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the carnivore
By G. A. MORRIS
Illustrated by BURCHARD
_Why were they apologetic? It wasn't their fault that they came to Earth much too late._
The beings stood around my bed in air suits like ski suits, with globesover their heads like upside-down fishbowls. It was all like amasquerade, with odd costumes and funny masks.
I know that the masks are their faces, but I argue with them and find Ithink as if I am arguing with humans behind the masks. They are people.I recognize people and whether I am going to like this person or thatperson by something in the way they move and how they get excited whenthey talk; and I know that I like these people in a motherly sort ofway. You have to feel motherly toward them, I guess.
They all remind me of Ronny, a medical student I knew once. He was smalland round and eager. You had to like him, but you couldn't take him veryseriously. He was a pacifist; he wrote poetry and pulled it out to readaloud at ill-timed moments; and he stuttered when he talked too fast.
They are like that, all fright and gentleness.
* * * * *
I am not the only survivor--they have explained that--but I am the firstthey found, and the least damaged, the one they have chosen to representthe human race to them. They stand around my bed and answer questions,and are nice to me when I argue with them.
All in a group they look half-way between a delegation of nations and anark, one of each, big and small, thick and thin, four arms or wings, allshapes and colors in fur and skin and feathers.
I can picture them in their UN of the Universe, making speeches in theirdifferent languages, listening patiently without understanding eachother's different problems, boring each other and being too polite toyawn.
They are polite, so polite I almost feel they are afraid of me, and Iwant to reassure them.
But I talk as if I were angry. I can't help it, because if things hadonly been a little different ... "Why couldn't you have come sooner? Whycouldn't you have tried to stop it before it happened, or at least comesooner, afterward...?"
If they had come sooner to where the workers of the Nevada power pilestarved slowly behind their protecting walls of lead--if they had lookedsooner for survivors of the dust with which the nations of the world hadslain each other--George Craig would be alive. He died before they came.He was my co-worker, and I loved him.
We had gone down together, passing door by door the automatic safeguardsof the plant, which were supposed to protect the people on the outsidefrom the radioactive danger from the inside--but the danger of a failureof politics was far more real than the danger of failure in the scienceof the power pile, and that had not been calculated by the builders. Wewere far underground when the first radioactivity in the air outside hadshut all the heavy, lead-shielded automatic doors between us and theoutside.
We were safe. And we starved there.
"Why didn't you come sooner?" I wonder if they know or guess how I feel.My questions are not questions, but I have to ask them. He is dead. Idon't mean to reproach them--they look well meaning and kindly--but Ifeel as if, somehow, knowing why it happened could make it stop, couldlet me turn the clock back and make it happen differently. If I couldhave signaled them, so they would have come just a little sooner.
They look at one another, turning their funny-face heads uneasily,moving back and forth, but no one will answer.
The world is dead.... George is dead, that thin, pathetic creature withthe bones showing through his skin that he was when we sat still at thelast with our hands touching, thinking there were people outside who hadforgotten us, hoping they would remember. We didn't guess that the worldwas dead, blanketed in radiating dust outside. Politics had killed it.
These beings around me, they had been watching, seeing what was going tohappen to our world, listening to our radios from their smallsettlements on the other planets of the Solar System. They had seen thedoom of war coming. They represented stellar civilizations of greatpower and technology, and with populations that would have made oursseem a small village; they were stronger than we were, and yet they haddone nothing.
"Why didn't you stop us? You could have stopped us."
* * * * *
A rabbity one who is closer than the others backs away, gesturingpolitely that he is giving room for someone else to speak, but he looksguilty and will not look at me with his big round eyes. I still feelweak and dizzy. It is hard to think, but I feel as if they are hiding asecret.
A doelike one hesitates and comes closer to my bed. "We discussed it ...we voted...." It talks through a microphone in its helmet with a softlisping accent that I think comes from the shape of its mouth. It has amuzzle and very soft, dainty, long nibbling lips like a deer thatnibbles on twigs and buds.
"We were afraid," adds one who looks like a bear.
"To us the future was very terrible," says one who looks as if itmight have descended from some sort of large bird like a penguin. "Somuch-- Your weapons were very terrible."
Now they all talk at once, crowding about my bed, apologizing. "So muchkilling. It hurt to know about. But your people didn't seem to mind."
"We were afraid."
"And in your fiction," the doelike one lisped, "I saw plays from youramusement machines which said that the discovery of beings in spacewould save you from war, not because you would let us bring friendshipand teach peace, but because the human race would unite in _hatred_ ofthe outsiders. They would forget their hatred of each other only in anew and more terrible war with us." Its voice breaks in a squeak and itturns its face away from me.
