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Title: Blunder enlightening
Author: Dave Dryfoos
Illustrator: Leslie Ross
Release date: August 31, 2026 [eBook #79483]
Language: English
Original publication: Holyoke, Mass.: Columbia Publications, Inc., 1952
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79483
Credits: Tom Trussel - Stories of Futures Past (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLUNDER ENLIGHTENING ***
Blunder Enlightening
by Dave Dryfoos
Novelet of Tomorrow’s Frontier
=On this world in the system of Altair, Sam Sarno and his wife
encountered something humans had never dreamed of. They were prepared
for alien life that might be hostile, or fearful, or any variation in
between. But the beings here simply and flatly ignored man....=
Trudging homeward over the rolling prairie of planet Altair 3, bright
Altair itself sinking swiftly behind him, his shadow lengthening in
front, Sam Sarno let his head hang, his shoulders sag, his feet stumble
heedlessly among the mossy tussocks. He was tall, blond, husky, and
rugged-looking; yet he walked like an old man. He knew it--and for the
moment didn’t care.
He’d spent the day ranging through a native garden now out of sight to
the rear, clambering up and down a high granite cliff that overhung the
garden. The exertion hadn’t exhausted him--he was young and athletic.
The planet Altair 3 was strange and virgin to human beings. Unknown,
unrecognizable dangers might be hiding behind the nearest bush, lurking
under the ground, infesting every breath of air. Sam Sarno had been
especially selected and trained for duty in such places, was mentally
and temperamentally prepared for the strain. Beyond routine precautions
drilled into him till they were second nature, he took no heed of
hazards.
It was defeat that bowed his shoulders--the complete, utter,
incomprehensible failure that his excursion had been. He felt weighted
down by shame, crushed under the need to admit once again that he’d
gotten exactly nowhere in his efforts to contact the natives.
He didn’t know what to tell Sally, his wife; he couldn’t understand
_why_ he’d failed. The situation was clear-cut; the prescribed methods
of dealing with it, infallible. The rock-paintings on the cliff behind
him proved the existence of a culture here, and Sam had been trained to
make swift, smooth contact with cultured nonterrestrials.
Those paintings were really something, Sam admitted to himself. Seen
from the ship that had brought him, they’d seemed grander than any
works of graphic art on Earth; and a closer view confirmed their
merit. Huge, they were: colorful, abstract, harmonious--obviously the
creations of intelligent beings.
Because it is comparatively easy to see through an atmosphere from the
top down he’d been able to observe the painters at work, even while
still aboard ship. They were odd-looking creatures: small, dingy,
grotesque--but cultured, just the same.
It was then that he and Sally had been given the job of contacting
these painters; marooned here to live with them for six months: ordered
to make an anthropological study of their culture before announcement
of the planet’s discovery led to an influx of traders who’d bring in
new products and methods, missionaries who’d bring new ideas.
Sam remembered how honored he and Sally had felt when they got their
assignment. It was their first major one; and, as he had to admit, easy
as such jobs go--especially since neither weapons nor factories to make
them had been seen from the ship.
That is--it _should_ have been easy. Altair 3 was in many ways
comparable to Earth. Size, mass, radiation received, length of day,
chemical composition--all were similar. The Universe having been
created all at one time, evolutionary forces must have operated on
Altair 3 about as long as on Earth--should have gone about as far.
By rights, a terrestrial man should have much in common with these
natives; contact ought to have been quickly established.
But it hadn’t been. Today, as on all previous days, the natives had
completely ignored him; Sam couldn’t see why.
* * * * *
Of course, the painters, now--and there’d the been three of them
again today, at work on widely-separated ledges along the granite
escarpment--the painters might possibly have resented his intrusion
while they labored. They’d been busy enough, clinging there high above
the ground, hanging on with all four feet, spreading with the fingers
of both hands the pigments held in gourds suspended from prehensile
tails.
They looked like unintelligent bugs, with their oily, lozenge-shaped
exoskeletal bodies, only three feet long. Still, they were
artists, beyond any doubt. They might be not only intelligent, but
temperamental; maybe that was why they’d seemed to look right through
him after he’d risked his neck climbing the cliff to get near.
They had eyes, though; the nature of their paintings made it clear
that they saw the same things Sam did. And anyway there was no such
excuse for that other native--the one who’d been standing in the
garden below the cliff. Just standing around, it had been, rubbing its
three-thumbed, five-fingered hands together, not doing a thing. Yet
that one had ignored him, too.
