John D. MacDonald

A Condition of Beauty

They threw the meat to him and he fed in darkness, his eyes smarted from the after effect of the blinding light which had, for a few moments, shone through the small door.

Food was good and hunger was good. So few things were good. His ears heard the tearing of the flesh from the dry bone and there was a good stinging at the corners of his jaws.

The old one crouched in the corner of the cell and ate with less noise.

He who was known as Pol threw the cleaned bone aside toward the heap of other bones. He padded with bare feet across the dirt floor and drank deeply of the single stream of water that came from the wall and fell into a deep pit at his feet.

The old one, his voice muffled with food, said, “I heard them speak, Pol. This is the year of great light, when the two suns are close. Tomorrow is the ceremony.”

“I saw one such,” Pol said. “My mother hid me and at last she sent me alone into the forest. I lived in the forest. For many months the sky was bright. And on the brightest morning of all, I heard the singing. By then I could move in the forest as quietly as any animal. I crept through the brush and I saw them. The priests and the naked giggling maidens of the village and those with drums. They went to the silver temple.”

The old one sighed. “I never saw the temple.”

Pol thumped his naked chest with a strong fist.

“I saw it and, after many days when I was certain that no one was about, I entered the temple.”

The old one gasped in awe.

“I entered the temple and I walked on the silver floors and saw the great wheels and the metal which can be looked through and all the rest of it. And I saw pictures of monsters even like you and I, Old One.”

The old one cackled. “At last you come to know yourself as a monster.”

Pol was suddenly, dejected. He sat on the floor, his back against the stone. In a lifeless voice he said, “In darkness it is hard to accept. I feel like a man. I think as a man does. It is odd to be monstrous. It is something one wishes to forget.”

Suddenly he remembered the girl. He padded to the far corner of the cell, pulled away the rock which no two of the normal ones could have lifted.

He set it on the dirt floor, hissed at the opening.

Her voice startled him, it was so close. “It is you, Pol,” she said softly.

“Who else can lift that stone, Lae? I hear your voice and in my mind I see you as a woman, a normal woman. A woman such as my mother. The old man and I have talked of how horrible it is to be a monster which must be hidden in darkness. It is easy to forget that you are one such, in this eternal darkness.”

Her fingers brushed his arm. “Touch my arm,” she said.

He did so, felt the horror within him as his fingers told him that her arm was strong, solid, thick.

“There,” Lae said. “It is best that you never forget that I am as you.”

He did not answer for many moments. He said, “Today you refused food again?”

“I did,” she said. “I grow weak.”

“Try to come through the space in the stones. I will help you.”

In a few minutes he was forced to give up as she moaned with pain, her flesh torn by the bitter edges of the rock.

“What will be gained?” she asked.

There was no humor in his low laugh. “Here in the darkness I pretend I am a man as other men. And I pretend that you are as other women. I want you with me. I want you where I can touch you.”

The old one laughed. It was a high, wild laugh — fading into something midway between a sob and a moan.

Patrol Eleven, of Planet Census Group Fifty-One, reached the projected frame of reference and each succeeding pulsation of the drive dropped velocity below supra-light to the extent that the pilot screen began to show the blazing form of Arcturus with one hundred times the luminosity of Sol.

The pulsation stopped and the screen came completely alive, adjusted for the fifty percent distortion caused by the speed of .75L.

Captain Harvey Crane, a thin tired man with weak eyes, grinned at Dan Brian, the first officer, pulled, the mike to his lips and announced to the rest of the crew:

“Here we are. Homeward bound. This is area Alice Baker Day ought one eight. Only two more areas to go. Chief Photographers Mate, report to the bridge. Arrange sectors with Mr. Brian.”

Captain Crane stood up, yawned and said, “Take it, Dan. You’ll find me in the sack if there’s anything urgent.”

When Crane had gone, Dan Brian leaned against the wall and watched Chief Photographers Mate Benton pull the prints out of the slot in the developer.

Benton was an earnest little man with nervous mannerisms.

“Hope to Heaven you don’t find anything we have to look at,” Dan Brian said sleepily. The photographer gave him an annoyed look.

When the prints were sorted for this first sector, the little man began checking their location against the sector map, using a computer to chart orbits.

He clucked when he found a half degree error in the sector map.

Finally he came to one print. He grew increasingly nervous as he looked at the sector map, clucking and licking his lips.

“What is it?” Dan asked wearily.

“Here’s one that isn’t recorded. It’s up to minimum measurements, but it doesn’t appear on the map. The comparison with the infra-red print shows that it has an atmosphere.”

