by Damon Knight
“Shhh," one said without turning.
They were staring at a small creature at the edge of the water.
Winton approached closer and crouched beside them. “I have news that might interest you.” He held his voice to a low murmur, but the triumph sounded in it like a rasp cutting through glass, a vibration that drew quick speculative glances from the engineers. They turned their attention back to the water’s edge.
“Tell us when this is over. Wait.”
The young preacher looked at what they were staring at and saw a little four-legged creature with large eyes and bright pointed teeth struggling feebly in the rising water. The younger engineer, Charlie, was taking pictures of it.
“Its feet are stuck,” Winston whispered. “Why don’t you help it?”
“It’s rooting itself,” Henderson murmured back. “We’re afraid that loud noises might make it stop.”
“Rooting itself?” Winton was confused.
“The animal has two life stages, like a barnacle. You know, a barnacle is a little fish that swims around before it settles down to being just kind of a lump of rock. This one has a rooted stage that’s coming on it now. When the water gets up to its neck it rolls up underwater and sticks its front legs out and starts acting like a kind of seaweed. Its hind feet are growing roots. This is the third one we’ve watched.”
Winton looked at the struggling little creature. The water was rising toward its neck. The large bright eyes and small bared teeth looked frightened and uncomprehending. Winton shuddered.
“Horrible,” he murmured. “Does it know what is happening?”
Henderson shrugged. “At least it knows the water is rising, and it knows it must not run away. It has to stand there and dig its feet in.” He looked at Winton’s expression and looked away. “Instinct comes as a powerful urge to do something. You can’t fight instinct. Usually it’s a pleasure to give in. It’s not so bad.”
Revent Paul Winton had always been afraid of drowning. He risked another glance at the little creature that was going to turn into a seaweed. The water had almost reached its neck, and it held its head high and panted rapidly with a thin whimpering sound.
“Horrible.” Winton turned his back to it and pulled Henderson farther up the bank away from the river. “Mr. Henderson, I just found out something.”
He was very serious, but now he had trouble phrasing what he had to say. Henderson urged him, “Well, go on.”
“I found it out from a native. The translator is working better today.”
“Charlie and I just recorded about four hundred words and phrases into it by distance pickup. We’ve been interviewing natives all day.” Henderson’s face suddenly grew cold and angry. “By the way, I thought you said that you weren’t going to use the translator until it is ready.”
“I was just checking it.” Winton actually seemed apologetic. “I didn’t say anything, just asked questions.”
“All right.” Henderson nodded grudgingly. “Sorry I complained. What happened? You’re all upset, man!”
Winton evaded his eyes and turned away; he seemed to be looking at the river, with its banks of bushes and trees. Then he turned and looked in the direction of the inland hills, his expression vague. “Beautiful green country. It looks so peaceful. God is lavish with beauty. It shows His goodness. When we think that God is cruel, it is only because we do not understand. God is not really cruel.”
“All right, so God is not really cruel,” Henderson repeated cruelly. “So what’s new?”
Winton winced and pulled his attention back to Henderson.
“Henderson, you’ve noticed that there are two kinds of natives—tall, thin ones that are slow, and quick, sturdy, short ones that do all the hard work. The sturdy ones we see in all ages, from child size up. Right?”
“I noticed.”
“What did you think it meant?”
“Charlie and I talked about it.” Henderson was puzzled. “Just a guess, but we think that the tall ones are aristocrats. They probably own the short ones, and the short ones do all the work.”
Thick clouds were piled up over the far hills, accounting for the slow rise in the river level.
“The short ones are the children of the tall thin ones. The tall thin ones are the adults. The adults are all sick, that is why the children do all the work.”
“What . . .” Henderson began, but Winton overrode his voice, continuing passionately, his eyes staring ahead at the hills.
“They are sick because of something they do to themselves. The young ones, strong and healthy, when they are ready to become adults they . . . they are hung upside down. For days, Henderson, maybe for more than a week, the translator would not translate how long. Some of them die. Most of them . . . most of them are stretched, and become long and thin.” He stopped, and started again with an effort. “The native boy could not tell me why they do this, or how it started. It has been going on for so long that they cannot remember.”
