Methuselah's Children (20 page)

Sarloo seemed almost unable to form a sentence without making reference to his gods. Lazarus did not mind; to another's religion he was tolerantly indifferent "I will come, Sarloo, old bean. It will be a happy-making thing for me, too."

Sarloo took him in the common vehicle of the Jockaira, a wheelless wain shaped much like a soup bowl, which moved quietly and rapidly over the ground, skimming the surface in apparent contact. Lazarus squatted on the floor of the vessel while Sarloo caused it to speed along at a rate that made Lazarus' eyes water.

"Sarloo," Lazarus asked, shouting to make himself heard against the wind, "how does this thing work? What moves it?"

"The gods breathe on the-" Sarloo used a word not in their common language. "-and cause it to need to change its place."

Lazarus started to ask for a fuller explanation, then shut up. There had been something familiar about that answer and he now placed it; he had once given a very similar answer to one of the water people of Venus when he was asked to explain the diesel engine used in an early type of swamp tractor. Lazarus had not meant to be mysterious; he had simply been tongue-tied by inadequate common language.

Well, there was a way to get around that-

"Sarloo, I want to see pictures of what happens inside," Lazarus persisted, pointing. "You have pictures?"

"Pictures are," Sarloo acknowledged, "in the temple. You must not enter the temple." His great eyes looked mournfully at Lazarus, giving him a strong feeling that the Jockaira chief grieved over his friend's lack of grace. Lazarus hastily dropped the subject.

But the thought of Venerians brought another puzzler to mind. The water people, cut off from the outside world by the eternal clouds of Venus, simply did not believe in astronomy. The arrival of Earthmen had caused them to readjust their concept of the cosmos a little, but there was reason to believe that their revised explanation was no closer to the truth. Lazarus wondered what the Jockaira thought about visitors from space. They had shown no surprise-or had they?

"Sarloo," he asked, "do you know where my brothers and I come from?"

"I know," Sarloo answered. "You come from a distant sun-so distant that many seasons would come and go while light traveled that long journey."

Lazarus felt mildly astonished. "Who told you that?"

"The gods tell us. Your brother Libby spoke on it."

Lazarus was willing to lay long odds that the gods had not got around to mentioning it until after Libby explained it to Kreel Sarloo. But he held his peace. He still wanted to ask Sarloo if he had been surprised to have visitors arrive from the skies but he could think of no Jockairan term for surprise or wonder. He was still trying to phrase the question when Sarloo spoke again:

"The fathers of my people flew through the skies as you did, but that was before the coming of the gods. The gods, in their wisdom, bade us stop."

And that, thought Lazarus, is one damn' big lie, from pure swank. There was not the slightest indication that the Jockaira had ever been off the surface of their planet.

At Sarloo's home that evening Lazarus sat through a long session of what he assumed was entertainment for the guest of honor, himself. He squatted beside Sarloo on a raised portion of the floor of the vast common room of the clan Kreel and listened to two hours of howling that might have been intended as singing. Lazarus felt that better music would result from stepping on the tails of fifty assorted dogs but he tried to take it in the spirit in which it seemed to be offered.

Libby, Lazarus recalled, insisted that this mass howling which the Jockaira were wont to indulge in was, in fact, music, and that men could learn to enjoy it by studying its interval relationships.

Lazarus doubted it.

But he had to admit that Libby understood the Jockaira better than he did in some ways. Libby had been delighted to discover that the Jockaira were excellent and subtle mathematicians. In particular they had a grasp of number that paralleled his own wild talent. Their arithmetics were incredibly involved for normal humans. A number, any number large or small, was to them a unique entity, to be grasped in itself and not merely as a grouping of smaller numbers. In consequence they used any convenient positional or exponential notation with any base, rational, irrational, or variable-or none at all.

It was supreme luck, Lazarus mused, that Libby was available to act as mathematical interpreter between the Jockaira and the Families, else it would have been impossible to grasp a lot of the new technologies the Jockaira were showing them.

He wondered why the Jockaira showed no interest in learning human technologies they were offered in return?

