The Alien Way Page 6

  “Our present duelling sword’s no good for you,” muttered Brodth. “Gives all the advantage to the taller, stronger man. But here—” He stopped before a section of the wall. “Look at these.”

  Jase looked. He saw two twin-bladed swords crossed on the wall. But they were practically hiltless, and the blades were several times as wide as the blade of a normal sword and half the length. Between the X formed by these swords hung two round circles of metal that Kator recognized suddenly as shields. He was looking at weapons as they had been used nearly two thousand years before.

  “Here,” said Brodth, indicating them with a wave of one gray-furred hand, “are weapons that favor your abilities as the present duelling swords would favor your opponent. The time is short to make an ancient Ruml warrior out of you, but—are you willing to gamble, Kator Secondcousin?”

  Chapter Eight

  The days and nights of the Ruml Homeworld were shorter than the days and nights of earth. But, because Kator thought of the Ruml day as a day in his own terms, Jase found himself thinking of it in that way as well. So that Jase found himself oddly, as it were, living in two different time systems—The hours, days, and weeks of the human world and the time divisions of the Ruml Homeworld, which went by half again as fast.

  The result was not so much confusion in the mind of Jase as an odd type of schizoid perception, like double vision—or perhaps, Jase thought, it could be called alternate vision—without unpleasant effects. In any case, the practical effect of this was to find Jase unconfused but confusing the others at the Foundation with the frequent fact that something which was to happen about a week of Ruml time away would actually be taking place the day after tomorrow by earthly standards.

  One case of this was the matter of the duel for which Kator was training. This by Rural standards was roughly a month of days away. In earth time it was little more than two weeks distant. Jase’s sleeping hours were spent living with Kator through the practice under Brodth’s instruction with the archaic Ruml sword and shield, and Jase’s daytimes in recording and sketching what he had seen, and his own attempts to relate it to earthly parallels.

  Like most people who end up as zoologists, he had been fascinated by creatures other than human ever since he was a small boy and had pulled back to health his first wounded squirrel with an airgun-pellet broken leg. The mystery of the little universes of Me and death existing in hollow trees and earthy burrows—as in upland, African ranges of the elephant, and the ocean-wide hunting grounds of the killer whale-had always fascinated him. His dream of remembrance, of how he had laid out on the hillside in the springtime Rockies, watching through his field glasses the spring fighting of the brown male bears, had been a dream of anticipation once, when he had been a boy.

  It seemed to him that there were identities between all creatures, including man. They were all related. They were like people without speech, with different needs and wants and customs. With a little—only a little—understanding, it had seemed to him that it should be possible to get through to at least all of the higher mammals.

  As a boy, he had imagined himself actually discovering a way to speak to wolf, tiger, and bear. Growing up, he had put the fantasies aside—but in spite of that, they had almost led him into the fields of psychology and communication instead of into his first love, naturalism.

  Now, in contact with Kator and the life of the Ruml, the old dream had come back. Only he was a man now, and it was an obsession, not a dream.

  He spent what time he could spare from recording and sketching in the Foundation library. The uncertain, foggy figure of a great discovery seemed to be fleeing just before him out of reach, like some veiled promise out of a story as wild as the Arabian Nights. He roamed the stacks where the old elevators had risen and descended, his nose and attention together buried in W. Kohler’s The Mentality of Apes, C. Loyd Morgan’s Animal Behaviour, Warden, Jenkins, and Warner’s Comparative Psychology—until Mele had to come and find him to bring him back to matters of food, drink, sleep, and the very alien experiment itself in which they were engaged.

  One day, nearly two earth weeks after Brodth had begun his tutelage of Kator, Mele came looking for Jase and found him seated on the floor on the sixth level of the stacks. A sixty-watt light bulb under its soup-plate reflector shone down on the -shelves of books and Jase himself. He was seated crosslegged, absorbed in his reading. On the floor, open beside him, was Theodore H. Hittell’s The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California. But the book he was reading, balanced on his knees, was Chalmers’ The Childhood of Animals.

