Heinlein, Robert A Methuselah's Children

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The departure of the landing boat was delayed while King and Lazarus investigated. Hans was matter
of fact about his information and what little they could check of what he said was correct. But he was not
too helpful about his "friends." "Oh, just people," he said, shrugging at their stupidity. "Much like back
home. Nice people. Go to work, go to school, go to church. Have kids and enjoy themselves. You'll like
them."
But he was quite clear about one point: his friends were expecting-him; therefore he must go along.
Against his wishes and his better judgment Lazarus saw added to his party Hans Weatheral, Janice
Schmidt, and a stretcher for Hans.
When the party returned three days later Lazarus made a long private report to King while the
specialist reports were being analyzed and combined. "It's amazingly like Earth, Skipper, enough to make
you homesick. But it's also different enough to give you the willies-llke looking at your own face in the
mirror and having it turn out to have three eyes and no nose. Unsettling."
"But how about the natives?"
"Let me tell it. We made a quick swing of the day side, for a bare eyes look. Nothing you haven't
seen through the 'scopes. Then I put her down where Hans told me to, in a clearing near the center of
one of their cities. I wouldn't have picked the place myself; I would have preferred to land in the bush
and reconnoitre. But you told me to play Hans' hunches."
"You were free to use your judgment," King reminded
"Yes, yes. Anyhow we did it. By the time the techs had sampled the air and checked for hazards
there was quite a crowd around us. They-well, you've seen the stereographs."
"Yes. Incredibly android."
"Android, hell! They're men. Not humans, but men just the same." Lazarus looked puzzled. "I don't
like it."
King did not argue. The pictures had shown bipeds seven to eight feet tall, bilaterally symmetric,
possessed of internal skeletal framework, distinct heads, lens-and-camera eyes. Those eyes were their
most human and appealing features; they were large, limpid, and tragic, like those of a Saint Bernard dog.
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It was well to concentrate on the eyes; their other features were not as tolerable. King looked away
from the loose, toothless mouths, the bifurcated upper lips. He decided that it might take a long, long time
to learn to be fond of these creatures. "Go ahead," he told Lazarus.
"We opened up and I stepped out alone, with my hands empty and. trying to look friendly and
peaceable. Three of them stepped forward-eagerly, I would say. But they lost interest in me at once; they
seemed to be waiting for somebody else to come out. So I gave orders to carry Hans out.
"Skipper, you wouldn't believe it. They fawned over Hans like a long lost brother. No, that doesn't
describe it. More like a king returning home in triumph. They were polite enough with the rest of us, in an
offhand way, but they fairly slobbered over Hans." Lazarus hesitated. "Skipper? Do you believe in
reincarnation?"
"Not exactly. I'm open-minded about it. I've read the report of the Frawling Committee, of course." -
"I've never had any use for the notion myself. But how else could you account for the reception they
gave Hans?"
"I don't account for it. Get on with your report. Do you think it is going to be possible for us to
colonize here?"
"Oh," ~'�d Lazarus, "they left no doubt on that point. You see, Hans really can talk to them,
telepathically. Hans tells us that - their gods have authorized us to live here-and the natives have already
made plans to receive us."
"That's right. They want us." -
"Well! That's a relief."
"Is it?"
King studied Lazarus' glum features. "You've made a report favorable on every point. Why the sour
look?"
"I don't know. I'd just rather we found a planet of our own. Skipper, anything this easy has a hitch in
it."
Chapter 2
THE Jockaira (or Zhacheira, as some prefer) turned an entire city over to the colonists.
Such astounding cooperation, plus the sudden discovery by almost every member of the Howard
Families that he was sick for the feel of dirt under foot and free air in his lungs, greatly speeded the
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removal from ship to ground. It had been anticipated that at least an Earth year would be needed for such
transition and that somnolents would be waked only as fast as they could be accommodated dirtside, But
the limiting factor now was the scanty ability of the ship's boats to transfer a hundred thousand people as
they were roused.
The Jockaira city was not designed to fit the needs of human beings. The Jockaira were not human
beings, their physical requirements were somewhat different, and their cultural needs as expressed in
engineering were vastly different. But a city, any city, is a machine to accomplish certain practical ends:
shelter, food supply, sanitation, communication; the internal logic of these prime requirements. as applied
by diiferent creatures to different environments, will produce an unlimited number of answers. But, as
applied by any race of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing androidal creatures to a particular environment,
the results, although strange, are necessarily such that Terran humans can use them. In some ways the
Jockaira city looked as wild as a pararealist painting, but humans have lived in igloos, grass shacks, and
even in the cybernautomated burrow under Antarctina; these humans could and did move into the
Jockaira city-and of course at once set about reshaping it to suit them better.
It was not difficult even though there was much to be done. There were buildings already
standing-shelters with roofs on them, the artificial cave basic to all human shelter requirements. It did not
matter what the Jockaira had used such a structure for; humans could use it for almost anything: sleeping,
recreation, eating, storage, production. There were actual "caves" as well, for the Jockaira dig in more
than we do. But humans easily turn troglodyte on occasion, in New York as readily as in Antarctica.
There was fresh potable water piped in for drinking and for limited washing. A major lack lay in
plumbing; the city had no overall drainage system. The "Jocks" did not waterbathe and their personal
sanitation requirements differed from ours and were taken care of differently. A major effort had to be
made to jury-rig equivalents of shipboard refreshers and adapt them to hook in with Jockaira disposal
arrangements. Minimum necessity ruled; baths would remain a rationed luxury until water supply and
disposal could be increased at least tenfold. But baths are not a necessity.
But such efforts at modification were minor compared with the crash program to set up hydroponic
farming, since most of the somnolents could not be waked until a food supply was assured. The
do-it-now crowd wanted to tear out every bit of hydroponic equipment in the New Frontiers at once,
ship it down dirtside, set it up and get going, while depending on stored supplies during the change-over;
a more cautious minority wanted to move only a pilot plant while continuing to grow food in the ship; they [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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