Downward to the Earth (3 page)

Mrs. Stein said, “There are some of those animals on the beach. The green elephants."

Everyone looked. Gundersen signaled for another drink, and got it. Van Beneker, flushed, sweating, winked again and put a second snout to his arm. The tourists began to titter. Mrs. Christopher said, “Don't they have any shame at all?"

“Maybe they're simply playing, Ethel,” Watson said.

"Playing?
Well, if you call that playing—"

Gundersen leaned forward, glancing out the window without getting up. On the beach a pair of nildoror were coupling, the cow kneeling where the salt was thickest, the bull mounting her, gripping her shoulders, pressing his central tusk down firmly against the spiny crest of her skull, jockeying his hindquarters about as he made ready for the consummating thrust. The tourists, giggling, making heavy-handed comments of appreciation, seemed both shocked and titillated. To his considerable surprise, Gundersen realized he was shocked, too, although coupling nildoror were nothing new to him; and when a ferocious orgasmic bellowing rose from below he glanced away, embarrassed and not understanding why.

“You look upset,” Van Beneker said.

“They didn't have to do that
here."

“Why not? They do it all over the place. You know how it is."

“They deliberately went out there,” Gundersen muttered. “To show off for the tourists? Or to annoy the tourists? They shouldn't be reacting to the tourists at all. What are they trying to prove? That they're just animals, I suppose."

“You don't understand the nildoror, Gundy."

Gundersen looked up, startled as much by Van Beneker's words as by the sudden descent from “Mr. Gundersen” to “Gundy.” Van Beneker seemed startled, too, blinking rapidly and tugging at a stray sparse lock of fading hair.

“I don't?” Gundersen asked. “After spending ten years here?"

“Begging pardon, but I never did think you understood them, even when you were here. I used to go around with you a lot to the villages when I was clerking for you. I watched you."

“In what way do you think I failed to understand them, Van?"

“You despised them. You thought of them as animals."

“That isn't so!"

“Sure it is, Gundy. You never once admitted they had any intelligence at all."

“That's absolutely untrue,” Gundersen said. He got up and took a new flask of rum from the cabinet, and returned to the table.

“I would have gotten that for you,” Van Beneker said. “You just had to ask me."

“It's all right.” Gundersen chilled the drink and downed it fast. “You're talking a load of nonsense, Van. I did everything possible for those people. To improve them, to lift them toward civilization. I requisitioned tapes for them, sound pods, culture by the ton. I put through new regulations about maximum labor. I insisted that my men respect their rights as the dominant indigenous culture. I—"

“You treated them like very intelligent animals. Not like intelligent alien
people.
Maybe you didn't even realize it yourself, Gundy, but I did, and God knows they did. You talked down to them. You were kind to them in the wrong way. All your interest in uplifting them, in improving them—crap, Gundy, they have their own culture. They didn't want yours!"

“It was my duty to guide them,” Gundersen said stiffly. “Futile though it was to think that a bunch of animals who don't have a written language, who don't—” He stopped, horrified.

“Animals,” Van Beneker said.

“I'm tired. Maybe I've had too much to drink. It just slipped out."

“Animals."

“Stop pushing me, Van. I did the best I could, and if what I was doing was wrong, I'm sorry. I tried to do what was right.” Gundersen pushed his empty glass forward. “Get me another, will you?"

Van Beneker fetched the drink, and one more snout for himself. Gundersen welcomed the break in the conversation, and apparently Van Beneker did, too, for they both remained silent a long moment, avoiding each other's eyes. A sulidor entered the bar and began to gather the empties, crouching to keep from grazing the Earthman-scaled ceiling. The chatter of the tourists died away as the fierce-looking creature moved through the room. Gundersen looked toward the beach. The nildoror were gone. One of the moons was setting in the east, leaving a fiery track across the surging water. He realized that he had forgotten the names of the moons. No matter; the old Earthman-given names were dead history now. He said finally to Van Beneker, “How come you decided to stay here after relinquishment?"

“I felt at home here. I've been here twenty-five years. Why should I go anywhere else?"

“No family ties elsewhere?"

