The Metrognome And Other Stories Part 16

The river was a good location for a blind. It flowed from the base of the distant ice sheet out of the mountains and down into a burgeoning lake surrounded by relatively flat land. Herds of camels and small horses grazed contentedly around the lake. They were huddled together against the snow now. This was a transition zone, where inhabitants of the glacial front mixed with migrants from the warmer subalpine regions. There was free flowing water and plenty of forage. Perfect rhino country.

He'd chosen a location on the flank of a hill, just below the more inaccessible bulge of the Rockies. He could shoot downhill from there. A bulky creature like a rhino wouldn't be able to muster much of a charge uphill. Thackeray was a sportsman but a prudent one.

He raised the Wincolt and squinted through the telescopic sight. Plenty of mammoth in view, a large herd of zebrelles, but no rhinos. Probably the gun had beeped for a zebrelle.

He was about to put the weapon back in its resting place when he heard the scream. It was sharp and high, and the wind carried it straight to him. Not an ungulate, of that he was certain. He'd heard too many of them scream when they'd been shot. This was something different.

Braving the snow, he stuck his head out of the blind. A rustling sound, a soft thras.h.i.+ng, came from somewhere behind his shelter. He frowned. It was snowing hard, but there seemed no danger of it turning into a whiteout. Could it be a trapped rhino, maybe, stuck in the snow? The wind could've distorted the scream. If so, his kill would be easy. He debated whether to go and have a look.

Unlikely to be a mammoth. The trail up the slope was too narrow, and there was no reason for a mammoth to come this way, anyhow. But a hungry rhino, maybe, just maybe.

h.e.l.l, it was worth a minute to check it out. Cradling the Wincolt tightly, he stepped out of the blind. The wind struck him full force and chilled him instantly. He worked his way cautiously around the shelter. The snow wasn't deep enough to hinder his progress. It whipped his exposed cheeks and made him think of his warm den back m Santa Fe.

There was nothing in view, and he was about to return to the blind, when the thras.h.i.+ng sound reached him again. It was fainter now and close by, beyond a slight rocky rise. Carefully he checked the location of the blind, which was white to match the snow. No harm in going another few feet. The possibility of a trapped rhino goaded him on.

The climb up the slight slope made him breathe hard. Near the crest he fell to crawling until he could peer over the edge of the s...o...b..nk.

He caught his breath. It wasn't a woolly rhino. It was Something Else.

The Phororhacos was dead, the three meter tall form of the giant carnivorous running bird stretched out in the snow. Its vestigial, tiny wings lay tight against its body. The enormous head with its razor sharp bill lay limp, the eyes closed in recent death.

Not many creatures would dare to tangle with that feathered monster, whose appet.i.te and ability to snap off the head of its prey in one bite made it a match for the legendary roc. Thackeray had a similar if smaller skull mounted in his trophy room. He'd shot the beast from a tree blind, not dar- not wanting to meet it on the ground.

Something had slain this one. He thought of the thras.h.i.+ng sound that had brought him out of the blind. Blood still seeped from its mouth and the place where a single bite had nearly severed its neck. Probably it had come upslope in search of the large agoutilike rodents that made their homes in caves along the mountainside. Now it had become prey itself.

There was only one Pleistocene carnivore with enough power and cunning to make a meal of the huge bird. But never, never had Thackeray dreamed of anything like this.

It was a Smilodon standing over the corpse, a saber-toothed cat. But it was unlike any Smilodon he'd ever seen described. Instead of the familiar tawny brown coloration, this killer was cloaked in a magnificent coat of white with black spots. In addition, a full black ruff ran around the neck. It blended perfectly with its environment.

The uncat glanced up from its recent kill. Thackeray burrowed lower into the snow. In his excitement at envisioning that exquisite skull mounted in his trophy room he'd forgotten that he was outside the armored walls of the blind. Olivine eyes flashed through the frozen breath that emanated from between nine inch long sabers. The tips of those extraordinary weapons were still stained with the blood of the Phororhacos.

