The Gentle Vultures Read online

  Strangely enough, the creature’s face had begun to sprout hair; more, in fact, than the Hurrian face had, and of a darker color.

  But still, the central fact was that he was not thriving. He had grown thinner because he was eating poorly, and if he was kept too long, his health might suffer. Devi-en had no wish to feel responsible for that.

  On the next day, the large-primate seemed quite calm. He talked almost eagerly, bringing the subject around to nuclear warfare almost at once. (It had a terrible attraction for the large-primate mind, Devi-en thought.)

  The creature said, “You said nuclear wars always happen? Does that mean there are other people than yours and mine—and theirs?” He indicated the near-by Mauvs.

  “There are thousands of intelligent species, living on thousands of worlds. Many thousands,” said Devi-en.

  “And they all have nuclear wars?”

  “All who have reached a certain stage of technology. All but us. We were different. We lacked competitiveness. We had the co-operative instinct.”

  “You mean you know that nuclear wars will happen and you do nothing about it?”

  “We do” said Devi-en, pained. “Of course, we do. We try to help. In the early history of my people, when we first developed space-travel, we did not understand large-primates. They repelled our attempts at friendship and we stopped trying. Then we found worlds in radioactive ruins. Finally, we found one world actually in the process of a nuclear war. We were horrified, but could do nothing. Slowly, we learned. We are ready, now, at every world we discover to be at the nuclear stage. We are ready with decontamination equipment and eugenic analyzers.”

  “What are eugenic analyzers?”

  Devi-en had manufactured the phrase by analogy with what he knew of the wild one’s language. Now he said carefully, “We direct matings and sterilizations to remove, as far as possible, the competitive element in the remnant of the survivors.”

  For a moment, he thought the creature would grow violent again.

  Instead, the other said in a monotone, “You make them docile, you mean, like these things?” Once again he indicated the Mauvs.

  “No. No. These are different. We simply make it possible for the remnants to be content with a peaceful, nonexpanding, nonaggressive society under our guidance. Without this, they destroyed themselves, you see, and without it, they would destroy themselves again.”

  “What do you get out of it?”

  Devi-en stared at the creature dubiously. Was it really necessary to explain the basic pleasure of life? He said, “Don’t you enjoy helping someone?”

  “Come on. Besides that. What’s in it for you?”

  “Of course, there are contributions to Hurria.”

  “Ha.”

  “Payment for saving a species is only fair,” protested Devi-en, “and there are expenses to be covered. The contribution is not much and is adjusted to the nature of the world. It may be an annual supply of wood from a forested world; manganese salts from another. The world of these Mauvs is poor in physical resources and they themselves offered to supply us with a number of individuals to use as personal assistants. They are extremely powerful even for large-primates and we treat them painlessly with anticerebral drugs—”

  “To make zombies out of them!”

  Devi-en guessed at the meaning of the noun and said indignantly, “Not at all. Merely to make them content with their role as personal servant and forgetful of their homes. We would not want them to be unhappy. They are intelligent beings!”

  “And what would you do with Earth if we had a war?”

  “We have had fifteen years to decide that,” said Devi-en. “Your world is very rich in iron and has developed a fine steel technology. Steel, I think, would be your contribution.” He sighed, “But the contribution would not make up for our expense in this case, I think. We have overwaited now by ten years at least.”

  The large-primate said, “How many races do you tax in this way?”

  “I do not know the exact number. Certainly more than a thousand.”

  “Then you’re the little landlords of the Galaxy, are you? A thousand worlds destroy themselves in order to contribute to your welfare. You’re something else, too, you know.” The wild one’s voice was rising, growing shrill. “You’re vultures.”

  “Vultures?” said Devi-en, trying to place the word.

  “Carrion-eaters. Birds that wait for some poor creature to die of thirst in the desert and then come down to eat the body.”

  Devi-en felt himself turn faint and sick at the picture conjured up for him. He said weakly, “No, no, we help the species.”

  “You wait for the war to happen like vultures. If you want to help, prevent the war. Don’t save the remnants. Save them all.”

  Devi-en’s tail twitched with sudden excitement. “How do we prevent a war? Will you tell me that?” (What was prevention of war but the reverse of bringing about a war? Learn one process and surely the other would be obvious.)