“Check it again,” Dan said.

“I’ve checked it three times,” the little man snapped...

Captain Crane moaned as Dan shook him awake. Then he listened quietly. When Dan was through he said, “If Benton says it’s up to minimum size, then it is. The last census probably got lazy this close to home.”

“Can’t we be lazy too?”

Crane stared at Dan until the younger man flushed. “Yes sir. I’ll take us over there and call you when it’s time to sit down.”

Later Captain Crane at the controls, cautiously braked Patrol Eleven below one mile per second before entering the atmosphere of the previously unrecorded planet. Benton had measured it at 4,500 miles circumference at the equator.

It was in orbit around Beta Scorpii at an average radius of 88 million miles, and apparently in that portion of its orbit which, once every few years, took it almost alarmingly close to Arcturus.

He braked further as they descended through the atmosphere, as the sky lightened from black, to purple, to deep blue and the stars disappeared, as the white hard light of Beta Scorpii faded to warm orange-yellow.

The supplementary screen was aimed at the planet below. All four men in the pilot room gasped as they saw the vast ship sprawled against a gentle wooded slope. Trees blurred the edges of it, but the silver metal was still bright and untarnished.

“Measurements!” Captain Crane snapped.

Dan Brian reported five minutes later. “Overall length, sir, twenty-eight hundred feet. Three hundred and ninety feet in thickest cross-section. That makes an index of point-thirteen-ninety-two.”

Crane had lost his relaxed air. “Don’t just stand there, Mr. Brian. Check the index on the recognition log.”

Dan Brian, sweating, did as he was told. In a few moments he said, slowly, “No known military or civil type, sir. Maybe... well, it has obsolete drive. Those tubes look atomic. Some alien intelligence that—”

“Don’t talk rot, Mr. Brian! If there were any intelligence in the known universe capable of building that ship, we would have heard of it before now. Use your head and check the historical reference book. Early expeditions.”

A few moments later Dan Brian gave a muffled gasp.

“Well?” Crane said coldly.

“It checks! Sir, that’s the Victrix! I read about that when I was a little kid. The tenth ship to leave Earth.”

Captain Crane stared at the screen. Patrol Eleven hovered, the crashed Victrix squarely in the middle of the supplementary screen. Captain Crane seemed to have forgotten the other men in the pilot room. His lips moved. Brian heard him say softly, “A hundred and ten generations ago.”

The lean head snapped up. “Take her down, mister.”

Dan Brian set Patrol Eleven as close to the hulk as he dared. It was morning on the tiny planet. The sun glittered on the silver hulk. The odd growth, trees with grotesquely thin trunks, had been cleared away from one side of the hulk by unknown hands.

The inside radiation screens were rolled up away from the direct vision ports and all hands stared at the silent forest, at the huge silver shape sprawled across the gentle slope.

Crane got the lab report. “Oxygen atmosphere, but too thin. Grabbed some soil. Nothing dangerous detected. Okay to venture out in suits.”

As Captain Crane did not have medical approval for Exploration, Dan Brian headed the group of five.

It happened five minutes after they stepped down onto the soil of the new planet, five minutes after their shoes, heavily weighted with lead, touched the thin, crisp grass.

Dan heard it first. He made a terse report back to the ship, loosened the weapon at his belt and waited.

It was a form of music. A distant thump of drums.

They moved closer to the port out of which they had clambered.

A procession came up over the brow of the hill.

Two of the men promptly became ill, which, clad as they were, was a very messy affair. Dan Brian swallowed hard.

His skin crawled as he watched them. They came close to him, but not too close. They spread out in a half circle and fell to their knees. Their chant resounded in the quiet forest glade. Red blood gushed after the expert thrust of the sacrifical knife.

They bowed low and sang and at last turned and went back the way they had come...

Dan Brian sat in Captain Crane’s cabin.

Dan shook his head slowly. “I don’t get it, sir. I’ve seen how they are on Venus. I’ve seen intelligent things that looked remotely like beetles, and sea slugs, and birds with scales instead of feathers. But nothing hit me like that did.”

It was night, a time for conjecture.

Captain Crane said slowly, “I don’t think you are thinking clearly, Dan. Revulsion needs a stepping-off place. Something completely alien is never horrible. It is merely incomprehensible. This is the first time that you or I have ever seen creatures which are sufficiently like men so that the unconscious comparison makes them horrible.”

Dan thought it over and nodded slowly. “That must be it. I can see what you mean. A bad scar on one of those Venusian would mean nothing to me. Across the face or a beautiful woman, it would mean a great deal.”

