by John Brunner
Someone gave vent to a nervous titter. Ordoñez-Vico quelled it with a glare like a flamethrower.
“Go on!”
Andrevski studied his hands with intent concentration.
“This hypothesis assumes the existence of yet another species, so jealous of its privileges that it scours the galaxy in search of possible competitors, and upon discovering them attacks without mercy. Am I correct in guessing that this is what’s worrying people at home?”
Ordoñez-Vico hesitated; then he said with an air of defiance, “Yes!”
“I see. As a matter of fact, I carried out quite an exhaustive computer analysis of this idea when it first occurred to me. It led to a pair of extremely interesting conclusions: on the one hand, any such species with the technology to attain space travel would stand between an eighty-nine and a ninety-nine per cent chance of fighting a disastrous final war before reaching another star, and on the other, assuming it did discover hyperflight, it would have technology adequate to sterilise whole planets, not simply to hunt down members of one particular race. In sum, General, if that were why the natives disappeared, the odds are several thousand to one in favour of this planet having become a belt of asteroids… which I think you’ll concede it has not?”
Moment by moment Ordoñez-Vico’s cheeks were growing redder, as though he suspected he was being mocked but could not put his finger on precisely how.
“Then what other explanations can you offer?” he snapped.
“Oh, several!” Andrevski said, and in parenthesis to Cathy: “More wine, please; this is making me thirsty… Yes, several, as I was saying. I believe we can rule out predators straightaway, because there are no large predators on the planet at present, and without being kept in check by the intelligent race one would expect them to have multiplied if they existed. That is, unless their diet consisted exclusively of their intelligent cousins, and having eaten the last of their prey they starved to death—not, I submit, particularly likely, hm? Parasites, of course, are another matter; it’s been correctly remarked that human body lice would not survive mankind, but again none of the surviving species is disastrously infected with parasites capable of killing them wholesale.
“Did their religion call for them to sacrifice one another, and ultimately reach such a pitch of fanaticism that groups and factions competed to see who could slay the most hecatombs on the most frequent feast days? It’s not without its earthly parallels, that notion. One might cite the downfall of the Inca culture, the wars of religious intolerance, the Inquisition, the autos-da-fé where dissenters were publicly burned alive… Oh, I’m sorry. I should have asked whether you’re religious.”
“Yes!”
“I am not, myself, but I don’t wish to give offence. Let me leave that aside, then—because in any event it’s most unlikely. All our evidence points to a planned, rational, successful expansion from a single centre, as I explained, so that kind of lunatic brutality would only enter the picture if we strained our definition of religion to include an ideology like Nazism… the most colourable of this particular range of suggestions in my view, by the way. A single-minded dictator, perhaps born of an exceptionally intelligent species—that could be the explanation we’re looking for.”
“Appearing out of nowhere?”
“Ah, that’s what’s most ingenious about this favourite hypothesis of mine,” Andrevski said, beaming. “Let’s suppose that two events fell very close in the history of this world: first, some solar disturbance irradiated the planet and provoked a higher-than-normal incidence of mutation, including one which generated intelligence. Remarkable intelligence! Constant expansion followed for three thousand years, until the small original nucleus of intelligent creatures had explored the whole planet—or rather, their descendants had—and visited the moon. And then came a fatal setback: the planet’s magnetic field underwent a periodic reversal, like those we know about on Earth. They perceived their surroundings in terms of electromagnetic fields, they most likely communicated in the same mode, their entire world picture was dependent on such effects. Suddenly… they went insane. Because they had all, simultaneously, lost touch with reality. How does that appeal to you, General?”
Andrevski sat back with a smug expression, while Ordoñez-Vico was visibly floundering in the welter of his words.
“A great theory,” Rudolf Weil said dryly. “Except that it doesn’t hang together. There wasn’t any such solar flare-up; it would have left traces on the rocks of the moon, and we eliminated that idea on the first trip.”
“And the last two magnetic-field reversals here were forty thousand years too early and thirty-eight thousand years too late respectively,” Ruggiero added. “Oh, Igor!”
Not a whit abashed, Andrevski said, “I know, I know! But it would be such an elegant explanation if it were true, wouldn’t it?”
It was beginning to dawn on the general that he had been led a very long way up a very twisted garden path. One instant before he erupted Rorschach said hastily, “What it comes to really, General, is that we’ve been driven back on the supposition that the natives’ downfall was due to some flaw in their constitution, but that it must have been one which affected them differently from us. Maybe their sudden rise to planetary domination was due to a—well, a form of drug. Perhaps some local food plant mutated into a form which stimulated their intelligence, but had long-term effects on their metabolism or their breeding capacity. Or perhaps it was killed off by a blight. I grant you that’s improbable for the same reason that an epidemic is improbable, but we’re groping around in the dark, we really are!”
During this speech the general had been recovering his self-control by consulting his lie detector and taking a great many deep and rapid breaths.
