The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “Ed won’t go.… Paul?”

  Leave him, with Sears’ inner torments and Ed’s arrogance? “No, Doc.”

  Ann Bryan said, “I’m staying for the show.”

  Dorothy lowered her cheek to the brown fuzz of Helen’s head; the baby’s absurd square of palm found Paul’s finger. Helen was almost eight months old—Lucifer months. The new life in Dorothy had been conceived in the last month of the rains. Dorothy said, “I’m going, Nancy, with Helen. As a valuable brood mare, I can’t afford heroism. Neither can you.”

  The giant women crossed the bridge; they had lingered outside, knowing the Charins needed to talk alone. Ann said, “I’ve heard the argument. I’m not pregnant yet. I’ve learned to shoot damn’ well.”

  Wright asked, “Will you abide by a vote when Ed gets back?”

  Ann pushed her fingers into black hair, cut short as a man’s. “I suppose I must.… If no men get to the island, how do two women and a girl child increase and multiply, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  Wright mumbled inadequately, “We’ll reach the island.”

  Ann said, “Then you already see it as a retreat?”

  Wright was silent. He tried to smile with confidence at the giant women and children, who were sober with reflected unhappiness—all but nine-year-old Dunin, who trotted to Paul and hugged him with her large arms and announced: “I learned six words while you were gone. Hi, listen! ‘Brain’: that’s here and here. ‘Me-di-tation’: that happens in the brain when it’s quiet. Mm-mm … ‘Breast’: that’s these. And ‘breath’: that’s ooph, like that. ‘Breeze’: that’s a breath with nobody blowing it.… I forgotten six.”

  Dorothy murmured. “Tem—tem—”

  Dunin hopped up and down. “‘Tempest!’ Big big breeze—”

  “That’s perfect,” said Paul. “Perfect.…”

  Before the five-month rainy season had made travel on the sodden, gasping ground too miserable, Mijok had explored a half circle of territory forty miles in radius east of the hills, for others who might be willing to learn new ways. It was slow work, often discouraging. He had located two bands of free-wandering women and children—twenty in all—and stirred their curiosity and friendliness. But he had been able to recruit only three other males. There was Rak. Blackfurred Elis and tawny Surok were in vigorous middle years, hard to convince but quick to learn once the barrier was down.

  Kamon was accepted leader of the women. White with age, gaunt, flat-breasted, stooped but quick on her feet, Kamon rarely smiled, but her good nature was profound. “Ann,” she said, “you ought to go. We—if we cannot fight off these southern pygmies, we can escape. But you? One of us would have to carry you. And as Mashana Dorothy says, your womb is needed.” (Mashana—sweetheart, mother, hunting companion, friend.)

  Wright said, “You, Dorothy, Helen, and the giant children.”

  That brought murmuring. Kamon checked it: “Only four children still need milk. You, Samis, your breasts are big: you will go.” Kamon turned with gentle deference to one authority she felt to be stronger than her own under the laws: “Doc?” Paul found it comfortable, no longer even amusing, that Wright should be known to the giants by his inevitable nickname. The pygmies disliked the short sound, and initial D always bothered them. To them he was Tocwright, or more often Tocwright-Who-Plays-with Gray-Fur-at-His-Throat.

  “Yes, Kamon. Samis too. Paul, how many trips will that take?”

  “Three—leaving fuel for about three more of the same length.”

  Wright nodded. “Ed has a notion of using the lifeboat for a weapon. Hedgehop, scare ’em to hell. But with fuel so low—”

  There was shadow at the drawbridge. Ed Spearman flung aside the carcass he had brought. Ann’s white face was still, though she clung to him briefly when he kissed her. It had occurred to Paul that Ann’s image of love would not be given reality anywhere in the galaxies: she wished moments to be eternities and a human self to be a mirror of desire. But Dorothy and I—somehow we’ve learned to let each other live.… “More news,” Spearman said. “I stopped at the village. A spy of Pakriaa’s came home last night—must be a sharp article: did the sixty-odd miles up the lake shore in nothing flat, with facts and figures.”

  “Lantis is moving.” Wright dropped his hands to his bony knees.

