The Winds of Altair

by Ben Bova

  Through it all the commentator's voice remained calm and detached, unaffected by death and disaster. All in a day's work. The tape did not even show the quake in California, or the people dying of starvation in the streets of Calcutta, Singapore, Peking; that was old news.

  The screen went blank.

  Jeff blinked several times, trying to pull himself back to this orbiting starship seventeen lightyears from Earth. He felt the stiffness of the chair against his spine, heard the muted ever-present hum of the electrical equipment that kept them all alive, breathed in the cool dry air of the Village.

  "Now what is more sinful?" Bishop Foy asked, in a weary whisper, "To eliminate the dumb brutes of this savage planet below us, or to allow the human race to decay into brutality and war, back on our home planet?"

  Jeff had no answer.

  The Bishop placed his bony hands on the desktop. Jeff saw that the knuckles were large, swollen. If he didn't know that there were medicines to cure it, Jeff would have guessed that Bishop Foy was troubled by arthritis.

  "Now then," Foy said, in his rasping whisper, "let me ask you another question, one that I pray you can answer affirmatively: Do you Believe?"

  "Yes, I do Believe." Jeff automatically gave the answer from his childhood catechism.

  "Do you Believe strongly enough to keep a secret that I shall impart to you?"

  "I . . . " Jeff hesitated. "What do you mean, sir?"

  "There is something that I want to tell you, Mr. Holman. A secret I wish to share with you. But with no one else. Do you understand? No one! Do you promise to keep what I am about to tell you a secret between the two of us?"

  Jeff nodded slowly. "Yes, I promise."

  "You swear, on your Faith?"

  "On my Faith," Jeff echoed, realizing that deep within him, he actually did Believe, no matter how many shortcomings he found in the people who administered Nirvan's Church.

  The Bishop almost smiled. "Then let me tell you why we have no choice except to continue altering Altair VI, even though it means slaughtering creatures made by God."

  "No choice?"

  "None whatsoever," Bishop Foy said. "In the same communications tapes that brought news of the colonists' approach, the Church High Council also informed me that the cost of sending these shiploads of colonists will make it impossible for the Church to pay for bringing us back to Earth, should our mission here end in failure "

  "Imposs . . . you mean we can't go back home?"

  "Only those who can afford to purchase their own fare will be allowed to leave," Foy said. He seemed to shrink, behind his desk, shrivelling perceptibly as Jeff stared at him.

  Thunderstruck, Jeff blurted, "But I always thought that it was just a rumor . . . a bad joke . . ."

  "That we will succeed here or die?" The Bishop took a deep, painful breath. "I know that the rumor was rife among the students. Well . . . now it's no longer a rumor. We are marooned here. We cannot return."

  "But they can't do that!"

  "They can and they have," Bishop Foy said. "It's not that they are cruel. Star flights are enormously expensive. The Church has nearly bankrupted itself in its zeal to tame this planet and convert the millions who will eventually colonize it. We are expendable. If we die here, we will be added to the Church's roll of glorious martyrs."

  There was no trace of irony or sarcasm in the Bishop's voice, Jeff realized. Perhaps some bitterness. But it was the almost-proud bitterness of a soldier who realizes that he has been ordered to carry out a suicide mission.

  "You see why you must keep this news a secret," Bishop Foy said, his voice strengthening a little. "If the others found out—there would be chaos throughout the Village."

  "I understand," Jeff mumbled.

  "And, I hope that you also understand why we must be ruthless with those animals down on the surface of the planet. We have no choice. No choice at all."

  CHAPTER 17

  The work went on. Day after day, as the weeks added up and everyone in the village mentally counted the hours until the colonists' ships showed up. Jeff dragged himself out of his sleepless bed each morning, ate by himself in the autocafeteria, and went to the contact lab to work with Crown.

  More landing teams were down to the surface. More oxygen-producing machinery was built in orbit, out of the steel and aluminum smelted from Altair's broad ring of metal-rich asteroids. The Village was becoming a manufacturing center as well as home to the five hundred men and women who lived in it.

