Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

“Remember the Chunquen?”

“Both sexes were sentient. They fought constantly.”

“And that funny religion on Altair One. They thought they could travel in time.”

“Yes, Sir, when we landed the infantry they were all gone.”

“They must have all committed suicide with disintegrators. But why? They knew we only wanted slaves. And I’m still trying to figure out how they got rid of the disintegrators afterwards.”

“Some beings,” said A-T Officer, “will do anything to keep their beliefs.”

–

From The Warriors (recording salvaged from the wreckage of kzin scout ship Far-Ranging Prowler ’s bridge recorder by the crew of The Angel’s Pencil .)

The star known to human beings as Altair has a number of planets. Planets are, of course, as common as dirt, so no big surprises there. There are some rings of asteroids close to the star, and then a single planet in what human beings call the goldilocks zone . Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The planet was eventually called Altair One by human beings, and something meaning pretty much the same by the kzinti. It is a planet similar to both Earth and Kzin in atmosphere, climate and gravity, so would be habitable to both species. It has, however, never been colonized. There are reasons for this.

One of them is the existence of an intelligent species, the Dilillipsans. They are, it has to be said, different .

If you asked any one Dilillipsan to choose a number between one and ten you’d get at least a thousand answers, and π would probably be one of them. Dilillipsans call their own world something which might be rendered, loosely, as Glot , a tiny fraction of a sound-name which is completely unpronounceable, and which translates, roughly, as the place we know a bit about and are usually standing on or sometimes moving around on when young and foolish.

The acoustic part of the Dilillipsan language sounds something like the station announcements at the beginning of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday played backwards, or perhaps sideways, and at double speed. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday , incidentally, had been quite a favorite with the Dilillies once they began picking up Earth television transmissions, its tragic grandeur never failing to move them.

Unlike human beings, who believe many things, or kzinti who also believe many things-except when they are of the very high nobility and have become cynical-the Dilillies believe everything, but by different amounts.

Some things they hardly believe at all, and some things they are almost certain about, but certainty is regarded as a mental health issue on Glot. They communicate with each other in five or six languages simultaneously, one involving generating three dimensional pictures on their stomachs, one involving chemicals that can smell bad, and two, or maybe three, involving making noises. It makes translating conversations just a little difficult. Note the delicate understatement in this remark.

Not many human spaceships or probes have passed near them, but some have been near enough for the Dilillies to eavesdrop on their communications, as they have on radio and television transmissions from Earth which is a mere fifteen light-years away. They have done this from curiosity, and without malevolent intent. Their knowledge of human culture is both broad and deep but their insights are fragmentary. The understatement in that remark is very far from delicate.

The hell with it. Language reflects culture and a way of perceiving the world, and the Dilillies are so different there’s no way of translating anything with any precision. So let’s just mangle everything shamelessly. Take it as a parable. Do what the Dilillies would do: believe everything, but not very much.

“You have to face it, those human beings are just so incredibly creative. I mean, what kind of wild mind would you need to have in order to be able to invent the hat?”

“Or a tie.”

“Or shoes.”

“No, shoes make sense. They have to walk around a lot and they have to walk on hard stuff like pavements and grass and they have very soft feet. So either they wear their feet out or they have some sort of protective cover for them. What I don’t understand is why it’s called footwear . It should be called anti-footwear.”

“Or foot anti-wear.”

“Yes, they are not very logical. But I still rate the moustache without the beard as the most brilliant joke. I mean, first you go for hundreds of thousands of years growing hair on your face. Then you find a way to get rid of it. Then you get rid of all of it except for a little bit right under the nose. That’s absolutely brilliant. You couldn’t make this up, none of us could ever get close! But those human beings did it. They’re amazing!”

The three and a bit Dilillies brooded on this for a few seconds. They had been vastly entertained by moustaches for centuries now. It had started a topiary cult twice.

“I still think that there’s a reason for these things. One that we can’t easily grasp, but one that makes sense to them.”

“What possible reason can there be for a necktie?”

“Perhaps the top button is obscene. Perhaps the buttons are more and more disgusting as you go up, and the top one is so obscene it has to be covered by something.”

“They can’t be obscene in themselves. It’s only when they are put through the buttonholes. Of course! It must be a symbol for sexual activity! Unbuttoned top shirt buttons must be merely vulgar. And I think moustaches are worn to tell other human beings that the owner isn’t really a child or a female. Their young don’t have hairy faces, nor do the females usually. I think they mostly want to be mistaken for children, but some don’t. Either that or the males feel that the females will feel inadequate for not having hairy faces and they want to cheer them up. So they get rid of most of it, but the insecure ones leave a small bit to prove they are adults.”

“Hmm. You think the females suffer from Hairy-Face Envy. I suppose it’s possible. But then why don’t they all wear false moustaches like the leader of the Marxists?”

“I don’t think Groucho was the leader of the Marxists, just the most famous of them.”

The bit, which was very young, and bobbed around in a very distracting manner, asked, “Why do they all spend so much time running around? They even invented cars and aeroplanes to do it faster.”

“Oh that’s easy. If one of them wants to communicate with another, they have to move very close together. Or they had to until they invented mobile phones.”

They thought about this. It made sense. Sort of.

Coco was explaining his recent hobby activities to his friend John Wayne. There had been a fashion for human nicknames in their early years. These are not even remotely like their real names, each of which would run to several pages of text, a dozen cartoons, the sound of a waterfall crunching its gears and the contents of a Spanish Farmacia . The term his is also not exactly accurate, and friend refers to a relationship which on a scale from zero (meaning total loathing) to ten (meaning someone you have a psychotic fixation on and spend all your time stalking) would score approximately the square root of a matrix of imaginary numbers.

“A spaceship? Full of animals that look like tigers? Can I see them too?” John Wayne was thrilled. “Really see them directly, not just on your stomachs?” Ever since The Greatest Show on Earth , one of his favorite films, when the tigers escaped during the great train wreck, not to mention The Jungle Book , whose name had thrillingly romantic connotations for the Dilillies, John Wayne had wanted to meet a tiger. Since seeing The Lord of the Rings , he had wanted to meet a Balrog, but had accepted, reluctantly, that they would probably not make congenial passengers in a spaceship.