Unearthly Neighbors (20 page)

What could he say about the precedent he had tried to set, without sounding like a pompous idiot? How could he tell them what he had learned, without sounding like a romantic fool? How could he make it clear to everyone that this was a matter of life and death, a question of ultimate survival? How could he show them the enormity of the sacrifice the Merdosi were making by permitting the strangers to come among them? How could he explain the lesser sacrifice his people must make in return, a sacrifice of restraint, of wisdom, of humility?

He could only tell his story to the best of his ability. He could only use the feeble words he knew. He could only hope that the truth was good enough.

What was the story he had to tell?

It was a simple story, really.

There were no primitive supermen. (Wasn’t that what we secretly longed for? Didn’t we want god-like beings who would shoulder our responsibilities for us? Didn’t we want a benevolent sorcerer who might wave a magic wand over our, world?)

There were no bestial savages. (Wasn’t that what we secretly wanted too? A nice evil monster that we could handle, instead of the monsters we all had within us? A bug-eyed tentacled beast that we could focus all of our little hates upon?)

It was a shame. There were no supermen. (Lay my burden down!) There were no monsters. (Kill the witch!)

There were just people.

It was just a story of people who had taken a different turning on the pathway of life. Just a story of human beings—more advanced and less advanced, better and worse. Just a story of the Merdosi, who had been afraid to give their trust—until now. A story of a people ready to learn, and to teach. And a story of the Edge, of Sun Shadows and Moon Shadows and a shelter of stars…

A story of how man met man, and wanted him for a friend.

He thought it was a good story, a story of promise, a story of beginnings. But he could not write the ending. That was up to the men of Earth.

He went to work.

It took him two days to tell his story.

When he had finished, he carefully arranged the machine cylinders and the manuscript on the table by the voice-typer. He took out his battered notebook and placed that on top of the pile. He had concealed nothing, held nothing back.

As soon as the time was right, he called the reconnaissance sphere on the portable radio equipment. It was there, as it was once each day, waiting for his call.

He talked fast, telling Ace what he had done and where the materials were. He told him what he was going to do and that he was in good shape. He made a few requests: tobacco, food, clothing. Then he cut the contact. He could not bear to listen to Ace’s familiar Texas voice; it was too much like home.

And he couldn’t go home, not yet.

He might never get home again.

He knew that if he ever returned to the ship he was through. Admiral York would never permit him to come back to Walonka, and he would never leave him behind if he had any choice. And Monte knew that it would be very easy to let himself be persuaded. Once he was on the ship it would be easy to convince himself that he wasn’t needed here, that his job was done.

It wasn’t done, of course. It was just beginning. It wasn’t enough to blithely make contact with a people. What was needed was a bridge, a bridge of sympathy and understanding. He would have to be that bridge. There was no one else.

One day, the ships from Earth would come again.

He had to be ready.

He changed his clothes and loaded his pockets with tobacco. He took nothing else. He left the tent, walked across the clearing, and entered the dark woods.

He did not look back.

There were open spaces in the forest where the blue sky showed through, but he averted his eyes. He did not want to see the gray sphere come down. He did not want to think of the great invisible ship that was his last link with home.

He walked on toward the hollow tree, where old Volmay would be waiting.

They had a lot of dreaming to do together.

It took four years.

They were long years, and busy years. Monte, caught in the web of one culture, could well imagine what was happening in the other. It would have taken the spaceship about eleven months to reach Earth from Sirius Nine. It would take it another eleven months to come back again. Therefore the people of Earth had had two years and a couple of spare months in which to make up their minds.

That was about par for the course. How had the decision been reached? With cartoons and editorials and public debates? Or by secret discussions within the United Nations?

Well, no matter.

The men of Earth
had
to come back, that was certain.

But
how
they would come, and for what purpose…

That was something else again. That was the worry that nagged at Monte for many long days and nights.

It had been a strange four years. There had been the excitement, the thrill of exploring a new and unknown civilization. (He knew now how they had felt, those men who had first seen the ruins of the Maya, the hidden tombs of ancient Egypt, the Eskimo shamans in the long Arctic night!) And there had been the loneliness, the very special kind of loneliness that a man knows when he is cut off from his kind. He could never truly be a part of the Merdosi way of life; he was sealed away from it by years of alien experiences. He longed for the sights and sounds of Earth, and yet he was no longer quite a man of Earth either.

Change was always hard.

He had made new friends, and Volmay in particular was as remarkable a man as any he had ever known. But Monte missed his old friends, the men and women who had shared that other life with him. The loss of Louise was a hollow ache within him.

Perhaps he was just growing old. He was getting to the age where a man seeks a return, a link with his own past, a closing of the circle of life.

And there had been one real crisis.

It seemed very obvious to him now, and he wondered that he had not thought of it before. It was inherent in the situation. When the Merdosi looked into his mind, they saw more than his personality, more than a reflection of the character of his people. They saw the possibility of their own destruction—and they saw a new kind of knowledge.

Artifacts, for them, had always been a sort of confession of weakness. But they could not help recognizing their own weakness when contrasted with the men of Earth. They could see the advantages of weapons, just as Monte could see the advantages of a technique of projecting emotions. If you combined the two, you had a defense of sorts.

Just in case.

Some of the younger Merdosi men began to experiment. They were able to bypass millenniums through the medium of his mind. It was absurd to imagine that they could build themselves a missile with a nuclear warhead, of course; Monte could not have done it himself. But bows and arrows were something else again.

It was pathetic, but it had the seeds of destruction in it.

It made the situation just that much more critical. An arrow can kill as surely as a bomb or a bullet. And a death now could only invite retaliation. If that happened, Monte’s whole life was reduced to an ironic joke.

Four strange and worried years…

It was with mixed emotions that Monte watched the coming of the ship, one spring day.

