Fire Time

by Poul Anderson

  ‘Very little. It’s rare and shy in Beronnen. Fairly numerous – is our impression – in the opposite hemisphere; but fully developed Ishtarians have hardly penetrated there yet. I can’t tell you a lot more than that goblins make crude tools and appear to have a language of sorts. As if Australopithecus survived on Earth.’

  ‘Hm.’ Dejerine stroked his mustache. ‘How strange that they have been allowed to.’

  ‘No, not really. Remember what an enormous amount of ocean, stormier than any on Earth, lies between.’

  ‘I mean that where ranges overlap, the higher species hasn’t exterminated the lower.’

  Ishtarians wouldn’t. Not even the most warlike barbarians have our casual human bloodthirstiness. For instance, nobody here has ever tortured prisoners for fun or massacred them for convenience. You probably think of the Gathering of Sehala as a sort of empire. It isn’t. Civilization has developed without any need for the state. After all, the Ishtarians are a more advanced form of life than us.’

  His surprise took her aback, until she reflected that an idea with which she had always lived must be new to him. After a moment he said slowly, ‘My readings did mention post-mammalian evolution. They never made too clear to me what was meant. I assumed – Tiens, you are not claiming they are more intelligent than us? This was not in my books.’ He drew breath. ‘True, they seem better at some things than we are, but less quick and original in others. That’s usual among contrasted sophont species. The totals always seem to even approximately out. I think the explanation is reasonable, that beyond a certain point there is no selection pressure to increase brain power further, and indeed this would grotesquely unbalance the organism.’

  She studied him with rising respect. Had he, the military man, taken that much trouble, that much thought? Okay, I’ll pay him the compliment of answering in kind, not talking down any more than necessary.

  ‘Can you stand a lecture?’ she asked.

  He smiled, leaned back against a bole, offered her a cigarette from a silver case, and, after she declined, helped himself. ‘When such a lecturer gives it?’ he murmured. ‘Mademoiselle, I try to be a gentleman, but my glands are in good working order.’

  Jill grinned. ‘We will have a twenty-minute quiz at the end,’ she said. ‘Ay-hem.

  ‘You know life here – ortho-life, that is, not T-life – developed quite similarly to Earth’s, the original environments being so similar. Mainly the same chemicals, two sexes, vertebrates descended from something like an annelid worm, and so forth. We can eat most of each other’s food, though we’d come down with deficiency diseases if we tried it exclusively, and certain things that one breed likes are poisonous to the other. The fact of hexapodality versus quadrupedality appears to be fairly trivial, a biological accident. Ishtar has its equivalent of fish, reptile, bird, mammal, et cetera. The differences are important enough that we lay on names ending in -oid. For instance, the theroids are warmblooded, give live birth, and suckle their young; but they don’t grow either hair or placentas – they’ve got astonishing alternatives – and in general, the variations are endless.

  ‘Maybe they’d be more like us yet, except for Anu’s going off on a red giant kick about a billion years ago. It’s spent the whole while since growing bigger, and nastier each time it passes close. This means Poikilothermic land animals – whoops! Cold-blooded, if you prefer – they’ve been at a still worse disadvantage than on Earth, and never got far. No trace among the fossils of anything analogous to dinosaurs. The theroids grabbed an early lead and kept it.

  ‘Okay. On this basis, which you’re doubtless familiar with already but I wanted to spell out – on this basis, we think – we think, mind you; the actual evidence to date is pitifully slight – we think the theroids have had more time to evolve than mammals on Earth. (Yes, I realize mammals are very old, but they didn’t really take off till the Oligocene.) The trick they invented here that we haven’t, is symbiosis. Oh, sure, you’re symbiotic with a few organisms yourself, like your intestinal flora. One definition would even include your mitochondria. But the well-developed Istarian theroid is a whole zoo and botanical garden of co-operating species.

