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diff --git a/29750.txt b/29750.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c86797c --- /dev/null +++ b/29750.txt @@ -0,0 +1,800 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zen, by Jerome Bixby + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Zen + +Author: Jerome Bixby + +Illustrator: William Ashman + +Release Date: August 21, 2009 [EBook #29750] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZEN *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +ZEN + +By JEROME BIXBY + + + _Because they were so likable and intelligent + and adaptable--they were vastly dangerous!_ + +[Illustration: Illustrated by ASHMAN] + + +It's difficult, when you're on one of the asteroids, to keep from +tripping, because it's almost impossible to keep your eyes on the +ground. They never got around to putting portholes in spaceships, you +know--unnecessary when you're flying by GB, and psychologically +inadvisable, besides--so an asteroid is about the only place, apart from +Luna, where you can really see the stars. + +There are so many stars in an asteroid sky that they look like clouds; +like massive, heaped-up silver clouds floating slowly around the inner +surface of the vast ebony sphere that surrounds you and your tiny +foothold. They are near enough to touch, and you want to touch them, but +they are so frighteningly far away ... and so beautiful: there's nothing +in creation half so beautiful as an asteroid sky. + +You don't want to look down, naturally. + + * * * * * + +I had left the _Lucky Pierre_ to search for fossils (I'm David Koontz, +the _Lucky Pierre_'s paleontologist). Somewhere off in the darkness on +either side of me were Joe Hargraves, gadgeting for mineral deposits, +and Ed Reiss, hopefully on the lookout for anything alive. The _Lucky +Pierre_ was back of us, her body out of sight behind a low black ridge, +only her gleaming nose poking above like a porpoise coming up for air. +When I looked back, I could see, along the jagged rim of the ridge, the +busy reflected flickerings of the bubble-camp the techs were throwing +together. Otherwise all was black, except for our blue-white torch beams +that darted here and there over the gritty, rocky surface. + +The twenty-nine of us were E.T.I. Team 17, whose assignment was the +asteroids. We were four years and three months out of Terra, and we'd +reached Vesta right on schedule. Ten minutes after landing, we had known +that the clod was part of the crust of Planet X--or Sorn, to give it its +right name--one of the few such parts that hadn't been blown clean out +of the Solar System. + +That made Vesta extra-special. It meant settling down for a while. It +meant a careful, months-long scrutiny of Vesta's every square inch and a +lot of her cubic ones, especially by the life-scientists. Fossils, +artifacts, animate life ... a surface chunk of Sorn might harbor any of +these, or all. Some we'd tackled already had a few. + +In a day or so, of course, we'd have the one-man beetles and crewboats +out, and the floodlights orbiting overhead, and Vesta would be as +exposed to us as a molecule on a microscreen. Then work would start in +earnest. But in the meantime--and as usual--Hargraves, Reiss and I were +out prowling, our weighted boots clomping along in darkness. Captain +Feldman had long ago given up trying to keep his science-minded charges +from galloping off alone like this. In spite of being a military man, +Feld's a nice guy; he just shrugs and says, "Scientists!" when we appear +brightly at the airlock, waiting to be let out. + + * * * * * + +So the three of us went our separate ways, and soon were out of sight of +one another. Ed Reiss, the biologist, was looking hardest for animate +life, naturally. + +But I found it. + + * * * * * + +I had crossed a long, rounded expanse of rock--lava, wonderfully +colored--and was descending into a boulder-cluttered pocket. I was +nearing the "bottom" of the chunk, the part that had been the deepest +beneath Sorn's surface before the blow-up. It was the likeliest place to +look for fossils. + +But instead of looking for fossils, my eyes kept rising to those +incredible stars. You get that way particularly after several weeks of +living in steel; and it was lucky that I got that way this time, or I +might have missed the Zen. + +My feet tangled with a rock. I started a slow, light-gravity fall, and +looked down to catch my balance. My torch beam flickered across a small, +red-furred teddy-bear shape. The