A Star Above It and Other Stories

by Chad Oliver

  Right now, as the sphere floated over the tree-tops, he was not unduly proud of himself. Even the argument that he was gaining valuable data for his science failed to reassure him, and it was a mark of his honesty that he did not even consider the argument that if he didn’t do the job somebody else would.

  Frank looked up from the controls, his blue eyes disturbed. He was not an insensitive man and many of the same thoughts had been bothering him. Frank, however, could always sell himself on the rightness of what he was doing. It was not dishonesty on his part; his brain just worked that way.

  “Seems kind of a shame,” he said. “I guess they like their life pretty well the way it is.”

  “Maybe not,” Canady said, helping him out. “After all, Frank, that’s an argument that might have kept us all in the caves.”

  “That’s right.” Frank’s eyes brightened. “Hell, if you don’t believe in progress, what can you believe in?”

  Canady could think of several answers to that one but he just shrugged as though the problem were insoluble. The blind faith in progress—which normally, if you tried to pin it down to anything approaching preciseness, meant increased technological complexity—was so deeply ingrained in Earth’s cultures that it had become an automatic response. Even children believed in progress. How could you not believe in progress?

  “I look at it this way,” Frank said slowly. “We’re taking something away from them, sure. We’re asking them to change their way of life on a purely voluntary basis—we’re not forcing them to do anything. In return, we’re offering them things they’ve never had before: comfort and good health and security. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Your insight is very comforting,” Canady said without smiling. “Got the bomb ready?”

  Frank looked at him sharply, disturbed by the juxtaposition of the two sentences. Canady, however, smoked his pipe without expression. “It’s ready.”

  Canady studied the terrain below in the viewers. They were over a cleared area near the native camp. He checked the safety detectors. There were no people in the target area, but it was close enough so that they could get an eyeful.

  “Let go the convincer,” he said.

  Frank tripped the switch and the bomb fell. It went off with a satisfying bang and set off a cloud of smoke out of all proportion to any damage it might have done. It was not atomic, of course. There was no need to use a blockbuster when a firecracker would serve.

  “Set her down,” he said.

  Frank jockeyed the sphere into position above the rows of skin tents and landed it in the precise center of the camp. They waited until the natives had had time to form a cautious circle around them and then they opened the port.

  The two men from Earth stepped out, smiles on their faces and their right hands raised in gestures of peace.

  Canady’s troubled green eyes took in the whole works with one swift, experienced glance. Anthropologists who have spent long years in the field tend to be more impressed with the similarities between cultures than with their obvious differences. It is only the untrained eye that seizes upon the somewhat superficial oddities and cannot see beyond the seemingly bizarre to the deeply-rooted universals that underlie all human social systems. A nomadic hunting culture has to have certain characteristics for the excellent reason that it will work in no other way. This, as Canady was well aware, is just as true twenty-nine light years from Earth as it was in aboriginal Asia, Africa, or North America. A scientific law is binding no matter where you find it.

  He saw a great deal in that one quick check. He saw not only the scene before him but saw it projected against a backdrop of facts and figures, saw it nearly divided up into familiar categories. Even if he had not already known a great deal about the natives from the planted microphones that had enabled him to learn the language, he could have predicted rather closely what these people would be like. Now as always in the moment of initial contact, he was on the alert for anything off-key, anything that didn’t fit. It was the unexpected that could make for trouble.

  At first, he saw nothing unusual.

  The natives stood in a loose circle, waiting. There were fewer of them now than there had been the night before; obviously the other bands had dispersed after the ceremony. Canady estimated the crowd at about sixty-five men and women. They were a tall, healthy-looking group with that robustness of bone and muscle that comes from an outdoor life and a predominantly meat diet. The men were dressed in skin leggings and had ornate bone combs stuck into their long dark hair. The women wore a simple skin tunic, tied at the waist with beaded thongs.

  Canady spotted his first oddity: none of the natives was carrying a weapon of any kind. He filed the fact away.

  Canady lowered his hand. “We visit The People in peace,” he said loudly in the native language. “We come among The People as friends. We come from the sky to bring honor to the Old Ones and many gifts to The People.”

  Precisely on cue, Frank dragged the yedoma calf out of the sphere and placed it on the ground before the natives. There was a low murmur from the people. A man stepped forward, his dark bronzed skin glistening in the sun. He was dressed exactly like the rest except that his head-comb was blue rather than white. He raised his right hand. “You are welcome among The People,” he said quietly. “We thank you for your gift. Our food is your food, and our camp your camp.”

  It was all according to formula but Canady felt again the stirrings of uneasiness. The natives were too calm, too self-assured. Surely the bomb had had some effect….

  “We bring not only friendship to The People,” he said. “We bring many useful gifts to make your days easier. We bring a hunting stick that kills with a sound like thunder.”

  Frank stepped out again with a repeating rifle in his hand. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, took aim on a small tree, and fired six shots in rapid succession. The trunk of the tree splintered neatly and a fragment of bark fell to the ground. The staccato sound of the shots died away and there was silence.

