There was a great cry. Jeydee’s corpse was lifted up by two huge females and carried down the other side of the slope to the camp at its bottom. The captives were herded at spearpoint to a log cabin near the huts. Evidently this had been used many times to hold prisoners while the tribe held a feast. The door was barred, and two guards were stationed outside it. This cabin was much smaller than the one in the village and had no windows.
Vana said, ‘It looks as if we’re reprieved until after the next sleep-time.’
Deyv, looking out through the space between two logs, gasped. He said nothing until he had gone to the wall, though. Then he whispered that they should gather around him.
‘I saw Jum and Aejip at the edge of the jungle! They appeared for only a second, then went back in! They’ve escaped and followed us!’
The Yawtl said, ‘What of it? Even if they sneaked in while all but the guards are sleeping, and they killed the guards, how would that help us? We couldn’t reach through and lift that bar in time. It’s tied with a rope. By the time we got it untied the whole camp would be roused.’
‘Some of us might get away,’ Deyv said. ‘I’m going to try. I won’t just sit here and make it easy for them.’
By then the corpse had been degutted and beheaded, and the legs cut off. Five hardwood spits were forced through the torso and the limbs, and these were placed on forked sticks over the fires. A female brought food and water for the prisoners. They ate it all, though they were glum. The celebration continued until all the brown liquor was drunk and the corpse and other food were devoured. One by one, the Tsimmanbul crawled into their makeshift huts. The guards, who had been forbidden to drink much, sat by the door talking in low pipings. Now and then they got up to hold their torches to the entrance and look within.
‘What do you make of this Phemropit?’ Deyv asked Sloosh.
‘Whatever else it is, it’s our death,’ the Archkerri said. ’Unless we find some way of communicating with it. Even then, it might kill us. Perhaps it can’t help it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I could be wrong. But I think that it uses that beam of light as we use sound. What only impinges with no bad effect upon others of its kind, as voice on our ears, pierces beings of softer stuff. Stone or metal can take the beam; flesh can’t. I think that the creature doesn’t know it’s killing other creatures. But then perhaps it wouldn’t care if it did. I’ll speculate that until it emerged from under the tree, it had never seen anything but its own metal-stone kind.’
‘You mean that it had lived on the meteor before it fell? That it was a native of a large rock that spun through cold airless space?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘It doesn’t breathe air? But how could it live?’
‘It might, probably must, get its food from eating rock. Or perhaps it lives on radiation, certain elements which would kill you or me but are its breath of life and its meat and bread.’
There seemed little else to say about the thing. Deyv lay down on the ground in a corner. He wished he had Jum to snuggle against. During the last of The Beast’s passage, the air had grown chilly. He shivered. It was then that Vana sat down by him and asked softly, ‘Could I lie in your arms? I’m cold.’
He was so surprised that he could say nothing for a moment.
‘But…’
‘But nothing. I just want to warm myself with your body. I don’t want to make love with you. I know how you feel about an eggless. I don’t blame you. I feel the same way towards you. That is, I did for a long time. But lately, I’ve been thinking. We’ve gone a long long time without the soul eggs. Yet… we have survived without them. They haven’t been necessary, even if we do miss them now and then. Perhaps the plant-man was right when he said that we might find out we don’t need them.’
‘We’re still without souls.’
‘Are we? You know Sloosh is rather wise, even if he is sometimes arrogant and even ridiculous. He said that it is the body which grows the soul. No body, no soul. The eggs, he said, are mere psychological aids. They are crutches, and a healthy person doesn’t need crutches. Nor can the eggs provide us with souls.’
‘He doesn’t know everything,’ Deyv said. ‘What you’re saying is wicked. It means that we’ve been lied to. Would our parents and grandparents and the shamans and all our ancestors have believed in soul eggs if they weren’t what they said they were? They couldn’t have been so mistaken.’
