The Winds of Altair

by Ben Bova

  "Just a minute," he said, surprising himself with the steel in his voice. "I want to ask you something."

  "What?" Carbo asked as he went to his chair in front of the control panel's main viewscreen.

  "Yesterday, in Bishop Foy's office, you seemed to agree with him about . . ."

  Carbo flung his head back and said to the ceiling, "Madonna mia, not you too! Peterson raked me over the coals for half an hour this morning."

  "But you said . . ."

  "I gave Foy an excuse to send a team down to the surface to implant more animals," Carbo said, heatedly. "He believes evolution is a false doctrine, and that's fine by me, as long as it helps us to do our work."

  Jeff felt himself frown. "But you seemed to agree with him . . ."

  "That if the apes are not fully intelligent now, they never will be. Yes, I allowed him to think I agree. So now he allows us to implant more animals, to study them more thoroughly, to get enough information about life down there so that we can make an intelligent decision about whether or not we should try to alter the planet enough to allow colonization to begin."

  "Then you don't agree with Bishop Foy?"

  "No. And I don't agree with Peterson, either. I think it's too early to make up our minds, one way or the other. We need to know much more, first. And we'll never learn more if we stand here all day talking!"

  Jeff grinned with relief and headed for the door to the contact room. It was so much easier being Crown than being Jeffrey Holman.

  The days stretched into weeks, and the weeks began to mount up toward a month. Jeff spent almost every waking moment in the contact lab, on the couch, in Crown's mind, his body. From sunrise to nightfall every day, he was Crown. He was in the wolfcat's brain when Crown woke each morning; he was there when the great beast hunkered down his huge body for sleep.

  Jeff's routine became almost as instinctive as an animal's. He got up long before the rest of the Village was awake. He ate, exercised, and then went to the lab. Amanda was there waiting for him, always. Most of the time Dr. Carbo did not show up until much later, after Jeff was already on the couch, in contact with Crown.

  Jeff treasured those few moments each morning with Amanda. He lived for them. He never dared to tell her that he loved her. He never dared to hope that she loved him. But just being close to her, near enough to hear her voice, to smell her perfume, kept him going from day to day.

  Often at the end of a grueling day-long session Jeff would eat dinner at the autocafeteria in his own dome.

  At first Laura managed to be there every evening, but Jeff found himself too tired, and too involved with thoughts of Amanda, to pay much attention to her.

  "I'm trying out for a contact mission," Laura told him one evening, her green eyes shining with excitement.

  "You?" Jeff asked.

  "Yes, me. What's wrong with that?"

  He pushed the last remaining morsel of stewed rabbit around the rim of his plate. Far in the back of his mind he thought of how small rabbits are, how paltry they would seem to Crown.

  "Well?" Laura demanded. "What's wrong with me making contact with one of the animals down there?"

  "Nothing," he said.

  "You don't seem very happy about it."

  "I'm pretty tired, Laura. It's hard work, you know."

  "Meaning that you think I can't do it?"

  For the first time that evening, he really looked at her. She had a redhead's temper, all right.

  "No, not at all. I'm sure you can do it. It's just . . . well, it's not easy, that's all."

  Laura pushed her chair away from the table and grabbed the tray containing her half-finished meal. "I thought you'd be excited about it! I thought you'd be happy for me! But what everyone's saying is true, isn't it? You don't want anyone else to make contact with those animals. You want to be the only one!"

  Before he could reply, she turned and stamped away from him, leaving him totally alone in the cafeteria.

  Jeff ate alone from then on. And as his life in the Village became more and more routine, automated, it became less and less real to him. What was real was Crown's life on the surface of the world called Windsong.

  Jeff could not figure out when the name came to him. Perhaps it was late one afternoon as Crown stood on the crest of one of the hills that overlooked the beach. From this particular spot, as he looked out toward the sea, he could not see the humans' camp. There was only the curving line of the hills, with their wind-bent trees, green and full of life, and the bright sand and the ocean. Waves marched up to the beach, driven by a wind that made the twisted trees bow low and sing.

