A World Named Cleopatra Read online

  Janne shrugged. Wryness twitched her mouth upward. We named you better than we knew, Cleopatra. Lovely but—hm—capricious.

  Fielding, who had been hunkered over food preparation, rose as she approached. Though everyone was now too used to the lesser weight to notice it, he, who had been a trifle awkward at home, was graceful here. He was a lanky man with a bush of black hair and features she thought were good-looking in their broad-nosed deep-brown fashion. They had found much in common on the long voyage hither, after they saw it was best to set political differences aside. He remembered with pleasure a visit to her Norway; it was less ruined than most of Earth, he said. She had studied in his North America. Their professions did not really sunder them either, he an engineer, she a naturalist; nobody on this trip could afford to be narrowly specialized.

  “Hi,” he said. “Want to take over cooking? Short rations need a woman’s touch.”

  “Short?” she asked.

  Fielding jerked his head at de Barros, who was raising the tent. “He insists. Says we may be stranded for quite a spell.”

  The Brazilian left his own work to come and say, “It is an obvious possibility.” As always, his slender form was neatly outfitted and soldierly erect. Upon the thin-sculptured head, prematurely gray hair and mustache had gone argent in this light. His English was less fluent that the others’, but he spoke it when with them, rather than the official Portuguese or Japanese of the expedition. Janne didn’t know whether that was a gesture of friendship or of condescension. Perhaps it was one toward her, another toward Fielding. In spite of the North American’s radicalism, she felt she understood him; both their countries remembered not only having once been prosperous and democratic, but having once been satellites of nobody else. Aristocrats, however, were outside her experience, whether baronial Brazilians or magnates of the New Empire.

  “You mean,” she asked, half timidly, “the radio interference will keep on for long?”

  “I am not positive,” de Barros admitted. “Our knowledge of stars like Caesar is less than complete. Still,, storms upon them have been seen to remain at peak for as much as two terrestrial weeks. Until the present one diminishes, no transmission of ours will carry all the way we have come from Base.”

  His redundant last sentence made Fielding scowl at what could be a subtle insult. But as if to emphasize, the auroras suddenly flamed high and lurid. The shadows they cast danced across the beach. Janne gasped in awe.

  “We are too small to be located from space, and only two of the aircraft have ample range to get here and back, if our whereabouts are known beforehand,” de Barros continued, likewise unnecessarily. “Hence we must wait till we can send a message and, I suppose, have fuel brought us. It seems common sense to stretch out our food supplies.”

  Fielding’s hand chopped at the forest. “When we’ve got a whole continent and ocean full of eatables?” he scoffed.

  “Are you sure it is?” Janne cautioned.

  “Why shouldn’t it be? Life uses the same basic stuff everywhere else on a planet. And conditions on this coast don’t seem especially different from the east.”

  “You’re assuming a great deal, Arch.”

  For an instant Janne feared that Fielding would gibe at de Barros with something unspeakably obvious of his own. Perhaps: “Yes, I understand that while similar environments have produced basically similar biochemistries on two planets, the parallelisms couldn’t be exact. Cleopatran flesh and fruit lack some of the compounds we must have, like certain vitamins; and a proportion is turning out to be poisonous to us. This has its advantages. It works both ways. Cleopatran diseases can’t get a foothold in us. And we can supplement our diets, deliciously, if we’re careful.”

  But instead the North American gave her one of his full-lipped smiles and said, “Right. I know what close relatives the potato, the tomato, and the deadly night-shade are. Don’t worry. I won’t eat anything you haven’t certified as a type we checked out on Base and proved was safe. I am betting we’ll find a lot hereabouts.

  Though such identifications were part of Jane’s job she felt unhappy at the responsibility. Seeking words to explain, she turned her gaze outward, along the shining, beach. What she saw made her go taut.

  De Barros noticed. “0 que há?” he exclaimed.

  “Shhhh.” She pointed.

  A hundred meters away, a creature had stepped from the forest onto the sand. Light shimmered off a tall, thin, eerily manlike body. It halted, crouched bent-legged, and peered at the strangers.

  She heard a slither as Fielding drew his gun. “Don’t shoot,” she whispered frantically.

  “I’m playing it cautious, no more,” he assured her. “Damn, isn’t that something!”

