The Ship Who Won (8 page)

remained. For the shellperson, it meant they could

"inhabit" functional alter-bodies and experience the full

range of human experiences firsthand. That knocked a lot

of notions of limitations or restrictions into an archaic

cocked hat. Since Keff had first heard about

Moto-Prosthetic bodies for brains, he had nagged Carialle

to order one. She evaded a direct "no" because she valued

Keff, respected his notion that she should have the chance

to experience life outside the shell, join him in his projects

with an immediacy that she could not enjoy encapsulated.

The idea was shudderingly repulsive to her. Maybe if

Moto-Prosthetics had been available before her accident,

she might have been more receptive to his idea. But to

leave the safety of her shell-well, not really leave it, but

to seem to leave it-to be vulnerable-though he insisted

she review diagrams and manuals that conclusively

demonstrated how sturdy and flexible the M-P body

was-was anathema. Why Keff felt she should be like

other humans, often clumsy, rather delicate, and definitely

vulnerable, she couldn't quite decide.

She started Simeon's gift tape to end that unproductive,

and somewhat disturbing line of thought. Although Carialle had a library that included tapes of every sort of

creature or avian that had been discovered, she most

enjoyed the grace of cats, the smooth sinuousness of their

musculature. This datahedron started with a huge spotted

feline creeping forward, one fluid movement at a time,

head and back remaining low and out of sight as if it progressed along under a solid plank. It was invisible to the

prong-homed sheep on the other side of the undergrowth.

Carialle watched with admiration as the cat twitched, gathered itself, sprang, and immediately stretched out in a full

gallop after its prey. She froze the frame, then scrolled it

backward slightly to the moment when the beautiful creature leapt forward, appreciating the graceful arc of its

back, the stretch of its forelimbs, the elongated power of

the hindquarters. She began to consider the composition

of the painting she would make: the fleeing sheep was frozen with its silly face wild-eyed and splay-legged ahead of

the gorgeous, silken threat behind it.

As she planned out her picture, she ran gravitational

analyses, probable radiation effects of a yellow-gold sun,

position of blip possibly indicating planet, and a computer

model, and made a few idle bets with herself on whether

they'd find an alien species, and what it'd look like.

a CHAPTER THREE

Keff ignored the sharp twigs digging into the belly of his

environment suit as he wriggled forward for a better look.

Beyond the thin shield of thomy-leafed shrubbery was a

marvel, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Closing with his target would not, could not, alter what he was

viewing at a distance, not unless someone was having fun

with optical illusions-but he painfully inched forward

anyway. Not a hundred meters away, hewing the hard

fields and hauling up root crops, was a work force of

bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical beings, heterogeneous

with regard to sex, apparently mammalian in character,

with superior cranial development. In fact, except for the

light pelt of fur covering all but lips, palms, soles, small

rings around the eyes, and perhaps the places Keff couldn't

see underneath their simple garments, they were remarkably like human beings. Fuzzy humans.

"Perfect!" he breathed into his oral pickup, not for the

first time since he'd started relaying information to Carialle. 'They are absolutely perfect in every way."

"Human-chauvinist," Carialle's voice said softly through

the mastoid-bone implant behind his ear. "Just because

they're shaped like Homo sapiens doesn't make them any

more perfect than any other sentient humanoid or human-like race we've ever encountered."

"Yes, but think of it," Keff said, watching a female,

breasts heavy with milk, carrying her small offspring in a^

sling on her back while she worked. "So incredibly similar

to us."

"Speak for yourself," Carialle said, with a sniff.

"Well, they are almost exactly like humans."

"Except for the fur, yes, and the hound-dog faces,

exactly."

'Their faces aren't really that much like dogs'," Keff

protested, but as usual, Carialles artistic eye had pinned

down and identified the similarity. It was the manelike ruff

of hair around the faces of the mature males that had

thrown off his guess. "A suggestion of dog, perhaps, but no

more than that last group looked like pigs. I think we've

found the grail, Cari."

A gust of cold wind blew through the brush, fluttering

the folds of loose cloth at the back of Keffs suit. His

ears, nose, and fingers were chilly and growing stiff, but

he ignored the discomfort in his delight with the objects

of his study On RNJ-599-B-V they had struck gold.

Though it would be a long time before the people he

was watching would ever meet them on their own terms

in space.

Coming in toward the planet, Carialle had unleashed

the usual exploratory devices to give them some idea of

geography and terrain.

The main continent was in the northern hemisphere of

the planet. Except for the polar ice cap, it was divided

roughly into four regions by a high, vast mountain range

not unlike the European Alps of old Earth. Like the four

smaller mountain ranges in each of the quadrants, it had

been volcanic at one time, but none of the cones showed

any signs of activity.

The team had been on planet for several days already,

viewing this and other groups of the natives from different

vantage points. Carialle was parked in a gully in the eastern

quadrant, four kilometers from Keffs current location,

invisible to anyone on foot. It was a reasonable hiding

place, she had said, because they hadn't seen any evidence

during their approach of technology such as radar or track-ing devices. Occasional power fluctuations pinged the

.needles on Carialle s gauges, but since they seemed to

occur at random, they might just be natural surges in the

planets magnetic field. But Carialle was skeptical, since

the surges were more powerful than one should expect

from a magnetic field, and were diffuse and of brief duration, which made it difficult for her to pin the

phenomenon down to a location smaller than five degrees

of planetary arc. Her professional curiosity was determined

to find a logical answer.

