Homo saps
Astounding Science Fiction – December 1941
(1941)*
Eric Frank Russell
(as by Webster Craig)
illustrated by Kramer

indicating that it may not always be the burden bearer who is the dumber, harder worker—

-

	Majestically the long caravan emerged from the thick belt of blue-green Martian doltha weed and paraded into the Saloma Desert.

	Forty-four camels stalked along with the swaying gait and high-faluting expressions of their kind. All were loaded. Beneath the burdens their deliberate, unhurried feet dug deeply into the long waves of fine, pinkish sand.

	The forty-fifth animal, which was in the lead, was not a camel. It was daintier, more shapely, had a beige-colored coat and only one hump. A racing dromedary. But its expression was fully as supercilious as that worn by the others.

	Sugden had the dromedary, Mitchell was on the following camel, and Ali Fa'oum formed the rearguard of one. The forty-two burdened beasts in between had modest loads and immodest odors. Ali, at the back, got the benefit of the last. It didn't matter. He was used to it. He'd miss it if it wasn't there.

	Twisting in his seat, Sugden tilted his head toward the sinking sun, and said. "They'll put on the brakes pretty soon, I guess."

	Mitchell nodded lugubriously. He'd sworn camels across Arabia, cursed them through the Northern Territory of Australia, and had oathed them three times around Mars. His patience was no better than on the day he'd started. Within his bosom burned a theory that if there had never been camels there would have been no such thing as Oriental fatalism.

	Abruptly the dromedary stopped, went down forelegs first, back legs next and settled with a sickening heave. It didn't bother to look behind, there wasn't any need, anyway. The rest of the cavalcade followed suit, front legs first, hind legs next, the same heave. A box with loose fastenings parted from its indifferent bearer and flopped into the sand.

	Ali, now compelled to dismount, did so. He found the fodder, distributed it along the resting line. Ignoring the white men, the animals ate slowly and with maddening de-liberation, their disinterested eyes studying the far horizon. Ali started grooming them as they ate. He'd groomed them in Port Tewfik thirty years ago. He was still doing it. They still let him get on with it, their expressions lordly.

	Lighting a cigarette, Sugden gave it a savage suck, and said, "And they talk about mules!"

	Slowly the dromedary turned its head, gave him a contemptuous look. Then it resumed its contemplation of distance. It chewed monotonously and methodically, its bottom lip pursed in silent scorn.

	"Same distance, same time," voiced Mitchell sourly. Thumping the heel of his jackboot, he killed a Martian twelve-legged sand spider. "Never more, never less. They clock on and clock off and they work no overtime."

	"They've got us where they want us." Sugden blew a twin funnel of smoke from itching nostrils, stared distastefully at what had been the spider. "They're the only things that can cover these deserts apart from the Martians themselves. If we had tractors, we'd use tractors if there was any gasoline on this planet."

	"Some day, when I'm bloated with riches," Mitchell pursued, "I'm going to be eccentric. I'm going to get them to build me a superhyper-ultra rocketship. One that'll carry some real tonnage."

	"Then what?" inquired Sugden.

	"Then start from where I left off here—only with elephants."

	"Ha-ha!" laughed Sugden, with artificial violence.

	The dromedary turned its head again. It made a squelching sound with its slowly moving mouth. The noise was repeated all the way along the line until the mount of Ali emitted the final salivary smack. Ali proceeded furiously with his grooming.

	Mitchell snorted and said, complainingly, "You'd think the whole darned lot had loose dental plates." He started to open up the thermic meal pack. "And they stink/'

	"And I don't like their faces," added Sugden.

	"Me neither. Give me a cigarette, will you?" Mitchell lit it, let it hang from his bottom lip. "To think the Martians kowtow to them and treat us like dirt. Funny the way they've acted like that since the first camel was imported."

	"Yeah, I'd like to get to the root of it sometime."

	"Try talking to a Martian. Might as well talk to a gatepost, and— yeouw, this thermic's red-hot!" Mitchell coddled his fingers. "Sixty years and never a word out of them. They ought to be able to talk, but won't." He heaved the meal pack onto its telescopic logs, slid out its trays. "Hi, Ali, come and give us a hand."

