Life Cycle Read online

  “Look here, my friend,” said Navarro. “You know our purposes. We want to get certain minerals from you. You have no use for them, and we would pay you well, in tools and machinery you cannot make for yourselves.”

  “It would be mutually advantageous,” agreed the Twonk. “When the first ship came, we considered it an excellent idea. But since then the gods have told us your sort must not be allowed to live.”

  “Por Dios! Why?”

  “The gods did not say.”

  “You serve these gods,” said Navarro harshly. “I believe you give them food—right? And tools and anything else they want. You obey their least whim. What do you gain from them?”

  No answer.

  “Can we talk to these gods? Maybe we can persuade them—”

  “It is forbidden you to see the Living Light.” Another conference. “Perhaps you will agree to die and stop bothering us if we tell you the gods are needful to our life. They give us pure metal—”

  “Most of which you make into tools for them,” snapped Navarro. “We could do the same for you.”

  “That is a small thing. But the gods are needful to our life. It is the gods who put life into our eggs. Without them no young would be hatched. It is thus necessary that we obey them.”

  “Cut it out, Juan,” snarled Kingsbury. “I’ve been through this rigmarole a hundred times. It’s no use.”

  Navarro nodded absentmindedly and trudged off. They switched to a different radio band, one the natives could not “hear,” but said nothing for a while.

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Navarro finally, “that nobody has ever seen a male Mercurian?”

  “Sure. They’re hermaphrodites.”

  “That was assumed by the first expedition. An assumption only, of course. They could not vivisect a live Twonk—”

  “I sure could!”

  “—and the old ones all go out on Dayside to die. The only chance for anatomical studies would be to find one which had met a violent end here in Twilight, and there was always too much else to do.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t they be hermaphrodites? Oysters are.”

  “At certain times of the year. But oysters are a low form of life. On Earth, Mars, and Venus, the higher one goes on the evolutionary scale, the more sharp the distinction between the sexes.”

  “All right, maybe their males are very small.”

  “As with some fish? Possibly. But most improbable. All their eggs are about the same size, you know.”

  “Who cares?” snorted Kingsbury. “I just want to go home.”

  “I care. I have a tidy mind. And, too, Earth needs that uranium and thorium. We will never get it unless we can circumvent this religion of theirs, either by persuading the gods or by… hm… destroying the cult. But to accomplish the latter, we will first have to understand the creed.”

  They came out on a road of sorts, a narrow track in the shale, stamped out by thousands of years of feet. There were natives working in the fields, and before the hive they could see smiths hammering cold iron and copper into implements. A few young were in sight, unhumanly solemn at their play. None paid any attention to the outworlders.

  Navarro pointed to a smith. “It is true what the Twonk said, that the gods supply their metal?”

  “Yes,” said Kingsbury. “At least, so I’ve been told, and I do think the Twonks are unable to tell a lie. Being radio-telepathic, y’know, they couldn’t lie to each other, so the idea would never occur to them.”

  “Hm… they do not have fire here, not in this sleazy atmosphere. They must have been in a crude neolithic stage until the gods started smelting ores for them. I imagine that could be done with mirrors focusing the Dayside heat on—oh, a mixture of crushed hematite and some reducing material.”

  “Uh-huh. And the gods get the pick of whatever the Twonks make out of the metal.” Kingsbury cleared his throat to spit, remembered he was in a space suit, and swallowed. “It’s perfectly clear, Juan. There are two intelligent races on Mercury. The Daysiders have set up in business as gods. They don’t want humans around because they’re afraid we’ll spoil their racket and make ’em work for a living.”

  “Obviously,” said Navarro. “The problem is, how to convince the Twonks of this? To do that, we shall first have to study the nature of the Dayside beings.”

  They mounted a razorback ridge and clapped down glare filters. Before them was the sun.

  It burned monstrous on the horizon, a white fury that drowned the stars and leaped back off the withered land. Even here, with shadows lapping his feet and the refrigeration unit at full blast, Kingsbury felt how the heat licked at him.