The whole mess was completely frustrating. Sam almost wished the
natives had been hostile, or thievish, or frightened; then he’d have
known what to do. But never, on any of the sixteen extra-solar planets
previously visited, had terrestrial man been simply ignored; it was
unbelievable. And Sam would be blamed for it.
No use dwelling on that, though: no use letting Sally see how dejected
he felt. Topping the last rise, Sam consciously squared his shoulders,
even broke into a shambling trot for the last hundred yards to his
prefabricated shack.
Sally waited at the door, dark hair carefully brushed, disposable dress
new, full lips brightly tinted. These past few months she’d seemed to
grow even prettier than she’d been before.
But her eyes were heavy. Sam often felt--and often said--that his
wife’s blue eyes were so big, anybody could see through them and tell
what she was thinking. Right now, he was sure, she shared his sense of
failure.
He kissed her without a word. Then he admitted, “No luck, hon....
Anything new here?”
“Ants,” she said, closing the door behind him. “Not real ones, but
something like. I followed their trail back to the nest. It was like an
anthill, more or less. Social. Cooperative. They seem to like sweets
and dislike water. Anyhow, I swept them out and set the table-legs in
water filled cans.”
“Lifted the table? In your condition?”
“Exercise is good for expectant mothers,” Sally said, somewhat
mockingly. “I can show you where it says in the book.”
Suddenly she cast herself heavily to the cot. “But,” she said. “But,
Sam--_worry_ isn’t good for me....”
“No.” Sam walked up and down, accurately gauging his stride to the tiny
room. “No, worry isn’t good, and you know that; so not only do you
worry, but you worry about worrying. And I worry about your worrying
about your worrying. Where does it get us?”
“No place,” Sally said flatly. “That’s why I’ve quit; I’m through
worrying about our mission here, our careers, or anything else except
our baby.”
* * * * *
Sam tried not to show how disturbed he felt. “That’s normal, dear,”
he said. “They probably expected this would happen to you; that’s why
they’re bringing the ship back in another four months. I’ll attend to
everything, meanwhile--you can just take it easy.”
“No, Sam. You don’t know what it’s like, to be left alone all day.
Suppose those ant-things had been poisonous?”
“But they weren’t! You’re borrowing trouble, Sal.”
“You mean you don’t care what happens to me?”
“Of course I care, dammit! That’s why I’m working so hard! You know
perfectly well that the discovery of this planet will be announced
before the ship comes back here. Traders and explorers will be here
long before substitutes can be found for us. If we don’t do the job
we were sent here to do, nobody will--and maybe you don’t think we
won’t be fired for that! I’d be lucky to wind up in a dull, routine,
underpaid rut as a terrestrial school-teacher, or something!”
“I don’t care! I don’t want to be left alone here ever again! And I
can’t go walking all over the place, either!”
No, of course she couldn’t.... And it was, Sam thought, normal for
an expectant mother to make unexpected demands. Should he humor
her till the storm blew over? Or put his foot down now? He tried a
compromise--reasonableness.
“If we don’t make friends with the natives,” he said, keeping his voice
low and earnest, “they may decide we’re enemies.”
“Maybe they already have,” Sally burst out; “maybe their ignoring
tactics are just a blind, while they gather forces. Maybe--maybe if you
knew what it’s like, puttering around here all alone every day, you’d
stay home once in a while.”
She began to sob, and Sam tried to comfort her, sitting beside her
on the cot, stroking and kissing her, murmuring reassurance into her
pretty pink ear.
But tenderness was not enough. The flow of tears would not stop till
after he found himself promising to stay home and let the natives go
hang.
“And I mean it!” Sally insisted, sitting up and pushing damp hair out
of her eyes. “Let them come to us, if they’re interested.”
“Sure, Sal. Whatever you say,” Sam answered. Anything to make her quit
crying. Anything! “Tell you what,” he added. “I’ll build a fire outside
and cook up a barbecue. How’d you like that, for a change?”
“Don’t go too far away after fuel,” Sally said dully.
He didn’t. He made a point of bustling into the shack every few minutes
on some inconsequential errand, loudly whistling and singing as he
trotted around.
But Sally was having none of his elaborate good cheer. She lay on the
cot and stared at the ceiling, movingly pale and listless.
2
Sam could think of nothing to do but keep busy. Besides, the day’s
activity had given him an appetite.
