Alton's Unguessable

by Jeff Sutton

  "Unguessable or not, we have to dig it out, know what it is that we're faced with," said Yozell.

  "I would welcome any suggestions, Alton."

  "Is the thing Roger senses necessarily the same thing that built this temple?"

  "A good point," Kimbrough conceded.

  "The thing might have been the successor to the temple builders, the reason they vanished," suggested Yozell.

  "What, specifically, do you have in mind?"

  "If Sam is right, the building material suggests a fairly high civilization. There almost certainly are other buildings, perhaps a great number of them. It isn't logical that this would be the last one standing. We have to find them."

  "And if we do?" asked Keim.

  "We have to explore them, unearth their artifacts, try to resurrect the culture of their builders, determine why such a race vanished. Perhaps that will tell us what happened here, what it is that Roger senses. What killed Weber," he added.

  Keim shook his head. "I don't believe that's possible."

  "That other buildings exist?"

  "To enter them," he corrected.

  "Why not?"

  "I believe they'd fall."

  A shocked silence followed before Yozell said, "I never believed in the supernatural, at least until now."

  "It's not the supernatural," interrupted Lara. "I don't know what it is, but it's not that."

  "No, it’s not that," agreed Keim.

  "This building is part of the dust of history," Kimbrough mused. "If we could hazard a time line, I might place its age at twenty thousand years, perhaps far longer. If we agree that its collapse was purposive, how was it accomplished?"

  "I wouldn't attempt to guess," replied Keim.

  "The act required the release of energy," persisted Kimbrough.

  "I still wouldn't hazard a guess." He looked at Gossett. "Perhaps we are the aliens, but I can't look at it from that viewpoint. At least I haven't the impression of a form of life merely trying to protect its homeland."

  "What is your impression?" asked the chemist.

  "A sense of malignancy, a something that would destroy us. I believe Alton is right; whatever destroyed the temple builders is still here. Weber, this temple—that's a confrontation of sorts. Don't ask me the basis for my belief; I don't know. But the planet reeks of death. The feeling is a scream in my mind."

  Gossett twisted his head upward. "There's a bird." Keim jerked his gaze to the sky. Hovering high above the treetops off to one side, the bird appeared absolutely motionless.

  "What about it?" asked Bascomb testily.

  "I hadn't noticed any in this area before. Come to think of it, I haven't seen many anywhere except around the ship."

  "I'd noticed that," murmured Yozell. "It's a type of gull."

  "Gull?"

  "In external structure. At least we can call it that until we make a final classification."

  "A gull, I like that," declared Lara. "It's reminiscent of the beaches of Lorn—oh, a thousand beaches. A gull spells sand and breaking waves and blue-green water."

  "Then a gull it is," declared Yozell.

  Gossett switched his gaze to the chief scientist. "Why would that one gull be up there now, looking down at us?"

  "Is it?"

  "I have that feeling."

  "It could be a coincidence," offered Yozell, "or perhaps it might have been attracted by our movements, or by the collapse of the temple. That certainly sent enough shock waves through the air."

  Although the explanation sounded plausible, Keim knew that none of them believed it. Not with gulls that sensed force fields, gulls that hovered a scant few inches before a man's face just before his neck was snapped!

  "You were going to trap a few," reminded Kimbrough.

  "I was about to do it when we got word of the temple."

  "Don't put it off, Alton."

  Gossett brought their thoughts to the surface, saying, "I really can't picture a gull as an alien intelligence, but assuming it is, how could it have destroyed the temple?" No one answered. When they returned to the skimmers, Keim twisted his head upward.

  A single gull hovered against the sapphire blue of the sky.

  Uli fought to stifle his terror as he watched the humans gather around their skimmers. A tumult seethed in every fragment of his mind that dwelt within every host. Its intensity was far beyond anything he'd ever experienced. That, alone, was frightening. He had to banish the emotion, to bring his thoughts into order, and to assess—with the absolute logic of his kind—his exact situation. Perhaps his alarm was unreasonable. He forced himself to review the incidents that had brought the terror to him.

  Thanks to the knowledge and language skills he'd acquired from the now dead crewman, he'd been able to probe the minds of the small group below and understand not only their words, but many of the nuances behind them. He'd been able to sense their fears and frustrations, their wonder and determination.

  But they verbalized so little of what they thought and

  almost nothing of what they felt. They seemed to fear their own thoughts and attempted to keep them capped, to disguise them so that they came into the awareness in a different form. How could a mind hide from itself in what they termed the "subconscious"? That was stranger yet. Later, when he had time, it would be interesting to study several of them more closely.

  With the humans making so many idle sweeps over the grasslands and adjacent forested hills—"reconnaissance" was the expression they used, a word he interpreted from his newly-acquired memory bank as meaning "just looking around"—he had neglected to keep every flight under observation. As a consequence, the discovery of the ancient ruin had escaped his attention until, by whimsy, he had dispatched a host to follow the last skimmer to the scene. But the humans quickly had vanished under a thick cover of trees and vines and his host hadn't sighted them again until after they'd reappeared at the site of the temple.

