The Long Night df-10 Read online

  The Klev entered the biolab section—she would not have him in her living quarters—with a gift held in both hands, a sword of Imperial metal. She shrugged; no doubt a museum would be pleased to get the thing. “Lay it on the floor,” she told him.

  Because she occupied the single chair, he stood. He looked little and old in his robe. “I came,” he whispered, “to say how we of Lokon rejoice that the heaven-borne has won her revenge.”

  “Is winning it,” she corrected.

  He could not meet her eyes. She stared moodily at his faded hair. “Since the heaven-borne could… easily… find those she wished… she knows the truth in the hearts of us of Lokon, that we never intended harm to her folk.”

  That didn’t seem to call for an answer.

  His fingers twisted together. “Then why do you forsake us?” he went on. “When first you came, when we had come to know you and you spoke our speech, you said you would stay for many moons, and after you would come others to teach and trade. Our hearts rejoiced. It was not alone the goods you might someday let us buy, nor that your wisemen talked of ways to end hunger, sickness, danger, and sorrow. No, our jubilation and thankfulness were most for the wonders you opened. Suddenly the world was made great, that had been so narrow. And now you are going away. I have asked, when I dared, and those of your men who will speak to me say none will return. How have we offended you, and how may it be made right, heaven-borne?”

  “You can stop treating your fellow men like animals,” Evalyth got past her teeth.

  “I have gathered… somewhat… that you from the stars say it is wrong what happens in the Sacred Place. But we only do it once in our lifetimes, heaven-borne, and because we must!”

  “You have no need.”

  Rogar went on his hands and knees before her. “Perhaps the heaven-borne are thus,” he pleaded, “but we are merely men. If our sons do not get the manhood, they will never beget children of their own, and the last of us will die alone in a world of death, with none to crack his skull and let the soul out—” He dared glance up at her. What he saw made him whimper and crawl backwards into the sun-glare.

  Later Chena Darnard sought Evalyth. They had a drink and talked around the subject for a while, until the anthropologist plunged in: “You were pretty hard on the sachem, weren’t you?”

  “How’d you—Oh.” The Krakener remembered that the interview had been taped, as was done whenever possible for later study. “What was I supposed to do, kiss his maneating mouth?”

  “No.” Chena winced. “I suppose not.”

  “Your signature heads the list, on the official recommendation that we quit this planet.”

  “Yes. But—now I don’t know. I was repelled. I am. However—I’ve been observing the medical team working on those prisoners of yours. Have you?”

  “No,”

  “You should. The way they cringe and shriek and reach to each other when they’re strapped down in the lab and cling together afterward in their cell.”

  “They aren’t suffering any pain or mutilation, are they?”

  “Of course not. But can they believe it when their captors say they won’t? They can’t be tranquilized while under study, you know, if the results are to be valid. Their fear of the absolutely unknown—Well, Evalyth, I had to stop observing. I couldn’t take any more.” Chena gave the other a long stare. “You might, though.”

  Evalyth shook her head. “I don’t gloat. I’ll shoot the murderer because my family honor demands it. The rest can go free, even the boys. Even in spite of what they ate.” She poured herself a stiff draught and tossed it off in a gulp. The liquor burned on the way down.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Chena said. “Donli wouldn’t have liked it. He had a proverb that he claimed was very ancient—he was from my city, don’t forget, and I have known… I did know him longer than you, dear. I heard him say, twice or thrice, Do I not destroy my enemies if I make, them my friends?”

  “Think of a venomous insect,” Evalyth replied. “You don’t make friends with it. You put it under your heel.”

  “But a man does what he does because of what he is, what his society has made him.” Chena’s voice grew urgent; she leaned forward to grip Evalyth’s hand, which did not respond. “What is one man, one lifetime, against all who live around him and all who have gone before? Cannibalism wouldn’t be found everywhere over this island, hi every one of these otherwise altogether different groupings, if it weren’t the most deeply rooted cultural imperative this race has got.”

