Equator & Segregation

by Brian Aldiss

  Dangerfield switched the projector off. As the colours died, he turned eagerly to Craig Hodges.

  ‘There!’ he exclaimed, with pride. ‘What did you think to that?’

  Craig stared at him. Though his chest was still bandaged, the hermit moved about easily. Modern healing treatments had speeded his recovery; he looked ten years younger than the old man who had yesterday suffered from fiffins. The excitement of the film he had just been showing had brought a flush to his cheeks.

  ‘Well, what did you think of it?’ he demanded, impatiently.

  ‘I’m wondering what you think of it,’ Craig said.

  Some of the animation left Dangerfield. He looked round the stuffy confines of his hut, as if seeking a weapon. His jaw set.

  ‘You’ve no respect,’ he said. ‘I took you for a civilised mans Hodges, But you’ve no respect, no reverence; you persist in trying to insult me in underhand ways. Even the Droxy film makers recognised me for what I am.’

  ‘I think you mean for what you like to think you are,’ Craig said, rising from his rough seat. A heavy stick caught him an unexpected blow on the shoulder; he seized the stick, wrenching it from Dangerfield’s grasp and tossing it out of the door.

  ‘Don’t do that again,’ he warned.

  ‘You insult me! You think I’m mad!’ Dangerfield cried.

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.’ Craig said coolly, ‘al­though I confess that your sanity is not of a type that appeals to me.’

  Leaving the hut, he made off briskly across the clearing. The first indication Barney had of his return was when the besieging pigmies set up an increased noise outside. Looking through one of the windows of the overlander, Barney could watch Craig approaching; he drew his gun, alert for trouble. The cayman-heads were still in an aggressive mood.

  Craig never hesitated. As he drew nearer, part of the rabble detached itself from the overlander and moved towards him, jaws creaking open. Craig ignored them. Without slackening his stride, he pushed through the scaly green bodies. Barney stood rigid with apprehension; he knew that if one of the pigmies moved to the attack, Craig would be finished. The mob would be swarming over him before anyone could save him.

  But the pigmies merely croaked excitedly as Craig passed. Jostling, shuffling their paws in the dirt, they let him get by. He mounted the step of the overlander and entered unmolested.

  The two men faced each other, Craig reading something of the relief and admiration on Barney’s face.

  “They must have guessed how stringy I’d taste,’ he remarked; and that was all that was said.

  He turned his attention to Barney’s bear-creature, already christened Fido. The animal chattered perkily as Barney ex­plained how he got it.

  ‘I’ll swear Fido has some sort of embryo language,’ Barney said. ‘In exchange for a good rub down with insecticide, he has let me examine his mouth and throat. He’s well enough equipped for speech. His IQ’s in good trim, too. Fido’s quite a boy.’

  ‘Show him how to use a pencil and paper, and see what he makes of it,’ Craig suggested, stroking the little creature’s yellow crest.

  As Barney did so, he asked Craig what had kept him so long with Dangerfield.

  ‘I was beginning to think the lost race of Kakakakaxo had got you,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘Nothing so interesting,’ Craig said, ‘although it has been an instructive session. Incidentally, I think I may have made an enemy of Dangerfield, under the surface, he resents having had to accept our help. He has been showing me a film intended to impress me with the greatness of Dangerfield.’

  ‘A documentary?’

  ‘Anything but. A squalid solid made by Galactic Studios on Droxy, and supposedly based on the old boy’s life. They presented him with a copy of it, and a viewer, as a souvenir. It’s called “Curse of the Crocodile Men”.’

  ‘Ye Gods!’ Barney exclaimed, ‘I’ll bet you found that instructive.’

  ‘In many ways, it is very helpful,’ Craig said seriously. “The script writers and director spent two days -just two and “soaking up atmosphere”, so-called, before returning to Droxy to cook up their own ideas on the subject. No other research was done.’

  Barney laughed briefly. ‘I presume the result was phoney through and through?’

