As on a Darkling Plain

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As on a Darkling Plain Page 10

by Ben Bova


  Lehman hunched forward, from across the table. “About the dynamics of having a representative of our relatively advanced culture step into their primitive—”

  “I won’t be representing an advanced culture to them,” Lee said. “I intend to be just as naked and toolless as they are. And just as black. Aaron can inject me with the proper enzymes to turn my skin black.”

  “That would be necessary in any event if you don’t want to die of sunstroke,” Pascual said.

  Hatfield added, “You’ll need contact lenses that’ll screen out the excess UV and protect your eyes.”

  “But you don’t look like the natives,” Alicia said. “You’re taller and slimmer and... well, handsomer!”

  They all laughed again.

  “I’ve already talked to Tanaka about that,” Lee said. “He can ugly me up a little... add some weight to my brows and cheekbones. Just temporary, not really plastic surgery in the permanent sense.”

  They spent an hour discussing all the physical precautions he would have to take. Lee kept glancing up to see if Marlene would put in an appearance. Then he noticed Rassmussen frowning. The idea’s slipping out from under his control. He can’t stop it now. The captain watched each speaker in turn, squinting with concern and sinking deeper into his Viking scowl. Then, when Lee was certain that the captain could no longer object, Rassmussen spoke up:

  “One more question: Are you willing to give up an eye for this mission of yours?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The captain’s hands seemed to wander loosely without a mug of beer to tie them down. “Well... you seem to be willing to run a good deal of personal risk to live with these, eh, people. From the expedition’s viewpoint, you will also be risking our only archaeologist and anthropologist, you know. I think the wise thing to do, in that case, would be to make sure we have a running record of everything you see and hear.”

  Lee nodded slowly.

  “So we can swap one of your eyes for a video camera, and plant a transmitter somewhere in your skull. I’m sure there’s enough empty space in your head to accommodate them.” The captain chuckled toothily at his joke. Everyone else stayed silent.

  Then Pascual said, “We can’t do an eye procedure here. It’s much too risky.”

  “Oh, I thought Dr. Tanaka was quite expert in surgery,” the captain said. “And naturally we’d preserve the eye and restore it afterwards. Unless, of course, Professor Lee...” He let the suggestion dangle.

  Lee looked at them sitting around the big table: Rassmussen, trying to look noncommittal; Pascual, upset and nearly angry; and Lehman, staring intently right back into Lee’s eyes.

  You’re trying to force me to back down, Lee thought of Rassmussen. Then, of Lehman, And if I don’t back down, you’ll be convinced I’m insane.

  For a long moment there was no sound in the crowded conference room except the faint whir of the air blower.

  “All right,” Lee said. “If Tanaka is willing to tackle the surgery, so am I.”

  When Lee returned to his cubicle, the message light under the phonescreen was blinking red. He flopped on the bunk, propped a pillow under his head, and asked the computer, “What’s the phone message?”

  The screen lit up: PLS CALL DR. LEHMAN.

  My son, the psychiatrist. “Okay,” he said aloud, “get him.”

  A moment later Lehman’s tanned face filled the screen.

  “I was expecting you to call,” Lee said.

  The psychiatrist nodded. “You agreed to pay a big price just to get loose among the natives.”

  “Tanaka can handle the surgery,” Lee answered evenly.

  “It’ll be months before you’re fit to leave the ship again.”

  “You know what our Norse captain says... we’ll stay as long as the beer holds out.”

  Lehman smiled. Professional technique, Lee thought.

  “Sid, do you really think you can mingle with these people without causing any cultural impact? Without changing them?”

  Shrugging, “I don’t know. I hope so. As far as we know, they’re the only humanoid group on the planet. They may have never seen a stranger before.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Lehman said. “Don’t you feel that...”

  “Let’s cut the circling, Rich. You know why I want to see them firsthand. If we had the time I’d study them remotely for a good long while before trying any contact. But it gets back to the beer supply. We’ve got to squeeze a century’s worth of work into a little more than four years.”

