by Sam Smith
We rested awhile to speculate on the people who had cultivated this orchard, who they might have been, why they might have abandoned it. But both Dag and I felt constrained not to pursue our theories in case we should frighten Malamud. We decided to press on up into the foothills to see if we could find any other signs of habitation.
The flora of the planet seemed to change with the altitude, different kinds of trees growing in bands along the hillside, until all vegetation dwindled up into bare mountain rock.
Directly above the orchard was a forest. Within the forest it was cool and shady, the soil dark. Here we were not pestered by the biting insects; and, with the leafy treetops forming a much lower ceiling and the grey tree trunks a serried wall, I felt much more at ease.
Our progress through the forest was unobstructed. Indeed we found several pathways.
Believing at first that these paths may have been worn by feet similar to ours, we cautiously attempted to follow them. But all disappeared into thickets of thorn. We concluded, therefore, that they had been made by creatures smaller than ourselves.
We did make one important discovery in that band of woods. This was a tree whose branches were weighted down with spherical objects the size of our heads. These objects Dag had not encountered in his philosophic ramblings. We swung them from their long stalks, tested their weight, rapped our knuckles on them and wondered what they could be.
Malamud grew impatient with our theorising and tried to yank one from its stalk. The stalk was difficult to break. The tree was on a steep slope. When the stalk did break Malamud and the object went tumbling over one another down the hill. They fetched up at the base of a tree.
The object broke, smearing Malamud's face with its white insides. He sat there comically wiping it from his eyes. Then he experimentally smacked his lips, followed immediately by a shout of pleasure,
"Ice cream!" He began immediately cramming it into his mouth, “Warm ice cream!”
Dag and I pulled another from the tree. When we had cracked it open we found the inside to be uniformly white and of a foamy texture. Tentatively I took some on my fingertip and tasted it. Ice cream was not an exact description: it was not sweet enough. But nor did it have the tang of acidity that the orchard fruit had had. I called them cake fruit. Although I realised later that cake, too, was a misnomer; what I had meant had been bread. Even that would not have been strictly accurate. For, although I have since found descriptions of similar fruits on other planets, cake fruit did seem peculiar to that place on that planet.
Our hunger satisfied, we climbed on up. And the higher we went the higher my spirits rose. Probably that was simply my having a full belly rather than any effect of altitude. And you may wonder that I had so recklessly gorged myself on cake fruit. But, by the time we had reached there, it had become obvious to me that we were in no imminent danger from our diet and we had to eat, and if we were going to die then it might as well be with full bellies. We had no choice but to experiment on ourselves.
In the next band of trees we found another source of food. These, Dag said, were called nuts. He had eaten some similar to this variety once, said that they were considered a great delicacy, which I suspect was due more to their scarcity in the city than in any pleasure in eating them. About the size of a thumbnail, they were hard, oval and green. By breaking the tough outer shell between two stones, the woody exterior could then be discarded and the pithy flesh within eaten. Dag maintained that they were a good source of protein.
I had kept one half of the cake fruit's brittle shell. This I now proceeded to fill with nuts while Dag and Malamud wandered off to inspect a cliff that we had seen jutting up through the trees. When they didn't return, for we had decided that we had come far enough for one day and were going to make our way back to the shuttle, I followed them to the cliff.
The face of the cliff was perforated with caves: some barely large enough to crawl into, others so wide that the shuttle could have been stored there. I followed Dag and Malamud's voices into one cave. A passageway led upwards towards the light.
I arrived behind them as they stood in the mouth of another cave. This cave looked out over the treetops. Below us was the forest and the desert. The far range of mountains could not be seen: a shimmering heat haze lay over the desert. But there below us, at the end of its own apostrophe, sat our shuttle — bright as a star.
“We'll have to cover it,” Dag said, “It's too easily seen from these hills.”
I agreed. But Malamud started to make facetious comments about first having to uncover the shuttle and then to cover it up again. So Dag proposed that we examine the other caves. Malamud, grumbling, followed us.
Some of the caves went so far back under the mountain that, without lights, we didn’t dare follow them.
"You don’t suppose these could have been old mine shafts?" Dag said. I thought not: the sides were too uneven.
“Besides," I said, “a special licence is required to mine on an inhabited planet."
As if to prove that the planet was indeed inhabited, in the next cave we entered we found the remains of a fire in a blackened circle of stones. It also looked as if the cave entrance had once been blocked off with wood; and along either side of the fire was more rotted wood, on which, we supposed, the occupants of the cave must have slept.
Dag and I wondered when they had left the cave, the likelihood of their returning. Malamud asked us why we were so concerned.
"Because," Dag said somewhat impatiently, “they will probably be hostile to us."
"I very much doubt that," Malamud said. "They're in the same rotten fix as us. Trying to make a go of this beastly planet. Why should they be hostile to us?”
Dag explained to Malamud the preoccupation of planetary intelligence with territory, with groupings, how they fought wars over it.
