Excelsior!

By Robert Chilson

* * * *

“That’s odd,” thought Arthur In gram, looking at the omma with lifted eyebrow. The omma, perched at the base of a tree limb at shoul der height, looked steadfastly back. That, as an ancient quotation has it, was the odd thing. Ingram finished stripping the leaves off the spice reed, set the aromatic stem between his teeth, and took up his stick, which he had leaned against the tree, all without taking his eyes off the omma.

At the last motion, the omma disappeared with an oily slowness that puckered Ingram’s forehead. Ordinarily the little animals flicked past, appearing and disappearing simultaneously. He had the feeling that the fist-sized omnivore was crouched on the other side of the tree, waiting for him to turn his back. But when he checked, he found nothing.

Ingram stood thoughtfully biting the reed and looking up and down the tree and at the other trees around. “Might as well try to grab a specific handful of air as look at an omma,” he thought. “Ordinar ily. Was it sick or something?”

He turned away to continue his morning walk. Though he had recently entered his sixth quarter-century, his stride was still firm, the stick merely for the dew-wet and occasionally thorny branches. These early morning walks, he de clared, would keep him on his feet for another half century—not by any means an impossibility. After a century spent in starships or the offices that controlled them, In gram had rediscovered nature. He found himself, to his intense sur prise, enjoying his retirement as much as he had ever enjoyed the fierce, at times violent, competition of interstellar trade.

Ommas, now. It surprised him that he knew so little about them, but then there was very little to know. When men had first come to Salamander, they had found that the ommas were at the bottom of all spinate food chains. All other spinal animals preyed either on them, or on their predators. It was not really odd that there were so few other animals in the same size ranges; the ubiquitous ommas were very efficient. Under them were the usual run of bugs and worms and occasional less-evolved small ani mals.

When he was a young man, the planet having been settled only a couple of decades, there was a fierce debate on the best means of altering the ecology. Some of it be gan to come back to him. Men had learned to handle ecologies with care—the hard way—long before Salamander was discovered. It was five Standard years, he remem bered, before lizards and frogs were introduced from Hindustan. They were a precaution against the predators imported from Sandra and other planets to thin the popu lation; an extra food supply. They wanted to make sure the little animals weren’t exterminated by some miscalculation.

Ommas were pests, though they could have been worse. Care was taken in the thinning process, and it seemed to have paid off; there were definitely fewer of them than there was a century ago. He had got his start as a construction su per for a now-defunct Combine, erecting factories and processing plants, and the half dozen men in his crew spent most of their time off trying to keep the little critters out of their jerried temporary quarters.

It does nothing for a super’s equanimity, Ingram recalled with a chuckle, to discover that the ex posed arms of a construction robot have been jammed with twigs and leaves. Of course all the robots could not be kept employed around the clock, even on the tightest schedule. He had solved that by ordering all robots to hover above the trees between tasks, but he had never really found a way to keep the pests from nesting in the construction material—they loved pipes—or even the various attachments for the robots. Ingram cut the shredded, chewed end off the spice reed and bit into a fresh section. His thoughts were distracted by the sight of a wild amber tree. They originated on June, quite a ways out. Plants, of course, were more freely transported from planet to planet than animals. Amber could be synthesized cheaply, and there was no great demand for amber candles; but the tree was attractive, with its smooth black bark and delicate flowers with their tiny, black-striped blue petals.

“Well I’ll be scuttled,” mur mured Ingram aloud. An omma sat alertly on a limb, watching him. Its yellow eyes were impas sive, the brown bark-patterned hide on its lithe body not matching the amber tree’s bark. “There really must be something wrong with it—with them,” he added, not speaking. He had left the first one behind him, of course. A disease spreading through them? Perfectly possible. Not an epidemic, though the sight of two sick ommas in one morning meant they were hit hard. But he had heard the scurry and seen the flick of normal ommas all around him. In fact, it was so nor mal that he had paid no attention, though thinking about ommas at the time.

The omma finally slid down be hind the limb, slowly. After a pro longed moment, he looked behind it. No omma. “Now there’s some thing wrong here,” he muttered, half-aloud. “If they don’t run at sight because they’re sick—how can they disappear so fast when they do hide? Ergo they must not be sick. Now that is wrong.”

