Balant: A Beginning

by Sam Smith

  Dag was always on the lookout for materials from which he might be able to make things. So he would stop to examine stones, trees, plants. While Malamud was more interested in the planet’s animals, wanted to see at close quarters the creatures who woke him every morning.

  He soon complained that all that he did see of any animal was its rear end.

  "Why are they so afraid of me?" he asked us.

  'Probably because," I said, "the inhabitants of this planet, who look like us, kill and eat them." I went on to tell him of primitive people's ingenuity in the extermination of other species.

  When I had finished my bloody tale Malamud said that he had given up all desire to meet the people of the planet.

  However the animals must have realised that the presence of we three posed no threat to them, for soon Malamud returned with descriptions or birds he had seen, of large animals with horns, of hopping buck-toothed creatures. One day he brought a lizard home with him, kept it in one of the smaller caves. Other small animals followed. Barricading the small cave he made a menagerie of it. Small whiskery animals, which looked like infants' toys, seemed to predominate. A wingless rumpless bird, about the size of his hand, became captive another day. Then one afternoon be came home cradling a small four-legged furry creature with sharp teeth.

  This creature seemed very fond of Malamud and nuzzled under his chin, licked his ear. Both Dag and I thought this disgustingly unhygienic, insisted that he put it in the cave with his other creatures. We didn’t want it nibbling our noses in the middle of the night.

  So, come bedtime, Malamud took it to his animal cave, but was unable to prise himself away from its playful affections. We could hear him giggling.

  It must have been the silence that made us listen. Dag and I were looking at one another when we heard a deep growl, a roar, and then Malamud's scream of pain.

  Dag immediately grabbed a torch from the wall and I ran after him down to the animal cave.

  Malamud was lying senseless on the floor. From behind Dag I saw a large beast with glinting eyes swipe again at Malamud's tunic. Dag stepped forward and thrust the flaming torch into the beast's face. Its huge yellow fangs bared, it backed away snarling and hissing. The small furry creature crept mewling about its legs. Then, with one last swipe of its claws at the sputtering torch, the beast turned and fled, its infant — for such I had immediately assumed it to be — scampering and crying after it.

  Malamud’s body was covered in blood, his face pale. I pressed my hand over his gory tunic, found his heartbeat.

  “He’s alive!” I told Dag. Together we carried him up to our cave. With the bloody tunic removed we could see that he only had one major wound — a gash running the length of his arm, deepest on his bicep.

  I washed off the blood. As soon as Dag saw the severity of the wound he set off to the shuttle to fetch the first aid kit.

  So began a long night. With Malamud’s head cushioned in my lap, holding the gash on his bicep closed, I occasionally reached over him to cast more wood onto the fire. When the fingers of one hand began to tremble — from holding the same position on Malamud’s arm — I changed to the other hand. And all the while, worried what might befall Dag on his journey down the mountainside at night, I listened anxiously for his return. Than I noticed a lump growing above Malamud’s temple. This I bathed with water. Once so still was he, and so cold, that I feared that he had died. Dreading that this might be so, I frantically felt for his pulse. Finding it beating I wept with relief, my tears splashing down onto his face.

  Dag stumbled gasping into the cave, his tunic and his legs splattered with mud. Barely able to stand he dropped the first aid kit before me, and flopped wheezing onto his hands and knees. Opening the first aid kit with one hand, I found that we had only five sutures left. I estimated where these would be most effective and clipped them over the wound. To stop the wound parting between the sutures, I then taped the remainder of the cut and tightly bandaged the entire arm. Malamud was still unconscious. Even the disinfectant hadn't roused him.

  Once Dag had recovered his breath he built up the fire. Then he sat opposite me and we watched Malamud. Neither of us spoke. Just before dawn Malamud’s eyelids flickered and his eyes rolled. Then he was gazing into my face. So relieved was I to behold these signs of life in him that I again wept. Malamud smiled, reached up with his good hand to touch the tears on my cheek, and then he slept again. A healthy sleep, visible and deep.

