The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Read online

  “Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn’t have an apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should be.

  “All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous check on the weight of an object. A balance can’t check the weight of a sample unless that weight is constant; there’s too much time lag involved.

  “So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They have no measurements, and the experiment can’t be repeated. And only Nordred actually saw the sample floating. Luvochek and Bessermann will eventually think up a ‘natural’ explanation for the apparent steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he saw actually happened.

  “I don’t see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field of physics.” But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.

  Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.

  “It’s a funny thing,” said Gonzales musingly. “Some time back, we were in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist’s work.

  “Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the ‘impossible’ to another physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him.” He smiled wryly. “There ain’t no justice in the world.”

  “No,” agreed MacHeath, “but the trick worked. He won’t have any subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that has already been smashed. On the contrary, he’ll let them go through in order to find new data to build another theory on.”

  “He’ll never again be the man he was,” said Taggert regretfully. “He’s lost the force of his convictions. He won’t be capable of taking a no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary.” He made an odd gesture with one hand. “What else can you do with a man who’s a psionic psychopath?”

  THE ASSES OF BALAAM (1961)

  With the careful precision of controlled anger, Dodeth Pell rippled a stomp along his right side. Clopclopclopclop-clopclop-clopclop-clopclopclopclop.… Each of his twelve right feet came down in turn while he glared across the business bench at Wygor Bedis. He started the ripple again, while he waited for Wygor’s answer. The ripple was a good deal more effective than just tapping one’s fingers, and equally as satisfying.

  Wygor Bedis twitched his mouth and allowed his eyelids to slide up over his eyeballs in a slow blink before answering. Dodeth had simply asked, “Why wasn’t this reported to me before?” But Wygor couldn’t find the answer as simply as that. Not that he didn’t have a good answer; it was just that he wanted to couch it in exactly the right terms. Dodeth had a way with raking sarcasm that made a person tend to cringe.

  Dodeth was perfectly well aware of that. He hadn’t been in the Executive Office of Predator Council all these years for nothing; he knew how to handle people—when to praise them, when to flatter them, when to rebuke them, and when to drag them unmercifully over the shell-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 point in 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 usual eight-thousand-cycle rumble to a shrill squeak. “Fry it, Wygor, if you weren’t such a good field man, I’d have sacked you long ago! Your trouble is that you have a penchant for bringing me problems that you ought to be able to solve by yourself and then flipping right over on your back and holding off on some information that ought to be brought to my attention immediately!”

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

  Dodeth’s voice lowered itself to a soft purr. “The next time you have to do anything as complicated as setting a snith-trap, you just hump right down here and ask me, and I’ll tell you all about it. On the other hand, if the lower levels all suddenly become infested with shelks at the same time, why, you just take care of that little detail yourself, 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 down at the data booklet that Wygor had handed him. “Fortunately,” he said, “there doesn’t seem to be much to worry about. Only the Universal Motivator knows how this thing could have spawned, but it doesn’t appear to be very efficient.”

  “No, sir, it doesn’t,” said Wygor, taking heart from his superior’s mild tone. “The eating orifice is oddly placed, and the teeth are obviously for grinding purposes.”

  “I was thinking more of the method of locomotion,” Dodeth said. “I believe this is a record, although I’ll have to look in the files to make sure. I think that six locomotive limbs is the least I’ve ever heard of on an animal that size.”

  “I’ve checked the files,” said Wygor. “There was a four-limbed leaf-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’t much there, really, but he knew Wygor well enough to know that all the data he had thus far was there. The only thing that rankled was that Wygor had delayed for three work periods before reporting the intrusion of the new beast, and now five of them had been spotted.

  He looked at the page which showed the three bathygraphs that had been taken of the new animals from a distance. There was something odd about them, and Dodeth couldn’t, for the hide of him, figure out what it was. It aroused an odd fear in him, and made him want to burrow deeper into the ground.

  “I can’t see what keeps ’em from falling over,” he said at last. “Are they as slow-moving as they look?”

  “They don’t move very fast,” Wygor admitted, “but we haven’t seen any of 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 balanced on two legs.”

  Dodeth sighed whistlingly and pushed the data booklet back across the business bench to Wygor. “All right; I’ll file the preliminary spotting report. Now get out there and get me some pertinent data on this queer beast. Scramble off.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “And…Wygor—”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “It’s apparent that we have a totally new species here. It will be called a wygorex, of course, but it would be better if we waited until we could make a full report to the Keepers. So don’t let any of this 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 knees and sank to his belly in thought.