He said now, “My impression is that you do not believe I mean what I say. Well, I do not believe you, either! This device of mine”—he held it up—“has not revealed any direct falsehoods… but Dr. Andrevski has attempted to confuse me with what he promptly confessed to be an indirect falsehood! By that I mean a web of words designed to lead his listeners astray. Be warned! It is not my responsibility to prove that you are lying. It is your responsibility to prove beyond any shadow of doubt that you are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! Starting tomorrow, early, I shall interrogate each of you in turn, in depth and in detail. And if anybody tries to deceive me, you know what will happen. Now, if somebody will guide me back to my quarters…?”
When the general had gone, Cathy said, her face very pale, “A man like that was chosen by the U.N. to be their representative, to sift through our data and pester us with questions… No, I simply don’t believe it!”
“I suspect Ian could tell you how horribly true it is,” Andrevski muttered.
“Yes indeed,” Ian said. “But don’t forget—his spy-eyes are monitoring everything we say, and he may conceivably have the patience to play through every tape from every last one of them. I think we’d better go quietly and quickly to our beds.”
VII
Thanks to Ordoñez-Vico, the normal work of the ship’s thirty-day stopover was going ahead far more slowly than usual; still, it was going ahead after a fashion. Ten days after the landing Weil was busy supervising the loading of the first Earth-bound packages into the hold made empty by delivery of the new equipment which was now being distributed to the various departments, chiefly more refined remote-analysis gear. There had been a major breakthrough in that field—ironically, as a by-product of counter-terrorist measures. Most of the new devices had first been used to spot mail bombs and concealed weapons at frontier posts and airports.
Thanks to the general’s meddling, most of the packages had had to be remade after he opened them for inspection.
“Morning, Rudolf,” a voice said from behind him, and he turned to find Rorschach approaching.
“Morning, Valentine,” Weil answered. “How are things going?”
“Oh… not too badly, considering. Everybody has behaved e
xtremely well. By this time I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had punched Ordoñez-Vico in the jaw.”
“Nor would I,” Weil agreed. “I’ve sometimes been tempted…” He mopped his face, sighing. “When I think of all the things I wanted to see on this visit, I get furious. This isn’t in the least how I expected to use up my last few days here. And I bet it isn’t how you expected to use yours.”
Rorschach hesitated. “Well—ah… They aren’t going to be my last few days, after all.”
“What?”
“The fact that you have to take Ordoñez-Vico back with you means only nine personnel can be rotated. So I’ll drop off the list. Lucas never wanted to become director, you know, and I don’t think he deserves to have the job forced on him. My health is good, I have no special ties on Earth and I think I’m reasonably well liked by the staff. So I’ll stay.”
Weil gave a whistle. “What does the general think about that idea?”
“He doesn’t know yet. But I have plenty of good reasons to offer him—not that one can be sure he’s susceptible to reason, hm? Ah… There’s one thing that’s been troubling me, you know.”
“Only one?” Weil uttered a sour chuckle. “That being…?”
“Is there a real risk of us being stranded? I mean, even if we persuade the general those rumours about alien weapons are groundless, is there a chance that the fund may be abolished anyway?”
“Yes, I’m afraid there is.”
“I thought you’d say that.” Eyes concealed behind dark glasses because the glare out here was as ever fierce, Rorschach looked towards the western horizon. “Would they give us at least some kind of link with home? Perhaps a cheap automatic qua-space missile that would shuttle back and forth carrying news and data?”
“The suggestion has been made, but it was turned down.”
“What?”
“It was blocked by the same sort of paranoid suspicion that sent Ordoñez-Vico here. A joint Russo-American-Japanese consortium published plans for just such a robot ship, quite cheap, very reliable, capable of being put into service in little more than a year. Do I have to explain what became of the proposal?”
Rorschach said bitterly, “Another plot by the rich to keep secrets from the poor. The builders would have first crack at our alien science.”
“Cynical! But all too accurate. Nonetheless, you can rest assured that when I get home I’m going to devote the remainder of my active life to fighting that sort of shortsighted idiocy. If I have anything to do with it, the base here won’t be cut off. After all, the data we’re taking back include a good many exciting new discoveries, and perhaps… No, it’s probably too much to hope for.”
“So I gather from talking to our new recruits,” Rorschach sighed, turning to look at the base buildings again. “They all paint a very dismal picture. Crisis on crisis, famine, epidemics, all these petty wars about nothing much, and here and there signs of a major war. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“I sometimes wonder, you know, whether there’s an inevitable limit to the achievements of intelligent beings. The natives here—now mankind, not for the first time on the brink of suicide… It reminds me of the old joke question: Is there intelligent life on Earth? And we’re the first people in a position to wonder about it seriously.”
With all too obvious an air of changing the subject, Weil said, “Speaking of the new recruits, how do they impress you?”
“Oh, I think we’ll get on well together. I’m sure Achmed will handle the communications and computer side most competently, and Karen Vlady is extremely likable as well as being admirably qualified, and—oh, the lot of them strike me as ideal for our kind of existence. Bar one, to be candid, and I’d like your opinion about him.”
“Not by any chance Ian Macauley?”
“That’s right.”
