Cluster (4 page)

“Tsopi, Polarian female.”

“Peace, Topsy.”

“Peace, Plint.”

Was this creature laughing back at him? What did the human form resemble, to the alien perception? A bundle of vine sprinters? Flint became intrigued. “I go to a dinosaur hunt. Would you like to accompany me?” In one sense, this too was protocol; Polarians like to be included in activities. But they were appropriately wary of dinosaurs.

“I would be gratified,” the teardrop said.

Now he had done it. He had never suspected the creature would accept. Well, it couldn't be helped. “It is an emergency. We shall be hurrying.”

“I shall not impede you,” the Polarian replied.

Fat chance!
But Flint smiled graciously. He gestured to the boy. “Show the way.”

The runner was off, sensing a race. This was firm, level ground, excellent for making time. Flint followed, stretching his legs.

Tsopi followed right along, rolling smoothly on her ball-wheel. She was at no disadvantage. Polarians could move rapidly and effortlessly when the terrain was right; their wheel was efficient. Flint had not before appreciated
how
efficient. On occasion he had wondered how the aliens kept themselves upright. The Shaman had remarked that a man on a unicycle performed the same feat. But there were no unicycles on Outworld.

Then they came to a ravine. One vine crossed it. The boy leaped up, caught a trailing sprout, and hauled himself topside. Flint started to follow, then paused. The Polarian could never make that leap.

“Permit me,” Flint said, extending his linked hands. He had heard of this kind of cooperation, and was curious to see if it worked.

The Polarian looped her trunk around his hands. It was warm; the body temperature was similar to man's. Flint braced himself and heaved up, hauling the entire weight of almost two hundred pounds into the air. Then he swung—and the torso of the creature bumped against the underside of the vine.

Instantly the trunk disengaged from his hands and whipped about the vine. The bottom wheel spun against the bark, shoving the torso up. The entire body elongated momentarily; the aliens had no bones. In a moment, by a splendid feat of acrobatics, the Polarian stood upright atop the vine, ready to move on.

Flint hauled himself up, and they proceeded running single file across the chasm. Purple mud bubbled for below; trash was disposed of here, for what dropped into that mud never reappeared.

The vine trailed near the ground on the far side, so the Polarian needed no help. Actually, Flint realized, she could have used a small ramp to hurl herself a few feet into the air at speed, high enough to catch the vine with her upraised tentacle. His assistance had merely facilitated things.

A mile farther along Flint heard the noises of an enraged dinosaur. “Trouble, all right!” he gasped, and tried to run faster. But he was winded.

Tsopi rolled up beside him, effortlessly. The tentacle touched the ground. “Permit me,” she said. Then the trunk reached over, circled around Flint's waist, and tightened elastically. In a moment he was lifted into the air, head forward.

Then Tsopi accelerated. Faster than any man, she zoomed across the plain, carrying Flint like an elevated javelin. Thirty miles an hour, thirty-five, forty—the wind whistled past his ears and forced his eyes and mouth closed. No wonder the Polarians had no such organs; they were unusable at this velocity. He held himself perfectly rigid, knowing that any upset in the alien's balance would be disastrous.

In moments they were at the scene of action. Tsopi slowed and set him down. The runner
 

“Thanks, Topsy,” Flint muttered, not entirely pleased at this demonstration of the alien's superior ability. But he realized that the Polarian might have felt similarly about the climb to the vine. It was a lesson, and a good one, vindicating the comment of the Shaman. Yet it galled him that he should have had to learn it this way.

“Welcome, Plint,” the Polarian responded, making a momentary glow of amusement.

Flint turned his attention to the situation. It was a disaster, all right. Two bodies lay in the trampled dirt, and Old Snort paced angrily around them. He had already worn a brown track in the turf. He didn't want to eat the bodies, for he was herbivorous, but he was intent on killing any other men who approached. Some ancient instinct told him that eventually they were sure to approach their dead.

The dinosaur was old, but neither small nor feeble. He measured thirty feet from snout to tail, and weighed about fifteen tons. His long-range eyesight was poor, but his nose and ears more than made up for this deficiency, and his muscles were huge. He had been wounded by several spear thrusts, but the cuts were superficial and only increased his rage. This hunt had been botched, all right.

