Chapter 57
Hearing this, Em again fell into deep thought. In spite of Seler shining much more weakly than the day-star, and more weakly than electric lamps, Bame still clearly distinguished the changes taking place on his interlocutor’s face. His expression became more and more calm and decisive at the same time.
Finally, Em shook his head and said, “It seems that not intelligence but emotions are holding me back—the chemical reactions that occur in our body are not always due to logical reasons, and, as we have been taught, it is wrong to rely on them.”
Bame nodded in agreement and added, “The plan of colonization does not allow actions based on emotions, as they would destroy the plan itself. We have been following the path of common sense from birth, and thanks to it, the development of our colony is flawless. In the end, the SQP authors knew what they were doing, and it was not by chance that they arranged this exam for us. They wanted to choose the best of us.”
Em listened to him and simultaneously nodded several times along to his own thoughts. Then he asked calmly, in a businesslike way, “So, how are we going to perform it? Will we just take a weapon and kill two men? Whom will we choose? First comers?”
“No. Maybe Ama and Omis really will not return,” Bame answered, also in a practical tone. “In this case, if we kill someone in advance, we would create a shortage of males. It would be unacceptable. We strive to eliminate a future problem, not create a new one in its place.”
“Yes, indeed, we—” Em started, but Bame interrupted him:
“It is better to pretend that it was an accident. We meet them outside the colony and, after completing our mission, we would say that we were mistaken; we mistook them for animals hiding among the plants.”
“When? Right now, or in the morning?” Em asked, and immediately answered himself. “Going now, at night, is pointless.”
Bame nodded and continued to lay out his plan, which it seemed he was composing while talking, “Tomorrow, at first we must go in the opposite direction, toward the ocean.”
“Why?”
“Because we cannot tell the truth to the others,” Bame explained. “So we will pretend that we headed to the ocean, and later we can say that we had gone astray.”
“But would it not be suspicious that we left so suddenly, without preliminary preparation and discussion?” Now Em was carefully checking to see if his comrade had thought through every detail of his plan.
After a brief silence, Bame reluctantly admitted, “This paragraph seems to need clarification.”
“So you did not weigh everything to the end?” doubt reappeared in Em’s voice.
“Yes, it turns out that I haven’t,” agreed Bame. “Help me.”
In response, Em thought for a few minutes, and then began to speak hesitantly, “We can say that for a long time we have not visited the coastline of the ocean, and now we want to see if something might have changed there. Perhaps this change is so significant that information about it should be included in the report? What if something is happening there that threatens the colony?"
Bame shook his head in disbelief and said, “As if earthlings can really advise us on something, eh? Well, nevertheless, after this story we can go south, being visible to someone, and later, already hiding in the forest, we will alter our course and turn north.”
“What if they come back before we leave?” Em remembered another question.
Bame thought for a moment before he answered, “About three months from now, when we are twenty, we will find out the results of the pairing, and then we will come up with some new plan.”
“Well, I think we’ve correctly weighed every detail,” Em said. “There is nothing to be done about it. Natural selection is the same everywhere, including in the galaxy—”
He stopped talking, although Bame saw that his comrade had not yet finished his speech. Soon, Em continued, “From the very first day of the colony’s existence, death has accompanied it. At first, the robots destroyed the wild creatures; next we killed both wild and domestic animals. Now, it seems, the time has come for humans.”
Later that night, they packed their things, took food from the kitchen, and left their house at dawn. They were occupying the building closest to the River Quiet. If they had headed straight to the ocean from their home, they would have had to pass by the living zone, going around it from the south. But since they wanted to meet someone and at the last moment tell them about their trip, they went through the center. There, to their delight, they met one of their comrades—Ifi.
The girl sat in the refectory, enjoying the cool of the morning and the quiet rise of Ro. She was watching the luminary gilding the forest outside the colony, already painted orange by nature. When Ifi heard where the young men were going, she said, “I wish I could go with you, but I am on duty today.”
Bame immediately gave her the answer they’d prepared in advance precisely for this case: “Nothing will come of it. We prepared in the evening and we plan to come back today. We do not want to miss their return. If we wait for you, time would be lost. So we are going right now.”
“I see,” Ifi nodded.
After this short conversation, they left without delay. Ifi sat for a while, and then, when she was about to start her duty, she suddenly realized that the young men had departed rather oddly for their trip. Such a hike was always planned in advance and everyone normally knew about it. Ifi, with belated bewilderment, cast a glance at them. She saw that they’d already moved off from the residential zone to quite a distance.
Chapter 58
“Is it possible to continue our march without food, with only one maser, and without space navigation?” Omis asked his companions.
“Food is not so important; we can easily survive without it for one day,” Ama said. “But everything else…” he stopped and looked around.
Omis listened to him attentively. Mafkona looked vacantly at the river as if she did not hear the words of her cohorts. Ama continued, “The loss of two masers and three UDs is a real bereavement, but now we have to finish the work with what we have left.”