  The natives watched impassively, giving him their courteous attention. They were neither frightened nor impressed.

  Canady finished his speech rather lamely. “It is our hope that this day will mark the beginning of a long friendship between The People and our own people. It is our hope that the Old Ones will look with favor upon our visit, and that we may each learn many things.”

  The native with the blue comb nodded. He waited to make sure that Canady had finished speaking, and then stepped forward and took his arm. He smiled, showing fine, even teeth. “Come,” he said. “You must be tired and hungry after your journey through the sky. Let us eat of the yedoma and talk to one another as men.”

  Canady hesitated, more and more unsure of himself. The tone of the thing was completely wrong. It was not that the natives were unfriendly, but there was certainly none of the usual gods-from-the-sky business. It was almost as though The People had visitors from space every day in the week. He looked at Frank out of the corner of his eye. Frank was smiling, still playing the Great White Father role.

  “Bring the rifle,” he said in English.

  The native turned and led the way toward his splendidly painted tent. Canady and Frank walked along behind him. The native men and women watched them with no great interest and then went about their business.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Canady said.

  “This is really something,” Frank whispered.

  “It’s something right enough,” Canady agreed. “But what the devil is it?”

  He followed the native into the tent, and he sensed once more that he stood on the edge of marvels, of wonders that dwelt in an abyss of dreams….

  The days that followed were easily the strangest of Canady’s life. Psychologically, it is never a simple matter for a man to be uprooted from all that is familiar to him and set down in a way of life that is not his own. Previously, though, in his work in the Alpha Centauri system, Canady had at least been supported by the knowledge that hi
s task was going well, that the situation was fully under control. And Dave, who had shared those years with him, had been much more of a friend than Frank Landis could ever be.

  Canady had never felt so utterly alone. Even in his troubled adolescence in New Chicago he had had understanding parents who gave him an anchor in a bustling world. Later, there had been a series of women—though he had never married—and the quiet contentment of summers in the unspoiled national forests of Colorado. His interest in his work had sustained him when all else failed, and now even his confidence in his knowledge was shaken.

  It was made all the more difficult by the fact that there was nothing wrong with The People that he could put his finger on. There were no signposts erected in the village that advertised BIG MYSTERY HERE. The People were friendly enough in their fashion and they were more than willing to cooperate. They did all the things that they were supposed to do. The men rode out of the camp on their camel-like mharus in hunting parties, searching for the grazing herds of yedoma which they brought down with their bows and arrows. The women cooked and worked long hours in preparing skins and gathering wild plants from the river valleys. Often, at night while the two moons sailed among the stars, stories were told around the campfires, stories of the Old Ones and the Long Walk and the heroic deeds of the warriors of The People.

  It was all very normal on the surface. But the nuances were all wrong, completely beyond Canady’s understanding. The grace notes of the culture were subtly alien in a way he could not fathom. Frank was merely puzzled and a little hurt by the reception given to his bag of tricks, but Canady was deeply disturbed.

  He tried to drive a wedge of understanding into the culture by falling back on the most reliable of all techniques. He began by employing the genealogical method, a safe introductory gambit for centuries. He sat down with Plavgar, the blue-combed native who seemed to have the high status of a headman. He asked him all the innocuous, surefire questions. What was the name of his wife? What had been the names of her parents? What had been the names of his parents? What were the names of their children, if any? This sort of thing was practically guaranteed to set any native off on a long chain of reminiscences about his family for generations back, and in the process the anthropologist could gain a valuable key to the various kinship connections that were so important in a primitive society. Plavgar, however, simply did not respond. He gave his wife’s name, and explained that she had been obtained by raiding a neighboring band. He gave the name of his father and mother—and then proceeded to name almost everyone in the band, calling them all father and mother, and offering to introduce them to Canady. The idea of brothers and sisters appeared to puzzle him. As for generations past, he was a complete blank. Since peoples without a means of writing always made a point of remembering relatives to a really amazing degree, this was manifestly impossible.

  He did get a typical culture hero story, about a man who had led an almost legendary mharu raid against the Telliomata, swiping their entire mharu herd from right under their eyes. But then Playgar blandly offered to introduce Canady to the culture hero, who could be seen at that moment calmly gnawing on a steak in front of his tipi.

  Frank set up his steam engine and showed The People the work it could do. They watched the demonstration politely, as one might watch a child putting together a model airplane, and then ignored it. Frank got out his battery-powered sewing machines and played his trump card. He took the women aside and showed them how they could cut their work-day in half. The women tried it out, smiling and eager to please, and then went back to their bone needles.

  Even the rifles, so demonstrably superior to the native bows and arrows, failed to have the desired effect. The natives admired Frank’s shooting and that was all. This was a serious business, because the rifle was a lever that the men from Earth had relied heavily upon. Once you substituted rifles for bows in a hunting culture you had a ready-made market. Not only would the natives become so dependent on the rifles that they would in time forget how to make bows, but the introduction of the rifle would set off a chain reaction that would completely upset the balance of power between the native groups. A band with rifles was unbeatable. Then, the mere threat of taking the rifles away or withholding ammunition was all the threat you needed….

