The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack

by Gardner Dozois

  Mazechazz, as “captain,” opened the proceedings.

  “Since this is our last session with you, we hope some fresh proposals have occurred to your honorable council during your absence,” hummed the speaker through Powers’ skull.

  He who was designated First among the council of the Mureess answered.

  “We have no new proposals, nor indeed had we ever any. Trade would be welcome, but we vitally need nothing you or your Combine have described, captain. We have all the minerals we need and the Great Mother—he meant the sea—provides food. We will soon go into space ourselves and meet as equals with you. We cannot tolerate what you call an ‘observer,’ who seems to us a spy, and not subject to our laws by your own definition. That is all we have to say.”

  That does it, thought Powers glumly. The cold—and entirely accurate—description of a Planetary representative of the Sirian Combine was the final clincher. The intensely proud and chauvinistic Falsethsa would tolerate no interference.

  Mazechazz gave no indication that he had heard. He tried again.

  “In addition to trade and education, general advancement of the populace,” murmured the mike, “have you considered defense?” He paused. “Not all races who travel in space are friendly. A few are starkly inimical, hating all other forms of life. Could you defend yourselves, Honorable Sirs, against such?”

  It was obvious from the speed of the answer that the Council of Mureess had considered, if not anticipated this question. The second member spoke, an obvious pre-assignment.

  “In all our long history, you are our first contact with star travelers. Yet we are not defenseless. The Great Mother contains not only food, fish and plants which we harvest, but many strong and terrible beasts. Very few are left to disturb us. In addition, the implications of your ship have not escaped us, and our scientists are even now adapting some of our atomic devices used in mining to other ends.” The voice contained a faint hint of pride as it ended. We got guns, too, buddy, it said, and we ain’t pushovers.

  The First of the Council spoke again. “Let me be plain, Respected Star-farers. It seems obvious to us that you have learned most of what we represent as a council, if not all. We are the heads of the Great Clans and we will not change. It hardly seems likely that you represent a society based on heredity if you include the diverse and nameless breeds of creature you have shown us on your screens. We do not want such an amalgam on our world causing unrest and disturbances of public order. Still less do we desire authoritarian interference with the ordered life we have developed. Your requests are one and severally refused. There will be no ‘observer.’ Trade, regulated by us, will be welcome. Otherwise, should you choose not to be bound by our laws, we must respectfully and finally bid you farewell. When at some future date, we develop ships such as yours, we may reconsider.” The speaker paused, looked at his three confreres, who nodded silently. The First stared arrogantly at Mazechazz, and continued.

  “Finally, we have decided to place a ban on further landings by aliens unless you are now prepared to negotiate a trade agreement on our terms!”

  Powers thought frantically, his face motionless. This was defeat, stark and unequivocal. The parable he had in mind seemed indicated now or never. He turned to Sakh Mazechazz, and spoke.

  “May I have your permission to address the Honored Council, Noble Captain?” he asked.

  “Speak, First Officer,” said the Lyran, his gular pouches throbbing. His ruby eyes, to his associate, looked pained, as well they might.

  “Let me pose a question, Honored Sirs,” said Powers. “Suppose that in your early history of creating your orderly realm you had discovered on one of your islands a race of Falsethsa as advanced and regulated as yourselves who wished nothing to do with you?” He could feel the alerted tension of the four as the golden eyes glowed at him.

  “The implications of your question are obvious,” the First of the Council spoke, as coldly as ever. “Do you threaten us with force from your Combine devoted to peace?” The flat voice of the translator hummed with acquired and impossible violence which Powers knew to be subjective.

  The First continued. “We would resist to the ultimate, down to the least of our young and the most helpless female weed cultivator! Do your worst!”

  Powers sat back. He had done his best. The hereditary dictatorship of a united world had spoken. No democratic minority had ever raised its head here. The society of Mureess was stratified in a way ancient India never thought of being, down to refuse collectors of a thousand generations of dishonorable standing. Ancient Japan had been as rigidly exclusionist but there had been a progressive element there. Here there was nothing. Nothing that is, except a united world of coldly calculating and very advanced entities about to erupt into space with Heaven knew what weapons and a murderous arrogance and race pride to bolster them.

  He thought of the dead orb called Sebelia, rolling around its worthless sun, an object of nausea to all life. And he had helped. Well, the boys in Biology had the ball now. He forced himself to listen to the First of Council as he bade Mazechazz a courteous farewell.

  “Depart in harmony and peace, Honorable Star-farers. May your Great Mother be benign, when you return to give your high council our message on the far-distant worlds you have shown us in the sky.”

  The Council departed, leaving Powers and Mazechazz staring at each other in the council chamber, their gaudy uniforms looking a little dull and drab.

  “Well, Sakh,” said Powers, his ruddy face a little flushed, “we can’t be perfect. They don’t know about spacewarps and instantaneous communicators. Plan II has nothing to do with us.”

  “Beyond our recommendation, you mean,” said the Lyran flatly. “We have failed, William. This means death for thousands of innocent beings, perhaps more. Their world population is about eighty million, you know.”

