Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (22 page)

"I see," murmured Pat slowly.
"Ham, I think I've got it. I think I understand. Let's get back to the
ship."

Without farewell she turned away and he
followed her thoughtfully. A strange listlessness oppressed him.

They had one slight mishap. A stone flung by some stray
trioptes
sheltered behind the ridge shattered the left lamp
in Pat's helmet. It seemed hardly to disturb the girl; she glanced briefly
aside and plodded on. But all the way back, in the gloom to their left now
illumined only by his own lamp, hoots and shrieks and mocking laughter pursued
them.

Within the rocket Pat swung her specimen bag wearily to the table and
sat down without removing her heavy outer garment. Nor did Ham; despite the
oppressive warmth of it, he, too, dropped listlessly to a seat on the bunk.

"I'm tired," said the girl,
"but not too tired to realize what that mystery out there means."

"Then
let's hear it."

"Ham," she said, "what's the
big difference between plant and animal life?"

"Why—plants derive their sustenance
directly from soil and air. Animals need plants or other animals as food."

"That isn't entirely true, Ham. Some
plants are parasitic, and prey on other life. Think of the
Hotlands
,
or think, even, of some terrestrial plants—the fungi, the pitcher plant, the
Dionaea
that trap flies."

"Well, animals move, then, and plants don't."

"That's not true, either. Look at
microbes; they're plants, but they swim about in search of food."

"Then
what is the difference?"

"Sometimes it's hard to say,"
she
murmured, "but I think I see it now. It's this:
Animals have desire and plants necessity. Do you understand?"

"Not
a damn bit."

"Listen, then.
A
plant—even a
moving one—acts the way it does because it
must,
because it's made so. An animal acts because it
wants
to, or because it's made so that it wants to."

"What's
the difference?"

"There is
a
difference.
An animal has will,
a
plant hasn't.
Do you see now? Oscar has all
the magnificent intelligence of a god, but he hasn't the will of a worm. He has
reactions, but no desire. When the wind is warm he comes out and feeds; when
it's
cold he crawls back into the cave melted by his body
heat, but that isn't will, it's just a reaction. He has no desires!"

Ham stared, roused out of his lassitude. I'll be damned if it isn't
true!" he cried. "That's why he—or they—never ask questions. It takes
desire or will to ask a question! And that's why they have no civilization and
never will have!"

"That and other reasons," said Pat.
"Think of this: Oscar has no sex, and, in spite of your Yankee pride, sex
has been a big factor in building civilization. It's the basis of the family,
and among Oscar's people there is no such thing as parent and child. He splits;
each half of him is an adult, probably with all the knowledge and memory of the
original.

"There's
no need for love, no place for it, in fact, and therefore no call to fight for
mate and family, and no reason to make life easier than it already is, and no
cause to apply his intelligence to develop art or science or—or anything!"
She paused. "And did you ever hear of the Malthusian law, Ham?"

"Not that I
remember."

"Well,
the law of Malthus says that population presses on the food supply. Increase
the food and the population increases in proportion. Man evolved under that
law; for a century or so it's been suspended, but our race grew to be human
under it."

"Suspended!
It sounds sort of like repealing the law of
gravitation or amending the law of inverse squares."

"No, no," she said. "It was
suspended by the development of machinery in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries
, which shot the food supply so far ahead that
population hasn't caught up. But it will, and the Malthusian law will rule
again."

"And
what's that got to do with Oscar?"

"This, Ham.
He never evolved under that law. Other factors
kept his numbers below the limit of the food supply, and so his species
developed free of the need to struggle for food. He's so
perfecdy
adapted to his environment that he needs nothing more. To him
a
civilization would be superfluous!"

"But—then what of the
trioptes
?"

"Yes, the
trioptes
. You see, Ham, just as
I argued days ago, the
trioptes
are newcomers, pushed
over from the twilight zone. When those devils arrived, Oscar's people were
already evolved, and they couldn't change to meet the new conditions, or
couldn't change quickly enough. So—they're doomed.

"As Oscar says, they'll be extinct soon—and—and they don't even
care." She shuddered. "All they do, all they
can
do, is sit before their caves and think. Probably they think godlike
thoughts, but they can't summon even a mouse-like will. That's what a vegetable
intelligence is; that's what it has to be!"

"I think—I think you're right," he
muttered. "In a way it's horrible, isn't it?"

"Yes."
Despite her heavy garments she shivered. "Yes, it's horrible.
Those vast, magnificent minds and no way for them to work.
It's like a powerful gasoline motor with its drive shaft broken, and no matter
how well it runs it can't turn the wheels. Ham, do you know what I'm going to
name them? The
Lotophagi
Veneris
—
the Lotus
Eatersl
Content to sit and dream
away existence while lesser minds—ours and the
trioptes
'—battle
for their planet."

"It's a good name, Pat." As she rose he asked in surprise,
"Your specimens? Aren't you going to prepare them?"