  Evalyth grinned around a rising anger. “And what kind of race are they to acquire it? And how about according me the privilege of operating on my own cultural imperatives? I’m bound home, to raise Donli’s child away from your gutless civilization. He will not grow up disgraced because his mother was too weak to exact justice for his father. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get up early and take another boatload to the ship and get it inboard.”

  That task required a while. Evalyth came back toward sunset of the next day. She felt a little more tired than usual, a little more peaceful. The raw edge of what had happened was healing over… The thought crossed her mind, abstract but not shocking, not disloyal: I’m young. One year another man will come. I won’t love you the less, darling.

  Dust scuffed under her boots. The compound was half stripped already, a corresponding number of personnel berthed in the ship. The evening reached quiet beneath a yellowing sky. Only a few of the expedition stirred among the machines and remaining cabins. Lokon lay as hushed as it had lately become. She welcomed the thud of her footfalls on the steps into Jonafer’s office.

  He sat waiting for her, big and unmoving behind his desk. “Assignment completed without incident,” she reported.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  She obeyed. The silence grew. At last he said, out of a still face: “The clinical team has finished with the prisoners.”

  Somehow it was a shock. Evalyth groped for words. “Isn’t that too soon? I mean, well, we don’t have a lot of equipment, and just a couple of men who can see the advanced stuff, and then without Donli for an expert on Earth biology—Wouldn’t a good study, down to the chromosomal level if not further—something that the physical anthropologists could use—wouldn’t it take longer?”

  “That’s correct,” Jonafer said. “Nothing of major importance was found. Perhaps something would have been, if Uden’s team had any inkling of what to look for. Given that, they could have made hypotheses and tested them in a whole-organism context and come to some understanding of their subjects as functioning beings. You’re right, Donli Sairn had the kind of professional intuition that might have guided them. Lacking that, and with no particular clues, and no cooperation from those ignorant, terrified savages, they had to grope and probe almost at random. They did establish a few digestive peculiarities—nothing that couldn’t have been predicted on the basis of ambient ecology.”

  “Then why have they stopped? We won’t be leaving for another week at the earliest.”

  “They did so on my orders, after Uden had shown me what was going on and said he’d quit regardless of what I wanted.”

  “What—? Oh.” Scorn lifted Evalyth’s head. “You mean the psychological torture.”

  “Yes. I saw that scrawny woman secured to a table. Her head, her body were covered with leads to the meters that clustered around her and clicked and hummed and flickered. She didn’t see me; her eyes were blind with fear. I suppose she imagined her soul was being pumped out. Or maybe the process was worse for being something she couldn’t put a name to. I saw her kids in a cell, holding hands. Nothing else left for them to hold onto, in their total universe. They’re just at puberty; what’ll this do to their psychosexual develop-. ment? I saw their father lying drugged beside them, after he’d tried to batter his way straight through the wall. Uden and his helpers told me how they’d tried to make friends and failed. Because naturally the prisoners know they’re in the power of those who hate them with a h
ate that goes beyond the grave.”

  Jonafer paused. “There are decent limits to everything, Lieutenant,” he ended, “including science and punishment. Especially when, after all, the chance of discovering anything else is unusual is slight. I ordered the investigation terminated. The boys and their mother will be flown to their home area and released tomorrow.”

  “Why not today?” Evalyth asked, foreseeing his reply. “I hoped,” Jonafer said, “that you’d agree to let the man go with them.”

  “No.”

  “In the name of God—”

  “Your God.” Evalyth looked away from him. “I won’t enjoy it, Captain. I’m beginning to wish I didn’t have to. But it’s not as if Donli’s been killed in an honest war or feud—or—he was slaughtered like a pig. That’s the evil in cannibalism; it makes a man nothing but another meat animal. I won’t bring him back, but I will somehow even things, by making the cannibal nothing but a dangerous animal that needs shooting.”