  “There will be other expeditions, after we return to Earth and tell them about these people.”

  “Yeah. But not for thee and me, friend.”

  Lehman didn’t answer.

  “Besides,” Lee went on, “by then it might be too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  His neck was starting to hurt; Lee hunched up to a sitting position on the bunk. “For them. Figure it out. There can’t be more than fifty people in the group we’ve been watching. I’ve only seen a couple of children. And there aren’t any other groups of people anywhere on the planet. They’re dying out. This gang is the last of their kind. By the time another expedition gets here, there might not be any of them left.”

  For once, Lehman looked surprised. “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes. And before they die, we have to get some information out of them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They might not be natives of this planet,” Lee said, forcing himself to speak calmly, keeping his face a mask, freezing any emotion inside of him. “They probably came from somewhere else. That somewhere is the home of the people who built the Titan machines... their real home. We’ve got to find out where it is.” Flawless logic.

  Lehman tried to smile again. “That’s assuming your theory about an ancient war is right.”

  “Yes. Assuming I’m right.”

  “Assume you are,” Lehman said. “And assume you find what you’re looking for. Then what? Do we just take off and go back to Earth? What happens to the people here?”

  “I don’t know,” Lee said, Titan-cold inside. “The main problem will be how to deal with the home world of their people.”

  “But the people here, do we just let them die out?”

  “I guess so. Why not? Their own people abandoned them. We don’t owe them anything.”

  Lehman’s smile was completely gone now. His face didn’t look pleasant at all.

  It took four months.

  The surgery was difficult. And beneath all the pain was Lee’s rooted fear that he would never have his sight fully restored. While he was recovering, before he was allowed out of his infirmary bed, Hatfield turned his skin black with enzyme injections. He was also fitted with a single quartz contact lens for his real eye, and a prosthetic eye that hid the submolar video camera that now hung in his emptied socket.

  Through it all Marlene stayed close to him. Through the weeks of pain she was never farther away than his voice could reach. As he grew stronger, was allowed out of bed to walk around the infirmary, she stayed near.

  They were eating together in his infirmary room one afternoon when he realized she was staring at him.

  “Still think I look ugly?”

  She looked startled for a moment. “What? Why do you say that?”

  “You were staring.”

  “Oh... I was daydreaming... being jealous, actually.”

  “Jealous.”

  Nodding, “Feeling sorry for myself. Because you think more of those humanoids out there than you do of me.”

  He wanted to laugh, but didn’t. “Now that’s a typically feminine attitude.”

  “Well, you’re going to live with them and leaving me behind. You’ve let them change your face and your skin....”

  With a grin he answered, “Well, Alicia doesn’t seem to mind that. She says it makes me look more interesting. Savage.”

  “That little bitch,” Marlene spat.

  “Hey!


  “Oh, I’ve been watching her. You’re not the only one she’s after. Our little patrician with the blood of the conquistadors. She’s an alley cat.”

  “Talk about feminine attitudes!”

  “Well, I’m female,” Marlene said, grinning herself now. “If you haven’t noticed.”

  “Hmm... I guess you might be at that. Come over here,” he patted the bed, “and let me study the problem a little more closely.”

  She got up from her chair and sat next to him on the bed. “Dr. Tanaka might not approve of this.”

  “You know what he can do, don’t you?”

  Later, as he lay back and looked at her beautiful face, he muttered, “I really don’t deserve you at all.”

  She didn’t answer. He never said it again.

  * * *

  Rasmussen still plodded. Long after Lee felt strong enough to get going again, he was still confined to the ship. When his complaints grew loud enough, they let him start on a diet of native foodstuffs. The medics and Hatfield hovered around him while he spent a miserable two weeks with dysentery. Then it passed. But it took a while to build up his strength again; all he had to eat now were fish, insects, and pulpy greens, raw.

  After more tests, conferences, a two-week trial run out by the Crystal Mountains, and then still more exhaustive physical exams, Rasmussen at last agreed to let Lee go.

