Damon Knight - Orbit 17

The other probe did not reply.

“But that. . . that is only the backdrop to the present conflict ... we are there, Launce . . . how strange to see ourselves interpreted by a primitive and alien mind! I hear the myth-call, the proclamation ... why this? Launce, this cannot be! It should not be . . . but yes! The myth of Armageddon, the call to chaos. Their whole cultural belief... call it religion ... is shattered. This creature is a shaman, a priest ... all is swept away, he howls .. . and we are in that mirror of chaos ... we ... and the shaman has decreed that the universe must end for his people, who have heretofore put all creation beneath them . . . because we . . . are greater than they!"

The potato-shaped creature grasped an iron knife and drove it deep into the side of its skull through the ear. Speed watched the map of the creature explode inside, echo pain up and down a million miles of neurons, and slowly fade to eternal quiescence.

The shaman had sunk to the ground between its four multijointed legs.

Proteus said with cold authority that he judged it a Situation Eight. Other methods of contact would have to be considered. The probes were to return to the shuttle at once.

Other aliens had begun howling, running madly about the area. Launce readied himself for close defense of Speed and began to trundle back toward the stream. Speed put his sensitive machineries to rest and followed.

Disappointment, failure, frustration.

“Use words, Speed,” Launce said.

“Words! What good are words? Words are a fallacy, a sham set up by one intelligent being to bilk and confuse another. Words mean whatever the creature using them wishes to mean, true or false. Give me a mythic consciousness, and I will tell you what a creature really means.”

“All I have are words.”

Speed said nothing in reply.

Launce plunged into the shallow water, Speed high-stepping close behind. Inside them Proteus showed them every safe rock, every stable pile which could be stepped on without testing. Retracing their path and re-using every step, the probes rapidly made their way through the cleft in the moraine.

Spider-like, the natives scampered on either side of the stream, dancing on the boulders and howling. Launce remained aware of them, watched for any sign of attack. Stones chattered beneath his treads and the scrape of rock on metal echoed in the ravine. Every so often one of them would repeat the action of the shaman.

“It’s ritual suicide,” Speed said. The longer he spoke, the fuzzier his words grew with the new programming. “We’ve triggered something unprecedented. Why couldn’t they have made you feel!”

“Too expensive. I am a guard escort.”

Drooping bodies littered the trail behind them. Each time Speed could feel the burning explosion as cold iron bit through both halves of a divided brain. Other aliens, bearing torches, were heading for the watchtowers. It might have been some sort of ritual, perhaps a warning to others, perhaps a plan to slide the burning buildings down on them. Proteus weighed the last possibility and urged them to move faster.

Speed was having difficulty keeping up with Launce, who could roll heedlessly over rocks without testing them for stability. Even with Proteus’ assurances, Speed would not step on a rock without preserving full balance on his other three legs. It took time, and Launce kept getting farther ahead.

“Launce, my legs will not allow me to keep pace with you. Slow down!”

Proteus made it a command. Launce paused in midstream as his partner hurried on spider-legs to catch up. Launce did not want to pause there; the ravine was at its narrowest and the towers were just above. The creatures carrying the torches had reached the towers. Proteus pulsed them an alarming possibility concerning tribal suicide, above and beyond iron knives.

Blinding infrared. Pause (milliseconds) shock!

Launce knew instantly. Explosives. The creatures were determined to make the usurpers of their terror-culture share their fate.

The towers were gone in fragments amid twin columns of smoke and limestone dust. Nothing more than black powder, primitive, crude ... and the walls of the ravine were sliding down. Launce had simultaneously shifted into high gear and told Speed to run immediately without regard to slippery stones. Both probes scrambled forward.

A seventy-kilogram stone struck Launce and nicked his forward turret; he did not swerve from his rolling course. A scramble of boulders slid around them, one striking Launce broadside and nearly overturning him. His treads snarled against the heat-cracked stone and shoved him clear. The worst was behind them. Launce felt only pebbles striking him. He was fast and well-armored. He turned his attention to search for Speed, and— Pain.

Large rocks were still sliding. Launce had seen them moving toward Speed, calculated that Speed would outrun them, but Speed, seeing the stones hurtling toward him, had stopped.

“You malfunctioned badly,” Launce said. Visibility was poor in the gritty dust.

“Yes. No. I’m sorry, Launce. I panicked.”

They both felt the snap. Proteus had come around the planet and the repeater had kicked out. The father-computer filled them more clearly now, more immanently. The insulation of too many electronic circuits, with their roughness and empty echoes, ceased.

Proteus ordered Launce to move farther away from the slide until the rocks had had a chance to stabilize and the dust to settle.

“Launce, I’m afraid.”

“Wait until the air clears. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Are you out of the way of the rocks?”

“As far as I can tell. Very little is moving anymore. Nothing that could harm me.”

“I wish you could feel what I feel.”

“Haven’t got the programming. Send me some sonnets.”

For nearly an hour the nonsense poured into Launce. Then the dust settled.

The cleft in the moraine was sealed now; the stream would have to build up to a sizable flow in the alternating season to sweep it clean again. In the process it would probably wash away the village. Proteus pointed out the possibility of that intention.

“I felt it,” Speed said. “They wanted to destroy everything. “They’d have destroyed the universe if you’d handed them the button.”

Launce surveyed the situation. An irregular mass of granite had flipped over another and pinned Speed against the ground by the flared part of his body, the power housing. Three of his four legs had been broken off or bent double. The rock had bent his power housing and forced Speed to shut down his main power source.

As Launce rumbled up to him, Speed was shoving against the ground with his single undamaged leg.

“This is pretty bad.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“That’s good.”

“Proteus showed me how to turn it off.”

“How much force can you exert with that leg?”

“Not much. I’m running it off brain-power. Leg-power is gone.”

Proteus told Speed to shut it off and save brain-power for mental functions. Launce bumbled his way around the boulder. He tried nudging it with the ram he carried forward between his treads. Stones flew from beneath his treads before he gave up.

“We’re dealing with quite a few megagrams here. I can’t move it, Speed. It’s twice as large as I am and eight times as massive.”

“There must be something in the shuttle you could use as a lever. A half-meter to the rear would do it. Just that much and I could rock backward on the curved part of my power housing— if you’d push me—spilling the rock to one side.”

“I see. A four-meter lever would do it. There are replacement shuttle undercarriage struts which would probably do . . .”