Apes and Angels Read online

  * * *

  It took Brad two trips to the shuttlecraft before he could assemble a reasonably comfortable base camp. At last, though, he had erected a cylindrical plastic shelter sealed and inflated with breathable air, an almost comfortable bedroll, a minuscule cookstove, and the communications gear. All the comforts of home, he told himself. Inside the shelter he could peel himself out of the cumbersome suit and helmet and sleep more contentedly. His dream came back his first night inside the shelter, but it was muted, somehow a bit different, not as biting.

  For five days Brad observed the aliens in their primitive village. And nights. Their routines were a simple round of working in the fields by day, then coming to their homes at sunset, building a fire in front of each building, and cooking a communal meal in big earthenware pots. After they ate, they went inside the huts and slept. What went on inside their circular homes Brad could not see from his perch on the rim of the hills encircling the village.

  A pretty boring life, he concluded. Up in the morning, work all day in the fields, then eat and sleep.

  At least, he assumed they slept. He couldn’t see any lights from inside the huts; only the flickering embers of their cook fires outside. Within less than an hour the entire village went dark. When they slept, Brad slept. He resisted the urge to sneak into the village at night and peek into those windows.

  The Predecessors’ earlier probes had determined that the Gammans were hermaphrodites, sexless. So when they slept, Brad thought, they slept. No romantic maneuvers.

  By the fifth day Brad realized that not all the aliens went into the fields to work. There was always a cluster of them gathered around the biggest building in the village; their longhouse, as Brad had dubbed it.

  It was difficult to tell if they were the same people each day. Brad found it hard to distinguish one of the Gammans from another. But he could detect no obvious signs of rank among the loafers at the longhouse. No individual received recognizable signs of deference.

  But what would their signs of deference be? he wondered.

  Asking Emcee didn’t help. “Insufficient data for a meaningful reply,” the master computer answered.

  At last Brad called Littlejohn. “I don’t think I can learn much more about them from this distance. I’m ready to go down and show myself to them.”

  In the miniaturized communications screen, Littlejohn’s dark face looked startled.

  “That’s a major decision, Brad. We’ll have to get Kosoff to agree to it.”

  Brad nodded. He had expected that reaction.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk to Kosoff.”

  CONFERENCE

  Brad asked Emcee to set up a brief get-together with Kosoff, to obtain his okay for going into the village. Instead, Kosoff convened a formal meeting of the full executive committee, all twelve department heads.

  “Show yourself to them so soon?” Kosoff asked, from the head of the conference table. Even in the communicator’s small screen Brad could see the negative frown on his bearded face.

  Sitting cross-legged on the inflated floor of his tent, Brad started to reply, “I don’t think I can learn much more about—”

  Kosoff interrupted, “The schedule calls for a minimum of two weeks of observation before making physical contact with the aliens. Isn’t that right, Dr. Littlejohn?”

  The display screen’s view enlarged to show the entire conference table. The people sitting around it looked so small that it was difficult for Brad to make out their faces. But Littlejohn’s dark, heavy-browed features were unmistakable.

  “The schedule has some flexibility in it,” the anthropologist began.

  Kosoff leaned forward in his chair. No mistaking the frown he wore. “Making actual physical contact with the aliens is the most delicate part of our mission. And the most important. We mustn’t let impatience wreck our work.”

  Brad asked, “So what am I supposed to do, sit here and watch them from afar for another ten days?”

  “Another few days, at least,” Kosoff replied.

  “What’s the point of that?” argued Brad. “What am I going to see that I haven’t already seen? That’s a primitive culture we’re looking at. They work, eat, and sleep. Day in and day out.”

  Elizabeth Chang, head of the philology department, spoke up. In her low, smoky voice she pointed out, “Every day you spend observing the aliens from afar, our linguistics program decodes more of their language. It is very difficult and very slow, but we are making progress. Do you not think it best to wait upon showing yourself to them until we have a fuller grasp of their language?”

  Kosoff nodded vigorously.

  Brad asked, “How long do you think it would take?”

  Chang’s doll-like face eased into a gentle smile. “How far is up?”

  “We can’t wait forever,” Brad said.

  “Not forever, but perhaps a few more weeks,” Chang replied.

  Quentin Abbott raised a hand. Without waiting for Kosoff to recognize him, the astronomer pointed out, “We do face a time limit, you know. The planet’s conjunction with Beta is coming in four months. We shall have to move this ship to an orbit around Alpha before then. I should imagine you’ll want to make contact before all that.”

  Kosoff waved a hand in the air. “Another week or two shouldn’t make much difference.”

  Abbott’s brows rose toward his scalp. “Really?”

  Brad insisted, “I can make contact with them tomorrow morning.”

  “And be their dinner tomorrow night,” Kosoff muttered.

  Littlejohn said, “There’s another element to consider. If Brad makes contact with them, and then the conjunction hits the planet with enormous storms and other ecological catastrophes, mightn’t the aliens blame Brad for the disaster?”

  There was a moment of silence, then comments came from around the table.

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “They might think MacDaniels is a witch!”

  “It might be better to wait until after the conjunction.”