No animal subject to such heavy predation will sit up and stare at any other animal, especially one as large as a man. Salamander did not, of course, have any man-sized carnivores, or omnivores, that made ommas a regular part of their diet, but there were plenty of animals of all sizes that would eat any they could get. Ingram stood chewing his reed, puzzling over it. “Maybe predation has fallen off in this area and they’re getting bold. Young ones. Or maybe they’re so heavily overpopulated they’re going weightless. Stresses on overpopulated animals will ac tually cause them to suicide, they say; or at least take actions leading to their own deaths, that they’d not have done ordinarily.” He had seen seatuses deliberately beaching themselves on Folly in that planet’s early days.
* * * *
Ingram strolled on, revolving the two ideas. At an opening in the trees he saw the top of the mile-high Tower—that was his name for it; he had never troubled to find out its name, purpose, or owner. It was the only building visible from his house, though there were other residences scat tered through the forest. He ori ented himself by it and resisted an impulse to consult his chron; he was no longer keeping anybody’s schedule. Turning his back to the Tower, he strolled toward home and breakfast.

The overpopulation idea was the most reasonable, he concluded idly. It struck him that the sounds of ommas were more frequent this morning than usual. There were more of them around, it seemed, than there had been even in the old days. Of course, memory is un reliable.

And again! Ingram had been half-consciously scanning every tree as he passed it. This omma might have been missed otherwise; it was half-concealed behind a tangle of creeper leaves. He raised his stick to the level, sighted on it, stepped forward, and thrust at it. It disappeared with a flick and a scrabble of claws on bark.

“That’s more like it,” declared Ingram, nodding companionably to the thorn tree with the creeper. The normal disappearance relieved him a little. “It’s possible” he mused silently, going on, “that I’m bowling along about nothing. Maybe they’re just curious about human beings. This section of the forest is almost untouched. And ommas are curious little devils.”

Lengthening his stride in antici pation of breakfast, it occurred to him that the overpopulation theory could not be right; even ommas do not triple their numbers overnight. Yesterday and the day before, he had heard a number of ommas, but nothing like this. And last week, though he hadn’t been com ing so deeply into the forest, he had hardly noticed them. He con sidered it idly, attention more on the empty state of his stomach. It occurred to him, too, that he had come farther this morning than usual; he was far off his own land, not that it mattered.

A dense section of forest loomed up, seeming very dark with the sun behind it. “Probably composed mostly of native thorn trees,” In gram moaned. He paused a while to watch a red-winged sundancer teaching her cubs to fly; then, tak ing a deep breath, plunged in. The stick and his tough clothes stopped most of the thorns from pinking him, and once inside he found that there were not so many as he had feared; but he was soon drenched. The synthetic fabric of his clothes could not be wet, but they were porous. Also, they had openings, such as the back of the neck.

It belatedly occurred to him that it could not be as late as he had thought; the dew was still both plentiful and quite cold. He had had time enough to go around, if he had thought. But his stomach was as insistent on regular hours as ever the Combines had been. Pausing to wipe the back of his neck and catch his breath—the cold water took it—Ingram noticed two more ommas watching.

He grinned sheepishly. “I hope you’re enjoying the sight,” he told them. “At that it’s fitting that you should be amused by me; I came out to be amused by you and your fellow creatures.” Glancing around the dark wood, he decided that he was about halfway through. He shivered a little and hoped the development agent was right when she said that all dangerous animals in this area had been exterminated and the ecology readjusted to pre vent their return. At least he could not hear anything moving but the ommas. There seemed to be quite a few here.
* * * *
He struggled on, the ommas fol lowing curiously; he heard and glimpsed a number of them around him. More important, he glimpsed sunlight ahead. It was as dim as early dawn in this grove; outside, sunlight had crawled down the trees almost to the ground. En couraged, he gripped his stick, lifted a dew-laden branch out of the way, stepped under it, and gasped as three ommas, leaping off, sent a cascade of water over his head.

“Little devils!” Brushing back his drenched, thinning hair, he went on, watching closely for ommas. To his amazement, there were clusters of them on every tree and bush. “This must be where a coven of ‘em live,” Ingram thought. “No wonder I saw so many today; I’ve never been out here before.” One last thick mat mostly of thorns, and he’d be out, or nearly. He waded gingerly into it, so. carefully that he only had to unstick his shirt from the thorns a couple of times.

