Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  The versatile and roughly humanoid robot that accompanied every scoutship (following men onto new planets but never leading them) would be left in the submerged scout, and would bring it to the human crew if they summoned it by radio.

  The Yuan Chwang was not orbiting Aqua, but hovering and trying to keep its quarter-milediameter bulk invisible, ten thousand miles above the island. The other scouts were cruising in upper atmosphere in the general area of the target island, observing what they could. The plan might be altered or abandoned at any step at the Chief Planeteer’s discretion, or by order from above.

  Detection screens picked out what looked to Brazil like the infra-red pattern of smoldering fires and fainter body heats of a small village where the recon photos had shown a village to be. Gates worked the scout by radar to an offshore point half a mile from the village, which lay on the shore of a small cove. He dipped the scout low enough to put a sonar probe under water and get a picture of the bottom.

  “Nothing strange down there,” said Gates. “We’ll go ahead.”

  Cutting in automatic stabilizers, he lowered the scout into and through choppy water and made slowly toward shore, while Brazil studied the ocean and bottom, trying to read half a dozen presentations at once.

  Near the rocky upthrust of land, Gates let the little ship settle gently down onto sandy bottom. He summoned the robot and told it to use enough drive to prevent sinking into the bottom. The robot got into the pilot’s seat as the humans checklisted themselves into helmets, out of the control room, and into the lock. They stood with legs spread and arms raised while gas and UV sterilized their suits and the chamber.

  Gates nodded and Brazil opened a valve to let alien sea into the lock; in a few seconds they stepped out of the world of checklists and into dark water. Brazil lingered to feel that the lock door was secured behind them, let gas into his flotation bubbles, and followed Gates up through the darkness. Once something like a luminous smokering curled greenly past them through the water.

  “Can you bliphate the distance phlooh that?” asked a voice from the Yuan Chwang, half-strangled by transmission through space, air, and water.

  “Hard to say; I’d guess only a few yards,” Gates answered, waiting until his head had broken surface and he had taken a look around. Brazil was right behind him; he could barely see Gates’ helmet above the water ten feet away. The rough rock face of the coastline was only a vaguely deeper darkness at one side. They paddled toward it; waves sloshed them against it; they gripped it and began to climb.

  EARTHMEN emerged onto the land of a new world, looking more like primeval lungfish than conquering demigods.

  They climbed rock uncertainly and slowly and halted at the top of a small gentle cliff. The suits were engineered for easy movement and reasonable comfort for twenty-four continuous sealed-in hours in almost any environment. Old planeteers sometimes said soberly that they needed a suit on to feel comfortable but they usually preferred to take the suit off before sitting down to discuss. How comfortably they wore it.

  “Wait for a little more light,” said Gates’ radio voice.

  Brazil sat down beside a large rock and tried to see what was on the inland slope away from the cliff.

  The sun was not far below the hilly horizon now and a gray predawn light made the scene gradually intelligible. A faint excuse for a road wandered along a few yards away, roughly paralleling the shoreline; it might be a cattle path that led toward the village. Beyond the road were fields with a semi-cultivated look, holding orderly rows of squat bushes above a mat of low-growing vines that seemed to cover most of the ground in sight. Green hills rose beyond the fields.

  The dawn brightened slowly. To Brazil, sunrises always brought awe, whether he saw them on an outworld or on crowded Earth, or across the red deserts of the world to which his parents had emigrated and where he had been born. Sitting on this alien rock with sea water dripping from his armor and his hand on a gunbutt, he thought: First Landing; it’s like a First Morning. Let there be light.

  “Light enough,” said Gates. “Let’s get started.”

  They walked on crunching vines to the road, heads swiveling constantly and air microphones tuned to high sensitivity. Brazil caught himself listening for the ape howling that had accompanied each new morning on his last new planet. It wasn’t good to carry such mental baggage when stepping into an unknown environment. He would have to unload it.

  They paced along the faint road toward the village. The hardpacked brownish soil of the road showed no trace of whatever traveled here.

  “Smoke ahead,” said Gates suddenly. It was a barely visible thin vertical tracery in the sky, rising not far away.

  The road curved around a craggy little hill; when they had rounded this, the village was before them. Large rowboats were beached on the sand of a small sheltered cove. Forty or fifty yards back from the water stood about twenty huts, built mainly from what looked like mats of the groundvine. A small stream trickled through the village, flowing from the direction of a structure like a low fortress, beyond the huts and much larger than any of them. Its dark walls of mud or clay or stone were surrounded by a considerable space cleared of all vegetation.

  Brazil turned his head to one side and saw his first native. His stomach went cold and he said to Gates: “On the rock up there. Look.”

  THE native was undoubtedly humanoid and had apparently been dead a long time. He was bound somehow with vines to the crag that almost overhung the road, ten or fifteen feet above the Earthmen, and around his neck hung a placard that looked like cardboard, bearing a short inscription in bold characters resembling Arabic. He had been a tall man in life, by Earthly standards, and long strands of pale hair were still in evidence.

  “Get this?” asked Gates of the observers in the sky.

