The Science Fiction Anthology. Fritz Leiber
of jabberwockies.
The single scarlet sun with its corona of spectrum frost was drawing low on the forest-covered horizon. Barnhart, dry of mouth and sore of foot, had not encountered yet a single one of the hundred inhabitants. He had missed his nap and his dinner, and now (he ran his tongue over his thick-feeling teeth) he was about to miss his nightly brushing of his teeth. He had taken only a minimum survival kit with him—which did not include a smaller personals kit.
His wristwatch, still on good, reliable ship’s time, recorded nearly fifteen hundred hours straight up. His body chemistry was still operating on the Captain’s Shift, whereby he spent part of the time with both the day and night shifts. It was nearly time for him to go to bed. Fortunately it was almost night on the planet.
He was searching out his portable force field projector from some loose coins and keys when the one hundred quronos came out of their houses and began geoplancting.
Fifth Day Marooned
The Journal of
Captain T. P. Barnhart,
Late of the U.G.S. Quincey
It becomes apparent that I may never leave alive this planet whose name and co-ordinates have been kept from me. By reason, justice and regulations, the men who put me here must pay (see formal attached warrant against First Mate O. D. Simmons and the remainder of my crew). For this reason and in the interest of science I am beginning this journal, to which I hope to continue contributing from time to time, barring sudden death.
At this writing I am in a village of ten houses identified as a settlement of quronos. These tall, hairless humanoids have performed an intricate series of indescribable actions since I first encountered them. My problem, as is apparent, is to decide whether these actions constitute their normal daily routine or whether I have instigated this series of actions.
If the latter is the case: where will it all end?
1700: Fifth day
Barnhart was not used to being ignored.
It was certainly not a part of his normal routine. Often in his life he had been scorned and ridiculed. Later, when he earned a captaincy in the exploration service, the men around him had to at least make a show of respect and paying attention to him. Being ignored was a new experience for him. While it was a strange thing to say of an explorer, Barnhart didn’t particularly like new experiences ... or rather he only liked the same kind of new experiences.
He kicked the wine-colored soil in red-faced impotence the first few dozen times quronos went silently past him on the way to gather fruit from the forest, or hew logs to keep the buildings in repairs (which seemed to be a constant occupation.)
However, when the twenty-fifth alien shouldered past him the morning after he first discovered the village, Barnhart caught him by the shoulder, swung him half around and slugged him off his feet with a stabbing right cross.
The alien shook his head foggily a few times and slowly climbed to his feet.
Barnhart bit at his under lip. That hadn’t been a wise thing to do at all. He should know that unorthodox moves like that led only to certain disaster. He fumbled for his force-field projector, and with a flush of adrenalin discovered he had lost it.
Now, he thought, the alien will signal the rest of them. And they, all one hundred of them (now does that include the one I first saw in the clearing or not?) they will converge on me and—
The qurono marched off into the forest.
Everyone was still ignoring Barnhart.
Barnhart munched on a steak sandwich listlessly and watched the aliens through the faint haze of the force field.
He had found the projector half stamped into the earth and he was testing it. But even a test was foolish. None of them was close enough to him to harm him with so much as a communicable disease. He might as well quit roughing it and get back to the cottage.
In the last few days he had had time to think. He took up his journal.
Eighth Day
I can only suppose that these actions of the aliens represent some kind of religious ritual. Again I am presented with the problem of whether these rituals are a part of their normal, daily life, or are they a special series instigated by my presence?
Yesterday I observed two of the quronos repairing one of the village houses. The native lumber seems to be ill-suited to construction purposes. Several times I have noticed logs tearing themselves free and crawling back into the virgin forest. Due to the instability of their building materials the aliens are constantly having to repair their houses.
In watching the two quronos at work I observed something highly significant.
The humanoids worked smoothly as a team, splitting and planing down the reluctant logs with double-bladed axes. Then, putting the lumber in place, they fastened it down with triangular wooden pegs. They pounded these pegs home awkwardly with the flat side of the axes.
The axes are crude and obviously indigenous to the culture.
I view this with considerable alarm.
Obviously any culture that can produce an axe is capable of inventing the hammer.
The quronos are not using their hammers in front of me. I am producing a change in their routine.
Where will it end?
What are they saving their hammers for?
800: Eighth Day
Barnhart had written that just before dawn, but as usual the aliens had continued to ignore him. For all he knew the ritual might go on for years—before they used their hammers. Or whatever they were planning.
It was drawing near time for his nap, but he felt completely wide awake even inside the safety of the force field. His throat hurt and the backs of his legs ached with the waiting, the waiting for the natives to come out and begin xenogutting.
He wiped his hands together and forced a smile. Why should he worry what the natives did? He was completely safe. He could live out his life in immutable security.
But this wasn’t his world. No part of it was his ... or at least only the part he had brought with him. Sanity lay in holding to what was left of his own world. But sanity didn’t always mean survival.
What if he could make the quronos’ world his own?
Barnhart wiped at the tiny stings against his face and his fingertips came away moist with beads of perspiration.
The aliens began marching out of the houses, in twos from the ten-foot doors, singly from the foot-square openings of every other facing wall.
It wasn’t his world of fire-works-streaked Ohio summers and bold green hills, this planet cowled with nun-like secrecy, looking acrid, tasting violet and transmitting a beauty and confusion only a trio of physical scientists could solve.
But there was only one thing to do.
Barnhart let down his force field and went out.
The human body wasn’t well-adapted for it but Barnhart did his best to join the quronos in xenogutting.
Instantly the cry welled up.
“Master.”
Barnhart stood up and faced the aliens, deeply disturbed.
He was even more disturbed when, later, he wrote again in his journal:
Ninth day
“Qurono,” I have learned from the Leader, is a term referring to a particular type of sub-human android. The synthetic process used in manufacturing these men does not allow them to develop beyond a certain point—a built-in safety factor of their creators, I can only suppose. Thus they were given the concept of the axe and have retained it, but they were able only to devise the idea of using the axe to hammer things with and are not capable of thinking of a special hammering tool.