  “I see.” Jonafer too stared long out of the window. In the sunset light his face became a mask of brass. “Well,” he said finally, coldly,2’under the Charter of the Alliance and the articles of this expedition, you leave me no choice. But we will not have any ghoulish ceremonies, and you will not deputize what you have done. The prisoner will be brought to your place privately after dark. You will dispose of him at once and assist in cremating the remains.”

  Evalyth’s palms grew wet. I never killed a helpless man before!

  But he did, it answered. “Understood, Captain,” she said.

  “Very good, Lieutenant. You may go up and join the mess for dinner if you wish. No announcements to anyone. The business will be scheduled for—” Jonafer glanced at his watch, set to local rotation “—2600 hours.”

  Evalyth swallowed around a clump of dryness. “Isn’t that rather late?”

  “On purpose,” he told her. “I want the camp asleep.” His glance struck hers. “And want you to have time to reconsider.”

  “No!” She sprang erect and went for the door.

  His voice pursued her. “Donli would have asked you for that.”

  * * *

  Night came in and filled the room. Evalyth didn’t rise to turn on the light. It was as if this chair, which had been Donli’s favorite, wouldn’t let her go.

  Finally she remembered the psychodrugs. She had a few tablets left. One of them would make the execution easy to perform. No doubt Jonafer would direct that Moru be tranquilized—now, at last—before they brought him here. So why should she not give herself calmness?

  It wouldn’t be right.

  Why not?

  I don’t know. I don’t understand anything any longer.

  Who does? Moru alone. He knows why he murdered and butchered a man who trusted him. Evalyth found herself smiling wearily into the darkness. He had superstition for his sure guide. He’s actually seen his children display the first signs of maturity. That ought to console him a little.

  Odd, that the glandular upheaval of adolescence should have commenced under frightful stress. One would have expected a delay instead. True, the captives had been getting a balanced diet for a chance, and medicine had probably eliminated various chronic low. level infections. Nonetheless the fact was odd. Besides, normal children under normal conditions would not develop the outward signs beyond mistaking in this short a time. Donli would have puzzled over the matter. She could almost see him, frowning, rubbing his forehead, grinning one-sidedly with the pleasure of a problem.

  “I’d like to have a go at this myself,” she heard him telling Uden over a beer and a smoke. “Might turn up an angle.”

  “How?” the medic would have replied. “You’re a general biologist. No reflection on you, but detailed human physiology is out of your line.”

  “Urn-m-m . yes and no. My main job is studying species of terrestrial origin and how they’ve adapted to new planets. By a remarkable coincidence, man is included among them.”

  But Donli was gone, and no one else was competent to do his work—to be any part of him, but she fled from that thought and from the thought of what she must presently do. She held her mind tightly to the realization that none of Uden’s team had tried to apply Donli’s knowledge. As Jonafer remarked, a living Donli might well have suggested an idea, unorthodox and insightful, that would have led to the discovery of whatever was there to be discovered, if anything was. Uden and his assistants were routineers. They hadn’t even thought to make Donli’s computer ransack its data banks for possibly relevant information. Why should they, when they saw their problem as strictly medical? And, to be sure, they were not cruel. The anguish they were inflicting had made them avoid whatever might lead to ideas demanding further research. Donli would have approached the entire business differently from the outset.

  Suddenly the gloom thickened. Evalyth fought for breath. Too hot and silent here; too long a wait; she must do something or her will would desert her and she would be unable to squeeze the trigger.

  She stumbled to her feet and into the lab. The fluoro blinded her for a moment when she turned it on. She went to his computer and said: “Activate!”

  Nothing responded but the indicator light. The windows were totally black. Clouds outside shut off moon and stars.

  “What—” The sound was a curious croak. But that brought a releasing gall: Take hold of yourself, you blubbering idiot, or you’re not fit to mother the child you’re carrying. She could then ask her question. “What explanations in terms of biology can be devised for the behavior of the people on this planet?”

