The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (23 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

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The boats swept swiftly forward on the quiet water. Soon Ribera felt the hull of his craft scrape bottom. He and Delgado jumped into the red water and helped the oarsmen drag the boat onto the beach. Ribera waited impatiently for the two other boats, which carried the scientists, to arrive. In the meantime, he concentrated his attention on the natives, trying to understand every detail of their lives at once.
None of the aborigines moved; none ran; none attacked. They stood where they had been when he had first seen them. They did not scowl or wave weapons, but Ribera was distinctly aware that they were not friendly. No smiles, no welcome grimness. They seemed a proud people. The adults were tall, their faces so grimy, tanned, and withered that the anthropologist could only guess at their race. From the set of their lips, he knew that most of them lacked teeth. The natives’ children peeped around the legs of their mothers, women who seemed old enough to be great-grandmothers. If they had been Sudaméricans, he would have estimated their average age as sixty or seventy, but he knew that it couldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-five.
From the pattern of fatty tissues in their faces, Ribera thought he could detect evidence of cold adaptation; maybe they were Eskimos, though it would have been physically impossible for that race to migrate from one pole to the other while the North World War raged. Both their parkas and the kayaks appeared to be made of seal hide. But the parkas were ill-designed and much bulkier than the Eskimo outfits he had seen in pictures. And the harpoons they held were much less ingenious than the designs he remembered. If these people were of the supposedly extinct Eskimo race, they were an extraordinarily primitive branch of it. Besides, they were much too hairy to be full-blooded Indians or Eskimos.
With half his mind, he noticed the astrologers glance at the village and dismiss it. They were after the Isle of Coney, not some smelly aborigines. Ribera smiled bitterly; he wondered what Jones’ reaction would be if the astrologer ever learned that Coney had been an amusement park. Many legends had grown up after the North World War and the one about Coney Island was one of the weirdest. Jones led his men up one of the nearer hills, evidently to get a better view of the area. Capitán Delgado hastily dispatched twelve crewmen to accompany the
mystics. The good sailor obviously recognized what a position he would be in if any of the astrologers were lost.
Ribera’s mind returned to the puzzle: Where were these people from? How had they gotten here? Perhaps that was the best angle on the problem: People don’t just sprout from the ground. The pitiful kayaks—they weren’t true kayaks; they didn’t enclose the lower body of the user—could hardly transport a person ten kilometers over open water. What about that large white craft, farther up the beach? It seemed a much sturdier vessel than the hide and bone “kayaks.” He looked at it more closely—the white craft might even be made of fiberglass, a pre-War construction material. Maybe he should get a closer look at it.
A shout attracted Ribera’s attention; he turned. The second landing craft, bearing the majority of the scientists, had grounded on the rocky beach. He ran down the beach to the men piling out of the boat, and gave them the gist of his conclusions. Having explained the situation, Ribera selected Enrique Cardona and Ari Juarez, both ecologists, to accompany him in a parley with the natives. The three men approached the largest group of natives, who watched them stonily. The Sudaméricans stopped several paces before the silent tribesmen. Ribera raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “My friends, may we look at your beautiful boat yonder? We will not harm it.” There was no response, though Ribera thought he sensed a greater tenseness among the natives. He tried again, making the request in Portuguese, then in English. Cardona attempted the question in Zulunder, as did Juarez in broken French. Still no acknowledgment, but the harpoons seemed to quiver, and there was an all but imperceptible motion of hands toward bone knives.
“Well, to hell with them,” Cardona snapped finally. “C’mon, Diego, let’s have a look at it.” The short-tempered ecologist turned and began walking toward the mysterious white boat. This time there was no mistaken hostility. The harpoons were raised and the knives drawn.
“Wait, Enrique,” Ribera said urgently. Cardona stopped. Ribera was sure that if the ecologist had taken one more step he would have been spitted. “Wait,” Diego Ribera y Rodrigues continued. “We have plenty of time. Besides, it would be madness to push the issue.” He indicated the natives’ weapons.
