Читать книгу Decimated - Jack Dann - Страница 8

TRAPS

The continent below him was covered with lush jungle except for the sandy plateau twenty miles in diameter. A moment earlier his instruments had picked up the other ship sitting near the southern edge of the tableland. The sandy surface of the plateau was fairly regular and Rysling decided to bring his own craft down on automatic, as close to the other ship as possible. He sat back in his contour seat and waited, his senses alert. Was someone else trying to beat him to his job?

His small exploratory vessel was now three thousand feet above the plateau and coming down fast on secondary jets. The primary landside jets cut in with a roar at five hundred feet and the sleek vessel settled slowly to the sand. When all had quieted the displaced sand made a crater-like perimeter around the silver hull.

Rysling made sure the double safety on the star-drive was secure, cut in the double safety for the landside rockets. Through his forward screen he saw that the other ship and also both suns were up. The yellow star was high in the dark blue sky, near its noontime. The red giant was near the horizon, just above the green jungle which surrounded the barren plateau. Rysling released the strap from around his waist. He stood up slowly and stretched. Nothing about the other ship was moving.

As yet the planet had no name, only a number: 3-10004-2. The gravity was only slightly higher than Earth normal. The atmosphere was nearly identical in composition to Earth’s. For all practical purposes the planet was ready to be colonized. But Earth Authority was picky. It wanted a complete classification of the land animals. That was why he was here, to catch the only remaining land animal that had not yet been caught, a catlike, four-footed creature which to date had eluded all efforts of hunters. That was all he had been told. He had been given a flat fee, operating expenses and a time limit of one earth month. Two weeks had already gone by.

As he came down the exit ramp, Rysling took a deep breath of the warm, humid air. After two weeks of the clean, sterile ship’s air the natural variety smelled awful. He was almost sickened by the thought of micro-organisms suspended all around him. He came to the end of the ramp and the sand was gritty beneath his heavy boots. It felt good, despite the air. He noticed that he was about four hundred feet from the other ship.

He walked to the other craft. The yellow sun was warm on his face. The other ship was also an exploratory model, slightly larger than his own. He estimated that it was perhaps two years older. There was a large, slightly scarred H on the hull. It might be one of Henderson’s ships, he thought, but the fading letter was not conclusive proof.

The ramp was down. Rysling went halfway up the incline.

“Is anyone home?” His voice echoed in the open airlock. There was no answer. He walked into the airlock and shouted up the central passageway which led up into the control room. “Hello.” Still no answer.

Rysling climbed the ladder into the control room. He looked around at everything carefully. All seemed to be in order—shut down —except for the radar and sensor instruments. They continued their watch of the surrounding country. For the moment they had nothing to report. The light above the security switches over the star-drive and rockets glowed a bright green. Everything seemed as it should be.

They’re all probably outside. I’m sure to run into them sooner or later.

He was almost ready to leave when his curiosity got the better of him. He sat down in the captain’s station and flicked on the log tape. He listened. For a long time there was nothing. At last, very faintly, he heard heavy breathing, then a voice he didn’t recognize.

“The greycat came into my mind. Suddenly I wasn’t a man any more but a beast. A hallucination? I don’t know—but I’ll be ready for it the next time. Going out now. Time: hell, my watch is broken...”

The tape ran on for a long time. Nothing more seemed to be on it. Rysling waited a little longer and switched it off. Apparently the skipper of the ship had not yet come back. He sounded like a man of imagination and easily frightened. Rysling shrugged.

He descended to the airlock, walked down the ramp, wandered to the edge of the plateau. Maybe the ship’s personnel were down in the jungle. He unsnapped his binoculars and began sweeping the jungle. Some impulse made him look straight down to the base of the cliff. He saw a stretch of white sand—and then he saw the bones.

Two human skeletons lay on the sand, hands pointed to the jungle as if praying. They must have fallen to their deaths somehow.

Rysling turned up the magnification of his oculars. At once it seemed he was standing directly over the two skeletons. A bug crawled out of one of the skulls and fled across the bright sand into the underbrush. How long did it take for flesh to rot away? Later he would have to go down and try to make identifications, determine what had happened and pack the remains for shipment home.

