Downward to the Earth (11 page)

Uneasy, Gundersen drifted away from the lake to look for Srin'gahar. He found the place where the nildor had been eating, where the lower branches of several trees were stripped bare. He saw what seemed to be the nildor's trail, leading away into the jungle. A painful white light of desolation flared in his skull at the awareness that Srin'gahar must quietly have abandoned him.

In that case his journey would have to be interrupted. He did not dare go alone and on foot into that pathless wilderness ahead. He would have to ask Van Beneker to take him back to some nildoror encampment where he might find another means of getting to the mist country.

The tour group was coming up from the lake now. Van Beneker's net was slung over his shoulder; Gundersen saw some lake creatures moving slowly about in it.

“Lunch,” he said. “I got us some jelly-crabs. You hungry?"

Gundersen managed a thin smile. He watched, not at all hungry, as Van Beneker opened the net; a gush of hot water rushed from it, carrying along eight or ten oval purplish creatures, each different from the others in the number of legs, shell markings, and size of claws. They crawled in stumbling circles, obviously annoyed by the relative coolness of the air. Steam rose from their backs. Expertly Van Beneker pithed them with sharpened sticks, and cooked them with his fusion torch, and split open their shells to reveal the pale quivering jelly-like metabolic regulators within. Three of the woman grimaced and turned away, but Mrs. Miraflores took her crab and ate it with delight. The men seemed to enjoy it. Gundersen, merely nibbling at the jelly, eyed the forest and worried about Srin'gahar.

Scraps of conversation drifted toward him.

“—enormous profit potential, just wasted, altogether wasted—"

“—even so, our obligation is to encourage self-determination on every planet that—"

“—but are they
people?"

“—look for the soul, it's the only way to tell that—"

“—elephants, and nothing but elephants. Did you see him ripping up the trees and—"

“—relinquishment was the fault of a highly vocal minority of bleeding hearts who—"

“—no soul, no relinquishment—"

“—you're being too harsh, dear. There were definite abuses on some of the planets, and—"

“—stupid political expediency, I call it. The blind leading the blind—"

“—can they write? Can they think? Even in Africa we were dealing with human beings, and even there—"

“—the soul, the inner spirit—"

“—I don't need to tell you how much I favored relinquishment. You remember, I took the petitions around and everything. But even so, I have to admit that after seeing—"

“—piles of purple crap on the beach—"

“—victims of sentimental overreaction—"

“—I understand the annual profit was on the order of—"

“—no doubt that they have souls. No doubt at all.” Gundersen realized that his own voice had entered the conversation. The others turned to him; there was a sudden vacuum to fill. He said, “They have a religion, and that implies the awareness of the existence of a spirit, a soul, doesn't it?"

“What kind of religion?” Miraflores asked.

“I'm not sure. One important part of it is ecstatic dancing—a kind of frenzied prancing around that leads to some sort of mystic experience. I know. I've danced with them. I've felt at least the edges of that experience. And they've got a thing called rebirth, which I suppose is central to their rituals. I don't understand it. They go north, into the mist country, and something happens to them there. They've always kept the details a secret. I think the sulidoror give them something, some drug, maybe, and it rejuvenates them in some inner way, and leads to a kind of illumination—am I at all clear?” Gundersen, as he spoke, was working his way almost unconsciously through the pile of uneaten jelly-crabs. “All I can tell you is that rebirth is vitally important to them, and they seem to derive their tribal status from the number of rebirths they've undergone. So you see they've not just animals. They have a society, they have a cultural structure—complex, difficult for us to grasp."

Watson asked, “Why don't they have a civilization, then?"

“I've just told you that they do."