  All personnel went armed. Thus far there had been no need for it, except to collect specimens. Janne had been glad of that; and, necessary and fascinating though dissections were, she hated seeing slain animals brought to her laboratory shack. It reminded her too sharply of whale and elephant, stag and lion, every kind of wildlife much bigger than a rat or a roach, which Earth knew only in archives. Yonder one, erect, alert, brought back to her some chimpanzees she had once seen in a film…O God, almost human faces, faunlike awareness behind the eyes…

  Frozen, the forest dweller watched them.

  De Barros was first to move, charily, back to a pile of gear. Janne glimpsed him draw forth a pair of night glasses and bring them to focus.

  She had never before seen him shaken.

  “Madre santa!” burst from him. He dropped the, binoculars. She snatched them up for herself. The Animal sprang into clear view.

  Startled by the noise and movement, it was loping back to cover. In its left hand—not paw, hand—it: gripped a rock shaped and edged by what must be chipping.

  It vanished. Charmian, entering the shadow of the planet, turned dull coppery-red.

  At dawn Janne again strayed off by herself and stood looking over the sea. It had awakened to a million blues and greens, white-laced where waves met land. Out upon some reefs basked scores of great long-necked marine reptiloids. Their numbers bespoke how rich in life these waters must be. The sky, cloudless, was already too lightful for the ring to show, except for a swift phantomlike Iras, Charmian’s half-sized companion. But it was not empty, that sky. Thousands of wings shared it with the sun. Clamor drifted down to meet the low surf noise.

  Shadows were long, more blue and sharp than on Earth. The air was brisk, barely on the cool side of balmy, laden with fragrances which mostly were different from those of sunset or night.

  “Good morning,” said de Barros,

  Janne turned to greet him. Immaculate, he offered his usual slight bow. “Did you sleep well, since you have risen this early?” he inquired.

  “No, I was too excited,” she said. “But I don’t mind.” Impulsively: “I can’t get over the—the abundance here. The whole horizon seems bigger.” It wasn’t in fact, she knew. The equatorial diameter of Cleopatra was 9920 kilometers, 78 percent of Earth’s, which meant that, under present conditions, she could see about one kilometer less far.

  He surprised her by saying, “It is.” After a moment: “This marvelously clear atmosphere. Vision isn’t caged by pollution. Perhaps I could show you something comparable on our estate in Rio Grande do Sul, the grasslands.…But no.” He shook his head. “They are an enclave which will last no longer than our family’s wealth and power. Meanwhile, every wind brings filth.” He sighed. “Here on Cleopatra—Janne, I begin to understand why my ancestors worshipped the Virgin.”

  What? she thought. Is the aristocrat baring his soul? And then: No. I shouldn’t be sarcastic when he’s trying to be friendly.

  It wasn’t the first time, either, she recalled. De Barros had found occasion after occasion to talk to her. That wasn’t easy. Besides his being a planetologist, a scholar of rocks, magmas, inanimate forces, there was the lack of privacy on Base Island. No two people were ever far from others; it might not be safe. And, well, Arch h
as been particularly likely to interrupt.

  “You’ve seen several new planets,” she said, for lack of better words.

  “None like this,” de Barros answered. “They had their wonders, but men could never make a home on them. A world where we can live, truly live, is more rare and precious than we can well imagine. It is like being given Eden back, to try again.”

  “Do you think people might colonize here?” It had often been speculated about, but the general feeling was that Caesar was too remote from Sol, at the end of too long a haul. It would never be possible to ship very many emigrants; and they would be more isolated than ever were Pilgrim Fathers—or Greenland Norse, who died out.

  “Oh yes, indeed. Let them see our account, and those who can will sell whatever they possess to buy a one-way passage and barely enough equipment for a start.”

  “But…cut off…and the uncertainties, the dangers…”

  “Janne, I can name you a good many persons who would not mind in the least being cut off from our present excuse for a civilization. I rather suspect I am among, them. As for danger, in a very few more generations Cleopatra at her worst will be safer than Earth at her best.”

  “You can’t think that: you!” she blurted.

  De Barros shrugged. “I am a scientist, who abhors politics and the military. But coming from the family I do, I cannot avoid noticing things, including things the public is not to be told. We are far closer to a far more serious ecological crisis, and the international balance of power is far more precarious, than the insiders admit even to themselves.”

