Hooded Swan - The Paradise Game Part 3

"Sure he will," I said. "It happens. You can patch him up. That should appeal to your maternal instincts."

The stinging sarcasm left her even more aghast. Speechless, in fact.

Which was a mercy.

I watched the fight. Johnny was losing, and pretty obviously. That was just as well, because while the other guy knew he was having an easy time, he wouldn't be disposed to get particularly nasty. In point of fact, he was playing with Johnny rather than beating him up. I knew Johnny had started it, and I knew he had been provoked. It was all part of the game. But they weren't going to do any substantial damage.

They couldn't afford to let it blow up into a major incident.

"He's got a gun," whispered Eve. She meant Johnny. Johnny liked wearing guns.

"Well, he better not b.l.o.o.d.y shoot anybody with it," I said. Slight tension showed in the construction of the sentence, and I was surprised to note that I was a little more involved with what was going on than I ought to be.

Johnny went down, knocked backward by a flailing right fist with no real power in it. He tried to leap to his feet instantly, but as soon as his weight was on his heels, the Caradoc man scythed them out from under him with a kick, and Johnny went down hard on his a.r.s.e. The crowd laughed, and Johnny knew full well that if he tried to get up again the same thing would happen. He moved backward on his hands and knees, but the heavy came after him, making sure that Johnny got no s.p.a.ce at all. Finally, Johnny launched himself without bothering to get up at all. He was on his back, and it was his feet that lashed out, aimed at the company man's groin. It was an interesting move, but it had no chance. The Caradoc man grabbed one of Johnny's ankles and tried for the other, but only got his fingers barked. He hauled the foot way up into the air, actually lifting Johnny bodily from the ground. Then he dropped him on his head.

The fight was over. Johnny could lay still and be collected later. For one horrible moment I thought he was going to unclip the beamer, as he righted himself with a furious twist of his body. But he was only angry, not mad. He knew what sort of a fight he was in, and he knew it wasn't scheduled to end with someone getting burned. When he saw that the other man was standing still, he hesitated. Then, obviously out of some mistaken idea of pride, he made as if to go forward again.

I might have called out to tell him to stay where he was, but I couldn't be bothered.

It didn't matter, because the U. S. Cavalry arrived, albeit a little late.

A guy in a black police uniform came past me at a fast walk, shouldered his way through the circle of Caradoc men, and quickly took up a position between the erstwhile combatants.

At first glance, he struck me as being a very, very tired man. I couldn't blame him. His was the hottest seat of all. Keith Just, law enforcement officer, sole representative of New Rome on Pharos. Paradise's answer to Wyatt Earp. Except he didn't have three brothers. Or a jail.

He didn't seem to know whether his arrival had stopped the fight, or whether it had stopped by itself. He glanced around, looking neither angry nor threatening, but just haggard.

He didn't say anything for a moment or two, then he fixed his baby blue eyes on Johnny and said: "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

Johnny didn't answer him, but Nick delArco appeared from somewhere, with an apparent eagerness to sort the whole affair out. With him was a fat man in a very expensive suit with a white sunhat-presumably Frank Capella, boss of the Caradoc operation.

The crowd began to do a slow fade, probably inspired more by Capella's presence than Just's. Three or four of the spectators, however, not only stayed but edged themselves into greater prominence. They were wearing uniforms too-the uniforms of Caradoc's industrial police force, known to its detractors as Caradoc's private army.

Everybody began to talk. Somebody or other wanted the Caradoc man put under arrest, unless it was only Capella putting on a show. Nick delArco was explaining to Keith Just who he was and who Johnny was while Just was still trying to figure out who to question, and Johnny was trying to tell someone or other that it wasn't his fault.

I guessed they'd get it all sorted out in due course.

I turned back to glance at Holcomb, who was waiting for me to do just that. "Caradoc doesn't want you here," he said. "They don't want arbitration. They know they're in the wrong."

"Thanks," I said. "For all the help. And kind co-operation. I think you've done a really fine job here.

What we all need is more people with your galactic spirit. I'm certain that Charlot will get around to seeing you himself, if he has the odd thirty seconds to spare."

I began to walk away, without really knowing where I was going. Eve, after a moment's hesitation, decided not to use her imagination, and followed me.

"If it wasn't for me," Holcomb said to my retreating back, "you wouldn't be here at all."

"Thank you," I said. "Very much." I didn't bother to turn around to say it to him.

"I don't think you handled all that very well," Eve told me.

"No," I said, "I don't suppose you do."

"In fact," she said, "I don't know why Charlot is using you on this job."

"No," I said again, "I don't suppose you do."

5.

That night, we had a post-mortem on the day. It wasn't a very good post-mortem. It hadn't been a very good day.