  “Here you are,” said Mele. “It’s past lunch time—and did you forget? There’s a board meeting after lunch.”

  “Oh!” Jase looked up and climbed to his feet. “Sorry.” He picked up his books. “Haven’t you eaten, either? Lead the way.”

  She stared at him, made a half-unconscious gesture toward him with one hand, then checked herself.

  “You might brush some of that dust off!” she said angrily. “There’ll be other people in the bar and the dining room.”

  “Oh—?" He flicked at his trousers with the one hand not holding the two books. Mele turned sharply and led the way through the narrow aisle between the bookshelves, where only one could pass at a time. Jase followed her to the stack stairs, down the stairs, and through her office into the main part of the Foundation building.

  The bar and dining room of the building-for the Foundation was more than half club to its scientific members scattered all over the world-occupied the first-floor space that had been a cafeteria back when the structure had been an office building. But the business tenants of the original building would have been startled by the difference. The dining room that now was, was a place of heavy tables, carved chairs, fine carpeting, and panelled walls.

  The bar, a short, heavy curve of oak, occupied one corner of the room to the left of the entrance. And when the big double doors of the entrance were pulled back, there was a little area containing three tables almost partitioned off, with the bar on one side, the wall on the other and the inward-opened, heavy door providing a screen on a third.

  Jase and Mele, since Jase had moved into the basement of the building with the start of the experiment, normally sat at one of these three tables—the one in the corner by the end of the bar. And the waiter on those tables normally held it for them.

  He had held it today as usual, and it had evidently been no great task this time. The dining room had only three other tables occupied—none of them among the three in the corner. Jase and Mele sat down and ordered. Jase put down his books on the table and immediately opened Chalmers’ The Childhood of Animals.

  “No you don’t,” said Mele. “—He'll have a drink,” she told the departing waiter. “An old fashioned. So will I.”

  Jase opened his mouth to argue, shrugged, and closed Chalmers. He put both books on the floor.

  “There,” he told her. “Out of sight, out of mind. Better?”

  “Yes,” she said. But she did not smile. Her eyes searched his face. “Are you losing weight?”

  “I don’t know. Why?” he asked. “You could ask Heller. He’s been keeping the physical charts on me.”

  “I think you ought to have a drink before every meal,” she said. “And no books.”

  “How about a night off?” He grinned—but then he sobered. “I don’t think you understand about this reading I’m doing,” he said. "I'm an observer in this business—and I have to have some knowledge of what to look for.”

  “You act as if you’ve got to do it all yourself,” Mele countered. “There’ll be lots of people going into the subject deeply later on. Why can’t you just stick to doing what you were originally supposed to do-just observe and report, and let it go at that?”

  The argument they got into then was old territory. It was interrupted by the coming of the drinks. But they went back to it again.

  “You keep saying I don’t understand,”
challenged Mele. “Well, if I don’t understand, tell me. Explain what I don’t understand.” The plates holding their lunches were placed before them, but they both ignored the food, leaning toward each other across the table.

  "I've been trying to,” said Jase. “You don’t seem to listen. There’re more critical elements to this situation than anybody but me seems to believe. You see, we really didn’t know what we were getting into. It’s a matter of instincts, both on our side and on the Rumls. And instinctive—or, actually, early imprinted—patterns of behavior are more powerful than the Board members, and particularly you, seem to realize—“

  “That again!” said Mele. Her eyes flashed. “Now you’re going to suggest again that I’m something less than a woman as far as instincts go, is that it? Well—“

  “No,” said Jase, grimly, but keeping his voice down. “No! You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. I’m just saying that you’re typical of our present times. And our present times—from early twentieth century on—have been loaded over with the notion of how-to blueprints for living. It started with popular psychology and spilled over to infect the whole pattern of man and civilization. I don’t say you—or anyone else—is lacking in natural instincts. I say you and everybody else seems to have forgotten how much more of a determining factor they are when the chips are down than intellectual pattern, from Dr. Spock to automation—”

  “Hi, there!” broke in the voice of Thornybright. “Can you stand being interrupted and intruded on at the same time? I’ve got someone here I want you to meet, and he can’t wait around until after the meeting this afternoon.”

