the Dark Light Years

by Brian W Aldiss

  "What fortune that we came!" said the third Politan. but the remark was, of course, not aimed at the Cosmopolitan.

  "Greetings, creatures!" bellowed two of the priestlings.

  And it was at that moment that the creatures on the bank raised Earth-made weapons to their hips and opened fire.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Captain Bargerone struck a characteristic posture. Which is to say that he stood very still with his hands hanging limply down the seams of his sky blue shorts and rendered his face without expression. It was a form of self-control he had practiced several times on this trip, particularly when confronted by his Master Explorer. "Do you wish me to take what you are saying seriously.

  "Ainson?" he asked. "Or are you merely trying to delay take-off?”

  Master Explorer Bruce Ainson swallowed; he was a religious man, and he silently summoned the Almighty to help him get the better of this fool who saw nothing beyond his duty.

  "The two creatures we captured last night have definitely attempted to communicate with me, sir.

  Under space exploration definitions, anything that attempts to communicate with a man must be regarded as at least sub-human until proved otherwise.”

  "That is so, Captain Bargerone," Explorer Phipps said, fluttering his eyelashes nervously as he rose to the support of his boss.

  "You do not need to assure me of the truth of platitudes, Mr. Phipps." the Captain said. "I merely question what you mean by 'attempt to communicate'. No doubt when you threw the creatures cabbage the act might have been interpreted as an attempt to communicate." "The creatures did not throw me a cabbage, sir," Ainson said. "They stood quietly on the other side of the bars and spoke to me.”

  The captain's left eyebrow arched like a foil being tested by a master fencer.

  "Spoke. Mr. Ainson? In an Earth language? In Portuguese, or perhaps Swahili?'* "In their own language, Captain Bargerone. A series of whistles, grunts, and squeaks often rising above audible level. Nevertheless, a language - possibly a language vastly more complex than ours.”

  "On what do you base that deduction, Mr. Ainson?”

  The Master Explorer was not floored by the question, but the lines gathered more thickly about his rough-hewn and sorrowful face.

  "On observation. Our men surprised eight of those creatures, sir, and promptly shot six of them. You should have read the patrol report. The other two creatures were so stunned by surprise that they were easily netted and brought back here into the Mariestopes. In the circum-stances, the preoccupation of any form of life would be to seek mercy, or release if possible. In other words, it would supplicate. Unfortunately, up till now we have met no other form of intelligent life in the pocket of the galaxy near Earth; but all human races supplicate in the same way - by using gesture as well as verbal plea. These creatures do not use gesture; their language must be so rich in nuance that they have no need for gesture, even when begging for their lives.”

  Captain Bargerone gave an excruciatingly civilized snort "Then you can be sure that they were not begging for their lives. Just what did they do, apart from whining as caged dogs would do?”

  "I think you should come down and see them for your-self, sir. It might help you to see things differently.”

  "I saw the dirty creatures last night and have no need to see them again. Of course I recognize that they form a valuable discovery; I said as much to the patrol leader. They will be off-loaded at the London Exozoo, Mr. Ainson, as soon as we get back to Earth, and then you can talk to them as much as you wish. But as I said in the first place, and as you know, it is time for us to leave this planet straight away; I can allow you no further time for exploration. Kindly remember this is a private Company ship, not a Corps ship, and we have a timetable to keep to. We've wasted a whole week on this miserable globe with-out finding a living thing larger than a mouse-dropping, and I cannot allow you another twelve hours here.”

  Bruce Ainson drew himself up. Behind him, Phipps sketched an unnoticed pastiche of the gesture.

  "Then you must leave without me, sir. And without Phipps. Unfortunately, neither of us was on the patrol last night, and it is essential that we investigate the spot where these creatures were captured. You must see that the whole point of the expedition will be lost if we have no idea of their habitat. Knowledge is more important than time-tables.”

  "There is a war on, Mr. Ainson, and I have my orders.”

  "Then you will have to leave without me, sir. I don't know how the USGN will like that.”

  The Captain knew how to give in without appearing beaten.

  "We leave in six hours, Mr. Ainson. What you and your subordinate do until then is your affair.”

  "Thank you, sir," said Ainson. He gave it as much edge as he dared.

  Hurrying from the captain's office, he and Phipps caught a lift down to disembarkation deck and walked down the ramp on to the surface of the planet provisionally label-led 12B .