Charlot was blissfully unimpressed by the whole thing. He didn't mind about Johnny starting fights with Caradoc personnel. He didn't mind about my extremely undiplomatic interview with David Holcomb. In fact, he didn't seem in the slightest bothered about the fact that the situation on Pharos was more like a circus than a fact-finding commission. Perhaps he thought it appropriate that the whole thing did resemble a circus.

I had the feeling that it could get worse yet.

Afterward, the others all went back to the ship. I stayed with Charlot, for the real discussion as to progress or the lack of it.

"I take it," I said, "that the true nature of operations here is a secret between you, me, and the bugs."

"There aren't any bugs," he said.

"You've checked?"

He nodded.

"OK," I said, "so it's only thee and me. Why? I can see the sense in keeping it off the record, but how come I'm inner circle all of a sudden but Nick's not? It doesn't seem like you, somehow."

"It's a matter of qualifications," he said. "I'd do it alone if I thought I could."

I thought it wiser not to comment on the sudden burst of humility.

"You could have brought help from New Alexandria."

"Not with your kind of experience."

This was very flattering, but not wholly surprising. The fact that I was working for Charlot at all implied that he had an unusual confidence in my abilities. Sometimes I wondered whether he knew about the wind, but there was no way that he could, so far as I could see. The wind didn't see how he could either.

Personally, I had an idea that it was just Charlot's vanity-he relied very strongly on his own opinions and impressions, and if he had somehow got the idea that I was hot stuff back in the days when Lapthorn and I ran the Javelin around for New Alexandria, there was nothing in the galaxy would make him relinquish that notion.

"Have you got anything for me?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I saw Holcomb, but I think you already knew that would be a waste of time.

He's here to gratify some weird hang-up of his own. He isn't seriously interested in Pharos or the natives.

I only saw one of his followers-a girl. Also struck me as being somewhat screwed-up. I thought she was going to go to work on me, but either Eve put her off or I put her off, or she decided it would be better not to bother.

"Anyway, that's all irrelevant really. Holcomb did put me on one track of thought which you've undoubtedly uncovered for yourself. He told me-obviously without realising the inferences-that life here isn't subjected to the stresses and strains that have shaped it on other worlds. He told me that the sole native law-so far as he knows- is 'live in Peace.' That struck me as an odd law, for various reasons, but you know that I'm cynical. It struck me that it wasn't so much a law as a description of the pattern of life here. After I left Holcomb, I set about trying to verify that. I went for a lovely walk in the Garden of Eden with Eve. She didn't understand what was going on, and I didn't explain. I think she'd probably be grateful if you let her go with someone else tomorrow.

"I examined the plants fairly closely. They all seemed moderately ordinary. I looked carefully for signs of blight or attack by insect parasites, but found nothing. What's more, I found no insects, no spiders, hardly any micro-fauna at all. The things I did find all look like worms, but they're not like worms on most worlds. They reminded me more of marine forms-like mobile seaweed.

"Obviously, I can't make any rational comment on the larger animal life on the basis of one stroll. But everything I did see seemed totally unworried by my approach and by my proximity. That's not unusual in itself, because the Caradoc men are banned from hunting or capturing or otherwise making enemies of the local birds and beasties, and they've had no opportunity to learn to run away.

"There are some odd shared characteristics, though. They have no teeth. None of them. I couldn't work out how any one of them got their daily sustenance. I watched them, but I never saw one of them take a nibble at a blade of gra.s.s. I considered the theory that they might all be obtaining sustenance straight from the sun, but that doesn't make sense. There's a wide range of speciation that just couldn't have happened without some form of strong selective pressure. If they're all photosynthetic, their adaptive range just wouldn't have got this far. And how could there possibly be humanoids, if the humanoid role simply doesn't exist?

"Two other suggestions might make some kind of sense. One: there might be an extremely strong selective agent that we can't see, and which might act in a way that we haven't come across before. Two: the whole d.a.m.n thing might be artificial. We're out on the rim here, a long, long way from Chao Phrya.

But now we know the Indris once existed, it might make sense to take another look at quite a lot of things that we thought we had off pat. We know that it could be done."

"Which of these two do you favour?" asked Charlot.

I shrugged. "Emotionally, the first. After Chao Phrya, I'm liable to be seeing Indrises everywhere I look, for a while, so I think the second idea is logically exaggerated in my mind. The first one is the better a.s.sumption, according to Occam's razor. But there are basic facts still to be decided. Perhaps you've made more progress with those. Presumably you've been having a good look at what's-his-name's findings."

"Merani," said Charlot, supplying the missing name.