  ‘Let’s take a sophont, for instance – a few of his most conspicuous partners. His pelt, or hers, is a mossy plant, shallowly rooted in the skin but connected to the bloodstream … because his skin is a lot more complicated than ours. His mane and brows resemble ivy. Their branches make a tough armor for the upper backbone and a fairly thin skull. The plants take out carbon dioxide, water, and other by-products of animal metabolism for their own use. They give back oxygen directly, plus a whole string of vitamin-like materials we’ve barely started to identify. True, the plants don’t furnish a complete respiratory-eliminative system. They supplement lungs, double heart, intestines, every organ – all of these with their special symbionts – but the upshot is an individual who functions better than we do. He can live on a far wider variety of food He’s less extravagant of water, through sweat or wastes or simply breathing. Thanks to Anu, water is in short supply over large areas of Ishtar. And, ah, our native also carries a built-in emergency food supply, those same plants. He can eat them and still survive, however handicapped by the lack. They’ll soon grow back from their roots or from spores in air and soil, same as they do on the newly born.’

  Jill paused for air. ‘Whew!’

  ‘I can see the advantages,’ Dejerine said slowly.

  ‘Did you know this already?’

  ‘I have read, yes. However, I’m glad to hear it repeated in a larger context.’

  ‘I’m coming to one, I hope.’ Caught in an excitement which for her never faded, Jill said: ‘Those advantages go beyond the obvious. Look, symbiosis like this isn’t merely helpful directly. It frees genes.’ Observing his puzzlement: ‘Well, think. Genes, which Ishtarian life also has, genes store information. Their storage capacity is bodacious, but it isn’t infinite. Imagine a set of ’em which governs some metabolic function. Now imagine that function being taken over by your friendly neighborhood symbiont. The genes aren’t needed for it any more. They can go into new lines of work. Mutation and selection see to it that they do. The mutation rate’s probably higher among Ishtarian theroids than Terrestrial mammals anyway, because body temperature is. The problem on Ishtar is much oftener keeping cool than keeping warm; and the theroids solve it partly through their plants – assorted endothermic chemistry more than transpiration – and partly by being naturally warm themselves.

  … I’m digressing all over the place, hm? Well, nature does. The point I’m trying to make is that the Ishtarians have advantages over us, including a longer evolutionary history as homeothermic animals. They may not have reached their present level of intelligence as early as humans – though Lord knows when that was – but they phased into it more gradually. This is one reason those goblins are still around. And the history shows. It shows.’

  Dejerine frowned. ‘In their brains, do you mean?’ he asked.

  Jill nodded. The ends of her hair tickled the bare angles between neck and shoulders. ‘Nervous systems as a whole,’ she said. ‘Man is rather hastily built, you realize. Jerry built, even. It’s been said we have three brains, one cobbled on top of the next. The stem first, the reptilian brain; then the mammalian cerebellum; finally the over-developed cerebral cortex. They don’t work together in awfully good harmony – hence ax murders, mobs, and socialism. The Ishtarian has more unity in his head. You can see it if you do a dissection. Insanity seems to be unknown – literally doesn’t exist, unless you count amentia due to massive physical damage. Not to disease. Ishtarians have precious little disease, with all those specialized helpers living in them. As for neurosis–’ Jill shrugged. ‘That’s a matter of definition, isn’t it? I’ll just say I’ve never known an Ishtarian whom I would call a twitch. And I might point out that alien and powerful as we happen to be, we humans have never produced any culture shock here. They respect us, they accept from us what things and ideas they
find useful, but it all integrates easily with their old ways.’

  Hoarse and a trifle dizzy from rapid-fire talking, she leaned back against the trunk which supported Dejerine, sipped coffee grown cold in the cup, took a bite from her piece of bread and jam. She’d made the preserve at home, half strawberry, half native newton fig, and been pleased when the Earthling wanted seconds.

  ‘M-m-m,’ he mused, ‘no doubt the general physiological superiority accounts for the long Ishtarian life-span. Three to five hundred years, correct?’

  Jill nodded. ‘I think, though, another factor’s been at work as well,’ she said. ‘On Earth, fairly short generations mean fast genetic turnover, fast evolution. That should be an advantage for the species. I’m inclined to agree with the theory that we’re programmed to start seriously aging as early as about forty, for this exact reason. But Ishtar suffers these Anu passages every thousand years. The effects are powerful for only a century or so. Longevity probably helps conserve adaptations to the cycle, and thereby helps species survival.’

