Damon Knight - Orbit 20

“I thought, ” said Gerold, heavily sarcastic, “that engineers were supposed to check our shuttles before we all happily fly off to unknown planets with them.”

“Not my fault,” said Biren, unmoved. “If the morons upstairs will stock an A4 shuttle with A3 substitute blocks, I can’t do anything but swear at them, and I’ve done that.”

Gerold snorted. Both he and Alissin, Hanna thought, seemed to have been affected, like her, by the peculiarly intractable feel of the planet. They had come back late and tired, Gerold making remarks about “blasted planets where you walk all day and get nowhere,” and Alissin saying that she hardly seemed to have done anything in a whole day’s work. As if to disprove the point, she was now sitting at the side desk, laying out specimens.

Hanna came out of reverie to hear Jon saying, “It’s ridiculous. We’ve never failed to make contact yet.”

She said, “We’ve made contact. We just don’t understand what they’re saying.”

“You must have got it wrong,” said Gerold accusingly.

Hanna let Jon indignantly deny this, and give his opinion that the words were probably some form of ritual.

Gerold said, “Listen to our clever University ethnologist. Give a thing a name and think you understand it,” and Jon subsided.

Before the pause became too awkward, Hanna said, “I know I’m not an ethno, but it didn’t look like a ritual to me. It was all so—unplanned. Or it looked like that, don’t you think, Jon? And why should they have a ritual especially for meeting us?”

“Could be for meeting any strangers.”

“Attaboy,” muttered Gerold, “my theory right or wrong.”

Erring said hastily, “It’s only first meeting, after all. You can’t be expected to get very far in one meeting.”

“Yes, but if only they’d take some notice of us.” Jon’s voice rose and cracked in frustration.

“Well, they did,” said Hanna. “They came to meet us, and responded to a greeting. It’s just that we don’t understand the notice they take of us.”

Jon snapped out, “Oh, stop saying we don’t understand. We know that, you fool—” and then, in the dreadful pause that followed, “Sorry. But you know what I mean.”

Erring said understandingly, “That’s okay. That’s okay. We know it’s hard on you not having a job to go on with.”

Biren said, “Do we have to make a really good contact? What’s the priority rating of this place?”

Alissin looked up from her plant specimens. “It’s quite high. Eight point five, or something like that.”

“Have we had any higher than that this trip?”

Everyone tried to repress exasperated sighs. Biren was notoriously vague about anything not directly concerning the working of the ship. Erring said kindly, “Only Vanging, and that was so good the colonists are already going out there.”

“How would this one compare with it?”

“We can’t tell yet,” said Alissin calmly. “The air’s very good, and the climate should be all right, but that’s about as far as we’ve got. Oh, and Gerold says the mineral deposits could be all right.”

“I did not. I said some rock formations like the ones we saw give good results.”

Alissin shrugged.

“Don’t need to talk to the locals anyway,” said Biren, persevering. “It’s a big enough planet. Colonists just keep out of the way.”

Both Hanna and Jon started to speak, and stopped. “Go on,” said Hanna.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Jon. “They did that three or four times prewar, and none of them really worked. One lot of colonists got massacred about seven years after they arrived, and no one knows why even now, and another lot started a civil war without meaning to, and I forget what happened to the others, but they didn’t work out.”

“Wouldn’t have any trouble with these if all they can do is sit round and talk nonsense.”

In the small room, the irritated snorts from Hanna and Jon were perfectly audible. “You know, Biren,” said Erring brightly, “I do think Jon and Hanna are right there. After all, this ‘making people not to be’ could mean killing or dying.”

“Well, why didn’t they say so?” said Gerold, aggrieved.

“It could be rit—” began Jon, and stopped.

Hanna said slowly, “You know, that’s funny. I don’t think the language tapes gave the Kona words for ‘kill,’ or ‘die,’ or ‘dead.’ And they’re on the standard lists, and the tapes were almost complete.”

“And I suppose if you were an ethno, you would conclude from that, the locals are immortal?” said Gerold, sarcastic again. But Hanna did not even hear him. Her lips moved soundlessly, checking off the known vocabulary of the Kona language.

Erring looked pointedly at the clock, and said, “It’s getting late. Are we standing watch tonight?”

“Yes, we are,” said Gerold. “I wouldn’t trust these local bastards as far as I could kick them.”

Biren yawned and grunted. “You don’t trust anyone that far, so why worry?”

Erring said immediately, “I’ll go first watch if you like. Hour and a quarter each? That’d take us till about dawn here, and we can’t do much until then.”

In silence, the other five climbed into rest suits, and disposed themselves around the floor of the small cabin.

In the middle of the long night, Hanna, sitting watching the red eyes of the alarm system, thought she could hear the chant of Kona voices over the plain. It was too faint to distinguish the words, but inevitably the sentence began in her mind, “They made us not to be, and they are not.” She thought again of the rangy white horses and tall riders galloping together effortlessly over the endless plain, and a phrase floated up in her mind— “sea-white, boundlessly beautiful.” After a little consideration, she tracked it down as a reference to Peter Beagle’s unicorn, in a course she had done on mid-twentieth-century fantasy. She thought of Beagle’s unicorns, immortality and beauty and power incarnate, and because of it, almost irrevocably beyond petty mortal transactions. And suddenly the thought came that even a unicorn could be no whiter, no lovelier, no more unreachable, than a Konanhorse. Outside, the chant went on, as thin as the wind. Hanna felt all at once desperately lonely. She thought, I wish we could talk properly. We didn’t discuss anything tonight, only scored off each other and refused to face issues. What are we doing, anyway, summing up planets at one a month? We’re none of us properly trained or prepared for what we do.

The image of white horses galloping over a dark plain kept breaking into her mind.

The next day Biren elected to go with Alissin and Gerold, and Erring decided to come with Jon and Hanna. Once more they tramped through the dark-green grass, and it was no easier than the first time. The breeze was, if anything, stronger than yesterday’s, and colder, more like a river; it quenched even Erring’s bright conversation. But this time they could see, even as they set out, the huddle of horses and riders, and the chant came clearly to meet them.

Hanna said, “They must have been at it all night. I heard them during my watch.”

“Well, at least we know they don’t feel the cold,” said Jon. His voice had a resentful edge to it, and his teeth were chattering.

This time the Konans did not come to meet them; but as the three Terrans approached, the group rearranged itself as effortlessly as before into a half-circle facing them. The chant had changed. Hanna could hear that, but in the confusion of voices she could catch only indistinct phrases. She said quickly, seizing the initiative, “We give you greeting. Will you speak with us?”

As before, the Konans had difficulty in allowing one voice to speak alone; but in the end, enough Konans fell silent to make the message understandable. Two or three voices said, “Why did they make us not to be, and why are they not?”