by Jerry
There was no point in even attempting a reply now. Later—if he lived long enough—Kirlatsu could build a new transmitter powerful enough to reach Ngasik’s handset, and a receiver capable of picking Ngasik’s weak signal out of overwhelming noise. The techniques were routine but would take time, and Kirlatsu was in no condition to even start them now.
Instead he called Dzukarl, aboard the Tsulan, and gasped out the essentials of what had happened to Ngasik. He finished with a personal comment. “I’m afraid you were right. They are dangerous. We should have listened to their . . .” He heard motions inside the ship that sounded like somebody getting ready to come out. “Don’t come out!” he warned quickly. “There’s . . . sickness out here. Or do you have it on the ship, too?”
“None that I know,” Dzukarl said.
Kirlatsu started to feel a new pounding sensation in his eyes and ears. “It struck suddenly,” he explained. “Just a few minutes ago. It sounds silly, but . . . Ngasik said the tsapeli were repeating their threats just before it happened.” The pain was getting worse. Kirlatsu just hoped this would pass like the first painful phase. He added, “Some of us are dead already. Keep the ship sealed.”
Dzukarl snapped, “Is Tsardong-li alive?” Kirlatsu strained to see. The boss had fallen just a few yards away, but Kirlatsu couldn’t tell whether he was alive or not. Dzukarl repeated his question more loudly.
Kirlatsu said weakly, “I don’t know.” Then he saw Tsardong-li’s arm creeping out toward his own radio, reaching it, snapping it on, then lying exhausted from the effort.
“Yes,” Tsardong-li said, just loud enough for his radio to hear.
“Listen,” the Arbiter said, “I’m telling you once more: take your sirla off this planet before it’s too late. We’ll bring you aboard and take you home in quarantine under expert medical care.”
Tsardong-li found strength to snarl, “No! I’m not going to be beat that easily. I have my own medics.” (If any of them are still alive, Kirlatsu thought sourly.) “And I’m still not convinced that anything here comes under your jurisdiction.”
Dzukarl muttered something under his breath. “If it doesn’t,” he said aloud, “it’s high time it did. Whether the tsapeli are a legally civilized race or not, messing with them is like playing with fire. Tsardong-li, you’re about to become a precedent. Stay if you insist. I’m rushing a full report on the situation here back to Reslaka. When I come back, I’ll have a warrant to take everybody who’s still alive off here. You won’t gain anything except a few more weeks of this and making me waste some fuel.”
He broke contact. A mushroom midway between Kirlatsu and Tsardong-li asked, “Do I understand correctly that one group of you is leaving as requested—but plans to return?”
Kirlatsu, annoyed and disgusted, grunted. Had he been in more articulate shape, the grunt would have been a select morsel of Resorka profanity, but the mushroom took it for assent. It said, “I wouldn’t advise that.”
That was all Kirlatsu heard, for already the Tsulan was readying its engines. Moments later it flashed away into the night sky.
The big bird flew for hours, and for all Ngasik knew, it might have covered hundreds of miles. In its initial climb it rapidly reached such a speed that the passengers could no longer stand the wind in their faces and took refuge completely inside the pouch. Judging from feel, the bird must have early climbed into a fast stream and just ridden it without exertion for most of the trip. Then the wind on an exposed face might not have been too severe, but the temperature would have been. There was enough heat loss through the outer wall at those altitudes to make Ngasik begin to appreciate the bird’s body heat.
Finally he felt a strong sensation of descent and deceleration. The tsapeli at his sides stood up and stuck their heads out the top of the pouch. Ngasik followed suit. The wind that hit his face was cold and strong, but a welcome relief after being cramped in the dark warmth of the passenger pouch for so long.
The sky was already beginning to redden with approaching dawn, and visibility was far better for diurnal eyes than when they took off. The Leechkeeper pointed with apparent pride to a region off to the right, making noises which did Ngasik little good without the parrot’s help. But he did gather that that area was the “capital.”