He started a fire, using a chopped-up crate as kindling, and threw
on some dried-out local vegetation to make coals. From the cases of
food, piled next to the shack for want of space within it, he dug out
a tinned ham that had been saved for a holiday treat. Then, while the
fire burned down, he concocted a spicy barbecue sauce and got the side
dishes ready. When finally prepared, dinner included soup made of
local water and a dried mix; broiled dehydrated potatoes; ham, and the
remains of a prepared-mix cake Sally’d made the day before. Sam found
he’d forgotten the vegetables Sally needed, and shamefacedly made up
for them by giving her an extra vitamin-pill.
Even without vegetables, the meal was a feast, compared to their usual
fare; to top off the occasion, Sam had put decorative candles on their
small folding table, and set the places nicely. But Sally ate only
enough to be polite, and then, complaining of a headache, went right to
bed.
Her apathy was infectious. Sam washed the utensils in a bucket at
the nearby creek, sloppily, and dried them over the fire to kill any
strange organism picked up in the washing. Chores finished, he didn’t
know what to do with himself. The meal, he felt, had been as much of a
failure as the rest of the day’s efforts.
For lack of anything better to do, he got out a flashlight, and in
its brightness extracted a chocolate-flavored ration-bar from an
opened case. Then, after unwrapping it, he found he had no appetite
for chocolate, after all. He stuffed the bar uneaten into a pocket of
his jacket and wandered aimlessly up and down in front of the shack,
staring at the strange constellations overhead, and testing how far
he could see along the moonless landscape under the faintly-glowing
permanent aurora, so much brighter here than on Earth.
Back toward the granite cliff, whose top, a good mile off, showed dark
and jagged above the plain, was a moving shape; a native. Sam had never
before seen one at night, and watched closely to determine if it were
approaching the house.
It wasn’t, he decided; it was circling the place. A sign of curiosity,
he thought vaguely, and felt faint stirrings of hope. But soon the
buglike figure disappeared, and Sam lost interest. He flung a few more
sticks onto the fire, and groped his way to bed.
He fell asleep as soon as his ear nestled into the pillow. He awakened
feeling he’d never slept at all.
* * * * *
Sally was shrieking at him. “Sam!” she cried, shaking his shoulder.
“Sam! Get up! Sam! The house is burning!”
Dazedly climbing from bed, stumbling out the door in bare feet and
pajama-bottom, Sam felt again that congealing sense of failure.
Everything was going wrong--even the barbecue he’d staged to amuse
Sally.
He discovered the fault wasn’t his, this time. The cooking fire was
down to embers--it was the stack of crated supplies that burned so
luridly and smokily. A trail of smoldering moss led from the barbecue
pit to the pile of cased goods, and from there he ran to see--went out
fifty feet from the house. At the end of the singed trail lay a native,
his oily surface ablaze, his body shrivelling as it writhed.
The native made no sound, but his searing agony was plain to see. Sam
dashed for the bucket, dumped the dishes from it, and raced to the
creek. Three times he flung a bucketful of water over the native’s
carapace before the flames were smothered. By then it was too late; the
creature’s life had guttered out.
And the priceless supplies were going! The pile was afire along its
outer border, as if the native had tried to scrape out the flames he
bore on projecting cases.
And Sally? She was running around barefoot, carrying things from the
threatened house.
“Get some clothes on!” Sam shouted. “And don’t lift anything heavy!”
* * * * *
He dug into the piled goods like a small insect boring through sand,
carrying the innermost cases away from the shack’s wall where they’d
been stacked. Then, with the hopelessly inadequate bucket, he wet down
roof and walls, trying to keep them from burning, putting out the
sparks that conspired to leave him homeless.
Time itself seemed to be caught up in the blaze. Sam never knew how
often he rushed back and forth from house to creek, flinging water,
carrying crates, filling the bucket, glancing occasionally at Sally,
then rushing to the creek again for still more water.
* * * * *
Altair was half way between horizon and zenith before the last whisp of
smoke had died down. The shack was intact, but its salvaged contents
lay strewn over an acre of landscape. Sam was burned, bruised,
blistered, and exhausted. And Sally was once more on the verge of
hysteria.
“What do we do now?” she wailed.
He kissed her. “Well, that fire’s out,” he said, smiling wanly. “I
guess the first thing we do is light another--in the stove.”
Sally made breakfast as if under opiates, while Sam washed, dressed,
and hauled back to the shack a few of the things she’d just carried
out. It was a dismal meal, eaten in silence. As soon as it was over,
Sally got sick. Sam put her to bed, and spent the day trying to bring
order out of the chaos that surrounded him.