  Temple! A place of worship to a being called a god. A supreme deity. He remembered such structures from, long ago. The earlier bipeds had worshipped him in just such places, even as he had blotted their cities and towns from the face of the planet, had sought out and annihilated the last of them. He had been the God of Death! Ah, he would be again! But how had these bipeds known that this had been a temple? Remarkable!

  His own shock had come with the discovery that the male creature named Roger Keim was a telepath. A "T-man," as the others thought of him. Uli's first reaction had been to reject the knowledge on the basis that telepathy was restricted to the Qua alone. But there was no mistake. Although the creature had made no attempt to probe his companions, many of their thoughts had appeared as mirror images in his mind.

  But the telepath had never revealed that he knew their thoughts. Stranger yet, he often had deliberately tried to block them out. There was something called an "ethic" involved. Ethic? The crewman had never heard of the word.

  Suddenly wary, Uli had focused his attention on the telepath. Keim's mind roved, incessantly. It probed, analyzed, deduced; it theorized, weighed, discarded, theorized again. His reasoning, most of which he kept to himself, was startling in its logic.

  Were there other telepaths? Once or twice Uli suspected the presence of a second one, but the mental probes had been faint, uncertain, subconscious in origin—so masked by the more powerful mind of the man called Keim that their source had been unidentifiable. Or had the secondary probes also emanated from Keim, sort of a mental echo as it were?

  He was debating it when two of the humans started toward the temple. Instantly fearful that they might discover some clue that would reveal his presence, he had destroyed the structure with a single discharge of mind power. It was then that his terror had come, for the creature called Keim had glimpsed a mental image of the temple falling before it had begun to fall!

  To look into the future—what kind of power was that? Uli was appalled. He'd never heard of such a thing. His own mind could look into the past for more than a hundred bi
llion years, could range to the edge of the universe. But to see into a time yet unborn? More, to see it starkly, to isolate its separate events, that was utterly incomprehensible. And just as instantly, the telepath had coupled the collapse of the temple with the fate of its builders—had linked the event, from the standpoint of causation, to the death of the crewman. What manner of creature was this? A cold apprehension swept out to the mind fragments in ten thousand hosts; it ran like rivers through his entire being.

  What if this creature were the least of his kind? The possibility had brought a new burst of terror. Suppose there were others with the power to uproot forests, level mountains, tear asunder an entire planet and hurl its atoms into the emptiness of the universe? What might he find in the galaxy's planet-rich interior? Minds equal to his own? No, there was nothing in the minds below to suggest that. Such a possibility was unthinkable.

  His first impulse to destroy the small group of humans had been deterred by the fear that it might frighten the others into prematurely leaving the planet. If that should happen before he could gain admission into the ship, he might be condemned to remain for another fifty thousand revolutions of this planet around its lonely sun. Perhaps other hosts would never come! A terrifying thought.

  He had to gain immediate access to the ship! Although he could quite easily acquire a host from the humans working outside, he reflected that it could be risky. The screams of the first crewman proved that. Now, with the alarm raised by the destruction of the temple, he couldn't risk any action that might panic them into precipitate flight.

  The best time to acquire a host would be just at the onset of sleep, when a man's eyes still would open at the slightest disturbance, yet when his mind would be drugged by lethargy. And it could be done; the human called Alton Yozell had pointed the way. But the humans suspected the birds. He pondered that. Not that they could confirm their suspicions; not at least until it was too late. But it did point up their level of intelligence which was much higher than first he had supposed.

  When the skimmers started back toward the ship, Uli turned his attention to the temple's rubble. Would the humans return to sift through the debris? Quite likely. But while there was scant chance they'd discover any evidence of him that might frighten them from the planet, he decided not to take the risk. Unleashing a bolt of mind power,r he watched the debris stream upward into the sapphire-blue sky, breaking down into its constituent atoms until absolutely nothing remained of what had been the temple. Nothing but the hideous scar in the forest.

  Ruefully he realized that the scar could be more damning yet. Why had he acted so precipitantly? He never had until the advent of these strange creatures. They were quite alarming, particularly the T-man. What awesome powers might he have? No matter, he would die soon enough. And the other humans, if they returned to the scene. But he would have to kill them in such a way that it would appear as an accident to those remaining.

  Perhaps he should fission.

  The thought came unbidden, as so often it had, bringing the same perturbation that always accompanied it. Why should the thought occur now? He debated it uneasily. To fission was part of his nature, his goal—the very reason he had been hurled inward from the dying edge of the universe. Why then the deep-rooted dread whenever the thought occurred?

  He forced himself to review his feelings, the consequences of the act itself. What did fission mean as applied to himself? Would he become a duality, retaining his conscious self as two selves, thus doubling his power? Or would each part become a completely new entity, each endowed with its own ego, each possessing its own racial memories. If the latter, then fission was tantamount to death.

  Death! The mere thought was frightening. Yet he was immortal! His whole being screamed of the fact; the life-time of a star was but a passing moment in his day. The immortal Qua! That came from deep within his memory banks. But did immortality apply to the individual as well as the race? There, the question was out! Hadn't his own awakening been as an entirely new being?

