Far From This Earth

by Chad Oliver

  The rough part, actually, was that there was nothing that he could do. He had become a passenger and that was all. Like the other behavioral scientists, biologists, and medical personnel, Paul’s job was to oversee the introduction of a new social unit, a new culture, on Capella V. He was an anthropologist, not a spaceman. There was no chance for him to be a hero, even in the sense of prodding the right answers out of the computers that were directing the ship.

  He was excess baggage.

  He could only wait it out.

  He walked slowly through a passageway and took the lift down to the level where the blanks had been kept. He did not know why he went; something impelled him. He pressed the combination on the sealed door and entered the vault. The chamber was deserted. There was no sound except for the throbbing of the ship.

  The empty tanks—surgically antiseptic sarcophagi shining under the white lights—were strangely still. The life-support systems, so carefully monitored on the outward voyage, were shut down. More than ever, the moisture-beaded tanks looked like swollen coffins in a forgotten necropolis. Paul reached out his hand and touched one. Cold, cold and clammy …

  “Well, friends,” he said, “you deserved something better.” His voice was small and lost in the silent vault.

  He wandered aimlessly through the chamber. The blanks had been his children, in a way; he had been responsible for them. He felt a gnawing sense of failure. To carry them across the light-years, half-alive, and then to dump them like so much inconvenient garbage—

  Them or us. Yes, that was the theme of all human history, wasn’t it? And prehistory too, for that matter. But it wasn’t good enough. After all, the blanks were human too.

  Almost.

  “Damn,” he said.

  He wanted to do something. His own fate was out of his hands. The blanks were gone, sleeping under the rains that fell from a distant sky. They didn’t have a chance, of course.

  But still—

  Paul turned abruptly and left the vault. The heavy door swung shut behind him. The lock mechanism whirred into place and the chamber was sealed again.

  “Look,” he said, loading his pipe with fresh tobacco and lighting it with an old-fashioned wooden match. “Are we absolutely dead sure the blanks can’t make it?”

  “Dead sure,” Tino Sandoval said. “And the operative word is dead.”

  They sat around a small table in a comfortable lounge—the five of them. Paul Edmondson, lean and graying, his long legs stretched out in counterfeit relaxation. Tino Sandoval, the sociologist, his dark eyes bright and attentive. Art Embree, psychologist by trade, argumentative by temperament, a balding little man with sheer energy bubbling out of his ears. Kitemu Nzioki, biologist, his slender hands fiddling with a drink. And the doctor, Rick Bordie, slouched, skinny, quiet as a spider.

  Art Embree snorted. “I’m not that certain about anything. I’ve seen too many pretty theories blow up in my face. I’ll write them off when I see their bones, not before.”

  “But they’re blanks,” Tino said. “Facts are facts.”

  “Not quite blanks,” Kitemu said quietly. “Remember, the transfer had started. That is a fact. They had a five-minute input. And the term blank is inaccurate anyway. They get some conditioning in the tank. Nothing much, but something.”

  “If it comes to that,” Art pointed out, “they’re born with something—or hatched, or whatever the word is. They come from fertilized sex cells. Genetically, they’re no different from us. Culture and learning aren’t the whole story, you know. Have you forgotten Lorenz and Tinbergen? The genes carry a good deal of coded information.”

  “Nuts,” Tino said. “You’ll be giving me the racial memory bit next.”

  Paul jabbed with his pipe, trying to convince himself. “Man is an animal. He may be a peculiar kind of an animal, but that’s an animal body he lugs around with him. There ain’t no such thing as an animal that begins life with nothing. It may take time to mature, it may need specific stimuli to bring it out, but it’s there. You don’t have to teach a cat to purr or a dog to bark or a fish to swim. And there’s plenty built into the human animal, too. We’re not just empty pots waiting for the miracle fluid of culture.”

  “Okay,” Tino said. “I went to school. So what’s in the blanks?”