  Brad watched as they talked. Each person at the conference table had an opinion, or at least wanted to be heard.

  Finally he said to them, “Well, instead of sitting around discussing the problem, you need to make a decision.”

  Kosoff nodded. “You’re right. Elizabeth, we’ll give you and your people another ten days to extend your understanding of the Gammans’ language. Brad, you’ll continue to observe them at a distance for ten days. No contact until then.”

  “But the possibility that they’ll blame MacDaniels for the conjunction storms?”

  With a shake of his head, Kosoff answered, “They’ve been through conjunctions before. Even if it’s happened before any of the living Gammans were born, they must have an oral history about it.”

  Chang nodded daintily. “They do talk about a bad time, an evil time that brings death.”

  “You see? Ten more days and then MacDaniels makes contact.”

  Brad felt as if he’d been neatly maneuvered into waiting ten days. Then he looked at Kosoff, who was smiling satisfiedly, and Brad felt frustration rising in him. Frustration—and anger.

  * * *

  Smoldering as he sat in his tent, Brad waited impatiently for the meeting to break up, then asked Emcee to connect him with Littlejohn on the anthropologist’s personal channel.

  “Nobody listens in on personal calls, do they?” he asked the master computer.

  “No one but me,” Emcee replied, “and I am programmed to respect an individual’s privacy unless some matter of danger to the mission is involved.”

  “Good. Put me through to Littlejohn, then.” Brad almost added, “Please,” but knew Emcee didn’t need human politeness.

  The anthropologist was in his kitchen, just reaching out for a steaming cup of tea.

  “I thought you might call,” Littlejohn said, heading for the recliner in his sitting room.

  Still squatti
ng on the floor of his tent, Brad blurted, “Kosoff is wasting valuable time.”

  Littlejohn stretched out on his recliner, the teacup still in his hand. With a sad little smile, he replied, “He doesn’t see it that way.”

  “I don’t understand why he wants me to spend another ten days repeating what I’ve already done. I’m ready to make contact with these people.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you are.”

  Brad blinked with puzzlement. “What?”

  “He wants to make certain that you—and everyone else—knows who’s in charge. It’s a simple matter of two alpha males competing for leadership of the pack.”

  “I’m not competing with Kosoff!”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No!”

  With a slight shake of his head, Littlejohn said, “Well, he thinks you are. And that’s what matters. He feels he has to show you, and everyone else, that he makes the decisions and the rest of us follow his lead. That includes you.”

  “That’s crazy!” Brad said.

  “He doesn’t see it that way. I don’t think he even realizes what he’s doing. But the most important thing to him is to maintain his position as leader. That means he has to make sure that you do what he tells you to do.”

  Brad pulled his knees up to his chin and muttered, “This is a helluva way to run the mission.”

  “No,” said Littlejohn, looking almost amused. “It’s the human way. The way of the primate apes.”

  * * *

  Brad stewed inwardly as the sun set and darkness enveloped the woods. His shelter wasn’t big enough to pace in, so he pulled on his biosuit, then pushed out through the air lock seal and walked through the trees for the better part of an hour.

  He heard strange animal cries in the darkness, and caught a glimpse of a large bird gliding almost silently between the trees. He trudged up to the crest of the rise and looked down at the village. All the buildings were dark, not a single light showing anywhere.

  Then he realized that the hollow was bathed in a faint, eerie reddish glow. Looking up, he saw the crescent of Beta glowering down. It’s getting closer, he knew.

  Finally he went back to his tubular shelter, crawled inside, and stripped off his suit. Sitting on the bedroll in nothing but his skivvies, he called to Emcee:

  “What time is it aboard the ship?”

  The computer’s smooth voice instantly replied, “Twenty-one fifty-three.”

  Felicia might be asleep already, he thought. But he told Emcee to buzz her personal channel anyway.

  His communicator screen glowed to life and Felicia’s warm-eyed face smiled at him.

  “I thought you would call,” she said.

  “Woman’s intuition?” Brad asked with a smile.

  “No, I heard about the meeting with the department heads.”

  He rehashed the meeting with her, and Littlejohn’s claim that Kosoff felt that Brad was competing against him. Felicia listened patiently, then asked, “So what do you intend to do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do: walk right down into the village tomorrow morning and say hello.”

  “Would that be wise?”

  “It’d be better than sitting here doing nothing.”

  “So do it,” she said.

  Brad shook his head slowly. “But if I frighten them, or anger them, or screw up the contact in any way—the mission would be totally loused up, and it would be all my fault.”

  Felicia said, “It’s all your responsibility, one way or another.”

  “My responsibility,” Brad echoed. “Not Kosoff’s damned committee’s.”

  “It’s a shame the Gammans don’t discover you on their own. Don’t they ever leave their village?”

  “They go to work in their fields, on the other side of the hollow from where I am. They forage for small game out at the edge of the hollow.”

  Felicia’s expression turned thoughtful. “Too bad they don’t come up to where you are and discover you on their own.”

  For several moments Brad fell silent, thoughts whirling in his head.

  At last he said, “Maybe I could arrange that.”