  His job was not an easy one. He would like to have his office get full credit for discovering a new species, just as Wygor had—understandably enough—wanted to get his share of the credit. On the other hand, one had to be careful that holding back information did not constitute any danger to the Balance. Above all, the Balance must be preserved. Even the snith had its place in the Ecological Balance of the World—although one didn’t like 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 had its niche in the ecological architecture, as Dodeth liked to think of it. The trouble was that the Balance was a shifting, swinging, ever-changing thing. Living tissues
carried the genes of heredity in them, and living tissues are notoriously plastic under the influence of the proper radiation or particle bombardment. And animals would cross the poles.

  The World had been excellently designed by the Universal Motivator for the development and evolution of life. Again, the concept of the Balance showed in His mighty works. Suppose, for instance, that the World rotated more rapidly about its axis, thereby exposing the whole surface periodically to the deadly radiation of the Blue Sun, instead of having a rotation period that, combined with the eccentricity of the World’s orbit, gave it just enough libration to expose only sixty-three per cent to the rays, leaving the remaining thirty-seven per cent in twilight or darkness. Or suppose the orbit were so nearly circular that there were no perceptible libration at all; one side would burn eternally, and the other side would freeze, since there would be no seasonal winds blowing first east, then west, bringing the warmth of the Blue Sun from the other side.

  Or, again, suppose there were no Moon and no Yellow Sun to give light to the dark side. Who could live in an everlasting night?

  Or suppose that the magnetic field of the World were too weak to focus the majority of the Blue Sun’s output of electrons and ions on the poles. How could life have evolved at all?

  Balance. And the Ultimate Universal Motivator had put part of the responsibility into the hands of His only intelligent species. And a part of that part had been put into the hands of Dodeth Pell as the head of Predator Control.

  Fry it! Something was niggling at the back of Dodeth’s mind, and no amount of philosophizing would shake it. He reached into the drawer of the business bench and pulled out the duplicate of Wygor’s data booklet. He flipped it open and looked at the bathygraphs again.

  * * * *

  There was no single thing about them that he could pinpoint, but the beasts just didn’t look right. Dodeth Pell had seen many monstrous animals in his life, but none like this.

  Most people disliked and were disgusted by a snith because of the uncanny resemblance the stupid beast had to the appearance of Dodeth’s own race. There could be no question of the genetic linkage between the two species, but, in spite of the physical similarities, their actions were controlled almost entirely by instinct instead of reason. They were like some sort of idiot parody of intelligent beings.

  But it was their similarity which made them loathsome. Why should Dodeth Pell feel a like emotion when he saw the bathygraphs of the two-legged thing? Certainly there was no similarity.

  Wait a minute!

  He looked carefully at the three-dimensional pictures again.

  Fry it! He couldn’t be sure—

  After all, he wasn’t a geneticist. Checking the files wouldn’t be enough; he wouldn’t know how to ask the proper cross-filing questions.

  He lolled his tongue out and absently rasped at a slight itch on the back of his hand while he thought.

  If his hunch were correct, then it was time to call in outside help now, instead of waiting for more information. Still, he needn’t necessarily call in official expert help just yet. If he could just get a lead—enough to verify or disprove the possibility of his hunch being correct—that would be enough for a day or two, until Wygor got more data.

  There was always Yerdeth, an older parabrother on his prime-father’s side. Yerdeth had studied genetics—theoretical, not applied—with the thought of going into Control, and kept on dabbling in it even after he had discovered that his talents lay in the robot design field.

  “Ardan!” he said sharply.

  At the other end of the office, the robot assistant ceased his work for a moment. “Yes, sir?”

  “Come here a minute; I want you to look at something.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The robot’s segmented body was built very much like Dodeth’s own, except that instead of the twelve pairs of legs that supported Dodeth’s body, the robot was equipped with wheels, each suspended separately and equipped with its individual power source. Ardan rolled sedately across the floor, his metallic body gleaming in the light from the low ceiling. He came to a halt in front of Dodeth’s business bench.

  Dodeth handed Ardan the thin data booklet. “Scan through that.”

  Ardan went through it rapidly, his eyes carefully scanning each page, his brain recording everything permanently. After a few seconds, he looked back up at Dodeth. “A new species.”

  “Exactly. Did you notice anything odd about their appearance?”

  “Naturally,” said Ardan. “Since their like has never been seen before, it is axiomatic that they would appear odd.”

  Fry it! Dodeth thought. He should have known better than to ask a question like that of Ardan. To ask it to determine what might be called second-order strangeness in a pattern that was strange in the first place was asking too much of a robot.