  They kicked that one around, scribbling on note-sheets, trying out ideas on each other. It was a session similar to countless others that all of them had known; it was as much a part of their lives as eating or drinking. The fact that the discussion took place in a starship that was fighting to survive made no difference. Indeed, it heightened the pleasure they all took from wrestling with an interesting problem. It was a lot better than staring at the walls and counting the seconds.

  So what was in the blanks?

  To start with, they had whatever was inborn in man. They had a capacity for culture, a capacity for language, a capacity for symbolic thinking. Capacity: that was a weasel word. It was more than that. The principles were still far from clear, but at the very least the human animal had tendencies to develop along preset lines …

  There was more. There were rudimentary things that were necessary to any functioning human animal anywhere. Scientists did not know how much of this was carried genetically. It was, however, essential no matter what particular form the lifeway was to take. Therefore, it was fed in, over the years, while the bodies grew in the tanks.

  Simple things.

  Food versus non-food. Danger, safety, caution. Facial expressions. Young-old. Male-female. Darkness and light. Territory. Security, comfort. Grasping, standing, walking. Sensitivity to temperature. Vocal sounds. Avoidance of pain.

  Nothing much.

  And what had the five-minute input contained, while the machines had run?

  Pitifully little. Just a kind of prologue, a preparation for the actual transfer of concrete data and invented experience. An animal awareness, an awakening of the individual. And curiosity, a stimulation of the brain to make it receptive to the knowledge it was about to receive.

  The knowledge that had never come.

  No real content. No culture, no language, no tricks of survival painfully acquired over the millennia.

  “So what we’ve got,” said Art Embree, “is a man-like primate starting out from scratch. An ape that’s got a good brain with nothing in it.”

  “It sounds like a recipe for oblivion,” Tino said.

  Paul smiled and poured himself a drink. “The apes did pretty well until we came along,” he pointed out. “They had some advantages the blanks don’t have—social experience, for instance. But they didn’t have human brains. Maybe that’s the equalizer.”

  Kitemu frowned. “You really think they have a chance?”

  Paul looked at him. “Maybe they’ve got a better chance than we do,” he said quietly.

  “Doc,” asked Art Embree, “what’s the medical prognosis? Can they live?”

  Rick Bordie spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. He was not a man enchanted by the sound of his own voice. “Physically, they are healthy seventeen-year-old males and females. They are completely free from disease; their environment has been sterile. Right now, they are very strong—stronger than any of us here. They need to learn how to use their bodies, but they have been exercised in the tanks. Their reflexes are good. They are quick. They have had their protective injections. The danger is that they may encounter an unknown disease for which they have no immunity. I think that danger is slight, but it is real—that’s why they should have been monitored in the usual fashion. However, they can survive physically if they can find food and water. My opinion is that they will.”

  Tino stood up nervously, easing his cramped leg muscles. “Dammit, you guys are optimistic to the point of lunacy. Those blanks are not apes, and they’re not lions or termites either. They are plain old human beings without any of the advantages that men have had—without any of the things that have turned men into powerful animals. They don’t even have a spear, to say
nothing of a bow and arrow. They don’t even have the idea of a spear. They have no fire, no nothing. Don’t give me that jazz about inventing significant human culture in a week or six months or a generation. It’s impossible, and you know it.”

  Paul drew on his pipe and aimed a neat smoke ring at the ceiling. “As an anthropologist, I have to agree with you, Tino. But you’re forgetting a few things. To start with the obvious, what about the first men, wherever you draw the line? They had no real culture either—no more traditional knowledge than a band of apes. They made it, somehow. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. And creatures like the Australopithecines were not big husky brutes, either. They probably weren’t as strong physically as we are.”

  “Okay,” Kitemu said. “You started with the obvious. What else have you got? I’d like to be convinced—so would Tino—but it’s going to take more than rosy hopes to pull those blanks through.”