"Oh, tomorrow."
She flung herself, parka and all, on her
bunk.

"But
they'll spoilt And your helmet light—I ought to fix it."

"Tomorrow," she repeated wearily, and his own
langour
kept him from further argument.

When the nauseous odor of decay awakened him
some hours later, Pat was asleep, still garbed in the heavy suit. He flung bag
and specimens from the door, and then slipped the parka from her body. She
hardly stirred as he tucked her
gendy
into her bunk.

Pat never missed the
specimen bag at all, and, somehow, the next day, if one could call that endless
night a day, found them trudging over the bleak plateau with the girl's helmet
lamp still unrepaired. Again at their left, the wildly mocking laughter of the
night dwellers followed them, drifting eerily down on the
Underwind
,
and twice
far-flung stones chipped glittering ice from neighboring spires. They plodded
listlessly and silently, as if in a sort of fascination, but their minds
seemed strangely clear.

Pat addressed the first Lotus Eater they saw.
"We're back, Oscar," she said with a faint rebirth of her usual
flippancy. "How'd you spend the night?"

"I
thought," clicked the thing.

"What'd you think about?"

"I
thought about—" The voice ceased.

A pod popped, and the curiously pleasant
pungent odor was in their nostrils.

"About—us?"

"No."

"About-the world?"

"No."

"About—what's the use?" she ended
wearily. "We could keep that up forever, and perhaps never hit on the
right question."

"If there is a right question,"
added Ham. "How do you know there are words to fit it? How do you even
know that it's the kind of thought our minds are capable of conceiving? There
must be thoughts that are beyond our grasp."

OS to their left a pod burst with a dull
pop.
Ham saw the dust move like a shadow across their beams as the Under-wind
caught it, and he saw Pat draw a deep draft of the pungent air as it whirled
around her. Queer how pleasant the smell was, especially since it was the same
stuff which in higher concentration had nearly cost their lives. He felt
vaguely worried as that thought struck him, but could assign no reason for
worry.

He realized suddenly that both of them were
standing in complete silence before the Lotus Eater. They had come to ask
questions, hadn't they?

"Oscar,"
he said, "what's the meaning of life?"

"No meaning. There is no meaning."

"Then
why fight for it so?"

"We
do not fight for it. Life is unimportant."

"And
when you're gone, the world goes on just the same? Is that it?"

"When we are gone it will make no
difference to any except the
trioptes
who eat
us." "Who eat you," echoed Ham.

There
was something about that thought that did penetrate the fog of indifference
that blanketed his mind. He peered at Pat, who stood passively and silently
beside him, and in the glow of her helmet lamp he could see her clear gray eyes
behind her goggles, staring straight ahead in what was apparently abstraction
or deep thought. And beyond the ridge sounded suddenly the yells and wild
laughter of the dwellers in the dark.

"Pat,"
he said.

There
was no answer.

"
Patl
" he
repeated, raising a listless hand to her arm. "We have to go back."
To his right a pod popped. "We have to go back," he repeated.

A sudden shower of stones came glancing over
the ridge. One struck his helmet, and his forward lamp burst with a dull
explosion. Another struck his arm with a stinging pain, though it seemed
surprisingly unimportant.

"We
have to go back," he reiterated doggedly.

Pat spoke at last without moving. "What's the use?" she asked
dully.

He frowned over that. What was the use?
To go back to the twilight zone?
A picture of
Erotia
rose in his mind, and then a vision of that
honeymoon they had planned on the Earth, and then a whole series of terrestrial
scenes—New York, a tree-girt campus, the sunny farm of his boyhood. But they
all seemed very far away and unreal.

A violent blow that stung his shoulder
recalled him, and he saw a stone bound from Pat's helmet. Only two of her lamps
glowed now, the rear and the right, and he realized vaguely that on his own
helmet shone only the rear and the left. Shadowy figures were skittering and
gibbering along the crest of the ridge now left dark by the breaking of their
lights, and stones were whizzing and spattering around them.

He made a supreme effort and seized her arm.
"We've got to go back!" he muttered.

"Why? Why should we?"

"Because
we'll be killed if we stay."

"Yes. I know that, but-"

He ceased to listen and jerked savagely at
Pat's arm. She spun around and staggered after him as he turned doggedly toward
the rocket.

Shrill hoots sounded as their rear lamps
swept the ridge, and as he dragged the girl with infinite slowness, the shrieks
spread out to the right and left. He knew what that meant; the demons were
circling them to get in front of them where their shattered forward lamps cast
no protecting light.

Pat followed listlessly, making no effort of
her own. It was simply the drag of his arm that impelled her, and it was
becoming an intolerable effort to move even
himself
.
And there
direcdy
before him, flitting
shadows that howled and hooted, were the devils that sought their lives.

Ham twisted his head so that his right lamp
swept the area. Shrieks sounded as they found shelter in the shadows of peaks
and ridges, but Ham, walking with his head sidewise, tripped and tumbled.