And sweet-smelling, deliciously sweet, once he’d climbed far enough up the hill to catch the scent, and to take his whole-plant sample.
Stowing that, with best hopes for Estevez, he drew his square, pegging one-meter lines on a plastic grid, took up his handheld recorder, and began counting ordinary grasses—there was a type, Lawton argued, that, with 136 grains per ear on average, showed evidence of artificial selection, probably had drifted from cultivated fields, and that that might let them, at safe distance, gather information on the edibility for humans of what the natives cultivated.
Which would tell them—
A siren blasted out abruptly, down among the base buildings. Ian froze, sitting as he was, looked downhill and looked about him, thinking some surveyor across the valley must have misjudged his position and triggered the perimeter alarm.
Grass near him whispered out of time with the breeze.
Startled, he spun on one knee and found himself staring at a pair of brown, dusty boots, and the hem of a brown, knee-length, many-buttoned coat, and the tall perspective of an ebon-skinned giant.
He couldn’t move. He heard the alarm sounding in the distance, and realized in shock that he was the emergency, and this was the cause of it, this … man, this creature that had picked his approach and his moment and chosen him …
The native beckoned to him, once, twice, unmistakably, to get up. Impossible not to recognize the intelligence, the purpose, the civilized nature of the native, who was black as night, with a face not by any remotest kinship human, but sternly handsome in its planes and angles.
A third time it beckoned. He saw no imminent threat as he rose. It was imposingly tall—more than a head taller—and broad-shouldered. He saw no weapons about its person—in which thought he suddenly realized that it might take some of his equipment for weaponlike. He was afraid to reach even for the probe he’d used, afraid to make a move in any direction, recalling all Earth’s history of war-making mistakes and missed chances for reason.
But he moved a cautious hand to his breast pocket, thumbed the switch on the pocket radio to the open position, all the while watching for the least alarmed reaction.
He said quietly, “Base, I’ve made contact,” and watched the native’s face. “Base.” He kept his voice low, his eyes constantly on the intruder, as if he were speaking to him. “Base, this is Ian. I’ve made contact. I’ve got company out here.”
The native still offered no objection, but in sudden fear of an imprudent answer from Base blasting out, he thumbed the volume control in the direction he devoutly hoped was down.
“Nil li sat-ha,” the intruder said to him—it sounded like that, at least, a low and, thank God, reasonable-sounding voice. He indicated the downward course toward the base, making his own invitation.
It motioned again up the hill.
“Base,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake, “that was him talking. I think it’s a he. It looks to be. Tall fellow. Well-dressed. No weapons. Don’t come up here. He seems civilized. I’m going to do what he wants, I’m going out of perimeter, I don’t want to alarm him. Stay back. And don’t talk to me.”
A hard, strong grip closed on his arm. He looked around in startlement at the intruder—no one in his life had ever laid hands on him with that intimation of force and strength. But the situation was suddenly sliding into confusion: a glance downhill showed him his friends running upslope toward them, the intruder was clearly alarmed—and their lives and everything they had worked for were at risk if someone miscalculated now.
Come, the intruder wanted. And a part of him wanted more than anything to run back to safety, back to things he knew, things he could deal with on his own terms.
But the hand that pulled at his arm was too strong to fight to any advantage, and he went where it wanted, still trying to think what to do—he left the communications switch open, hoping no one would chase them or corner the alien,—panted, “Base, it’s all right, I’m safe, it’s wanting to talk, for God’s sake, base, tell them pull back. …”
But he had no idea why they were coming headlong after him, whether they knew something he didn’t or whether base was talking at all. They couldn’t fight. They had a handful of weapons against the chance of animal intrusions, but they were a very few humans on a world they knew wasn’t theirs, they couldn’t get off the planet, nobody could get down to them, not even the Guild, until the lander was built, and there was no way they could hold out against a native population that decided to attack them.
Someone downslope shouted, he didn’t know what, but the intruder began to run and he found himself compelled by a grip on his arm that hauled him along at a breathless, stumbling pace.
“Stay back!” he said to whoever was listening. “Dammit, he’s not hurting me, don’t chase him!”
Breath failed him. He wasn’t acclimated to the air, he couldn’t run and talk, he struggled to keep his feet under him as the intruder dodged around brush and rocks and pulled him along.
Then his ankles did go, and pitched him onto his knees on the stony hill, the intruder still holding his arm with a grip that cut off the blood to his hand.
He looked up at the native, then, scared, trying to get his breath, trying to get up, and it snatched him up, wrenching his arm as it looked back the way they had come, as afraid as he was, he thought, despite the pain.
“I’m all right,” he said for the radio. “I’ve turned the volume off. I can’t hear you. I don’t want to scare the man, don’t come after me!”
The native jerked him along, and he cooperated at the best pace he could manage, his lungs burning, his breath coming on a knife’s edge. His head spun, then, and he had the intruder half-carrying him, while he gasped after air and saw the world in shades of gray.
At last it dragged him into a dark place and smothered him with its body and his coat. He made no protest, except to try to breathe, and, getting his face clear, lay in the shelter of the native’s panting body, wanting only to stay alive, and not to provoke any craziness out of anyone.