Cardona noticed the weapons. “All right. We’ll humor them for now.” He seemed to regard the harpoons as an embarrassment rather than a threat. The three men retreated from the confrontation. Ribera noticed that Delgado’s men had their pistols half drawn. The expedition had narrowly avoided a bloodbath.
The scientists would have to content themselves with a peripheral inspection of the village. In one way this was more pleasant than direct examination, for the ground about the huts was littered with filth. In a
century or so this area would have the beginnings of a soil. After ten minutes or so the adult males of the tribe resumed their work mending the kayaks. Apparently they were preparing for a seal-hunting expedition; the area around the village had been hunted free of the seals and seabirds that populated most other parts of the coast.
If only we could communicate with them,
thought Ribera. The aborigines themselves probably knew (at least by legend) what their origins were. As it was, Ribera had to investigate by the most indirect means. In his mind he summed up the facts he knew: The natives were of an indeterminate race; they were hairy, and yet they seemed to have some of the physiological cold-weather adaptations of the extinct Eskimos. The natives were primitive in every physical sense. Their equipment and techniques were far inferior to the ingenious inventions of the Eskimos. And the natives spoke no currently popular language. One other thing: the fire they kept alive at the center of the village was an impractical affair, and probably served a religious purpose only. Those were the facts; now, who the hell were these people? The problem was so puzzling that for the moment he forgot the dreamlike madness of the gray landscape and the “setting” noonday sun.
A half hour and more passed. The geologists were mildly ecstatic about the area, but for Ribera the situation was becoming increasingly exasperating. He didn’t dare approach the villagers or the white boat, yet these were the things he most wanted to do. Perhaps this impatience made him especially sensitive, for he was the first of the scientists to hear the clatter of rolling stones and the sound of voices over the shrill wind.
He turned and saw Jones and company descending a nearby hill at all but breakneck speed. One misstep and the entire group would have descended the hill on their backs rather than their feet. The rolling stones cast loose by their rush preceded them into the valley. The astrologers reached the bottom of the hill, far outdistancing the sailors delegated to protect them, and continued running.
“Wonder what’s trying to eat them?” Ribera asked Juarez half-seriously.
As he plunged past Delgado, Jones shouted, “—think we may have found it, Capitán—something man-made rising from the sea.” He pointed wildly toward the hill they had just descended.
The astrologers piled into a boat. Seeing that the mystics really intended to leave, Delgado dispatched fifteen men to help them with the craft, and an equal number to go along in another boat. In a couple of minutes, the two boats were well into the channel and rowing fast toward open water.
“What the hell was that about?” Ribera shouted to Capitán Delgado.
“You know as much as I, Señor Profesor. Let’s take a look. If we go for a little walk”—he nodded to the hill—“we can probably get within sight of the ‘discovery’ before Jones and the rest reach it by boat. You men stay here.” Delgado turned his attention to the remaining crewmen. “If these primitives try to confiscate our boat, demonstrate your firearms to them—on them.
“The same goes for you scientists. As many men as possible are going to have to stay here to see that we don’t lose that boat; it’s a long, wet walk back to the
Vigilancia
. Let’s go, Ribera. You can take a couple of your people if you want.”
Ribera and Juarez set out with Delgado and three ship’s officers. The men moved slowly up the slope, which was made treacherous by its loose covering of boulders. As they reached the crest of the hill the wind beat into them, tearing at their parkas. The terrain was less hilly but in the far distance they could see the mountains that formed the backbone of the peninsula.
Delgado pointed. “If they saw something in the ocean, it must be in that direction. We saw the rest of the coast on our way in.”
The six men started off in the indicated direction. The wind was against them and their progress was slow. Fifteen minutes later they crossed the top of a gentle hill, and reached the coast. Here the water was a clean bluish-green and the breakers smashing over the rocky beach could almost have been mistaken for Pacific waters sweeping into some bleak shore in the Province of Chile. Ribera looked over the waves. Two stark, black objects broke the smooth, silver line of the horizon. Their uncompromising angularity showed them to be artificial.