  They left quickly, abruptly, before the captain could change his mind. Lee’s only real farewell was to Marlene, in her room.

  “You’re going? When?”

  “In about fifteen minutes, if Grote can check out the skimmer that fast.”

  She stared at him for a long moment as he stood in the doorway of the tiny cubicle. She looked as though there were a thousand things she wanted to say. But she merely put her hand to his smoke-black cheek and asked:

  “Will you come back to me?”

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  She started to say something else, her voice caught, and she turned away. Lee hesitated, then left her there with her head down and her back to him.

  Grote piloted the skimmer the long way around the Crystal Mountains, down a gentle slope to the sea, through the surf and out onto the easy, billowing sea. They kept far enough out at sea for the beach to be always beyond their horizon.

  When night fell, Grote nosed the skimmer landward. They came ashore around midnight, with the engines clamped down to near silence, a few kilometers up the beach from the humanoids’ site. Grote, encased in a powersuit, walked with him partway and buried a relay transceiver in the sand, to pick up signals from the camera and transceiver embedded in Lee’s skull.

  “Good luck.” Grote’s voice was muffled by the helmet. Lee stood naked beside him.

  He watched the New Zealander plod mechanically back into the darkness. He strained to hear the skimmer as it turned and slipped back to sea, but he could neither see nor hear it.

  He was alone on the beach.

  Clouds were drifting landward, riding smoothly overhead. The breeze on the beach, though, was blowing warmly out of the desert, spilling over the bluffs and across the sand, out to sea. The sparse stars of this world’s sky peeped through the clouds, in and out. Along the foot of the cliffs it was deep black. Except for the wind and surf, there wasn’t a sound: not a bird nor a nocturnal cat, not even an insect’s chirrup.

  Lee stayed near the water’s edge. He wasn’t cold, even though naked. Still, he could feel himself trembling.

  Grote’s out there, he told himself. If you need him, he can come roaring up the beach in ten minutes.

  But he knew he was really alone.

  The clouds thickened and began to sprinkle rain, a warm, soft shower. Lee blinked the drops away from his eyes and walked slowly, a hundred paces in one direction, then a hundred paces back again.

  The rain stopped as the sea horizon started turning bright. The clouds wafted away. The sky lightened first gray, then almost milky white. Lee looked toward the base of the cliffs. Dark shadows dotted the rugged cliff face. Caves. Some of them were ten meters or more above the sand.

  Sirius edged a limb above the horizon and Lee, squinting, turned away from its brilliance. He looked back at the caves again, feeling the warmth of the hot star’s might on his back.

  The first ones out of the cave were two children, boys. They tumbled out of the same cave, off to Lee’s left, giggling and running.

  When they saw Lee they stopped dead. As though someone had turned them off. Lee could feel his heart beating as they stared at him. He stood just as still as they did, perhaps a hundred meters from them. They looked about five and ten years old, he judged. If their lifespans are the same as ours.

  The taller of the two boys took one step toward Lee, then turned and ran back into the cave. The younger boy followed him.

  For several minutes nothing happened. Then Lee heard voices echoing from inside the cave. Angry? Frightened?

  They’re not laughing.

  Four men appeared at the mouth of the cave. Their hands were empty. They simply stood there, and gaped at him, from the shadows of the cave’s mouth.

  Now we’ll start learning their customs about strangers, Lee thought to himself.

  Very deliberately, he turned away from them and took a few steps up the beach. Then he stopped, turned again, and walked back to his original spot.

  Two of the men disappeared inside the cave. The other two stood there. Lee couldn’t tell what the expressions on their faces meant. They were faintly like the reconstructions of Neanderthals that he had seen as a student; but these were men: alive, wary, lips set in firm strength, eyes watching him.

  Suddenly other people appeared at a few of the other cave mouths. They’re interconnected, Lee realized.

