Trigger and Friends by James H. Schmitz

Somebody came to warn Duffold that the landing operation was to get underway in eighty minutes. He hurried off to contact the Outposts Station on Palayata and extend the period he expected to be absent.

When he came back, they were still at it—

* * *

There seemed to be no permanent government or permanent social structure of any sort on Palayata; not even, as a rule, anything resembling permanent family groups. On the other hand, some family groups maintained themselves for decades—almost as if someone were trying to prove that no rule could be applied too definitely to the perverse planet! Children needing attention attached themselves to any convenient adult or group of adults and were accepted until they decided to wander off again.

There were no indications of organized science or of scientific speculation. Palayatan curiosity might be intense, but it was brief and readily satisfied. Technical writings on some practical application or other of the scientific principles with which they were familiar here could be picked up almost anywhere and were used in the haphazard instruction that took the place of formal schooling. There wasn’t even the vaguest sort of recorded history, but there were a considerable number of historical manuscripts, some of them centuries old and lovingly preserved, which dealt with personal events of intense interest to the recorder and of very limited usefulness to his researcher. It had been the Hub’s own archaeological workers who eventually turned up evidence indicating that Palayata’s present civilization had been drifting along in much the same fashion for at least two thousand years and perhaps a good deal longer.

Impossible . . . impossible . . . impossible—if things were what they seemed to be!

So they weren’t what they seemed to be. Duffold became aware of the fact that by now Buchele and Wintan and he were the only ones remaining at that table. The others presumably had turned their attention to more promising work; and refreshments had appeared.

* * *

They ate thoughtfully until Duffold remarked, “They’re still either very much smarter than they act—smarter than we are, in fact—or something is controlling them. Right?”

Buchele said that seemed to be about it.

“And if they’re controlled,” Duffold went on, “the controlling agency is something very much smarter than human beings.”

Wintan shook his short-cropped blond head. “That wouldn’t necessarily be true.”

Duffold looked at him. “Put it this way,” he said. “Does the Service think human beings, using all the tricks of your psychological technology, could control a world to the extent Palayata seems to be controlled?”

“Oh, certainly!” Wintan said cheerfully; and Buchele nodded. “Given one trained operator to approximately every thousand natives, something quite similar could be established,” the senior commander said dryly. “But who would want to go to all that trouble?”

“And keep it up for twenty centuries or so!” Wintan added. “It’s a technical possibility, but it seems a rather pointless one.”

Duffold was silent for a moment, savoring some old suspicions. Even if the Service men had a genuine lack of interest in the possibilities of such a project, the notion that Psychology Service felt it was capable of that degree of control was unpleasant. “What methods would be employed?” he said. “Telepathic amplifiers?”

“Well, that would be one of the basic means, of course,” Wintan agreed. “Then, sociological conditioning—business of picking off the ones that were getting too bright to be handled. Oh, it would be a job, all right!”

Telepathic amplifiers—Outposts was aware, as was everyone else, that the Service employed gadgetry in that class; but no one outside the Service took a very serious view of such activities. History backed up that opinion with emphasis: the psi boys had produced disturbing effects in various populations from time to time, but in the showdown the big guns always had cleaned them up very handily. Duffold said hopefully, “Does it seem to be telepathy we’re dealing with here?”

Wintan shook his head. “No. If it were, we could spot it and probably handle whoever was using it. You missed that part of the summary, Excellency. Checking for tele-impulses was a major part of the job I was sent to do.” He looked at Buchele, perhaps a trifle doubtfully. “Palayatans appear to be completely blind to any telepathic form of approach; at least, that’s the report of my instruments.”

“Or shut-off,” Buchele said gently.

“Or shut-off,” Wintan agreed. “We can’t determine that with certainty until we get our specimen on board. We know the instruments would have detected such a resistance in any human being.”

Buchele almost grinned. “In any human being we’ve investigated,” he amended.

Wintan looked annoyed. From behind Duffold, Pilch’s voice announced, “I’ll be wanting his Excellency at Eighty-two Lock in”—there was something like a millisecond’s pause, while he could imagine her glancing at her timepiece again—”seventeen minutes. But Lueral wants him first.”

As Duffold stood up, she added, “You two had better come along. Biology has something to add to your discussion on telepathy.”

“Significant?” Buchele asked, coming stiffly to his feet.

“Possibly. The Integrators should finish chewing it around in a few more minutes.”

Duffold had been puzzling about what Lueral and the Biology Section could be wanting of him, but the moment he stepped out of a transfer lock and saw the amplification stage set up, with a view of a steamy Palayatan swamp floating in it, he knew what it was and he had a momentary touch of revulsion. The incident with the keff creature, which had cost the lives of two Outposts investigators, had been an unlovely one to study in its restructure; and he had studied it carefully several times in the past few days, in an attempt to discover any correlation with the general Palayatan situation. He had been unsuccessful in that and, taking the seat next to the stage that was indicated to him, he wondered what Biology thought it had found.

Lueral, the red-headed woman who had attended the earlier part of the general conference, introduced him to a fat, elderly man, whose name Duffold did not catch, but who was Biology’s Section Head. He was operating the amplifier and remained in his seat. Lueral said into the darkened room:

“This is the record of an objective restructure his Excellency brought shipward with him. The location of the original occurrence was at the eastward tip of Continent Two; the date, one hundred thirty-eight standard, roughly one hundred hours ago. To save time, we would like his Excellency to give us a brief explanation of the circumstances.”

Duffold cleared his throat. “The circumstances,” he said carefully, “are that we have investigators working in that area. Ostensibly, they are archaeologists. Actually, they’re part of an Outposts project, checking the theory that Palayata is operating under some kind of secret government. There is a concentration of the deserted settlements we find all over the planet around those swamps. The two men involved in the restructure were working through such a settlement—or supposed to be working through it—when the accident occurred.”

He added, “If it was an accident. I brought the record along because of the possibility that it was something else.”

The Section Head said in a heavy voice, “The restructure appears to have been made within two hours after the actual incident.”

“A little less than two hours,” Duffold agreed. “There were hourly position checks. When the team failed to check in, a restructure heli began to track them. By the time they reached this keff animal, some natives already had killed it—with a kind of harpoon gun, as the restructure shows. Some portions of the bodies of our investigators were recovered.”

“Had the natives observed the incident?” Lueral inquired.

“They said they had—too far off to prevent it. They claim they kill a keff whenever they find one, not because they regard them as a danger to themselves but because they are highly destructive to food animals in the area. They hadn’t realized a keff might also be destructive to human beings.”

The Section Head said, “This is a view of the keff some minutes after the killing of the two men. The promptness with which the restructure was made permits almost limitless detail.”

Duffold felt himself wince as the colors in the amplification stage between them blurred and ran briefly and cleared again. The keff appeared, half-submerged in muddy water, a mottled green and black hulk, the eyeless head making occasional thrusting motions, with an unpleasant suggestion of swallowing.

“Weight approximately three tons,” said the Section Head. “The head takes up almost a third of its length. Motions very slow. Normally, this would indicate a vegetarian or omnivorous animal with a limitless food supply, such as these mile-long swamp stretches would provide. Possibly aggressive when attacked, but not dangerous to any reasonably alert and mobile creature.”

He added, “However, we were able to pick up tele-impulses at this point, which indicate that the natives’ description of its food habits is correct. I suggest using tel-dampers. The impulses are rather vivid.”