OUT of all the millions of planets in that small sector of the universe that we refer to quaintly as our galaxy, few have names of their own. Worlds, by and large, are nameless things. They may have designations assigned to them from outside, but numbers are not names and in any case the numbers are unknown to the life-forms that dwell there.
The giving of names is a characteristic of man and manlike beings, although it also occurs among a few other language-oriented genera. Moreover, the naming of planets is a special thing. First, you have to know what a planet is and that it needs to be distinguished from other planets—otherwise, it remains simply “the” world, if indeed it gets that far. It is not enough to name a territory, a river, a mountain. A concept of a total world is required—and most people don’t have it.
It takes a complex and sophisticated culture to name a planet. Of course, the lightships of Caravans Unlimited tended to steer clear of civilizations more advanced than that of Earth. They had not encountered many, and the few they had touched briefly were almost totally alien. There was no basis for a trading relationship, and certainly not a profitable one. Caravans had little to offer to such a culture, and no bargaining power at all.
Caravans left the handful of complex civilizations alone—which meant that Earth had no effective contact with them. The exploration of space was too costly to be undertaken by governments swamped by more urgent demands; the business corporations such as Caravans could pursue it only as long as it showed a profit. On the other side, it was a curious fact that the alien civilizations seemed to lack any interest in space travel.
The Caravans lightships had never detected an alien ship in space.
Alex Porvenir had long been convinced that this was nothing but a sampling error. The universe was immensely large, and the Caravans ships were few. The dimensional technique of moving a ship through not-space was tricky; the chances of direct contact with another ship were remote. The itch to explore the universe might not be universal. Certainly, there were civilizations that seemed unconcerned, or knew all they wished to know. But curiosity is a prerequisite to intelligent life, and somewhere. . . .
Alex was by no means certain that he wanted to encounter unknown ships in the depths of space. He had troubles enough as it was.
For example, the problem on Arctica.
Arctica was that rare thing, a world with a name. It had been named by the Caravans traders and had no official tag, but Arctica it was. It had to be.
A cold planet, adrift with silver snow and sheeted with glinting ice. A world of howling blizzards and long stillnesses. A land of slow magnificent glaciers and sudden explosive thaws.
Of course, it was not all snow and ice and barren frozen rock. Few life-sustaining worlds are that uniform. There was a broad equatorial belt that was moderate in its climate, there were transitional zones of treeless bush-covered plains, and there were deep central open seas.
But the Lupani lived on the fringes of the snow and ice, and it was the Lupani who brought the traders to Arctica. There were other, more populous tribes south of the Lupani, but they had nothing that Caravans could use.
On the charts, Arctica was Sirius XI, almost nine light-years from Earth.
Nobody ever thought of it as Sirius XI.
Now, as the Caravans lightship carrying Alex Porvenir approached the Sirius system, spring was coming to Arctica.
That was no accident.
What happened—or failed to happen—in the spring was the obvious key to the riddle of the Lupani.
* * * *
The Lupani were a tough, resourceful people who somewhat resembled the Eskimos of an older Earth. They even looked like them in a purely physical sense, and for very good reasons. They had the same narrow eyes, the same high cheekbones and fatty pads protecting the nose, the same somewhat globular body build. When you confront the stresses of extreme cold, wide-open eyes are vulnerable to freezing, a projecting beak of a nose is an invitation to disaster, and a body that does not retain heat does not survive.
When you have no wood, you build your houses of snow or rock and line the walls with skins. When you have to walk in a blizzard, you don’t go naked or with just a couple of strategically placed feathers.
The old Eskimos—extinct now in the manswarm that was Earth—would have recognized the Lupani, and understood them.
They had faced many of the same problems.
The Lupani could not just park themselves in one spot and live off the land. Farming was impossible. They had to shift with the seasons, utilizing the resources of each to the maximum.
Summers were hard and lonely, but productive. During the summer months, the askaggen moved in small groups onto the suddenly flowering treeless plains that formed the southern edge of the Lupani range. The askaggen were not herd animals. Large, hairy, and formidably tusked, they were more like a stunted mammoth than anything else. Scattered in little knots of four or five animals, they feasted on the grassies and shrubs of the summer plains. In order to hunt them —and even to find them—the Lupani had to split up into family groups and fan out over a huge territory. It took a lot of walking, and friends that parted when summer began would not see each other again for many long months.
In the fall, when the chill winds began to blow, the askaggen drifted southward out of the land of the Lupani. The scattered Lupani began their trek north toward their winter villages, carrying their collected tusk-ivory with them. They lived on berries and marsh birds and the small rodents that burrowed in the damp soil.
Winter was the best time, despite the bitter cold. The Lupani were together and snug in their rock villages with the interior walls lined with hides. There were sea mammals beneath the ice, sleek propoise-like karibu that maintained breathing holes in the crust ice. The harpoons of the Lupani hunters sought them out with ease; it took skill and patience but it was not really hard work. Winter was a time of enforced leisure, a time for sewing skins and repairing weapons and carving dreams and memories out of ivory. It was also a time of awesome frozen beauty, and the Lupani were by no means unaware of the magic of their winter world.
