The baby kept her eyes on his, and slowly raised her silken hands. She cupped them together to make a closed chamber, looked down at it, opened her hands slightly and swiftly to peer inside, rapt at what she pretended to see; closed her hands again to capture the treasure, whatever it was, and hugged it to her breast. She looked up at him slowly, and her eyes were full of tears, and she was smiling.
He took his grandchild carefully in his arms and held her gently and strongly. Monkey?
“April,” he gasped. “Little Ape. Little Ape.”
Viridis is a young planet which bears (at first glance) old life-forms. Come away and let the green planet roll around its sun; come back in a while—not long, as astronomical time goes.
The jungle is much the same, the sea, the rolling savannahs. But the life. …
Viridis was full of primates. There were blunt-toothed herbivores and long-limbed tree-dwellers, gliders and burrowers. The fish-eaters were adapting the way all Viridis life must adapt, becoming more fit by becoming simpler, or go to the wall. Already the sea-apes had rudimentary gills and had lost their hair. Already tiny forms competed with the insects on their own terms.
On the banks of the wandering rivers, monotremes with opposed toes dredged and paddled, and sloths and lemurs crept at night. At first they had stayed together, but they were soon too numerous for that; and a half dozen generations cost them the power of speech, which was, by then, hardly a necessity. Living was good for primates on Viridis, and became better each generation.
Eating and breeding, hunting and escaping filled the days and the cacophonous nights. It was hard in the beginning to see a friend cut down, to watch a slender silver shape go spinning down a river and know that with it went some of your brother, some of your mate, some of yourself. But as the hundreds became thousands and the thousands millions, witnessing death became about as significant as watching your friend get his hair cut. The basic ids each spread through the changing, mutating population like a stain, crossed and recrossed by the strains of the others, co-existing, eating each other and being eaten and all the while passing down through the generations.
There was a cloud over the savannah, high over the ruins of the compound. It was a thing of many colors and of no particular shape, and it was bigger than one might imagine, not knowing how far away it was.
From it dropped a golden spot that became a thread, and down came a golden mass. It spread and swung, exploded into a myriad of individuals. Some descended on the compound, erasing and changing, lifting, breaking—always careful to kill nothing. Others blanketed the planet, streaking silently through the green aisles, flashing unimpeded through the tangled thickets. They combed the riverbanks and the half-light of hill waves, and everywhere they went they found and touched the mushroom and stripped it of its spores, the compaction and multiplication of what had once been the representatives of a very high reptile culture.
Primates climbed and leaped, crawled and crept to the jungle margins to watch. Eater lay by eaten; the hunted stood on the hunter’s shoulder, and a platypoid laid an egg in the open which nobody touched.
Simian forms hung from the trees in loops and ropes, in swarms and beards, and more came all the time, brought by some ineffable magnetism to watch at the hill. It was a fast and a waiting, with no movement but jostling for position, a crowding forward from behind and a pressing back from the slightest chance of interfering with the golden visitors.
Down from the polychrome cloud drifted a mass of the golden beings, carrying with them a huge sleek ship. They held it above the ground, sliced it, lifted it apart, set down this piece and that until a shape began to grow. Into it went bales and bundles, stocks and stores, and then the open tops were covered. It was a much bigger installation than the one before.
Quickly, it was done, and the golden cloud hung waiting.
The jungle was trembling with quiet.
In one curved panel of the new structure, something spun, fell outward, and out of the opening came a procession of stately creatures, long-headed, bright-eyed, three-toed, richly plumed and feathered. They tested their splendid wings, then stopped suddenly, crouched and looking upward.
They were given their obeisance by the golden ones, and after there appeared in the sky the exquisite symbol of a beauty that rides up and up, turns and spirals down again only to rise again; the symbol of that which has no beginning and no end, and the sign of those whose worship and whose work it is to bring to all the Universe that which has shown itself worthy in parts of it.