Abruptly and, to Henderson, shockingly, the preacher dropped to his knees and put his hands together. He tilted his head back with shut eyes and burst into prayer.
“O" Lord, I do not know why You waited so long to help them to the true light, but I thank You that You sent me to stop this horrible thing.”
Quickly he stood up and brushed his knees. “You’ll help me, won’t you?” he asked Henderson.
“How do we know it’s true?” Henderson scowled. “It doesn’t seem reasonable.”
“Not reasonable?” Winton recovered his poise in sudden anger. “Come now, Harry, you’ve been talking as if you knew some anthropology. Surely you remember the puberty ceremonies. Natives often have initiation ceremonies for the young males. It’s to test their manhood. They torture the boys, and the ones who can take it without whimpering are considered to be men, and graduated. Filthy cruelty! The authorities have always made them stop.”
“No one around here has any authority to order anyone else to stop,” Harry grunted. He was shaken by Winton’s description of the puberty ceremony, and managed to be sarcastic only from a deep conviction that Winton had been always wrong, and therefore would continue to be wrong. It was not safe to agree with the man. It would mean being wrong along with Winton.
“No authority? What of God?”
“Well, what of God?” Henderson asked nastily. “If He is everywhere, He was here before you arrived here. And He never did anything to stop them. You’ve only known them a week. How long has God known them?”
“You don’t understand.” The dark-haired young man spoke with total conviction, standing taller, pride straightening his spine. “It was more than mere luck that we found this planet. It is my destiny to stop these people from their ceremony. God sent me.”
Henderson was extremely angry, in a white-faced way. He had taken the preacher’s air of superiority in the close confines of a spaceship for two months, and listened patiently to his preaching without letting himself be angry, for the sake of peace in the spaceship. But now he was out in the free air again, and he had had his fill of arrogance and wanted no more.
“Is that so?” he asked nastily. “Well, I’m on this expedition, too. How do you know that God did not send me, to stop you?”
Charlie finished taking pictures of the little animal under water as it changed, and came back up the bank, refolding the underwater lens. He was in time to see Winton slap the chief engineer in the face, spit out some profanity that would have started him on an hour of moral lecture if he had heard either of them emit such words. He saw Winton turn and run, not as if he were running away, but as if he were running to do something, in sudden impatience.
Ten minutes later Henderson had finished explaining what was bothering the preacher. They lay on the bank lazily looking down into the water, putting half attention into locating some other interesting life form, and enjoying the reflection of sunset in the ripples.
“I wish I could chew grass,” Henderson said. “It would make it just lik
e watching a river when I was a kid. But the plastic stuff on my face keeps me from putting anything into my mouth.”
“The leaves would probably be poisonous anyhow.” Charlie brushed a hand through the pretty green of the grass. It was wiry and tough, with thin round blades, like marsh grass. “This isn’t really grass. This isn’t really Earth, you know.”
“I know, I wish I could forget it. I wonder what that creep Winton is doing now.” Henderson rolled on his back and looked lazily at the sky. “I’ve got one up on him now. I got him to act like a creep right out in the open. He won’t be giving me that superior, fatherly bilge. He might even call me Henderson now instead of Harry.”
“Don’t ask too much.” Charlie clipped a piece of leaf from a weed and absently tried to put it into his mouth. It was stopped by the transparent plastic film that protected him from local germs and filtered the air he breathed.
He flicked the leaf away. “How did that creep get to be a missionary? Nothing wrong with him, except he can’t get on with people. Doesn’t help in his line of work to be like that”
“Easy, like I said,” said Henderson, staring into the darkening pink and purple of the sky. “They encouraged him to be a missionary so he would go far, far away. Don’t ever tell him. He thinks that he was chosen for his eloquence.” Henderson rolled back onto his stomach and looked at the river. It was a chilly purple now, with silver ripples. “More clouds over the mountains. And those little clouds overhead might thicken up and rain. If the river keeps rising, there might be a flood. We might have to move the ship.”
