The Death of Sleep (41 page)

"They," Varian declared, "would eat anything."

Lunzie managed a chagrined smile. "My future efforts will be better, I promise. Just getting the hang of it."

"If you could just neutralize the hydro-telluride," Varian said. "Of course, we can always eat grass like the herbivores. D'you know, it doesn't stink?"

"Humans can't digest that much grass fiber."

On one of their supervised "foragings," the children had spotted a shy, hip-high, brown-furred beast in the ferny peat bogs. All their efforts to capture one of the "cute" animals before an adult could follow the active children, were circumvented by the quadrupeds' native caution. Varian found that odd since there was no reason for the little animals to fear bipeds. Then a wounded herbivore too slow to escape with the others was captured. A pen was constructed outside the camp for Varian to tend and observe the creature. On the next trip, Varian brought back one very small specimen of a furry quadruped breed. It had been orphaned and would have fallen prey to the larger carnivores.

The two creatures proved to compound Ireta's anomalies. Trizein had been dissecting clear-ichored marine creatures, styled fringes because of their shape. The large herbivore, savagely gouged in the flank, was red-blooded. Trizein was amazed that two such diverse species would have evolved on the same planet. Trizein could find no precedents to explain red-blooded, pentadactyl animals and ichor-circulating marine creatures cohabiting. The anomaly didn't fit the genetic blueprint for the planet. He spent hours trying to reconcile the diversities. He requested tissue samples from any big creature Varian's team could catch, both carnivore and herbivore, and he wanted specimens of marine and insect life. He seemed to be constantly in the shuttle lab, except when Lunzie hauled him out to eat his meals. He'd have forgotten that minor human requirement if she'd let him.

Meanwhile, the little creature now named Dandy and the wounded female adult herbivore called Mabel had to be tended and fed: the children assumed the first chore. Lunzie had synthesized a lactose formula for the orphan and put the energetic Bonnard in charge of its feeding, with Cleiti and Terilla to assist.

"Now you kids can't neglect Dandy," Lunzie told them. "I don't mind if you treat it as a pet but once you take responsibility for it, you'd better not forget that obligation. Understand me? Especially you, Bonnard. If you're interested in becoming a planetary surveyor, you must prove to be trustworthy. All this goes down on your file, remember!"

"I will, Lunzie, I will!" And Bonnard began issuing orders to the two girls.

Varian chuckled as she watched him grooming Dandy and fussing over the security of his pen while the girls refilled its water bucket. "He's making progress, isn't he?"

"Considerable. If we could only stop him bellowing like a bosun."

"You should hear his mother," Varian replied, grinning broadly. "I don't blame her for dumping him with us. I wouldn't want him underfoot if I was charting an ion storm."

"How's your Mabel?" Lunzie asked casually although she had another motive for asking.

"Oh, I think we can release her soon. Good clean tissue around the scar once we got rid of all the parasites. I wouldn't want to keep her in a pen much longer or she'll become tame, used to being given food instead of doing her own foraging."

"Mabel? Tame?" Lunzie rolled her eyes, remembering that it had taken all the heavyworlders to rope and secure the beast for the initial surgery.

"Odd, that injury," Varian went on, frowning. "All the adults of her herd had similar bite marks on their haunches. That would suggest that their predator doesn't kill!" Her frown deepened. "And that's rather odd behavior, too."

"You didn't by any chance notice the heavyworlders' reaction?"

Varian regarded Lunzie for a long moment. "I don't think I did but then I was far too busy keeping away from Mabel's tail, legs and teeth. Why? What did you notice?"

"They had looked . . ."—Lunzie paused, trying to find exactly the right adjective—"hungry!"

"Come on now, Lunzie!"

"I'm not kidding, Varian. They looked hungry at the sight of all that raw red meat. They weren't disgusted. They were fascinated. Tardma was all but salivating." Lunzie felt sick at the memory of the scene.

"There have always been rumors that heavyworlders eat animal flesh on their home planets," Varian said thoughtfully, giving a little squeamish shudder. "But that group have all served with FSP teams. They know the rules."

"It's not a rumor, Varian. They
do
eat animal protein on their homeworlds," Lunzie replied, recalling long serious talks she'd had with Zebara. "This is a very primitive environment, predators hunting constantly. There's something called the 'desert island syndrome.'" She sighed but made eye contact with the young leader. "And ethnic compulsions can cause the most civilized personality to revert, given the stimulus."