  ‘Absolutely false. After the usual preliminaries - spectacular spaceship crash on mountainside, etcetera - a Tarzan-like

  Dangerfield is shown being captured by the bear-race, who stand six feet high and wear tin helmets. The pekes, for simplicity’s sake, never appear. The bears are torturing our hero to death when the Crocodile Men, the pigmies, raid the place and rescue him. The Crocodile Men, according to the film, are a proud and ancient warrior race, come down in the world through the encroachment of the jungle. When they get Dangerfield, they don’t like him. They, too, are about to put him to death when he saves the leader’s son from foot-rot or something equally decisive. From then on, the tribe treats him like a god, build him a palace and all the rest of it. Appalling, “B” feature stuff, full of fake dialogue and settings.’

  ‘Hm, I see,’ Barney said. He sat silent for a minute, looking rather puzzledly into space, tweaking his beard. ‘It is odd that, considering this hokum was cooked up on Droxy, it all tallies surprisingly well in outline with what Dangerfield told us last night about the great past of the pigmies and so on.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Craig agreed with satisfaction. ‘Don’t you see what that means, Barney? Nearly everything Dangerfield knows, or believes he knows, comes from a hack in a Droxy studio, rather than vice versa.’

  They stared at one another, Barney rather blankly. Into both their minds, like the faint sound of a hunter’s horn, came the reflection that all human behaviour, ultimately, is inexplicable; even the explicable is a mystery.

  ‘Now you see why he shied away from us so violently at our first meeting.’ Craig said. ‘He’s got almost no first-hand informa­tion because he is afraid to go out looking for it. Knowing that, he was prepared to face Droxy film people - who would only be after a good story - but not scientists, who would want hard facts. Once I had him cornered, of course, he had to come out with what he’d got, presumably hoping we would swallow it as the truth and go.’

  Barney made clucking noises. ‘He’s probably no longer fit to remember what is truth, what lies. After nineteen years alone here the old boy must be quietly crazy.’

  ‘Put the average person, with the mental conflicts to which we are all prey, away on an unlovely planet like Kakakakaxo for nineteen years,’ Craig said, ‘and he will inevitably finish as some sort of fantasist. I don’t say insane, for a human mind is very resilient, but shielded away from reality, pear has worked steadily on Dangerfield all this time. He’s afraid of people, afraid of the cayman-heads, the Crocodile Men. He hides from his terrors in fantasy. He’s a “B” feature god. And you couldn’t budge him off the planet because he realises subconsciously that reality would then catch up with him.’

  Barney stood up,

  ‘Okay, doctor,’ he said. ‘Diagnosis accepted. All we have collected so far are phantoms. Now just tell me where exactly PEST work stands after this revelation of the uselessness of our main witness. Presumably, at a standstill?’

  ‘By no means,’ Craig said. He pointed to Fido. The little bear was sitting quietly on the table with the pencil in his hand, licking the point with nonchalance.

  On the paper, he had crudely drawn a room, in which a bear and a peke were locked in each other’s arms, as if wrestling.

  A few minutes later, when Craig had gone into the laboratory with some beetles and other insects culled from Dangerfield’s hut, Barney saw the old hermit himself coming across to them, hobbling rapidly among the pigmy shelters with the aid of a stick. Barney called to Craig.

  Craig emerged from the lab with a curious look on his face, at once pleased and secretive.

  ‘Those three pigmy carcasses which Tim brought into the lab,’ he said. ‘I presume Tim cut the
m up - it certainly doesn’t look like your work. What did he say to you about them?”

  Barney explained the point Tim had made about the worms.

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’ he inquired.

  ‘No, nothing, nothing,’ Craig said in an odd voice, shaking his head. ‘And that’s all Tim said.... Where is he now by the way?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Craig; the boy’s getting as secretive as you are. He must have gone outside for a breath of fish. Shall I give him a call?’

  ‘Let’s tackle Dangerfield first,’ Craig said.

  They opened the door. Most of the pigmies had dispersed. The rest of them sped away when Dangerfield waved to them. The old man agitatedly refused to come into the overlander, his great nose standing out from his head like a parrot’s beak as he shook his head. He wagged a finger angrily at them.

  ‘I always knew no good would come of your nosing about here,’ he said. ‘It was foolish of me to condescend to have any­thing to do with you in the first place. Now that young fellow of yours is being killed by the pigmies, and serve him right, too. But goodness knows what they’ll do when they’ve tasted human flesh - tear us all apart, I shouldn’t wonder. I doubt if I’ll be able to stop them, for all my power over them.’