V
“Left with the creature,” Patton Bretano said, with a sinking heart, and Pardino, down on the surface, went on about how they’d gotten radio transmission, they were still getting it, and they wanted a decision from the station.
Patton Bretano sat with the receiver in his hand, listening to it, asking himself why it was his son, and what kind of craziness had sent Ian out by himself, or why Ian hadn’t run for the base instead of away from it, but he feared he knew that answer already.
Ian wouldn’t risk the project, wouldn’t risk it. Working near the perimeter, Pardino said. In an area where they thought they had years yet to find the answers.
But the answers had found them. Found Ian, on the edges and unprotected. Pardino talked about how the radio was still open, and if it stayed that way they had a chance to track them.
But, How can I tell Joy? was the thought chasing through Patton’s mind, scattering saner notions. The father’s instincts were to mount a search party, to curse Ian for doing what he’d done, the father’s instincts didn’t damn care what risks the search would run.
The father didn’t give a damn how a rescue attempt would play politically with the Guild. The politician was thinking of the risks they knew they’d run, where they’d put the base … God, of course there were dangers, and there were procedures for avoiding them. They’d created an electronic perimeter. The natives weren’t advanced enough to bypass it. They’d been down there for months without an incident. They’d never let their precautions lapse, and Ian hadn’t been in the first team down, he’d pulled every string he had and absolutely made sure that Ian wasn’t in the first team. …
“Pat,” Pardino said, “Pat, are you there?”
“Yes,” he said, thinking, God help us, it’s happened, hasn’t it? Contact’s made. Irrevocable from this point. But my son …
“We can’t go after him,” Pardino said. “The staff’s in consensus, we can’t
go after him, we aren’t in that kind of position here …”
“I want the transmissions.” He was trembling. The shock was still richocheting through his nerves, saying nothing was real. But that open radio was the only fragile link to Ian, and he wanted to be hearing that, not Pardino; he wanted to hear for himself that Ian was all right, never mind what the Guild was going to make of it, never mind that the news was going to be all over the station with the speed of the phone system, and somehow he had to break the news to Joy and get some kind of official news release out.
Had to take a position before the Guild released the story on its own.
He wasn’t a bad man. He told himself he wasn’t a bad man. He was walking a narrow line between a Pilots’ Guild that wouldn’t scruple to use the story against everything their hopes rested on, and a council skittish of opposing them too radically … and now Ian had gone and put himself in the middle of what, God help him, he’d planned.
Because he knew and the committee knew there were inhabitants in that area of the island, non-technological as they needed, as they’d wanted the first contact to be, not to bring them face-to-face with the savviest politicians and the most advanced technology on the planet … but he hadn’t on any terms wanted Ian in the middle of that encounter.
Pardino was saying something about the patch on channel B, and he couldn’t but think how the Guild was going to be monitoring their transmissions the instant they realized there was something happening. Everything they said, everything Ian said, was going to the Guild the same as it went to them, bet on it.
“Pat,” Pardino said, obscuring what he wanted to hear, Ian’s voice, “Pat, the boy’s resourceful, he’s being clever, he’s not hurt, they’re not threatening him, whatever’s happened. He talks, but they can’t suspect there’s a pickup, they haven’t got radio. He said he’s got the volume down so they can’t hear, but he’s not that far away. The batteries are good for at least four days solid, he says don’t come after the guy, they’re not threatening him. You copy, Pat?”
“Yeah. Yes, I understand you. I want the transmissions, dammit.”
“You’ve got everything we have.”
Pardino signed off with that, as if it made anything better than it was; but, He’s resourceful, Pardino had said, too, and Patton clutched that thought to himself when Pardino went out and left him a quiet, static-ridden breathing.
Then Ian’s voice, saying, out of breath, “It’s still all right, don’t worry, he’s just afraid someone’s following us. We’re in a cave in the rocks. He keeps touching my arm, very gentle, like he’s trying to get me to be quiet, he talks to me and I act like I’m answering him.”
The other voice came back then, a low, quiet burr.
“He’s at least a head taller than me,” Ian’s voice said, “mostly like us, but incredibly strong. His skin is black as space, his eyes are narrow and his nose is kind of arched, flat to the face, he frowns, you can tell that. …”
The other voice again. A pause, then:
“He’s talking to me, I guess you can hear that, real quiet, like he’s trying to tell me everything’s all right.”
Ian’s voice was shaking. Patton felt the fear in his son, felt the strain telling on him, and Ian’s breaths were short and desperate. He knotted his hands together and knew the Guild was recording by now, every desperate minute, to play back to the council and the station at large.
Ian wasn’t the type to crack, he knew his son. Ian was doing all right emotionally. It was the physical stress or a physical constraint that was putting that quaver into Ian’s voice, but others might not think so.
He punched in his wife’s office number, before the news could go out. He said it the way Pardino had said it, just, “Joy, Ian’s in a little trouble, don’t panic, but they’ve got a contact down there and Ian’s met it.”
“A contact,” Joy said, on the other end of the line. “What do you mean, they’ve got a contact? Is he all right? Pat? Is he all right?”
