"Mindswap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sheckley Robert)

Chapter 9

The Ganzer Rain Forest on Melde was deep and wide; the faintest ghost of a breeze whispered among the colossal trees, slithered through the interlocked vines, and crept broken-backed over hook-edged grass. Drops of water slid painfully down and around the tangled foliage like exhausted runners of a maze, coming to rest at last in the spongy and indifferent soil. Shadows mingled and danced, faded and reappeared, called into spurious motion by two tired suns in a mouldy green sky. Overhead, a desolate therengol whistled for his mate, and heard in reply the quick ominous cough of a predatory kingspringer. And through this dolorous woodland, so tantalizingly like Earth and yet so different, Marvin Flynn moved in his unfamiliar Melden body, his eyes downcast, searching for ganzer eggs but not knowing what they looked like.

All had been haste. From the moment he arrived on Melde, he had barely had a chance to take stock of himself. No sooner was he bodified than someone was barking orders in his ear. Flynn had just had time to look hastily over his four-armed, four-legged body, give his tail a single experimental flick, and fold his ears across his back; then he was herded into a work gang, given a barracks number and a mess-hall location, and handed a jumper two sizes too big for him, and shoes that fitted tolerably well except for the left front. He signed for and was given the tools of his new trade; a large plastic bag, dark glasses, a compass, a net, a pair of tongs, a heavy metal tripod, and a blaster.

He and his fellow workers were then assembled in ranks, and received a hasty indoctrination lecture by the manager, a bored and supercilious Atreian.

Flynn learned that his new home occupied an insignificant portion of space in the vicinity of Aldeberan. Melde (so named for its dominant race, the Meldens) was a thoroughly second-rate world. Its climate was rated 'intolerable' on the Hurlihan-Chanz Climatic Tolerance Scale; its natural-resource potentiality was classified 'submarginal', and its aesthetic-resonance factor (unweighted) was given as 'unprepossessing'.

'Not the sort of place,' the manager said, 'that one would choose for a vacation, or indeed, for anything, except possibly the practice of extreme mortification.'

His audience tittered uneasily.

'Nevertheless,' the manager continued, 'this unloved and unlovely place, this solar misfortune, this cosmic mediocrity is home to its inhabitants, who consider it the finest place in the universe.'

The Meldens, with a fierce pride in their only tangible asset, had made the best of their bad bargain. With the plucky determination of the eternally unlucky, they had farmed the edges of the rain forest and collected meagre low-yield ores from the vast blazing deserts. Their dogged persistence would have been inspiring had it not been so tedious; and their efforts might have been considered a tribute to the vaunting spirit of life had they not invariably ended in failure. Because, despite all their travail, the Meldens were able to achieve nothing better than slow starvation in the present, and the promise of racial degeneration and extinction in the future.

'This, then, is Melde,' said the manager. 'Or rather, this is what Melde would be were it not for one additional factor. That factor spells the difference between success and failure. I refer, of course, to the presence of ganzer eggs.

'Ganzer eggs!' the manager repeated. 'No other planet possesses them; no other planet so desperately needs them. Ganzer eggs! No object in the known universe so clearly epitomizes the quality of desirability. Ganzer eggs! Let us consider them, if you will.'

Ganzer eggs were the sole export of the planet Melde. And luckily for the Meldens, the eggs were always in heavy use. On Orichades, ganzer eggs were utilized as love-objects; on Opiuchus II, they were ground up and eaten as a sovereign aphrodisiac; on Morichades, after consecration, they were worshipped by the irrational K'tengi. Many other uses could be cited.

Thus, ganzer eggs were a vital natural resource, and the only one which the Meldens possessed. With them, the Meldens could maintain a tolerable degree of civilization. Without them, the race would surely perish.

To acquire a ganzer egg, all one had to do was pick it up. But therein lay certain difficulties, since the ganzers, not unnaturally, objected to this practice.

The ganzers were forest dwellers, remotely of lizard origin. They also were destroyers, clever at concealment, wily and ferocious, and completely untameable. These qualities rendered the collection of ganzer eggs extremely perilous.

'It is a curious situation,' the manager pointed out, 'and not without its paradoxical overtones, that the main source of life on Melde is also the main cause of death. It is something for you all to think about as you begin your workday. And so I say, take good care of yourselves, keep guarded at all times, look before you leap, observe every precaution with your indentured lives, and also with the costly bodies which have been entrusted to your keeping. But in addition, remember that you must fulfill your norm, since every day's work unfulfilled by so much as a single egg is penalized by the addition of an additional week. Therefore, be careful, but not too careful, and be perseverant, but not blindly so, and courageous, but not rash, and assiduous, but never foolhardy. Follow these simple maxims and you will have no difficulty. Good luck, boys!'

Marvin and his fellow workers were then formed into ranks and marched into the forest on the double.

Within an hour they reached their search area. Marvin Flynn took this opportunity to ask the foreman for instructions.

'Instructions?' the foreman asked. 'What kind of type instructions?' (He was an Orinathian deportee with no language aptitude.)

'I mean,' Flynn said, 'what am I supposed to do?'

The foreman pondered the question and at length responded: 'You supposed pick eggs of ganzer.' (Amusingly enough, he pronounced it 'guntser'.)

'I understand that,' Flynn said. 'But I mean to say, I don't even know what a ganzer eggs looks like.'

'Not to worry,' the foreman replied. 'You know when see no mistake, yes.'

'Yes, sir,' Marvin said. 'And when I find a ganzer egg, are there any special rules for handling it? I mean to say, is breakage a problem, or-'

'To handle,' the foreman said, 'you pick up egg, put in bag. You understand this thing yes no?'

'Of course I do,' Marvin said. 'But also, I would like to know about daily quota expectations. I mean to say, is there some sort of a quota system, or perhaps an hourly breakdown? I mean, how does one know when one has fulfilled his norm?'

'Ah!' said the foreman, a look of comprehension finally crossing his broad, good-natured face. 'Of finish is like this. You pick ganzer egg, put in bag, check?'

'Check,' Marvin said instantly.

'You do so time after time until bag is full. Catch?'

'I believe I do,' Marvin said. 'The full bag represents the actual or ideal quota. Let me just go over the steps again to make absolutely sure I've got it. First, I locate the ganzer eggs, applying Terran associations to the concept, and presumably having no difficulty in identification. Second, having located and identified the desired object, I proceed to "put it in my basket", by which I assume that I lift it manually to initiate the transaction, and then proceed with actions consonant with that beginning. Third, repeating this strategy S for an x number of times, I perform the equation Sx=B!, when B represents the capacity of the bag and ! represents the sum of x transactions necessary to fulfill B. Finally, the sum of all strategies completed, I return to the camp, where I turn in the contents of my bag. Do I have it straight, sir?'

The foreman tapped his teeth with his tail and said, 'You put me on, huh, kid?'

'Well, sir, I merely wished to ascertain-'

'You make big joke on old-planet Orinathian yokel, yah, sure, huh. You think you so smart, but you ain't so smart. Remember – nobody likes wise guy.'

'I'm sorry,' Flynn said, swishing his tail deferentially. (But he wasn't sorry. It was his first show of spirit since this downward-trending series of events had begun for him, and he was glad to find himself capable of some show of spirit, no matter how ill-timed or badly considered.)

'Anyhow, me I tink you catch elementary rudiments of job all right so you go now perform work-labour big, and keep nose clean or I break six or more of your limbs, dig?'

'Dig,' said Flynn, wheeled and cantered into the forest and there began his search for ganzer eggs.