Omis looked at him, puzzled, “Do you think we can still get the crystal?”
“What else can we do?” Ama asked. “The alternative is the loss of communication with Earth.”
Mafkona, standing still so far, flinched and began to speak: “No. We know the rule: establishing a rapport with Earth is a task of paramount importance. We must fulfill it even if it threatens our lives. It seems that now we have encountered just such a situation.”
Ama was surprised a second time at the girl’s courage. The first time had been when she unexpectedly joined the tour.
“Well,” he said. “Let us think about our problem: we need to cross some twenty-two kilometers of unknown territory covered with dense forest, find the right place and do it without the help of a space guide. Is it possible?”
After only a second’s thought, Mafkona said calmly, “Instead of a space guide, we have topographic signs. Remember the hills that we saw from the cliff. We can climb plants and check our course with their help.”
“Indeed,” Ama perked up when he realized what the girl meant. “Did not we see with our own eyes both our goal and the hills that will serve us as road signs? It looks like we can really do this without space navigation. At least, to get the crystal and to return to this place, because, of course, this cliff will be visible from those hills.” He involuntarily glanced at the rock from which they had descended not so long ago.
Mafkona nodded, but Omis immediately reminded his companions, “We are short of weapons.”
“Weapons—” Ama began, and then he paused for a while before resuming, “Yes, this requires reflection. We have a maser, a bow, and six arrows... maybe in our situation an ax-hammer can also be considered a weapon.”
“So we are equipped?” Omis asked doubtfully.
“Who knows?”Ama answered him, “We have never experienced such a circumstance.”
; He bent down, and reached for a pebble. Then he got up and threw it into the water. After standing for a while, he squatted, took two more stones and began to knock them against each other. His friends silently looked between him and the current, also thinking intensely.
Finally, Ama got up, and after he’d thrown the other pebbles into the water too, he voiced what he had just thought out: “The main thing is, as Mafkona said, that we have no choice. Therefore, we must do this with what we have. But I doubt whether it is correct to continue our outing together. Three masers and ten arrows are not equal to one maser and six arrows. Perhaps all of this would have been enough in the forest around the colony, but we have already learned that truly unfamiliar and dangerous animals live in this new place. Therefore, we are forced to make changes to the original plan, taking into account the situation, not the rules.”
He stopped, but his companions just looked at him expectantly, awaiting further explanation. Ama continued by addressing Omis, “As you say, we have a shortage of weapons. Since we do not have the opportunity to get more masers, we must reduce our group. In this case, we will have more weapons per person.”
“Do you mean that one of us should return to the colony empty-handed?” Omis clarified.
“Not really, but it seems that six arrows can only be useful in the vicinity of the colony. We have already spent almost half of them, and barely approached the border of an alien area. What benefit will we have from the bow if we lose the remaining six arrows, say, in the next couple of hours?”
“Indeed, if we had known that such beasts live in here, we would not have taken the long-bow with us, because it would be pointless." Mafkona said pensively.
“The person who returns can send a rescue team to this place, the route to which is already written in the satellite’s memory.”
Omis added another idea to the conversation: “This team, equipped with space navigation, will help us to get to the colony surely, so that we are not late.”
“Right,” Mafkona backed him, although not entirely, “But this plan has one weak point—we do not have road signs on the way to the colony.”
“Ye-es,” Ama drawled the word. “There are no landmarks on the road to the colony, only a continuous forest.”
“This is not entirely true,” Omis did not agree with him. “There is one clear guide line on the route from here to the colony.”
Seeing the puzzled glances of his companions, he explained, “We walked here, albeit a little, but still constantly uphill. Therefore, on the way back, we will go downhill. As soon as you feel that you are no longer descending, you can guess that you are moving in the wrong direction.”
His comrades listened to him, but were in no hurry to agree.
“In this case, there is an equal chance that you will go southeast to the colony or southwest to the boundless forest,” Ama expressed his doubts.
Omis thought for a moment, and then said, “How can we stray from the way that we passed just a few hours ago?”
“I have to say,” the girl answered without hesitation, “That today, or during any other outings, I did not memorize the landmarks. Why should I, the owner of the orbital positioning, need this?"
The two youths looked at each other. Then Ama nodded to Omis and said to him, “You should return and send the rescue team, as you are already familiar with the relief, you know the direction, the sky is clear, and Ro will prompt you the time more or less accurately. Maybe you will even see our footprints somewhere."
Omis looked at his comrades and said firmly, “It will be difficult for me to get lost with so many clues. In an extreme case, I will just walk straight to the east till the River Quiet, and along its bank I will certainly reach the colony.”
Mafkona said to him, “You will probably have to stay home. You will be tired and unable to walk as fast as the rescuers.”
Omis just nodded to her, and by this the council ended. The young people began to carry out their tasks, as usual, without a farewell. The robots had never used words that did not make sense to them, and so neither did humans reared by them.