  “God!” he whispered. “How far can we go into that blazing hell?”

  “Not very far,” said Navarro. “We shall have to hope some Twonks died close by. Come!” He broke into long low-gravity bounds, down the slope and out onto the plain.

  Squinting through tormented eyes, Kingsbury made out a shimmering pool at the horizon. It spouted as he watched… molten lead? With the speed he had and the sharp curvature of the surface, the sun was rising visibly as he ran.

  Even here there was life. A crystalline tree squatted near a raw pinnacle, stiff and improbable. A small thing with many legs scuttered away, shell too bright to look at. Basically, Dayside life had the silicate form of-Twilight, many of the compounds identical-—a common ancestry a billion years ago, when Mercury still had water—but this life was adapted to a heat that made lead run liquid.

  “This… road… goes on,” panted Kingsbury. “Must be… a graveyard… somewhere…”

  His skin was prickling now, as charged particles ate in through the armor. His underclothing was limp with sweat. His tongue felt like a swollen lump of wood.

  This was farther into Dayside than men had ever gone before. Through the dizziness, he wondered how even a Twonk could survive the trip. Only, of course, they didn’t. The natives had told the first expedition that their old ones went out into the sunlight to die. There’d be no one to bury them, and the shells weren’t volatile—

  He stumbled over the first one before he knew it. When his gauntlets touched the ground, he yelled. Navarro pulled him up again. There was a dazzle in their helmets, they squinted and gasped with dry lungs and thought they heard their brains sizzling.

  Dead Twonks, thousands of them, scattered around like broken machines, empty-eyed, but the light demonic on their carapaces. Kingsbury picked one up. Even in Mercurian gravity, it seemed to have oddly little weight. Navarro took another. Its arms and legs flapped horribly as he ran back eastward.

  They never remembered that running. After they had fallen on the dark side of the ridge, they must have fainted, for the next memory was of stirring and a slow awareness that they were embracing dead Mercurians.

  Kingsbury put his lips to his canteen nozzle and sucked water up the hose. It was nearly scalding, but he had never drained so sweet a draught. Then he lay and shuddered for another long while.

  “Bueno,” croaked his companion. “We made it”

  They sat up and regarded their loot. Both shells had split open down the front, along the line of weakness where the ventral scutes joined. They had expected to find the shriveled remnants of “organic” material, dried flesh and blackened tendons and collapsed veins. But there was nothing.

  The shells were empty.

  It was a long circuitous walk back to the ship. They didn’t want any natives to see them. After that there was a wonderful time of sleeping while Antella worked.

  They didn’t stop to think about the implications until it was too late to think very much at all. Sunrise would occur at the temple in a few hours, and it was quite a ways from here.

  Antella’s claw-like hands gestured proudly at the shells. “See, I have hinged the front plates so you can get in and out Your radios are connected to the antennae, though how you expect to talk Mercurian if anyone converses with you, I do not understand. This harness will support the shells around you
r suits. Naturally, you cannot use the lower arms, but I have wired them into a lifelike position.”

  Kingsbury drew hard on a cigarette. It might be the last one he ever smoked. “Nice work,” he said. “Now as for the plan itself, we’ll just have to play by ear. We’ll get inside the temple with the others, see what we can see, and hope to get out again undamaged. If necessary, we’ll shuck these disguises and fight our way back here. Even in space suits, we can outrun any Twonk.”

  Navarro shook his head. “A most forlorn hope,” he muttered. “And if we should succeed, do you realize how many xenologists will pour the vials of wrath on our heads for disrupting native culture?”

  “That bothers me a lot,” snorted Kingsbury.

  “I, of course, can claim to be carrying out the historic traditions of my own people,” said Navarro blandly. “It was not the Saracens but the Basques who slew Roland at Roncesvalles.”

  “Why’d they do that?”

  “They didn’t like the way Charlemagne was throwing his weight around. Unfortunately, you, my friend, cannot say you are merely preserving your own culture. These Twonks have no scalps to lift.”

