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kroosh sounded alike to them, but let's don't be too picky about things.
There were no hot showers that evening; Dave Questell s gang had trouble with
the pump and needed some new parts made up aboard the ship. They were still
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working on it the next morning. He had meant to start teaching Sonny
blacksmithing, but during the evening Lillian and Anna had decided to try
teaching
Mom a nonphonetic, ideographic, alphabet, and in the morning they co-opted
Sonny to help. Deprived of his disciple, he strolled over to watch the work on
the pump. About twenty Svants had come in from the fields and were also
watching, from the meadow.
After a while, the job was finished. The petty officer in charge of the work
pushed in the switch, and the pump started, sucking dry with a harsh racket.
The natives twittered in surprise. Then the water came, and the pump settled
down to a steady thugg-thugg, thugg-thugg
.
The Svants seemed to like the new sound; they grimaced in pleasure and moved
closer; within forty or fifty feet, they all squatted on the ground and sat
entranced. Others came in from the fields, drawn by the sound. They, too, came
up and squatted, until there was a semicircle of them. The tank took a long
time to fill; until it did, they all sat immobile and fascinated. Even after
it stopped, many remained, hoping that it would start again. Paul Meillard
began wondering, a trifle uneasily, if that would happen every time the pump
went on.
"They get a positive pleasure from it. It affects them the same way Luis'
voice does."
Mean I have a voice like a pump?" Gofredo demanded.
"Well, I'm going to find out," Ayesha Keithley said. "The next time that
starts, I'm going to make a recording, and compare it with your
voice-recording. I'll give five to one there'll be a similarity."
Questell got the foundation for the sonics lab dug, and began pouring
concrete. That took water, and the pump ran continuously that afternoon.
Concrete-mixing took more water the next day, and by noon the whole village
population, down to the smallest child, was massed at the pumphouse,
enthralled. Mom was snared by the sound like any of the rest; only Sonny was
unaffected. Lillian and Ayesha compared recordings of the voices of the team
with the pump-sound; in Gofredo's they found an identical frequency-pattern.
"We'll need the new apparatus to be positive about it, but it's there, all
right," Ayesha said. "That's why
Luis' voice pleases them."
"That tags me: Old Pump-Mouth," Gofredo said. "It'll get all through the
Corps, and they'll be calling me that when I'm a four-star general, if I live
that long."
Meillard was really worried, now. So was Bennet Fayon. He said so that
afternoon at cocktail time.
"It's an addiction," he declared. "Once they hear it, they have no will to
resist; they just squat and listen. I
don't know what it's doing to them, but I'm scared of it."
"I know one thing it's doing," Meillard said. "It's keeping them from their
work in the fields. For all we know, it may cause them to lose a crop they
need badly for subsistence."
The native they had come to call the Lord Mayor evidently thought so, too. He
was with the others, the next morning, squatting with his staff across his
knees, as bemused as any of them, but when the pump stopped he rose and
approached a group of Terrans, launching into what could only be an
impassioned tirade. He pointed with his staff to the pump house, and to the
semicircle of still motionless villagers. He pointed to the fields, and back
to the people, and to the pump house again, gesturing vehemently with his
other hand.
You make the noise. My people will not work while they hear it. The fields lie
untended. Stop the noise, and let my people work
.
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Couldn't possibly be any plainer.
Then the pump started again. The Lord Mayor's hands tightened on the staff; he
was struggling tormentedly with himself, in vain. His face relaxed into the
heartbroken expression of joy; he turned and shuffled over, dropping onto his
haunches with the others.
"Shut down the pump, Dave!" Meillard called out. "Cut the power off."
The thugg-thugg-ing stopped. The Lord Mayor rose, made an odd salaamlike bow
toward the Terrans, and then turned on the people, striking with his staff and
shrieking at them. A few got to their feet and joined him, screaming, pushing,
tugging. Others joined. In a little while, they were all on their feet,
straggling away across the fields.
Dave Questell wanted to know what it meant; Meillard explained.
"Well, what are we going to do for water?" the Navy engineer asked.
"Soundproof the pump house. You can do that, can't you?"
"Sure. Mound it over with earth. We'll have that done in a few hours."
That started Gofredo worrying. "This happens every time we colonize an
inhabited planet. We give the natives something new. Then we find out it's bad
for them, and we try to take it away from them. And then the knives come out,
and the shooting starts."
Luis Gofredo was also a specialist, speaking on his subject.
While they were at lunch, Charley Loughran screened in from the other camp and
wanted to talk to
Bennet Fa-yon.
"A funny thing, Bennet. I took a shot at a bird& no, a flying mammal& and
dropped it. It was dead when it hit the ground, but there isn't a mark on it.
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