Halfway through, though, a thorny branch seemed to wrap it self around his ankle. He drew it back cautiously, but it didn’t re lease. He shook it, peering down into the gloom around his feet to see what was happening; that didn’t feel like any thorn. It felt more like—ow! Teeth had des cended on his fingers and he re leased a branch that slapped across his chest. “The little bugeater bit me!” he complained, looking at the finger. The bite showed pink, but was not yet bleeding. Teeth again attacked his ankle, hampered by the tough synthetic of his sock. He kicked out and the little animal lost its hold. Others scuttled near.

“I must be walking right into their dens,” Ingram thought. “As if the thorns weren’t bad, enough. I never knew the little imps were so bold.” He plunged in more blindly, turning his back and shoulders to the worst of the branches. The ommas followed closely, squealing and chittering. They clustered around his ankles, biting at every opportunity. They did not trouble him much until he felt one on his shoulders. It bit at him through his shirt, and he paused to brush it off.

That was a mistake. They came swarming up his pants legs, sharp claws digging through to the skin. They scurried up over him in the trees and dropped by twos and threes on his head and shoulders. His ears were bitten several times, and little claws gripped his fingers when he tried to brush them off. Or they sank about two dozen claws into his skin through his shirt and hung on grimly when he pulled at their leathery bodies.

Finally he realized that they were climbing on faster than he could take them off. He plunged, staggering, into the brush, ignoring the thorns, head down, backing through for the most part. With a convulsive struggle and a last wrench, he tore himself free from the thorns, crashed through the last line of trees in the dense grove, and fell at full length over a creep er. He was breathing heavily, as much from shock as anything.

“So keep your denning,” he gasped feebly, looking back at a couple of triumphant ommas. Little demons.. “But though,” as Tom Bowling said to the Caridian port authorities, “it’s such a little ship,” they were determined to de fend their dens.

Before he could take stock of his injuries, or start pulling thorns, a horde of squealing and chittering ommas poured out of the dark wood and swarmed over him. In gram surged to his hands and knees, chilled now with real fear. He swung his stick blindly, parallel to the ground, felt it connect with several small bodies. He made it to his knees, tore one off his head, lost his balance and fell back to hands and knees. Instantly a swarm of them ran up his arms.

There were hundreds of the things. Ingram fought with blind panic, realizing the ommas meant to kill. “Thing to do,” he thought, struggling grimly to his feet, “is to get away from the pack. Take such small animals a long time to down so big a predator. They’re not adapted for . . .” Reaching his feet, he staggered off as fast as he could go, blindly, not stopping to dislodge those already on him. The idea was to keep more from getting on. Some, changing position, were falling off.
* * * *
After a few minutes, Ingram be gan to calm down. He found him self far enough ahead of the ommas to slow down, and tore off several from his shoulders and back. He was vaguely surprised to find that the rest were gone. He was panting now, and tired, but knew he could not stop; he could hear the little animals scurrying af ter him. A fast walk was sufficient; not to keep ahead of them, but to keep them from massing for a rush. They quickly learned that they could not take him two or three at a time. But, if they ever got him down again . . .

He quelled a touch of panic at the thought, and steered away from thick spots in the forest. He had been heading blindly for the sun, but as the pressure eased, he kept glancing over his shoulder for a sight of the Tower top. A couple of glimpses of it were sufficient to orient him. He trimmed his course—a little to the left of the sun—and strode rapidly, breath whistling, stomach weightless with fear, or, at least, apprehension. The ommas bracketed him, climb ing onto branches ahead and wait ing till he passed. Ingram took to whacking all low branches with his stick.

“At least I’m no longer hungry,” the thought, and steered away humor. He ignored the dryness of his mouth, the tiredness of his legs, and the speed of his pulse and breath. Presently, he entered a siz able glade he recognized; he was all of three miles from home. More if you counted what he called Misty Hollow, a tangled section just west of the house. It would not be wise to try to cross that hol low, but going around might be just as bad. He wasn’t sure just how long he could keep up this pace. Of course the ommas might not follow him much farther.

This glade was a hundred feet across, and as long as he stayed on his feet, perhaps occasionally shift ing his position, he should be all right, he thought. Of course they’d wait for hours if he stopped here. Watching them warily, he dug his fingernail into the notches of his utility bracelet. “Arthur Ingram’s residence, monitor speaking,” it said tonelessly.

“Ingram speaking,” he said hoarsely. “Triangulate on my bea con.”

