by Andre Norton
8. DESSIE’S MERMAN
WHEN NOTHING moved across that circle of light, they dared to retrieve their packs and go out.
The carrier had plunged full speed ahead, leaving the curve of the monorail. Under it, but crushed legs pinned to the sand and rock of the valley floor, threshed one of the monsters, writhing over the torn remains of the one Santee had shot earlier. Leaping out of the reach of the prisoned creature’s darting head the Terrans rounded its body and made for the opposite wall of the canyon.
Here the rock afforded holds and they pulled themselves up. But the lizard crushed beneath the car appeared to be alone and nothing menaced their retreat. Panting they reached the top and dared to look back.
Below the monster still fought insanely against the carrier which held it down. But if there were others of its fellows alive they had not joined it. Santee wiped his steaming face with the back of a hand.
“I still don’t know how we got outa that one, kid. It was sure a close call.”
“Too close. I want to catch up to the sled before we run into any more of those murdering devils.”
“Yeah,” Santee pulled ruefully at the sling of the rifle.
“Next time I go walkin’ I’m gonna have a lotta ammo! This here country’s got too many surprises.”
They set out at a sober pace, too exhausted by their exertions of the past hour to hurry. It was dusk growing into night before they found their way down a rise into another grassy plain. In the distance was a massed shadow of what could only be a wood.
Would they have to fight their way through or around that, Dard asked himself drearily. But a light reassured him. There was a campfire down there. Cully had landed the sled this side of the barrier.
As Santee and Dard dragged themselves wearily into the circle of firelight they were met with a flood of questions. Dard was too tired to try to answer. He ate and drank and crawled into his bedroll before all the tale of their adventure of the afternoon had been told. Kimber was very sober when it was complete.
“That was too close. We’ll have to go better armed when we explore. But now that we know there is no civilized threat to our colony it may be some time before we return this way. Tomorrow the sled will ferry us over the forest and the cliffs and we shall be home. Those are our cliffs there.”
“Home,” Dard repeated that word in his mind, trying to associate it with the sea valley, with the cave house of the star voyagers. A long, long time ago “home” had had a good meaning. Before the burning, before the purge. But his memory of that halcyon time was so dim. Then “home” had meant the farm, and cold, hunger, the constant threat of danger. Now “home” would be a cell hollowed out of a colored cliff on a weird world generations of time away from Terra.
In the morning he lazed about the camp with Santee while Cully, after a last tune-up of the limping engine, lifted the sled toward the sea with Kimber as the first passenger. It was an hour before the sled returned and the engineer ordered Dard into the listing craft. They flew slowly, skimming the barrier, and Cully did not take him all the way down the sea valley to the cliff house, but dropped him with his pack at the edge of the ancient fields.
Dard swished through the tall grass. He could see people moving in the distant fields, more of them than had been about when he had left. More of tthee sleepers had probably been aroused.
Then a clear, lilting whistle announced the boy, some years younger than himself, who came driving before him three calves. He stopped short when he caught sight of the battered explorer and smiled.
“Hi! You’re Dard Nordis, ain’t you? Say, you musta had yourself a time-seein’ them ruined cities and the lizards and all! I’m gonna go out and see ’em, too-when I can get Dad to let me. I’m Lanny Harmon. Can you wait ’til I stake out these critters? I’d like to go back with you.”
“Sure.” Dard eased his pack to the ground and watched Lanny tether the calves in the pasture.
“They sure do like this kinda grass,” the farm boy explained as he came back. “Hey, let me carry that there pack for you. Mr. Kimber said you had a big fight with some giant lizards. Are they worse’n those flyin’ dragons?”
“They sure are,” Dard replied feelingly. “Say, is everybody awake now?”
“Everybody’s that’s goin’ to.” A shadow darkened the boy’s face for a moment. “Six didn’t come through. Dr. Skort-but you knew ’bout him, and Miz Winson, and Miz Grene, Looie Denton and a coupla men I didn’t know. But the rest, they’re all right. We were awful lucky. Whee- look out!”