light passed on. I brought it sharply +back to target. + +My hair did _not_ stand on end, regardless of what you've heard me +quoted as saying. Why should it have, when I already knew Yurt so +well--considered him, in fact, one of my closest friends? + +The Zen was standing by a rock, one paw resting on it, ears cocked +forward, its stubby hind legs braced ready to launch it into flight. Big +yellow eyes blinked unemotionally at the glare of the torch, and I cut +down its brilliance with a twist of the polarizer lens. + +The creature stared at me, looking ready to jump halfway to Mars or +straight at me if I made a wrong move. + +I addressed it in its own language, clucking my tongue and whistling +through my teeth: "Suh, Zen--" + +In the blue-white light of the torch, the Zen shivered. It didn't say +anything. I thought I knew why. Three thousand years of darkness and +silence ... + +I said, "I won't hurt you," again speaking in its own language. + +The Zen moved away from the rock, but not away from me. It came a little +closer, actually, and peered up at my helmeted, mirror-glassed +head--unmistakably the seat of intelligence, it appears, of any race +anywhere. Its mouth, almost human-shaped, worked; finally words came. It +hadn't spoken, except to itself, for three thousand years. + +"You ... are not Zen," it said. "Why--how do you speak Zennacai?" + +It took me a couple of seconds to untangle the squeaking syllables and +get any sense out of them. What I had already said to it were stock +phrases that Yurt had taught me; I knew still more, but I couldn't +speak Zennacai fluently by any means. Keep this in mind, by the way: I +barely knew the language, and the Zen could barely remember it. To save +space, the following dialogue is reproduced without bumblings, blank +stares and _What-did-you-says_? In reality, our talk lasted over an +hour. + +"I am an Earthman," I said. Through my earphones, when I spoke, I could +faintly hear my own voice as the Zen must have heard it in Vesta's all +but nonexistent atmosphere: tiny, metallic, cricket-like. + +"Eert ... mn?" + +I pointed at the sky, the incredible sky. "From out there. From another +world." + +It thought about that for a while. I waited. We already knew that the +Zens had been better astronomers at their peak than we were right now, +even though they'd never mastered space travel; so I didn't expect this +one to boggle at the notion of creatures from another world. It didn't. +Finally it nodded, and I thought, as I had often before, how curious it +was that this gesture should be common to Earthmen and Zen. + +"So. Eert-mn," it said. "And you know what I am?" + +When I understood, I nodded, too. Then I said, "Yes," realizing that the +nod wasn't visible through the one-way glass of my helmet. + +"I am--last of Zen," it said. + +I said nothing. I was studying it closely, looking for the features +which Yurt had described to us: the lighter red fur of arms and neck, +the peculiar formation of flesh and horn on the lower abdomen. They were +there. From the coloring, I knew this Zen was a female. + +The mouth worked again--not with emotion, I knew, but with the +unfamiliar act of speaking. "I have been here for--for--" she +hesitated--"I don't know. For five hundred of my years." + +"For about three thousand of mine," I told her. + + * * * * * + +And then blank astonishment sank home in me--astonishment at the last +two words of her remark. I was already familiar with the Zens' enormous +intelligence, knowing Yurt as I did ... but imagine thinking to qualify +_years_ with _my_ when just out of nowhere a visitor from another +planetary orbit pops up! And there had been no special stress given the +distinction, just clear, precise thinking, like Yurt's. + +I added, still a little awed: "We know how long ago your world died." + +"I was child then," she said, "I don't know--what happened. I have +wondered." She looked up at my steel-and-glass face; I must have seemed +like a giant. Well, I suppose I was. "This--what we are on--was part of +Sorn, I know. Was it--" She fumbled for a word--"was it atom explosion?" + +I told her how Sorn had gotten careless with its hydrogen atoms and had +blown itself over half of creation. (This the E.T.I. Teams had surmised +from scientific records found on Eros, as well as from geophysical +evidence scattered throughout the other bodies.) + +"I was child," she said again after a moment. "But I remember--I +remember things _different_ from this. Air ... heat ... light ... how