The 19th Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Charles V. De Vet

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

  Originally published in Science Fiction Stories, November 1959.

  The second day on the planet we made contact with one group of natives—the race the survey team had named the “Pinks.”

  Several times, as we sat and followed the shade around the space ship, we had gotten glimpses of pink-orange bodies through the pineapple-top trees; and late in the afternoon an old female, followed by two male children, came out into the clearing and stood watching us cautiously.

  “Sit still,” Pastor Gorman said softly. “Any movement might frighten them.”

  After a few minutes the Pinks edged closer to the pile of wild yams we had placed between us and the woods, and we were able to observe them better.

  The old female must have stood over seven feet tall. Her body was covered with orange-streaked pink hair that was straggly and patchy. Her hide reminded me of a moth-eaten rug. Her small round head and long arms were entirely free of hair. She held her hulky shoulders bunched up around her neck and pendulous udders, starting low on her breast, hung down to her waist.

  The children were covered with a film of dust that had caked in oily spots of moisture. Evidently they had been perspiring heavily, after rolling in dirt. None of them wore clothing.

  A soft breeze brought the heavy odor of rancid bodies. “I can smell them from here,” I said.

  Gorman gave me a frown of disapproval. “They’re a primitive race,” he said. “Naturally they won’t be as sanitary as we are.”

  The three Pinks squat down beside the pile of yams and began to eat, tearing off the tough casings of the vegetables with their teeth and spitting them on the ground. After they’d eaten their fill of the yams, they gathered the remainder in their arms and moved quickly away from us. Several dozen other Pinks, who had come out of the woods while they ate, met them and snatched at the yams. There was a brief, snarling, teeth-snapping scrabble, and our late visitors lost the bulk of their spoil.

  Pastor Gorman was quite pleased. “A successful beginning,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. “We’ve shown them we mean no harm. Soon we should be able to prove that we’re their friends. Then our work can begin.”

  Actually it was his work that would begin. I was only Johnny Zarwell, the pilot and owner of the space ship. I had contracted to bring him out here, to spend a year with him on this newly-discovered world, and bring him back again. The missionary work would be all his.

  Gorman was an old man, well into his seventies. After a lifetime of secular work, and realizing that he was approaching the end of his productive years, he had decided to add a last, dramatic, effort to his career. Something that would add weight and significance to his life. Without actually stating it as such, even to himself I believe, he probably saw himself as the Saint Patrick of this world. He would bring the word of God to the savages—humanoid—that had been found here; he would be the first, and would be remembered in their history. I suppose that could be called vanity, but I’m certain it was not a deliberate vanity, and it was a noble one. He was prepared to give everything—including his life if necessary—to teach them of the true God. Pastor Gorman was as thoroughly a good man as I have ever known.

  His church, a rather recent sect who called themselves the Repentants, had furnished the money to hire my ship, and I had flown him to this new world.

  * * * *

  The next day Pastor Gorman and I spent the early hours of the morning digging up wild yams in the forest. He went unarmed, but I carried an electric pistol at my waist; I had no intention of dying a martyr’s death, if I could help it.

  When we’d gathered a couple pecks of yams we carried them to the center of the clearing, and withdrew to the ship. Soon a young Pink, then a flood of others, left the woods and descended on the waiting meal. Each Pink, grabbed as many yams as he could get to and ran off to eat them. Within a half minute the yams had all vanished.

  An old female—probably the same one that had visited us the day before—stayed behind. She had been too slow to get any of the yams and now evidently was hoping we had more.

  Pastor Gorman saw this as his opportunity. He took two steps toward her, and as she gathered herself for flight he spoke quietly. “We are friends.” We had both learned their simple language from the tapes the survey team had made.

  The old female said nothing, but stood watching him warily.

  “We will not hurt you,” Gorman tried again.

  “Hungry,” the old female said.

  “We will feed you,” Gorman assured her.

  “Big hungry,” she said, accenting the adverb.

  “Wait in that place.” Pastor Gorman went into the ship and came out with a loaf of bread and a tin of canned beef. He opened the can and started toward the female.

  She retreated, keeping approximately ten yards distance between them. Pastor Gorman placed the can and the loaf of bread on the ground and returned to where I stood.

  The female approached the food, sniffing, and with drops of saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth. She snatched up the loaf and bit off large chunks and swallowed them greedily. When she finished she took up the can of beef and sniffed at it. She turned it around in her hands several times, spilling the meat to the ground. Disregarding the dropped food she continued to examine the can until she lost interest and tossed it aside.

  “I made a mistake,” Pastor Gorman whispered to me. “I just remembered that they’re yegetarians.”

  “Hungry,” the old female whined.

  “Come with another sun,” Gorman said, moving one arm around in a circle.

  “Hungry,” the female repeated.

  Pastor Gorman shook his head and held his hands out to show that they were empty.

  The female made a disgruntled noise in her throat and left us.

  Gorman smiled with satisfaction. “I think we’ve made out first friend,” he said. “She will bring the others to us.”

  * * * *

  We saw the planet’s other humanoid race the next day.