Disposing of the corpse--simple enough, so far as the work of it
went--gave him the most trouble. Sam buried his hopes with those
charred remains. On Altair 3 as elsewhere, he decided gloomily, there
must certainly be taboos concerning the dead. In the light of native
customs that he’d so miserably failed to learn, he was very probably
mishandling the body. And even if he weren’t, the natives most likely
considered him a murderer....
As he repiled crates, carried personal effects back into the shack,
fixed lunch, cleaned, swept, and tried to make a few essential repairs,
Sam kept looking over his shoulder. It was, he told himself derisively,
as if he had a nervous tic.
But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t help wondering when the natives would
descend upon him, to demand their comrade’s body and take revenge for
his death.
* * * * *
They didn’t come all that day. When, having made a light supper and
cleaned up after it, Sam felt free to crawl between the sheetless
blankets on the cot, he had decided these bug-things must be trying to
ignore death itself.
The thought gave him no pleasure. He’d promised Sally not to seek out
the natives; he knew that if he did so, he might well be punished as a
criminal. But, lying there in the darkness, Sam found himself face to
face with a fact he’d been avoiding all day.
He absolutely must get hold of those creatures, now. He’d lost too
much food in the fire, was no longer self-sufficient enough to get by
without their help. Sally would starve if he continued to fail.
“But you promised!” she said at breakfast next morning. “Besides,
they’ll probably kill you!”
“I don’t believe so,” he hedged. “I’ll bet they have no enemies of any
kind, and don’t even know what an enemy is. We’ve never seen a single
predator here, remember; there probably aren’t any. I suspect that all
the local animals are vegetarians--all we’ve seen eating were. And
with the native population as low as it seems to be, I doubt they have
to compete for food, either. Most likely the lack of both enemies and
competitors is what makes these painters ignore us--we’re just nothing
for them to worry about.”
“They’re probably worried now,” Sally objected. “One of them died here,
and the way he died makes me think he didn’t know what fire is. So they
can’t be very far advanced--not worth investigating, Sam.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he argued. “They seem to be highly inflammable--on
account of their oily surface, most likely. Man could experiment with
fire because a minor mistake meant only a minor burn but maybe these
creatures can’t touch fire without being burned to death.”
“They must be awfully stupid, then, because one of them did touch fire.”
“He was a painter, maybe. At least, he almost certainly appreciated
form and color. Flame and coals are beautiful, and probably were
unfamiliar to him. So he picked up a pretty bauble that was a hot
coal--”
“You promised! You could at least try to find some local foodstuffs
without wandering off after natives. They won’t help you. And if they
never cook anything, they probably have a lot of foods we couldn’t eat.”
“All right,” Sam said resignedly. “I’ll do it your way. But I’ve got
to get out and around. I’ll try to see what the local animals eat
that looks possible for us, maybe find some berries I can experiment
with....”
He pushed back his folding chair, anxious to get away before Sally
pursued his plans to their ultimate implications, saw the hazards of
his simple scheme.
On the one hand, he remembered that most things poisonous to
terrestrial man were also poisonous to other terrestrial life-forms.
Sprays and baits harmless to man and fatal to vermin, for instance were
few, and artificially developed. In theory, he might be able to eat
what other animals ate.
But if this were a vegetarian world, as he suspected, then toxic
secretions would have special survival-value for plants provided with
them. There were probable plenty of poisonous plants here. Plenty! He’d
have to be awfully careful.
“I don’t want you horsing around, Sal,” he said from the doorway. “I’ll
do all the experimenting, understand? And from now on, I’ll fix my own
meals--the remaining supplies are for you.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Well, you’ve got more than just yourself to be fair to.”
“Oh, Sam!” She rose and clung to him. “Don’t be gone long, darling.”
“Oh, no,” he assured her. “I’m just out for a little walk.” And to
prove it, he left without the belt holding his canteen and emergency
rations.
3
He missed the weight around his hips. Passing the creek, he felt
suddenly thirsty, yet hesitated to drink water that he’d never tasted
undistilled. No use experimenting with it, he decided; the still was
undamaged.
But thirst grew as he wandered on. He knew it was psychological--a
trick of his vagrant mind. He put a pebble under his tongue.
Without conscious thought, he’d started in his usual direction, toward
the garden and the cliff behind it. Carefully he observed the small
animal-forms that crawled, wriggled, ran, and flew out from under his
feet. None of them seemed to be eating at the moment.
Well, if he couldn’t eat what they ate, he could possibly eat some of
_them_. American Indians, he remembered, had liked grasshoppers; he was
himself fond of shrimp.