“Winton said that the native mentioned a flood.” Charlie got up lazily and stretched. “Getting dark out here anyhow. We’ll have to find out more about that interview.”
They went in search of the preacher.
What he told them was disturbing, and vague.
“That was Spet,” Henderson said. “That was the one I was learning words from all afternoon. And he told you he was going to die?”
Winton was earnest and pale. He sat crouched over the chart table as if his resolution to act had frightened him. “Yes. He said he was going to die. He said that they were going to hang him upside down in a tree as soon as the next rain starts. Because he is old enough.”
“But he said that other young males live through it? Maybe he’s wrong about dying. Maybe it’s not as tough as it sounds.”
“He said that many die,” Winton said tonelessly. His hands lay motionless on the table. He was moved to a sudden flare of anger. “Oh, those stupid savages. Cruel, cruel!” He turned his head to Henderson, looking up at him without the usual patronizing expression. “You’ll fix the translator so that it translates me exactly, won’t you? I don’t want to shoot them to stop them from doing it. I’ll just stop them by explaining that God doesn’t want them to do this thing. They will have to understand me.”
He turned his head to Charlie, standing beside him. “The savages call me Enaxip. What does that mean? Do they think I’m a god?”
“It means Big Box,” Henderson cut in roughly. “They still think that the box is talking. I see them watch the box when they answer, they don’t watch you. I don’t know what they think you are.”
That night it did not rain. Winton allowed himself to fall asleep near dawn.
To Spet also it made a difference that it did not rain.
The next day he fished in the river as he always had.
The river was swollen and ran high and swiftly between its banks and fishing was not easy at first, but the brown ghost returned, bringing another one like himself, and they both helped Spet with pulling in the fish traps. The new ghost also wanted to be told how to talk, like a small one, and they all had considerable amusement as the two ghosts acted out ordinary things that often happened, and Spet told them the right words and songs to explain what they were doing.
One of them taught him a word in ghost language, and he knew that he was right to learn it, because he would soon be a ghost.
When Spet carried the fish back along the path to his family hut that evening, he passed the Box That Speaks. It spoke to him again, and again asked him questions.
The spirit covered with black that usually gibbered on top of the box was not there. Nothing was on top of the box, but the brown ghost who had just been helping him fish stood beside the box and spoke to it softly each time it asked Spet a question. The box spoke softly back to the ghost after Spet answered, discussing his answers, as if they had a problem concerning him.
Spet answered the questions politely, although some of them were difficult questions, asking reasons for things he had never thought needed a reason, and some were questions it was not polite to ask. He did not know why they discussed him, but it was their business, and they would tell him if they chose.
When he left them, the brown ghost made a gesture of respect and mutual aid in work, and Spet returned, warmed and pleased by the respect of the relative-ghost.
He did not remember to be afraid until he was almost home.
It began to rain.
Charlie came up the ramp and into the spaceship, and found Henderson pacing up and down, his thick shoulders hunched, his fists clenched, and his face wrinkled with worry.
“Hi.” Charlie did not expect an answer. He kicked the lever that tightened the noose on the curtain plastic behind him, watched the hot wire cut him loose from the curtain and seal the curtain in the same motion. He stood carefully folding and smoothing his new wrapping of plastic around himself, to make sure that the coating he had worn outside was completely coated by the new wrapping. All outside dust and germs had to be trapped between the two layers of sterile germproof plastic.
He stood mildly smoothing and adusting the wrappings, watching Henderson pace with only the very dimmest flicker of interest showing deep in his eyes. He could withdraw his attention so that a man working beside him could feel completely unwatched and as if he had the privacy of a cloak of invisibility. Charlie was well-mannered and courteous, and this was part of his courtesy.
“How’re things?” he asked casually, slitting open his plastic cocoon and stepping out.