“No. And it's comfortable here. I get a company pension. I get tips from the tourists. There's a salary from the hotel. That's enough to keep me supplied with what I need. What I need, mostly, is snouts. Why should I leave?"

“Who owns the hotel?” Gundersen asked.

“The confederation of western-continent nildoror. The Company gave it to them."

“And the nildoror pay you a salary? I thought they were outside the galactic money economy."

“They are. They arranged something with the Company."

“What you're saying is the Company still runs this hotel."

“If anybody can be said to run it, the Company does, yes,” Van Beneker agreed. “But that isn't much of a violation of the relinquishment law. There's only one employee. Me. I pocket my salary from what the tourists pay for accommodations. The rest I spend on imports from the money sphere. Don't you see, Gundy, it's all just a big joke? It's a routine designed to allow me to bring in liquor, that's all. This hotel isn't a commercial proposition. The Company is really out of this planet. Completely."

“All right. All right. I believe you."

Van Beneker said, “What are you looking for up mist country?"

“You really want to know?"

“It passes the time to ask things."

“I want to watch the rebirth ceremony. I never saw it, all the time I was here."

The bulging blue eyes seemed to bulge even more. “Why can't you be serious, Gundy?"

“I am."

“It's dangerous to fool with the rebirth thing."

“I'm prepared for the risks."

“You ought to talk to some people here about it, first. It's not a thing for us to meddle in."

Gundersen sighed. “Have you seen it?"

“No. Never. Never even been interested in seeing it. Whatever the hell the sulidoror do in the mountains, let them do it without me. I'll tell you who to talk to, though. Seena."

“She's watched the rebirth?"

“Her husband has."

Gundersen felt a spasm of dismay. “Who's her husband?"

“Jeff Kurtz. You didn't know?"

“I'll be damned,” Gundersen murmured.

“You wonder what she saw in him, eh?"

“I wonder that she could bring herself to live with a man like that. You talk about
my
attitude toward the natives! There's someone who treated them like his own property, and—"

“Talk to Seena, up at Shangri-la Falls. About the rebirth.” Van Beneker laughed. “You're playing games with me, aren't you? You know I'm drunk and you're having a little fun."

“No. Not at all.” Gundersen rose uneasily. “I ought to get some sleep now."

Van Beneker followed him to the door. Just as Gundersen went out, the little man leaned close to him and said, “You know, Gundy, what the nildoror were doing on the beach before—they weren't doing that for the tourists. They were doing it for you. It's the kind of sense of humor they have. Good night, Gundy."

GUNDERSEN WOKE EARLY. His head was surprisingly clear. It was just a little after dawn, and the green-tinged sun was low in the sky. The eastern sky, out over the ocean: a welcome touch of Earthliness. He went down to the beach for a swim. A soft south wind was blowing, pushing a few clouds into view. The hullygully trees were heavy with fruit; the humidity was as high as ever; thunder boomed back from the mountains that ran in an arc paralleling the coast a day's drive inland. Mounds of nildoror dung were all over the beach. Gundersen stepped warily, zigzagging over the crunching sand and hurling himself flat into the surf. He went under the first curling row of breakers and with quick powerful strokes headed toward the shoals. The tide was low. He crossed the exposed sandbar and swam beyond it until he felt himself tiring. When he returned to the shore area, he found two of the tourist men had also come out for a swim, Christopher and Miraflores. They smiled tentatively at him. “Bracing,” he said. “Nothing like salt water."

“Why can't they keep the beach clean, though?” Miraflores asked.

A sullen sulidor served breakfast. Native fruits, native fish. Gundersen's appetite was immense. He bolted down three golden-green bitterfruits for a start, then expertly boned a whole spiderfish and forked the sweet pink flesh into himself as though engaged in a speed contest. The sulidor brought him another fish and a bowl of phallic-looking forest candles. Gundersen still was working on these when Van Beneker entered, wearing clean though frayed clothes. He looked bloodshot and chastened. Instead of joining Gundersen at the table he merely smiled a perfunctory greeting and sailed past.

“Sit with me, Van,” Gundersen said.

Uncomfortably, Van Beneker complied. “About last night—"

“Forget it."

“I was insufferable, Mr. Gundersen."