  “That’s a laugh,” said Kingsbury, “my culture for the past hundred years has been building skyscrapers and bridges. Come on, let’s shove.”

  It was a clumsy business getting into the shells, but once the plates were latched shut and the harness adjusted, it was not too awkward a disguise. The heads could not be turned on then- necks when you wore a space helmet inside, but Antella had filled the empty eye sockets with wide-angle lenses. Kingsbury hoped he wouldn’t be required to wink or move all four arms, or waggle the ovipositor or speak Mercurian; but otherwise, if he was careful, he ought to pass muster.

  The humans left the ship and went down the valley, moving with the stiff native stride. Not till they were past the hive did they speak. Kingsbury’s belly muscles were taut, but none of the autochthones paid him any special heed. It was fortunate that the Mercurians were not given to idle gossip.

  Presently he found himself on a broad, smoothly laid road. It ran straight northwest, through a forest of gleaming barrel-shaped plants where the small wildlife of Twilight scuttled off into the dusk. More and more natives joined them, tall solemn figures streaming in from side roads onto the highway. Many were laden with gifts, iron tools and flashing gems and exquisitely wrought stone vessels. Did the gods drink molten lead out of those? There was no speech on the communication band, only the quiet pulse of currents oscillating in nerves that were silver wires.

  Ghostly journey, through a dark chaotic wilderness of rock and crystalline forest, among a swarm of creatures out of dreams. It shocked Kingsbury how small man and man’s knowledge were in the illimitable universe.

  He switched to the other band and said harshly, “Juan, maybe we are nuts. Even if we get away with it, what can we hope to do? Suppose one of these Twonks pulled a similar stunt in your church—wouldn’t that just make you fighting mad?”

  “Yes, of course,” answered the other man. “Unless by such means the Twonk proved to me that my faith was based on a fraud. Naturally, she would not be able to do so; but assuming for the sake of discussion that she did, my philosophy would come crashing down about my ears. Then I should be quite ready to listen to her.”

  “But God! How can we imagine these critters think like us?”

  “They don’t. But that is in our favor, because they are actually more logical than we humans. They have freely admitted that the only reason they obey the gods is that those are essential to fertility.”

  “Well… maybe the gods are!”

  “Yes, yes, I am quite sure of it. But I am equally sure that there is nothing supernatural about it. Suppose, for instance, that a dose of sunlight is necessary for reproduction. A class of priestesses may have capitalized on this fact—I am not sure how, given the Mercurian telepathy, but perhaps the priestesses can think on a different band. Now if we can show that the sunlight alone is required, and the priestesses are mere window dressing, then I am sure the Twonks will get rid of them.”

  Kingsbury grinned with scant mirth. “And we’re supposed to find this out and prove it in one glimpse?”

  “This was originally your idea, amigo.”

  “Yeah. Please don’t rub it in.”

  They walked on, silent, thinking of Earth’s remote loveliness. An hour passed. It grew hotter, and the western blaze climbed into the sky until you could see the great lens of zodiacal light just above the hills, and more natives joined the procession until there were several thousand pouring along the road. Kingsbury and Navarro stayed close together, near the middle of the crowd.

  Black against the blinding sky, they saw the temple. It stood on a high ridge, a columned building of red granite, curiously reminiscent of old Egyptian work. A flat roof covered the front half; the rear was open, but walled off from sight.

  The pilgrimage moved between basalt statues onto a flagged plaza before the temple. There it halted, motionless as only a nonbreathing Mercurian can be. Kingsbury tuned back to the communication band and heard that they were chanting—at least, he supposed the eerie whining rise-and-fall of radio pulses was music. He kept his own mouth shut; no one in that entranced collectivity would realize he wasn’t joining in.

  A line of Mercurians emerged from the colonnade. They must be priestesses or servitors, for there were geometric patterns daubed on their shells. They halted before the worshipers. Gravely, those who bore gifts advanced, bowed down, and laid them at the feet of the clergy. The articles were picked up and carried back into the temple.

