Part 4 (1/2)

-That, he said, depends on the sort of function you're looking for.

It's a Paradise, I said. It's perfect for the Paradise Game. Is that its function? A custom-designed Paradise. But custom-designed for whom? You know as well as I do that the Paradise syndrome is as absolutely specific to humanity as you can get. I keep looking for Indris but I'm sure it's not as simple as that

-It's a trap, he said.

Charming, I came back. What a lovely idea that is. Building a planet as a human-being trap. There must be an easier way.

-I was speaking figuratively, he said.

I know, I said, I know. I only wish I didn't run to the same kind of suspicions. But this is a world which seems to be completely free of nasty surprises. Caradoc crews have been here months, and nothing's gone wrong with them. Or if it has they haven't told us about it.

-Maybe I've been corrupted by your nasty suspicious mind, he said.

And maybe he had at that. But it was entirely possible that our dark visions came from fatigue. I wondered idly how fatigued I might be without the wind's kind support. Or maybe it was just that we were struggling for enlightenment, and finding the problem completely opaque to our perception.

Ah well, I thought, as I stripped off and slid into my bunk, in seeking enlightenment, it's always as well to remember that it's always darkest before it gets even darker.

Then I went to sleep.

6.

The aliens were ”camped” beside a waterfall in the forest. It wasn't a very big waterfall, but it had obviously been there a long time. It had cut a deep slit in the ridge from whose heights it fell. The cascade fell down one wall of a right-angled covert in the slipped rock, so that the watercourse was backed by a stone face and fronted by the lush forest. The stone face behind the pool was continuously washed by spray, and was innocent of any sign of life. The rock was not uniform, being streaked and pocketed with softer conglomerates which had given way far more easily to the insistent attentions of the water. In consequence, the wall was quite deeply pockmarked, and some of the pockmarks had been attacked-presumably with stone hammers and axes, and sizeable caves had been made of them. These caves provided shelter-when it was needed-for the natives.

I knew that they used no fire, and that they had no enemies to be afraid of, so that the caves were only a huddling place against the cold of winter and the rain. The natives had no use for them at the present, but they had stayed by the pool. Apparently, said Charlot, they enjoyed bathing.

What struck me most forcibly about the caves in the rock face was that they were so difficult to gain access to. In order to reach them, one had to cross the pool, and the only way to do that was by swimming the pool and climbing the face. There was no ledge behind the waterfall by which the natives could take an easier route. I couldn't really see the point. If they had to get wet in order to get to their shelter, there was hardly much point to it as a refuge from the rain. Similarly, if they were hardy enough to cross and recross the pool in winter- and winter here was not very harsh-they hardly needed a hidey-hole to keep them from the cold. The caves, like so much about the natives, did not make sense.

Caradoc had established a small base here for the purposes of studying the natives and their habitat.

Obviously, the crews had declined the opportunity to share the apparent native way of life by moving into the caves. They had erected a small cl.u.s.ter of tents-some on an ap.r.o.n of bare rock which fringed the pool where the watercourse narrowed again to become a river. At this point the river was narrow enough to be jumped by a reasonably athletic man, but the Caradoc people had built a bridge. The rest of the tents were on top of the ridge, and in order to facilitate pa.s.sage between the two elements of the base they had cleared part of the steep slope on the near side of the pool and had actually constructed a staircase to the top of the fall.

”Why the split?” I asked Charlot.

”There was no room to pitch all the tents on either site,” said Charlot, with una.s.sailable logic. ”But the split is fairly basic-the natural scientists are down here at ground level, the cultural experts are up there.”

”Aren't they talking to each other, or something?”

”To judge by what they've collected to date, no,” he said. ”These are tailor-made specialists. Each has his narrow field of research. They compile detailed reports on details. Not a one of them has any interest in understanding, so far as I can see-only in data a.s.sembly. It makes sense, from the company's point of view. If there's anything worth knowing, they want to be the first to know it. The men on the ground aren't scientists, they're data farmers. It's the company's executive scientists who put the data together at their leisure and gradually a.s.similate the big picture. The only executive here is Merani, who's slow and very cautious. Whatever the key to this problem is, he hasn't found it yet, and won't for a long time. I don't suppose that bothers Caradoc much-the important man from their point of view is the trouble-shooter- that's Kerman, of course. He's the man who's supposed to see that everything goes the company's way. He's a dilettante-Merani's supposed to feed him the scientific angles-but he's sharp. If he had a third of my training or your experience he might have got this thing straight in his head, and I'm not altogether sure that he hasn't. But he's young-a typical Caradoc hustler-and I think he lacks the proper subtlety of mind.”