The onslaught of spring was no cause for rejoicing; the Lupani sang no songs to spring. It was a time for thaws and open rushing water, a time for drenching rains and snarling knife-edged winds. The karibu swam far to the south to bear their young in warmer water that splashed against distant islands. For the Lupani, it was a time for farewells and a time of gnawing hunger. The people of the villages delayed as long as they could, and then broke up into tiny groups that moved toward the barren wet plains, waiting for the askaggen to come again. Meanwhile, they scavenged what they could.
That was the annual cycle of the Lupani.
That was the way it had always worked. That was the way it was supposed to work.
The problem was simple. It wasn’t working now.
The cycle was broken.
* * * *
The Caravans lightship, operating now in normal space, flashed toward Arctica. The huge white sun that was Sirius bathed the ship in silver. The symbol of the laden camel on the bow seemed somehow right at home. Had there been anyone to see, it would not have been difficult to imagine another burning sun, a sea of shifting sand, the patient tinkling of the harness bells. . . .
And men. Men of a special breed. Men with an ancient lineage. Men who knew about far journeys and strange ports of call. Men who for most of their adult lives sought out products that were worth transporting across immense distances. Men who lived with the stars—
“It just can’t be that way,” Tucker Olton said. “There has to be some other explanation.”
Alex Porvenir filled one of his habitually foul pipes and fired it up. “Great,” he said. “I’m all ears. Clue me in on that other explanation.”
“I wish I could. Just once, I’d like to reverse our roles. It would do my ego a lot of good—what’s left of it.”
Alex Porvenir smiled. “Your time will come. Besides, we worked this one out together, remember? It wasn’t just my idea. I don’t understand it either. But there’s no other way the thing will work.”
“It won’t work this way either. You know it won’t. I don’t give a damn what the computer says. I’ve seen the Lupani. I know what they can do and what they can’t do. The theory may sound good, but it has the slight defect of being impossible.”
Alex nodded and stretched out his long legs. His disconcertingly direct brown eyes narrowed slightly. He passed a lean hard hand through his graying hair. He liked Tucker Olton. The two men had been through a lot together, intellectually and otherwise. Alex was proud of the younger man. He had learned his lessons well but he had a mind of his own. He had the too-rare gift of being able to see what he looked at. He saw what was there, not what was supposed to be there.
“You will grant two facts,” Alex said, puffing on his pipe. “One, the Lupani have virtually stopped producing their carved ivory artifacts. Two, they told the probe team that they were out of ivory. They said they no longer hunted the askaggen. No askaggen, no ivory. No ivory and thus no more of those wonderful carvings. And no product for Caravans; we can’t market harpoons and skin hats. Correct?”
“Okay except for one small item. They have to hunt the askaggen. They can’t survive any other way. The karibu aren’t available in the summer, and even if they were the Lupani couldn’t eat them. The strongest tabu in their culture involves consuming out-of-season food. You remember Bob Edgerton’s classic article?”
“The Ecological Base of Lupani Food Prohibitions? I think I vaguely recall it. In fact, I talked it over with Bob before he wrote it, and I showed it to you when it first came out.”
Tucker Olton flushed. “Well, anyway. They can’t eat askaggen meat except in the summer. They can’t eat the flesh of the karibu except in the winter. Under no circumstances can they eat both at the same time. Even allowing for overlapping distributions, it works out very neatly. They don’t harvest enough karibu to affect the breeding population and the same goes for the askaggen. They are assured a perpetual food supply—”
“I grasp the argument.”
“Yeah, but consider the implications. They have to hunt the askaggen in the summer. Otherwise, they’d starve. If they go after the askaggen, they get the ivory from the tusks. The karibu have no tusks; they’re not built like a walrus. Okay, no askaggen and no ivory. What in the hell are they doing?”
Alex knocked out his pipe. “Obviously, our friends are staying put in their winter villages. Instead of dispersing in the spring and heading for the askaggen range, they are staying together where they are.”
“My point is that they can’t do that. People have to eat. That’s as solid a law as we can have in what we laughingly refer to as the behavioral sciences.”
Alex shrugged. “When you can’t get an answer or the answer is impossible the chances are that you’re asking the wrong question. The Lupani are not hunting the askaggen. They are parked on their posteriors in their winter villages. Presumably, they aren’t eating each other. Therefore, they have found a food resource that we don’t understand. The question is simple. What is this food and where is it coming from?”
“Swell. Does that get us closer to an answer?”
“Maybe. If we know the question we’re halfway to a solution. There’s something to be said for the old Boasian approach. We don’t need a speculative theory. We need some facts.”
“I have a hunch that those facts are going to be pretty damned peculiar.”
“Facts are generally more peculiar than imaginative guesses. I’m inclined to agree with you. I don’t pretend to know the answer to this one. I am sure that there’s only one place to find the answer.”