The monstrous ship filled the sky, blotting out the sun, making no attempt at concealment.

(A show of force?)

Landing spheres detached themselves from the mother ship and started down. Monte counted twenty of them. They glittered like ominous bubbles in the sunlight.

They landed.

With a sinking heart, Monte watched the soldiers climb out.

They lined up in little rows, like toy soldiers on parade. Behind them, in a protected pocket, stood six men who
were not in uniform. That, at least, was encouraging. Monte would have given a lot for a good pair of field glasses.

Volmay smiled a tired old smile. “They have come to rescue you from the monsters, my friend.”

“It looks that way.”

“What will we do?”

“Will you go and speak to the other men, Volmay? Tell them to get ready. Tell them to have patience. Tell them that there has been a misunderstanding.”

“I will do that. And you?”

Monte shrugged. “If they’re so dead-set on doing it, I guess I’ll go down there and let them rescue me.”

“Alone?”

“That would be best, I think.”

“Will they listen to what you have to say?”

“They’ll listen. They’ll listen unless they’re prepared to shoot me on sight.”

“You will be careful?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you well. We will be waiting.”

Monte clenched his fists and clamped his empty pipe between his teeth. He left the shelter of the trees and started across the field toward the soldiers.

The soldiers saw him coming. They stayed in formation, screening off the six civilians.

Monte walked up to them, his blood boiling. He put his hands on his hips, took a deep breath, and spat out of the corner of his mouth. He stood there, looking them up and down: skinny, ragged, bearded, his eyes as cold as ice.

“Get the hell out of my way,” he said diplomatically. One of the soldiers sneezed.

A colonel stepped forward. “Try to be reasonable, sir. We know you’ve been through a lot. But we have a procedure to follow here—”

“Great!” Monte was getting madder by the minute. “If I may coin a phrase, colonel, we can do without your particular bull in this china shop. Let’s get something straight, shall we? The Merdosi are back there in the trees, watching every move you make. Right now they’re friendly. More than that—they’re trusting us. But you’ve got to get these soldiers out of here.”

The officer flushed. He made a desperate effort to salvage his dignity, but a sneeze caught him unawares. “I have my orders—”

“Just a minute, please.” A tall man in civilian clothes pushed through the line of soldiers. His hair was grayer than Monte remembered it, but he had the same smiling eyes. “Monte, is it really you?”

“Bob!” Monte laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Bob Cotten! My God, the last time I saw you—”

“The Triple-A meetings in Denver, wasn’t it? It’s been a long time, too long. Man, you look like a ghost. What have they been doing to you?”

“Bob, have you got some authority around here?” Bob Cotton grinned. “Well, I’m the new anthropologist in charge of making contact with the natives. I guess I’ve sort of got your old job.”

“For two cents I’d let you start from scratch. Boy, am I glad to see you! Can’t you get this damned army out of here? Everything’s okay if we don’t mess it up now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. You want me to sign it in triplicate?”

“That won’t be necessary, Monte. Your word is good enough for me. But you’ll have to talk to the big boys.”

“Who’d you bring with you? The P.T.A.?”

“Not quite. The Secretary-General sent along a five-man committee. They’ve got a big fancy title—something about Extraterrestrial Relations, which sounds highly immoral—but they’re okay. One man each from the United States, Russia, England, China, and India. They won’t give you any trouble, once they get a go ahead from you. But the way things were left here, it’s understandable that no one wanted to take chances.”

“I told you everything’s okay.” Monte turned to the man in uniform. “If the colonel will be good enough to stand aside…”

The officer waved his hand. “Sure, sir. Glad to have you back, Dr. Stewart.”

Monte shook his hand. “Sorry I was so cantankerous, colonel. Buy you a drink later?”

The colonel sneezed and managed a smile. “I could use one.”

Bob Cotten escorted him to the five waiting men. They all had smiles of welcome on their faces.

Monte felt a great load lifting from his shoulders. He almost broke down and cried.

Everything was going to be all right.

Later that same afternoon, the first meeting took place between the two groups. It happened in a little clearing in the forest, not far from Volmay’s tree.

On the face of it, the meeting wasn’t very dramatic. It would have made a poor scene in a play, no matter how the music swelled behind it. Indeed, Monte thought, there were only two people left on two worlds who could really appreciate the enormity of what happened.

He himself was one.

Volmay was the other.

They stayed on the fringes now, gladly relinquishing the stage. But they were both remembering. Remembering that other meeting that had been only yesterday as worlds count time, and yet had been an eternity ago in some far lost age…

Volmay had been standing there, frozen with fear, and the wolf-thing had padded across the leaves.

Monte had walked toward him, meat in one hand and berries in the other.

“Monte,” he had said, pointing at himself…

Had that been only yesterday, even as the worlds count time?

It was all so easy now.

Monte had led Bob Cotten and the U.N. committee to the clearing. They had left the soldiers behind and they were unarmed. The men of the Merdosi had been waiting, their bows and arrows tossed casually into the bushes.

One of the Merdosi men had stepped forward and shaken the hand of the man from India, smiling with pleasure at being able to show off his knowledge of the customs of Earth. “You are welcome among my people,” he said in English.

“We have come in peace,” said the man from India, proudly speaking a sentence he had learned in the Merdosi language. (Charlie’s records, back on the ship, had been put to good use.) “I want you to meet my friends.”

Simple.

Nothing to it.

Monte looked across at Volmay, and the old man solemnly winked at him.

That night, Monte slept alone in his tent. He was not quite ready to feel the steel of the ship around him. Outside, a small fire burned against the darkness of the hushed and silent world.

A light breeze began to blow, whispering through the trees its song of silvered rivers and sleeping grasslands and distant mountains. A fat yellow moon floated over the edge of the black forest.