Unearthly Neighbors Read online

  IN CHAD OLIVER, anthropology, science fiction and good writing have found a happy catalyst. Mr. Oliver works himself in that field of the sciences which is the study of man (or kinds of man), has the imagination to project anthropological problems into science-fiction terms, and the writing ability to create solid, believable and moving characters, trying to solve problems which man has been tackling since the world began.

  In Unearthly Neighbors, Chad Oliver comes to grips with what it might really be like to investigate an alien life-form. He makes it clear that this is not going to be easy. He does not “pretty up” his story. But he demonstrates the reality of courage and despair, of hope and defeat, and in the end, of that imperfection in man which is the saving of the human, and other, races.

  Copyright © 1960 by Chad Oliver

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Ballantine Books, Inc.

  101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, New York

  Unearthly Neighbors

  Before the End

  High above the tossing trees that were the roof of the world, the tierce white sun burned in a wind-swept sky.

  Alone in the cool, mottled shade of the forest floor, the naked man sat with his back resting against his tree and listened to the sigh of the woods around him. He was an old man now, old with the weight of too many years, and his thoughts were troubled.

  He lifted his long right arm and held it before him. There was strength in Volmay yet; the muscles in his arm were firm and supple. He could still climb high if he chose, still dive for the strong branches far below, still feel the intoxicating rush of the air in his face…

  He let the arm drop.

  It was not only Volmay’s body that was old; the body mattered little. No, it was Volmay’s thoughts that worried him. There was a bitter irony about it, really. A man worked and studied all his life so that one day he would be at peace with himself, all duties done, all questions answered, all dreams explained. And then…

  He shook his head.

  It was true that he was alone, but all of the People were much alone. It was true that his children were gone, but they were good children and he could see them if he wished. It was true that his mate no longer called out to him when the blood pulsed with the fevers of the spring, but that was as it should be. It was true that he had only a few years of life remaining to him, but life no longer seemed as precious to Volmay as it had in the lost, sunlit years.

  He looked up at a fugitive patch of blue sky that showed through the red leaves of the trees. He had walked life’s long pathway as it was meant to be walked, and he knew what there was to know. He had not been surprised—except once—and he had not been afraid.

  And yet, strangely, he was not content.

  Perhaps, he thought, it was only the weight of the years that whispered to him; it was said that the old ones had one eye in the Dream. Or perhaps it had been that one surprise, that one glimpse of the thing that glinted silver in the sky…

  But there was something within him that was unsatisfied and unfulfilled. He felt that his life had somehow tricked him, cheated him. There was something within him that was like an ache in his heart.

  How could that be?

  Volmay closed his dark eyes, seeking the dream-state. The dream wisdom would come, of course, and that was good. But he already knew what he would dream; he was not a child…

  Volmay stirred restlessly.

  The great white sun drifted down the arc of afternoon. The wind died away and the trees grew still.

  The naked man dreamed.

  And—perhaps—he waited.

  1

  “Free will?” Monte Stewart chuckled and tugged at his untidy beard. “What the devil do you mean by that?”

  The student who had imprudently expressed a desire to major in anthropology had a tough time in choking off his flood of impassioned rhetoric, but he managed it. “Free will?” he echoed. He waved his hand aimlessly. “Well—uh—you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” Monte Stewart leaned back precariously in his swivel chair and stabbed a finger at the eager young man. “But do you know?”

  The student, whose name was Holloway, was obviously unaccustomed to having his glib generalities questioned. He fumbled around for a moment and then essayed a reply. “I mean that we have the ability to choose, to shape our own Destiny.” (Halloway was the type that always capitalized words like Fate and Destiny and Purpose.)

  Monte Stewart snorted. He picked up a dry human skull from his desk and flapped the spring-articulated mandible up and down. “Words, my friend, just words.” He cocked a moderately bushy eyebrow. “What type blood do you have, Mr. Halloway?”

  “Blood, sir? Why—Type O, I think.”

  “When did you make the choice, Halloway? Prior to your conception or later?”

  Halloway looked shocked. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I see that your hair is brown. Did you dye it, or merely select the proper genotype?”

  “That’s not fair, Dr. Stewart. I didn’t mean—”

  “What didn’t you mean?”

  “I didn’t mean free will in everything, not in biology. I meant free will in the choices we make in everyday life. You know…”

  Monte Stewart sighed. He fished out his pipe from a cluttered desk drawer and clamped it between his teeth. One of his most cherished illusions was that students should learn how to think; Halloway might as well start now. “I notice, Halloway, that you are wearing a shirt with a most admirable tie, a pair of slacks, and shoes. Why didn’t you put on a G-string and moccasins this morning?”

  “Well, sir, after all—”

  “Your presence in my class indicates that you are technically a student at the University of Colorado. If you had been born an Australian aborigine, you would instead be learning the mysteries of the churinga. Isn’t that so?”

  “That may be, but just the same-—”

  “Have you had supper yet, Halloway?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you think you are likely to choose fermented mare’s milk mixed with blood for your evening meal?”

