Гарри Гаррисон - Planet Of No Return

“I’ve copied the symbols as best I could, onto this piece of bark,” Brion said, when he had clambered back out of the crater. “Can you make any sense of them at all?”

She turned the bark around and around, then shook her head no. “It’s not any language that I am acquainted with. Though the alphabet has a familiar look. The memory banks may come up with something …”

Their grey-haired prisoner opened his eyes and began to tremble and scream hoarsely, scrabbling to crawl away from them. Brion reached out and seized him, then pressed his thumb hard against the side of the man’s neck below the ear. The prisoner flopped twice and was still.

“Did you see that?” Brion asked.

“The way you crunched him unconscious? I sure did. You’ll have to teach me that trick …”

“No, not that. What he was looking at when he started to wail. It was the radio controller.”

“Could he have known what it is?”

“I doubt that very much. But it must have some terrible significance for him that we will have to determine.” Brion turned his head sideways, listening. “The ship is on the way down. You must memorize the list now, of the things that we will need.”

The lifeship was on the ground for less than two minutes. Brion worried for every second of the time. Even when the ship had lifted off again with Lea aboard, the nagging concern continued. It had landed safely twice — which indicated that this location might not be under continuous observation. But each time it came down the danger of possible discovery increased. Yet they had to stay in this area because the hunters were the only key they had to the deadly problem of this planet. Since there was no choice he forced himself to put the danger from his mind and concentrate on setting up the HLP.

The small metal case of the Heuristic Language Programmer contained a wealth of sophisticated circuitry and design. It functioned through a holographic projector that formed a three-dimensional image — an image that apparently floated in the air above it. The first image that appeared was a tilted white surface with operating instructions printed upon it. Brion read this and punched into the controls the codes that he wanted. The instructions vanished and the teacher-image appeared in their place. This was an elderly man dressed in a plain grey outfit who sat, crosslegged, with a lidless box on the ground before him. Brion worked with the controls until he had replaced the man’s suit with a loincloth affair, and had managed to lengthen the image’s hair as well. Though their prisoner was much filthier, teacher and student resembled each other very much.

Brion looked at the frozen three-dimensional image and nodded. It was good enough. A touch of a final control caused the image to move backward in space so that it concealed the projection mechanism. When this happened it looked as though Brion’s arm had been plunged deep into the man’s naked thigh. He withdrew his hand, satisfied.

As soon as the task was completed the worry returned. Nor would it recede until the lifeship had landed and taken off safely again with Lea aboard. Now all he had to worry about were the remaining members of the tribe. There was no sign of them yet, nor could he detect their presence anywhere nearby. The seconds ticked slowly by.

Nothing had changed by the time the ship had returned and landed. He stood and waved. “Just drop the equipment down to me, one item at a time,” he called out to Lea when the airlock had opened, “Then get down yourself as fast as you can.”

It was dangerous — but it was the fastest way to get the equipment unloaded. He caught the heavy containers, one after another, stacking them to one side, then hurrying them into the crater as Lea climbed down to join him. As soon as they were clear of the blast area of the ship he punched in the commands that sent it back into orbit again. Only after it was gone and there had been no retaliation from the sky could they relax. Lea shook her fist at the distant hills.

“All right out there, you can come back now, come down here and try to cause some more trouble. Are you going to get a lovely surprise this time! It will be my pleasure. Not one of you smelly creatures is worth a finger of Brion’s hand!”

“I appreciate the sentiments,” he said, putting a bandage over the antiseptic foam that had been spread on the stump of the missing finger. He looked down. “Our guest seems to be stirring again.”

“I’ll go get us some food while you start up the machine. You can find out if it’s possible to strike up a conversation with him.”

The education technique of the HLP was painfully slow and painstakingly precise. It was essential that the subject cooperate at all times. This proved difficult because there was no active cooperation by the captive at first, something that was necessary to make this technique work. It wasn’t that the man was belligerent — just that he was terrified out of his wits.

Brion had known that the man was about to awake when he sensed the unconscious brain rhythms begin to change. First there was worry and a sensation of pain, and nothing else until he opened his eyes. Then they were replaced by simple and unmitigated fear, the same fear that had possessed Vjer when he had first seen Brion. But this was worse because it was unending and relentless. When the captive focused his eyes on Brion he tried to scramble away, mewling with terror. Brion seized him by the ankle to prevent his escape, but when he did this the sensation of fear grew even stronger. The man moaned in agony, venting his bowels uncontrollably. His eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed as he fainted. Brion went to get the medkit.

“Would you like some food?” Lea asked as he joined her in the shelter of the crater.

“Not quite yet. He’s being very uncooperative, so I’m going to give him the shot of scopalamine that the instructions recommended for this kind of case.”

The slight sting of the subcutaneous pressure spray from the capsule stirred the man to consciousness; Brion slipped the device into his pocket before it could be seen. This time a numbness spread over the captive’s fear. The man moved uncomfortably, wiping at himself, eyeing Brion with fear-ridden suspicion. Brion did nothing, simply sat on the ground and waited. He could see the man looking at the projected image, and at the same time felt the first touches of curiosity behind the ebbing fear. To the prisoner’s eyes the image was that of a man of his own age. A man who appeared to have astonishing body control, for he sat, not moving his body in the slightest, just breathing very lightly. Without this computer simulation of life the image would have been a statue. When the curiosity grew stronger-Brion spoke the cue word softly.

“Begin.”

The captive glanced at Brion with a sudden spurt of fear — then back to the image which had stirred for the first time. The image nodded and smiled, then reached into the open box that was sitting on the ground before him. He withdrew his hand holding what appeared to be an ordinary rock.

“Rock,” the image said clearly. “Rock…rock.” Each time it spoke the word it nodded and smiled. Then it extended the rock and made an interrogative sound. The old man only gaped, his brain filled with confusion.

With infinite machine patience the image repeated the demonstration and the interrogative. There was no positive reaction. On the third repetition the image was no longer smiling. When the old man did not answer to its interrogation the face grew ugly, the lips drew back from the teeth, it frowned — expressing every outward indication of aggression and anger that the anthropologists had ever discovered in any culture. The captive quailed away, moaning with fear. On the next repetition, when the rock was thrust in his direction, he stammered out “Prtr”. The image smiled and nodded and made all kinds of reinforcing friendly gestures. The learning process had begun.