CHAPTER VIII

FIRST CONTACT: Later that night as I lay on the earth, looking at the spare and grainy inner surfaces of the tent, my eyes seeking through them as if instinctively for some patch of the night, there was a rustling outside and the sound of footsteps. Instinctively, with my great commander’s reflexes, I reached for the weapon at my side to protect myself from the invader but when the curtains parted it was Stark, Closter and Nina who were standing there. Nina framed between the two, looking solemn, her eyes becoming around as she saw the weapon . . . and with a feeling of revulsion I put the weapon at my side, half rolled onto it as if to conceal it and said:

“What is it?”

Their eyes were still on my hip concealing the weapon. They could not believe, obviously, they could not believe that I might have shot them. This proves along with everything else that they have no comprehension of the duties of the captain, the great isolation in which he must walk, his powerful and dangerous heart which expands, as it were, to defend himself and his crew against the beasts of night. “What is it?” I said, discouraging their stares. “What do you want?”

“The alien will speak to us now,” Closter said, looking at me in an appraising fashion. “We have established communication.”

“Full communication,” Stark said. He seemed to move subtly behind Closter, his eyes busy, active, concerned with the granules on the canvas. “We thought that we would report this to you.” He paused, shook his head, then stepped in front of Closter. “After all,” he said, after taking a breath, “You’re the commander. We thought that you would like to know.”

“You would have shot us,” Nina said. “You would have killed us.”

“You didn’t say anything,” I said. “How would I know who it was? I had to protect myself. You’ve got to take precautions.”

“What precautions? Who else would have come in here at this time?”

“You never know,” I said. My embarrassment was acute, yet well-controlled. I would not yield any of it to them. Looking at her in the twinkling, sudden light of Folsom’s Planet which, just as the Bureau had predicted, revolves around the sun exactly as does the Earth, rendering it to the same cycle, making it an even more desirable third stage planet, I could see that any relationship between us was now truly finished. Mating procedures or none she despised me. “You just cannot tell,” I insisted, “you have got to be prepared for all eventualities.”

“You would have to be insane,” Nina said, “to want to kill us,” and moved away from there, her face a disappearing bulb in the darkness, moving away from me in a kind of complex frieze; her face was a series of still-lifes which finally passed away from here, taking illumination with it until only Stark, Closter and I were there to confront one another in the midst of burlap. Stark’s voice was shaking uncharacteristically as he said, “Would you like to see him?”

“See who?”

“The native,” Closter said. “We’ve established full communi­cation . . .”

“I know,” I said. “You said that already. But what is there to see?”

“You might have some questions to ask?” Stark said.

“But I don’t,” I said. “I have no questions to ask. This is not my responsibility, you know that. The responsibility for achieving communication is your own; how many times have you said that?”

Nina’s departure had put me in an even fouler temper, that and the indistinguishability of Stark and Closter. Not only their dialogue but their very characters were interchangeable; it might have been not two men standing there but one who had doubled himself. There seemed to be something profound about this fact but I could not locate it.

“Is that what you came here for?” I said, “to tell me mean­ingless things like that?” I rolled over, felt the prod of weapon under hip. “I’m not interested,” I said, “I’m not interested in your filthy little experiments. As far as I’m concerned it’s out of my control.”

“Don’t you want to see him?” Stark said. “We thought that you would . . .”

“No,” I said, “no, I do not,” but even as I was protesting in this way something strange was happening; I was beginning to move. Limbs flailed in the old and accustomed ways, the con­sciousness moved at cross-angles and then I was standing, sway­ing, looking down at Stark and Closter who—and I should have commented on this a long time before—are considerably shorter than I am. As, of course, they should be. The commander is the tallest of the crew; this is mandated for psychological factors.

“All right,” I said, “all right, I’ll have a look at him.”

“That’s good,” Closter said. “We thought that it would be best if you did. After all, when he returns to the encampment, matters should go very rapidly. We thought that you should check on him first.”