Chapter 59
Mafkona and Ama went to the very edge of the river. The youth carried a backpack, and the girl a maser. Omis took the bow and the quiver, and turned to the rocky wall to examine it once again. He remembered Mafkona’s worry about how they would overcome this vertical obstacle on the way back. Then they had just jumped down, but now what?
Omis also recalled that he’d told the girl that they could bring a fallen plant and use it as a ladder. Now it became clear that it would not be so simple. Tree-like, large, branched plants grew only on the opposite bank of the Warm, or in the forest above the cliff. And here there was only a coastal strip covered with boulders, stones, and pebbles. For a while the young man looked at the wall and then turned left to the geysers. He hoped to find a better place for ascension.
For approximately fifty meters, the rock remained impregnable, as before, but finally, after a few more steps, Omis noticed a horizontal fissure, several chinks, and a ledge on the surface of the sheer rock. These apertures could serve to help him to his goal. The main difficulty waited for him at the beginning of the climb. Despite his tall growth, he couldn’t reach even the lowest fissure, showing as a black strip at a height of about three meters.
Omis wondered if he should call for help from his companions. He turned around and looked at the river. There, Mafkona and Ama were turning the tent into a raft. He decided that it would be wrong to distract them and that he had to cope by himself. Here a suitable thought occurred to him.
The young man began to wander about in search of rocks that might be suitable to his idea. It took some time, but in the end, he found several large stones with relatively flat surfaces. He carried them in turn to the foot of the cliff and stacked one on top of another to get a column a little over half a meter high.
Having finished this preparation, he again looked at his former fellow travelers. With the help of a small plastic pump installed above the entrance, when the fabric was a tent, they had already inflated their mattress. Now his comrades were fastening the oars to their nests. Last night, these folding plastic sticks had served as supports.
Omis returned to his business. He carefully put his left foot on the top of his pillar and, slightly pushing off with his other foot, stood on it. Here he first bent his knees, then bounced with outstretched arms and seized the edge of the crack.
Hanging on his own fingers, he began his ascent one meter high. Despite such a short distance, it took a long time. The irregularities on this surface actually were extremely shallow, and it took many efforts to grope for a suitable one and hang his weigh on it or insert his sandal’s toe into it.
Almost having reached the upper edge, he heard the sound of obscure slaps. He wanted to glance there but could not turn his head and look back. A minute later, Omis finally grabbed the top of the wall, first with his left hand and then with his right one. Now he hung on his arms and tried to put his left leg into the split to which he had jumped from his pedestal. Suddenly, in the surrounding silence Mafkona’s shrill cry came from the river.
The young man flinched and at that moment his left palm slipped from the support. As a result his large body remained hanging only from the fingers of his right hand. A moment later, when these fingers straightened, unable to bear his weight, Omis slipped along the rock and fell onto his stone structure, half collapsed after his jump. During this slipping, as he instinctively turned his face aside, afraid to scratch it against the wall, with his right temple he hit a small knob imperceptibly jutting from that stone wall.
A deafening sound rang in his head. For a moment the youth even lost his sight, and the pain pierced his temple so sharply it was as if the RA-5 had passed current not through his hand but through his head. The young man sat on a stone, leaning back against the wall. He didn’t even feel the pain in his backside, which had hit a pedestal. Instead, a very strange sense engulfed him, as if he weren’t
sitting motionless, but was spinning and at the same time something was pressing on his temples. He couldn’t think and it was difficult for him to breathe.
Omis sat motionless. Gradually the ringing in his head subsided, and the pain lessened. At the same time, his ability to think returned to him, and he understood more and more clearly that he needed to wait until the pain and dizziness were gone, and only then should he try to get up.
Indeed, the noise soon almost completely disappeared, and his vision was restored to its usual sharpness. Only in his right temple there remained an unpleasant throb. He rubbed it and almost screamed in pain. After that, Omis again had to sit still and wait for the new pain to disappear. As soon as he felt better, he, first of all looked at the river.
The raft had passed beyond the middle of the Warm. Ama and Mafkona were peering into the water looking for something. From his place, Omis couldn’t see what was happening there. Much narrower than the Quiet, this river, nevertheless, had at least three hundred meters breadth. Of course, he didn’t notice anything dangerous, and now even doubted whether he really heard Mafkona’s or someone else’s cry.
He felt better and better. Having almost completely recovered, he realized that since nothing threatened his comrades, he could start his second attempt. Omis repaired his stone column, climbed on it and jumped again. Being already better experienced, this time he clambered more confidently, and even the slight dizziness that he still felt didn’t impede him. He repeated the same path upwards, but this time more carefully and calmly. The effort appeared successful, and the youth finally ended up on top of the steep wall.
Having gained support for his feet, he turned and looked at the watercourse of the Warm. Omis saw his comrades rowing, and the raft approaching the opposite bank. Apparently, the stream was faster than it seemed. For some time he accompanied them with his gaze, and then he turned back to the cliff and resumed his ascent, this time along the much easier part.
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