Promised Land

by Brian Stableford

  ‘What do you think might have happened on New Alexandria?’ I asked him. ‘Can you think of any chain of circumstance which could present us with our present situation?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything,’ he said. ‘But there is a rumour.’

  ‘What rumour?’ I demanded. I really felt that I should have been let in on this previously. Surely Max or Linda would have told me if they had known.

  ‘The girl was an Indris,’ said Micheal. ‘That’s only a rumour.’

  ‘What’s an Indris?’ I inquired politely.

  ‘I think you’d call it an idol,’ he said.

  ‘A god?’ I asked, sorely puzzled.

  ‘Not a real god,’ he said. ‘A false one.’

  ‘The girl was a false god,’ I repeated; just to be sure I’d got it right. ‘What does that mean? I mean, does that provide an explanation for the woman’s behaviour?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. Having casually let slip his revelation about what the grapevine was saying, he now couldn’t see any significance to it at all.

  I’d been doing far too much thinking. I gave up.

  The tail end of the conversation cast doubts on all my earlier conclusions and speculations. I was no longer sure that I’d inferred correctly what he was trying to tell me. I realised that I utterly and completely failed to understand, and that I’d have to be content with that until I got another blinding flash of inspiration. Perhaps I never would. There are, it is said, certain alien races which are completely beyond human understanding. That was almost inevitable. We have limited minds. But it was a provocative thought that a species could be beyond human understanding while we were apparently well within the scope of theirs. Especially when said species was at a very primitive level indeed. What, I wondered, did that imply?

  It was all too much for me to flog my mind about at the time. I gave it a rest, and was content to kick plants to pieces and study the vast tree trunks for a while. It occurred to me that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I was too close to it all. I would have been very grateful for an incisive dialogue with Charlot to clear up my confusion.

  After we’d eaten, and compensated somewhat for the gap in our stomachs, I decided to have a round of conversation with Linda, to find out exactly how much she didn’t know.

  ‘What’s the crime rate among the Anacaona?’ I asked her.

  ‘There’s no crime,’ she said. ‘The Anacaona are an honest people.’

  ‘Even when they’re abused?’

  ‘They’re not.’

  ‘They were.’

  ‘There were no crimes. No trouble at all.’

  ‘How do you explain that?’

  ‘It doesn’t need an explanation. It’s a fact. Crimes need explaining, not the absence of them.’

  That seemed to me to be a negative point of view, and a convenient justification of ignorance, but I didn’t bother to say so.

  ‘What’s an Indris?’ I asked, instead.

  ‘An Anacaon myth.’

  ‘Do the Anacaona have a complicated mythology?’

  ‘The wild ones do, yes. The Anacaona who have been associated with the Zodiac have lost virtually all traces of it, though. Either that or they disseminate it strictly in private.’

  That struck me as being a very odd point of uncertainty for someone who claimed to be an alien anthropologist. It suggested that Linda Petrosian’s failure to understand the Anacaona might be as absolute as my own. She trusted their actions implicitly, but retained doubts about their inmost thoughts.

  ‘What’s the Indris myth?’ I asked her.

  ‘Indris is a plural and singular name. It was borrowed from our language as a label to apply to an individual or a group of people or things which used to be worshipped.’

  ‘Used to be?’

  ‘The Indris used to be alive, in legend. They are now thought of as having been extinct for a long time. They are now thought of as having been false gods.’

  ‘Is that your doing?’

  ‘No. The Anacaona have believed the Indris to be false gods for a long time now.’

  ‘What have they replaced them with?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ It didn’t seem likely that a race should declare one set of gods false without finding some truer ones. Not at the primitive level, anyhow.

  ‘The Anacaona seem to be quite free of superstition now.’

  I pondered for a few moments. ‘Are you sure,’ I said slowly, ‘that there was ever a time when the Anacaona thought that the Indris were real gods?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t make sense for them to have gods which they knew to be false, would it?’

  I supposed not.

  ‘Micheal told you about the Indris, didn’t he?’ she asked.

  ‘Did you know about this rumour?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t think it was worth mentioning to us?’

  ‘No. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, who started it and what keeps it in circulation?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘If I’d thought it was important,’ she said, ‘I’d have told you. But I didn’t. I don’t know anything about it, and it doesn’t make sense. If it originates with the wild Anacaona, I can’t imagine how they could have got hold of such an idea, unless your woman told them.’

  ‘She’s not my woman,’ I said stiffly. ‘And I can’t think of any conceivable reason why she should say such a thing...Except one,’ I added.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘It might be true,’ I said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  There was a certain amount of friction between Max and Danel. It was not that Danel was uncooperative—like all the Anacaona, Danel was the soul of co-operation—nor that Max was over-exhibiting his dislike for the Anacaona. It was simply a clash of roles. Insofar as it was a war at all, it was a cold and bloodless one.

  In my opinion, Danel cast a slight shadow on the picture Micheal had inspired in me of the Anacaona as the perfect people to share a planet with. I wished that I could talk to him, or to Mercede, because I had a feeling that they might put the whole story in a different light.

