DARK IS THE SUN

by Philip José Farmer

  "I hope they don't look into the logic of that," Sloosh buzzed.

  "They won't," the snake-centaur said. "They're too upset to think straight."

  Deyv flung his hands straight up.

  "Now! I go to follow your ancestors to a better world!"

  He turned with his eyes shut. Following Vana's instructions, which she gave quaveringly, he advanced to the edge of the bridge, stopped, and bent his knees. Though he wanted desperately to turn and walk away, he leaped.

  47

  HE fell into a bright light, was aware of trees around him and long grass below him, and he landed. His knees bent, he fell, rolled, and was up on his feet. They hurt but not so much that he couldn't walk.

  Beyond were the statue and their weapons. Sloosh had cast them as far as he could so the jumpers wouldn't land on them.

  He was near the edge of a cliff. If the gateway had been ten feet further to one side, it would have admitted him to a fatal drop to the rocks at the base. Beyond that was a belt of trees and a beach of white sand and a blue sea that sent its rollers thundering onto the land.

  In the other direction was a forest populated mostly by tall trees unlike any he'd ever seen. They were conical, and instead of leaves the branches had a heavy needlelike growth.

  The sky was blue. Near its zenith was a yellow blaze that was impossible to look at long. It was that that gave the light and the heat.

  If what Sloosh and The Shemibob had said a young Earth would look like was correct, he was on a young Earth.

  He'd been counting while observing. At one thousand, he stood beneath the gateway and forced himself to look almost directly at it. But it was a dark spot in the air, a strange but undreadful phenomenon, like the gateway in the tunnel. Then Vana shot through, and he jumped to avoid being hit but ready to aid her if she was hurt. She rolled and, like him, came up on her feet.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes. Are you?"

  The Shemibob, holding the screaming baby, came through next. Her forty feet flattened out under the impact, and her legs bent far under her weight. But she was unhurt She handed Keem to Vana, saying,

  "Here. She knows the difference between my nipple and yours."

  Sloosh shot through and landed squarely but still fell forward. He got up complaining that he must have sprained his upper spine.

  "We Archkerri are unusually subject to backaches, anyway."

  Though he was to move around slowly and carefully for some time, he was not by any means totally incapacitated.

  Tsi'kzheep was set up where the next to come through, if there were any, could see it at once. It had been decided that the statue should be kept as a focal point, a rallying and sustaining symbol, for the tribes.

  Though it wasn't the direct ancestor of any but the Chaufi'ng, it was the brother of the five other founders. They would tell the tribes that Tsi'kzheep had sent the others ahead to look for a home for their children. In the meantime, it would shepherd the six tribes. The Chaufi'ng dialect would become the common speech of all. And Deyv would be the chief of all.

  The people were going to be shocked by the idea that a nonshaman would lead them. And the shamans were going to make trouble; there'd be a power struggle. This, however, was only one of many problems in the merging of the six groups into one.

  Deyv wanted to go exploring at once. Instead, he had to pitch in to help make a great pile of grass.

  Otherwise, there would be many hurt or even killed. They pulled the long grass and threw it down beneath the gateway and then cut off branches to make a barrier along the sides of the mass. Once these were placed, they formed a simple but effective windbreak.

  The yellow glaring light in the sky, the sun, crossed the heavens. Deyv saw his first sunset, a frightening but beautiful sight. They ate some nuts and berries they'd collected around a fire. The sound of the surf came faintly to them, interspersed by calls of night birds and, twice, a coughing roar. The air became chilly, causing them to regret the loss of the vessel. They took turns feeding the fire while the others slept.

  The sun rose, draped in many colors. Deyv went hunting and returned when the sky-light had just dropped down from the zenith. He carried the back leg of a large animal.

  "The rest was too much for me or even you, Sloosh, to carry. And it's too far away for us to go get it. It would be eaten by then by some beasts that look like wolves. I'd have liked to bring back the head, but it would've been too much. It has six knobs on top of its head and two long curving tusks sticking down from the upper jaw. Yet it eats plants. I saw some beasts which resembled some we know and some which are very different."

  Vana started to cut up the leg while Deyv made forked uprights and trimmed down a thick branch to make a spit The Shemibob came running then and told them to go with her to the edge of the cliff.

  Below, walking on the beach, were a dozen bipeds.

  "Hairy, bent-necked, slanting foreheads, heavy brows, outthrust jaws, chins not well developed," Sloosh said. "They are precursors of the fully human or something like the fully human. Poor devils! If our tribespeople do come through, those half-humans are doomed."