I nodded. Throughout this dissertation on the difficulties of coming to grips with the problem via Caradoc methodology we were standing beside the pool. The inhabitants of the camp were all conspicuous by their absence. There wasn't a single alien in sight, and all the Caradoc men were busy-either inside the tents or out in the field (which, being a forest, hid them fairly effectively from human gaze).

”Well,” I said, ”when does it all begin to happen around here?”

”The natives work to a pretty tight time schedule,” he explained, his eyes wandering to the staircase as if he were expecting someone. ”They disappear into the forest in the early morning, and come back when the sun's high to bathe and play.”

”Where do they go?”

”Rumour has it that they go to eat. Every morning a cohort of Caradoc men go with them into the forest, the best of friends, and inside half an hour every last one of them has been slipped by every single alien.

The aliens are just too quick and too agile. They don't even seem to be doing it because they're secretive.

It just happens. Merani isn't even particularly concerned about it; he reckons that it's not urgent, and-like all problems-will be solved in good time.”

A man-presumably the man Charlot was expecting- was coming down the stair by this time, and Charlot moved to meet him, leaving me no opportunity to follow up my questions.

The man was young, black-haired and handsome, dark-skinned and powerfully built. I deduced correctly that he was Kerman.

He greeted Charlot enthusiastically, and showed all the signs of being glad to meet me. I a.s.sumed immediately that it was all fake, but I might have been doing the poor fellow an injustice. Pigs might also fly.

What Charlot wanted to do, obviously, was sit down with a mountain of paperwork and go steadily through it with his usual astonis.h.i.+ng efficiency. That was exactly what Kerman didn't want him to do.

Kerman wanted him to talk to people, to winkle out each and every fact from a sea of trivia and irrelevancy. All in the name of total co-operation, of course. Never an unfriendly word was spoken. I don't honestly know why Charlot took it all, but I suppose his official position bound him to some kind of protocol. I began to realise why I was so necessary to him. I could cut the red tape and get away with it.

I could be rude and nasty and it wouldn't matter a bit.

Charlot set a time for us to take a break, and then we split. Charlot's dearest wish was, of course, that I could take Kerman away from him, but though we both tried we were unsuccessful here. Kerman handed me over to one of the biology team-a waspish man with bifocals called Furin. I knew that if I talked to him I would probably make him mad, and almost certainly wouldn't get anywhere, so I decided that I might as well ignore him.

I listened while he told me what was going on where, and who was doing what, said ”Thank you” and just carried on. I marched up to a file full of observations on local ecology, and started at number one.

Furin said ”You can't do that!” and the guy whose handiwork I was co-opting said ”Leave those alone!”

and I said ”Shove off.”

There was a quick shuffling match, and some half-voiced protests, then Furin rushed off to tell on me. I sat down with the file to wait for the result. The Heavens did not fall. I won.

So I carried on.

Instantly, I was plunged into a welter of technical language and technical procedure that rendered whatever the reports were about into ninety percent garbage. I could tell that it was going to be a tough job for one of my slight academic leanings. I was having to do Charlot's part of the job, and all my years of b.u.mming around rim worlds wasn't any replacement for a gram of his talent.

It took me half an hour to get used to the filing system, and looked like taking me days to get used to the procedure. But I knew it was the only way I was ever going to get to the facts. The smokescreen of esoteric formulation and presentation was thin compared to the smokescreen they could throw up by talking.

By the time I went back outside to rejoin Charlot and his harem of willing helpers, I was getting dizzy.

Also nowhere.

We sat on the edge of the ap.r.o.n, and I dug our lunch out of my packsack. The coffee came in tubes and the gruel in plastic trays. It was very uninteresting, but we spun it out and talked in-between mouthfuls.