Keffwas more involved with what he could see with his

own eyes-his wonderful aliens. He studied the tool with

which the nearest male was chipping at the ground. The

heavy metal head, made of a slagged iron/copper alloy, was

laboriously holed through in two places, where dowels or

nails secured it to the flat meter-and-a-half long handle.

Sinew or twine wound around and around making doubly

sure that the worker wouldn't lose die hoe face on the back

swing. By squeezing his eyelids, Keff activated the telephoto function in his contact lenses and took a closer look.

The tools were crude in manufacture but shrewdly

designed for most effective use. And yet no technology

must exist for repair: the perimeter of the field was littered

with pieces of discarded, broken implements. These people might have discovered smelting, but welding was still

beyond them. Still, they'd moved from hunter/gatherer to

farming and animal husbandry. Small but weU-tended

small flower and herb gardens bordered the field and the

front of a man-high cave mouth.

'They seem to be at the late Bronze or early Iron Age

stage of development," Keff murmured. "Speaking anthro-pologically, -this would be the perfect species for a

long-term surveillance to see if this society will parallel human development." He parted the undergrowth, keeping

well back from the opening in the leaves. "Except for having only three fingers and a thumb on each hand, they've

got the right kind of manipulative limbs to attain a high

technological level."

"Close enough for government work," Carialle said,

reasonably. "I can't see that the lack of one digit would

interfere with their ability to make more complex tools,

since clearly they're using some already."

"No," Keff said. "I'd be more disappointed if they didn't

have thumbs. A new species of humanoid! I can write a

paper about mem." Keffs breath quickened with his

enthusiasm. "Parallel development to Homo sapiens

terraneum? Evolution accomplished separately from

Earth-born humanity?"

"It's far more likely that they were seeded here thousands of years ago," Carialle suggested, knowing that she'd

better dampen his enthusiasm before it got out of hand.

"Maybe a forgotten colony?"

"But the physical differences would take eons to evolve,"

Keff said. The odds against parallel development were

staggering, but the notion that they might have found an

unknown cousin of their own race strongly appealed to him.

"Of course, scientifically speaking, we'd have to consider that

possibility, especially in the light of the number of colonial

ventures that never sent back a 'safe down' message."

"Yes, we should seriously consider that aspect," Carialle

said, but without sarcasm.

"JJ-
y

By thrusting out the angle of his jawbone, Keff

increased the gain on his long-distance microphone to listen in on the natives as they called out to one another. All

the inhabitants of this locale were harvesting root produce.

If any kind of formal schooling existed for the young, it

must be suspended until the crops were brought in. Typical of farm cultures, all life revolved around the cycle of

the crops. Humanoids of every age and size were in or

around the broad fields, digging up the roots. They

seemed to be divided into groups of eight to ten, under the

supervision of a crew boss, either male or female, who

worked alongside them. No overseer was visible, so everyone apparently knew his or her job and got on with it.

Slackers were persuaded by glares and peer pressure to

persevere, Keff wondered if workers were chosen for their

jobs by skill, or if one inherited certain tasks or crop rows

by familial clan.

Well out of the way of the crews, small children minding

babies huddled as near as they could to a low cavern

entrance from which Carialle had picked up heat source

traces, suggesting that entrance led to their habitation. It

made sense for the aborigines to live underground, where

the constant temperature was approximately 14# C, making

it warmer than it was on the surface. Such an accommodation would be simple to heat, with the earth itself as

insulation. Only hunger could have driven Keff out to farm

or hunt in this cold, day after day.

Keff could not have designed a world more likely to be

dependent upon subsistence culture. The days were long,

but the temperature did not vary between sunup and sun-down. Only the hardiest of people would survive to breed:

and the hardiest of plants. It couldn't be easy to raise crops

in this stony ground, either. Keff rubbed a pinch of it

between his finger and thumb.

"High concentration of silicate clay in that soil," Carialle

said, noticing his action. "Makes it tough going, both for

the farmer and the crop."

"Needs more sand and more fertilizer," Keff said. "And

more water. When we get to know one another, we can

advise them of irrigation and soil enrichment methods. See

that flat panlike depression at the head of the field? That's

where they pour water brought uphill by hand." A line of

crude barrels nestled against the hillside bore out his

theory.

Dirt-encrusted roots of various lengths, shapes, and colors piled up in respectable quantity beside the diggers,

whose fur quickly assumed the dull dun of the soil.

"Its incredible that they're getting as much of a yield as

they are," Keff remarked. 'They must have the science of

fanning knocked into them."

"Survival," Carialle said. 'Think what they could do with

fertilized soil and steady rainfall. The atmosphere here has

less than eight percent humidity. Strange, when you consider they're in the way of prevailing continental winds,

between the ocean and that mountain range. There should

be plenty of rain, and no need for such toil as that."

Under the direction of a middle-aged male with a light-brown pelt, youngsters working with me digging crews

threw piles of the roots onto groundsheets, which were

pulled behind shaggy six-legged pack beasts up and down

the rows. When each sheet was full, the beast was led away

and another took its place.

"So what's the next step in this production line?" Keff

asked, shifting slightly to see.

The female led the beast to a square marked out by

hand-sized rocks, making sure nothing fell off as she

guided the animal over the rock boundary. Once inside,

she detached the groundsheet. Turning the beast, she led