  “Roger. You’re going on?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “We never mind these ‘No Trespassing’ signs,” said Brazil, with an attempt at flippancy he didn’t feel. Dead men were nothing new to him, but this one had a considerable resemblance to himself, and had, so to speak, sneaked up on him.

  There were no living people yet in sight, but there were shrill cries in the dawn from the village, and a small flock of hawklike birds with oversized wings sprang up into flight from among the huts. The birds were green and vivid orange against the misty sky and flew circling over the village.

  “Let’s go,” said Gates.

  They began down the sloping road toward the huts, trying to look confident but not frightening.

  At an open gateway in the wall of the fortified structure a figure appeared, a red-haired man dressed in dark jerkin and leggings and boots, with breastplate of silvery metal that matched the round helmet he carried in one hand. In the other was a spear. He stretched himself and yawned, and appeared to be trying to scratch his ribs with the helmet. He was still a good distance away and gave no sign that he had spotted two aliens in strange suits walking into his town.

  The birds were more alert. The cries of the circling flock changed suddenly in tone, and in a moment it had become a living arrow launched at Gates and Brazil.

  The two Earthmen stopped, each considering the possibility of mowing down the birds with stun pistols—which should have a disorganizing but not fatal effect on any complex nervous system—before the flock could strike them as it seemed it must, and both rejecting the idea, like twin channels of a single computer. The armored suits were tougher than any bird was likely to be; leave defense to the suits and don’t hurt the native pets.

  The flock broke off before contact, to circle the intruders in a blurred uproar of wings and claws, but several birds scraped the helmets, which were almost invisible in mild light, and one tore head-on at Brazil’s apparently unprotected face, possibly meaning to veer away an inch from his eyes.

  The thud of impact was impressive; when Brazil’s eyes opened from the reflex blink, the bird was flopping on the ground with something badly broken. He picked it up, in
tending to impress the natives with his friendliness by treating kindly their pet that had attacked him, and also to suggest to them that it was futile to attack; but it struggled and fought his armored hands so he could do nothing else if he tried to hold it.

  HE SET it gently down again as the first natives came blinking and shivering out of their huts to see what all the noise was about, some of them still pulling on scanty rags of clothing. They were all of a type with the body on the rock, blond, tall humanoids with deep chests and slender limbs; in the living people were visible a dozen small distinctions of facial and bodily proportion that added up to an obvious but not at first definable difference from any Earthman.

  The red-haired man of the fortress had ducked inside the gateway, which was still open. A domestic-looking animal with plumes on its head looked out at the strangers with interest.

  The blond natives stood together in front of their huts, as if waiting for a group picture to be taken, gaping at their visitors in silence. The watchbird flock still screamed and flew, now in widening circles, having given up assault at least temporarily.

  Gates kept moving forward until he stood near the center of the cleared space between beach and huts. Brazil stopped beside him there and they stood almost motionless, smiling, arms spread with hands open, in the approved position for approaching Apparent Primitives who seem timid. The sun stood over the horizon now, dissipating the morning fog.

  Brazil became aware that the whole crowd was watching him. Only now and then did one shoot a quick glance at Gates, as if puzzled about something.

  Gates spoke via throat mike and radio, without moving his smiling lips. “You look like ’em, boy. I think you better play leader. They may have never seen anyone dark as me before.”

  Brazil made the practiced throat-muscle movement that switched on his speaker and opened his mouth to begin the greeting of his public with soothing sounds. He was interrupted by Sam’s voice in his ear again. “Coming from the fort.”

  Six Apparent Primitives who looked anything but timid were marching in sloppy formation down the slope from the walled structure, straight toward the Earthmen, bearing spears and facial expressions that Brazil could not interpret as meaning anything good. They were all redhaired and armored, muscular, well fed, and bulbous-nosed, evidently of a different tribe or race than the blond hut dwellers.

  Brazil’s barefoot audience watched the warriors’ approach nervously and began to fade back into their huts. But one of the older men who had been staring Brazil in the eye with an expression of mounting and intense emotion—the planeteer grew edgy at not being able to decide what emotion—now sprang forward in serious excitement, to grab Brazil, by the arm and harangue him with the first native speech he had heard, looking at him with the gaze of a pleading worshiper.

  The six red warriors were very near and didn’t look happy at all. They also seemed to be concentrating on Brazil.

  WITH a cry of seeming despair, the old man tore himself away from Brazil and fled toward a hut as if in mortal terror.

  One of the approaching warriors threw his spear with a whipping expert motion; it caught the old man in the back and sent him dying on his face in the sand.

  “Well, I’ll be—” Boris Brazil roared out the first Earth words into the air of Aqua.

  The red-haired warriors stood before him, eying him with what he interpreted as incredulous contempt. One of them barked something that he thought he could almost translate: “What are you doing, you blond peasant clod, dressed up in that outlandish armor?” He probably looked more like a blond native in the suit, with his physical proportions somewhat concealed, than he would without it.

  The one who had speared the old man started walking toward his victim, maybe to retrieve his weapon. Brazil started that way too, with no clear idea of what he was going to do, but with the feeling that the old man had appealed to him in vain for help.