  Windsong.

  Dark clouds hurried across the sky, changing, boiling, floating high in the air as they wafted by.

  Windsong.

  Over the days and weeks, Crown solved the problem of hunting in these rich wooded hills without running afoul of the wolfcat families that claimed the territory for themselves. He joined one of the families.

  The wounds from his first encounter healed within a few days, and the ape he had killed kept him well fed for that long and more. The only scavengers he saw along the beach were the circling, gliding lizard-hawks, and these he kept off merely by staying close to his kill during the daylight hours. At night, when Crown slept, the birds slept too. But finally even the great bulk of the ape dwindled and began to smell foul with decay. Crown moved away, and in less than a day the lizard-hawks picked the carcass clean to the bone.

  Crown headed up into the woods the next day, and Jeff tensed mentally, knowing that when Crown tried to hunt down a meal in those woods, the nearest wolfcat family would attack him.

  To Jeff's surprise, though, Crown did not go hunting. He padded through the wooded underbrush until he found a small wolfcat family, lolling in the spotty sunlight that filtered through the trees. A grizzled old male, three females, and a pair of cubs less than one year old. The cubs were barely two meters long, muzzle to tail.

  Crown watched them from a distance for the better part of the day, staying well screened in the leafy foliage that grew among the trees. He saw the females hunt down a snorting, tusked, tough-hided creature, a kind that Crown had never seen before. After they had killed it, they dragged it back to the shaded hollow where the male lay at his ease, allowing the cubs to tussle playfully under his watchful eye.

  As the family settled down to its meal, Crown stood up at his full height and slowly approached them, silently, his head held low. The male looked up from his gorging and uttered a warning growl from deep in his chest. Crown stopped at the edge of the hollow and lifted his face to the sky.

  Why is he doing that?

  I don't know. Maybe we should call Peterson, or one of the others.

  No need for that. We're getting it all down on tape. We can . . . look at that!

  The old male walked slowly, menacingly, toward Crown, his growl like the rumble of distant thunder. The females stood by their kill, watching. Crown stood unmoving, his head lifted high, his throat exposed to a sudden, life-taking slash.

  The elder sniffed at Crown for long moments, then turned his head back toward the females. The smallest of them tore a piece of bleeding meat from the dead boar and, holding it in both forepaws, walked up beside the old male and laid the food on the ground in front of Crown.

  Jesu Christo! They're offering him food!

  It . . . it's like a ritual.

  Amanda, we'd better not let Ferris see this until Foy does. She'll go hysterical.

  We can't keep this from her.

  I know. I know. But we certainly don't have to go out of our way to tell her about it!

  Crown accepted the meat and ate it. The elder male was big, powerful, in his prime. He had no fear of Crown, once Crown showed him that he would be submissive. The females were his, but in a few years the cubs would be old enough to start mating. A wolfcat family with only one male was a rarity; if this wolfcat family had included a male cub instead of two females, Crown might not have been accepted so easily
.

  Jeff understood that, and wondered if Crown had known it instinctively or if the wolfcat had reasoned it out for himself. The idea troubled Jeff for many days afterward. He was glad that Crown now had a family and could hunt without danger. But something about the way Crown had gone about solving his problem kept Jeff awake night after night until he finally realized what it was. He sat bolt upright in his bed after hours of thrashing about fitfully. The shattering truth of it hit him with the clarity of a religious revelation.

  "The wolfcats are intelligent!" he said aloud, into the empty darkness of his dorm room. "Not the apes. The wolfcats!"

  CHAPTER 10

  "Intelligent?" Dr. Carbo looked at Jeff skeptically.

  "The wolfcats are intelligent," Jeff repeated. "I know they are."

  Carbo and Amanda were strapping Jeff into the contact couch, to begin the morning's work. It was still dark down on the hills overlooking Crown's beach. The wolfcats were still sleeping.

  Amanda said, "Maybe we'd better call Peterson."

  "He's busy getting the landing team ready," Carbo replied. "I don't think we ought to bother him with this."