But for now he had a job to do, an animal to net. It was the kind of odd job he often took on between his regular ship runs. A man could always do with a little extra capital. Besides, he liked hunting. Trap a greycat, they had told him. Simple enough with the proper gear. But others had failed. Maybe Earth Authority had hired bunglers. Like the previous owners of the two skeletons below?

Their fate really didn’t concern him. He would not fail.

* * * *

The “hound” was really just a cage which could open any one of its six sides, could track its prey visually and through body heat and strike more swiftly than any living thing could move. Carefully Rysling worked the remote controls and guided it out of the cargo hold and gently down to the sand. He had set up the tripod earlier. It held the screen monitor for the hound’s electronic eyes. The remote control panel was just below the screen. In effect he would be the hound, seeing with its eyes and making sure that it did not tangle itself in vegetation—much of the tracking, however, was automatic and in reality he would only be needed during crucial moments, if they arose. Otherwise he could just sit in front of the monitor and live vicariously what the hound was doing. A routine job. He could not see how anyone could have failed to catch the animal. The beast didn’t have a chance. The hound’s eyes and heat-sensing device were tied into the ship’s computers which had been programmed to recognize only this type of living thing.

Rysling adjusted the controls for automatic search pattern. The pattern was based on what knowledge the computer had of the greycat. The hound lifted itself from the sand and moved slowly to the edge of the plateau. In a moment it dropped out of sight into the jungle. Rysling sat back in his seat in front of the monitor screen and stretched his legs.

In front of him now he could see wide-stemmed plants as the hound-cage pushed them aside. Some smaller plants bore large unopened buds. The tree trunks were massive, and an unfamiliar moss grew over much of their brown surface. The grass in the forest was a foot high, Rysling estimated. He could see great vines passing through it—lines of communication between the trees. He felt as if he were the hound, a great and powerful beast moving through the jungle aisles. The heat there was oppressive and moisture fell in great drops from huge leaves. He pushed a button and the hound’s eyes looked to the now hidden sky. He could only see the great trunks, standing like titans, guardians of the forest.

Rysling turned to look at the other ship. Sunlight was bright on the plateau. The yellow star was edging toward its afternoon. The red giant was partly below the horizon. Atmospheric refraction distorted its equatorial region, making the huge star look misshapen and bloated. Rysling no longer believed that anyone would return to the other ship.

When he turned again to the screen the hound was motionless. Nothing moved on the monitor except for a leaf touched by the wind. Slowly, silently, the greycat walked into view, thin and muscular, body low to the ground—the eyes were yellow ovals and looked directly into the screen. Rysling was fascinated by the eyes, they beckoned him, they drew his gaze into themselves. It seemed almost as if the cat were looking directly at him, as if the green-furred beast knew that something else waited behind the hound’s mechanical eyes. Rysling bit his lip. His hands hovered over the console, ready to take over in case of difficulty.

The hound moved in slowly at first, automatically—it picked up speed until it was moving about thirty miles an hour. But the greycat was suddenly a blur skimming the grass. The hound followed with deadly accuracy, changing direction with the animal. In a few moments it was directly behind the cat. Both were moving well past fifty miles an hour, Rysling estimated. The front cage door was open. Rysling noticed the red light on the console, informing him of the fact. There was a different colored light for each of the six doors. At any moment now the cat would be scooped up and the door would shut. In front of him Rysling could see the dark streak that ran from the cat’s ears to the long tail.

The greycat jumped into some brush, turned, and snarled at him. In a moment it would all be over, Rysling thought. Then he could go and take care of the two skeletons at the cliff base, go home to collect the rest of his fee.

The green vegetation before him was suddenly very vivid. Rysling felt a dizziness. He closed his eyes for a moment. His arms grew heavy and blood pounded in his head. When he opened his eyes the screen was out of focus and the whole world was spinning.

* * * *

He felt as if he were falling, but slowly. And the cool green grass of the forest was all around him, caressing him, inviting him to sleep until his strength returned and he could fight the strange, scentless creature that was chasing him. Rysling looked up at the hound through the greycat’s eyes. It was coming toward him. He rose on his hind paws and fell back farther into the thick brush. He tried to swat the cage with his paw. He snarled and fell over backward. He jumped to all fours immediately.