"You were about to come out into space. We were wondering how to hide!"That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if hemight have descended from a bat--gray silken fur on his pointed face,big night-seeing eyes, and big sensitive ears, with a humped shape onthe back of his air suit which might be folded wings. "We were trying toconceal where we had built, so that humans would not guess we were nearand look for us."
They are ashamed of their fear, for because of it they broke all thekindly laws of their civilizations, restrained all the pity andgentleness I see in them, and let us destroy ourselves.
I am beginning to feel more awake and to see more clearly. And I ambeginning to feel sorry for them, for I can see why they are afraid.
They are herbivores. I remember the meaning of shapes. In the pathsof evolution there are grass eaters and berry eaters and root diggers.Each has its functional shape of face and neck--and its wide,startled-looking eyes to see and run away from the hunters. In all theirracial history they have never killed to eat. They have been killed andeaten, or run away, and they evolved to intelligence by selection. Thoselived who succeeded in running away from carnivores like lions, hawks,and men.
* * * * *
I look up, and they turn their eyes and heads in quick embarrassedmotion, not meeting my eye. The rabbity one is nearest and I reach outto touch him, pleased because I am growing strong enough now to move myarms. He looks at me and I ask the question: "Are there anycarnivores--flesh eaters--among you?"
He hesitates, moving his lips as if searching for tactful words. "Wehave never found any that were civilized. We have frequently found themin caves and tents fighting each other. Sometimes we find them fightingeach other with the ruins of cities around them, but they are alwayssavages."
The bearlike one said heavily, "It might be that carnivores evolve morerapidly and tend toward intelligence more often, for we find radioactiveplanets without life, and places like the place you call your asteroidbelt, where a planet shoul
d be--but there are only scattered fragmentsof planet, pieces that look as if a planet had been blown apart. Wethink that usually ..." He looked at me uncertainly, beginning tofumble his words. "We think ..."
"Yours is the only carnivorous race we have found that was--civilized,that had a science and was going to come out into space," the doelikeone interrupted softly. "We were afraid."
They seem to be apologizing.
The rabbity one, who seems to be chosen as the leader in speaking to me,says, "We will give you anything you want. Anything we are able to giveyou."
They mean it. We survivors will be privileged people, with a key to allthe cities, everything free. Their sincerity is wonderful, but puzzling.Are they trying to atone for the thing they feel was a crime; that theyallowed humanity to murder itself, and lost to the Galaxy the richnessof a race? Is this why they are so generous?
Perhaps then they will help the race to get started again. The recordsare not lost. The few survivors can eventually repopulate Earth. Underthe tutelage of these peaceable races, without the stress of divisioninto nations, we will flower as a race. No children of mine to thefurthest descendant will ever make war again. This much of a lesson wehave learned.
These timid beings do not realize how much humanity has wanted peace.They do not know how reluctantly we were forced and trapped by oldinstitutions and warped tangles of politics to which we could see noanswer. We are not naturally savage. We are not savage when approachedas individuals. Perhaps they know this, but are afraid anyhow,instinctive fear rising up from the blood of their hunted, frightenedforebears.
* * * * *
The human race will be a good partner to these races. Even recoveringfrom starvation as I am, I can feel in myself an energy they do nothave. The savage in me and my race is a creative thing, for in those whohave been educated as I was it is a controlled savagery which attacksand destroys only problems and obstacles, never people. Any human raisedoutside of the political traditions that the race inherited from itsbloodstained childhood would be as friendly and ready for friendship asI am toward these beings. I could never hurt these pleasant, overgrownbunnies and squirrels.
"We will do everything we can to make up for ... we will try to help,"says the bunny, stumbling over the English, but civilized and cordialand kind.
I sit up suddenly, reaching out impulsively to shake his hand. Suddenlyfrightened he leaps back. All of them step back, glancing behind them asthough making sure of the avenue of escape. Their big luminous eyeswiden and glance rapidly from me to the doors, frightened.
They must think I am about to leap out of bed and pounce on them and eatthem. I am about to laugh and reassure them, about to say that all Iwant from them is friendship, when I feel a twinge in my abdomen fromthe sudden motion. I touch it with one hand under the bedclothes.
There is the scar of an incision there, almost healed. An operation. Theweakness I am recovering from is more than the weakness of starvation.
For only half a second I do not understand; then I see why they lookedashamed.
They voted the murder of a race.
All the human survivors found have been made sterile. There will be nomore humans after we die.
I am frozen, one hand still extended to grasp the hand of the rabbityone, my eyes still searching his expression, reassuring words still halfformed.
There will be time for anger or grief later, for now, in this instant, Ican understand. They are probably quite right.
We were carnivores.
I know, because, at this moment of hatred, I could kill them all.
--G. A. MORRIS
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ October 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.