"Wilhelm, Kate - Planet Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

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Planet Story
by Kate Wilhelm
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Copyright (c)1975 Kate Wilhelm
First published in Epoch, ed. Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood, 1975

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction and Fantasy


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THERE IS NOTHING to fear on this planet.
The planet is represented in our records by a series of numbers and letters, each conveying information: distance from its sun, mass, period of rotation, presence or absence of a moon, or moons. The seedling colony that will arrive some day will name the planet.
We are twenty-seven men and women planet-side, and three more who remain on the orbiting ship -- minimum age twenty-five, maximum age fifty. This is the fourth Earth year of a seven-year contract. There were twenty-eight of us planet-side but Ito went mad and committed suicide twenty days ago, on the seventh day here.
There is abundant life here, a full spectrum from viruses to high order mammals. The animals do not fear us. We walk among them freely. Each is conditioned to fear its predator and to search out its prey. Nowhere in that scheme does man fit in.
The sun is a bright yellow glow in the clouds; it moves like a searchlight in fog to complete its trip in thirty-four hours. The planet's month is thirty-seven days. On the thirty-eighth day we shall leave. We shall take nothing with us except data, facts -- a paragraph in the catalogue of worlds. With our lives we are buying insurance for the family of Earthmen.
Olga watches me with brooding eyes, for twice I have spurned her, while I in turn watch Haarlem, a distant figure at the moment, operating his core drill with such precision and concentration it is as if he has become an extension of the mechanism he uses. I wonder at the affinity that sometimes exists between man and his machinery, an affinity that seems reciprocal in that now the will of the human rules, and again he is ruled by the demands of his tool. I concentrate on Olga and Haarlem and my abstract thoughts because here within reach of the ship, in sight of my friends and co-workers, I am afraid.
My buzzer sounds and I turn it off and go back to the ship, the end of my duty break. Since Ito's death we have taken turns at the computer, coding the data, transmitting everything to our orbiting ship. Should Haarlem die, another would operate his core drill, complete his geological survey; should I die, another would don my doctor's garb and check temperatures, administer to the ill and injured. I wait for my signal to activate the steps and the airlock door to the decontamination chamber and as I wait I watch Haarlem, a distant figure. I am eager to be inside, my suit off, breathing the air of the ship, not that from my oxypack, and I want to whirl about, to find whatever it is making my heart beat too fast.
On this gentle continent, on this benign planet where there is no menace to mankind in the air, on the ground, beneath the ground, no menace of any kind, I am afraid. We all are afraid. No one speaks of his fear because there is nothing to allude to as a possible source. No sighing wind in the trees, no alien ghosts among ruins, no psychic call from a gloomy wood. Nothing. A broad plain of low vegetation; animals grazing; a hazy sky; a flock of small, furry, flying animals that appear soft and pettable; an iridescent gauzy wing of an insect that hovers, then darts away, insect-like.
There are no ruins on this planet. No artifacts. No intelligent life has ever walked here until now. There is the plain that stretches to the horizon to the east, and the hills rounded with age and. covered with trees spaced as if planned, park-like, garden-like. Elvil assures us there is no plan, this is how trees grow if left alone. There are the flowers that grow at the junction of the forest and plain: bushes with blue flowers, carpeting plants with yellow masses of blooms, vines that curl and twist their way up the trees that edge the forest. Red flowers hang downward, with long slender stamens that sway with the wind, like dancers in yellow tights against a scarlet velvet backdrop. The flowers are the buffer zone between forest and plain, a living flag of truce, promising no encroachment on the part of either for ground already held by the other.
The steps descend and I climb upward and turn momentarily, to see Olga's face lifted, as she watches me with brooding eyes. I enter the chamber where a spray cleanses my suit, and lights dry it and finish the process. I discard the garment and step naked into the shower and remain under the warm water for the allotted time, wishing it were longer, and, still naked, go into the dressing room where Derek is preparing to go outside. Elvil is assisting him.
I watch him dress and realize, belatedly, he is dressing for a trip in one of the flyers. Our ships are like Chinese puzzle boxes: Inside each there is a smaller one, which in turn contains another even smaller. We have three flyers on the landing ship, each large enough for six or eight people. Two of them are with the ocean party, and now Derek plans to use the third. He is pulling on his heavier suit, his gloves are at his belt.
"Where are you going?"
"To the ocean group. Jeanne is missing."
I feel a lurch in my stomach. Jeanne? She is tall and has hair the color of sun on pale sand, blindingly bright, with dark streaks. Her skin is baby smooth and there is a joy in her that makes her a favorite of everyone.
"They need a third car for the search," Derek says, and now he is ready. Elvil double checks him and he enters the decontamination chamber.
"They'll find her," Elvil says then, his hand heavy and cold on my bare shoulder. I nod and clasp his hand briefly.
* * * *
While the ship is on the ground the seats for thirty become narrow beds, each with a screen that can be closed. When I am relieved at the computer I find Olga waiting for me in my tiny area of privacy.
"Please," she says, "don't make me leave. I only want to talk."
It is not yet dark outside; my mind is on the search that is continuing along the ocean's edge. But I am very tired. I sit by Olga and draw her close and hold her. She is trembling.
"I am so afraid," she whispers. "I keep looking around to see what's there, and there's nothing. And that makes it worse." Her trembling increases and I lie down with her and stroke her and think of the search.
Olga is beautiful in a broad-hipped, large-breasted way that is pure sensuality. Her responses to any touch are always sexual. She apologizes for it often, but everyone understands her needs, and few deny her the caresses she craves, the release she must have. Her trembling now however is not caused by sexual tension, but fear, and I don't know how to allay it.
We should have a meeting, an open session with everyone present, and air our fears, I decide. After the search for Jeanne is completed, I'll call a meeting here on the ship, another with the shore party. Derek can preside there. He will know how to conduct it, what to look for, how to force it along certain lines.
Olga moans and I turn my attention once more to her. She has forgotten her fear, at least for the moment. When I leave her, she is sleeping peacefully.
The captain's office is next to my infirmary. He is a slender man, with delicate hands, and he, like Haarlem, has an affinity for his machines. Sometimes I feel he and the ship are one. His face is deeply carved and often he is careless with his depilatory cream and misses a fissure in which dark hairs grow luxuriantly, until the next time he removes his beard. Those dark lines make his face look like a caricature. He is studying a monitor on his desk when I enter. It is the search area near the ocean. I read the moving lights as readily as he, but I ask anyway.
"Any news yet?"
"Nothing."
We continue to watch together for a few moments, and then I sit down opposite him and say, "She has done it deliberately then."
He nods. There are constant signals from the suits unless the wearer turns them off. Two buttons are involved requiring both hands to deactivate the signal system. It is an impossibility for it to happen accidentally.
"Like Ito," I say. Not like, but he knows what I mean. Ito hanged himself.
"I'm afraid so," he says. He looks at me, but doesn't turn off his monitor. "Have you any suggestions?"
"None. I'd like an open session, as soon as possible."
There is no immediate response. He must weigh the possible results: an increase of fear if it becomes acknowledged, a decrease, a cause identified, someone else being driven to suicide. There are ten days remaining to us on this planet. He says, "Today I found myself stopping to hear if there were footsteps behind me. I have been uneasy before, not like this though. I looked around before I could control myself."