  He gave her a considering look. ‘What a bleak philosophy.’

  ‘Oh? Doesn’t bother me.’ Jill thought for a moment. Okay, let’s be frank with him. We need his … empathy … more than his intellectual understanding ‘Well, no use denying, everybody’d like to have that number of healthy years,’ she said. ‘But since we can’t, no use crying, either. The Ishtarians get their share of woe. Every second lifetime, Ragnarok. And they don’t whine.’

  He was silent awhile, in the blowing morning warmth, before he murmured, with his eyes aimed away from her, across the curve of the planet: ‘It must have curious effects on you in Primavera. The same unchanged centaur who was your grandfather’s friend is yours, and will be your children’s – but before you were grown, he was your teacher for many things, was he not, your protector, conceivably your idol? Forgive me; I do not wish to be impertinent; but I am interested to know if my guess is right, that for some of you lifelong residents, some autochthons are father figures.’

  By Darwin, he is a surprising bastard!

  His gaze back upon her, he must have seen he had touched a nerve. Why deny what he could learn by leading any gossipy townsperson into talk? ‘Yes, I s’pose,’ Jill said. ‘Maybe I’m an example. Larreka, the commandant of the Zera Victrix … we’ve always been close. I daresay I absorbed a lot of attitudes from him.’ Impulsively: ‘He saw me through a bad experience in a way nobody else in the universe could’ve.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dejerine paused. ‘Do you wish to discuss it?’

  Jill shook her head. Why should I trust him this much, this fast? He’s the enemy, isn’t he? ‘No, I’d rather not; for now, anyway.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said gently.

  She remembered–

  Big land animals are rare on Ishtar. Each thousand years, food becomes too scarce in most regions. Central and southern Beronnen can support a few, like the tree lion and the almost elephantine valwas. But in its farther north, the continent turns into a reach of dry savannahs known as the Dalag. There lesser game abounds, in between Anu passages: at least fifty kinds of azar, for instance, several quite large. The beasts which kill them for food are dog-size or less, running in packs, though with massive jaws capable of frantically fast devouring; and no scavengers are visible to the naked eye other than certain swift small invertebrates The sophont population is thin, mostly herders who do not do much hunting. Yet here and there cyclopean ruins rise out of the burnt-yellow sea of lia; and it is thought that civilization was invented in this country.

  The thing which binds together these paradoxes is the sarcophage.

  For her eleventh birthday, which on Earth would have been a few months short of her twelfth, Jill got leave to join Larreka’s party on a trip to the Dalag. Aside from sport, the commandant planned to look over sites of possible strong points against barbarian incursions when the red sun came. An adult human went along too, Ellen Evaldsen, Jill’s well-beloved young aunt, a planetologist who wanted to study rock formations besides adventuring around inside new horizons.

  They marched merrily overland. Often the girl rode on Larreka or a friend of his. Ellen said they spoiled her rotten, but didn’t interfere. And in camps firelit, starlit, moons-lit, ominously Anu-lit, the woman traded stories from Earth for native tales until Jill could not decide which were more wonderful. Then they reached the Dalag, and it was grander than anything that could be said.

  Whispering, billowing golden reaches, broken only by darker shrubs and single flamelike trees; mysterious shadowy coolness of a water hole beneath a mineral-painted bluff; hard blue glare overhead and unmerciful heat, before night brought chill and a diamond swarm of stars; encounters with herder folk, a few words and a cup of herb tea under a felt canopy, the noble sight of a wo bounding skillfully to round up its master’s els and owas; then onward to seek an immensity of wild grazers, whose hoofbeats boomed from the bottom of the world– Oh, yes, cruel sights as well, less her comrades chasing down an animal and cleanly killing it with bow or spear, than a pack of tartars driving an azar into a stand of the bush called claw, then ripping flesh from it while it hung there hooked and screaming–

  ‘But they’ve got to,’ Larreka told Jill. ‘We can save meat by quick-like soaking it in gut juice. Animals can’t. Or, those that make gut juice inside themselves, they can, by eating fast. Tartars aren’t able to. If they couldn’t eat most of a prey alive, they’d have to kill eight times as many to get a square meal. And … if there were no beasts of prey, the rest ’ud chew the range bare and starve.’

