect, and convincing evidence that we’re starting to carry it out.”
“Aha!” Ngasik said suddenly. “I’m beginning to see the light, I think.”
“Huh?”
“Wait. You finish your story first. What was Tsardong-li’s reaction?”
“He said he wasn’t going to be bullied by a toadstool, and stubbed his toe kicking the nearest one. What did you mean by ‘aha’ ?”
“I think I’m starting to see connections. You say they switched from ‘continent’ to ‘planet’ this morning. Well, last night I was talking to some of the tsapeli through a bird they have that can translate between tsapeli and Resorka. The one that was so demolished in the fight—he came out of that bag of worms healed instead of eaten—asked me where we came from. They had a little trouble swallowing the idea that we were from a planet of a distant star, but I think they finally did. And this morning your mushrooms are talking planets instead of continents. Sounds suspiciously like your mushrooms are just propagandists planted there by the tsapeli and kept up to date by them.”
“That’s a bit much. Still, how did any of them learn our language? And can they do anything more than threaten?”
“I don’t know. As for the language, they must have had spies. The mimic-beetles, maybe? I just know I’m starting to think there’s more here than meets the eye.”
“So is Dzukarl. He’s about ready to order the sirla off the planet, but Tsardong-li’s standing pat on the letter of the law—which, as he points out, makes no provision for gabby mushrooms. But Dzukarl’s getting plenty nervous. Since your fire didn’t faze them, are you ready to have us try to rescue you?”
Ngasik hesitated briefly before answering, “No, I still think it’s too risky. I don’t have any more ideas to try just now, and I’d sure like to get out of here—the eyestrain’s something fierce. But unless you have something real clever and foolproof all worked out, I think I’m safer biding my time than trying anything rash.”
When Ngasik’s inquisitors—the Leechkeeper and Crescentface—returned at dusk, they seemed to exude exasperation. Crescentface opened the conversation with, “Why haven’t your people responded to our ultimatum?”
Thereby pretty well confirming Ngasik’s suspicion about the mushrooms. The tsapeli were the free agents here—probably the only free agents. Deal successfully with them and problems like birds and mushrooms would be solved in the bargain.
Ngasik laughed humorlessly. “I can hardly say, seeing how much contact with them you’ve allowed me. But one reason might be that you haven’t given them any reason why they should leave.”
“But they must!” the Leechkeeper said emphatically. Ngasik noted with mild surprise that they didn’t seem to think it odd that he knew what the ultimatum was. “Can’t they see that? Before they . . . you . . . came, everything was normal. All nature was in harmony. Your coming introduced a clashing note. You brought discord and destruction. If you stay it will just get worse. Everything will . . . collapse—” His voice drifted off and his tail twitched nervously. Ngasik could see that he realized he was not making himself clear.
Ngasik could sympathize somewhat with that frustration, but that didn’t change the fact that the Leechkeeper’s plea sounded like nothing more than superstitious fear of the vaguest kind. There was nothing in it substantial enough for Ngasik to seize on and try to clarify. He said, “I’m sorry. But I could never persuade them to leave on the basis of that. Tsardong-li is a hard-boiled egg. He’d have to have neat, specific, compelling reasons, succinctly phrased and preferably expressed in cash terms to the nearest decimal.”
“There are compelling reasons!” the Leechkeeper insisted. “I just don’t know how to explain them to you. I don’t think the translator is equipped—” He gave up. Ngasik recalled his own attempts to tell where he had come from, and how, and for a moment he felt sure he understood the Leechkeeper’s feeling. Perhaps there really were reasons why the Reska produced far-reaching disturbances here. Perhaps even Tsardong-li could be moved by them—if he could be told, to his satisfaction, what they were. But if he couldn’t there was no chance.
All Ngasik could do was to repeat, “I’m sorry. Maybe the danger isn’t as great as you think. Surely we can’t be that terrible a threat to you. We haven’t even—”
Suddenly—to the momentary confusion of the translator-parrot—Crescentface interrupted with a fierce stamp of his foot and lashing of his tail. “The danger is real,” he said hotly, “and we haven’t overestimated it. If we can’t make you understand it, that’s too bad. We meant you no harm and we hoped to avoid it, but we have no choice left. We don’t make threats we can’t follow up. Our warnings were simple statements of fact.” Then he switched to his own language, untranslated, for five seconds, and stamped angrily out, emitting a series of siren screams as he passed through the door.