“Where is the Chief?” Flint demanded of the nearest warrior, who was covering behind the stump of a withered vine.

“Wounded,” the man cried. “He watches over his son, who is dying. He calls for you.”

Flint hesitated, remembering the eclipse of Sol. The omen could signify the direct intervention of Sol in his affairs, but an alternate interpretation was that he could face a crisis of leadership. Sol was literally the center of the human empire, but figuratively the symbol of power, anywhere. If he bailed out Chief Strongspear, in the absence of the Chief's natural son, Flint would become the odd-on favorite for adoptive replacement. The Chief was too old to sire a new son, and too near retirement to raise a young lad to the office. But he had to have an heir, and soon. The custom of the tribe required it.

Flint wasn't certain he
wanted
leadership. There were many strictures on the Chief. He had to officiate at all sacrifices, marry all widows, lead all major hunts, and settle all tribal disputes. Any of these could be sticky matters. It was a dangerous, unpopular office, with little occasion for romance or star gazing. Worst of all, the Chief had to practice magic, to ensure good hunts and fertile tribeswomen, and to compel discipline. Just as Strongspear had compelled Flint's own attendance by the threat of the pus-spell.

Flint did not believe in magic—at least, not for himself. Others could cast spells that worked beautifully, but Flint had never been able to succeed. The Shaman had told him it was a matter of confidence and suggestion, that the spells worked because the ignorant tribesmen really believed in them. And the Shaman had demonstrated this by casting a mass sleep-spell on the entire tribe in the middle of the day. All had either succumbed or pretended to. Flint himself had gone under. The Shaman, figure of ridicule that he might be, knew human nature well, and was the ultimate magician. But Flint's own efforts didn't compel sufficient belief, and so failed. Already the others well knew his liability; men Flint could back off in a physical encounter could back
him
off in magical competition. It didn't help to have the Shaman explain that their very strength came from their ignorance; the plain fact was their magic worked.

Even Honeybloom had once given him a stiff finger, mischievously. He had been forced to gather three five-leaved thornblooms, at terrible expense to his hide, before she relented and put them in her red hair. “Intelligent people are highly suggestible,” the Shaman had observed, unperturbed.

And there was one crowning drawback to the Chiefship: retirement. At the end of his term, the Chief was ritually slaughtered and offered up for sacrifice to the Nature Spirits of Outworld. The Shaman, knowledgeable in everything, had explained that though in one sense this represented an unfortunate primitivism, in another it was practical. No Chief had any incentive to store private wealth, and so he was generally honest. “And the hunting
does
seem to improve the year after such a sacrifice,” the Shaman had admitted.

Naturally, Flint thought. Because the hunters had the fear of extinction goosing them, after witnessing human murder.

No, Flint did not want to be Chief. But as he came into the presence of Strongspear, he realized that he would probably have little choice. The old man's eyes glittered with grief under his ornate headdress of rank. Blood dripped from a shoulder wound. He was in no mood to be balked. Any trouble from Flint, and there would be much worse than pus-spells as punishment.

Yet the very seriousness of the situation provoked an anti-survival mirth. Here were cavemen and dinosaurs together! Flint bit his tongue to stop the smile, but it burst out anyway.

“What the hell you laughing at, boy?” Strongspear demanded.

“Not a laugh, a grimace,” Flint said quickly. He bared his teeth to amplify his horror. His horror was real, in its fashion. What a place for a foolish smile!

“What's that Pole doing here?” the Chief rapped.

Flint had forgotten the Polarian, who had unobtrusively followed him. “This is Topsy of Polaris,” he said hastily. “Topsy, this is Chief Strongspear.” He faced the Chief again. “Topsy is merely observing.”

“Well, let him spin his wheel out of here!” Strongspear snapped. “We don't need any damned aliens.”

“The Chief means it might be dangerous for you,” Flint told the Polarian. “No offense intended.” It did not seem to be the time to advise Strongspear that he had mistaken the gender of the alien.