  Kingsbury sweated and shivered in his spacesuit. What if the ritual included some fancy dance? He hoped Navarro, who had the gun, could break out of his shell fast enough to use it. None of the natives was armed, and a human was a match for any ten Mercurians, but there must be five thousand of them around him.

  The glare became a sudden flame. Sunrise! The shadow of the temple fell over the plaza, but Kingsbury narrowed his eyes to slits, and still his head ached.

  He was dimly aware of the priestesses returning. Their voices twittered, and the chant ended. A hundred Mercurians walked forth, up the stairs and into the doorway. Another hundred and another hundred… They were not quite so impassive now. Kingsbury could see that those near him were trembling with excitement.

  Now his and Navarro’s line was on the move. He saw that one of the priestesses was leading them. They entered between the pillars and went across a room of mosaics and down a hall. At its end were passages leading to a number of roofless courts into which the sunlight fell. His party took one.

  The priestess stood aside, and the procession went on in.

  Against the radiance, Kingsbury could just see that there was a doorway on the western side and that daises were built into the floor. The Twonks were settling themselves on those, waiting. He switched to the private band: “Juan, what happens now?”

  “What do you think?” answered the Basque. His voice shook, but there was a wryness in it. “This is where they breed, isn’t it?”

  “If one of ’em makes a pass at me, shall I try to play along?”

  “I think there is something against it in Leviticus—nor could you, ah, respond… We shall probably have to run for our lives. But they are all lying down. Find yourself a couch!”

  There was a stillness that stretched. The heat blasted and gnawed. Even the Twonks couldn’t endure it for very long at a time. Something would have to take place soon, unless—

  “Juan! Maybe they’re what-you-call-it, virgin birth. Maybe the sun fertilizes them.”

  “No. Not parthenogenetic. It has not the evolutionary potentiality to produce intelligent life—it does not give variant zygotes. Sunlight is necessary but not sufficient, I think. And I still cannot believe they are true hermaphrodites. Somewhere there must be males.”

  Almost, Kingsbury jerked. It was a tremendous effort to hold himself rigid, to wait in the shimmering, dazzling devil-dance
of light as all the natives were waiting. “I’ve got it! The gods—they are the males!”

  “That is clear enough,” said Navarro impatiently. “I deduced it hours ago. But if the case is so simple, I am not hopeful. The males can still claim to be a different, superior order of life, as they indeed already do. We shall need a more fundamental discovery to upset this male-worshiping cult.”

  Navarro’s voice snapped off. Flame stood in the doorway.

  No… the tall lizardlike forms, in burnished coppery scales, wreathed in silvery vapor—they glowed, walking dragons, but they did not burn. They advanced, through the doorway and into the courtyard. Their beaks gaped, and the small dark eyes held sun sparks, and the tails lashed their taloned feet. More and more of them, stalking in, one to a Twonk, and approaching with hands held out.

  The males of Mercury… Dayside life, charged with the energy from the sun which made new life possible, sweating out pure quicksilver to cool them so they wouldn’t fry their mates. Was it any wonder they were thought divine?

  But it wasn’t possible! Male and female had to come from the same race, evolving together—they couldn’t have arisen separately, one in the hell of dayside and one in the endless purgatorial dusk of Twilight. The same mothers had to bear them; and yet, and yet, Twonk eggs only brought forth Twonks…

  Then—

  The knowledge bit home as a dragon neared Kingsbury. The male was hesitating, the lean head wove back and forth… An alien smell? A subtle wrongness of posture?

  The Mohawk sat up and yelled. The dragon spouted mercury vapor and crouched. Teeth made to shear through rock flashed in the open mouth.

  “Juan, I’ve got it! I know what they are! Let’s get back!”

  Navarro was on his feet, fumbling at the belly of his disguise. Latches clicked free, and he scrambled out of it. The nearest dragon leaped. Navarro’s gun bucked. The male fell with a hole blown through him. So much for the immortal gods, the heavenly showmen. Kingsbury was out of his own shell now. A female lunged at him. He got her around the waist and pitched her into the mob. Whirling, he slugged his way toward the door, Navarro covering his back.