H.M. Hoover - Lost Star (6 page)

"Do they hunt?"

"I don't think so. I don't think they like meat. Or perhaps they're afraid to kill things. When the bider-necks—they're ugly little batlike—"

"I've seen them."

"Well, sometimes they go after a lumpie."

"They eat them?" Lian was horrified.

"No. The odd thing is, they don't. They just seem to like to torment the lumpies. A whole flock will land

on one animal, crawl all over it, making a screeching fuss. But they won't bite it more than once, and then only slightly. The other lumpies will drive them off and then stand there with tears running down their faces. It's a very pathetic sight. I saw it happen twice, and I'm not sure, because it's hard for me to tell the animals apart, but I don't believe I've seen either victim of the harassment afterward."

Lian thought that over. "Maybe those two lumpies were dying?"

"Why would you think a thing like that? They died of J trauma from being attacked, you mean?" She frowned. "Do you think lumpies are that sensitive?"

"No. Well—maybe? Bidernecks frightened me."

She didn't want to say what she really thought and what suspicions of hers this story might confirm. As scavengers the bidernecks could smell illness in a creature—the scent of a fever, the sweetness of hemorrhage. They were genetically coded to recognize weakness, anticipate death. But they could not digest species alien to their world. If the lumpies knew this ... it was possible they had come to recognize an attack by bidernecks as a sign of approaching death and wept to see it.

It was also possible that the lumpies were timid and cried because the bidernecks frightened them. Still, the lumpies had come to help her. . . .

"Have you ever heard anything sing around here?"

"Have you?"

"Yes, today," Lian said. "Have you?"

Dr. Scott didn't answer right away, and when she did, her words seemed very deliberate. "There is a place in these woods, beyond the spot where we met back there ... I was walking alone one evening . . . the first day we were here. I was watching the sky, glad to be out of it . . . glad to be alone for a change. . . She stopped and they walked in silence for a bit.

"And?" Lian prompted her after a polite interval.

"I don't know what. A low, mournful song, very long, with infinite variations on a single involved theme.

It made sense—mathematically, anyway . . . the moons were up, the shadows were dark. When the wind made the trees move, the shadows changed."

"Were you scared?"

"I was terrified," Dr. Scott said. "And I don't know why, Lian, but it seemed to me then—and it still does now that I think about it—that the song was sung by something at least as intelligent as ourselves. Perhaps that is what frightened me—that idea." She shook her head and smiled apologetically. "I don't like to remember that. Did it affect you the same way?"

"Is that why you came out to find me? Because you were frightened here?"

"No . . . well, maybe a little. But did you hear a song like that?"

"No," Lian said. "But I heard a song. Like a greeting, or maybe just an everyday song. Has anyone else heard singing out here?"

"If they have, no one has mentioned it, and I didn't want to bring it up for fear of scaring people unnecessarily. It's an unknown . . . what do you think it was?"

Lian shrugged. "A lumpie?" Her voice was almost wistful with hope.

Dr. Scott started to laugh and then saw Lian was serious.

"Why?" she said, too gently, a small worry entering her eyes.

"Because." Lian wasn't going to risk being laughed at again. "I . . . just do. Is Dr. Farr still at the dig?"

They arrived back at the dig in time to hear a
chorus of "ahs!" Dr. Farr and the others stood on the bank watching two tolats in the pit below. They were trying to cut a hole in the wall of one of the two square structures they had unearthed.

They were using torches designed to cut through the most exotic and resistant of metals or metallic plastics. But whatever this particular substance was, it not only was not cutting, it was deflecting beams so powerful their heat made the exposed red clay boil like magma.

It was hard to tell who was most excited: Dr. Farr, who saw in this indication of an ancient race with a highly advanced technology and possibly a civilization to match; Klat, who immediately wanted the substance analyzed to learn if it was derived from amalfi technology; or the tolats, who looked upon this resistant substance as an engineering problem to be analyzed, solved, and forgotten.