“Very kind of you,” I said. “My limbs felt vaguely discon­nected, there was a disoriented sense of weaving as I stood between them; then I moved slowly toward the tent flap. “I’m sure you’ve done wonderful work.”

“Oh indeed,” Stark said, “it’s surprising how well you can do with them, what you can dig out if you simply approach it from the right direction. Do you know something we’ve found? They’reeager to communicate; they were just shy and frightened. Ac­cording to their mythos we’re the vengeance gods come to wreak retribution upon them. They couldn’t understand why, after our initial appearance we simply didn’t destroy them.”

“That’s fascinating,” I said. “Why do they believe in vengeance gods?” Actually, this was merely a means of making conversation. I had no concern with the aliens; the only question, staggering at the ridges of the mind, was what had happened to Nina? Where had she gone, why had she turned on me in this way? I would not have thought that I could have generated the feelings of impotence and dismay which possessed me. In the darkness, the floor of the forest seemed to be filled with small, dangerous animals snapping away at my heels. I walked carefully, lifting my feet away from the source of the menace, glimpsing the faces of Stark and Closter in little off-flashes from the half-moon. The atmosphere was ex­tremely earthlike but I was not lulled for an instant: I knew that we were on an irretrievably dangerous and alien world, billions of years from home and that there would be little assistance from the Bureau in the completion of our extremely dangerous mission.

“That seems to be part of their mythos,” Closter was saying. “Remember?” I discussed that with you before. The fact that the myths seem to be strangely monotheistic, reflecting a level of cul­tural integration which they don’t seem to possess in any of their other folkways. The vengeance gods are historical forerunners of the monotheistic tradition of course.”

“Of course,” I said, “of course, you’re absolutely right, there,” and Stark took a firm grip on my shoulder, impelled me then toward the left and through the flaps of the enclosure in which the alien sat before a low fire, looking at me from shrouded eyes, a strange look of—perhaps this is anthropomorphism—cunning in his eyes as they blinked once, twice, seeming to absorb me with the light of their gaze. Looking at him I could feel for the first time that sense of humility which the Bureau instructed us we would feel when dealing with alien races, alien contact . . . a sense of our insignificance in the void, the marvel of the processes which had resulted in this sudden, powerful connection with the source of our history. What can only be called a sense of wonder overcame me as I stared at the alien and he, in turn, stared at me. Closter gave a palpable chuckle to the rear as I looked at the alien and then seemed to disappear behind the burlap, leaving Stark, the alien and myself grouped together in a tight and uncomfort­able position.

“He is in full communication,” Stark said, “you may talk to him.” To the alien he said, “This man is named Hans Folsom. He is the commander of this expedition.”

The alien nodded gravely. Little folds of flesh under his throat moved, a fine spray of sweat seemed to spread a halo around him. “I am pleased to greet you, Hans Folsom,” it said. “My name is Ezekiel.”

The tone was surprisingly pleasant, surprisingly lifelike. If I had expected that this native, given speech, would talk in a different timber, if I had thought that the sheer alienness of his condition would cause him to speak his tongue and tones incom­prehensible I was wrong . . . for his voice had the spare flatness of the very agent who had converted him to speech; he sounded, in fact, chillingly like Stark himself. The possession of language had not changed his aspect then, so much as it had merely flattened it: declension, possibly, is the word. He had fallen away from the position of an impenetrable and noble savage to the accessibility and rather noxious familiarity of Stark himself . . . who stood there grinning.

“Isn’t that remarkable?” he said to me. “Ask him anything you want.”

“What do you want?” I said. The alien looked at me with a solemn, considerate gaze, his aspect shifting now to one of sym­pathy. He seemed to be trying to commune. “What do you want?” I asked again.

“I want to learn. That is why I came here. I came to learn from you.”

“Do your people want to learn?”