And ran. His cat’s body ran without him, instinctively, turning, jumping with an exhilarating sureness. He felt the thorn balls cling to his paws. His eyes saw everything—the forest was a rich orchestration of scents that told him all he needed to know.

* * * *

With a trembling hand Rysling turned off the hound’s automatic program, He was shaking. Sweat had run down his back. He inhaled a tranquilizer. The hound would come back now but he would send it out again.

A hallucination, he thought. It was what the voice on the log tape of the other ship had been talking about. But he had felt pain, fatigue, tasted the pungent scents of the forest, known the sweat and muscles of the swift greycat as he knew his own. And he had known the fear of the cat, running before something it did not understand, could never understand because it was not part of the normal environment.

He thought he had part of the picture now. He had been hit by the animal’s defense mechanism. Did the cat have telepathic abilities? At any rate, what he had experienced had to be an illusion and he would have to ignore it next time around. Perhaps the cat’s strange power dated from some still undiscovered stage of interplanetary evolution when all life forms were still undifferentiated, all awarenesses one—the single pulse of the natural force.

The hound appeared over the edge of the plateau. It skimmed to within six feet of the control console tripod and settled to the ground. Rysling went to it and checked it carefully. Nothing was wrong. He went back to the console and sat down to face the screen. With one flick he turned the automatic track back on. Quickly the hound flew over it. When it reached the spot where it had left the cat it descended again to the jungle floor, its heat residue sensor scanning the ground for the warm trail. The greycat’s path led in a wide circle toward the northern cliff wall of the plateau. The hound followed.

Apparently the animal was following the cliff wall closely. The hound picked up speed. The greycat came into view on the sand ahead. The hound picked up still more speed. The cat ran, leaving big paw prints in the sand strip that rimmed the base of the plateau.

Rysling braced himself for the hallucination. It came like a dream he could recognize as one but he could not break the spell. The cage was open and coming directly for him. The cliff wall was at his back. He had to wait for the moment when he could rush past it into the jungle. For an instant his new body was frozen, as if all its instincts were dead or confused by the precision of an enemy which made so few mistakes, gave so little opportunity to escape. The cage came on until it was directly in front of him.

It swallowed him. The bars slid shut with a click. Then he heard the small voice whispering in his ear, You’re Rysling—this is an illusion. It will go away, change. Just wait. But the presence of the jungle was stronger, the backdrop of his new life, the vast and vivid support for his senses, the source of all blessings. He heard it, he smelled it, he saw the vivid, achingly intense colors. Only the bars kept him from it. His own voice was very faint, very far away and of no consequence. A small fly buzzing near his ear.

The greycat threw himself at the bars. Stupid, the button, the voice said. Outside the first bar. He slid his paw between the bars and pushed wildly. The side entrance of the cage opened with a half-remembered whirring sound.

The jungle beckoned. He ran into the gloom, quietly, swiftly, in one fluid motion unlike the jerky point-to-point movement of his previous life. He could smell the shades of colors—he sensed the range which before had been only green, brown, or mud-colored. The soft voice told him to go back, regain his former self, break the spell that bound him to a world that man had turned his back on a million years ago—but the voice was a poor, sterile thing compared with the rich, surrounding forest.

Still, he would have to go back, if only for a moment. The jungle called to him—it promised confidently.

But instead he ran toward the sandy plateau.

The human form that had once been Kurt Rysling stood up from its seat in front of the tripod console. Its movements were jerky. It tried to walk and fell on all fours. The smell of the jungle it had known all its life seemed distant, faded and alien. The colors were pale and the normal sounds of the forest were gone. Its strange new limbs were weak. The greycat tried to growl but only a weak sound came out of its small, human mouth. He crawled nearer the jungle, hoping that all the normal sensations would return. He reached the edge. The urge to jump came suddenly. The greycat leaped from the plateau, its human arms stretched out in front like paws.

