Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  He was dreaming again.

  He was new wolf. He was Band-father—first-ranked male in a pack of early modern Old Earth wolves—Plan-Speak-Hunt People—who were supplanting the older evolutionary lupine form: the oldwolves, or dire wolves, as later Old World archaeologists would call them.

  In the shadow of the young maple trees and the thick brush of the hillside, he looked down on the open floor of the valley below, at the open area a hundred feet or so down, where the dire wolves were already through their forenoon sleep, in preparation for the coming night of hunting. They slept, some who were friendly lying close to each other, even making small clumps—others scattered singly about at a good distance from all other sleepers.

  By the Band-father’s right shoulder stood Next-brother, the second-ranking male of this pack of newwolves, first among those not Band-father, but who carried their tails straight as ranking members of the Band. By his left shoulder stood Band-mother, the top-ranking female of the newwolves; and mother, in fact, to many of the Band. None stood ahead of Band-father.

  Like him, those with him looked out on a black-and-white world; but the air reaching their spread nostrils was rich with a multitude of nose-tastes—“scents” was too pale, too meager a word to capture the fullness of a newwolf’s world of smell.

  Strong upon it was the wolfish taste of the oldwolves down below. They were larger than the newwolves; their bones were heavier. They were able to hunt large prey like the hairy mastodon. But future archaeologists, finding mud casts of their brains inside their fossil skulls, would note that their brains were smaller than those of the newwolves.

  The eyes of Band-father and the others noted and read each tiny movement of each other and the dire wolves below; and when Band-father turned to them at last, he read by the flick of an ear, the smallest movement, the narrowing of an eye—those tiny signals from them, that the other newwolves understood and agreed.

  It was decided. He turned, they all turned, and began to trot back to their own packground.

  Even as he dreamed, Bleys—the human Bleys—was telling Toni about it; Toni and anyone else in the room. He could not help himself.

  —It was noon when they got back to the packground and the Band was gathered together. Excitement was high. Band-father went back and forth among his children, his brothers and sisters and their children, touching noses, receiving their signs of obedience—gripping their noses in his jaws as some Roman legate might grip the forearms of his soldiers in approval before a battle. Gradually, the understanding amongst them all grew, an understanding that passed from one to the other, not in symbols, but simply by a chain of smaller actions and gestures—nose touching, nose bites, slight movements, the whole language of the new people—for they did not think in symbols, but in images of scent and sound and sight and emotion, all joined in a patterned community of understanding that replaced what could not be said in words.

  This afternoon we hunt the oldwolves and drive them; as we hunt and drive the meat-animals that are our prey—in a two-pronged attack, by two part-Bands. I will lead one part-Band. Next-brother will lead the other.

  Then Bleys moved even deeper into the dream, no longer conscious of saying aloud what he was experiencing—to Toni or anyone else. Only, for a moment before he was submerged…

  “I thought you ought to have a look at him,” something in him was barely conscious of Toni saying.

  “Yes,” Kaj said. “You were right…”

  But Bleys went deeper, leaving them… lost now completely in the dream.

  He was the newwolves’ Band-father.

  Chapter 39

  Band-father, in the wildness of his dreaming…

  ...I am with my part-Band, running. My ears stand tall and breathe the voice of the west wind. My straight-held tail is groomed by claws of low branches as it streams proudly behind me. My ear flicks back, and the distinctive footfall tells me that Band-mother is in her customary place, protecting the flank of my windward side. We have crossed the fast water and skirted the place of fiery rocks since Next-brother left with the boldest of pups-now-two-snows-old and the bent-tail hunters of the other part-Band.

  Band-mother and I with my suckle-mates, each as full-grown and strong as I, seek the oldwolf Band-father and his oldwolf, dominant straight-tails. They will be in prized places of sleeping.

  Next-brother, with his part-Band nearby will wait in silence. He will not break cover until he hears bones and teeth. He is a newwolf. His companions will obey him. They are newwolves.