  The men's canteen was still functioning. With sure instinct, the two explorers marched in to find the members of the Exploration Corps who had been involved in the events of the night before. The canteen was of pre-formed reinplast and served the synthetic foods so popular on Earth. At one table sat a stocky young American with a fresh face, a red neck, and a razor-sharp crewcut. His name was Hank Quilter, and the more perceptive of his friends had him marked down as a man who would go far. He sat over a synthwine (made from nothing so vulgar as a grape grown from the coarse soil and ripened by the un-refined elements) and argued, his surly-cheerful face animated as he scorned the viewpoint of Ginger Duffield, the ship's weedy messdeck lawyer.

  Ainson broke up the conversation without ceremony. Quilter had led the patrol of the previous night.

  Draining his glass, Quilter resignedly fetched a thin youth named Walthamstone who had also been on the patrol, and the four of them walked over to the motor pool - being demolished amid shouting preparatory to take-off - to collect an overlander.

  Ainson signed for the vehicle, and they drove off with Walthamstone at the wheel and Phipps distributing weapons. The latter said, "Bargerone hasn't given us much time, Bruce. What do you hope to find?”

  "I want to examine the site where the creatures were captured. Of course I would like to find something that would make Bargerone eat humble pie." He caught Phipps' warning glance at the men and said sharply, "Quilter, you were in charge last night. Your trigger-finger was a bit itchy, wasn't it? Did you think you were in the Wild West?”

  Quilter turned round to give his superior a look.

  "Captain complimented me this morning," was all he said.

  Dropping that line of approach, Ainson said, "These beasts may not look intelligent, but if one is sensitive one can feel a certain something about them. They show no panic, nor fear of any kind.”

  "Could be as much a sign of stupidity as intelligence." Phipps said.

  "Mm, possible, I suppose. All the same. ... Another thing, Gussie, that seems worth pursuing.

  Whatever the standing of these creatures may be. they don't fit with the larger animals we've discovered on other planets so far. Oh, I know we've only found a couple of dozen planets harboring any sort of life - dash it, star travel isn't thirty years old yet. But it does seem as if light gravity planets breed light spindly beings and heavy planets breed bulky compact beings. And these critters are exceptions to the rule.”

  "I see what you mean. This world has not much more mass than Mars, yet our bag are built like rhinoceroses.”

  "They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos when we found them," Quilter offered. "How could they have any intelligence?”

  "You shouldn't have shot them down like that They must be rare, or we'd have spotted some elsewhere on 12B before this.”

  "You don't stop to think when you're on the receiving end of a rhino charge," Quilter sulked.

  "So I see.”

  They rumbled over an unkempt plain in silence. Ainson tried to recapture the happiness he had experience
d on first walking across this untrod planet. New planets always renewed his pleasure in life; but such pleasures had been spoiled this voyage - spoiled as usual by other people. He had been mistaken to ship on a Company boat; life on Space Corps boats was more rigid and simple; unfortunately, the Anglo-Brazilian war engaged all Corps ships, keeping them too busy with solar system maneuvers for such peaceful enterprises as exploration. Nevertheless, he did not deserve a captain like Edgar Bargerone.

  Pity Bargerone did not blast-off and leave him here by himself, Ainson thought. Away from people, communing -he recollected his father's phrase - communing with nature!

  The people would come to 12B. Soon enough it would have, like Earth, its over-population problems.

  That was why it was explored: with a view to colonization. Sites for the first communities had been marked out on the other side of the world. In a couple of years, the poor wretches forced by economic necessity to leave all they held dear on Earth would be trans-shipped to 12B (but they would have a pretty and tempting colonial name for it by then: Clementine, or something equally obnoxiously innocuous).

  Yes, they'd tackle this unkempt plain with all the pluck of their species, turning it into a heaven of dirt-farming and semi-detacheds. Fertility was the curse of the human race, Ainson thought Too much procreation went on; Earth's teeming loins had to ejaculate once again, ejaculate its unwanted progeny on to the virgin planets that lay awaiting - well, awaiting what else?

  Christ, what else? There must be something else, or we should all have stayed in the nice green harmless Pleistocene.

  Ainson's rancid thoughts were broken by Waltham-stone's saying, "There's the river. Just round the corner, and then we're there.”