	"No, sah. Finish these first. One hour."

	"See?" Removing his solar topee, Mitchell Hung it on the sand. '"The stinkers first, us last." *

-

	The igloo-shaped lumps of Jenkinsville showed on the horizon at sunset next day. Nobody knew the Martian name of the place, but its first discoverer had been one Hiram Jenkins, originally of Key West, Florida. So from then on it was Jenkinsville. The place was precisely fourteen miles away. Nevertheless, the dromedary squatted and the rest did likewise.

	Sugden dismounted with the usual scowl, raked out the usual battered cigarette, heard Mitchell air the usual curse. It couldn't have been a curse of much potency since the curve on the grief chart remained constant, with never a dip.

	The same box fell into the sand again, making the same dismal thump. Phlegmatically, Ali got on with the feeding and grooming rigmarole. In superior silence the forty-five animals rested and masticated and gazed at nearby Jenkinsville much as Sugden had gazed at the squashed spider,

	"I've a persistent notion," said Sugden, his sand-chafed eyes on the energetic Mr. Fa'oum, "that he sneaks up at midnight and worships them. First time I catch him I'll prove he can't salaam without presenting his rumps for suitable retaliation."

	"Humph!" Mitchell wrestled with the meal pack, burned his fingers as he'd done a thousand times before, let out his thousandth yeouw! "Hi, Ali!"

	"One hour," said Ali, firmly.

	"I'm clinging to life," announced Mitchell, speaking to the general outlines of Jenkinsville, "so's I can outlive the lot. One by one. as they die on me, I'm going to skin 'em. I'll make foot mats of their stinking pelts. I'll get married, wipe my feet coming in and going out and every time the cuckoo clock puts the bean on me."

	The sixth camel from the front rumbled its insides. Slowly the rumble moved from stomach to gullet, ended in an emphatic burp. Taking its blank eyes off Jenkinsville, the dromedary looked backward with open approval. Mitchell enjoyed a furious kick at the thermic, denting its side.

	"Now, now!" said Sugden.

	Mitchell gave him a look of sudden death, twitched a tray from the thermic. He did it wholeheartedly. The tray shot clean out of the container, tilted against his ineffectual grasp, poured a mess of hot beans in tomato sauce over his jackboots. Ali paused and watched as he brought a bundle of night coats to the complacent camels. Sugden stared at Mitchell. So did Ali. Also the camels.

	Looking first, at Sugden, then at his boots, Mitchell said, "Notice that?"

	"Yes, I've noticed it," admitted Sugden, gravely.

	"Funny, isn't it?"

	"Not at all. I think it unfortunate."

	"Well," said Mitchell, stabbing a finger at the observing line, "they think it's funny."

	"Oh, forget it. All animals are curious."

	"Curious? Hah!" Lugging off his boots, Mitchell hefted them, swung them around, gauged their weight and handiness. All the time his eyes were on the dromedary. In the end, he changed his mind, cleaned his boots in the sand, then put them on. "They're seeing the world at our expense—and they all look at me when I do this to myself."

	"Aw, let's eat," soothed Sugden. "We're hungry, and hunger makes one short-tempered. We'll feel better afterward. Besides, we'll be in Jenkinsville early in the morning."

	"Sure, we will. We'll be in Jenkinsville first thing in the morning. We'll offer our junk for all the mallow seeds we can get, and if we don't dispose of the lot—as we probably won't—we'll start another one-hundred-mile hike to Dead Plains to shoot the balance." Mitchell glowered at the cosmos. "If, by some miracle unique in the records of Martian trading, we do switch all we've got, we'll start back on our one hundred fifty miles of purgatory to Lemport, accompanied by forty-four camels, forty-four double humped skunks."

	"And one dromedary," Sugden reminded, delicately.

	"And one one-humped skunk," agreed Mitchell. He glared across the sands to where the said skunk was enjoying its own digestive processes with true Arabian aplomb.

	"If you're not going to eat," announced Sugden, "I am!" He slid another tray from the thermic, stabbed himself a couple of steaming pinnawursts. He was very partial to minced livers of the plump and succulent pinna birds.