Tucker Olton shivered. “It’s not my idea of an ideal vacation spot. I don’t have enough fat on my bones. I also regret to inform you that I’m not waterproof.”
“It won’t be fun,” Alex Porvenir conceded. “Just the same, it’s the only way. No sacrifice is too great for dear old Caravans. If the old man can take it, you’ll survive. No matter how you slice it, we’re stuck. The two of us have to go down there and find out what is going on.”
Tucker Olton shivered again. He did not look happy.
* * * *
The spherical landing shuttle drifted silently down through a cold gray sky. Like a fragile bubble it came to rest, hardly breaking the crust of the old, melting snow. The wind moaned eerily outside, a wind untamed and unbroken by obstructions of any sort. It was not a playful wind. It had teeth in it and it meant business.
“Mush,” Tucker Olton muttered. “Nanook rides again.”
“Nanook walks,” Alex Porvenir corrected him. “But not very far, fortunately.”
The two men left the shuttle, moving from an artificial world in which everything was controlled. The transition was a shock.
The howling wind almost knocked Alex down. The cold got to him at once despite the special clothing that he wore. His face burned and then became numb.
It was impossible to talk. The two men just had to bend their bodies against the wind and force themselves through the snow. Their boots sank in almost to their knees.
Alex could see; there was no danger of losing his way. He had put the shuttle down within sight of the stone walls of the village, walls that glinted icily in the diffused white light of the cloud-hidden sun. He could see the forbidding sea beyond the village, with turbulent, open black water frothing between great piles of shifting pack ice.
They kept going, stumbling through the snow. It took them a good thirty minutes to reach the Lupani village.
Alex led the way to the house of Korigh, who was the nearest thing the Lupani had to a leader. There was no way to knock against the hides that sealed the tunnel entrance. Alex dropped down on his hands and knees, pulled aside the flap, and crawled inside. The passageway was cool, dark, and damp. But there was no wind and the silence was startling.
“Horani!” he shouted. His voice didn’t perform up to his expectations. He swallowed and tried again. “Horani!”
There was a stirring against the inner seal. He thought he heard an answering call.
Alex shoved the second flap open and crawled in. He stood up, sensing Tucker behind him. The heat hit him like a hot fist. The chamber smelled heavily of burning fish-oil and half-cured hides and sweating bodies. It took him a long minute before his eyes adjusted to the dim light from the oil lamps hanging on thongs from the roof. He felt singularly vulnerable although he knew he had nothing to fear from Korigh under normal circumstances. Korigh had always welcomed the traders and the good things the traders had brought to the Lupani.
Alex recognized the fat old man despite the fact that it had been years since he had last seen him. Korigh was not a man you forget easily. Strong he was, with arms like a wrestler. His long black hair shone with fresh grease. His round face was lined and weathered, but his eyes were as sharp as those of any man that Alex had ever known.
Alex remembered one of Korigh’s wives too. She was no beauty and never had been, but there had been a time when she had extended the hospitality of the house to Alex and he had been only too happy to accept.
Not a word was spoken.
That was not the way.
Alex shucked off his clothes, stripping down to the loin cloth that was proper indoors attire. He stepped forward and embraced Korigh.
The old man smelled as bad as ever.
Then the conversation exploded.
Alex could not keep up with all of it. As a younger man, he had dealt directly with many different peoples on a variety of worlds; even then, using the best linguistic boosters that were available, he could not possibly be fluent in all of the varied languages he had to speak and understand. Now, when he was essentially a policy planner and occasional troubleshooter, his linguistic skills were rusty. It was only the necessity of visiting the Lupani in the spring that had saved him. There had been time, utilized in between other jobs, to brush up on the language. He was far from perfect, but he was not totally out of it either.
Tucker, he noticed, was in better shape. Languages got tougher with age.
There were a few peoples in the galaxy with whom you could come straight to the point. The Lupani, emphatically, were not among them.
They drank a kind of sweet berry wine that did nothing to improve Alex’s powers of communication. He was not a wine man; wine made him sleepy and gave him a colossal headache. They ate slabs of rubbery karibu flesh. The karibu were still acceptable in Lupani terms, since it was too early to hunt the askaggen and spring was only beginning, but the karibu were not wholly acceptable to Alex. The meat was nearly raw and full of fat.
The heat inside the hide-lined house was terrific. It was hard to believe that a cold wind whined over fields of snow just beyond the walls.
And the talk went on and on. Korigh was in no hurry.
They spoke of when the traders had first come to the Lupani. They joked of the ivory heirloom that Korigh had always refused to trade. The old man laughed and brought it out for Alex to examine. It was a fantastic thing, alive, half dream and half memory. It was less than two feet long, yellowed with age, carved with an extraordinary skill. When you held it in your hands, you saw the ancient gods of sea and snow, you lived the old hunts and the old loves, you felt the pride of a people who had met a tough world head-on and licked the worst it had to offer—
As art, it was a masterpiece.