do +I live here?" + +Again I felt amazement at its intelligence; (and it suddenly occurred to +me that astronomy and nuclear physics must have been taught in Sorn's +"elementary schools"--else that _my years_ and _atom explosion_ would +have been all but impossible). And now this old, old creature, +remembering back three thousand years to childhood--probably to those +"elementary schools"--remembering, and defining the differences in +environment between _then_ and _now_; and more, wondering at its +existence in the different _now_-- + +And then I got my own thinking straightened out. I recalled some of the +things we had learned about the Zen. + +Their average lifespan had been 12,000 years or a little over. So the +Zen before me was, by our standards, about twenty-five years old. +Nothing at all strange about remembering, when you are twenty-five, the +things that happened to you when you were seven ... + +But the Zen's question, even my rationalization of my reaction to it, +had given me a chill. Here was no cuddly teddy bear. + +This creature had been born before Christ! + +She had been alone for three thousand years, on a chip of bone from her +dead world beneath a sepulchre of stars. The last and greatest Martian +civilization, the _L'hrai_, had risen and fallen in her lifetime. And +she was twenty-five years old. + +"How do I live here?" she asked again. + +I got back into my own framework of temporal reference, so to speak, and +began explaining to a Zen what a Zen was. (I found out later from Yurt +that biology, for the reasons which follow, was one of the most +difficult studies; so difficult that nuclear physics actually _preceded_ +it!) I told her that the Zen had been, all evidence indicated, the +toughest, hardest, longest-lived creatures God had ever cooked up: +practically independent of their environment, no special ecological +niche; just raw, stubborn, tenacious life, developed to a fantastic +extreme--a greater force of life than any other known, one that could +exist almost anywhere under practically any conditions--even floating in +midspace, which, asteroid or no, this Zen was doing right now. + +The Zens breathed, all right, but it was nothing they'd had to do in +order to live. It gave them nothing their incredible metabolism couldn't +scrounge up out of rock or cosmic rays or interstellar gas or simply do +without for a few thousand years. If the human body is a furnace, then +the Zen body is a feeder pile. Maybe that, I thought, was what evolution +always worked toward. + +"Please, will you kill me?" the Zen said. + + * * * * * + +I'd been expecting that. Two years ago, on the bleak surface of Eros, +Yurt had asked Engstrom to do the same thing. But I asked, "Why?" +although I knew what the answer would be, too. + +The Zen looked up at me. She was exhibiting every ounce of emotion a Zen +is capable of, which is a lot; and I could recognize it, but not in any +familiar terms. A tiny motion here, a quiver there, but very quiet and +still for the most part. And _that_ was the violent expression: +restraint. Yurt, after two years of living with us, still couldn't +understand why we found this confusing. + +Difficult, aliens--or being alien. + +"I've tried so often to do it myself," the Zen said softly. "But I +can't. I can't even hurt myself. Why do I want you to kill me?" She was +even quieter. Maybe she was crying. "I'm alone. Five hundred years, +Eert-mn--not too long. I'm still young. But what good is it--life--when +there are no other Zen?" + +"How do you know there are no other Zen?" + +"There are no others," she said almost inaudibly. I suppose a human girl +might have shrieked it. + +_A child_, I thought, _when your world blew up. And you survived. Now +you're a young three-thousand-year-old woman ... uneducated, afraid, +probably crawling with neuroses. Even so, in your thousand-year terms, +young lady, you're not too old to change._ + +"Will you kill me?" she asked again. + +And suddenly I was having one of those eye-popping third-row-center +views of the whole scene: the enormous, beautiful sky; the dead clod, +Vesta; the little creature who stood there staring at me--the +brilliant-ignorant, humanlike-alien, old-young creature who was asking +me to kill her. + +For a moment the human quality of her thinking terrified me ... the +feeling you might have waking up some night and finding your pet puppy +sitting on your chest, looking at you with wise eyes and white fangs +gleaming ... + +Then I thought of Yurt--smart, friendly