  There was silence in the room until Powers broke it again.

  “Would you have Sebelia, Sakh,” he asked gently, “or Ruller I, Bellevan’s world, or Labath?” There was no answer to this and he knew it. There was only one alternative to a dead, burned-out, empty planet. Mureess was in the wrong stage of development, and it would have to be brought in line. The Sirian Combine had to, and would remove any intelligent unknown menace from a position from which it could threaten its Master plan of integrated peace. As they left the chamber, Powers said a silent prayer and touched the tiny Crescent and Star embroidered on his shirt pocket. At least, he thought, the planted ultra-wave communicators would be there when the Falsethsa needed them. He looked out of a corridor port at the gray and rolling sea. The Great Mother, he thought bitterly, benevolent and overflowing!

  Traleres-124, female gardener, aged thirty-two cycles, hummed in a minor key as she harvested weed of the solstice crop, twelve miles off the northern islands. A rest period was due in the next cycle day, and she and her mate were ahead of quota which should make the supervisor give them a good holiday.

  The tall weed swayed gently against her and several small fish darted past in fright. As the first heavy beat of the water struck against her slim body, she looked up. Frozen with horror, she released her container, but in forty feet of water, the monster caught her before she had moved a hundred yards.

  As it fed, horribly, other grim shapes, attracted by the blood moved in from the distant murk of deeper water.

  Savathake-er rode his one-man torpedo alertly as he probed the southern bay of Ramasarett. He was a scientist-12 and also a hereditary hunter. If the giant fish, long since eliminated from the rest of the seas, were breeding in some secret area of the far and desolate southern rocks, it was his business to know it. No fish could catch his high-powered torpedo, while his electric spears packed a lethal jolt. Probably, he thought, a rumor of the poor fisher folk who worked the southern fringe areas. What else could you expect from such types, who had never even learned to read in a thousand cycles. Nevertheless, as he patrolled the sunken rocks, he was alert, scanning the water on all sides const
antly for the great shape he sought, his skin alert for the first strange vibration. By neglecting the broken bottom, brown with laminaria and kelp, he missed the great, mottled tentacle which plucked him off his torpedo in a flash of movement, leaving the riderless craft to cruise aimlessly away into the distance.

  “Your highness,” said the Supervisor Supreme, “we are helpless. We have never used metal nets, because we have never had to. Our fiber nets they slash to ribbons. They attack every species of food-fish from the Ursaa to the Krad. The breeding rate is fantastic, and now my equal who controls the mines says they are attacking the miners despite all the protection he can give them. They are not large, but in millions——”

  “Cease your outcries,” said the First in Council, wearily, “and remove that animal from my writing desk. I have seen many pictures of it since they first appeared five cycles ago. It still looks alien and repulsive.”

  They stared in silence at the shape that any high-school biology student of distant Terra could have identified in his sleep.

  At length, the First in Council dismissed the Supervisor of Fisheries and headed thoughtfully for an inner room of his palace. He knew at last the meaning of the strange metal communicating devices, discovered and confiscated, after the star ship had departed, six cycles before. It was a simple machine to operate, and he guessed food could be sent incredibly quickly to his starving planet. Just as quickly as other things, he thought grimly. And we have to beg. Hah. Admission to the great peace-loving Combine, may the crabs devour them.

  But he knew that he would send and that they would come.

  * * * *

  “I was comparing the two reports, my friend,” said Mazechazz, “but I am not so familiar with your planetary ecology as I should be. When Mureess applied for admission to the Combine, I requested a copy of their secret directive from Biology, but I had never seen the older report until you gave it to me just now. Can you explain the names to me, if I read them off?”

  “Go ahead,” said Powers, sipping his sherbet noisily. He seldom wondered what alcohol would feel like any longer. Most Old Believers had tried it when young and disliked it.

  “I’ve already looked up the names I didn’t know,” he said, “so start the Mureessan list first.”

  “Great White Shark, or Man-eater,” read Mazechazz. “He sounds obvious and nasty.”

  “He is,” said Powers. He put down his glass. “Remember, as usual, the birth rate has been at least tripled. An increased metabolism means increased food consumption, and no shark on Terra was ever full. This brute runs forty feet when allowed, in size, that is. A giant carnivorous fish, very tough.”

  “Number two is Architeuthis, or Giant Squid,” continued the Lyran. “Is that a fish? Sorry, but on my world, well, fish are curiosities.”

  “It’s an eyed, carnivorous mollusk with enormous arms, ten of them and it reaches eighty feet long at least. Swims well, too.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Mazechazz continued. “Smooth dogfish.”

  “A tiny shark,” said Powers, “about three and a half feet in size. They school in thousands on Terra and eat anything that swims. Just blind agile appetite. They have a high normal breeding rate.”

  “Finally we have a Baleran Salamander, so you’re free of one curse, anyway. Balera, I believe, is hellishly wet, although I don’t know much about it.”

