Downward to the Earth Page 2

  A woman turned gingerly and said to Gundersen, “What are they?"

  “Sulidoror. The secondary species. They come from up mist country. These are northern ones."

  “Are they dangerous?"

  “I wouldn't call them that."

  “If they're northern animals, why are they down here?” her husband wanted to know.

  “I'm not sure,” Gundersen said. He questioned his mount and received an answer. “They work at the hotel,” Gundersen called ahead. “Bellhops. Kitchen hands.” It seemed strange to him that the nildoror would have turned the sulidoror into domestic servants at an Earthman's hotel. Not even before relinquishment had sulidoror been used as servants. But of course there had been plenty of robots here then.

  The hotel lay just ahead. It was on the coast, a glistening geodesic dome that showed no external signs of decay. Before relinquishment, it had been a posh resort run exclusively for the benefit of the top-level administrators of the Company. Gundersen had spent many happy hours in it. Now he dismounted, and he and Van Beneker helped the tourists down. Three sulidoror stood at the hotel entrance. Van Beneker gestured fiercely at them and they began to take the luggage from the beetle's storage hold.

  Inside, Gundersen quickly detected symptoms of decline. A carpet of tiger-moss had begun to edge out of an ornamental garden strip along the lobby wall, and was starting to reach onto the fine black slabs of the main hall's floor; he saw the toothy little mouths hopefully snapping as he walked in. No doubt the hotel's maintenance robots had once been programmed to cut the ornamental moss back to the border of the garden bed, but the program must have subtly altered with the years so that now the moss was allowed to intrude on the interior of the building as well. Possibly the robots were gone altogether, and the sulidoror who had replaced them were lax in their pruning duties. And there were other hints that control was slipping away.

  “The boys will show you to your rooms,” Van Beneker said. “You can come down for cocktails whenever you're ready. Dinner will be served in about an hour and a half."

  A towering sulidor conducted Gundersen to a third-floor room overlooking the sea. Reflex led him to offer the huge creature a coin; but the sulidor merely looked blankly at him and did not venture to take it. It seemed to Gundersen that there was a suppressed tension about the sulidor, an inward seething, but perhaps it existed only in his own imagination. In the old days sulidoror had rarely been seen outside the zone of mist, and Gundersen did not feel at ease with them.

  In nildoror words he said, “How long have you been at the hotel?” But the sulidor did not respond. Gundersen did not know the language of the sulidoror, but he was aware that every sulidor was supposed to speak fluent nildororu as well as sulidororu. Enunciating more clearly, he repeated his question. The sulidor scratched its pelt with gleaming claws and said nothing. Moving past Gundersen, it deopaqued the window-wall, adjusted the atmospheric filters, and stalked solemnly out.

  Gundersen frowned. Quickly he stripped and got under the cleanser. A quick whirr of vibration took from him the grime of his day's journey. He unpacked and donned evening clothes, a close gray tunic, polished boots, a mirror for his brow. He toned the color of his hair down the spectrum a short distance, dimming it from yellow almost to auburn.

  Suddenly he felt very tired.

  He was just into early middle years, only forty-eight, and travel ordinarily did not affect him. Why this fatigue, then? He realized that he had been holding himself unusually stiff these few hours he had been back on this planet. Rigid, inflexible, tense—uncertain of his motives in returning, unsure of his welcome, perhaps touched a bit by curdled guilts, and now the strain was telling. He touched a switch and made the wall a mirror. Yes, his face was drawn; the cheekbones, always prominent, now jutted like blades, and the lips were clamped and the forehead was furrowed. The thin slab of his nose was distended by tension-flared nostrils. Gundersen shut his eyes and went through one of the drills of a relaxation mode. He looked better thirty seconds later; but a drink might help, he decided. He went down to the lounge.

  None of the tourists were there yet. The louvers were open, and he heard the roar and crash of the sea, smelled its saltiness. A white curdled line of accumulated salt had been allowed to form along the margin of the beach. The tide was in; only the tips of the jagged rocks that framed the bathing area were visible. Gundersen looked out over the moonslight-streaked water, staring into the blackness of the eastern horizon. Three moons had also been up on his last night here, when they gave the farewell party for him. And after the revelry was over, he and Seena had gone for a midnight swim, out to the tide-hidden shoal where they could barely stand, and when they returned to shore, naked and salt-encrusted, he had made love to her behind the rocks, embracing her for what he was sure would be the last time. And now he was back.

  He felt a stab of nostalgia so powerful that he winced.

  Gundersen had been thirty years old when he came out to Holman's World as an assistant station agent. He had been forty, and a sector administrator, when he left. In a sense the first thirty years of his life had been a pale prelude to that decade, and the last eight years of it had been a hollow epilogue. He had lived his life on this silent continent, bounded by mist and ice to the north, mist and ice to the south, the Benjamini Ocean to the east, the Sea of Dust to the west. For a while he had ruled half a world, at least in the absence of the chief resident; and this planet had shrugged him off as though he had never been. Gundersen turned away from the louvers and sat down.