  He awoke again after sunrise and weakly sat up. His arm throbbed so, while Dag plied him with food and water, I loosened the bandages. He stayed awake just long enough to forgive the beast its attack on him.

  "How would you feel if some ignoramus kidnapped your child?" he enquired of us; and he slept again.

  He slept right through to the next day. Thinking that he may have fractured his skull, I worried about his sleeping so much. But the following morning he was almost back to his old bright self. Indeed, a few days later he returned to the cave with a snake wrapped around his still bandaged arm.

  Where the near fatal attack by the beast had not, that snake, with its ever-open eyes, undid Malamud's equable acceptance of life on the planet. It ate two of his wingless birds.

  "Disgusting creature," he said. "How I wish I was back among civilised beings." And, temporarily losing interest in the bloodthirsty animals, he moped about the caves homesick for civilisation.

  His homesickness echoed my own. Often I woke at night, went to the mouth of the cave and, parting the screen of branches, gazed up at the uncluttered stars. With my head bent back I would try to imagine myself no longer on a wind-whispering planet, its night alive with the sounds of creeping menace, but warm within the quiet security of even the smallest outstation.

  Dreaming such thoughts I would still be in the cave's mouth when the morning mist obscured the firmament, when that gross sun blazoned brassily down and that primitive planet awoke with a yell. And, not having slept, throughout the vertigo day I would drowsily long for the silence, for the enclosing darkness of space, for the unwinking purity of the stars.

  Chapter Seven

  More animals; water, and some of its effects, and some of our thoughts on some of its inhabitants. Plans are made and reluctantly agreed to.

  To maintain a balanced diet we were always on the lookout for new sources of food. But we agreed, rather than repeat the diarrhoea of the apples, that with any new food only one of us would eat it; and, if within twenty four hours he suffered no ill effects, then we would judge the food to be harmless.

  One day Malamud arrived home with some blue berries that he had found further up the mountain. Having already sampled several as he had picked them, he proposed to test them on himself.

  An hour after he had eaten the last of the berries, Malamud fell to the floor clutching his stomach, his eyes rolling. Dag and I rushed to him in consternation. While I held his head, Dag tried to force water between his clamped teeth. But, because of his writhing and thrashing, we spilt more over ourselves than we managed to get into him. Dag and I looked fearfully to one another.

  I should state here that by this time I had become extremely fond of Malamud's cheery presence. For, although I did not always understand his jokes, I enjoyed hearing him and Dag laughing together. So, smoothing his hair, I said,

  "Please don’t die Malamud.” I must admit that I was, again, close to tears.

  "Certainly not," he sat up. “Wouldn’t dream of it."

  So astounded was I by this sudden transformation that at first I assumed it was but another aspect of whatever was ailing him. However, when Dag expostulated,

  "The brat!" I knew that it had been one of his jokes.

  Malamud meanwhile had slipped out of the cave. Furiously Dag and I gave chase. We caught up with him near the stream.

  The stream here paused in its race down the mountainside, gathered in a marsh a little below us. Dag threw a stick at Malamud just as Malamud reached the stream. Malamud ducked, lost his foothold and w
ent slithering down the wet slope and into the marsh. He emerged draped in slimy green weeds and spitting water. Dag and I were both laughing.

  "Now tell me,” Dag shouted down to him, "that Pi's got no sense of humour."

  Later, by way of explanation for his joke, Malamud said that he had simply wanted to liven things up a bit. Nor was I angry at him for his cruel deception: Malamud brought colour to many days that would otherwise have passed in grey routine. I should also add that, once anyone has been in your care, then you find it easy to forgive them their foolishness. For which same reason no doubt Malamud tolerated my taciturnity.

  Another day Malamud came up to me in the cave and told me that he had found some distant relations of mine. By this time his interest in the planet’s animals had revived — the snake had been released — and so I knew that he was going to show me some animals, suspected that he may have discovered a colony of apes.