“See that desert?” Dag said. "Suppose one group claimed half as its own, another group claimed half as its own, and they agreed on an imaginary line drawn down the middle of it. Suppose then that one group crossed that imaginary line, the other group would attack and kill them. Although the desert can be of no use to either of them. This — all that you can see before you — is someone else's territory. Someone on this planet is bound to have claimed it as their own. We are trespassers. If we are discovered they might kill us.”
The idea was so preposterous to Malamud that he believed that Dag was making fun of him. And when I earnestly endeavoured to convince him that such was the case, be became even more determined in his belief that we were mocking his ignorance. Realising that Malamud could not be persuaded to the truth, we gave up and continued our exploration of the other caves. No other cave betrayed signs of occupation.
By now we had been within the caves for some time. I brought to Dag’s attention the constancy of the temperature. On entering the caves, compared with the heat outside, they had seemed cool; now they were comfortable. And at every cave entrance my eyes were drawn to the gleaming shuttle.
Dag's thoughts must have been running along lines similar to my own for he suggested that we move into the caves. So, once again, while I had been toying with a possibly good idea, Dag had decided.
"At least give it a try for one night,” he said. "And, if we like it, then stay here.”
Malamud was opposed to the idea, said that it was cold enough in the shuttle at night, here it would be even colder.
“The opposite," I said; and I told him how the rocks would probably retain the heat of the day for far longer then the thin metal of the shuttle.
“And what if They come back?" Malamud gestured to the detritus of the last occupants. Dag doubted that they would, not after being absent so long, said that we'd be in greater danger of discovery in the environs of the shuttle.
'Its very brightness is bound to attract the curious.”
"It might also attract the rescue services,” Malamud pertinently objected. "And we won't be there to be rescued."
“I've thought of that,” Dag sai
d. “We will be able to see them from here. And, before they've started to search for us down there, we will have reached them. One of us can always be on lookout here. And, should our little star down there attract those from this planet, then we will have ample time in which to hide ourselves." The caves had many entrances and exits.
Malamud raised more objections. On what would we sleep? Dag told him that we could make beds of leaves. And what of warmth? I told him that a fire was easily made — through friction. And what of wild beasts? Dag said that we could barricade ourselves in at night with fallen branches.
Malamud, still failing to grasp the necessity of leaving the shuttle, reiterated and rephrased his objections. But the decision had been made, and, the planet’s sun being long past its zenith, we made our way back to the shuttle.
Our return journey passed without incident, save that we glimpsed a flock of small twittering yellow birds.
"A tiny portion of the dawn's racket," Malamud dismissed them.
By the lake we were again bitten by insects; and, when we reached the shuttle, although the sun was setting, the door handle was too hot to touch with the naked hand. We had to wrap leaves around the handle to be able to turn it. Inside the shuttle the air was fetid. And that, I believe, was what decided Malamud that our removal was necessary, for his protestations forthwith lacked their previous conviction.
So ended our second day on the planet.
Chapter Six
Moving home, our first encounters with wild animals and other natural phenomena, a near catastrophe, followed by homesickness.
Neither our stomachs nor the cold awoke us our third night in the shuttle. The hooting and the wailing of the morning it was that roused us.
While we waited for the row to subside, scratching at our insect bites, we breakfasted on nuts, apples and cake. Dag then suggested that we proceed at once with the covering of the shuttle — before the day became too hot.
Because I knew where not to stand, though I had no fear of damaging the shuttle's exterior, Dag had me climb onto the roof of the shuttle. Dag and Malamud then passed fallen branches up to me. Malamud, of course, continually jibbed about having to go back on a job that we had sweated over before.
“Let's just hope," he said when we had finished, "that you two learned gentlemen don't change your minds again."
Then we trekked up to the caves.
"Just the one night," Malamud kept saying, loathe to leave what he regarded as the security of the shuttle.
We had worried that we would have little daylight left to prepare the cave for the night; but, knowing the way there, not tarrying as we had the day before to study our surroundings, we arrived long before the sun was at its zenith.
The caves were as we had left them.
That afternoon we went collecting fallen branches from the forest. Some we used to build a screen across the mouth of the cave. With others we blocked the entrances and exits that we would not be using; and some we earmarked for burning.
Malamud was sceptical of my ability to start a fire. I spent some time with him in the forest collecting all the necessary ingredients — a pliant vine, a curved branch, two pieces of hard wood, a round stick and some dry leaves.
Back in the cave I made the vine and the curved branch into a bow, held the round stick upright between the two pieces of hard wood; and, by sawing the vine back and forth, I made the round stick rapidly spin between the two pieces of wood. When smoke began to appear about the ends of the stick, I told Malamud to heap dry leaves about its lower end.
I continued sawing, puffed into the smoke; and, from the heap of leaves, there sprouted orange flames. Malamud was fascinated,
“How does it work?"
“Elementary transference of energy," I told him.
With the fire blazing, we went outside to see where the smoke emerged from the cave; for, inside the cave, it appeared to disperse up through the ceiling. We found that once the smoke had wound its way up through the fissures and cracks within the cliff it was barely discernible, could only be smelt.