“You were in your cups. Forgiven. In vino veritas. You were calling me Gundy last night, too. You may as well do it this morning. Who catches the fish?"

“There's an automatic weir just north of the hotel. Catches them and pipes them right into the kitchen. God knows who'd prepare food here if we didn't have the machines."

“And who picks the fruit? Machines?"

“The sulidoror do that,” Van Beneker said.

“When did sulidoror start working as menials on this planet?"

“About five years ago. Six, maybe. The nildoror got the idea from us, I suppose. If we could turn them into bearers and living bulldozers, they could turn the sulidoror into bellhops. After all, the sulidoror
are
the inferior species."

“But always their own masters. Why did they agree to serve? What's in it for them?"

“I don't know,” Van Beneker said. “When did anybody ever understand the sulidoror?"

True enough, Gundersen thought. No one yet had succeeded in making sense out of the relationship between this planet's two intelligent species. The presence of two intelligent species, in the first place, went against the general evolutionary logic of the universe. Both nildoror and sulidoror qualified for autonomous ranking, with perception levels beyond those of the higher hominoid primates; a sulidor was considerably smarter than a chimpanzee, and a nildor was a good deal more clever than that. If there had been no nildoror here at all, the presence of the sulidoror alone would have been enough to force the Company to relinquish possession of the planet when the decolonization movement reached its peak. But why two species, and why the strange unspoken accommodation between them, the bipedal carnivorous sulidoror ruling over the mist country, the quadrupedal herbivorous nildoror dominating the tropics? How had they carved this world up so neatly? And why was the division of authority breaking down, if breaking down was really what was happening? Gundersen knew that there were ancient treaties between these creatures, that a system of claims and prerogatives existed, that every nildor went back to the mist country when the time for its rebirth arrived. But he did not know what role the sulidoror really played in the life and the rebirth of the nildoror. No one did. The pull of that mystery was, he admitted, one of the things that had brought him back to Holman's World, to Belzagor, now that he had shed his administrative responsibilities and was free to risk his life indulging private curiosities. The shift in the nildoror-sulidoror relationship that seemed to be taking place around this hotel troubled him, though; it had been hard enough to comprehend that relationship when it was static. Of course, the habits of alien beings were none of his business, really. Nothing was his business, these days. When a man had no business, he had to appoint himself to some. So he was here to do research, ostensibly, which is to say to snoop and spy. Putting it that way made his return to this planet seem more like an act of will, and less like the yielding to irresistible compulsion that he feared it had been.

“—more complicated than anybody ever thought,” Van Beneker was saying.

“I'm sorry. I must have missed most of what you said."

“It isn't important. We theorize a lot, here. The last hundred of us. How soon do you start north?"

“In a hurry to be rid of me, Van?"

“Only trying to make plans, sir,” the little man said, hurt. “If you're staying, we need provisions for you, and—"

“I'm leaving after breakfast. If you'll tell me how to get to the nearest nildoror encampment so I can apply for my travel permit."

“Twenty kilometers, southeast. I'd run you down there in the beetle, but you understand—the tourists—"

“Can you get me a ride with a nildor?” Gundersen suggested. “If it's too much bother, I suppose I can hike it, but—"

“I'll arrange things,” Van Beneker said.

A young male nildor appeared an hour after breakfast to take Gundersen down to the encampment. In the old days Gundersen would simply have climbed on his back, but now he felt the necessity of making introductions. One does not ask an autonomous intelligent being to carry you twenty kilometers through the jungle, he thought, without attempting to enter into elementary courtesies. “I am Edmund Gundersen of the first birth,” he said, “and I wish you joy of many rebirths, friend of my journey."

“I am Srin'gahar of the first birth,” replied the nildor evenly, “and I thank you for your wish, friend of my journey. I serve you of free choice and await your commands."

“I must speak with a many-born one and gain permission to travel north. The man here says you will take me to such a one."

“So it can be done. Now?"

“Now."

Gundersen had one suitcase. He rested it on the nildor's broad rump and Srin'gahar instantly curved his tail up and back to clamp the bag in place. Then the nildor knelt and Gundersen went through the ritual of mounting. Tons of powerful flesh rose and moved obediently toward the rim of the forest. It was almost as though nothing had ever changed.