Harry Harrison: Deathworld

It was Rhes who broke the silence. His quick mind had taken in the factors and sorted them out. “There’s one thing wrong,” he said. “What about us? We live on the surface of Pyrrus without perimeters or guns. Why aren’t we attacked as well? We’re human, descended from the same people as the junkmen.”

“You’re not attacked,” Jason told him, “because you don’t identify yourself as a natural disaster. Animals can live on the slopes of a dormant volcano, fighting and dying in natural competition. But they’ll flee together when the volcano erupts. That eruption is what makes the mountain a natural disaster. In the case of human beings, it is their thoughts that identify them as life form or disaster. Mountain or volcano. In the city everyone radiates suspicion and death. They enjoy killing, thinking about killing, and planning for killing. This is natural selection, too, you realize. These are the survival traits that work best in the city. Outside the city men think differently. If they are threatened individually, they fight, as will any other creature. Under more general survival threats they co-operate completely with the rules for universal survival that the city people break.”

“How did it begin — this separation, I mean, between the two groups?” Rhes asked.

“We’ll probably never know,” Jason said. “I think your people must have originally been farmers, or psionic sensitives who were not with the others during some natural disaster. They would, of course, act correctly by Pyrran standards, and survive. This would cause a difference of opinion with the city people who saw killing as the answer. It’s obvious, whatever the reason, that two separate communities were established early, and soon separated except for the limited amount of barter that benefited both.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Kerk mumbled. “It makes a terrible kind of truth, every step of the way, but I still find it hard to accept. There must be another explanation.”

Jason shook his head slowly. “None. This is the only one that works. We’ve eliminated the other ones, remember? I can’t blame you for finding it hard to believe, since it is in direct opposition to everything you’ve understood to be true in the past. It’s like altering a natural law. As if I gave you proof that gravity didn’t really exist, that it was a force altogether different from the immutable one we know, one you could get around when you understood how. You’d want more proof than words. Probably want to see someone walking on air.”

“Which isn’t such a bad idea at that,” he added, turning to Naxa. “Do you hear any animals around the ship now? Not the ones you’re used to, but the mutated, violent kind that live only to attack the city.”

“Place’s crawling with ‘em,” Naxa said, “just lookin’ for somethin’ t’kill.”

“Could you capture one?” Jason asked. “Without getting yourself killed, I mean.”

Naxa snorted contempt as he turned to leave. “Beast’s not born yet, that’ll hurt me.”

They stood quietly, each one wrapped tightly around by his own thoughts, while they waited for Naxa to return. Jason had nothing more to say. He would do one more thing to try and convince them of the facts, after that it would be up to each of them to reach a conclusion.

The talker returned quickly with a stingwing, tied by one leg to a length of leather. It flapped and shrieked as he carried it in.

“In the middle of the room, away from everybody,” Jason told him. “Can you get that beast to sit on something and not flap around?”

“My hand good enough?” he asked, flipping the creature up so it clung to the back of his gauntlet. “That’s how I caught it.”

“Does anyone doubt that this is a real stingwing?” Jason asked. “I want to make sure you all believe there is no trickery here.”

“The thing is real,” Brucco said. “I can smell the poison in the wing-claws from here.” He pointed to the dark marks on the leather where the liquid had dripped. “If that eats through the gloves, he’s a dead man.”

“Then we agree it’s real,” Jason said. “Real and deadly, and the only test of the theory will be if you people from the city can approach it like Naxa here.”

They drew back automatically when he said it. Because they knew that stingwing was synonymous with death. Past, present and future. You don’t change a natural law. Meta spoke for all of them.

“We… can’t. This man lives in the jungle, like an animal himself. Somehow he’s learned to get near them. But you can’t expect us to.”

Jason spoke quickly, before the talker could react to the insult. “Of course I expect you to. That’s the whole idea. If you don’t hate the beast and expect it to attack you — why it won’t. Think of it as a creature from a different planet, something harmless.”

“I can’t,” she said. “It’s a stingwing !”

As they talked Brucco stepped forward, his eyes fixed steadily on the creature perched on the glove. Jason signaled the bowmen to hold their fire. Brucco stopped at a safe distance and kept looking steadily at the stingwing. It rustled its leathery wings uneasily and hissed. A drop of poison formed at the tip of each great poison claw on its wings. The control room was filled with a deadly silence.

Slowly he raised his hand. Carefully putting it out, over the animal. The hand dropped a little, rubbed the stingwing’s head once, then fell back to his side. The animal did nothing except stir slightly under the touch.

There was a concerted sigh, as those who had been unknowingly holding their breath breathed again.

“How did you do it?” Meta asked in a hushed voice.

“Hm-m-m, what?” Brucco said, apparently snapping out of a daze. “Oh, touching the thing. Simple, really. I just pretended it was one of the training aids I use, a realistic and harmless duplicate. I kept my mind on that single thought and it worked.” He looked down at his hand, then back to the stingwing. His voice quieter now, as if he spoke from a distance. “It’s not a training aid you know. It’s real. Deadly. The off-worlder is right. He’s right about everything he said.”

With Brucco’s success as an example, Kerk came close to the animal. He walked stiffly, as if on the way to his execution, and runnels of sweat poured down his rigid face. But he believed and kept his thoughts directed away from the stingwing and he could touch it unharmed.

Meta tried but couldn’t fight down the horror it raised when she came close. “I am trying,” she said, “and I do believe you now — but I just can’t do it.”

Skop screamed when they all looked at him, shouted it was all a trick, and had to be clubbed unconscious when he attacked the bowmen.

Understanding had come to Pyrrus.

“What do we do now?” Meta asked. Her voice was troubled, questioning. She voiced the thoughts of all the Pyrrans in the room, and the thousands who watched in their screens.

“What will we do?” They turned to Jason, waiting for an answer. For the moment their differences were forgotten. The people from the city were staring expectantly at him, as were the crossbowmen with half-lowered weapons. This stranger had confused and changed the old world they had known, and presented them with a newer and stranger one, with alien problems.

“Hold on,” he said, raising his hand. “I’m no doctor of social ills. I’m not going to try and cure this planet full of muscle-bound sharpshooters. I’ve just squeezed through up to now, and by the law of averages I should be ten times dead.”

“Even if all you say is true, Jason,” Meta said, “you are still the only person who can help us. What will the future be like?”