But if there were no predators here, it might be a mistake for him to
act like one--to make himself feared. Not, of course, that the natives’
reactions would matter. He had no intention of getting in touch with
them, Sam reminded himself.
Certainly not! He’d only chosen this particular direction to walk in
because he knew the way. He was going to the garden as a matter of
course, because its obviously artificial plantings might be crops.
There wasn’t the slightest chance, Sam emphatically told himself, that
he’d break his promise to Sally.
But when he got to the garden, Sam could clearly see, as he’d seen
many times before, that it wasn’t a farm; the several acres contained
too wide a variety of plants. The place was, more like a horticultural
museum than a food-growing area. Whether the plants were of types
selected for food or for ornamentation, he couldn’t tell. They were
all sizes and shapes--lichens as big as pines, shrubs that looked like
miniature hardwoods, flowering plants, and some that seemed downright
ugly.
He looked among them for fruits and berries, handicapped by the fact he
was not a biologist but a sociologist--remorseful because he’d never
before searched out local food-resources. Painstaking effort redoubled
his thirst--made him hungry despite the short time since breakfast.
And, as Altair rose higher and higher, his appetite acquired a genuine
excuse for its clamor.
Regularly, every fifteen minutes, he told himself he must go back
before Sally got upset again, just as regularly, he assured himself
that in another fifteen minutes he’d find manna.
Under the influence of hunger, his sense of smell became more active.
He sniffed the wind like a hound--and found a message in it. There was
an odor borne on the light breeze--something he couldn’t place, though
it seemed familiar. Something pleasant; he decided to trace the scent
to its source.
* * * * *
The source was a pool in a corner of the garden--slightly scummy,
bubbling occasionally, clouded, and brownish. The tall vegetation
that grew all around had concealed it from his earlier, more casual
inspections.
Leaning over the pool, he recognized its odor, or thought he did. It
was yeasty, like a bakery. Or--that was it--a brewery! Something was
fermenting here.
He felt an overwhelming desire to taste the product of that
fermentation. Thirst, in the back of his mind for hours, now, became a
sharpnailed hand, clawing at his throat. Alcohol was a disinfectant, he
assured himself; this would be safer to drink than water.
Kneeling, he thrust a hand beneath the scummy surface, finding the
fluid warmish, slightly viscid. He cupped his fingers and drew out a
small amount. It smelled good.
His hand didn’t cool very rapidly in the air--not the way it would have
if the fluid had been high proof. There couldn’t be enough alcohol in
it to hurt him, he decided; he thrust out his tongue and licked up the
few drops that had not yet dribbled through his fingers.
They tasted sweetish, as if the fluid were high in sugar content.
Perhaps it might give him a little quick energy, stave off hunger as
well as thirst. He cupped both hands together, plunged them into the
pool, drew out a fairish quantity, and gulped it down.
The drink gave him no pleasure. A sense of guilt had touched his mind
before the fluid touched his stomach. He became fully aware that this
was an unnecessary risk--mentally acknowledged that, for Sally’s sake,
he should have been more careful. Furtively he rose to leave.
As he turned away, his attention was caught by a rapid motion seen in
the corner of one eye. From halfway around the pool, a native waved its
arms vigorously and looked straight at him.
It could have been the one he’d seen in the garden yesterday, Sam
thought, but he wasn’t sure; all the creatures looked alike to him.
Certainly this one displayed excitement, though; it seemed to be waving
him away from the pool!
Well, to hell with that, Sam decided. This stuff seemed to be
harmless--refreshing, in fact. Besides, if the beast wanted to
communicate with him, it could damned well go jump. He’d promised
Sally, and by golly he wasn’t going to have anything to do with them;
defiantly, he took another drink.
By the time he’d risen and wiped his lips on his sleeve and his hands
on his pants, the native was upon him, showing unmistakable agitation
in the urgent way it waved its arms. Impulsively, Sam thrust out his
hand, and mockingly said, “How do you do?”
There was no audible reply. The native stopped waving its arms, took
Sam’s warm damp hand in a cooler, oily, hard one, and drew him away
from the pool, scuttling backward. Mildly repelled, but not frightened,
Sam disengaged his hand and followed freely.
He stumbled, though, and had to be helped by a renewed grip of that
shell-coated hand. On his empty stomach the alcoholic fluid churned and
burned; he was getting drunk, knew it, and was very much amused at the
idea.
Sam permitted himself to be drawn into the shade of some trees. Then,
suddenly obstinate, he balked. Instead of going further, he lay down,
giggling.