As a product for Caravans, it was ideal. Small, portable, eminently marketable.
But it was not for sale. And the other carvings, living legends created from the ivory of the askaggen tusks, were not being produced. . . .
They talked of blizzards and blinding white sunlight and drenching rains that scoured the land. They talked of feasts and starvation. They talked of stalking the karibu on shoals of ice and harpooning them through their breathing holes. They talked of how the sinew line whistled into the deep black water when the harpoon foreshaft detached and the karibu dived, and how the warm red blood stained the snow.
They talked of everything except the askaggen hunts.
Try as he would, Alex could not make a dent in that one. He knew that Korigh was fencing with him, and Korigh was a master. He would speak of the askaggen and the carvings when he was ready.
That might be a long, long time.
Alex was not sure whether he finally passed out from the heat and the wine or just went to sleep.
He was sure that he had not made the slightest progress.
* * * *
The next day, Alex walked through the village. It was raining hard and it was cold. The wind blew in gusts that almost knocked him off his feet. He didn’t care. After the sweltering oily heat of a Lupani house, the chilly rain was downright refreshing.
Why the Lupani did not all die of pneumonia he did not know. Nor did he care at the moment. He simply needed to clear his head and wash the stink off his clothing.
The village looked the same. He could not detect any basic change in it at all.
The same bleak, square rock houses with their extended tunnel entry-corridors. The same elevated stone platforms supporting glistening, inverted skin-lined canoes. The same stacked toboggans, flat-bottomed and wet, with their arched pushing-handles. The same bundled-up children, oblivious to the cold and the rain, hurling their small harpoons at improvised targets.
Everything was the same and yet there was a subtle sense of strangeness. The timing was wrong.
There was a notable lack of industry in the village, and the Lupani were a hard-working people. It was the beginning of spring and that meant that the Lupani were facing the worst time of the year. It was normal for them to delay leaving their winter villages as long as they could, but they had to prepare for dispersal and the endurance of the lean season. There were traps to be repaired, packs to be sewn, compound bows to be rewound, arrows to be tested. They could not hunt the askaggen with harpoons; despite this, not a single child was practicing with the bow and arrow. . . .
It was as though the Lupani were expecting easy times, a season of plenty. Certainly, there was no sign of preparations to start the long trek toward the range of the askaggen.
Alex shook his head. He did not understand what was going on.
He returned to the house of Korigh, removing his dripping clothes and immersing himself in the oily heat.
“Well?” said Tucker Olton, wiping a film of sweat from his forehead. “Where are we now?”
“In a word,” Alex replied, “nowhere.”
Old Korigh rubbed his fat hands together and smiled an unreadable smile.
* * * *
Alex gave it a week and reached an unavoidable conclusion. He was no closer to a solution than when he had arrived. The Lupani were friendly enough and they were as talkative as ever. But they would not discuss the askaggen even when prodded by direct questions. And they did nothing at all to get themselves ready to leave the village.
The rains poured down and there were cold rivers winding through the snow. The winds moaned against the rock walls and icy breakers from the sea pounded the slippery shores.
The Lupani sat cozily in their houses and did nothing.
They simply waited.
Alex did not know what they were waiting for and he could not find out. He was more than a little frustrated and he was not enchanted with the stench of the hot Lupani houses. He was sick of berry wine and he had a perpetual headache. The blubbery karibu meat gave out, and that was a minor blessing. The spring season was far enough along now so that the karibu were moving south to bear their young, and in any event it was too late to eat karibu. The Lupani had not changed enough to violate their most ancient food prohibition. They were living on small dried fish and the supply was already getting low.
They could not exist on fish for long. There were not enough of them in the cold sea and they were making no attempt to replenish their stock.
They just waited.
That was fine for the Lupani. They knew what they were doing, and a less suicidally inclined people could hardly be imagined.
It was not fine for Alex.
Caravans was in business to make a profit. It was a difficult enterprise, hemmed in as they were by a multitude of legal restrictions. They could not simply provide the Lupani with a supply of ivory; that would be a clear case of cultural manipulation that could lead to drastic consequences both for the Lupani and for Caravans. The U.N. ET Council would have a collective hemorrhage.
In interstellar trade, time was a factor that had to be taken into account. As long as the lightship orbited Arctica without positive results, it was wasting time. There were other planets in the Sirius system, and other products. Caravans could not afford to go into suspended animation while Alex Porvenir tried to figure out what in hell the Lupani were up to.
And Alex was not inclined to let the lightship go without him. It was always wise to stay within hollering distance.
Therefore: leave.
Admit defeat for now.
Come back later. If the Lupani would not explain, a month’s time would explain for them. They could not hide events.
Beyond that, Alex was human. He was a man; he had no ambition to be a disembodied intellect. He missed Helen. He wanted some gut-cleansing Scotch. He wanted to puff on a pipe that did not reek of oil.