  Van Beneker appeared, still in his sweaty, rumpled fatigues. He winked cordially at Gundersen and began rummaging in a cabinet. “I'm the bartender too, Mr. G. What can I get you?"

  “Alcohol,” Gundersen said. “Any form you recommend."

  “Snout or flask?"

  “Flask. I like the taste."

  “As you say. But snout for me. It's the effect, sir, the effect." He set an empty glass before Gundersen and handed him a flask containing three ounces of a dark red fluid. Highland rum, local product. Gundersen hadn't tasted it in eight years. The flask was equipped with its own condensation chiller; Gundersen thumbed it with a quick short push and quietly watched the flakes of ice beginning to form along the inside. When his drink was properly chilled he poured it and put it quickly to his lips.

  “That's pre-relinquishment stock,” Van Beneker said. “Not much of it left, but I knew you'd appreciate it.” He was holding an ultrasonic tube to his left forearm. Zzz! and the snout spurted alcohol straight into his vein. Van Beneker grinned. “Works faster this way. The working-class man's boozer. Eh? Eh? Get you another rum, Mr. G?"

  “Not just yet. Better look after your tourists, Van."

  The tourist couples were beginning to enter the bar: first the Watsons, then the Mirafloreses, the Steins, finally the Christophers. Evidently they had expected to find the bar throbbing with life, full of other tourists giddily hailing one another from distant parts of the room, and red-jacketed waiters ferrying drinks. Instead there were peeling plastic walls, a sonic sculpture that no longer worked and was deeply cobwebbed, empty tables, and that unpleasant Mr. Gundersen moodily peering into a glass. The tourists exchanged cheated glances. Was this what they had spanned the light-years to see? Van Beneker went to them, offering drinks, weeds, whatever else the limited resources of the hotel might be able to supply. They settled in two groups near the windows and began to talk in low voices, plainly self-conscious in front of Gundersen. Surely they felt the foolishness of their roles, these soft well-to-do people whose boredom had driven them to peer at the remote reaches of the galaxy. Stein ran a helix parlor in California, Miraflores a chain of lunar casinos, Watson was a doctor, and Christopher—Gundersen could not remember what Christopher did. Something in the financial world.

  Mrs. Stein said, “There are some of those animals on the beach. The green elephants."

  Everyone looked. Gundersen signaled for another drink, and got it. Van Beneker, flushed, sweating
, winked again and put a second snout to his arm. The tourists began to titter. Mrs. Christopher said, “Don't they have any shame at all?"

  “Maybe they're simply playing, Ethel,” Watson said.

  "Playing? Well, if you call that playing—"

  Gundersen leaned forward, glancing out the window without getting up. On the beach a pair of nildoror were coupling, the cow kneeling where the salt was thickest, the bull mounting her, gripping her shoulders, pressing his central tusk down firmly against the spiny crest of her skull, jockeying his hindquarters about as he made ready for the consummating thrust. The tourists, giggling, making heavy-handed comments of appreciation, seemed both shocked and titillated. To his considerable surprise, Gundersen realized he was shocked, too, although coupling nildoror were nothing new to him; and when a ferocious orgasmic bellowing rose from below he glanced away, embarrassed and not understanding why.

  “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.

  “I would have gotten that for you,” Van Beneker said. “You just had to ask me."

  “It's all right.” Gundersen chilled the drink and downed it fast. “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 like very intelligent animals. Not like intelligent alien people. Maybe you didn't even realize it yourself, 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. Gundersen welcomed the break in the conversation, and apparently Van Beneker did, too, for they both remained silent a long moment, avoiding each other's eyes. A sulidor entered the bar and began to gather the empties, crouching to keep from grazing the Earthman-scaled ceiling. The chatter of the tourists died away as the fierce-looking creature moved through the room. Gundersen looked 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 Earthman-given names were dead history now. He said finally to Van Beneker, “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 elsewhere?"

  “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?” Gundersen asked.

  “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 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 up mist country?"

  “You really want to know?"

  “It passes the time to ask things."

  “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."

  “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 and said, “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."

  Three

  GUNDERSEN WOKE EARLY. His head was surprisingly clear. It was just a little after dawn, and the green-tinged sun was low in the sky. The eastern sky, out over the ocean: a welcome touch of Earthliness. He went down to the beach for a swim. A soft south wind was blowing, pushing a few clouds into view. The hullygully 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 hu
rling 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. When he returned to the shore area, he found two of the tourist men had also come out for a swim, Christopher and Miraflores. They smiled tentatively at him. “Bracing,” he said. “Nothing like salt water."

  “Why can't they keep the beach clean, though?” Miraflores asked.

  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, wearing clean though frayed clothes. He looked bloodshot and chastened. Instead of joining Gundersen at the table he merely smiled a perfunctory greeting and sailed past.

  “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."