  He tried to smile and waved. There were women among the onlookers now, and a few children. One of the boys who saw him first—at least, it looked like him—started chattering to an adult. The man silenced him with a brusque gesture, never taking his eyes off Lee.

  It was getting hot. Lee could feel perspiration trickling along his ribs as Sirius climbed above the horizon and shone straight at the cliffs. Slowly, he squatted down on the sand.

  A few of the men from the first cave stepped out onto the beach. Two of them were carrying bone spears. Others edged out from their caves. They slowly drew together, keeping close to the rocky cliff wall, and started talking in low, earnest tones.

  They’re puzzled, all right. Just play it cool. Don’t make any sudden moves.

  He leaned slightly forward and traced a triangle on the white sand with one finger.

  When he looked up again, a grizzled, whitehaired man had taken a step or two away from the conference group. Lee smiled at him and the elder froze in his tracks. With a shrug, Lee looked back at the first cave. The boy was still there, with a woman standing beside him, gripping his shoulder. Lee waved and smiled. The boy’s hand fluttered momentarily, but he never got up the courage for a real wave.

  The old man said something to the group, and one of the younger men stepped out to join him. Neither held a weapon. They walked to within a few meters of Lee, and the old man said something, as loudly and bravely as he could muster.

  Lee bowed his head. “Good morning. I am Professor Sidney Lee of the University of Ottawa, which is one hell of a long way from here.”

  The old man and the younger one squatted down and started talking, both of them at once, pointing to the caves and then all around the beach and finally out to sea.

  Lee held up his hands and said, “It ought to be clear to you that I’m from someplace else, and I don’t speak your language. Now if you want to start teaching it to me...”

  They shook their heads in a completely human way, talked to each other, said something else to Lee.

  Lee smiled at them and waited for them to stop talking. When they did, he pointed to himself and said very clearly, “Lee.”

  He spent an hour at it, repeating only that one syllable, no matter
what they said to him or to each other. The heat was getting fierce; Sirius was a blue flame searing his skin, baking the juices out of him.

  The younger man got up and, with a shake of his head, spoke a few final words to the elder and then walked back to the group that still stood knotted by the base of the cliff. The old man rose, slowly and stiffly. He beckoned Lee to do the same.

  As Lee got to his feet he saw the other men start to head out for the surf. A few boys followed behind, carrying several bone spears for their—what? Fathers? Older brothers?

  As long as the spears are for the fish and not me, Lee thought.

  The old man was saying something to him. Pointing toward the caves. He took a step in that direction, then motioned for Lee to come along. Lee hesitated. The old man smiled a toothless smile and repeated his invitation.

  Grinning back at him in realization, Lee said aloud, “Okay, if you’re not scared of me I guess I don’t have to be scared of you.”

  It took more than a year before Lee learned their language well enough to understand roughly what they were saying. It was an odd language, sparse in some ways and almost completely devoid of pronouns.

  His pronunciation of their words made the adults smile, when they thought he couldn’t see them doing it. The children still giggled at his speech, but the old man—Ardraka—always scolded them when they did.

  They called the planet Makta, and Lee saw to it that Rasmussen entered that as its official name in the expedition’s log. He made a point of walking the beach alone one night each week, to talk with the others at the ship and make a personal report. He quickly found that most of what he saw, heard, and said inside the caves never got out to the relay transceiver buried up the beach; the cliffs rock walls were too much of a barrier.

  Ardraka was the oldest of the clan, and the nominal chief. His son, Ardra, was the younger man who had also come out to talk to Lee on that first day. Ardra actually gave most of the orders. Ardraka could overrule him whenever he chose to, but he seldom exercised that right.

  There were only forty-three people in the clan, nearly half of them elderly-looking. Eleven were pre-adolescent children; two of them infants. There were no obvious pregnancies. Ardraka must have been about fifty, judging by his oldest son’s apparent age. But the old man had the wrinkled, sunken look of an eighty-year-old. The people themselves had very little idea of time beyond the basic rhythm of night and day. There were no seasons.

 

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