FAR-FLUNG PRAISE FOR CONTINUUM 1 and 2:
"A Truly New Type of Anthology ... a long
time coming and quite unexpected, this title is a real treat to every science
fiction fan."
The News American—Baltimore
"The writers are top flight. . . . Can't
wait to see what happens!"
Fresno Bee, Fresno, California
"A wide variety of themes and styles
that maintain reader interest; and the writing, by veteran sf authors . . .
consistently high quality."
Library Journal
"As with the first volume, each story
can stand alone. ... all are very good, varied in technique and scope, and fine
examples of great science fiction."
Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio
"Here are some of the most solid names
in current science fiction."
Herald American—Palm Springs
In
the CONTINUUM Series Continuum 1
CONTINUUM 2
Edited
by Roger Elwood
A
BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOK published by BERKLEY PUBLISHING CORPORATION
Copyright © 1974, by Roger Elwood
All rights reserved
Published by arrangement
with the author.
All
rights reserved which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address
Berkley Publishing Corporation
200 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10016
Library
of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-87184
SBN 425-02864-X
BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by
Berkley Publishing Corporation 200
Madison Avenue New York, N.
Y. 10016
BERKLEY
MEDALLION BOOKS • TM 757,375
Printed in the United
States of America
Berkley Medallion Edition, JUNE, 1975
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Roger Elwood 1
STATIONS OF THE NIGHTMARE
Part Two: THE STARTOUCHED
Philip José Farmer 3
PASSING THE
LOVE OF WOMEN
Poul Anderson 37
CARAVANS UNLIMITED: STABILITY
Chad Oliver 60
THE ARMAGEDDON TAPES - TAPE II
Thomas N. Scortia 84
KILLASHANDRA - CRYSTAL SINGER
Anne McCaffrey 102
THE DEATH OF
HYLE
Gene Wolf 134
THE LEGEND OF
HOMBAS
Edgar Pangborn 140
THE FIRE
FOUNTAIN GailKimberly
INTRODUCTION
THE first four
Continuum anthologies are
completed. Continuum 1 contained eight stories, each a series
opener by a prominent author; this
second volume, the third and
the fourth
will each also contain
eight stories—altogether there
is to
be a
total of 32 stories divided into eight
series with four stories per
series. For example: Anne
McCaffrey's series chronicles the life and
career of Killashandra, the Crystal
Singer: the first story is entitled,
"Prelude to a Crystal Song";
the second:
"Crystal Singer"; the third:
"Milekey Mountain"; the fourth: "Coda
and Finale." Anne's agent,
Virginia Kidd, and I feel
that these stories are among the
finest that Anne has done
to date.
Another example: Chad Oliver's
"Caravans Unlimited" series is concerned with essentially the same
protagonists and the same central theme—an inter-galactic
trading company that gets involved
with the internal affairs of
alien races. The first story
is entitled "Shaka'; the second: "Stability";
the third:
"The Middle Man"; and the fourth: "Monitor."
While Anne's stories are decidedly offbeat
and poetic
in style,
Chad's are traditional and rugged; each
Continuum book will
contain another story in
the "Caravans"
series.
Since these two
are examples
of series
with the same protagonists throughout, it might be appropriate
to tell
a little
about another type of
series featured in Continuum: the one
contributed by Edgar Pangborn.
His stories
have no characters which continue from
one to
another but all take place
in the
same world as did his novel,
Davy; you might
call them pages from the history
of that
world; the time span might
be hundreds
of
years but the origin is the
same. The Pangborn stories are
entitled: "The Children's Crusade"; "The
Legend of Hombas"; "The
Witches of Nupal"; and "Mam
Sola's House."
There are five
other series, each written by
the same
author: "Stations of the
Nightmare" by Philip
José Farmer; a series by Poul Anderson which
is, in
effect, a continuation of his
"Orbit Unlimited" novel of
a few
years ago—the stories are entitled:
"My Own, My Native
Land"; "Passing the Love of
Women"; "A Fair Exchange";
and "To
Promote the General Welfare." As well as: "The Armageddon
Tapes" by Thomas N. Scortia;
a series of short-shorts by Gene
Wolfe, "The Note work of
Dr. Stein"; and "Thag."
The final series
in the
Continuum anthologies is
one built
around the revolving authorship
concept. Dean Koontz laid the
groundwork for this series,
developed the territory into which
other authors would venture,
and wrote
the first
story himself; it's entitled "Night of the Storm." Then four other authors
wrote the successive stories: "Fire Fountain" by Gail Kimber-ly" (in this volume); '
'Darkness of Day' ' by
George Zebrowski and Pamela Sargent; and
"Making the Connection" by Barry
N. Malzberg.
A total of
more than 260,000 words has been devoted to the
four Continuum
anthologies. All
of us
feel a strong degree of
excitement about these books.
While maintaining the quality orientation of past all-original anthology series, this group
adds another facet: the series concept
which links all four tightly
together. However, each story
remains a separate entity; each
can be read and enjoyed by
itself without the reader's being cheated in any way.
Buy one;
buy all
four—they stand by themselves and they form a continuous narrative over
four books and the hundreds of
thousands of words.
Roger Elwood
Philip
José Farmer
STATIONS OF THE NIGHTMARE
Part
Two: THE STARTOUCHED
1.
THE iron door
with the monocle window swung
inward. A small cage was shoved
in, and
a chain
connected to it was pulled. The door of the
cage rose. A large brown-gray
male rat dashed out. The big
door closed swiftly and silently.
The windowless
room was ten by eight
by twelve
feet. Its white plaster walls were
bare. A closed-circuit TV camera
squatted on a bracket
at the
juncture of a wall and
the ceiling.
It pointed down at the only
furniture: a bed, a chair,
and a
metal cabinet. The narrow
bed held
a man.
Eyes closed, he lay on
his back, his arms by his
side, his feet pointing straight
up. He
was five feet six inches long,
broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, and slim. He was fifty-four
years old and had brown
hair untouched by gray,
a high
forehead, bushy brown eyebrows, a
thick military-type mustache, and
a chin
like a ball, deeply indented in its middle. He
wore only a hospital gown,
His right
arm and his left
leg were
chained to the metal frame
of the
bed.
The rat ran
around the room, sniffing at
the base
of the
walls, then clawed up
the sheets
of the
bed to
the man's
left foot. It sniffed at the
shackle around the ankle and
began gnawing at the thick creamy
stuff smeared on the shackle.
The cheese,
mixed with flecks of crabmeat,
disappeared rapidly. The rat
touched the man's leg several
times with its nose as if
searching for more food. The
man did
not move
his leg; his eyelids remained closed.
The rat ran
along the man's leg and
stopped on the man's stomach. When still the man
did not
move, the rat crept forward
slowly, its nose twitching.
It sprang
forward at the daub of
cheese mixed with meat
on the
man's face.
The rat never
got to
the face.
It slumped
and rolled
off the
man's body and fell
by his
neck. Its open mouth revealed
that its teeth had been pulled.
The man
behind the door turned pale,
and he
swore. He beckoned to a figure
standing at the far end
of the
hall. A nurse, clothed from head
to foot
in white
coveralls and gloves and a
hood with a glass
face mask, hurried to him.
"Get the rat!" he said.
The nurse gave
him a
strange look and went inside.
With gloved hands, she picked up
the dead
rat and
put it
into the cage and came back
out of
the room.
The man
locked the door and put
the key in the
pocket of his white laboratory
coat.
"Take it
to the
lab."
He looked inside
the room.
The man
in the
bed had
not moved. But it was evident
to the
watcher that something in the
man had detected the
danger and taken appropriate measures. And yet it was
all impossible.
2.
Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor,
looking scared, came out of
the woods. He had gone over
almost every foot of the
area. There were thorn tangles only
rabbits could penetrate, and he
had scratched his face and hands
trying to get into them.
His boots
were wet for he
had waded
across the creek that bisected
the woods, and mud streaked the
sides of his jacket and
pants. He had slipped while reaching
for a
branch to pull himself up a
steep bank.
Of the
yellow stuff that Eyre had
reported, Tincrowdor had seen nothing. But
the thing
that had turned him pale
and made
him want to run
out of
the trees
was the
impression in the mud even the
recent heavy rains had failed
to obliterate.
It looked
innocuous enough. It was
only an indentation of some
hemispherical object that had
been set upon a patch
free of grass.
Eyre had told
of seeing
the thing
in a
dream, but Tincrowdor was convinced that
Eyre was reporting an actual
occurrence. He had driven down to
the farm
where Eyre had been hunting,
and had heard the farmer's story
of how
Riley, Eyre's pointer, had run up
onto the porch of the
house and cowered under the
glider. The farmer had not noticed
the dog
until he came home for
lunch, when his wife
told him of seeing the
dog run
panic-stricken across the
fields toward the house. She
thought that something had happened to
Paul Eyre, but then she
saw him
standing near the edge
of the
woods. He seemed all right,
so she
supposed that the dog
had lost
its nerve
over something and that Eyre would
explain when he returned from
his quail
hunting. Eyre went into the woods
and did
not come
out for
several hours. When he
did he
tried to drag the dog
out from
under the glider. It leaped for
Eyre's face and bit his
hand, which Eyre had thrust in front of his
face. Eyre tossed the dog
over the porch railing and then,
as it
came after him again, killed
it with
a charge from his shotgun.
When Eyre told
Tincrowdor about the dog, he
had preferred
ignorance about why it
had attacked
him. Eyre had come home,
slept for awhile, or
so he
said, and had had a
strange dream about his hunting of
that morning. In the dream,
Riley had flushed out two quail,
and Eyre
had shot
at the
lead bird. Even as he fired,
he realized
that it was not a
quail but a flying saucer
about two feet in
diameter. The thing had been
hit by
the pellets
from Eyre's gun and
had descended
into the woods. Eyre had
gone after it but
at the
edge of the woods had
encountered a yellow mist. Some of
the mist
had coagulated
into drops, like a golden-colored mercury.
Then, in his
dream, he had seen the
saucer drop from a tree
onto the ground. He
had followed
it, had
seen the rear parts of
a lioness disappear into the bush,
and a
few moments
later, the head and shoulders of
a naked
woman. She was the loveliest
woman he had ever
seen.
The following
Monday morning, while driving to
work, Eyre had suddenly pulled his
car over
to the
side of the road. Fellow
workers in a car
behind his had investigated and found him in
a complete mental withdrawal. Mavice, his
wife, had had him taken to
a nearby
private sanitarium. His condition was
diagnosed as catatonia originating
from causes unknown.
Tincrowdor and Eyre's
son, Roger, had searched through
the cornfield along the road where
Eyre had stopped his car.
They had found some paw prints
that Roger, a zoology student,
said were those of a large
feline, a lion's or a
tiger's. The big cat must
have had wings, because
its prints
appeared suddenly between some rows about
twenty yards inside the field
and disappeared
as suddenly about twenty
feet deeper inside the field.
Tincrowdor had then
gone to the sanitarium, where his friend and poker partner, Dr. Jack
Croker, had shown him and
Morna Tincrowdor some slides
of Eyre's
blood.
Four days later,
Tincrowdor had decided that he
would check out the woods in
which Eyre had hunted. Now
he knew
that Eyre had been reporting, under the guise of
a dream,
reality.
Tincrowdor was a
writer of science fiction, and
as such
he should have been pleased. A
wounded flying saucer, golden haze flowing from the wound,
a lovely
sphinx, and strange yellow brick-shaped organisms in the tissues
of the
man who
had hunted the saucer
and the
sphinx. These were the stuff
of which science-fiction dreams were made.
Tincrowdor did
not looked pleased. He looked terrified.
3.
Paul Eyre
had been
dreaming of a glittering green city at the
far end of an
enormous field of red flowers.
His eyes
opened. He had felt happy until
then. He sat up, shocked.
He remembered
seeing the woman's face
among the stalks of corn,
the glimpse
of the great tawny body beneath
her torso,
and his
foot on the brake pedal. The
car had
slid to a stop on
the soft
shoulder of the road. He had
put the
gear into park and stared
at her.
She had
smiled and waved a
white arm at him. Her
teeth were hot human; they were
sharp and widely separated, like a cat's, though they were even. He
had begun
shaking, and then he had
fainted.
And here
he was
in a
strange and bare room.
He started
to get
off the
bed and
became aware that an arm
and leg were chained to the
bed. "Hey, what's going on
here?" he yelled. "What's
going on?"
His ears drummed,
and his
heart jumped. He lay down
again and stared at the single
bright light, a bulb in
the ceiling
shielded by heavy wires. Then he
saw the
TV camera,
like a one-eyed gargoyle squatting on
a metal
ledge. A few minutes later,
the door opened. A woman shrouded
in white
cloth and glass entered. In one
gloved hand, she held a
hypodermic syringe.
The momentarily
opened door had revealed, in
the hall,
a broad and heavy male face
with thick black eyebrows, a
broken nose, and thick lips.
"How are you,
Mr. Eyre?"
a muffled
voice said from behind the glass plate. She stood
at the
foot of the bed as
if she
were waiting for permission to advance.
"Where am
I? What's
going on?"
"You're in
the Adler
Sanitarium. You've been in a
catatonic state for four
days. I'm Mrs. Epples, and
I'm here
to help
you get well. I'd like to
give you a shot. It's
just to tranquilize you; it
won't hurt you"
She was speaking
so strangely,
so unlike
a nurse,
he realized,
because she was afraid
of him.
If he
said no, she wasn't going
to insist.
He felt
weak, and his stomach rumbled.
He was
hungry and weak. His mouth felt
as dry
as an
ostrich's feather.
"I don't
want any shot," he said,
"so forget it. Why am
I chained to this bed? What
are you
doing in that getup? Do
I have
some disease?"
The woman looked
up at
the cold
eye of
the TV
camera as if she expected to
get some
reassurance from it.
"So many
questions at once," she said,
and she
laughed nervously. " Your're
chained to keep you from
hurting yourself. We don't know if
you have
a disease
or not,
but your
blood picture is strange. Until we
know what those, uh, organisms
are, we have to keep you
in quarantine."
"My left arm
and right
leg are
not chained,"
he said.
"So what's to keep
me from
using them to hurt myself,
if that's
really what you're worried
about? And what organisms are
you talking about?"
"They're unknown,"
she said,
ignoring his first comment.
"What if
I have
to relieve
myself?"
"There's a bedpan and
toilet paper on the shelf
in the
stand." she said. "You
can reach
it."
"And how
do I
call you to take the
pan away?"
"We'll know when
you need
someone," she said,
glancing at the TV camera.
"You mean
that someone'll be watching me?"
She shrank back,
and said,
"We don't want you to
hurt yourself."
"You have
no right
to keep
me here!"
he shouted.
"I want out! Now!"
"I'll bring
you your
food," she said, and she
left.
Eyre's rage moved
along the spectrum from red
to blue.
He became frightened and confused. If
he had
awakened in a strait jacket, and the nurse had
told him he had been
crazy, he would have understood that. But everything in his situation was
wrong. He was
being held prisoner and lied
to. He
had no
doubt that he was here because
of what
had happened
in the
woods —when?—five days ago.
And the
woman, Mrs. Epples, was afraid of him for some
reason. Yet, he was supposed
to have
lain here in a—what was it?—a
cata-something or other?
Like a coma? What could he
have done to scare her
so? Or,
was she
telling the truth about
his blood
having some sort of strange
germs?
All his
life, he had been unable
to just
sit still
and think
unless he was figuring out some
mechanical device. And then he
needed paper and pencil
to work
out his
ideas. He read only the
newspapers and journals dealing
with hunting or cars or
motorboats, or technical books
concerned with his type of
work.
He could sit
for an
hour or so watching TV
or talking
to friends,
but then he became
restless and had to be
up and
doing.
Or, perhaps not
so much
doing, he thought, as moving.
He had to keep moving. Why?
It was the
first time in his life
he had
ever asked himself that question. The first time he
had asked
himself anything about himself.
And why
was that?
It didn't take
many brains to see that
his feelings—Tincrowdor
would say, his sensitivity—had been sharpened. Nor did it take
much intelligence to connect this
sharpening with the incident
in the
wood. Which might
mean that the organisms in his
blood were responsible.
Which meant that they were beneficial. Or did it? Paul
Eyre did not really like
having improved insight. He
was like
a man
who had
spent his whole life building an
impregnable castle only to find
out that
he himself was breaking down its
walls.
This analogy made
him even
more ill at ease. He
wasn't used to thinking in nonmechanical
terms.
He took refuge
in logic.
If the
organisms had caused changes in him of which he
was aware,
they had also caused changes
of which he knew nothing. Otherwise,
why would
he be
isolated and why would the nurse
be so
scared of him?
While he was
pondering this, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, he felt sure
that he had been drugged.
There were needle marks on his
left arm, so many that
he must
have had some of them
when he had first
awakened. But he had been
so disturbed
then that he had not noticed
them. Some of them, though,
must have come from intravenous feeding. While he slept,
he was
nourished on a liquid
diet.
What had made
him drop
off so
suddenly? He looked around and presently found what he
knew he would find. There
was, in the shadow cast by
the TV,
the opening
of a
small pipe. An anesthetic gas had
been expelled into the room
to make
him unconscious, and the
nurse had come in after
the gas
had been
dispelled and had given
him a
shot and set up the
IV. apparatus.
The gas alone
was enough
to keep
him from
escaping. They must really fear him
if they
thought he also had to
be chained
to the bed.
His feelings
were not limited to fear
and rage.
Such precautions also made
him feel
important. And this was the
first time in his life that
he had
felt, deep down,
that he was of any
significance to anybody.
He sat
up and
tested his strength against the
chains. He was weak, but even
if he
had had
his full
power, he could not come
near breaking the steel
links. And even if he
could, whoever was watching him through
the TV
would release the gas.
He lay down
again and contemplated his situation.
It was
like life; you couldn't leave it
until you died.
4.
Dr. Jack
Croker and Leo Tincrowdor sat in Croker's office
tearing each other and
themselves apart.
"Mavice says that
if you
don't let her see Paul,
she'll get him out of here,"
Tincrowdor said.
"She'd just be
upset if she saw him,"
Croker said. "And I don't think
it'd be wise for her
to get
anywhere near him. You know why.
So why
don't you talk her into
leaving him in my care?"
"I can't tell
her why
it's so vital that he
be isolated,"
Tincrowdor said. "And if
she's not told, she won't
see any
reason not to move
him elsewhere.
Besides, what solid proof do
you have that he
is dangerous?
None, none at
all."
Croker could think
of evidence.
He regretted
now telling
Tincrowdor anything at all.
"What else
has happened?"
Tincrowdor said.
"What do you
mean?" Croker said. He lit
a cigarette
to give
himself time to think.
"You told me
that your lab tech's face
was badly
scarred from adolescent acne. But after she
took blood from Eyre, her
face miraculously cleared up.
And you
said that Backers, a male
nurse, had a heart
attack while he was in
the room
with Paul. You were thinking of
firing Backers because of his
brutality, and you suspected
that he was doing something
to Paul
when the heart attack occurred. It's
obvious to anyone with imagination
that you believe that
those alien organisms have changed
Paul, have given him strange powers.
And it's
obvious that you fear that those
organisms might be infectious."
Croker bit his
lip. If he told Tincrowdor
that the organisms had disappeared, or at least were
no longer
detectible, then he would have lost
one more
reason for keeping Eyre. But
he was
not sure that they
had all
been excreted. There might be
some in tissues unavailable until Eyre
died. In his
brain, for instance.
"We've collected about
two million
of the
yellow creatures in his urine and
fecal matter," he said. "Boiling
them in hot water doesn't kill
them nor does depriving them
of oxygen.
About the only way
they can be quickly destroyed
is through
burning. And that takes
a minimum
temperature of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes hours for
the strongest
acids to eat through the coating."
Tincrowdor said, "That
alone should make you think
they're of extraterrestrial origin."
He regretted saying
this immediately. He hadn't told
Croker about the paw print in
the cornfield
or the
saucer print in the woods. If Croker really thought
the yellow-brick
things were from outer space, then
he would
be adamant
about not releasing Eyre.
Nor could Tincrowdor
blame him. Paul Eyre free
could be a calamity, perhaps extinction,
for humanity.
But Eyre
was a
human being with certain
inalienable rights. Never mind that
most of his fellow
Americans professed to believe the
same but acted as if they
didn't. He believed.
Still, he didn't
want to die, along with
everybody else, if Eyre really were a danger.
Yet, there were
times in the velvet hours
of the
night, and the clanging minutes of
noon, when he wondered if
it wouldn't
be a
good thing if humanity
were wiped out. For their own
good, of course. Human
beings suffered much, some more
than others, but they all suffered.
Death would put an end
to their
pain. It would also prevent the
birth of more babies whose
main inheritance would be pain.
Tincrowdor had an obsession about
babies. They were born
good, he
believed, though they had potentialities for evil. Society invariably
insisted that they should grow up
good, but provided the best
and the
most fertilizer for evil.
Croker, like most
doctors, thought that this was
the best
of all
possible worlds, which was
to be
expected. Their world gave doctors great respect and prestige
and much
wealth. It was natural for them
to become
angry with anything or anybody
that might change things as they
were. Yet, outside of the
very poor, criminals, and policemen, they saw more of
evil than anybody. But they fought
against anything that might soften
evil, just as they had fought
against medical insurance until they
suddenly saw that a good thing
could be made out of
it.
Croker was
not, however, a typical specimen
of his
profession. He had some imagination.
Otherwise he could not have
been a member of the Baker
Street Irregulars, the society that
proceeds on the premise
that Sherlock Holmes was a
living person.
It was this
imagination that made Croker connect things that his duller colleagues
would have seen as entirely
disparate. This same gift made him
a danger
to Eyre.
Tincrowdor was
aware that Croker was aware
and that
Croker, like himself, was
being stretched like a piece
of bubble
gum between his conscience
and his
duty. Or perhaps, Tincrowdor thought, they
were each bubbles being blown
up by
the situation. If they
didn't act soon, they would
pop.
And the trouble
with me, thought Tincrowdor, is that I'm not
really concerned with Paul
Eyre as an individual human being. I don't even
like Eyre. He'd be better
off dead
and so
would his family. But then, come
to think
of it,
so would
I. So
why am
I interfering? Especially when logic says that
the fate
of one
miserable human being is
nothing compared to that of
the fate
of all humanity.
For one
thing, if Eyre were done
away with, the case might
be closed forever. That this might
break off forever any contact
with extraterrestrials alarmed him.
Besides, like most science-fiction writers, he secretly hoped
for vast
cataclysms, end-of-the-world invasions
from outer space, anything that
would polish off most of mankind.
Among the survivors would be
himself, of course. And
this little band, having learned
its lesson, would then make a
paradise of earth.
In his more
light-filled moments he laughed at
this fantasy. The survivors wouldn't do
a bit
better than their predecessors.
Croker, who had
been silent, said, "How about
a drink,
Leo?"
"Drink dims
the conscious
and illuminates
the unconscious,"
Tincrowdor said, "Yes, I'll have
one. Or several."
Croker brought
out a
fifth of Weller's Special Reserve,
and the two silently toasted their
thoughts.
Tincrowdor asked for
another three fingers and said,
"If you murder Eyre, you might
have to kill me, too.
Not to
mention Morna. You wouldn't
have enough guts to do
that."
"I could
kill Eyre and then myself,"
Croker said cheerfully.
Tincrowdor laughed, but
he was
taken aback. "You've got too much
curiosity to do that," he said. "You'd want to know what those
yellow things are and where
they came from."
"You'd better tell
me all
you know,"
Croker said. "I had thought that the organisms were
mutations, though I didn't really believe that."
"You're less hidebound
and more
perceptive than I thought," Tincrowdor said. "O.K.
I'll tell you everything."
Croker listened without
interrupting except to request more
detailed description of several
events. Then he said, "Let
me tell you about the rat
I released
in Eyre's
room."
When Croker was
finished, Tincrowdor poured himself another drink. Croker looked disapproving
but said
nothing. He had once shown the
writer the brain and liver
of a
skid-row bum. Tincrowdor had quit drinking
for three
months. When he started again, he drank as if
he were
trying to make up for
the lost
time.
Tincrowdor sat down
and said,
"Even if Paul isn't carrying
a contagious disease, he's a menace.
He can
kill anything he thinks is dangerous.
Or, maybe
anytime he gets angry. And
he gets angry a lot."
He downed half
his drink
and said,
"So that should make your course
of action—and
mine—apparent. You can't
loose that on the world."
"And what
will you do?" Croker said.
"My God,
here are two intelligent and compassionate people discussing murder!" Tincrowdor
said.
"I didn't mean
that," Croker said. "I was
thinking of keeping him locked
up, as
if he
were a sort of Man
in the
Iron Mask. But I don't know
if that
is possible.
In the
first place, a fake death would have to be
arranged, but that would lead
to almost
insuperable complications and connivery.
He'd have to seem to
have died in a
fire, so the body would
be unrecognizable.
I'd have to supply a body
so it'd
be a
closed-coffin funeral. I couldn't keep him
here, because somebody might talk.
I'd have
to arrange for his
transportation elsewhere, and I'd have to
pay for his keep. And the
first time he got angry
or thought
he was
menaced, he'd kill. And
that would cause trouble wherever
he'd be."
"And if
it all
came out, you'd go to
jail. And I'd be an
accessory before, during, and
after the fact. And, to
tell you the truth, I don't
have the guts to be
your accomplice."
"Your only
complicity would be your silence,
and I'd
never say anything about your knowledge
of this."
'' Why'd
you tell
me anything
in the
first place?" Tincrowdor said. "Is it
because you wanted someone to
share the guilt?"
"Perhaps I thought
that if anyone else knew
about it, I'd not be able
to do
anything," Croker said.
"And you
could release him with a
clear conscience? Your hands'd
be tied?"
"Perhaps. But that's out. I can't
release him."
He leaned toward
Tincrowdor and said, "If his
family could be made aware of
all the
facts, they just might agree
to keep
him here. It might not be
forever, because he may lose
this power to kill by thought
or however
he does
it. After
all, the organisms have gone. Perhaps
the power
will, too."
"You don't
know his family. Maybe his
son and
daughter would go along,
because they're educated enough and
have imagination enough to
extrapolate from the situation. But Mavice? Never! She'd think we
were crazy with all this
talk of flying saucers and yellow
stuff and killing by invisible
means. The story would be out
in no
time. She would tell her
brothers, who are also umimagihative clods. Not that they'd
worry much
about Paul. They don't like him.
But they'd
want to help their sister. She's the baby of
their family, and they'd hear
about it from her all right."
"Yeah," Croker said.
"How'd you ever get to
know the Eyres? They're certainly not
the type
you'd be friends with."
"Morna and Mavice
were high-school buddies. Mavice stood by Morna when she
was being
ostracized by her other friends because of some lying
story a boy was telling
about her. They have been good
friends ever since. Despite the
disparity in their education and their
attitudes—Morna's a liberal,
as you
know, and Mavice's a
flaming reactionary—they manage
to get
along fine. I had
a little
affair with Mavice myself, back
in the
days when I was
young and horny and a
fine female body meant more to me than a
fine female brain."
"How you ever
stood that screeching voice, I'll
never understand," Croker
said. "But that's neither here
nor there.
What if Mavice were
told a story that doesn't
quite fit the facts?"
4' I don' t know
how you
could do it and still
not be
exposed.'' Croker erupted from
his chair
spilling whiskey over his pants.
"Well, something
has to
be done
and soon!"
There was a knock
on the
door, and Croker said, "Who
is
it?"
"It's Mrs.
Epples. May I come in?"
Croker opened the
door. Mrs. Epples, looking past
him, said, "I wanted to speak
to you
alone, Doctor."
Croker went out
into the hall and shut
the door.
Tincrowdor looked at the
fifth and decided not to
have any more. A minute
later, Croker entered. He
looked pale.
"Eyre's dead!"
Tincrowdor opened
his mouth,
but Croker
held up his hand.
"I know what
you're thinking, but it's not
true, so help me God. Eyre
died of natural causes. At
least, ƒ didn't have anything
to do
with it."
5.
Paul Eyre
awoke naked on something cold
and hard.
A scalpel was poised above him
and beyond
a face,
its lower
half hidden by a gauze mask.
Above the man there glared
a hard
bright light.
The man's
eyes widened, the scalpel jerked
away, and he cried, "No! No!"
Eyre rolled off
the stone
and onto
the floor.
Though his legs and arms gave
way to
weakness, he crawled away toward
the closed door. Something hard struck
the marble
floor. The metallic sound was succeeded
a second
later by the thump of
a heavy body.
A few
feet from the door, Eyre
collapsed. He lay breathing heavily for awhile, knowing somehow
that the immediate danger had passed.
But out
there, beyond the door, and
not far
away, were other dangers.
They were walking up and
down the corridors, intent on their
business. At least two were
thinking about him also.
Their thoughts
were neither verbal
or iconic. They blew through the door as thin
susurruses from two far-off oceans.
They lapped around him
as the
last waves of the sea
would roll out on the beach
and splash
his feet.
As he sat
up, he
caught another element in the
faint whisperings. It identified
the sex
of the
thinkers.
He reached up,
grabbed the edge of the
stone table, and pulled himself up. Eyre walked around
the table,
leaning on it, and then got
down on his knees to
examine the man on the
floor. His eyes were open and
glazed, his skin was bluish,
and he
had no
pulse. Something, probably a
heart attack, had struck him
down just as he was about
to kill
Eyre. But why had he
wanted to murder Eyre and to
dissect him?
He looked around
the room
and found
nothing with which to clothe himself.
The man's
clothes wouldn't fit him, but
if he
had to, he would put them
on. He
couldn't stay naked. He had
to get
to a telephone and call the
police, but if he went
out into
the corridor, he'd be seen at
once. And there must be
others in this plot to kill
him. This man wouldn't have
been acting alone.
Or would
he?
He was confused
and weak,
from lack of data as
well as hunger. And being naked
made him feel guilty, as
if he
had actually committed some crime that
had justified
the dead
man's trying to kill him. First,
he'd get some clothes and
then he would get out.
He walked slowly
to the
door and opened it. The
corridor was empty except for a
very old man shuffling toward
him. He wore slippers, pants, a
shirt, and an old frayed
bathrobe. He was about Eyre's size.
His heart
beating hard, Eyre waited until
the old man was opposite him.
He reached
out an
arm, grabbed the man by his
sleeve, and yanked him inside.
He disliked
using violence on him,
yet at
the same
time he felt angry at
him. An image of his own
father, aged beyond his years,
his mouth
hanging open, drooling, passed
before him. He hated old
people, he realized, and he
hated them because they prefigured
his own fate.
The hate was
good in one way. It
gave him the strength to
do what was needed. Fortunately, the old man was
paralyzed with fright and did not
fight. If he had, he
might have caused Eyre considerable trouble, Eyre was so
weak.
The old
man squawked
before Eyre could get a
hand over the toothless mouth. The
door banged shut. The old
man rolled
his eyes and went limp. Eyre
eased him down and began
to undress
him. At least, the
old man
didn't stink from lack of
bathing. But Eyre couldn't bring himself
to put
on the
stained shorts. Evidently the old man
had imperfect
control over his bladder.
When Eyre
had finished
dressing, he looked at the
old man,
who was still unconscious
but breathing.
And what
would the fellow do when he
awoke? He'd arouse everybody, and the hunt would be on. And when
Eyre did get hold of
the police,
what then? Wouldn't the old man
be able
to charge
Eyre with assault and the theft
of his
clothes? But surely the police
would understand the necessity of
this.
He had
no time
to consider
the consequences
of what
he was
doing. He had to
get out
and away.
He put
the scalpel
in the
pocket of the bathrobe and
stepped out into the hall. As
he walked
down the hall, he realized
that he was not wearing his
glasses. In fact, now that
he thought
back on it, he hadn't had
them when he had awakened
in that
room. Yet, he had seen perfectly.
This frightened him for a moment
but before
he reached
the end of the hall he
felt reassured. Whatever was going
on, it
wasn't entirely malignant.
At the corner,
he thought
of stopping
to reconnoiter.
But it
would be better to
act as
if he
belonged here, so he shuffled
to his
right. He was in
another hall, and at once
he saw
that he should have gone to
his left.
Ahead of him was a
desk behind which sat a nurse,
and beyond
her another
hall at right angles to
his. And a man Eyre recognized
was walking
in it.
His profile
was that
of the apish man Eyre had
seen the last time Mrs.
Epples had entered the room in
which he had been confined.
He repressed the
impulse to wheel and go
in the
opposite direction. A quick
movement might attract the man's
eye. The male nurse passed on,
and Eyre
stopped, felt in his pockets
as if
he had suddenly discovered he'd left
something in his room, and
then started to turn
back. The nurse looked up
and saw
him.
"What can
I do
for you?"
she said,
sharply.
"Nothing," he
said. "I forgot my cigarettes."
She stood up
and said,
"I don't believe I know
you. Are you sure you're on
the right
floor?"
"I was
admitted last night," he said
and walked
away. At the end of the
corridor two doors opened onto
a balcony.
Through their windows he could see
across a brightly lit court.
He was
on the first story.
"Just a minute!" the woman said. "I
don't see any new names of
the list!"
"Look closer!" he called back and
then was trying the handles of the doors. They
were locked, and he was
not strong
enough to break them
open with his body. He
went on down the hall to
his left,
ignoring the demands of the
nurse that he come back. As soon as he
was out
of sight,
he kicked
off the
slippers and ran as fast as
he could,
which was not swiftly, toward
the door at its end. It
was barred
and locked,
too. He turned and pushed open the door of
the room
nearest him and entered. The
bed was empty. The
door to the bathroom was
closed, and inside someone was flushing
the toilet.
On the
bureau near the window were jars and tubes and
boxes of ointments and powders.
The windows could
be swung
open inward, but the bars
would prevent anything but
air or
messages from getting out.
He put his
ear to
the bathroom
door. Despite the rush of
water splashing in the
washbowl, he could hear the
voices in the hall. One was
Mrs. Epples'.
"If you
do see
him, don't go near him,
for God's
sake!"
"Why not?"
a woman
said.
"Because he. . .."
The voices trailed
off as
his pursuers
presumably went down the hall to
their left.
He opened the
door and looked out. Mrs.
Epples and another nurse were walking
away from him. At the
middle of the other hall, the apish male nurse
was opening
the door
to a
room. He was working his way
down the hall, and soon
would be opening the door behind
which Eyre stood.
The water
was no
longer splashing. The woman would
be coming out in a minute.
He withdrew
his head
from the hall, tried to estimate
the time
it would
take for the nurse to
open the next door, and stepped
out into
the hall.
Another door down the hall was
open, and a nurse was
looking into the room. Eyre
was around the corner and out
of sight;
the two
nurses had disappeared. He was
congratulating himself when
Mrs. Epples came out of a
room four doors from him.
He halted,
and she
screamed.
Before he could
go on,
she had
dodged back into the room
and slammed the door. Behind him
he heard
a shout
and the
slap of shoes on the floor.
Eyre ran again.
There was another shout. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw
the apish
man standing
by the
corner. Evidently he had
no intention
of pursuing
him any
further.
A door
opened ahead of him and
a thin
young man with tousled hair and
wild eyes looked out, but
when he saw Eyre he
shut the door. Eyre
opened it and walked in,
and the
young man cowered against the bed.
Eyre did not believe that
he was
frightened because he knew
anything about him. The young
man would have been
frightened by any stranger.
Eyre said
nothing. He went to the
closet, opened it, and took
out a pair of hush puppies
and a
jacket. In the bureau drawer
he found a wallet and removed
a ten-dollar
bill, a five, four ones,
and some change.
"I'll pay
you back
later," he said.
The young
man shivered
and his
teeth chattered.
Paul Eyre stepped
out of
the room
just as Mrs. Epples and
the apish male nurse came around
a corner.
They halted, stared at him, and
fled.
They were afraid
of him,
no doubt,
but they
must have gone for help. However,
if everybody
was as
scared as those two, nobody was going to stop
him. Not unless they shot
at him
from a distance.
Two minutes later,
he walked
out of
the Adler
Sanitarium. Only a security
guard, a sixty-year-old man, stood
between Eyre and freedom. He stepped
aside as Eyre approached him because Mrs. Epples was
screaming at him from the
front entrance.
"Don't use your
gun! Let him go! The
police will take care of
him!"
This startled Eyre.
Why would
they bring in
the police?
He was the one who had
been held prisoner and whom
they, or at least some of
them, had tried to kill.
Or, did
they have some good reason for
having held him? Was he—he
felt cold at the thought—was he carrying some dreadful
disease? Had he been infected by that yellow stuff?
If this were
so, why
hadn't he been told? He
would have cooperated to the fullest.
There were
about thirty cars in the
parking lot. Some of them
had unlocked doors, but
none of them had keys
in the
ignition locks. He didn't
want to take the time
to cross
wire one, so he started walking down the road.
As soon
as he
was out
of sight
of the sanitarium, he turned right
into the woods. The Illinois
River lay a mile
and a
half away, and a half
mile up its bank was
a refuge.
6.
The cottage
belonged to a friend who
had invited
the Eyre
family Saturday afternoons for boating and water-skiing
and a
big meal at night.
They would sleep in the
two extra
rooms, get up for a big
breakfast about ten, go to
a nearby
church, and spend the afternoon on
the river.
Eyre paid for these weekends
by repairing Gardner's boat
motors or helping him paint
his boats.
The season was
over, and the house was
shut up. Eyre knew that it
held canned foods and blankets.
He could
hide out there while he tried
to find
out what
was happening
to him.
The cottage was
about twenty yards from the
river and was isolated from the
neighboring houses by thick woods
on each
side. He crouched in
the thick
bushes behind a big tree
while the moon rose.
About two hours
after he had hidden, car
lights probed down the narrow dirt
road leading to the cottage.
Shivering, he lay down flat on
the cold
ground in a little hollow
behind the bush. When the lights
had passed
him, he raised his head.
Two cars
were parked in the
moonlit area before the house.
Men in
the uniforms of the county police
were tramping around the house
with flashlights. Presently two
went in, and their flashlights
speared the darkness within.
After ten minutes, the two
came out. One of them said,
"There's no sign he's been
here."
"Yeah, but
he might
come here later."
One talked over
the radio
for a
minute, then called to the others. "The sheriff said to
watch the Y-fork for an
hour."
The cars drove
away. Eyre stayed where he
was. A half-hour later a patrol
car, its lights off, rolled
into the open area before
the house. Two men
got out
quietly, tried the locks, and
cast their flashlight beams through the
windows. A few minutes later, they got into the
car and
drove off.
Eyre waited until
three in the morning before
entering the house. An extra key
was hidden
in a
stump by the woodpile. Whoever had told the police
about this cottage—he suspected Mavice—had forgotten about
the key.
The moonlight
coming in the windows and his
knowledge of the place enabled
him to
locate a bottle of
distilled water, a box of
powdered milk, and cans of fruit
and meat.
The water
and gas
were shut off, so he
could not cook, and
he had
to go
outside to relieve himself.
At three thirty,
he crawled
onto the unsheeted mattress under
a pile of blankets. He fell
asleep at once but dreamed
of flying
saucers, yellow bricks, and
a green
city far off across a
red field.
He felt a great
longing for the city, an
overwhelming homesickness. He awoke
with the tears only half-dried.
7.
Half an hour
after dawn, carrying two blankets,
a can
that he had filled with water,
two opened
cans of food, and a
sack of garbage, he went back
to his
hiding place. He fell asleep.
Two hours later he was awakened
by noises
from the house. A car
with two county officers
was parked
out front.
He was
glad that he had replaced the
key in
the stump,
for an
officer was looking inside the stump.
Somebody had recalled that it
was there.
Was it Mavice who had betrayed
him? Or one
of the
kids? Gardner must have given a
key to
the police,
but somebody
in Eyre's
family had told the
police about the cottage. They
would not have known about Gardner
otherwise.
An officer
came out of the house
and called
to the
other.
"Everything's just
as we
left it."
Fortunately, they
had not
counted the blankets.
A moment
later, the sound of a
motor announced another car. His ear
identified it as a Porsche,
and thus
he was
not overly
surprised when Tincrowdor drove up. What was
he doing
here?
Tincrowdor got out
and talked
to the
officers, but they spoke too softly
for Eyre
to hear
what they were saying. Several
times, Tincrowdor looked out
at the
woods, and once he looked
directly at Eyre but could
not see
him, of course. Eyre hoped
that he wasn't going to suggest
to the
police that they search the
woods.
The policeman
got into
the car,
and Tincrowdor
started toward his. As he
passed the stump, he dropped
something into its open end.
Eyre waited
for a
half-hour and went to the
stump. The key still dangled on
a thick
cord from a nail driven
into the interior wall. Below it
lay an old
and frayed
wallet. He opened it and
found a folded letter
in it.
Paul,
I'm taking a
chance that you may come
here and find this. The police
don't know I'm doing this,
but if
they find this, there's nothing they
can do
about it. I'm only trying
to get you to surrender yourself.
But please
don't tear this up at this
point. Read on, because it
is vitally
important that you do. And when
I say
vitally, I am
not exaggerating.
It's vital not only for you
but possibly
for the
world itself that you make yourself
available at once for study.
Study by scientists.
Roger and I
found evidence that you were
lying when you said you'd dreamed.
We know
that it must have been
reality but that you
were afraid you'd be thought
crazy if you reported it as
reality. And Croker, poor dead
Croker, found evidence that you were
infected with a completely unknown organism.
