Collected Short Fiction, page 732
“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. “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 as you might very intelligent animals. Not like intelligent alien people. Maybe you didn’t realize the truth about your attitude, 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.
A SULIDOR entered the bar and began to gather the empties, crouching to keep from grazing the Earth man-scaled ceiling. The chatter of the tourists died away as the fierce-looking creature moved through the room. Gundersen glared 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 Earth man names were dead history now.
He asked Van Beneker finally, “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?”
“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?”
“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 that 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 in mist country?”
“You really want to know?”
“It passes the time to ask questions.”
“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 Royce.”
“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.
“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.”
III
GUNDERSEN awoke early. The hour was just a little after dawn. The green-tinged sun hung low in the sky. He went down to the beach for a swim. A soft south wind was blowing, pushing a few clouds into view. The hully-gully 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, then returned to the shore area.
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. He looked blood-shot and chastened.
“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?”
Good question, Gundersen thought. No one as 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 de-colonialization 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 rebirth of the nildoror.
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. 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. Putting it that way made his return to this planet seem more like an act of will and less like the yielding to an 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?”
“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. “I suppose I can hike it if it’s too much bother. But—”
“I’ll arrange things,” Van Beneker said.
A YOUNG male nildor came in an hour after breakfast to take Gundersen down to the encampment. In the old days Gundersen would simply have climbed on his back—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. “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.”
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 kneeled 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.
They traveled the first kilometer through an ever-thickening series of bitterfruit glades in silence. Gradually it occurred to Gundersen that the nildor was not going to speak unless spoken to.
He opened the conversation by remarking that he had lived for ten years on Belzagor. Srin’gahar said that he knew that—he remembered Gundersen from the era of Company rule. The nature of the nildoror vocal system drained all overtones and implications from the statement. It came out flat, a mooing nasal grunt that did not reveal whether the nildor remembered Gundersen fondly, bitterly, or indifferently.
Gundersen took advantage of the ride to practice his nildororu. So far he had done well—but in an interview with a many-born one he would need all the verbal skill he could muster.
Again and again he asked, “I spoke that the right way, didn’t I? Correct me if I didn’t.”
“You speak very well,” Srin’gahar insisted.
Actually the language was not difficult. It was narrow in range, simple in grammar. Nildororu words did not inflect; they agglutinated, piling syllable atop syllable so that a complex concept like “the former grazing-ground of my mate’s clan” emerged as a long grumbled growl of sound unbroken even by a brief pause. Nildoror speech was slow and stolid, requiring broad rolling tones that an Earth man had to launch from the roots of his nostrils. When he shifted from nildororu to any Earth language, Gundersen felt sudden exhilaration, like a circus acrobat transported instantaneously from Jupiter to Mercury.
Srin’gahar was taking a nildoror path, not one of the old Company roads. Gundersen had to duck low-hanging branches now and then, and once a quivering nicalanga vine descended to catch him around the throat in a gentle, cool, quickly broken, yet frightening embrace. When he looked back he saw the vine tumescent with excitement, red and swollen from the thrill of caressing an Earthman’s skin. Minutes later they crossed a Company road. It was now a fading track in the jungle, nearly overgrown. In another year it would be gone.
The nildor’s vast body demanded frequent feedings. Every half hour they halted and Gundersen dismounted while Srin’gahar munched shrubbery. The sight fed Gundersen’s latent prejudices, troubling him so much that he tried not to look. In a wholly elephantine way the nildor uncoiled his trunk and ripped leafy branches from the low trees. The great mouth sagged open and in the bundle went. With his triple tusks Srin’gahar shredded slabs of bark for dessert. The big jaws moved back and forth tirelessly, grinding, milling.
We are no prettier when we eat . . .
But the demon within Gundersen counterpointed his tolerance with a shrill insistence that his companion was indeed a true beast.
Srin’gahar was not an outgoing type. When Gundersen said nothing the nildor said nothing. When Gundersen asked a question, the nildor replied politely but minimally. The strain of sustaining such a broken-backed conversation drained Gundersen and he allowed long minutes to pass in silence. He had no idea of where he was and could not even tell if they were going in the right direction. The trees far overhead met in a closed canopy, screening the sun.
After the nildor had stopped for his third meal of the morning, though, he gave Gundersen an unexpected clue to-their location. Cutting away from the path in a sudden diagonal, the nildor trotted a short distance into the most dense part of the forest, battering down the vegetation, and came to a halt in front of what once had been a Company building—a glossy dome now dimmed by time and swathed in vines.
“Do you know this house, Edmund of the first birth?”
“What was it?”
“The serpent station. Where you gathered the juices.”
The past abruptly loomed like a toppling cliff above Gundersen. Jagged hallucinatory images plucked at his mind. Ancient scandals, long forgotten or suppressed, sprang to new life. This was the serpent station, this ruin? This was that place of private sins, the scene of so many falls from grace?
Gundersen slipped from the nildor’s back and walked haltingly toward the building. He stood at the door a moment, looking in. Yes, there were the hanging tubes and pipes, the runnels through which the extracted venom had flowed. All the processing equipment was still in place, half devoured by warmth and moisture and neglect. There was the entrance for the jungle serpents, drawn by alien music they could not resist—and there they were milked of their venom.
Gundersen glanced back at Srin’gahar. The spines of the nildor’s crest were distended. A mark of tension. A mark, perhaps, of shared shame. The nildoror, too, had memories of this building. Gundersen stepped into the station, pushing back the partly open door. It split apart from its moorings as he did so, and a musical tremor ran—whang whang whang—through the whole of the spherical building, dying away to a blurred feeble tinkle.
GUNDERSEN heard Jeff Kurtz’ guitar again. The years fell away and he was once more a newcomer on Holman’s World and about to begin his first stint at the serpent station, now assigned to that place that was the focus of so much gossip. Yes. Out of the shroud of memory came the image of Kurtz. There he was, standing just inside the station door, impossibly tall, the tallest man Gundersen had ever seen, with a great pale-domed, hairless head and enormous dark eyes socketed in prehistoric-looking bony ridges. A bright-toothed smile ran at least a kilometer’s span from cheek to cheek.