  “No, Doc, but will in a day or so.” Spearman sat down, holding Ann’s fingers till she pulled them away. He nodded to Sears and Paul. “Good trip?” He had grown even more rugged in a year of Lucifer. He wore only shorts and Earth-made shoes; months of handling a heavy bow had made his upper arms almost as thick as the narrow part of Mijok’s forearm. His face had deepened its lines; he had never smiled easily.

  “Very good,” Sears said. “The island is—” He was silent.

  Spearman grunted. “You’re sold too? Well, here’s the news. One: you remember Pakriaa’s second challenge, sent by two warriors, correct and formal—trust Pak for that. One of those messengers is returning. The spy ran on ahead—with part of the body of the other ambassador.” He studied the sickened faces. “Two: the spy says Lantis plans to send four thousand on the lake boats, another six thousand overland. Pakriaa—who is in a state of mind I don’t know how to describe, not jitters exactly—Pakriaa thinks we may feel the lake-boat drums tomorrow. She doesn’t know what they are, by the way—invention of Lantis, I guess. From her description they must be drums, maybe hollow logs mounted on boats. She heard them last year in the war we interrupted. You feel them before you hear them, she says: she thinks it was a lake devil consulting with the Queen of the World. Three: the spy wasn’t sure, but thinks Lantis has already sent six hundred east of the lake to make a big circle, come down on the settlement from the northeast.”

  “Smart,” Paul said. “To drive us into the kaksma hills?”

  “The kaksma hills.” Spearman’s gray eyes squinted in a sort of laughter. “They’re not so bad. The critters may be all they say, after dark, but—I’d better own up: I’ve gone that way on my last three solo trips. Safe enough in daylight, when they’re half blind. I killed a few today.”

  Sears asked quickly, “Bring back specimens?”

  Spearman teased the fat man with waiting and chuckled and nodded at the asonis carcass. “Tied to one of the hoofs. Don’t look so worried, Doc—I waded plenty of streams on the way back.” He rose with heavy grace and strolled out on the bridge. “Come a minute, some of you.” Paul joined him; Wright stayed as he was; Sears was examining the kaksma’s gray, thick-tailed body, holding back its pinkish lip. Paul caught a repellent glimpse of the jutting upper canines; the molars were shearing tools like a cat’s. He saw the spade claws of the forefeet. The jet eyes were like a mole’s. “Look,” Spearman said, “the hills. Notice that hogback at the southern end—it’s five miles long. Riddled with burrows. They must live on small game on the meadow below and hunt the other side of the hills too, where it’s jungle.” His fingers dug at Paul’s shoulder. He spoke loudly enough to be heard by all: “Listen: the earth at the burrows is red ocher. Understand? Hematite.”

  Wright let out his breath sharply. “So—”

  “Yeah. Just a five-mile mountain of iron ore. Merely what I’ve been looking for ever since we crashed. For a start. From iron to steel to—ah.… And just when we’ve got it—God! with organized pygmy labor—” He strode back into the fortress, glancing obliquely at the silent giant women. “The pygmies do understand work, you know. Well, never mind it now. Of course we must get the baby and the women to your island right away. As a temporary refuge, we must use it.” He watched Wright with unqualified sadness. “Apart from that, you know what I think of your Island of Lotos-Eaters—”

  “That’s not just, Ed.”

  “Adelphi then. Well, the women and Helen—”

  “And the giant children, with Samis to nurse the youngest.”

  Spea
rman asked evenly, “Paul, how’s the charlesite?”

  “After the trips Doc mentioned, enough for three more.”

  Ann’s keen ears caught a far-off sound. “Mijok’s coming back.”

  The music grew slowly manifest: Mijok, in an Earth song more than two hundred years old. Long-flowing chanteys and slower spirituals suited him. He had teased Ann to teach him all she knew, even after she lost interest. Swift melodies and rapid syllables were beyond him—the depth of his tone rendered them grotesque. More than a mile away, he was wallowing in “Shenandoah”—Mijok, to whom the ocean was only a word and a river steamboat the cloudiest of legends. Other voices, true on pitch, followed his solo:

  “Away—we’re bound away.…”

  Paul asked, “How many, Nan?”