The flattened forehead and the positioning of the ears on the side instead of the top of the head marked this creature as a real saber tooth and not one of the true, modern cats. He was of a line destined to drown in the river of time. A line suited to a wilder, more feral age.

Must be a new species, Thackeray thought anxiously. He could even name it. Smilodon californicus alpinus. No, no. Smilodon californicus thackeray. Much better. What would Musseb Tuq say to that?

Regulations said that in such cases his first duty was to call in a paleontologist. d.a.m.ned if he'd do that. He'd discovered the beast. It was his. A paleontologist would just want to try and take it alive, anyway. That was hardly what Thackeray had in mind.

Besides, he was outside his blind, unprotected. He had to defend himself, didn't he?

Slowly he lifted the Wincolt and slid the muzzle through the snow. The sh.e.l.ls it fired were specially designed to kill by penetration only. They would not shatter or explode. That could ruin a good trophy. He lowered his gaze to the telescopic sight, activated the laser, and squinted.

The Phororhacos remained in the cross hairs, the red dot of the laser playing across wind ruffled feathers. Of the Smilodon there was no sign.

He jerked his eyes away from the sight. d.a.m.n. He'd taken his eyes off it for a second, and it had vanished into the storm. Probably heard the gun moving and got spooked.

For a wild moment he thought of going after it. Only for a moment. The storm could intensify any minute.

Anyhow, he was no tracker. He was a sportsman. Sportsmen hired trackers. They didn't try to imitate them.

Maybe it'll return for its kill, he thought. If so, the Wincolt's heat sensor would alert him. Meanwhile he could turn the blind so it was pointing this way. To h.e.l.l with the rhino. He'd stumbled across something far more worth killing.

Better get about it. Turning the blind would be a job, and Thackeray wasn't used to physical labor. He started back down the slope.

As he neared the entrance, the gun started beeping softly. He turned a wild circle, keeping the muzzle pointed outward. Snow whistled in his ears, mocked him from behind naked rock. Nothing else moved in the Quaternary evening.

Then he saw the sides of the blind moving. The sabertooth hadn't run off. It was inside.

He did not panic. Some men do not panic because they are brave. Some do not panic because they are too frightened to move. A few, like Thackeray, do not panic because of an overriding arrogance.

This should be easy, he thought. Even easier than up on the hill. Holding the rifle at the ready, he slipped around the blind until he was standing facing the entrance. When the Smilodon finished its exploration of the interior, it would come out. There was only the one exit. Thackeray would have his trophy.

Not on the wall, this one. Not with that pelt, he mused. Make a rug of it.

Time pa.s.sed, cold time. Thackeray's face was beginning to get numb. His hands were starting to chill even through the thick, insulated gloves. He couldn't shoot into the blind for fear of hitting the Chronovert.

Come out, d.a.m.n you. Why don't you come out? Come out where I can kill you.

It occurred to him that having discovered a nice, warm shelter, the saber tooth might be settling down to wait out the storm. Surely the blind was more comfortable than whatever cave it had been living in.

It had to come out. Thackeray was a little concerned now. It must be hungry. Soon it would emerge to drag the body of the dead Phororhacos back to its new lair.

Soon, soon . . . Thackeray discovered he was shaking from the cold. If he waited outside much longer, he'd be shaking too hard to aim the rifle. Also, it wag almost dark. He couldn't wait for full night. In the dark anything could happen. He never had liked the dark.

For the first time he began to think of the saber tooth as a possible danger instead of an unmounted trophy.

The Wincolt's stock boasted a number of specialized controls. Thackeray made a decision, used numbed fingers to push one control several notches forward. Now the weapon was on full automatic. He could spray forty sh.e.l.ls in as many seconds. Not very sporting, but then, neither was freezing to death. He'd played the sportsman long enough. It wasn't his fault if the dumb animal was refusing to cooperate. He wanted a defrost supper and some hot coffee.

If he was careful, he could catch it easily. Maybe it would be sleeping. He'd just have to be careful of the Chronovert. He was freezing.