Ngasik was left alone with the Leechkeeper, hopelessly confused and for the first time actually fearful of what was happening. He asked the Leechkeeper, “What’s the matter with him? Where’s he going?”
The Leechkeeper said only, “They were warned. You can’t expect us to sit idle and watch our way of life be destroyed.”
An unprecedentedly chilling chorus of howls had already started outside, some of them just outside the door. Ngasik still didn’t know what kind of animals produced the howls, though he had heard them often and had seen many animals, but suddenly he was practically positive they were instruments of long-distance communication for the tsapeli. Something was being plotted out there. Under the howls, briefly, he faintly heard a buzzing of wings, far smaller and faster than the razor-beaked birds that had attacked the Reska the night he was captured.
He protested, “But nobody’s trying to destroy your way of life! Listen—”
The Leechkeeper interrupted dully, “Whether you kill us maliciously or accidentally, we’re just as dead.”
Ngasik tried to explain that there was no reason to believe any such thing was going to happen. Privately, he wasn’t so sure. Even as he talked, he remembered his pavement-encrusted home planet and how different it was now from the wilderness most of it had been a few centuries earlier. He himself had chosen space and wild planets in preference to the noise and pollution that came with the comforts of home. It could happen here, too—not overnight, of course.
Just minutes later, he was interrupted by the sound of huge wings outside. The Leechkeeper said, “Come with me,” and went through the door with the parrot still on his shoulder. Ngasik hesitated a moment and then followed. He really had no more than a fleeting illusion of a choice.
The Leechkeeper led him a few dozen feet to a clearing tightly hemmed in by trees. The full moon hanging above the clearing showed an enormous “bird” on the ground, wings partly spread and filling a great deal of the clearing. The bird was leaning awkwardly forward, and Crescentface was climbing into a deep pouch just below its throat. The Leechkeeper indicated that Ngasik should climb in next to him. Ngasik hesitated, but only until Crescentface gave a siren burst and the watchdog came charging from among the trees. Finally the Leechkeeper climbed in and slipped something in the parrot’s mouth.
Ngasik, trying to get used to the excessive warmth and snug fit of the pouch, which came up to his chin when he stood full-length in it, asked his ts
apeli escorts, “Where are we going?”
Crescentface said, “To the capital.”
“Capital?” Ngasik echoed sharply. “Of what?”
“The continent.” And then the parrot went limp. The Leechkeeper tucked it down inside the pouch and shouted something. The big bird leaned back, raising its passengers several feet, and started flapping its expansive wings. All three passengers stood with their heads above the pouch, watching the moonlit clearing fall below. Then they hung between the stars and the dark trees, rapidly gaining speed and altitude.
Ngasik, for the first time really shocked by events, took out his radio and tried frantically to get a call through to Kirlatsu. The tsapeli were watching, of course, but at least they couldn’t understand what he said with the parrot drugged. He wanted somebody of the sirla to know what was happening.
But no answer came.
Kirlatsu heard, but was quite unable to answer. The disease which had started raging through the Reska camp only minutes earlier, striking with terrifying suddenness and simultaneity, had just got to him. He was in the initial stage of severe nausea and violent muscle spasms, and had no idea how he would be in ten minutes. Some were already dead; others were still passing through a varied succession of agonizing symptoms. A few seemed to be making a partial recovery already, and still fewer, immune or at least delayed in their reaction, had not yet been struck.
And Ngasik’s fading voice from Kirlatsu’s radio was saying, “They were behind the mushrooms’ threats, and they insist they weren’t kidding. Don’t know what they mean, but you’d better watch out.
Thanks for the advice, Kirlatsu thought wryly. Gradually he began to feel better, passing into a phase characterized by great, but finite, weakness and misery. But by the time he was able to reach and use his radio, Ngasik was out of range.