“I mean cities, machines, books—"

“They're not physically equipped for writing, for building things, for any small manipulations,” Gundersen said. “Don't you see, they have no
hands?
A race with hands makes one kind of society. A race built like elephants makes another.” He was drenched in sweat and his appetite was suddenly insatiable. The women, he noticed, were staring at him strangely. He realized why: he was cleaning up all the food in sight, compulsively stuffing it into his mouth. Abruptly his patience shattered and he felt that his skull would explode if he did not instantly drop all barriers and admit the one great guilt that by stabbing his soul had spurred him into strange odysseys. It did not matter that these were not the right people from whom to seek absolution. The words rushed uncontrollably upward to his lips and he said, “When I came here I was just like you. I underestimated the nildoror. Which led me into a grievous sin that I have to explain to you. You know, I was a sector administrator for a while, and one of my jobs was arranging the efficient deployment of native labor. Since we didn't fully understand that the nildoror were intelligent autonomous beings, we
used
them, we put them to work on heavy construction jobs, lifting girders with their trunks, anything we thought they were capable of handling on sheer muscle alone. We just ordered them around as if they were machines.” Gundersen closed his eyes and felt the past roaring toward him, inexorably, a black cloud of memory that enveloped and overwhelmed him, “The nildoror let us use them, God knows why. I guess we were the crucible in which their race had to be purged. Well, one day a dam broke, out in Monroe District up in the north, not far from where the mist country begins, and a whole thornbush plantation was in danger of flooding, at a loss to the Company of who knows how many millions. And the main power plant of the district was endangered too, along with our station head-quarters and—let's just say that if we didn't react fast, we'd lose our entire investment in the north. My responsibility. I began conscripting nildoror to build a secondary line of dikes. We threw every robot we had into the job, but we didn't have enough, so we got the nildoror too, long lines of them plodding in from every part of the jungle, and we worked day and night until we were all ready to fall down dead. We were beating the flood, but I couldn't be sure of it. And on the sixth morning I drove out to the dike site to see if the next crest would break through, and there were seven nildoror I hadn't ever seen before, marching along a path going north. I told them to follow me. They refused, very gently. They said, no, they were on their way to the mist country for the rebirth ceremony, and they couldn't stop. Rebirth? What did I care about rebirth? I wasn't going to take that excuse from them, not when it looked like I might lose my whole district. Without thinking I ordered them to report for dike duty or I'd execute them on the spot. Rebirth can wait, I said. Get reborn some other time. This is serious business. They put their heads down and pushed the tips of their tusks into the ground. That's a sign of great sadness among them. Their spines drooped. Sad. Sad. We pity you, one of them said to me, and I got angry and told him what he could do with his pity. Where did he get the right to pity me? Then I pulled my fusion torch. Go on, get moving, there's a work crew that needs you. Sad. Big eyes looking pity at me. Tusks in the ground. Two or three of the nildoror said they were very sorry, they couldn't do any work for me now, it was impossible for them to break their journey. But they were ready to die right there, if I insisted on it. They didn't want to hurt my prestige by defying me, but they
had
to defy me, and so they were willing to pay the price. I was about to fry one, as an example to the others, and then I stopped and said to myself, what the hell am I doing, and the nildoror waited, and my aides were watching and so were some of our other nildoror, and I lifted the fusion torch again, telling myself that I'd kill one of them, the one who said he pitied me, and hoping that then the others would come to their senses. They just waited. Calling my bluff. How could I fry seven pilgrims even if they were defying a sector chief's direct order? But my authority was at stake. So I pushed the trigger. I just gave him a slow burn, not deep, enough to scar the hide, that was all, but the nildor stood there taking it, and in another few minutes I would have burned right through to a vital organ. And so I soiled myself in front of them by using force. It was what they had been waiting for. Then a couple of the nildoror who looked older than the others said, Stop it, we wish to reconsider, and I turned off the torch, and they went aside for a conference. The one I had burned was hobbling a little, and looked hurt, but he wasn't badly wounded, not nearly as badly as I was. The one who pushes the trigger can get hurt worse than his target, do you know that? And in the end the nildoror all agreed to do as I asked. So instead of going north for rebirth they went to work on the dike, even the burned one, and nine days later the flood crest subsided and the plantation and the power plant and all the rest were saved and we lived happily ever after.” Gundersen's voice trailed off. He had made his confession, and now he could not face these people any longer. He picked up the shell of the one remaining crab and explored it for some scrap of jelly, feeling depleted and drained. There was an endless span of silence.

Then Mrs. Christopher said, “So what happened then?"

Gundersen looked up, blinking. He thought he had told it all.

“Nothing happened then,” he said. “The flood crest subsided."

“But what was the point of the story?"