“Come on, Tuck,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”
Tucker Olton grinned. “You mean the Old Man is going back empty-handed? No solution? No fancy scheme up his sleeve? I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Do you have a solution?”
“If I have, it’s invisible.”
“Then you’ve lived to see the day. We’ll save our fancy schemes for another time.”
“Mush!” yelled Tucker Olton. He was not enchanted with the Lupani.
The two men said their farewells.
They splashed through a driving rain to the shuttle.
The spheroid lifted into the stormy sky, having accomplished exactly nothing.
* * * *
Exactly one month later, the lightship returned.
The landing shuttle touched down.
A grim-faced Alex Porvenir stepped out, followed by a dubious Tucker Olton.
It was almost summer now. The winds of Arctica had softened. There was still snow on the ground, but it was not piled high into drifts. There was cold black water everywhere.
Miraculously, the rains had stopped.
The white fire of Sirius was far from balmy, but there was a trace of warmth in the air.
The two men sloshed through the muddy snow toward the Lupani village. It was easier going than it had been before, although not Alex’s idea of a pleasant stroll.
He was angry at his own previous failure. He blamed himself. He had no hostility toward the Lupani. After all, they owed him nothing. On their own merits, they were a remarkable people. They had a right to be secretive if that was their desire.
Within minutes, it was obvious that the Lupani were still in their winter village. It was impossible, but there they were.
Before he ever actually got into the village, Alex Porvenir knew where the answer to the riddle was. He did not know what the answer was, but he knew where it was.
He stopped short. A chill ran through him that owed nothing to the weather of Arctica.
“Look at that,” he whispered.
Tucker Olton had turned very pale. “I don’t believe it. Alex, you know what this means. Here, among the Lupani, of all the people on all the worlds—”
Alex shrugged. He noticed that he was trembling. His mind fastened on little things: the brownish color of the snow, the wet cold against his boots, the pale blue of the cloudless sky. “Why not here?” he asked. He did not expect an answer. “Why not here?”
The two men knew what they were seeing. They knew it with an instant certainty. It was something they had half-anticipated for much of their adult lives, and yet the reality staggered them.
“Little man, what now?” Tucker Olton released a breath he had not been conscious of holding. “We’d better turn back. This is too big for us, Alex.”
Alex Porvenir hesitated, then made up his mind. “It may be too big for us, but who else is there? I vote we go ahead.”
Tucker Olton searched for a way out and found none. “I guess we’re all there is,” he admitted.
The two men moved forward, their boots squishing in the muck. Their eyes never left the thing that waited for them just outside the Lupani village.
In itself, the thing was not spectacular. The facts about it could be easily discerned. It was a structure of some sort. It was about sixty feet across. It was hemispherical in shape. It was gray in color and appeared to be metallic.
It most certainly had not been built by the Lupani, or by any other people on the world of Arctica.
It had also not been built by anyone from Earth.
The structure was plainly and clearly alien. It had no business being there, but there it emphatically was.
Alex Porvenir was perfectly capable of putting two and two together. It was one of his talents. He knew, at least roughly, what was inside that building.
So did Tucker Olton.
“Let’s check it out first,” Alex said. “We want to be sure of our facts.”
They walked right up to the structure. Nobody tried to stop them. It was no great trick to find the entrance. The pathway was marked by the tracks of many boots. There was a door, almost square, with a handle. There was a simple latch. The door was not locked.
“Naturally,” Alex muttered.
He opened the door and stepped inside. There was interior illumination, apparently coming from the dome itself. The chamber was just a big room, like a vault. It was unheated.
Stacked in orderly rows were little gleaming boxes, about a foot square. There were thousands of them, piled all the way up to the curved roof. They filled the structure.
Alex pulled one of the boxes down. It was not particularly heavy. The glittering covering was simply a wrapping foil. He peeled it off.
There were four brownish cubes inside the box. The stuff was granular and slightly greasy to the touch. It had a faintly aromatic smell.
Alex licked one of the cubes, gingerly. It had a meaty flavor.
“It’s food concentrate of some sort,” he said.
“That was a foregone conclusion. What the devil do we do now?”
Alex considered. “I think we want an analysis of this stuff,” he said. His voice seemed very small in the packed vault. “Take a box and haul it back to the ship. Find out exactly what it is. You’ll have to make a full report, of course. It’s going to cause a bit of a stir.”
“That’s the understatement of the day.”
“It doesn’t matter how excited they get. Keep them out of here until I decide what to do. You’ll have to go straight to Carlos and Captain Dryden. Just keep reminding them that I am the senior cultural officer and this is my responsibility until and unless the U.N. directs otherwise. The ship is in no danger as far as I can see; Dryden will have to make that judgment. You tell Carlos I will look after the interests of Caravans. That should keep him happy. By the time the U.N. ET Council receives a report and acts and gets a message back we’ll be long gone from here. Understand?”
