E.C. Tubb - The Winds of Gath

Dumarest looked around. It was still too bright for him to be totally unobserved if anyone were watching but details would be blurred by the dim light. He dropped to one knee very close to the sleeping man. His hand touched the coffin and he leaned forward—and saw the gleam of watchful eyes.

"Sime?"

"What is it?" The man lifted himself on one elbow. His gaunt chest was bare beneath the ragged tatters of his shirt, his face skeletal in the ruby glow. "What do you want?"

"I've got a proposition." Dumarest leaned close so that the man could smell the liquor on his breath. "Remember me? I helped you carry this thing from the field." His hand rapped the coffin.

"I remember."

"Well, I can get you a lift with it. A couple of units will do it."

No.

"Are you stupid? We've got as far again to go. You want to pass out before we reach the mountains?"

"No. Of course not."

"Then how about it?" Dumarest sounded impatient. "A couple of units to one of the guards. Its worth it."

"Thank you, but I can't." Sime reared upright and rested one arm on the lid of the box. "I know that you mean well but it's a personal matter. Please try to understand."

Dumarest shrugged. "Suit yourself—it's your funeral."

He rose to his feet, half turned and caught a glimpse of movement. He lurched toward it and almost trod on the recumbent body of the old crone who had traveled with Sime. She appeared to be fast asleep.

Melga adjusted the hypogun and held the nozzle close to the furry hide of the small animal which Dyne held writhing in his hands. It was desperate with terror. Its mouth gaped and its eyes bulged but it made no sound aside from the harshness of its breathing. She watched it for a moment then pressed the trigger. Air blasted a charge of anesthetic through the hide and into the bloodstream. Immediately the animal went limp.

"I have changed the dosage and chemical content of the anesthetic," said the physician. She took the animal from the cyber's hands and fastened it to the surface of her dissecting table. "On the next specimen I shall, if necessary, simply sever the sensory nerves to the brain." She sat down, picked up a heavy scalpel and bared the skull with a few, deft strokes. She had had much practice. The dissected remains of half a score of the creatures stood in plastic containers. She had concentrated on the skull.

"Perhaps it would be as well to dissect without undue concern for the creature's pain," suggested Dyne. Like the woman he wore a surgeon's gown and mask. Elbow-length gloves covered his hands. "It could be that any anesthetic used will destroy what we are trying to find."

"Possible," agreed the woman, "but very unlikely." She cut and snipped and discarded. A saw whined briefly as she sliced through the top of the skull. A suction device removed the circle of bone. Blood welled over the surface of the living brain. "While I agree that chemicals may alter the metabolism they can hardly change the physical structure. But I may have to make perfectly sure." The blood vanished into the maw of a sucking tube as she adjusted the instrument. "However pain, in itself, can serve no useful end. The muscles will be tense, the blood cells engorged, the entire glandular system in a state of abnormality." She swung a glass over the wound and selected a delicate probe. "Fear is also an important consideration. It may be as well to gas the next collection of specimens to ensure that they are uncontaminated by the effects of the emotion."

Dyne made no comment. He leaned forward, watching as the woman cut and probed into the mass of living tissue, her expert fingers baring the innermost recesses of the creature's brain. He caught the faint sound of her indrawn breath.

"Something new?"

"No."

She put down the probe and picked up a scalpel. Quickly she stripped the rest of the hide from the now-dead creature. Again she cut and delved, this time with more speed but with no less skill. Finally she put aside her instruments and leaned back in her chair.

"The same," she said flatly. Her voice was heavy with fatigue. "Exactly like the others."

"You regard the evidence as conclusive?"

"There can be no doubt. The random sampling would have shown any divergences if they existed. No divergences were found. We must accept the logical conclusion."

Leaning forward she pressed the release. The disposable topsheet of the dissecting table sprang from the edges into a cup cradling the unwanted remains. She threw it into a disposal unit. A gush of blue flame converted it to ash.

Dyne narrowed his eyes at the brief glare. "You are not preserving the remains?"

"It would be unnecessary duplication—the specimen yielded nothing new."

She leaned back, acutely conscious of the confines of the tent, the clutter of her equipment. She was a tidy woman and such confusion caused mental irritation. Dyne didn't help. He stood, a watchful figure, to one side of the table, the dissecting light casting hollows beneath his eyes. She wished that he would sit down or go away. She always worked better alone.

"We can now be quite certain that these creatures have no functioning auditory system," she said, knowing that he waited for her summation. "They have no outer ear—in itself not too important, but they have no ossicle and no tympanic cavity. They have a membranous labyrinth containing otoliths and similar in structure to that of the gnathosomes. This takes care of their sense of balance but it is not connected to anything which could be a functioning auditory nerve."

"Could it be vestigial?" He was shrewd, she thought before answering.

"No. There is simply no recognizable nerve tissue present which it could be and no connection to the outer hide or to any form of tympanic membrane. The conclusion is inescapable. These creatures are completely devoid of the mechanism of an auditory system."

She closed her eyes, feeling waves of fatigue rolling over her like the waves of a sea, remotely conscious of the dull ache in her hands and wrists. Once it would not have been like this. Once she had been able to sit at her table and work and work and work… She caught herself on the edge of sleep and opened her eyes to the glare of the dissecting light. Age, she thought wryly. It comes to us all.

Something brushed against one of the walls. A soft tread whispered beyond the plastic—one of the ubiquitous guards of the Matriarch on her rounds. Dyne waited until she had moved away.

"So these creatures are completely deaf. Is that your summation?"

"I didn't say that they were deaf." The physician reached out and snapped off the dissecting light. The comparative gloom was restful to her eyes. "I said that they had no auditory system."

The cyber could recognize the difference but he wondered why the woman was being so precise. "Exactly. But with no auditory system they must be completely deaf in the sense that we use the word."

She nodded.

"Then they cannot receive and interpret external vibration." He was insistent. "You are positive as to that?"

She had been positive from the first. Scientific thoroughness had prompted the following dissections and now there could be no doubt. Without an auditory system the animals were stone-deaf. The sonic guns used to trap them? They operated directly on the nervous system and created a condition of panic fear. The victim had no choice but to run from the point of maximum disturbance. Ground vibration? Perhaps they could sense it but in a manner she couldn't yet tell.

But, without the ability to hear, how could they survive? How could they hunt, mate, elude ordinary means of capture?

THE PATH veered more to the east so that the upper rim of the sun fell below the horizon and only a dull, red glow shone from beyond the sea. The stars were brighter now, limning the bulk of the mountains which waited ahead, casting a thin, ghost-light on the grass and the boulders to either side. Far below, from the base of the cliffs, the muted roar of the waves sounded like the pounding of a monstrous heart.