The Rebel Worlds

XI

Kathryn estimated the distance from Thunderstone to Port Frederiksen as about 2000 kilometers. But that was map distance, the kind that an aircar traversed in a couple of hours, a spacecraft in minutes or seconds. Aground and afoot, it would take weeks.

Not only was the terrain difficult, most of it was unknown to the Didonians. Like the majority of primitives, they seldom ventured far beyond their home territory. Articles of trade normally went from communion to communion rather than cross-country in a single caravan. Hence the three who accompanied the humans must feel their own way. In the mountains especially, this was bound to be a slow process with many false choices.

Furthermore, the short rotation period made for inefficient travel. The autochthons refused to move after dark, and Flandry was forced to agree it would be unwise in strange areas. The days were lengthening as the season advanced; at midsummer they would fill better than seven hours out of the eight and three-quarters. But the Didonians could not take advantage of more than four or five hours. The reason was, again, practical. En route, away from the richer diet provided by their farms, a noga must eat — for three — whatever it could find. Vegetable food is less caloric than meat. The natives had to allow ample time for fueling their bodies.

“Twenty-four of us humans,” Flandry counted. “And the sixteen we’re leaving behind, plus the good doctor, also have appetites. I don’t know if our rations will stretch.”

“We can supplement some with native food,” Kathryn reassured him. “There’re levo compounds in certain plants and animals, same as terrestroid biochemistries involve occasional dextros. I can show you and the boys what they look like.”

“Well, I suppose we may as well scratch around for them, since we’ll be oysting so much in camp.”

“Oystin’?”

“What oysters do. Mainly sit.” Flandry ruffled his mustache. “Damn, but this is turning into a loathsome fungus! The two items I did not think to rescue would have to be scissors and a mirror.”

Kathryn laughed. “Why didn’t you speak before? They have scissors here. Clumsy, none too sharp, but you can cut hair with them. Let me be your barber.”

Her hands across his head made him dizzy. He was glad that she let the men take care of themselves.

They were all quite under her spell. He didn’t think it was merely because she was the sole woman around. They vied to do her favors and show her courtesies. He wished they would stop, but couldn’t well order it. Relationships were strained already.

He was no longer the captain to them, but the commander: his brevet rank, as opposed to his lost status of shipmaster. They cooperated efficiently, but it was inevitable that discipline relaxed, even between enlisted men and other officers. He felt he must preserve its basic forms around himself. This led to a degree of — not hostility, but cool, correct aloofness as regarded him, in distinction to the camaraderie that developed among the rest.

One night, happening to wake without showing it, he overheard a muted conversation among several. Two were declaring their intention not just to accept internment, but to join McCormac’s side if its chances looked reasonable when they got to the base. They were trying to convince their friends to do likewise. The friends declined, for the time being at any rate, but good-naturedly. That was what disturbed Flandry: that no one else was disturbed. He began regular eavesdropping. He didn’t mean to report anyone, but he did want to know where every man stood. Not that he felt any great need for moralistic justification. The snooping was fun.

That started well after the party had left Thunderstone. The three Didonians were named by Kathryn as Cave Discoverer, Harvest Fetcher, and, to human amusement, Smith. It was more than dubious if the entities thought of themselves by name. The terms were convenient designations, based on personal qualities or events of past life. The unit animals had nothing but individual signals.

Often they swapped around, to form such combinations as Iron Miner, Guardian Of North Gate, or Lightning Struck The House. Kathryn explained that this was partly for a change, partly to keep fresh the habits and memories which constituted each entity, and partly a quasi-religious rite.

“Oneness is the ideal in this culture, I’m learnin’, as ’tis in a lot of others,” she told Flandry. “They consider the whole world to be potentially a single entity. By ceremonies, mystic contemplation, hallucinogenic foods, or whatever, they try to merge with it. An everyday method is to make frequent new interconnections. The matin’ season, ’round the autumnal equinox, is their high point of the year, mainly ’cause of the ecstatic, transcendental ’speriences that then become possible.”

“Yes, I imagine a race like this has some interesting sexual variations,” Flandry said. She flushed and looked away. He didn’t know why she should react so, who had observed life as a scientist. Associations with her captivity? He thought not. She was too vital to let that cripple her long; the scars would always remain, but by now she had her merriment back. Why, then, this shyness with him?

They were following a ridge. The country belonged to another communion which, being akin to Thunderstone, had freely allowed transit. Already they had climbed above the jungle zone. Here the air was tropical by Terran standards, but wonderfully less wet, with a breeze to lave the skin and caress the hair and carry scents not unlike ginger. The ground was decked with spongy brown carpet weed, iridescent blossoms, occasional stands of arrowbrush, grenade, and lantern tree. A mass of land coral rose to the left, its red and blue the more vivid against the sky’s eternal silver-gray.