  “I guess not. But I could, couldn’t I?”

  “Where would you get it this side of the Kazaks? Have you ever considered the fact that a belief in free will is a primary prop of the culture you happened to grow up in? Has it ever occurred to you that if the concept were not present in your culture you wouldn’t believe in it—and that your present acceptance of it is not a matter of free choice on your part? Have you ever toyed with the notion that any choice you may make is inevitably the product of the brain you inherited and what has happened to that brain during the time you have been living in a culture you did not create?”

  Halloway blinked.

  Monte Stewart stood up. He was not a tall man, but he was tough and wiry. Halloway got up too. “Mr. Halloway, do you realize that even the spacing between us now is culturally determined—that if we were members of a different cultural system we would be standing either closer together or further apart? Come back and see me again in two weeks and we’ll talk some more.” Halloway backed toward the door. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re entirely welcome.”

  When the door closed behind Halloway, Monte grinned. Even with his rather formidable beard, the grin was oddly boyish. He had been having a good time. Of course, any moderately sophisticated bonehead could have given him an argument on the old free will problem, but Halloway—although he qualified at present as a bonehead—was not even moderately sophisticated. Nevertheless, the boy had possibilities, if he would just stop coasting and start thinking. Monte had seen it happen before—that startling transition from wide-eyed undergraduate to dogmatically certain graduate and, sometimes, on to the searching q
uestions that were the beginnings of wisdom.

  Monte enjoyed his teaching and got a kick out of his reputation as a fearsome ogre. The experience of finding a student with real potential was a rewarding one, second only to the thrill of solving a rough problem in population genetics or probing into the mysteries of the culture process itself. Monte liked his work; which made him practically unique in the modern world.

  He walked over to the projector, a surprisingly dapper man despite the hit-or-miss casualness of his suit. His short black hair was neat and trim, complementing the slight shagginess of his jutting spade beard. His clear gray eyes were bright and alert, and although he looked his age—which was a year shy of forty—he conveyed the impression that it was a pretty good age to be.

  He flipped on the projector, testing it for tomorrow morning’s freshman class. The three-dimensional picture took shape in the air, without a screen, and there was old Mr. Neanderthal in profile—supraorbital ridges, occipital torus, and all. He turned off the projector, thus effectively returning Homo neanderthalensis to the Third Interglacial.

  Since his stomach informed him that it was time to be heading for home, he locked up his smoke-hazed office and rode the elevator up to the roof of the Anthropology Building. (It was not one of the larger buildings on the campus, but the status of anthropology in 1991 had improved to the point where it was no longer possible to dump the department into an improvised shack.) The cold Colorado air was bracing, and he felt fine as he climbed into his copter and took off.

  He lazed along in the traffic of the middle layer, enjoying the glint of snow on the mountains and the clean golden light of the westering sun. It had been a pretty good day for a Wednesday, and it had been easy. Indeed, if anything, it had been too easy. A considerable part of Monte’s irritation with other people was due to their frequent inability to fire an idea his way that he hadn’t heard fifty times before. Monte needed stimulation; he lived on it. He didn’t give two hoots in a rain barrel for his reputation as one of the four or five top men in his field, but he did relish new problems. Once he had cracked a problem to his own satisfaction he tended to lose interest in it. He appreciated new points of view for the simple reason that life was too short to waste it on boredom.

  He eased the copter down toward his tasteful rock-and-log home in the foothills of the mountains, and was surprised to see an unfamiliar copter parked on the roof right next to his garage. He landed, climbed out, and took a good look at it. It was an expensive green Cadillac, and it had the official U.N. insignia on its tags.

  This, he decided, might be interesting.

  The top door of his home opened before him, and Monte Stewart hurried down the stairs to see what was going on.

  The man was seated in Monte’s favorite chair in the living room, enjoying what appeared to be a Scotch and soda. Both of these choices, in Monte’s view, indicated a man of intelligence. He stood up when Monte entered the room, and Monte recognized him at once. He had never actually met the man, but his craggy face and silver-gray hair were immediately familiar to any tri-di watcher.

  “You’re Mark Heidelman,” he said, extending his hand. “This is an unexpected pleasure; I’m Monte Stewart. Did you send a letter or something I didn’t get?”

  Mark Heidelman shook hands with a solid, no-nonsense grip. “The pleasure is mine, Dr. Stewart. No, I didn’t write—I just barged in on you. It’s pretty shoddy procedure for a diplomat, but this visit is on the hush-hush side. I hope you’ll excuse it when you find out why I’ve come. I took the liberty of coming to your home because this concerns your wife as well as yourself. She’s certainly a lovely woman, by the way.”

  Monte waved him back to his chair and pulled up another one. “I like her,” he admitted. “This is an official visit, then?”

  “Very much so. We’re going to try to put you on the spot, Dr. Stewart.”