Slowly he approached the entrance. Dim light showed inside, activated by a photocell as eight descended. With the tip of the rifle he nudged the material aside, played the laser pinpoint over the blind's interior. Nothing moved inside. And the heat sensor wasn't beeping anymore.

As he moved inside he saw the hole in the back of the blind. It was impossible, of course. The material should have been impervious to anything like a simple tooth or claw. Not that there was anything simple about a nineinch long saber. The ragged edges of the gap flapped in the wind.

That decided it for him. He couldn't guard two entrances. Forget the coffee, skip the supper. Still holding the rifle, he made his way to the Chronovert and settled himself into the padded seat. He'd return home and come back to these same coordinates with a bigger, stronger blind, a professional tracker, and proper snow travel gear. Maybe an sir car. Then he'd go out and hunt down that d.a.m.n uncat.

He could see it clearly as he activated the Chronovert's instrumentation: the spotted skin spread out on his trophy room floor, those terrible serrated saber teeth propping up the flattened skull, green eyes replaced by equally bright spheres of gla.s.s.

Oh, he'd bring it back, all right. You just had to have the right tools. He'd come after rhino, not mountain saber tooth.

He activated the controls. The Chronovert started to hum, the puncture field forming around it. The outlines of the blind's interior began to waver.

Something grunted in the machinery. He frowned. This was no time for a mechanical problem. the Chronoverts were supposed to be foolproof. They had to be. You couldn't find a time physicist shop in the Quaternary. The field, however, continued to brighten properly. He turned to check the projectors.

Staring out of the cargo compartment were a pair of bright green eyes. They were barely a foot from his face. A snarl rose from beneath them. It was a hungry snarl, as Thackeray had correctly surmised.

He screamed across ten million years.

Thackeray had always enjoyed the Pleistocene. It was only fair that the Pleistocene enjoy him.

NORG GLEEBLE GOP.

When I began reading science fiction, women's issues generally referred to what brand of washer dryer to buy for the house or whether one's habitation suffered from the dread waxy yellow buildup. The latter always suggested to me some insidious, infectious alien disease (is there a story there?).

My, de times how dey do change.

1 never had any problem with equality, as it were, perhaps because from the start so many of my editors, not to mention my agent, Virginia Kidd, were women. Just to prove it (largely to myself, l suppose), I made the protagonist of my second novel female. A character I would have enjoyed meeting.

Much more difficult than writing a character who happens to be of the opposite s.e.x is trying to do a story in which that character has to deal with a problem particular to his or her gender. It's as if C. L. Moore had tried to do a story dealing with Northwest Smith's fear of impotence.

The only way, I believe, that a writer can handle such a difficult situation is to discuss it with members of the opposite s.e.x. Even then, there is always the fear that you're treading psychological water instead of getting at something real.

"It's just that they're so cute," Deering said. Her friend and fellow xenologist AI Toney disagreed. "The Inrem are a primitive, utterly alien race that we still know next to nothing about, which is why SA has gone to the trouble of sponsoring this expedition. Although the att.i.tude of the natives toward us thus far has, been friendly, we don't know nearly enough about their culture to start making generalizations. 'Cute' qualifies as a generalization, Cerice, and not a very scientific one at that. These people are hunter gatherers who have developed a complex social structure we are just beginning to understand. Their language remains incomprehensible, with its floating internal phrases and switchable vowel sounds, and their rituals no less confusing."

Cerice Deering leaned back in her chair and stared out the gla.s.s port at the surface of Rem V . The sun was slightly hotter than that of her home, the atmosphere thick and moist. And it boasted that rarest of all discoveries, a native intelligent race. How intelligent remained to be determined. She considered herself fortunate to be counted among those designated to do the determining.

Not only was being a member of the expedition exciting and enlightening, it could be a career maker. If she could come up with something spectacular. The compet.i.tion to be first with a breakthrough was keen among the expedition's scientists. As one of the youngest, it would, be hard for her to make a mark for herself. Or so her colleagues thought. She smiled a secret smile at her private plan. Fortune favors the bold, or so the old Latins claimed. She intended to find out.