None of the Didonians were complete. One maintained heesh’s noga-ruka linkage, the other two rukas were off gathering berries, the three krippos were aloft as scouts. Separated, the animals could carry out routine tasks and recognize a need for reunion when it arose.

Besides their own ruka-wielded equipment — including spears, bows, and battleaxes — the nogas easily carried the stuff from the spaceboat. Thus liberated, the men could outpace the ambling quadrupeds. With no danger and no way to get lost hereabouts, Flandry had told them to expedite matters by helping the rukas. They were scattered across the hill.

Leaving him alone with Kathryn. He was acutely conscious of her: curve of breast and hip beneath her coverall, free-swinging stride, locks blowing free and bright next to the sun-darkened skin, strong face, great green-gold eyes, scent of warm flesh … He changed the subject at once. “Isn’t the, well, pantheistic concept natural to Didonians?”

“No more than monotheism’s natural, inevitable, in man,” Kathryn said with equal haste. “It depends on culture. Some exalt the communion itself, as an entity distinct from the rest of the world, includin’ other communions. Their rites remind me of human mobs cheerin’ an almighty State and its director. They tend to be warlike and predatory.” She pointed ahead, where mountain peaks were vaguely visible. “I’m ’fraid we’ve got to get past a society of that kind. Tis one reason why they weren’t keen on this trip in Thunderstone. Word travels, whether or not entities do. I had to remind Many Thoughts ’bout our guns.”

“People who don’t fear death make wicked opponents,” Flandry said. “However, I wouldn’t suppose a Didonian exactly enjoys losing a unit; and heesh must have the usual desire to avoid pain.”

Kathryn smiled, at ease once more. “You learn fast. Ought to be a xenologist yourself.”

He shrugged. “My business has put me in contact with various breeds. I remain convinced we humans are the weirdest of the lot; but your Didonians come close. Have you any idea how they evolved?”

“Yes, some paleontology’s been done. Nowhere near enough. Why is it we can always find money for a war and’re always pinched for everything else? Does the first cause the second?”

“I doubt that. I think people naturally prefer war.”

“Someday they’ll learn.”

“You have insufficient faith in man’s magnificent ability to ignore what history keeps yelling at him,” Flandry said. Immediately, lest her thoughts turn to Hugh McCormac, who wanted to reform the Empire: “But fossils are a less depressing subject. What about evolution on Dido?”

“Well, near’s can be told, a prolonged hot spell occurred — like millions of years long. The ancestors of the nogas fed on soft plants which drought made scarce. Tis thought they took to hangin’ ’round what trees were left, to catch leaves that ancestral rukas tore loose in the course of gatherin’ fruit. Belike they had a tickbird relationship with the proto-krippos. But trees were dyin’ off too. The krippos could spy forage a far ways off and guide the nogas there. Taggin’ ’long, the rukas got protection to boot, and repaid by strippin’ the trees.

“At last some of the animals drifted to the far eastern end of the Barcan continent. Twas afflicted, as ’tis yet, with a nasty kind of giant bug that not only sucks blood, but injects a microbe whose action keeps the wound open for days or weeks. The ancestral nogas were smaller and thinner-skinned than today’s. They suffered. Prob’ly rukas and krippos helped them, swattin’ and eatin’ the heaviest swarms. But then they must’ve started sippin’ the blood themselves, to supplement their meager diet.”

“I can take it from there,” Flandry said. “Including hormone exchange, mutually beneficial and cementing the alliance. It’s lucky that no single-organism species happened to develop intelligence. It’d have mopped the deck with those awkward early three-ways. But the symbiosis appears to be in business now. Fascinating possibilities for civilization.”

“We haven’t exposed them to a lot of ours,” Kathryn said. “Not just ’cause we want to study them as they are. We don’t know what might be good for them, and what catastrophic.”

“I’m afraid that’s learned by trial and error,” Flandry answered. “I’d be intrigued to see the result of raising some entities from birth” — the krippos were viviparous too — “in Technic society.”

“Why not raise some humans ’mong Didonians?” she flared.

“I’m sorry.” You make indignation beautiful. “I was only snakkering. Wouldn’t do it in practice, not for anything. I’ve seen too many pathetic cases. I did forget they’re your close friends.” Inspiration! “I’d like to become friends with them myself,” Flandry said. “We have a two or three months’ trip and buckets of idle time in camp ahead of us. Why don’t you teach me the language?”

She regarded him with surprise. “You’re serious, Dominic?’

