Robert Silverberg: Downward to the Earth

“That’s pre-relinquishment stock,” Van Beneker said. “Not much of it left, but I knew you’d appreciate it.” He was holding an ultrasonic tube to his left forearm. Zzz! and the snout spurted alcohol straight into his vein. Van Beneker grinned. “Works faster this way. The working-class man’s boozer. Eh? Eh? Get you another rum, Mr. G?”

“Not just yet. Better look after your tourists, Van.”

The tourist couples were beginning to enter the bar: first the Watsons, then the Mirafloreses, the Steins, finally the Christophers. Evidently they had expected to find the bar throbbing with life, full of other tourists giddily hailing one another from distant parts of the room, and red-jacketed waiters ferrying drinks. Instead there were peeling plastic walls, a sonic sculpture that no longer worked and was deeply cobwebbed, empty tables, and that unpleasant Mr. Gundersen moodily peering into a glass. The tourists exchanged cheated glances. Was this what they had spanned the light-years to see? Van Beneker went to them, offering drinks, weeds, whatever else the limited resources of the hotel might be able to supply. They settled in two groups near the windows and began to talk in low voices, plainly self-conscious in front of Gundersen. Surely they felt the foolishness of their roles, these soft well-to-do people whose boredom had driven them to peer at the remote reaches of the galaxy. Stein ran a helix parlor in California, Miraflores a chain of lunar casinos, Watson was a doctor, and Christopher — Gundersen could not remember what Christopher did. Something in the financial world.

Mrs. Stein said, “There are some of those animals on the beach. The green elephants.”

Everyone looked. Gundersen signaled for another drink, and got it. Van Beneker, flushed, sweating, winked again and put a second snout to his arm. The tourists began to titter. Mrs. Christopher said, “Don’t they have any shame at all?”

“Maybe they’re simply playing, Ethel,” Watson said.

“ Playing? Well, if you call that playing—”

Gundersen leaned forward, glancing out the window without getting up. On the beach a pair of nildoror were coupling, the cow kneeling where the salt was thickest, the bull mounting her, gripping her shoulders, pressing his central tusk down firmly against the spiny crest of her skull, jockeying his hindquarters about as he made ready for the consummating thrust. The tourists, giggling, making heavy-handed comments of appreciation, seemed both shocked and titillated. To his considerable surprise, Gundersen realized he was shocked, too, although coupling nildoror were nothing new to him; and when a ferocious orgasmic bellowing rose from below he glanced away, embarrassed and not understanding why.

“You look upset,” Van Beneker said.

“They didn’t have to do that here.”

“Why not? They do it all over the place. You know how it is.”

“They deliberately went out there,” Gundersen muttered. “To show off for the tourists? Or to annoy the tourists? They shouldn’t be reacting to the tourists at all. What are they trying to prove? That they’re just animals, I suppose.”

“You don’t understand the nildoror, Gundy.”

Gundersen looked up, startled as much by Van Beneker’s words as by the sudden descent from “Mr. Gundersen” to “Gundy.” Van Beneker seemed startled, too, blinking rapidly and tugging at a stray sparse lock of fading hair.

“I don’t?” Gundersen asked. “After spending ten years here?”

“Begging pardon, but I never did think you understood them, even when you were here. I used to go around with you a lot to the villages when I was clerking for you. I watched you.”

“In what way do you think I failed to understand them, Van?”

“You despised them. You thought of them as animals.”

“That isn’t so!”

“Sure it is, Gundy. You never once admitted they had any intelligence at all.”

“That’s absolutely untrue,” Gundersen said. He got up and took a new flask of rum from the cabinet, and returned to the table.

“I would have gotten that for you,” Van Beneker said. “You just had to ask me.”

“It’s all right.” Gundersen chilled the drink and downed it fast. “You’re talking a load of nonsense, Van. I did everything possible for those people. To improve them, to lift them toward civilization. I requisitioned tapes for them, sound pods, culture by the ton. I put through new regulations about maximum labor. I insisted that my men respect their rights as the dominant indigenous culture. I—”

“You treated them like very intelligent animals. Not like intelligent alien people. Maybe you didn’t even realize it yourself, Gundy, but I did, and God knows they did. You talked down to them. You were kind to them in the wrong way. All your interest in uplifting them, in improving them — crap, Gundy, they have their own culture. They didn’t want yours!”

“It was my duty to guide them,” Gundersen said stiffly. “Futile though it was to think that a bunch of animals who don’t have a written language, who don’t—” He stopped, horrified.

“Animals,” Van Beneker said.

“I’m tired. Maybe I’ve had too much to drink. It just slipped out.”

“Animals.”

“Stop pushing me, Van. I did the best I could, and if what I was doing was wrong, I’m sorry. I tried to do what was right.” Gundersen pushed his empty glass forward. “Get me another, will you?”

Van Beneker fetched the drink, and one more snout for himself. Gundersen welcomed the break in the conversation, and apparently Van Beneker did, too, for they both remained silent a long moment, avoiding each other’s eyes. A sulidor entered the bar and began to gather the empties, crouching to keep from grazing the Earthman-scaled ceiling. The chatter of the tourists died away as the fierce-looking creature moved through the room. Gundersen looked toward the beach. The nildoror were gone. One of the moons was setting in the east, leaving a fiery track across the surging water. He realized that he had forgotten the names of the moons. No matter; the old Earthman-given names were dead history now. He said finally to Van Beneker, “How come you decided to stay here after relinquishment?”

“I felt at home here. I’ve been here twenty-five years. Why should I go anywhere else?”

“No family ties elsewhere?”

“No. And it’s comfortable here. I get a company pension. I get tips from the tourists. There’s a salary from the hotel. That’s enough to keep me supplied with what I need. What I need, mostly, is snouts. Why should I leave?”

“Who owns the hotel?” Gundersen asked.

“The confederation of western-continent nildoror. The Company gave it to them.”

“And the nildoror pay you a salary? I thought they were outside the galactic money economy.”

“They are. They arranged something with the Company.”

“What you’re saying is the Company still runs this hotel.”

“If anybody can be said to run it, the Company does, yes,” Van Beneker agreed. “But that isn’t much of a violation of the relinquishment law. There’s only one employee. Me. I pocket my salary from what the tourists pay for accommodations. The rest I spend on imports from the money sphere. Don’t you see, Gundy, it’s all just a big joke? It’s a routine designed to allow me to bring in liquor, that’s all. This hotel isn’t a commercial proposition. The Company is really out of this planet. Completely.”

“All right. All right. I believe you.”

Van Beneker said, “What are you looking for up mist country?”

“You really want to know?”

“It passes the time to ask things.”

“I want to watch the rebirth ceremony. I never saw it, all the time I was here.”