It was a plateau rimmed by steep slopes. Gray morning mists swirled skyward from a lake sunk in the middle of it. From the air, the forests which covered it looked indistinguishable from those around the sirla encampment. On the ground, after the big bird landed in a small clearing near the lake, Ngasik recognized minor differences in vegetation, but only minor ones. The “capital” was just virtually unbroken forest like all the other temperate parts of the planet.
The tsapeli led Ngasik past two of the fungoid “houses” and stopped at the third one. The interior was a single room, smaller than his previous prison, and with no extra doors or furniture other than a familiar luminous watchdog. The tsapeli indicated that he was to stay and then left, hurrying to their lodgings before the full daylight.
Ngasik, tired after the long, uncomfortable flight on an empty stomach, fell asleep almost immediately. He woke several times during the day and tried the radio, but always without success.
Night, of course, brought visitors. Crescentface and the Leechkeeper, with the parrot on his shoulder, entered first, followed by a large stranger with more of an easygoing air than any of the other tsapeli Ngasik had met. The stranger carried a closed container, evidently carved from some fruit, under one arm. A strip of skin shaved bare above his upper lip created an effect that struck Ngasik as whimsically comical.
Crescentface gestured elaborately toward the stranger and introduced him. The parrot translated everything except the unpronounceable name, which had some resemblance to an improbable consonant cluster: “His Honor, Bdwdlsplg, First Person of the National Assembly of Sorcerers.”
Bdwdlsplg wrinkled his upper lip in a way that Ngasik interpreted as a smile of sorts. “I’m afraid the bird didn’t render my title very well,” he apologized. “I gather it isn’t really very translatable. Fortunately it’s not really very important, either. My pleasure to meet you.” He uncovered the container he carried and held it out to Ngasik. “You must be hungry. You’ll find this nutritious and, I hope, palatable.” This time Ngasik took the food—not because he was put at ease by Bdwdlsplg’s relative suavity, but simply because he had decided that for some reason the tsapeli considered him rather special. Maybe it was nothing more than the fact that he was the one bird in the hand supposed to be worth several elsewhere. Whatever the cause, they seemed unlikely to murder him—yet, anyway. His decision was also influenced, of course, by a hunger that had become overpowering.
The container held some fruit and a few small animals, none of them cooked. Yet some of them tasted remarkably as if they had been cooked. There were also a couple of smaller containers, one containing a thin liquid and the other a sort of pudding. Ngasik was about to try the pudding when he noticed several of the little white arthropods he had seen in clearings lodged in its surface.
Bdwdlsplg saw him staring at them and explained, “They make the pudding for us. It’s our main staple crop, and the bug colonies plant it, take care of it, andharvest it, thereby saving us all that trouble. They convert it to this form, and all we have to do is gather it from their hives. Very satisfying form of agriculture. Naturally the pudding always has a few of the bugs scattered through it, so rather than pick them out we just bred them for flavor.”
Ngasik nodded numbly and tasted it. Actually, it wasn’t bad. His upbringing included a mild prejudice against bugs in his food, but several days of fasting made that easy to overcome. He settled down to eating Bdwdlsplg’s gifts without complaint.
“Now,” said Bdwdlsplg, “to business. We’re going to be asking you a good many questions. Before we start, do you have any you’d like to ask us? We’ll be glad to answer—within reason.”
“Yes,” Ngasik responded immediately and with renewed i
rritation. “What happened to my shipmates? And don’t tell me nothing did. I have my own . . . er . . . magical . . . ways of knowing that something did.”
Bdwdlsplg wrinkled his lips again and made some noises that might have been laughter. “Your magic isn’t as impressive as you might think. I’ll admit we don’t understand all the details, any more than you understand everything you’ve seen here. But it’s pretty obvious that your technology is built on applying the fundamental principles of nature—the ones you shouldn’t even have to understand—from scratch. Trying to imitate in a few years what nature has developed over millions, instead of just learning to use it and build on it. What a colossally obtuse way to try to build a civilization—when evolution has already done most of the work for you, and better than you’ll ever do it yourself!”
Hold on! Ngasik thought. Who’s looking down on whose civilization? You’re the savages here . . . aren’t you? He said coldly, “It’s served us well. What about my shipmates—or don’t you want to answer?”