  Jeff lost weight constantly. It was not the physical effort of working with Crown so much as the psychological stress he was under. Amanda—who was in charge of all the contact work most of the time, since Carbo spent more and more of his time with the landing teams—worried about Jeff's weight loss and the dark, sleepless circles under his eyes. She had the medics check him out regularly, but they could find nothing physically wrong with him.

  "He's under a strain," Lana Polchek told Amanda, after her third checkup of Jeff in as many days. "But we all are. He's all right physically. How is he behaving?"

  Amanda said, "The psychiatrists say he's in a conflict situation but he seems to be handling it all right. He's under considerable tension, of course, but his performance is fine. Reflexes still as good as ever, and he and the wolfcat have the firmest link of all the student-animal contacts. But I still worry about him . . ."

  Dr. Polchek nodded sympathetically. "Don't go mothering him too much. He's young and resilient. Actually, all this strain is boiling away his baby fat. Except for the nervous tension, his body is in better condition now than it was when we first arrived here."

  Amanda's eyebrows rose two centimeters.

  "Of course," the physician added, "nervous strain can cause severe mental or even physical breakdown—eventually."

  "Thanks for the advice," Amanda said.

  Although Jeff tended to stay to himself at meals, the cafeteria was no longer empty early in the morning when he took his breakfast. There were more than a dozen other students working in the expanded contact lab now, and they all ate together. They even prayed together, briefly, swiftly, their heads bowed around the cafeteria table before they dug into their breakfasts. Jeff stayed away from them. They were all so relentlessly cheerful, so happy to be doing their work, so dedicated to the Church that would sooner let them die than save them, so boundlessly optimistic as they methodically prepared the annihilation of Crown and all the living creatures of Windsong.

  But this particular morning, Jeff was not alone for long. Laura McGrath carried her heavily-laden breakfast tray to the table where Jeff sat, and put it down beside his.

  "Do you mind if I join you?" she asked, smiling at him.

  Jeff looked up at her, and wished with all his heart that he could be as happy and free from worry as she.

  "No, I don't mind at all," he said.

  Laura sat beside him. "Everybody else says that you're a snob, you know," she said, still smiling to show that she didn't care what they said.

  "I guess maybe they're right."

  She ignored that. "I tell them that you're more sensitive than the rest of us. That you care more about your wolfcat—you've been in contact with that same animal for months now, haven't you?"

  Nodding, Jeff muttered, "Uh-huh."

  "You do need to relax, Jeff," Laura said, more seriously now. "You can't carry all the burden of two worlds on your shoulders, you know."

  "Yeah, I know."

  Laura took a couple of spoonfuls of hot cereal, then went on, "I'm having a birthday party Saturday night.

  "You . . . what?"

  "A party. It's my birthday. Saturday. It won't go very late, we've all got to get up for Sunday worship and then back to the lab . . ."

  Jeff pushed his breakfast tray from him. "You spend all day every day killing the animals down there and then you feel like partying?"

  Laura looked startled at his suddenly angry tone. "I . . . I thought . . ."

  "Here we've got the apes dropping dead on us
, the meat herd moving farther away every day, and you're thinking about parties. Wonderful!"

  Her face went red. "Well you don't have to act so superior! I mean, when it comes to Holier Than Thou . . ."

  "Is that what you think? Just because I'm the only one who gives a damn about what happens down there? The rest of you are too busy figuring out how much time you can get off from the lab and whose parties to go to."

  Laura put her spoon down on the table with a trembling hand. "Don't try to pull that on me, Jeff Holman. Everybody knows why you spend so much time in the contact lab."

  "Do they?"

  "Yes, they do," Laura snapped. "The way you hang around Amanda Kolwezi . . . like a puppydog!"

  Jeff felt as if someone had just punched him in the gut. "What?"