The howling discords died away and Lazarus brought his thoughts back to the scene around him. Food was brought in; the Kreel family tackled it with the same jostling enthusiasm with which Jockaira did everything. Dignity, thought Lazarus, is an idea which never caught on here. A large bowl, fully two feet across and brimful of an amorphous mess, was placed in front of Kreel Sarloo. A dozen Kreels crowded around it and started grabbing, giving no precedence to their senior. But Sarloo casually slapped a few of them out of the way and plunged a hand into the dish, brought forth a gob of the ration and rapidly kneaded it into a ball in the palm of his double-thumbed hand. Done, he shoved it towards Lazarus' mouth.

Lazarus was not squeamish but he had to remind himself, first, that food for Jockaira was food for men, and second, that he could not catch anything from them anyhow, before he could bring himself to try the proffered morsel.

He took a large bite. Mmmm . . . not too bad-rather bland and sticky, no particular flavor. Not good, either, but it could be swallowed. Grimly determined to uphold the honor of his race, he ate on, while promising himself a proper meal in the near future. When he felt that to swallow another mouthful would be to invite physical and social disaster, he thought of a possible way out. Reaching into the common plate he scooped up a large handful of the stuff, molded it into a ball and offered it to Sarloo.

It was inspired diplomacy. For the rest of the meal Lazarus fed Sarloo, fed him until his arms were tired, until he marveled at his host's ability to tuck it away.

After eating they slept and Lazarus slept with the family, literally. They slept where they had eaten, without beds and disposed as casually as leaves on a path or puppies in a pen. To his surprise, Lazarus slept well and did not wake until false suns in the cavern roof glowed in mysterious sympathy to new dawn. Sarloo was still asleep near him and giving out most humanlike snores. Lazarus found that one infant Jockaira was cuddled spoon fashion against his own stomach.

He felt a movement behind his back, a rustle at his thigh. He turned cautiously and found that another Jockaira-a six-year-old in human equivalence-had extracted his blaster from its holster and was now gazing curiously into its muzzle.

With hasty caution Lazarus removed the deadly toy from the child's unwilling fingers, noted with relief that the safety was still on, and reholstered it. Lazarus received a reproachful look; the kid seemed about to cry. "Hush," whispered Lazarus, "you'll wake your old man, Here-"

He gathered the child into his left arm and cradled it against his side. The little Jockaira snuggled up to him, laid a soft moist mouth against his hide, and promptly went to sleep.

Lazarus looked down at him. "You're a cute little devil," he said softly. "I could grow right fond of you if I could ever get used to your smell."

Some of the incidents between the two races would have been funny had they not been charged with potential trouble: for example, the case of Eleanor Johnson's son Hubert. This gangling adolescent was a confirmed sidewalk superintendent. One day he was watching two technicians, one human and one Jockaira, adapt a Jockaira power source to the needs of Earth-type machinery. The Jockaira was apparently amused by the boy and, in an obviously friendly spirit, picked him up.

Hubert began to scream.

His mother, never far from him, joined battle. She lacked strength and skill to do the utter destruction she was bent on; the big nonhuman was unhurt, but it created a nasty situation.

Administrator Ford and Oliver Johnson tried very hard to explain the incident to the amazed Jockaira. Fortunately, they seemed grieved rather than vengeful.

Ford then called in Eleanor Johnson. "You have endangered the entire colony by your stupidity-"

"But I-"

"Keep
quiet!
If you hadn't spoiled the boy rotten, he would have behaved himself. If you weren't a maudlin fool, you would have kept your hands to yourself. The boy goes to the regular development classes henceforth and you are to let him alone. At the slightest sign of animosity on your part toward any of the natives, I'll have you subjected to a few years' cold-rest. Now get out!"

Ford was forced to use almost as strong measures on Janice Schmidt. The interest shown in Hans Weatheral by the Jockaira extended to all of the telepathic defectives. The natives seemed to be reduced to a state of quivering adoration by the mere fact that these could communicate with them directly. Kreel Sarloo informed Ford that he wanted the sensitives to be housed separately from the other defectives in the evacuated temple of the Earthmen's city and that the Jockaira wished to wait on them personally. It was more of an order than a request.