Lian had come back with the full intention of telling
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Dr. Farr all about her discovery. But now as she stood there listening to all the divergent opinions, she realized that to tell Dr. Farr would be to tell the entire staS. Diplomat that he was, he would include everyone to avoid bitter professional jealousies and general ill feelings among staff members. And that would be not only right but necessary for the harmony of the expedition.

She trusted him but not all the expedition crew. She knew nothing about them. If she talked too much . . • suppose the tolats decided to analyze a lumpie by testing its mental and physical capabilities or even dissecting one or more. This was legally a Class Five world; the lumpies were officially "wildlife," vulnerable animals. They could be hunted, by permit, or collected for zoos.

There was no way she could report what she found without involving the lumpies. If she omitted all mention of them, one look at the interior of the place, with lumpie tracks and finger marks all over, would show they had entered there. The staff might think nothing of that if it were not for the switch plates and, above all, how she gained access to the dome. These were all educated people; if it was obvious to a complete amateur that the buildings showed a link between lumpie and ruin, it would be more obvious to an expert.

They are going to find out sooner or later, her common sense reminded her, but not because I betrayed the lumpies or their old computer.

"Lian! There you are," Dr. Farr called, and she jumped as if he could read her mind. He came up the walkway to join her. "Did you find the site interesting?"

"Very. I walked quite a distance."

"Find any artifacts on the surface?"

"No," she said honestly.

He nodded. "That's the curious thing about this place. There are no artifacts. No middens. Just structures. It's almost as if it were a model city. As if no one ever lived here. Fascinating, but"—he stared off into the pit—"a bit discouraging at times."

Lian thought how easy it would be to cheer him up and how much of a relief. "Dr. Farr?" she began, then stopped. If the lumpies had wanted to tell somebody else, they would have.

Something in her expression made him regard her more closely. If she told ... it would be to please him and to ease her own sense of responsibility toward the lumpies—hardly admirable motives. "I—uh—would you please tell Scotty I've gone up to camp to have my lunch?"

One of the man's eyebrows raised questioningly, but all he said was, "Certainly." She had the feeling he was watching her halfway up the road.

Before eating, she went to her quarters to shower and change. Her clothing had become dusty and grass stained during her morning jaunt, and she was unaccustomed to grime of any sort. Observatories were almost surgically clean places. En route to the dining hall, she put the soiled garments into the autocleaner and paused for a moment to watch them writhe.

The dining hall was empty. She took a sandwich and a cube of fruit drink from the dispenser and wandered outside to sit on the grass and eat. That was a mistake. Within seconds a wortle marched around a dome and headed in her direction. Others followed. They formed in review before her, owlish eyes watching each bite she took, wide beaks working over each bite denied them. She went on eating.

Thinking perhaps she wasn't getting the hint, one bird hopped up on her knee and stared from closer range. It was heavy and its claws dug in. She moved to dislodge him, and in that instant another wortle stole her sandwich. The thief in blue feather pants hurried off with its booty, the other wortles giving chase.

"It's not a very good sandwich," Lian called after them. "But compared to the taste of beetles, you may like it."

She sat there to finish the fruit drink, and before long the wortles were straggling back. Liquids apparently held no charms for them. They stared at her

awhile, then began to yawn great frog-mouth yawns. One by one they closed their eyes and dozed in the sun. Seeing them was very suggestive. On this revised time schedule an afternoon nap seemed an excellent idea and the lush grass an inviting bed. But remembering the beetles and Buford, she went to her room to sleep.

When Dr. Farr woke her, the sun was low and her room glowed with diffused pink light. "Would you care to walk down to the river and watch the lumpies swim?" he said. "I admit it's not exciting, but we take our entertainment where we can on an expedition."

She glanced at her watch. "Do we have time before dinner?" She was very hungry.

"Dinner is fashionably late here. It fills up a long evening."