  But the wild one faltered. He said finally, “Get down there. Explain the situation.”

  Devi-en felt keen disappointment. That didn’t help. Besides—He said, “Land among you? Quite impossible.”

  His skin quivered in half a dozen places at the thought of mingling with the wild ones in their untamed billions.

  Perhaps the sick look on Devi-en’s face was so pronounced and unmistakable that the wild one could recognize it for what it was even across the barrier of species. He tried to fling himself at the Hurrian and had to be caught virtually in mid-air by one of the Mauvs, who held him immobile with an effortless constriction of biceps.

  The wild one screamed. “No. Just sit here and wait! Vulture! Vulture! Vulture!”

  It was days before Devi-en could bring himself to see the wild one again. He was almost brought to disrespect of the Arch-administrator when the latter insisted that he lacked sufficient data for a complete analysis of the mental make-up of these wild ones.

  Devi-en said boldly, “Surely, there is enough to give some solution to our question.”

  The Arch-administrator’s nose quivered and his pink tongue passed over it meditatively. “A solution of a kind, perhaps. I can’t trust this solution. We are facing a very unusual species. We know that already. We can’t afford to make mistakes.—One thing, at least. We have happened upon a highly intelligent one. Unless—unless he is at his race’s norm.” The Arch-administrator seemed upset at that thought.

  Devi-en said, “The creature brought up the horrible picture of that—that bird—that—”

  “Vulture,” said the Arch-administrator.

  “It put our entire mission into such a distorted light. I have not been able to eat properly since, or sleep. In fact, I am afraid I will have to ask to be relieved—”

  “Not before we have completed what we have set out to do,” said the Arch-administrator firmly. “Do you think I enjoy the picture of—of carrion-eat—You must collect more data.”

  Devi-en nodded finally. He understood, of course. The Arch-administrator was no more anxious to cause a nuclear war than any Hurrian would be. He was putting off the moment of decision as long as possible.

  Devi-en settled himself for one more interview with the wild one. It turned out to be a completely unbearable one, and the last.

  The wild one had a bruise across his cheek as though he had been resisting the Mauvs again. In fact, it was certain he had. He had done so numerous times before, and the Mauvs, despite their most earnest attempts to do no harm, could not help but bruise him on occasion. One would expect the wild one to see how intensely they tried not to hurt him and to quiet his behavior as a result. Instead, it was as though the conviction of safety spurred him on to additional resistance.

  (These large-primate species were vicious, vicious, thought Devi-en sadly.)

  For over an hour, the interview hovered over useless small talk and then the wild one said with sudden belligerence, “How long did you say you things have been here?”
>
  “Fifteen of your years,” said Devi-en.

  “That figures. The first flying saucers were sighted just after World War II. How much longer before the nuclear war?”

  With automatic truth, Devi-en said, “We wish we knew,” and stopped suddenly.

  The wild one said, “I thought nuclear war was inevitable. Last time you said you overstayed ten years. You expected the war ten years ago, didn’t you?”

  Devi-en said, “I can’t discuss this subject.”

  “No?” The wild one was screaming. “What are you going to do about it? How long will you wait? Why not nudge it a little? Don’t just wait, vulture. Start one.”

  Devi-en jumped to his feet. “What are you saying?”

  “Why else are you waiting, you dirty—” He choked on a completely incomprehensible expletive, then continued, breathlessly, “Isn’t that what vultures do when some poor miserable animal, or man, maybe, is taking too long to die? They can’t wait. They come swirling down and peck out his eyes. They wait till he’s helpless and just hurry him along the last step.”

  Devi-en ordered him away quickly and retired to his sleeping room, where he was sick for hours. Nor did he sleep then or that night. The word “vulture” screamed in his ears and that final picture danced before his eyes.

  Devi-en said firmly, “Your Height, I can speak with the wild one no more. If you need still more data, I cannot help you.”

  The Arch-administrator looked haggard. “I know. This vulture business—Very difficult to take. Yet you notice the thought didn’t affect him. Large-primates are immune to such things, hardened, calloused. It is part of their way of thinking. Horrible.”

  “I can get you no more data.”

  “It’s all right. I understand.—Besides, each additional item only strengthens the preliminary answer; the answer I thought was only provisional; that I hoped earnestly was only provisional.” He buried his head in his grizzled arms. “We have a way to start their nuclear war for them.”