Dizziness stopped the giggles. Sam felt dissociated from himself, as if
floating free in space, whirling around and around like a planet in its
orbit, except that he was sun as well as planet. The trees around him
circled nauseatingly. The native wavered as if seen through heated air.
Sam shut out these sights by closing his eyes. Almost immediately, he
was whirled off into sleep.
* * * * *
Evening’s chill awakened him. His head ached. He was stiff from lying
on the ground; he was dizzy; his stomach was upset. For a few seconds
he not only forgot where he was, but feared to open his eyes and find
out.
When he did open them, it was to squint at a gyrating world only now
slowing down from the rotation that had sent him to sleep. As the speed
decreased, he made out the sheltering vegetation, and what looked like
several natives.
He’d never before seen several natives in a group. He thought he was
deluded, and closed his eyes to shut out the hallucination. Then,
cautiously, he opened just one eye, and looked again.
No, by golly! He wasn’t suffering from double vision! Six unblinking
natives stared in a row!
Carefully, Sam moved each aching limb in turn. They felt battered,
but more or less whole. And they were unrestrained. He rolled over to
his stomach and got slowly to hands and knees. The exertion made him
violently ill.
It took five minutes to get to his feet. The natives offered helping
hands, but he rudely brushed them off. He wished they’d do something he
could blame them for; it would be nice to say this was all their fault.
But it wasn’t. He knew exactly where he was, now--and how he’d gotten
there. He promised not to leave Sally alone, and had left her alone.
He’d promised not to have anything to do with the natives, and had
displayed obvious weakness before them. He had come out to find food,
and had gotten drunk. He was, Sam felt, the lowest form of life that
had ever fouled up an important assignment.
He must get control of himself. Those beasts were probably plotting
some fiendish revenge for the one that had burned. And he could hardly
stand without falling.
Maybe another drink would fix him, Sam felt vaguely. Sure--hair of the
dog!
Ignorant of the proper direction to take, he staggered off in search of
the pool, the natives following in a silent semicircle.
He found it. Guided by odor or submerged memory, he stumbled through
the growth around it, flopped to his knees, blew some of the scum away,
rested his hands on the bottom, and drank.
A native tugging at his jacket made him stop. He looked around, and saw
that the other five were waving their arms frantically.
Sam didn’t care. The natives seemed suddenly ridiculous, like a team of
cheer-leaders from some school for defectives. He was going to settle
his--urps!--settle his stomach. And then go home, s’help him.
But after he’d had another drink, and had gotten clumsily to his feet
with only the native who clung to his jacket keeping him from falling
into the pool, Sam decided he couldn’t go home yet, though it was
almost dark. Nope! Dark or not, gotta have something to show for this
little excursion. Gotta bring home some food!
Since the natives were gesturers, he gestured, making all the signs
he could think of for eating, food, hunger, and weakness. They seemed
mainly interested in edging him away from the pool. He gave up
signalling, therefore, and plucked a lettuce-like leaf from a plant
beside him, opening his mouth to eat it.
* * * * *
Instantly the natives closed in, tearing the leaf from his grasp,
forcing him to wipe his hand on the ground. They had little regard
for his thin skin--scraped some of it off on the twigs and pebbles
underfoot, made it to blister.
Sam didn’t like that. He lurched away from them down the aisle of
plantings to a bush with small berries on it, like pepper-corns. He
plucked a few, and tried to eat them.
Again his find was knocked from his hand. This time, though, the
natives didn’t damage his skin. They’d better not! Sam told himself
fiercely.
He tried another plant, tearing a piece of soft and rubbery bark from a
tree nearby. Once more the material was taken violently from him; this
time three of the natives grasped his clothing, trying to pull him in a
specific direction.
Out of the garden, he thought. Away from their precious plants. But
they had plenty--they could afford to share them!
“No, you don’t!” he muttered, and savagely beat them off.
What happened next was never clear to him. All six natives seemed to
close in as if by signal. With horny hands they pounded at his legs.
The more he struggled, the harder they hit. Finally, he tripped. Then,
with a single sharp blow to the base of his skull, one of them knocked
him out.
* * * * *
He came to with the sensation of being carried--horizontally, but face
downward; his nose kept bumping something.
Opening his eyes, he found that his nose was bumping the back of a
native. He was being carried feet first through the darkness on two of
them, while others grasped him with painfully clawlike hands. He felt
awful.