  Jase and Mele straightened up almost guiltily. They had been talking in fiercely low voices, with their heads almost touching. Now, as they sat back, Jase saw that standing beside the thin psychologist across the round table from them was a tall, extremely erect, athletically slim man with hair so neatly and closely cut it was impossible to tell whether it was gray or simply blond. This companion of Thornybright’s was wearing a lightweight, gray summer suit, but he wore it on his active figure with a difference on which Jase could not at the moment put his finger. The man’s face was tanned, sharp-jawed, and he smiled pleasantly.

  “Certainly,” said Jase. “Sit down. Both of you.” He indicated the other side of the round table and the two chairs there that were normally never used. “We’ll get the waiter over with the menu for you.”

  “Thanks, we’ve eaten,” said Thornybright, as they pulled out the chairs and sat down. The waiter, seeing them, came over anyway. “Nothing for me. How about you, Bill?”

  “Nothing, thanks.” The other shook his head, smiled at the waiter, smiled at Mele and Jase, and looked back at Thornybright.

  “Oh, yes—,” said the psychologist. “Jase, Mele, Td like to have you meet Bill Coth. He’s one of our Air Force generals—a three-star man, currently tied up with the White House, on special matters. He and I have been working together on this nationwide mental health program.”

  “You’re a psychologist?” Mele asked him. Coth laughed.

  “Sort of left-handedly a psychologist,” he said. “Right-handedly I’m a dedicated military sort.”

  Jase, who had been about to make a light remark about young Air Force generals, changed his mind about the color of that short-barbered hair. The pleasantness and self-possession of the man was a social tool honed smooth by years of practice. Now that he looked closely, there were faint lines in the bronzed skin at the outer corners of Goth’s eyes, radiating in a quarter-circle. They deepened and showed when the general smiled.

  “I was telling Bill,” said Thornybright, “—go ahead and eat, you two; don’t mind us—I was telling Bill about your paper on the seasonal combativeness of the brown bear.”

  “Left-handedly a zoologist, too?” asked Jase, hastily swallowing a gravied piece of beef stew that—he now discovered—was growing cold.

  “I don’t have an extra left hand for it,” laughed Coth. “No, I’m just interested. I was always interested in animals when I was a boy. I thought of zoology just as I thought about psychology. But an appointment to the Academy at Denver came through—” He shrugged cheerfully. “Also, anything concerned with fighting falls into my right-hand department. I thought I’d like to read a copy of your paper, but I haven’t been able to get hold of a copy.”

  “It was read, not published,” said Jase. “I don’t have an extra copy myself, but I think the Foundation has a copy to lend out. I had the typescript of it photocopied at the time.” He looked at Mele. “Does the Foundation have a copy?”

  “I can find out.” She smiled back at Coth, and Jase felt a slight touch of anger. He knew her well enough to know that she was smiling for his annoyance.

  “I’d appreciate that,” said Coth. He launched into a wryly humorous account of the misadventures that apparently befell him when he tried to find materials in the Library of Congress from time to time. Jase returned to his beef stew. By the time he was done, Thornybright was looking at his wristwatch.

  “Well,” said the psychologist, “Bill, I guess the three of us are going to have to take off and leave you. The other people will be waiting for us to start the meeting back in the library room, now.” They all rose, and Coth shook Jase’s hand warmly in parting.

  “Don’t think I’m trying to butter you up,” said the slim general. “But I’ve read some of your articles in Natural Science magazine—and I was fascinated by them.” His smile was genuine, and his handclasp was warm. Jase felt momentarily ashamed of the resentment that had burgeoned in him following Mele’s smile.