“Oh, sure. Nothing to it. I just go back and calmly inform them that man has made his first contact with an alien civilization operating in space. I tell them that they’re messing around with the Lupani. And I tell our boys just to sit tight.”
“Exactly.”
“And meanwhile, what do I do?”
“You get an exact analysis of that junk. You make damned sure the communications men are on the alert for my instructions and a landing crew is at the ready. Then bring the shuttle back. Park it where I can see it from the village. I’ll tell you what to do then.”
Tucker Olton looked at him with something like awe. “Just what are you going to do?”
Alex Porvenir smiled. “I haven’t the foggiest notion,” he said.
The younger man started to object, gave it up as a bad job, and scooped up a shiny box.
He waved and headed back for the shuttle.
Alex Porvenir put his hands on his hips and stared intently at the food concentrates piled in the dome.
He was quite confident on one point.
For man, for Caravans, for the future—
Nothing would ever be the same again.
* * * *
The oily heat in the house of Korigh was as bad as ever. The smells were a little different, though. The bubbling food that was stone-boiling in the hide kettle had an aromatic, pungent odor. The smell was stronger than it had been in the alien warehouse.
Alex wiped the sweat from his brow. “We have always traded fairly with our friends, the Lupani,” he said. He knew he was repeating himself. He and Korigh had been getting nowhere fast for two days.
“That is true,” the fat old man with the sharp eyes conceded.
“Why did you not tell me about the food?”
“They said not to speak of it.”
“We are your friends.”
“You trade fairly. They give something for nothing. We no longer must leave our companions and hunt the askaggen. There is much food. Enough to last until the karibu come again. We are happy.”
“Who gives something for nothing?”
“They do. The strangers.”
“What do they look like?”
“They come from the sky.”
“Do they look like us?”
“They are not Lupani.”
“We are not Lupani, either.”
“You are more like Lupani than they are.”
“Do they have a name?”
“They are the Others. They are very powerful. They bring much food.”
“How long did it take them to build the food-house?”
“Not long. The Others came. Then it was there.”
“In the winter, where does the food-house go?”
“It is not there.”
“Why don’t they just leave it?”
“They are not like us. They are Others.”
“And you will not hunt the askaggen again?”
“This food is good. It is easy. We do nothing for it. Why hunt the askaggen?”
“You have always hunted the askaggen.”
The old man grinned and flexed his naked massive arms. “But you have not. It is very hard. It is very lonely. We will find other things to trade.”
“What?”
Korigh shrugged. The folds of fat on his belly quivered. It was plain that he could not care less. There was more food than he could eat. It was free for the taking. That was a bargain that was hard to beat.
“It will destroy the Lupani,” Alex said. “Once, you were strong. Now you will be weak.”
“We still harpoon the karibu. We cannot eat them now. Life has been hard for my people. Now it is easier. If you are my friend, you will understand that.”
“What if the food stops coming?”
“Then we will hunt the askaggen as before.”
Heads we win, tails you lose.
Alex was getting a headache again.
“Korigh, there are some things you do not understand.”
“Do you understand everything?”
Alex shook his head and regretted it. The pain sharpened. He did not understand everything. He did not like what he had to do.
Still, there were some things he understood very well.
And there were some things he could do.
“I will show you why the Lupani must hunt the askaggen,” he said. “I will show you because it is right.”
“My eyes will be open,” the old man assured him. He meant: It had better be good.
Alex Porvenir put on his clothes and left.
* * * *
Back in the shuttle, Alex explained his plan to Tucker.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Tucker Olton looked more harassed than Alex had ever seen him.
“You don’t think it will work?”
“Oh, it’ll work as far as the Lupani are concerned. I can see the logic of it. But if you think I’m going back up to the ship and set this one up you’re crazy. You don’t know what it’s like up there. Dryden and Carlos are both mad enough to chew nails.”
“I had the authority, as long as the ship was not in danger.”
“I know that. They know that. But be reasonable, Alex. This thing is big.”
Alex sighed. “Okay, Tuck. Take her up. I’ll give them my instructions personally.”
Tucker Olton moved to the controls. “This I have to see.”
“You will,” Alex Porvenir promised.
* * * *
It took them two weeks to get things ready.
The machine itself, which Alex insisted on calling the Converter, was not too troublesome. It was even kind of fun for the shop crew—a dream assignment, except for the pressure involved. After all, it did not have to do much of anything. It just had to look right and perform a few simple functions.
The scout ship that went after the porpoise-like karibu had a tougher job. The sea was large and the karibu were not easy to locate. They were not simple to catch either, particularly the females who were close to bearing their young. Once caught, it was difficult to keep them alive.
Still, a Caravans ship was nothing if not adaptable. It had handled stickier problems than this in its time.
Alex Porvenir did not argue and he explained no more than he had to. That could wait.
If he had self-doubts, he did not express them.
He knew what he had to do.
He did it.
* * * *
The Converter was ready.