  Ann shut her eyes. “Four, besides Mijok and—yes, Lisson’s singing. At least two new recruits. Ah—they can sing before they talk.” She hurried into that thatched house-within-a-house which was her corner of privacy on Lucifer. The giant women were smiling, though Kamon’s eyes followed Ann with trouble and pity. They hummed in three-part counterpoint. Their voices had the range of a Charin baritone; Paul missed Muson, who could approach the tenor. Sears’ bass moved in, a well-behaved trombone teasing a crowd of bassoons. Dorothy’s alto added a warm thread of sound.…

  The tall children and women poured out over the bridge when Mijok and his companions were still distant. Musical thunder in the woods pulsed along the ground. Spearman smiled indulgently. “Just like a bunch of kids.”

  “Yes,” Wright said. “The pygmies are more serious. They have wars.”

  Sears stopped humming and mumbled, “Don’t, Chris.…”

  Mijok brought in his triumph, beaming and warm. “And my smallest woman?” Dorothy placed the naked morsel that was Helen in his waiting hands. Mijok was bemused. “How can anything be so small?”

  Dorothy claimed: “Seven pounds at birth—that ain’t hay, Mijok.”

  “Growing too,” Elis said. The golden-furred girl Lisson tickled Helen’s chest with the tip of a forefinger, and Mijok introduced the newcomers. One was timid. “Just a boy,” Mijok explained. “Knows some words already, though. Danik?”

  The giant boy whispered, “Good day.” The other was older, black like Elis, trying to display stern indifference, but Surok eased him into relaxation with a few words in the old language.

  For Mijok, speech had still the brilliance of newness but was wholly flexible; he reveled in colloquialisms, acquired mainly from Sears and Dorothy. “While the boys and I were out having a hell of a time, what’s with local industries? The island, gentlemen?”

  “Good,” Sears said. “Better than I dared dream.”

  “And those tough babies in the south—anything new?”

  Sears winced. “That part ain’t good.”

  Mijok fondled the fat man’s arm with a hand mild as silk. “Now, Jock, now. We’ll give ’em hell, that’s what we’ll do. Hey, Paul?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Abara trotted between Sears and Paul in the forest aisle, a silent ugly man with popeyes, bulging underlip, jutting ears; thirty inches tall. He was twenty-six. His potbellied softness had the beginning sag of middle age. There was politics, Paul guessed, in his presence at the camp—it was not because the queen had tired of him that he was temporarily detached from the harem. His body was agile for all its pokiness, his mind even more nimble; his English, when he stooped to use it, was good. After the noon meal Abara had appeared, crossing the drawbridge like a wisp of red smoke, ignoring the giants, reminding Sears obliquely that it was three days since he had visited the clearing near the camp, where the white olifants had learned to come.

  Sears’ love for the great leaf eaters had deepened with familiarity. He had easily persuaded the others to guarantee their permanent protection in the laws. He had taught the pygmies to call them olifants, a shrewd stroke, conveying to the Neolithic mind that the animals were of Sears’ totem. Even during the long ordeal of the rains he had gone alone for whole days and nights, following olifant trails, sitting in patience where a broad-leaf tree they enjoyed was abundant. Deep forest was no place for a man who moved slowly and shrank from discomfort and danger, yet Sears held to this undertaking as stubbornly as Wright to his dreams of a community of good will under a government of laws. And before all except Paul and Wright, Sears was able to preserve a manner like the face of Lake Argo on a still morning. That calm gave him, in the eyes of the pygmies, more puzzling divinity than they found in the others. Abara worshiped from behind a mask of cynical blankness. Pakriaa seemed almost to love him openly. She was not arrogant with him; when he spoke she listened. She assigned soldiers to collect the insects, fish, small animals he wanted for study; she brought him gifts—an earthenware vessel with ritual painting, odd flowers, ornaments of wood and bone and clay. She liked to sit by him when he was at the microscope and peek, mystified, into the country of the lens.

  Sears had let the olifants grow used to him. He talked to them. He learned they like to be rubbed above the tip of the trunk and on the vast flat tops of their heads—for this luxury they would kneel, rumbling and sighing. Eventually he dared climb into the natural saddle between hump and skull: they allowed it. They were never excited nor in a hurry. The kaksmas they probably avoided by keen scent and flight in times of danger; they kept clear of the omasha by going into open ground only at night.