  He had not finished talking before Craig and Barney had leapt from the overlander.

  ‘Where’s Tim? What’s happened to him?’ Craig asked. ‘Tell us straightforwardly what you know.’

  Oh, I expect it’ll be too late now,’ said Dangerfield. ‘I saw him slip into the cliff temple, the interfering young fool. Perhaps you will go away now and leave me -‘

  But the two PEST men were already running across the clearing, scattering brilliant birds about their heads. They jumped the crude shelters in their path. As they neared the temple in the cliff, they heard the monotonous clacking of the pigmy pack. When they reached the ornamental doorway, they saw that it and the corridor beyond were packed tight with the creatures, all fighting to get further into the cliff.

  ‘Tim!’ bawled Barney. ‘Tim! Are you here?’

  The clacks and croaks died instantly. The nearer pigmies turned to stare at the men, swinging their green snouts inquisi­tively round. In the silence, Barney shouted again, but no answer came. The mob continued its struggle to get into the temple.

  ‘We can’t massacre this lot,’ Craig said, glaring at the mob of cayman-heads before them. ‘How’re we going to get in there to Tim?’

  ‘We can use the cry gas in the overlander!’ Barney said. “That will shift the pigmies.’ He doubled back to their vehicle, and in a minute brought it bumping and growling across the clearing towards the temple. It was tough going. The high roof ploughed through overhanging trees, breaking down the weavers’ carefully constructed roof and sending angry birds flying in all directions. As the vehicle lumbered up, Craig unstrapped an outside con­tainer, pulling out a hose; the other end of it was already con­nected to internal gas tanks. Barney threw down two respirators, to emerge a moment later wearing one himself.

  Donning his mask, Craig slung the spare over his arm and charged forward with the hose. The reeking gas poured over the nearest pigmies, who fell back like magic, coughing and pawing at their goat-yellow eyes. The two men entered the temple; they moved down the corridor unopposed, only impeded by the pigmies’ wild flight to get out of their way. The noise of croaking was tremendous; in the dark and mist, Craig and Barney could hardly see their way ahead.

  The corridor changed into a pigmy-sized tunnel, working gently upwards through the mountain. The two ecologists had to struggle past kicking bodies. It occurred to Craig that the pigmies, for a tribe of savages little higher than brutes, had behaved fairly phlegmatically until now. But now they were confronting cry gas; they could not comprehend it, and they were really frightened.

  The supply of cry gas gave out. Craig and Barney stopped, peering at each other in surprise and some apprehension.

  ‘I thought the gas tanks were full?’ Craig said.

  ‘They were. One of the cayman-heads must have unwittingly bitten through the hose.’

  ‘Or Dangerfield cut it.. .’.

  Dropping the now useless hose, they ran forward. Their retreat was cut off: the pigmies at the mouth of the temple would have recovered by now, and be waiting for the men to return. So they forged ahead, both throwing off their respirators and pulling out blaster-guns as they turned a corner.

  There they stopped. This was the end of the trail. The tunnel broadened into a sort of ante-room, on the opposite side of which stood a wide wooden door. A group of pigmies who had been scratching at this door - its panels were deeply marked by their claws - turned and confronted the men. Tears, crocodile tears, stood in their eyes: a whiff of the gas had reached them, but it had served only to anger them. Six of them were there. They charged. There was no avoiding them.

  ‘Get ‘em!’ Barney yelled.

  The dim chamber twitched with blinding blue-white light. Blue hieroglyphs writhed on the wall. Acoustics, in the roar of the blasters, went crazy. But the best hand weapon has its limitations, and the pigmies had speed on their side. Terrifying speed. They launched themselves like stones from a sling.

  Barney scarcely had time to settle one of them than another landed squarely in his stomach. For a small creature, it was unbelievably solid. Every claw dug a point of pain through Barney’s thick suit. He jerked his head back, falling backwards, bellowing, as the jaws gaped up to his face. Its grey tongue, its serried teeth, the stink of fish - he tried to writhe away from them as he fired the blaster against the pigmy’s leathery stomach. Even as he hit the ground, the pigmy fell from him, dead, and in a dying kick knocked the weapon from his hand.