Crane sucked on his pipe. Then he examined the dark wood. He said slowly, “They are horrible to us, Dan, because they are men.”

Dan laughed uneasily.

“Don’t laugh, my boy. I’ve seen the effects of environment before. Those are the decendents of the survivors of the Victrix. Their bodies have merely adjusted to the thin air, the gravity, other factors. Diet. Those are humans.”

Dan was closer to being ill than he had been when he had first seen them. And he knew that Crane was right. It was nightmare.

“But — such a terrific change!” he protested, hoping against hope that Crane was wrong.

“It is extreme,” Crane agreed. “Thus nature had help. Selective breeding. Probably all tied up with their religious fetishes.”

“But how would they know the change was necessary?”

“Intellectually, they wouldn’t, Dan. But some sixth sense would guide them.”

“I hate the thought of having to look at them tomorrow.”

“It has to be done. We have to examine the ship, examine their village, make a report on customs. You can thank your stars that we don’t have to bring one of them back with us for examination. Fortunately we don’t have provision for that on this ship. Somebody not as lucky will have that pleasure. Happy dreams to them.”

“I’d better turn in,” Dan said.

“Read your manual on alien cultures. You’ll have to get transcripts, tri-di films, measurements.”

Dan went reluctantly to bed...

Captain Crane took a nap after Dan Brian had been gone for five hours. He was awakened by Dan, who, a look of excitement on his face, was shaking him by the shoulder.

“Back so soon?” Crane said sleepily.

“Sir, what did you mean by proper provision to take some of those people back with us?”

“I mean that we can’t release a compartment to have the air pressure reduced to what they’re used to. We can’t store their food.”

“But, sir, suppose a couple of them can breathe our air and eat our food?”

“Are you crazy, mister? Don’t you want to be able to eat for the rest of the trip? Has the sun gotten to you?”

“But, sir—”

“Where are these horrors that you want to collect like specimens.”

“They’re on the ship.”

“What!” Captain Crane roared. He jumped to his feet, “Where are they? I’ll have you broken for this!”

They were in the main lounge. Captain Crane stopped dead as he saw them. He stared with his mouth open and then he smiled.

The man was strong and well-muscled. His eyes were squinted against the light. In spite of his matted hair and beard, Crane guessed his age at about twenty-five or twenty-six. His gray eyes looked intelligent. He wore trousers borrowed from a crew member.

The girl clung to his hand. They stood close together, not frightened but wary. She seemed to be about eighteen. She was very beautiful. They had dressed her in a sheet from one of the cots. It was fastened around her slim waist with a crewman’s belt.

“There were three of them, sir,” Dan said excitedly. “They were underground. That’s why they’re so pale. The old one died of the shock of being released and seeing us. Anderson, the language guy, has made progress. These two belong to the same race. So that means you were right. They’re throwbacks and the treatment is to imprison them, prevent their breeding. Please, sir, can we take them along. They catch on quickly. Imagine finding these two among that race of... of monsters.”

The words of the other monsters were strange. Pol could not understand them. He could understand the gestures. Anything was better than remaining in that prison under the ground. He was grateful to them. They had released him, had brought him and Lae to the new silver temple, the one that stood upright. Their air inside their temple was heavy and thick, but not unpleasant.

One of the monsters came and beckoned to him. Holding Lae’s hand he went through the narrow corridor and came into a small room where chairs were fixed to the floor.

The monster pointed to the screen. He and Lae watched. The screen was dark and suddenly there was a lurching so that they stumbled and nearly fell. In the screen they saw the old temple, dropping away beneath them.

“Lae, we are being taken into the sky in this temple. Are you afraid.”

“Not with you near.”

Her hand was warm in his. They watched the earth of their land until it startlingly resembled a small ball, and the height made him weak and dizzy.

Then they were led back to the small room once more.

They were left alone.

Pol looked down into the face of Lae, the Ugly, and he said, “It is better that we go with these, our brothers, who somehow have found freedom.”

“Yes, it is better.”

“You are not afraid?”

“I am not afraid.”

“I have a thought, Lae. Maybe in the place to which they take us, there will be no men or women properly formed. Maybe in time we shall forget what proper men and women look like and we can thus forget that we are incredibly ugly.”

“That may be so,” she said softly.

He glanced down and found that he was holding her hand. That puzzled him because none of the other monsters were nearby and thus there was no need of it.

Yet he did not wish to release her.

The silver temple moved in silence.

Content

John D. MacDonald
A Condition of Beauty