  He mulled the question uneasily. He'd had his racial memories, they were part of the self; that was beyond denial. But were they the same as the self? What if he didn't fission? Then an eternity lay ahead. That, too, was undeniable.

  But if death were to be his fate, then certainly he couldn't fission until he reached a planet occupied by hosts having an interstellar technology. Hosts such as the humans. When he reached an appropriate planet, he would fission readily enough. Through him the Qua would spread throughout the galaxy and, ultimately, throughout the Middle Universe. But he had to wait—wait for the proper time. For that reason, he hadn't fissioned since his arrival on the planet of the lonely blue-white sun.

  That, and the fear of death.

  FIVE

  Hunched over a desk in his stateroom, Captain Woon told the T-man, "I can appreciate your feelings, Roger, and I know that reporting them is your job. Nevertheless," his voice became deliberate, "I'm asking you not to discuss any of the things that are happening, or that you believe might be happening, except with Kimbrough or me."

  "Why?" demanded Keim.

  "It's causing some unrest."

  "It's what's happening that's causing the unrest."

  "That's beside the point."

  "Who's bothered?"

  "Burl Ashford, for one."

  "Ashford?" Keim wasn't really surprised. The geologist had openly displayed his uneasiness since the crewman's death. He'd also displayed considerable fear when first they'd detected intelligent life on their previous trip to Kale. Not even the later discovery of the intelligence being confined to a stone-age culture had completely allayed it.

  There was a private joke that he'd joined the survey service only to escape a nagging wife. Whatever the reason, Ashford clearly held a not-so-secret fear of anything that smacked of the alien. "What's his complaint?"

  "He suggested that we write off the planet. Leave."

  "I suggested that the first day."

  "Planets like this are^not easily come by," Woon' reprimanded. "What could I put into a report to justify abandoning it?"

  "I'm no longer advocating that course."

  "Why the change?"

  "I believe there's a form of life on this planet completely alien to us, to our way of thinking; an intelligence that might constitute the greatest threat the human race has ever known. If the possibility exists of a future confrontation, we'd better start learning what this thing is."

  "My question would be, where are its weapons?"

  "It has a mind."

  "Oh?"

  "I wouldn't underrate that point."

  "Nonsense, Roger. We could incinerate this planet. I can't say that a few unusual coincidence justifies the assumption that such a being even exists."

  "The collapse of the temple wasn't a coincidence," he retorted.

  "Possibly not, and I'll have to admit that Kimbrough agrees with you on that point." Woon regarded him speculatively. "But I still want you to quit voicing your beliefs. We want to approach this problem scientifically, not emotionally."

  "I'm emotional?"

  "Not you, others."

  "Besides Ashford."

  "Some of the crew are disturbed."

  "I'm speaking of the science staff."

  Woon hesitated. "Hester Kane and Robin Martel," he said finally.

  Keim took the time to digest that. Robin, a brilliant young meteorologist, was new to the service. Survey 992 was her first deepspace operation. But Hester Kane, the linguist, was a veteran, and definitely not the nervous type. Still, women were prone to view things in a different light.

  He asked, "Anything in particular bothering them?"

  "Female intuition."

  He grinned. "I wouldn't discount that. How about Lara?"

  "She'll do." In the spacer's idiom, the answer constituted high praise. Keim wasn't surprised. On Kale, she'd insisted dwelling alone among the natives was the only real means of gaining more than a superficial insight into their culture
. Although Kimbrough had opposed it as highly dangerous, she had been adamant. As it turned out, she'd dwelt in a native village for most of their stay.

  "Is the unrest restricted to those three?" he asked.

  "It's sweeping the crew, I mentioned that. Weber's death shook them. Now, with what happened at the temple…" Woon gestured eloquently. "We can't operate efficiently unless we cap the fear."

  "I agree, but we still have to explore what is happening."

  "I intend to."

  Keim felt ruffled as he left the captain's quarters. The only time he'd voiced his real convictions was immediately following the collapse of the temple, and then only when the group had tried to assess what had happened. But rumors were spreading; the whispers nibbled at his mind and, at night, he could all but taste the fear that pervaded the ship. Woon was dead right in his contention that they couldn't operate efficiently under those conditions.

  Outside, he found Alton Yozell preparing to move several small cages into his laboratory. Keim noticed that they held the rodent-like creatures that inhabited the surrounding grasslands. "Look like field mice to me," he commented.

  "Very similar," the biologist agreed. "Gulls and field mice… It's strange how nature tends to parallel itself across the galaxy."

  "Krado 1 doesn't appear much different from Klasner or Jondell or Old Earth, if you except the blue-white sun," he reflected.

  "I'm not prepared to render a verdict, Roger."

  "Neither am I," he confessed. "Actually I sense a vast difference, but I can't say what it is."

  "Each planet is different," replied Yozell, "yet very little exists that can't be explained. Given time and opportunity, of course."

  "Have you tried trapping the birds yet?"