The Winds of Altair (9 page)

CHAPTER 11

Peterson left shortly afterward, looking very unhappy.

Amanda, sitting beside Carbo on the sofa in her living room, said, "You've dropped a ton of bricks onto his shoulders."

"I didn't mean to," he replied. "You think I should have stayed silent?"

"No. I don't see how you could."

"I had to tell him."

"Yes," Amanda agreed. "It's just that he's already got so much responsibility, what with heading the landing team and all . . ."

"I know."

"So you think that Jeff's right? The wolfcats are intelligent?"

Carbo threw up his hands. "How can I say? I'm not an anthropologist. I'm not even a psychologist! It's not my field."

"But it's your responsibility.
Our
responsibility, I mean."

"Yes," he admitted. "My responsibility. I can stop this whole business if I want to. It's my responsibility."

"Not yours alone, Frank," she said. "I could run the lab without you, if I had to."

He smiled at her. "Yes, I suppose you could."

"So don't try to carry this whole load on your own shoulders."

"You want your share of it?"

"I've got my share, whether I want it or not."

Carbo looked into her deep dark eyes for a long moment. Finally he said, "Would you share this burden with me even if you didn't have to?"

Amanda cocked her head and grinned at him. "I'll tell you what responsibility I'll share with you . . . willingly."

"What?"

She nodded toward the dining area table. "Cleaning up the dirty dishes."

"Oh." His face fell.

"I never feel comfortable going to bed unless the kitchen's cleaned up first," Amanda said.

"Oh?" Carbo felt his spirits rise.

They lay side by side on Amanda's bed, a thin sheen of perspiration covering their naked bodies, the only light in the room coming from the soft glow of a luminescent abstract painting on the wall above their heads.

Carbo stroked Amanda's shoulder. His hand wandered down across her breast, her stomach, the gentle curve of her hip.

"You know, my skin is almost darker than yours," he whispered.

"Too many white hunters in my family tree," Amanda answered, smiling.

"There were Moors in my family background," Carbo said. "Centuries ago. People from northern Italy still call southerners Africans, Ethiopians. It's a big joke in northern Italy."

"Not in Africa."

He turned toward her and nuzzled the hollow where her throat and shoulder met. Amanda sighed softly.

"We'll start our own religion," he said at last. "The African-Italian Voodoo Catholic Church."

"Voodoo is West Indian, not African," Amanda said.

"Oh. Yes, of course."

She turned toward him and grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of his head. "But we can call it anything you like, Frank. Just as long as we leave all that petty nonsense behind us. No barriers between us, Frank! Not race, or religion, or nationality. We are two human beings, ninety-five trillion kilometers from Earth; two human beings who love each other."

"It's a long distance from home, isn't it?" In the semi-darkness, his voice had a lost, sad echo in it.

"A long distance from all the hatreds and terrors of the past," Amanda said.

"And from all the rules, the laws that defined right from wrong."

She was silent for a moment. Then, propping herself on one elbow, she asked, "Do you need those laws, Frank? Can't you make your own rules?"

He gazed at her beautiful, serious face, barely visible in the soft radiance of the painting.

"Amanda," he whispered, "I don't want to have this colonization effort shut down. I think perhaps Jeff is right, and the wolfcats
are
intelligent, but I still want the colonization to proceed."

He couldn't see the expression on her face, whether she was surprised or disappointed or angry. Her voice was calm, though, as she asked:

"Even if it means wiping out all the animals down there?"

He nodded in the darkness. "Yes."

"But why . . ."

"Because I believe the same way that Foy does, damn my soul! I don't want to believe that way, but I do. I realized while we were talking with Peterson this evening. We've got to subdue and dominate that world down there. We have no choice!"

"Frank, I don't understand why . . ."

"Earth is dying, Amanda! You know that, you saw it every day of your life. The whole planet is suffocating under megatonnages of human flesh. We need colonies, we need places to export people, to ease the population pressure on our home world."

"But Altair VI isn't fit for human life. You said so yourself."

"We'll have to make it fit."

"There are other worlds," Amanda said.

"None like Earth. We haven't found a truly Earthlike planet anywhere. Altair VI is as good as any. We've got to transform it. Otherwise, Earth is lost."

Amanda let herself drop back onto her pillows. To the ceiling, she said, "We've subdued and dominated the Earth to the point of destroying it Now we've got to subdue and dominate new worlds."

"I don't like it any more than you do," he said. "But we have no choice. It's either tame the new worlds or sink into extinction."

"And the living creatures on this world? The wolfcats and all the rest?"

"It's either them or us, Amanda."

"There must be another way."

"There isn't."

Amanda thought hard about it, but she could find no argument to counter his.

