Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds Read online

  “That’s not unreasonable,” I had to admit. “I suppose you’ve hunted them.”

  “Oh yes.” He was smiling, staring upward, white teeth and eyes glowing almost disembodied in the darkness. “Bare-handed.” Abruptly, he stepped away from the wall, going about halfway to the water’s edge.

  “Raj!”

  “Shouldn’t be anything to worry about,” he said, far too loudly for my comfort—and then he shouted several words in Arabic. When the echoes stopped chasing around the dome, there was another noise: the beasts’ wings rustling in reaction.

  “Christ—you’re waking them up!”

  “Maybe one or two.” He threw a spear straight up and stepped back to the wall. “I’d like to see them fly.”

  The stick slowed and began to tumble, and barely brushed one of the large ones. It stretched its wings, dead white inside, and let go of the stalactite. The stone column thrummed a deep bass note. The creature fell slowly, parachuting, and about halfway down beat its wings hard several times, hovering and then climbing back up to its perch. It grabbed the stalactite and folded itself around it.

  “Not too fast,” Raj said.

  “Not awake yet.” I was impressed by its grace and evident strength. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “All right. And come back tonight, with torches.”

  “Unless you have an attack of sanity.” If I hadn’t been there, I suspected Raj would have just turned his back on them and walked straight out of the cave. But he obediently mooched crabwise along behind me.

  Waiting at the cave entrance was a group of four Obelobelians, perhaps a family. Mature male and female, a tall host, and a child who didn’t yet have any visible sex. All of the adults wore short black cloaks, made of hide from the balaseli’s wings.

  I greeted the host—the other genders never spoke with humans—and it returned the formal politeness but moved to block our way.

  “Not night,” it said.

  I agreed: “Not night.”

  “Balaseli sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Balaseli growing ritual, you?”

  I put my hand on Raj’s shoulder. “Him, tonight.”

  “Not young, him.”

  I thought for a second. “On his world, young.”

  It considered that in silence and slowly stepped aside. “To-night.”

  They let us get about fifty meters down the trail and then followed in silence. We stopped at our fire and they walked on by as if in a trance. Of course, they were probably gossiping, joking, philosophizing like mad—telepathically.

  At that time, the scientists were still looking at the Obelobelians as innocent flea-picking primitives, barely social, pre-agricultural and so forth. Language limited to a few hundred words, mostly nouns and adjectives. As we later learned, only the hosts use spoken language, and before humans came, they only used it in ritual. One spoken word drowns out real conversation for minutes, echoing in their minds. Active verbs are the “loudest,” so they avoid them.

  I spitted a few mushrooms and roasted them over the smoldering lumps. The four days’ food we’d brought cost more than the expensive knives. It took some delicate bioengineering to make mushrooms that looked like the vile things the Obelobelians ate but were nutritious to humans, and at the same time not poisonous to Obelobelians, just in case they took a bite. You couldn’t ask for flavor on top of that. Filet of sock.

  Raj seemed to enjoy them; he ate his three and then roasted another pair. Being vegetarian might have helped. Looking forward to the evening, rather than dreading it, certainly did.

  One last try. “There’s no way we’re getting off this planet with a balaseli skin.” I said.

  “Leave that to me.”

  “What, you think you can bribe Dr. Avedon?”

  “No. Though I’m sure she has her price.” He picked threads of flesh off the outside, saving the best for last. “If she’s still the only person in the dome, it’s simple. She has to sleep. I leave the hide outside the dome until she does.”

  “Word of the kill may precede us.”

  He shrugged. “At worst, they throw us off the planet, I pay a fine, I don’t get to keep the skin. That’s all right.”

  “And I pay a fine, too, and lose my license.”

  “As we discussed. I’ll compensate you.”

  “If you’re alive.”

  “Even if I’m not.” True enough; on Qadar, his family would assume responsibility for his debts. “Well. Look at this.”

  I turned around and saw a group of Obelobelians approaching. A tall host with a cloak, maybe the one we’d encountered at the cave, and eleven females armed with spears.