"Is that why you keep experimenting to improve the quality of available foodstuffs?" Lunzie nodded. "Keep up the good work, then. Last night's meal was rather savory. I'll keep an eye out for a hint of reversion."

A few days later Lunzie entered the shuttle laboratory to find Trizein combining a mass of vegetable protein with an ARCT-grown nut paste. She swiped her finger through the mess and licked thoughtfully.

"We're getting there, but you know, Tri, we're not real explorers yet. I'm sort of disappointed."

Trizein looked up, startled. "I think we've accomplished rather a lot in the limited time with so much to analyze and investigate. We're the first beings on this planet. How much more explorer can we be?"

Lunzie let the grin she'd been hiding show. "We're not considered true explorers until we have made a spiritous beverage from indigenous products."

Trizein blinked, totally baffled.

"Drink, Trizein. Quickal, spirits, booze, liquor, alcohol. What have you analyzed that's non-toxic with a sufficient sugar content to ferment? I think we should have a chemical relaxant. It'd do everyone good."

Trizein peered shortsightedly at her, a grin tugging at his lips. "In point of fact, I have got something. They brought it in from that foraging expedition that was attacked. I ran a sample of it. I think it's very good but I can't get anyone else to try it. We'll need a still."

"Nothing we can't build." Lunzie grinned. "I've been anticipating your cooperation, Tri, and I've got the necessary components out of stores. I rather thought you'd assist in this worthy project for the benefit of team morale."

"Morale's so important," Trizein agreed, exhibiting a droll manner which he'd had little occasion to display. "I do miss wine, both for drinking and cooking. Not that anything is likely to improve the pervasive flavor of Iretan food. A little something after supper is a sure specific against insomnia."

"I didn't think anyone suffered that here," Lunzie remarked, and then they set to work to construct a simple distillation system, complete with several filters. "We'll have to remove all traces of the hydro-telluride without cooking off the alcohol."

"A pity acclimatization is taking so long," Trizein said, easing a glass pipe into a joint. "We'll probably get used to the stench the day before the
ARCT
comes for us."

They set the still up, out of the way, in a corner of Lunzie's sleeping dome. With a sense of achievement, they watched the apparatus bubble gently for a time and then left it to do its job.

"It's going to be days before there's enough for the whole team to drink," Trizein said in gentle complaint.

"I'll keep watch on it," she said, her eyes crinkling merrily, "but feel perfectly free to pop in and sample its progress."

"Oh, yes, we should periodically sample it," Trizein replied gravely. "Can't have an inferior product."

They shut the seal on Lunzie's dome just as Kai and Gaber burst excitedly into the camp.

"We've got films of the monster who's been taking bites out of the herbivores," Kai announced, waving the cassette jubilantly above his head.

The lightweights watched the footage of toothy monsters with horrified interest. Varian dubbed the carnivores "fang-faces" for the prominent fangs and rows of sharp teeth. They were terrifyingly powerful specimens, walking upright on huge haunches with a reptilian tail like a third leg that flew behind them when they ran. The much smaller forepaws might look like a humorous afterthought of genetic inadequacy but they were strong enough to hold a victim still while the animal chewed on the living prey. Fortunately the fang-faces on film were not savaging herbivores in this scene. They were greedily eating clumps of a bright green grass, tearing them up by those very useful forelimbs, stuffing them into toothy maws.

"Quite a predator," Lunzie murmured to Varian. She ought to have hauled Trizein away from his beloved electro-microscope. He needed to have the contrast of the macrocosm to round out the pathology of his biological profiles.

"Yes, but this is very uncharacteristic behavior for a carnivore," Varian remarked, watching intently. "Its teeth are suitable for a carnivorous diet. Why is it eating grass like there's no tomorrow?"

As the camera panned past the fang-face, it rested on a golden-furred flying creature, eating grass almost alongside the predator. It had a long sharp beak and wing-hands like the Ryxi but there the resemblance ended.

"We've seen avian nests but they're always near water, preferably large lakes or rivers," Gaber told Lunzie. "That creature is nearly two hundred kilometers from the nearest water. They would have to have deliberately sought out this vegetation."