  "Their kind would be doomed anyway when a higher type evolved," The Shemibob said.

  "I wonder," Sloosh said, "if something similar happened when our Earth was young. That is, did full humans come through a gateway from an older and perishing universe? And did they wipe out their lesser ancestors? Or perhaps I should say, cousins?

  "I speculate this because there is nothing in the memory of the plants about intermediates in the evolution of the prehuman to human. Full man appeared suddenly, and he ousted the preman. Through violence, of course."

  "If that is a fact instead of theory," The Shemibob said, "then humankind is far older than we thought."

  The bipeds stopped now and then to dig up shellfish in the shallows. They also did not refuse to eat a large dead fish that floated in.

  When they'd disappeared around the bend of the beach, the watchers went back to their meal. The sun sank; the stars came out. Then black clouds came up, bearing thunder and lightning. Soon a cold rain fell, forcing them to take cover under the trees. They spent a miserable sleepless night and had difficulty starting the fire in the morning.

  Though he was tired, Deyv had to hunt again. It was close to dusk before he returned with a half-grown piglike beast.

  "There just isn't enough cover for me to get near enough to use the blowgun."

  "It's time we made a new weapon," The Shemibob said. "This will be a simple but effective one, and it will have a far greater range than your blowgun or your spear. When we find a wood that is springy enough, I'll show you how to fashion part of it. It will be able to propel a short slim spear with great force. But it takes much practice to learn how to use it well."

  Morning came again, bringing with it discouragement.

  "How long do we wait here?" Deyv asked The Shemibob.

  "We'll set up a camp, make lean-tos, and wait for thirty days. If they haven't come through by then, we look for a better place. We should go south, since I suspect we're in an area that gets snow and ice. You wouldn't like them."

  Both humans were downcast and worried. Would their daughters have to bear children by their sons?

  Eventually, according to Sloosh, their descendants would be inbred and would degenerate. The human species would die. The minimum number needed to perpetuate a healthy race was five hundred.

  Another day passed; Before they went to sleep in the little hut they'd built, Deyv said, "This waiting is making me nervous."

  "You always were impatient," Vana said. She kissed him. "At least, we'll have each other and our children. And The Shemibob and Sloosh will be with us, and our children and our grandchildren and perhaps their children. The Shemibob and Sloosh will be a big comfort. They're very wise and will teach us many things that would take us many generations to learn."

  Deyv wasn't consoled. It was a long time before he could get to sleep. Suddenly, sho
ckingly, he was being shaken by the shoulder.

  "Get up! Get up!" Vana was saying.

  "It can't be time for me to stand guard yet," he said sourly.

  "No, no! They're starting to come through! Can't you hear them?"

  He got up quickly. Sloosh was throwing more wood on the fire so that the big blaze would render the area more visible. Men were crawling out from the pile of grass. One by one, at a count of twenty seconds between, men were falling through, yelling or screaming.

  The first of the men to carry a struggling, shrilling child dropped through.

  The shaman of the Chaufi'ng staggered toward Deyv. He looked dazed.

  "The sky was bright when we decided to enter the demon's mouth," he said.

  He looked upward. "That is a strange Dark Beast."

  "There is no Dark Beast here," Deyv said. "And when the light comes, you will see such a sight as you never dreamed of."

  The shaman spoke slurringly, and his eyes looked strange. Deyv didn't know whether the tribes had taken drugs again to nerve themselves for the leap or whether they were suffering from shock. Entering this world was like being born. The psyche reeled under this strange birth and thus the body was stricken. All the leapers-forth would be in a trauma.

  Tomorrow—a word Deyv had learned from The Shemibob—tomorrow there would be trouble when the six tribes discovered that their ancestors were not there. But they would be in shock, and they would follow those who were in full possession of their faculties.

  Deyv and Vana and Sloosh and The Shemibob were so much more experienced. They had gone through many shocks. They had, in a sense, been born many times. They would be adults leading little children.

  Sloosh came to Deyv from the bonfire.

  He said, "You are smiling; you look as if you are about to start dancing. Why?"

  "We were there, and now we're here! We live! Our children will live! Joy!"

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Philip Jose Farmer was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, and has lived most of his life in Peoria, Illinois. He holds a

  B.A. in creative writing from Bradley University. In 1953 he won the Hugo Award as most promising new science-fiction author. He is most noted for his novel The Lovers and the Riverworld series.

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