  "But we've got to!" Jeff insisted. "It's important."

  Carbo lowered the gleaming metal helmet onto Jeff's head. "What makes you think that they're intelligent?"

  "The way Crown behaves. And the way the wolfcat family took him in. It was a kind of ritual. That wasn't the way dumb animals act."

  "Chimpanzees behave that way," Amanda said. "They use gestures and have pretty intricate family relationships."

  "See?"

  "But chimps aren't intelligent," Carbo said.

  "Aren't they?"

  "Not officially. Not as far as Bishop Foy is concerned."

  "What about the world government?" Amanda asked. "Chimpanzees are on the officially protected list. Chimps, dolphins, whales and androids—killing them is punishable just as though you killed a human being."

  "But the Church doesn't accept that," Jeff said, feeling the weight of the helmet on his head.

  "And Foy runs this mission," Carbo muttered.

  "But he doesn't run Louisa Ferris," Amanda said sharply. "She represents the world government."

  Jeff glanced at Carbo, then at Amanda, and then back to Carbo again. The two of them were facing each other, electricity sparking between them.

  "Now wait a minute," Carbo said. "I don't want us to get into the middle of a battle between Foy and Ferris . . ."

  "Church and state," Amanda murmured, almost smiling at the irony of it.

  "We have our jobs to do," Carbo insisted quietly. "Let's do them."

  Jeff struggled to sit up but the cuffs and the helmet held him on the couch. "But what about Crown?" he demanded. "What about the wolfcats down there?"

  Carbo closed his eyes, as if in great pain. "I'll speak to Peterson about it. Tonight. I'll arrange to have dinner with him and ask his opinion. Now let's get to work."

  Jeff could see that there was little more he could accomplish. He willed his tensed body to relax on the couch, thinking to himself, But there's a lot that Crown can do. Crown can prove that the wolfcats are intelligent.

  He closed his eyes and waited for the neuro-electronic probe to establish contact with the wolfcat. As he felt the now-familiar sensations of sinking, plummeting into an inky oblivion, a new thought assailed his consciousness:

  If the wolfcats are intelligent, and we have to stop trying to colonize the planet, I'll have to stop making contact with Crown!

  Crown awoke from his night's sleep and shook his maned head, as if trying to clear away a bad dream. He got to his six paws and stretched languidly. The cubs were already awake, lying still between the two slumbering females, watching Crown carefully. They were too young to understand what had happened; they still regarded Crown as a stranger, an intruder. The old male, Thunder, seemed to be asleep also, but he lay facing Crown and it was impossible to tell from a wolfcat's lidless eyeplates whether it was awake or not.

  Crown snuffled at the cubs, then padded off into the woods. As a family member, he had to show that he could help to provide food. Jeff did not even try to control him as Crown tracked down one of the canny, sharp-tusked boars. It was a large one, and it showed absolutely no fear of the wolfcat as Crown backed it against a rock outcropping where it could not run away from him. The boar charged at Crown, head low, seeking to get under the wolfcat's jaws and thrust upward with its projecting tusks against Crown's throat or belly. But Crown was too fast for that; he sidestepped the lunging boar and broke its back with single powerful blow of his forepaw. The animal screamed once, then Crown ripped its throat out and it died, quivering as its blood gushed onto the grass.

  Crown carried his kill back to the glade where Thunder and the family still lay resting. The cubs raced up to him, circling him and his kill as he approached the older male. The females stayed respectfully beside Thunder, who stood on all sixes and purred happily as Crown deposited the kill at his feet. The head of the family tore off a haunch for himself and carried it a few steps away, then settled down to eat. The females stood by the kill expectantly. Crown took a chunk of meat for himself, then they each took theirs, leaving the remainder for the cubs to gnaw on.

  His belly full, Crown felt an urge to see the beach once again, even though he disliked and distrusted the ugly alien machines that lay strewn along the sand. But he got up anyway and headed out toward the top of the ridge line, where he could see the beach and the ocean. Thunder and the rest of the family stayed behind, sated and content for the time being.

