Zen

by Jerome Bixby

those"elementary schools"--remembering, and defining the differences inenvironment between _then_ and _now_; and more, wondering at itsexistence in the different _now_--

  And then I got my own thinking straightened out. I recalled some of thethings we had learned about the Zen.

  Their average lifespan had been 12,000 years or a little over. So theZen before me was, by our standards, about twenty-five years old.Nothing at all strange about remembering, when you are twenty-five, thethings that happened to you when you were seven ...

  But the Zen's question, even my rationalization of my reaction to it,had given me a chill. Here was no cuddly teddy bear.

  This creature had been born before Christ!

  She had been alone for three thousand years, on a chip of bone from herdead world beneath a sepulchre of stars. The last and greatest Martiancivilization, the _L'hrai_, had risen and fallen in her lifetime. Andshe was twenty-five years old.

  "How do I live here?" she asked again.

  I got back into my own framework of temporal reference, so to speak, andbegan explaining to a Zen what a Zen was. (I found out later from Yurtthat biology, for the reasons which follow, was one of the mostdifficult studies; so difficult that nuclear physics actually _preceded_it!) I told her that the Zen had been, all evidence indicated, thetoughest, hardest, longest-lived creatures God had ever cooked up:practically independent of their environment, no special ecologicalniche; just raw, stubborn, tenacious life, developed to a fantasticextreme--a greater force of life than any other known, one that couldexist almost anywhere under practically any conditions--even floating inmidspace, which, asteroid or no, this Zen was doing right now.

  The Zens breathed, all right, but it was nothing they'd had to do inorder to live. It gave them nothing their incredible metabolism couldn'tscrounge up out of rock or cosmic rays or interstellar gas or simply dowithout for a few thousand years. If the human body is a furnace, thenthe Zen body is a feeder pile. Maybe that, I thought, was what evolutionalways worked toward.

  "Please, will you kill me?" the Zen said.

  * * * * *

  I'd been expecting that. Two years ago, on the bleak surface of Eros,Yurt had asked Engstrom to do the same thing. But I asked, "Why?"although I knew what the answer would be, too.

  The Zen looked up at me. She was exhibiting every ounce of emotion a Zenis capable of, which is a lot; and I could recognize it, but not in anyfamiliar terms. A tiny motion here, a quiver there, but very quiet andstill for the most part. And _that_ was the violent expression:restraint. Yurt, after two years of living with us, still couldn'tunderstand why we found this confusing.

  Difficult, aliens--or being alien.

  "I've tried so often to do it myself," the Zen said softly. "But Ican't. I can't even hurt myself. Why do I want you to kill me?" She waseven quieter. Maybe she was crying. "I'm alone. Five hundred years,Eert-mn--not too long. I'm still young. But what good is it--life--whenthere are no other Zen?"

  "How do you know there are no other Zen?"

  "There are no others," she said almost inaudibly. I suppose a human girlmight have shrieked it.

  _A child_, I thought, _when your world blew up. And you survived. Nowyou're a young three-thousand-year-old woman ... uneducated, afraid,probably crawling with neuroses. Even so, in your thousand-year terms,young lady, you're not too old to change._

  "Will you kill me?" she asked again.

  And suddenly I was having one of those eye-popping third-row-centerviews of the whole scene: the enormous, beautiful sky; the dead clod,Vesta; the little creature who stood there staring at me--thebrilliant-ignorant, humanlike-alien, old-young creature who was askingme to kill her.

  For a moment the human quality of her thinking terrified me ... thefeeling you might have waking up some night and finding your pet puppysitting on your chest, looking at you with wise eyes and white fangsgleaming ...

  Then I thought of Yurt--smart, friendly Yurt, who had learned to laughand wisecrack--and I came out of the jeebies. I realized that here wasonly a sick girl, no tiny monster. And if she were as resilient as Yurt... well, it was his problem. He'd probably pull her through.

  But I didn't pick her up. I made no attempt to take her back to theship. Her tiny white teeth and tiny yellow claws were harder than steel;and she was, I knew, unbelievably strong for her size. If she gotsuspicious or decided to throw a phobic tizzy, she could scatter shredsof me over a square acre of Vesta in less time than it would take me toyelp.

  "Will you--" she began again.

  I tried shakily, "Hell, no. Wait here." Then I had to translate it.

  * * * * *

  I went back to the _Lucky Pierre_ and got Yurt. We could do without him,even though he had been a big help. We'd taught him a lot--he'd been achild at the blow-up, too--and he'd taught us a lot. But this was moreimportant, of course.

  When I told him what had happened, he was very quiet; crying, perhaps,just like a human being, with happiness.

  Cap Feldman asked me what was up, and I told him, and he said, "Well,I'll be blessed!"

  I said, "Yurt, are you sure you want us to keep hands off ... just gooff and leave you?"

  "Yes, please."

  Feldman said, "Well, I'll be blessed."

  Yurt, who spoke excellent English, said, "Bless you all."

  I took him back to where the female waited. From the ridge, I knew, theentire crew was watching through binocs. I set him down, and he fell tostudying her intently.

  "I am not a Zen," I told her, giving my torch full brilliance for thecrew's sake, "but Yurt here is. Do you see ... I mean, do you know whatyou look like?"

  She said, "I can see enough of my own body to--and--yes ..."

  "Yurt," I said, "here's the female we thought we might find. Take over."

  Yurt's eyes were fastened on the girl.

  "What--do I do now?" she whispered worriedly.

  "I'm afraid that's something only a Zen would know," I told her,smiling inside my helmet. "I'm not a Zen. Yurt is."

  She turned to him. "You will tell me?"

  "If it becomes necessary." He moved closer to her, not even looking backto talk to me. "Give us some time to get acquainted, will you, Dave? Andyou might leave some supplies and a bubble at the camp when you move on,just to make things pleasanter."

  By this time he had reached the female. They were as still as space, nota sound, not a motion. I wanted to hang around, but I knew how I'd feelif a Zen, say, wouldn't go away if I were the last man alive and hadjust met the last woman.

  I moved my torch off them and headed back for the _Lucky Pierre_. We allhad a drink to the saving of a great race that might have becomeextinct. Ed Reiss, though, had to do some worrying before he could downhis drink.

  "What if they don't like each other?" he asked anxiously.

  "They don't have much choice," Captain Feldman said, always the realist."Why do homely women fight for jobs on the most isolated spaceoutposts?"

  Reiss grinned. "That's right. They look awful good after a year or twoin space."

  "Make that twenty-five by Zen standards or three thousand by ours," saidJoe Hargraves, "and I'll bet they look beautiful to each other."

  We decided to drop our investigation of Vesta for the time being, andcome back to it after the honeymoon.

  Six months later, when we returned, there were twelve hundred Zen onVesta!

  Captain Feldman was a realist but he was also a deeply moral man. Hewent to Yurt and said, "It's indecent! Couldn't the two of you controlyourselves at least a little? _Twelve hundred kids!_"

  "We were rather surprised ourselves," Yurt said complacently. "But thisseems to be how Zen reproduce. Can you have only half a child?"

  Naturally, Feld got the authorities to quarantine Vesta. Good God, theZen could push us clear out of the Solar System in a couple ofgenerations!

  I don't think they would, but you can't take such chances, can you?

 
--JEROME BIXBY

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ October 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.