So the wolfcats and all the rest will die, she thought. Just as the gorilla and elephant and giraffe were driven into extinction on Earth. Man the exterminator. It's not enough that we slaughter ourselves and the other creatures of our own planet. Now we have to reach out and begin killing the creatures of every world we touch.

She dozed fitfully, unaccustomed to sharing her bed after the long months away from Earth. She dreamed of Africa, of a dark menacing forest that was totally silent and empty of all animals. Not even an insect buzzed to relieve the oppressive, guilty silence. Yet something, someone was pursuing her. Amanda walked slowly through the shadowy woods, barefoot, frightened. She realized, all of a sudden, that she was naked and that this silence was a danger in itself. Something was behind her, coming after her, and she could not hear it approaching.

She began to walk faster. The sun was a distant glowing blur against the clouds that covered the sky, but even so the heat was thick and heavy. Sweat poured from her, she could feel it trickling along her with stinging drops of salt. She wanted to stop, to rest, but she could not. Tangled vines and underbrush flailed at her bare legs. Moving forward was more difficult with each step. But she had to keep going. She ran, her lungs burning, knowing that if she stopped even for a moment she would be horribly, horribly killed.

And then she saw someone up ahead. A man! A friend. He beckoned to her. She knew he was calling to her, but she could not hear a word. She struggled through the thick underbrush, battled against the vines that tried to twine themselves around her naked, sweating body. The man was dark-skinned, smiling to her, beckoning to her, showing her the way to safety.

She broke free of the underbrush at last and ran the last dozen steps toward him. He collapsed onto the grass, his body slashed in a dozen gushing, bleeding wounds. She recognized his face. It was her brother.

Amanda sat bolt upright in the bed, both her fists pressed against her mouth to keep herself from screaming. Carbo slept sprawled on his stomach, oblivious.

She cried for a long while, rocking slowly back and forth, silently. When at last no more tears would flow from her eyes, she lay back again and stared at the ceiling. Carbo stirred and flung an arm across her midriff. She turned her head to look at him and smiled sadly at the sleeping man. She lay there, silent, awake, not daring to close her eyes for fear of dreaming again.

CHAPTER 12

Jeff was surprised when Dr. Peterson came up to his table and sat down beside him. It was early in the morning; the cafeteria was nearly empty, as usual. Only the handful of students who had early chores assigned to them were shuffling through the cafeteria's serving line, half asleep.

Peterson put down a tray heaped with everything the cafeteria offered at this hour next to Jeff's meager breakfast of juice and cereal.

"Mind if I have a few words with you?" he asked, pulling out the chair next to Jeff's.

"Sure," Jeff said.

Peterson folded his long legs around the chair, took up a large glass of juice and drank down half of it. "They don't serve coffee here," he said.

"No. We don't drink coffee or tea," Jeff replied.

"Where I come from," Peterson said, a smile on his craggy face, "nobody can start the day without a big mug of steaming hot coffee."

Jeff said nothing.

Peterson's smile faded by degrees. "Dr. Carbo tells me that you think the wolfcats are intelligent."

"That's right."

Cutting into his eggs, Peterson said, "I've looked at your tapes from the past three days. I'll admit that the wolfcats are a lot more complex than we originally thought they were."

"They have definite social customs," Jeff said. "That's a sign of intelligence, isn't it?"

"It's one possible sign," Peterson said. "But it's not the whole story by itself. True intelligence involves tool use, language . . ."

"They have names," Jeff said.

Peterson ate a forkful of eggs and soy-bacon.

"My wolfcat's name is Crown. His family elder's name is Thunder. The females are Brightfur and Tranquil."

"And the cubs?"

Jeff blinked. "They don't have names yet. They're too little."

The anthropologist grinned and swallowed at the same time. "They must weigh five hundred kilos each."

"That's little for a wolfcat."

"You realize, I hope, that the chances are that you invented those names yourself," Peterson said.

"No," Jeff said. "Those names were in Crown's mind, not mine."

"How can you be sure of that?"

Frowning, Jeff said, "I'm sure. I . . . I just know it. The planet has a name, too. The wolfcats call it Windsong."

Peterson said nothing for a while, he just worked away at his breakfast, chewing each bite methodically while Jeff sat there, his appetite gone.

"Let me ask you this," the anthropologist said at last. "How do the wolfcats tell each other their names?"

"They . . ." Jeff began, then hesitated. "They know."

"Yes, but how? Do they speak to each other? Do they hear each other in their minds, like mental telepathy? Do they use sign language? Gestures?" Peterson smiled kindly to show Jeff that he wasn't trying to attack him.

Jeff thought for a few moments. "It must be some form of telepathy. They don't speak or use sign language."

"We'd have a tough time proving that to Foy, wouldn't we? Or anyone else."

Glumly, Jeff nodded agreement.