It was assembled not far from the alien warehouse. It stood there in the muck with a solid go-to-hell assurance. It was basically square and it glittered impressively in the pale white sunlight. It had lots of buzzers, dials, lights, and bells. It had a contracting chute at the top. Near the bottom there was a high-visibility slot. It too was square.
The Lupani had gathered to watch—men, women, and children. Old Korigh had been true to his word. The old man stood in front of his people, strong arms folded across his massive chest, his sharp eyes keen and alert.
“Are you prepared?” Alex Porvenir asked.
“We are prepared,” Korigh replied.
“Watch, then. See the source of your new food.”
Alex waved his hand for a signal.
Three traders went to work. They had been carefully rehearsed, but it was still sloppy work. They heaved a tranquilized karibu out of the portable tank. They held it up high so the Lupani could see it.
The Lupani reacted with murmurs and gestures. They knew a karibu when they saw one.
The three men hauled the gleaming sea-mammal up the ladder to the top of the Converter. They held the karibu up high again, giving the Lupani a good look.
They dropped the karibu down the chute.
The Converter went into action. It chugged and whined and hissed. Steam shot out through vents. Needles moved on dials. Buzzers sounded and bells rang. Colored lights flashed.
After ninety seconds of feverish mechanical activity, the Converter gave a conclusive terminal cough. Glittering boxes about a foot square shot out through the bottom slot. There were ten of the boxes, identical to the ones in the alien warehouse. They lay there, in the slush, impassively.
Alex picked one up and handed it to Korigh. The old man peeled back the foil. He sniffed one of the greasy brown cubes. The aromatic smell could not be mistaken.
Korigh stepped forward and selected one of the boxes for himself. He repeated his investigation.
Alex waved his hand.
The three men grabbed another karibu and dropped it down the chute.
The Converter did its stuff again.
Alex waved his hand for the third time.
When the Converter finished its dramatic chugging and buzzing, there was a goodly stack of boxes of food concentrate confronting the Lupani.
“This new food the strangers brought to you,” Alex said loudly, “is not new food at all. It is old food. It is made from the karibu, as we have shown you. You have been eating the karibu in the spring and summer. As your friends, we felt that you should know this thing.”
There was a long, slow silence.
Then the Lupani began to back away, expressions of horror on their faces.
They had eaten a lot of that stuff. Karibu! They had violated the most ancient law of their people.
Many of the Lupani became violently ill. Old Korigh led the way into the warehouse. The people went to work angrily. They hauled the gleaming boxes of food concentrate out of the vault. They ran with them to the dark sea and heaved them into the water.
Alex gave the signal to dismantle the Converter.
Tucker Olton stared at the village and shook his head. “Proud of yourself?” he asked.
Alex Porvenir managed a tight smile. “A little,” he admitted. “On balance, just a little.”
* * * *
The Caravans lightship was flashing through the gray wastes of not-space. Even in dimensional terms, it was already far from the Sirius system.
Alex Porvenir poured himself a glass of Scotch, tasted it, and carefully added two cubes of ice. There were some things, he felt, that could not be improved upon. He stoked up his pipe and lit it. The smoke was a shade on the bitter side. He had expected that. Alex never had much luck with his pipes.
“Want to talk about it?” asked Tucker Olton.
“You’ve read the report.”
“Yeah, but what do you really think?”
“I told the truth.”
“Nobody ever tells the full truth in an official report. You taught me that, Alex.”
“Maybe.” Alex fiddled with his pipe and fired it up again. It was not significantly improved. “Suppose we take the Lupani for openers.”
“You put them in one hell of a spot.”
“No. I didn’t put them anywhere. In effect, I returned them to their traditional way of life. I let them alone.”
“Come on.”
Alex fixed himself another drink. It made the pipe taste better. “Look at it this way. You know the cycle of the Lupani. Basically, they stay put in their villages during the winter, harpooning the karibu. Then they break up into small groups and head for the askaggen range for the summer hunting. Suppose that we had broken that cycle by dumping in enough food to hold them in their villages. We could have supplied askaggen tusks, too, for that matter. Then what?”
“It would have been a clear case of cultural manipulation. The U.N. ET Council would have blown their collective stacks. The Caravans lawyers would have been demolished; there would have been no case to defend. But that’s not the point—”
“It is the point. If we had done that, we would have been in hot water legally. Beyond that, it would have been morally wrong—I’m an old graybeard who still worries about morality, you know. Ultimately, it would have destroyed the Lupani by destroying their culture. This was not a change that they had made. They would just be pawns. When we tired of the game, the food would stop. The Lupani have to work out their own future. It is their right.”
“But—”
“Okay, we didn’t break the cycle. This time, we were completely innocent. We found the cycle broken. It was a bad business, from our viewpoint and from that of the Lupani. We restored the cycle. The Lupani will hunt the askaggen again. They won’t eat food they believe to be karibu during the summer. They have nothing else. They’ll break up and go after the askaggen.”
“And we’ll have our ivory carvings again. Caravans saves another product.”