  Try as he might, Canady could get no information about shamans. At first, he put this down to an understandable tabu against referring to the supernatural. But the natives did not shy away from his questions: they simply assured him that they didn’t have any curers or healers or medicine men. He got a lot of patient talk about the Old Ones, and that was that. He shook his head. He had never heard of a primitive culture without shamans—it was as unthinkable as a copter without an atmosphere. What did they do when they got sick?

  It was not until he had been on the planet for two full months that the truth hit him in the face, the truth that should have been obvious from the first. It was so simple, so utterly out in the open, that its significance had completely escaped him. And it was so fantastic that the very idea was automatically rejected by the mind.

  It all began when Lerrie, the wife of Rownar, announced that she was pregnant.

  III

  A fever pitch of excitement ran through the camp of The People and Canady found himself caught up in it despite himself. He had lived long enough to know that true happiness was the rarest of all gifts, and the natives around him were almost delirious with joy. Even the certain knowledge that he was on the verge of a tremendous scientific discovery paled to insignificance. There was a smile on every face and work was impossible. A sense of miraculous well-being permeated the very air. It was a holiday mood and Canady surrendered to it.

  The People had stayed long in one place and it was time to move on. The warm summer months were fading into the chill of autumn and the yedoma herds were migrating to the south across the grassy, rolling plains. The People would have had to follow them in any case, but it was definitely the news about Lerrie that triggered their departure.

  The great tents were struck and the hides were lashed to pack mharus. The tent poles were tied to the flanks of the beasts so that their tips dragged along the ground. The tips were securely lashed together, travois-fashion, to form a V-shaped platform upon which The People placed their few belongings. The men and women mounted their mharus and they were ready. Leaving home was as simple as that.

  The People moved out at dawn on a cold, gray day. A light rain was falling and the yedoma robes were welcome against their shoulders. Canady, moved by an impulse he hardly understood, rode with the natives. His camel-like mharu was a spirited mount and he felt oddly at peace on the scrap of hide that served as a saddle. His tall, lean body had grown hard in his months with The People and the wind-swept rain in his face was fresh and cool, the breath of life itself.

  Dammit, he thought, I feel like a man again.

  Frank followed along behind the tribe, piloting the sphere. He held it just above the level of the grass and its soundless presence was curiously unreal. The People ignored it and whenever Canady glanced back and saw it hovering over the plain behind him he felt a wild urge to laugh. The thing was somehow comical, for all the engineering skill that had gone into it. When compared with the magnificent vitality of the world around it the sphere became a kind of cipher, colorless and blatantly trivial. It seemed to sail along in a void, trying without success to attract attention to itself. It was a loud-shirted tourist in a forest of cool pines and it didn’t matter, it was overwhelmed….

  A day and a night and a day The People rode. They did not seem to hurry and they dozed in their saddles and chewed on dried meat and berries as they traveled but there was a definite direction to their wandering, They crossed the windy plains and struck a trail that wound up into the foothills of a range of purple, snow-capped mountains. They rode into a sheltered canyon where a small stream trickled out of a glacial spring, a canyon where the trees were tall and dark and green. They moved through the evening shadows, pitch
ing their tents and building great yellow fires that warmed the chill air.

  Canady was sore and red-eyed from lack of sleep. The trick of dozing in the saddle looked easy enough when the natives did it, but he had discovered that the jerky gait of the mharu was anything but soothing. He decided that perhaps the rugged outdoor life was not an unalloyed joy after all and stumbled into the sphere with relief. The warm, dry bunk pulled him like a magnet and he fell into it without bothering to take off his damp, dirt-streaked clothes.

  Frank, neat and clean and freshly-shaven, wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a fertilizer factory, my friend,” he said. “Remember, I live here too.”

  “Make yourself at home,” Canady said. He yawned, too tired to argue. “Call me early, will you? I have a feeling that something’s going to pop, and I don’t want to miss it.”

  Frank said something else, then looked more closely at his companion and gave up. Canady was already snoring lustily. Frank smiled and managed to haul off the sleeping man’s boots, which he held at arms-length and deposited outside on the ground. He gently placed a blanket over Canady’s body and sat down to write up his field notes for the day.

  He shook his head. Canady was a funny guy.

  Outside in the night, a single voice was raised in a plaintive chant. It was a woman’s voice, soft and lovely in the silence. Frank listened to it for a long time and then he too went to bed.

  The woman chanted on, her voice liquid and true, and it was hard to tell whether it was a song she sang, or a prayer….

  The next day dawned clear and cold with a thin wind whining down from the mountain snows. The sheltered valley, dark with tall fir trees, was slow to warm and the tipis of The People stood like frozen sentinels on the canyon floor.