  The sun is bright, but the world is still black and white. There is gray shadow, but very little, because the sun warms my back and shadow-brother-who-runs-with-me when the sun shines, is under my belly, hiding from the light. When the sun is lower, he will run beside me. The wind speaks to my nose. A blackwing cries to us of food that needs no killing. She would share. Band-mother growls softly, warning the others to pay no heed. Deadsister-daughter snorts. They need no warning. They are newwolves.

  The trees here are small and closely packed. The earth still smells sharply of burn when I scrape away the leaves. The heavy underbrush is good cover, but we have no need of cover. The oldwolf smell is still faint. We circle around the brush and leap the fallen logs, half-charred. The others are behind me. The day is warm…

  …I, and those with me are very close to the oldwolves now. Their band-scent is the many scents of separate individuals. We move quickly.

  Suddenly I have two wolves inside me. Part of me is Watcher, part Mover—but over both I am still single, still Band-father. Trees rush toward my part-Band and pass out of sight behind us. We are no longer just running. Legs gather beneath us and send us forward in great bounds.

  We break from the trees; and in the wide clearing before us—looking not unlike ourselves—the oldwolves are beginning to stir. From the shadow of the large boulder near the middle of the clearing, a great oldwolf rises and stretches and looks incuriously at us. Several others look at us and growl softly and look back at this crook-tailed oldster.

  He is their Band-father.

  He is mine.

  Watcher-in-me casts an eye about the clearing as Mover increases the length and power of his leaps toward the oldwolf Band-father. The other oldwolves are no longer looking to him for lead-signals. They are rising and fighting. But they are scattered. Band-mother accepts a challenge, then dodges an oldwolf’s charge while Deadsister-daughter sinks her teeth into the challenger’s hindquarters. Then both dart away.

  The oldwolf Band-father braces himself and takes Mover’s charge on the shoulder and his jaws close on the back of my neck. Mover-in-me has been too sure of himself. I have been Band-father too long to be careful enough. But Mover-in-me is faster than any oldwolf, and the season of green grasses and plump calves has been better to us than to those we fight, for the great beasts they hunt are ever scarcer. My neck is thick with fur and heavy with fat. The heavy jaws clamp down on my thick neck-hair and hide, and Mover-in-me snaps my teeth on oldwolf’s foreleg to crush its bone. The oldwolf falls, dragging me down with him, never loosening his grip. Lying beside him, Mover-in-me breaks his other front leg. We roll to our feet and tug. The oldwolf has strong jaws, but he cannot dig in with his broken legs. I tear loose.

  Other oldwolves are coming from the trees at the far side of the clearing, loping toward us. They are many, they are young and they are proud. They will let us kill their leaders. Then they will challenge us, drive us off or kill us, and become themselves leaders of the oldwolves.

  They are young and foolish. The Band is the source of life.

  Mover sidesteps a charge and plunges away as Watcher sees Next-brother and his companions charge suddenly from hiding in a tangle of brush. They charge the younger oldwolves who wait to win and lead their Band. Two of the oldwolves stand bewildered, their attention shifting back and forth from the battle before them to this new threat.

  They die where they stand; for all but their strongest and bravest turn away from the charge, h
aving seen me and my part-Band winning against their older leaders; and Next-brother and our eager young wolves with the taste of a kill strong in their noses take down those who linger.

  —Too late, the others turn, but now Mover and Band-mother and our other companions have disengaged from our first attack and joined Next-brother among the newcomers.

  Bite… feint… check… dodge. Mover is the one in control of me now.

  It is too much for the remaining oldwolves. They break and flee. Mover would follow, but Watcher holds him back.

  The oldwolves will not return. We have hurt them too much. When the snows come again they will die, for the great long-haired ones they hunt are too few, and the oldwolves are not swift-footed and quick-bodied enough to bring down the fleeter meat-beasts, as we can, to feed their young.