Peterson finished off most of his breakfast while Jeff sat in silence, barely picking at the meager meal before him.

"Well," the anthropologist said at last, "we're going down there this morning. If there's anything you can do to help the wolfcat show his intelligence to the landing team . . . well, I'll be looking for a sign."

He got to his feet and Jeff stood up too, barely reaching the older man's shoulder.

"Thank you," Jeff said.

"For what?" Peterson looked genuinely surprised.

"For listening to me. For caring enough not to make fun of the idea."

The anthropologist's rugged face grew very serious. "Son, I'm a scientist. Do you understand what that means?"

"It means that you're interested in science."

"Much more. A farmer can be interested in science." Peterson put a hand on Jeff's shoulder. His grip was strong and sure. "To be a scientist is a way of life. It means that when you come across a new idea, you use your five senses to get as much information about the idea as you can. You listen. You watch. You touch and taste and sniff. You test the idea. Only after all that do you start to make up your mind."

Jeff almost smiled. "In the Church they teach that scientists can never make up their minds."

"We're always open to new information. That makes some people very uneasy. They want to be told 'the truth,' the absolute unchanging final word. We don't deal with that kind of dogma. We're always ready to alter our conclusions in the light of new data."

"So you can never know the truth," Jeff said.

"We can get pretty close." Peterson grinned at him. "Closer than anyone else. But we never claim to have the final, absolute truth."

"The Church has the Truth."

"Not the same thing. Not the same at all. Your Church—any church—establishes a set of rules, and then tries to explain everything in the world according to those rules. Scientists try to discover how the world actually works, how things behave. Different approach."

Jeff thought it over briefly, then said, "But you don't deal with
why
things work the way they do."

Peterson's grin spread across his weathered face. "No. We have our hands full trying to figure out
how
they work. We leave the causes to religion and philosophy."

"But then . . ."

Peterson stopped him by looking at his wristwatch. "We'll have to continue this some other time. I'm due at the shuttle port in ten minutes."

Glancing at his own watch, Jeff agreed. "I've got to get to the contact lab."

They left the cafeteria together, then took different tube-corridors toward their different destinations. The last Jeff saw of Peterson, the lanky anthropologist waved to him and said, "See you down there!"

Jeff waved back and watched the scientist jog down the greenpath of the tube and disappear from sight.

Amanda was already in the lab when Jeff arrived, but Dr. Carbo had not shown up yet.

"He'll stagger in soon," she said, smiling, as she started fastening the cuffs on Jeff's ankles and wrists.

"We're going to be working with the landing team today," Jeff said.

"That's right."

Jeff lay back on the couch. His stomach felt queasy, fluttery, and he knew it was not because the scientists were going down to the surface this morning.

He closed his eyes for a moment, worked up his courage, and said, "Amanda?"

"Yes?" She had moved over to the monitoring instruments on the wall next to the couch.

"Would you have dinner with me tonight? To celebrate, I mean?"

"Celebrate?"

"This is the first time we've worked with a landing team," Jeff said

Her eyebrows rose a centimeter. "That sounds like a good-enough reason to celebrate," Amanda said.

"Then you'll have dinner with me?"

"Yes. I would like to."

Jeff's heart soared, but then he realized, "Uh . . . it'll have to be in the cafeteria in my dorm area. We don't have our own kitchens."

She seemed to think it over for a moment. "That'll be fine, Jeff."

He let out a long happy sigh and felt his body relax against the warm fabric of the couch.

Dr. Carbo came in, his chin darker than usual. But he grinned happily as he strode up to Jeff.

"All set?" he asked.

"Yessir."

Turning to Amanda, "Everything ready?"

Jeff couldn't hear her reply.

"All right, then," Carbo said. "Let's get started."

Crown was already at the crest of the ridge line overlooking the beach, even though Altair had barely nudged its limb over the sea horizon.

Like he knew we're going to need him today.

Or he remembered the thoughts that Jeff had in his mind from yesterday.

Do you think maybe Jeff's right, and they really are intelligent?

I don't know. It's not my field.

Crown sniffed at the sea breeze. It was heavy with the now-familiar scent of the rusting machines. But the wolfcat knew that something else was going to happen today. Something strange and alien. He growled his displeasure.

How did you sleep last night?

Off and on. I had a nightmare . . .

I'm sorry.

It wasn't your fault.

I'm still sorry.

You went out like a light. You didn't move a muscle.

I didn't have any nightmares, either.

I'll bet.

It was a morning like any other morning, yet Crown knew that this one would be different. He padded along the crest of the ridge line, watching the sea and the sky, waiting.

And finally it appeared. Far, far up in the clouded sky he saw a tiny speck racing across the heavens, leaving a thin trail of vapor behind it, like a dark line drawn against the gray clouds. The speck began to grow and take shape: triangular wings, a sleek shining body that ended in a raked-back tail surface.

