The Creatures of Man (13 page)

Romee wondered self-pityingly why these Earthmen didn't stop arguing absurdities and give her the damage money so she could leave. Or at least not yell so loud.

"You two are frightening Mrs. Westbrook," Miss McGuire announced smugly.

"Huh? Oh, my apologies, chimee . . . Mrs. Westbrook," said Grandolph.

"That's all right," Romee quavered. "If I can have my damage money I'll leave so you can yell all you like."

"Your damage money?" He looked puzzled. "Oh, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little while for that, Mrs. Westbrook. The claim must be processed through the nearest Interspecies Circuit Court—a matter that will have my personal attention."

Romee nodded. "Tomorrow?" she asked.

"Longer than that, I'm afraid, but very soon. Probably within half a year, certainly no more than a year, Mrs. Westbrook."

Romee wondered dejectedly how "half a year" could be considered "very soon."

Grandolph reached in his pocket. "Here," he said. "If you are short of money, Mrs. Westbrook, this should tide you over."

Romee took the paper and studied it. It was a two-casher note. "Thank you," she said, hoping she was not revealing her disappointment.

Because she was going to have to go down to the jungle, after all.

She found an empty bower near that of a cousin of her chimo in which to spend the night. The next morning she returned to the Cultural Exchange Center compound and entered the trading post. She felt she just couldn't face the jungle today without a bite of chocolate first.

"Half a casher of chocolate, please," she said timidly to the woman behind the counter.

"We don't have any," the woman snapped crossly.

"Oh." Romee hesitated. "When will you get some?"

"Get some what?"

"Chocolate."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," the woman snapped. Romee was shaking badly, but her desire wouldn't let her leave. "Chocolate is what I'm talking about."

"Never heard of it," said the woman, not quite so harshly.

Could it be that this woman really didn't know about chocolate? That didn't make sense at all, but after all, what did about Earth people?

"It's brown and bitter unless it has sugar in it," Romee explained pleadingly. "It comes in square cakes about this thick." She held up her hand to show the thickness.

"Oh, that stuff," said the woman. She reached under the counter and came up with a half-casher block of chocolate in a plain green wrapping. "This what you mean?"

Romee took the block and tore the wrapping from a corner. It was chocolate, all right.

"Yes."

"Half a casher, please."

Romee paid her and received her change. Quickly she took a bite and chewed it rapidly. Um-m-m. How nice it was! And already she was feeling less tensed up.

"I thought everybody knew about chocolate," she said to the woman, who was watching her with a strange expression.

"Knew about what?"

"About chocolate." Romee pointed to the block in her hand. "About this."

"Of course everybody knows about that!" said the woman.

Romee munched in thoughtful silence. Here was a strangeness that needed solving, because it dealt with chocolate. She wished she didn't have to worry about it now, since going to the jungle was problem enough for one time.

At last she said, "You know about this," indicating the block in her hand, "but not about chocolate."

"That's right," the woman said.

"But this is chocolate."

"I never heard of it."

Romee thought some more. "What is this stuff called?" she asked in sudden inspiration.

"It doesn't have a name, so far as I know," the woman replied.

"It had a name yesterday," murmured Romee.

"That's right, it did," said the woman. "But last night a directive came from Director-in-Charge Grandolph, who was steamed about something." She held up a sheet of paper with writing on it. "Would you like to know what it says?"

"Yes, please."

The woman read from the paper: "All personnel at this station have been entirely too negligent in their responsibility toward the native population whose welfare is our trust. Namely, we have taken no firm steps toward the reduction and eventual end of the (bleep-bleep) addiction that became established under our exploitative predecessors with fatal consequences for hundreds of thousands of innocent natives."

The woman looked up. "Where I said 'bleep-bleep', the Director-in-Charge used that word you mentioned," she explained, then continued reading:

"Unfortunately, the economics of our situation here make the immediate cessation of our trafficking in (bleep-bleep) impossible. And despite our warnings, the natives' cravings for (bleep-bleep) continue unabated. Only a few hours ago I was the pained witness to the indignities a native will willingly suffer to obtain the price of this addictive.

