Collected Short Fiction, page 475
Frowning, Lenoir listened with care to the stream of alien syllables that came from the being’s thin lips. The Commander was not a linguist, and since he never stayed on a planet of colonisation more than two or three months, he did not weigh his mind down with its language; there were specialists who could take care of that, and he had more fitting duties on the organisational level. But he had spent a good deal of time listening to the speech of the aliens, and he had to admit that whatever this one was saying, he was saying in an entirely different tongue.
“You notice the difference, sir?” Becker said. “The Hranth language is liquid and vowel-rich. What this fellow’s saying is a mass of rough consonants.”
Lenoir nodded. “Hook up the O’Neill. Let’s find out what’s going on.”
The O’Neill Translator was a formidable bit of hardware that took up a good chunk of the tent area, including the cryostat section that kept its computer elements at operating heat. Becker checked the gauges along the control panel and nodded finally; the Translator had reached its functional temperature.
Lenoir picked up the microphone and said slowly, in English: “I am the Earthman Commander. Tell us who you are.”
Since the machine had no samples of the alien’s language to operate with, it merely reproduced Lenoir’s words as they had been spoken. But the sound was enough to touch off another flood of alien words which the Translator’s pickup grids recorded and passed along to the crytonic computer that was the central element of the O’Neill.
Rapidly the words were broken down, analysed phonemically, sorted, classified, arranged. They were compared with specimens from a hundred other languages; they were distributed along a theoretical meaning-scale; they were translated by crude analog into English. The entire operation took a few seconds.
The Translator said: “I am (proper-name) Dulizd of the (tribal-name) Trazzidovh.”
“Where is your village?” Lenoir asked.
The O’Neill rendered his question into rasping coarse syllables and the alien responded; after a brief time-lag the machine said: “My village is beyond the hill, at the edge of the great plain.”
“How can that be?” Becker whispered, below the range of the translator’s audibility-threshold. “The Hranth village is at the edge of the plain.”
Lenoir asked for a more specific location; the alien was unable to give one, or at least the Translator could not render it. Conversing by O’Neill was a slow and tortuous process, and possibly an inaccurate one—though a feedback circuit enabled the machine to correct earlier misinterpretations as further conversation increased its understanding of the language. Lenoir found himself starting to sweat. He persevered.
And, after an hour of dogged plugging, a strange and disturbing story began to take form.
The village at the edge of the great plain, the alien told them, had been built long ago—nearly two thousand years ago, it seemed. Lenoir was willing to accept the figure. Time moved slowly on this world of dry fields and mudflat houses, and there was no reason why a village could not endure for thousands of static years.
The Hranth had built the village and it had been their home. Another tribe, the Trazzidovh, had lived several hundred miles to the west—a semi-nomadic warrior tribe, fierce and self-reliant, ethnically closely related to the placid mud-dwelling Hranth but culturally quite different.
The two tribes had maintained a hazy kind of relationship for several centuries. Communications were poor on the planet, and often a decade or more might go by without a visit between the tribes. Still, for many years the Hranth had been suggesting that their sturdier cousins send a contingent of warriors to live in the Hranth village and serve as protectors. The Hranth had few enemies, but those few were annoying ones, and the Hranth did not enjoy combat.
The Trazzidovh did—but the Trazzidovh were not interested in making a journey of three or four hundred miles eastward to the Hranth village. And so matters rested, for many hundreds of years.
Until the day when die Trazzidovh took on an enemy too big for them to handle: the well-organised and ferocious Lurmzil, a large tribe of the western mountains, who responded to a Trazzidovh attack on their hunting area by falling upon the Trazzidovh and virtually annihilating them in a bloody encounter.
Only two hundred of the tribe survived the conflict. Now, decimated, too weak to endure the hazards of life in the open plains of the west, the Trazzidovh remembered the many-times-repeated plea of their Hranth cousins. The Hranth once again extended an invitation; it was acceptable to them for the Trazzidovh to take refuge in their village.
Wearily the beaten Trazzidovh made the long trek eastward to settle with the Hranth. Arriving, they were surprised to find the Hranth under attack by local enemies; gathering their shattered forces, they drove the attackers off and were welcomed warmly by the Hranth.
But the warmth was short-lived. The Hranth, now that their enemies had been driven off, felt no further need for the newcomers, and refused to give them choice land in the village. Too tired to return to their homeland, the Trazzidovh accepted a barren strip near a ravine at the extreme western edge of the Hranth domain. Bitterly, they cursed the cousins who had invited them to seek refuge only with the intention of using them as catspaws.
Matters remained in stasis, and continued that way even up to the arrival of the Earthmen, according to Dulizd of the Trazzidovh. The Hranth numbered nearly five thousand; the Trazzidovh still had not increased their original two hundred even after the passage of three more centuries.
They lived on, a small and proud minority in the midst of the Hranth. They clung to their own language and way of life, though they had also learned the Hranth tongue to make possible communications between the tribes. The Hranth had never bothered to study the Trazzidovh language, regarding the tribe-fragment as too inferior to trouble with.