  I spread my hands and spoke to the host. “¿Padafat oté tekanen?” I asked; what’s up?

  It spread its hands the same way, but with two more fingers. “He cannot…do!”

  “But he is young. He desires passage.”

  The host pointed at Raj’s plumbing. “He is, he has passage.”

  “No,” I said. “On his world, like mine, even young boys have that. Males are born like that.” An Obelobelian’s genitalia stay hidden until the rite of passage. Apparently the shock triggers a basic anatomical change—sort of like getting the stuffing scared out of you. (If you could believe what the Obelobelians told the scientists, that is. They wouldn’t be the first autochthones to hide a sly sense of humor.)

  The host turned its back on me and sat down. Two of the females sat down facing it. The other nine stared at us, rigid with discipline or fear or boredom.

  “Do you think—” Raj began.

  “Hush.” He nodded. Probably not a good idea to interfere with the ritual.

  After a few minutes the host stood and turned back around. The expression on its face would have been chagrin on a human’s. He pointed at Raj. “You are die.”

  Raj was holding one of the fire-annealed spears. I saw his grip tighten. The host slouched and walked back down the path, along with the two it had been sitting with.

  The other nine guards stayed, unblinking. Then they stepped forward three steps in unison, toward Raj, ignoring me. The one closest to Raj made an unmistakable gesture, pointing at his spear and then holding her hand out, palm up.

  Raj’s tone was pleasant and he smiled. “There is no way in seven hells I will give you this spear.” She repeated the gesture.

  “Better hand it over,” I said. “Nine against two is no odds.”

  He looked at me. “Nine against one. You do what you will.”

  The guard very slowly wrapped her many fingers around the weapon’s shaft. Raj watched the action in a calculating way. He would certainly win any contest of strength. With her other hand, though, she offered Raj her own spear.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said. “She wants to trade.”

  Raj studied the heavy flint tip, the careful binding that fastened it to the wood. “Not much of a trade.” He relinquished his and took the shorter, stronger weapon. “Thank you.”

  She put her palms together in an all-purpose social gesture and I told Raj to copy it. Then the nine of them ambled back toward their camp. The one who had made the exchange tossed Raj’s spear aside.

  “I would regard that as an omen of good fortune,” Raj said.

  “Acceptance, anyhow.”

  In retrospect, it seems odd that we didn’t realize they were using telepathy. It had not at that time been demonstrated, although a form of it had been suspected for years in the case of the S’kang, of the carbon star Ember. But these creatures seemed so feckless and primitive.

  For the next couple of hours we each rounded up bundles of the kumali torches and I improvised holders out of the soft dome tops of the largest fungi—that way we could have several of them burning in the cave and still keep both hands free, for spears.

  “What are you going to do if they ignore you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged. “Suppose the balaseli need some sort of olfactory clue to attack. Or
suppose there’s some gestural stimulus that young Obelobelians do instinctively.”

  “In that case, I suppose we’ll have to wait until some native goes in for the ritual. If we follow along, we should be attacked as well.”

  “That could be a long time. What do you propose we eat, waiting for one of them to die?”

  “Accidents happen.”

  That was too much. “I won’t be an accessory to murder.”

  “I didn’t say murder.” He looked up at the slate sky. “Getting dark.”

  He was right, and I felt a sudden easing. I hate the waiting around before going into action. What’s going to happen will happen, and worrying about it never helps. “Let’s go.”

  I bundled up all of the small kumali torches and the improvised bases, and carried them under one arm, with a lit one in the other hand awkwardly gripped along with the knife, and a canteen hanging from a vine around my neck, bumping with every step. I think humans invented clothes so they could have belts and pockets.

  Raj looked slightly more dignified, only slightly, with a bundle of fire-hardened sticks under one arm and the two flint-tipped spears in the other hand. We didn’t look like any match for a cross between a manta ray and a vampire bat.

  The Obelobelians were waiting for us: the old host, the female guards, and a couple of males, unarmed and smaller than the females.

  “Came to wish us luck,” Raj said.