Janice Schmidt submitted ungracefully to Ford's insistence that the Jockaira be humored in the matter in return for all that they had done, and Jockaira nurses took over under her jealous eyes.

Every sensitive of intelligence level higher than the semi-moronic Hans Weatheral promptly developed spontaneous and extreme psychoses while being attended by Jockaira.

So Ford had another headache to straighten out. Janice Schmidt was more powerfully and more intelligently vindictive than was Eleanor Johnson. Ford was forced to bind Janice over to keep the peace under the threat of retiring her completely from the care of her beloved "children." Kreel Sarloo, distressed and apparently shaken to his core, accepted a compromise whereby Janice and her junior nurses resumed care of the poor psychotics while Jockaira continued to minister to sensitives of moron level and below.

But the greatest difficulty arose over . . . surnames.

Jockaira each had an individual name and a surname. Surnames were limited in number, much as they were in the Families. A native's surname referred equally to his tribe and to the temple in which he worshipped.

Kreel Sarloo took up the matter with Ford. "High Father of the Strange Brothers," he said, "the time has come for you and your children to choose your surnames." (The rendition of Sarloo's speech into English necessarily contains inherent errors.)

Ford was used to difficulties in understanding the Jockaira. "Sarloo, brother and friend," he answered, "I hear your words but I do not understand. Speak more fully."

Sarloo began over. "Strange brother, the seasons come and the seasons go and there is a time of ripening. The gods tell us that you, the Strange Brothers, have reached the time in your education (?) when you must select your tribe and your temple. I have come to arrange with you the preparations (ceremonies?) by which each will choose his surname. I speak for the gods in this. But let me say for myself that it would make me happy if you, my brother Ford, were to choose the temple Kreel."

Ford stalled while he tried to understand what was implied. "I am happy that you wish me to have your surname. But my people already have their own surnames."

Sarloo dismissed that with a flip of his lips. "Their present surnames are words and nothing more. Now they must choose their real surnames, each the name of his temple and of the god whom he will worship. Children grow up and are no longer children."

Ford decided that he needed advice. "Must this be done at once?"

"Not today, but in the near future. The gods are patient."

Ford called in Zaccur Barstow, Oliver Johnson, Lazarus Long, and Ralph Schultz, and described the interview. Johnson played back the recording of the conversation and strained to catch the sense of the words. He prepared several possible translations but failed to throw any new light on the matter.

"It looks," said Lazarus, "like a case of join the church or get out."

"Yes," agreed Zaccur Barstow, "that much seems to come through plainly. Well, I think we can afford to go through the motions. Very few of our people have religious prejudices strong enough to forbid their paying lip service to the native gods in the interests of the general welfare."

"I imagine you are correct," Ford said. "I, for one, have no objection to adding Kreel to my name and taking part in their genuflections if it will help us to live in peace." He frowned. "But I would not want to see our culture submerged in theirs."

"You can forget that," Ralph Schultz assured him. "No matter what we have to do to please them, there is absolutely no chance of any real cultural assimilation. Our brains are not like theirs-just how different I am only beginning to guess."

"Yeah," said Lazarus, " 'just how different.' "

Ford turned to Lazarus. "What do you mean by that? What's troubling you?"

"Nothing. Only," he added, "I never did share the general enthusiasm for this place."

They agreed that one man should take the plunge first, then report back. Lazarus tried to grab the assignment on seniority, Schultz claimed it as a professional right; Ford overruled them and appointed himself, asserting that it was his duty as the responsible executive.

Lazarus went with him to the doors of the temple where the induction was to take place. Ford was as bare of clothing as the Jockaira, but Lazarus, since he was not to enter the temple, was able to wear his kilt. Many of the colonists, sunstarved after years in the ship, went bare when it suited them, just as the Jockaira did. But Lazarus never did. Not only did his habits run counter to it, but a blaster is an extremely conspicuous object on a bare thigh.

Kreel Sarloo greeted them and escorted Ford inside. Lazarus called out after them, "Keep your chin up, pal!"