	As the food went cold in the Martian evening, Mitchell joined in. The pair ate ruminatively, in unconscious imitation of the camels,

-

	Three hours beyond the flaming dawn the caravan slouched into the market place in Jenkinsville and unloaded with many animal grunts and much Terrestrial profanity. Martians came crowding in, more or leas ignored the white men, took a little more notice of Ali Fa'oum, but paid most attention to the camels. For a long time they looked at the camels and the camels looked at them, each side examining the other with the aloofish interest of ghosts discovering fairies.

	Mitchell and Sugden let them get on with it. They knew that in due time, when they thought fit, the natives would turn to business. Meanwhile, the interim could be used for making all the necessary preparations, setting up the stalls, displaying the stocks, getting the books and scales ready. Each Martian had his hoard of mallow seeds, some small bags, some big bags, some with two or three.

	The seeds were what the traders were after. From this product of the Martian desert mallow could be distilled—a genuine cure for Terrestrial cancer. This disease would have been wiped out long ago if only the temperamental mallow were cultivatable—which it wasn't. It grew wherever it took the fancy and nowhere else. It didn't fancy anywhere on Earth. Hence, its short, glossy-leafed bushes had to be searched for, and Martians did the searching.

	In ones and twos, and in complete silence, the Martians drifted from the camels to the stalls. They were large-eyed beings, with big chests and flop ears, but otherwise human in shape. Though literally dumb, they were fairly intelligent. Terrestrial surgeons opined that the Martian voice box once had functioned, but now was petrified by centuries of disuse. Maybe they were right. Mitchell and Sugden didn't know or very much care. The traders high-pressured their clients in deft sign language, sometimes helped out by writing and sketches.

	An old Martian got his bag weighed, was credited with one hundred eighty dollars in gold, solid, heavy, international spondulies. Mitchell showed him a roll of batik-patterned broadcloth and a half-plate glossy photograph of Superba de la Fontaine attired in a sarong of the same material. He didn't mention that the fair Superba was originally Prunella Teitelbaum of Terre Haute. All the same, the old chap liked neither. He pulled a face at Mitchell, indicated that both were trash.

	"They're getting finicky," complained Mitchell, addressing the God of Commerce. Irefully, he swung a roll of Harris tweed along the rough-wood counter, fingered it, smelled it, held it up for his customer to enjoy the heathery odor of the fabric. The customer approved, indicated that he'd take three arm spans of same. Mitchell sliced off the required length, rolled it dexterously, tossed it over.

	Way down in the Communal Hall beyond the serried rows of red granite igloos a band of tribal beaters started playing on a choir of gongs. The instruments ranged all the way from a tiny, tinkling silver hand disk up to an enormous copper cylinder twenty feet in diameter. Every note was powerful and pure, but the tune was blatant torture.

	Scowling, Mitchell said to the old fellow, "Now how about a watch? So long as you've got the time, you'll never have to ask a policeman. Here's the very one, a magnificent, fifty-jeweled, ten-day chronometer, rectified for Mars, checked by the Deimos Observatory, and guaranteed by Mitchell & Sugden."

	He tried to put it all into signs, sweating as he did it. The Martian sniffed, rejected the timepiece, chose five cheap alarm clocks. Moreover, he went right through the stock of several dozens in order to pick himself five with differing notes. Then he selected a gold bangle set with turquoises, a midget radio, an aluminum coffee percolator and a small silver pepper pot into which he solemnly emptied the inevitable packet of Martian snuff.

	"That leaves you two bucks seventy," said Mitchell. The old fellow took his balance in cigarettes and canned coffee, toddled back to pay his respects to the camels. There was still a gang busy soul-mingling with the animals. "Damn the stinkers!" Mitchell heaved a huge bag of seeds onto the scales. The needle swung around. "Seven hundred smackers," he breathed. He scrawled the amount in big figures with a blue pencil, held it out to the new customer.

-

	This one was a young Martian, taller than the average. He nodded, produced a five-year-old catalogue, opened it, pointed to illustrations, conveyed by many signs that he wanted the cash put to his credit until he had enough to get an automobile.

	"No use:' said Mitchell. "No gasoline. No go. No soap!" He made snakes of his arms in his efforts to explain the miserable and absolute impotence of an automobile sans juice. The Martian watched gravely, started to argue with many further reference's to the catalogue. Mitchell called in Sugden to help.