It's evident that
these things have made some
changes in your body. And in your
mind. Mrs. Epples had a
very badly scarred face from adolescent
acne. The scars disappeared after she assisted in
getting you to bed in
the sanitarium. A male
nurse, Backers, suffered a heart
attack when he apparently manhandled you. He is a
rather brutal person and was not
discharged only because help is
hard to get at Adler's. No
wonder, considering its very low
pay scale.
It's obvious that
you have
powers that nobody else has
ever had. Except in
science-fiction stories. Or, possibly, some people in
the past
have had them—Jesus, Faustus, some others, maybe some so-called
witch doctors of so-called primitive
peoples.
I wouldn't advise
you to
try walking
on the
surface of the Illinois. But you
can hurt,
you can
kill, and you
can heal. I don't mean that you can do
this consciously. At
least not yet. But when you,
or your
unconscious, or whatever, feels threatened, it reacts violently. By what means, I
don't know. I'd guess, by mental
means. Definitions or analyses don't matter just now.
You have powers
for good
and evil.
You struck
down Croker in, I presume, a
moment of panic. Yet, Croker
was not trying to kill you.
He thought
you were
dead. You were kept prisoner in
that room, and your unconscious,
or whatever,
took the only means of
getting you out of that
room. At least, I'm presuming you
didn't do it consciously. Your body became, as far
as Croker
could tell, dead. But you
came out of that
fake-death state when you were
about to be dissected. And Croker
paid the price for trying
to keep
your condition a secret.
It's a good thing
I'm squeamish
and wasn't
present to watch the dissection. I went home and
so was
spared. The old man whose clothes
you took
seemed to have had a
mild heart attack. Apparently you, or
whatever, didn't feel that he was
an important
threat. He died a few
hours later, anyway. His old heart
couldn't take the minor injury
you gave it.
I'm asking you
to turn
yourself in, Paul. You should
voluntarily allow yourself to
be locked
up, for
awhile, at least. You won't be
charged with murder or manslaughter,
because you couldn't help
the deaths.
But if
you persist
in hiding, in running away, you'll
be killing
more people, and, eventually,
you'll be killed.
At the moment,
there is very little evidence
that your story is true. Croker
hid the
slides of your blood and
his reports on you. We can't
find them. Not yet. But
Epples and Backers saw the experiment
with the rat. You were
in an unconscious state, Paul, but
you killed
a rat
that had been released in your
room and tried to bite
you. It couldn't because its teeth
had been
removed. You killed it without
moving a muscle.
If you
give yourself up, the scientists
can test
you and
they'll have to believe
what they see. They won't
want to, but they'll have to.
And then
they'll have to believe that
an extraterrestrial of some
sort, mechanical or biological, has landed on earth. This
knowledge they will have to
keep to themselves while a quiet
search for the extee is
conducted. If the news got out,
the panic
would be terrible.
I won't lie
to you,
Paul. If the world found
out that
you were a possible source of
infection, you'd be in grave
danger. But that's why
you need
to be
kept in a place that
is heavily guarded. While you're running
around loose, the news might get
out, and every man's hand
would be against you.
Why do I
take the chance that the
police may find this letter and so bring about
the very
situation I've described? Because
the situation
demands that I take this
chance. You are the most important
person in the world, Paul.
The most important.
You must give
yourself up and let events
fall where they may.
You know my
phone number. Call me, and
I'll make arrangements to meet you
and have
you given
a safe
conduct.
Leo
8.
Paul Eyre
sat in
his daughter
Glenda's car in the parking
lot of
Busiris Central High School.
It had
taken him three hours to
settle down his heart
and thoughts.
By the
end of
that time he had half-convinced himself that he was indeed
the danger
Tincrowdor had said he
was. He still did not
intend to give himself up; at
least, not yet. He had
little imagination but the letter had shown him what
could happen to him. He
might be kept the rest of
his life
in a
hospital room. He might be
killed by some fanatic who wanted
to rid
the world
of the
threat to it he represented. All the guards and
precautions that could be imagined
would not be enough to
make him safe from determined
men.
And yet, he
wanted to do his duty.
Duty demanded that he sacrifice himself for the sake
of the
world. He could be a
walking bomb a thousand
times more fatal than a
dozen H-bombs.
He did not
really feel that he was.
He felt
lonely and helpless and very scared.
He felt
like a leper. He felt
self-pity. Why had this horrible thing
happened to him,
of all
people? What had he done to
deserve it? He wasn't a
wicked person. He had his
faults, though at the
moment he couldn't think of
any, but they weren't great enough
for him
to be
singled out for a singular
punishment. All he had
wanted to do was to
keep working at Trackless and on
his own
little business, to enjoy a
beer now and then, to go
fishing and hunting, to retire
someday and spend his remaining years camping, fishing, and
hunting. And work on some gadget
that would make him rich
and famous.
That was
all he
wanted.
Now, he thought,
he knew
what the deer and the
rabbits felt like when he had
been after them. Not that
he regretted
shooting them. They were
beasts of the field, provided
by God
for his
pleasure and good. He
had none
of that
false sentimentality that permitted
some to be horrified by
the deaths
of gentle-eyed
and harmless deer, while they thought
nothing of slaughter of gentle-eyed and harmless cattle and
sheep for their tables. He
didn't see them confining
themselves to nuts, carrots, and
apples.
Nevertheless, as he
had made
his way
through the woods and the city
to this
parking lot, he had experienced
the same
horror that the deer must have
experienced.
Busiris, a city
of 150,000
population, stretched
six miles
along the western shores
of the
Illinois. It also covered the
three bluffs inland for a distance
of five
miles. He had walked through
the forests and by
the farms
and the
few industries
on its
northern side, ascended the
bluff through some woods, and
walked through the outlying
areas. He had to cross
some of the major roads, and
the closer
he got
to the
high school, the more chance he had of being
recognized. But he had shaved
off his
mustache in the cottage,
and he
was not
wearing his glasses.
Using a screwdriver taken from the cottage,
Eyre pried open the front left
window of Glenda's car. Reaching
in with
the other, he brought up the
lock on the inside of
the door.
A moment later, he had crosswired
the car
and had
the motor
running. If he were
spotted by a patrol car,
he would
at least
try to get away in her
Impala.
Three thirty
came. The big building spewed
forth students. Over two-thirds
of the
cars had left the lot
when Glenda appeared. She had a
beautiful though thin face and
long black hair. Yet, she was
a pitiful
figure. She would have been
five feet eight inches tall if
her back
had been
an exclamation
mark instead of an interrogative. Her legs seemed as
thin as the back of a
cigarette package. One leg was
several inches shorter than the other.
She walked
with a motion suggestive of a sick snake.
Glenda was
a living
reproach to her father, though
he had
only recently recognized it. He had been
disappointed when she was born because
he had
wanted another son. Girls were
useless; they demanded special
care, became a worry when
they were pubescent, and beyond helping
their mothers when they got older,
couldn't pay their way in
his household.
Paul Eyre had, however, determined that his daughter was
going to be as much like
a boy
as possible.
He had
taught her how to repair
cars and outboard motors, to do
carpentry and electrical work, and
to hunt and fish. At least,
when she got married, she
wasn't going to be a drag
like Mavice. Mavice had refused
to learn
enough to help him in his
business. And when she reluctantly
went along on his outdoor trips,
she griped
about the cooking, the boredom
and the discomforts.
When Glenda
was ten,
she had
gone with him and Roger
to Wisconsin on a fishing trip.
She had
not been
feeling well for several days and
had objected
to going.
Mavice had objected, too. He had
stormed at both of them
until they subsided. On reaching the little lake, Glenda
had become
too sick
to leave
the tent. Eyre had ignored all
except her most basic demands
and had, in fact, been angry
because he thought she was
malingering. The second day, Glenda
had a
high fever and was only
conscious now and then.
Finally realizing the seriousness of the situation, he had
bundled her into a car
and driven
all night
back to Busiris.
Glenda had
almost died of infantile paralysis.
And she
would always be a cripple.
She had never
said anything to him about
his forcing
her to
go on the trip. Mavice, however,
had more
than made up for Glenda's silence. How many times,
when they were quarreling, had Mavice thrown this up
to him?
Now, watching her
hobble bent-backed across the lot,
he felt
sick. And he understood
why her
mere presence had made him
so angry, why he
had longed
for the
day she
would go off to college. Deep down, he knew
that it was his selfishness
and stupidity that had wrecked her.
He had
refused to admit that knowledge to his consciousness, but it had nevertheless
disturbed him.
He also saw
for the
first time that Mavice was
to blame,
too. Why hadn't she held out
against him? No matter how
he had
ranted, she should have
refused to let him take
an obviously
sick child on such a trip.
Both of them
were guilty. Both had refused
to admit
their guilt. The only difference now was that Mavice
was still
blind, and something had suddenly and
painfully opened his eyes.
He knew what
that something was. The strange
organisms in his body had worked
a change
in him.
9.
Glenda, seeing
him in
the driver's
seat, stopped. Her pale face became
even whiter. Then she came
around the side of the
car and got in
beside him. Tears ran down
her cheek.
"What are
you doing
here, Dad?"
He refrained from
telling her that she was
his second
choice. Busiris College was
too far
away and too well patrolled
for him
to try to see Roger.
He told her
all that
had happened
and described
Tincrowdor's letter, Glenda looked
stunned.
"I didn't
want to phone Leo because
the police
might've tapped his wires,"
he said.
"I want you to get
to his
house and arrange for him to
be in
the phone
booth near the downtown public library. I'll call him
from another booth."
"I just
can't believe all this!" Glenda said. "It's too fantastic!"
"I'm not crazy,
and Leo
will tell you so," he
said. "The world has enough problems,
more than it can handle,
as everybody,
including God, knows. But now,
in the
past few days, it has two
new problems.
And both
make all past problems look
simple. One is that
saucer creature. The other is
me. I
can turn
myself in and give
the world
a chance
to solve
the dilemma
I represent. But what's going to
prevent the saucer thing from
infecting other people? Nothing,
nobody, is going to be
able to do anything about that.
Except me."
"What do you
mean?" she said. She leaned
over and placed a hand on
his arm.
He moved
it away,
feeling that he might be
contagious.
' 'I mean
that there's something of the
saucer thing in me. It's
changed me, is still
changing me. I'm part saucer
thing myself. Otherwise, why would I
have those dreams of that
green city and the longing for
it? You
see before
you a
man who'«
still your father but not your
father. Half-human. Or, maybe I was
only half-human before and
it's making me more human.
I don't
know. Anyway, it takes
a thief
to catch
a thief,
and I'm
the only
one who can catch
the saucer
thing. That's because I'm part
saucer thing, and the
saucer thing herself is dogging
me. Why,
I don't know. There's so much
I don't
know. But I'm convinced that only I can trap
her. Which is
why I'm
not going
to turn
myself in. But I
need help to stay out
of the
hands of the police. That's why I want to
talk to Tincrowdor. Maybe he'll
help me."
"Dad," Glenda
said in a choked voice.
"I'm sick!"
She fell against
him, and even through his
shirt he could feel the heat
from her face. He pushed
her back
so that
she sat
up as
straight as she ever
would be able to. Her
head hung forward, mouth open; she
breathed as if a rusty
windmill was in her throat.
"I'm not angry with you, Glenda!"
he cried.
"My God, I love you!"
10.
Once, he
had deserted
her when
she had
been sick. There had been no
excuse then for what he
had done.
Now, if he deserted her, he would have an
excuse. He couldn't let himself
be caught. And logic certainly told
him to
leave her. He could phone in to the hospital
and then
take off. Glenda would be
taken care of, and
he would
be safe.
He thought for
sixty seconds or so and
then drove out of the
lot and headed toward
the Methodist
Hospital. Glenda probably needed to get
to a
hospital as swiftly as possible,
and he
would not be responsible for even
a second's
delay.
He drove as
fast as he could, passing
three stop signs and two
red lights. His car
pulled up at the emergency
entrance four minutes later. After running
inside and telling the nurse
at the
admittance desk, he went
to the
public phone down the hall.
He dialed his home number but
hung up after the phone
had rung
twenty times. Then he
dialed Tincrowdor's number. Morna answered.
He told her
to shut
up and
listen while he explained the
situation.
"You get
Mavice and Roger down here
and take
care of things," he said, "And
tell Leo I'll be getting
in touch
with him. 'Bye!"
He walked
down the hall away from
the emergency
room. He heard the nurse calling
after him but did not
look back. A minute later, he went out by
the main
exit, past the policeman standing
guard there. He strode
up the
slope along the hospital, cut
over to a side street that
led to
Main Street, and took a
bus. Two blocks from his house,
he got
off at
Sheridan and Lux. He phoned the
hospital and asked for Mavice
Eyre, the mother of the girl
who had
just been brought in. He
waited for two minutes before Mavice answered, then hung
up and
walked to his house, hoping that Roger would not
be there.
He saw no
one who
knew him until he got
to his
house. Across the street was the
three-storied nursing home
filled with old people who had
often seen him come and
go and watched him when he
worked on cars and boats
in his
driveway. About eight of them, mostly
old ladies,
were sunning themselves on the side
porch as he went up
the driveway
to the
rear of his house. They looked
curiously at him but none
waved. Apparently, his strange
clothes and lack of spectacles
and mustache had deceived them.
Under a washbowl
on a
stand by the rear door
was a
key. Fifteen munutes later, he left
his house.
He was
dressed in his own clothes and
carried a wallet with fifty
dollars, and a shotgun and thirty shells. He got
into Roger's car; its motor
was still
warm. Evidently Roger had
gotten home just in time
to drive
his mother to the hospital in
her car.
Paul Eyre had
no specific
place in mind to go
to. He
would drive out of the city,
abandon the car, and walk
to one
of the
riverside cottages deserted for
the season.
There he would wait as long
as he
was left
alone.
It didn't matter
where he was. Sooner or
later, the saucer thing in its
saucer form, or in that
of the
sphinx, would show up. And then
he would
destroy it. Or, it would
destroy him.
As he got
to the
end of
his street,
he saw
a patrol
car pull
across it, blocking his
car. He slammed on the
brakes, backed with a squeal of
tires into a driveway, and
raced away. The rear-view mirror showed
him the
police car backing up so
it could swing around.
When he
looked again, he saw another
black-and-white car, its red
lights flashing, pull around the
corner ahead of him.
He put the
car into
neutral, opened the door, and
fell out of it while it
was still
moving. He ran for the
old folks'
home, the sanctuary of senior citizens,
the elephants'
graveyard. The old ladies on the
front porch screamed. One stood
in his
path. Rage flashed through him. The
woman fell on her face.
Shouts of male voices tore at
him, and as he went
through the door into a
huge dining room, he
heard a shot. A warning
fired into the air.
He crossed
a big
room into a smaller one,
went past that through a kitchen,
and out
the door.
He vaulted
over a fence with an agility
he did
not know
he possessed.
But he
had forgotten about the savage police
dog the
Hunters kept. Though it was chained,
it had
enough leash to get at
him. It sprang at him
and dropped upon the
ground and lay
still, its tongue hanging out, its eyes glazing.
He stopped and
turned toward the big house,
his arms
up in
the air. If he
kept on running, he would
kill half the world, and he could
not endure
that thought. He would surrender
now, and if the police shot
him because
they were afraid to let
him stay
alive, so much the
better. That would solve many
problems.
The police, of
course, did not shoot. They
had not
been told how dangerous he was,
nor did
they know then that he
had left
three old women dead
behind him. Even if they
had, they would have thought that
the excitement
was too
much for the aged hearts.
That is exactly
what the few authorities who knew the truth
allowed the police and
the public
to think.
He was
not brought
to trial on any charge but
was declared
to have
been examined by psychiatrists
and found
insane.
Eyre did not
argue with the decision. Nor
did he
tell his keepers about the incident,
three nights after being locked
up, when he had awakened and
looked out of the window.
Outlined in its frame was a
saucer shape. It hovered for
a few
seconds and then flashed upward out
of sight.
Eyre felt that it—she—was watching over him because he
was her
only living offspring. Or, something inside him was.
11.
Six months
passed without his seeing a
human being in the flesh. From time to time
he awoke
knowing that a gas had
put him to sleep and samples
of his
tissues had been taken from
him. Once, he awoke with an
x-ray photo on the table
beside him. The TV had come
to life
then, and Dr. Polar's image
had told
him what the x-ray
meant. It was of his
brain, and the arrow drawn on it pointed to
a tiny
spot in his cerebellum, the "hind brain."
This was something that had
been detected by radioactive
tracing. It might be a
tumor, but Dr. Polar did
not think it was. Its shape
was too
much like a brick's. Dr.
Polar admitted that he
would like to operate to
extract it. But he was
afraid that the surgeon
would drop dead before the
knife could make its first cut.
"Apparently, if doesn't
object to our taking tissue
samples or doing certain other experiments,"
Polar said. "These don't threaten you, or it, I
should say."
Eyre asked about
its nature but
was told
that Polar and his colleagues didn't even have any
theories about it. Eyre then
asked if Polar planned
to kill
him so
he could
dissect him. Polar did not answer.
He also asked
a number
of times
about Glenda. Each time, he
was told that she
was alive
and doing
well. That was all he
could, or would, be
told.
On the first
day of
the seventh
month, as Eyre paced back
and forth, the door to his
room opened. Glenda walked in,
and the
door was quickly shut
and locked.
Eyre was so
overwhelmed that he had to
sit down
in his
chair. Glenda stood tall and straight,
her breasts
were no longer just little buds, and her legs
were even and shapely. She
smiled at him and then broke
into tears and ran to
him. He cried, too, though at one time he
would have thought it unmanly
to do
so.
"I almost died,"
she said,
after she had left his
arms. "My bones got soft. The
doctors said nothing like this
had ever
happened before. They said
the calcium
was semi-dissolved.
The bones were like
rubber at first and then
like a hard jelly. They kept me in a
kind of bath-bed; I floated
in water
while they put braces and molds
around me to straighten me out. After a
few weeks, the bones
began to get hard again.
It took
two months for them to become
completely hard, and it was
so long,
so very long, and
so frightening!
But look
at me
now!"
Eyre was happy
for a
long time. But when Glenda
said that he wasn't going to
be freed,
he became
angry.
"Why not? I can do
great good, more good than
anybody has ever done before!"
"Dad, they
can't let you go. Every
time you got mad at
someone, you'd kill him.
Besides. ..."
"Well, what is
it?" he said. He hoped
he wouldn't
be getting
angry with her. Maybe
he should
tell her to get out
now.
"We're all
in prison
here!" she said, and she
began to cry.
Though there was
no reason
to ask
why, he did so. The
authorities, whoever they were,
had locked
up not
only his family but the two
Tincrowdors, Mrs. Epples, and Backers
in this place. They were well
treated and given everything they wanted except their freedom.
"But what about
our friends
and relatives?"
"They've been told
we are
all being
treated for a rare contagious
disease. I don't know how
long they're going to believe
that, but I think
some sort of indirect pressure
is being
put on
them. They're not to
say anything
about this to anybody else.
We get letters, and we can
write letters. But they're censored.
We've had to rewrite
some of them."
Eyre was in
a rage
for two
days and a funk for
three. The sixth day, Dr. Polar
appeared on the TV screen.
He waited
until Eyre had quit storming at
him and
then said, "It's not as
bad as
it seems to you, Paul. There
may be
a way
out for
all of
us. I
want you to go to the
door now. The view-window will be opened for
a minute. I want
you to
just look through it. That's
all."
Since there
was no
reason to refuse, Eyre did
so. He
saw only
a baby, about a
year old, lying on a
bed. The baby had a
wasted face and very thin arms
and legs
and was
obviously dying. Eyre felt pity for
it.
Then the
window was slid shut by
someone out of his view.
Three days
later, the door opened, and
Glenda entered. They embraced each other,
and Glenda
said,' 'The baby
is completely
cured, Dad. It had
leukemia and would have died
in a
week or so. Now, it's cured.
The doctors
won't admit that, but they
do admit that there's been a
complete remission."
"I'm glad of
that," he said. "But what
does that mean for me? And
for you?"
he added
hastily. "And the
others?"
Glenda gave
him an
uninterpretable look, and
said, "If you'll cooperate,
Dad, we'll be set free.
We can't
tell the truth when we get
out, and if we should
slip up, we'll be in
trouble. But we'll be free. If.
. .
."
It was
evident that she was ashamed,
and yet
she longed
desperately for him to
say yes.
Nor could
he blame
her. She had been set free
from her crooked body only
to be
denied the new life promised her.
"What do
the others
say?"
"Mom is going
to go
crazy, literally crazy, Dad, if
she can't
get out. Roger says
the decision
is up
to you.
Morna Tincrowdor says she'll do everything
she can
to get
you out,
but she's
just talking, and she knows it.
Leo Tincrowdor
says you're not to give in
to the
bastards. But then he's happy.
He gets
all the
books and booze he
wants and he doesn't have
to support
himself. He sends a
message. 'Stone walls do not
a prison
make.' I think he
means by that you'll get
out by
yourself, somehow."
"If they
wanted me to do something
evil," he said, "I'd have
to refuse, and I'm
sure you wouldn't want me
to say
yes. But I do say yes.
Only, Glenda, promise me you
won't forget me. You'll write me
at least
once a week. And you'll
come to see me once in
awhile."
"Of course I
will, Dad," Glenda said. "But
it doesn't
seem fair! You have this gift,
you'll be doing good for many
people, and yet you'll be kept
in prison!"
"I won't
be the
first," he said. "Nor the last.
Anyway, they're keeping me
here so I won't hurt
people, though God knows I don't
wish anyone harm. Not consciously, anyway."
He bent close
to her
and whispered,
"Tell Tincrowdor to keep looking. He'll
know what I mean."
Late that night,
he awoke
knowing that someone, or something,
was near
and wanted
him awake.
He rose
and went
to the
window and looked out
over a wall and a
river beyond it and a
city sparkling with many
lights. Near the window, perhaps
twenty feet away, the
saucer hung. It was whirling,
and its
rotation seemed to be
making the noise he had
heard in his sleep. The humming was modulated, and its message, so
it seemed
to him, was one of farewell.
Farewell and sadness. It had
come to earth for some unknown
reason, had met with an
accident, had caused an unplanned change
in another
creature, and now must leave. Whatever it had planted
in him,
it felt
that the planting had not and
would not come to fruition.
Suddenly, it
shot upward. He thrust his
face against the bars and looked
up but
could no longer see it.
When he walked away from the
window, the vision of the
red fields
and the
green city flashed before him. Was
that a vision of the
thing's home? Was the vision broadcast
to him
by some
mental means from the thing? Or, did he carry
inside himself one of its
progeny, and did this child carry
inside itself an ancestral memory
of the
home of its mother? And was
it able
to transmit
this hereditary vision to him now
and then,
when he, or it, or
both, were under some stress?
He would never
know now, he told himself.
The visitor
had come because of mysterious reasons and had left
for mysterious
reasons. Whatever her mission
was, it had been aborted.
It was
his fate
to be
the only
human being touched by the
stars. And it was
his fate
that other human beings were
afraid of the startouched. So, while
the giver
of the
two-edged gift roamed through the spaces
between the stars, he, the
recipient, was shut up
in one
small room. Forever.
"Not forever,"
he muttered.
"You might keep me in
if I
was just a human being. But
I'm more
than that now. And you
will wish you hadn't locked me
up. You'll
wish you had treated me
like a human being."
Poul Anderson
PASSING THE LOVE
OF WOMEN
AFTER three hours
of troubled
sleep, Dan Coffin awoke to
the same knowing: They
haven't called in.
Or,
have they? his mind asked, and answered: Unlikely. I gave strict orders I be told
whenever word came, whatever it was.
So
Mary's voice has not reached us since dusk. She's lost, in danger. He forced
himself to add: Or, she's dead.
Forever stilled, that joyousness
that ran from the radio
to him
especially? "Remember, Dan, we've
got a
date exactly three tendays from now. 'Bye till then.
I'll be waiting." No!
Understanding it
was useless,
and thinking
that he ought to get more
rest, he left his bunk.
The rug,
a cerothere
hide, felt scratchy under his bare
feet, and the clay floor
beyond was cold. The air did
surround him with warmth and
sound—trillings,
croakings, the lapping of
waves, and once from the
woods a carnivore's scream—but
he hardly
noticed. Paleness filled the windows. Otherwise his cabin was
dark. He didn't turn on
a light to help him dress.
When you spend a lot
of time
in the
wilderness, you learn how
to do
things after sunset without a
fluoropanel over your head.
Weariness ached
in him,
as if
his very
bones felt the drag of
a fourth again earth's gravity. But that's nonsense, he thought.
His entire life had
been spent on Rustum. No
part of him had ever known
earth—except his chromosomes and the
memories
they bore of billionfold years of
another evolution—I'm
simply worn out from worrying.
When he trod
outside, a breeze ruffled his
hair (as Mary's fingers had done)
and its
coolness seemed to renew his
strength. Or, maybe that came from
the odors
it brought,
fragrances of soil and water and
hastening growth. He filled his
lungs, leaned back against the rough
solidity of walls, and tried
to inhale
serenity from this, his
homeland. A few thousand human
beings, isolated on a
world that had not bred
their race, must
needs be wary. Yet,
did they
sometimes make such a habit
of it
that there could be
no peace
for them
ever?
The two dozen
buildings of the station, not
only the log shelters like his own
but the
newer metal-and-plastic prefabs,
seemed a part of
the landscape,
unless they were simply lost
in its immensity. Behind them, pastures
and grainfields
reached wanly to a towering black
wall of forest. Before them,
Lake Moondance murmured and
sheened to a half-seen horizon;
and above that world-edge
soared mountains, climbing and
climbing until their tiers were
lost in the cloud deck.
The middle of
heaven was clear, though, as
often happened on summer nights. Both
satellites were aloft there. Raksh
was nearly at maximum distance, a
tiny copper sickle, while Sohrab
never showed much more
than a spark. The light
thus came chiefly from natural sky-glow
and stars.
Those last were more sharp and multitudinous than was
usual when you looked up
through the thick lowland
air. Dan could even pick
out Sol
among them. Two sister
planets glowed bright enough to
cast glades on the lake, and
Sohrab's image skipped upon it
as swiftly as the moonlet flew.
It's
almost like a night on High America, Dan thought. The memory of walking beneath upland
skies, Mary Lochaber at his
side, stabbed him. He
hurried toward the radio shack.
No one ordinarily
stood watch there, but whoever
was on
patrol—against catlings, genghis ants,
or less
foreseeable emergency makers—checked it from time to
time to see if any
messages had come in.
Dan stared
at the
register dial. Yes! Half an hour
ago! His finger stabbed the
playback button. "Weather Center calling,"
said a voice from Anchor.
"Hello,
Moondance. Look,
we've got indications of a
storm front building off the
Uranian coast, but we need
to check
a wider
area. Can you take some local
readings for us?" He didn't
hear the rest. Sickness rose in
his throat.
A footfall
pulled him back to here
and now.
He whirled
rather than turned. Startled, Eva Spain
stepped from the threshold. For a moment, in the
dim illumination
of its
interior, they confronted each other.
"Oh!" She tried
to laugh.
"I'm not an urso hunting
his dinner, Dan. Honest, I'm not."
"What are
you after,
then?" he snapped.
If
that were Mary, tall and slim, hair like sunlight, standing against the
darkness in the door— It was only
Eva. In the same coarse coveralls as him, with
the same
knife and pistol—tools—at her
belt, she likewise needed no
reduction helmet on her
red-tressed, snub-nosed, freckle-faced
head. Also like him, she was
of stocky
build, though she lacked the
share of Oriental genes that made
his locks
dark, cheekbones high, skin tawny. And she had a
few years
less than he did, whereas
Mary was of his age. That
didn't matter; they were all
young. What mattered was that this
was not
Mary.
Now, don't blame Eva for that, Dan told
himself. She's good people. He recalled
that for a long while,
practically since they met, everybody seemed
to take
for granted
that in due course they would marry. He couldn't
ask for
a better
wife, from a practical viewpoint.
Practicality be damned.
Her eyes,
large and green, blinked; he
saw light
reflected off tears. Yet, she answered
him stiffly:
"I could inquire the same
of you. Except I'd
be more
polite about it."
Dan swallowed.
"I'm sorry. Didn't
mean to be rude."
She eased a
little, stepped close and patted
his hand.
Her palm
was not as hard
as his;
she was
a biologist,
not an
explorer who had lately begun farming
on the
side. Nevertheless he felt callouses left by the gear
and animal
harness that every lowlander must use.
(Mary's touch was
soft. Not that she was
an idler.
Even on High America, survival required
that every healthy adult work, and she did a
competent job of keeping the
hospital records. But she never had
to cut
brush, midwife a cow, cook
on a
wood fire for a campful of
loggers, dress an animal she
herself had shot and cure its
hide. Such was lowlander labor,
and it
would be death for Highland Mary
to try,
even as it was death
for her
to be
long marooned in the
wilderness around Lake Moondance.)
"Sure," Eva said
gently, "I understand. You've fretted
your nerves raw."
"What does
bring you here at this
hour?"
"The same
as you." She
frowned. "Do you think I'm
not concerned? Bill Svoboda
and the
Lochabers, they're my friends as well as yours."
Dan struck
fist in palm, again and
again. "What can we do?"
"Start a search."
"Yes. One wretched little aircar
available, to scout over how
many thousands of square
kilometers? It'd take
days to assemble a fleet of
vehicles. They haven't got days.
Bill does, maybe, but . .
. Mary
and Ralph
. .
. very
possibly don't."
"Why not? If
their helmets are intact------------- "
"You haven't seen
as many
cases as I have. It
takes a pretty strong man, with
considerable training, to wear one
of those
rigs almost constantly. When your own
chest expansion has to power the
reduction pump—the ordinary person can't
sleep in one of them. That,
and sheer
muscular exhaustion, make the body extra
vulnerable to pressure intoxication, when the victim takes the helmet off so
he can
rest."
Dan had spoken
in a
quick, harsh monotone. Eva replied
less grimly: "They can't be any
old where.
They were homebound, after all."
"But you
know they, the Lochabers, they wanted to see
more of the countryside, and Bill
promised he'd cruise them around.
They'd've been zigzagging the whole way. They
could have landed at random, as
far as
we're concerned, for a closer
look at something, and come to
grief. Even if we pass
near, treetops or crags or mists
can hide
their vehicle from us."
"I'm aware that
this is a rather large
and not
especially mapped country." Eva's response was dry.
It broke
into anger. She stamped her foot.
"Why are you moping around
like this?
Dan Coffin, the
great discoverer! Won't you fry?"
He hit
back indignation of his own.
"I intend to start at
dawn.
I assure you it's
no use
flying at night,
it's a waste of fuel.
Light-amplifier systems lose too
much detail, in that com-
plicated viewfield where the
smallest trace may be the
one that
counts. The odds are
astronomical against chancing in sight
of a
beacon fire or in
metal-detector range or—"He
slumped. "Oh,
God, Eva, why am
I being
sarcastic? You've flown more than
I
have. It's so huge
a territory,
that's all. If I had
the slightest
clue------ ''
Once more her
manner mildened. "Of
course." Slowly: "Could we maybe have such
a lead?
Some faint indication
that they might have headed one
way rather
than another? Did Mary—did
Mary tell you she was
especially interested in seeing some particular sight?"
"Well, the geysers
at Ahriman,"
he said
in his
wretchedness. "But the last
call-in we got from them
was that
they'd visited this and were about
to proceed
elsewhere."
"True. I've
played back that tape a
few times
myself."
"Maybe you put
an idea
into their heads, Eva? You
saw considerable of them,
too, while they were here."
"So I did. I
chatted about a lot of
our natural
wonders.
Ralph's fascinated by the
giant species." She sighed. "I
offered
to find him a
herd of terasaur. We flew
to Ironwood
where one
had been reported, but
it had
moved on northward, the trail
was
clear but there was
a thunderstorm
ahead. I had trouble convinc-
ing Ralph how foolish
we'd be to fly near
that weather. Just
because lowland air currents
are slow,
those High Americans
always seem to think
they lack force. . .
.No, Ralph's bright,
he knows better; but
he does
have a reckless streak. Why
am I
rambling? We-------- "
She broke off.
Dan had
stiffened where he stood. "What
is it?" she whispered.
"That could be
the clue
we need."
The night
wind boomed under his words.
"What?" She
seized him by the wrist.
Only afterward did he notice that
her nails
had broken
his skin.
"Terasaur—they migrate
upward in summer, you know.
Bill could've promised to locate a
herd for the Lochabers, maybe the same herd you
failed to see. Their tracks
are easy
enough to spot
from above------ "
He grabbed
her to
him. "You're wonderful!
It may turn
out to
be a
false lead, but right now
it is
a lead
and that's plenty. Come daybreak, I'm
on my
way!"
Tears broke from
her, though her voice stayed
level. "I'm coming along.
You may
need help."
"What? I'll take a partner, certainly-------------- "
' The partner
will be me. I can
pilot a car, shoot a
gun, or treat an injury as
well as anybody else. And
haven't I earned the right?"
In the
several years of his career
as an
explorer, Dan Coffin had often returned
to High
America. Not only did the
scientists and planners want
the information
he gathered
about this planet that they hoped
to people
with their descendants; but he
himself must discuss further expeditions and arrange for equipping
them. Moreover, he had
family and friends there.
Additionally, at first,
he found
refreshment of both body and
spirit in the land.
High America rose above the
cloud deck that covered most of
Rustum most of the time;
its skies
were usually clear, its winters knew
snow and its summers cool breezes
through their warmth. Compared
to the
low country,
it was
almost like earth.
Or so he
imagined, until gradually he began
to wonder.
He had gotten a standard teaching
about the variations. The sun
was smaller in earth's sky though
somewhat more intense, its light
more yellowish than orangy.
Earth took one-point-seven years to complete
a circuit
around Sol, but spun on
its axis
in a
mere twenty-four hours. There
was a
single moon, gigantic but sufficiently far off that it
showed half the disc that
Raksh did and took about eleven
days (about thirty earth-days) for a cycle of
phases. Dan Coffin, who
weighed a hundred kilos here,
would weigh eighty on earth. The
basic biologies of the two
worlds were similar but not identical;
for instance,
leaves yonder were pure green, no
blue tinge in their color,
and never
brown or yellow except when dying.
. .
.
Searching his
memories, then asking questions carefully
framed, he came to
realize how poorly the older
people—even those who had
grown to adulthood on earth,
and even
when helped by books and films—were
able to convey to him
some sense of what the mother
globe really was like. Did
the differences add up
to such
alienness that they themselves could no longer quite imagine
it? And
if this
was true,
what about the younger folk, the
Rustumites born? And what about
the children
whom they in turn
were starting to have?
So did
Dan Coffin
really need High America?
Most humans
absolutely did, of course. The
air pressure
at lower altitudes was too much
for them,
made them ill if they
were exposed more than
very briefly, eventually killed them.
But his body could
take it, actually thrive on
it. In
fact, on each return he missed
more keenly the high-metabolism vigor that was his down
below, the clarity of sound
and richness
of smells.
Besides, High America was
too damn
cramped. Oh, there was still a
lot of
fallow real estate; but the
future belonged to those who could
settle the lowlands. Already the
whole wild, beautiful, mysterious, limitlessly beckoning surface of
the world
was theirs.
He continued to
enjoy his visits as a
change of pace, a chance
to meet people, savor
the civilized
amenities, roister a bit in what few
establishments Anchor supported
for that
purpose. Yet, it was always good
to get
back to Moondance. This became
especially true after Eva
Spain arrived there.
Like him,
she had
been an exogenetic baby, her
parentage selected with a
view to tolerance of dense
air. The result was equally satisfactory for her. He
and she
could both descend to sea level
in comfort,
which made them natural partners.
Most of those who were beginning
to settle
the lowlands
did not
care to go that far down;
Moondance station was at two
kilometers altitude. Eventually, man as a whole
would be able to live
anywhere on the planet.
That evolution wouldn't take a
dreadfully long time, either: because
the few
who now had full freedom were sure
to have
a disproportionate
share in the heredity.
Dan and
Eva .
. .
they worked well together, liked
each other, there was no burning
romance but there was a
growing attraction and certainly
a marriage
would make excellent sense from every standpoint. But then,
for the
first time since school days, he encountered Mary Lochaber.
This near-summer
solstice, at this middle latitude,
daylight would endure for
about forty-two hours. The searchers
intended to lose none of them.
Their aircar was aloft before
the first
eastward paling of the
clouds.
Those had again
covered the sky. Dan remembered
Mary wondering how he
could endure such almost perpetual
gloom. "It's not like
that at all," he answered.
"Still another thing you ought to
experience for yourself."
Finally she had
come, and—his knuckles stood white
on the
controls.
Eva turned
her eyes
from the forest. Beneath silver-bright
heaven, in the absence
of clear
shadows, its treetop hues were
an infinitely subtle and changeable intermingling. Their endlessness was broken by the
upheaval of a plutonic tor,
the flash
of a waterfall and a great
river, the splendid northward climbing
of the entire land. Kilometers away, uncountable birds moved
like a storm.
"You really
are suffering,
aren't you?" she asked quietly.
He heard
his own
voice, rough and uneven: "I
used to revel in the sheer
bigness of the country. Now,
when we have to find
one speck that's gotten lost somewhere,
it's horrible."
"Don't let it
get to
you that
way, Dan. Either we learn
to live
with the fact of
death—here—or we can never be
happy."
He recalled the
tidal cross-chop that had capsized
their boat when they were taking
biological samples off the Hephaestian
coast. Half-stunned, he might
have drowned if she hadn't
come to his aid. Toshiro Hirayama,
who had
been like a brother to
both of them, was
indeed lost. The rest of
the crew
clung to the keel for hours
before a rescue flyer found
them. She got back her
merriment as fast as
any of
the others.
Nevertheless she still laid a wreath
now and
then before Toshiro's little cenotaph.
"You're a fine girl,
Eva," Dan said.
"Thanks," she
answered low. "However, it's another
girl on your mind, isn't it?"
"And Ralph. And Bill." "Mainly her. Right?"
Brought up
in his
stepfather's tradition that a man
should not reveal his private feelings
to the
world, Dan had to struggle
for a
moment before he could
nod and
say: "Yes."
"Well, she is
beautiful." Eva spoke
without tone. "And
a very charming, gracious person. But a
wife for you?"
"We . . .
hadn't discussed that . .
. yet."
"You've been giving
it some
mighty serious thought. And so
has she."
His heart
stumbled. "I don't know about
her."
"I do.
The way
her look
dwells on you, the voice
she speaks
in when you are
there—it's obvious." Eva bit her
lip. "Is either of you in
earnest, though? Truly?"
He thought
of long
talks, of hikes and horseback
rides across her father's lands, of
dances in Wolfe Hall and
afterward walking her home under
frosty stars and hasty Sohrab
and the
bronze light of Raksh upon a
clangorous river. There had been
kisses, no more; there had been
words like, "Hey, you know,
I like
you," no more. Yet,
he had
felt that when he came
to dinner,
her parents (and Ralph,
her brother,
who shared
her blonde
good looks and sunny temperament) were studying him with
a certain
amiable intensity.
She herself? "I'm
not sure,"
he sighed.
"They've got such a . .
. a
different style on High America."
Eva nodded. "It
might not count as a
decent-sized village on earth,"
she said,
"but Anchor is where most
of the
population on Rustum centers, and where
the industry
and wealth
and culture are. The alpine hinterland
may be
sparsely settled, but essentially
it's been tamed. People have
leisure for fine manners. They
may even
be overcultivating
that kind of thing, as
a reaction against the early hardships.
Meanwhile we're the raw frontier folk."
"You're hinting at
a social
gap? No, the Lochabers aren't
snobs. Nor are we
yokels. We're scientists,
carrying out research that is both
interesting and necessary."
"Granted. I don't want
to exaggerate.
Still, it was getting to
know those friends of
yours—a sort of overnight intimacy
that never quite happens
in their
own safe
environment—that drove home to
me the
fact that there is a
difference."
He could not
kiss Mary at Moondance. A glassite bulb sealed
off her head, maintaining
an air
pressure that was normal for
her. The same pressure
was kept
in the
station's one small guesthouse; but it
took discouragingly long to go
through its decompression chamber
when one's own lungs were
full of lowland atmosphere. Anyway, she
shared it with her brother.
But there were
rich compensations. At last he
could show her something of his
world, that overwhelmingly greatest part
of the
planet she had known
only from reading, pictures, a
few stereotyped tours, and
his words.
During five magical days, she
and Ralph could wander
with him and Eva through
the templelike
vastness, intricacy, and serenity of
the woods,
or go
ahorseback on a laughing
breakneck hunt, or see how
biological engineering joined slowly
with hard work and patience
to make
the soil bear fruit
for man,
or. .
. .
Rakshlight glimmered
on the
curve of her helmet and
the long
fair tresses within. It
made a rocking bridge across
the waters,
which lapped against the
boat louder and more chucklingly
clear than ever waves did in
the highlands.
Wind had died, though coolness still breathed through the
summer air, and the sail
stood ghostly. That didn't
matter. Neither he nor she
were in any
hurry to return.
She asked
him: "Where does the name
Moondance come from?"
"Well," he
said, "the lake's
big enough
to show
tides when Raksh is as close
as now;
and then
the reflections
gleam and flash around the way
you see."
