Anne McCaffrey - Decision at Doona

“I just finished pointing out that their cultural level is considerably above rank superstition,” Lawrence said with some asperity.

“Ken, you didn't see a worship center in the village, did you?” asked Ramasan.

“Not a place obviously set aside as sacred,” and Reeve scoured his memory of the quiet village. “All the buildings looked residential, but then, how'd I recognize an Hrruban church from a proverbial hole in the ground?”

“Of them we got plenty,” laughed Lawrence who had so recently been a fence-post hole digger.

“Do they suckle their young?” Ezra Moody asked.

Ken closed his eyes again to focus on the scene in the village but he had too many details doing a reel in his mind's eye.

"I'm sorry, Doc. I did see young ones, the kids with their balls and some older cubs – I guess you'd call 'em cubs – were playing some involved throwing game. I didn't pay it much attention, you understand, but it looked at a glance like a team game. I didn't see a small baby cub. Some of the women, though, wore garments draped from their shoulders-patterned materials. Some didn't. Difficult to notice mammary development through the fur. A couple of females had a sleeveless top, then the ornamental girdle and a skirt similar to the one Hrrula wears, only they didn't carry knives. So it's obvious that clothing is adornment rather than cover-up. And the women didn't take any part in the conference at the central fire. They came and went. They cook indoors; I did notice that.

“Oh, and I saw a woman milking one of the deer-types in a pen by her house.”

“They can domesticate those deer, huh?” Ben rumbled. “I'd thought of trying it, once I could catch one,” and then he shrugged. “Deerhorns were once ground up as an aphrodisiac.”

“Good Lord!” Ezra Moody exclaimed, staring at Ben Adjei in astonishment.

Everyone was used to Ben's dry teasing humor but occasionally he would succeed with the pragmatic medic. Now he shrugged again, but there was a certain gleam in his dark eyes as he replied. “The wise merchant stimulates demand for his products and impotence is on the rise in our automated society.”

"Why, you wouldn't – you don't mean – " Moody stammered until someone's chuckle tipped him off.

“A moment, though,” Dautrish interjected. “Ben has a point. No, of course I don't mean ground deerhorn, Ezra, but I mean, let us be sensible in what we plan to bring back to mother Earth. Let us not duplicate or undercut each other's treasure. I am very tempted to bring back some of those nicotine-rich leaves, Ezra, for I happen to know that there isn t enough available on Earth to treat those circulatory diseases for which nicotine is a specific.”

“You can't prepare enough to make its importation valid,” Ezra replied. “And can we protect it and Earth from a possible cross-infection? We have to be sure what we bring in can be adequately sterilized, you know, or it will be jettisoned.”

“True, true,” Dautrish agreed, his enthusiasm waning abruptly.

“Can you sterilize feathers?” Sam Gaynor asked in alarm.

“Yes, indeed. Ultra-violet'll do it. We can put them through an insecticide to remove the quill parasites.”

“Parasites?” Sam Gaynor regarded the plastic bagsful of vivid feathers with obvious suspicion.

“Hey, which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of rocks?” Lawrence asked with an all too sober face.

“Huh?” Gaynor was startled afresh. “Oh, knock it off, Lawrence;” he said when the sociologist began to laugh. He picked up his colorful treasure and left the mess hall, muttering under his breath.

“Take it easy, Lawrence,” Ken suggested. “You know he's got a low boiling point and we don't need to fight among ourselves.”

“He may just find there isn't room for fine feathers on the Codep ship,” Lee Lawrence replied, no trace of his recent amusement on his face. “Mart's rings, Vic's plasticized towers, even Macy's stones make more sense than feathers!”

“Yes, but feathers don't have much mass and it's mass that a ship moves,” Vic Solinari pointed out.

“Yes but! Yes but!” Lee cut in, his eyes restlessly darting from one face to another, his mouth distorted suddenly with his inner conflict. “Yes, but why?”

The anguished question hung unanswered in the tense silence that followed the sociologist's outburst. Each man must have been wrestling with conscience and conditioning, Reeve realized. Wrestling against the inexorable departure from Doona. They had accepted it, at least to the point of collecting items now unobtainable on Earth and therefore valuable; extraterrestrial products with which to buy a decent status. But the emotional shock was seeping past rationalization, past obedience, past all civilized compromise, and every man in the room was fighting to maintain mental balance in the face of this embittering disappointment.

«Why?» Ken heard himself saying. «Because history has shown that two civilizations cannot coexist on the same planet without competing to the point of aggression – and destruction. God knows I don't want to leave Doona either, but I goddam well couldn't live with myself if I stayed – and the Hrrubans got wiped out like the Siwannese.»

"One can suddenly understand why our ancestors found genocide to be the easiest solution to their own problems in dealing with minority groups," Ben remarked in his imperturbable fashion. "It was Columbus wasn't it, who eliminated the Carib tribes completely? Of course, they had only spears, and swords, not rifles and – " his voice dropped to a velvety whisper.

“Are you mad, Adjei?” Lawrence shouted, his eyes wide with horror at the big vet's soft intimation.

“Not from you, Ben?” Moody was stunned.

“You're sick Adjei!”

“What's the matter with you?”

Ben smiled as he leaned back in his chair. “I just thought I'd say it and it would be said and could be forgotten.”

There was no doubt, judging by the expressions in the room, that the thought had occurred to everyone; nasty, niggling, treacherous thought that it was. Ben was right. It was a relief to hear it spoken, to be able to discard it with honest revulsion.

“But it rather forcefully points up why we have a Principle of Non-Cohabitation, doesn't it?” he went on quietly. “However, we have progressed. Your reaction proved that. So we will have the dubious pleasure of being recorded as the heroes of the Decision at Doona.”

Ken put down his empty cup. He hadn't had enough coffee but he couldn't stay in the charged uneasy atmosphere of the mess hall.

“Doc, spring me out some stay-awake, will you?” he asked.

“Why beat your wits out over that crazy purr, Ken? What good'll it do you now?” Lawrence asked.

“I don't know,” Reeve answered honestly as he waited for Ezra to locate the stimulant, “but it occupies my mind and gets me from today to tomorrow.”

“Knowledge is never useless.” Dautrish said, riffling the pages of his careful botanical drawings. “I think I'd like to have a list of those Hrruban equivalents of all these. For my records, you know, and,” he favored Ken with a wry smile, “my own personal satisfaction.”

“Say, is Hrrula going back to his village tomorrow?” asked Solinari. “I mean, I'd kinda like to look around it.”

Ken scrubbed wearily at his face, waiting for the pep pill to take effect. “Hrrula didn't indicate any length of stay. I'd like to get one more good session with him on the tape before he goes.”

«You know,» Lee mused, an trace of his previous disgruntlement gone, «I rather like that – we learn his language.»

“I, too, approve,” Ben concurred. “For once, the native gets the linguistic upperhand. Unusual too, probably unique in contact history. Hmmm. When you've got the glossary, Ken, I'll learn it with you.”