“Yes, he’s something of an oddity, isn’t he? Tense and remote, and seeming to live somewhere different from the rest of us. But Igor was delighted to get him, wasn’t he?”
“Oh yes, and at present he appears to be settling in well and making a good impression on his colleagues. I can’t say why it is I’m concerned about him; I just know I am. What do you think?”
“I’d back him to crack the native language.”
“You honestly believe he’s that good?”
“He has a great deal of determination. I could tell, the moment I met him, he’d had to fight a hell of a battle against himself before agreeing to be sent here. He hated the prospect of being shut up with a dozen near strangers in the ship, but he overcame that, too, and made himself popular during the voyage. Yes, I think he has it in him to batter away until he makes a breakthrough. But he’ll probably go about it some very personal and unexpected way.”
Rorschach glanced at his watch. “I hope,” he muttered, “that he doesn’t do anything personal and unexpected today. The general is spending the morning in the relic shed with him, Cathy and Igor, being told about the printed crystals they brought in from the peat site. It’s the most explosive situation yet. Ian’s unpredictable, as you just said; Igor made it clear the first evening that he thinks the general is a blockhead, and Cathy… well, she seems to have recovered well from the shock of hearing about her brother, but she’s a deep person and hides her feelings much too often.”
He brightened slightly. “Well, at any rate if we get through today intact, things should be easier from tomorrow on. The next thing Ordoñez-Vico wants is a sight of our working methods, so he’s going to let us get back on the job. Having something to do will bleed off a lot of our accumulated tension.”
I wish that bloody man would get off our necks! I want to start work on these printed crystals he doesn’t give a hoot for. Back on Earth I had how many through my hands—eighteen, nineteen? And most of their patterns scrambled. But here there are hundreds, and at the digs there are thousands, and I’m itching, absolutely itching to get at them!
Restless, Ian paced up and down the aisles between the bare metal storage racks of the relic shed—not the original, which had been made of steel plates, but a hastily erected substitute of plastic and aluminium, with minimal magnetic sensitivity.
All around him were thousands of relics brought in from various digs, those in the best state of preservation or found in what appeared to be significant conjunction with one another. But every last one was horribly enigmatic. A sort of pear-shaped thing here, with a hook on the narrow end, about a metre and a half long… and next a cluster of five corroded bars, like the frame of a child’s swing… and next a sort of plate, a concave shallow disc with four large and four small protuberances spaced equidistantly around its circumference… and there other and always other artefacts, purpose unknown and unguessed.
But I’ve got to make guesses and start making them right away!
He glanced around. There was some kind of low-key argument going on at the far end of the shed, where in an open space a big bench held an array of scientific equipment—radio daters, neutron-bombardment analysers, various chemical analysers, and a computer remote with a metre-wide screen and the controls which linked it to the base’s main computers. It sounded as though it might continue for some while.
Almost guiltily he picked up the five corroded bars and examined them. They were large and heavy, and one of them was half a metre shorter than the rest.
Now, if I were a crab-shaped six-limbed creature with electromagnetic perceptions, what the hell would I use that for? I—hmm! Interesting! I think it was meant to stand upright, and if it were just a little more spread out… Where’s that disc? How big is it?
He leaned the clustered bars against a strut and picked the disc up. It also was very heavy, but if it were laid on the ground… and if that hook-tipped what’s-it were…
Hmm! He rubbed his chin, staring at the items arranged side by side. Now, if only—
“Cathy!” he shouted. “This group here, coded Ash 5248 through 5250! Were any organic remains found in association
with the metal bits?”
The altercation at the far end of the shed broke off.
“Macauley!” Ordoñez-Vico snapped. “Don’t interrupt when I’m talking to—here, what do you think you’re doing?”
He came storming down the aisle with Igor and Cathy anxiously following.
Ian licked his lips in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I just had an idea about how these might fit together, and even what they might be for. But it’s probably ridiculous.”
“Really!” The general’s voice dropped to a purr. “Now, I’ve just been told in great detail that nobody knows whether these things do anything or not, let alone what the natives used them for. I’m delighted to hear you contradict that. Continue!”
Cathy and Igor were both looking furious, and Ian felt the blood rush to his cheeks. He muttered, “Well—ah… If these things are numbered consecutively, I presume they were found together?”
Cathy gave a sour nod.
“Were they by any chance in some kind of large enclosed space, what you might call a hall?”
Cathy started, and her annoyance faded like frost at sunrise. “Yes, they were! I recall how excited Olaf was when he got into that building. And he found a great many other similar groups of metal bars, but this is the only one he shipped back to base. It seemed typical, he said.”
“Why did you ask about organic remains in association?” Igor demanded, likewise forgetful of his anger.
“Well—uh…” Ian picked up the pear-shaped object in two fingers. “This is very light, isn’t it? But that disc and these bars are very heavy and solid. Suppose the bars were set up over the disc”—he made illustrative gestures with down-turned fingers—“and this bob were hung from the crosspiece so it could swing freely. You’d need to prevent it being blown around by draughts, wouldn’t you? So you’d close the lot in with something nonmetallic, like cloth or matting, and there you’d have it.”