"They're an interesting species, too," Kai remarked. "They were curious enough to follow our sled and they're capable of fantastic speed."

Varian let out a crow. "I want to be there when we tell that to the Ryxi! They want to be the only intelligent avians in the galaxy even if they have to deny the existence of others by main strength of will."

"Why weren't these species seen on the initial flyby of Ireta?" Divisti asked in her deep slow voice.

"With the dense jungle vegetation a super cover? Not surprising that the report only registered life-forms. Think of all the trouble we've had getting pictures with them scooting into the underbrush."

"I wish the
ARCT
wasn't out of range," Kai remarked, not for the first time. "I'd like to order a galaxy search on EV files. I keep feeling that this planet has to have been surveyed before."

Dimenon, as chief geologist, was of the same opinion. He was getting peculiar echoes from signalling cores all over the continental shield. Kai managed to disinter an old core from the site of one of the echoes. Its discovery proved to the geologists that their equipment was functioning properly but the existence of an unsuspected core also caused consternation.

"This core is not only old, it's ancient," Kai said. "Millions of years old."

"Looks just like the ones you're using," Lunzie remarked, handling the tube-shaped core.

"That's true enough, but it suggests that the planet has been surveyed before, which is why no deposits of transuranics have been found in an area that should be rich with them."

"Then why no report in the EV files?" Dimenon asked.

Kai shrugged, taking the core back from Lunzie. "This is slightly more bulky but otherwise identical."

"Could it be the Others?" Dimenon asked in a hushed voice.

Lunzie shook her head, chuckling at that old childish nightmare.

"Not unless the Others know the Theks," Kai replied. "They make all the cores we use."

"What if the Theks are copying the science of the older technology?" Dimenon argued defensively.

While it was hard to imagine anything older than Theks, Lunzie looked at Kai who knew more about them than she did.

"Then the ancient core has to mean that Ireta was previously surveyed? Only who did it? What do the Theks say?"

"I intend to ask them," Kai replied grimly.

A few days later, Varian sought Lunzie out in her dome. The young leader was shaking and very disturbed. Lunzie made her sit and gave her a mug of pepper.

"What's wrong?"

The girl took a deep sip of the restorative drink before she spoke.

"You were right," Varian said. "The heavyworlders are reverting to savagery. I had two of them out on a survey. Paskutti was flying the sled as we tracked a fang-face. It chased down one of the herbivores and gouged bites out of its flank. It made me sick, but Paskutti and Tardma exhibited a grotesque fascination at the sight. I insisted that we save the poor herbivore before it was killed. Paskutti promptly blasted the fang-face with the sled exhaust, showing his superiority like an alpha animal. He did drive it off but not before wounding it cruelly. Its hide was a mass of char."

Lunzie swallowed her disgust. As surrogate mother-confessor and psychologist for the team, she knew that a confrontation with the heavyworlders was required to discover exactly what was going on in their minds, but she didn't look forward to the experience. Right now she needed to refocus Varian on her mission, to take her mind off the horror.

"The predator just took the animal's flesh," she asked, "leaving a wound like Mabel's? That's interesting. A fang-face has a tremendous appetite. One little chunk of herbivore oughtn't to satisfy it."

"They certainly couldn't sustain themselves just by eating grass. Even though they do eat tons of it in the truce-patch."

Lunzie stroked the back of her neck thoughtfully. "That grass is more likely to provide a nutrient they're missing. We'll analyze anything you bring us."

Varian managed a laugh. "That's a request for samples?"

"Yes, indeed. Trizein is right. There are anomalies here, puzzles left from eons past. I'd like to solve the mystery before we leave Ireta."

"If we leave," Gaber said irritably later that day when Lunzie invited him to share a pot of her brew of synthesized coffee. "I don't intend ever signing up for a planetary mission again. It's my opinion that we've been planted. We're here to provide the core of a planetary population. We'll never get off."

"Nonsense," Lunzie returned sharply, ignoring his basic self-contradiction to concentrate on reducing a new rumor. "The transuranics of this planet alone are enough to supply ten star systems for a century. The FSP is far more desperate for mineral wealth than starting colonies. Now that Dimenon is prospecting beyond the continental shield, he's finding significant deposits of transuranics every day."