	After ten minutes, Sugden said: "I get it. He wants a heap with a producer-gas plant. He thinks he can run it on local dead wood."

	"For Pete's sake!" groaned Mitchell. "Now they're going Broadway on us! How in the name of the seven devils can we get one here?"

	"In pieces," Sugden suggested. "We'll try, anyway. Why not? It may start a cult. We might end up with a million jujubes apiece. We might both be Martian producer-gas automobile tycoons, and be ambushed by blondes like they say in magazines. It'll cost this guy an unholy sum, but it's his sum. Attend to the customer, Jimson, and see that he's satisfied."

	With doubtful gloom, Mitchell made out a credit slip for seven hundred, handed it across. Then he took a deep breath, looked around, noticed camels and Martians regarding each other with the same philosophical interest. Some of the animals were munching choice titbits offered them by the natives.

	More bags, more weighings, more arguments all through the rest of the day. As usual, the clients didn't want a good proportion of the Mitchell-Sugden stock and again as usual, some of them wanted things not in stock and difficult to obtain.

	On the previous trip one Martian had taken a hundred phonograph records and had ordered some minor electrical apparatus. Now he turned up, claiming his apparatus, didn't want another disk, put in an urgent order for a couple of radio transmitter tubes of special design. After half an hour's semaphoring, he had to draw the tubes before Mitchell understood what was wanted. There was no law against supplying such stuff, so he booked the order.

	"Oh, Jiminy," he said, wearily, "why can't you guys talk like civilized people?"

	The Martian was faintly surprised by this comment. He considered it solemnly, his big, grave eyes wandering from the liverish Mitchell to the camels and back again. The dromedary nodded, smirked, and let the juice of an overripe wushkin drool from its bottom lip. The Martian signed Mitchell an imitation to follow him.

	It was on the verge of dusk and time for ceasing operations, anyway. Leaving his exhausted partner to close the post. Mitchell trailed the Martian. Fifteen years before he had trailed one to an illegal still and had crawled back gloriously blotto. It might happen again.

	They passed the camels now being groomed by the officious Ali Fa'oum, wandered through the town to a large igloo halfway between the-market place and the northern outskirts. A mile to the south the gongs of Communal Hall were sounding a raucous evensong. The big tremblor caused dithers in the digestive system.

	Inside the igloo was a room filled with, a jumble of apparatus, some incomplete, some discarded but not thrown out. The sight did not surprise Mitchell, since it was well known that the Martians had scientific abilities along their own peculiar lines. His only emotion was a feeling of disappointment. No still.

-

	Connecting to a thing looking like a homemade radio receiver with a tiny loud-speaker, the Martian drew from its innards a length of thin cable terminating in a small, silvery object which he promptly swallowed. With the cable hanging out of his mouth, his big eyes staring solemnly at Mitchell, he fiddled with dials. Suddenly, an inhuman, metallic voice oozed from the loudspeaker.

	"Spich! This artificial spich! Just made him. Very hard—cannot do much!"

	"Ah!" said Mitchell, faintly impressed.

	"So you get me tubes. Do better then—see?"

	"Sure," agreed Mitchell. Then the overwhelming thought struck him that he was the first Terrestrial to hold vocal conversation with a Martian. Front-page news! He was no pressman, but he was trader enough to feel that there ought to be a thousand frogskins in this interview if he handled it right. What would a journalist do? Oh, yes, ask questions. "Why can't you guys speak properly?" he asked, with unjournalistic awkwardness.

	"Properly?" squawked the loudspeaker. The Martian was astonished. "We do talk properly. Ten thousand years ago we ceased this noise-talk of low-life forms and talked here"—he touched his forehead—"so!"

	"You mean you converse telepathically?"

	"Of course—same as camels."

	"What?" yelled Mitchell.

	"Sure! They are high form of life."

	"Like hell they are," bawled Mitchell, his face purpling.

	"Hah!" The Martian was amused. "I prove it. They talk here." Again he touched his forehead. "And not here, like you." He touched his throat. "They toil in moderation, eat reasonably, rest adequately, wear no clothes, pay no taxes, suffer no ills, have no worries, enjoy much contemplation and are happy."