She caught his
hand. "I was thinking," she murmured, "it ought to be Moon-Dan's. Yours. To me it always
will be. What you're doing is
so great."
"Oh, really,"
he stammered,
"I'm just a servant. I
mean, the scientists give me instrument
packages to plant and collect,
experiments and observations to carry out, and
I follow
orders. That's all."
"That is
not all,
as you
perfectly well know. You're the
one who has to cope and
improvise and invent, in the
face of unending surprises. Without your
kind of people, we'd forever
be prisoners on a
few narrow
mountaintops. How I wish I
could be one of you!"
"Me too,"
he blurted.
Was she
suddenly as half-frightened as he?
She was
quick to ask: "Where did Ralph
and Eva
go?"
He retreated
likewise into the casual. "I'm
not sure.
Wherever, I'd guess their
flit will pass over the
Cyrus Valley.
She's mighty taken by
your car. She's been faunching
to try
it
out under rough conditions.
The updrafts
there------------- "
Her tone
grew anxious. "Is that safe?"
"Sure, yes.
Eva's an expert pilot, qualified
to fly
any vehicle
at any air density. This model
of yours
can't handle much unlike the H-17, can it? It's
only a modification." Because there
was around him the splendor of
his country,
he had
to add:
"You know, Mary, what
worries me is not how
well the craft performs, but what
its engine
may signify.
I've read books about what fossil
fuels did to the environment
on earth;
and here
you're re-introducing the petroleum
burner."
She was
briefly taken aback.' 'Haven't you
heard?" A laugh. "I guess
not. You seem to have
other things on your mind
when you visit us. Well, the
idea is not to replace
the hydrogen
engine permanently. But petroleum
systems are easier to build,
with far fewer man-hours; mainly because
of fuel
storage, you know. Dad thinks he
can manufacture
and sell
them for the rest of
his lifetime. By then, there should
be enough
industrial plants on Rustum that it'll
be feasible
to go
back to a hydrogen economy.
A few hundred oil-fired power plants,
operating for thirty or forty years,
won't do measurable harm."
"I see.
Good. Not that I'm too
surprised. Your brother was telling me yesterday about the
work he does in his
spare time, drilling into children how
they must not repeat the
old mistakes.
..." Again he skirted too
near the thing that was
uppermost in his heart. "Uh,
by the
way, you mentioned wanting to see more of the
lowlands on your way home,
if you
could get a pilot who can
safely take you off the
mapped and beaconed route. Well, I
may have
found one."
She leaned close.
Her gaze
filled with moonlight. "You, Dan?"
He shook
his head
ruefully. "No. I wish it
were, but I'm
afraid I've taken too
much time off from work
as is.
Like Eva.
However, Bill Svoboda is
about due for a vacation
and----------- "
The three
of them
had flown
away into silence.
Eva's yell
cut like
a sword.
"There?*
She swung
the car
around so the chassis groaned
and brought
it to hover on autopilot, a hundred meters aloft
and jets
angled outward. Dan strained
against the cabin canopy, flattening
his nose till tears blurred vision
and he
noticed the pain that had
brought them forth. His
heart slugged.
"They're alive," he uttered. "They don't seem hurt." Mutely, his companion passed
him his
binoculars. He mastered the shaking of his hands and
focused on the survivors below
him and the scene around them.
Mountains made a
rim of
russet-and-buff woods, darkling
palisades, around a valley
shaped like a wide bowl.
Save for isolated trees, it was
open ground, its turquoise grass
rippling and shimmering in wind. A
pool near the middle threw
back cloud images. That must have
been what first attracted the
terasaur.
They numbered
some thirty adults, five meters
or more
of dark-green scaliness from blunt snouts
to heavy
tails, the barrels of their bodies
so thick
that they looked merely grotesque
until you saw one of them
break into a run and
felt the earthquake shudder it made.
Calves and yearlings accompanied them; further developed
than Terrestrial reptiles, they cared
for their
young. The swathe they
had grazed
through the woods ran plain
to see from the south. Doubtless
Bill Svoboda had identified and followed it just as
Eva had
been doing.
A hill
lifted out of the meadowland.
On its
grassy lower slope the other vehicle
had landed,
in order
to observe
the herd
at a
respectful distance. Not that
terasaur were quick to attack.
Except for bulls in
rut, they had no need
to be
aggressive. But neither had they reason
to be
careful of pygmies who stood
in their way.
"What's happening?" Eva breathed. "They never act like this—in summer, anyhow."
"They're doing it,
though." Dan's words were as
jerky as hers.
The car
from Anchor was not totally
beyond recognition. Tough alloys
and synthetics
went into any machine built
for Rustum. But nothing in the
crumpled, smashed, shattered, and scattered ruin was worth salvage.
Fuel still oozed from one
tank not altogether beaten apart. The
liquid added darkness to a
ground that huge feet
had trampled
into mud. Now and then
a beast would cross that slipperiness,
fall, rise besmeared and roaring to fling itself still
more violently into the chaos.
The hillcrest around
which the herd ramped was
naked stone, thrusting several
meters up like a gray cockscomb. There the
three humans had scrambled
for refuge.
The berserk
animals couldn't follow them,
though often a bull would
try, thunder-bawling as he flung
himself at the steeps, craned
his great
wattled neck and snapped
his jaws
loud enough for Dan to
hear through all the distance and
tumult. Otherwise the terasaur milled about, bellowed, fought each
other with tushes, forelegs, battering tails, lurched away exhausted
and bleeding
till strength came back to seek
a fresh
enemy. Several lay dead, or
dying with dreadful red
slowness, in clouds of carrion
bugs.
Females seemed less
crazed. They hung about on
the fringes
of the rioting giants and from
time to time galloped clamoring
in circles. Terrified and forgotten, the calves huddled by
the pool.
High overhead,
light seeping through clouds burnished
the wings of two spearfowl that
waited for their own chance
to feast.
"I'd guess—well, this has got to
be the
way it
was," Dan said. '
'Bill set down where you
see. The herd, or some
individual members, wandered close. That
seemed interesting, no cause for alarm.
Probably all three were well
away from the car, looking for a good camera
angle. Then suddenly came the charge. It was a complete
surprise; and you know what
speed a terasaur can put on
when it wants. They had
no time
to reach
the car and get airborne. They
were lucky to make it
up onto
the rock, where they've been trapped
ever since."
"How are
they, do you think?" Eva asked.
"Alive, at least. What a nightmare, clinging to
those little handholds in darkness, hearing
the roars
and screams,
feeling the rock shiver underneath them! And
no air
helmets. I wonder
why that."
"I daresay they
figured they could dispense with
apparatus for the short time they
planned to be here."
"Still, they've had
the nuisance
of cycling
through pressure change." Dan
spoke absently, nearly his whole
attention on the scene that filled
the lenses.
At the
back of his mind flickered
the thought that, if this had
gone for as many hours
as evidently
was the case, the herd would
have wiped itself out by
now had
it not
been handicapped by darkness.
"Well," Eva was
saying, "Ralph told me more
than once how he longed to
really experience the lowlands, if
only for a few breaths." Her fist struck the
control panel, a soft repeated
thud. "Oh,
God, the barrier between us!"
"Yes, Mary
remarked the same to me.
Except I always had
too much else to
show her and try to
make her see the beauty
of------ "
Bill Svoboda was
on his
feet, waving. The glasses were
powerful; Dan saw how
haggard, grimed, and unkempt the
man was. Mary looked better. But
then, he thought, she would
forever. She must in
fact be worse off, that
bright head whirling and ready to
split with pain, that breast
a kettle
of fire
. .
. together with hunger, thirst, weariness,
terror. She kept seated on her
perch, sometimes feebly waving an
arm. Her brother stayed sprawled.
"Ralph's the sickest,
seems like," Dan went on.
"He must be the one most
liable to pressure intoxication."
"Let me
see!" Eva ripped the binoculars
from him.
"Ouch," he
said. "Can I have my
fingers back, please?"
"This is
no time
for jokes,
Dan Coffin."
"No. I guess
not. Although—" He gusted a sigh.
"They are al ive. No permanent
harm done, I' m sure."
Rel ief
went through him in such a
wave of weakness that he
must sit down.
"There will
be, if
we don't
get them
to a
proper atmosphere in
. . .
how long? A few
hours?" Eva lowered
the binoculars.
"Well, doubtless a vehicle
can arrive
from High America before then, if
we radio
and somebody
there acts promptly."
Dan glanced up
at her.
Sweat glistened on her face,
she breathed hard, and he had
rarely seen her
this pale. But her jaw
was firm and she
spoke on a rising note
of joy.
"Huh?" he
said. "What kind of vehicle
would that be?"
"We'd better take
a minute
to think
about it." She jackknifed herself into the chair beside
his. Her smile was bleak.
"Ironic, hm?
This colony's had no problems
of war
or crime—and
now, what I'd give for a
fighter jet!"
"I don't
understand----------- No, wait. You
mean to kill the
terasaur?"
"What else?
A laser cannon fired from above
. .
. Aw,
no use daydreaming about military apparatus
that doesn't exist on Rustum. What do you think
about dropping a lot of
fulgurite sticks? Bill's dad
can supply
them from his iron mine."
She grimaced and lifted a hand.
"I know. A
cruel method of slaughter.
Most of the beasts'11
be disabled only.
Well, though, suppose, as soon as
our friends
have been taken off, suppose
a couple of agile men go
afoot and put the creatures
out of
their misery with some such tool
as a
shaped-charge drill gun."
Shocked, he
exclaimed: "You'd destroy the entire
herd?"
"I'm afraid
we must,"
she sighed,
"After all, it's
gone crazy."
"Why has it?
We've got to find that
out, Eva. Otherwise somebody
else'11 get caught by
the same
thing, and might not survive."
She nodded.
"I doubt if
we can
learn the cause from a
lot of
mangled dead meat," he told her.
"We can
arrange experiments on other herds,
later."
"To what
effect? Look
at the
damage here. We could wipe
out the terasaur in
this entire region. They aren't
common; nothing so big
can be.
But it
appears they're mighty damn important to ecology. Have you
seen Joe de Smet's paper
on how they control firebrush? That's a single item.
It'd be strange if there aren't
more that we haven't discovered
yet." Dan gulped. "Besides,
they're, oh, wonderful," he said
through the tumult below. "I've seen them pass by
in dawn
mists, more silent than sunrise ..."
Eva regarded him
unbelievingly, until she
whispered: "Are you serious? Would you
risk Mary Lochaber's life, and
two more, to save a few
animals?"
"Oh, no. Of course not."
"Then what
do you
propose?"
"Isn't it obvious?
We carry
field gear, including a winch
and plenty of rope. Lower a
line, make them fast, and
we'll crank them right up into
this car."
She sat for
an instant,
examining his idea with a
fair-mindedness he well
knew, before the red head
shook. "No," she said.
"We can't hover close, or
our jet
turbulence may knock them right off
that precarious perch. Then we'd
have to drop the line from
our present
altitude. This is a windy
day; the hill's causing updrafts. I
don't expect the end of
a rope
could come anywhere near—unless we weight
it. But
then we've made a pendulum for
the wind
to toss
around, and very possibly brain someone or knock him
loose. See what tiny slanty
spaces they've got to
cling to, and think how
weakened they are by now."
"Right," he
answered, "except for one factor.
That weight isn't going to be
any unmanageable
lump. It's going to be
me."
She nearly screamed.
One hand
flew to her opened mouth.
"Dan, no!
Please/"
Lowland air
need not move fast to
have a mighty thrust. And
the topography here made
for more
flaws, gusts, and whirlings than was common. To control
the winch,
Eva had
to leave
the car on autopilot, which meant
it lurched
about worse than when hovering under her skilled hands.
Dan swung,
spun, was yanked savagely up and
let drop
again, scythed through dizzy arcs, like the clapper of
a bell
tolled by a lunatic.
The winds
thundered and shrilled. Through his
skull beat the brawl of jets
aimed to slant past him,
ground ward. Below him the terasaur
bellowed and trampled a drumfire
out of
the earth.
Knotted around his waist,
the line
wouldn't let him fall, but
with every motion it dug bruisingly
into his belly muscles. He
grasped it above his
head, to exert some control,
and the
shivers along it tore at his
palms and thrummed in his
shoulders. An animal rankness boiled up
from the herd, into his
nostrils and lungs. He didn't know
if that
or the
gyring made him giddy. Here came the rock!
Two meters
above, he swept through a
quarter circle. "Lower away!"
he cried
futilely. His partner understood, however, and let
out some
extra rope. His boots reached
for solidity. All at once the
car stumbled
in an
air pocket.
He fell,
snapped to a halt,
and saw
the cliff
face rush toward him. He
was about to be dashed against
it.
He heaved
himself around the cord till
he stretched
horizontally outward. The curve of
his passage
whistled him centimeters above bone-shattering
impact. He caught a glimpse
of Bill Svoboda, wildly staring, and
folded his legs in bare
time to keep from striking the
man.
Then he was
past, and swarming up the
rope. On the return arc, the soles of his
boots made contact with the
stone. He let them brake him by
friction. It rattled his teeth,
but it
practically stopped his swinging.
The next touch,
on the
next sway of the pendulum bob—which was himself—came slow and easy. He got his footing and
stood among his friends.
Immediately Eva released
more rope. Hanging loosely now,
it couldn't haul him
back if the car should
suddenly rise. He sank to the
rock and spent a minute
sweating, panting, and shuddering.
He noticed
Bill crouched at his side.
"Are you all right?" the
other man babbled. "Lord,
what a thing! You might've
been
killed! Why'd you do
it? We
could've held out till----------------- "
"You're okay?"
Dan croaked.
"Y-yes. That
is, the
Lochabers are sick, but they
ought to recover fast."
Dan crawled
on hands
and knees
to Mary.
"I came for you," he said, and held her
close. Dazed, she responded only
with a mumble. He let her
go, rose,
and conferred
with Bill.
Taking in
still more line, they secured
bights around bodies at five-meter intervals. Bill would go
first, he being in condition
to help Eva; next
came Ralph; then Mary (as
he made
her fast,
Dan thought what an
odd and
deep intimacy this was); finally
Dan himself, who could
best endure the maximum oscillation.
The remnant of
the task
proved simple. Eva raised the
car, at the lowest possible rate,
until one by one the
four on the rope dangled free in the sky.
She continued
to rise
till they were in calm air.
Thereafter she left the vehicle
again at hover and winched them in.
Though reduction
helmets were always on hand,
she depressurized the cabin
on the
way back
to Moondance.
The Lochabers sat half asleep, half
in a
faint. Eva called the station
medic. He said the
highlanders should stay in the
guesthouse till they had regained enough
strength for a flight home;
but on
the basis of Bill's account, he
didn't think that would take
long, nor that treatment need consist
of more
than bed rest and nourishment.
Dan spoke
little. He was sunk in
thought. Directly after landing,
he prepared
to take
off again.
When he
had cycled
through the lock, he found
Eva on
hand. The quarters were a dormitory
with kitchenette and mini-bath—cramped, austere, and relieved only
by windows
that gave on a view of
lake and forest, but they
could never be opened to the
breeze that sang outside. Eva
had drawn
a chair
into the narrow aisle
between rows of bunks. Ralph
lay at her
left, Mary at her
right. The siblings were in
pajamas, propped up on pillows. Nearby stood
a vase
of triskele
that the visitor must have brought.
The room
had grown
vivid with the goldenness of the blossoms, pungent with
their summery odor.
Dan halted. Eva
had been
crying! She'd washed her face
afterward, but even though
she seldom
wept, he knew the traces
of it upon her.
"Why hello,
stranger," Ralph greeted.
His tone
was a
little mechanical. Both the
Lochabers already seemed well on
their way back to health—and less than happy. "How
did your
expedition go?"
"Successful, I think." Dan's gaze went to
Mary and would not let itself be hauled away. Her
hair was molten amber across
the pillows and her
eyes like the heavens about
High America.
She smiled at
him; but the smile was
uncertain, even timid.
"How are
you doing?"
he said,
99 percent
to her.
"We're coming along
fine." She spoke so low
that he had to strain to
hear her in this thin
air. "Thanks to you."
"Oh, that wasn't
much." Curiously, he didn't blush.
Rather, he felt the ghost of
a chill.
"It was
plenty." Ralph's words came firm.
He, too,
was a
leader. "Damn few men
could have done what you
did, or would have dared to
risk their necks like that."
"I did
try to
talk him out of it,"
Eva said
in a
dulled voice.
"A heroic action,"
Ralph went on. "You saved
us several
extra hours of suffering.
Please don't think we're ungrateful.
Still, we can't help
wondering. Why?"
"Your lives," Dan answered. "Or, maybe worse,
brain damage."
Mary shook her
head. "That wasn't at stake,
dear, once you'd located us," she
said gently. "We could have
waited awhile more."
"I couldn't be
sure of that," he said,
with a slight upstirring of anger that she should
be thus
withdrawn. "I didn't know how
long you'd been marooned,
and you
just might have been among those people whose pressure
tolerance is abnormally low."
As low as mine is high.
"We aren't,"
Ralph said. "But anyway, it
was quite
an exploit, and we owe you
our sincerest
thanks." He paused. "And then you
flew back at once, not
even stopping to rest. I
stand in awe." He chuckled, though his
heart wasn't in it. "Or,
I will stand in awe as
soon as the doctor lets
me out
of bed."
Dan was
glad to shift the subject.
"My job, after
all." He drew up
a chair
to face
Eva and
them. It was good to
sit. Hour upon hour had drained
him. (The flight from here
to the
valley again, through air that in
places had gotten heavily turbulent;
the hovering above the rampage; the
squinting and studying, while the agony
of the
herd tore in him almost
as if
it had
been his own; the final thing
he did;
and not
even his triumph able to
lift the weariness off his bones,
during the long flight back.)
Maybe he should have caught some
sleep after his return, before
coming here.
"Was it
the terasaur
you were
concerned about?" Mary asked.
"Eva told us you were
going back to them, but
she didn't
know more than that
herself."
He nodded. "Uh-huh.
They're an important part of
the environment. I couldn't
pass up this chance to
learn more about them, and try
to save
what was left."
Eva half rose.
Something of the woe behind
her eyes
disappeared. "Did you?" she cried.
"I think so."
A measure
of joy
woke likewise in him. ' 'Frankly, I
feel more like bragging about
that than about a bit
of athletics at a rope's end."
"What happened? What'd
you do?"
Eva reached
toward him.
He grinned. The
tide of his pleasure continued
to flow.
4 'Well, you see,
terasaur do go rather wild
in rutting
season. The cause must be a
change in body chemistry, whether hormonal or pheromonal we don't know—but we
do know
how micro
amounts of such substances
will affect animal behavior, humans
included. Now, this herd
wasn't mating and its antics
were crazy even for that time
of year.
However, there were certain basic similarities. I wondered what
new factor
might have triggered the madness."
He stopped
for breath.
"Go on!" Eva urged.
Dan sought Ralph's
gaze. 4 "Petroleum
is complicated
stuff," he said. "Besides
long-chain hydrocarbons, it contains all
sorts of aromatics and the chemists
alone know what else. In
addition, your jet fuel probably
has polymers
or whatever,
produced in the course of refining.
My idea
was that
in among
those molecules is one,
or a
set, that happens to resemble
the terasaurian sex agent."
Mary drew a gasp. "Not
your fault," Dan added hastily. "Nobody
could have known. But it
does underline the necessity
of learning
everything we can about this
planet, doesn't it?"
The blond
young man scowled, 44You
mean . . . wait
a minute," he said.
44A few bulls drifted
near our car, probably just curious. They got a
whiff of unburned fuel dissipating
in the
exhaust; we'd left the
motor idling as a precaution—what
we thought was a precaution. That whiff was enough
to make
them charge, cutting us off from
the car.
Then, when the first tank
was ruptured and fuel
spilled out by the hundreds
of liters,
it drove the entire herd into
a frenzy. Is that what
you mean?"
Dan nodded again.
"Correct. Though of
course the total situation was wrong,
unbalanced, for the poor beasts.
The molecules involved must have similarities
but no
doubt aren't identical with their natural
gonad stimulator. Besides, it's the
wrong time of year
and so
forth. No wonder they ran
amok. Suppose someone injected you with
an overdose
of any
important hormone!"
"It's an
interesting guess. Are you certain,
though?"
' 'The biochemists
will have to check out
the details.
But, yes, I am certain in
a general
way. You see, I flitted
back to the site, where they were still rampaging.
I ignited
the spilled
fuel with a thermite bomb. It
went up fast, in this
atmosphere. Almost immediately, the
herd started to calm down.
By the
time I left, the survivors had
returned to their calves."
"M-m-m-------- "
"I know
why you're
glum, Ralph. Your family business
is getting set to produce oil-fired
motors. And now it'll have
to do
a lot more research first. What's
at stake
isn't merely the terasaur, you realize.
It's every related species, maybe
the entire
lowland ecology."
"That's why
you were
so anxious
to save
the herd,"
Mary said low. "Eva's told us
how you
insisted."
"Oh, I didn't have
any definite
ideas at that time," Dan replied. "Only
a—a general
principle." His mood
drooped. Trying to lift
it, he
said, "This doesn't mean your
father's project has to
be cancelled.
Once the chemicals have been
identified, I'm sure they
can be
taken out of the fuel."
"Indeed." Ralph
forced a smile. "You've done us a considerable
favor, actually. Besides the rescue,
you've saved us a number of
further losses like this."
"But you
didn't know!" tore from Mary.
Dan started
half out of his seat.
"What's that?"
"You didn't know—then—and
anyway, even if you had
known, there are other
herds—" She began to weep.
Appalled, he went
to her,
knelt by her bunk, and
gripped her hand. It lay cold
and moveless
in his.
"Mary, what's wrong?"
"I was
afraid of this . .
. what
Ralph and Eva were getting
at
. . . before you came
. .
. don't
you see?
You, you, you care so
greatly about this land
. .
. that
to save
a part
of it
. .
. you'd
risk------- ''
"Not your
life, ever!" he exclaimed.
"No, I s-s-suppose not . . .
but your
own!"
"Why shouldn't
I, if
I want
to?" he asked in his
bewilderment.
Her look
was desperate
upon him. "I thought—I hoped—All the years
we might
have had! You risked those!"
"But . . .
but Mary,
my duty—"
In long,
shuddering breaths, she mastered herself
enough to say, with even the
ghost of a smile: " 'I
could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov'd I
not honour
more.' Dan, I never really
sympathized with that attitude.
Or, at
least, I think two people
have to share the
same, well, the same honor,
if they
really want to, to share each
other. We belong to different
countries, you and I. Can
you understand?"
He shook
his head
as he
spoke, harshly. "No. I'm afraid
I don't." He rose
to go.
"But you're still exhausted, Mary. I'd better not keep
after you about this, or
anything. Let's talk later, shall we?"
He stooped
above her bed, and their
lips touched, carefully, as if they
were strangers.
Though the
air outside
was hot
and damp,
a rising
wind roared in treetops; and over
the lake
came striding the blue-black wall of a rainstorm
that would cleanse and cool.
Nobody else
was in
sight when Dan and Eva
left the guesthouse. Nonetheless
they did not continue on
among the neighbor buildings,
but went
down to the shore. The
water chopped at their feet. Afar,
lightning flashes were reflected off
its steeliness, and thunder
rolled around heaven.
"Well," he
said at last, into the
wind, "I guess that's that."
"You'll get over
it," said Eva, no louder
or livelier
than he. "You both will, and
be friends when
you happen
to meet."
"Except why couldn't she see--------- ?"
"She could,
Dan. That's precisely the trouble,
or the
salvation. She sees far too
clearly."
"You mean, because
I care
about the land, she doesn't
imagine I care about
her? Not She's
not that
petty."
"I didn't say
she is,
Dan. In fact, she's very
large, very wise and kind. Look,
she can live here, never going outside of
cages like a house and a
helmet. But to make you
stay all your days, or
more than a bare
fragment of them, where she
can be—that'd
cage you. You, who
now have
the whole
world before you. Better to
say goodbye
at once,
while you're still fond of
each other."
And
you, Eva, inherit me, he thought in
bitterness. He glanced down at her,
but her
head was averted from him
and he
saw only flying cinnabar
locks.
Wind skirled, thunder
cannonaded. He barely heard, after
a minute: "That's what I had
to tell
Ralph before you arrived. When he asked me to marry him."
The breath went
from Dan. The first stinging
drops of rain smote him in
the face.
Then she turned
back and took both his
hands. In her eyes he
saw—not a plea, not
an invitation—the
challenge to make a new
beginning.
Chad Oliver
CARAVANS UNLIMITED:
STABILITY
THE great lightship
of Caravans,
Unlimited came out of the
gray wastes of not-space
with a shuddering wrench. The
ship steadied, at home
again in the black velvet
of the
universe in which it had been
born. The symbol on its
bow, a laden camel, seemed to breathe a sigh
of relief.
The system
of Capella
was almost dangerously close; the tremendous
yellow primary, sixteen times the size
of the
sun that
earth knew, blazed against the faint light of more
distant stars.
Tucker Olton released
himself from his chair clamps
and managed a sickly smile. He
had never
gotten used to the dizzy
sensation of returning to
normal space. He tried to
cover up his discomfort by firing
questions at his companion.
"I don't get
it," he said. "Your schemes usually make at
least a crazy kind
of sense
to me,
but not
this time. Exactly what in the
hell do you think you're
doingV
Alex Porvenir salvaged
what he could of his
spilled drink and added enough Scotch
to make
it respectable.
"I think it best if
I spare you the arcane details
on this
one. Just do what I
tell you and then you can
always plead ignorance when everything
blows up in my
face."
"Don't be avuncular,
Alex. It's my responsibility, too, and my job. I
have a right to know
what's going on."
Alex looked
at the
younger man, his brown eyes
narrowed.
He ran a
lean, strong hand through his
graying hair.' 'Don't you trust me,
Tuck?"
"Of course, I
trust you. That's not the
point. You aren't trusting me said I don't understand
why. Your plan won't work
and you know it.
So what's
the deal?"
"Think the
old man
is losing
his grip,
do you?"
"I didn't say
that. I don't think that.
Dammit, we've known each other for
a long
time. We've worked on a
lot of
projects together. We've had
our disagreements,
but I've
never seen an
operation like this one.
It's—well, it's just plain silly.
You must
have your reasons. I
merely want to know what
they are."
Alex put down
his drink
and fired
up an
exceptionally foul pipe. "I have my
reasons, yes. I told you
why I
wanted to leave you out of
the planning
stage, and I wasn't kidding.
My intention
is to
violate a sacred company directive—I'm
disobeying orders, if you
want to put it that
way. If my plan doesn't
work, that's my hard luck. If
you weren't
involved in it, you're in
the clear. Still want to know
everything?"
"I want
to know
something."
"Okay. Just
to set
your feverish brain to rest.
I'm very
concerned about the Maburu;
I've always admired them a
great deal. I know their life
has been
tough, but if I could
have picked the person I wanted
to be
I just
might have been
one of
the Maburu. The atavistic streak in
me, I
suppose—I happen to like hunters."
"But that's
exactly what the company wants
you to
do. We're
trying to preserve the Maburu
culture. ..."
"Are we?" Alex
blew out a cloud of
acrid blue smoke. ' 'Maybe it all depends on
how we
define our terms. I'm worried
about what always worries
me in
these situations—this habit we have of
posing as Omnipotent Beings, messing
around with other people's lives. Caravans has
made mistakes before, and so
have we as individuals.
We don't
know everything. It's all too
easy to allow our
own interests
to shade
the decisions
we make.
Caravans wants
those horns; they've been a
profitable product for us. When you
cut through
the high-sounding
verbiage about saving the integrity of
the Maburu
lifeway, what they really want me to do is
to see
to it
that those horns keep coming.
I'm not convinced. Maybe that's the
best way to proceed, maybe
not. I promise you that what
I want
to try
is not
unethical. It will violate no laws.
Beyond that, I think it'll
work—that is, it will attain the basic objectives of the Caravans planners.
I'm just
not going to do precisely what
I was
told to do. Let me
ask you
a question. Will my plan result
in any
possible harm to the Maburu?"
"I don't
know what your plan really
is."
"So I'll rephrase
my question.
You do know what action I am going to
take. That's what you've been
moaning and groaning about. Will it
hurt them in any way?"
"No. I don't see---------- "
"Then can't we
leave it at that? Do
me a
favor this once and don't press
me for
details. You'll know soon enough."
Tucker Olton sighed.
"Okay, Alex. I just hope
you know
what you're doing."
Alex Porvenir smiled
and drained
his drink.
"So do I, friend. So do I."
The great
yellow sun was low in
the western
sky, burning redly through banks of
rain-swollen clouds. Some of the
fierce heat had gone out of
the day.
The winds
were beginning, gently now, and they
carried a hint of cooling
moisture. The plains grasses stirred. Even
the thorny
flat-topped trees swayed a little,
showing signs of life
after the searing afternoon heat.
A small
herd of about twenty bokix
became active in a clump
of thick brush. The
animals ventured out of the
shade for the first time in many hours. They
milled about aimlessly, shaking off
the torpor of the
hot afternoon,
sampling the scorched but sweet-smelling grasses.
A large buck
lifted his horn-crowned head to
taste the wind. He was a
splendid creature, his coat delicately
striped with tan and white, his
liquid eyes clear, his exquisite
horns golden and sweeping back over
his powerful
shoulders. The antelopelike bokix,
somewhat resembling the kudu or
oryx of ancient earth, were all big animals but
the buck
was truly
exceptional. He must have weighed close
to five
hundred pounds.
The buck
tossed his horns and snorted.
He was
thirsty after the heat of the
afternoon. He wasted no time
on the
grass. He moved off with a
long, easy stride, headed for
water.
The other bokix
followed his lead. The herd
strung out almost in single file,
walking steadily into the wind.
Old, old laws, as old as
complex life on the land. Where
there are grassy plains, there will
be animals
that feed on the grasses.
Where there are grass-eaters,
there will be hunters to
prey upon the herds. Lithe, fast killers
with sharp claws and teeth. Scavenger packs to snarl over
the carcasses.
Birds to peck
and rip and scratch at the
meat-shredded bones.
And, sometimes, men. A special kind of
men. Tireless, strong, patient
men, their eyes narrowed against
the sun
and wind. Men who
wait and stalk and wait
again. Men who
know about arrows and poisons and
traps. Men who know the
land and the animals that live
upon the land. Men who know
that animals must drink after the
heat of the day. Men who know where
the springs bubble and the rivers
flow. . . .
Hunters.
Waiting.
These, then,
are the
Maburu.
Hard men;
there are no fat Maburu.
The men
leave their crude brush shelters and
seek the herds. The hunting
bands are small, six or seven
men moving
like shadows along dusty and
almost invisible trails. The
men know
their jobs, but foot hunting
is slow. Often, they are gone
for many
days before they make a
big-enough kill to justify
returning to camp.
The women
and the
few old
men stay
fairly close to the shelters. The women fan out,
carrying their babies in cape
slings, searching for edible
roots and berries and the
wild succulent melons that
grow along the ground vines.
They actually supply most of
the food;
the Maburu
could not live on meat
alone in their tough
world. The women pick up
firewood along the way, and when
they return to the shelters
they build little fires and sit
and wait
and stare
into the gathering darkness. .
. .
The older
children—there are not
many in any one of
the scattered Maburu groups—play the games
they have always played. The boys
build snares and go after
lizards and snakes and small rodents
with their scaled-down bows and
arrows. The girls help with the
babies and dig roots out
of the
hard-packed ground and weave
little baskets for berries.
It is not
an easy
life. There is seldom enough
food for a full belly. There are few luxuries.
There is sickness that strikes
suddenly. There are children
who whimper
and die,
and there
are men who do
not return.
. .
.
But there
is more
than this.
There are times
when the big kill is
made and there is meat
for everone. It has a good
smell with the juices dripping
into the fires. You can eat
until you hurt, and rest,
and eat
again. You can sleep a long
sleep and dream your dreams
and be
secure in the knowledge that there
will be more food tomorrow.
There are times for dancing, times
for singing
happy songs. There are times for
jokes, and times
when a man and a
woman can lie together in the
warm huts with the rains
drumming on the thatch. There are times when the
sky traders
come, taking away the golden horns of the bokix
and leaving
in return
wonderful things that give days of
enchantment. There are times when
a boy
comes of age, and
you can
see pride
in his
eyes, and it is good
to be a Maburu. There are time when a child
is born,
and you
know that the Maburu will go
on forever.
Now, while the
small band of Maburu hunters
deploys in the afternoon sun, dividing
along the stream bank and
leaving an open corridor so that
the bokix
will not catch their scent,
there are other Maburu.
That is
the problem.
They are not
far away,
these new Maburu. A hard
journey of two days, that is
all. Looked at in another
way, though, the new Maburu are distant indeed.
They are different,
and have
become more different within the span of two generations.
There are many,
while the old Maburu were
few. They live close together. Their
houses are solidly made, and
they do not move them with
the seasons.
The men no
longer hunt. They spend the
long afternoons in councils around great
calabashes of sugar-stalk beer. It
is a
party of sorts, but there is
work to be done and
they take it seriously.
The councils are
forums. There are many legal
cases to be heard and decided.
Boundary disputes, and
thefts, and endless details of bride wealth payments.
And witchcraft. There
are too
many witches. . . .
The doctors
are busy
indeed. It is difficult to
combat the witches. The doctors must
examine the victims. They know
that illness is caused by witches,
of course,
but that
is not
specific enough. They must
speak with the spirits, calling
to them
on their ornately carved bows with
the special
strings and the sounding gourds that
resonate when struck. And they
must consult the flashing Wiloto, which
can signal
answers that only they can read.
Then they know the witch
that is responsible, and what she
has done.
That is the diagnosis. The treatments are complicated and expensive, and sometimes
they fail. Then the witch must
be confronted
directly, and that is a
dangerous business.
The women, too,
are busy.
They work hard, harder than
in the old way. There is
clearing and the planting and
the weeding
and the harvesting in a never-ending cycle. There are the
great baskets to weave, some of
them as tall as the
woman herself; the baskets have intricate
designs of many colors and
they are used to store the
foods in stilted storage huts
where the rodents cannot get at them. There is
more than one wife in
a house
now, and that means trouble. It
is small
wonder that some of the
women turn to witchcraft and use
their ancient power. It gives
release of a sort.
The new
Maburu have discovered agriculture. They do not know how
remarkable this is. They know
only that they can grow more
food than they could ever
find. They know only that
it is easier to grow food
than to hunt it—easier for
the men,
at any rate. They know only
that now there is enough
food so that people never have
to go
to sleep
with empty bellies.
They know
only that there are more
Maburu, and they are not
fools by any means.
They know that there is
strength in numbers. They can stay
all their
lives in one village instead
of wandering the hard trails lean
and hungry
and shifting
camps with the changing seasons. Their
children have a better chance
to survive; no longer
must they fear becoming too
attached to a baby that may
be dead
in a
matter of days. Elders are
not a
rarity now and a man does
not routinely
face death when he is
thirty.
They rather
look down on their backward
cousins, these new Maburu. They know
that they have found a
better way.
Who, after all,
would spend his life tired
and thirsty
on the
hunt, when he could
sit back
in the
shade and sip his beer
and relish the importance of savoring
a good
legal case?
Surely they
are ignorant,
those old Maburu.
. .
.
The buck
paused and lifted his head,
his golden
horns gleaming in the last
rays of the setting sun.
He sniffed
the freshening
wind. There was a
faint scent that disturbed him.
He hesitated,
his white-flecked tail cocked
with awareness.
It was the
sweet wet smell of water
that decided him. He moved again
toward the stream.
The bokix herd
was not
walking now. The gait had
shifted to a fast purposeful trot. Dust puffed up
around them and behind them.
The buck reached
the river
first. He waded out in
the cool
clean water, enjoying the
sensation of it. He paused
again and froze for a moment,
his nostrils
quivering. Then he drank, and
the herd drank with
him.
The Maburu hunters
struck. Swiftly, suddenly,
soundlessly. Converging, three from upstream and three from down. The first arrows flew while
the bokix
were still in the water.
The animals could not maneuver. They
were easy targets.
When the shafts
hit, the stricken bokix did
not simply
roll over in the water and
die. They were big animals,
and it
took a lucky arrow to drop
a bokix
in his
tracks. The herd exploded, thrashing and snorting. There was
whirling confusion, with golden horns flashing
and red
blood mixing with the muddied
water.
Most of
the animals
charged for the bank they
had just
left, heedless now of
the hunters
who waited
for them.
They heaved themselves out of the
water and took off at
a dead
run for
the cover of the brushy thickets.
They ignored the arrows that
pricked at their hides.
The great
buck was unhit. Part of
the reason
was that
the hunters were primarily after meat,
and the
cows were better eating. But the
hunters had seen his fantastic
horns, and more than one arrow
had come
his way.
It was
more than luck. The animal had not attained his
size and age without wisdom
and cunning. He had survived in
a tough
world. Even before the arrows had flown, some instinct
had warned
him. He began to swim away,
making for the opposite bank.
He was
out of
effective range before most
of the
rest of the herd had
fully reacted.
The hunters were
jubilant. The stalk had been
perfect, the arrows true. At least
seven of the bokix had
been severely pierced. It was an
incredible number.
But the
hard part was just beginning.
The poison would
work, yes; it was fresh
and strong
and smeared thickly on the foreshafts
of the
arrows. But the poison worked slowly on large animals.
It had
to get
into the bloodstream, and an animal as
big as
a bokix
would take time to die.
And the bokix
would not conveniently stay together,
trot back to camp, and collapse.
They would split up, go
in all
directions.
They must be
followed along unpredictable trails. They
must be found when they weakened,
found and guarded. There were
other animals who would
welcome the Maburu kill, either
to bring down the dazed bokix
or to
scavenge the dead meat. The
bokix must be butchered
and the
flesh cut into long strips
to dry;
otherwise, the meat was
too heavy
to carry.
Someone had to notify the camp
so that
the women
and children
could shoulder some of the burden.
And night
was falling.
It was
no simple
matter to track a wounded animal
through the darkness.
Still, it
had been
a great
hunt.
It would
be good
to sit
around the fires and tell
about it, when and if they
got home.
One day,
it would
be good
to remember.
The Caravans
lightship drifted in silent orbit,
far above
the world of Capella VII. It
was a
creature of the deep, and
docked on the shores of that
strange space-sea only under the
most exceptional circumstances.
The spherical
landing shuttles came down out
of space,
whispering through the atmosphere.
There were six of them,
floating down like white
bubbles through the glare of
the warm
sunshine.
Many times the
traders had come thus to
the Maburu,
seeking the golden horns of the
bokix. The horns were fabulous,
natural works of art, but what
made them valuable enough to
transport was the elementary fact that
wild animals were extinct on
the human ant hill that was
earth. The horns of the
bokix were priceless exactly because there
was nothing
like them at home. The value
of a
status symbol varies inversely with
the supply.
There was no
need for the traders to
conceal their movements. They had nothing
to fear
from the Maburu, and indeed
they wanted to be seen.
But this
time they had not come
to trade.
This time
their task was different. . . .
Emerging from
the landing
shuttles, the traders greeted the
shouting Maburu cordially. There was real friendliness
on both
sides; they welcomed each
other. It was a profitable
relationship for both of
them, of course, but it
was more
than that. The traders generally liked
and admired
the Maburu,
and the
Maburu had received only
good things from the traders.
You tend to like people who
bring you fine presents.
The traders dealt
only with the hunting Maburu.
The farmers
had no horns.
It takes time
to trade,
whether you are dealing with
primitive or civilized peoples. You don't
just dump out your goodies,
collect your horns, and
leave. That is an insult.
No, there
must be feasting and songs and
pleasant conversation that only lightly
touches upon
the purpose
of the
visit. . . .
Days went by
before the shuttles were loaded,
and still
the traders were not through. Trade
was not
the primary
purpose of this visit to the
Maburu, although they could not
afford to ignore the opportunity to obtain more of
the golden
horns. The logistics of space travel
made it necessary to transact
business whenever it was possible. Time
spent in space was dead
time; it cut into profits.
The traders
did not
understand the rest of their
job at
all. Alex Porvenir had asked them
to do
many peculiar things in his
time, but nothing like this. Still,
the man
knew his job—and his word
was law in field
operations.
They could not
explain to the Maburu. They
knew nothing to explain. They just
did what
they had been told to
do.
The traders grumpily
shouldered axes and proceeded to
a nearby forest. While the Maburu
watched and wondered, they selected tall trees and began
to chop
them down. When they got
one down, they trimmed
off the
branches and converted the trees into
long poles. The poles varied
in length
between fifteen and twenty feet. They
were so heavy that it
took ten men to haul
them from one place
to another.
The Maburu thought
it was
great fun. Besides, there would
be firewood for many months.
The traders were
much less amused. They could
have done the job quickly with
the proper
energy equipment, of course, but
Alex Porvenir had specified
axes, picks, and shovels. No
doubt it had something to do
with the laws governing the
introduction of sophisticated technology into undeveloped areas. Just the same, he wasn't doing any chopping or hauling.
It seemed to
take forever. The men were
not in
condition for this kind of work.
They tired easily in the
burning sun. Their hands blistered. Their backs ached.
It took
them a solid eight days
to cut
one hundred
poles.