“Oh, I’ll answer. Are you through eating? Your friends, I regret, have contracted a particularly virulent disease, custom tailored for them. You contributed, by the way—the fluid sample Syglgdm took from you showed us what was needed.” Ngasik remembered the leech, but found the possibility of doing such a thing—and the implications of what else the tsapeli could do—a bit much to assimilate all at once. For now he accepted it and asked, “Why?”
“A last resort. They were offered a chance to leave unharmed. It was necessary for them to leave because they were disrupting the local life patterns.”
“How? Mining a few minerals, harvesting a few plants? I can’t believe that what little we took could have any large-scale, long-range harmful effects.”
“The arrival of a second ship strongly suggested that things would get worse before they got better.”
That Ngasik could not deny. “If you would confront us directly—explain the difficulty—maybe we could negotiate.”
“There are no concessions for us to make. You don’t understand the delicacy of the situation. The emergence of intelligence naturally tends to unbalance the—ecology. Do you have that word?” Bdwdlsplg had hesitated to use it, but it came through translation all right. Ngasik nodded, and Bdwdlsplg went on, “Presumably your odd devices did; certainly our tailored life forms did. Restoring and maintaining a viable balance was a hard-earned accomplishment. The new balance is so delicate, so precarious, that we have to be extremely careful about introducing new forms. The very presence of an unplanned alien element here, even quite a small one, could quite conceivably precipitate chaos.
“We realize that you probably intend no such thing, but you quite literally threaten our entire way of life. Therefore, we can’t tolerate your presence. If you won’t go willingly, and promptly, we’re forced to take extreme measures. Exterminate those who are here, deter survivors who might want to come later. All without personal malice.”
Part of Ngasik, even with his superficial acquaintance with ecology, could see their viewpoint. What they said might be literally true. But still, those were his shipmates, his sirla, being exterminated!
That issue was too big and confusing to grasp on the spur of the moment. He kept tossing it around mentally while a detached part of his mind asked numbly, “You say you don’t even need to know the laws of physics and chemistry and—”
The translation evidently wasn’t getting through. Bdwdlsplg interrupted, “I guess those are the ones. But we’re just now beginning to see that maybe there are times when it would be nice to have them.”
“But how—”
Bdwdlsplg held up one hand, palm forward, and wrinkled his shaved lip again. “It’s my turn to ask questions now. You say you’re from the stars.
Dzukarl, under quarantine aboard the Tsulan and miserable enough just from his trembling weakness and horrible itching, winced at the scowl on Aingao’s face on his phonescreen. Aingao, as Chairman of the Overgovemment of Reslaka, with jurisdiction transcending all sirla and geographic units, was not one to be offended lightly. He glared out of the screen at the Arbiter and demanded, “You’re sure the ship was fully sealed?”
Dzukarl gulped. “Yes, sir. For several hours before the outbreak in the sirla camp. Since the onset was so sudden in the camp but seemed to miss us altogether, we assumed the disease-causing agent arrived suddenly and worked almost at once. Maybe we were wrong. I can hardly imagine the pathogen getting through the Tsulan’s seals. But it obviously got aboard some time and struck while we were at space.”
“Hm-m-m. I gather you haven’t made much progress toward isolating the germ and finding a cure?”
“No, sir. One of our medical officers died almost immediately. The other seems to be immune and has been working very diligently to get a handle on the disease. As soon as we landed he had additional, highly sophisticated, instruments sent aboard through a sterilizing chamber to help him.”
“What has he learned so far?”
Dzukarl lowered his eyes from the screen. “Er . . . very little, sir. Actually, there’s no lead at all yet.” He added hastily, “But I’m sure something will turnup. Meanwhile, there is a sirla in a very ticklish spot with more or less intelligent natives on a world they are trying to exploit. One man has been captured. And . . . er . . . there is a remote possibility that the plague is a biological weapon used by the natives.”
“What?” Aingao almost shouted.