  It was only a few minutes' walk to the top of the ridge line. Crown surveyed the littered beach, watched the waves rolling in from the far horizon, and thought of his own hill, so far away now that it seemed like another world, a long-distant past that could never be recaptured. He raised his muzzle toward the pearly gray sky, where Altair was a vague glowing blur climbing toward zenith. Strangers would soon be dropping out of that sky, strangers who would change this world of Windsong. And Crown knew that he would be expected to help those strangers.

  He growled. Not in anger, for wolfcats know nothing of such a human emotion. Crown growled in pain, in understanding of the pain that was to come.

  And on his couch thousands of kilometers above the cloud-shrouded surface of the planet, Jeff Holman writhed and moaned with the same realization, the same pain.

  Harvey Peterson ate slowly, chewed his food carefully, and listened attentively to what Frank Carbo was telling him.

  "I'll have to look at your tapes," he said, putting his fork down on his emptied plate.

  Peterson, Carbo, and Amanda Kolwezi were eating dinner together in Amanda's apartment. She had volunteered to cook for them, an inducement that Peterson could not resist, no matter how busy he was preparing for the expedition to the planet's surface. His wife, one of the Village's medics, had evening-shift duty.

  "Where is Holman now? Can I talk with him about this?" Peterson asked.

  Carbo, pushing his chair back away from the table slightly, answered, "Jeff's sleeping. At least, he ought to be. He's been working long days, and I want him to get as much rest as he possibly can."

  "He's been working very hard," Amanda said. She sat between the two men, her back to the wicker screen that covered the doorway to the kitchen.

  "And he has much harder work coming up," Carbo went on. "He'll be using that wolfcat to help you and your landing team, Harvey, when you go down there."

  "But if the wolfcats really are intelligent . . ." Peterson mused, stroking his chin.

  "Then we're wasting our time here," Amanda said.

  "And the Church's money," Peterson added.

  Carbo picked up a crust of bread that remained on his plate, brought it to his mouth, then thought better of it and returned it to the plate.

  "Do you think for one minute," he asked them, "that Foy would admit that any animal down there is intelligent?"

  "It's not Foy's decision to make," Amanda said.


  Peterson agreed. "Dr. Ferris is the one to say yes or no, not Bishop Foy."

  "She's a member of the Church, isn't she?"

  "What's that got to do with . . ." Understanding dawned on Peterson's face. "You don't think that she'd let Foy influence her decision, do you?"

  Carbo shrugged elaborately. "We're a long way from home. And Foy doesn't want to be a failure. His Church has sunk tons of money into this colony."

  "It's not a colony yet," Amanda corrected.

  Peterson hunched forward in his chair and leaned his long, sinewy arms on the table. The sparse hair on his arms was almost white from years of exposure to the sun; the skin was deeply tanned, leathery.

  "Now, I know Bishop Foy pretty well, I think. He's no fool; he won't ram through a colonization effort over our protests, I'm sure."

  "I am not sure," Carbo said.

  "He's a man of God," Peterson insisted. "He has a conscience, just the same as you do."

  "So did Machiavelli," Carbo replied. "And the Borgias were such good members of the Roman Catholic Church that several of them became Popes."

  Peterson laughed. "But that was centuries ago."

  "Your own playwright, George Bernard Shaw . . ."

  "I'm Norwegian, not English!"

  "Shaw was Irish," Amanda said.

  "Whatever he was," Carbo answered irritatedly. "He once said that a religious fanatic, who is willing to die for his faith, is just as willing to let you die for that same faith."

  "What do you mean?" Peterson asked. "I don't see the connection."

  Carbo pressed his hands together, almost as if in prayer. "Bishop Foy believes in his religion. His religion tells him that 'lower animals' cannot be intelligent. His religion tells him that evolution is nonsense. His religion tells him that Man . . ." he turned to Amanda and made an apologetic dip of his head . . . "Man was created by God to rule the world. No other creature matters."

  "I wouldn't state it that way . . ."

  "But he would. Foy would."

  Amanda said, "Frank, aren't you overstating things?"