Yurt, who had learned to laugh +and wisecrack--and I came out of the jeebies. I realized that here was +only a sick girl, no tiny monster. And if she were as resilient as Yurt +... well, it was his problem. He'd probably pull her through. + +But I didn't pick her up. I made no attempt to take her back to the +ship. Her tiny white teeth and tiny yellow claws were harder than steel; +and she was, I knew, unbelievably strong for her size. If she got +suspicious or decided to throw a phobic tizzy, she could scatter shreds +of me over a square acre of Vesta in less time than it would take me to +yelp. + +"Will you--" she began again. + +I tried shakily, "Hell, no. Wait here." Then I had to translate it. + + * * * * * + +I went back to the _Lucky Pierre_ and got Yurt. We could do without him, +even though he had been a big help. We'd taught him a lot--he'd been a +child at the blow-up, too--and he'd taught us a lot. But this was more +important, of course. + +When I told him what had happened, he was very quiet; crying, perhaps, +just like a human being, with happiness. + +Cap Feldman asked me what was up, and I told him, and he said, "Well, +I'll be blessed!" + +I said, "Yurt, are you sure you want us to keep hands off ... just go +off and leave you?" + +"Yes, please." + +Feldman said, "Well, I'll be blessed." + +Yurt, who spoke excellent English, said, "Bless you all." + +I took him back to where the female waited. From the ridge, I knew, the +entire crew was watching through binocs. I set him down, and he fell to +studying her intently. + +"I am not a Zen," I told her, giving my torch full brilliance for the +crew's sake, "but Yurt here is. Do you see ... I mean, do you know what +you look like?" + +She said, "I can see enough of my own body to--and--yes ..." + +"Yurt," I said, "here's the female we thought we might find. Take over." + +Yurt's eyes were fastened on the girl. + +"What--do I do now?" she whispered worriedly. + +"I'm afraid that's something only a Zen would know," I told her, +smiling inside my helmet. "I'm not a Zen. Yurt is." + +She turned to him. "You will tell me?" + +"If it becomes necessary." He moved closer to her, not even looking back +to talk to me. "Give us some time to get acquainted, will you, Dave? And +you might leave some supplies and a bubble at the camp when you move on, +just to make things pleasanter." + +By this time he had reached the female. They were as still as space, not +a sound, not a motion. I wanted to hang around, but I knew how I'd feel +if a Zen, say, wouldn't go away if I were the last man alive and had +just met the last woman. + +I moved my torch off them and headed back for the _Lucky Pierre_. We all +had a drink to the saving of a great race that might have become +extinct. Ed Reiss, though, had to do some worrying before he could down +his drink. + +"What if they don't like each other?" he asked anxiously. + +"They don't have much choice," Captain Feldman said, always the realist. +"Why do homely women fight for jobs on the most isolated space +outposts?" + +Reiss grinned. "That's right. They look awful good after a year or two +in space." + +"Make that twenty-five by Zen standards or three thousand by ours," said +Joe Hargraves, "and I'll bet they look beautiful to each other." + +We decided to drop our investigation of Vesta for the time being, and +come back to it after the honeymoon. + +Six months later, when we returned, there were twelve hundred Zen on +Vesta! + +Captain Feldman was a realist but he was also a deeply moral man. He +went to Yurt and said, "It's indecent! Couldn't the two of you control +yourselves at least a little? _Twelve hundred kids!_" + +"We were rather surprised ourselves," Yurt said complacently. "But this +seems to be how Zen reproduce. Can you have only half a child?" + +Naturally, Feld got the authorities to quarantine Vesta. Good God, the +Zen could push us clear out of the Solar System in a couple of +generations! + +I don't think they would, but you can't take such chances, can you? + + --JEROME BIXBY + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ October 1952. + 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. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zen, by Jerome Bixby + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZEN *** + +***** This file should be named 29750.txt or 29750.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/7/5/29750/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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