The native gave a distinct shrug. He was not quite as old, I saw now, as I had originally taken him to be. Disease or dilapi­dation would, of course, be quite common with primitive folk of this sort; the team had done a remarkable job in dewarting, shav­ing, cleansing. He appeared to be a fairly vigorous male in the bloom of years.

“I do not know if they want to learn,” he said. “I only know whatI want to learn. This is why I am here.”

The emphasis was well-placed, the timber quite lifelike. It was obvious that the team indeed had done a striking job. “Who calls you Ezekiel?” I said. “Is that your name for yourself or is that the name you have been given?”

“He has been given that name,” Stark said. “His own appears to be unpronounceable.”

“Given by who?”

“By us of course.”

“Why?”

“Actually,” Stark said, “actually it wasn’t my idea, it was Closter’s. It was kind of silly but I let him have his way. After all, hedid do so much of the work and his own specialties are mytho­logical . . .”

“Still don’t know why,” I said. I had the illusion that in the darkness the alien and I were exchanging a look of understanding, that we had been welded together, collaborators against Stark’s babbling idiocy. This was an illusion, of course, the alien and I having little enough in common, but a comforting one. I felt quite abandoned at that moment. “Why don’t you tell me . . .”

“Ezekiel was one of the minor prophets in the Old Testament,” Stark said. “He wrote about various visions given him by angels of the Lord.”

“OldTestament,”the alien said rather thickly. His pronunci­ation was impeccable.“OldTestament.”

“Old Testament?” I said.

“One of the books of the old Bible,” Stark said. He paused. “I admit it was a rather silly idea.”

“I don’t see the point or purpose.”

“Well,” Stark said clearing his throat, “the point is that to us this native, Ezekiel, might take a position of prophet to his kind. And of course he sees us as gods. Isn’t that so, Ezekiel?”

“Yes,” the alien said agreeably. “You are the gods. You are the Thunder Gods of creation; you have come to save us and to bring us universal peace.”

“Who’s been teaching him this stuff?” I said. “Who’s been talking about Thunder Gods?”

Stark gave a little cough. “Itold you I rather thought it was silly. I had nothing to do with it at all. It was Closter’s idea. He thought that it might be amusing.”

“We’re not Thunder Gods,” I said to the alien. “We come rep­resenting the Galactic Federation.”

“I know that,” Ezekiel said. “I know about the Galactic Fed­eration. I was explained to all of that. But I prefer to call you Thunder Gods.”

“You see?” Stark said, “he doesn’t mind it at all. He likes it. We wouldn’t do anything against his will.”

“We are not gods,” I said again. “We represent the Federation. We come from a world many billions of miles from here in peace and to help you but we are men just like yourselves.”

“What are billions?” Ezekiel said.

“Do you see?” Stark said. Even in the dark I could imagine the smugness on his face, just from the way in which his voice came forth, the compression of the cheekbones, the tilt of arro­gance. “He conceptualizes only within certain limits and, of course, we must work within them. What is the difference anyway what he thinks of us? Communication has been established! Ask him any questions you wish.”

“But this is not right,” I said slowly. It would be difficult for me to seat the basis of my anger, the slow, patient necessity I felt to make this point. “It is not right to teach him that we are gods.”

“Thunder Gods.”

“Ofany stripe. How can we train them, how can we involve them in the Federation if they look upon us as gods? Right away the whole notion of eventual equality has been destroyed. Don’t you see that?”

Stark said, “I see everything, Captain. I had never heard him use the formal term before and there was something jarring about it, I felt myself instinctively bracing. “Why don’t you take care of the command facilities and leave the matter of linguistics and social interaction to us. Do you have any questions to ask Ezekiel before we send him back to the village?”

“You are in conflict,” Ezekiel said flatly. “The two gods are in dispute. Gods are fighting among themselves; the heavens thus are shaking. This is one of the signs of the approaching end, when even the gods will fight among themselves.”

“Is this what you have taught him?” I said. “Is this what you have been spending your time doing?”