Delgado drew a pair of binoculars from his parka. Ribera noted with surprise that the binoculars bore the mark of the finest optical instruments extant: U.S. Naval war surplus. On some markets, the object would have brought a price comparable to that of the entire ship
Vigilancia
. Capitán Delgado raised the binoculars to his eyes and inspected the black forms of the ocean. Thirty seconds passed.
“¡Madre del Presidente!”
he swore softly but with feeling. He handed the binocs to Ribera. “Take a look, Señor Profesor.”
The anthropologist scanned the horizon, spotted the black shapes. Though winter sea ice had smashed their hulls and scuttled them in the shallow water, they were obviously ships—atomic or petroleum powered, pre-War ships. At the edge of his field of vision, he noticed two white objects bobbing in the water; they were the two landing boats from the
Vigilancia
. The boats disappeared every few seconds in the trough of a wave. They moved a little closer to the two half-sunken ships, then began to pull away. Ribera could imagine what had happened: Jones had seen that the hulks were no different from the relics
of the Argentine navy sunk off Buenos Aires. The astrologer was probably fit to be tied.
Ribera inspected the wrecks minutely. One was half capsized and hidden behind the other. His gaze roamed along the bow of the nearer vessel. There were letters on that bow, letters almost worn away by the action of ice and water upon the plastic hull of the ship.
“My God!” whispered Ribera. The letters spelled:
S—Hen—k—V—woe—d.
He didn’t need to look at the other vessel to know that it had once been called
Nation
. Ribera dumbly handed the binoculars to Juarez.
The mystery was solved. He knew the pressures that had driven the natives here. “If the Zulunders ever hear about this …” Ribera’s voice trailed off into silence.
“Yeah,” Delgado replied. He understood what he had seen, and for the first time seemed somewhat subdued. “Well, let’s get back. This land isn’t fit for … it isn’t fit.”
The six men turned and started back. Though the ship’s officers had had an opportunity to use the binoculars, they didn’t seem to understand exactly what they had seen. And probably the astrologers didn’t realize the significance of the discovery, either. That left three, Juarez, Ribera, and Delgado, who knew the secret of the natives’ origin. If the news spread much further, disaster would result, Ribera was sure.
The wind was at their backs but it did not speed their progress. It took them almost a quarter-hour to reach the crest of the hill overlooking the village and the red water.
Below them, Ribera could see the adult male natives clustered in a tight group. Not ten feet away stood all the scientists, and the crewmen. Between the two groups was one of the Sudaméricans. Ribera squinted and saw that the man was Enrique Cardona. The ecologist was gesturing wildly, angrily.
“Oh, no!” Ribera sprinted down the hill, closely followed by Delgado and the rest. The anthropologist moved even faster then the astrologers had an hour before, and almost twice as fast as he would have thought humanly possible. The tiny avalanches started by his footfalls were slow compared to his speed. Even as he flew down the slope, Ribera felt himself detached, analytically examining the scene before him.
Cardona was shouting, as if to make the natives understand by sheer volume. Behind him the ecologists and biologists stood, impatient to inspect the village and the natives’ boat. Before him stood a tall, withered native, who must have been all of forty years old. Even from a distance the native’s bearing revealed intense, suppressed anger. The native’s parka was the most impractical of all those Ribera had seen; he could have sworn that it was a crude, sealskin imitation of a double-breasted suit.
Almost screaming, Cardona cried, “God damn it, why can’t we look at your boat?” Ribera put forth one last burst of speed, and shouted at Cardona to stop his provocation. It was too late. Just as the anthropologist arrived at the scene of the confrontation, the native in the strange parka drew himself to his full height, pointed to all the Sudaméricans, and screeched (as nearly as Ribera’s Spanish-thinking mind could record),
“—in di nam niutrantsfals mos yulisterf—”

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