  But I could only talk about Danel to Micheal, to Linda, and to Max. When we were in the tent that evening, Max and I had a quiet drink before bedtime. I felt that it was some measure of acceptance that he offered me a share of his private supply of booze. Perhaps he was relenting. It didn’t endear him to me greatly, though. Not much.

  ‘You don’t get on with Danel, do you?’ I said. I wasn’t enamoured of Max’s line in private chit-chat, so I thought I might as well come straight to the points which interested me.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ said Max.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he makes a big thing out of being a big guy. He kills spiders with his axe just for the fun of it, and sets his little brother up to play tunes for them while he does it. He makes a big thing about being at home in the forest and I’m damned if he knows the place any better than I do. He isn’t wild, no matter how much he pretends. He’s a fake.’

  ‘Strikes me that ought to offend Linda more than it bugs you,’ I said. ‘I thought she was the one who was deeply into sharing the planet with the Anacaona. I thought you wanted to leave them alone to do whatever they want.’

  ‘You’re on a different wavelength, Grainger,’ he told me. ‘I don’t give a damn about goldens in general. I don’t think we have to look after them because they’re part and parcel of our beloved planet. I don’t give a damn about anything that doesn’t touch me. But Danel touches me. Here and now. If he’s going to help us, he should help us and forget this bloody no-speak pantomime.’

  ‘You don’t care about why he is that way?’

  ‘No. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against goldens. Just because I turned down their invitation to supper the other night doesn’t mean to say I can’
t stand to set foot in their homes. It’s just that I don’t like this whole farce about who does what when. They’re all too bloody nice or too bloody distant. They’re a bunch of hypocrites and that’s all there is to it. They’re harmless, and they’re useful, but don’t let anyone ever tell you that they’re God’s gift to the Zodiac. Because they’re not. Whatever they do it’s for their own reasons—I don’t know what they are or what the hell, but I sure as hell know they weren’t created purely and simply for our convenience and amusement, which is what Linda and her gang seem to think. It has nothing to do with the Promised Land argument—that’s a tired argument anyway—it’s just that because they’re so helpful and live up to all our expectations that people like Linda feel they’ve got to like the bastards. Well, not me. I’m not going out of my way to hate them, but when I’m standing next to them I’ll be damned if I’ll love one just because he’s got cute notions about the old days and the old ways. See?’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘But you’re making no effort to understand.’

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘if I tried to understand everything in this life I’d go crazy. Do you understand us, let alone them?’

  ‘I can rationalise human behaviour,’ I told him.

  ‘Nuts,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand, and damn your rationalising human behaviour. There’s a hell of a lot in life that I’ll never understand and it won’t hurt me in the least. Why bother? Do what you do, and damn reducing it all to clockwork.’

  It was a nice philosophy. All right, I guess, for those people who think like that. Lapthorn was always content to feel rather than to know. He demanded explanations, all right—he was as curious a man as I’ve ever encountered—but his explanations weren’t the same as mine. I wanted to know why things happened. He only wanted to know how, and especially how it felt. Max wasn’t even a Lapthorn. He was content, so far as I could see, just to go through it all. But perhaps that was a bad judgement. People are very rarely honest about themselves in that kind of account.

  ‘If Danel is so bent on being untouched by human hands,’ I said, ‘why did he agree to guide us?’

  ‘I’ll give you three reasons,’ he said generously. ‘Personally, I don’t believe in any of them. One: he was told to by someone, human or Anacaon. Two: he wants to show off his Anacaon pride and integrity to the full. Three: he thinks that the people you’re trying to find might be worth a look on his own behalf. Okay?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘The last one—you mean that you think the girl is an Indris.’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘You think he might be right?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Look, can’t we drop this interrogation business, just for once? Anyone would think to listen to you that this whole farce is just a blind for a spying trip. I never knew anybody try to find out so much so fast. If we weren’t miles from anywhere in a bloody jungle I’d swear you were picking up information for some undercover purpose.’

  I was astounded by this accusation.

  ‘Who the hell would want to spy on you?’ I demanded.

  ‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘I’m not a baby. We may be cut off here, and we may not want to know about your great big wonderful galaxy, but we have to know enough to look after our own interests. What about these people who go around buying and selling worlds? What about the people who move in to strip planets of all the ore they can get in the shortest possible time?’

  I think he was talking about the Caradoc Company and its brethren. He had the right idea about their sharkish temperament and methodology, but he knew absolutely nothing about the feasibility of the sort of tactics he was talking about.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘the galaxy is full of nasty people like that. Worlds are worth money. But not worlds like this one. They’re a dime a dozen. With people on, that is. Without people, they can be turned into very nice resorts by the experience-sellers. Experience goes over like a bomb these days. Not ore. Raw materials are easy to get hold of. Far too easy. What’s worth money these days is something that can’t be mined or mass-produced. Knowledge and heritage fetch big money through the New Alexandrian processing machine, but what the companies are more interested in is buying and selling war and paradise. They deal in big games on a big scale. They don’t leave anything which will turn them a profit lying around, if they can help it, but I can assure you that they wouldn’t pay a spy to look around down here. Your purple greenhouses aren’t nearly nice enough. You don’t grow any nice drugs. You just haven’t anything they want, because you’ve already destroyed the potential paradise value of your planet by living on it. Besides which, you know full well that New Rome empowers itself to take all necessary steps to protect indigenes. Your planet has indigenes—the Anacaona.’