Dard overbalanced as he tied to stop in mid-step and landed on the ground beside Lanny who had squatted down to sweep away the grass and display a dome of mud- plastered leaves and grass.
“What in the world?”
Lanny chuckled, “That there’s a hopper house! Dessie, she found one yesterday and showed me where to look, Watch!” He rapped smartly with his knuckles on the top of the dome.
A second later a hopper’s head popped out of the ground level door and the indignant beast let them know very plainly its opinion of such a disturbance of the peace.
“Dessie, she got a hopper to stand still and let her pet him, My sister Marya-now she wants a hopper-says they’re like kittens. But Ma says they steal too much and we ain’t gonna bring any in the cave, I’d like to try to tame one, though.”
They detoured around a field of the blue-pod grain, meeting the harvesters working there. Dard shook hands with strangers, bewildered by all the new faces. As he went on he asked Lanny:
“How many are there of us now?”
Lanny’s lips moved as he counted. “Twenty-five men- counting you explorers-and twenty-three women. Then there’re the girls, my sisters, Marya and Martie, and Dessie and Lara Skort-they’re all little. And Don Winson, he’s just a baby. That’s all. Most of the men are down rippin’ up the ship.”
“Ripping up the ship?” Why did that dismay him so?
“Sure. We ain’t gonna fly again-not enough fuel. And she was made to take apart so we can use parts of her for machine shops and things like that. Well-here we are!”
They came out on what was now a well-defined path running up to the main entrance of the cave. Three men were working on a swinging platform suspended from the top of the cliff, fitting clear glass into a hole ready to receive it as a window:
“Dardie! Dardie! Dardie!”
A whirlwind swept down upon him, wrapping thin arms about his waist, burrowing a face against him. He went down on his knees and took Dessie into a tight hug.
“Dardie,” she was sniffling a little. “They said you would come an’ I’ve been watching all the time! Dardie,” she smiled at him blissfully, “I do like this place! I do! There are lots of animals in the grass and some of them have houses just like us-and they like me! Now that you’ve come home, Dardie, everything is wonderful-truly it is!”
“It sure is, honey.”
“So there you are, son,” Trude Harmon bore down upon him. “Hungry, too, I’ll wager. You come right in and rest and eat. Heard tell that you had yourselves some excitin’ times.”
With Dessie holding his hand tightly and Lanny bringing up the rear still carrying his pack, Dard came into a room where there was a long table flanked by benches. Kimber was already sitting there, empty plates before him, talking to an excited Kordov.
“But where did they go-those city dwellers?” the little biologist sputtered as Dard waded into the food Trude Harmon spread before him. “They could not just vanish- pouff!” He snapped his fingers. “As if they were but puffs of smoke!”
Kimber gave the same answer to that question as Dard had made. “Say an epidemic following war-germ warfare-or radiation sickness-who can tell now? By the weathering of the city they have been gone a long time. We found no traces of anything but animal life. And nothing to fear but the lizards…
“A whole world deserted!” Kordov shook his head. “It is enough to frighten one! Those Others took the wrong turning somewhere.”
“It is up to us to see that we don’t follow their example,” Kimber cut in.
That evening the voyagers gathered about a giant campfire in the open space before the cliff house, while Kimber and the others in turn recited the saga of their journey into the interior. The city, the robot-controlled battery, the battle with the lizards, held their listeners enthralled. But when they had done the question came again:
“But where did they go?”
Kordov gave the suggested answers, but then he added:
“It would be better if we asked ourselves now why did they go and be governed by the reply to that. They have left us a deserted land in which to make a new beginning. Though we must not forget that in other continents of this world some remnants of that race may still exist. Wisdom suggests alertness in the future.”
Dessie, sitting in Dard’s lap, leaned her head back against his shoulder and whispered:
“I like hearing about the night monkeys, Dardie. Do you suppose they will ever come here so I can see them too? Knowing them would be fun.”