Our next consideration was the making of beds. Dag suggested that we use small leafy branches as covers. We could, he said, place them over ourselves once we had lain down. So we spent the rest of that afternoon tearing small branches from the trees. And, having collected a meal of cake and nuts, having discovered a stream beyond the cave and filled some empty cake shells with water, we looked with some satisfaction around our new dwelling.
Even with the heat of the day, the fire did not make the cave unbearably torpid. We had food and warmth and bedding.
Before night came we went to one of the higher caves to look down upon the shuttle. The path that it had made through the desert still showed us where it was, but it was not now so immediately visible.
Back in our cave we sat around the flickering glow of our fire and, no longer governed by the planet’s day and night, we talked. If this night was successful we agreed to stay in the cave, with one of us on lookout every day in case the rescue services should appear. To meet such an eventuality, Malamud proposed having a fire ready-built on the clifftop above the caves, so that whoever was on lookout could set fire to it, thus drawing the rescuers’ attention to us and alerting the other two — wheresoever they may be.
We made other contingency plans. And, while we talked, Malamud fed the fire and Dag experimented with some sharp flat stones he had found on one of the lower slopes. From amongst the firewood be selected a forked stick. Then, with the same pliant vine that I had used to make the fire bow, he secured one of the stones between the fork, made himself a hatchet. He practised chopping at a few sticks, pronounced himself satisfied.
Tired, we prepared ourselves for sleep. Laying around the fire we pulled the branches over us. We said our goodnights, and I lay looking through the flames at the two green mounds that contained my friends.
I was pleased that we were adapting so well to our straitened circumstances, was proud of our resourcefulness in making a fire and a hatchet. Yet I was also saddened to think that three such civilised people should have had to sink to such primitive artefacts. We belonged to Space, not to this barbarous planet. And while I lay there I noticed that my companions' eyes too were open; and I wondered what their thoughts might be.
I awoke once that night — to see Malamud reaching out of his green nest to throw more sticks onto the fire. Wondering if we would ever be rescued, I fell back to sleep. Then I was being dragged from my dreams by the hullabaloo of morning.
"Just where do all those creatures hide themselves?" Malamud asked.
Shaking ourselves free of our leafy bedding we took stock, declared the experiment a success, and decided to stay in the cave. So began our life there.
The wound on my forehead healed — although, because of their amateurish sutures, it left a noticeable scar — and our days settled into a steady routine. The daily chores we soon divided to each our satisfaction. In the cool of morning we collected our bowls of water from the stream, then wood for the fire, and food from whatever source. Dag made each of us a vine belt so that we could wear our tunics tucked up, not have then trailing through the dirt. He also made a hatchet each for Malamud and I, which we wore stuck into our belts.
Evenings Malamud sat for hours staring into the fire, became our authority on which woods burnt at which speeds. He noticed that certain woods oozed a tarry substance as they burnt. This tar he began to collect, winding it around the end of a green stick. He then discovered that this tar would burn on its own without burning the stick. So he made us all torches and we explored the deepest caves.
One cave contained a sinister blackwater pool, another the white droppings of a scaly creature that roosted upside down on the ceiling. About four hundred meters further under the mountain we found a large airy cavern. This cavern had a small hole for an entrance; and, for an exit, a long narrow tunnel, which led up to daylight. Malamud crawled up this tunnel, found himself in the forest far above the caves.
We decided to make this cavern our sanctuary; then, if ever we were in danger of discovery by the planet's inhabitants, we could retreat there. The cavern contained many loose rooks which could be used to block the entrance; and there we could remain until it was safe for us to leave. To meet such a circumstance we stored some nuts, some uncracked cake fruit and several bowls of water there.
I soon became our permanent lookout. Dag and Malamud awoke eager every morning to go off exploring, while I was content to lean one-legged in a cave entrance and, gazing down over the roof of the forest, lose myself in thoughts. Not that I was incurious about the planet, but I did not relish the insect bites and the scratches which Dag and Malamud daily brought home with them.
In fact I can say that I saw almost as much from the caves as they did on their wanderings. I saw many varieties of birds swooping low over the treetops, two large animals one day racing across the desert floor. And one day I saw a black squall of rain come rushing along the side of the mountains. I watched it descend to the desert and disappear — shattered by the heat. And, during that afternoon, I saw a patch of the desert turn green; and I realised that it was not only green but patterned also with the colours of many flowers. By the time Malamud and Dag returned, though, the desert was brown again; and, having been further along the mountain, they had not even seen the squall.
Other days I watched the sand blowing over the desert, rising at times in a yellow cloud, to lay again in ridges as thematic as music. And some days an idea whereby I might repair the shuttle would occur to me. So I would rush hotfoot down the mountainside. Only to trudge homeward at the end of day, disappointed and contemptuous of my ineffectual self.
At first Dag and Malamud made their explorations together — believing that was safer. But, as their interests lay in different directions, they soon went their separate ways.