“I’m afraid you heard me, sir. I can hardly accept it myself, but the aborigines were making threats shortly before the plague struck, to the effect that something unpleasant would happen if the Reska didn’t get off the planet forthwith.”
Aingao frowned. “Aborigines talking about getting off planets? Forgive me, Dzukarl, but that hardly sounds consistent.”
Dzukarl shook his head miserably. “I know it’s confusing, sir. I’m confused myself.
But let’s figure it out later. Right now, I believe it’s urgent that Sirla Tsardong be taken off that planet—and kept off. I tried to persuade Tsardong-li, but he refused. Said there was no developed race there so I had no basis for authority. Technically, he’s right. But I think the case is special. I request a warrant giving me special authority to order removal.”
Aingao chewed on his upper lip, pondering the request. Dzukarl elaborated on it: “Moreover, sir, I believe the probable urgency is extreme. Tunnel ships are too slow because of acceleration and deceleration time. And there will likely be considerable danger upon arrival. I would like to return by warp ship, and take a sizable armed division with me.”
Aingao groaned. “I’m afraid I find your requests basically reasonable. But the expense of using a warp ship just for transport! And the morality of letting diseased men from the Tsulan travel with healthy soldiers . . . of sending healthy men to a plague world—”
He was interrupted by a sharp buzz in his own office. “Excuse me,” he said. “Something urgent coming in.” He leaned out of the field of view for several minutes, his voice becoming too low for Dzukarl to understand what he said. When he returned to Dzukarl’s screen he was very pale. “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” he said weakly. “Your plague seems to be spreading like wildfire from your ‘sealed’ ship. Deaths have already been reported as much as forty miles from the spaceport. And you’ve been in port less than two hours!”
“Sir,” Dzukarl said tightly, “I hate to mention it, but—”
Aingao nodded. “I know. In that time one ship has cleared here on an interplanetary run and another on an interstellar trade route. The interplanetary we can probably intercept, but the interstellar . . .” He stared blankly into space, shaking his head slowly.
There came a day when Ngasik found a signal on his radio, weak but intelligible. He listened intently, both relieved and concerned, as Kirlatsu explained, “I’ve built some new equipment so we could talk to you. I would have done it sooner, but I’ve been sick. Most of us have been sick. We had hoped to find where you were a
nd plot a safe way to rescue you, but I’m afraid that’s impossible now. There aren’t enough of us left alive and well.”
Ngasik felt spiritual sickness as he visualized his sirla decimated by plague, but physically he was still in good shape. Bdwdlsplg had even provided him with a diurnal watchdog so he could get some exercise in sunlight. He told Kirlatsu, “The plague is artificial. The tsapeli took a fluid sample from me and used it to invent a plague to exterminate the Reska. Probably some of us are immune—I haven’t got it yet.” (He realized abruptly that that was odd—the disease was based on his body fluids, and yet he seemed immune. Had they done something else to prevent his getting it?) “It might be a good idea for the survivors there to seal themselves in the ship. They may be after you shortly with a new strain designed to catch those who resisted the first batch. They’re very anxious to eradicate us.”
“They may not have to bother,” Kirlatsu said bitterly. “This one’s still spreading, finally attacking individuals we thought were immune.”
So maybe my time will come, Ngasik thought.
Kirlatsu had paused, but Ngasik said nothing. After a while Kirlatsu said pensively, “So the tsapeli caused this! They must know how to cure it, too—but they’d rather just watch us suffer and die. Ngasik . . . why are they doing this to us?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Ngasik said slowly. “To really understand it—to be sure whether it makes sense even from their standpoint—I’d have to know more about ecology than the little I remember from my dlazol.
“It turns out that our ‘obvious savages,’ ironically, have almost a pure technocracy organized on a continent-wide basis. Their technology is entirely biological, but very advanced. The new life forms they create—and they can make them to order overnight—make it necessary to control the ecology very closely. Their entire culture depends on keeping that running smoothly. It has to be handled by people who understand it, so the modem descendants of the ‘sorcerer’ class who learned the tricks of manipulating life control the main branch of their government. The government has to be continent-wide because ecological interactions interlock strongly over an entire land mass.