  Powers rose and stretched. “He’s a little fellow with six legs and a leathery hide. A nuisance on Balera, which is the equivalent of a Terran swamp. He eats every vegetable known, dry or fresh, and, being only two inches long is hard to see. He doesn’t bite, just eats things and breeds. There must be millions by now, on each island of Mureess. Then the eggs get carried about. They’re tough and adhesive. You can guess what their warehouses looked like.”

  “At least two million starved before the Council gave in,” resumed the Lyran sadly. “But they gave in all the way and abolished caste privilege before the first relief ship even arrived. They’ll be full members shortly. And this older report?”

  “Read the names,” said Powers. He was staring out of the Club window at the stars. “They fed us our own dirt, because we hadn’t eliminated all our competitors. Disease means microorganisms, so you choose the largest animal possible with efficiency, that is. Just read the list. My grandparents died, you know, but it had to be done, or we’d have destroyed ourselves. The Combine was a far greater blessing to us than it ever was to Mureess, I can assure you of that!”

  He listened in silence as the Lyran read.

  “Desmodus, the vampire bat,

  Rattus Norvegicus, the common rat,

  Mus Domesticus, the common mouse,

  The Common Locust,

  Sylvilagus, the Cottontail Rabbit,

  Passer Domesticus, the House Sparrow,

  Sturnus Vulgarus, the European Starling.”

  Powers sat down and stared at his friend. “Terran life by comparison with many other worlds is terribly tough because we have so many different environments, I suppose. Hence its use on Mureess. Of course, the Combine increased breeding rates again, but adapting that bat to stand cold was the last straw,” he said. “The rest of them were all ready and waiting, but the bat was tropical. We’ll start with him. Desmodus is a small flying mammal about.…”

  GREYLORN, by Keith Laumer

  PROLOGUE

  The murmur of conversation around the conference table died as the World Secretary entered the room and took his place at the head of the table.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll not detain you with formalities today. The representative of the Navy Department is waiting outside to present the case for his proposal. You all know something of the scheme; it has been heard and passed as feasible by the Advisory Group. It will now be our responsibility to make the decision. I ask that each of you in forming a conclusion remember that our present situation can only be described as desperate, and that desperate measures may be in order.”

  The Secretary turned and nodded to a braided admiral seated near the door who left the room and returned a moment later with a young gray-haired Naval Officer.

  “Members of the Council,” said the admiral, “this is Lieutenant Commander Greylorn.” All eyes followed the officer as he walked the length of the room to take the empty seat at the end of the table.

  “Please proceed, Commander,” said the Secretary.

  “Thank you, Mr. Secretary.” The Commander’s voice was unhurried and low, yet it carried clearly and held authority. He began without preliminary.

  “When the World Government dispatched the Scouting Forces forty-three years ago, an effort was made to contact each of the twenty-five worlds to which this government had sent Colonization parties during the Colonial Era of the middle Twentieth Centuries. With the return of the last of the scouts early this year, we were forced to realize that no assistance would be forthcoming from that source.”

  The Commander turned his eyes to the world map covering the wall. With the exception of North America and a narrow strip of coastal waters, the entire map was tinted an unhealthy pink.

  “The latest figures compiled by the Department of the Navy indicate that we are losing area at the rate of one square mile every twenty-one hours. The organism’s faculty for developing resistance to our chemical and biological measures appears to be evolving rapidly. Analyses of atmospheric samples indicate the level of noxious content rising at a steady rate. In other words, in spite of our best efforts, we are not holding our own against the Red Tide.”

  A mutter ran around the table, as Members shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

  * * * *

  “A great deal of thought has been applied to the problem of increasing our offensive ability. This in the end is still a question of manpower and raw resources. We do not have enough. Our small improvements in effectiveness have been progressively offset by increasing casualties and loss of territory. In the end, alone, we must lose.”

  The C
ommander paused, as the murmur rose and died again. “There is however, one possibility still unexplored,” he said. “And recent work done at the Polar Research Station places the possibility well within the scope of feasibility. At the time the attempt was made to establish contact with the colonies, one was omitted. It alone now remains to be sought out. I refer to the Omega Colony.”

  A portly Member leaned forward and burst out, “The location of the colony is unknown!”

  The Secretary intervened. “Please permit the Commander to complete his remarks. There will be ample opportunity for discussion when he has finished.”

  “This contact was not attempted for two reasons,” the Commander continued. “First, the precise location was not known; second, the distance was at least twice that of the earlier colonies. At the time, there was a feeling of optimism which seemed to make the attempt superfluous. Now the situation has changed. The possibility of contacting Omega Colony now assumes paramount importance.

  “The development of which I spoke is a new application of drive principle which has given to us a greatly improved effective velocity for space propulsion. Forty years ago, the minimum elapsed time of return travel to the presumed sector within which the Omega World should lie was about a century. Today we have the techniques to construct a small scouting vessel capable of making the transit in just over five years. We cannot hold out here for a century, perhaps; but we can manage a decade.

  “As for location, we know the initial target point toward which Omega was launched. The plan was of course that a precise target should be selected by the crew after approaching the star group closely enough to permit telescopic planetary resolution and study. There is no reason why the crew of a scout could not make the same study and examination of possible targets, and with luck find the colony.