  The Pinks had eaten the food we had dug in the early morning, and were circling around us, never coming within reach, but seeming to have lost their earlier fear. Pastor Gorman spoke to several of them, but they shied off, too timid to speak.

  Suddenly the Pinks scattered, uttering bleating cries as they disappeared into the woods. It took us a minute to locate the cause of their alarm: Two brown-skinned humanoids at the far edge of the clearing.

  They stood regarding us, evidently very puzzled. After a minute they began moving slowly toward us, cautiously but without apparent fear. Their skin was a light brown color, with a purple cast, and as far as we could see, hairless. They were spindly-limbed, with big stomachs, yet they moved with a wiry agility. Their lower cuspid teeth grew up over their lips and gave them a ferocious appearance. This, I suppose, was the reason the survey crew had named them the “Uglies.” They wore hide cloaks that covered their backs and sides and were knotted across their chests. Each had a stone knife tied in the knotted cord on his chest, and each held a long, stone-tipped spear.

  As they came near they raised their weapons slightly, and I brought my hand cautiously up to my pistol butt. I wore the pistol always when I was outside.

  “Whatever you do, don’t shoot one of them,” Gorman cautioned. “That would be disastrous.”

  “If they make a move to throw those spears I’m going to defend myself,” I gritted lowly.

  “Don’t. Please,” he pleaded. “We can run inside if they prove hostile.”

  He edged over to the open port of the space ship and I followed.

  “Pale babies,” one of the tanned savages said unexpectedly.

  I saw Pastor Gorman’s eyebrows raise and his face work slightly as he sought the meaning of the words. The Uglies’ language was a bit more complicated than that of the Pinks, but we had had no trouble learning it.

  “We friends,” Gorman called to the savages.

  They disregarded him and muttered in a soft gutt
ural back and forth, too rapidly for us to understand what they said.

  “We come in peace,” Gorman spoke slowly, distinctly. In an aside to me he said, “They’re supposed to be more intelligent than the Pinks.”

  At that moment one of the savages pointed urgently to where a bolder Pink had shown himself at the edge of the woods and both bounded off in pursuit. I breathed a sigh of released tension.

  * * * *

  We saw the Uglies several times the next day. However, they paid no attention to us, but each time disappeared chasing the fleeing Pinks.

  In the afternoon I decided to go hunting. Both of us would welcome a meal of fresh meat. I took along a compass and was careful not to go too far from the ship. I was unable to scare up even one animal. Twice I thought I had, but both times what I thought were animals turned out to be only large native insects, and not edible.

  I returned to the ship just in time to see a party of three Uglies chasing a female Pink—by her markings I recognized her as our visitor of the second day on the planet—across the clearing. As I watched, the Pink disappeared over a ridge, closely followed by the brown savages. Thirty or so yards behind them ran Pastor Gorman. He was shouting, “Stop that! Stop that! Let her alone!”

  I ran across the clearing at an angle that would intersect his path. He stopped, gasping for breath, as I came up to him. We both looked down into the shallow gorge below us. The Pink female was lying on her stomach, with a long spear sticking out through her back.

  Gorman was too winded, and I too shocked by what I saw, to move as an Uglie turned the female over on her side, pushed her head back, and slashed open her throat with his knife. Her limbs still jerked feebly as he slit her stomach and disemboweled her.

  It was all over in a brief minute. Two of the Uglies boosted the body of the female onto the shoulder of the largest and they carried her up and over the hill on the far side of the gorge.

  I heard Pastor Gorman being sick beside me as I turned away. I was not feeling at all well myself.

  I had to give the old boy credit—he had nerve. His face still hadn’t regained its natural color a few minutes later as he said resolutely, “I’m going after them.”

  “Good Lord, they’ll kill you, too,” I protested.

  He gently but firmly took my hand from his arm. “That killing cannot be permitted to continue,” he said. He paused. “If I accomplish nothing else while I’m here, I’ve got to stop that.”

  I saw that it would do no good to try to dissuade him. “Take a gun then,” I said. I offered him my pistol.

  He shook his head.

  I did get him to take my compass, and the lunch I had packed for my hunting trip, but that was all. I never expected to see him alive again.

  * * * *

  He returned shortly before dusk that same day. But he would not talk. He was a sick man—mentally sick. He prayed late into the night, and once toward daylight when I woke I heard him muttering to himself. I doubt that he slept at all that night.

  In the morning he was more calm. He would eat nothing—took only a cup of coffee—but he talked quite freely.

  “They’re cannibals, Johnny,” he said. “They eat those poor Pinks.”

  I had suspected as much, but I said nothing: I knew he would go on. “I tried to reason with them,” he resumed, “but it did no good. They answered my questions, but wouldn’t argue. Their attitude seemed to be that what I talked about was too absurd even to discuss. I got nowhere.” He bowed his head.

  “I was afraid they’d kill you,” I said, trying to take his mind from his grief.

  He put down his cup of coffee. “That’s a funny thing,” he commented. “I was almost certain they would, too—but they weren’t the slightest bit hostile. After awhile, I think I figured out the reason why. Their young are white until about a third grown, I found, and I have a theory they thought I was one of them; one who had never lost his youthful whiteness. I suppose that must happen sometimes. Probably about as often as an albino human.” His thoughts returned to his earlier distress. “We’ve got to convince them to stop that slaughter, Johnny,” he said.

