Six Blind Men & an Alien (5 page)

    Matoka considered pulling the corpse to an outcrop and hiding it there, but the cat weighed close to five hundred pounds and he realized that moving it, especially on this terrain, was beyond his capabilities, so he left it where it lay and began ascending the mountain again, determined to put a few thousand feet between himself and the cat’s corpse, just in case some man should discover it before the various scavengers had eaten enough of it to obliterate the reason for its death.

    At six thousand feet he was charged by a rhino, and a leopard almost caught him at eight thousand feet. It was clear to him that the forest held too many dangers, that he would be safer moving higher up the mountain.

    He had a scrape with a lone bull elephant at eleven thousand feet, but thereafter nothing attacked him, though he saw leopard signs up to just below the snow.

    On the evening of his third day on Kilimanjaro, as he wandered the barren slopes just below the snow line clutching his now-tattered robe about him, he pressed a thumb against the chip in his neck and raised the mother ship again.

    "This is Matoka," he said.

    "I know who you are," came the reply. "Are you still in hiding?"

    "Yes. But I am running low on ammunition, and such native foods as I can metabolize grow at a lower altitude on the mountain, where I am more likely to be seen. When can I either continue my trek to the south, or return to the mother ship?"

    "We don’t know."

    "What is the problem?"

    "The situation is unclear," replied the voice. "Evidently our colonies on Malpur and Samangiare are under attack. They should be able to defend themselves without recalling ships such as this one, but until we know for a fact that they won’t require our presence, we have been ordered to hold our position."

    "When shall I contact you again?"

    "In five days."

    "Five days?" he exclaimed.

    "If there’s any news before then, we will contact you."

    "Make sure you do. I am cold and hungry, and I have very little ammunition left."

    The connection ended, and Matoka found himself staring at a leopard his voice had attracted. He knew he could only activate his weapon three or four more times, so he chose to remain perfectly motionless. He didn’t smell like anything the leopard had ever eaten or hunted, and he hoped that would discourage the cat-but there wasn’t much for a carnivore to kill and eat this high on the mountain, and finally the leopard began approaching him. He reached for his weapon, his sudden movement precipitated a charge, and he barely killed the leopard before it could reach him.

    During the next two days, he killed two more leopards, and realized that he was now totally out of ammunition. He tried eating the leaves and the bark from a variety of trees, but couldn’t metabolize them. Sick and weak, he realized that he couldn’t defend himself should he be attacked by yet another predator, so he climbed onto the snow cap.

    He didn’t think he could last three more days, so he tried to contact the ship. All he got was a recorded message: "We will contact you when there is a change in status. There is a possibility we are being monitored, whether by Earth or by the enemy. Do not break radio silence again."

    The connection was broken. He looked up the ice cap. There had to be some caves up there, someplace to get away from the awful cold. Maybe he could find something edible. Here and there a tree or bush broke through the snow cover. Maybe he could metabolize one of them.

    And maybe not. He looked longingly down at the forest he had been so anxious to leave. Maybe he didn’t have a weapon, but he could climb trees for safety. He tried to remember if leopards climbed trees.

    He took a few steps down the ice cap. Then he looked ahead. There was a leopard standing there, right at the edge of the snow, glaring hungrily at him.

    With a sigh he turned back and began ascending the snow cap again. There had to be caves up ahead, and right now he would put up with the hunger if he could just get out of the frigid wind.

    He climbed for another hour, and found that he was too weak to continue. There might be caves up ahead, but he knew he would never see them. His only hope was the ship. He sat down in the snow, vaguely aware of the lack of feeling in his feet and legs, and pressed against the chip again.

    This time there was no response at all, not even an order not to break radio silence.

    His situation looked as bleak as the top of the mountain. He fought to stay awake, but felt consciousness slipping away.

    "They will call," he muttered as he slowly toppled over onto his side. "I’m one of them. They won’t leave me here." And as he closed his eyes for the last time, he whispered once more: "They will call."

    

    

    "You’re the expert," said Ray Glover, turning to me. "How long could it last up here on the mountain?"

    "That depends," I said.

    "Why can’t scientists ever just give an answer without qualifications?" he grumbled.

    "I don’t know his lung capacity. I don’t know what he ate. I don’t know the oxygen content on his home planet. I don’t know-"

    "Never mind," he interrupted me.

    "There’s a much more interesting question anyway," said Adrian Gorman.

    "Oh?" said Ray. "What?"

    "Is he the only one on the mountain?" said Gorman.

    "Damn!" said Bonnie excitedly. "You think there might be more?"

    Gorman shrugged expansively. "Why not?"

    Ray looked at me again. "I don’t suppose you have an opinion?"

    I shook my head. "Not without more data."

    "You know," mused Gorman, "the ice was a lot farther down the mountain when Hemingway was here-well, when he was supposed to be here-and a lot farther down a few hundred years earlier. Who knows how long the alien’s been up here? Maybe we just need to walk around where the glacier used to be."

    "You won’t find anything," I told him.

    "Why not?"

    "Scavengers," I said. "There are hyenas and jackals up here, as well as vultures and marabou storks. And even if there weren’t, the ants would have it picked clean in a couple of days."

    "I don’t know," said Gorman. "This guy was at least partially exposed, and he’s still here."

    "You don’t get ants in all this ice," I replied. "And he’s still frozen. No odor to attract the scavengers until he starts thawing. Any lower down on the mountain and these conditions wouldn’t exist."

    Gorman shrugged. "Makes sense," he said. "Still, it was an idea. Is there some machine that can spot them through the snow and ice?"