“So far he’s fine,” Patton said. “We can hear him, he’s got his radio open, I’ve got him on the other channel. Turn on your B.”
“I’ve got it,” Joy said, “I’ve got it.”
“—a little out of breath,” Ian was saying, and coughed. “My legs are wobbly. I’m not acclimated down here. I’d say we’re a couple klicks from the base, don’t know how to judge it. There’s like trees around here, kind of soft-trunked, big flat leaves, there’s like a lot of moss, there’s got to be water near here, I’d think, it’s all soft-leaved stuff.…”
God, Patton thought, the boy was still observing, still was sending back his damn botany notes, but it was the native he wanted to know about.
He heard the creature talking again, he heard Joy ask, “Is that one of them?” and he muttered, “So far there’s just one of them. Walked right through the perimeter alarm and accosted Ian. Ian ordered the rescue party back. He apparently wasn’t feeling threatened.”
“Sir,” his secretary’s voice broke in, on override. “Vordict’s calling in, says it’s urgent, about your son, sir.”
The Guild had heard. The Guild was going to raise bloody hell about the situation and play hard politics with the electorate. He wasn’t ready for this. He had a son in trouble down there and Vordict, damn him, wanted to make an issue of what they all sensibly knew had been inevitable from the hour they reached this star, all to read him might-have-beens.
“He wants to keep moving,” Ian’s faint voice said. “He wants us to walk again. I’m cold, I’m out of breath, excuse the shakes. …”
“Put him on,” he told his secretary, regarding Vordict, and told Joy, “It’s Vordict. I’ve got to talk to him. Ian can’t hear us. But whatever he’s found down there, it’s not hostile, it’s all right. …”
Ian gasped, a short, small intake of breath, and Patton’s heart froze.
Ian said, long-distance, “I lost my balance, is all. It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t anybody do anything stupid.”
Patton wished the Guild would take that to heart.
“Patton,” came the voice from the other channel. “Patton, you’ve forced this, this is on your head, it’s your son in danger, and you knew damned well there was a settlement close to the base. I have the documents. I have the witness. You knew before you made the drop there, tell me otherwise, and be advised I intend to take this before the council.”
VI
There was no offer of resistance, no threat, no weapon, and thus far the luck had been with the effort. Perhaps the moon-man sensed so and made no resistance to his kidnapping. Or perhaps malicious chance was running otherwise and everything only seemed this easy.
Manadgi did not reckon himself a superstitious man, nor a gullible one, or he tried not to be. Anything that proceeded this easily with so much force available to the other side, he greatly distrusted.
But the moon-man, at least a head shorter than he, seemed a fragile creature, easily out of breath, quickly winded on the mildest climb. The creature’s pale complexion turned paler still, and at times it staggered, but it never ceased to try to walk with him.
It might be he had put it in fear of its life. It might be it was simply the disposition of moon-folk to be acquiescent, for reasons such folk understood, but he could not persuade himself to trust that chance, no more than he could entirely persuade himself that the clockwork machines were harmless to intruders.
He walked and walked, and the moon-man stumbled along beside him, muttering to himself so constantly he began to wonder if the creature was habitually that addled or somehow injured in its wits. He had found it sitting in front of a square of grass, plucking stems and talking to itself, while poking at a black box full of buttons that perhaps made sense, but about what business he could not determine.
Perhaps it was mad. Perhaps all moon-folk were—along with those furious early pursuers that had given chase and then given up.
Or perhaps they were, after all, frail and gentle fol
k who could not even resist the kidnapping of one of their number—
But who then loosed the clockwork machines to destroy the valley?
The moon-man was lagging farther and farther off the pace he wanted, was staggering in his steps and then fell to his knees, holding his side. “Get up!” Manadgi told it sternly, and waved his hand.
The moon-man wiped his face and there was blood, most evidently blood, red as any man’s, running from its nose—a flood of life, broken forth by the running and the climbing he had forced it to.
He was sorry for it, then—he had not meant to do it harm and still it was trying to do what he asked it, with the blood pouring down its face.
He gestured with a push at its arm for it to sit down again, and it seemed glad and relieved, bent over and pinched its nostrils shut, then began to cough, which, with the bleeding, made him worry that it might choke itself.
Manadgi tucked his hands between his knees and squatted, waiting, hoping the creature knew what best to do to help itself. It was far from threatening anyone at the moment, rather, it seemed choked, so imminently in peril of its life that he took his water-flask and offered it, hoping it would help.
The moon-man looked at him with suffering eyes, then unstopped the flask and poured a little water out on his hand, to be sure it was water, he thought, before he wiped his face with it. Then he poured a little more into his bloody hand and had a mouthful, which seemed to help the coughing.
And the moment he stopped choking, the moon-man began muttering again, the odd creature …
Not an ugly or a fearsome being, Manadgi decided, except the blood smeared on its pale face. Its strangeness made him queasy about touching it, certainly about ever using the flask, but he greatly regretted hurting it, not having known how delicate it was.
Still, for all he knew, its associates had set one of the clockwork monsters on their trail.
“Get up,” he said to it, exactly the words he had used before. “Get up.”