Big Ancestor by F. L. Wallace (best classic books of all time .txt) 📗

the pests to find out that the bodies aren't flesh."

"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"

"It might. We had an audience."

"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"

"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough, they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."

"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a creature without real hands?"

"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and they'll never get away from the trap to try."

"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of marrying you."

"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew that, in relation to her, he was not advanced.

"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."

Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To her, I'm merely a passionate savage.

They went to his cabin.

She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless, except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on the violet end of the spectrum.

She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on primeval Earth."

He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as her own world. She had something else in mind.

"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."

"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't have subhuman monsters."

"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension. It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make them start lower than I am?"

The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another, it governed personal relations between races that were united against non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.

"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.

"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."

It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a permanent union.

"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.

"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it lead me astray."

"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."

"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't like him and he wouldn't marry me."

"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough. There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."

She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race had a body like hers and she knew it.

"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and I would be infertile."

"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act unconcerned.

"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."

His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"

She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh give when his knuckles struck it.

She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.

"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the blood and pain."

She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back and looked at herself critically.

"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it healed by morning."

She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across the bridge. Then she came over to him.

"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."

He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage, invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still feel that attraction to her?

"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and he's even more savage than I am."

"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too much, though. You're just right."

He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that, nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he wanted her.

"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children I have." She wriggled into his arms.

The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not completely her fault. Besides....

Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior children—and they might be his.

He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no, through—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger was turned.

"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already broken it once."

He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.

There were no immediate results from the puppet performance and so it was repeated at intervals. After the third time, Firmon reported, coming in as Halden pored over the meager biological data he'd gathered on the unknown ancestor. Wild guesses mostly, not one real fact in all the statistics. After two hundred thousand years, there wasn't much left to work with.

Firmon slouched down. "It worked," he said. "Got three a few hours ago."

Halden looked at him; he had hoped it wouldn't work. There was satisfaction in being right, but he would rather face something less intelligent. Wariness was one thing, the shyness and slyness of an unseen animal, but intelligence was more difficult to predict.

"Where are they?" he asked.

"Did you want them?" Firmon seemed surprised at the idea.

Halden sighed; it was his own fault. Firmon had a potentially good mind, but he hadn't been trained to use it and that counted for more than people thought. "Any animal smart enough to appreciate the value of a knife is worth study on that account. That goes double when it's a pest."

"I'll change the cremation setting," said Firmon. "Next time, we'll just stun them."

The trap setting was changed and several animals were taken. Physically, they were very much as Halden had described them to Taphetta, small four-legged creatures with fleshy antennae. Dissection revealed a fairly large brain capacity, while behavior tests indicated an intelligence somewhat below what he had assumed. Still, it was more than he wanted a pest to have, especially since it also had hands.

The biological mechanism of the hands was simple. It walked on the back of the front paws, on the fingers of which were fleshy pads. When it sat upright, as it often did, the flexibility of the wrists permitted the forepaws to be used as hands. Clumsy, but because it had a thumb, it could handle such tools as a knife.

He had made an error there. He had guessed the intelligence, but he hadn't known it could use the weapon he had put within reach. A tiny thing with an inch-long knife was not much more dangerous than the animal alone, but he didn't like the idea of it loose on the ship.

The metal knife would have to be replaced with something else. Technicians could compound a plastic that would take a keen edge for a while and deteriorate to a soft mass in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, he had actually given the animal a dangerous weapon—the concept of a tool. There was only one way to take that away from them, by extermination. But that would have to wait.

Fortunately, the creature had a short life and a shorter breeding period. The actual replacement rate was almost negligible. In attaining intelligence, it had been short-changed in fertility and, as a consequence, only in the specialized environment of this particular ship was it any menace at all.

They were lucky; a slightly higher fertility and the thing could threaten their existence. As it was, the ship would have to be deverminized before it could land on an inhabited planet.

Halden took the data to the Ribboneer pilot and, after some discussion, it was agreed that the plastic knife should supplant the metal one. It was also decided to allow a few to escape with the weapon; there had to be some incentive if the creature was to visit the trap more than a few times. Besides, with weapons there was always the chance of warfare between different groups. They might even exterminate each other.

Gradually, over a period of weeks, the damage to hydroponics subsided; the pests were under control. There was nothing to worry about unless they mutated again, which was unlikely.

Kelburn scowled at the pilot. "Where are we now?" he challenged, his face creased with suspicion.

"You have access to all the instruments, so you should know," said Taphetta. He was crouching and seemed about to spring, but he was merely breathing relaxedly through a million air tubes.

"I do know. My calculations show one star as the most probable. We should have reached it two days ago—and we're nowhere near it."

"True," admitted Taphetta. "We're heading toward what you would consider the fifth or sixth most likely star."

Kelburn caught the implication. They all did. "Then you know where it is?" he asked, suspicion vanishing.

"Not in the sense you're asking—no, I'm not sure it's what you're looking for. But there was once a great civilization there."

"You knew this and didn't tell us?"

"Why should I?" Taphetta looked at him in mild astonishment. "Before you hired me, I wouldn't tell you for obvious reasons. And afterward—well, you engaged all my skill and knowledge and I used them to bring you here by the shortest route. I didn't think it necessary to tell you until we actually arrived. Is that wrong?"

It wasn't wrong; it merely illustrated the difference in the way an alien mind worked. Sooner or later, they would have found the place, but he had saved them months.

"What's it like?" Emmer asked.

Taphetta jiggled his ribbons. "I don't know. I was passing near here and saw the planet off to one side."

"And you didn't stop?" Emmer was incredulous.

"Why should I? We're great navigators because we do so much of it. We would never get very far if we stopped to examine everything that looks interesting. Besides, it's not a good policy in a strange region, especially with an unarmed ship."

They wouldn't have that problem. The ship was armed well enough to keep off uncivilized marauders who had very recently reached the spaceship age, and only such people were apt to be inhospitable.

"When will we land?" asked Halden.

"In a few hours, but you can see the planet on our screens." Taphetta extended a head ribbon toward a knob and a planet came into view.

There weren't two civilizations in the Milky Way that built on such a large scale, even from the distance that they could see it. Great, distinctive cities were everywhere. There was no question as to what they had found.

"Now you'll learn why they ran away," said Taphetta.

"A new theory," Kelburn said, though it wasn't, for they had left. "What makes you think they were afraid?"

"No air. If your calculations are right, there must have been an extensive atmosphere a few hundred thousand years ago and now there isn't any. A planet this size doesn't lose air that