The small voice still spoke in the greycat’s simple brain. Momentarily it became stronger when the cat came to the broken body of Kurt Rysling lying next to the sun-bleached skeletons at the bottom of the cliff. The red star had long since set, and the yellow sun was low over the jungle. The cat stood perfectly still in the cliff’s shadow, listening. Dimly, from somewhere in the depths of the greycat’s nervous system, Rysling understood what had happened to the two skeletons before him. This then was the skipper of the other ship and his companion and what was happening to him had happened to them. He looked at his own corpse with indifference. It was after all a thing and not himself. He felt comfortable and safe. From somewhere his old voice summoned up enough strength to tell him that while he could adapt easily to the cat’s nervous system, the greycat had not been able to master the complexities of a human cortex. But, then, did this not mean that the human mind was only a resident of the physio-chemical brain? That in reality it was an epiphenomenon, a matrix of energy which could detach itself from its physical form?. It must be so, the small voice said. After all, the iron of a magnet produces something beyond itself, the magnetic field; and the mass of a world produces a gravitational field; and the physio-chemical brain tissue produces a pattern of energies that is the real mind, responsible for all the higher functions. The small voice seemed desperate as it spoke. There would be a price to pay for his new existence—fading memories, the power of reason, love. But he didn’t care. The world was vast and entirely within his grasp. It was a world for him. The smells of the forest wrapped themselves around him. Did he for a moment detect—a female odor? The image was clear: a sleek female, waiting somewhere for him. The small voice was almost gone now—he could not understand its meaning or where it had come from. He glanced again at the broken body that lay face down, its neck broken. He looked up to the edge of the plateau. Had he thought of going there? There was no way up. Swiftly he turned and ran into the green shadows. His muscles were strong. In one place the yellow sun cast its light into the jungle aisle, making his fur feel warm. Soon, he knew, it would be night. The small voice was only a background sound, no stronger than an insect’s drone. He stopped and turned to look at the plateau, which from this distance was visible through a break in the trees. He could just barely see the top of one silvery ship. He looked at it, trying to remember what it was but that memory was already gone.

The greycat turned again and disappeared into the jungle.

AFTERWORD FOR “TRAPS”

George:

“Remarks want you to make them,” Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe says to his captors when they try to shut him up. This story, along with the others, is now a captive in time, captured again in this collection, provoking remarks from both of us.

I don’t know, as I write this, what Jack will say, but this is a van Vogtian pastiche, recalling his Rull stories, and maybe even “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. It is a story written by the rules, which you can only break later; beginners don’t like to hear that. You first write what you admire, and then grow into yourself. For Jack it was this story’s greycat, and the way it walks onto the scene and into the eyes of the hunter, who learns where and to what he wants to throw in his lot. Sometimes I think the greycat’s expression is Jack Benny’s look of exasperation.

Rysling’s name is a misspelled version of the name of the blind poet in Robert Heinlein’s story “The Green Hills of Earth.” We just liked the sound of it.

* * * *

Jack:

And so our character Rysling comes alive to take a bow once again...

George was right: we were trying to write a real story, one that followed Aristotle’s rule of beginning, middle, and end. The goal of the exercise was to narrate a straightforward story in a prose style that was as simple and direct as we could make it. If memory serves, we wrote “Traps” in 1968, and it was published in Worlds of If in 1970. That was the period of the “New Wave” in science fiction, a time of wild stylistic experimentation characterized by open-ended plots, stream-of-consciousness prose, and John Dos Passos news headline collages. Writers and editors such as Damon Knight, Robert Silverberg, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James Tiptree, Jr., Joanna Russ, Pamela Zoline, Sonya Dorman, Kit Reed, Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delany, J.G. Ballard (whose “condensed novels” really were something new in the world), John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, Thomas N. Disch, and a host of others were redefining the genre. Although some of the stories in this collection were definitely influenced by the newfound stylistic freedom of the New Wave, “Traps” is a story that moved against the strong tide of the zeitgeist.

As George suggested, we were trying to write a traditional story, a pastiche in the style of Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, Clifford Simak, Murray Leinster, and A. E. van Vogt (if, indeed, van Vogt with his rule of introducing a new plot element every 800 words could ever be considered traditional).