Venus on the Half-Shell (17 page)

Simon thought they were limbless until he saw the leader project a long pencil-thin arm with six joints and a three-fingered hand from each hole in the ball-hub. The arm bent in the middle to point downward. This seemed to be a signal to slow down. The others put out stick-like six-jointed legs from both holes in the hubs. These had collapsible feet, broad when spread out, toeless, and with thickly calloused soles. They dragged these in the dirt until they had reduced speed, then they retracted their legs.

The leader’s left arm came out, and he turned halfway toward where he was pointing. The others followed suit, keeping the same exact distance behind him.

Simon flew above them for a while in the red light of the ancient and dying sun. The herd, seen from above, formed the outline of an arrowhead. Its point was the leader, a big purple creature with white sidewalls. The V of the arrow was composed of young males riding shotgun. Straight out from behind the leader, in Indian file, were females with their young rolling along beside them. The base of the arrow was made up of old males whose purple was turning gray. As he would discover, the formation was based on a rigid pecking order. The leader was always in front, and the females behind him held positions according to their fertility and sexual vigor.

All except the leader were a solid purple. But when a young male overthrew the old leader, he would grow white sidewalls. His new social position triggered off hormones that caused this strange tire-change.

The leader had signaled a change in direction and speed because he had seen some tumbleweeds rolling toward them. Presently, the herd intercepted these, and their right arms snatched the plants and tore off branches. The pieces went into the right-hand holes. Inside were mouths with broad strong teeth which mashed and chewed the plants with a sidewise motion. The plants provided not only water but food like rubbery chocolate.

The anal opening was by the left-hand hole in the hub; the excrement was shot out in tiny pellets. Since the Lalorlongians had an extremely efficient metabolism, they expelled very little offal.

Simon told the ship to fly close to the left of the herd. As he’d expected, the herd turned toward the right. They were hesitant about turning at a right angle and so presenting their bodies to the full force of the strong wind. Once they’d fallen to the ground, they had no way of getting back up. They rolled at a forty-five-degree angle from their previous path, leaning into the wind. To do this, they stuck out their right arms as far as they could and bent their eye-stalks to the right. Then they drew their arms back into the holes, rolled along for a while, and, at a signal from the leader, pointed straight westward again. This manoeuvre was done with the aid of the left arms.

“What do they talk with?” Simon said to Chworktap.

“They use their fingers, just like deaf-and-dumb people.”

The
Hwang Ho
carried a jeep. Simon ordered the ship to stop, and he and Chworktap got into the jeep. The dog and the owl, who were suffering from cabin fever, complained so much about being left behind that he told them to get in too. But the owl had to sit in the back seat so she wouldn’t disturb Chworktap. The port opened, a gangplank ran out, and they drove onto the smooth surface. The ship then lifted and followed them a mile behind.

The jeep had no trouble catching up, even though the wind was pushing the herd at about thirty-five miles an hour. The eyes on the ends of the stalks rolled with fright as the jeep neared them, and the herd veered to the left. Their arms came out, the fingers wriggling and crossing and bending as they asked each other what in hell these strangers were and what did they mean to do? Their signal lights began flashing hysterically. It was later that Simon discovered that these people used their lights in conjunction with their fingers when they talked. This was to make it difficult for him to carry on a conversation. He couldn’t use the fingers of both his hands and operate two flashlights at the same time. But Chworktap turned the lights on and off for him, and the two were able to carry on a conversation with the wheels. Sometimes, they got a little confused and had to start a sentence all over again.

Simon and Chworktap spent most of each day on the road. Somebody had to drive but somebody also had to operate the flashlights. Chworktap rigged up a device which enabled her to turn the lights off and on with the fingers of one hand while she drove with the other. Fortunately, she didn’t have to watch out for cars or immovable objects or worry about running off the pavement. After a few days, she put together a device which kept the car at the same distance from the Lalorlongian they were learning the language from. This fixed a laser beam on their informant. If the informant went too far away or came too close, the change in the beam’s length caused a motor to turn one of two straps fixed to the wheel to correct the course and also to alter the setting of the cruise control.

Simon was beginning to wonder what he would ever have done without Chworktap.

“Watch it!” he told himself. “You aren’t
about
to fall in love with a robot!”

Simon won the confidence of the wheelers the third day. One of the young adolescent males was showing off. He would curve around and head into the wind until he was stopped and then was pushed backward. He had done this a dozen times to the admiration of the young females, who wiggled their fingers and flashed their lights in a running ovation. But while the young stud was cutting a figure-eight, he leaned over too far and fell on his side. The fingers and lights of everybody signaled panic and despair, but they all rolled on, leaving the young male lying on his side, one arm stuck up and waving frantically, his eyes rolling in their sockets.

“They’re going to abandon him,” Chworktap said.

“Apparently, they have no way of lifting him up,” Simon said. “So it’s tough titty for anybody that falls over.”

Simon disconnected the driving mechanism and turned the jeep around. It only took a moment for the two of them to lift upright the three-hundred-pound youth. He did not start rolling at once, however. His eyes still rotated like the Coyote’s when he gets caught in a trap he’s set for the Roadrunner.

“He looks like he’s in pain,” Chworktap said.

This, as it turned out, was right. Above the arm-opening was another hole, a small one from which the male’s pistil stuck during mating or when he was excited. The youth had been excited while he was showing off, and when he had fallen he had squeezed the end of his pistil under his hub. This was comparable to being kicked in the crotch.