  “Try this,” Paul said, his mind racing. “Consider the situation they face. They don’t have to worry about the Others; our voracious friends are chasing us and they never bother non-technological settlements on the ground. To them, the blanks are just so many grasshoppers or rabbits. With me so far? Capella V is an essentially earthlike planet; that’s why it was chosen. There are no people there, of course—the planet never developed an intelligent culture-bearing species or it would have been closed to us under the Charter. So all the blanks will have to cope with are the normal hazards of existence: the environment, sickness, other animals.”

  “And themselves,” Art Embree said. “Don’t forget that. Most of man’s troubles have always come from other men.”

  Tino laughed with exasperation. “Is that all? Just storms and cold and wind? Just their own natures, which may be unique to say the least? Just hunger, with no way to get food? Just carnivores that can rip their defenseless hides to shreds? Come on!”

  Paul shook his head. “I know I’m pleading a case. I feel guilty; we all do. But there is a case. Look, they can’t be natural prey for any animal on Capella V—that’s true by definition.”

  “That doesn’t mean they will never be attacked,” Art Embree objected. “A man is not natural prey for a lion, either—or a snake. Just the same, lions have killed men, and eaten them, too. Snakes have struck. Even noncarnivores can get into the act; a fair number of Kitemu’s ancestors were killed by elephants, for instance. And the blanks—assuming that they live for a while—are totally helpless.”

  “Are they? I’ve heard that one all my life.” Paul clenched his fist and slammed it down hard on the table. “Who says man is so weak and defenseless without his weapons, anyway? Isn’t that a myth like so many of the ideas we have about the human animal?”

  “It’s no myth,” Tino said. “Go wrestle a gorilla sometime—or even a chimpanzee.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Paul stroked his pipe to calm himself down. “What kind of men are we talking about? College professors who write books telling us how feeble we are? Invalids? Babies? Businessmen who push paper all day? Those blanks are young and healthy. Look, I’ve heard all the stock lines. I even believed them once: man isn’t as strong as a gorilla, he can’t fly like a hawk, he can’t see like an eagle, he doesn’t have claws like a tiger or teeth like a lion, he can’t run like an antelope or dig like a mole or swim like a tuna or climb like a gibbon. So what?”

  “So he’s weak and defenseless,” Kitemu said. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Can’t you see the fallacy in all those statements? You take the human animal and match him against the very best in specialized categories; of course he doesn’t look good. But try it another way. He’s a lot stronger than most animals his size, and he has more endurance. He can outrun a rabbit. He can swim a heck of a lot better than a horse or a rhino—let’s see them try the English Channel sometime. He’s got superb eyesight. He can out-climb a bull anytime. He can kick, he can choke, he can tear, he can punch. His teeth are plenty good enough to bite a small snake in half. And that’s not all.”

  “There’s more?” Art Embree smiled.

  “Yes, there’s more. All these comparisons always match one man against some other animal. Why? Man is a pack animal and always has been. He lives in groups, he hunts in groups, he fights in groups. There’s nothing startling about that, but it does make a difference. It’s one thing to catch a man alone, and something else to tackle ten or fifteen. There’s still more. He can throw—rocks, sticks, anything. Just let him pick up a rock and he is a deadly fighting machine.”

  “Isn’t that culture?” Tino objected. “Doesn’t man have to be taught?”

  Paul shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Some of it is probably instinctive, if I may use that dirty word. I suspect that pack animals are pretty much born that way, if they are not inhibited by some fancy experiment. There’s no doubt that a chimpanzee will pick up a stone on occasion or brandish a stick of wood if it is threatened. Call it culture if it makes you feel better, but why can’t a blank do the same? And he’s got a brain, remember. He’s got a better brain than anything else on that planet. He may not have any experience yet, but he’s not Joe Stupid.”

  “So we can all relax,” Tino said. “Man wins again. It’s very reassuring.”

  “No, I don’t say that. I just say they’ve got a chance, just like we do. That’s all.”