  I followed him down to the lake. In the orchard he bade me crawl behind him. When we were within a few meters of the lake shore he ushered me up beside him.

  “There,” he whispered, “Pi birds.” Around the perimeter of the lake was a flock of long-legged white birds.

  “See,” he said, "they stand for hours on one leg. Have even got whiskers like you." And he tugged at my beard.

  I believe that Malamud was envious of mine and Dag's beards. Being that much younger his beard had not yet started to grow. Now he frequently called Dag and I old men.

  Dag had tried to shave his with a sharp stone, but had succeeded only in cutting himself. Dag thought it important that we not lose pride in our appearance. To that end he and Malamud invented a six-legged creature as tall as a small tree to arouse my curiosity.

  On one of their joint explorations they had discovered a warm stream. This, Dag and I had deduced, was probably due to there being a dormant volcano somewhere in the vicinity. I had thought no more on it; but Dag and Malamud had proceeded to dam the stream and they subsequently, and frequently, bathed in the pool they had made there.

  The fabled six-legged creature — I suspected a giant insect — led me to that pool, and there they threw me in.

  “To be quite frank Pi," Dag said, “your stink has become unbearable.”

  Angry and ashamed, I had spluttered and splashed, and had started viciously scrubbing at myself.

  “Use mud,” Dag told me.

  I looked at him suspiciously, believing that his intended japes were becoming as bad as Malamud's; but he leapt in beside me and began slapping mud all over himself.

  "It takes off the grease," he plastered it over his hair. I followed suit, rinsed it off. He was right. And, in fact, I became so fond of bathing that when I was not on lookout I stayed whole days wallowing in that pool.

  Indeed, although outwardly uncropped and worn-looking, I venture to declare that we were as clean in our daily habits as the majority of space dwellers. Dag had even discovered a sweet-tasting stick which, if one chewed it, one could then use the splintered end to brush one's teeth with.

  Malamud arrived another day at the cave carrying a large leaf.

  "I found it by the lake," he told Dag and I, "I think it's an infant Nautili. See its silver trail." Dag took the leaf from him,

  "It's a snail. Philosophy again," he told me. "’Carries his prejudices about with him like a snail its shell.' Some people call the Nautili’s silver trails ‘snail trails’."

  Malamud again asked what Nautili were. Both Dag and I, in our various studies, had been fascinated by Nautili; and we saw no need now to stop our tongues for fear of frightening Malamud. Being that much younger he had accepted with comparative ease the hazards of planetary life. And we had seen no definite silver trails on this planet. Apart from which, being so far inland, we believed ourselves in no danger from Nautili.

  I will reproduce Dag's description of Nautili here, for I have found that the ignorance of some people, like Malamud, is often as surprising as their knowledge. And Malamud is, was, by no measure a fool; but what does a space dweller need to know about a planet-based intelligence like the Nautili?

  "Nautili,” Dag said, "are marine creatures. All other space dwellers have evolved from land-based intelligence. In their planetary civilisations all land dwellers appreciated the value of co-operation. The Nautili do so as well, but only among themselves.

  “The difficulty is one of communication. We share no common experience with the Nautili. The Nautili evolved in oceans similar to those on either side of this continent. Water is their natural environment. They breathe water. We breathe air.

  “Now the oceans in which they evolved are a chain of eat-and-be-eaten creatures. Very few herbivores as on the land. Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat smaller fish. From what we've so far gleaned the Nautili are not large creatures; they would, therefore, have had many predators in the food chain above them. So, we assume, for their own protection, they constructed barricades. And they became, in effect, the ocean's toolmakers.

  “Behind those barricades the Nautili multiplied and prospered, needing, therefore, greater territory. So they built themselves vehicles in which they could safely venture into the open oceans and hunt. Even so they still depended on speed to avoid being crushed in the jaws of larger sea creatures. So they developed faster and faster craft; until, one day, they burst from their ocean and sped through the thinner atmosphere above. And from there, carrying their environment with them, into space.