Then they were gone, and the jungle exploded into killing and flight, eating and screaming, so that the feathered ones dove back into their shelter and closed the door. …
And again to the green planet (when the time was right) came the cloud-ship, and found a world full of birds, and the birds watched in awe while they harvested their magic dust, and built a new shelter. In this they left four of their own for later harvesting, and this was to make of Viridis a most beautiful place.
From Viridis, the ship vaulted through the galaxies, searching for worlds worthy of what is human in humanity, whatever their manner of being alive. These they seeded, and of these, perhaps one would produce something new; something which could be reduced to the dust of Viridis, and from dust return.
MR. COSTELLO, HERO
“COME IN, PURSER. AND shut the door.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” The Skipper never invited anyone in—not to his quarters. His office, yes, but not here.
He made an abrupt gesture, and I came in and closed the door. It was about as luxurious as a compartment on a spaceship can get. I tried not to goggle at it as if it was the first time I had ever seen it, just because it was the first time I had ever seen it.
I sat down.
He opened his mouth, closed it, forced the tip of his tongue through his thin lips. He licked them and glared at me. I’d never seen the Iron Man like this. I decided that the best thing to say would be nothing, which is what I said.
He pulled a deck of cards out of the top-middle drawer and slid them across the desk. “Deal.”
I said, “I b—”
“And don’t say you beg my pardon!” he exploded.
Well, all right. If the skipper wanted a cozy game of gin rummy to while away the parsecs, far be it from me to … I shuffled. Six years under this cold-blooded, fish-eyed automatic computer with eyebrows, and this was the first time that he—
“Deal,” he said. I looked up at him. “Draw, five-card draw. You do play draw poker, don’t you, Purser?”
“Yes, sir.” I dealt and put down the pack. I had three threes and couple of court cards. The skipper scowled at his hand and threw down two. He glared at me again.
I said, “I got three of a kind, sir.”
He let his cards go as if they no longer existed, slammed out of his chair and turned his back to me. He tilted his head back and stared up at the see-it-all, with its complex of speed, time, position, and distance-run coordinated. Borinquen, our destination planet, was at spitting distance—only a day or so off—and Earth was a long way behind. I heard a sound and dropped my eyes. The Skipper’s hands were locked behind him, squeezed together so hard that they crackled.
“Why didn’t you draw?” he grated.
“I beg your—”
“When I played poker—and I used to play a hell of a lot of poker—as I recall it, the dealer would find out how many cards each player wanted after the deal and give him as many as he discarded. Did you ever hear of that, Purser?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“You did.” He turned around. I imagine he had been scowling this same way at the see-it-all, and I wondered why it was he hadn’t shattered the cover glass.
“Why, then, Purser,” he demanded, “did you show your three of a kind without discarding, without drawing—without, mister, asking me how many cards I might want?”
I thought about it. “I—we—I mean, sir, we haven’t been playing poker that way lately.�
�
“You’ve been playing draw poker without drawing!” He sat down again and beamed that glare at me again. “And who changed the rules?”
“I don’t know, sir. We just—that’s the way we’ve been playing.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Now tell me something, Purser. How much time did you spend in the galley during the last watch?”
“About an hour, sir.”
“About an hour.”
“Well, sir,” I explained hurriedly, “it was my turn.”
He said nothing, and it suddenly occurred to me that these galley-watches weren’t in the ship’s orders.
I said quickly, “It isn’t against your orders to stand such a watch, is it, sir?”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t.” His voice was so gentle, it was ugly. “Tell me, Purser, doesn’t Cooky mind these galley-watches?”
“Oh, no, sir! He’s real pleased about it.” I knew he was thinking about the size of the galley. It was true that two men made quite a crowd in a place like that. I said, “That way, he knows everybody can trust him.”
“You mean that way you know he won’t poison you.”
“Well—yes, sir.”
“And tell me,” he said, his voice even gentler, “who suggested he might poison you?”