  I howl deeply, and the newwolves gather at my signal. We lope back toward the shade of the trees. Shadow-brother-who-runs-with-me stretches out, far ahead of my feet, his nose to the horizon…

  Gradually, still running in his mind, Bleys slipped out of the dream and back into the room, the dim room with Toni and no one else.

  Still full of strength from the fight, Bleys started to sit up in the bed, but could not move. He was held. His arms and legs were fastened somehow to the edges of the bed so that he could not move.

  Wildness flooded him.

  “Why am I held?” he shouted at the face of Toni, close beside him.

  He felt her hand stroking his forehead.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she said.

  “Take them off!” he shouted. “Take them off!”

  She reached for her wrist control pad, and the restraints fell away from his arms and lower legs. He almost dropped back into unconsciousness in relief; and when he came fully to himself again, she was gently and soothingly, rhythmically wiping his face, neck, naked shoulders and upper body with a cool, damp cloth, and he was gradually relaxing, gradually, gradually, gradually…

  *

  —Again there was a long time of chaotic dreams… then, finally, a dream that came clearly once more.

  He dreamed he was having a conversation with the young Hal Mayne, whom he had finally found.

  The boy sat cross-legged, like a lean young Buddha in lotus position, on something like a dais. High enough so that, seated as he was, his eyes were level with those of Bleys, who stood talking to him.

  The room they were in was shadowy and cool, to the point of being almost cold. Hal Mayne had something like a blanket, of some indeterminate color—Bleys could not tell which, the room was so dim—draped around his shoulders. This cloaked him. It was impossible to say what he was wearing otherwise.

  They were in earnest conversation; but that was not going properly, from Bleys’ point of view. Hal Mayne was at odds with him. Their talk had come to the point where the youngster seemed almost to be pronouncing judgment on the adult Bleys.

  “—Why can’t I make you understand?” Bleys found himself saying.

  “Because your language isn‘t understandable,” Hal answered calmly. “You don’t speak to me in normal human language. You are Other.”

  The boy had pronounced the last word as if it had been an identification name, like Dorsai, or Friendly.

  "No, no,” Bleys was saying. “The Other organization is only that, a means to an end—a good end.”

  “Good or not,” said Hal, “it’s got nothing to do with what you are. You are Other.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? Is this a joke—as if to say I come from a race of aliens?” Bleys demanded. “I’m talking Basic, and I’m human as you are.”

  “No,” said Hal. “Of course you aren’t alien. You’re human, but individual—as all we humans are different from each other. So you’re the only one of your kind. The Bleys-Other. It’s always been so for you. Always, you’ve thought of yourself as the only one of your kind, even with your mother. Your mother knew this, without understanding it; but that was one reason she felt toward you as if you were a changeling. She feared you. Think back. You've always known this. You were not so different as a child; but step by step as you grew, you grew toward being Other. You made yourself Other. Soon you'll have forgotten you were anything else. You’ll live only to turn the human race into Others like you, so you won’t be alone anymore. But that can’t be done, even by you.”

  “How do you know about what I was like as a child? What do you know about my mother?” Bleys demanded.

  “I know because I’m unique, like you, and like every other human born since the race began. But I know you for what you are; and one of my duties in the always-evolving pattern of history is to stop you from destroying people in trying to make them into what they were never meant to be.

  “Because you work for that, I know you for the antagonist you are. I know the destruction that could come; and that you lie, even to yourself when you tell yourself. What I plan will not be bad.”

  “You and I know better…”

  The dream lost itself in darkness, and Bleys slipped into different sleep. Not the disturbed slumber he had almost become used to; but honest, deep sleep. When he woke, all things seemed different.

  The pain in his side was gone. The feeling of wrongness was gone. Only a deep, abiding sadness was left.

  There was more light than before in the room. He could see his surroundings clearly, now; although the one window wall of the room—he had clearly been right when he thought that he was in a hotel room—was lightened only partially. It was like coming back to life.