  They rounded low banks of gravel from which thorn trees grew. Overhead, a mauve sun gleamed damply through haze at them. It raised a shimmer of reflection from the leaves of a million million thistles, growing silently all the way to the river and on the other side of it as far as the eye wanted to see. Only one landmark: a big blunt odd-shaped thing straight ahead.

  "It - " said Phipps and Ainson together. They stared at each other. " - looks like one of the creatures.”

  "The mudhole where we caught them is just the other side," Walthamstone said. He bumped the overlander across the thistle bed, braking in the shadow of the looming object, forlorn and strange as a chunk of Liberian carving lying on an Aberdeen mantelshelf.

  Toting their rifles, they jumped out and moved forward.

  They stood on the edge of the mudhole and surveyed it One side of the circle was sucked by the grey lips of the river. The mud itself was brown and pasty green, streaked liberally with red where five big carcasses took their last wallow in the carefree postures of death. The sixth body gave a heave and turned a head in their direction.

  A cloud of flies rose in anger at this disturbance. Quilter brought up his rifle, turning a grim face to Ainson when the latter caught his arm.

  "Don't kill it," Ainson said. "It's wounded. It can't harm us.”

  "We can't assume that. Let me finish it off.”

  "I said not. Quilter. We'll get it into the back of the overlander and take it to the ship; we'd better collect the dead ones too. Then they can be cut up and their anatomy studied. They'd never forgive us on Earth if we lost such an opportunity. You and Walthamstone get the nets out of the lockers and haul the bodies up.”

  Quilter looked challengingly at his watch and at Ainson.

  "Get moving," Ainson ordered.

  Reluctantly. Walthamstone slouched forward to do as he was told; unlike Quilter, he was not of the stuff from which rebels are made. Quilter curled his lip and followed. They hauled the nets out and went to stand on the edge of the mud pool, gazing across it at the half-submerged evidence of last night's activities before they got down to work. The sight of the carnage mollified Quilter.

  "We sure stopped them!" he said. He was a muscular young man. with his fair hair neatly cropped and a dear old white-haired mother back home in Miami who pulled in an annual fortune in alimony. "Yeah. They'd have got us otherwise." Walthamstone said. "Two of them I shot myself. Must have been those two nearest to us.”

  "I killed two of them, too." Quilter said. "They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos. Boy, did they come at us!”

  "Dirty things when you come to look at them. Ugly. Worse than anything we've got on Earth. Aren't half glad we plugged them, aren't you, Quil?”

  "It was us or them. We didn't have any choice.”

  "You're right there." Walthamstone cuddled his chin and looked admiringly at his friend. You had to admit Quilter was quite a lad. He repeated Quilter's phrase, "We didn't have any choice.”

  "What the hell good are they, I'd like to know.”

  "So'd I. We really stopped them, though, didn't we?”

  "It was us or them." repeated Quilter. The flies rose again as he paddled into the mud towards the wounded rhinoman.

  While this philosophical skirmish was in progress, Bruce Ainson stalked over to the object that marked the scene of the slaughter. It loomed above him. He was impressed. This shape, like the shape of the creatures it appeared to imitate, had more than its size to impress him; there was something about it that affected him aesthetically It might be a hundred light years high and it'd still be - don't say beauty doesn't exist! - beautiful.

  He climbed into the beautiful object. It stank to high heaven; and that was where it had been intended for. Five minutes' inspection left him in no doubt: this was a ... well, it looked like an overgrown seedpod.

  and it had the feel of an overgrown seedpod. but it was - Captain Bargerone had to see this: this was a space ship.

  A space ship loaded high with shit.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Much happened during the year 1999 on Earth. Quins were born to a twenty-year-old mother in Kennedyville, Mars. A robot team was admitted for the first time into the World series. New Zealand launched its own system-ship. The first Spanish nuclear submarine was launched by a Spanish princess.

  There were two one-day revolutions in Java, six in Sumatra, and seven in South America. Brazil declared war on Great Britain. Common Europe beat the U.S.S.R. at football. A Japanese screen star married the Shah of Persia. The gallant All-Texan expedition attempting to cross the bright side of Mercury in exotanks perished to a man. All-Africa set up its first radio-control-led whale farm. And a little grizzled Australian mathematician called Buzzard rushed into his mistress's room at three o'clock of a May morning shrieking. "Got it. got it! Transponential flight!”

  Within two years, the first unmanned and experimental transponential drive had been built into a rocket, launched, and proved successful. They never got that one back.