None of them
noticed a single landing shuttle
that drifted down out of the
sky on
the fourth
day. It did not come
down in the usual place. It
landed on the edge of
one of
the new
agricultural villages, and one
man got
out.
If they
had noticed,
the traders
were past caring.
In the manner
of men
saddled with a difficult and
senseless job, they blanked
their minds and just tried
to get
through it. Alex Porvenir would not
have won any popularity contests with them. They hated
him, they hated Caravans, and
before long they hated the Maburu,
who finally
got bored
and left
them alone.
When they had
cut and
trimmed one hundred poles, they
dragged and rolled them
to the
clearing that Porvenir had
designated on his
map. That took four more
days. Then the real fun began.
The weary and
angry men started to dig
holes. Deep, deep
holes. One
hundred of them, arranged in
a precise
and complicated
pattern. The ground
was hard
and dry
and did
not yield
easily. It was like
chipping away at rock.
It did not
console them any to remember
that the ship could have drilled the holes in
a matter
of seconds.
The only pleasure
they had was in thinking
of what
all this
was costing Caravans. Every
hour that ship remained in
orbit was lost time. They already
had the horns.
It took seven
days to dig the holes,
and they
were not pleasant days. The traders
muttered sourly about mutiny, and
they were only half-joking. But they
were too well paid to
take the idea seriously. They were
also too damned tired.
Besides, they
still had to get the
poles into the holes.
By the time
they had rigged up some
crude hoists and started to plant the forest of
poles in the clearing, they
figured they were trapped in some
madman's nightmare.
Alex Porvenir's, to be specific.
Poles in the holes. They
ran through
all the
possible variations on that one, most
of them
obscene.
Mostly, they
just wanted it all to
be over.
Alex Porvenir
stepped out of the shuttle
and looked
at the
village.
He was not
unmindful of the crew still
chopping down trees in the forest
near the camp of the
old Maburu.
He knew
that it was a tough, dirty
job. He knew that the
skilled men would resent it.
Still, it was accomplishing
its purpose.
His plan
was by
no means as bizarre as it
seemed.
He put the
crew out of his mind.
His task
was here,
with the new Maburu. It was
all up
to him
now. If he failed, much
more would be lost than a
single staple in the interstellar
trade. The Maburu themselves were on
the line.
Alex smiled. He
welcomed the challenge. It was
good to get out of the
ship, get away from nagging
doubts. It was good to
feel the land under
his feet
and the
warm sun on his face.
It was
good to sniff the
smells of living things, carried
on the
wind.
The land and
the sky
and the
sun always
restored Alex. Both his mind and
his body
told him that man was
still an animal. He never felt
really comfortable sealed in a
ship or trapped in the
sterile towers of a
city. He needed the ancient
things.
He was
consciously aware of the pleasure
he took
in functioning
as a
field anthropologist again, getting ready
to do
a job
he knew he could do well.
Scanners and computers were fine
and necessary, but sometimes
a man
had to
get out
and stick
his nose
in the dirt. Alex was interested
in people.
They were lots more fun than
elegant abstractions.
He stood
in the
open, not trying to hide.
He lit
his pipe,
savoring it for a
change. He studied the scene
before him. He was on a
small rise, and his view
was clear.
He could
see a
group of Maburu already moving toward
him.
The new Maburu. How incredible they were, and
how little
aware of their own
accomplishment!
There was the
neat and compact village, with
the solid
houses and the thick roof thatches
yellow-brown in the sun. It
was not
a small village; Alex estimated that
it held
at least
two thousand
people. That meant a
population density perhaps fifty times
higher than that of
the hunting
Maburu. There were the fields,
radiating out from the
village. Not all of them
were in production; the ones
closest to the village were
mostly in fallow, as fresher and more distant land
had to
be cleared
when the original fields played out.
The Maburu
had no
livestock and thus no fertilizer; they did not know
how to
replenish the soil.
Alex could see,
though, that the fields were
interplanted. He could recognize four different
kinds of plants growing side
by side in each sprawling field.
That was something.
Capella VII
was a
big planet,
but it
was very
lightly inhabited. Much of it was
water. There were whole continents
that were devoid of men. There
were other people besides the
Maburu, of course, but not many.
Man was
still a rather rare animal
on Capella VII. There was no
other agriculture anywhere on the
planet.
The Maburu
had invented it. On
earth it had taken man
a good
two million years to
turn the same trick. If
it had
never happened, Alex would
not be
where he now was. Crops
in the
soil provided the roots
from which all civilizations grew. Settled villages,
states, cities, industry—yes, and space
travel itself. It was a monumental
accomplishment.
There was another
side to the coin. More
people meant more problems. Wars and
social classes and stinking slums—the
Maburu had much to
look forward to. But that
was a
distant future, thousands of
years away.
Farming was hell
on hunters,
too. Hunters need a lot
of room,
and their small populations
cannot compete with organized farmers. There were no hunters
left on earth. Ever since
the Neolithic, the hunters
had dwindled.
They had retreated into deserts and arctic wastes, land
nobody else wanted. And in
time there was nowhere left to
go. .
. .
The hunting Maburu
were already anachronisms, whether they knew it or not.
The invention
of agriculture
had made
them obsolete. In the
long run, they were doomed.
It did
not matter
how brave they were,
or how
admirable.
It did matter,
perhaps, that Alex happened to
like the old Maburu. It did
matter that Caravans needed the old Maburu.
That was
the new
factor in the equation: Alex
Porvenir and what he knew. He could preserve
the old
way, with a little luck.
Those were his instructions.
Those were also his inclinations.
He carefully
knocked out his pipe and
moved to greet the oncoming Maburu.
It was
neither a true first-contact situation nor a simple
matter of slipping into an established
routine. The village Maburu did
not know who Alex
Porvenir was, of course, but they did
know about the traders from the
sky. They were not totally
divorced from their hunting kinsmen; they
were only separated from them by
a journey
of two
days, and it was by
no means
unusual for a hunting family to
drift over and join the
farmers.
It was difficult,
as it
always was. Difficult
and slow.
It was
complicated by the pressure
of time.
If Alex's
plan was going to work, it
had to
work quickly. He had to
finish his job before those poles were set into
the soil.
He had
one thing
going for him: He could
speak the language, after a fashion.
He had
dealt with the old Maburu
many times, and the language of
the villagers
had not
been isolated long enough to change
appreciably.
He did not
feel that he was in
any particular
personal danger. The people had no
reason to fear him, and
he was
experienced enough not to
make stupid mistakes. On the
other hand, he had to be
careful. He did not really
know these new Maburu. A
thickly settled farming village
was a
far cry
from an open hunting band.
A stranger
would be studied by many
eyes.
There would be
whispers and suspicions, and the
witches would finger their bones. .
. .
Alex smiled and
tried to look as inoffensive
as possible.
He jumped twice in greeting and
clasped his hands.
"I come
in peace,"
he said.
The first
hours were chaotic, as always.
It was
impossible for Alex to make any
precise observations. It was all
a confused
blur of smells (greasy
wood smoke staining the roof
thatch, dry plants splitting in hot
granaries, human dung smothered in
clouds of flies), colors
(faded red cloaks, dirty white
feathers, a brilliant blue design on
a huge
basket, the hard brown of
the trampled soil), and sounds (the
jabber of too many voices,
distant shouts, the creak
of wood
in the
houses, the clacking of bows, the
shuffling of naked feet).
He kept smiling,
although his head was killing
him. He tried to locate a
child to make friends with;
that was always a good
move, but he never
had the
opportunity. The most he saw
of children were round frightened eyes peering out of
doorways.
He had hoped
that there might be a
chief of some sort; it
would be easier to
deal with a single man.
But it
rapidly became apparent that there was
no chief.
These people were acephalous, like so many village farmers.
He would
probably have to work through a council of elders,
and that was always a mess.
And slow.
He smiled; he
could not afford impatience. He allowed himself to
be led.
When he was offered food,
he accepted.
That was often the supreme test
for an
anthropologist; he had
eaten some decidedly grim items in
his time.
The food
given to him wasn't bad, though—a
calabash of hot grainy gruel
topped with a thick savory sauce.
He asked
for water
and got
it in
another calabash. It was very
warm and he could
almost see the bugs in
it. He
drank it, anyway, adding a pill
on the
sly.
When the cooling
darkness came, there was the
inevitable dancing in a
centrally located clearing. It seemed
to Alex
that this was a maxim among
many peoples that he had
known: when in doubt how to
deal with a stranger, put
on a
dance.
It gave
the visitor
something to do.
It also
stalled for time. It was
the younger
people who danced. The elders were
free to cluster in groups
beyond the firelight, talking and gesturing.
Alex knew that
he was
being closely observed. He was
quite tired, but he kept a
fascinated expression on his face.
He was
actually bored stiff; he
had seen
it all
before, with every imaginable variation. The only aspect
that intrigued him was the
almost total lack of
instrumental background. The Maburu had
no drums, no rattles,
no string
or wind
instruments. They simply clicked wooden blocks
together to keep time.
The singing was
something else again. The Maburu
had always been a singing people;
they had a flair for
poetic imagery, and their mood
songs had frequently intrigued the
traders who heard them. The hunters
sang lonely little songs as
they wandered the trails, and their
women sang sad laments around
their tiny fires. When
there was meat from a
good kill, there were happy songs.
The songs he
now heard
were new songs with complex
interweavings of
rhythms and counter-melodies. They were
sung both by the
dancers and the audience. Alex
recorded as many of them as
he could.
There might be something useful
there.
His attention wandered
despite his certain knowledge that
he was under close scrutiny.
He was
in a
hurry, but there was nothing
he could
do. In his weariness, he thought:
Again, a man in a village. I have seen so many of them, on so
many
different worlds. I see the correspondences, the parallels. That is my
training. But every village is unique, and every person.
There are some things I can anticipate,
predict. There are other things that will surprise me—perhaps fatally.
I am forever an outsider, always on the
fringes. I can try to understand, but I cannot truly participate. I cannot
share.
Iam
alone here, alone in a crowd. Iam
isolated by what I am and what I know. Iam
cut off from all these people, as
finally as the metallic hull of my ship shields me from the abyss of space.
Again, a man in a village.
The fires
eventually died and the dancing
stopped.
Alex was escorted
to a
house not far from the
center of the village. The house
was empty
now, but the smells and
the clutter
testified to the fact
that a family had been
rather hastily evicted.
He was
left alone.
He fumbled around
with the aid of his
pocket light and located a pile
of moderately
clean bedding. He climbed in,
fully dressed, and waited
for sleep.
It was
a long
time coming.
He lay
in the
darkness, his eyes wide open,
listening to the scrabbling of tiny
feet in the roof thatch
over his head. After some hours,
he slept.
The first day was
over.
There is
waste-time, lost-time, in any field
investigation. No matter what
pressures you are under, there
are certain
things that you must do.
Here, there was
seemingly endless discussion with the
village elders who ultimately
made whatever decisions were made.
There was the careful
cultivation of alliances, the constant
refutation of rumors. There
were people to meet, people
to avoid. There were the usual
time-consuming mechanics of
housekeeping. Where do you
get your
food? Who cooks it? Where does
the firewood
come from? Who hauls the
water?
And always,
you must
explain and explain and explain.
Alex had
no time
to spare.
As the
days went by, he knew
that the men from the ship
were cutting and trimming the
poles, dragging them into
position, executing his plan.
He did
finally accomplish a few useful
things.
He got a basket—
Peering into the
stilt-supported granary, he
was astonished
at the size of the thing.
The basket
nearly filled the storage room.
It must have been lowered into
the structure
before the roof was finished.
The basket
was beautifully
made. Tightly and intricately woven, it was covered with
a brilliant
blue design. The craftsmanship
was all
the more
amazing because the basket was
made to be used
in everyday
life; it was not a
ceremonial object. Moreover, it was hidden
from view inside the granary.
He gave very
close attention to baskets. They
were far superior to the relatively
crude portable containers of the
hunting Maburu.
He found a
woman weaving a large basket
that was nearly finished. He made
a deal
with her and arranged to
pick the basket up when the
design was completed.
That was
something.
He recorded songs—
He went with
the women
into the fields. After they
had gotten
used to his presence,
and had
answered his questions about the
agricultural cycle, they went
on with
their work. They sang soft
little songs, individual songs, songs that told
of drudgery
and green living things and the
magic of water and the
solace of children.
He spent time
with boys and girls, recording
the songs
that went with their games. He
sat with
the men
at beer
parties, catching songs that
were partly drinking songs and
partly long narrative chants that reviewed
the surprising
details of old legal cases.
The songs
were good ones, and he
got a
lot of
them.
And, with excitement, he got the Wiloto—
The old doctor
was reluctant
at first.
He sat
cross-legged in his smoky shadowed hut.
His bright
eyes were studiously blank. He knew
nothing. He had no secrets.
He was
not really
a doctor
at all. Alex had
been misinformed.
Alex persisted.
He knew
about medicine men. They were
always special, always intelligent,
always devious. Where
there were witches, there were witch
doctors. That was
what a witch doctor was—a doctor
that treated illness caused by
witchcraft. The more
serious the witchcraft problem, the
more elaborate the techniques
of the
witch doctors tended to be.
And the new
Maburu were infested by witches.
It was
a characteristic of densely
populated farming villages.
So Alex stuck
with it. He worked on
the old
boy, spent long hours with him,
gave him presents. He showed
him a
trick or two that he had
learned from other doctors on
other worlds. He got his confidence.
And then
he got
the Wiloto.
The doctor
sat impassively
in the
smoke-filled hut. He had his
special bow resting across
his knees.
He wore
a greasy
cloak and a kind of square
cap made
of some
faded animal skin.
Alex stayed
back in the shadows.
The patient
came in. He was a
man about
thirty years old. He was very
thin and his hands were
trembling. He could hardly walk. There was a film
of sweat
on his
face. His eyes were clouded and dull.
The man
sat before
the doctor,
swaying. He was close to
collapse.
"I am bewitched,"
he whispered.
"I cannot eat. I am
in pain. At night, I cannot
sleep. You must help me.
I will
pay you
well."
The doctor
smiled a toothless smile. "I
know you, Kilatya. I
know your family. You
will be cured."
"The witches------------- "
"I will
know the witches and deal
with them. That is why
you came to me. It is
good that you got here
in time.
Now, be silent. There are—others—who will help."
The doctor picked
up his
bow. It was ornately carved
and had
a very thin, tight gut string.
Half of a hollow gourd
was inserted
between the string and
the bowshaft.
He held
the bow
in one
hand, the end against
his shoulder,
like a man playing a
violin.
He took a
short wand of polished wood
and worked
it over
the taut bowstring, sometimes tapping it
and sometimes
sawing on it.
The effect
was eerie
in the
gloomy hut.
The doctor
began to chant in a
monotone, calling on the ancestors. Other voices seemed to
answer him, coming from the
floor, the roof, the corners of the hut.
Alex smiled.
The old
boy was
some ventriloquist.
The doctor put
down his bow. "There, Kilatya. We know the
names of the witches.
It is
as you
suspected. There are two of
them—your mother's brother's wife
and the
older sister of your second wife."
Kilatya groaned. "I
knew it, I knew it.
They will surely kill me."
"No. There
are ways.
We will
consult the Wiloto."
Kilatya trembled
violently and was silent.
The doctor reached
behind him and picked up
a large
object wrapped in a
red cloth.
He placed
it between
his legs.
Slowly, he removed the cloth.
The Wiloto was
a squat
black pot. It sat on
an attached
tripod. It was covered with ivory-skull
designs. The whole thing was
about two feet high.
The doctor
put his
arms around the Wiloto, embracing
it. He
began to moan softly.
His eyes
grew very large and bright.
He put
questions to the Wiloto.
The Wiloto answered
him. In the gloom of
the smoky
hut, the Wiloto flashed blue signals.
It was
like a code of blinking
blue light. The strange blue glow
illuminated the hunching doctor's face, on and off, on
and off.
. .
.
"There," the doctor said finally. "Now
we know
what to do." He replaced the
Wiloto in its red cloth
and set
it gingerly
aside. He reached out
and touched
his patient
comfortingly. "Follow my instructions,
Kilatya, and you will be
well again. You need fear the
witches no more."
He gave detailed
orders about certain herbs, specific
prayers, and precise protective spells. Then
he sent
Kilatya on his way. The man
seemed stronger already.
"Very good," Alex said, stepping out
of the
shadows. "Iam impressed with
your skill. I am impressed
also by the Wiloto. Let me see it again,
please."
The old doctor
smiled a sly smile and
removed the red cloth. "See," he said.
"There is a shutter here."
He touched
the neck
of the black pot.' 'You squeeze
it and
it opens.
Press it again and it closes."
He demonstrated.
"And the blue light?"
"There is a
large glow-rock inside. It shines
in the
dark. I know where there are
many such stones. It was
a simple
matter to build the Wiloto. The
skill comes in knowing how
to use
it. A
doctor must know many
things."
Alex breathed
a sigh
of relief.
He had
confidence in this one.
He spent the
better part of two days
with the doctor, explaining and offering and persuading.
Then he
left as he had come,
in the
landing shuttle.
He carried
with him his basket, his
songs, and the Wiloto.
He figured that
he had
two days
left before all the poles
were in place.
Alex Porvenir
felt good. He was very
tired, but he was happy.
He had been with Helen. He
had eaten
enough food to last him
a week. The computer analysis was
favorable.
And he
was clean.
He fired
up his
pipe. Even that tasted good.
"Okay, Carlos,"
he said.
"You've seen the analysis. What's
your verdict?"
Carlos Coyanosa
stared dubiously at the squat
black pot with its design of
ivory skulls. "Maybe I'm a
little dense, Alex. I don't quite
get it."
"It's simplicity
itself. Allow me to spell
it out.
The village Maburu make the Wiloto. We
can get
a good
supply once we set up the
market in the village. The
computer says it will sell.
It's a fad item, to be
sure, but a durable one.
The supernatural
is hot
right now. There's nothing like the
Wiloto on earth, and never
has been. A for-sure
witch doctor's oath pot, complete
with skulls and a phosphorescent blue alien stone! Man,
Caravans will make a killing on
this one. The Wiloto will
be so
far in, it will stick out the
other side!"
Carlos Coyanosa
was a
cautious man. As the senior
Caravans representative aboard the
lightship, he had to be.
"Maybe, Alex. It looks
good. I think it will
make a profit for us.
But exactly how does it tie
in with
our supply
of bokix
horns?"
Alex smiled
broadly, with rather more confidence
than he felt. "Inversely,"
he said.
"I still don't get
it."
"Look at
it this
way." Alex knew he was
on very
thin ice. He adopted a very
positive tone. "Caravans was getting
a good
product from the Maburu—bokix
horns. The supply of that
product was endangered because the Maburu were
shifting away from a hunting style
of life.
My assignment
was to
maintain the Maburu as a
product source. Okay, I've done
that. We still have the Maburu,
and we've
got a
product. We've simply exchanged bokix
horns for the Wiloto. Everybody
wins."
Carlos Coyanosa
stared at him. "You knew that your instructions meant that you
should find a way to
keep the bokix horns coming. You're
not a
fool, Alex. Don't play dumb
with me."
"I hope
I'm not
a fool,"
Alex carefully refilled his pipe
and lit it. '
'1 hope you're not, either.
There was only one way
I could
ensure the supply of
bokix horns for the long
haul. That way was clearly illegal. It would have
involved not only cultural manipulation
that was not in the
best interests of the people
concerned, but also an effort
on our
part to retard
normal cultural
development. When the ET
Council of the U.N. got hold of that one, it
would blow us right out
of the
tub. I just couldn't put
Caravans in that position.
If we
want to go to the
top with
it, I
doubt very much that
Caravans will wish to argue
that their plan involved suppression of cultural progress in
order to preserve a profit. Do
I make
my point?"
Carlos Coyanosa
was not
a happy
man. He suffered in silence
for a very long two minutes.
He weighed
the alternatives.
"You've done a remarkable
piece of work," he said
finally.
"You do
get the
point."
"I'd say
that you'd made it crystal
clear. What in the hell
would you have done
if there
hadn't been any Wiloto? I couldn't
sell those songs and
we couldn't
push fifty giant baskets in
fifty years."
Alex smiled
again. "I guess I'd just
have stayed in that village. I always wanted to
settle down, put down some
roots— and the beer wasn't half
bad."
"I hope
your dream comes true in
the near
future," Carlos Coyanosa said sincerely, and left to file
his report.
"Look, I like hunters." Alex
Porvenir relaxed and sipped his
Scotch. "Given my druthers,
I'd stick
with the old Maburu and
more power to 'em."
"You sold them
right smack down the river,"
Tucker Olton said.
"How do
you figure
that?"
"You could
have saved them. You didn't
even try."
"Saved them from
what? And how?
The Maburu
who still
want to hunt can
do so;
they've got a free choice.
We can
still market a few bokix horns
along with the Wiloto; they
are not
mutually exclusive. And the
farming Maburu are people, too.
Don't forget that."
"Those hunters
are doomed
and you
know it."
"In time, yes. In the long run, they
can't compete with the farmers for land and resources.
But I
didn't do that, Tuck. I
didn't invent sociocultural natural selection, and I
didn't teach those people how to
plant crops."
"In fact,
you didn't
do anything."
Alex killed
his drink
and fixed
another. "One thing you still
have to learn, my
friend. There are times, Caravans
or no
Caravans, when the best
course of action is to
do nothing
at all.
Just leave people alone.
There are other times, of
course, when you must act. But
we play
God too
easily. It's a disease of
power."
"I still don't
see----------- "
"Why I didn't
do something
to preserve
the hunters?
I hate
to be corny, but it would
have been wrong.
They appeal
to me,
they appeal to you,
but so
what? We can't stick them
on a
reservation or stuff them
as exhibits
in a
museum. What we've really got down
there is a selfish situation.
It takes
a stable
culture to guarantee a
steady product flow—in this case,
bokix horns. When the culture becomes
unstable—when it starts to change—it's only natural for Caravans
to think
in terms
of putting the lid on. We
want the original product because
that's what we're geared to handle.
But the
Maburu are evolving whether they
know it or not. This
isn't simply a case of
some minor deviation that interferes with normal hunting. They
have discovered agriculture, just as we did
more than ten thousand years ago. The only way
to stop
them would be to deny
them the right to their own
future, whatever it turns out
to be.
We can't
force them backward—or at
least I can't."
"Just let
Mother Nature take her course,
eh?"
"Sometimes the
old gal
knows what she's doing."
"It seems
an odd
thing for a man with
your job to be saying,
Alex."
"Sometimes we
can help
her along
a little—for
our own
interests, or that of
Caravans, or to assist people
in a
really desperate situation. I've never argued that
it's always wrong to act when you're
in the
right place at the right
time. But, dammit, it's not for
us to
sit on
the sidelines
and make
romantic judgments about who
is to
survive and who is to
go under.
We're not that smart—and
we're not that objective, either."
'' And
all that
jazz about cutting the poles
and arranging
them in neat little holes? What
was that all about?"
Alex grinned. "Nothing. Nothing and
everything. I had
to take some action that would
satisfy my superiors. So I
took some action—I sent in a
crew and put them to
work doing something mysterious.
The big
boys never understand what we're doing, anyway. Cutting the
trees and shaping the poles
and setting them up—it
didn't hurt anyone and it bought me the
time to find a
substitute product. That's all. It
was one
of my
better plans, I think."
"That crew
that broke their backs down
there for weeks might not look
at it
that way. I'm glad ƒ
don't have to face them
and give them the
word."
"There's no
need for them to know,
Tuck. We had a plan.
They did their part.
The plan
worked. They weren't wasting their time and effort. Let's
leave it at that."
"Okay." The
younger man poured himself a
drink. "And after all your work,
what have we got?"
"Well, we've
got the
Wiloto. And we can sleep
nights."
"And the Maburu? What
have they got?"
Alex Porvenir
clasped his hands. "Maybe I'm getting old,
Tuck. But we've
given the Maburu the chance
to be
themselves. We've given
them the right to go
their own way, wherever it
leads. I think that's
enough. I'm content, for once."
The two
men looked
at each
other, thinking of all the
decisions they had made
in the
past and would have to
make in the future.
"I'll drink
to that,"
Tucker Olton said.
Thomas
N. Scortia
THE ARMAGEDDON TAPES —TAPE II
UNTIL
this moment
human institutions such as the
well-named "Holy State" represented the closest human
approach to group consciousness.
Yet, there was a deeper
racial consciousness that could
find expression only in the
final melding of two great
races, the human and
the Angae.
These insectlike creatures shared
in a
unique racial immortality that might
never have become part of the
total human experience had not
the Angae
encountered the Children of
Men by
the merest
coincidence. For mankind then, only a
focal point, a Messiah was
needed and in the outcast Martin,
there arose a power and
force that spelled the end of
the racial
uniqueness of the Angae and
of humans
and eventually the only
force that could meet the
enveloping destructiveness of the
Theos that had now invested
the whole
of the neighboring galaxy. . . .
Die Anelan de Galactea-Vol.
II, Ca.
4300
"Second Battalion
... we
are in
position now."
"Air assault .
. .
ETA ten
seconds . . . The
yellow jump light has been. ..."
' 'Mobiles two
and three
. .
. We
see them
below. The men of the village
are gathered
in the
square. Many of them are
in their
old ceremonial costumes. They
stand, impassive waiting ... I see the
children now. There are six
of them.
I can
identify the
one called Martin through
the periscope.
He's taller and seems in command.
He is.
. .
."
"What are
they doing?"
"Attack, attack, attack. ..."
"Oh, God.
. .
."
"It's too
much to. . . ."
(Cut the tape.
There's nothing beyond this point,
only a mass of confused signals.
We're still not sure of
what happened in Cherokee, only that
we have
lost all contact with our
forces and the mission seems to
have failed utterly.)
(How can that
be, Inquisitor
Jarvis? They were only a
handful and our men are as
completely loyal and disciplined as have ever appeared on the face of
the earth.)
(It had happened.
Make no mistake of that.
These proceedings are to
be considered
top secret.
You are
the only
civilian who knows of
this debacle. Naturally, the citizens
of our Holy State must not
know. You will forget it
when you leave this room.)
(But there must
be an
accounting. No citizen may be
interrogated or erased without an
accounting.)
(Don't be a
fool. This is an emergency.
All special
rights of the citizen are suspended,
especially the rights of these
renegades. Citizen Clawson, you
have examined the outcast?)
(John Tall trees? Barbarous name.)
(The Indians love
their native names. No matter,
the Holy
State has indulged them
and preserved
their race for reasons known to it. I suppose
its motive
as much
as anything
is to
define their special biochemical immunity to
the Mettler
serum that has given us the
final world-wide peace for which
the human
race has longed.)
(They represent the
focal point of a contamination.
I would
have eliminated them long
ago.)
(You question
the decision?)
(No, Inquisitor Jarvis. No, of course
not.)
(Then tell me
about this John Talltrees. You have had him
for five days. In what fashion
has his
biochemistry changed? I gather from your
preliminary reports that it has.)
(It's somewhat
difficult to define. There are
metabolites in the urine, for instance,
that are normally associated with paranoid schizophrenia.
The acetylcholine
esterase of the nervous system
has been
subtly modified so that the
catalytic rate is much enhanced.)
(This means
nothing to me.)
(It means that
the impulses
in his
nervous system travel at several times normal speed. His
physical reactions are appropriately
speeded up as well as
his heartbeat
and certain
parts of his metabolism,
most notably his ability to
mobilize blood glucose from
stored glycogen.)
(And the
end result
of this
is. .
. .)
(A remarkably improved human
being. He
thinks faster, acts faster, and mobilizes
greater stress reserves than are
available to the normal human being.
With all this, he has
developed a peculiar psychological
dichotomy.)
(Psychological dichotomy?)
(He believes he
is two
personalities inhabiting a single human
body. He does not
find this abnormal or alarming
or in
any way
disconcerting. He holds that
these will eventually merge and
further merge with others.
What others, I cannot understand
from his interrogation.)
(You've dared to
interrogate him without an inquisitor
present? You tread on
a very
dangerous group, Citizen.)
(A purely clinical interrogation,
Inquisitor. I recognize that
this case is your
special interest. I have attempted
no deep
probe, only what is
necessary to elicit a complete
case history for your inspection.)
(Very well. This
is not
for me
to decide
in any
event. Whoever finally disposes
of this
case will have these tapes
for his decision.)
(These tapes?)
(This one and the one with
the boy
Martin. You
are not
aware of that one and, unless
it seems
advisable, you will not be
allowed to hear it.
I may
in due
course give you some major
information from the tape,
however, if it seems useful
to your
purpose.)
(I want no
information of this sort. I'm
a citizen,
loyal to the State and its
avatar, the Premier Annointed. I have every reason
to believe
he will
fill his allotted life span.)
(This is for me
to decide,
Citizen. Do you question that?)
(State, no.)
(Very well,
have your people bring in
the subject.
We will
proceed with the interrogation
proper.) (I will of course leave.)
(Not at all. In
such a situation, I will
need you as a witness.)
(The tape
should be sufficient. Please, the
tape should be sufficient. I have
no desire.
. .
.)
(Your desire is
to serve
the Holy
State and at the moment
I have the power to decide
how the
State is served.)
(Very well,
I will
give the signal.)
(Noise in
the background,
sound of rolling wheels. Mumbled conversation and
the whisper
of a
door closing.) (Is he conscious?)
(Yes, Inquisitor.)
(Will you
recite the ritual introduction?) (I would have thought that
was a
privilege you reserved for yourself.)
(The Holy State
looks to all of its
citizens as priests of the
new scheme.)
(Very well .
. .
mumble, mumble ... the Holy
Fight of the citizen as a
unit of the vast State
. .
. mumble
. .
, conceived
in the light of the true
liberty that is the surrender
of self
. .
. mumble. . .
most Exalted Plurality, the Premier
Anointed . . .)
(You have no
feeling for the words. No
matter, there is little doubt that you believe them.
Mettler gave us the greatest
and most effective tool to assure
the continuity
of the
ecclesiastic reverence in the
individual.)
(Shall we
begin? Yes? Very well, what
is your
name?)
My name
is John
Talltrees and my name is
Martin.
(Of course,
of course,
but which
am I
addressing?)
For the moment
I, John
Talltrees, will talk for us.
Martin is of the opinion that
you cannot
fully understand his psychology, which is, after all, alien
to your
mind. It is a matter
of having
spent too much time
with Them.
(The insect creatures that
we destroyed
in the
spaceship? Was he
truly a part of them?)
Body, soul, mind. A complete blending of consciousness,
which is why he
still holds a deep affection
for them
even though he now realizes that
his species
must destroy them or ...
at least absorb them.
(John, what happened
in Cherokee?
We know
that the ship landed or was
forced down and that for
a long
time, the children were among you.
We know
that the aliens were somehow
cast into a kind of trance
that was apparently the doing
of the
children. We know that
the children
in some
fashion entered your society and changed
you, but the motives ...
the details,
the reasons? . .
.)
(Your questions
are not
phrased precisely enough, Citizen.)
(Your indulgence, Inquisitor, I will pursue
this in a fashion that will give us the
information we want.)
I am
John Talltrees. I have lived
in the
village of Cherokee in the Great
Smokies all of my life,
long before you people assembled all the disparate tribes
of the
land and brought them to
our land. I grew
up in
the gentle
hills with their wealth of
pine that you have despoiled, the thriving kudzu that
would cover whole hills in a
summer.
(Kudzu, isn't
that a Japanese vine?)
(It is,
Inquisitor, introduced in the fifties
as a
soil stabilizer by the highway builders
of the
Republican period. It has come
to contaminate the area.)
We lived as
brothers in the village. Although
our numbers
had been sadly reduced
by the
tender angels of the Holy
State, there were enough of us
to form
a viable
society and the State for
the most part left
us alone
after it had sequestered us. How were we to
know that our sin was
one over
which we had no control,
that we were immune
to the
nucleic-acid serum that had finally
brought peace and conformity
to the
world, that had brought this
antlike dependence upon the
State?
(The greatest invention
for peace
and human
dignity, he speaks of it in
such a contemptuous manner.)
(Remember, Inquisitor, these are the outcasts.
It was
for this
original sin that they
were expelled from our society.)
Oh, like all
humans we longed for that
special feeling of identity with a
larger group. In our case,
the identity
was the
tribe and later the
village. We understood your need
for it
was our need. You, on the
other hand, rejected us because
we could
not fulfill the need
in your
specific fashion.
(He does
not sound
like John Talltrees now.)
(It is
the other
personality intruding.)
(Disgusting.)
When the ship
came from the sky, we
thought that it was another of your war machines,
sent to exterminate us. We
knew that you would eventually have to make this
particular decision. We were a pocket
of infection
that could not forever be
tolerated. When the ship
plunged from the sky and
fell onto the mountainside, we ran
to the
hill spots we had prepared.
Many of our people
were caught in the valleys
and a
few were
within the area where
the ship
landed and were never heard
from again. It was,
we think,
the radiation
from the ship's engines.
When we finally
approached the ship, we found
that it was wounded and that
there were humans inside. They
were children and they came from
the ship
and greeted
us. There
were also other things in the
ship, great insectlike creatures, but these were either dead
or in
a deep
stupor. The children were very
strange . . .
filthy and half-blinded by the
day's light . . .
told us that they had put
the aliens
to sleep,
that some of the aliens
had inadvertently been killed.
The children
stood among themselves and sorrowed over
the ones
they had killed because they did not want to
take life needlessly. They felt
all life
substance should be conserved
for the
group and the lost aliens
would not be salvaged
for the
group. One of the children
was dead and this one they
ate.
(Ugh, Holy Writ,
is it
true that they were cannibals,
Inquisitor?)
(The earlier tape
in which
the one
Martin was interrogated suggested
the aliens
were. Apparently the children were
good students, far too
good.)
They explained that
this was not a mere
ritual, that the aliens had changed them in such
a way
that they could preserve the
essence of each individual
by consuming
him, that the personality continued as
a live
thing within the one who
had consumed him. It was the
most complete kind of personal
immortality.
(State, State, can
it be?
It's what we have always
striven for, but can it be?)
(Citizen, you astonish
me. This
is completely
outside of doctrine. Utter political blasphemy.
Personal immortality lies only in the
continuity of the Holy State.)
(Still, it would
make some sense. We know
that the personality is an incredibly
complex coda, impressed on DNA
molecules. If these could
be ingested
intact and preserved, passed from generation
to generation,
there would be no true
death.)
(It is
against all State teachings. Have a care that
you don't
find yourself in our
Chambers of Love.)
(No, no, I
don't consider it seriously. I am completely doctrinaire. How could
I be
otherwise?)
(Of course, Citizen. Of course.)
We took them
into our village and tended
their wounds and fed them. It
was strange.
They could not at first
eat our
food but preferred a sort of
reed mash with which we
fed our
cattle. The one named Martin .
. .
although it is difficult to
decide which of the five children
is Martin
. .
. brought
them together and they stood for an hour in
silent communion in the square.
After that, they could eat our
fare. Martin told me that
they had changed themselves.
In due
course, he promised me that
they would change us and I
found this frightening. I told
him that
he should
not do this but he brushed
it aside,
saying that they had in
the long days and nights of
the ship
conceived that their existence was not accidental, that they
had a
special mission for the race
from which they sprang.
(This is the
crux of the investigation, Citizen. This
paranoid delusion of a
special mission. Martin spoke of
it in
the earlier
interrogation.)
(Did the
interrogator understand what he meant?)
(Alas, he is
no longer
available for questioning. He had
to be
sent to the Blessed
Fields. He was hopelessly insane.)
(Peace and
joy to
his soul,
Inquisitor.)
(To be
sure. John
Talltrees, what happened in the
village?)
You know what
happened initially. Your stations had
traced the ship to our village,
but for
a long
time you were content to
watch and wait for
any overt
move. When this did not
come, you grew restive and fearful,
just as Martin predicted you
would. Your fear was too great
to be
contained and he reached out
and stimulated it.
(You imply
that he could in some
fashion control us?)
The aliens had
changed Martin and his companions
in many
ways, biochemically and physically.
What they did not know
was that Martin and
his companions
had been
brought by their parents to a
remote spot in Canada because
they were different, because
they would have been exterminated
by your
Holy State before they could reach
maturity, had the State known
of them.
Because of this special
ability of theirs, they were
able to identify more closely with
the aliens
that captured them and their parents
than any normal child. They
became essentially generators of
food for the aliens much
as an
aphid generates food for ants, and
in the
process they became a part
of the
group mind of the aliens. Through
that link, they learned to
see the
universe as the aliens
did, to detect the fine
structure of physical phenomena in a
fashion our gross senses cannot.
To detect
is to know, to know is
to understand,
to understand
is to
manipulate.
(You see, Citizen,
it is
as we
thought. These creatures pose a
deadly threat to our
Holy State. And
to you,
John Talltrees. You should
have killed them immediately.)
I could
not.
(Why not?)
We were
friends.
(Friends with
filth?)
Friends and a part of them. We
took them into our village
and Martin and I found that,
in spite
of his
utterly alien way of thinking, that we could somehow
communicate on an emotional level. You must understand that, for all of
his unusual
life and his remarkable talents, he
was still
little more than a child.
Physically about seventeen, he seemed younger and
more naive than this in many
ways. At first, he even
had trouble
coordinating his muscles and
would often stumble on the
road or reach for a glass
of water
and overshoot
it by
as much
as four
inches.
We did not,
at the
time, recognize the five children
for what
they were. We saw
a startling
unity among them, an ability
at times almost to merge into
a single
personality. We found their quiet assurance that they carried
some special message for humanity disconcerting. This . .
. what
Sarah Running Brook called "messianic conviction" . . .
was unshakable,
a sense
of almost holy conviction. Of course,
living as outcasts in your
Holy State, we were
quite familiar with this form
of paranoia
and made allowances for it.
(Inquisitor, dare we
let him
go on?
To insult the
State? Surely, he becomes a
candidate for the Fields.)
(Enough of that. The State will dispose of
him in
due course.
For the moment he
is valuable
to us.)
I took
Martin to me as a
second son and taught him
in those
early days to walk
and ride
and hunt.
We hunt
a great
deal in the old manner of
our fathers
and he
found this strange and primitively satisfying. The two girls
became adept at the looms
and wove some marvelous
fabrics that brought a high
return at the State Store. The
strangest thing was that, when
one of
the children developed a talent, suddenly
they all seemed to have
it. One day, although by our
standards it was not seemly,
Martin took over a loom from
the small
one named
Beth and produced a fabric with
a woof
and warp
that seemed to interchange, creating a fabric of
suppleness and electric quality. He
said that he had altered the
electrostatic distribution along the cotton
molecule, but we passed
it off
as another
of those
inexplicable things that children
were constantly saying.
You understand, all this
while your people were playing
a waiting game, fearful of this
great ship that had descended
into the Smokies. You were completely
unaware that the creatures inside were either dead or
had been
immobilized by the children. That was
something I did not understand
until much later Martin and I
became . . . well. . . closer.
They had lived with the aliens
for a
long time as their food
sources . . . Martin
called them "cows," which was a reasonably
good description for the ant-aphid relationship
they had . . .
and had
developed an empathy for the
aliens. Martin always referred to
them simply as "They" and he
spoke of the love that
they had developed for these creatures
in the
dank confines of the ship.
Still, the aliens had
denied them their birthright, and as they grew to
be more
powerful than the aliens, they
turned against them. They loved them
as children
loved their parents and they
hated them for the
restrictions the aliens placed on
their natural talents. When the children
finally took over the ship
and landed
it near our village,
they threw the aliens into
a deep
sleep. Some of them did not
survive and died on landing.
The children
felt a perverse joy in this.
They were not truly dead,
of course,
not so
long as members of
Their race still
lived to eat them.
(God, that reference
to cannibalism
again, Inquisitor.)
(God? Citizen.
You forget
yourself. Haven't we of the
Holy State spent a good portion
of your
conditioning demonstrating to you that there
is no
God, that the State is
the sublime
summation of al! human
effort, and that the citizen
may lose
himself in his fellows? What need
do you
have for a God?)
(It was
a purely
automatic response that. . .
.)
(Should not have come. Your
conditioning leaves something to be desired.)
(No, no, it
isn't true. I was one
of the
first. My parents volunteered for the
serum in the midst of
the devastating
wars when it seemed that the
whole race would die.)
(We shall
see. When this is finished.
. .
.)
(I can
only await your benign decision,
Inquisitor.)
Martin lacked humanity,
if you
understand me. He knew as
did the others that
he had
a mission.
How it
came to him I'm not
sure . . . probably from
what he had seen in
the minds
of the
aliens . . .
but he
could see clearly into the
probable futures of our race and
he knew
that he had to guide
us in
a certain
direction, that eventually, for our mutual survival
before a greater menace we would
have to merge with the
aliens from whose ship he had
come. "They will resist that
with all the elemental fury of
a total
race," he said, "but we
will prevail in the end."
I could not
understand that since he had
assured me that the aliens were not malign, that
They sought merely
another world, an uninhabited one so
that They might again build
the culture
that had been destroyed
in a
great disaster in the next
Galaxy. They had fled some overwhelming
menace that had produced this disaster. A single vast
creature, Martin thought.