  He didn’t believe me. He really didn’t believe me.

  ‘You can’t possibly think we’re here under subterfuge?’ I said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Is that why your government is making things so bloody difficult?’ I asked him. Then I thought for a moment and added: ‘No. Can’t be. No matter how paranoid your people are they’d accept the credentials of Titus Charlot and the Law of New Rome, wouldn’t they?’

  Still, it did go some way to explaining the bloodymindedness of the Zodiac people’s whole attitude to the mission.

  ‘Look,’ said Max. ‘I don’t really care who you are. I got this job because somebody has to wet-nurse you two, no matter what your job is. If it makes you feel any better, I guess I don’t think you’re conspiring to take our planet away from us, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the crew think exactly that. Paranoid is what some of them are, all right. The minute anyone starts threatening incidents and legal pressures and gunboats, the crew get very uptight, and who can blame them? But don’t try to tell me that we aren’t doing the right thing by you. We’re helping you, like you asked, and we’re doing all we can.

  ‘Any case, what the hell do you think we care about some ship dumping a couple of goldens way out in the jungle? We don’t—that’s how much we care. What the hell did you expect us to do when you turned up bawling at us out of the sky? Roll out a red carpet and give you our entire police force plus Sherlock Holmes? This is a busy world, Grainger. We’ve got no unemployment here. We don’t have to sell this experience you’re talking about because we’ve got it. We’re building this world. You were bloody lucky that the Commander spared a couple of people and let you play your silly games at all. The Anacaona will find your two. If you want them back the Anacaona will let us have them. I don’t get this whole deal, but what I do know is that to us it isn’t that important.

  ‘So don’t throw your weight about like the captain himself were back of you. You’re nothing, Grainger.’

  And that, as they say, was really telling me.

  There was no point in starting a fight. These people were difficult to deal with because they were difficult to deal with, and that was that. This wasn’t Rhapsody, where you could treat everyone like a lunatic. There really wasn’t much point in my hammering away at everybody trying to get answers to questions they didn’t consider worth asking.

  I talked to the wind, instead. At least I could get some intelligent conversation there.

  This is all getting distinctly tedious, I said.

  You don’t say, he replied. Whose fault is that? Take it easy. You’ll be wandering around in this forest for a good many days yet. Enjoy the scenery. It’s more fun that way.

  Thank you for the suggestion. Do you have any light to shed on our various problems, though? Any helpful hints on how to understand this affair?

  One extra question, he said.

  Well come on, then, I said. Don’t be shy.

  We haven’t seen anything which suggests that the Anacaona are the end product of an evolutionary chain. I know all the story Max gave you, and it’s no doubt true as far as it goes. But the mammals here—or their conceptual equivalent—have never had the development they had back on good old Earth. Sure, there a
re these croppers—anything from rabbits to elephants, as I understand the colloquial usage of the term. But there are emphatically no monkeys. I don’t believe that the Anacaona could possibly have evolved here. They’re no more indigenous than the people of the Zodiac.

  Marvellous, I commented.

  It was a hypothesis well worth considering, of course, but it hardly made matters any simpler. If anything, it made for even more complications.

  Roll on next week, I said, as I dropped off to sleep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The next day was another exceptionally heavy one for those of us who were less than fully tuned up—which was all of us except Danel. Even Micheal was beginning to show signs of stress.

  Danel ploughed on with the same grim relentlessness. His feet came down hard, virtually splashing his way through the soft carpet of delicate plants. The ground was becoming more and more difficult. It was far from even, and the slopes we had to negotiate were made that much more treacherous by virtue of the fact that the vegetation crowded them and to some extent concealed their real topography. It was never possible now to pick our way around the worst of the ground cover—we had to plunge on through it whether it was ankle-deep or waist-deep. Luckily, Danel’s purposeful stride took on the heaviest part of the burden of clearing a way. Max and I took it in turns to go second and make a further contribution to the comfort of those in the rear. On dropping back at one point to let Max take over, my tiredness seemed more than a little irksome because I could not see the point of Danel’s insistent pace.

  ‘Look,’ I said to Micheal, ‘he’s got to slow down. We just can’t move this fast as a party. Doesn’t he know anything about the convoy principle? Somebody’s going to come to grief soon if he doesn’t stop forcing that furious pace.’

  ‘I’ve told him,’ said Micheal. ‘I don’t think he’s listening. There’s something on his mind.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘There’s something on his mind. What about Mercede? Can’t she persuade him to stop? She’s suffering as much as anyone except Eve.’ Eve, of course, was worst affected by the implacability of the pace. We’d lightened her pack somewhat, but her feet were blistered and the blisters were bursting, and there was nothing we could do about that. If we’d had medicine from the Swan at least she could have had stimshots to stop her caring too much, but she wouldn’t trust what was on offer from the Zodiac kit, and I didn’t blame her.