‘Sloosh says that the Earth is round. He proved that. Yet we’ve been told by our elders that it is flat.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Just let me lie in your arms and get warm. I didn’t come to you to argue. I’m tired of all the disagreements and squabbles we’ve had. I just want to be next to you and get warm before death makes me cold forever.’
Deyv opened his arms. She lay down close to him, her breast on his, her arm thrown over his other breast, her head on his shoulder.
After a while, his shoulder became wet.
‘I hope you don’t mind if I weep,’ she said. ‘It is a terrible thing to die so far away from your tribe. If my egg hadn’t been stolen, I’d be with my tribe, or at least with my husband’s. I would’ve been married and would have had at least one child by now. But it’s never to be.’
Deyv said, ‘I’m weeping, too. It is an awful thing.’
‘It’s not so bad holding a soulless next to you, is it?’ she said. ‘You don’t feel nauseated, do you?’
‘I thought I would,’ he said. ‘But no, it isn’t. You feel just like any woman with a soul. And if we were alone, I would lie with you. I think that if you had your egg, you’d make a good wife for me. Of course, I couldn’t tell unless we could match the eggs.’
‘Do we really need them? Can’t we tell what our hearts say, not some stone?’
‘You mustn’t talk such nonsense.’
‘I wish you’d both quit your nonsense,’ the Yawtl said. ’You’re keeping me awake. I would like to point out, however, that the witches don’t have soul eggs, and they don’t miss them one bit.’
‘But they’re evil,’ Deyv said, annoyed that Hoozisst had been eavesdropping. ‘They don’t have eggs because theirs went sour.’
‘Originally, yes,’ the Yawtl said. ‘The founders of the witch families had no eggs or they had mismatched eggs and so were driven from their tribes. And they found artifacts of the ancients and became powerful. They also made it their tradition not to have eggs. Why should they? They didn’t need them. Besides -’
‘Besides,’ Sloosh buzzed, ‘the witches are no more evil than anyone else. The tribes say they are because they fear them and they can’t understand them or anyone who would live without the eggs. But the witches are no more greedy for power than the tribespeople. It’s just that they have the means with which to attain more power.’
‘Has everyone been listening to us?’ Deyv asked angrily.
‘It helps pass the time,’ Feersh said. ‘What Hoozisst and the plant-man say is true, though. And you two have been very stupid. You could have been enjoying each other all during your journey. Now it’s too late.’ She laughed loudly.
‘Shut up ‘ Deyv said. ‘You are evil!’
At that moment the guards began a screaming piping. A beast snarled, and a guard fell with his back against the log gate. Deyv leaped up and saw the rosetted body of Aejip, her fangs buried in the Tsimmanbul’s throat. From beside the doorway came more screaming and a deep ferocious growling.
Deyv pushed through the slaves and almost knocked the blind woman down getting to the door. He began untying the rope, one arm thrust through a lower space and the other in the space above the heavy log. Hoozisst came to aid him. Meanwhile, the cat had left the dead guard to help Jum with the other. By then the sleepers had been roused by the uproar. They stumbled out of their little huts, looked around, and saw the bodies and the animals by the torchlight. Seizing their weapons, they ran towards the cabin.
The c
at and the dog bounded off into the darkness. Deyv had to withdraw his arms to prevent their being speared.
The Yawtl had reached under the lowest log of the door and pulled in the dead guard’s stone tomahawk. A little while later, he had to surrender it. The shaman had checked the weapons, found one missing and guessed at once where it was.
He raged around for a while, uttering threats at the prisoners. They were unimpressed. He was not going to torture them because they were the messengers to the god and had to have clear minds to deliver the messages. Nor would he slay them on the spot. His god would not like that.
After a while, the shaman quieted down. Before he went back to his hut, he stationed two guards on each side of the cabin. That quenched Deyv’s hope that the animals might try again. They would know that they had no chance against eight alert warriors.