  Monte reached for his pipe, filled it, and puffed on it until it lit. He knew, of course, that Mark Heidelman was the confidential trouble-shooter for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which meant that he was a very big wheel indeed. Ever since the long-ago days of the near-legendary Dag Hammarskjold, when the U.N. was not yet as much a part of daily life as spaceships and taxes, the Secretary-General had been just about the most important man in the world. But what did he want with him?

  “I take it that you need an anthropologist.”

  Heidelman smiled. “We need you, if that’s what you mean.”

  The servomec wheeled itself in, carrying a tray with two fresh glasses of Scotch and soda. It wasn’t much of a robot—just a wheeled cart with assorted detachable appendages—but Monte and Louise had not had it long, and they were inordinately proud of it.

  Monte took his drink, raised it toward Heidelman, and proceeded to indulge in one of the great benefits of civilization. “Now then, Mark. What’s this all about?”

  Heidelman shook his head. “Your wife told me that you hated to discuss anything before supper, and I’m taking her at her word. Anyhow, she’s invited me to share a steak with you and I’d hate to get booted out before I sampled her cooking.”

  Monte chuckled, understanding more clearly why Heidelman was one of the world’s most successful diplomats. The man radiated charm, and there was nothing at all unctuous or phony about it.

  “Give me a hint, can’t you? Mysteries make me nervous.”

  “You may develop some dandy ulcers before this one is over with. You see, Monte, one of our ships has finally hit the jackpot.”

  Monte felt a cold thrill of excitement run through him. He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Do you mean—”

  At that moment, Louise came in from the kitchen. She looked fresh and attractive as always, with her lovely brown eyes shining and her black hair neatly coiled in the latest fashion. She had put on one of her sexiest dresses, Monte noted, which was a sure sign that she approved of Mark Heidelman. After eighteen years of marriage, Monte still found his wife delightful. She was one of the main reasons why he would have been the first to admit that he was a lucky man.

  “The steaks are on, gentlemen,” she said. “Bring your drinks along with you.” She gave her husband a light kiss on the forehead. “Monte, I’m so curious I could die.”

  “So am I,” Monte said.

  They went into the dining room, which was in a separate wing of the house. It was too cold for the roof to be rolled back, but the stars were clearly visible through the glassite roof panels.

  Being civilized people, they turned their full attention to one of life’s most underrated pleasures: genuine sirloin steak. It was cooked to perfection, with a delicate pink streak through the middle. There was also a crisp green salad with blue cheese dressing and a small mountain of whipped potatoes, but the steak—as was only fitting—was the main thing.

  Heidelman did not insult the meal by talking shop, and Monte didn’t have the heart to detract from Louise’s superb cooking by trying to push the conversation. He waited until they were back in the living room and the servomec had supplied them all with coffee.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ve got a quorum, and I have been duly fed. Let’s hear about this jackpot you mentioned.”

  Heidelman nodded. “I hope this doesn’t sound too melodramatic, but I have to say that what I am going to tell you is absolutely confidential. I know I can rely on your discretion.”

  “Shoot, man,” Monte said. “Let’s just pretend we’ve run through all the preliminaries. What have you got?”

  Mark Heidelman took a deep breath. “One of our survey ships has found a planet with human beings on it,” he said.

  Monte tugged at his beard. “Human beings? What kind of human beings? Where?”

  “Give me a chance, will you? I’ll spill it as fast as I can.”

  “Fine, fine. But don’t skip the details, huh?”

  Heidelman smiled. “We don’t have many details. As you know, the development of the interstellar drive has made it possible for us—”


  Monte got to his feet impatiently. “Not those details, dammit. We know about the Centaurus and Procyon expeditions. What about these human beings? Where are they, and what are they like?”

  Heidelman drained his coffee. “They were discovered on the ninth planet of the Sirius system—that’s about eight and a half light-years away, as I understand it. Maybe I was a little premature in calling them human beings, but they look pretty darned close.”

  “Did you make contact with them?” Louise asked. “No. We didn’t expect to find any men out there, of course, but all the survey ships carry strict orders to keep their distance in a situation like this. We did get some pictures, and mikes were planted to pick up recordings of one of their languages—”

  Monte pounced on the word like a cat going after a sparrow. “Language, you say? Careful, now—even chimpanzees make a lot of vocal racket, but they don’t have a language. How are you using the word?”

  “Well, they seem to talk in about the same circumstances we do. And they are definitely not limited to a few set sounds or cries—they yak in a very human manner. We have some movies synchronized with the sounds, and several of them show what appear to be parents telling things to their children, for instance. That good enough?”

  Monte dropped back into his chair and pulled out his pipe. “I’d say that settles it. They’re men in my book. How about the rest of their culture—things you could see from a distance, I mean?”

  Heidelman frowned. “That’s the odd thing about it, Monte. The survey boys were pretty careful, but they couldn’t see any of the things I would have expected. No cities or anything of that sort. Not even any houses, unless you call a hollow tree a house. No visible farming or industry. The people don’t even wear clothing. In fact—unless the survey was cockeyed—they don’t seem to have any artifacts at all.”

  “No tools? No weapons? Not even stone axes or wooden clubs?”