"Yes, I've had a brief look at them. I was more interested today in making a close inspection of his work with the natives. I think I can get a lot closer to the nature of things here through his linguistic a.n.a.lyses than through his scientific observations. His biologists, unfortunately, stick pretty close to the rules. They record the data, not their comments. You can't do linguistic a.n.a.lysis that way, so there's more actual intelligence and understanding in the work that's been done on breaking the communications barrier."

"Any sign of Anacaon-type complexities?" I asked.

He shook his head. He reached up with his hand then, and pa.s.sed it over his forehead while he squeezed his eyes shut as if to try to clear a slight headache. The light in the shack was a bit on the bright side, but he'd also had a long working day. He looked suddenly old, though, and it occurred to me to wonder whether he might not be feeling the pace a bit.

"You want to jack it in and get some sleep?" I asked him.

"No," he said. "You'd better know what I've found so far. I'll cut it as short as possible. The native language is very simple. The vocabulary appears to be no more than five or six hundred words. Whole areas of reference are missing. They're all biologically female, as you know, so the s.e.xual spectrum of the language is missing. So is the kinship spectrum. They have no idea of relationships, so far as Merani could ascertain. There are other oddities of minor significance, but the most important features of the language, so far as I can see, are that they have no generic name for themselves, and they have no word for death."

"You can't infer from that that they don't die," I said. "There are things that some people just don't talk about."

"Quite so," he said. "But it sharpened my perspective. I haven't found any evidence whatsoever, of any kind, that the concept of death exists on Pharos. It seems at least possible that things don't die here."

It was a moderately startling idea. "I'll bear it in mind," I said, unnecessarily. "This business of all being female -do you have that sorted out from a biological point of view?"

"It's fairly simple, superficially. But all we know is superficial. No dissections, no births. The language does contain a word which Merani has translated as 'birth,' but there's a good deal of doubt about it.

There are no children in the encampment. It's possible that the label 'female' is not really applicable to these people."

"You've considered the beehive a.n.a.logy, I suppose?"

"Briefly," he said. "No conclusions." He was looking tired.

"Is there anything else I ought to know?" I asked him. "I'm pretty worn out myself. The air here is nice and invigorating, but it seems to me that it's put my metabolism in a higher gear. I suppose there's no question of anything else but gruel to eat while we're here?"

I shouldn't really have added the afterthought, as I wanted to close down for the night, but it seemed important at the time.

"The Caradoc biologists have done some food tests," Charlot told me, "but their results seem to be worrying them. They've not freed anything local as edible. I'll have a close look at their results some time.

Caradoc ships in some synthetics to keep the crews happy-they find it's economical in terms of morale and productivity-but they won't release any for us. As far as they're concerned we can supply ourselves.

I'm sorry-if I'd considered it, I could have ordered the Hooded Swan supplied better.

"As to whether there's anything else . . . you're right, this is a very exhausting world. You'd better come out with me to the encampment tomorrow, and we can do some work on the various mountains of data together. You could help by keeping Kerman off my back as well."

"He giving you trouble?"

"No, he's giving me too much help. He knows nothing, and having him continually on my back is a veritable plague."

"I'll do what I can," I promised. Once I was out in the cool night air, the absurdity of the situation hit me.

Here I was feeling sorry for t.i.tus Charlot, the bane of my life. But it wasn't really so absurd. You can get used to anything-even slavery-and I always prided myself on my realism and my ability to adapt to situations. Things could be a lot worse.

I knew the wind would approve, and he did. I would have liked to talk to him at some length about his own reactions to the Pharos puzzle, but I hadn't been lying to Charlot when I told him that I was pretty worn out. The atmosphere here did seem to be moving me a little faster than I was used to, as if I were on a slight high all day long.

Something about this world smells, I said.

-Smells very nice, commented the wind. He was referring to the sweet perfume which permeated the forest, and which drifted out of it on the breeze.

I was speaking figuratively, I said.

-I was trying to draw your attention to something strange, he said.

I realised immediately what he meant. Pharos did, in fact, smell very nice. Why? Plants on most worlds have scent to attract insects. Come to that, decorative flowers usually exist purely and simply to attract insects. But the plants here could hardly be insect-pollinated.

It's not that strange, I said. There are lots of animals here. Maybe the plants are animal- or bird-pollinated. They could still have scent and flowers.

-That's not the point, said the wind. Insects and birds don't pollinate plants out of altruism. They have a motive for following scents and milking flowers. It's bribery. But how would the plants on Pharos go about offering a lure? What attracts the pollinators?

I was tired. So tired I wasn't thinking straight.

You're right, I said to the wind. The whole thing positively reeks of sweet perfume. This world is all dressed up. It's got no apparent functional design at all.