  “Matters of that nature are presumably best explained in terms, of psychology and cultural anthropology,” said the voice.

  “M-m-maybe,” Evalyth said. “And maybe not.” She marshalled a few thoughts and stood them firm amidst the others roiling in her skull. “The inhabitants could be degenerate somehow, not really human.” I want Moru to be. “Scan every fact recorded about them, including the detailed clinical observations made on four of them in the past several days. Compare with basic terrestrial data. Give me whatever hypotheses—anything that does not flatly contradict established facts. We’ve used up the reasonable ideas already.”

  The machine hummed. Evalyth closed her eyes and clung to the edge of the desk. Donli, please help me.

  At the other end of forever, the voice came to her:

  “The sole behavioral element which appears to be not easily explicable by postulates concerning environment and accidental historical developments, is the cannibalistic puberty rite. According to the anthropological computer, this might well have originated as a form of human sacrifice. But that computer notes certain illogicalities in the idea, as follows.

  “On Old Earth, sacrificial religion was normally associated with agricultural societies, which were more vitally dependent on continued fertility and good weather than hunters. Even for them, the offering of humans proved disadvantageous in the long run, as the Aztec example most clearly demonstrates. Lokon has rationalized the practice to a degree, making it a part of the slavery system and thus minimizing its impact on the generality. But for the lowlanders it is a powerful evil, a source of perpetual danger, a diversion of effort and resources that are badly needed for survival. It is not plausible that the custom, if ever imitated from Lokon, should persist among every one of those tribes. Nevertheless it does. Therefore it must have some value and the problem is to find what.

  “The method of obtaining victims varies widely, but the requirement always appears to be the same. According to the Lokonese, one adult male body is necessary and sufficient for the maturation of four boys. The killer of Donli Sairn was unable to carry off the entire corpse. What he did take of it is suggestive.

  “Hence a dipteroid phenomenon may have appeared in man on this planet. Such a thing is unknown among higher animals elsewhere, but is conceivable. A modification of the Y chromosome would produce it. The test for that that modification, and thus the test of the hypothesis, is easily made.�
��

  The voice stopped. Evalyth heard the blood slugging in her veins. “What are you talking about?”

  “The phenomenon is found among lower animals on several worlds,” the computer told her.

  . “It is uncommon and so is not widely known. The name derives from the Diptera, a type of dung fly on Old Earth.”

  Lightning flickered. “Dung fly—good, yes!”

  The machine went on to explain.

  * * *

  Jonafer came along with Moru. The savage’s hands were tied behind his back, and the spaceman loomed enormous over him. Despite that and the bruises he had inflicted on himself, he hobbled along steadily. The clouds were breaking and the moon shone ice-white. Where Evalyth waited, outside her door, she saw the compound reach bare to the saw-topped stockade and a crane stand above like a gibbet… The air was growing cold—the planet spinning toward an autumn—and a small wind had arisen to whimper behind the dust devils that stirred across the earth. Jonafer’s footfalls rang loud.

  He noticed her and stopped. Moru did likewise. “What did they learn?” she asked.

  The captain nodded. “Uden got right to work when you called,” he said. “The test is more complicated than your computer suggested—but then, it’s for Donli’s kind of skill, not Uden’s. He’d never have thought of it unassisted. Yes, the notion is true.”

  “How?”

  Moru stood waiting while the language he did not understand went to and fro around him.

  “I’m no medic.” Jonafer kept his tone altogether colorless. “But from what Uden told me, the chromosome defect means that the male gonads here can’t mature spontaneously. They need an extra supply of hormones—he mentioned testosterone and androsterone, I forget what else—to start off the series of changes which bring on puberty. Lacking that, you’ll get eunuchism. Uden thinks the surviving population was tiny after the colony was bombed out, and so poor that it resorted to cannibalism for bare survival, the first generation or two. Under those circumstances, a mutation that would otherwise have eliminated itself got established and spread to every descendant.”