“I really couldn’t say, Captain. It’s just sort of something that came up. Cooky doesn’t mind,” I added. “If he’s watched all the time, he knows nobody’s going to suspect him. It’s all right.”
Again he repeated my words.
“It’s all right.” I wished he wouldn’t. I wished he’d stop looking at me like that. “How long,” he asked, “has it been customary for the deck officer to bring a witness with him when he takes over the watch?”
“I really couldn’t say, sir. That’s out of my department.”
“You really couldn’t say. Now think hard, Purser. Did you ever stand galley-watches, or see deck-officers bring witnesses with them when they relieve the bridge, or see draw poker played without drawing—before this trip?”
“Well, no, sir. I don’t think I have. I suppose we just never thought of it before.”
“We never had Mr. Costello as a passenger before, did we?”
“No, sir.”
I thought for a moment he was going to say something else, but he didn’t, just: “Very well, Purser. That will be all.”
I went out and started back aft, feeling puzzled and sort of upset. The Skipper didn’t have to hint things like that about Mr. Costello. Mr. Costello was a very nice man. Once, the Skipper had picked a fight with Mr. Costello. They’d shouted at each other in the dayroom. That is, the Skipper had shouted—Mr. Costello never did. Mr. Costello was as good-natured as they come. A good-natured soft-spoken man, with the kind of a face they call open. Open and honest. He’d once been a Triumver back on Earth—the youngest ever appointed, they said.
You wouldn’t think such an easygoing man was as smart as that. Triumvers are usually life-time appointees, but Mr. Costello wasn’t satisfied. Had to keep moving, you know. Learning all the time, shaking hands all around, staying close to the people. He loved people.
I don’t know why the Skipper couldn’t get along with him. Everybody else did. And besides—Mr. Costello didn’t play poker; why should he care one way or the other how we played it? He didn’t eat the galley food—he had his own stock in his cabin—so what difference would it make to him if the cook poisoned anyone? Except, of course, that he cared about us. People—he liked people.
Anyway, it’s better to play poker without the draw. Poker’s a good game with a bad reputation. And where do you suppose it gets the bad reputation? From cheaters. And how do people cheat at poker? Almost never when they deal. It’s when they pass out cards after the discard. That’s when a shady dealer knows what he holds, and he knows what to give the others so he can win. All right, remove the discard and you remove nine-tenths of the cheaters. Remove the cheaters and the honest men can trust each other.
That’s what Mr. Costello used to say, anyhow. Not that he cared one way or the other for himself. He wasn’t a gambling man.
I went into the dayroom and there was Mr. Costello with the Third Officer. He gave me a big smile and a wave, so I went over.
“Come on, sit down, Purser,” he said. “I’m landing tomorrow. Won’t have much more chance to talk to you.”
I sat down. The Third snapped shut a book he’d been holding open on the table and sort of got it out of sight.
Mr. Costello laughed at him. “Go ahead, Third, show the Purser. You can trust him—he’s a good man. I’d be proud to be shipmates with the Purser.”
The Third hesitated and then raised the book from his lap. It was the Space Code and expanded Rules of the Road. Every licensed officer has to bone up on it a lot, to get his license. But it’s not the kind of book you ordinarily kill time with.
“The Third here was showing me all about what a captain can and can’t do,” said Mr. Costello.
“Well, you asked me to,” the Third said.
“Now just a minute,” said Mr. Costello rapidly, “now just a minute.” He had a way of doing that sometimes. It was a part of him, like the thinning hair on top of his head and the big smile and the way he had of cocking his head to one side and asking you what it was you just said, as if he didn’t hear so well. “Now just a minute, you wanted to show me this material, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, Mr. Costello,” the Third said.
“You’re going over the limitations of a spacemaster’s power of your own free will, aren’t you?”
“Well,” said the Third, “I guess so. Sure.”
“Sure,” Mr. Costello repeated happily. “Tell the Purser the part you just read me.”