  “Sure.” I approached the elder and lay down my bundle. Before I could deliver the standard greeting, it pointed at Raj again. “He is die,” it said.

  Well, it hadn’t turned out to be a threat last time. A curse? A prediction? “And me?” I asked. “Am I die?”

  The host stared at me for more than a minute, with a weird hunched intensity. (Now, of course, I know that it was trying to break through the static in my mind so we could really communicate.) It took a step forward and rolled its shoulders like an exotic dancer, very exotic, which I supposed was an Obelobelian shrug. “Not maybe, die maybe. It is…self. You must be…self.” Always good advice. Go forty light years and find Polonius.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  The shrug again. “Always be for a passage here, there. Where passage be.”

  “You may be right,” I said to Raj. “Just a cheering section.” Or pallbearers, I thought and didn’t say.

  No one tried to interfere as we walked into the cave, and no one followed us, at least not immediately. Best not to use the flashlights, in case. Raj hadn’t wanted to, anyhow—trying to duplicate as nearly as possible the native experience—but that was a quirk I would not let interfere with my survival, or even his.

  Raj followed the game plan all the way down to the main cavern. We hugged the side of the cave, moving as quietly as possible. With every tiny click of a pebble, though, I felt exposed. Hard to sneak up on a blind monster that feeds by sonar.

  As we squeezed into the last cavern we startled something big and white and shiny, like a maggot the size of a horse that slid into the water and squirmed away. Wings rustled overhead.

  After a moment of paralysis I mastered my fear enough to begin lighting torches. Raj took two and sidled ahead of me, both of us keeping our backs pressed against the gritty wall. We worked backward and forward and soon had a staggered line of sixteen greasy big candles guttering in the still air.

  There was enough light to see each other clearly, and I didn’t care for what I saw. Raj was grinning so hard I could see both rows of white teeth in his black face, and if he was feeling anything except pure ecstasy, he was hiding it real well.

  I’ve seen it before, of course; men getting an almost sexual thrill from the prospect of facing a dangerous animal. It’s sort of amusing when you’re protected by laser rifles and body armor. Not so amusing when you’re naked as babies and armed with sticks and rocks. Sort of insane, actually, and I had to admit considering for the first time in a long career abandoning a client for fear he was determined to get me killed. I stayed, of course, and shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened next.

  I didn’t actually see Raj make his move, since all my attention was concentrated on the cave ceiling, searching the murk for the humped forms of the balaseli. I couldn’t see them yet, though, my eyes still dazzled from lighting and placing the candles. I wonder even now whether Raj could see more than I, or didn’t care, or was tired of waiting—or did feel the same fear I did, and dealt with it in his own way.

  Whatever it was, I heard a sudden shout, almost a bark, and was appalled to see Raj halfway to the water’s edge, a spear in each hand, bellowing a challenge into the gloom. He was answered: a silent wisp of dark umber against the cave’s blackness, suddenly behind him, drifting in at eye level—I started to shout but he had sensed it, spun around, hurled the right-hand spear with perfect accuracy. The spear struck the beast dead center with a meaty smack, and it suddenly reared back, tripling in size as its huge wings unfurled, beating the air. The teeth inside the wings glittered like thousands of diamond points. Then the other spear hit even harder, not ten centimeters from the first.

  The balaseli made a strange high-pitched sound, unlike any pain cry I know, but rather like the mating challenge of a ba’albeast on Selva or the chittering of a Terran dolphin. Suddenly it seemed to contract in every dimension and then spring back to normal size, as if flexing a huge muscle. Raj stood transfixed as the beast did this three times, meanwhile beating its wings to stay aloft. I shouted for him to come back. He ignored me, reaching down to pick up a pair of the fire-hardened sticks.

  The fourth time the creature flexed, both of the spears came loose and clattered on the ground. A dark green fluid pulsed out of it as it reared back, hovering now a few meters from Raj, who had both lances braced against his sides, pointed at the beast. Then a second one dropped from the ceiling and enveloped him from behind.