  "Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about," Laura said. "Your tongue hangs out whenever you're near her."

  Jeff's answer strangled in his throat. He pushed his strode away from Laura, heading for the greenpath that led to the contact lab.

  Crown had been searching all day.

  The antelope herd could not be found. Crown and the other controlled wolfcats had started out at sunrise after them, as usual. But they were gone. Their trail led southward, but even well after Altair had crossed the zenith, there were no antelope in sight.

  The wolfcats saw easily enough where the antelope had been. The grass was chewed, cropped down close to the ground. Hoofprints and spoor abounded. But instead of moving a kilometer or so to the south overnight, the entire herd had vanished—dashed away to the south.

  The cold's getting too much for them.

  Or maybe they know something that we don't know.

  We should have implanted neuro probes in some of them. That way we could have kept them nearby.

  Too late now.

  As the late afternoon sun began to disappear behind the trees, Crown stopped on the open grassland that stretched off to the south. The antelope were gone; nowhere in sight. Even if he could find one now, this late in the day, he could never drag it back to feed the apes before night fell. As it was, it would be dark before he himself got back to the camp area.

  With a reluctant growl, Crown turned back toward the camp. Why not go on? the wolfcat wondered. He remembered his hilltop and the peaceful life of his earlier days. But he turned northward and headed back for the beach where the apes worked grudgingly on the strange alien machinery.

  It was cold. The wind cut through his fur and chilled him. Great stretches of the grass had been scoured clean by snowfalls; the sooty flakes seemed to burn away anything living that they stayed in contact with for more than a few hours.

  But the trees haven't shed their leaves.

  Maybe they keep them all year round. They must shake off the snowflakes somehow.

  The woods seemed empty of life. Every animal had either migrated southward or burrowed deeply underground for the winter. There were no other wolfcats around to challenge Crown's invasion of their territory, except for the controlled beasts that were chained electronically to the alien camp.

  Crown's own family—Thunder, the two females and their cubs—had moved off to the south several days ago. Crown knew where they were heading, and knew that he could find them again when, and if, he ever got away from the humans and their machines.

  He could not stay near the beach camp much longer, he knew. With no food, the apes and the other wolfcats would either have to leave—or starve to death. You won't starve, Crown heard inside his head. No matter what happens, I won't let you starve.

  He sensed something moving in the brush, off to his left, among the tall trees. Something alive. Its scent was very strange, very faint. But if it was alive, it meant food.

  Creeping slowly, nose to the ground, Crown poked into the underbrush. In the dim rays of the setting sun he saw a snake. A large snake. Its body was about the width of a healthy antelope's leg—perhaps a quarter of the width of Crown's own foreleg. It was difficult to tell how long the snake was because most of its length was coiled around the trunk of a young tree.

  Crown snuffled at the snake. He had never seen this kind of serpent before. Some of them were poisonous, he knew. But poisonous or not, the snake was food.

  It hissed at him and opened its jaws wide, showing a blood-red mouth armed with long fangs. Fear was meaningless to Crown. But hunger was not. He snatched at the snake with his forepaw.

  The snake was quicker. It dodged to the side, then darted at the wolfcat. Crown jumped back, avoiding the snake by a millimeter. He pounced with both forelegs and pinned the snake, writhing, to the ground. With one midpaw he struck it a crushing blow on the head.

  But not before the snake buried its fangs in that paw. Crown felt searing pain flame through his midleg. It was white-hot, unbearable. He crashed to the ground on top of the snake's lifeless body.

  Disconnect! Get him out of there!

  Crown could not move, could not breathe. There was nothing in the universe except blind, maddening agony. He . . .

  . . . opened his eyes and saw the panelled ceiling.

  "Crown!" Jeff screamed out.

  Dr. Carbo grabbed Jeff by the shoulders and held him down on the couch. "Aspette! Wait! Take it easy!"

  "He's dying! I tried . . ."

  "There's nothing you can do! Calm down!"