An overwhelming desire to escape surged through him. But it had been,
he recalled, another overwhelming desire--to drink from that loathsome
pool--that had gotten him into this mess. He lay still, letting
consciousness return slowly but fully. He was almost sober, now; sober
enough to feel both sick and sorry.
And helpless. He’d fought these natives once, and lost. Might lose
again. And if he escaped, would they be far behind? He had no place to
run but the shack, no desire to lead a group of irate captors to Sally.
Besides, it was dark, now. He couldn’t see where he was going. And it
wouldn’t help anything if he found out. He decided to let them revenge
themselves, satisfy themselves. As far from the shack as possible. It
was the least he could do....
He was feeling quite heroic when they set him on his feet, but that
pleasant sensation evaporated when he saw why he’d been released.
They wanted him to open the door of his shack. Obviously they had seen
him pass through here, but apparently they didn’t know how to work the
latch. He realized they must long have been aware that he’d regained
consciousness.
What could he say to Sally? Sam wondered frantically. What could he do
to avoid shocking her?
He’d never before been brought home drunk. Searching his mind for the
right way to greet her, he called, “Company, honey,” and waited for her
to answer.
4
Sally held a lamp in his eyes as she swung open the door. “Good grief!”
she gasped. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he assured her, grinning as he swayed.
She moved closer, as if to kiss him, then sniffed suspiciously. She
stepped back, and only then noticed the natives standing behind him in
expressionless array. She nearly dropped the lamp.
“’S all right, Sal,” Sam said, shuffling his feet. “These boys are
friends of mine.” He was aware of thickness in his speech, but couldn’t
seem to control it.
The impediment served a purpose, he observed. Sally’s initial shock
gave way to indignation; she was much too angry to be frightened.
“Your friends can put you to bed,” she sniffed, tossing her head. “I
certainly won’t.”
She stood aside. Without help, Sam managed to cross the threshold and
sit on the cot. The natives stared through the doorway. Sam got up,
took the hand of one, and led it within. The others followed, and he
closed the door.
The natives huddled in the center of the floor, filling the room. Sally
shrank into a corner by the stove.
“My own dear Trojan Horse,” she jeered. “Wooden head and all.”
“This is what we were sent here to do, Sal,” Sam said reasonably.
“It’s what you promised not to do,” she reminded him.
“I couldn’t help it,” he said. “They came to me. A good thing, too,
come to think of it; I was trying to eat things in the garden, see?
They wouldn’t let me, and now I’m getting the idea they’ve got nothing
but poisonous plants there, probably to teach their young. Sure! That
would explain why they got so excited. And see, I’ve got a little
skin-allergy on my hand, like poison ivy.”
He held it up for her inspection.
A look of sympathy passed swiftly over her face, and was as swiftly
repressed. “Do they have a bar up there, too?” she asked, much too
sweetly.
“No. But alcohol is a poison, of sorts. So they have a fermenting pool
up there. I didn’t drink very much, but I haven’t had anything to eat
all day--”
“I’m not going to cook for you now,” Sally stated. “We can’t feed them
all, and you can’t just eat while they watch; you’ll have to wait till
they go.”
Resignedly, knowing she was right, Sam thrust his dirty hands into his
jacket pockets. He felt something, fingered it, and recognized the
chocolate bar. Just the thing!
Clumsily Sam took out the bar, wiped a few crumbs of dirt from it, and
with his pocket-knife cut it into eight small but more or less equal
parts. The natives watched fixedly.
He gave a piece to each of them, one to Sally, and kept one. The
natives held theirs and watched him.
“This is to eat,” he said, and thrust his entire portion into his
mouth. Sally did likewise. Hesitantly, looking from them to one
another, the natives nibbled with chitinous mandibles at the small
brown squares. One by one, their bits of chocolate disappeared.
“Sally, I think they like the stuff,” Sam said, pleased with himself;
“I think they want some more.”
“Well, they can’t have any,” Sally said; “we can’t spare it.”
“All right.” Turning to the silent natives, Sam displayed empty hands,
turned his pockets inside out, and shrugged. “No more,” he said, and
shook his head. “And I’m still hungry, too.” He rubbed his belly, and
pulled tight his jacket’s belt to show emptiness beneath it.
The natives looked at one another and seemed to commune. They turned to
the door. Stepping carefully between them, Sam opened it. They marched
out single file and disappeared into the night.
“Rude, aren’t they,” Sally said, grinning relievedly in spite of
herself. “When the food runs out, they go home.”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “All day I’ve been trying to show them we
need something to eat. Maybe they have the idea, finally; maybe they’re
going to get us something.”