  “Very well, then. Make an appointment for this evening with Yerdeth Pell. I would like to see him at his home if it is convenient.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the robot.

  * * * *

  Evening was four work-periods away, and even after Yerdeth had granted the appointment, Dodeth found himself fidgeting in anticipation.

  Twice, during the following work periods, Wygor came in with more information. He had gone above ground with a group of protection robots, finally, to take a look at the new animals himself, but he hadn’t yet managed to obtain enough data to make a definitive report on the strange beasts.

  But the lack of data was, in itself, significant.

  Dodeth usually liked to walk through the broad tunnels of the main thoroughfares, since he didn’t particularly care to ride robot-back for so short a distance, but this time he was in such a hurry to see Yerdeth that he decided to let Ardan take him.

  He climbed aboard, clamped his legs to the robot’s sides, and said: “To Yerdeth Pell’s.”

  The robot said “Yes, sir,” and rolled out to the side tunnel that led toward one of the main robot tunnels. When they finally came to a tunnel labeled Robots and Passengers Only, Ardan rolled into it and revved his wheels up to high speed, shooting down the tunnelway at a much higher velocity than Dodeth could possibly have run.

  The tunnelway was crowded with passenger-carrying robots, and with robots alone, carrying out orders from their masters. But there was no danger; no robot could harm any of Dodeth’s race, nor could any robot stand idly by while someone was harmed. Even in the most crowded of conditions, every robot in the area had one thing foremost in his mind: the safety of every human within sight or hearing.

  Dodeth ignored the traffic altogether. He had other things to think about, and he knew—without even bothering to consider it—that Ardan could be relied upon to take care of everything. Even if it cost him his own pseudolife, Ardan would do everything in his power to preserve the safety and health of his passenger. Once in a while, in unusual circumstances, a robot would even disobey orders to save a life, for obedience was strictly secondary to the sanctity of human life, just as the robot’s desire to preserve his own pseudoliving existence was outranked by the desire to obey.

  Dodeth thought about his job, but he carefully kept his mind off the new beasts. He knew that fussing in his mind over them wouldn’t do him any good until he had more to work with—things which only his parabrother, Yerdeth, could supply him. Besides, there was the problem of what to do about the hurkle breeding sites, which were being encroached upon by the quiggies. Some of the swamps on the surface, especially those that approached the Hot Belts, were being dried out and filled with dust, which decreased the area where the hurkle could lay its eggs, but increased the nesting sites for quiggies.

  That, of course, was a yearly cycle, in general. As the Blue Sun moved from one side to the other, and the winds shifted accordingly, the swamps near the Twilight Border would dry out or fill up accordingly. But this year the eastern swamps weren’t filling up as they should, and some precautionary measures would have to be taken to prevent too great a shift in the hurkle
-quiggie balance.

  Then there was the compensating migratory shift of the Hotland beasts—those which lived in the areas where the slanting rays of the Blue Sun could actually touch them, and which could not stand the, to them, terrible cold of the Darklands. Instead, they moved back and forth with the Blue Sun and remained in their own area—a hot, dry, fiery-bright hinterland occupied only by gnurrs, gpoles, and other horrendous beasts.

  Beyond those areas, according to the robot patrols which had reconnoitered there, nothing lived. Nothing could. No protoplasmic being could exist under the direct rays of the Blue Sun. Even the metal-and-translite bodies of a robot wouldn’t long protect the sensitive mechanisms within from the furnace heat of the huge star.

  Each species had its niche in the World. Some, like the hurkle, lived in swamp water. Others lived in lakes and streams. Still others flew in the skies or roamed the surface or climbed the great trees. Some, like Dodeth’s own people, lived beneath the surface.

  The one thing an intelligent species had to be most careful about was not to disturb the balance with their abilities, but to work to preserve it. In the past, there had been those who had built cities on the surface, but the cities had removed the natural growth from large areas, which, in turn, had forced the city people to import their food from outside the cities. And that had meant an enforced increase in the cultivation of the remaining soil, which destroyed the habitats of other animals, besides depleting the soil itself. The only sensible way was to live under the farmlands, so that no man was ever more than a few hundred feet from the food supply. The Universal Motivator had chosen that their species should evolve in burrows beneath the surface, and if that was the niche chosen for Dodeth’s people, then that was obviously where they should remain to keep the Balance.

  Of course, the snith, too, was an underground animal, though the tunnels were unlined. The snith’s tunnels ran between and around the armored tunnels of Dodeth’s people, so that each city surrounded the other without contact—if the burrows of the snith could properly be called a city.