“I grant you it’s not the central issue. But I did protect the interests of Caravans. That’s my job.”
“What difference does that make now? You of all people must realize what we ran into down there. . . .”
“Yes.” Alex tried another pipe. It was a shade better. “Don’t you see how important this makes Caravans?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. It seems to me that it reduces our little trading game to utter insignificance.”
“Why? Because of the Others?”
“Of course. We’re not alone in space any longer. We’ve contacted an alien civilization that’s trying to do something. They have a plan, whoever or whatever they are. We can’t just go on with business as usual.”
“What plan do they have?”
“I don’t know the details, of course. How could I? They are alien, for one thing. We can’t read their minds. But some aspects of what they’re up to are clear enough.”
“Such as?”
“There’s just one sensible reason for supplying the Lupani with enough food to carry them through the summer. That’s to keep them from moving and splitting up. If they stay put in those winter villages, it will change their social structure. The most obvious consequence would be that the Lupani will develop a different pattern of leadership. Instead of an informal headman like old Korigh, who has no real authority, they will evolve a chief system or some mechanism that can control a stable and sedentary unit. In short, the Others would create a situation there where they could deal with responsible leadership—leadership that could back up its commitments with force. It must be part of a plan designated to produce a network of controlled cultures in scattered star systems. I can’t even begin to guess what the ultimate purpose is. But I’m damned well sure they’re not doing it for our benefit. And I’m certain they’re not concerned about the basic rights of the people they are pushing around, either—they’re using them as pawns. In my book, that’s ominous. And it’s dangerous.”
“I’ll buy that. But you’ve got to push the wagon a little further down the road.”
“Meaning?”
Alex poured himself a final drink. The strain of the decisions that he had made were beginning to tell on him. He was tired and he was worried. He needed to justify himself, if he could.
“The Others have a plan of some sort,” Alex said. “We don’t. But it’s a very long-range scheme, whatever it is. It would take decades to produce the kind of change they want in the Lupani, and let’s face it—the Lupani are a very small cog in a very large plan. I confess that I don’t understand why they picked the Lupani at all; there are other peoples right there on Arctica that would seem to be better suited to their purposes. But we don’t have to understand the details of what they are doing. I suspect that it was just a coincidence that we both had an interest in the Lupani. Anyway, I think they’ll leave the Lupani alone now. The Lupani won’t be easy for them to deal with after this little misadventure, and there are so many other cultures on so many other worlds. . . .”
“Okay, we may have saved the Lupani. So?”
“So that’s something—and it’s also a key to the future. We have no master plan of our own, and we’re not likely to have one in our lifetimes. But we can try to undo what they do whenever and wherever we meet—as long as it is in our best interests to do so, and as long as what they are doing is clearly counter to the best interests of the peoples involved. And that’s all we can do.”
“But surely—”
“Look, friend. There ain’t no convenient Space Patrol—unless we’re it. There is no magnificent space navy that is going to take decisive and imaginative action. We come from a world that didn’t care enough about the universe it lived in to finance interstellar exploration. We come from a planet of deadheads.”
“That’s putting it pretty strongly, Alex.”
“What do you think will happen when our report reaches Earth—meaning the U.N. ET Council? There will be all kinds of flapping and screaming and the tri-di pundits will editorialize for maybe two whole weeks about What This Really Means. Then the local political priorities will assert themselves. Sirius is a long way from Earth and there is no dramatic threat—it isn’t as though an alien space fleet were about to vaporize the planet. The end result will be a decision that we can’t afford to spend vast sums of money needed at home to encounter a hypothetical something out there in space. Our friends at home will saddle us with fifty-five new regulations and that will be it. Earth will do nothing. We’re all there is—Caravans and the other trading companies.”
“We can’t take that kind of responsibility. What if we made mistakes? Our goofs could affect the whole future of mankind—”
“We have to do what we can. We can probably make on-the-spot decisions that will be better than those produced by a pack of politicians who have never even seen another planet. We can’t do much. We can’t come up with big-deal Final Solutions. We can’t be sure we’re right—but who is? I am sure of one thing.”
“Hit me with it quick. My head is spinning.”
“Just this. It is imperative that we keep Caravans in operation. Without the trading companies, we have no eyes in space. And we need some eyes now. We need some vision.”
“It isn’t much, Alex.”
“I know that. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can with what you’ve got. This peculiar human animal has muddled through before that way. Maybe he can again.”
“I’m scared, Alex.”
“So am I. But right now I’m more sleepy than frightened. This peculiar human animal is going to sack out.”
* * * *
The Caravans lightship thrust on through the grayness of not-space.
It carried a fragile cargo of men and women and tools and trinkets and strange art objects and stranger dreams.
The symbol of the laden camel seemed curiously mundane and inadequate. An anachronism, perhaps.
The universe was vast, an endless sea in which floated so many flaming suns, so many waiting worlds. . . .
But the camel was a patient animal.
It would make it to the next port of call, and the next.
It might get the job done.