“You are three-point-three Stan dard miles from the house,” it in formed him. “Four points south of west. Further instructions?”

Ingram opened his mouth, closed it. Of course—send the car out to pick me up! But the aircar was in the garage, and while it could receive orders by radio, he had no radio that could reach it. The house was shielded, of course. Its intercoms were wired. The monitor could speak to the aircar, or he could himself, through his UB com and the monitor’s mikes. But though the car had outside mikes, it hadn’t been programmed to take orders through them.

They were creeping up on him through the brush. Ingram paced slowly away, mind racing. So near, yet so far. He turned his back on a sprouting stump he wished he could sit down on, looked anx iously at the Tower, and caught just a glimpse of a point of golden light near its top. He frequently saw light-colored aircars about it near sunrise; it was either a hotel, office building, or some kind of in stitution. That gave him an idea. Stumbling more rapidly in circles around the glade, he asked, “What’s the location of the nearest public building?”

For several seconds the monitor consulted the house library and checked with Traffic Control. “The Interstellar Rookery, approximately thirty miles west. Distance and di rection can be calculated more ac curately if—”

“No. Call them up and have Service send a robocab out on my beacon.”

“Done. Arrival time, five min utes.”

When it came, Ingram collapsed into it and croaked, “To the house of Arthur Ingram.”

For so short a trip, the aircar did not bother with high accelera tion. Ingram had time to pick thorns out of his burning flesh and recover some of his equanimity. He was not really hurt at all, con siderably to his surprise. Oddly enough, his first coherent thought was a flash of anger at the monitor for telling him the name of the Tower. Rookery! What a prosaic name!

On landing, his first act was to wet his throat. Then he ordered breakfast and sat back with a cup of coffee, considering his ex perience with his usual amused de tachment.

He should not have been at tacked even by a pack of such small omnivores. It was not some thing animals in their ecological niche ever did. Ingram puzzled it over for a while, finally nodded. He was using excellent ecological reasoning, but the ecological mode is not the only way of thinking about animals. A century and more ago, enormous pressure had been put on the ommas. Predation, already severe, had become fierce. At the same time, their food sup ply had been augmented by the in troduction of new prey for them, primarily lizards. The theory was that they would get their food in larger lumps of meat, cutting down on the dangerous, time-consuming task of searching for the bugs, small plants, and buds that they ate.

The theory had seemed to work, he remembered. But, once results were satisfactory, everybody had apparently forgotten about the ommas. And while no one was watching, the ommas began to find other ways of responding to the change in their environment. What more natural than that some of them would begin to specialize as lizard-eating carnivores? Probably others were specializing as herbiv ores; ommas were very adaptable. In any case, evolving the speed and intelligence needed to catch lizards would put them into the omma-eating category themselves; a leg up the evolutionary ladder. Being already gregarious, hunting in packs would be discovered early.

“It is doubtful if they’d ever be a danger to men or other large ani mals,” mused Ingram, “but when an animal begins to change its mode of living, it has to find its new limits by trial and error.” He probably never would have been attacked if he hadn’t been near their denning. But it was hard to imagine a nurben or felshim from Sandra having much impact on such a pack.

Point was, that ecology is not the kind of science in which prob lems can be solved. It’s a contin uing process, like a whirlpool or a river’s relation to its banks. It was impossible to say, as yet, how suc cessful the ommas would be. If they succeeded, the whole ecology, calculated so carefully so long ago, would collapse.

“The ecologists,” he thought, “had forgotten that it’s ecological pressure that forces adaptive evol ution.” At least it was a good bet they had. The habit of planning ahead does not come easy to men whose life-expectance is a century and a half. Signs of the adaptation should have been seen long since. But he hadn’t heard of it. There must be no one watching. This sort of thing might well be happening on every planet in the sector and nobody the wiser.

Ingram carried his cup to the unicorn. “Connect me with the Ecological Service,” he ordered the monitor.

After a moment its toneless voice replied, “There is no gov ernment Ecological Service listed. Darien Combine lists a private Ecological Department of its Col onization Company. Both Sala mander government’s Conservation and Development Department and the interstellar Penetration Service deal in ecological problems. Which do you wish to consult?”

“So there’s no ecological ser vice?” asked Ingram, smiling grimly at his lined, battered reflection in the unicorn’s visiplate. “Something will have to be done about that.” ■