  Amanda's face appeared before him. "It's not your fault, Jeff. There's nothing you can do about it."

  "But he'll die!"

  They disconnected him from the couch. Amanda made him drink something hot and bitter. Jeff sat on the edge of the couch, feeling slightly dizzy and terribly afraid, as Dr. Carbo went back to the control room.

  "Still getting signals from the probe," he called back to them. "He's still alive . . . . Vital signs are very low. though."

  "He's dying," Jeff muttered again.

  Amanda leaned against the couch's edge beside him and slipped an arm around Jeff's shoulders. "Come on now, he's a tough old cat. He's been through worse than this and survived it."

  "Let me get back in contact with him. Maybe I can help him."

  Carbo peered at Jeff through the thick window of the control room. His face was a dark, solemn mask. "No," he said flatly. "There's not a thing you can do for him except tear yourself apart emotionally. If the poison kills the beast, it will kill him whether you're linked to him or not. If it doesn't—well, we'll keep monitoring the signals from the probe. If he makes it through the night he'll probably be okay."

  Jeff gripped the edge of the couch with both hands as hard as he could, trying to keep his emotions under control.

  "We have bigger problems, Jeff," Carbo said, coming around the control panel to the door of the contact chamber. "The food situation down there is starting to look desperate. I'll have to talk with Peterson and the others to see what can be done."

  Amanda nodded. "You go find Peterson; I'll take care of Jeff."

  Carbo gave the two of them a grim glance, then went to the door that led out to the corridor and left them alone in the lab. Jeff wanted to collapse into Amanda's arms, to let her hold him and comfort him and love him forever.

  But she, instead, lifted his chin with her hand and gazed straight into his eyes. "It's going to be all right, Jeff. Don't worry. Everything will turn out all right."

  Jeff started to reply, but his tongue felt strange, numb. His eyelids were very heavy. He could hardly sit up, he was so tired. Vaguely, far in the back of his mind, he realized that whatever she had given him to drink was putting him to sleep.

  "It will be all right, Jeff," he heard Amanda's voice crooning softly, as if from a tremendous distance away. "Everything will work out for the best."

  When he awoke he didn't know where he was. It wasn't his dorm room, and it wasn't the contact lab. He was in a comfortable bed. The room was dark, except for the faint glow of luminescence from just over his head. He turned slightly in the bed and saw that the glow came from a bank of monitoring instruments set into the wall above h
im.

  The infirmary.

  Voices buzzed nearby, whispering urgently.

  Amanda must have given me something to make me sleep, and then they brought me here.

  "He'll be perfectly all right," someone was whispering, speaking as low as people did in church. Jeff saw in the dimness that his bed was surrounded on three sides by accordion-fold partitions that reached from ceiling to floor.

  "He's exhausted, and emotionally drained," another voice muttered. It sounded to Jeff like Dr. Carbo's. "He's tied very closely to that animal. Emotionally, I mean."

  "Yes, the tests have shown that," said the first voice.

  "We shouldn't have let it go this far." Jeff knew that was Amanda. "We should have separated him from Crown long ago, for his own good."

  "Twenty-twenty hindsight," Carbo said.

  "Well, he's separated from the animal now and he's going to stay separated," said the third voice, the one that Jeff could not recognize. "This is as good a time as any to cut the cord."

  "Aren't you worried about his emotional reaction?" Amanda whispered.

  "I'm more worried about his growing identification with that animal down there. We'll keep him here under observation for a few days. Under no circumstances will he be allowed to return to your laboratory."

  Jeff wanted to leap out of bed, yank the partitions down, and show them that he was as strong as ever and ready to continue working with Crown. But he couldn't lift his head off the pillow. He couldn't even scream out his rage and frustration at his helplessness. All he could do was lie there silently, knowing that Crown was dying and he was too weak to help.

  CHAPTER 18

  Amanda and Carbo walked slowly back to the dome that housed the scientific staff. By wordless agreement they went to his quarters.