Yet, although
They had no
inimical designs on the earth
and on our race, Martin knew
that They would finally recognize
the challenge of the children. He
knew that the great ships
still waiting beyond the clouds of
our world
would now not simply go away
as They had planned originally. The menace of the
children to Their uniqueness as a race
and eventually
of the
human race was too
great, the danger to Them
too acute.' 'They
will not go," he
told me. "They will come
finally, reluctantly, and then we will
face the Armageddon that will
yield a Galaxy-spanning welding of
the two
races. There will be other
races and we will invest the
total universe against the day
when Something comes."
"Something?" I asked.
Martin shivered.
"A menace beyond
defining, a thing beyond your wildest
imaginings of dread and evil."
I found his
wide-eyed horror amusing. He believed
in what
he said, of course, but I
still found it amusing. Why,
I don't
know since it became obvious that
he and
the children
had an
acuteness of vision not
given to ordinary human beings.
(Acuteness of
vision? In what fashion? You've referred to this before.)
This is
a difficult
thing for me to understand.
As I
said, the children had learned from
the aliens
to see
the fine
structure of the universe. Where our
senses yield a statistical result, a gross summation of minute changes, the children could see on
a finer
level, determine the subtle
interactions of billions of particles,
see discretely the tiny
forces that made up the
larger ones that we detect and
deal with. To this end,
their senses went beyond the
statistical and their manipulation
of the
environment around them was subtle and
complete in a fashion we
cannot understand. At
least as yet. They played
with atoms as an ordinary
child plays with dominoes.
(What do
you mean,
"as yet"?)
Martin has
assured me that we will.
This is part of his
mission. First we must
find the several selves we
each contain, reconcile them,
and then
we will
be ready
for them,
for the
final step in the long evolution
from the cave.
(Do you hear,
Inquisitor? This business of finding
the several
selves within one's self.
Isn't this what happened to
Martin's interrogator?)
(Perhaps, perhaps. The
man thought
somehow that there was another in the room with
him when
he taped
the narco-interview. He spent hours speaking with this
person and answering. Only there was
just one and he could
not face
that. After his personality degenerated, we of course .
. .)
(Of course. .
. .)
Although our mountains
had been
badly despoiled in the past,
I was able to take Martin
among them and show him
something of the joy we had
in nature,
in the
trees and the small things
that creep through the brush, and
in the
hard and glittering rocks that
made up our world.
I took
him among
the Cherokees
and the
remains of the Iroquois
and the
Sioux and all the other
tattered remnants of once-great
races that you had herded
into this tiny area. From Them he learned much. From
us the
sense of oneness with nature, from
the Iroquois
the ancient
dream therapy that looks obliquely into
a man's
soul—the dream therapy that took your
own western
scientists centuries to discover long
after it was a part
of their
culture.
We went down
into the valley one day,
where the streams wind sluggishly through tortuous channels from
the mountains.
I showed him how
to pan
the streams
and we
recovered tiny glints of fire, of
garnets and rubies,
that in another day would
have been priceless. I told him of
the time
centuries before when a great house
called Tiffany's had mined this
area for the precious stones. Now
there are only the small
fragments in the stream, but their
fire and inner nature pleased
him. As we talked, he assembled
an astonishing
mound of the bright stones,
none of them over
a millimeter
in length
and then
he sat
gazing at them.
When I asked him
what he was doing, he
remarked that he was simply playing.
He was
still very much a child,
you see.
He frowned and the mound of
stones moved uncertainly, then more
certainly and then arose
as a
cloud of dull red. It
formed a man image, then a
woman image (for he was
beginning to be troubled by this
aspect of his humanness), and the shape caught
the energy from some
source and emitted the purest
of reds
so that the woman shape was
a cloud
of brilliant
ruby light.
(Humph, laser phenomenon,
no doubt.
Can he
really do this without apparatus?)
(It would
seem so, Inquisitor.)
(More likely
an excellent
example of simple hypnotic positive illusion. I don't believe in such
nonsense as this.)
We grew close,
Martin and me. He had
a remarkable
capacity for friendship, even though he
was remarkably
naive about the world. He talked
endlessly with the elders of
all the
tribes, absorbing their lore
and their
knowledge of the outside world.
One day he asked
me what
it meant
to be
a blood
brother.
"It's an
old custom
among many of the tribes,"
I said.
"I don't
understand its meaning," he said.
"When two
men are
friends and feel their destinies
are forever entwined, they mingle their
blood and become one."
"This I understand,"
he said.
For a
moment the memories of what had
happened earlier in the village
troubled me, but he pressed those memories back into
the deepest
part of my mind as
he and the children had done
before. It was obvious that
we were
not ready for the
horror that to them was
the most
ordinary part of their life and
their passing on.
"You and I
will become blood brothers, John,"
he announced that evening.
"I would
like that," I said.
We sat in
the light
of the
lantern in my cabin and
each of us gashed our wrists
so that
the blood
flowed freely. Then we crossed the wounds and watched
the blood
intermingle, vowing eternal friendship
in the
old manner.
I watched
his expression
and saw a wonder
come into his eyes, a
sudden realization. At the same time
my own
mind was suddenly awash with
the most
conflicting sensations, as though
I were
simultaneously in a
hundred bodies.
"Of course,"
he said.
"It should have been easy
to do
it this
way all along."
Before I could stop
him, he raised my wounded
wrist and began to deepen the
wound until the blood spurted
forth. I watched with a kind
of horror
as he
did the
same to his. We sat,
two huddled male figures,
while he raised my wrist
to his
mouth and signalled for me to
do the
same. I was suddenly frightened
and dizzy but I
did as
he asked.
We sat
and silently
drank each other's blood.
(The creature is
mad. Disgusting. A stink
in the
nostrils of the Anointed Plurality.)
(Wait, Inquisitor
Jarvis. Wait.)
In the end
he caused
the wounds
to close.
I do
not know
how he did this yet, but
the knowledge
is in
my mind.
Just as everything else is in my
mind. Just as
Martin is in my mind
and I
in his.
(Madness. This is
clearly impossible.)
No, no, for
as Martin
said, no personality, no ego
was lost
in the ship. But the creatures
of the
ship needed food and here,
except for the cities,
food is more plentiful. The transfer is still
important, however, and in
our ritual
Martin found the way that
replaced their earlier cannibalism.
It was
a discovery
of vast
significance, he informs me.
(When did
he till
you that?)
Just this instant.
(Never mind
this errant mysticism. Tell us
about the last day.)
The last day
before your people came to
attack the alien ship and take
Martin away, we went badger
trapping. The badgers had returned to
the hills
in recent
years and often provided a
welcome change to our
larder. We had once tried
to hunt
them with dogs, although our lore
told us that this was
not possible.
The razor-clawed animal would
roll on its back and
rip at
the underside of the poor dogs
before disappearing into its hole.
We lost many fine animals before
we learned
that they were best trapped.
We set green
willow snares, Martin and I,
in the
old way.
The snares were so arranged that,
when the animal came to
eat the
bait, a split green-willow
bow was
triggered and closed on its
leg. Even then this
is not
the surest
way of
trapping the beasts for they are
fierce and want freedom above
all else,
preferring even death to capture. We
can admire
them for that for this
is what
we would have. Better freedom than
the soul-destroying
captivity of your Holy State.
(There is no
question of it. He is
a complete
revanchist. Even though we have given
our word
that the tribes will not
be molested, this one is destined
for the
Fields. Can you imagine such attitudes unleashed among the
laity.?)
(They would not
understand it, Inquisitor, any more
than I do. The complete acceptance
of our
Holy State is a part
of our
life, a necessary outgrowth
of the
serum that had stifled all
combativeness in our race.)
(A Combativeness and aggression
that brought us once to
racial extinction, Citizen.)
(I do not
question it. Together we make
a whole
greater than its parts now. We
are one
with the State and the
State is us without reservation and without flaw.)
(So be
it.)
(So be
it.)
The badger
gnawed its leg off. (John, what do you mean?)
The badger we
had trapped
gnawed its leg off. This
is a
common thing with them.
They thrash at the trap, struggle so violently that sometimes
they break bones. In the
end if
they cannot escape otherwise, they gnaw
through their living flesh to
gain release and crawl
off into
the brush
to die.
That was what happened with our
trap. We came upon it,
and the
grass and kudzu vines were a
mass of dull red blood.
There in the green willow trap was the hind
leg of
the beast,
tattered shreds of flesh still clinging to the bloody
part where the beast had
painfully torn its own
leg off.
The agony
it must
have suffered in its desire
for freedom.
We followed the
trail of blood. It was
comparatively easy for the creature was
bleeding its life away as
it dragged
itself from the trap. Over a hundred
yards away, half-buried under a
low scrub pine we found it.
How it
had made
it that
far, I don't know,
a tribute
to its
brute heart. It lay with
its muzzle
bared, those white foam-speckled teeth screaming
out its
rage and its defiance even in
death. The talons were unsheathed
and for
a moment it seemed as if
it were ready to attack. Only
it was
quite dead.
Martin stood for
a long
time and looked at the
pitiful creature. Then he said, "It
wasn't truly free for it
was returning
to its
own kind. It is only free
of us."
"That is
so," I said.
"But all humans
on this
planet are all bound in
this fashion, one to the other,
trapped as the beast was
trapped by your trap. They are prisoners of a
State that has bound them
soul and mind and now they
must be released from this
trap so that they can
find a new meaning, a new
being. There will be those
who will
not survive the ordeal.
Like this poor thing, they
will gnaw their legs free of
the trap
and, before they can find
help, they will crawl away and
die."
He paused and
thought for a long time.
"Yes," he said
at last,
"it is better to
crawl away and die than
to resign
oneself to the trap."
After that we
returned in time to see
your forces attack the ship in
all their
fury. It took them a
long time to gather courage,
and when they finally
destroyed the ship and rounded
up the
children, Martin was among
them. He warned them that
this was not the end, that
the ship
was only
one of
many. Still, they took him away—for
interrogation, they said—and
the troops
and war machines invested
the village
against all provisions of the treaty.
(That was the
way it
was, Citizen. I myself was
one of
the board of elders
that ordered the attack. We
knew we had to destroy the ship. I suppose
we knew
that there would be others,
but the ship had
to be
destroyed. Especially after we received
intelligence on what the
children were doing in the
village.)
(Was it
necessary to kill the children?)
(Do you question
it? We
had one,
Martin, for interrogation. We had no
need of the others and
we found
that they were dangerous and could
not be
imprisoned.)
It is not
as easy
to kill
us as
you might
imagine, Inquisitor. You destroy
the physical
bodies but the personalities of such as we are
infectious. Like some amoeboid organism,
we breed
and spread and become a part
of others.
(John Talltrees? . . .) No, Inquisitor, it is not
he. (Shut up. I will not
believe it.)
Martin still
exists. He left your interrogator
after giving him the gift of
special insight. It was not
Martin's fault that the interrogator was unable to reconcile
his diverse
personalities, that he became
insane. Some of you will
not and
you will,
of course, not survive. All of
you must
go through
this evolution to rid yourselves of the influence of
your State before you find
that higher insight that Martin will
bring you.
(What happened in
the village?)
It is the
end product
of a
million years of evolution.
(What happened an
hour ago in the village?)
I can see
it from
here. We are, after all,
only a few miles from
the village. I sense
that we are in one
of your
mobile interrogation vans. Surely, from
this short a distance you
must have seen?
(What happened in
the village?)
They came
from the sky. They knew
that one of Their ships had been
destroyed and now They knew
the true
menace represented by us. They
might have gone from this
system and found a new home
in peace.
Now They know that They must
stand and wipe out
the very
menace They created. In the
end, of course, we will prevail
and They will be a part
of us.
(What happened in
the village?
John, John.)
I am John.
Through Martin's eyes I saw
the thing
come out of the sky. It
was even
bigger than the one that
had crashed
before. It stretched over half the
horizon and it came in
with raging energies that caused the
very mountains to flow. The
pines burst into flames and feathered
into charcoal. The pitiful few
animals of the hills fled before
it and
were charred in turn. Then
the village and all my people
... all
my people
... all
my people.
. .
.
(What about the
troops?)
They are
no more.
Only Martin at a distance
and I
here remain. Martin, whom I taught
friendship and who must go
on, seeking new growth, new power
until. . . .
(Inquisitor Jarvis, that sound.)
(No, They could not
detect us.)
Hide, do
what you will, They are determined
to eliminate
this infection.
(Sounds of hissing,
falling structures, silence, then. .
. .)
(Ohhh.)
(John, are you
still there?) Yes, I am here.
We are
here. (The Citizen Interrogator is dead.)
It is unfortunate.
(Damn you
and your
cold acceptance of all this. Don't
you realize your own race is
in deadly
danger?) Martin has told
me so.
(Where is he?)
He went elsewhere.
But a
part of him remains here.
(Damn his soul, damn his soul.)
Why are you crying?
(My world,
my ordered
secure world, the Holy State
and its
Faithful. What have
he and
his creatures
done to my world?)
They will
make it anew, now that
they are joined.
(No, no, I
will not have it. He
may have
escaped but I will find him,
track him down, kill him.
. .
.)
Send him
to the
Fields?
(Kill him, kill him
with all the implacable rage of the badger
you trapped.)
Gnaw off your
leg, Inquisitor? Will you gnaw
off your
leg? Is this the way to
freedom?
(Damn you, I
have the power to. .
. .)
Kill me.
(Kill you.)
(Silence.)
(John, John,
I am
a just
man, hard but just.)
(I am
not a
cruel man. John!)
(Oh, God
in Heaven,
why did
I do
that?)
Anne McCaffrey
KILLASHANDRA-CRYSTAL SINGER
KILLASHANDRA came in
from the Milekey Mountains with
a load of rose quartz prisms
and cylinders
in A-sharp
or higher.
She worked well in
the upper
registers, which gave her a
distinct advantage over most
of the
crystal singers in the Heptite
Guild.
When she'd hit
the frequencies,
holding the tone long enough
to locate and pitch
the crystal
cutter, she hadn't thought twice
before she'd decided shape:
prisms and cylinders. A good
crystal singer has to
have, first of all, perfect
pitch and then a fine intuition
for shape.
No sense
coming in with black quartz
in octagons and cubes when the
critical demand was for beads
and cones.
When Guildmaster Lanzecki told her she'd
hit the
market at the top, she shrugged.
"Made it lucky
this time," she said, wincing
as she
remembered the last week
on the
Range. The sun had been
fierce on the scars
of her
cuttings, half-blinding her, and the
scream of crystal had
sliced through her mind as
she'd cut. But she'd been desperate
to hack
enough cargo to get off-world
for awhile away from crystal song,
far away,
so her
mind would have a chance to
heal. "What's the guild's percentage
of it?"
Lanzecki peered up
at her
from his console, a little
smirk bending the left corner of
his thin
mouth.
"Don't quibble,
Killashandra."
She bridled,
knowing what he meant. "I'm
one of
the best
and you know it. I've got
years to go." Her tithe
to the
guild would keep her when crystal
had blown
her mind
and stopped
her ears.
Lanzecki lifted one
shoulder. "You've cut crystal a
long time, Killashandra."
"I don't need
reminders," she said,
snapping the words out. And that
was a
fallacy for crystal singing sapped
your memory. "How much is guild
cut? I have to have
enough to get off-world this time."
Lanzecki inclined his
head slightly for the wisdom
of that.
"Yes, you've solo-ed too
long. That's not smart, 'specially in the Milekeys. Find yourself
a new
partner off-world."
Killashandra laughed.
"That's what you always say."
Lanzecki waggled a
finger at her. "I mean
it. You've
been too damned lucky but I
wouldn't cut my margins again
so fine
if I were you, not at
your age, and not cutting
solo."
She couldn't think
what he meant. She'd always
had a
second sense for storms in the
Milekeys and always got out
well in advance.
"You missed a
big one
by two
hours and that
is close,"
Lanzecki told her.
"Close but I
can still
scramble. How many machs did it
reach?" she asked with
a good
show of indifference, considering the cold fear in
her belly.
She couldn't
remember storm-sign.
Lanzecki tapped out
the proper
sequence and the slides on
the back wall altered swiftly until
the Milekey
Range and a weatherscope were superimposed.
The disturbance
had reached
the frightening velocity of
twelve, mach forces that would
have blown her mind had she
been caught among crystal.
"There'll be good
cutting when I go back,"
she said
with an arrogant smile. No one
else could cut rose quartz
true in the Milekeys.
"Just don't go
back solo, Killa." Lanzecki was
completely serious. "You've sung crystals a long
time now. You pulled out
with a crazy two-hour margin but
one day
you'll stay just that moment too long and poff.. . ."
He threw
his hands
up, fingers
wide. "Burst ears and
scrambled brains."
"That's the
time, my friend," and Killashandra
patted the console on which he
had just
recorded her tithe, "I get
some of my own back."
Lanzccki eyed her.
"With your ears ruptured and
your mind rocking? Sure, Killa. Sure.
Look, there're half a dozen
good men'd double you anytime you
raised your finger. A good
duet makes more than a solo.
Larsdahl. ..."
"Larsdahl?" Killashandra
was scornful
and suspicious.
"You two
worked damned well together."
' 'Lanzecki, how
much did he slip you
to remind
me of
him?"
Lanzecki's thin face
became absolutely expressionless.
When he spoke again,
his voice
was hard,
as if
he regretted
his impulse.
"I was
wrong, Killashandra. It's too late
for you
to cut
duo. Crystal's in your
soul." He turned away.
She waited a
moment, trying to be amused
by his
accusation. As if she'd
ever sing duet with Larsdahl
again. Then she wondered why. There
must have been a good
reason once if Lanzecki said they'd
worked well together once. He'd
know. But the prohibition against Larsdahl
must have been severe for
it to stay so firmly in
her mind,
even if she couldn't remember
the details.
She decided
to clean
up and
outfit in her guild room.
She must
have something wearable left
from her last trip in.
Not that
she could remember that time particularly
well. That was one problem
with being a crystal singer:
The sonics
did something
to your recall circuits. Well, that
was one
excuse. Actually, unless you went off-world
completely, and got away from
crystal, nothing memorable ever
happened.
Maybe she
should double again. "Crystal in her
soul, indeed!" Why
had she split
with Larsdahl? Why had he
prejudiced her against any desire
to share
anything? And he'd had the nerve,
the gall,
the double-juice
to ask
about her? She snorted, wondering if
he still
sang slightly sharp. It'd been
the devil to compensate when they
cut minor
notes.
She felt exhausted
as she
thumbed the lock on the
door to her room and her
body still pulsed with the
frequencies of the Milekey lodes. She
punched for a radiant bath,
stripping as she heard the viscous
liquid plunging into the tub-tank.
Once immersed in that, the fatigue—and
the resonances—would
drain from her body
and she
could think beyond the next
note.
By then, she
did remember
patches of her last break.
They didn't please her. For one
thing, she'd come in with
a light
load, forced off the Range a
few kilos
ahead of a bad stocm.
She'd reaped the benefits of that
storm this trip, of course;
that was the way of it
with crystals. But she hadn't
had enough
credit to get off planet. (If
a singer
worked one lode a long
while, those crystals had the power
to call
and resonate
you no
matter where you were on Ballybran
until you had to go
back to them.) She'd been tired, and lonely and
sought company in a landsman;
tone-deaf, sober-sided so she
couldn't circe him. But he hadn't
been man enough to
anneal her. "Crystal
in my
soul, indeed!"
Lanzecki's words stung, like
crystal scratch.
She made a
noise of sheer selfndisgust and pulled herself from
the tank. The radiant
fluid sheeted from her body,
as firm
and graceful as a youngster's. Killashandra puzzled idly on
the matter of personal chronology. She couldn't remember her
approximate age; it usually
never mattered to a crystal
singer. Something about the
sonics, the crystal songs, stimulated
the regenerative RNA and
a crystal
singer looked and felt young
for far longer periods of time
than other mortals. Not immortality,
but close to it.
The price
was the
risk of numb ears and
scrambled brains, high enough.
"This time
I'll be off-planet," she told
her reflection
and slid
open the dresser panel.
She was mildly
surprised at the finery there
and decided
she must have spent what credit
she'd had for pretty threads
to lure
that unwary landsman. He'd
been a brute of a
lover, though a change. Anything had
been a change from the
possessiveness of Larsdahl. How dare he inquire
after her? There was no
harmony between them any
more. He had no lien
or hold
on her
because they'd been a duet!
Angrily Killashandra
punched for Port Authority and
inquired the destinations of imminent
blast-offs.
"Not much,
C. S.
Killashandra," she was
told politely. "A
small freighter
is loading
for the
Armagh system. ..." "Have I been there?" Pause. "No, ma'am." "What does Armagh do for
itself?" "Exports fish oils
and glue,"
was the
semi-disgusted reply. "Water world?"
"Not total. Has
the usual
balance of land and ocean.
..." "Tropical?"
"It has a
very pleasant tropical zone. All
water sports, tasty foods if you
like a high fruit/fish diet."
"Book me." Crystal
singers could be high-handed, at least on Ballybran.
"Blast-off at
2230 today," Port Authority told
her.
"Grand." And
Killashandra broke the connection.
She drew on
the soberest
garments in the press, randomly
selected half a dozen,
tossed them into a vapak,
and closed
it. She hesitated, mid-room, glancing about
incuriously. It was, of course, the standard member room,
and sterile.
No trace
of anything personal, of Killashandra.
"Because," Killashandra
said out loud as if
her voice
might at least be imprinted on
the room,
"I'm nothing but a crystal
singer with only a
present to live in."
She slammed the
door as she left but
it didn't
do much
to satisfy her discontent.
She had
time to get the refracting
lenses removed from her eyes. It
didn't change her outlook much.
In fact,
Ballybran looked duller than
usual as she flitted to
the Port
Authority Terminal. She left
the flit
for any
other crystal singer who might
need transport from the
terminal. She remembered at the
last to punch through to the
Guild Hall and give her
off-planet destination. And she withdrew
her priority
rights on the Milekey lode
until her return. If
someone, and she
felt it would be Larsdahl,
wanted to try their
luck there, they could for
all of
her. They might even make a
good haul, now that the
latest storm had changed the frequencies
again.
Briefly her
body ached for those resonances,
for the
dazzle of rainbow light prisms dancing
off variegated
quartz, for the pure sweet sound of crystal waking
in the
early morning sun, or sighing in the cold virginal
light of one of the
larger moons, for the subsonic hum
that ate through bone in
black cold night.
Then she
dealt with the formalities of lifting off-world and
settling in her cabin.
She entered the
common room for the first
time the third day out, having
enjoyed a deep drug-sleep to purge the last
of crystal
sound from her blood
and bone.
She was
hungry, for more than food, a hunger she could
keep leashed as far as
she herself
was concerned. But the
eight male passengers and the
two crewmen
who circulated in the
transit territory were affected by
her sensuality. There wasn't
anyone she wanted so she
retired to her cabin and remained
there the rest of the
trip.
Armagh Ill's Port
Authority Terminal smelled of fish
oil and
glue. Great casks were
being trundled into the hold
of the
freighter as she bade
an impatient
farewell to the passenger steward. She flashed her general
credentials and was admitted unconditionally to the
planet as a leisure guest.
No problem
so she hadn't had to use
her guild
membership. Armagh III was an
open planet.
She rented
a flit
and checked
into the Touristas for a
list of resorts. It was too
lengthy and so she closed
her eyes,
and bought a ticket to the
destination on which her finger
settled: Trefoil, on the
southeastern coast. She paused long
enough to obtain a quick change
of Armagh
clothing, bright patterns in a
lightweight porous weave, and
was off.
Trefoil was small,
a fishing
town. Ships under sail were
tacking across the harbor.
She thought
she'd seen sailships before but, of
course, she couldn't be sure.
Her curiosity
roused, she sauntered down
to the
docks to watch a huge
two-master beat up the
channel to the wharves, its
crew bustling about the decks, which
glinted with an almost crystalline
sheen.
' 'What makes
the decks
shine?" she asked another observer.
"Fish oils,"
was the
somewhat terse reply and then
the man,
a red-bearded giant, took
a second
look. Men usually did at
Killashandra. "First
time on Armagh?"
Killashandra nodded, her
eyes intent on the sailship.
"Been here long?" "Just arrived." "Got a pad?"
"No."
"Try the Golden
Dolphin. Best food in town
and best
brewman."
Killashandra turned to
look at him then. "You
pad there?"
"How else could I
judge?" the man replied with
charming candor.
Killashandra smiled back
at him,
neither coldly nor invitingly. Neutral. He reminded her of
someone. They both turned back to watch the docking
ship.
Killashandra found the
process fascinating and silently applauded
the well-drilled
crew: each man seemed to
perform his set task without apparent
instruction from the man in
the bridge
house. The big hull
drifted slowly sideways toward the
wharf. The sails flapped, empty of
wind, and were quickly gathered
and fastened along the
booms. Two crewmen flung lines
ashore, fore and aft; then leaped
after them when the distance
closed, flipping the heavy
lines deftly around the bollards
and snubbing
the ship securely.
Armagh men ran
to height,
tanned skins, and strong backs,
Killashandra noticed approvingly. Redbeard was watching her
out of the corner of his
eye. He was interested in her all right.
Just then, the nearest
sailor turned landside, and waved
in her
direction. His teeth were
startlingly white against the mahogany of his skin. He
tossed back a streaked blond
curly mane of hair and waved
again. He wore the long
oil-shiny pants of his profession and an oddly fashioned
vest, which left chest and arms
bare and seemed stiff with
double hide along the ribs.
He looked incredibly muscular. Was he waving
at her?
No, at
Redbeard beside her, who
now walked
forward to meet his friend. A third man, black-bearded
and tangle-maned,
joined them, was embraced by Redbeard. The
trio stood, facing the ship, talking
among themselves until a fearsome
machine glided along rails to their
side of the dock. It
extruded a ramp out and
down, onto the deck
of the
boat, where it hovered expectantly.
The two sailors
had jumped
back aboard, the blond man
moving with the instinctive grace of
the natural
athlete so that the black-haired man looked clumsy in
comparison. As a team, they
heaved open the hatch.
The hesitant
ramp extruded clamps that fastened to the deck and
the lip
of the
opened hold. More ramp disappeared into the maw of
the ship.
Moments later the ramp belt moved
upward and Killashandra saw her
first lunk, the great oil fish
of Armagh,
borne away on its last
journey.
She became absorbed
in the
unloading process, which, for all
the automated assistance of the machine, still
required the human element. The oil
scales of the huge fish
did not
always stay on the rough surface
of the
ramp belt and had to
be forced
back on manually. The
blond used an enormous barbed
hook, planting it deep
in what
was actually
the very
tough hide of the elusive fish and deftly flipping
the body
into place again. Redbeard seemed to
have some official position for
he made
notes of the machine's
dials, used the throat mike
often, and seemed to have forgotten
her existence
entirely. Killashandra approved. A
man should
get on
with his work.
Yes, especially when he worked with
such laudable economy of motion and
effort. Like the young blond.
In fact, Killashandra
was rather
surprised when the ramp suddenly retracted and the machine
slid sideways to the next
hold. A small barefoot
rascal of a lad slipped
up to
the crewmen,
a tray of hot pies balanced
on his
head. The aroma was tantalizing
and Killashandra
realized that she'd not eaten
since breaking fast on the freighter
that morning. Before she could
signal the rascal to her, his
merchandise had been bought up
by the
seaman. Irritated, Killashandra looked landward. The docks
couldn't be dependent on
the services
of small
boys. There must be other eating
facilities nearby. There were, of
course, but off-dock. With a backward
glance at her blond sailor,
contentedly munching from a pie
in each
hand, she left the wharf.
As it happened
the eating
house she chose displayed a
placard advertising the Golden
Dolphin. The hostelry was up
the beach,
set back amid a
grove of frond-leaved trees, far
enough around a headland from the
town and the wharf so
that commercial noise was muted. She
took a room with a
veranda looking out over the
water. She changed into
native clothing and retraced her
steps along the quiet corridor to
the public
room.
"What's the native
brew?" she asked the barman,
settling herself
on the
quaint high wooden stool.
"Depends on your
capacity, m'dear," the little black
man told her, grinning a welcome.
"I've never
disgraced myself."
"Tart or sweet?"
"Hmmm. Tart,
cool, and long."
"There's a concoction
of fermented
fruits, native to this globe, called 'harmat.' Powerful."
"Keep an
eye on
me then,
man. You call the limit."
He nodded respectfully.
He couldn't
know that a crystal singer had a metabolism that compensated for drug
or narcotic
or excess alcohol. A blessing-curse.
Particularly if you
were injured off-world, with no crystal
around to draw the noise
of accidental pain from your bones
and muscles.
Harmat was tart,
cool, and long, with a
pleasant aftertaste that kept the mouth
sweet and soothed the throat.
"A good drink
for a
sun world. And
sailors."
"Aye it is,"
the barman
said, his eyes twinkling. "And if it weren't for them, we could
export more."
"I thought
Armagh's trade was fish oils
and glue."
The barman wrinkled
his nose
disdainfully. "It is. Harmat off-world commands a price, only
trade rules say home consumption
comes first."
"Invent another
drink."
The barman frowned.
"I try. Oh, I try.
But they
drink me dry of anything I
brew."
"You're brewman
as well?"
He drew himself
up, straight
and proud.
"I gather the fruit from my own land, prepare
it, press
it, keg
it, age it."
She questioned him further, interested in another's exacting trade, and thought if she
weren't a crystal singer, brewmaking
would have been fun.
Biyanco, for that
was the
brewman's name, chatted with her
amiably—he was an amusing
fellow—until the laughter and talk of
a large
crowd penetrated the quiet gloom
of the
public room.
"The fishermen,"
he told
her, busying himself by filling
glass after glass after
glass of harmat, lining them
up along
the bar.
He was none
too soon,
for the
wide doors of the public
room swung open and a horde
of oil-trousered,
vested men and women surged up
to the
bar, dark hands closing on
the nearest
glass, coins spinning and
clicking to the wooden surface.
Killashandra remained on her
stool but she was pressed
hard on both sides by thirsty
people who spared her no
glance until they'd finished the first
and were
bawling for a refill. Then
she was rather casually, she felt,
dismissed as the fisherfolk laughed and talked trade.
"You'd best watch
that stuff," said a voice
in her
ear and
she saw Redbeard.
"I've been
warned," she answered, grinning. "Biyanco makes the
best harmat this side of
the canal.
It's not a drink for the
novice."
"I've been warned,"
she repeated,
mildly amused at the half-insult. Of course, the man
couldn't know she was a
crystal singer. So his
warning had been kindly meant.
A huge bronzed
fist brushed past her left
breast. Startled, she looked up into
the brilliant
blue eyes of the blond
sailor, received an incurious
appraisal that warmed briefly in
the way
a man will look at a
woman, and then grew cautious.
Killashandra looked away
first, disturbed and disappointed. He was much too young
for her.
She turned
back to Redbeard, who grinned as
if he
had watched
the swift
exchange of glances and was somehow
amused by it.
"I'm Thursday,
Shamus Thursday, ma'am," the redbeard
said.
"Killashandra is
my name,"
she replied
and extended
her hand.
He couldn't
have told her profession by her grip but
the strength surprised him. She could
see that.
Killashandra was not a tall or
heavily boned woman; crystal cutting
does not need mass, only controlled
energy and that could be
developed in any arm.
"This is
my good
friend, Shad Tucker," and Thursday
gestured to the blond.
Thankful that the press
of bodies
made it impossible for her
to do the courteous handshake, Killashandra nodded to Shad
Tucker.
"And my old
comrade of the wars, Tir
Donnell," Shamus Thursday motioned to the blackbeard, who also contented
himself with a nod and
grin at her. "You'd be here for a
rest, Killashandra?" And when
she nodded,
"And why would you pick such
a dull
fisherman's world as Armagh if
you'd all the galaxy to
choose from?"
Killashandra had
heard that sort of question
before, how many times she didn't
care to remember. She'd also
heard the same charming invitation for confidence.
"Perhaps I like water
sports," she replied, smiling back
at him, and not bothering to
hide her appraisal.
To her surprise,
he threw
back his head and laughed.
She could see where he'd trimmed
the hairs
from his throat, leaving a narrow
band of white flesh that
never saw sun. His two
buddies said nothing but
their eyes were on her.
"Perhaps you
do, ma'am.
And this
is the
place. Did you want the long
wave ride? There's a boat
out every
dawn." Shamus looked at her questioningly.
"Then water skating? Submarining? What is your pleasure,
elusive Killashandra?"
"Rest. I'm tired."
"Oh, I'd
never think you'd ever known
fatigue, ma'am!" The expression
in his
eyes invited her to confide.
"For someone unfamiliar
with the signs, how would
you know?"
"She's got
you there,
Shamus," said Tir Donnell, clapping
his friend on the
shoulder. Shad Tucker smiled, a
sort of shy, amused smile, as
if he
hadn't suspected her capable of
caustic reply, and wasn't sure
he should
enjoy it at his friend's
expense.
Shamus grinned, shrugged,
and eyed
Killashandra with respect. Then he bawled
to Biyanco
that his glass had a
hole in it.
When the
edge of their thirst had
been satisfied, most of the
fishermen left. "In search
of other
diversion," Shamus said
but he, Tir Donnell, and Shad
Tucker merely settled stools around
her and continued to
drink.
She matched them,
paid her rounds, and enjoyed
Shamus' attempts to pry
information, any personal information, from her.
He was not,
she discovered,
easily put off, nor shy
of giving
facts about himself or
his friends.
They'd all worked the same
fishing boat five seasons
back, leaving the sea periodically
as the monotony or bad fishing
turned them off temporarily. Shamus had an interest in
computers and often did wharfman's
chores if the regular
men were
away when ships came in.
Tir Donnell needed some ready credit,
was working
the lunk
season and would return to his
regular job inland. Shad Tucker,
the only off-worlder, had sailed the
seas of four planets before
he was landed on Armagh.
"Shad keeps saying
he'll move on, but he's
been here five years and more, and no sign of
applying for a ticket-off," Shamus told Killashandra.
Tucker only shrugged,
the slight
tolerant smile playing at the
corner of his mouth,
as if
chary of admitting even that
much about himself.
"Don't let Shad's
reticence mislead you, ma'am," Shamus went on, laying a
hand on his friend's shoulder.
"He's accredited for more
than a lunk fisher. Indeed
he is.
Got mate's
tickets on four water
worlds that make sailing Armagh
look like tank bathing.
Came here with a submariner
rig one
of the
Anchorite companies was touting."
He shrugged,
eloquently indicating that the
company's praise had fallen on
deaf Armaghan ears.
"They're tradition bound
on Armagh,"
Tucker said, his accent a nice
change, soft on her ears.
She had
to sharpen
her hearing to catch what he
said. Shamus' light baritone was
almost harsh by contrast.
"How so?" she
asked Shad, ignoring what Shamus
started to say.
"They feel there
is one
good way to
catch lunk when it's in
oil. By net. That way you don't
bruise the flesh so much
and the
lunk doesn't struggle the
way he
does on a hook and
sour the oil. The captains, they've
a sense
of location
that doesn't need sonic gear. I've sailed with five
or six
of the
best and they always know when and where the
lunk are running. And how many
they can bring from that deep."
And,
thought Killashandra,
bemused by Shad's soft accent,
you'd give your arm
to develop that sense.
"You've fished
on other
worlds?" she asked out loud.
"Aye."
"What, for instance?" He was as elusive with
information as a fish. Or herself.
"Oh, spiderfish, crackerjaw, bluefin, skaters, and Welladay
whales."
The young man
said it casually, as if
encounters with such aquatic monsters were
of no
account. Shamus' eyes were alight,
as if he had accurately gauged the effect of
that catalog on Killashandra.
"A crackerjaw opened his back for
him on
Spindrift," Shamus said, proudly.
"And he flew five miles
with a skater and brought him
down, the largest one ever
recorded on Man-dalay."
Killashandra wasn't sure
why Shamus
Thursday wished to extol his friend.
But it
made him more acceptable in her eyes. Shad was too young, anyhow.
Killashandra made no further attempt to draw Shad out
but turned
to Tir
Donnell and Shamus.
Despite a continued
concern for her consumption of harmat, Shamus kept ordering
until full dark closed abruptly
down on the planet and the
artificial lights came on in
the room.
"Mealtime," Biyanco announced in
a loud,
penetrating voice and activated
a barrier
that dropped over the bar.
He appeared through a side door
and briskly
gestured them to a table for
four on the other side
of the
room. Killashandra made no resistance to Shamus' suggestion that they all dine
together and she spent the rest
of the
evening in their company. And her
night alone. By choice. She'd not made up
her mind.
When the sun
came up over the edge
of the
sea, she was down in the
hotel's private lagoon, floating on
the buoyant
waters, just as the lunk ships,
sails fat with dawn winds,
slid out to open sea
with incredible speed.
To her surprise,
Shamus appeared at midday and
offered to show her Trefoil's few
diversions. Nothing loath, she went
and found him most agreeable company,
conversant on every phase of Trefoil's
domestic industry. He steered her
from the usual tourist paths, for
which she was grateful. She
abhorred that label though that was,
in essence,
her status
on any
world but Ballybran. Nor did she
give Shamus Thursday any hint
of her
profession despite all his
attempts to wheedle the information
from her.
It wasn't exactly
that she liked being secretive,
but few
worlds understood the function
of crystal
singers and some very odd habits
and practices
had been
attributed to them. Killashandra had learned
discretion and caution, and remembered them.
Late afternoon and
a bleeper
on Shamus'
belt alerted him to return to
the dock,
the fishing
boats had been sighted.
"Sorry, m'dear," he said as he
executed a dipping turn of
his fast flipper. "Duty calls."
She elected to
join him on the wharf,
allowing him to think it
was his company she
preferred. Actually she wanted to
watch the silent teamwork of docking,
and see
the mahogany
figure of Shad Tucker in action.
He was
much too young for her,
she told
herself again, but a
right graceful person to observe.
They'd had a
quick plenteous catch that day, Killashandra was told as the
fishermen drowned their thirsts in
harmat at the Golden Dolphin. Tucker
seemed unusually pleased and Killashandra could not resist asking
why.
"He's threatening to buy a ticket-off,''
Shamus told her when Shad replied
with an indolent shrug. "But he
won't go. He never does. He's
been here five years, longer
that on any other planet."
"Why?" Killashandra asked Shad, then had to
hush Shamus. "Let Tucker
reply. He knows his own
mind, doesn't he?"
Shad regarded her
with mild surprise and the
indolent look left his blue eyes,
replaced by an intentness she found hard to
ignore.
' 'This is
a real
sea world,''
Shad said, picking his words
in his
soft-accented way, "not some
half-evolved plankton puddle."
He
doesn't open his lips wide enough to enunciate properly, she thought,
and wondered
why he
guarded himself so.
"You've lunk
for profit,
territ and flatfish for fine
eating, the crustaceans and bivalves for
high livers, then the sea
fruits for a constant harvest. Variety. I might buy myself
a strip
of land
and stay."
"You do
ship on more than the
lunk boats?"
Shad was surprised
at her
question. "All the boats fish
lunk when it runs. Then you
go after
the others."
"If you've
a mind
for drudgery,''
said Tir Donnell gloomily.
Shad gave Tir
a forebearing
glance. "Lunk requires only muscle," he said with a
sly grin.
This appeared to
be an
old challenge,
for Tir
launched into a debate that Shad
parried with the habit of
long practice.
For the sake
of being
perverse, Killashandra took Tir Donnell
to bed that night. She didn't
regret the experience although there
was no harmony between them. His
vehemence did take the edge off
her hunger
if it
gave her no peace. She
did not
encourage him to ask
for more.
Somewhere, long ago, she'd learned the way to do
that without aggravating a lover.
He was gone
by dawn.
Shamus dropped by a few
hours later and took her to
see a
sea-fruit farm on the peninsula,
ten kilometers from Trefoil
to the
south. When she assured Max
Ennert, the farmer, of
her depth-worthiness,
they all fitted out with breather
tanks and went submarine.
Enclosed by water,
isolated by her trail of
bubbles, though attached by guideline to
Max and
Shamus, Killashandra realized—probably for
an uncountable
time—why crystal singers sought water worlds.
Below sea level, there was
insulation against aural sound, relief
from the play of noise
against weary eardrums.
They drifted inches
above the carefully tended sea
gardens, Max and Shamus occasionally pruning off a ripe
frond of grape or plum, shoving
them in the net bags
they towed. They bypassed reapers
in a
vast sea-valley where weed was
being harvested. Occasionally loose strands would drift
past them, the fuller longer ones
deftly caught and netted by
the men.
Killashandra was content
to follow,
slightly behind Max, slightly ahead of
Shamus, craning her neck, angling
her body
to enjoy as much of the
clear sea-view as possible. One
or the
other man checked her gauges from
time to time. Euphoria could
be a
curse under sea and
they didn't know her capacity,
nor the professional immunity she enjoyed.
Perhaps that was
why Shamus
argued with Max at one
point, when they'd been below some
two hours.
They stayed down almost three more
before they completed the circuit.
As they
walked out of the
sea at
Max's landing, night was approaching
with the usual tropical
dispatch.
"Stay on,
Shamus, Killashandra, if you've no
other plans," Max said but the
words sounded rehearsed, strained.
She entered
the room
where she had changed to
sea-dress and heard Shamus' footsteps right
behind her. She didn't bother
closing the door. He
did, and had her in
his arms
the next
instant. She made no
resistance to his advance, nor
did she
respond. He held her
from him, surprised, a question
in his
eyes.