  Janne winced. “How I hope you are wrong.”

  He cocked his head. “Forgive me. I,didn’t mean to distress you on such a gorgeous morning. Let us therefore simply speak of adventure, opportunity, freedom, healthful and beautiful surroundings. Consider yourself. You stand so raptly watching those animals. There must be work for a hundred lifetimes of naturalists. Would you not be happier here than anyplace else?”

  Janne bit her lip.

  “Why are you sad all at once?” he asked low, and took her arm.

  “That being,” she got out through a thickness in her gullet.

  “Ah. The tool-bearer.”

  “Yes. I did daydream about pioneering, when it didn’t seem Cleopatra had intelligent life. But now…”

  “Marvelous in truth. To be sure, what we saw appeared less developed than man.”

  Janne shook her head. “I got a pretty good look at the hand ax. It’s made as well as specimens from Earth’s Paleolithic were…by Homo sapiens. Oh, perhaps you can’t teach calculus to the maker. But perhaps you can. And even if not, his breed must be on their way, well on their way, to becoming as bright as we are—their own kind of consciousness, which surely can’t be the same as ours.”

  “You wish to learn more about them, do you not?”

  “ ‘Wish’ is a feeble word. I was afire until—Roberto, are you certain colonists will be coming?”

  “Yes, if we don’t discover some terrible obstacle.”

  “Maybe we can.”

  He considered her before saying, “You are afraid that man, permanently on Cleopatra, would destroy the aborigines.”

  “I am. Think what he did to his fellow men who were weaker, or to the dolphins and apes. I could hope he’d have the sense to learn from Earth and use a new planet right. But don’t you see, whatever he did, he’d be using it. Making it his, changing it, dominating…. He might grant natives a few wretched reservations. No more. What then of their own dreams, everything they might have done, might have given to the universe? No,” Janne said through tears, “I don’t want to be a party to that. How could I ever dare die?”

  She fought for calmness. De Barros ventured to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Easy, easy,” he murmured.

  “You are borrowing trouble. Let us first learn the facts—whatever we can—seeing that we must be here for awhile anyway. You have never had a more fascinating challenge, have you?”

  “No,” she confessed, and felt a surprised gratitude that he should be this understanding. He’s really a good person, she thought.

  “Uh-hum!” said Fielding at their backs. “For your information, I’ve found where the nearest fresh water is. So how about you making breakfast?”

  The men matched fingers to decide who should accompany Janne on her first excursion, and who guard camp. Fielding won; at any rate, he seemed to regard it as a victory. De Barros philosophically said he could study a nearby outcrop. Cleopatran petrology had its duplications of the terrestrial, but already at Base he had discovered differences which a geologist would call spectacular.

  The other two collected their equipment. While not planning to go far, they carried compasses—the planet had a stronger magnetic field than Earth—and small transceivers—the electrical chaos in the upper atmosphere wouldn’t stop short-range radio, if one didn’t mind static. In addition, they bore weapons, first-aid kits, Janne’s professional tools, and a couple of sandwiches.

  Travel was simple—no tangled brush to fight. Cleopatran plants did not seem to have evolved as far as angiosperms, at least on this continent. However elaborated, they were basically primitive, mostly soft-bodied and disinclined to grow in dense masses. The chief exception was an intensely green stuff which resembled moss (and wasn’t), making a springy carpet underfoot.

  Janne recognized some of the vegetation. In various cases, she had helped devise the names. Several dinobryans were in sight, upheaving their great spongy masses like coral knolls. A dichtophyte had stretched its network between two of them, strands ranging from cable-thick to thread-fine for the entrapment of animal prey. Metallic particles in the leaves of a Venus mirror made them sheen; the bush was surrounded by insectoids whose wings were similar, and Janne guessed it attracted them to pollinate. Nestled beneath the outward-bristling spearpoint stalks of a sarissa, a chameleon plant shifted hue as illumination changed. There were many more kinds of rooted life than these, a few suggestive of ferns, lycopods, fungus, or evergreen trees, most were wildly exotic. Besides every possible shade of verdure, the forest had its bursts of vivid red, purple, yellow—not true flowers, but poinsettia-like pseudo blooms.