“Indeed. I don’t promise to retain the knowledge all my life. My head’s overly cluttered with cobwebby information as is. But for the present, yes, I do want to converse with them directly. It’d be insurance for us. And who knows, I might come up with a new scientific hypothesis about them, too skewball to have occurred to any Aenean.”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. That was her way; she liked to touch people she cared about. “You’re no Imperial, Dominic,” she said. “You belong with us.”

“Be that as it may—” he said, confused.

“Why do you stand with Josip? You know what he is. You’ve seen his cronies, like Snelund, who could end by replacin’ him in all but name. Why don’t you join us, your kind?”

He knew why not, starting with the fact that he didn’t believe the revolution could succeed and going on to more fundamental issues. But he could not tell her that, on this suddenly magical day. “Maybe you’ll convert me,” he said. “Meanwhile, what about language lessons?”

“Why, ’course.”

Flandry could not forbid his men to sit in, and a number of them did. By straining his considerable talent, he soon disheartened them and they quit. After that, he had Kathryn’s whole notice for many hours per week. He ignored the jealous stares, and no longer felt jealous himself when she fell into cheerful conversation with one of the troop or joined a campfire circle for singing.

Nor did it perturb him when Chief Petty Officer Robbins returned from an excursion with her in search of man-edible plants, wearing a black eye and a sheepish look. Unruffled, she came in later and treated Robbins exactly as before. Word must have spread, for there were no further incidents.

Flandry’s progress in his lessons amazed her. Besides having suitable genes, he had been through the Intelligence Corps’ unmercifully rigorous courses in linguistics and metalinguistics, semantics and metasemantics, every known trick of concentration and memorization; he had learned how to learn. Few civilian scientists received that good a training; they didn’t need it as urgently as any field agent always did. Inside a week, he had apprehended the structures of Thunderstone’s language and man’s pidgin — no easy feat, when the Didonian mind was so absolutely alien.

Or was it? Given the basic grammar and vocabulary, Flandry supplemented Kathryn’s instruction by talking, mainly with Cave Discoverer. It went ridiculously at first, but after weeks he got to the point of holding real conversations. The Didonian was as interested in him and Kathryn as she was in heesh. She took to joining their colloquies, which didn’t bother him in the least.

Cave Discoverer was more adventurous than average. Heesh’s personality seemed more clearly defined than the rest, including any others in the party which incorporated heesh’s members. At home heesh hunted, logged, and went on rambling explorations when not too busy. Annually heesh traveled to the lake called Golden, where less advanced communions held a fair and Cave Discoverer traded metal implements for their furs and dried fruits. There heesh’s noga had the custom of joining with a particular ruka from one place and krippo from another to make the entity Raft Farer. In Thunderstone, besides Many Thoughts, Cave Discoverer’s noga and ruka belonged to Master Of Songs; heesh’s krippo (female) to Leader Of Dance; heesh’s ruka to Brewmaster; and all to various temporary groups.

Aside from educational duties, none of them linked indiscriminately. Why waste the time of a unit that could make part of an outstanding entity, in junction with units less gifted? The distinction was somewhat blurred but nonetheless real in Thunderstone, between “first families” and “proles.” No snobbery or envy appeared to be involved. The attitude was pragmatic. Altruism within the communion was so taken for granted that the concept did not exist.

Or thus went Flandry’s and Kathryn’s impressions. She admitted they might be wrong. How do you probe the psyche of a creature with three brains, each of which remembers its share in other creatures and, indirectly, remembers things that occurred generations before it was born?

Separately, the nogas were placid, though Kathryn said they became furious if aroused. The krippos were excitable and musical; they produced lovely clear notes in intricate patterns. The rukas were restless, curious, and playful. But these were generalizations. Individual variety was as great as for all animals with well-developed nervous systems.

Cave Discoverer was in love with heesh’s universe. Heesh looked forward with excitement to seeing Port Frederiksen and wondered about the chance of going somewhere in a spaceship. After heesh got straight the basic facts of astronomy, xenology, and galactic politics, heesh’s questions sharpened until Flandry wondered if Didonians might not be inherently more intelligent than men. Could their technological backwardness be due to accidental circumstances that would no longer count when they saw the possibility of making systematic progress?

The future could be theirs, not ours. Flandry thought. Kathryn would reply, “Why can’t it be everybody’s?”

Meanwhile the expedition continued — through rain, gale, fog, heat, strange though not hostile communions, finally highlands where the men rejoiced in coolness. There, however, the Didonians shivered, and went hungry in a land of sparse growth, and, despite their krippos making aerial surveys, often blundered upon impassable stretches that forced them to retrace their steps and try again. It was here, in High Maurusia, that battle smote them.