  Bleys could see everything within the walls of the room quite sharply and clearly. Toni was leaning over him, shaving him with a small razor, undoubtedly of Newtonian concept and Cassidan design, but one which was familiar to him as it was to millions of people on the New

  Worlds—it burnt the sprouting beard off at a tiny but measured distance above the skin and felt merely as if his face was being stroked. Toni must have done that daily, during the time he was ill.

  Then Bleys became aware of Kaj looming behind her, and as soon as she was done, she moved out of the way. Kaj himself moved closer.

  “How are you feeling?” Kaj asked.

  “Good!” Bleys said. “How’s Henry?”

  “He’s fine. He and Dahno will be in to see you in a few days. But I asked how you felt.”

  “I’ve been sleeping. Real sleep.”

  “I believe you,” Kaj said. “You’ve made a good recovery. Better than I expected, even given your excellent health to begin with. You must have harnessed your creative ability with a vengeance.”

  “Harness”—Bleys checked himself—“you know, what the Council hit me with must have begun to affect me a lot sooner than twenty-four hours later. I remember now not feeling right as early as when we were driving to the spaceport.”

  “They lied to you, of course,” Kaj said. “They wanted you to feel you were even more helpless than most people poisoned that way. I didn’t warn you because I didn’t want to suggest—”

  “I’m not particularly suggestible,” Bleys said.

  “No,” said Kaj. “But I didn’t know that then. Medicians have to play safe.”

  “How long was I out of action?” Bleys asked.

  “Counting from the time you came aboard Favored of God, a little over two weeks.”

  Bleys gave a long sigh of relief.

  “Only that? It felt like eternity. That’s good. I don’t have the time to spare for being sick. But at least I’m well now.”

  “I wish I could agree with you,” Kaj said. “But maybe you remember my telling you that the effects of this would linger. You’re still going to have occasional episodes of what you’ve gone through, these past two weeks, including finding yourself talking uncontrollably, and blackouts. There may be other elements, too, that have been going unnoticed so far, but which you’ll discover as the large effects fade. But if you keep the positive attitude—or whatever it is that’s brought you back this much—you’ll eventuall
y get rid of them all, and you’ll greatly shorten the time wrestling with them. Let me just give you a couple of words of caution—stay optimistic. Stay confident.”

  Bleys smiled. “I was born optimistic and confident. In fact, I can’t imagine being anything else. And thank you, medician, for all you’ve done—even though I don’t know what it was. Without your help it’d’ve been a lot worse.”

  “Any medician could have helped you,” Kaj said, almost shortly. It was the closest Bleys had ever seen the medician come to betraying any emotion.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” Bleys said. “Now I’ll get up—“

  He raised his head and started to raise his body; but Kaj’s hands stopped him and gently held him back, pushing him back down.

  “Move very slowly,” Kaj said. “Move fast and you’ll find yourself getting dizzy, perhaps even blacking out again, or having some other of the symptoms you’ve just been having.”

  Kaj turned toward Toni. “Help me here. We’ll prop him up on pillows gradually till he’s sitting; then, if he’s all right with that, then we may let him try to sit on the edge of the bed. Tomorrow, perhaps, he can stand up, and eventually try walking.”

  “Tomorrow?” Bleys said. Kaj ignored him.

  In the end, they did it just as Kaj had said. It was four days before he walked across the room with one of them on either side, but with neither holding onto him as he went.

  “You see?” said Bleys. “I’m fine.”

  But the truth was, he was not. He had not become dizzy. Nor had he blacked out. But his whole body felt weak and strange. He would not admit it, but he was glad when they steered him once more to the bed and he sat down on the side of it.

  “Now, I suggest you rest for a while, then try sitting up, standing up and walking again, and alternate between rest and exercise that way for a day or two.” Again Kaj turned to Toni, who now was right beside him as they stood looking down at Bleys, seated on the bed, his head almost on a level with theirs. “You’ll be able to help him, won’t you, Toni?”