"Therefore, I order that, effective immediately, the very word (bleep-bleep) be omitted from the vocabulary of every Terrestrial on this planet. The health hazard warnings will be dropped from telecasts, as indeed will all mention and display of (bleep-bleep) be stricken from TV programming.

"It is my belief that we have discussed (bleep-bleep) entirely too much, and too freely, with the natives, and can make our abhorrence clear to them only by refusing to mention (bleep-bleep). It occurs to me that treating (bleep-bleep) as too horrid to mention may have a salutary effect on the natives, by playing upon their fright syndrome.

"To repeat, all personnel are hereby forbidden to speak of or display (bleep-bleep). If a native mentions it you will make clear that you never heard the word and do not know its meaning."

The woman finished reading and stood looking at Romee with a peculiar twisted smile.

Romee thought about the words on the paper. Presumably they were sensible words, from the Earth-human viewpoint. And she wasn't sure whether or not they were more absurd than most Earth-human doings, from her viewpoint. She was puzzled.

"Bleep-bleep," she murmured, trying the sound the woman had used in place of "chocolate."

The woman brightened. "Why, yes. Bleep-bleep!"

Romee tucked away the remainder of her block of chocolate, said good-bye to the woman, and left the trading post.

On her way to the gate she met a chimo she knew coming in. "Are you going to buy chocolate?" she asked him.

"Yes, Romee."

'They don't talk about it anymore," she told him. "But if you ask for bleep-bleep, they'll sell you some."

The chocolate was relaxing, but did not take away fright. Romee was very scared as she descended the steep slopes from the Cultural Exchange Center to the edge of the jungle, and felt almost numb once she entered the trails that twisted through the thick foliage, even though the trails were safe.

The danger would begin when she left the trails to squirm her way through the undergrowth, and she would have to do that. The trails were kept picked clean of natsacher shoots. She kept peering through the shadows, trying to spot a patch of natsacher that was not too far from safety. She found an isolated shoot or two that was within reach from the trail, but these were only enough to emphasize how big and how empty was her gathering-sack.

At last she took a deep, tremulous breath and plunged off the trail. For a distance of some fifty feet she fought through thick tangle, then came out in a relatively open area where enough light filtered down to make natsacher grow. And indeed, there were shoots all around her. Rapidly she began breaking them off and stuffing them in her sack.

When the patch was picked clean she plunged frantically back to the trail. Only then did she take time to estimate the fullness of her sack . . . about a third.

KRO-O-OMM!

The sound was distant, but it was behind her. She jerked and fell on her face. She lay there and trembled for a while, then rose and followed the trail deeper into the jungle.

A brightness off to her left indicated another likely natsacher patch. She pushed through to its edge, and paused, looking at it. She wasn't sure just why, but this patch had a particularly dangerous look to her. But it was a big one, at least twice as big as the other. She could fill her sack here.

Slowly she moved out among the shoots. Nothing happened. She began picking. This was a long narrow patch which she had entered at one end. As she worked her way along it, her confidence grew a little. It was heartening to see how fast her sack was filling.

And then it was full. She saw there were plenty of shoots left to be picked. If she needed another sack-load to pay for fixing the damn-TV and to get enough chocolate to last her family a while, she would come back to this place.

She lifted her sack, turning slowly toward the trail as she did so.

KRO-O-OMM!

She jerked and flopped on her face, her thoughts racing in terror and dismay.

It's got me! I didn't jump away from it! My poor hatchlings!

SWISH! Something large and fast swooped past, over her cringing form. She waited for the monstrous killer to pounce on her.

Instead she heard a creaking as of strained tree limbs. Several seconds passed.

KRO-O-OMM!

She tried to hug the ground more closely.

SWISH!

She was more than halfway unconscious, and aware of nothing but the continuing sounds, and only vaguely of them.

KRO-O-OMM! SWISH! CREAK.

KRO-O-OMM! SWISH! CREAK.

The pattern seemed to go on and on.