A sonic boom split the air, making Crown jump back toward the safety of the trees. But still he watched the rocketplane as it banked and turned gracefully overhead, came down low, skimmed the waves, and finally landed on the hard-packed sand of the beach, rolling almost up to the abandoned equipment on four sets of oversized wheels.

The rocketplane had made practically no noise after the sonic boom. Crown hunkered down on his belly, still shaded by the trees and screened by the underbrush, and watched the alien craft for long, silent minutes. Its scent was powerful, but much like the odor of the other machines: dead, metallic, harsh.

At last a hatch opened in the rocketplane's side. A strange creature stood uncertainly just inside the hatchway. It stood on two legs. It was gleaming white, almost like the metal of the shuttle craft. It's head was a bulbous gleaming bowl. To Crown it looked somewhat like one of the apes, up on its hind legs. But it was ridiculously small, puny.

A ladder slid out from the side of the ship and planted itself on the sand of the beach. The alien creature slowly walked down the ladder, using its forelegs to hold onto the railing on either side of the steps. It stopped at the bottom, turned around slowly as if surveying the beach, then looked back up toward the hatch and waved a foreleg. Another alien appeared and started down the ladder. Then another, and still another. Crown counted six in all.

He growled, a deep menacing rumble from inside his chest. But he knew that he must go down to the beach and come closer to these strange creatures. Slowly, reluctantly, Crown got up onto all sixes and started down the slope of the hill, head low, ears flattened, lips pulled back in a barely-repressed snarl.

Harvey Peterson stood at the bottom of the ladder, his heart pounding with anxiety. It was like stepping into the darkest night he could imagine, wading into a bowl of ink. Even with the infrared lamp built into his helmet, he could barely see twenty meters ahead. The microwave radar scanner showed that the beach was flat and level, sloping slightly up from the ammonia-frothing sea toward a line of wooded hills that rose steeply, some hundred meters in from the shore.

He turned back toward the ship, where the other volunteers stood clustered around the hatch, waiting.

"All right," he said into his helmet microphone, "come on down." He almost said that the coast was clear, but such a pun would seem too frivolous in this murky, danger-laden world.

The radar display was superimposed on his visor, so that he saw what the microwaves revealed as a glowing, ghostly image superimposed over the dim murky images that his natural vision could make out.

"The equipment is up this way." He pointed, and started plodding up the beach. The other five men followed him.

Soon enough they came upon the abandoned tractors and broken packing cases of equipment.

"Rusted through," said their engineer.

"Cripes, look at this pump. The plastic's been eaten away and the metal's
etched—
like somebody's been pouring high-grade acid over it."

"Looks like the statues on the Acropolis," said one of the scientists. "Eaten through by sulfur dioxide fumes."

"Just make certain you don't tear your suits," Peterson warned. "This atmosphere is laced with enough methane and . . ."

"Omygod, what's that?"

Peterson turned to see a mountainous gray shape gliding slowly toward them. He blinked twice, then realized what he was looking at.

"Stand perfectly still!" he commanded. "Don't panic. It's the wolfcat that Carbo's people have under control."

"You sure it's under control?"

The beast stood taller than any of them at the shoulder. Its six legs ended in paws bigger than a man's head. Peterson saw that its claws were retracted, but he could imagine the size of them. Its head was enormous, with two huge plates of bony-looking material where the eyes would be on an Earth animal. Its mouth was open a slit, and Peterson could see the tips of dagger-sharp teeth.

"It's growling."

"It might be a purr."

Someone laughed, halfway between embarrassment and hysteria. "Jesus Christ, I just shit my pants."

"Just stay where you are, everybody," Peterson said, fighting to keep his voice calm, "until it gets accustomed to us."

"What then?"

"Then it has us for brunch."

The wolfcat's huge head moved slowly from side to side, as if inspecting each of the six humans. It took one step toward Peterson, then slowly lay down on the sand and rested its chin on its forepaws.

"Peterson to base," the anthropologist spoke into his radio microphone. "We have made contact with the wolfcat. Instruct Carbo and Holman to have the animal lead us toward the apes. We want to find and tranquilize at least one family of the apes."

Crown lay on the sand and watched the aliens. They stood frozen, like a deer caught out in the open trying to confuse a wolfcat by standing stock-still. These creatures were too small to consider killing for food, unless the wolfcat was starving. But something in Crown's brain told him that even then, they would be no good to eat. They were poisonous, like some of the smaller animals of Windsong; to eat them would mean death.

The apes. These alien creatures wanted to find a family of apes. Crown snorted at the idea. The apes came along this beach, but he had no idea of where their lairs might be. Still, he rose ponderously and turned northward. He took a few steps, then swung his head back to see if the aliens were following.