  It was hideous. He roared and struggled; twice, lance tips pierced though from inside. Green ichor and red blood sprayed in every direction. Then it slumped away.

  For one terrible year, age nineteen, I hired out on Hell as a mercenary soldier. I saw too much but nothing I saw in that year was as bad as the sight of Raj, face intact but skin flayed off from shoulders to knees, heart and lungs exposed and guts spilling out, uncoiling; beyond mortal help but not beyond realizing what had happened. He faced me and said four clear words—one of them was “Allah” but that exhausts my Arabic—then made a strangling sound and fell over, probably dead, certainly doomed. The creature that had attacked him was writhing soundlessly on the ground. The one he had speared fell flapping, splashing, into the water.

  Some basic human, or humane, instinct almost killed me then. I took a couple of steps toward him. A balaseli whispered down between me and the cave wall and enfolded me.

  I must not have been in its embrace for more than a second, but that second resonates through my life like a huge bell struck once. I think it resonated backward, weeks, as well as forward, to now and however much longer I have. That’s why I had been so jumpy.

  Mine must have been larger than the one that killed Raj. It covered me face and all. It was like being smothered by a woolen blanket soaked in animal blood.

  I froze. Thousands of tiny teeth pressed gently into my flesh, like the grains of coarse sandpaper but alive. Knife pinned uselessly between my own wrist and abdomen.

  Maybe Buddha defeated Allah in this contest. I hadn’t been to kiack in twenty years, but the Way lies deep, and in what I thought was my last act as a living being, I tried to compose myself for death. The teeth pressed harder and I surrendered…

  And was suddenly spilled out onto the cold wet rock, unharmed.

  I rolled back to the safety of the wall, burning my calf on one of the kumalis but heedless of the pain. Calming somewhat, I was surprised to see that the creature seemed not to have harmed me beyond leaving mild abrasions all over, such as you might give yourself by scratching an itch too vigorously.

  The one that had attacke
d me was flopping around as Raj’s was; in less than a minute both were limp, dead. Alien protein, of course. There was no way they could sense our toxicity without tasting; evidently one taste was plenty. I supposed the simple creatures mistook us for Obelobelians, which triggered the aggressive behavior. The truth turned out to be somewhat stranger.

  I hadn’t asked Raj what was to be done with his remains, should the hunter become the quarry, but assumed he was conventionally Moslem in that regard. On Qadar the ceremony goes on for days, and a lot of the ritual involves the physical corpse.

  It was an interesting problem. I’m conventionally tolerant of other people’s notions, and there was the added incentive that Raj’s relatives might not honor his debts with only my word that he had died. But there was no way in hell I was going to saunter out there and drag him away. Just have to wait until daylight, when the balaseli were dormant again. He would be a pretty sight in ten hours.

  Something touched me on the shoulder and I almost jumped out of my aching skin. It was the old host. “I watch,” it said. “He is die; you are passage.”

  “Guess so,” I said. I did kill a balaseli, though the weapon I used was not especially heroic. Sweat.

  The host solved part of my problem. It had a long looped cord that ended in a wooden hook. On the third toss, it snagged Raj behind the knee; together we were able to haul him to the wall. Carrying him out was not something I would ever care to try again. It took a long time. The host would not touch him—probably wise—and his dead weight nearly defeated me. I collapsed twice on the passage out and again as we staggered from the cave entrance. Several of the xenologists were waiting with a pair of improvised stretchers. One of them, an older woman I hadn’t seen, touched my arm and I felt a slight pinprick. All the pain washed away and I fell asleep.

  I carried Raj back to Qadar frozen solid in a specimen bag. His family paid my fee in gold and had me thrown out of the house, the castle. I decided it would be prudent to leave Qadar immediately.

  Odd how things sometimes come together. I had done a lot of soul-searching on the way back, and decided that I had been a hunter for far too long. The fee for this one would allow me to live prudently for several years on Selva or Thelugi, both of which had good universities for xoology and animal behavior. I could finish the degrees I started twenty years ago and stop killing the things that I liked the most.