31
While breakfasting, they wondered who would be eaten for supper. Fat Bull answered that some time later by pointing out Tishdom. She screamed and struggled but was carried off and tied to the post. Presently, she was limp and silent, having failed also. Her body was taken back over the hill to be prepared for lunch, not supper. It was Shig, last of the slaves, who provided this item.
The shaman then indicated that Deyv was next. He stood pale, in shock, while Vana embraced him and wept.
‘You won’t have to question the god just now,’ Fat Bull said. ‘You have until some time before the next supper to work out how to please Phemropit.’
This is ridiculous!’ Sloosh buzzed. ‘You stupid Narakannetishaw could kill off the entire population of the world and still not get what you want from the god. You’re going about this the wrong way. Phemropit doesn’t have the slightest idea what you’re trying to do. He doesn’t know your language, but he is trying to communicate with you.
‘What you dullards must do is what you did with us. That is, teach him your language.’
His colleagues thought it was indiscreet to insult the person who held their lives in his hands. But then, what difference did it make?
‘He is our god,’ Fat Bull said. ‘Are you telling me that our god would not be able to speak with our tongue?’
‘Yes,’ Sloosh said. ‘It would be obvious to any but the lowest intelligence that he doesn’t. Or perhaps I should say that it’s not so much a lack of intelligence that has made you err as your pattern of thinking. To you a god can do anything, so this one must be able to speak your language. At the same time, you have refused to see that Phemropit is, for some reason, immobile. He’s not moving not because he doesn’t want to move but because he can’t.’
‘I’ll overlook your insults, cabbage-head,’ the shaman said. ’I can understand why you’re not so friendly. But what you say about Phemropit isn’t true. He’s a god, and so-’
‘And so he can do anything he wishes to do. Nonsense! I can prove to you that he can’t move.’
The shaman looked interested. He strode away and picked up his sticks and threw them seven times. Then he came back.
‘Deyv must still be tied to the post. The gods so decree it.’
‘Very well,’ the Archkerri said. ‘Tie him to it. But’ first move the post a few feet to one side.’
‘But then the god can’t see him!’
‘You just said your god could do anything. Why couldn’t he see Deyv? I’ll guarantee that the god will be able to see him.’
‘And if the guarantee is no good? What then?’
‘Then I’ll let you tie me to the post.’
The shaman burst out into shrill piping laughter.
‘You’ll let me? You have a fine sense of humour, walking-cauliflower. Very well. I’ll do as you suggest. I do want to tell the god what to do, for his best interests and ours. Look!’
He pointed down the slope to the right of the god. A warrior was just putting the cube on the ground.
‘While I slept, my ancestor, White Flippers, came to me and said that I should tell the god that if he doesn’t talk to us we’ll destroy him with that.’
Sloosh buzzed in his own speech so that the shaman couldn’t understand him. ‘I’ve heard of bribing gods but never of threatening them. Well, theology is a strange business, but it has its own logic, I suppose.’
To Fat Bull he said, ‘How do you propose to blow up Phemropit without also destroying yourselves?’
‘Easy. We’ll tie a rope to the rod and another rope to that one and as many ropes as are needed. Then we’ll hide behind this hill so we’ll be protected when we pull on the end of the rope.’
Sloosh closed his eyes. Deyv cried out in Vana’s speech that Sloosh mustn’t tell Fat Bull the truth. As long as the shaman believed that the cube was what Deyv said it was, he might be tricked.
The plant-man opened his eyes. ‘I wasn’t contemplating telling him the truth. I was just wondering why he was ignoring your statement that the cube would slay everything between here and the ocean.’
The shaman said, ‘What are you talking about? I don’t like you jabbering away in your gibberish. Are you telling one another ways to fool me? Believe me, you won’t get away with it.’
‘No,’ Sloosh said, ‘that’s not it. We were talking about what would happen if you did trigger off the cube’s devastating powers. You have forgotten that it will sear the jungle for miles around. The back of the hill wouldn’t shield you.’
‘I think you’re lying,’ Fat Bull said. ‘No magical device could be that powerful. You just want to scare us so much we’ll be afraid to use it.’