	"But they darned well work," shouted Mitchell. He smacked his chest. "And for me."

	"As all must, high and low alike. You also work for them. Who works the hardest? You see—glug-glug!" The loud-speaker gulped into silence. Hurriedly, the Martian made adjustments to the set and presently the speaker came to fresh but weaker life. "Battery nearly gone. So sorry!"

	"Camels, a high form of life!" jeered Mitchell. ''Ha-ha! I'll believe it when I've got a lemon-colored beard nine feet long."

	"Does the delectable pinna know the superiority of our bellies? How can you measure the mental stature of a camel where there is no common basis? You cannot talk inside the head; you have never known at any time what a camel is thinking." The loud-speaker's fading crackle coincided with the Martian's patronizing chuckle. Mitchell disliked both noises.

	"So long as it knows what I'm thinking, that's all that matters."

	"Which is entirely your own point of view." Again the Martian registered his amusement. "There are others, you know, but all the same— crackle, crackle, pop!" The apparatus finally gave up the ghost and none of its operator's adjustments could bring it back to life. He took out the artificial larynx through which he had been talking, signed that the interview was over.

-

	Mitchell returned to the camp in decidedly unsweet humor. Sugden met him, and said, "We shifted sixty percent. That means another hike starting tomorrow morning. A long one, too."

	"Aaargh!" said Mitchell. He began to load the thermics. Sugden gave him a look, holed down in his sleeping bag and left him to work it off.

	Jenkinsville was buried in slumber and Sugden was snoring loudly by the time he finished. He kept muttering to himself, "Homo saps, huh? Don't make me laugh!" all the while he worked. Then he got the last thermic sealed up, killed a spider he found scuttling around in an empty can, had a last look over the camp.

	The camels were a row of blanketed, gurgling shapes in the general darkness, with the nursemaidish Ali Fa'oum a lesser shape somewhere near them.

	Looking at them, Mitchell declaimed, "If I thought for one moment that you misshapen gobs of stink-meat knew what I was saying, I'd tell you something that'd take the supercilious expression off your faces for all time!"

	With that blood-pressure reliever, he started back to his own sleeping bag, got nearly there, suddenly turned and raced toward the camels. His kick brought Ali into immediate wakefulness, and his bellow could be heard all over the camp.

	"Which one of them made that noise?"

	"No can tell," protested Ali, sleepily. "Forty-four of them an' dromedary. How tell who makes noise? Only Allah know!"

	Sugden's voice came through the night, saying, "Mitch, for Heaven's sake!"

	"Oh, all right." Mitchell returned, found his torch. "Telepathic bunk!" he muttered. "We'll see!" By the light of his torch he cut a playing card into forty-five pieces, numbered them with a pencil, shuffled them in the dark, shut his eyes and picked one. Number twelfth

	Waking again, Sugden stuck his head out and said, suspiciously, "What're you doing now?"

	"Crocheting for my bottom drawer," said Mitchell. Ignoring the other, he examined his gun by the light of the torch, found it fully loaded with ten powerful dynoshells. Smiling happily, he murmured, "Number twelve!" and lay down to sleep.

	Ali shook him into wakefulness with the first flush of dawn. Sugden was already up, fully dressed and looking serious.

	"One of the camels has scrammed," he announced. "Number twelve."

	"Eh!" Mitchell shot up like a jack-in-the-box.

	Sugden said, "And I don't like that funny look you put on when I told you. It was my camel, not one of yours. Have you pinned an abracadabra on it?"

	"Me? What, me?" Mitchell tried to look innocent. "Oh, no!"

	"Because if you have, you'd better unhex it mighty quick."

	"Oh, we'll find it," comforted Mitchell. He got dressed, stowed away his gun, made the mental reservation that he'd do nothing about number twelve, nothing at all. He made the thought as powerful as he could.

	The missing animal was waiting for them beside the trail one hour out from Jenkinsville. It look its position in the string as of old habit. Nobody said anything. It was a long time since Mitchell had been so quiet.

	After a while, Sugden's dromedary turned its neck and made a horrible face at Mitchell riding right behind. He still said nothing. Deliberately, the caravan swayed on.

The End