  “Oh? What need be done?”

  “It is something very direct, very simple. It is something I could never have thought of. Nor you.”

  “What is it, your Height?” He felt an anticipatory dread.

  “What keeps them at peace now is that neither of two nearly equal sides dares take the responsibility of starting a war. If one side did, however, the other—well, let’s be blunt about it—would retaliate in full.”

  Devi-en nodded.

  The Arch-administrator went on. “If a single nuclear bomb fell on the territory of either of the two sides, the victims would at once assume the other side had launched it. They would feel they could not wait for further attacks. Retaliation in full would follow within hours; the other side would retaliate in its turn. Within weeks it would be over.”

  “But how do we make one of them drop that first bomb?”

  “We don’t, Captain. That is the point. We drop the first bomb ourselves.”

  “What?” Devi-en swayed.

  “That is it. Compute a large-primate’s mind and that answer thrusts itself at you.”

  “But how can we?”

  “We assemble a bomb. That is easy enough. We send it down by ship and drop it over some inhabited locality—”

  “Inhabited?”

  The Arch-administrator looked away and said uneasily, “The effect is lost otherwise.”

  “I see,” said Devi-en. He was picturing vultures; he couldn’t help it. He visualized them as large, scaled bird (like the small harmless flying creatures on Hurria, but immensely large), with rubber-skinned wings and long razor-bills, circling down, pecking at dying eyes.

  His hands covered his eyes. He said shakily, “Who will pilot the ship? Who will launch the bomb?”

  The Arch-administrator’s voice was no stronger than Devi-en’s. “I don’t know.”

  “I won’t,” said Devi-en. “I can’t. There is no Hurrian who can, at any price.”

  The Arch-administrator rocked back and forth miserably. “Perhaps the Mauvs could be given orders—”

  “Who could give them such orders?”

  The Arch-administrator sighed heavily. “I will call the Council. They may have all the data. Perhaps they will suggest something.”

  So after a little over fifteen years, the Hurrians were dismantling their base on the other side of the Moon. Nothing had been accomplished. The large-primates of the planet had not had their nuclear war; they might never have.

  And despite all the future horror that might bring, Devi-en was in an agony of happiness. There was no point in thinking of the future. For the present, he was getting away from this most horrible of horrible worlds.

  He watched the Moon fall away and shrink to a spot of light, along with the planet, and the Sun of the system itself, till the whole thing was lost among the constellations.

  It was only then that he could feel anything but relief. It was only then that he felt a first tiny twinge of it-might-have-been.

  He said to the Arch-administrator, “It might all have been well if we had been more patient. They might yet have blundered into nuclear war.”

  The Arch-administrator said, “Somehow I doubt it. The mentalic analysis of—”

  He stopped and Devi-en understood. The wild one had been replaced on his planet with minimal harm. The events of the past weeks had been blanked out of his mind. He had been placed near a small, inhabited locality not far from the spot where he had been first found. His fellows would assume he had been lost. They would blame his loss of weight, his bruises, his amnesia upon the hardships he had undergone.

  But the harm done by him—

  If only they had not brought him up to the Moon in the first place. They might have reconciled themselves to the thought of starting a war. They might somehow have thought of dropping a bomb; and worked out some indirect, long-distance system for doing so.

  It had been the wild one’s word-picture of the vulture that had stopped it all. It had ruined Devi-en and the Arch-administrator. When all data was sent back to Hurria, the effect on the Council itself had been notable. The order to dismantle the Base had come quickly.

  Devi-en said, “I will never take part in colonization again.”

  The Arch-administrator said mournfully, “None of us may ever have to. The wild ones of that planet will emerge and with large-primates and large-primate thinking loose in the Galaxy, it will mean the end of—of—”

  Devi-en’s nose twitched. The end of everything; of all the good Hurria had done in the Galaxy; all the good it might have continued to do in the future.

  He said, “We ought to have dropped—” and did not finish.

  What was the use of saying that? They couldn’t have dropped the bomb for all the Galaxy. If they could have, they would have been large-primate themselves in their manner of thinking, and there are worse things than merely the end of everything.

  Devi-en thought of the vultures.

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  Isaac Asimov, The Gentle Vultures