"I'm not
susceptible to euphorics, Shamus," she told him. "What are you talking about?"
he asked,
eyes wide with innocence.
"And I've submarined
on more
worlds than Shad has sailed."
"Is it Tucker
you're after?" He didn't seem
jealous, merely curious.
"Shad's ..." and
she shrugged,
unwilling to place the young man
in any
category.
"But you
don't fancy me?" Not aggrieved,
again, merely curious.
She looked at
him a
long moment. "I think ..."
she began,
pausing as she voiced
an opinion
that had been subconscious till that moment, "... you
remind me too much of
someone I've been trying to forget."
"Oh, just
remind you?" Shamus' voice was
soft and coaxing, almost like Tucker's.
She put
that young man firmly out of her mind.
"Not to
worry, Shamus. The resemblance is purely superficial."
His eyes twinkled
merrily and Killashandra realized that
the resemblance had been
indeed purely superficial, for the
other man would have responded with
dark suspicion and urgent questions she'd have left unanswered
purely to annoy him more.
"So, dark and
mysterious lady, when you get
to know
me better. ..."
"Let me
get to
know you better first."
They flitted back
to Trefoil,
circling over quays empty of
any fishing craft.
"Lunk is moving
offshore," Shamus said.
"Season's about over, I'd say."
"Does Tucker
have enough for a ticket-off?"
"I wouldn't know."
Shamus was busy landing. "But
Tir needs one more
good haul. And so, I
suspect, does Skipper Garnsey. They'll track
school as far as there's
trace before they head in."
Which was
the substance
of the
message left for Shamus at
the Golden Dolphin. So
Killashandra, Shamus, and Biyanco talked most of the evening
with damned few other drinkers
at the
bar.
That was
why Killashandra
got an
invitation to go with Biyanco fruit-harvesting. "Land
fruit for harmat," Biyanco said with an odd shudder.
Shamus laughed
and called
him an
incorrigible lubber. "Biyanco swears
he's never touched sea-fruit in
his life."
"Never have been
that poor," Biyanco said with
some dignity.
The brewman
roused her before dawn, his
tractor purring outside her veranda. She
dressed in the overall he'd
advised and the combi-boots, and braided
her hair
tightly to her skull on
the outward leg of their trip.
Trefoil nestled
on the
curved sands of a giant
horseshoe bay, foothills at its back.
Rain forests that were all
but impenetrable
swept up the hills,
sending rank streamers across the
acid road in vain attempts to
cover that man-made tunnel into
the drier
interior.
Biyanco was
amiable company, quiet at times,
garrulous but interesting at others. He
stopped off on the far
side of the first range of foothills for lorries and climbers. None of
the small
boys and girls looked
old enough,
Killashandra thought, to be absent from
schooling. All carried knives half
again as long as their legs
from sheaths thong-tied to their
backs. All wore the coveralls and combi-boots with spurred
clamp-ons for tree-climbing.
They chattered and
sang, dangling their legs from
the lorries as the tractor churned
through the acid road. Occasionally
one of
them would wield his
knife, chopping an impertinent streamer that clasped itself to
a lorry.
Biyanco climbed farther
above sea level by the
winding acid road until he finally
slowed down, peering at the
roadside. Five kilometers later he let
out an
exclamation and veered the tractor
to the left, his hands busy
with dials and switches. A
warning hoot brought every climber's legs
back into the lorries. Flanges,
tilting downward, appeared along
the lorry
loadbeds and acid began to drip
from this shield. Acid sprayed
out, arcing well past the tractor's
leading edge, dissolving vegetations. Suddenly the tractor's
treads locked and ground on
metal. Biyanco pushed a
few toggles,
closed a switch, and suddenly
the tractor purred smoothly
along the hidden track.
"Own this side
of the
mountain, you know," Biyanco said,
glancing at Killashandra to see the effect
of his
announcement. "Ah, you thought
I was
only a barman, didn't you?
Surprised you, didn't I?
Ha." The little man was
pleased.
"You did."
"I'll surprise
you more
before the day is over."
Which he did,
sprier than she'd ever thought
him, and elated with his success.
She was
glad for his sake and
somewhat puzzled on her
own account.
He was
adept enough so that she
ought to have enjoyed
it, too.
Was there
crystal in her soul, after
all? Was she too
old to
love?
They'd reached their
destination, a permaformed clearing with acid-roofed buildings that housed
his processing
unit and temporary living quarters. The
climbers he'd escorted went farther on, sending the lorries off on automated tracks,
six climbers to each lorry. They'd
evidently climbed for him before
and in the teams they now
assembled, for he gave a
minimum of instruction before dismissing them to pick.
Then he'd
shown Killashandra into the processing
plant and explained the works succinctly.
Each of the
teams worked a different fruit,
he told
her. The secret of good harmat
lay in
the careful
proportions and blending of dead ripe
fruit. There were as many
blends of harmat as there
were fish in the
sea. His had made the
Golden Dolphin famous; that's why so
many Armaghans patronized the hostelry.
None of this vapid, innocuous stuff
came from his stills. Harmat
took months to bring to perfection:
the fruit
he'd process today would not be
fermented for nine months and
would not be offered for
sale for six years.
Then he took her below
ground, to the cool dark storage
area, deep in the permaform.
He showed
her the
automatic alarms if the
vicious digger roots of the
jungle ever penetrated the permaform, he wore a bleeper
on his
belt at all times (he never
did remove
the belt
but it
was made
of soft
tough fiber). He let her sample
the brews
and it
amused her that he would sip
abstemiously while filling her cup
full. Because she liked him and
she'd learned about harmat from
him, she gradually imitated drunk.
He'd had a
good deal of experience, Killashandra had to admit, and
he tried
his damnedest
to bring
her to
pitch but the frequency was wrong,
as it
had been
with Tir, would have been
with Shamus, and this
badly puzzled Killashandra. She ought
not to have such trouble off-world.
While Biyanco slept,
before the full lorries glided back
to their clearing, she probed her
patchy memory, again and again
stopped by Larsdahl's cynical laugh. Damn the
man! He was haunting her even
on Armagh.
He had
no right
to taint
everything she touched, every association
she tried
to enjoy.
She could remember, too, enough snatches
to know
that her previous break had
been as disastrous. Probably other breaks,
too. In the quiet cool dark
of the
sleeping room, Biyanco motionless with exhaustion beside her, Killashandra
bleakly cursed Larsdahl. For he'd sworn
she would
find fulfillment with no other lover
if she
left his bed. Laughing, she'd
left him, sure then of herself
where she was completely unsure now. "Crystal in her soul?"
Experimentally she
ran her
hand down her bare body,
to the
hard flesh of her
thighs, the softness of her
belly, her firm breasts. She'd had
her children
decades before, they'd be grown and parents.
Maybe grandparents. You never
conceived once you sang crystal. Small
loss, she thought, and then,
suddenly, wasn't sure.
Damn, damn! Damn
Larsdahl. She'd found the Milekey lode. She had the
priority right. He couldn't have
mined it, he couldn't sing the
right resonances, he
didn't have the cutting skill for the light quartzes.
She'd tried, grant
her that,
to show
him but they'd crack,
he simply
hadn't the sense of pitch.
At least for rose crystal. And
then he'd withheld the gift
of peace
from her body because
she wouldn't
. .
. because
she couldn't
. . . teach him her
trick of pitch.
"You have it
or you
haven't, Larsdahl," she'd told him,
implored him, shouted at
him. "You can't be taught
any more
than you can teach
crystal singing to the deaf!
I can't
help you!''
There'd been bitter
recriminations, physical battles,
because Larsdahl hadn't wanted
to let
her go
even after he'd jeopardized their partnership with his insistence.
She'd had to invoke guild
protection, something a crystal
singer ought not to have
to do.
But it had sobered Larsdahl and
he'd let her alone. Not
entirely alone: there'd be
the odd
message from another singer. Or, the
verbal communication for Lanzecki
to pass
on. Lanzecki ought to know better.
And you
didn't, damn it,
need two to work her
priority range. The sounds were too
pure: two ears were better
than four. Two bodies inhibited the
purities, muddied the pitch. She'd
learned that much from Larsdahl.
The sound
of the
returning lorries, the singing of
the climbers, roused Biyanco. He blinked
at her,
having forgot in his sleeping that he'd
taken a woman again. With
solemn courtesy, he thanked
her for
their intercourse, and having dressed, excused himself with grave
ceremony. At least a man
had found pleasure in
her body,
she thought.
She bathed,
dressed, and joined him as
the full
fruit bins began spilling their colorful
contents into the washing pool.
Biyanco was seated at
the controls,
his nimble
fingers darting here and there as
he weighed
each bin, computed the price,
and awarded each chief his crew's
chit. It was evidently a
good pick, judging by the grins
on every
face, including Biyanco's.
As each lorry
emptied, it swiveled around and
joined the line on the tractor
that was also headed homeward.
All were
shortly in place and then the
second part of the processing
began. The climbers took themselves off under the shade
of the
encroaching jungle and ate
their lunches.
Abruptly noise pierced
Killashandra's ears. She
let out
a scream, stifling a repetition against her hand but
not soon
enough to escape Biyanco.
The noise
ceased. Trembling with relief, Killashandra looked around, astonished that no one else
seemed affected by the
appalling shriek.
"You are
a crystal
singer, then, aren't you?" asked Biyanco, steadying
her as
she rocked
on her
feet. "I'm sorry. I wasn't
sure but I forgot
the crystals
in the
drive have been off. Honest
I did, or I'd have warned
you." He was embarrassed and earnest.
"You should
have them balanced," Killashandra replied angrily and immediately apologized. "How could you
know I might be a crystal
singer?"
Biyanco looked
away from her now. "Things
I've heard."
"What have
you heard?"
He looked
at her
then, his eyes steady. "That a crystal singer can sound notes that'll drive
a man
mad. That they lure men
to them, seduce them, and then
kidnap 'em away to Ballybran
and they never come back."
Killashandra smiled, a
little weakly because her ears
still ached. "What made you think
I wasn't?"
"Me!" He jabbed
at his
chest with a juice-stained finger. "You slept
with me."
She reached out
and touched
his cheek
gently. "You are a good man,
Biyanco, besides being the best
brewman on Armagh. And I like
you. But you should get
those crystals balanced."
Biyanco glanced
over at the offending machinery
and grimaced, "The balancer's got a
waiting list as long as
Murtagh River," he said.
"You look pale. How about
a drink?
Harmat'll help ... oh,
you are
a witch,"
he added,
chuckling as he realized that she
couldn't've been as drunk as
she'd acted. Then a smile tugged
his lips
across his face. "Ohho, you are a something, Killashandra of Ballybran. I should've spotted your
phony drunk,
and me
a barman
all these
decades." He chuckled
again. "Well, harmat'U help your nerves." He clicked
his fingers at one of the
climber chiefs and the boy
scampered into the living quarters, back
again in a trice with
glasses and a flask of chilled
harmat.
She drank eagerly,
both hands on the glass
because she was still shaky. The
cool tartness was soothing, though,
and she
wordlessly held the glass
out for
a refill.
Biyanco's eyes were kind and somewhat
anxious. He knew what unbalanced
crystalline shrieks did to
the sensitive
nerves of a singer.
"You've not
been harmed by it, have
you?"
"No. No, Biyanco,
we're tougher than that. It
was the
surprise. I wasn't expecting
you to
have crystal-driven equipment. ..."
He grinned slyly.
"We're not backward on Armagh
for all
we're quiet and peaceful. " He leaned
back from her, regarding her with fresh interest. ' 'Is
it true
that crystal singers don't grow
old?"
"There're disadvantages
to that,
my friend."
He raised his
eyebrows in polite contradiction. But she only smiled as she steadily sipped
the harmat
until all trace of pain
had eased from her
nerves.
"You told me
you've only a certain time
to process
ripe fruit. If you'll let me
take the tractor down the
rails past the first ridge
. . . No. . .
." and she vetoed her
own suggestion
arriving at an impulsive alternative. "How long do you
have before the pick sours?"
"Three hours, tops,"
and in
Biyanco's widening eyes she saw incredulous
gratitude as he understood her intention. "You wouldn't?" he said
in a
voiceless whisper.
"I could
and I
would. That is, if you've
the tools
I need."
"I've tools,"
and, as if afraid she'd
renege, he propelled her toward the machine shed.
He had what
she needed,
but the
bare minimum. Fortunately, the
all important
crystal saws and knives were
still very sharp and true. With
two pairs
of knowledgeable
hands (Biyanco had put the driver
together himself when he updated
the plant's
machinery thirty years ago),
it was
no trick
at all
to get
down to the crystals.
"They're in
thirds," he told her needlessly.
"Pitch?"
"B-flat minor."
"Minor? For heavy work like
this?"
"Minor because it
isn't that continuous a load
and minors
don't cost what majors
do," Biyanco replied crisply.
Killashandra nodded,
accepting the oblique snub. She
hit the
B-flat and the crystal
hummed sweetly in tune. So
did the
D. It
was the E that
was sour—off
by a
half-tone. She cut off the
resonance before the sound
did more
than ruffle her nerves. With Biyanco carefully assisting her,
she freed
the crystal
of its
brackets, cradling it tenderly
in her
hands. It was a blue,
from the Ghanghe Range, more than
likely, and old, because the
blues were worked out
now.
"The break's in
the top
of the
prism, here," she said, tracing
the flaw. "The bracket
may have
shifted with vibration."
"G'delpme, I weighed those
brackets and felted them proper. ..."
"Not to worry,
Biyanco. Probably the expansion coefficient
differs in this rain
forest enough to make even
properly set felt slip. Thirty years
they've been in? You worked
well."
They decided
to shift
pitch down, which meant she
had to
recut all three crystals,
but that
way he'd
have a major triad. Because she trusted him, she
let him
watch as she cut and
tuned. She had to sustain pitch
with her voice after she
had warmed
them enough to sing,
but she
could hold a true pitch
long enough to place the initial,
and all-important
cuts.
It was
wringing wet work, even with
the best
of equipment
and in a moderate climate. She
was exhausted
by the
time they reset the felted brackets.
In fact,
he elbowed
her out
of the
way when he saw how her
hands trembled.
"Just check me,"
he asked
but she
didn't need to. He was
spry in more than
one way.
She was
glad she'd tuned the crystals
for him. But he
was too
old for
her.
She felt
better when he started the
processer again and there was no
crystal torture.
"You get
some rest, Killashandra. This'11 take
a couple
more hours. Why don't you stretch
out on
the tractor
van seat?
It's wide enough. That way you
can rest
all the
way back
to Trefoil."
"And yourself,
Biyanco?"
He grinned
like the old black imp
he was.
"I'm maybe a shade younger than
you, crystal singer Killashandra. But we'll never know, will
we?"
She slept,
enervated by the pitching and
cutting, but she woke when Biyanco
opened the tractor door. The
hinge squeaked in C-sharp.
"Good press,"
he said
when he saw she was
awake. Behind in the lorries, the
weary climbers chanted to themselves.
One was a monotone. Before he
could get on her nerves,
they'd reached the village.
The lorries were detached and the
climbers melted into the
darkness. Biyanco and Killashandra continued on the acid road
back to Trefoil
It was close
to dawn
before they pulled up at
the Golden
Dolphin.
"Killashandra?"
"Yes, Biyanco?"
"I'm in
your debt."
"No, for
we exchanged
favors."
He made
a rude
noise. And she smiled at
him. "We did. But if you
need a price, Biyanco, then
it's your silence on the
subject of crystal singers."
"Why?"
"Because I'm
human, no matter what you've
heard of us. And I must have
that humanity on equal terms
or I'll
shatter one day among the quartz.
It's why we have to
go off-world."
"You don't
lure men back to Ballybran?"
"Would you
come with me to Ballybran?"
He snorted.
"You can't make harmat on
Ballybran."
She laughed for
he had
given the right answer to
ease his own mind. The tractor
moved off softly in first.
She slept the
sun around
and woke
the second
dawn refreshed. She lazed
in the
water, having been told by
the pug-nosed host that the lunk
ships were still out. Biyanco
greeted her that noonday
with pleasantries and no references
to favors past, present, or future.
He was
old enough,
that brewman, she thought, to know
what not to say.
She wondered
if she
should leave Trefoil and flit
around the planet. There'd be other
ports to visit, other fishermen
to snare
in the net of her attraction.
One of
them might be strong enough,
must be strong enough
to melt
the crystal
in her.
But she
tarried and drank harmat all afternoon
until Biyanco made her go
eat dinner.
She knew
the lunk
boats were in even before
the parched
seamen came thronging up
the beachroad,
chanting their need. She helped Biyanco
draw glasses against their demand,
laughing at their surprise to
see her
working behind the bar. Only
Shad Tucker seemed unamazed.
Shamus was there,
too, with Tir Donnell, teasing
her as
men have teased barmaids for centuries.
Tucker sat on a stool
in the
comer of the bar
and watched
her, though he drank a
great deal of harmat to "unstick
his tongue
from the roof of his
mouth."
Biyanco made them
all go
eat, to lay a foundation
for more
harmat, he said. And
when they came back, they
brought a squeeze box, a fiddle, two guitars,
and a
flute. The tables were stacked against the wall and
the music
and dancing
began.
It was
good music, too, true-pitched so Killashandra could enjoy it, tapping her foot
to the
rhythms. And they played until
the musicians pleaded for
a respite,
and leaving
their instruments on the bar,
swept out to the cool
evening beach to get a
second wind.
Killashandra had
been dancing as hot and
heavy as any woman, partnered with
anyone who felt like dancing,
including Biyanco. Everone except
Tucker, who stayed in his
corner and watched . . .
her.
When the
others left to cool off,
she wandered
over to him. His eyes were
a brighter
blue in the new red-tan
of his
face. He was picking his hands
now and
again because the last of
the lunks had an acid in
their scales that ate flesh.
And he'd
had to
grab some barehanded at the last.
"Will they
heal?" she asked.
"Oh, sure. Be
dry tomorrow.
New skin in
a week.
Doesn't hurt."
Shad looked at his hands
impersonally and then went on
absently sloughing off the
dying skin.
"You weren't
dancing."
The shy grin
twisted up one corner of
his mouth
and he ducked his head a
little, looking at her from
the side
of his
eyes.
"I've done my
dancing. With the
fish the past days. I like to watch, anyhow."
He unwound
himself from the stool to
reach out and secure the nearest guitar. He picked
a chord,
winced so he didn't see
her shudder at the
discord. Lightly he plucked the
strings, twisting the tuning
knob on the soured G,
adjusting the E string slightly, striking the chord again
and nodding
with approval.
Killashandra blinked.
The man
had perfect
pitch.
He began to
play, softly, with a style
totally different from the raucous tempi of the previous
musicians. His picking was intricate
and the
rhythm sophisticated, yet the result
was a
delicate shifting of pattern
and tone
that enchanted Killashandra.
It was
improvisation at its best, with the player as
intent upon the melody he produced
as his
only audience.
The beauty of
his playing,
the beauty
of his
face as he played, struck an aching in her
bones. When his playing ceased,
she felt
empty.
She'd been
leaning toward him, perched on
a stool,
elbows on her knees, supporting her chin with cradled
hands. So he leaned forward, across
the guitar,
and kissed
her gently
on the
mouth. They rose, as one, Shad
putting the guitar aside to
fold her in his arms and
kiss her deeply. She felt
the silk
of his
bare flesh beneath her hands, the
warmth of his strong body
against hers and then ... the
others came pouring back with
disruptive noise. The mood
he had
so delicately
created was brutally torn apart.
As well, thought
Killashandra, as Shamus boisterously swung her up to the
beat of a rough dance.
When next she looked over her shoulder, Shad was
cornered and watching, the slight
smile on his lips,
his eyes
still on her.
He
is much much too young for me, she told herself, and
lam very fragile with too much living.
The next
day she
nursed what must have been
her first
hangover. She'd tried hard
enough to acquire one. She
lay on
the beach in the
shade and tried not to
move unnecessarily. Otherwise she'd
ache and hurt. No one
bothered her until midday; presumably everyone was nursing hangovers
of their
own. Then Shad's large
feet stopped on the sand
beside her pallet. Shad's big knees
cracked as he bent over
her and
his peeling hand tipped back the
wide hat she wore against
sun glare.
"You'll feel
better if you eat this,"
he said,
speaking very softly. He held out
a small
tray with a frosted glass
and a
plate of fruit chips on it.
She wondered if
he were
enunciating with extra care for
she understood every soft
word, even if she resented
the gist
of them. She groaned and he
repeated his advice. Then he
put gentle hands on her, raising
her torso
so she
could drink without spilling.
He fed
her, piece by piece as
a man
feeds a sick and fretful child.
She felt sick
and she
was fretful
but, when all the food
and drink were in her belly,
she had
to admit
that his advice was sound.
"I never
get drunk."
"Probably not. But
you also
don't dance yourself bloody-footed either."
Her feet
were tender, come to think
of it,
and when
she examined the soles, discovered blisters and myriad thin
scratches.
Tucker sat
with her all afternoon, saying little. When he
suggested a swim, she
complied and the lagoon water
was cooler than she'd remembered, or maybe she was
hotter for all she'd been lying
in the
shade.
When they
emerged from the water, she
felt human, even for a crystal
singer. And she admired his
straight tall body, the easy
grace of his carriage,
and the
fineness of his handsome face.
But he was much too young
for her.
She would
have to try Shamus for she needed a man's
favors again.
Evidently it
was not
Shad's intention that she find
Shamus for he persuaded her that
she didn't
want to eat in the
hostelry; that it would be more
fun to
dig for
bivalves where the tide was
going out, in a cove he
knew of, a short walk
away. It is difficult to
argue with a soft-spoken
man, who is taller than
you by
six inches, and can carry you
easily under one arm .
. .
even if he is a century
or so
younger.
And it was
impossible not to touch his
silky flesh when he brushed past her to tend
the baking
shellfish, or when he passed
her wine-steeped fruit chips
and steam
roots.
When he looked
at her,
sideways, his blue eyes darker
now, reflecting the fire
and the
night, it was beyond her
to resist
his importunities.
She woke
on the
dark beach, before the dying
fire, with his sleeping weight against
her side.
Her arms
were wrapped around his right arm,
her head
cradled on the cup of
his shoulder. Without moving her head,
she could
see his
profile. And she knew there wasn't
any crystal
in her
soul. She could still give .
. .
and receive.
For all
she sang
crystal, she still possessed that priceless
human quality, annealed in the
fire of his youth.
She'd been
wrong to dismiss him for
what was a mere chronological accident, irrelevant to the
peace and solace he brought her. Her body was
exultant, renewed.
Her stretching
roused him to smile with
unexpected sweetness into her eyes.
He gathered
her against
him, the vibrant strength of his
arms tempered to tenderness for her slight frame.
"You crazy
woman," he said, in a
wondering voice as he lightly scrubbed her scalp with
his long
fingers and played with her fine
hair. "I've never met anyone
like you before."
"Not likely
to again." Please!
He grinned
down at her, delighted by
her arrogance.
"Do you
travel much?" he asked.
"When the
mood strikes me."
"Don't travel
for awhile."
"I'll have
to one
day. I've got to go
back to work, you know."
"What work?"
"I'm a guild member."
His grin broadened
and he
hugged her. "All
right. I won't pry." His finger
delicately traced the line of
her jaw.
"You can't be as
old as
you make
out," he said for she'd
been honest enough earlier to tell
him they
were not contemporary.
She answered him
now with
a laugh
but his
comment brought a chill to her.
It couldn't have
been an accident that he
could relieve her, she thought, caressing his curving thigh.
She panicked
suddenly at the idea that, once
tasted, she could not drink
again and strained herself to him.
His arms tightened
and his
low laugh
was loving to her ears. And their
bodies fit together again as
fully and sweetly in harmony as before. Yes, with
Shad Tucker, she could dismiss
all fear as baseless.
Their pairing-off
was accepted
by Shamus
and Tir
who had
his ready credit now
and was
off to
apply it to whatever end
he'd had in mind. Only Biyanco
searched her face and she'd
shrugged and given the
brewman a little reassuring smile. Then he'd peered closely
at Shad
and smiled
back.
That was
why he
said nothing. As she'd known
he wouldn't.
For Shad Tucker wasn't
ready to settle on one
woman. Killashandra was an
adventure to him,
a willing
companion for a man just finished
a hard
season's work.
They spent
the days
together as well,
exploring the coastline in both directions
from Trefoil, for Shad had
a mind
to put
his earnings in land or sea
front. She had never felt
so .
. .so vital and alive. He had
a guitar
of his
own that
he'd bring, playing for hours little
tunes he'd make up when
they were becalmed and had to
take shelter in the shade
of the
sail from Armagh's biting noonday sun. She loved to
look at him while he
played; his absorption had the quality
of an
innocent boy discovering major Truths of Beauty, Music, and
Love. Indeed, his face, when
he caressed her to a fever
pitch of love, retained that
same youthful innocence and intent absorption.
Because he was so strong,
because his youth was
so powerful,
his delicate,
restrained love-making was all
the more
surprising to her.
The days multiplied and became
weeks but so deep was
her contentment that the
first twinge of uneasiness caught her unawares. She knew what it
was, though: her body's cry
for crystal song.
"Did I hurt you?"
asked Shad for she was
in his
arms.
She couldn't
answer so she shook her
head. He began to kiss
her slowly, leisurely, sure of himself. She
felt the second brutal knock along her spine and
twisted herself closer in his
arms so he wouldn't feel it
and she
could forget that it had
happened.
"What's wrong,
Killashandra?"
"Nothing. Nothing that you
can't cure."
So he
did. But afterward, she couldn't
sleep and stared up at
the spinning moons. She
couldn't leave Shad now. Time
and again he'd worked his magic
with her until she'd've sworn
all crystal thought was purged. Until she'd
even toyed with the notion of resigning from the
guild. When crystal got too
bad, she could tune sour crystal
on Armagh.
But she
must stay with Shad. He held
back fear, he brought her
peace. She'd waited for a lover
like Shad Tucker so long, she had the right
to enjoy
the relationship.
The next moment
another spasm struck her, hard,
sharp, fierce.
She fought
it though
her body
arched with pain. And she
knew she couldn't resign.
That she was being inexorably
drawn back. And she did not
want to leave Shad Tucker.
To him,
she was
a novelty,
a woman
to make
love to .
.
now
. . when the lunk
season had been good and
man needed
to relax. But Killashandra was not
the sort
of woman
he'd build a home for
on his
acres of sea-front. For her,
she loved
him: for his youth, for his
absurd gentleness and courtesy; because,
in his arms, she was briefly
ageless.
The profound
cruelty of her situation was
driven home to her mind as
bitterly as the next hunger
pain for crystal sound.
It
isn't fair, she cried piteously.
It isn't fair. I can't love
him. It isn't fair. He's too young. He '11 forget me
in other loves. And I. . . I'll not be able to
remember him. That was the
crudest part.
She began
to cry,
Killashandra who had foresworn tears
for any man half a century
before when the harmony between
herself and Larsdahl had
turned discordant. Her weeping, soft
as it was, woke Shad. He
comforted her, lovingly and complicated
her feelings
for him
by asking
no questions
at all.
Maybe, she thought with
the desperation
of fearful
hope, he isn't that young. He
might want to remember me.
And, when her
tears had dried on her
face, he kissed her again, with an urgency that
must be answered. And was, as
fully and sweetly as ever.
The summons
came two days later. Biyanco
tracked them in the cove and
told her only that she
had an
urgent message. She was grateful for
that courtesy but she hated
the brewman
for bringing the message at all.
It was a
guild summons all right; she
had to
go back
and sing
rose crystal. Implicit in
the message
was a
guild warning: she'd been away too
long from crystal. What crystal
gave, it took away. She stared
at her
reflection in the glass panel
of the
message booth. Yes, crystal
could take away her appearance
of youthfulness. How long
would Shad remember the old
woman she would shortly become?
So she
started out to say goodbye
to him.
Best have it done quickly and now! Then back
to Ballybran
and forgetfulness
in the crystal song. She felt
cold all over.
He was
sitting by the lagoon, strumming
his guitar,
his face
absorbed in a melody
he'd composed for her. It
was a
pretty tune, one that stopped in
the mind
and woke
you humming
it the
next day.
Killashandra caught back
her breath:
Shad had perfect pitch: he could
come with her, to Ballybran.
She'd train him herself to
be a crystal singer.
"Don't," said
Biyanco stepping to her side.
"Don't what?"
she asked
coldly.
"If you really
love him, Killashandra, don't. He'll
remember you this way. That's what
you want,
isn't it?"
It was,
of course,
because she wouldn't. So she
stood there, beside Biyanco, and listened
to Shad
sing, watched the boyish absorption on his beloved face
and let
cruelty wash hope out of
her.
"It never
Avorks, does it,
Killashandra?" Biyanco asked
gently.
"No." She had
a fleeting
recollection of Larsdahl. They'd met somewhere, off-world. Hadn't they?
They must have. Had she been
lured to Ballybran by some
ageless lover? Perhaps.
Who knew? The
difference was that now, she
was old
enough not to play the siren
for crystal.
Old enough
to leave
love while he was young, and
still in love enough to
remember her only as a
woman.
"No one
forgets you, Killashandra,"
Biyanco said, his eyes dark and
sad, as she turned to
leave. "Maybe I can
remember that much."
Gene Wolfe
THE DEATH OF
HYLE
I have never
been a religious man, and
I am
not a
religious man now. I have known
all my
life—at least, since I was
seven or eight, when I began
to read
my older
brother Walter's chemistry books,
and later
the big,
old, red-bound encyclopedias
in my
father's study—that this world
of supposedly
sentient matter, this world that appears
(I ought
to have
said, appeared) so solid to my
admittedly bemused eyes—eyes enchained by
maya, as the Hindus have been
telling us for four thousand
years—is insubstantial as vapor.
Not only
because what we have self-indulgently
called our too-solid flesh is
(as it
is) no
more than a cosmos of crackling
energy; and not only because
that fiction we refer to as
objective reality is (as it
is) the
creature of the very radiation by which we gauge
it—and of our senses—a creation
shaped too by the
digital nature of our brains
and by
our minds'
deplorable habit of overlaying
all we
see and
hear and feel with what we
anticipated perceiving, overlaying it, I
say, before warping the whole to
bring it in line with
our past
experiences; but most of
all because
it is
the least
substantial of the laws that
rule us that tyrannize
us most—so
that we, every one of
us, feel
crushed beneath the dictum
that one thousand less nine
hundred and thirty is seventy, and
tortured by the implacable commandment to destroy the
thing we love, while the
solid fact (as we call it)
that Madagascar is off the
eastern coast of Africa affects us not at all.
I am
back again; though it must
seem to you who read
this that I was never gone,
it had
been a long time—several days at least. I gauge
the time
by the
grass; there are no newspapers,
no bottles of milk on our
doorstep for the simple reason
that June bought our milk at
the market
(we never
used much, anyway) and I bought a paper, on the odd
days when I was inclined
to read one, from the rack
beside the station. Now the
grass is my Journal, and whispers
news and gossip with green
tongues that sometimes tell more than
they know, or understand.
But enough
of them
and their
small indiscretions—I vanished. Have you ever felt what
it is
to vanish?
Do you
know how a light feels when
it goes
out? Where the minutes disappear
to when they pass?
Let me
tell you. . . .
I had finished writing that
sentence about África, and made the period
with a little stab of
my pencil,
and was
just wondering if Madagascar
and Africa
were the right example, after
all, when the pencil fell through
my fingers
to the
paper, and rolling along the top
of my
desk, came to rest against
the metal
box in
which I keep my
stamps. It was not that
the pencil
had become
too heavy for me
to hold,
but that
my fingers
had grown
too light
to hold it. I am tempted by
the rooted
courses of our language to
say that I had
the feeling
then that the room around
me, tole box, pencil, the brass inkstand with its
devil face, desk, chair, books,
walls, my bronze bust
of Hogarth,
had become
unreal as the angel faces seen
in clouds.
The truth
is otherwise:
What I felt was no feeling,
but certainty.
I knew that
I had lived
my life
among the shadows of
shadows, that I had worked
for money
as I might have labored for
fernseed, and spent my gains
for the
watermarks on paper, paper
in a picture, the picture in a book seen lying open in a projection from a lens about to crack in an
empty room of a
vacant house. I stood up
then and tried to rub
my eyes and found
that I saw through my own
hands, and that they possessed personalities
of their
own, so that it was
as though I nuzzled two friends,
the left
quick and strong, the right
weaker, withdrawn, and a
little dull. I saw a
man—myself, I might as well admit,
now, that he was myself—leave
the room,
walking through the misty
wall and up into the
sky as
though he were climbing a hill;
he turned
toward me my own face
cruel as a shark's, then threw
it at
me. I
ducked and ran, lost at
once until I met a tall,
self-contained personage who
was a
tree, though I did not realize
it until
I had
been with him for sometime.
I think
he was Doctor Hopkins' tree, actually—the
big shade
tree behind his house.
Dr. Hopkins
lives on the next street
over, two houses down. His tree
spoke to me of the
winds, and the different kinds
of rains they blow, and as
I talked
I saw
that he too was fading,
and with him the light. A
woman with white-blazoned black hair
came carrying a lantern;
I asked
her about
my daughter
June.
I asked about
June: that is true, but
you cannot
conceive how I feel when I
write that, the pride that
I did
not gibber
with fear to her (though to
tell the truth I was
very near it), the irony. She
said, "Old man, what
are you
doing here?" and held her
lantern up, and I understood—I will say "saw," though that is not
the right word—that the lantern had
come trailing this woman as
a car might drag behind it
a child's
toy on
a string.
I said,
"Am I among the nin?"
"Don't be
a fool.
What do you think names
like that mean now?" She started
to leave,
and I
followed her. We were not
walking across a dark
plain in a cold wind,
but the
mind is so accustomed to casting
every event into images of
this sort that it seemed so—except
when I took particular note of what we
were really doing, which was something
like falling down a horizontal
hole, a hole lined everywhere
with roots and worms and
strangely shaped stones, things
all alive
but ignoring
us. "June!"the
lantern said, and its woman
looked at me. I thought
at first that she
was mocking
me ,
then I understood that she
was calling June, my poor daughter,
for me,
and that
she was
looking for her inside
me, just
as you
might tell a man who
says he cannot find his glasses
that they might be in
his pocket.
I bent
over to see, and
kept on going, entering my
body somewhere between my navel and
my crotch.
I was
walking into the withdrawal center again. Not withdrawal
from drugs, which is what
those places used to be
when I was younger, but the
place people—only young people, supposedly, people under thirty—withdrew from life itself. An
operation had removed, at
least for a time, certain
wrinkles from my face; my beard
was dyed,
and young
hair the shade of wheat
had been sown in
my scalp.
They questioned me at the
center, but only briefly—it is a
way of
disposing of the crowds, they
say; a way to end crowding
that involves no deaths. We
shut our eyes to the sky
and the
sea in
the seventies—now
in the
nineties we open doors to a
darker, nearer empire than either,
the place
that is between stones
that touch, that has lived
for fifty
thousand years in the
black guts of caves, for
six thousand
in the
empty rooms of old
houses; and one of the
doors is the door in
this wall of bricks.
"Yes, what
can we
do for
you?"
"I want
to go."
"Yes," he
said again. He waved me
to a
chair. "Tonight? Now?"
"Yes."
"My advice
is to
give yourself a cooling-off period. You don't have to,
but that's
what I'd advise you to
do." I shook my head.
"I don't
mean a long time—just a
couple of days." "No."
He sighed. He
was a
young man, but the clipped
mustache he wore made him look
faintly old-fashioned, a little prissy.
He said, "I'm going:myself, you
know. I wouldn't work here
if I
weren't. I wouldn't feel
right about it."
"If you're
going to go, why don't
you go
now?"
"My friend—I'm
supposed to ask you questions,
you don't
ask me, understand. You want to
go, and
I think
that's great, but if I say
you can't,
you can't.
At least, not
from here."
"How long
are all
these questions going to take?"
"I just
wanted to explain. You know,
when a person goes he
doesn't go right away,
at least
not usually.
He bounces."
I said,
"I've seen them."
"Sure, everbody has.
It's like this." He reached
into a drawer of
his desk
and drew
out a
resilient ball cast of some
clear elastometer shot with
flakes of gold. He laid
it on
the desk
top, and it began rolling very
slowly toward the edge. "See,
Mr. Ball doesn't like it up
on the
top of
my desk;
it's plastic up there, cold and narrow. He wants
to go
down to the floor—the wider
world, you know? We
give him a little push
and down
he goes.
Watch what happens.''
The ball reached
the edge
and solemnly
tumbled off, struck the floor and
rose again until it was
nearly as high as the
top of
the desk, dropped, rose,
dropped, and rose. Each time
it fell
it made a soft patting, and
this was the only sound
in the
silent building. ' 'Every
time it bounces nearly as
high as it was before,
but not quite. Sooner
or later
it will
stop bouncing and just roll
around the floor—then it will be happy."
"But meanwhile
it's not?"
"It's not
at peace.
It's—you know—agitated. People are like
that, and the older
they are the more agitated
they get; we won't take anybody over thirty, and
you must
be pretty
close to that.''
"I'm twenty-nine."
"Sure. Listen, the
truth is that we do
take them over thirty, but we don't advertise it
because we're not supposed to.
I mean,
a woman comes in,
she's fifty, and she's got
cancer. I'm supposed to tell her
no deal
because she'd bounce too long."
The young man shrugged
fluidly, an Italianate shrug though
his mustache was no darker than
a fox's
back. "We take her and
tell her to bounce where she
won't be seen. You're thirty-five
if you're a day."
"I'm twenty-nine."
"All right. Anyway,
I try
and explain to these
people. It's hard on them, the
bouncing in and out of
nature. The N.I.N,
is
what they call
them when they're gone, you
know—the not in nature. But what about
when they're on the shuttle
between the worlds? And you're going
to be
there a long time. It's
not like
you were a child
of sixteen
or seventeen."
"What interests
me," I said, "is that
you seem
to be
implying that the nin exist at
a lower
energy level than we do."
"Hell, it's
a bit
more complicated than that," the young man said, "but
have I talked you out
of it?"
They gave
me drugs
both orally and intravenously; and made me lie down
among humming, flashing machinery with
wires on my head and feet
and hands;
and played
music of a kind I
had never heard before, while I
read from a battered card.
How much of what was done
was done
only to compel belief I
do not
know—perhaps it all was.
Never again, to walk as men
walk, nevermore to die or sigh or cry. . .. When it
was over
I stood
up and the young man and
a young
woman shook my hand very
solemnly and I thought
that it would have been
much more impressive if they had
been dressed as doctor and
nurse, but I did not tell
them. When I was coming
up my
own front
walk, the key in my hand,
the whole
world began to rise, pivoting
(I think)
on Madagascar so that
I fell
off the
surface and was caught for
a moment in the green arms
of a
neighbor's tree, and then, falling
through them like rain,
but upward,
tumbled sidewise into the sky.
"Did you
find her?" the lantern asked.
I said
that I had found her now,
and indeed
I saw
her over
the woman's
shoulder, led by a tall, swaggering
being of scarlet and gold.
I ran
to her
and hugged her, and when I
saw that
the woman
of the
lamp had followed me I hugged
her, too. "Be careful of
Thag," she said. "You're going—we're—"
And then
we three—but
not the
man in
scarlet and gold—were standing beside the
furnace in the basement of
my own house. But June (until
she vanished
last night from her own
locked room, while the
dark-haired woman with the white
forelock, who no longer
is held
aloft by her lantern, slept
with me in the bed that
has not
held two since May died)
would only cry, and tell us
that her father the king
would allow no one to
mock her, and scream
for fear
the old
man in
the picture
above our mantle would imprison her
in the
Piombi with Casanova. The dark-haired woman, whose eyes are
blue and whose name is Laurel,
said: "She has broken; we
all break
to some
extent, and you have brought the
wrong fragment."
Edgar Pangborn
THE LEGEND
OF HOMBAS
HOMBAS was wiser
than his people, but not
stronger than Death, who makes no
exceptions. Several times, even before
the departure of the
Spring Caravan, when the day's-end
prayers had been spoken and he
sat at
the fringe
of the
night-fire in the compound, Hombas had
seen the red bear Death
approaching through the flames.
Hombas had also
seen Death in the woods
by daylight,
the presence so like a true
red bear
that it would have deceived
anyone else. He knew
the truth,
being Shaman and Chief Elder
of the Commun. He had observed
the red
shadow, the Unanswerable, the Well-intentioned,
following one or another of
the people. Unaware, the
objects of Death's study continued
their evening tasks, preparing
the Commun
to survive
the night—stacking wood for
the fires,
making a circuit of the
stockade, rounding up and
counting the goats and children.
Trailing older members
of the
Commun (or the children, the
timid weaker ones) and
snuffling at their heels, the
red bear
might lift a black
nose to savor the air
for the
scent of mortality. And now and
then Death stood in front
of them,
obliging them to walk unknowingly through what only Hombas
saw, the core of the mystery.
Hombas knew
that Death had so far
reached no decision. Many times the
red bear
Death had risen to overwhelming
shaggy height, twice the
height of a man, and
stared at Hombas
himself across
the village
street, small red eyes noncommittal
like a pig's and sorrowfully wise like a man's.
