happens every time we colonizean inhabited planet. We give the natives something new. Then we findout it's bad for them, and we try to take it away from them. Andthen the knives come out, and the shooting starts."
Luis Gofredo was also a specialist, speaking on his subject.
* * * * *
While they were at lunch, Charley Loughran screened in fromthe other camp and wanted to talk to Bennet Fayon.
"A funny thing, Bennet. I took a shot at a bird ... no, a flyingmammal ... and dropped it. It was dead when it hit the ground,but there isn't a mark on it. I want you to do an autopsy, andfind out how I can kill things by missing them."
"How far away was it?"
"Call it forty feet; no more."
"What were you using, Charley?" Ayesha Keithley called from the table.
"Eight-point-five Mars-Consolidated pistol," Loughran said. "I'dlaid my shotgun down and walked away from it--"
"Twelve hundred foot-seconds," Ayesha said. "Bow-wave as well asmuzzle-blast."
"You think the report was what did it?" Fayon asked.
"You want to bet it didn't?" she countered.
Nobody did.
* * * * *
Mom was sulky. She didn't like what Dave Questell's men were doingto the nice-noise-place. Ayesha and Lillian consoled her by takingher into the soundproofed room and playing the recording of thepump-noise for her. Sonny couldn't care less, one way or another;he spent the afternoon teaching Mark Howell what the marks on papermeant. It took a lot of signs and play-acting. He had learned aboutthirty ideographs; by combining them and drawing little pictures,he could express a number of simple ideas. There was, of course,a limit to how many of those things anybody could learn andremember--look how long it took an Old Terran Chinese scribeto learn his profession--but it was the beginning of a methodof communication.
Questell got the pump house mounded over. Ayesha came out and trieda sound-meter, and also Mom, on it while the pump was running.Neither reacted.
A good many Svants were watching the work. They began to demonstrateangrily. A couple tried to interfere and were knocked down withrifle butts. The Lord Mayor and his Board of Aldermen came out withthe big horn and harangued them at length, and finally got themto go back to the fields. As nearly as anybody could tell, he wasfriendly to and co-operative with the Terrans. The snooper overthe village reported excitement in the plaza.
Bennet Fayon had taken an airjeep to the other camp immediatelyafter lunch. He was back by 1500, accompanied by Loughran. Theycarried a cloth-wrapped package into Fayon's dissecting-room.At cocktail time, Paul Meillard had to go and get them.
"Sorry," Fayon said, joining the group. "Didn't notice how late itwas getting. We're still doing a post on this svant-bat; that's whatCharley's calling it, till we get the native name.
"The immediate cause of death was spasmodic contraction of everymuscle in the thing's body; some of them were partly relaxed beforewe could get to work on it, but not completely. Every bone thatisn't broken is dislocated; a good many both. There is not theslightest trace of external injury. Everything was done by its ownmuscles." He looked around. "I hope nobody covered Ayesha's bet,after I left. If they did, she collects. The large outer membranesin the comb seem to be unaffected, but there is considerablecompression of the small round ones inside, in just one area,and more on the left side than on the right. Charley says itwas flying across in front of him from left to right."
"The receptor-area responding to the frequencies of the report,"Ayesha said.
Anna de Jong made a passing gesture toward Fayon. "The baby's yours,Bennet," she said. "This isn't psychological. I won't accept a caseof psychosomatic compound fracture."
"Don't be too premature about it, Anna. I think that's more or lesswhat you have, here."
Everybody looked at him, surprised. His subject was comparativetechnology. The bio and psycho-sciences were completely outsidehis field.
"A lot of things have been bothering me, ever since the firstcontact. I'm beginning to think I'm on the edge of understandingthem, now. Bennet, the higher life-forms here--the people, and thatdomsee, and Charley's svant-bat--are structurally identical with us.I don't mean gross structure, like ears and combs. I mean molecularand cellular and tissue structure. Is that right?"