The Hranth disliked the Trazzidovh, who were aloof, warlike people, and kept them in poverty lest they breed and outnumber the milder but numerically superior Hranth. Yet the tribes lived together in identical mud huts, with no perceptible boundary between the Hranth district and that of the Trazzidovh, in a state of perpetual and bloodless civil war.
The Hranth village, Lenoir thought when the alien had finished his recitation, was a house divided. The situation suddenly made the business of settling on this planet a great deal more complicated.
By the time the tale was told, the O’Neill Translator had acquired a fairly good grasp of the language. Communication was reasonably smooth now.
Lenoir said, “So the Hranth chief granted us permission to settle in the neighbourhood without even informing the Trazzidovh of our arrival?”
“That is right. Last night we accidentally learned that beings from the stars had arrived on the world.” (The Trazzidovh word for world, interestingly enough, was hranth. Evidently there had been some borrowing from the Hranth language, in one direction if not both.)
Lenoir eyed the scrawny but somehow dignified old alien and said: “Do the Trazzidovh object to our presence on Hranth?”
“The Trazzidovh are too few to object to anyone’s presence anywhere,” replied the alien simply. “I have come here for a different reason. I wish to offer the services of my people.”
“Services?”
“Yes. We will help you build your homes, plough your fields, bring you water and animals. In return you can give us food, medicine for our sick ones, teach us your ways of farming and living. We wish to learn.”
Lenoir darted a glance at Becker, who did not react. It’s an interesting proposition, the Terran Commander thought. They want to work for us. That’s better than the Hranth, who don’t seem to care a damn what we do.
Aloud he said, “Very well. You can tell your people that any of them who want to work for us can come here tomorrow morning and begin.”
The alien jacknifed into a sinuous genuflection. “I give thanks.”
“And,” Lenoir said, “you can pass the word along to your neighbours the Hranth too. We can use all the help we can get.” Dulizd of the Trazzidovh straightened up abruptly and stared at the Earthman with what seemed to be a reproachful gaze. He said, “I do not think the Hranth will be interested in working for you.” Lenoir shrugged. “We can manage without them.”
The alien left shortly afterwards. Lenoir said to the linguistics team, “Suppose you type out a transcript of this interview and send it across to me right away.”
“Yes, sir,” Becker said.
“And I suggest you de-emphasise the study of the Hranth language and start learning Trazzidovh. I have a feeling we’ll be doing a lot more business with them than with the Hranth.”
He ducked out of the tent and made his way across the clearing to his own headquarters. The sun, G-type and big, was high overhead now and cutting loose; even in his light tropics uniform, Lenoir was sweating. He had little enough fat on his 230-pound frame as it was, but he expected that whatever suet there was would be steamed off him before he completed the job of setting up the Hranth colony.
A job which had suddenly become more appealing, he thought, if more difficult. He liked the little alien who had come to the camp today. Lenoir appreciated the kind of battler who could cling to life no matter how many times he got clubbed across the eyebrows—and the plucky Trazzidovh, beaten and decimated and tricked and still able to approach visitors from space without fear and ask for a job, were the sort of people he could respect.
Of course, he hadn’t heard the other side of the story yet. The Hranth kept to themselves and had little to do with the newly-arrived Earthmen, but perhaps their version of how the Trazzidovh came to share their village was substantially different.
It was.
Three Hranth showed up at the Terran camp late that afternoon, and they had plenty they wanted to say.
The hot young sun had started to drop toward the horizon, and the largest of Hranth’s three pale moons was dimly visible above, when the delegation arrived.
There was no need for the ponderous assistance of the O’Neill translator this time. Mary Delacorte had picked up a working knowledge of the Hranth tongue with almost frightening speed, and she served as interpreter. The Hranth trio stood patiently before Lenoir’s desk, not speaking, merely staring at him placidly like three unusual trees rooted to the floor.
Finally Lenoir said, “Well? Why have you come to see me?” Through the medium of Mary Delacorte, the tallest of the trio responded, “We have learned that you wish to hire the Trazzidovh.”
“That’s right. I told Dulizd to invite your people to work for us too. Building a colony is a big job.”
The alien’s Ups curled unhappily. “We do not want to work for strangers. We are a free people.”
“Of course. Didn’t Dulizd make it clear that we’d pay? We don’t mean to make you slaves!”
The alien bent his arm back, extending his elbows in what Lenoir knew was the equivalent of a negative shake of the head. “The question of pay does not enter into it. To work for another tribe is to become a slave. The Trazzidovh are accustomed to slavery, but we of the Hranth are a free people.”
“Hold it,” Lenoir objected. “Why do you say the Trazzidovh are accustomed to slavery?”
“They have been slaves for centuries. Ever since they came creeping to us, shattered, seeking refuge.”
“They said you invited them.”
“This is the lie they tell. We allowed them to come to us, but we never wanted them. They live among us but they are an inferior people, worthy only of eating slops and living in the ravines.” Lenoir folded his arms. “Perhaps this is so, perhaps not. But you still haven’t answered my first question: why have you come here?”
“To ask you not to employ the Trazzidovh.”
“Why? What business is it of yours?”
“They might develop Earthman ways. They cannot be trusted to live like civilised beings. You might give them weapons to destroy us.”