  The clearing was silent except for muted trilling of illuama. The ground was trodden; purple-leaf vines hung dead and brown, ripped out by trunks and tusks. Sears said that once, with no notion of conveying the idea, he had tugged peevishly at a vine under the nose of his favorite cow. “So, she came and fetched it loose—tired of watching me act like a damn fool.”

  Abara said, “I will whistle, me.…” Two came, spectrally calm. “Susie!” Sears called. “Been a good girl, hey?” The old cow let down her many tons to have her head scratched. Another arrived on fog-silent feet; then two bulls together, munching leaves. The five were placid, enjoying the hot stillness and Sears’ purring talk. The largest bull stood ten feet at the shoulder, Paul estimated, as Abara’s two-feet-six approached him, seized a lowered ear, and climbed up. Abara piped: “We walk now, Mister Johnson.”

  Mister Johnson’s pale eyes noted Paul’s bulging jacket; the boneless finger of his trunk groped suggestively till Paul produced a melon-like fruit. “Hoo-hee!” Abara crowed. “We thank you.” They vanished in the shadows.

  “Susie, want to dig some vines?” But Sears halted in the act of climbing her neck. Spearman had joined them, with a good hunter’s quiet.

  “You really have something there.” Spearman was cordial and flushed. “Pygmies still make the best wine. Ours is no damn good, yet.”

  “Meant to ask how the last turned out.”

  “Needs ripening, like everything else.”

  “In fact,” said Paul, “you’re slightly plastered.”

  “But slightly.” Ed grinned. “How if I climb on one of those?”

  Sears was doubtful. “Have to get acquainted first. Mister Smith over there—he shook me off the first time. Not rough—just wasn’t ready.”

  “They pull vines at command? You can steer ’em?”

  “Sure. If they like you. Knee pressure.”

  “Abara’s good?”

  “They prefer him to me. Arek is better still. I miss her.”

  “Mijok rides, doesn’t he?”

  “Mijok and Elis. Surok’s a bit skittish. I guess Pak thinks it’s undignified—or else the damned witches disapprove.”

  “Hm … We have, maybe, three days before Lantis hits us—”

  “Lantis—I’d succeeded in forgetting her for three minutes.” Sears drooped his head against the column of Mister Smith’s foreleg; eyes closed, he cursed without humor. He dredged up almost forgotten wor
ds from the old years of Earth, from bars, docks, dissecting rooms, at least four major religions. He cursed Lantis root and branch, ancestry and posterity, heart, body, and brain. Regaining a trace of mirth, he outlined a program of correction that would have kept hell under forced draft for a thousand years. Still with closed eyes, he asked, “What’s the point, Ed? What’s the damned point?”

  “How many of these critters have you tamed?”

  “Five. There’s another smelling around, not ready yet.”

  “And five riders—you ride ’em, don’t you, Paul?” Paul nodded.

  Abara and Mister Johnson returned in silence, under the trees behind Spearman, who was unaware of them. Sears said, “Paul’s good. Good balance.”

  “So you have a rider for each mount.… Well, I talked it over with Doc—he says it’s your department. What if a bunch of those animals, with armed riders—”

  “No,” said Sears. “Quite impractical.”

  “Why?”

  “Well … They won’t go in the open—omasha.”

  “They will at night, you told me.”

  “They are not fighters.”

  “If they go where you order ’em—”

  Sears said, “No. If Paul and I and the two strongest giants were trying that, what’s left? You, Doc, Surok, and the giant women.”

  Spearman snapped: “Then use only three—Abara, Mijok, Elis.”

  “Mijok will fight beside Chris. You know that. So will I.”

  Spearman turned away, noticing Abara and Mister Johnson for the first time and ignoring them. Popeyes watched him from a mountain of white flesh. “All right. Oh, I almost forgot: Doc wants you back at the camp for another conference. It has just occurred to him that since we’re about to be wiped off the planet we ought to have a military commander. For the look of the thing, you reckon? You know, I dreamed of space travel from the time I was five. Never imagined I’d do it with a Sunday school. Don’t hurry of course. Just come when it damn well suits you.”