Fayon nodded. "Biology on this planet is exactly Terra type. Yes.With adequate safeguards, I'd even say you could make a viabletissue-graft from a Svant to a Terran, or vice versa."
"Ayesha, would the sound waves from that pistol-shot in anyconceivable way have the sort of physical effect we're considering?"
"Absolutely not," she said, and Luis Gofredo said: "I've been shotat and missed with pistols at closer range than that."
"Then it was the effect on the animal's nervous system."
Anna shrugged. "It's still Bennet's baby. I'm a psychologist,not a neurologist."
"What I've been saying, all along," Fayon reiterated complacently."Their hearing is different from ours. This proves it.
"It proves that they don't hear at all."
He had expected an explosion; he wasn't disappointed. They allcontradicted him, many derisively. Signal reactions. Only PaulMeillard made the semantically appropriate response:
"What do you mean, Mark?"
"They don't _hear_ sound; they _feel_ it. You all saw what they haveinside their combs. Those things don't transmit sound like the earsof any sound-sensitive life-form we've ever seen. They transformsound waves into tactile sensations."
Fayon cursed, slowly and luridly. Anna de Jong looked at himwide-eyed. He finished his cocktail and poured another. In thesnooper screen, what looked like an indignation meeting was makinguproar in the village plaza. Gofredo cut the volume of the speakereven lower.
"That would explain a lot of things," Meillard said slowly. "Howhard it was for them to realize that we didn't understand when theytalked to us. A punch in the nose feels the same to anybody. Theythought they were giving us bodily feelings. They didn't know wewere insensible to them."
"But they do ... they do have a language," Lillian faltered."They talk."
"Not the way we understand it. If they want to say, 'Me,' it's_tickle-pinch-rub_, even if it sounds like _fwoonk_ to us, when itdoesn't sound like _pwink_ or _tweelt_ or _kroosh_. The tactilesensations, to a Svant, feel no more different than a massage byfour different hands. Analogous to a word pronounced by fourdifferent voices, to us. They'll have a code for expressing meaningsin tactile sensation, just as we have a code for expressing meaningsin audible sound."
"Except that when a Svant tells another, 'I am happy,' or 'I have astomach-ache,' he makes the other one feel that way too," Anna said."That would carry an awful lot more conviction. I don't imaginesymptom-swapping is popular among Svants. Karl! You were nearlyright, at that. This isn't telepathy, but it's a lot like it."
"So it is," Dorver, who had been mourning his departed telepathytheory, said brightly. "And look how it explains their society.Peaceful, everybody in quick agreement--" He looked at the screenand gulped. The Lord Mayor and his party had formed one clump, andthe opposition was grouped at the other side of the plaza; they werescreaming in unison at each other. "They make their decisions byendurance; the party that can resist the feelings of the otherlongest converts their opponents."
"Pure democracy," Gofredo declared. "Rule by the party that canmake the most noise."
"And I'll bet that when they're sick, they go around chanting,'I am well; I feel just fine!'" Anna said. "Autosuggestion wouldreally work, here. Think of the feedback, too. One Svant has a feeling.He verbalizes it, and the sound of his own voice re-enforces it in him.It is induced in his hearers, and they verbalize it, re-enforcing itin themselves and in him. This could go on and on."
"Yes. It has. Look at their technology." He felt more comfortable,now he was on home ground again. "A friend of mine, speaking abouta mutual acquaintance, once said, 'When they installed her circuits,they put in such big feeling circ
uits that there was no room leftfor any thinking circuits.' I think that's a perfect description ofwhat I estimate Svant mentality to be. Take these bronze knives, andthe musical instruments. Wonderful; the work of individuals tryingto express feeling in metal or wood. But get an idea like the wheel,or even a pair of tongs? Poo! How would you state the First Law ofMotion, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in tickle-pinch-rubterms? Sonny could grasp an idea like that. Sonny's handicap, ifyou call it that,