And now
and then, when Hombas had been
fasting or smoking the marawan
pipe to invite wisdom,
the red
bear Death had drawn very
close to observe him, vast russet
head swaying back and forth
barely an arm's length away. The
last time this happened Hombas
had said, quietly so as not
to excite
the small
fry who
enjoyed their evening romps around his
hut: "I will go and
wait for you in the
open place when I
must, but I am not
ready." Death made no response to this, and he
spoke again: "Or, if it
will not offend you, I should
like to wait until the
return of the Spring Caravan,
which must be soon
(Jesus willing), so that I
may bless
the young men and hear for
the last
time what they tell of
the out-world."
The red
bear sighed hugely and went
away, but only two nights later returned, standing close
over Hombas, rising up on
mighty hinder legs and
gazing down, blotting away the
night and the fire, and youth
and age
and time,
the village
and the
world. The Spring Caravan
was now
shockingly overdue. Fear of disaster was
chilling everyone. Hombas prayed once
more to the red bear: "I
ask you
to allow
me to
remain until after the Ottoba harvest, for
my people
have always needed me when
they were frightened."
At this
appeal—Hombas hoped he had avoided
loss of dignity in making it—the
red bear
Death showed neither anger nor
assent, but shambled off
to lie
in the
grass of the outground, under Hombas' eyes, until the
stockade gate was closed for
the night. Head on great flat
paws, Death dozed, or looked
toward the south when the children
squealed or the little blattering
goats walked through the presence.
Death lives in
the south
when at rest. The warm
wind-spirits flee; that is
why the
south wind is hurried and
soft like the touch of memory.
Hombas' people
were wealthy, owning two other
commum sites and prepared to defend
them. It was nearly time,
even in the usual order of
affairs, for the people to
move to the next of
these locations—Flint Hill—after the necessary sacrifices and housecleaning. The people should
never remain too long in
one place. The ground sickens; squash,
yam, and beans come to
a puny harvest; the goats give
poor milk. Men also sicken
of sameness, just as they dread
too big
a change;
then the gods are offended. Hombas saw in the
eyes of his people that
the move
ought to be made
soon, and all except the
children would guess that on this
occasion Hombas was not to
travel with them. But he had
not yet
spoken, and one does not
hurry the Chief of Elders.
They possessed other
wealth, including a treasure of
Old-Time coins for trading with
the mad
foreign city of Malone (some say Mayone), a four
days' march toward the sunrise
side of the world. In the
spring, loaded with a winter's
take of furs, or after the
Ottoba harvest with handsome stacks
of new-woven
baskets, wood carvings, bows,
necklaces of painted clay, doll
toys of soft pine
or plaited
straw for children, the young
men of
the Caravan would gather
for the
good-luck prayers and Hombas' blessing. Then
some skylarking, brag, and horseplay—boys
are like
that, and young men may
now and
then be allowed to act like
boys—and in good time the
Caravan would sort itself out and
march in excellent silence down
the dense
green trail.
Those foolish people
of Malone
have no notion of commercial
values. For a stack of
fewer baskets than the fingers
of one
hand, they may pay
a whole
nickel coin, or even a
penny. Apparently they don't
know how grand a polish
these red-brown things will take, nor
how easily
you can
pound a hole in one
of them with a steel point,
and thus
wear it for protection against smallpox and the malare.
A soft
people, the Maloners, and often
you see grown mues
among them behind their great
stone walls, a great evil certain
to bring
a greater
evil upon them, if they
really don't understand the necessity of destroying
these dreadful beings at birth.
But their
weapons and magic make them
terrible. (Someday, says another
Shaman who has grown old
since Hombas' time, Malone
shall fall desolate, and we
shall go there to take what
we will,
and be
rich forever.)
In a good year
the Caravan
would return with whole handf
uls of gorgeous coins—steel knives too,
brass arrowheads nearly as good as
steel, perhaps smoked fish, and
soft cotton or wool cloth
for the women's delight.
It was
a day
for carnival
and rejoicing
when the Spring Caravan
returned. But where were they?
Hombas could remember
the time,
before his initiation, when the Elders
had taken
him aside
and taught
him how
to measure
the years of his
life by spreading the fingers
of both
hands. You can measure days in
the same
fashion. He recalled how, after
the circumcision and knocking
out of
an eye
tooth and other agonies of passage, there came a
year when his age was
told by both hands together and
one more
hand. Thus on and on,
adding a finger with every return
of the
moon of spring, until the
joy was
gone from it, and
such counting became a reminder
of stiffening
in the joints, fading of sight,
waning of all powers. He
remembered the spring moon
of nine
fives, long ago, when he
became a Shaman, and
with the following winter moon
an Elder. His age now was
hardly to be credited: he
numbered it by opening both hands
together six times and then
showing two fingers. Few but the
gods can live to such
an age.
The people
believe that when a
Chief of Elders journeys over
the waters
marking the boundaries of life he becomes
a god,
and joins
the divine Council of Elders in
the country
beyond the mountain Marsia.
The hands of
Hombas counted far too many
days since the Spring Caravan had
gone. The red bear was
walking in the firelight.
The red
bear comes for all, but
only the wise can observe
the presence; only the wise remember
that the red bear Death
will take from them even wisdom.
That is why we should
listen to the wise, but not
too much.
The Spring
Caravan never returned. One young
man at
last crawled naked up the trail,
gasping and torn. His right
leg was
broken; flies clung to
gaping and festering wounds; he
could not number the days he
had spent
in hobbling
and creeping
home. Once, driven off the trail
by the
smell of black wolf, he
had lost
his direction, and found
it again,
he said,
only by the mercy of
Jesus, Shaman of
Shamans. He was brought to
Hombas, and in the dust before
the blanket
where Hombas sat he collapsed,
digging clawed fingers into
the dirt
and beating
his forehead
on the ground, broken with shame
that he should be the
carrier of such news. But Hombas
was gentle
in speech,
saying only: "You may tell us
now, Absolon, son of Josson."
The young man
told how the Spring Caravan,
returning with rich goods from the
trading at Malone, had been
ambushed not far outside the walls
of the
city. Of the seven young
men, only Absolon had survived. Him
the ravagers
had left
for dead
under the pile of other bodies,
after stripping them of every
smallest thing, every rag,
bead, coin, ornament—even the wild
parrot's feather that Absolon
wore in his hair because
the White
Parrot was his patron.
The enemy were Sallorens, Absolon was sure,
from the Ontara coast country, squat
black-haired men who took no
scalps. The savages of
Eri in
the southwest,
or the
red-haired Cayugas, would certainly
have taken scalps and probably
living captives, too, for
the entertainment
of their
villages. These Sallorens, or anyway dark
men tattooed
just like them, are often
seen at Malone, Absolon
declared, wearing Mohan clothes and
acting in other ways
like Maloners. Then Absolon lifted
his torn
head and cursed Malone
in all
its days
and years,
for he
believed there had been
a conspiracy,
Malone sending word to the
Sallorens of the Caravan's
coming.
"Do you know
this, Absolon? Perhaps they were
lying in wait for any caravan
that might appear."
"It may be,"
said Absolon. "Before the Chief
Elder's wisdom I am a
fool and a nothing."
The women wailed
and scored
their breasts; they pulled out
their hair and raved.
The other
young men who had not
been chosen to go with the
Caravan smeared their faces with
dung, and wept, and sharpened their
knives. Then all became still,
for after Absolon had been taken
away to be cared for
and if
possible healed, Hombas called
a Council
of the
other four Elders. When the old
men discuss
what is to be done,
there should be no speech or
foolish noise.
The Elders
grouped by the night-fire. Hombas said: "My brothers and my children, this
calamity was foretold. But I,
Hombas, Chief of Elders,
failed to read the signs
truly. I am in sorrow. For many days and
nights I have seen the
red bear."
Isaia, second in
age and
virtue of the Elders, asked:
"The red bear, the Well-intentioned, has not chosen, Chief
of Elders?
"He has
not chosen."
The Elder
Isaia said: "The Chief of
Elders is burdened with years and long service to
Jesus, Shaman of Shamans."
And others: "Jesus,
Shaman of Shamans, knows what
is to
be."
"The people
shall move to Flint Hill,"
Hombas told them, ' 'as soon
as the
bodies of the young men
have been recovered, if that may
be. They
shall be given as heroes
to the
burning. After this, Jero, and Adam,
and the
Elder Elahu, shall go to
Flint Hill and see that the
stockade is in repair, the
ground fit, the dwellings clean and
sound, the wood gathered, and
the night-fire
restored."
"It shall
be done
as the
Chief of Elders explains."
"I, Hombas,
shall not go to Flint
Hill."
"The saying
of the
Chief of Elders is hard."
"I have
lived six tens and two."
"Make us
to understand
the will
of the
Spirit."
"I foretold
a safe
journey for the Caravan. Now
the young
men who went with
my blessing
are dead,
my head
is covered
with ashes, the women
tear their breasts."
Isaia said
again, as was proper, but
with the noise a voice
makes when ambition mixes
uneasily with kindness: "The Chief of Elders is heavy
with years and godlike in
long service."
' 'Before the
sun rises
ten men
shall go and recover the
bodies of young men, if that
may be,
if the
forest has not taken them.
But now the people
must understand a hard thing:
Without these men we have not
the strength
to carry
war against
the Sallorens
this year. After the
winter moons perhaps it may
be done,
under the guidance of another Chief
of Elders,
when I have journeyed over the waters that mark
the boundaries
of life."
"Amen, amen."
"At your
departure for Flint Hill, I
shall go out to the
open place and await the Unanswerable.
Let none
look back."
'4Amen, O Hombas, Chief of Elders."
"And now, O
Lord of Hosts," said Hombas,
"deliver
us from evils and evildoing, in the name of
the Father,
the Son,
and the Spirit! May the wombs
of our
women bear, may the earth
bring forth, and the
white-scut deer be
plentiful. And may my children and my brothers dwell
with one another in justice
and mercy, amen."
"Amen."
After quiet,
the Elder
Dorson said: "Hombas, Chief of
Elders, the fourth child
of the
woman of Jero turns blue
in the
face and scarcely breathes.
The child
is, to
be sure,
a girl."
' 'I will
carry her with me to
the open
place, in Jesus' name."
And the Elder Magann. "Hombas,
Chief of Elders, an earthen pot in the house
of Adam
cracked last night for no
clear reason as it stood by
the fire."
"Let it be
broken in small shards, for
exorcism. The fragments may be left
with me in the open
place."
The Elder Isaia
said with respect: "Hombas, Chief of Elders, I have
a sleek
male kid not yet weaned
of its
mother."
"This I accept
as first
offering to the Unanswerable. Let it be tethered in the open place
at the
time of your departure. Should the people ratify you,
dear and well-spoken Isaia, as
Chief of Elders, may you live
long and continue to love
justice."
Then Hombas, who
had lived
for many
years without women, entered his
hut and
laid across his eyes the
white cloth that brings prophetic dreams.
In the
village, no loud talk, no
more wailing, out of
respect for the rest and
sleep of him who had been
Chief of Elders and who
would not go with the
people on their next journey.
And Hombas
dreamed of his own journey
to come,
over the waters that mark the
boundaries of life.
He stood on
the bank
in his
dream, while the Ferryman approached through fog like one
reluctant. By the mystery of
dreaming, Hombas was able
to observe
his face—calm
it was,
devoid of anger and
joy—as he could not observe
the face
of a
companion who stood beside
him in
the heaving
vapor. It was proposed to Hombas
by this
companion that he might not
be ready for the passage. To
him Hombas
replied: "I am ready in
years, ready in weariness;
my joints
pain me, my memory mocks me like a naughty
servant. In other ways, can
one ever be ready, my companion?
Is not
life too sweet to abandon
even when the stream widens
and moves
sluggishly with a burden of memories?
What more must I do
before I rest with my
fathers?"
The reply of
his companion
was not
in words,
but Hombas
understood that some further
labor might indeed remain—but it would be for him
to discover
the nature
of it.
And as
though he had come to Hombas
for no
purpose except to offer a
troubling communication, the faceless
companion was now gone—all along he might have been
no more
than a heavy part of
the mist.
In his place the red bear stood
half-seen, surely too vast to
accompany Hombas in the
little boat, but ready perhaps
to swim
in the black water beside him, or
to drift
through the obscurity as a phantom. As one
who had
loved and served his fellows
a long
time, Hombas understood how the most immense
and inescapable
of forces
may well
appear unreal to human beings—they always have—until these forces
sweep them away: flood, fire, war,
pestilence, human folly, or that
death which is merely the end
of living.
The Ferryman
was poling
an oarless
boat. This might mean that the
waters marking the boundaries of life are as
shallow as they are slow. It
was an
instructive, amusing detail that he
could have told the village children
who liked
to tumble
and chase
each other around his
hut, climb his legs, sprawl
in his
lap and
fall asleep, tease for
some little present or a
kiss—children are not repelled by the
truly wise, only by the
half-wise. But the red bear stirred
and sighed,
and Hombas
remembered it was not fitting for him to think
of seeing
the children
again, nor the village, nor any
of the
faces of his own kind.
The Ferryman
grounded his boat on the
gravel margin. Hombas offered him the
coin of passage. But the
gaunt naked fellow said: "This is only metal. From
Hombas, Chief of Elders, more is
expected."
"What must
I pay
then?" asked Hombas.' "The
wise are poor in the world,
Ferryman; their chief reward is
not much
more than uneasy tolerance."
"Will you
pay me
your hopes?"
' 'If I have my
hopes no longer, can I
rest among my fathers? I
see that perhaps I
might, and—yes, rather than stay
here on this bank among these
homeless vapors, I will pay
you my
hopes."
"It is offered
grudgingly. It is not enough.
Will you pay me your visions
and your
memories of human love?"
"Without them, Ferryman,
how shall
I be
better than this broken rock and
sand, which has no will except
the water's
will?"
"You are not
ready for passage," said the
Ferryman. "Go back in the world
a little
while, Hombas, in your tattered
loincloth and nakedness and
pride. Go back and labor
again, if it is only the
labor of learning humility."
And Hombas woke,
putting away the cloth from
his eyes
and seeing the tranquil night-fire outside his hut. He
heard muted voices with other village
sounds, the desolate laughter of
a loon
in the marsh, a night-hawk, a wolf's howl from
the midnight
hills. Up in the
maple leaves a wind was
rippling in the current of spring. The dream disturbed
him in
his heart.
Before first light—he knew the ten
men were
about to go and recover
the bodies of the slain, if
that might be—a boy came
softly to tell him the messenger
Absolon had died in the
night, of fever and the festering
of his
wounds.
Hombas wished he
might consult a wiser head
as to
the meaning of all that was
happening, but he knew, as
sober truth, that however imperfect his
wisdom, no one wiser than
himself was in the village or
perhaps anywhere in the world;
unless it might be the children,
who have
no time
to transmit
the virtue
of their simplicity before it is
gone—that is why we should
listen to children.
The bodies
of the
young men were brought back,what the
Sallorens and the forest
scavengers had left of them,
and were
given as heroes to
the burning.
All that
day Hombas
sat on
his blanket in the compound fasting,
his eyes
in pain
from the smoke of the pyre.
It hung
sullen over the village in
the windless
hours. He was aloof,
as was
proper for one lately Chief
of Elders, unapproachable and old. He
thought of the young men,
prayed for them. He
thought too of the older
days, of the years outside his experience but spoken
of by
his father,
who had
known himself to be
a great-grandson
of the
West Wind. When at last the
funeral songs were done and
the blaze
not more
than heat remembered, evening was coming
on again,
while in the village certain quiet
preparations were being made for
departure in the morning.
It was not
fitting that Hombas should pay
heed to these. He meditated through another night on
his dream
of that
shallow river marking the boundaries of life, of the
Ferryman's hard sayings. He did not
see the
red bear.
At dawn the
younger wife of Isaia brought
him goat's
milk, and the kid that was
to be
tethered near him in the
open place. As he drank the
milk and blessed her, the
Elder Isaia came also to
kneel before him, and
said: "Hombas, venerable
Shaman, the Elders have chosen me
to hold
the office
that you honored, in Jesus' name.
I pray
you bless
me to
this service, Hombas."
They say
that Hombas smiled as he
blessed Isaia, who was not a
cheerful man, and placed on
him the
sacred deer-bone necklace that
confers courage and quickness of
mind. They say also that Isaia,
in his
time as Chief of Elders,
governed well, though sometimes hesitant and
anxious, and that the precedents
upholding his decisions were
very often the judgments of
Hombas. "Be content, Isaia,"
Hombas said. "It is a
brave journey between midnights."
This has been remembered, though few agree on all
that Hombas meant by it.
Then there came
to him
the aging
warrior Jero; he had taken
from his woman the
infant girl five days old
whose face turned blue and who
could not breathe except with
difficulty, bringing her to Hombas; behind
him his
woman watched dry-eyed, and did not
speak. The baby, as Hombas
received her in his arms,
curled a fist around
his finger
and for
awhile her gasping breath came more quietly. The people
remember this, not as a
miracle but as a certain evidence
of divine
grace. And when Hombas rose, holding her in the
hollow of his arm and
leading the unweaned kid with his
left hand, it was seen
that the kid followed him without
any tugging
at the
leash of leather, and that the
child had fallen asleep. Hombas
said then to the woman
of Jero: "Be content,
Rashel, with what no power
can change.
If she is not to know
joy in
living, neither can she know
sorrow."
Hombas went out
beyond the stockade of the
village, through the pasture where the
goats were being herded together
for the
journey to Flint Hill,
and up
a winding
path in the long grass,
among juniper and scattered
boulders and tangles of wild
raspberry canes, to the
open place, a wide area
where flat granite covered a shoulder
of the
hillside; at the western end
of the
outcropping of rock grew
a thick
spruce that held away the
wind. Near this tree
the good
man Adam
had brought
the shards
of his broken pot, and a
sound jar filled with spring-water.
Hombas blessed him, and
sat here
with the still sleeping child,
gazing over undulant hills
in the
south, and toward the mountain
Marsia in the southwest,
distant under the sky of
spring.
The little goat
he had
tethered somewhat below the open
place out of his sight. It
was necessary
that it should bleat and
call, being a first offering to
the powers
who would come
for Hombas
himself when the time
was right.
The small
creature might feel desolate and abandoned
for a
time, until the gods of
the forest
came and released it;
but they
would do so. It would
not be
fitting for Hombas to
witness their coming. The forest
gods ought not to be drawn
by trickery,
or against
their will, into human observation. They are lonely ones.
That is why the bats,
who are the gods
of those
night-thoughts that flutter
past too quickly to be questioned,
never appear by day. Or
if one
does, a good man will help
it to
a tree-hollow
where it can wait on
the return of dark.
Holding the infant,
Hombas meditated on death, and
found it strange that all he
could remember of his people's
thought on the matter, including his
own, had been concerned not
with the thing itself but with
hope or legend or speculation
concerning some life beyond
the incident
of death:
as though
death were no more than a
passage, an opening in the
woods. But what if it is not so? What if death is no
passage at all, only the termination of thought, feeling, presence?
Who has seen the soul that is to board the Ferryman's little boat and cross the
waters that mark the boundaries of life? If none has seen it, can a wise man
accept a belief in the existence of it?
Was it my soul far wandering that spoke with
the Ferryman, and with someone faceless, in my dream?
All people dream, and most dreams are ridiculous. In
sleep are we perhaps not wandering away from the body into the country of the
spirits as the wise men of the past have taught us, but merely lying still and
thinking fantastically in our sleep? . . . Now this might mean that there is no
soul, and even that the wise men of the past were not quite wise.
The morning drew
on with
quiet, in springtime coolness. Hombas sensed that the people
had gone,
and his
mind traveled a little way with
them on the obscure trail
to Flint
Hill, and let them go, returning
to the
open place. The child did
not wake;
her breathing was very
shallow, her pallor more waxen
than bluish, with pinched tiny nostrils.
Now and
then Hombas waved away a hovering
fly. It might have been
more fitting, more pleasing to the
forest gods, to set her
out now
on the
rock or where the kid was
tethered, but Hombas preferred to
hold her fading warmth against his
own until
her small,
foredoomed struggle for continuing
life should end. It would
not be
long.
He meditated on
the tales
and fancies
and histories
of the
Old Time, the Age of Sorcerers.
It was
darkly long ago—five generations,
even two fives, who can
say? Hombas' father when he was
young had met a very
old man
in Malone
who said
that as a boy
he had
seen one of the Old-Time
death-sticks of heavy metal, in possession
of an
ancient redheaded Cayuga. That savage had
told him how there used
to be
pellets made by the Sorcerers, each containing a devil,
which could be placed inside the hollow stick. Then,
by command
of the
stick's owner, the devil would burst
forth at the other end
with such frightful power that anything
in its
path was instantly killed. Catrishes,
those pellets were called.
The Cayuga
assured the boy they had
all been used up
and swept
out of
existence in Old-Time—at least, he said,
looking sly, he thought they had. He
broke open the stick at the
large end so that the
boy might
look through the hollow passage inside
and see
the strange
regular spirals cut into the metal,
and then
made him jump out of
his skin
by slamming
a foot on the ground and
shouting "BrroomP' Cayugas never
have any manners. The
boy, telling the story as
an old
man, was said to have said
that the Maloners who saw
the stick
had no
belief in the powers
of it.
They claimed it was just
a hollow
iron bar with wooden fittings, part
of one
of the
Sorcerers' miraculous machines; or perhaps
the Sorcerers
had used
it to
beat their servant devils and make
them obey.
Hombas knew other
tales. In the Age of
Sorcerers, myriads of magicians rushed about
all over
the earth
in wheeled
carts that moved of themselves by a horrid magic.
Hombas himself, when
young, hunting with two
companions and following a wounded
woods buffalo too far
to the
south, dangerously close to Cayuga
country, had come upon
one of
the enormous
roads built by the Sorcerers to serve these hell-carts.
Straight as a spear the
road ran and level as a
stream, cutting a valley from
hilltop to hilltop with mighty disdain
for any
lesser rises or hollows. Vines
had been able to cross it
here and there, especially the poison ivy and
jinna-creeper, with their countless
busy rootlets. Elsewhere
the road stretched bleak and clear,
pitted with cracks and holes
but nearly lifeless, a track of
desolation through the green. Seeing this thing, one could
understand how the curse of
the good
Jesus had fallen on the Sorcerers
and destroyed
them and all their works.
Hombas and his
friends had known better than
to venture
out on that horror. Yet, the
young men do say that
the Townfolk
make some use of
these roads, near Malone and
those other places where they have
their clustered dwellings, and impregnable
high walls to hold off
brown tiger and black wolf
and red bear. The feet of
their horses and oxen cannot
endure the surface of the ancient
roads, of course, but the
Maloners and their kind, with leather
shoes and an unlimited store
of foolishness, walk out
on them
and apparently
take no harm.
The Sorcerers rode
in the
machines that climbed through the
air beyond human vision.
They could make the air
vibrate, too, and so talk magically
with each other across many
miles. And they traveled back and
forth at will between the
earth and the moon.
The moon
is a
globe that the god Jehova
set spinning
many centuries ago along
with the sun, in such
a way
that the two run a
strictly ordered course above
the earth
and below
the earth.
The heat of the sun is
life and day; the light
of the
moon is wisdom and night. A
long time from now, the
force of the god's original
cast will run down
(according to his own foresight)
and then
both sun and moon
will fall into the sea
that runs all around the
field of the earth.
In that
time will be only starlight;
there will be no day. The
earth will stand without heat
or wisdom.
The people, all of them, will
have crossed the waters that
mark the boundaries of life.
In the time
of the
Sorcerers the moon was larger
in the
skies, and often red. And the
impious traveling of the Sorcerers
to the
moon resulted in the
first of their great punishments.
The moon-people
came out of the center
of their
globe and made war on
them. The Sorcerers fought
hard, but the moon-people, whom Jesus loves also, defeated
them with a mightier science
(that is an Old-Time word for
magic), destroying countless numbers of
the Sorcerers' flying craft.
Before the Sorcerers' armies on
the moon were annihilated by the
moon-people, the colossal warfare had laid
waste enormous areas of that
globe and created mountainous
ruins.
There is never
any profit
in trying
to tell
of these
things to the Maloners. They build
walls, contrary to Jesus' commands,
and they cherish the ugly fancy
that the earth itself is
a globe,
and there is no truth in
them. When they die, the
Ferryman cannot take them because they
do not
believe in the god Jehova
nor in Jesus his
prophet, but follow the false
prophet Abraham. At death their poor
homeless spirits go wandering, swept here and there until
they become caught in the
tree branches. When the wind strikes
those branches in the barren
time of winter, you hear them
crying.
This is how
you may
know the truth of what
happened to the Sorcerers on the
moon. When the
moon is full, look on
those gray marks that seem like
shadows. Those are
blighted areas left by the war
up there,
just like the desert of
Eri and
other places that the Sorcerers left
ruined on the earth before
they perished.
The child
made a noise too small
and fleeting
for a
groan. Her breathing ceased. Hombas recited
the prayer
for those
dying in infancy, that
the Ferryman
should let them pass without
payment of a coin.
Rising stiffly with her, he
felt the spring chill with sudden acuteness; his joints
ached. Dizziness from the hours of
fasting laid hold of him,
and he
staggered.
These disorders
could be overcome. Presently he
was able
to carry the baby's lifeless body
to the
far edge
of the
rocks. There the Forest People would
find her, or the Well-meaning
Winged Ones whose faces are not
to be
looked on because the god
Jehova for his own
reasons has made them horrible.
He had set
down the little corpse and
made the sign of the
cross over her, when
from no great distance an
intolerable cry of outrage and pain
rang and rang through the
woods, echoing metallically from
bare tree-trunks and rock surfaces.
Shrill it was, keening and prolonged,
coming from some great chest
of powerful resonance. Black wolf could
not have
made that noise. Red bear does
not speak,
except to growl or chuckle
or snort
a little: The red bear expects
deference from everyone, except the
Maloners who are foolish
and sinful,
and has
no need
of threatening or angry
cries. Hombas stood paralyzed with
wonder, shrinking too, for
it was
a sound
to make
the flesh
cringe regardless of courage.
He trembled
in the
certainty that he would again hear
the anguished
voice. He did, once more,
and the sound trailed
off in
a long
groan. Brown tiger never sent
foith that roar of
agony. If this were a
victim of brown tiger—woods buffalo, maybe,
or elk—it
would have had no chance for
a second
cry. And what grass-eater could utter such vast rage?
There came distant
thrashing noises, and a muffled pounding
as if
a giant's
fist were hammering the earth.
Then Hombas belatedly remembered
that not very long ago,
before the departure of the Spring
Caravan, the people had built
a deep
deadfall near the Open
Place, where they had found
a trail
beaten by those vermin,
the wild
pigs, attackers of children and
raiders of the gardens.
Hombas had approved the digging
at the
time. Presumably the swine
had proved
too clever
to be
deceived, and so he
had heard
no more
said about it. All the
same Hombas found it
shocking that he could have
forgotten it.
High time
indeed to go and sit
in the
Open Place.
Well—wild boar never
made such a noise as
that. And Hombas reflected: In the forest live many gods we do not know.
Perhaps one of them has need of me. Perhaps Jesus, Shaman of Shamans, has
offered me opportunity to do some service before I cross the waters that mark
the boundaries of life.
Somewhat lightheaded but no longer much
afraid, he glanced toward the sun,
astonished to note how far
the day
had advanced
beyond noon. He let
himself down from the rock,
moving more easily as his muscles
limbered with the action, and
moved off under the trees in
the direction
of that
pounding. He heard now a
heartrending moaning, muffled, high,
nasal, broken now and then by
a snap
of jaws.
So it
might be bear after all,
for they
chatter their teeth like
that in anger; but surely
not a
red bear.
In Hombas' memory, no red bear
had ever
been caught in a trap
or deadfall.
Hombas* foot caused
a dry
branch to crack under him;
the moaning and pounding ceased. The
noise had summoned him; now the
being, whoever it was, knew
he was
coming, and so fell silent. Hombas was sure of
the direction.
He called
politely: "I who come to you
am Hombas
who was
Chief of Elders. If you
are a god, you may command
me, a
believer in the laws. If
you are a forest thing, I
come in mercy."
He heard
no reply.
But the
Forest People are not given
to needless speech, except for the
wind spirits, and what they
say is
more music than speaking.
He hobbled
on therefore,
no longer
trying to move with
quiet. He found the trail
that had been tramped, not recently,
by the
wild swine. The smell in
his nostrils was the feral, fishy
scent of bear. He came
to the
edge of the pit, where the
branches hiding the deadfall had
been broken in. Rearing a tormented
head above the surface of
the ground
was the red bear
Death, who was blind.
With the
eyes of the flesh Hombas
saw him,
an old
and mighty male who had evidently
been blind in his right
eye for
a long time, since the socket
was shrunken
and fallen
in—perhaps an arrow wound, or a
slash in some battle with
his own
kind. Now the other eye was
squeezed shut, leaking tears, and
in the
fur of the great, round, innocent
face were tangled the bodies
of many wild bees, smashed by
the bear's
paw—but one of them must have
carried a sting to the
eyeball. The bear's head was
turned toward Hombas, but
only because he had heard
the approach. When Hombas stepped silently
to one
side, the creature did not move
in response
to the
action.
With the
senses of his flesh Hombas
heard, some distance up the trail,
the still
furious snarling hum of the
hive. The bee warriors had not
pursued the ravisher this far,
or perhaps
had lost sight of him when
he fell
into the pit in his
pain and blindness.
Hombas smelled the
bear's blood. In falling he
had pierced
a hind foot on one of
the sharpened
stakes in the pit. He
had torn
the foot free, but
other stakes prevented him from
winning a purchase with his hind
claws on the dense clay
walls. He had pounded at the
edges of the pit, without
aim in
his darkness,
trying to break down
a passage
to freedom,
but the
clay was tight, the pit dug
deep and wide by the
people with good steel tools from Malone. Now the
bear had ceased that effort.
Smelling and hearing
man, he roared in despair
and agony.
He lunged toward Hombas,
bringing down both forepaws tremendously on the
edge. But then his blind
head dropped between them, and he
let it
remain there, as if he
prayed.
With the senses
of the
flesh, the knowledge of a
hunter, the wisdom of a Shaman,
Hombas observed and understood all this, and feared the
tortured beast, and pitied him.
With the
eyes of the spirit, Hombas
knew that the red bear
Death might be about
to die.
Hombas asked him:
"Has the god Jehova decreed
that Death shall die? Is it
possible?"
He won
no answer.
In the
faintness from his age and
long fasting, he believed the waters
that mark the boundaries of life must be flowing
not far
from this lonely place in
the woods,
and without sight of him he
felt the presence of the
Ferryman. Poling the little boat (perhaps)
nearer to this shore, expecting
that Hombas might by now have
discovered what labor it was
he ought still to perform. What will become of the Ferryman, if Death is
about to die?
Hombas moved
away, disturbed by an inner
rejoicing not altogether candid nor genuine. Death
was to
be no
more—why, if so, all the Forest
People should be singing, and
every leaf should smile with an
inner sunlight. But he, Hombas,
was, the only one who knew
it yet—he
alone among all the wise
men. Soon all would know it.No
more dying! (But if flowers
do not fade, how shall new flowers grow?)
He walked
feebly down the trail, unwilling
to look
back although the blind bear might
be silently
calling him. I
shall not die. I shall live forever. (With these aching joints, this
weariness?—oh, even that way, is life not dear?) I shall enjoy the night-fire,
the changes of life in the compound, the children, the meditation, the sharing
of wisdom, the tenderness of returning spring. (But if flowers do not fade,
how can there be rebirth, how can there be spring?)
I must go to Flint Hill and tell my people. I
return to you—hear me! There is to be no more dying. I, Hombas, Chief of
Elders, have permitted Death to die although he prayed to me. I bring you life
eternal—rejoice, rejoice! Your children shall not perish! Never shall your
beloved die!
He found laughter,
running down the trail, stumbling,
weeping and shouting: "Life eternal! Hear me, my people! Life
eternal F'
But in this
clumsy ecstasy he tripped on
a root,
and saved
himself by clutching at
a branch,
and stood
there wavering, dizzy and gasping for
breath. His eyes cleared. He
stared along the branch. A fat
greenish blowfly lit on it
not far
from his fingers; she was ripe
with eggs and bloated with
carrion meals, and he saw her
accept the mounting and penetration
of a
male. The two squatted there linked
in copulation,
seeming to regard him. No dying? . . .
Hombas returned
to the
pit. He spoke a little
to the
red bear
Death, but the legend
does not say whether this
was a
true conversation or only
the voiced
reflections of a man with
a difficult task to perform. He
searched the region around the
pit until he found where his
people had cut an ash
tree to use in making the
deadfall. They had left the
long butt on the ground,
wanting only the flimsy
upper branches. Moving this fourteen-foot
log was
surely a task for two
men in
their prime, yet Hombas accomplished it, levering it with
small sticks we suppose, and resting
often.
He worked it
to the
edge of the deadfall. He
said to the blinded beast: "It is well that
we met,
who have
need of each other." And then he slid the
log down
so that
an end
rested against one of the stakes,
a bridge
on an
easy slant for the bear's
escape. And he sat by the
trail waiting.
That is how
Death became blind. But the
people who know the legend call
Hombas blessed, because of his
mercy to us.
Gail
Kimberly
THE FIRE FOUNTAIN
IN a city
of glass
and steel,
on a
minutely symmetrical street, in a geometrically
perfect building that housed relics
of the
past in orderly rows, the four
friends were together. They were
on the
fifteenth floor, in the
"Ancient Modes of Travel" exhibit, strolling past
bulky, four-wheeled vehicles that had
been powered by fossil fuel; awkward,
wasp-shaped fliers with propellors on their
roofs, and smooth-hulled seacraft.
The four friends
were Bramfel, Orin, Greely, and
Anatol—all much alike in
build and appearance, since they
had been made from the same
pattern—and all were robots, but
different in personality, and of different age
and experience.
Orin, the oldest, had
passed all but six months
of his
allotted two-hundred-year lifespan. Greely
and Anatol
were half his age. Bramfel was
the youngest,
a mere
forty-eight.
They passed along
the line
of vehicles
that were each on a
plastic platform, spotlighted, labeled, and catalogued, and did not know they
were looking at their own
close relatives, for the vehicles and the robots had
both been the brainchildren of man. But the robot
race now denied that man
had ever
existed. Whatever records human
beings might have left before
they died out, nearly eight centuries
ago, had either been obliterated,
forgotten, or went unrecognized.
Man was
considered a myth, a superstition. The robots believed these
artifacts before them had been devised
by other
robots like themselves—more primitive
in design and more
limited in intellect, to be
sure, but still ancestors of their
own kind.
And so they
wondered at the clumsy construction
of machines
that had flown robots
through the skies before the
time they could fly under their
own power;
and machines
that had driven them along the
roads before the roads had
become obsolete. They stopped before the
boats.
This
one, Bramfell told
the others
over his open telebeam. A boat like this with sails, and a motor to
use only when we have to. We can explore the sea and the islands, endure all kinds of weather, examine all manner of marine and terrestrial life. Think of
the experiences we can store!
A boat! Orin stroked
the hull
with his metal hand. I've flown over the seas and swum in them,
but never in all my years have I tried to sail over
them in a vessel like this!
Bramfel turned on
his vocalizer
and gave
a brief
command in the clicking speech the
robots sometimes used. There was
a sudden hum of power and
the air
around them turned to mist,
and they were standing
on the
deck of a rolling sloop,
riding deep blue waves, striped orange
and green
sails taut above them. The illusor
gave them a sixty-second sample of what it
would be like to
be on
this type of sailboat and
then, with a whine, it turned
off and
they were once again standing
on the
solid floor before the
model.
It will be dangerous, came the
thought from Anatol.
But what a challenge! Greely seemed
enthusiastic.
And
that's what life is all about, Orin reminded them. Experience . . . danger . . . knowledge to
store in our data vaults and thus to mature and grow wise.
The idea
of a
voyage on an ancient ship
had come
to Bramfel
the first time he'd
seen this model, and he
was glad
that his friends seemed to like
it. It
would take four of them
to handle
the ship. We'll have one built exactly like this one,
bigger, of course, and stocked with an emergency engine. Should we have our
powers reduced to make it more of a challenge?
They all considered
this, and finally Greely answered.
We should have our
anti-grav flight motors removed, at any rate, so we won't be tempted to fly out
of danger.
Really! Anatol objected.
The whole project sounds
perilous enough as it is, without crippling ourselves, too.
But he was
overruled by the others, and
the decision
was made to leave as soon
as the
boat was ready.
They went out
of the
building, and while Greely and
Anatol hurried away to
keep appointments, Bramfel strolled with
Orin through the museum's gardens.
Orin seemed troubled,
but he
had shut
off his
telebeam so that Bramfel had to
wait until he was ready
to communicate
again. He admired the precisely patterned
flower beds and the crystal
fountains, and at last
Orin opened his beam.
Bramfel, although you 're
young, you 're a logical, sensible robot. I'm going to tell you something I
wouldn't tell the others. They wouldn't understand, but I believe you will.
Bramfel, pleased
at the
compliment, urged him to go
on.
I have lived many years and seen many strange
things, Orin told him. Now we are voyaging together on what will be my last adventure before my
data vaults are audited for the last time and Central Agency decides if I have
matured enough to be promoted to a high position, or if I will be sent back to
the factory to have my memory erased and my body refitted and sent out again.
You '11 be promoted, Orin, I feel sure. You 're
very wise.
Perhaps you'll feel differently when I tell
you this. Orin paused for a
moment and then made the
strangest statement Bramfel had ever heard.
I believe in the existence
of man.
Man!
But that's irrational! The thought went
out over
his telebeam before he could stop
it, but
Orin had apparently been expecting this reaction. He seemed
unperturbed.
Wait a moment, Bramfel, before you form any
conclusions. Remember that I have lived nearly two hundred years, and have seen
many strange things.
What? What have you seen?
I have seen footprints. Not the pawprints of
animals, but the footprints of something that walked upright on feet that had
no rubber treads and no vent holes on the bottom, as
ours do.
Apes, Bramfel suggested.
In the forests of the north country? No. And
where I have seen the footprints, I have found fires of wood and brush lying
deserted, still glowing when I found them. Apes do not make fires. Bramfel, I
have seen the ruins of ancient buildings, imperfectly built yet sturdy. Not the
works of robots.
But
Orin, no one has ever seen a man. There have always been tales about human
beings, but surely someone would have told about seeing them if they existed?
And
risk being reported to Central Agency as irrational? No, Bramfel, I think men
have been seen by others, but no one has dared risk bringing back stories about
them.
Bramfel considered
this. Man—the most vicious, most
dangerous species in the
world, if the stories about
them were true. But no, such
tales couldn't be true! The
universe was, after all, logical, and
all things
existing in it were logical.
Man was
an irrational, illogical, mythical being that could
not exist.
He was
said to be made
of flesh,
yet able
to think
and reason.
No creature of flesh could reason
and think,
as far
as he
knew. Not only that, but man
was susceptible
to disease,
death, and decay. And man was
said to kill. No logical
being would take a life
that could not be replaced.
Orin went
on. I believe, Bramfel, that
human beings know of our existence and stay out of our way.
Why? Why would they not want to meet us?
I don't know. But they hide in remote corners
of the world. I believe that travelers that are missing every now and then have
been captured by men and perhaps destroyed. It is said humans will render a
robot inoperative and use his components for their own dark purposes.
Why
are you telling me all this? Bramfel felt uncomfortable receiving such
information, especially from a robot
he respected
as much as Orin.
Because I want to find man on this voyage,
and I want you to help me. You '11 be heading this expedition, and I want your purpose to be the
same as mine. Bramfel, when Central Agency audits my data vaults, they're going
to find out that I hold this belief they consider irrational. What will be my
chances for promotion then? But if I can prove the belief is not irrational,
perhaps even bring back a specimen of man, or some irrefutable evidence. . . .
It would certainly
be an
interesting challenge, Bramfel knew, searching for a mythical being.
But why not?
After all, it would be Chin's
last voyage, his last chance,
and it
meant so much to him. Very well, he told
the old
robot. But shouldn't we tell the others, too?
You know Anatol is too conventional to even
consider the possibility of human beings existing. He'd refuse to go on such a
trip. And Greely cares only for the experience, the excitement, and the danger.
No, I don't want them to know until we have some concrete evidence to show
them.
A fifty-six-foot
yawl was built and stocked
with an emergency engine, depthfinder,
tools, and greases with which
to repair
themselves if
needed, and assorted gear for
the voyage.
Then, to add to the danger
and thus
make the experience more valuable,
they had their abilities
deliberately reduced. Instead of being
able to lift a
ton, the strength in their
arms was cut down to
be sufficient for only one-tenth that
much. Instead of being able
to run as fast as the
fastest animal and to fly
under their own power, they could now only trot,
earthbound. Their hearing, too, was
cut down so that
they could hear sounds only
in their
immediate vicinity.
Four safeguards were left them: their
visual receptors, that could see by
night and by day with
equal ease; their thinking capacity had not been diminished;
their components had been specially sealed to withstand the
elements and the pressure of
the sea depths, and
air-lungs had been installed to
make their metal bodies buoyant in
the water.
They could voyage for only
six months, for their
atomic batteries would need recharging
at the end of that time,
but in
six months
they could store a wealth
of data.