  It was warm and quiet here, a checkerboard of bright openness and sun-speckled shadow, a multitude of odors sweet, pungent, pleasantly rank. Most of the abundant animals were small and not noisy. Insectoids buzzed or hummed. A swarm of smidgins passed, the tiny individuals merged into a cloud; two leathery-winged reptiloids flapped along, leisurely feasting. A jackadandy flaunted plumes of a sort, though it wasn’t a bird either, and trilled. The largest beasts seen were half a dozen hipposaur, grazing at a distance. But Janne was utterly charmed when she came upon a reptiloid new to her, likewise a peaceful herbivore. It could afford pacifism,, being a two-meter-wide walking dome of bony armor and spiky tail. “We must call that a hoplite!” she said clapping her hands together.

  “Huh?” Fielding asked. “It doesn’t look as if it could even hop heavy.”

  Janne laughed. “An infantryman in classical Greece. Roberto was telling me, several days ago…”

  “Oh. I’m afraid my education’s been neglected. Come on; if you want to search for natives, we should keep moving.

  His sourness drew a troubled regard from her. “What’s the matter, Arch?”

  “Ah, hungry, I guess. That stupid rationing…No, that isn’t really it. I think you can see what it is.”

  Her cheeks heated. She decided not to reply. They walked on for a number of minutes.

  “Okay, damn it. I’ll speak out,” Fielding said. “It’s that Brazilian bastard, and you getting chummy with him.”

  “I know you’d overthrow his class, his entire country—and you know I don’t agree that violent revolution ever improved anything—but, Arch,” Janne pleaded, “we’re human beings together, a long, long way from home.”

  “He hasn’t left his interests behind. You can bet your blood he’s figuring how his relatives can get a strangle-ho
ld on this planet—squeeze out the Japanese, sure, but make peons out of the settlers—”

  “He isn’t! We’ve talked—”

  “Yeah, he wants you in his bag also. Janne, you may be a little naive, but you’re not stupid. You know the signs.”

  I do, sighed within her. Inescapable, perhaps. We aren’t many women along; and I—her fingers knotted together—I’m one of the few who are neither solidly attached to a man nor, available to a lot of them…The psychologists should have picked the crew more carefully. Did they try and fail? It must be hard to find qualified volunteers among Earth’s poverty-trapped masses.

  Fielding stared before him as he tramped and added harshly, “I suppose you’ve seen them on me too.”

  “You—you’re sweet,” she stammered, “but—”

  “But not just what you’re after? Who is, then? A rich Brazilian? I’m not sweet at all. I can be as mean as necessary to keep him from getting you.”

  Janne bridled. “Arch, you’re overstepping.”

  “No. I’m worried sick. You don’t understand how rotten his type is. Why, I’d rather see you the mistress of Captain Yoshida than the wife—the toy, the slave—of—”

  “Nok! Enough! You’re making me understand why Roberto loathes fanatics. Stop slandering him before I stop liking you.”

  He swallowed. They continued, through a land where she could no longer find beauty.

  But after more minutes a new sound broke the silence between them. They halted, strained their ears, stared at each other with anger forgotten. Janne’s heart leaped. She beckoned Fielding to follow her, well behind; she could move more quietly than he.

  A screen of something like tall bracken rose in front of the clattering. Janne crept up to it, parted stalks and fronds, peered through.

  What I thought! What I both hoped and feared it would be.

  The creature squatted in a glade where a ridge of flinty rock thrust above soil. It was a reptiloid, hairless; small scales were darkly iridescent in the sunlight. Erect on clawed feet, it would overtop her by a few centimeters. The frame, unobscured by clothes or ornaments, was manlike in a sense. Its alienness—lean barrel of a torso, long, curiously jointed legs, short arms and the way they hung from the shoulder, slender tail—did not make it grotesque; this body had its own grace, its own integrity. The neck was likewise long, flexible, supporting a narrow head. The eyes were its best feature, large and golden, protected by arching ridges that, with the membranous crest on top, made the skull resemble an ancient helmet. The face was flat, a single nostril slit in place of a nose, mouth V-shaped in a perpetual grin, jaws of nearly human delicacy. When they opened, the variety of teeth indicated that here too was an omnivore.