Robert Silverberg: Downward to the Earth

The bulging blue eyes seemed to bulge even more. “Why can’t you be serious, Gundy?”

“I am.”

“It’s dangerous to fool with the rebirth thing.”

“I’m prepared for the risks.”

“You ought to talk to some people here about it, first. It’s not a thing for us to meddle in.”

Gundersen sighed. “Have you seen it?”

“No. Never. Never even been interested in seeing it. Whatever the hell the sulidoror do in the mountains, let them do it without me. I’ll tell you who to talk to, though. Seena.”

“She’s watched the rebirth?”

“Her husband has.”

Gundersen felt a spasm of dismay. “Who’s her husband?”

“Jeff Kurtz. You didn’t know?”

“I’ll be damned,” Gundersen murmured.

“You wonder what she saw in him, eh?”

“I wonder that she could bring herself to live with a man like that. You talk about my attitude toward the natives! There’s someone who treated them like his own property, and—”

“Talk to Seena, up at Shangri-la Falls. About the rebirth.” Van Beneker laughed. “You’re playing games with me, aren’t you? You know I’m drunk and you’re having a little fun.”

“No. Not at all.” Gundersen rose uneasily. “I ought to get some sleep now.”

Van Beneker followed him to the door. Just as Gundersen went out, the little man leaned close to him and said, “You know, Gundy, what the nildoror were doing on the beach before — they weren’t doing that for the tourists. They were doing it for you. It’s the kind of sense of humor they have. Good night, Gundy.”

GUNDERSEN WOKE EARLY. His head was surprisingly clear. It was just a little after dawn, and the green-tinged sun was low in the sky. The eastern sky, out over the ocean: a welcome touch of Earthliness. He went down to the beach for a swim. A soft south wind was blowing, pushing a few clouds into view. The hullygully trees were heavy with fruit; the humidity was as high as ever; thunder boomed back from the mountains that ran in an arc paralleling the coast a day’s drive inland. Mounds of nildoror dung were all over the beach. Gundersen stepped warily, zigzagging over the crunching sand and hurling himself flat into the surf. He went under the first curling row of breakers and with quick powerful strokes headed toward the shoals. The tide was low. He crossed the exposed sandbar and swam beyond it until he felt himself tiring. When he returned to the shore area, he found two of the tourist men had also come out for a swim, Christopher and Miraflores. They smiled tentatively at him. “Bracing,” he said. “Nothing like salt water.”

“Why can’t they keep the beach clean, though?” Miraflores asked.

A sullen sulidor served breakfast. Native fruits, native fish. Gundersen’s appetite was immense. He bolted down three golden-green bitterfruits for a start, then expertly boned a whole spiderfish and forked the sweet pink flesh into himself as though engaged in a speed contest. The sulidor brought him another fish and a bowl of phallic-looking forest candles. Gundersen still was working on these when Van Beneker entered, wearing clean though frayed clothes. He looked bloodshot and chastened. Instead of joining Gundersen at the table he merely smiled a perfunctory greeting and sailed past.

“Sit with me, Van,” Gundersen said.

Uncomfortably, Van Beneker complied. “About last night—”

“Forget it.”

“I was insufferable, Mr. Gundersen.”

“You were in your cups. Forgiven. In vino veritas. You were calling me Gundy last night, too. You may as well do it this morning. Who catches the fish?”

“There’s an automatic weir just north of the hotel. Catches them and pipes them right into the kitchen. God knows who’d prepare food here if we didn’t have the machines.”

“And who picks the fruit? Machines?”

“The sulidoror do that,” Van Beneker said.

“When did sulidoror start working as menials on this planet?”

“About five years ago. Six, maybe. The nildoror got the idea from us, I suppose. If we could turn them into bearers and living bulldozers, they could turn the sulidoror into bellhops. After all, the sulidoror are the inferior species.”

“But always their own masters. Why did they agree to serve? What’s in it for them?”

“I don’t know,” Van Beneker said. “When did anybody ever understand the sulidoror?”

True enough, Gundersen thought. No one yet had succeeded in making sense out of the relationship between this planet’s two intelligent species. The presence of two intelligent species, in the first place, went against the general evolutionary logic of the universe. Both nildoror and sulidoror qualified for autonomous ranking, with perception levels beyond those of the higher hominoid primates; a sulidor was considerably smarter than a chimpanzee, and a nildor was a good deal more clever than that. If there had been no nildoror here at all, the presence of the sulidoror alone would have been enough to force the Company to relinquish possession of the planet when the decolonization movement reached its peak. But why two species, and why the strange unspoken accommodation between them, the bipedal carnivorous sulidoror ruling over the mist country, the quadrupedal herbivorous nildoror dominating the tropics? How had they carved this world up so neatly? And why was the division of authority breaking down, if breaking down was really what was happening? Gundersen knew that there were ancient treaties between these creatures, that a system of claims and prerogatives existed, that every nildor went back to the mist country when the time for its rebirth arrived. But he did not know what role the sulidoror really played in the life and the rebirth of the nildoror. No one did. The pull of that mystery was, he admitted, one of the things that had brought him back to Holman’s World, to Belzagor, now that he had shed his administrative responsibilities and was free to risk his life indulging private curiosities. The shift in the nildoror-sulidoror relationship that seemed to be taking place around this hotel troubled him, though; it had been hard enough to comprehend that relationship when it was static. Of course, the habits of alien beings were none of his business, really. Nothing was his business, these days. When a man had no business, he had to appoint himself to some. So he was here to do research, ostensibly, which is to say to snoop and spy. Putting it that way made his return to this planet seem more like an act of will, and less like the yielding to irresistible compulsion that he feared it had been.

“—more complicated than anybody ever thought,” Van Beneker was saying.

“I’m sorry. I must have missed most of what you said.”

“It isn’t important. We theorize a lot, here. The last hundred of us. How soon do you start north?”

“In a hurry to be rid of me, Van?”

“Only trying to make plans, sir,” the little man said, hurt. “If you’re staying, we need provisions for you, and—”

“I’m leaving after breakfast. If you’ll tell me how to get to the nearest nildoror encampment so I can apply for my travel permit.”

“Twenty kilometers, southeast. I’d run you down there in the beetle, but you understand — the tourists—”

“Can you get me a ride with a nildor?” Gundersen suggested. “If it’s too much bother, I suppose I can hike it, but—”

“I’ll arrange things,” Van Beneker said.

A young male nildor appeared an hour after breakfast to take Gundersen down to the encampment. In the old days Gundersen would simply have climbed on his back, but now he felt the necessity of making introductions. One does not ask an autonomous intelligent being to carry you twenty kilometers through the jungle, he thought, without attempting to enter into elementary courtesies. “I am Edmund Gundersen of the first birth,” he said, “and I wish you joy of many rebirths, friend of my journey.”