Robert Silverberg: Downward to the Earth

The spaceline stewardess was telling the eight passengers, “Your guide should be here any minute. He’ll take you to the hotel, and—”

Gundersen was supposed to go to the hotel too, just for tonight. In the morning he hoped to arrange for transport. He had no formal plans for his northward journey; it was going to be largely an improvisation, a reconnaissance into his own pockmarked past.

He said to the stewardess, “Is the guide a nildor?”

“You mean, native? Oh, no, he’s an Earthman, Mr. Gundersen.” She rummaged in a sheaf of printout slips. “His name’s Van Beneker, and he was supposed to be here at least half an hour before the ship landed, so I don’t understand why—”

“Van Beneker was never strong on punctuality,” Gundersen said. “But there he is.”

A beetle, much rusted and stained by the climate, had pulled up at the open entrance to the building, and from it now was coming a short red-haired man, also much rusted and stained by the climate. He wore rumpled fatigues and a pair of knee-high jungle boots. His hair was thinning and his tanned bald skull showed through the slicked-down strands. He entered the building and peered around, blinking. His eyes were light blue and faintly hyperthyroid-looking.

“Van?” Gundersen said. “Over here, Van.”

The little man came over. In a hurried, perfunctory way he said, while he was still far from them, “I want to welcome all you people to Belzagor, as Holman’s World is now known. My name’s Van Beneker, and I’m going to show you as much of this fascinating planet as is legally permissible to show you, and—”

“Hello, Van,” Gundersen cut in.

The guide halted, obviously irritated, in mid-spiel. He blinked again and looked closely at Gundersen. Finally he said, clearly not believing it, “Mr. Gundersen?”

“Just Gundersen. I’m not your boss any more.”

“Jesus, Mr. Gundersen. Jesus, are you here for the tour?”

“Not exactly, I’m here to take my own tour.”

Van Beneker said to the others, “I want you to excuse me. Just for a minute.” To the spaceline stewardess he said, “It’s okay. You can officially convey them to me. I take responsibility. They are all here? One, two, three — eight. That’s right. Okay, the luggage goes out there, next to the beetle. Tell them all to wait. I’ll be right with them.” He tugged at Gundersen’s elbow. “Come on over here, Mr. Gundersen. You don’t know how amazed I am. Jesus!”

“How have you been, Van?”

“Lousy. How else, on this planet? When did you leave, exactly?”

“2240. The year after relinquishment. Eight years ago.”

“Eight years. And what have you been doing?”

“The home office found work for me.” Gundersen said. “I keep busy. Now I’ve got a year’s accumulated leave.”

“To spend it here?”

“Why not?”

“What for?”

“I’m going up mist country,” Gundersen said. “I want to visit the sulidoror.”

“You don’t want to do that,” said Van Beneker. “What do you want to do that for?”

“To satisfy a curiosity.”

“There’s only trouble when a man goes up there. You know the stories, Mr. Gundersen. I don’t need to remind you, how many guys went up there, how many didn’t come back.” Van Beneker laughed. “You didn’t come all the way to this place just to rub noses with the sulidoror. I bet you got some other reason.”

Gundersen let the point pass. “What do you do here now, Van?”

“Tourist guide, mostly. We get nine, ten batches a year. I take them up along the ocean, then show them a bit of the mist country, then we hop across the Sea of Dust. It’s a nice little tour.”

“Yes.”

“The rest of the time I relax. I talk to the nildoror a lot, and sometimes I visit friends at the bush stations. You’ll know everyone, Mr. Gundersen. It’s all the old people, still out there.”

“What about Seena Royce?” Gundersen asked.

“She’s up by Shangri-la Falls.”

“Still have her looks?”

“She thinks so,” Van Beneker said. “You figure you’ll go up that way?”

“Of course,” Gundersen said. “I’m making a sentimental pilgrimage. I’ll tour all the bush stations. See the old friends. Seena. Cullen. Kurtz. Salamone. Whoever’s still there.”

“Some of them are dead.”

“Whoever’s still there,” Gundersen said. He looked down at the little man and smiled. “You’d better take care of your tourists, now. We can talk at the hotel tonight. I want you to fill me in on everything that’s happened while I’ve been gone.”

“Easy, Mr. Gundersen. I can do it right now in one word. Rot. Everything’s rotting. Look at the spaceport wall over there.”

“I see.”

“Look at the repair robots, now. They don’t shine much, do they? They’re giving out too. If you get close, you can see the spots on their hulls.”

“But homeostasis—”

“Sure. Everything gets repaired, even the repair robots. But the system’s going to break down. Sooner or later, the rot will get into the basic programs, and then there won’t be any more repairs, and this world will go straight back into the stone age. I mean all the way back. And then the nildoror will finally be happy. I understand those big bastards as much as anybody does. I know they can’t wait to see the last trace of Earthmen rot right off this planet. They pretend they’re friendly, but the hate’s there all the time, real sick hate, and—”

“You ought to look after your tourists, Van,” Gundersen said. “They’re getting restless.”

A CARAVAN OF nildoror was going to transport them from the spaceport to the hotel — two Earthmen per alien, with Gundersen riding alone, and Van Beneker, with the luggage, leading the way in his beetle. The three nildoror grazing at the edge of the field ambled over to enroll in the caravan, and two others emerged from the bush. Gundersen was surprised that nildoror were still willing to act as beasts of burden for Earthmen. “They don’t mind,” Van Beneker explained. “They like to do us favors. It makes them feel superior. They can’t hardly tell there’s weight on them, anyhow. And they don’t think there’s anything shameful about letting people ride them.”

“When I was here I had the impression they resented it,” Gundersen said.

“Since relinquishment they take things like that easier. Anyway, how could you be sure what they thought? I mean, what they really thought.”

The tourists were a little alarmed at riding nildoror. Van Beneker tried to calm them by telling them it was an important part of the Belzagor experience. Besides, he added, machinery did not thrive on this planet and there were hardly any functioning beetles left. Gundersen demonstrated how to mount, for the benefit of the apprehensive newcomers. He tapped his nildor’s left-hand tusk, and the alien knelt in its elephantine way, ponderously coming down on its front knees, then its back ones. The nildor wriggled its shoulders, in effect dislocating them to create the deep swayback valley in which a man could ride so comfortably, and Gundersen climbed aboard, seizing the short backward-thrusting horns as his pommels. The spiny crest down the middle of the alien’s broad skull began to twitch. Gundersen recognized it as a gesture of welcome; the nildoror had a rich language of gesture, employing not only the spines but also their long ropy trunks and their many-pleated ears.“ Sssukh! ” Gundersen said, and the nildor arose. “Do you sit well?” it asked him in its own language. “Very well indeed,” Gundersen said, feeling a surge of delight as the unforgotten vocabulary came to his lips.

In their clumsy, hesitant way, the eight tourists did as he had done, and the caravan set out down the river road toward the hotel. Nightflies cast a dim glow under the canopy of trees. A third moon was in the sky, and the mingled lights came through the leaves, revealing the oily, fast-moving river just to their left. Gundersen stationed himself at the rear of the procession in case one of the tourists had a mishap. There was only one uneasy moment, though, when a nildor paused and left the rank. It rammed the triple prongs of its tusks into the riverbank to grub up some morsel, and then resumed its place in line. In the old days, Gundersen knew, that would never have happened. Nildoror were not permitted then to have whims.