Henderson stopped pacing and took a cigar from a box on the table with savage impatience in his motions. “Very bad,” he said. “Winton was right.”
“Eh?” Charlie wadded up the plastic and tossed it into the disposal hopper.
“The natives, they actually do it.” Henderson clenched the cigar between his teeth and lit it with savage jerky motions. “I asked Spet. No mistake in the translator this time. He said, yes, they hang the young men upside down in trees after the first spring rain. And yes, it hurt, and yes, sometimes one died, and no, he didn’t know why they had to do this or what it was for. Ha!” Henderson threw the cigar away and began to pace again, snarling.
“Oh, yes, the translator was working fine! Generations of torturing their boys with this thing, and the adults can’t remember how it started, or why, and they go on doing it anyway.”
Charlie leaned back against the chart table, following his pacing with his eyes. “Maybe,” he said mildly, “there’s some good reason for the custom.”
“A good reason to hang upside down for a week? Name one!”
Charlie did not answer.
“I just came from the native village,” he said conversationally as though changing the subject. “Winton has started. He’s got the translator box right in the center of their village now, and he’s sitting on top of it telling them that God is watching them, and stuff like that. I tried to reason with him, and he just pointed a gun at me. He said he’d stop the hanging ceremony even if he had to kill both of us and half the natives to do it.”
“So let him try to stop them, just by talking.” Henderson, who had stopped to listen, began to pace again, glowering at the floor. “That flapping mouth! Talking won’t do it. Talking by itself never does anything. I’m going to do it the easy way. I’m going to kidnap Spet and keep them from getting him. Charlie, tribes only do thing
s at the right season, what they call the right season. We’ll turn Spet loose after the week is up, and they won’t lay a hand on him. They’ll just wait until next year. Meanwhile they’ll be seeing that the trees aren’t angry at them or any of that malarky. When they see that Spet got away with it, they’ll have a chance to see a young male who’s becoming a healthy adult without being all stretched out and physically wrecked. And maybe next year Spet will decide to get lost by himself. Maybe after looking at how Spet looks compared with an adult who was hanged, some of the kids due for hanging next year would duck into the forest and get lost when it’s due.”
“It’s a good dream,” Charlie said, lounging, following Henderson’s pacing with his eyes. “I won’t remind you that we swore off dreaming. But I’m with you in this, man. How do we find Spet?”
Henderson sat down, smiling. “We’ll see him at the stream tomorrow. We don’t need to do anything until it starts raining.”
Charlie started rummaging in the tool locker. “Got to get a couple of flashlights. We have to move fast. Have to find Spet in a hurry. It’s already raining, been raining almost an hour.”
Darkness and rain, and it was very strange being upside down. Not formal and ceremonial, like a story-song about it, but real, like hauling nets and thatching huts, and eating with his brothers. The world seemed to be upside down. The tree trunk was beside him, strong and solid, and the ground was above him like a roof being held up by the tree, and the sky was below his feet and very far away—and, looking down at the clouds swirling in the depth of the sky, he was afraid of falling into it. The sky was a lake, and he would fall through it like a stone falling through water. If one fell into the sky, one would fall and fall for a long time, it looked so very deep.
Rain fell upward out of the sky and hit him under the chin. His ankles and wrists were tightly bound, but did not hurt, for the elders had used a soft rope of many strands tied in a way that would not stop circulation. His arms were at his sides, Ids wrists bound to the same strand that pulled at his ankles, and the pull on his arms was like standing upright, carrying a small weight of something. He was in a standing position, but upside down. It was oddly comfortable. The elders had many generations of experience to guide them, and they had chosen a tall tree with a high branch that was above the flood. They had seemed wise and certain, and he had felt confidence in them as they had bound and hung him up with great gentleness, speaking quietly to each other. Then they had left him, towing their little flat-boats across the forest floor that was now a roof above his head, walking tall and storklike across the dim-lit glistening ground, which looked so strangely like a rough, wet ceiling supported by the trunks of trees.