The tentacle touched the trunk of a vine. “I quite understand, and appreciate the consideration. But the dinosaur poses no threat to me. Perhaps I can be of help.”

“Perhaps,” Flint agreed politely. He wished Tsopi would get well clear, but she was slow at taking such hints. Already he was regretting his vow to the Shaman to be nice to the aliens. If Tsopi died in the midst of a human dinosaur hunt, there could be Spherical repercussions.

“The Polarians control a Sphere twice the diameter of ours,” he Shaman had explained. “They've been in space longer, and they have better organization. And no doubt they're more advanced technologically in their origin-world than we are at Earth. Out here at the Fringe they're primitives, just as we are, just as every species is at the edge of its Sphere. But don't let that fool you. Someday we may need their help. Always remember that.”

This was one of a great many fundamental lessons the Shaman had taught Flint: the respect of alien culture. There were few Polarians on Outworld, but there were billions within their own Sphere. In many respects, Outworld was closer co Polaris than to Sol.

Suddenly Flint had an idea. If the Polarians could be made to seem instrumental in relieving this crisis, there would be little credit due Flint himself, and thus no question of becoming heir to the Chief. Strongspear would never confer honor on an alien.

“Your offer of assistance is much appreciated,” Flint said to Tsopi. “I noticed you move very swiftly. Do you think you could lead Old Snort toward our deadfall, without running the risk of getting trampled or gored?” Actually, as the Shaman had remarked, it was a misnomer. This was a concealed pit, not a killing weight to drop on the animal. But Strongspear called it a deadfall, so that was what it was.

“This would be simple,” Tsopi said, glowing with pleasure. Flint wondered whether her constant illumination was a Polarian trait or a female one.

“Get that dino turd out of here!” Strongspear yelled, furious that the alien should witness the human predicament.

“We shall clean up Snort's refuse as soon as we get him into the trap,” Flint said, hoping the Polarian would misinterpret Strongspear's reference. If only it weren't so apt!

They moved out. Flint showed Tsopi where the deadfall was, then they rounded up the scattered tribesmen and approached the dinosaur.

“The idea is to lure him away from our dead,” Flint explained. “But since he has killed men, he must be killed, not just removed. So we have to lead or drive him over the pit. The only problem is–”

“He can outrun us,” a tribesman finished.

“Yes,” Flint agreed grimly. “Therefore the Polarian has kindly agreed to take the lead. Old Snort can't outrun a Polarian on level ground.”

The men looked dubious, but acceded to Flint's evident authority. If he muffed it,
he
would be in trouble, not they. They formed a half circle around the dinosaur, a wide arc, for they were not eager to provoke him into another devastating charge. The monster would tend to shy away from a large group of men at a distance, unable to see or smell them well enough to attack them with confidence. But this was chancy.

Flint and Tsopi came near. Old Snort snorted as he became aware of them. He stomped the ground, making it shudder. From up close, he was huge—twice the height of a man. The bones of his head opened out into a massive shield about the neck, and he had three great horns on his nose. “A triceratops,” the Shaman had said. “Not a true reptile, here on Outworld, but close enough for practical purposes. The planet permits larger development. Convergent evolution.” Flint hadn't cared about the technicalities; all he knew was that Old Snort was about as formidable an opponent as the planet offered. True, there were also predator dinosaurs, but they seldom bothered to go after anything as small as men, and men stayed well clear of them, so there was little contact. There were many of these hornbeasts, in contrast, and their young made good hunting. The sheer stupidity of flushing this one, instead of smaller prey...

Flint shook his head. Old Snort, the most ferocious of the lot, terror of the plain for over a century.

The huge head swung around, attracted by Flint's motion. The triple horns pointed at man and Polarian. Any notion that the dinosaur was dull or slow was dissipated by that alert reaction; Old Snort was stupid, but fully competent within his province. The opposite of the Shaman, who was intelligent but often incompetent about routine things, like gutting roachpigs for cooking. He tended to shy away from the squirting green juices.

The dinosaur snorted again, the air misting out around his nasal horn with a half-melodious honk, and stamped one mighty hoof warningly. He did not like intruders.