Deyv could see, by the light of the torch whose end was stuck in the ground, that the rope was not only being tied to the rod, it was being glued.
‘You’re right,’ he said to Fat Bull. ‘We were lying. You’ll be quite safe if you hide behind the hill, though you might be knocked down by the blast. However, you can’t threaten the god unless you can speak his tongue.’
The shaman went away to do some thinking about that. After a while, he returned. He ordered that the post should be moved a few feet to one side.
Deyv said, ‘Sloosh, I hope you know what you’re talking about.’
‘If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize.’
‘That’s very comforting.’
The digging up of the post was interrupted by an earthquake so severe that it rippled the earth and cracked open the beach. Other tremors, not so strong, followed. When it seemed that there would be no more, everybody got up off the ground and business was resumed.
Deyv saw a pair of red eyes glowing in the bush behind a warrior with a torch. He wondered if they could be Jum’s or Aejip’s. At that moment, he was unbound. If he broke for the jungle, he might make it. No. There were too many armed Tsimmanbul around. They’d porcupine him with spears before he was forty feet away.
Sloosh said, I think we could have left the post where it was. The quake has shifted the so-called god a little to its right.’
The Archkerri explained what he wanted done. Deyv said, ‘Why do I have to be tied to the post? I won’t run away.’
After thinking about this strange proposal, the shaman said, ‘Well, it’s not according to proper procedure. No, you can’t be free.’
Sloosh asked for a number of objects, and he picked up a flat but thick stone about two feet across. He accompanied Deyv to the post and, after some hesitation, Fat Bull joined them.
‘I want to know exactly what you’re doing when you’re doing it,’ he said. ‘And speak only my language.’
The plant-man waited until Deyv was tied, then he handed him the firefly. ‘As the Narakannetishaw have noted, the god emits light pulses of four differing lengths. They’re in groups, obviously some sort of photonic words. What we have to do is to teach him our, that is, my language. Once he learns that, we can start to learn his.’
Deyv extended the firefly in his left hand and began pressing on the insect. Sloosh had wanted to omit the ritual, but Fat Bull had insisted it be retained. At the end, the light beam shot out, but it struck the flat ston
e. Sloosh, standing to one side, had held it out in his hand. He withdrew it and looked at its surface. The beam had made a very small depression, warm around the rim.
‘It wouldn’t damage the metal-stone of its own kind,’ he said. ‘I suspect that that is shot with nickel-iron.’
He persuaded the shaman to set up another pole but one which had a slot at its top to hold the stone upright. Deyv began triggering flashes while the Archkerri held up some of the objects. Presently, the god-thing was repeating Deyv’s words.
‘Now,’ Sloosh said to the shaman, ‘do you see what a little intelligence may accomplish? You could have done this long ago. And you wouldn’t have killed so many people so uselessly.’
They weren’t so useless,’ Fat Bull said. They made very good eating. Tell me, how long will it be before Phemropit will be able to understand me well?’
‘At least as long as it took us to learn your speech and perhaps longer. After all, the god may have a mind which is very alien to ours. He may think in somewhat different categories, though I’m sure many of his must overlap ours.’
Fat Bull said that the tribe could not stay out there so long. As it was, they took a chance of being attacked by their enemies every time they came here. He hurried off to make arrangements while Sloosh and Deyv continued the lessons. The shaman’s people wished to observe the lessons, and they loathed the idea of not eating their captives. But, after Fat Bull berated them, they packed up.
Twelve warriors and three females stayed behind as guard. To make sure that the prisoners would not escape, the guards bound their hands and feet. Only when the captives were exercising or teaching Phemropit were they untied.
‘Actually, I don’t need you,’ the shaman said. ‘I can give the lessons to him myself. But why should I do all the work? Besides, you might arm yourselves and come back for revenge. I’ll let you loose when the whole tribe returns to witness the god as he sets out for our village.’
The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage Page 44