  As Brazil started to move, the five other spears were suddenly leveled at him. A hysterical blond boy ran out of a hut to kneel beside the old man and scream something that sounded nasty at the approaching warrior. Gates was standing motionless a few yards away. A spear thrust fast and hard against Brazil’s chest with plain intent to kill, setting him back on his heels; a lordly voice from the Yuan Chwang said in his ear, “This is not our affair.” Brazil grabbed the thrusting spear in his left hand, jerked its owner forward off balance, and delivered with his armored right fist what seemed an appropriate greeting to an Apparent Primitive Attempting Murder of Earthman.

  The blow knocked the man out from under his helmet and dropped him to the sand. Spears rocked Boris from all sides, clashed and slid around his helmet. He caught a glimpse of the sixth warrior kicking the boy, knocking him over, and pulling a short axe from his belt for a finishing blow.

  The arm swinging back the axe suddenly released it; the weapon spun through the air to land yards away and the warrior sat down suddenly and nervelessly. Sam Gates had decided it was time for stun pistols.

  Before Brazil had reached the same conclusion, the four remaining spearmen had given up trying to stick him through his suit and were grabbing at his arms to hold him. Gates potted two more of them, in the legs, with silent and invisible force. The remaining two abandoned the fight and backed away toward their stronghold with spears leveled, shouting what was no doubt a call for reinforcements. The red that Brazil had felled got up and tottered dazedly after them.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Gates.

  Brazil’s eye swept around. The old man was dead, the spear still in him. The young boy who had been kicked was lying unconscious right in front of a warrior who was going to be considerably annoyed as soon as he felt a little better. Brazil scooped the child up and got him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and looked at Gates, who gave a sort of facial shrug, as if to say: If we can save a life, there’s no need to ponder possible bad consequences, since this whole operation looks like a fizzle now anyway.

  THEY strode at a good pace out of the village as the watchbirds screamed a cheerful farewell. A few reds were milling around the gateway of the fort as the Earthmen went over the rise and out of sight, but no organized pursuit was yet visible. Once out of sight of the village they began a steady loping run, the small body bouncing on Brazil’s shoulders. Gates called for the robot to bring the scout up to the surface at the shoreline.

  “This is the Tribune,” said a voice. “What do you intend doing with that child?”

  “Saving his neck,” said Gates. “Maybe we can learn something from him too.”

  They ran with stun pistols drawn, spinning around frequently to see if anyone followed them. No one pursued.

  Brazil was gasping when he finished the climb down the rocks to the shoreline and set his unconscious burden—no, half conscious now, with a swelling lump on the forehead—down inside the airlock. The outer door shut behind Gates and the robot had the scout underwater and moving out to sea in a moment.

  Entertaining an alien aboard a scoutship was something the Space Force had learned to plan for ahead of time. A door in the back of a suit locker led from the airlock into the tiny Alien Room, into which Gates was now feeding atmosphere from outside, via snorkel and remote control. When the room was ready, Brazil carried the boy into it, sealing the door behind him. Gates could now decontaminate in the airlock, and go to the control room. Brazil would have to wear suit and helmet for a while yet.

  Medical was already on the communicator in the Alien Room when Brazil turned to look at the screen, after putting the kid down on the bed-acceleration couch that took up most of the room, checking the air pressure and setting the temperature up a few degrees.

  “Kid doesn’t look too bad off,” Brazil told the doctor. He smiled reassuringly at the boy, who was now fully conscious and lay watching with wide eyes and a growing yellowish lump on his forehead. He might be ten or eleven years old, judged by Earth standards.

  “Keep him quiet. And get us a blood sample as soon as
possible. Do you think we’ll have to feed him?”

  “Yes. If we can keep him for a week or two we should get the language and a good line on the local culture. We’ve got synthetic proteins and simple sugars on the scout, of course, so I guess he won’t starve—but I’ll try for your blood sample first. And listen, this may be important—I’m turning off the video screen for now, so it won’t alarm him. But when it’s on again, keep anyone with red hair off it. Use blond, noble, handsome people like me if possible.”

  Brazil started to call Sam on the intercom, but through a valve into the Alien Room came sterile blankets and a painless blood sample syringe, before he could ask for them.

  Chandragupta’s voice came into his helmet: “This is the Tribune. I have little complaint of your actions so far, except that your striking that man with your fist served no good purpose. But I must forbid you to keep that child any longer than is necessary for his own welfare.”

  “How long will that be, Chan?” asked Captain Dietrich’s voice, getting no immediate answer. “Would the boy be welcomed home, or speared like that old man, or what? I think we’d better learn the language and customs before trying to decide. And as for Brazil’s hitting that man—”

  A debate went on. Brazil listened with half an ear while he covered his guest with blankets and sat beside him, trying to inspire confidence.

  “It’s all right, sonny, it’s all right.” I hope, he thought. He patted the boy gently with his armored hand. That was the only treatment he dared attempt until he knew considerably more about the biology of his guest.

  And the guest could be very valuable. Children made good subjects for First Contact as a rule, if they were not too young. Their minds adapted quickly to the alien. They caught on quickly to the game of language teaching. And they were likely to give an honest and direct view of their own culture.