“Yes, it would,” he whispered back.
Maybe someday when they were sure of safety beyond the cliffs, all the Terrans could venture out and he could show Dessie the night monkeys. But not until the last of that scaled death had been found and exterminated!
Since Kimber could not use his arm until the shoulder wound healed, Dard became hands for the pilot, working with Cully on the damaged sled. Seeing that he could and did follow instructions, Cully went back to his own pet project of dismantling the engine of the carrier they had rescued from the sea tube. He intended some day, he insisted, to hunt out that second car from the lizard valley and compare the two.
Dessie kept near them as they worked. She was Dard’s shadow in the waking hours, as she had always been since taking her first uncertain steps. The other children were objects to be watched with sober interest, but as yet she preferred company she knew. And, since she was perfectly content to sit quietly, absorbed in the antics of the hoppers, insects, and the butterfly-birds; they often forgot she was with them.
“No- ”
Dard was startled into turning by her sudden cry. She was having a tug of war with the largest hopper he had yet seen, a grandfather of a clan at least. But Dessie’s strength was superior, and she wrenched away the prize the animal had just stolen from the blouse Dard had discarded in the heat.
“He opened your pocket,” she told the boy indignantly,”and he took this out, just as if it were his own! What is it? Pretty—” She crooned the word as she fingered the sheets in which colors ran in waving bands.
“Why- I’d forgotten all about that. It’s a book-or I think it is, Dessie. It belonged to Those Others.”
"A what!” Kimber reached for it. “Where did you get it., kid?”
Dard explained how he had found it in the hidden room of the gun emplacement and of his theory that Those Others might have used the bands of color as a means of communication.
“I was going to compare it with those shots you took on microfilm of that doorway in the city. And then so much happened I forgot all about it.”
“You do have a feeling for word patterns-I remember.”
“Dard makes pictures out of words.” Dessie answered for him. “Show how, Dardie.”
Under Kimber’s interested eyes Dard sketched out the pattern of a line of verse. The pilot nodded.
“Patterns for words. And that must be how you understood the importance of this. All right. Remember those rolls of some kind of recording tape we found in the first carrier? Rogan believes that they can be read by the help of our machines. You’re going down to the ship right now and tell him to get out that equipment, We didn’t see any use for it yet and it’s been left down there. But I want to know
- Yes, go right now!”
So Dard, with Dessie still in tow, set off down river to the seashore where the remains of the star ship was being dismantled as fast as they could use its materials at the cliffs. The red spider plants were again floating in wide patches on the water, but not cloaking all the river as they had on the day the ship landed.
“I haven’t been down here yet,” Dessie confided. “Mrs. Harmon says that there are bad dragons.”
Dard was quick to underline that warning. Dessie might just try to make friends with one of the things!
“Yes, there are, Dessie. And they are not like the animals at all. Promise me that if you see one you will can me right away!”
She was apparently impressed by his gravity for she agreed at once.
“Yes, Dardie. Mr. Rogan brought me a pretty shell from the sea. Might I just go down and see if I can find another?” Dessie asked.
“Stay in sight of the ship and don’t wander away,” he told her, seeing no reason why she should not hunt for treasures along the water’s edge.
The ship which had been so solid and secure against the dangers of outer space was but a shell of her former self. In some places she had been stripped down to the inner framework. Dard squeezed through open partitions to a storeroom where he found the techneer checking the markings on a pile of boxes. When he explained his errand Rogan was enthusiastic.
“Sure we can try reading those tapes. We’ll need this, and this, and"-he pushed aside a larger container to free a third- “this. I’ll go to work assembling as soon as we get this back to the cliff. Might be able to try running off one roll tonight or early tomorrow. Want to give me a hand?”
Dard took one of the boxes under his arm and hooked his fingers in the carrying handle of another before tramping back over the ramp to the sand.
