The Asses of Balaam

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact Fiction October 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  THE

  ASSES

  OF

  BALAAM

  By DAVID GORDON

  Illustrated by Schoenherr

  * * * * *

  _The remarkable characteristic of Balaam's ass was that it was more perceptive than its master. Sometimes a child is more perceptive--because more straightforward and logical--than an adult...._

 

  _It is written in the Book of Numbers that Balaam, a wise man of the Moabites, having been ordered by the King of Moab to put a curse upon the invading Israelites, mounted himself upon an ass and rode forth toward the camp of the Children of Israel. On the road, he met an angel with drawn sword, barring the way. Balaam, not seeing or recognizing the angel, kept urging his ass forward, but the ass recognized the angel and turned aside. Balaam smote the beast and forced it to return to the path, and again the angel blocked the way with drawn sword. And again the ass turned aside, despite the beating from Balaam, who, in his blindness, was unable to see the angel._

  _When the ass stopped for the third time and lay down, refusing to go further, Balaam waxed exceeding wrath and smote again the animal with a stick._

  _Then the ass spoke and said: "Why dost thou beat me? I have always obeyed thee and never have I failed thee. Have I ever been known to fail thee?_"

  _And Balaam answered: "No." And at that moment his eyes were opened and he saw the angel before him._

  --STUDIES IN SCRIPTURE

  by Ceggawynn of Eboricum

  With the careful precision of controlled anger, DodethPell rippled a stomp along his right side._Clop_clopclop_clop_-clopclop-_clop_clop-clop_clop_clopclop....Each of his twelve right feet came down in turn while he glared across thebusiness bench at Wygor Bedis. He started the ripple again, while hewaited for Wygor's answer. The ripple was a good deal more effective thanjust tapping one's fingers, and equally as satisfying.

  Wygor Bedis twitched his mouth and allowed his eyelids to slide upover his eyeballs in a slow blink before answering. Dodeth had simplyasked, "Why wasn't this reported to me before?" But Wygor couldn'tfind the answer as simply as that. Not that he didn't have a goodanswer; it was just that he wanted to couch it in exactly the rightterms. Dodeth had a way with raking sarcasm that made a person tendto cringe.

  Dodeth was perfectly well aware of that. He hadn't been in theExecutive Office of Predator Council all these years for nothing; heknew how to handle people--when to praise them, when to flatter them,when to rebuke them, and when to drag them unmercifully over theshell-bed.

  He waited, his right legs marching out their steady rhythm.

  "Well," said Wygor at last, "it was just that I couldn't see any pointin bothering you with it at that point. I mean, _one_ specimen--"

  "Of an entirely new species!" snapped Dodeth in a sudden interruption.His legs stopped their rhythmic tramp. His voice rose from its usualeight-thousand-cycle rumble to a shrill squeak. "Fry it, Wygor, if youweren't such a good field man, I'd have sacked you long ago! Yourtrouble is that you have a penchant for bringing me problems that youought to be able to solve by yourself and then flipping right over onyour back and holding off on some information that ought to be broughtto my attention immediately!"

  There wasn't much Wygor could say to that, so he didn't try. He simplywaited for the raking to come, and, sure enough, it came.

  Dodeth's voice lowered itself to a soft purr. "The next time you haveto do anything as complicated as setting a snith-trap, you just humpright down here and ask me, and I'll tell you all about it. On theother hand, if the lower levels all suddenly become infested withshelks at the same time, why, you just take care of that little detailyourself, eh? The only other alternative is to learn to think."

  Wygor winced a trifle and kept his mouth shut.

  Having delivered himself of his jet of acid, Dodeth Pell looked downat the data booklet that Wygor had handed him. "Fortunately," he said,"there doesn't seem to be much to worry about. Only the UniversalMotivator knows how this thing could have spawned, but it doesn'tappear to be very efficient."

  "No, sir, it doesn't," said Wygor, taking heart from his superior'smild tone. "The eating orifice is oddly placed, and the teeth areobviously for grinding purposes."

  "I was thinking more of the method of locomotion," Dodeth said. "Ibelieve this is a record, although I'll have to look in the files tomake sure. I think that six locomotive limbs is the least I've everheard of on an animal that size."

  "I've checked the files," said Wygor. "There was a four-limbedleaf-eater recorded seven hundred years ago--four locomotive limbs,that is, and two grasping. But it was only as big as your hand."

  Dodeth looked through the three pages of the booklet. There wasn'tmuch there, really, but he knew Wygor well enough to know that all thedata he had thus far was there. The only thing that rankled was thatWygor had delayed for three work periods before reporting theintrusion of the new beast, and now five of them had been spotted.

  He looked at the page which showed the three bathygraphs that had beentaken of the new animals from a distance. There was something oddabout them, and Dodeth couldn't, for the hide of him, figure out whatit was. It aroused an odd fear in him, and made him want to burrowdeeper into the ground.

  "I can't see what keeps 'em from falling over," he said at last. "Arethey as slow-moving as they look?"

  "They don't move very fast," Wygor admitted, "but we haven't seen anyof them startled yet. I don't see how they could run very fast,though. It must take every bit of awareness they have to stay balancedon two legs."

  Dodeth sighed whistlingly and pushed the data booklet back across thebusiness bench to Wygor. "All right; I'll file the preliminaryspotting report. Now get out there and get me some pertinent data onthis queer beast. Scramble off."

  "Right away, sir."

  "And ... Wygor--"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "It's apparent that we have a totally new species here. It will becalled a _wygorex_, of course, but it would be better if we waiteduntil we could make a full report to the Keepers. So don't let any ofthis out--especially to the other Septs."

  "Certainly not, sir; not a whistle. Anything else?"

  "Just keep me posted, that's all. Scramble off."

  After Wygor had obediently scrambled off, Dodeth relaxed all his kneesand sank to his belly in thought.

  His job was not an easy one. He would like to have his office get fullcredit for discovering a new species, just as Wygor had--understandablyenough--wanted to get his share of the credit. On the other hand, one hadto be careful that holding back information did not constitute any dangerto the Balance. Above all, the Balance must be preserved. Even the snithhad its place in the Ecological Balance of the World--although one didn'tlike to think about sniths as being particularly useful.

  After all, every animal, every planet had its place in the scheme;each contributed its little bit to maintaining the Balance. Each hadits niche in the ecological architecture, as Dodeth liked to think ofit. The trouble was that the Balance was a shifting, swinging,ever-changing th
ing. Living tissues carried the genes of heredity inthem, and living tissues are notoriously plastic under the influenceof the proper radiation or particle bombardment. And animals _would_cross the poles.

  The World had been excellently designed by the Universal Motivator forthe development and evolution of life. Again, the concept of theBalance showed in His mighty works. Suppose, for instance, that theWorld rotated more rapidly about its axis, thereby exposing the wholesurface periodically to the deadly radiation of the Blue Sun, insteadof having a rotation period that, combined with the eccentricity ofthe World's orbit, gave it just enough libration to expose onlysixty-three per cent to the rays, leaving the remaining thirty-sevenper cent in twilight or darkness. Or suppose the orbit were so nearlycircular that there were no