  “Because we weren’t in competition with them for minerals, we only came into contact with them by the merest chance. A tracking station was placed directly, albeit unknowingly, in their path between two planets. The tracking station reported a sighting, and was almost immediately destroyed. We, of course investigated; and chanced upon a convoy of Nautili ships. The Nautili attacked our police ships. The police defended themselves. So, out in deep space, a battle of the elements, fire and water, ensued. Both sides suffered losses.

  "We could not find one medium on which to communicate with them, negotiate a peace. So the fight continued. Until, worried by our losses, we decided to stand aside from what we had by then gathered was their convoy path; and the Nautili, counting their own losses, decided to make a detour. Since then we have warily co-existed."

  "That's the trouble with you old men — ask a simple question and you're told something you didn't want to know. What about the silver trails?"

  “Some police ships followed the convoy to its destination, retraced it to its source. Both were planets with large oceans. Where the Nautili had crossed the land masses on those planets — presumably in moving heavy equipment — were silver trails. Like that snail trail, only millions of times wider.

  “We have since those early days made several attempts to communicate with the Nautili. All to no avail. We can only deduce from observation. And that's what fascinates me about them — their completely alien philosophy. They seem wholly without mercy, without compassion for other creatures. While we, on the other hand, have learnt to respect every living creature as being a potential source of equal intelligence. So we harm none.

  "But any object that stands in the way of the Nautili, or interferes with their progress, like that tracking station, they obliterate. There is a suspicion among some researchers that the Nautili flooded one of the planets they colonised, that they deliberately drowned all the land creatures on that planet. And yet, since that tracking station, the Nautili no longer harm us space people. We've discovered that they make a detour around one of our cities. And that's why, I suspect, that knowledge of them is not publicised. We don't want to frighten our citizens."

  Malamud wanted to know which city. Dag told him.

  “And I don't believe," Dag said, "that our incomprehension of them is because, as some maintain, they are more intelligent than we are. In its history civilisation has encountered many intelligences which, at the time, were far in advance of its own. Several of which it could not hope to immediately surpass.

  "Now everybody
, like you Malamud, secretly knows that they are more intelligent than anybody else living. So, when they're suddenly presented with an entire race of indisputably greater intelligence, they lose a little self-respect. And they each have to humbly admit to their innermost selves that they are not quite as clever as they thought they were. Troubling times. Yet, after the initial trauma, our predecessors soon learnt to live with the idea, much as our far off ancestors once lived with the idea of an omniscient omnipotent god. And civilisation assimilated those intelligences and proceeded. But the Nautili... the Nautili are of a different intelligence."

  I too had chanced upon mention of the Nautili by accident; and what fascinated me about them was their means of propulsion. I have already said here that all propulsion is a series of controlled explosions. Not so, so far as anyone knew then, the Nautili's ships. Their ships contained no combustible substances. When they bad been hit by our police ships in space, they had simply dispersed in droplets.

  Nor did we understand how they made their metals. They seemed to manufacture them from the very seawater itself. No mining, no smelting; and yet their metals were as hard and as durable as our own, their ships as fast as our fastest.

  All land-based study of physics has been founded on the effect of fire in one form or another. The science of the Nautili began in water. We had not one point in common from which to begin comparison.

  "My mother says," I told Dag, "that we should play music to them."

  Malamud began singing to his snail. Dag threw a stick at him, and returned to his sewing. While I thought of my mother, of my violin, of my promise to her. Would I ever play a violin again?

  Sensing the sadness that had come over me Dag ordered me to stand and try on the boots he had made.

  Down by the desert edge — one of us regularly went down to renew the shuttle's cover — Dag had discovered a tree which had wide long flat leaves. Through trial and error he had found that, depending on the treatment they received, the leaves became either as soft and as supple as cloth, or as hard and as resilient as plastic. The cloth be made by beating and washing the leaves in the stream, then letting them dry some distance from the fire. The plastic he made by roasting the leaves before the fire.