After a while, the youth seemed ready to go. Simon knew that he would never catch up with the herd, so he and Chworktap lifted him up over the back end of the jeep and onto the back seat. The dog, which had just finished pissing against the youth, jumped into the front seat. The owl flew overhead, circling the jeep, but when she saw that she was going to be left behind, she landed on the hood and grabbed the ornament.

Simon drove the jeep far ahead of the herd, and he and Chworktap hoisted the youth out and set him upright. Presently, the herd came along, and the youth, aided by a shove from Simon, took off to rejoin the herd.

Simon later observed a mother feeding her child. The little wheel ran up alongside the female, who dragged her feet to reduce her speed until they were going at the same pace. A long cartilaginous tube came out of a hole near the top of the hemisphere, just below the rotating collar. It traveled out until it was over a hole in a similar location on the child’s hemisphere. The child reached up with its hand and pulled the tube into its hole. They traveled together for about fifteen minutes, after which the tube withdrew. The mother had fed milk through this to the young.

Toward evening, the leader signaled, and he slowed down. A bright orange female came up alongside him, and they mated. This was a simple and quick operation. The pistil came out of its hole, crossed the gap between them, and plunged into one of the female’s holes. A few seconds later the pistil withdrew, its end dripping with a honey-like liquid. The female dragged her feet, and another female came up to take her turn. By dusk, the leader had pistiled every nubile female in the herd.

When night fell, the herd turned on all its light. Simon was going to call in the ship on his radio when he saw the lights of two wheelers go out. He put the phone back on its hook and turned out the jeep’s lights. Sure enough, adultery had come to Lalorlong. Though not for the first time, he was sure.

“I wonder what would happen if the bull wheel caught them?” Simon said. “How in heaven’s name do they fight?”

A few days later, they found out. A big young male stranger rolled toward them from the left. The leader signaled frantically, and the herd slowed down. The bull then leaned into the wind and headed toward the stranger.

“The young stud is going to challenge the bull,” Simon said. “I suppose that if he wins, the bull is left behind on his side, and the youth takes over.”

The two met at an angle, since it would have been fatal to have turned at right angles to the wind for over a second. The youth spun around and around while the bull wavered as if he were going to fall over. But he held his arms out to maintain his balance, managed to make a turn, and struck the spinning stud a glancing blow on the rim. The youth crashed over, and the leader, flashing his lights triumphantly, called to the herd to follow him.

Simon felt sorry for the youth, so he and Chworktap got him up and sent him on his way. Not, however, before they were sure that he wouldn’t be able to catch up with the herd.

“Such encounters must be rare,” Simon said. “The stud who leaves his herd or is driven out to seek a mate must have a hard time. He might wander around forever before he runs across another herd. Then he has to beat the bull and maybe the young males of the herd, for all I know, before he takes over.”

A week later, while they were driving around, they saw an old male lying on his side. They drove up and jumped out, but there wasn’t much they could do for him. He had had a blowout. His one free arm waved, the three fingers wiggling frantically, and the eyes on the ends of the stalks dripped tears.

Simon tried to patch up the hole with the tire-repairing materials in the jeep. When he started the vulcanizing, the eye-stalks lashed back and forth and the light-organs flashed redly. The Lalorlongian was being badly hurt. In any event, his treads were worn off, and the skin was too thin to take a patch-up job.

Simon could not endure to leave him there to starve to death. He took out his automatic and, with tears running from his own eyes, emptied twelve bullets into the hole in the hub. Anubis ran around barking and Athena flew screeching around and around above the shattered corpse. The male’s arm dropped, folding this and that way, its lights dimmed and died, its stalks crumpled, and its eyes glazed.

After they had returned to the ship, Simon said, “The ethics of euthanasia is one of my minor questions. Is it or isn’t it right to put a sentient creature out of its pain if it’s going to die anyway? You just saw my answer. What do you think?”

“It’s ethically correct if the dying person gives her consent,” Chworktap said. “Actually, if you deny her the right to euthanasia, you’re interfering with her free will. But you didn’t ask that person if he wanted to be killed.”

“I was afraid he’d say no, and I couldn’t stand the thought of his suffering.”

“Then you were wrong,” she said.

“But he was suffering terribly, and I saved him from a lingering death.”

“You should have left it up to him.”

On reflection, Simon agreed with her. But it was too late to correct his error.

Simon spent the next week questioning the members of a dozen herds.

“What’s your basic philosophy?”

“Keep rolling.”

“Why?”

“Keep rolling, and you’ll get there.”

“Where?”

“To the yonder.”

“But on this planet you can only end up where you started.”

“So what? The name of the game is Getting There.”

“But why do you want to get there?”

“Because it’s there.”

“What happens after you die?”

“We go to the Big Track in the Sky. No lack of tumbleweeds there, everyone is the leader of the herd, and only the evil have blowouts.”

“But why were you put on this planet?”

“I told you. To travel around and around while we follow our glorious leader.”

Or, in the case of the leader, “To travel around and around while my herd follows me.”

“But what about those who have blowouts?”

“They’re guilty.”

“Guilty of what?”

“Of harboring bad thoughts.”

“Against whom?”

“Our leader and the Big Repairer in the Sky.”

“But what about the young studs that challenge the leader? Don’t they have bad thoughts?”

“Not if they win.”

“What happens to the bad ones?”

“They’re taken up to the Big Track, too. But they get their just reward. Their tires go flat once a day.”

Simon was disgusted, but Chworktap said, “What did you expect? Look at how poverty-sticken, how bare, this planet is. All the Lalorlongians see is flat hard earth, dust, and tumbleweeds. So, if there’s little outside to see, there’s little to think about inside.”

Simon said, “Yeah, I know. Maybe the next place’ll be better.”

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