Smiling, Lenoir said, “We’re not here to give weapons to anybody. We just want to build a colony.”
“Do not build it with the aid of the Trazzidovh,” came the stubborn reply.
“I don’t plan to get mixed up in a private feud,” Lenoir said. “But right now I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t hire them, and so we will.”
“We will prevent it.”
Lenoir didn’t like the tone of that. “How will you do that?”
“We will pray to the Moon-God that your colony is a failure,” said the Hranth haughtily. “This is our way of destroying you. Now we shall go.”
So they’ll pray to the Moon-God, Lenoir thought when the alien delegation had gone. Well well well. I hope we don’t all wither up and die.
To Mary Delacorte he said, “Thanks for the service, honey. Be a good girl and have a transcript of the conversation whipped up for my records, will you?”
“Right away, Commander.”
He smiled at her and stepped to the front door. Men in shorts and deep tans were busily hammering away, building the colony. He had seen this so many times before, on a dozen worlds scattered through the galaxy, as Man staked his claim further and further from the mother world.
The Hranth were going to pray to the Moon-God. If that were the worst problem this colony had to face, everything was going to turn out all right.
He wondered briefly if it were wise to get involved in native frictions. Perhaps not; but it was handy to have a labour force available, and furthermore he suspected the Trazzidovh had been getting a raw deal. Perhaps things could be altered a little in the next few months. After all, the settlers were going to spend the rest of their lives living next door to the aliens.
Not much after dawn the next morning Lenoir woke to discover that the compound was bulging with aliens. He dressed hurriedly and went out to investigate.
The linguistics team was there already. Lieutenant Becker said sleepily, “They got here half an hour ago. Must have started out for the camp in the middle of the night. We counted a hundred and sixty of them.”
“All Trazzidovh?”
Becker nodded. “All of them jabbering away in their language and Hranth interchangeably. I’ve been talking to them in Hranth, and they say they all want to work. The whole tribe’s here except for the babies, the very old men, and three or four girls who stayed behind to take care of them.”
Lenoir proceeded to put the aliens to work. He relayed his orders to them via Mary Delacorte and Becker, who addressed them in Hranth after first explaining that there had not yet been time to learn their native tongue.
The Trazzidovh worked well. They were eager people, go-getters, people with drive and push and ingenuity. By the end of the first day, seeing them working side-by-side with the colonists, Lenoir’s liking for them had ripened into a genuine admiration.
They were pleasant people to work with—co-operative, attentive, energetic. They had all the best qualities of Terrans; they were perhaps the most Earthlike alien race Lenoir had ever encountered. They formed a sharp contrast to the Hranth.
How sharp a contrast it was became apparent during the next several weeks. Intrigued by the interesting tribal relationship, Lenoir sent a team of his anthropologists to make detailed investigations of the single village inhabited by two tribes.
They reported that the Hranth were a lazy people, content to accept the flow of events as they were without rising to change the course of their lives. When the drought came, they suffered; when the storms came, they suffered. In both cases they prayed endlessly, calling, on some mystic deity dwelling simultaneously in each of the three moons to help them.
The Trazzidovh, on the other hand, had built irrigation canals and contoured farms—but the land given them by their hostile cousins was so infertile that even with all their ingenuity they had not been able to increase their numbers. Two hundred of them had fled across the plains centuries before, and two hundred they still numbered.
The two tribes lived together in a state of chilly aloofness. The Hranth regarded their neighbours as vastly inferior; the Trazzidovh, suffering silently, privately had contempt for their flabby-willed cousins, but because they were outnumbered twenty-five to one they accepted their lot stoically—until they learned of the Earthmen and saw in them a chance to climb upward once again.
Day after day Lenoir studied the reports. The Hranth had begun a marathon religious dance. Round the clock they beat drums and chanted and prayed for the swift doom of the Earthmen, but otherwise made no attempt to interfere with the activities of the growing colony.
The Hranth danced and prayed. The Trazzidovh, having already prayed and finished praying, were taking action. Day after day the colony expanded. The Earthmen were picking up smatterings of the Trazzidovh language.
And the Trazzidovh were learning English.
Already bilingual, having been forced by circumstance to learn Hranth and being impelled by pride to retain their own language as well, the Trazzidovh found little difficulty in learning yet another language.
They fattened and grew prosperous, and the Hranth continued to pray. The one-time ragpickers, the hapless refugees of the barren ravine, were thriving thanks to their association with the Earthmen.
And still the Moon-God stayed his hand. Lenoir often wondered how much strain their faith in the Moon-God was going to take.
In time Lenoir left the planet they had called Hranth, and moved on, leaving behind a fairly well established young colony. The schedule called for Lenoir and his men to pick up another outfit of colonists and settle them on the fourth planet of Gamma Cruris. After that, there were other jobs to do, and others beyond those.
Eleven years slipped by, and Lenoir found himself within five light-years of the Gamma Trianguli Australis system, where once he had helped to plant a world. He was on his way back to Earth for his once-in-a-decade vacation; just out of curiosity he stopped off at Gamma Trianguli Australis VII, which was labelled Hranth on his star-charts.