  Before Barney could reach it, two other assailants had landed on him, sending him sprawling. He was defenceless under their predatory claws.

  The blue light leapt and crackled over him. An intolerable heat breathed above his cheek. The two pigmies rolled over to lie beside him, their bodies black and charred. Shakily, Barney stood up.

  The wooden door had been flung open. Tim was there, holstering the blaster which had saved Barney’s life.

  Craig had settled with his two attackers. They lay twitching and smouldering on the floor in front of him. He stood now, breathing deeply, with only a torn tunic sleeve to show for his trouble. The three men looked at each other, grimed and dishevelled. Craig was the first to speak.

  ‘I’m getting too old for this sort of lark,’ he said.

  ‘I thought we’d had it then; thanks a lot, Tim,’ Barney said.

  His beard had been singed, its edges turned a dusty brown. He felt his cheek tenderly where a blister was already forming. Sweat poured from him; the heat from the thermonuclear blasts had considerably raised the temperature in the ante-room.

  ‘Why did I ever leave Earth?’ he growled, stepping over one of the scaly corpses.

  ‘You got yourself into a nasty spot,’ Craig said to Tim. The young man instantly became defensive, looking both embarrassed and defiant.

  ‘I’m sorry you came in after me,’ he said. ‘I was quite safe behind this door, as it happened. I’ve been doing a little research on my own. Craig - you’d better come in and see this place for yourself, now that you’re here. I have discovered the Tomb of the Old Kings that Dangerfield told us about! You’ll find it explains quite a lot we did not know.’

  ‘How did you manage to get as far as this without the pigmies stopping you ?’ Craig asked, still stern.

  ‘There was a diversion on when 1 entered. Most of them were clustered round the overlander. They only started creeping up on me when I was actually inside. Are you coming in or aren’t you?’

  They entered, Tim barring the door behind them before turning to pick out the details of the long room with his torch beam. The proportions of the place were agreeable. Despite its low roof, it was architecturally impressive. Its builders had known what they were doing. Decoration had been left at a minimum, except for the elaborate doo
r arch and the restrained fan-vaulting of the ceiling. Attention was thus focused on a large catafalque, upon which lay a row of several sarcophagi. They had a pathetic, neglected look. Everywhere was deep in dust, and the air tasted stale and heavy.

  Tim pointed to the line of little coffins, the outsides of which were embellished with carvings.

  ‘Here are the remains of the Old Kings of Kakakakaxo,’ he said. ‘And although I may have made myself a nuisance, I think I can claim that with their aid I have solved the mystery of the lost race of this planet.’

  ‘Good!’ Craig exclaimed encouragingly. ‘I should be very interested to hear any deductions you have made.’

  For a moment, Tim looked at him penetratingly, suspecting sarcasm. Reassured, he continued.

  ‘The curious thing is that the problem is like a jigsaw puzzle to which we already possessed most of the pieces. Dangerfield supplied nearly all of them - but he had fitted them together upside down. You see, to start with, there is not one lost race but two. This temple - and doubtless others like it all over the planet - was hewn by the races who have engraved their own likenesses on these sarcophagi. Take a look at them! Far from being lost, these two races have been under our noses all the time: I mean of course, the creatures we call pekes and bears. Their portraits are on the sarcophagi and their remains inside. Their resemblance to Earth animals has blinded us to what they really are.’

  Tim paused for their approval.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Barney said, to Tim’s regret, turning from an inspection of the stone coffins. “The bear people at least are brighter than the pigmies. As I see it, the pigmies are pretty stodgy reptiles whom nature has endowed with armour but precious little else. I had already decided that there was another thing Great God Dangerfield had garbled: far from being an ancient race, the pigmies are neoteric, upstart usurpers who have appeared only recently on the scene to oust the peke and bear people. Any knowledge of the glaciers they may have is, of course, because they drifted down from the cold regions until the river brought them to these equatorial lands. As for the bear people - and I suspect the same goes for the pekes - their chatter, far from being the beginning of a language, is the decadent tail-end of one. They’re the ancient races, already in decline when the parvenu pigmies descended on them.’