  ‘But why do things have to be awful right here?’ she protested. ‘Meat doesn’t rot away this fast anywhere else, does it?’

  Larreka appealed to Ellen, who repeated in different words what Jill had been warned of beforehand. The airborne mold named sarcophage by humans is harmless to living tissue. But it settles instantly on dead flesh, multiplies explosively, and in two or three hours reduces the hugest animal to bones. It seems to require a particular climate, for it exists only in the Dalag and the nearer Fiery Sea islands. Or is climate what limits it? And what strange adaptations to it has evolution brought forth? ‘It’s not a horror, Jill, dear, it’s a mystery for us to solve.’

  ‘I’ve heard as how it caused the first civilizations,’ Larreka added.

  Jill gave him a wide-eyed look through the furious sunlight.

  ‘Well, a notion,’ Larreka said. ‘An old mudfoot like me can’t judge. However, some of our philosophers and your scientists think it might’ve happened like this. When people first tried living in these parts, they had to be vegetarians; couldn’t keep any meat to speak of. But then they found, certain beasts of prey make juices in their guts that kill the, uh, sarcophage. ’Course, all those people knew was, the juice’d make the meat last. They needed apparatus, like kettles for boiling down the animal guts and bowls for soaking slaughtered critters in. Those had to be herd critters; treatment isn’t very practical for hunters. You’ve seen that, watching us. The apparatus is pretty heavy, being made out of stone or pottery. So those early people settled down in sod huts – which helped ’em stay cool, anyway – and kept flocks, and started raising feed. … Later on, these ideas about houses and ranches moved south, where life is easier, and South Beronnen’s been the heartland of civilization ever since. But here’s where it began, maybe.’

  ‘Including a great many myths, religions, rituals, concepts of life and death alike, from Valennen to Haelen,’ added Ellen Evaldsen. ‘The transience of the flesh may be basic, as widespread on Ishtar, as the dying god is on Earth.’

  ‘Huh?’ grunted Larreka. ‘Well, if you say so, lady.’

  And thus wonder had kindled in Jill too. She had already known that ruin visited the world, again and again and again. As far back as she could remember, Larreka had been matter-of-factly preparing for the next time, and humans planned ways to make it less dreadful than before. She was quick to accept the Dalag for what it was.

  Until the d
ay when Ellen died.

  It happened brutally fast. The woman had climbed a high black rock thrust out of the savannah which, she laughed, had no business being here. It appeared safe. But it held an invisible weakness (from the heat and storms of a million years of Anu passage?). In the camp beneath, they saw the stone break, they saw her fall.

  She lay with her head at a grisly angle. By the time Larreka reached her, dissolution had begun. Flesh bloated, stank, shone iridescent blue-green, collapsed into foul liquid, and puffed away. The Ishtarians couldn’t dig a grave speedily with their limited tools. What they buried was white bones and hair which remained Anu-red.

  Larreka sought Jill. He gathered her curled-together body in his arms and trotted off, beyond sight of the camp. Bel set in fire, the stars bloomed forth, Ea burned like a candle. He settled down in sweet-smelling mildness of air and lia, drew her close against his breast, and stroked her for a long time.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think. We shouldn’t’ve let you see.’

  Jill wept.

  ‘But you belong to the legion,’ he said. ‘Don’t you, soldier?’ He laid fingers below her chin and raised her face toward his and the stars.

  She nodded violently, for there was nothing else.

  ‘Then listen,’ Larreka said, almost too low to hear. ‘You may have heard, when we four-leggers lose a person we care about, it hits us harder than it does you humans. If you’ve known somebody for a few hundred years … Well, we’ve had to learn how to take it. Let me tell you what we do in the legions.’

  And first he told her of banners, rewoven century after century, which bear the names of the fallen; and then he told her of much else; and when dawn broke, she danced the dance of farewell with them, as best she could, at the grave: the earliest step away from grief.

  Jill rose. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get packed and be on our way. I want to show you a typical ranch, but if we stall too long, the most interesting members will be off to hell and gone on the range.’