She could not confide in Toney. While he was a friend, he was also a compet.i.tor, and he certainly would have disapproved of her intentions.

"Where's your sense of adventure, Al?" she asked, teasingly.

"In the scientific method. In the careful filing of observations for collation at a later date, at which time the real discoveries are made. In learning patiently and a.s.suredly. This isn't a play, Cerice. The Inrem are not special effects. You don't plunge blindly into an alien culture. That can be dangerous."

She couldn't keep from laughing aloud. "The Inrem? Dangerous? Are we talking about the same aliens, Al?"

"Never trust appearances. That's a truism from human; anthropology that applies just as well to aliens."

"So we squat here and pick up a useful datum or two a day. Science at a snail's pace." She put her long legs up on the table, knowing it would distract him. "Take this Gop ceremony they're having tonight. How the h.e.l.l are we supposed to study it if we're forbidden to attend?"

Toney looked uncomfortable, partly because of the question, partly because Deering was wearing only shorts and a halter. Rein V was a hot world and getting hotter, he reflected.

"We can't study it. We'll have to wait until we're invited in or until Dhurabaya and his people crack this ridiculous language and we learn how to ask permission property."

"It's not ridiculous. The Inrem don't realize that to us their language sounds like baby talk."

"I know. But it's still hard to keep a straight face when the local chief waddles up to you and says with all seriousness something like 'Neemay goo ga weebte fisk,' or whatever it was he told us yesterday. "

"That's one reason why I think they're so cute."

"He might've been cursing me out."

"Bull. You're paranoid, Al. The Inrem have been downright hospitable ever since we set up camp here. They've been curious and helpful every time we're asked them for something except for excluding us from the occasional ceremony."

"You've got something on your mind." Toney looked up at her sharply.

"Who, me? I'm just a junior researcher. Half the senior scientists on this barge don't think I have a mind." She pulled one knee back to her chest and locked her hands around her ankle.

Toney swallowed, staring, and forgot about the warning lecture he intended to inflict on his a.s.sociate.

Night and the creaks of an alien world. Whistles and hoots, squeals and buzzes a.s.saulted the encampment. Deering wasn't worried as she slipped out of camp and made her way through the forest toward the big Inrem village where they'd been conducting their field studies. The expedition had been on Rem for six months, and nothing bigger than a biting bug had challenged them. Violet leaves caressed her thighs. Webbers scurried out of her path, their big fluorescent eyes glowing in the light of her glowtube.

It was about a mile and a half over level, relatively dry ground to the village. She could hear the steady susurration of the chant long before she located a good place to make her observations. The Inrem were very big on ceremonies, performing at least one a week. They politely permitted the visiting humans to study most of them. Only a few had been declared off limits, such as this Gop ceremony tonight.

Deering knew it was an especially important ceremony, but she and her colleagues had not been able to determine why. Much of the interspecies communication between human and Inrem still took the form of signs and gestures as the expedition's linguists struggled to crack the complex if silly sounding native tongue.

She was breaking a taboo as she set up her recording equipment on the little rise overlooking the village, but she wasn't frightened. An expedition botanist had accidentally killed an Inrem adolescent two weeks ago, but even that hadn't been sufficient to provoke their anger. They seemed to respond with understanding and even compa.s.sion for the distraught visitor.

The village consisted of stone and wood longhouses arranged in a circle around a central square. There were small openings in the ground in front of each longhouse. As near as they had been able to discover, the openings led to an intricate complex of tunnels of unknown extent. They were too small to admit humans (the Inrem averaged about three feet in height), and so what studies they had been able to carry out had been done only with instruments. The consensus so far held that the caves served to store food and provide private links between longhouses. They were not for defense. There was no war among tile Inrem.

The ceremony was already under way. There was no carved image, no deity to be wors.h.i.+ped. The Inrem rituals remained an open book, attendant upon multiple interpretations. She hoped tonight's work would allow her to make several. If nothing else, merely recording the forbidden ceremony would be a real feather in her cap.