He wanted to hurl the empty crab in her tensely smiling face. “The point?” he said. “The point? Why—” He was dizzy, now. He said, “Seven intelligent beings were journeying toward the holiest rite of their religion, and at gunpoint I requisitioned their services on a construction job to save property that meant nothing to them, and they came and hauled logs for me. Isn't the point obvious enough? Who was spiritually superior there? When you treat a rational autonomous creature as though he's a mere beast, what does that make you?"

“But it was an emergency,” said Watson. “You needed all the help you could get. Surely other considerations could be laid aside at a time like that. So they were nine days late getting to their rebirth. Is that so bad?"

Gundersen said hollowly, “A nildor goes to rebirth only when the time is ripe, and I can't tell you how they know the time is ripe, but perhaps it's astrological, something to do with the conjunction of the moons. A nildor has to get to the place of rebirth at the propitious time, and if he doesn't make it in time, he isn't reborn just then. Those seven nildoror were already late, because the heavy rains had washed out the roads in the south. The nine days more that I tacked on made them
too
late. When they were finished building dikes for me, they simply went back south to rejoin their tribe. I didn't understand why. It wasn't until much later that I found out that I had cost them their chance at rebirth and they might have to wait ten or twenty years until they could go again. Or maybe never get another chance.” Gundersen did not feel like talking any more. His throat was dry. His temples throbbed. How cleansing it would be, he thought, to dive into the steaming lake. He got stiffly to his feet, and as he did so he noticed that Srin'gahar had returned and was standing motionless a few hundred meters away, beneath a mighty swordflower tree.

He said to the tourists, “The point is that the nildoror have religion and souls, and that they are people; and that if you can buy the concept of relinquishment at all, you can't object to relinquishing this planet. The point is also that when Earthmen collide with an alien species they usually do so with maximum misunderstanding. The point is furthermore that I'm not surprised you think of the nildoror the way you do, because I did too, and learned a little better when it was too late to matter, and even so I didn't learn enough to do me any real good, which is one of the reasons why I came back to this planet. And I'd like you to excuse me now, because this is the propitious time for me to move on, and I have to go.” He walked quickly away from them.

Approaching Srin'gahar, he said, “I'm ready to leave now."

The nildor knelt. Gundersen remounted.

“Where did you go?” the Earthman asked. “I was worried when you disappeared."

“I felt that I should leave you alone with your friends,” said Srin'gahar. “Why did you worry? There is an obligation on me to bring you safely to the country of the mist."

THE QUALITY OF the land was undoubtedly changing. They were leaving the heart of the equatorial jungle behind, and starting to enter the highlands that led into the mist zone. The climate here was still tropical, but the humidity was not so intense; the atmosphere, instead of holding everything in a constant clammy embrace, released its moisture periodically in rain, and after the rain the texture of the air was clear and light until its wetness was renewed. There was different vegetation in this region: harsh-looking angular stuff, with stiff leaves sharp as blades. Many of the trees had luminous foliage that cast a cold light over the forest by night. There were fewer vines here, and the treetops no longer formed a continuous canopy shutting out most of the sunlight; splashes of brightness dappled the forest floor, in some places extending across broad open plazas and meadows. The soil, leached by the frequent rains, was a pale yellowish hue, not the rich black of the jungle. Small animals frequently sped through the underbrush. At a slower pace moved solemn slug-like creatures, blue-green with ebony mantles, which Gundersen recognized as the mobile fungoids of the highlands—plants that crawled from place to place in quest of fallen boughs or a lightning-shattered tree-trunk. Both nildoror and men considered their taste a great delicacy.

On the evening of the third day northward from the place of the boiling lake Srin'gahar and Gundersen came upon the other four nildoror, who had marched on ahead. They were camped at the foot of a jagged crescent-shaped hill, and evidently had been there at least a day, judging by the destruction they had worked upon the foliage all around their resting-place. Their trunks and faces, smeared and stained with luminous juices, glowed brightly. With them was a sulidor, by far the largest one Gundersen had ever seen, almost twice Gundersen's own height, with a pendulous snout the length of a man's forearm. The sulidor stood erect beside a boulder encrusted with blue moss, his legs spread wide and his tail, tripod fashion, bracing his mighty weight. Narrowed eyes surveyed Gundersen from beneath shadowy hoods. His long arms, tipped with terrifying curved claws, hung at rest. The fur of the sulidor was the color of old bronze, and unusually thick.