“Yes?” Sally was staring out the shack’s rear window, her face shocked
and pale. “Look! They’ve found the grave!”
They had indeed. Under the dim auroral light they’d already begun to
burrow through the soft, recently spaded dirt for the body of their
comrade. Sam watched with bated breath as they recovered the corpse,
loaded it onto the back of one of their number, and bore it away out of
sight along the dark and rolling plain.
He reached out to grip his wife’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a
fool and I know it.”
“Maybe they do, too,” Sally said thoughtfully. She was silent a moment,
her forehead puckered in thought.
“You know,” she went on, “seriously, Sam, that might be the key to
this whole nightmare. I mean, look--the natives know about these
ant-like social life-forms that live here. Those insect-things have a
complicated social life, but all on the basis of built-in drives. They
just react to endocrine secretions and the like, and don’t think the
way we do. Their patterns of action are complicated, but unchanging.
“Maybe the natives ignored us because they thought we were just pair
of strange animals, of no interest since we’re neither enemies nor
competitors--you yourself said they have none--going through our
complicated, instinctive, unrationalized routine. Today, though, you
proved them wrong by going out and acting foolishly, in a way that
obviously was not built-in.”
“You’re sweet,” Sam said, “to try making yourself believe that
everything I’ve done was for the best. But--”
“I’m not saying that! I’m only saying that rational beings are the ones
with wills instead of drives; and it’s will and not instinct that gave
you the capacity to go out and make a fool of yourself today. Animals
never do so good a job. For instance, they usually leave alcohol alone
unless first driven neurotic by artificial means--that’s been proved
time and again, experimentally. Animals aren’t even likely to play
around with something that’s none of their business--the way the native
did last night trying to steal a piece of our fire. Maybe its mates
recognize that we share its capacity for error.”
_Another thing that rational beings have_, Sam reflected briefly, _is a
conscience_. He wondered if it was his feeling of guilt that kept him
from accepting Sally’s theory. Still ... no use eliminating all her
hopes....
* * * * *
He said, slowly, “I guess every animal on this planet--except a very
young one--knows better than to drink from that pool. And I guess it
might be called a clincher that I got drunk, slept, woke, was sick--and
then went right back for another drink.”
“Oh, you did!” Sally sounded genuinely shocked. “Well, I hope you feel
as bad as you look!”
“Worse,” Sam assured her. He got up, slopped water into a basin, and
washed, avoiding her troubled eyes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if she’d figured everything right, he told himself.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the natives came back with a large supply of
tasty and nourishing food.
But what if they’d gone for their soldiers, or their weapons?
He didn’t want Sally to think of that. “You might as well turn in,” he
said with elaborate casualness. “You’ve had a bad day. I’ll sit up a
while, in case our guests come back. Have to be polite, you know.”
“I’ll sit up with you,” Sally said sharply. “You might need me to
reload.”
Sam stared at her, wide-eyed and not wholly grateful that his mind had
been so clearly read. But resentment gave way to affection. He kissed
her, laid out his guns, and spent the rest of the night hauling in
crated supplies and setting them around the interior walls to serve as
breastworks.
* * * * *
It was dawn, when the natives returned. By then, Sally was dozing in
a chair, and Sam, the cabin crowded to the roof, had stopped work to
thoughtfully watch Altair climb the sky in a blaze of scarlet and gold,
painting the granite cliff with colors more striking than any that
rational beings had ever devised.
“They’re coming,” he warned softly.
Sally awoke, and rose swiftly but stiffly. “How close shall we let them
come?” she asked. Sam hesitated then squeezed her hand as he gave her a
gun. “When you said they might understand us, didn’t you mean it?” he
asked gently.
“I meant they _might_--yes.”
“Well, I’m going out to meet them,” Sam said.
“But--but they might kill you!”
“Honey, a while ago you came up with a beautiful theory that rational
beings can be distinguished from beasts because rational beings make
such dopey mistakes. Well, while you’ve napped I thought up another
couple of distinctions to take into account. One is, that only the
rational can theorize in the way you did. The other is, that lacking
those built-in drives, we rational ones can act in brand new ways when
we want to, and actually adapt our behavior to our theories. And that’s
what I’m going to do.”
“But Sam! My theory may be an awful mistake!”
“To err is human,” he said, grinning over his shoulder as he opened the
door. “And human is what we’re trying to prove we are.”
But apparently Sam’s earlier blunderings had been enough to establish
his rationality; for the natives brought nothing but food.
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, December 1952
(Vol. 1, No. 1). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
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