“The one you found in the book?”
“You know the one. You read it out your own self, didn’t you?”
“Oh,” said the Third. He looked at me—sort of uneasily, I thought—and reached for the book.
Mr. Costello put his hand on it. “Oh, don’t bother looking it up,” he said. “You can remember it.”
“Yeah, I guess I do,” the Third admitted. “It’s a sort of safeguard against letting the Skipper’s power go to his head, in case it ever does. Suppose a time comes when a Captain begins to act up, and the crew gets the idea that a lunatic has taken over the bridge. Well, something has to be done about it. The crew has the power to appoint one officer and send him up to the Captain for an accounting. If the Skipper refuses, or if the crew doesn’t like his accounting, then they have the right to confine him to his quarters and take over the ship.”
“I think I heard about that,” I said. “But the Skipper has rights, too. I mean the crew has to report everything by space-radio the second it happens, and then the Captain has a full hearing along with the crew at the next port.”
Mr. Costello looked at us and shook his big head, full of admiration. When Mr. Costello thought you were good, it made you feel good all over.
The Third looked at his watch and got up. “I got to relieve the bridge. Want to come along, Purser?”
“I’d like to talk to him for a while,” Mr. Costello said. “Do you suppose you could get somebody else for a witness?”
“Oh, sure, if you say so,” said the Third.
“But you’re going to get someone.”
“Absolutely,” said the Third.
“Safest ship I was ever on,” said Mr. Costello. “Gives a fellow a nice feeling to know that the watch is never going to get the orders wrong.”
I thought so myself and wondered why we never used to do it before. I watched the Third leave and stayed where I was, feeling good, feeling safe, feeling glad that Mr. Costello wanted to talk to me. And me just a Purser, him an ex-Triumver.
Mr. Costello gave me the big smile. He nodded toward the door. “That young fellow’s going far. A good man. You’re all good men here.” He stuck a sucker-cup in the heater and passed it over to me with his own hands. “Coffee,” he said. “
My own brand. All I ever use.”
I tasted it and it was fine. He was a very generous man. He sat back and beamed at me while I drank it.
“What do you know about Borinquen?” he wanted to know.
I told him all I could. Borinquen’s a pretty nice place, what they call “four-nines Earth Normal”—which means that the climate, gravity, atmosphere, and ecology come within .9999 of being the same as Earth’s. There are only about six known planets like that. I told him about the one city it had and the trapping that used to be the main industry. Coats made of glunker fur last forever. They shine green in white light and real warm ember-red in blue light, and you can take a full-sized coat and scrunch it up and hide it in your two hands, it’s that light and fine. Being so light, the fur made ideal space-cargo.
Of course, there was a lot more on Borinquen now—rare isotope ingots and foodstuffs and seeds for the drug business and all, and I suppose the glunker trade could dry right up and Borinquen could still carry its weight. But furs settled the planet, furs supported the city in the early days, and half the population still lived out in the bush and trapped.
Mr. Costello listened to everything I said in a way I can only call respectful.
I remember I finished up by saying, “I’m sorry you have to get off there, Mr. Costello. I’d like to see you some more. I’d like to come see you at Borinquen, whenever we put in, though I don’t suppose a man like you would have much spare time.”
He put his big hand on my arm. “Purser, if I don’t have time when you’re in port, I’ll make time. Hear?” Oh, he had a wonderful way of making a fellow feel good.
Next thing you know, he invited me right into his cabin. He sat me down and handed me a sucker full of a mild red wine with a late flavor of cinnamon, which was a new one on me, and he showed me some of his things.
He was a great collector. He had one or two little bits of colored paper that he said were stamps they used before the Space Age, to prepay carrying charges on paper letters. He said no matter where he was, just one of those things could get him a fortune. Then he had some jewels, not rings or anything, just stones, and a fine story for every single one of them.
Selected Stories Page 10