Finally it occurred to her that she wasn't being eaten, or even bitten. Slowly, and very cautiously, she twisted her neck and looked up.

KRO-O-OMM! SWISH! A greenish-brown mass about two feet in diameter came arcing down, across the natsacher patch, to zing through the air above her. It snapped to a halt a short distance past her, just short of the wall of undergrowth surrounding the patch.

CREAK. It reversed direction, moving slowly now, and came back over her. She saw that the mass was attached above to an oddly jointed limb or heavy vine. This limb was now bending, and in a moment had carried the mass upward and out of sight in the foliage. She could still see some of the limb.

KRO-O-OMM! SWISH! Here it came again! The limb was snapping straight, like a many-jointed leg of some kind. The mass reached the end of its trajectory and stopped.

CREAK. It began moving back once more.

Romee realized she could easily crawl away, out of its path. But she didn't feel up to moving just yet. So she watched it and thought about it.

If she had jumped when she heard the noise, she would have landed in the undergrowth, just about where that mass would have knocked her if she hadn't fallen out of its way. It was as if the noisemaker wanted her in that particular spot of undergrowth, and had meant to put her there, one way or the other.

What was waiting for her there? And why didn't it just come get her?

She was tempted to crawl over and peer through the leaves to find out. The temptation to do such a risky thing made her cringe some more.

KRO-O-OMM! SWISH! Creak. Crackle.

It had added a new sound. Crackle. She looked up, wondering why, and saw that the jointed limb was beginning to look shredded. It wasn't used to swishing so frequently and continually, she guessed, and was wearing itself out. It must have some way of sensing she was still in its path with her back more or less turned toward it, but couldn't tell she was lying down. She resolved to crawl away after the next swish, so it would stop that horrifying noise.

KRO-O-OMM! Here it came. SWISH! CRACK!

The limb snapped. Instead of making its sudden stop, the detached mass was flung into the undergrowth. A moment later Romee heard a rough grating noise coming from the spot where the mass had landed.

This noise was sickening rather than frightening. In a little while she felt much better, and her curiosity was aroused. She crept forward, pushed into the undergrowth, and stared at what was happening.

The ground there was covered by what looked like misshapen boxes with open tops, all packed tightly against each other. Each box was twisting in place, back and forth, rubbing against the sides of the neighboring boxes. Their top edges were sharp, and their motion made them cut anything touching them, the same way the power knives sold by the Earthmen cut.

They were chopping the greenish-brown mass to bits. The shredded pieces of it were forming a pulpy mess in the areas between the blades. Romee shuddered hard, thinking how close her own body had come to that same fate, and of how many people had been chopped up to feed that kind of . . .

. . . that kind of
tree.
Because she could see it was a tree. The slim trunk rose from the middle of the blade-edged boxes (they were really something like roots, she realized), and by changing position slightly while she looked up, she could follow the trunk to where it divided into three down-looping limbs, one of which had a splintered, bedraggled look. And no mass on the end of it like the other two.

Romee giggled. For the first time since she was a tiny hatchling. She giggled. Then she laughed.
It was so funny!
She had tricked the noisemaker into eating part of itself!

She was laughing like a drunken Earthman. It was a strange sensation, laughing, but nice. She squatted comfortably to enjoy it while it lasted.

Finally she grew quiet. The way she felt was puzzling, but she couldn't figure out what it was. Well, no matter. Life was full of mysteries she couldn't hope to solve.

She rose, looked at the noise tree for a moment, toying with the idea of tricking it into eating its remaining two masses. That would be a foolish and useless risk to take, she decided. She retrieved her sack of shoots, returned to the trail, and began the trip back to the Cultural Exchange Center.

There she would tell the Earthmen about the noise tree, and how it was killing and eating the chimos and chimees who went into the jungle for natsacher shoots. The Earthmen would know some way to kill off the noise trees so that . . .

No.

The Earthmen would pay her no attention. They would just say that chocolate . . . or bleep-bleep . . . was the culprit. And besides, they would say, they could not think of upsetting the jungle ecology of Notcid by exterminating a predator species.