    "There is," I said.

    "Maybe we should think of getting one. After we tell the world about this guy, I think whoever manufactures it would give us a few for free in exchange for our mentioning their names."

    "You can try," said Jim Donahue, who’d been silent up to this point. "But I don’t think you’re going to find any others."

    "Why not?" asked Gorman.

    "I think he was a loner," said Donahue.

    "Why?"

    "Just a hunch," said Donahue, who then clammed up.

    

    

    
Gorman looked down at the alien and tried to reconstruct what it was doing on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, light years from its home, breathing air it was never meant to breathe, eating food it was never meant to eat. Whatever its reason for abandoning its home world, one thing he was sure of: it wouldn’t have left alone. More likely it came for the same reason so many others had come to Africa: to colonize it. And that was clearly not the task for a solo visitor, so no matter what Donahue and the others thought, this creature figured to be just one member of the landing party, one cog in a machine that hoped to settle here-

    
Adrian Gorman was the third blind man.

    

    

    The world of Pharachine had become intolerable. Overpopulated, under-managed, its natural resources plundered, its air polluted, the average citizen’s life expectancy dropped every year. Finally the Pharachi had decided to colonize other worlds before it was too late.

    They knew better than to put all their eggs in one basket, so they had chosen the twenty most likely worlds. The requirements were simple enough: they had to circle a type G star at distances of forty to one hundred million miles, they had to have an oxygen content of between fifteen and thirty-five percent, they had to have at least a two-to-one ratio of water to land, they had to have a protective layer in the atmosphere to negate the effects of the star’s ultra-violet rays, and they had to be populated by life forms. Not necessarily sentient races, but by
something
which would act as proof that the worlds truly were habitable.

    Nibolante and his family were in the fourteenth group, which was to colonize the third planet of a yellow star, clearly a type G, that was well out on one of the spiral arms of the galaxy. They packed those goods they could not do without, and were ensconced on the huge ship when it took off on the appointed day.

    It would take just under four hundred days to reach the planet. During the voyage, there would be schooling not only for the children, but also for the colonists, teaching them a variety of survival methods until they could build and establish a thriving city. Enough neutrino activity had been observed that it was all but certain that the planet was populated by an industrialized civilization.

    They had entered the planet’s system, and Nibolante and Marbovi, his mate, were putting their two children through yet another exercise aboard a small landing craft when disaster struck. Something
large
collided with the ship, possibly a meteor, possibly a comet. Whatever it was, it blew a large hole in the hull, and air began rushing out. The ship lurched crazily, and an automated voice announced that the structure would disintegrate within thirty seconds.

    Nibolante knew no one could reach his landing craft in that time. In fact, most of them had already died from shock or asphyxiation. He rushed to the controls, cast off from the ship, and dared a look back just in time to see it vanish while still beyond the orbit of the outermost planet

    "That should have been
us
," said Marbovi.

    "Just be glad that it wasnt," said Nibolante, trying to remember the lectures about how to pilot the craft in case of emergency, for which this surely qualified.

    "What are we to do?" she persisted. "There are only the four of us."

    "Our colony will be a little smaller than anticipated," answered Nibolante. "But we have no other option but to continue to our destination."

    "I didn’t bargain to be the mother of a new race," said Marbovi bitterly.

    "It might not be so bad," he said. "They’re sentient, and at least they haven’t damaged
their
planet the way we damaged ours."

    "Will there be anyone to play with?" asked Sallassine, his son.

    "Eventually," replied Nibolante. "I am certain that most sentient races are ultimately rational and friendly."

    "What does that mean?" asked Sallassine.

    "It means I think you will find playmates before long."

    "Me too?" asked his daughter hopefully.

    He smiled reassuringly at her. "You too."

    It took them three days to reach their destination, and they took up a high orbit, studying the world, trying to decide where to land. Nibolante and Marbovi were in the galley, eating, when Sallassine called out: "Come quickly!"

    Both parents, certain that one of the children was sick, raced to the control room. Cheenapo, their daughter, was playing with a favorite toy, and Sallassine was sitting before a viewscreen.

    "What is it?" demanded Nibolante.

    "Look," said Sallassine, pointing to the screen.

    Nibolante stared at the screen and frowned. The powerful camera showed a huge explosion on an island at the eastern end of the planet’s largest body of water.

    "An accident at some factory?" asked Marbovi, staring at the mushroom cloud.

    Nibolante adjusted the controls and shook his head. "A war."

    "Are you sure?"

    "That was a nuclear bomb," he said. "And
this
"-he had the screen pinpoint it-"is the airship that delivered it."

    "What kind of world
is
this?" she asked.

    "I don’t know," he said. "I truly don’t know."

    "Can we go back?"

    "Not in this vessel," answered Nibolante. "We haven’t the fuel or the air, and even if we did, the engine’s not up to it. For better or worse we’re stuck here."

    "What are we to do then?"

    "We’ll stay in orbit and study them until we can make a decision."

    By the time a second bomb was dropped three days later, they’d monitored enough transmissions to know that the two destroyed cities were called Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they had no idea what had caused the war, only that it seemed to extend to almost every land mass on the world.

    "We will land where there is the least chance of our encountering the native inhabitants," announced Nibolante after two more days.

    "That would seem to be the southern polar cap," remarked Marbovi.

    He began taking readings, and after another day decided that the southern ice cap was too inhospitable to life: the temperatures-and it was the middle of winter in the southern hemisphere-were too frigid even for his species, and until he knew how their metabolism could handle living on a diet of aquatic life and avians, he didn’t want to chance landing there.