And so
the Seahorse and its
crew sailed from Whitecliff Point and went north to
the frigid
waters near the North Pole,
where the robots witnessed the splendor
of the
northern lights and the glitter of stars on the
icebergs. Bramfel searched the bleak
tundra with Orin, but
found no trace of human
beings.
Then they sailed
southeast, exploring the rocky coasts
where gannets nested, and the islands
where gannets nested, and the
islands where deer and
moose wandered. While Anatol and
Greely dived under the
waves to observe life in
the depths,
Bramfel and Orin searched
forests and plains along the
coast, looking for man,
but finding
no sign
of him.
In temperate
and tropical climates they landed on
islands with strange varieties of
animal life, but no
evidence of any other inhabitants,
until they had been voyaging for
more than five months and
it was
time to return to civilization. Bramfel felt by now
that Orin's stories had not been
the exact
truth. Perhaps in his desire
to justify
his belief, the old robot had
misinterpreted things he
had found
years ago. Perhaps time
had distorted
his memory.
Orin didn't seem to be discouraged,
but explored
each new place with the
same enthusiasm; still Bramfel
was tiring
and felt
that in his search for the
legend he might be missing
out on
adventures that would be more meaningful.
One warm, sunny
day when
the sea
lay like
sapphire glass around them and there
was no
breeze to fill their sails,
Bramfel decided to dive
underwater to see if he
could catch a glimpse of
a giant squid that Greely claimed
to have
seen while swimming underwater
earlier that day. He asked
Orin to go with him,
and together they sank down into
the half-light
of the
undersea world.
Curious fish followed
them as they descended, until they had passed the point where the
sun's rays could reach and
blackness closed in around
them, the only light the
amber glow from their visual receptors. Down, and still
farther down they went, to
the depths where the squids lived.
They swam among rocky reefs,
frightening schools of fish
that were no more than
tiny ovals of pale light darting
between them, searching for the
giant squid. A mass of seaweed
gathered on Bramfel's leg and
he had
to stop
to untangle it, holding to a
rock as he did so,
but as
the seaweed
came loose, he saw
that it wasn't a rock
he was
clutching. It was a metal tube,
encrusted with corals that disguised
its shape.
He summoned Orin over his telebeam.
The old
robot swam to him in answer
to his
call, and together they pried
away the organisms clustered
on the
tube and studied it carefully.
It was
about ten inches in diameter and
probably made of steel, although
the metal was pitted and marred
by age
and the
encroaching sea life.
When they swam
back a short distance to
get a
better look, they saw that the
tube was protruding from a
huge metal structure that lay on
the sea
bottom, and there were other
metal tubes sticking out from its
side.
It's a ship! Orin was
excited.
Bramfel went closer
again, brushing away a swarm
of curious
fish that clustered around
him. There seemed to be
glass here, just above the first
deck, partly visible under the
crust of sea animals. He peeled
these off a small area
and uncovered
a round
pane of glass, pitted
and corroded
like the metal that held
it. He
pressed his face to
the glass,
his visual
receptors beaming into the blackness, and looked through. The
sea had
taken over.the inside of the ship,
too, but he could see,
after a time of studying,
the remains of walls
that had been formed a
compartment, and the shapes of fixtures
inside it. Fixtures he did
not recognize.
No robot built this ship. Orin's face
was beside
his, pressed to the thick glass.
But then who else?
Human beings! I knew we'd
find something!
Perhaps
ancient robots. . . . Bramfel was reluctant
to jump
to conclusions.
There's
no mention of this type of vessel in all recorded history. Why would robots
need a ship with metal tubes along its sides? What about those fixtures? What
would they be used for? And why would robots need a ship divided up into units
the way this one is, as though its occupants needed to be separated from each
other when they traveled? We don't have any such need.
Bramfel drew back
from the glass, puzzled, trying
to correlate this new data with
information already in his vault.
He swam over and studied the
metal pipes again. He could
not guess what purpose these might
serve, either. When he looked
up, Orin was nowhere
to be
seen.
Bramfel moved along
the side
of the
ship to find out where
he might have gone, and then
Orin's call reached him. At
the same
time, he saw an
opening in the ship, just
beyond him. He swam in and
there was Orin, rubbing his
metal hand against part of
a ruined wall.
What
is it? Have you found something?
A
metal plate set into this wall. It has markings on it. Orin traced his
finger over the faint lines
etched into the square plate.
Bramfel studied
the writing
that was not in any
language he had ever seen, and
as Orin's
finger moved, he tried to
decipher it. "S. S.
Albany.'' What do you suppose it is
? The name of this ship?
Probably. Orin dug
his fingers
around the square edge of
the plate and tried to pry
it loose,
and Bramfel
pried at another corner. They were
so engrossed
in trying
to free
the plate
that it was only when they
were aware of varicolored lights glowing in the corner
of their
vision, and looked up to
see a
huge shape moving inside the ship,
not far
from them, that they remembered the squid.
Both of them
headed immediately for the opening.
When they had passed through it,
Bramfel looked back to see
the giant
squid rocketing out of
the aperture.
Using a metal tube for
leverage, he rose out
of its
path.
Panic gripped him
now. The squid was huge,
at least
three times his size, and might
do them
serious damage if it attacked
them. He saw that
Orin was swimming just above
him, headed upward, and he pushed
off from
the top
of the
sunken ship, feeling clumsy and slow
in the
water, taking what seemed ages
to rise even a
little way. He looked back
to see
the glowing
lights on the squid's body and
the wavering
tentacles close to his kicking feet. He thrashed his
arms harder, but could only
dance helplessly in slow
motion. He looked back once
more, readying himself for the tug
at his
body when the creature would
grasp him, but instead of the
reaching tentacles a large fish
glistened just under his
feet, and as he looked,
slim bands whipped around it and
it suddenly
dropped, leaving only pale sea
worms and shimmering jellyfish
whirling in its wake. He
put every
atom of power in his body
into the upward swim, until
at last
he could
see the faint light
that meant the surface of
the sea
was just
above them.
Finally they
emerged into the sunlight, seeing
their boat a short distance away
with Anatol and Greely on
deck.
Finding
that ship was worse than finding nothing at all, Orin
told him
as they
swam toward the sailboat. We couldn't even get that metal plate to take
back as evidence that the ship exists and wasn't built by robots.
But I saw it, and I believe you are right. No
robots would have built it.
I've got to get concrete evidence, and
there's so little time left.
Bramfel had
an idea.
Let's get Anatol and Greely
to dive down and look at it. That way we'll all have the same impressions in
our data vaults. Four witnesses will be as good as evidence.
But there was
no opportunity
to tell
Anatol and Greely about the ship.
As soon
as Bramfel
and Orin
were back on board their
sailboat, a strong wind
began blowing in from the
northwest, bringing storm clouds
and swelling
the waves
until by nightfall the little boat
was sliding
down the faces of moving
mountains of water. Bramfel stayed by
the helm,
struggling with the kicking wheel, while
continuous rain pelted them. Orin
came into the cockpit beside him,
but the
other two robots stayed on
the deck, experiencing the turmoil. Greely stood
astern, gripping the mast with
both six-fingered hands, the tiny
hooks on each finger pressed into
the wood,
his head
lifted toward the angry sky. Bramfel
yearned to order him below,
to the
comparative safety of the cabin,
but he
knew he must not. Greely
was living through the
experience in his own way
and no
other had the right to interfere.
Anatol was near him, probably
recording each separate flash of
lightning for some quieter time
so that
he could relive the
precise sensations all over again.
At last dawn
broke, but it was a
lurid dawn of red streaks
between black, racing clouds,
and the
rain let up intermittently only to fall again in
blinding torrents while the wind
shrieked through the rigging.
Far ahead,
Bramfel had seen a hump
of green that meant land, and
he was
heading for it.
But the little
craft had taken on too
much water. Barely able to
stay afloat, it yawed
suddenly to port and began
to sink,
and Bramfel slid helplessly across the
slippery deck and into the
ocean.
Blackness closed
in around
him, but after the first
shock his visual receptors were able
to pick
out another
robot in the sea near him,
though he couldn't tell who
it was,
and the
shape of the capsized ship above
them. He propelled himself away
from the sinking ship with powerful
thrusts of his limbs. He
would have to swim for the
land they had sighted, knowing
that his companions would be doing
the same.
Warnings of fear pulsed through him. In this storm
they could be dashed against
the rocky shoals or even lose
their bearings in the raging
waters and perhaps swim around in
endless circles. And Or in,
how would
he hold up at
his age?
Bramfel searched the waters around
him and telebeamed calls to the
others, but there was no
answer, and the one he had
seen was gone. He suppressed
his anxiety,
needing to concentrate all his
faculties on the swim to
land.
He stayed under
the turbulent
waves, swimming in
what he felt must be the
right direction to the land.
No use
to surface
and try to sight it now
until the rain had let
up.
An hour or
so later,
he surfaced
and looked
around. The sea was calmer now,
and the
storm clouds were drifting toward
the horizon. The hump of green
land was dead ahead. He
searched for any sign of the
other robots as the waves
bore him up and tossed him down, but could
see no
one else,
so he
submerged again and resumed
his tireless
swim.
At last, there
was a
rocky reef where the waters
grew shallow, and as he came
to the
surface again he saw that
the reef
became a neck of land, and
beyond that was the shore
sloping down toward the ocean; a
band of white sand rimmed
with thick foliage.
Someone was on
the sand
as he
approached it, and when finally the water was so
shallow he could walk, the
one on
shore was coming to meet him,
waving metal arms in a
stiff greeting.
Anatol!
You made it!came the happy thought from Anatol. The others should be here soon, too.
What place is this? Have you explored it yet?
I haven't had time, my friend. I arrived here
just before you. But it seems uncivilized. A small island,
perhaps.
They waited
by the
edge of the water, scanning
the heaving
sea patiently, until at
last here was another metal
head bobbing in the surf, and
soon Orin was coming toward
them.
My
left arm . . . it must have been damaged when the boat capsized . . . I don't
know how. Orin held out
his arm
for them
to see. It had
a deep
dent running from the shoulder
to the
elbow. But it doesn't matter,
I'll be trading in this old shell soon, anyway.
The
important thing is that you got here safely, Bramfel told him.
Do you know where Greely
is?
I'm
not certain, but he might have been trapped on the ship as it sank. I caught a
glimpse of someone pinned under the mast just after it fell. Then a wave
carried me away. I wasn't sure then who it was, but it must have been Greely.
Bramfel was
shocked. Why didn't you get back to the ship and try
to rescue him?
Because,
Orin replied
reasonably, I was damaged. It was a struggle for me just
to keep myself on course in that storm. If I had tried to save Greely I would
have risked further damage, or perhaps have been trapped with him.
You
behaved quite logically, Orin, Anatol commented, but Bramfel was in a turmoil. They were
both so calmly indifferent, and that might be logical
but it
didn't seem right, somehow. We should swim back and see if we can rescue
him.
That
would be foolish to try, Anatol pointed out. How could you and I cover miles of sea, hoping to find one small sunken
ship?
Orin agreed. And it could be that Greely managed to get
free and decided to swim all the way home without stopping here.
Not with more storms coming. Bramfel waved
an arm
at the
black clouds banked on
the horizon.
Our batteries are running
down. Why would he risk draining them further with the extra effort of fighting
a stormy sea when he could wait here until the going is easier? We all knew
that was the best thing to do.
He might have been terminated by the
accident, Orin reminded him. At the time I saw him, I couldn't tell.
Bramfel was
still worried. I
hope we find some sort of civilization on this land so we can arrange for a
rescue crew to look for him. But this place wasn't on any of our maps. They
showed about a hundred miles of open sea before we would have reached
Whitecliff Point again.
That's
illogical, Anatol argued. Our maps are complete and correct. We must
have gone far off our course during the storm so that we lost our bearings.
Perhaps,
Bramfel agreed.
We '11 know better when we
find out what lies beyond this beach.
They stood on
the shore
a little
while longer, scanning the sea, until
there was sudden loud, rumbling
roar and the earth beneath them began to shake.
Waves swelled in sudden mounds
of foam, and the
trees beside the beach shook
violently. Startled, Bramfel saw dark
jets of steam and ash
squirting up from the sea just
beyond the reef before he
fell to the ground. Soon,
ashes were falling on
them in a swirling mist,
blackening the sand, and a muddy
rain began to pelt them.
As soon
as the
earth had stopped quivering and they
could get a firm footing,
they ran for the cover of
the trees.
When they looked back at
the beach, a gigantic wave was
rolling toward it.
Frantically, they
turned and ran through the
woods, hearing the crash of trees
falling close by, hoping they
could find shelter. Ahead of them
was the
rocky side of the green
hill they had seen, and they
scrambled upward on their powerful
legs until they reached a broad
ledge and saw the mouth
of a
cave.
They took shelter
just inside the cave entrance,
although it seemed to go far
back into the hillside. They
watched the rain, and thought again
of Greely,
but to
dwell on what might have
happened to him would
have been useless. They agreed
that his companionship would
be missed.
As soon as this rain lets up, we can get to
the top of this ridge and get a good view around. Bramfel was
anxious to find out where they
were.
But
why is it raining mud? Anatol held out
his arms,
coated with grime like the rest
of his
body. Look at me! And you two don't look any
cleaner. He lifted his
head suddenly. What
was that?
Bramfel strained
his aural
receptors. I don't hear anything but the rain.
A
sound in here, farther back in the cave.
And then Bramfel
heard it, a low moaning
like an animal in pain. Orin
apparently had heard it, too,
for he
pointed toward the back of the
cave and the three turned
and went
that way. The cavern widened from
its mouth,
where they had been standing,
and slanted slightly downward,
forming a high-ceilinged, wide-walled room. It was damp
and cool,
and bats
clustered in rocky niches above them.
The robots'
visual receptors glowed, casting a faint
light in the place, taking
in every
detail as easily as though the
cave had been brightly lit,
and they
all saw
the mound of animal skins on
the floor
and paused
in front
of it.
The mound quivered. Something was under
those skins.
Bramfel reached down
and pulled
the top
layer back. There, lying under the
cover, was a
creature he had never seen
before.
It gave a
frightened cry and sat up,
grabbing at the covering he
had pulled away, but
he stood
staring, holding the skins in
an unconsciously tight grip,
so that
the creature
could not hide from their gaze.
It was smaller
than he, but formed in
roughly the same way. A small, pale
face with blue and white
eyes. Fragile-looking neck and shoulders.
Two round
protuberances on the chest, and
a huge round bulge below those
that gave the creature a
clumsy look. Its appendages were slender
and curved,
but were
almost like his, however the thing
had hair
on its
head and body and was
certainly made of flesh.
An animal of an unknown species, Anatol stated.
We've discovered something
interesting indeed!
Bramfel agreed.
A
cave-dwelling animal, although it resembles a monkey somewhat.
Not at all, Anatol objected.
It looks more like a
chimpanzee, but with less hair and shorter arms.
The creature
whimpered and hunched back toward
the wall
of the cave, away from them.
It moved
slowly and awkwardly, Bramfel saw, and
he wondered
at its
grotesque shape—long, slender limbs
and a
midsection out of all proportion
to the
rest of it. It was shaking,
probably with fear, so he
bent down to the level of
its face
and made
soothing gestures with his hands,
to show they meant it no
harm. The creature obviously didn't
understand. It flinched and
made anxious noises.
Orin seemed
fascinated. He stood completely still, studying the creature intently,
and Bramfel
suddenly knew why. The old
robot believed this was
a man!
Bramfel looked at the frightened
thing with new interest.
Is this
what a human being looked
like? It certainly seemed different from
any animal
he'd ever seen, but it didn't
seem to be dangerous or
vicious. On the contrary, it
was quite pitiful. But
that could be only because
it was
alone, and cornered. I
wonder if there are any others like it in here?
I'll take a look. Orin went
farther back into the cave
and Bramfel could hear his footsteps
halting. No, the walls narrow down back here. There's
only a small passage, not big enough for anything that size to get through.
This one must be alone.
The animal is shivering, Anatol pointed
out. It might be cold.
Bramfel held
out the
covering he had taken from
it, and
the creature grabbed it with its
slender hands and pulled it
up around
itself so that only
the face
was showing,
and the
round, frightened eyes.
Look
at the way it uses its hands!Bramfel watched the fingers
arrange the covering, noticing
that instead of claws, they
ended in oval, shell-like tips.
Amazing! Anatol agreed.
It shows intelligence!
Look at
these! Orin was coming back,
carrying an earthenware bowl, a piece
of bone
sharpened to a thin point
at one end, and a length
of rope
made of braided vines. There are more of these objects back there. All sorts of instruments and utensils.
An intelligent animal that uses tools? Anatol was incredulous.
It's a human being! Orin extended
his dented
arm toward
it triumphantly. I was right. They do exist, and we've found
one!
Nonsense!
Anatol stepped
back a little, away from
the creature. It's a species of chimpanzee, he insisted.
A
cave-dwelling chimpanzee. A mutation with less hair and pale skin caused by
living away from the sun.
No, Orin told them. There's
something else here I want you to see.
They followed
him to
the rear
of the
cave, seeing the bones and skins
of animals
that littered the floor, and
there, against the sloping cave wall,
stood a metal box. They
went closer to study it. It
was rectangular,
about three feet long and
two feet
high, rusted and dented. Bramfel knelt
beside it to get a
better look and saw the faint
letters engraved on its top.
"S. S. Albany."
The same words we found on the ship!
What
do you mean? Anatol had not
heard about their discovery, so the others told
him.
Can you still doubt these are humans we've
found? Orin
asked when he'd
listened to the story.
I
don't know that this is conclusive proof. Anatol pried
at the
top of the box and finally
got it
open. It was empty. He
closed the lid again and the
three robots went back to
stand beside the frightened creature in
the cave.
If this is a human being, Anatol persisted, it can terminate us. So far all it's done is shiver in a corner.
Bramfel had
to agree.
It looks too weak and
clumsy to hurt one of us.
Let's
see if it will try. Orin approached the creature slowly. When he was close enough,
he crouched
and held
out the
instrument with the sharp
point, cupping it in his
palm, and the creature, after staring
at him
for a
moment, reached out and took
it. For a long
time each one of them
was still,
Bramfel and Anatol watching, and Orin
crouching beside the being, who
held the crude knife
in a
clenched hand and looked first
at them
and then at the
weapon. The animal skin that
had been
held in one hand dropped away
from its upper body, that was heaving and glistening with moisture. The hand
that was now free went
to clutch the knife,
too. Then, in two swift
movements, the creature raised the knife
and brought
it down
toward its own chest, with a
piteous wail that echoed through
the cave.
Bramfel started foward but
Orin, closer, already had deflected
the knife's path with a swat
from his metal hand and
the instrument
clattered across the cave
floor.
The creature collapsed
then, turning its face into
the mound
of skins, and Orin stood up.
We should leave it alone.
It seems to be afraid of us. It can't get away.
Bramfel picked
up the
weapon from the floor and
put it
in the
storage compartment in his
chest, and then they went
back to the mouth of the
cave and looked out at
the driving
rain.
Bramfel made
the first
comment. I've never heard of an animal that would try
to destroy itself with a sharp instrument.
Nor an animal that uses tools for anything, Orin added,
at least not such a variety
of tools. But human beings are said to be intelligent. He looked
at Anatol.
Before you jump to hasty conclusions,
remember that human beings, according to the legends, can only be killed with a
wooden weapon.
No, that's not accurate, Bramfel objected.
The story goes that they
can be killed in different ways, but they will spring to life again somewhere
else in another form, unless the weapon is wooden.
Exactly! Orin was
nodding enthusiastically. This man was trying to escape from us.
Anatol was
not impressed.
Speculation. Useless speculation.
We '11 only know for sure what species the creature is when we take it back to
Central Agency and have tests made on it.
Bramfel longed to
retreat inside himself, to turn
off his
receptors, however he knew
he must
stay alert. He almost believed this creature was a
man, but he needed to
mull over the evidence, to examine
the facts.
The entity in
the cave
seemed to be suffering. Every now and then it
would groan, and once it
screamed. Bramfel went back then, to see if he
could help it, and saw
that it had kicked off
the skins that covered it and
was tossing
on its
couch. It seemed to be ignoring
his presence,
or else
its suffering
was too
great for it to notice anything
outside itself. Its hands clenched
and pulled
at the skins, and its body
seemed to be straining.
And then Bramfel
realized what was happening. He tele-beamed a call
to the
others and they raced in
to watch
the female
as she gave birth to her
young.
They were helpless
to know
what to do. The creature
strained and cried, and Bramfel, who
had seldom
seen an animal in pain,
felt that he should
be helping
her, but when he approached
she objected, making loud, growling noises
that were easy to understand.
At last
the baby
emerged from her body, and
with her last bit of strength,
she used
her teeth
to sever
the cord
that connected it to
her, tied it off, and
took the tiny, crying thing
in her arms and pressed it
against her. Then she lay
back with her eyes closed, exhausted.
The three robots
kept a vigil around her
through the night. The tiny creature
was fascinating
to watch,
a miniature
replica of its mother, perfect in
every detail. It made small
noises and sucked at its mother's
body for sustenance. Bramfel had
never seen an animal give birth,
although he knew that this
was the
way in which fleshy creatures reproduced,
but there
was something
different about witnessing it; seeing
the baby
emerge and instantly breathe air; knowing
that there was not one
mechanical component inside it,
and yet
it functioned
perfectly. Of course, animals were inferior
to mechanical
beings. They were imperfect copies of the robots'
perfection, who lived without any real purpose
or knowledge.
Yet, there was certainly some
logic to their existing at all,
since Central Agency had pronounced
the universe to be entirely logical
and rational.
So what
was the
logic in this kind
of being?
If they
were human, Central Agency must be mistaken in saying
the universe
was rational
in every
way. These creatures were
intelligent, yet vulnerable; dangerous, yet weak; fierce, yet
tender. It followed, then, that
Central Agency might be
either mistaken or untruthful. No, he could not
assimilate such a monstrous
thought, at least not until
he had
more data about these
humans, if that's what they
were.
The female and
her offspring
slept for many hours, until
the floor of the cave began
to tremble
from another earthquake and she sat
up with
a cry.
Frightened bats swooped at them.
She hugged the baby to her
with one arm, and beat
them away with the other. The
cave wall cracked with a
terrifying sound, and loose rocks tumbled
around them. The female shielded
her baby
with her own body
until the quake was over
and the
rocks had stopped falling, and then
she soothed
its frightened
cries by rocking it and crooning
to it.
Bramfel watched and wondered. Why had she not tried
to save
herself instead of that tiny,
helpless thing? It was
completely useless to her, only
a drain
on her strength and a burden
to her,
yet she
had protected
it as
though it were her
most valuable possession. He turned
to Orin
and Anatol who were
watching her with the same
interest. She doesn't behave logically.
Oh
yes, Anatol replied.
All animals protect their
young. Preservation of the species.
Then
what is she doing now ?Bramfel asked.
It's in no danger now, but
she tries to take away its fears. And why does she make that humming sound?
The creature seemed
to have
forgotten they were there. Bramfel thought she probably had
grown used to their presence
and sensed that they
would not harm her, because
she was
totally absorbed in her
infant. She cradled it in
her arms
and her
voice came sweet and
clear, speaking, yet not speaking.
Bramfel thought the sound
strangely beautiful. It made him
think of a waterfall,
of the
wind, of a bird call.
She
seems to be forming words, ©rin told them. Maybe
we could speak with her.
Well,
apparently she can't hear us this way. You'll have to shut off your telebeam
and articulate. Bramfel turned his own
off.
Orin stepped forward.
The creature
stopped her music and clutched at her baby, watching
him suspiciously.
"We will not
hurt you," Orin said in
the clicking
speech the robots sometimes used. "My
name is Orin."
The female
sat, motionless.
"Orin." He moved closer to her.
The female
opened her mouth and spoke
words, but none of them could
understand the language she used.
Bramfel decided to
try. He pointed to himself.
"Bramfel," he clicked, Then he pointed to Orin
and repeated
his name.
The creature seemed
to relax.
Her mouth
opened and her teeth showed white as a cadence
of sound
came from her throat. Then
she began to imitate
the sounds
they had made, as with
her free
hand she pointed to
first one and then the
other. "Orin," she said,
and "Bramfel."
The pointing
finger went toward Anatol, who seemed reluctant but finally
pronounced his name for her.
She repeated that, too,
and then
pointed to herself, but now
she spoke with a different sound,
in liquid
syllables. "Sallis."
Bramfel and Orin,
delighted, tried to repeat that
but it
didn't sound the same, somehow. The
female opened her mouth and
the cascade of sounds
came again. Then she held
up the
wriggling baby. "Adam,"
she said.
When daylight
came again and the rain
had stopped,
the female went to the mouth
of the
cave, but Anatol blocked her
way. She
might try to escape. We must keep her in here until we decide how to get her
back to civilization.
Orin objected to
this. She's too weak to get far if she tries to run
away. Besides, she probably needs food and only wants to go out and look for
it.
And so they
allowed the female, carrying her
baby, to leave the cave, and
while Anatol kept watch on
her, Bramfel and Orin went up
the side
of the
hill to get a view
from its top. Once they
had climbed over the
rocky ledges near the cave,
the hillside
became a gentle, grassy
slope, but the greenery they
had seen
from the ship was
blackened now with a layer
of ashes
and soot.
The summit was
a plateau,
but Bramfel
took note of no more
than that before he
saw the
spectacle, perhaps a quarter-mile away from them. It
looked at first like a
fountain of fire. A steady jet
of glowing
boulders soared from a cone-shaped
black hill that rose from the
sea. Orange steam clouds coiled
above it, enclosing a nest of
lightning bolts that dazzled and
roared in brief explosions.
Orin seemed overcome
with excitement. It's a volcano!Rising from the sea! That's
what caused the earthquakes and the storms. And that's why ashes are falling
from the sky.
It's
too close! Bramfel could almost
feel the vibrations of the
fiery rocks that were
landing on the beach, visible
below them, where they lay glowing
like angry fireflies. As the
two robots
watched, a bundle of
gray spears of rock and
vapor streamed from the volcano, and
a broad
mushroom cloud formed atop the
column that towered high
in the
air. Brown gusts of volcanic
dust swelled from the
crater, and steaming blocks of
lava broke in arcs from the
dark central mass. The wind
veered and dark ash bore down
on them
like a moving wall. They
ran before
it down
the slope, their feet
crunching on the cinders, until
they had gained the shelter of
the cave
mouth. Anatol and the female
were already there. Together
they watched the strange golden
rain slanting down through
the sunlight.
The female was
terribly frightened. She clutched her
baby to her with one hand,
while with the other she
covered her face and whimpered.
They told
Anatol about the volcano, and
Bramfel wished the female could understand
them. Or, did she know
about it?
Did you notice, Bramfel, whether this is an
island? Orin asked.
No. The volcano was so fascinating,
I didn't look at anything else.
Nor did I. If the
land is large enough, we must start walking. We '11 have to get away from here.
If this is an island, we '11 have to swim, but how can we take these two humans
with us?
Make a boat, Bramfel suggested.
Without tools that might take too long. We
probably won't be safe here for another day, so close to the volcano. And I
believe that's why this human is all alone here. There must have been others
who fled when the volcano rose.
There was nothing
they could do at the
moment, until the wind changed and
the rain
of ashes
stopped. Gradually, Sallis stopped
crying and took her baby
back into the rear of
the cave,
and Bramfel went with
her and
watched as she sat on
her mound
of skins and ate
the fruit
she had
gathered that morning. When she had
finished her meal, she allowed
the baby
to feed
while she used her voice to
make the same musical sounds
he had
heard before. Enchanted, he tried to imitate
her, but the clicking noises he made were grotesque
even to him. Sallis showed
her teeth and made a happy
sound and then, ignoring him,
she took
up the soothing ribbon of music
once again. The baby's eyes
closed and its restless
body relaxed. Bramfel studied them,
listening and wondering, and when they had
both fallen asleep he remained deep
in thought.
Orin came
to tell
him when
the downpour
had stopped.
Anatol is going up
the hill to see the volcano for himself and find out about this place while
he's there.
Human beings are amazing, Bramfel told
the old
robot. I remember the stories that said they
reproduce in an un-mechanical way, but I never realized what it could be like
to see one creature make another just like itself, that already works perfectly
without mechanics or technicians to ready it.
The same thing occurred to me, Orin agreed.
It was interesting.
Interesting! Orin, this human created her own
species right before our eyes!
No,
they reproduce like animals. The female didn't create
her baby, it was created by the male sperm and her own
fertile
egg, and grew inside her body. What we saw was only the
emergence----
I know all that! Bramfel interrupted.
I've learned the biology of
fleshy creatures. But consider, Orin, we are the highest form of life, yet we
can't reproduce ourselves as these humans can, or even as the lowest form of
animal life can.
Central Agency creates us.
Central Agency duplicates
our bodies and sends us out from the factories, but did it conceive us? Orin was
silent.
I'm talking about creating. Bramfel was
growing impatient.
Yes, Orin finally answered. I understand.
And this female also makes music of endless
variations, all pleasing to the aural receptors, that brings
strange thoughts. Listening to her my senses perceive things that are not
evident.
You believe she creates this music, too?
She seems to improvise it. No two pieces have
the same pattern.
We can compose music. What's so different about hers?
Only by transposing notes we have learned.
This female uses her voice like an instrument, and makes use of words with it.
She gets a message across with the sound, somehow. I've never heard music like
it.
You believe that human beings, then, have
powers we do not have? Do you infer they have abilities superior to ours?
As a race they must be, or have been at one
time, highly intelligent. Remember the ship we saw, Orin, with the fittings we
could not even guess the uses for. I don't infer they are superior to us, but
only that they are different, and possess traits we know little of.
All the more reason to take them back home
and study them scientifically, Orin pointed out.
/ wonder if she would want to go with us, if
she knew? I wonder what kind of tests they will give her, and what they might
do to her?
We won't harm her. We don't take a life that
can't be replaced—unlike humans.
If we could make her understand that she's
contributing valuable knowledge to our whole race, she might go willingly. Bramfel looked
at the
sleeping female and her child,
and somehow knew that she would
be most
unwilling.
Orin glanced toward
the cave
entrance. I wonder what's keeping Anatol so long?
Let's go and meet him while they are asleep, Bramfel told him.
They found
Anatol at the top of
the ridge,
pinned under a basalt boulder. Bramfel
and Orin
ran to
where he lay and heaved
the giant rock, still
steaming from the volcano, off
his legs.
Are you all right? Bramfel leaned
over him with concern.
Anatol answered
him weakly.
It began to rain stones up
here and this one got me as I tried to get away. I think my left leg is
inoperative.
His leg was,
indeed, a crushed mass of
metal, and there was a
jagged Jear in his
right leg, although it was
intact. They lifted him and carried
him between
them clumsily down the slope.
I could see the other side of this island, he told them as they went. That's what it is, and not a very big island,
at that. To the west of us is another island, about two miles distant.
Bramfel glanced back
at the
clouds that rose behind them,
black and threatening. We'll swim to the next island and tow you
along with us.
But what about the female
and her baby? Orin seemed
doubtful.
We can take Anatol first and then come back
for them. We can build a raft.
They reached
the cave
and deposited
the injured
robot just inside its mouth. But
there was no sound from
the inside
of the
cave, and when they
looked, they saw that the
female and her baby were gone.
They
can't go far. Bramfel was disappointed.
Since this is a small
island, there will be no place for them to go. We can swim with Anatol to the
next island and then come back, find her, and take her there, too.
Orin agreed, and
Anatol was willing, so they
carried him down the hillside toward
the other
side of the island, hearing
the volcano rumbling now behind them.
Bramfel thought with apprehension
of the
swim across two miles of
churning sea, towing the dead weight
of Anatol,
and hoped
that there were no reefs between
this island and the next.
They didn't need any more injuries.
Through the bushes
he could
see the
white sand ahead of them, glistening
in the
sunlight, but it wasn't until
they were on the beach that
they saw the boat. It
was about
fifteen feet long, made of some
light wood, sturdy enough to
hold the three of them. Four
wooden paddles sat inside it.
A rope
of vines
anchored it to a
rock at the water's edge,
where it bobbed in the
waves.
There was
no point
in wondering
where it had come from,
or if it had been there
since they arrived on the
island. They needed it, so they
decided to use it, and
deposited the injured Anatol inside it.
The boat is big enough to hold the female and
her baby, too, Orin suggested. Why don't we go and find her, and take her
with us?
It
would save us a trip, Bramfel agreed, and
so, leaving
Anatol in the boat
and making
sure the rope holding it
was secure, he took off in
the direction
of the
woods that edged the beach, while Orin went the
other way.
Bramfel tried to
walk lightly, making as little
noise as possible to warn her
in case
she was
hiding from them, but although he spent nearly half
an hour
searching, there was no sign of
her. Disappointed, he returned to
the beach
by another
way, and it was
while he was still in
the cover
of the
bushes that he heard the child
crying. Looking between the branches,
he saw them.
Four humans were
on the
beach beside the boat. One
was the
female, carrying her young,
but the
other two were bigger and
heavier that she, although
formed in much the same
way, but lacking the protuberances on the chest and
abdomen. They were talking to each
other in their own language,
the two
strangers sounding angry and
the female
speaking softly. Finally one of
the males, for so
Bramfel judged them to be,
gave a loud shout and held
up a
weapon that he carried. It
was a
sharp-edged metal head on a long
wooden handle. Waving this, he
ran toward
the boat with a wild cry,
the other
male following, brandishing his own weapon.
They were going to attack
Anatol, lying helplessly in the
boat! Before Bramfel could move,
the female
had run
to one of the males and
grabbed his arm with her
free hand. She let out a
piteous wail and both the
males stopped and looked at
her. She was telling them something
now, pointing to herself and
to her baby. Although Bramfel couldn't
hear her words, and couldn't have understood them, anyway,
it was
plain to him she was telling
them about meeting the robots
in the
cave. He knew he should go
out there
and help
Anatol, but he was curious
to know more about the reactions
of these
humans. Would the male be influenced
by the
female? Was she trying to
reason with him? The other male
was apparently
awaiting the first one's decision, for he stood slightly
behind the pair and watched
them without making a move.
The female
seemed to be winning the
argument. The two males put down
their weapons and went to
the boat,
and as
Bramfel tensed, ready to
run to
Anatol's aid if needed, there
was a long, loud roar from
the volcano.
All of
them turned to look and saw,
high above them, the steaming
magma of another eruption jetting toward
the clouds.
Quickly, the
humans heaved Anatol out of
the boat
and laid
him on the beach, the female
running beside them. The helpless
robot struggled and squirmed
but they
held his arms so that
he could not harm them. Then
they helped the female and
her baby
into the boat.
The sky
was turning
dark with the volcano's black
breath and the rain was starting
again. Bramfel ran out of
the bushes
toward the boat. He would have
to stop
them before they got away.
As he pounded along the beach,
he saw
Orin running from the other
direction. The males turned
around and saw them, and
they waited on the sand, their
weapons ready.
Orin reached them
first. With a swipe of
his metal
arm, he knocked the nearest human
to the
ground. The other swung with
his weapon, aiming for
Orin's neck where his vulnerable
ring cable was located. Orin deflected
the blow
with his forearm and with his
other arm he felled the
creature. Seeing that Orin was
handling the humans, Bramfel
picked up their weapons and
threw them into the
water, among the waves that
were churning and rising from the
volcano's force.
The female was
crying, scrambling out of the
boat to the beach. She ran
to one
of the
fallen males, whose face was
streaked with blood from
the blow
Orin had given him, and
knelt in the sand
beside him, making anxious noises.
The frightened baby wailed.
As Bramfel
approached them, the injured male,
dazed but conscious, sat up
and shielded
the female
with his body, as
though afraid Bramfel would attack. The
robot halted. Humans could terminate robots,
but now
that their weapons were gone, these
humans seemed only weak and
fearful. Yet,
the unarmed
male, vulnerable himself, and helpless,
seemed ready to die to
protect the female and her
young.
Orin was
exultant. We have four specimens now to take back home,
instead of two. Let's get them all in the boat and we '11 push it back to
civilization.
They got
Anatol back into the boat.
If only I could swim with
you, he complained,
we could get home so much
faster.
Bramfel helped Orin
then to drag the unconscious
male into the boat, and the
female and the other male
got in
beside him without protest. The warm,
wet ashes
rained down on them, and
the volcano grumbled threateningly,
flinging its hot boulders near them as they pushed
the wooden
craft out into the churning
sea.
They swam quickly
and tirelessly,
and when
they were far enough away from
the island
and darkness
had fallen,
they looked back to see the
volcano spilling blood-red lava over
its open mouth, lava that flowed
in a
fiery stream over the island
they had just left.
We
got out just in time, Orin remarked, paddling
strongly behind the boat.
Inside, the humans were quiet
except for the occasional cry of
the baby.
Bramfel was
thinking about what the humans
had done
on the
beach. They
must have come back for her, he told Orin. The males. One
of them is probably her mate, the father of the baby. They must have left her
there when they had to flee prom the rising volcano. Perhaps she couldn't
travel when she was so close to giving birth. But the mate came back for her.
Even though the danger to himself was so great, he
came back for her.
Orin seemed
to be
thinking along other lines. In all my two hundred years I've never seen a
human, and now we have four of them. I have truly had unusual experiences to
complete my life.
Just before dawn,
Bramfel made his decision. The humans must eat, he told
Orin. I will try to catch some fish for them. We
don't know how long we'll have to swim before we reach home, and we want them
alive. He left
Orin to push the boat
alone and he paddled around it,
diving now and then to
catch fish from under the surface,
and bringing
them up to throw into
the boat,
where the males, both
conscious now although seeming sick
and still fearful, took them from
him and
shared them with the female.
When Bramfel had
given them many fish, he
went to the nose of the
moving boat where Anatol lay,
and, out of sight of
Orin who still pushed at the
stern, he climbed
in beside
the inert
robot. For a moment
he bent
beside him, asking how he
was faring, and then with a
sudden movement he seized Anatol
under the arms and
heaved him over the side.
Anatol sank like a stone. Bramfel
dived in quickly after him
and, catching up with him in
the depths,
hauled him to the surface
again. Orin, unknowing, still pushed the
boat and was yards away
from them now. Bramfel
beamed a call to him.
Orin, come and help!
The old robot
turned, saw them, and swam
away from the boat. What happened?
Anatol fell
cut of the boat.
Bramfel
pushed me out! Anatol seethed with
shock and disapproval at the
lie.
Orin swam up
to them
and grasped
one of
Anatol's arms to support him. You
did what? he asked
Bramfel.
Bramfel looked past
Orin, at the little boat
bobbing on the waves. He saw
the faces
of the
three humans looking at them
with wide eyes, and
then he saw them take
the slender
wooden oars and dip them in
the water,
and as
the two
males pulled on these, the female
opened her mouth and showed
her teeth
at him, the way she had
done in the cave, and
Bramfel knew she understood what he
had done.
Orin and Anatol
saw, too, that the boat
was pulling
away from them. Orin dropped Anatol's
arm and
started through the water to stop
it, but
Bramfel sent him a warning.
If you try to bring them
back, I'll let Anatol sink.
But why? Orin kept
asking, long after the little
boat had disappeared in the direction
of the
islands, and they had towed
Anatol many miles through
the sea.
And finally Bramfel
answered. Because no matter how we
studied them, we would never understand them.
What do you mean? Orin insisted.
We could have gained
priceless knowledge, and you deliberately let it out of our grasp, perhaps
forever.
I
hope human beings are never caught to be tested and dissected. No tests would
ever tell us how they can create, how they can make music that summons up
strange thoughts, why there is such a strong bond between the female and her
baby, and her mate. They value each other highly, and it seems right that we
should place the same value upon them.
These
ideas of yours hardly seem rational, Anatol commented, but Bramfel
ignored him.
You
still have your evidence for the existence of human beings, Orin. You and I
have the data about the sunken ship we saw. I have the weapon we took from the
female. And Anatol is a witness, even though he still won't admit the creatures
were human beings.
I would have preferred the
living specimens, Orin answered, but I know when our data vaults are audited
and all the facts agree, the proof will be there. He paused
for a
moment, and then continued. Bramfel, I still believe you think these
humans are superior to us.
What
nonsense! Anatol stated. There is nothing as perfect as we are.
philip josé farmer • poul anderson • chad oliver
anne McCaffrey • edgar pangborn thomas n. scortia • gene wolfe • gail kimberly
These writers, widely hailed as among the best in the current science
fiction field, have joined forces with the prolific editing talents of Roger
Elwood to create the first truly unique anthology series in years.
In this second volume in the series, Anne McCaffrey returns the reader
to the world of Milekey Mountains-a godforsaken colony planet where
Killashandra, the Crystal Singer, is losing her capacity for detecting the
killer storms that will wreck her mind. Philip José Farmer, in "Startouchedi' presents a further adventure of Paul
Eyre, who has been contacted by an alien creature in the astonishing form of a
beautiful woman wtth the hind parts of a lion-a sphinx! The other authors draw
us back to the worlds they created in CONTINUUM 1, and Gail Kimberly goes to
the robot-dominated future created by Dean R. Koontz in the revolving
authorship series that ends this volume. From LIBRARY JOURNAL, on CONTINUUM 2:
"...continues the overall high quality of the first, with definite
trends beginning to emerge....this second volume lives up to, or perhaps
surpasses the promise ^ of the first. If the remaining volumes continue the
good work, this series may well be a trend-setter in sf anthologies!'