She was just inserting a new cube in her recorder when half a dozen armed Inrem materialized from the trees behind her. Eyeing them warily, she moved to put the recorder between the natives and herself. She had a small pistol with her, but using it on a native, even in self-defense, would result in her being censured and sent home in disgrace.

Nothing in the Inrem's expressions or movements betrayed a hint of hostility, however. The senior warrior stepped forward. Like all of his kind, he walked on a pair of thick, stumpy legs. His squat body seemed to have been fas.h.i.+oned from gray putty. There was no neck, only a tapering of the torso that was called a head. His short tail twitched as he sniffed at her with his flexible trunk and its rosette, fringed tip. The teeth in his mouth were blunt, and something akin to a squashed derby decorated his bald pate.

"Si mokle reerip ba boovle," he declaimed. "Norg gleeble gop."

As always, Deering had to repress a smile. Not that the expression would have meant anything to the Inrem. "Look, I don't mean to intrude." The words were for her own benefit, since no native could understand a word of English. She turned both hands palm up in a universal gesture of conciliation. "I just want to watch." Now she did smile. "I'll leave if you insist."

The Inrem had built in smiles, like porpoises. "Norg gleeble gop," the senior repeated.

"Oh, okay, whatever. 'Norg gleeble gop.' "

This appeared to please the warriors no end. Apparently she'd said exactly the right thing. Poor Toney and his paranoia. A pity he and the other old fogies weren't here to witness this minor triumph of improvised interspecies communication. You just have to go at it boldly and with the right spirit, she reflected.

The senior uttered another delighted "Norg gleeble gop" and gently took her hand to lead her down to the village. No one objected as she picked up her still functioning recorder. She felt gratified and exhilarated. This was what science was all about, the rush that came from making a breakthrough discovery, the thrill of observing what none had seen before her.

A few of the villagers paused in the middle of their clumsy but high spirited dances as she was led into the square. For the first time she sensed something akin to hostility, until the senior warrior escorting her raised a hand and declared loudly, "Norg gleeble gop! Sookle wa da f.o.o.kie!" Then the performers were all smiles again.

No one bothered her as she set up her instruments, angling them on a group of elder Inrem females. The species had three s.e.xes: male, female, and neuter. Behind her the alien music rose to a deafening din as a cl.u.s.ter of musicians pounded, tootled, and plucked furiously at their instruments. It was by far the most impressive performance so far witnessed, and Deering concentrated on her recorder. There was a driving, atonal beat to the music that was distracting and fascinating.

With a cry, the performers and dancers scattered. Normally this signified that she ceremony was at an end, but the Gop was different. Instead of the chief matriarch retiring to her longhouse, she gathered her favorite male and neuter around her and joined the rest of the population in forming small groups in front of the numerous cave openings. Deering adjusted her angle from narrow to wide, trying to include as many groups as possible.

Then she gasped and looked up from the eyepiece of the recorder.

Something was coming out of each of the holes in front of the longhouses. Slowly at first, tentatively searching, each pale pink worm was as thick as a man's arm. They tapered to points and were innocent of features: no eyes or ears, no mouths, no nostrils. The worms swayed back and forth as if in time to the now silent music that had called them forth.

Occasionally a worm world touch one of the chanters, whereupon the individual so blessed would tumble onto its back and begin writhing in ecstasy. Deering worked her recorder frantically. Here was some kind of solemn symbiotic relations.h.i.+p no one on the expedition had so much as suspected. What the Inrem derived from the, worms was a matter for future speculation. Their mere existence, not to mention their special relations.h.i.+p to the natives, would cause pandemonium among her colleagues. She had slipped secretly out of camp seeking something unique and had been rewarded beyond her wildest dreams.

The worms were now swaying low over the twisting, jerking bodies of the blessed, doing something it was difficult to see because the standing members of each group blocked her line of sight. She shoved another cube into the recorder.