“Dessie came down with me. She wanted some more sea shells. I’ll have to round her up.”
“Sure thing.” Rogan set down his large box and came along. They were almost at the shore when the scream sent them into a run.
“Dardie! Dardie! Quick!”
Dard’s hand went to the ray gun Cully had given him after the adventure with the lizards. It had a full charge in it now. But they had seen no trace of the monsters here!
“There she is! By those rocks!”
But he didn’t need Rogan’s direction. Dard had already sighted Dessie, her back to some sea-washed rocks, shying stones at one of the flying dragons, while she continued to shout for help. To Dard’s surprise she made no move to join her rescuers but stood her ground valiantly until he used the ray to slice the head of the dragon and send its body flopping into the sea.
“Come here!” he called but she shook her head. He saw tears on her cheeks.
“It’s the sea baby, Dardie, the little baby out of the sea. It’s so afraid! We must help it—”
Dard stopped, catching at Rogan to bring him to a halt also. He trusted Dessie’s instincts. She had been protecting another creature, not herself, and he had a feeling now that her act was of vast importance to them an. He schooled his voice to a low, even level as he said:
“All right, Dessie. The dragon is dead. Can you get the sea baby to come out now-or shall I come to help you?”
She smeared her hand across her wet face. “I can do it, Dard. It’s so frightened and it might be more afraid of somebody as big as you.”
She squatted down before a small opening between two rocks and made soft coaxing sounds. At last she turned her head.
“It’s coming out. But you must stay away-please—”
Dard nodded. Dessie held out her hand to the hollow between the rocks. He was sure he saw something hesitatingly touch that small palm. Then she wriggled back, still coaxing.
What followed her brought a gasp from Dard, even inured as he now was to the surprises this world had to offer. Some twenty slender inches tall, it walked upright, the four tiny digits of one hand confidently hooked about Dessie’s fingers. In color the creature was a soft silvery gray, but when a shaft of sunlight touched the fluff of thick fur which completely covered it, rainbow lights twinkled from each hair tip.
Its head was round, with no vestige of ears
, the eyes very large, turning from Dessie to the two men. When it caught sight of them it stopped short and, with a gesture which won Dard completely, put the other band to its wide, fanged mouth, chewing on its finger tips shyly. The small feet were webbed and sealed with rainbow tints, as were the hands. He continued to examine it, puzzled. It was akin to the night-howling monkeys, but it was much smaller and plainly amphibian. And it appeared to be able to see perfectly well in the daylight.
“Where did it come from, Dessie?” he asked quietly, trying hard not to alarm the engaging little thing.
“Out of the sea,” she waved her flee hand at the waves.
“I was hunting shells and I found a pretty one. When I went down to wash the sand off it there he was, coming out of the water to watch me. He was sleeked down with the wet then-he’s a lot prettier now—” She broke off and stopped to address her companion with a series of chirrups such as Dard had heard her use with the wild things of lost Terra.
“Then,” she continued, “that bad dragon came and chased him into the rocks and I called you-like you, told me to, Dardie, if I saw a dragon. They are bad. The sea baby was so frightened.”
“Did it tell you so?” asked Rogan eagerly.
Perhaps it was the vibration of his deeper voice in the air which sent the sea creature crowding against Dessie, half hiding its face against her.
“Please, Mr. Rogan,” she shook her head reprovingly.”He’s afraid when you talk. No, I don’t think he talks like us. I just know what he feels-here,” she touched a forefinger to her head. “He wanted to play with me so he came ashore. He’s a nice baby-the nicest I ever, ever knew! Better than a fox or a bunny or even the big owl.”
“Great Space! Look there—off the rocks!”
Dard’s eyes followed the line of Rogan’s pointing finger. Two sleek round heads bobbed out of the water, great unblinking orbs were turned to the party on the beach. Dard’s grasp on Rogan’s arm tightened.
“Keep quiet! This is important!”
Dessie beamed at their interruption.