  “Maybe this is a season when their natural game is scarce,” I tried again to console him. “I didn’t see a sign of an animal in the woods yesterday. Maybe they killed and ate the Pink only because they were starving.”

  I had said the wrong thing.

  Pastor Gorman rose abruptly and paced the room several times before he was able to resume our conversation. Finally he stopped and rested both palms on the eating board. “I saw the bodies of a dozen Pinks, Johnny;” he choked out. “They were hanging from tree limbs—like the carcasses of animals.”

  * * * *

  Sometime during the next night, Pastor Gorman decided that his immediate work must still be with the Pinks. “The Uglies’ chieftain gave me his word they would not hunt near the ship,” he said. “That was the most I could get him to agree to. But at least we can continue our work.”

  I’m afraid that for the next several weeks his work was not very rewarding. The Pinks soon lost all fear of us, but that created other, more serious problems. The worst nuisance, probably, was their curiosity and acquisitiveness. They would steal tools, or any other articles we were unwise enough to leave where they could be found. Most of what they took was useless to them.

  One curious female touched Gorman’s shirt, and when he made no protest, continued the inspection of the remainder of his garments, becoming more bold all the time. Soon a dozen others joined in the game of pulling at his clothing.

  My own attention was taken by several Pinks who began tugging at my clothing in the same game. I brushed them urgently aside, but they came gleefully back, and the adults proved stronger than I. Drawing my sidearm, and squeezing its grip to half charge, I set them back on their rumps.

  I turned to see how Gorman was making out. The Pinks had him on the ground beside the ship, and were tearing the last of the clothes from his body. They were jabbering excitedly and giving out with a kind of chirping laugh. I sprayed the gun’s charge across them and they fell in a half circle around him.

  He climbed slowly to his feet and limped past me. He’d had a rough few minutes. “Thanks, Johnny,” he mumbled as he went by.

  When he came out of the ship he still did not wear a gun, but he made no protest when I gave a taste of the shock to any Pinks who came too near either of us the rest of the day. By evening we were left strictly alone. I found myself able to work up little fondness for the Pinks.

  * * * *

  During the following days, Pastor Gorman tried often to talk to them about his God, but with no more result than if he had been preaching to a colony of baboons. It was impossible to carry on any semblance of a constructive conversation with them. “Maybe they just aren’t intelligent enough to understand what you’re trying to tell them,” I suggested once. “They remind me more of animals than people.”

  “The linguists, who studied the tapes the survey crew made, estimated their intelligence at about 60 percentile—on the human scale, that is,” he replied. “They’re definitely not animals.”

  “I’ve often wondered,” I said. “Just where do you draw the line? When are they classed as animals, and when as an intelligent species? In other words, when do you decide they have souls to be saved?”

  “There’s been a great deal of theological debate on that question,” Gorman answered thoughtfully, “but mostly we’re inclined to agree with the civilian authorities in their standard of rating a planet’s races. If they have a language, they’re intelligent—and to us they have souls.”

  * * * *

  The Pinks soon spoiled our yam digging. When we came out in the mornings they were always waiting. They would follow us into the forest and grab the yams as soon as we dug them up, most of the time impeding our work as they fought for the food. I lost my enthusiasm for the digging then. The yams were quite easily found, and easily dug. The Pinks could dig their own, and did, when hungry enough. The
fact was, they were too lazy to do it for themselves, unless they had no other choice. And there was little point to our efforts, as I saw it. We had as much of their friendship as they had to give, and they would never stay still long enough for Pastor Gorman to tell them about his God. Soon he, too, began to wonder if it were not a forlorn task.

  We had noticed early that all the adults we saw were females, while the young were all males, but this did not puzzle us long. Soon after Gorman returned from the Uglies’ village, we passed a young male as he wrapped his arms around a female and playfully pulled her to the ground. Gorman stopped to watch them with a smile. “Affectionate little fellow, isn’t he?” he remarked.

  Abruptly he turned aside, his face reddening slowly with embarrassment. The young male’s affection had proven to be more mature than Pastor Gorman had anticipated.

  It did help solve the puzzle for us however. The Pinks, we learned, were born male, and remained so until shortly after puberty period. They then underwent a biological transformation and became females. We could readily single out many older children whose male accouterments were in the evident process of atrophy, and whose female contours were beginning to emerge.

  * * * *

  The Pinks seemed to understand that they were safe from the Uglies when they were in our clearing and it was cluttered with them everyday. Their droppings, and natural fetid odor, made the place smell like a particularly odiferous stable.

  The pregnant females took to giving birth to their young beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing. There were always six to a litter—never more and never less—and the young were on their own from a few weeks after birth. Their mothers gave them little care.

  They were born small, hardly more than six inches long. A moment after birth they would raise themselves on their hands and feet, shake their small wet bodies, and crawl on all fours over the prostrate body of their parent, struggling with other newborn for a place at the pendulous udders. A month later they could be found nibbling at the bark of small trees. Judging by the observed number of pregnant females, they probably bred several times a year.