They followed a switchback path down through the bushes on the hillside past a series of burrows where the wortle colony lived. Below, some of the staff was already sitting on the rocks. The sound of a miniature landslide from the sandy bluff caused Lian to look back to see a lone tolat coming down the hill. The tolat's eyes were erect to see over the bushes.

"Shall we wait for it?" she asked Dr. Farr. "To be polite? It's all by itself, and it might like company."

"Very well," he said agreeably. "But I doubt if the gesture will be appreciated. Tolats are very different from you and me."

She interpreted the remark as fact. The tolat caught up to them as they stood waiting for it. It swerved past without speaking, without so much as a glance at them, and went on down the path as if they were not there. Seeing her puzzled expression, Dr. Farr said, "It was a kind thought, Lian. By human standards. But by tolat standards, our colleague was not rude."

"It could at least say good evening."

Dr. Farr smiled. "To a tolat that is an unessential remark and a foolish waste of time. I said good evening to one on a night when it was raining—it promptly went to its superior to question my mental fitness."

The lumpies, some sixty of them, swam from a gravel sandbar a short distance away from the rocks. For the first time Lian saw they came in all ages. She was going to remark aloud on that and stopped herself; of course they had young. But it pleased her to see it nonetheless. The two of them sat down to watch.

"How do you tell male from female?"

"We can't," said Dr. Scott, who sat nearby. "They all look alike. Only another lumpie knows."

Almost the entire expedition crew was watching the creatures, envying them the pleasure of the river. Swimming in untreated water was off limits to the staff. There was always the danger of foreign parasites that might cause exotic illnesses as yet undiagnosed and untreatable by preprogrammed medical computers.

To see a lumpie swim was to see the creature in a different concept. The water turned them into creatures of grace. They looked like seals in the river, plump and sleek and fast. Heads out and up, rear legs tight together, arms paddling, forelegs balancing and guiding like flippers, they played tag and rolled and arabesqued over and over. And it was an entertaining performance.

"Who named them lumpies?" Lian asked after watching their water acrobatics. "It's a very derogatory name. I think they're beautiful."

Several staff members laughed.

Dr. Scott spoke up. "I think they are, too, once you get used to them. Lumpie is an ancient provincialism from the mining areas of the North American Midwest. I believe it referred to the poor who scavenged lumps of coal in and around the mines, coal the machinery could not recover or wasted. Inadequate diet often made these people obese and rather dull-witted. The term has come down through the centuries to mean a stupid but harmless animal or person. My guess would be that these creatures were named lumpies by one of the first ore freighter crewmen to visit this planet, and the name stuck, as cruel but superficially apt nicknames do."

Lian regarded her with new interest. "Do you think the lumpies are smart?"

"When I watch the joy they take in swimming, yes," she said. "They certainly are charming animals."

"We of the planet Tola do not trust any . . . (untranslatable)," said a tolat standing behind them. The speaker on its translator amplified the hiss of its voice. "Not when we are ignorant of their habits and hungers. You unshelled ones are far too soft. . . ."

Considering the benign appearance of lumpies versus the formidable looks of a tolat, Lian thought that an odd statement. How could a lumpie hurt a tolat, short of sitting on it? Then, in an effort to be fair, she thought she probably was prejudiced because, like the lumpies, she too could walk upright and smiled and cried and was unshelled. One always had to allow for the chauvinism peculiar to individual races and species.

To her, tolats were so uncomfortably crablike, with their quick scuttling movements, their eyes like oblong blue gems on sticks that lifted up and out or retracted into neat slots in their shelled bodies. To watch them walk, bowllike body suspended between four matched pairs of jointed legs, was to see synchronization as an art form. To watch them eat, delicately shredding their food with foreclaws and with exquisite precision inserting the bits into their wedge-shaped mouths, did strange things to Lian's stomach. It was, of course, impolite to say this, since tolats probably found the feeding apparatus of humans equally revolting.