  Thornybright was right. The rest of the Board was already in the Library Room waiting for them when they got there. Waiting and seated around the table.

  “I declare this meeting open,” said Thornybright, sitting down, starting the recorder beneath the table, and taking some typewritten notes from his pocket. “Present are…” he read and went on to read other current information about the date and number of the meeting into the minutes. “…Shall the minutes of the last meeting be read at this time? Do I hear a motion?”

  “Move no,” grunted Dystra. He was looking more like a bull than ever, a monolith of solid flesh seated between the two arms of his chair.

  “Second,” said Heller. “Vote,” said Thornybright. All voted aye.

  “Reading of minutes of previous meeting are therefore dispensed with,” said Thornybright. “The Volunteer in this experiment, will now bring this meeting up to date on his experiences while in contact with the Ruml Kator Secondcousin Brutogasi.”

  He sat back in his chair. Jason leaned forward and began talking, beginning with the interview between Kator and the Examiner at the Examination Center, through the business with the Broker, and so on through the Ruml Homeworld “days” of practice in Brodth’s salle d’armes since.

  When he was done, Thornybright declared the question period open.

  “This business the Examiner mentioned-about sending an expedition,” asked Heller. “What’s meant by ‘expedition,’ Jase? And did your contact, Kator, know about an expedition being sent in advance, or suspect it?”

  “He seems to have taken it for granted,” said Jase, frowning. “As far as what it means—he thought about it for just a second there, but the impression I carried away was that it was a sort of single-ship-go-and-look thing, rather than an attacking or occupying force of any kind.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Thornybright. “But wasn’t the word ‘expedition’ mentioned before? Wasn’t this what the original Brutogas went on and from which he returned only with the twelve companions he later killed? I got the impression that ‘expedition’ was definitely an occupying or conquering force.”

  Jase frowned again and searched his memory. It was a curious process, to have a question draw a complete blank from his human store of memories and then be able to dredge up an answer out of his remembered alien experiences as Kator.

  “—I’m sorry,” he said after a min
ute. “That’s my fault. It wasn’t the same word. I simply used the term ‘expedition’ to translate both of them into English. The words are almost the same, and they both mean essentially ‘expedition,’ but there’s that difference between them. The Brutogas’s expedition was an expedition to take possession. What the Examiner spoke of was an expedition to explore and report back. The confusion comes—” Jase searched his mind for a minute. The confusion comes because both expeditions would be the first sent out to that particular destination.”

  “What’s the difference?” demanded Dystra. “Why an occupying expedition to the Brutogas’s world and an exploring one to earth?”

  “There was no native intelligent life on the Brutogas’s world!” said Jase, disgusted with himself. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “Then,” said Thornybright, interestedly, “perhaps this expedition to earth is merely preliminary to establishing something like diplomatic relations with us?”

  “No—” the word was hardly past Jase’s lips than he realized he had been tricked by the thin, sharp-minded psychologist.

  “Why do you say no?” Thornybright pounded. “What else could it be for? “

  “To spy us out,” said Jase, grimly.

  “With a view to conquering us?”

  “—Yes,” said Jase.

  “You sort of hesitated over answering that,” said Thornybright. “Why spy if they aren’t considering conquest—or isn’t ‘conquest’ the right word?”

  “I don’t know if I can answer that,” said Jase, carefully.

  “Maybe you better try,” said Dystra. They were all looking at him. Jase felt bitter inside. There was no use trying to avoid the answer with men like this interested in getting it out of him. And Thornybright—as well as Dystra, now—would keep after him until they got it.

  “Whenever they’ve come across intelligent or semi-intelligent other races in the past,” said Jase, harshly, “they’ve either eliminated them in taking over their worlds or reduced them to a more or less domestic animal status. But—“