  “You think so?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  TEMPTATION

  Brad slept dreamlessly after his talk with Felicia, even though he realized he hadn’t asked her how she was doing, or what she was doing in his absence.

  He awoke as morning sunlight brightened the curved surface of his tent. Sitting up, he called Emcee and asked for a review of the animals that the Gammans caught and ate.

  By midmorning Brad was outside the shelter, in his biosuit, cheerfully building a primitive trap from branches and twigs, humming to himself. His work was clumsy at first, especially with his hands encased in the suit’s thin, slightly slippery gloves. But within a couple of hours, with Emcee’s help, he had built a barred little box with a hinged door that could snap shut and lock. Then he reached up and pulled a bright-colored fruit from one of the sinuous trees.

  It looks ripe, he said to himself. We’ll see.

  “What are you doing?” the voice of a controller demanded.

  Startled by the intrusion, Brad replied, “An experiment,” and quickly returned his attention to his work.

  “That’s not on the mission protocol.”

  “Yes it is. We’re supposed to study the eating habits of the local fauna.”

  The controller did what bureaucrats usually do when faced with a contradiction: he bucked the question to the next-highest level of authority.

  I just hope it doesn’t get to Kosoff, Brad thought.

  With Emcee guiding him, Brad found tiny paw prints around the edges of the bushes at the base of one of the big, sky-reaching trees. He placed his lopsided little trap beneath the bush’s leaves and backed away, then hunkered down on his stomach to watch and wait.

  And wait. And wait.

  “They’re not coming,” he muttered to Emcee.

  “Hunting requires patience,” the computer replied. “The animals you seek are wary. After all, it’s their lives that are at stake.”

  Brad nodded inside his helmet. “Patience,” he whispered.

  He was drifting off to sleep when he was startled by a screeching, snarling noise. His eyes flashing wide, Brad saw that a little furball was caught inside his rickety trap, desperately struggling to get out.

  Grinning at his success, Brad got to his feet and walked to the trap. The animal was making it shake and rattle with his exertions. It seemed to be half fur, half teeth, and either terrified or furious. Perhaps some of both. Its eyes were wide and glaring.

  It had six little legs, Brad saw. And the fruit he had laid inside the trap for bait had been half gnawed away.

  “You had your meal before you realized you couldn’t get out,” he said to the trapped critter.

  Brad’s plan was to go down to the edge of the village that night and lay the dead beast where the natives would be certain to find it. Curiosity would drive them to wonder how it got there, and that would impel them to follow the trail of his bootprints and find him. Contact.

  But that brought up a problem. He had to kill the animal.

  Brad stared down at the little beast. It had quieted down, probably exhausted from its struggles. It crouched inside the trap, panting and staring at him.

  He knew that the equipment in his pack included a laser pistol with enough power to instantly, painlessly kill a human being, let alone an undersized ferret.

  He also knew he couldn’t do it.

  Well, he thought, I’ll leave a live gift in the village. Tonight.

  He picked up the wooden cage. The animal snarled and nipped at Brad’s fingers, making him drop the little coop. Its door popped open and the furball scooted away, chattering furiously.

  Holding his hand close to his helmet, Brad saw that the critter’s teeth had not penetrated the fabric of his glove. He didn’t feel any pain, except to
his ego.

  Mighty hunter, Brad said to himself.

  Undeterred, he picked up the empty cage and started all over again.

  By nightfall, Brad had collected three squeaky, chittering little rodents in three lopsided, flimsy traps. He had added primitive straps made from vines, so that he could carry them without getting his fingers nipped.

  As he gently laid his handiwork outside his shelter, he saw that all three animals had curled up and gone to sleep. Good, he thought. The quieter the better.

  Using the night-vision optics in his helmet, he carefully carried his catches to the crest of the ridge and looked down at the village. Only one light was showing, in the building he thought of as the longhouse.

  The controllers back aboard the orbiting starship had been quiet, for the most part. Brad’s explanation that he was studying the local fauna apparently satisfied them. They must have found a line in the mission protocol that covers what I’ve done so far.

  But going down into the sleeping village was another matter, he knew. Emcee was watching everything he did; Brad hoped that the human controllers on the night shift depended on the computer to alert them of anything deviating from mission protocol, and were not watching him moment by moment.

  Brad hunkered down amidst his catches and waited. He drifted off to sleep, then woke with a start when his earphones buzzed with the sounds of Gammans speaking.

  Raising his helmeted head above the crest, he saw in the ruddy light of Beta four Gammans walking leisurely away from the longhouse, chatting among themselves. He knew the sounds of their conversation were automatically relayed from his suit to Emcee, up in the orbiting starship. More grist for the linguists’ mill, he thought.

  The four aliens went their separate ways to their huts, calling to one another in what Brad thought must be their version of “good night.” The village grew quiet and utterly dark. Maybe they can see in the dark better than I can, he thought.

  Brad waited an hour, fighting off the urge to sleep. The animals he had caught were quietly snoozing away. Hope I can get them down to the village without waking them, he thought. He decided to carry them one by one, and deposit them at the doorway to the longhouse. That’ll make more bootprints for the villagers to follow, he told himself.