  “All of our technology may not save us, friends,” Art Embree said.” But if we could just make it—go back and see what happened—help out the survivors and get them started in the right direction …”

  The five men looked at nothing, their fingers toying with writers and pipes and glasses. They became aware again of the throbbing ship around them. They sensed the immense power of the interstellar drive that twisted them through the smoky gray folds of space prime.

  They felt the cold that was beyond temperature.

  They felt the sweat that dampened their hands.

  And they felt the presence of the Others, out there somewhere, probing, seeking, following …

  He opened his eyes. There was brightness, pain. He closed his eyes, stirred. He felt heat on one side of him. On the other, cold. Cold and damp.

  He lay where he was, waiting. He had always waited. He did not know what he was waiting for. Nothing happened.

  He was still, quiescent. Time passed. The sensation of heat increased. It was not comfortable. He waited. He was not eased. That was strange. Always before, he had only had to wait if something was wrong and the something went away.

  He felt … different. There was no buoyancy. Fluid did not touch his skin. Something rough and sharp dug at his cold side. There had been nothing hard in his world.

  He waited. Nothing happened.

  He began to hurt. Slowly, he moved. He moved away from pain. He turned, rolled. His hot side cooled, was soothed. His damp side warmed. That was better.

  He sighed. He waited again. He dozed. The discomfort came back. He felt empty, depleted. He turned again. There was a brief easing and then more pain.

  He opened his eyes a second time. He was more careful now. He did it slowly, a little at a time. The brightness returned. Not as bad this time, not as harsh.

  He had seen light before, but not like this. The light was above him. It was huge. It was hot. It hurt.

  His mind engaged the problem, uncertainly. The light was hot. It was hurting him.

  Move.

  Away from the light.

  He struggled up on his hands and knees. He stood up, swayed, fell. He lay there, waiting. Not good. Pain. He stood up again. It took him a long time.

  Strange. Different.

  He stood there, a creature without a name. Very slowly, he shaded his eyes with his hand. He turned in a circle, staring at the world in which he found himself.

  He saw colors that he had never seen before. He did not know what they were. They assaulted his senses, stabbing him with vividness. One color above, surrounding the bright
glare of hotness. Other colors down where he was. Many colors, but one most of all. A cool color that rested his eyes. He drank it in, tasting wetness in his mouth.

  Textures that were new to him, and yet half-remembered. A stirring against his skin. Not fluid, very slight. Another sensation against his feet. He knelt down, clumsily, and felt it with his hands. Different things. Some stringy, not hard. Some damp and yielding. Some sharp things. Hard.

  He stood again. He noticed … forms … sprawled on the surface. Many forms. He studied them. They were unlike other things that he saw. They seemed … something that he knew …

  He looked at himself, touching himself with his hands. He looked at them. He compared. He grunted, satisfied. Yes, they were like him. He lost interest.

  He alone stood. That made him different.

  The pain returned. He was hot. His skin hurt. An emptiness gnawed at his belly. He did not know what to do. He stood motionless, waiting. There was no relief.

  He used his eyes, searching. The glare bothered him. He saw an area of non-brightness. It was a cool color. It looked soft and damp. His mouth watered again and he licked his lips. He had no real concept of distance or of movement. He was where he was. The cool place was not-here.

  Puzzled, he shuffled his feet, turning. The pain did not go away. He groaned.

  He made no conscious decision. He began to move, walking uncertainly. He was drawn by the cool-colored place. He stumbled more than once, but he did not fall. He kept going through the bright hotness. The cool area got bigger. He could feel it.

  He touched it. The walking became difficult. Things scraped at his skin. Hard, sharp things. Almost as high as he was, but not rigid. They gave when he pushed through them. He could smell wet coolness. He heard a fluid gurgling sound. He went toward it, staggering.

  The glare … stopped. He was less hot. Tall things around him now, big cool things, reaching up. He saw liquid. Much of it, moving. More than in the world he had known.

  He smiled. He knew about fluid. He walked into it and fell, trying to pull it around him.