  This is not the place for an explanation of TP formulae; the printer, in any case, refuses to set three pages of math symbols. Suffice it to say that a favorite science fiction gimmick - to the dismay and subsequent bankruptcy of all science fiction writers - was suddenly translated into actuality. Thanks to Buzzard, the gulfs of space became not barriers between but doorways to the planets. By 2010. you could get from New York to Procyon more comfortably and quickly than it had taken, a century before, to get from New York to Paris.

  That is what's so tedious about progress. Nobody seems able to jog it out of that dreary old exponential curve.

  All of which goes to show that while the trip between B12 and Earth took less than a fortnight by the year 2035. that still left plenty of time for letter writing.

  Or - in Captain Bargerone's case, as he composed a TP cable to their lordships in the Admiralty - for cable writing.

  In the first week he cabled: TP POSITION: 355073x 6915 (Bl2). YOUR CABLE EX 97747304 REFERS. YOUR ORDER COMPLIED WITH. HENCEFORTH CREATURES CAPTIVE ABOARD KNOWN AS EXTRATERRESTIAL ALIENS (SHORTENED TO ETAS).

  SITUATION REGARDING ETAS AS FOLLOWS: TWO ALIVE AND WELL IN NUMBER THREE HOLD. OTHER CARCASSES BEING DISSECTED TO STUDY THEIR ANATOMY. AT FIRST I DID NOT REALIZE THEY WERE MORE THAN ANIMALS.
DIRECTLY MASTER EXPLORER AINSON EXPLAINED SITUATION TO ME, I ORDERED HIM TO PROCEED WITH PARTY TO SCENE OF CAPTURE OF ETAS.

  THERE WE FOUND EVIDENCE THAT ETAS HAVE INTELLI-GENCE. SPACE SHIP OF STRANGE MANUFACTURE WAS TAKEN INTO CUSTODY. IT IS NOW IN MAIN CARGO HOLD AFTER RE-DISTRIBUTION OF CARGO. SMALL SHIP CAPABLE OF HOLDING ONLY FIGURE 8 ETAS. NO DOUBT SHIP BELONGS ETAS. SAME FILTH OVER EVERYTHING. SAME OFFENSIVE SMELL. EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT ETAS ALSO EXPLORING Bl2.

  HAVE ORDERED AINSON AND HIS STAFF TO COMMUNICATE WITH ETAS SOONEST HOPE TO HAVE LANGUAGE PROBLEM CRACKED BEFORE LANDING.

  EDGAR BARGERONE.

  CAPT. MARIESOPES.

  GMT 1750:6.7.2035.

  Other prosodists were busy aboard the Mariestopes.

  Walthamstone wrote laboriously to an aunt in a far-flung western suburb of London called Windsor: My dear old aunt Flo - We are now coming home to see you again, how is your rheumatism, looking up I hope. I have not been space sick this voyage. When the ship goes into TP drive if you know what this is you feel a bit sick for a couple of hours. My pal Quilt says that's because all your molecules go negative.

  But then you're all right.

  When we stopped at one planet which hasn't got no name because we were the first, Quilt and me had a chance to go hunting. The place is swarming with big fierce dirty animals as big as the ship. It lives in mudholes. We shot dozens. We got two alive ones on board this old tub, we call them rhmomen, their names are Gertie and Mush. They are filthy. I have to clean out their cage but they don't bite. They make a lot of rude noises.

  As usual the food is bad. Not only poison but small helpings. Give my love to cousin Madge, I wonder if her education is completed yet. Whose winning the war with Brazil, us I hope!!!!

  Hoping this leaves you as it finds me at present, your loving nephew, Rodney.

  Augustus Phipps was composing a love letter to a Sino-Portuguese girl; above his bunk was a phobe of her looking extremely sinuous. Phipps regarded it frequently as he wrote: Ah CM darling.

  This brave old bus is now pointing towards Macao. My heart as you know is permanently oriented (no pun intended) towards that fair place when you are holidaying there, but how good to know we shall soon be together in more than spirit I'm hoping this trip will bring us fame and fortune. For we have found a sort of strange life out here in this neck of the galaxy, and are bringing two live samples of it home. When I think of you, so slender, sweet, and immaculate in your cheongsam, I wonder why we need such dirty ugly beasts on the same planet - but science must be served.