“I told you, Captain, that the matter might best be left . . .”

“This is disgraceful,” I said, “I will have to make a full report on this. It is not supportable . . .”

“I’m afraid that this is getting us nowhere, Captain. I’m afraid that we are only wasting our time here. If you have nothing more to say, I am going to give Ezekiel final instructions and send him back to his people so that the process of assimilation may begin. It was only fear which held his people back from us, not hostility. They will be eager to cooperate and the sooner Ezekiel returns the sooner the process will begin.”

“Yes,” Ezekiel said, “my people are eager to worship the Thun­der Gods now that we will know the language.”

“Insupportable,” I said again. I stumbled against a mud wall of the enclosure in my rage, staggered into little springing shoots of vegetation which seemed to have been implanted within the walls, brushed at my face teasingly, tauntingly.

“You are filling up this alien with cheap mysticism, cheap nonsense and it will not redound to our credit. You know what the Bureau will say!” I screamed and reeled through an abscess of wall, into the cool and shrieking night. There, feeling the breezes waft against my face, I felt calmer, felt that I had made a spectacle of myself and that perhaps I should return to Stark, apologize for my outburst, but in the next moment when Stark had come from the enclosure to rail at me I felt that impulse ebb and with its ebbing, strength returned. He stood there, the alien at shoulder-height beside him and shouted imprecations, imprecations at me, the Captain, and the rage was within me again. “You fool,” I said, “don’t you realize that this is insubordination.”

“You have no right to interfere with the acculturation process. You have no right to question our methods and particularly not in front of Ezekiel; we are trying to reinforce training and now you are . . .”

“I don’t care,” I said. Powerful in my rage, I felt the clarity of design. “You are confined to quarters, Stark! I have the authority to do this . . .”

He came up, touched me with the lightest and most tentative of touches which acted only to compound the rage. “Captain,” he said with a genuine and quiet curiosity, “Captain, are you mad?”

“Send the alien back to his people!” I said, “send him now!” and wrenched myself from that grasp, turned, spun, cracked Stark across the face, feeling my fingers dig past flesh to the bone, the arching, defiant, mutinous bone of him and with a little shriek he fell away. I turned then toward the alien, my impulse powerful: I think that I might have struck him too (and this as a violation of the code of conduct would have been serious; under no circum­stances are we authorized to impose our will physically upon un­affiliated races) but I was saved by Ezekiel’s own alertness: with a strange little cry he dodged my intention and turned then, came up and past me, and then was gone into the forest. Dark blob against darker blobs, he passed into invisibility and I stood there over the heaving and weeping Stark, a sense of catastrophe work­ing through at all levels, a sense that perhaps I had overreached myself but for all of that I felt pleased, quite pleased—and I am not denying the rising pride—because I had at last asserted myself. I had shown them that liberties could not be taken. I had shown them that there were limits beyond which the commander in his rightful post could not be pushed without terrible retaliation. Thinking so, I stood there in the forest, hearing, with unnatural perception, the sounds of Ezekiel as he ran back toward his set­tlement, listening to Stark’s little moans and snuffles and then burst upon me like a great, rotten fruit, like the sun exploding to reveal the corrupt filaments within; I understood then what the Bureau might have meant, whattransliterative meant, and the thought was enchanting; it was as if the key to a new language, the language, say, upon the rock, had opened up to me and that I could understand it; in that new world of possibility things which I had never before understood broke open one after the other—I might have been Ezekiel himself absorbing information out of the coding devices—and there is no saying how long I might have stayed there, Folsom lost in his new world of contemplation and connection, had not Nina emerged from the brush where she might have been for a long time and come up to me deliberately and deliberately she reached forward and slapped me a ringing blow on the face much like the one I had administered to Stark who, reciprocally, gave anah! of approval on the ground.

“You fool,” she said, “you’ve really gone and fucked things up this time.”

And looking at her delicate face crumpling indelicately now in rage, I began to see that she was right.