An ape cast a stone it had been carrying. The missile smacked Tolteca’s temple. Pain blinded him. He lurched, and then they were on him. Thick arms dragged him to earth. His nose was full of their hair and rank smell. Fangs snapped yellow, a centimeter before his face. He struck out wildly. His fist rebounded from ridged muscle. The drubbing and clawing became his whole universe. He whirled into a redness that rang.
When he came to himself, a minute or two afterward, he was pinioned by two of them. A third approached, unwinding a thin vine from its waist. His arms were lashed behind his back.
He shook his head, which throbbed and stabbed him and dripped blood down on his tunic, and looked around. Raven had been secured in the same manner. The apes squatted to stare, or bounced about chattering. They numbered a dozen or so, all males, somewhat over a meter tall, tailed, heavybodied, covered with greenish fur and tawny manes. The faces were blunt, and they had four-fingered hands with fairly well-developed thumbs. Several carried bones of leg or jaw from large herbivores.
“Oa,” Tolteca groaned. “Are you—are—”
“Not too much damaged yet,” Raven said tightly, through bruised lips. Somehow he found a harsh chuckle. “But my pride! They were tracking us!”
An ape picked up one of the dropped pistols, fingered it, and tossed it aside. Others removed the men’s daggers from the sheaths, but soon discarded them likewise. Hard hands plucked and prodded at Tolteca, ripped his garments with their curious pluckings. It came to him with a gulp of horror that he might well die here.
He fought down panic and tested his bonds. Wrist was lashed to wrist by a strand too tough to break. Raven lay in a more relaxed position on his back, squirming a little as the apes played with him.
The largest howled a syllable. The gang stopped their noise and got briskly to their feet. Though short of leg and long of toe, they were true bipeds. The humans were hauled up with casual brutality and the procession started off deeper into the woods.
Only then, as the daze cleared fully from him, did Tolteca realize that the bones his captors carried were weapons, club and sharp-toothed knife. “Proto-intelligent—” he began. The ape beside him cuffed him in the mouth. Evidently silence was the rule on the trail.
He didn’t stumble long through his nightmare. They came out into another meadow, where an insolently brilliant sun spilled light across grasses and blossoms. The males broke into a yell, which was answered by a similar number of females and young. Those came swarming from their camping place under a great boulder. For a moment the mob seethed with hands and fangs. Tolteca thought he would be pulled apart alive. A couple of the biggest males knocked their dependents aside and dragged the prisoners to the rock.
There they were hurled down. Tolteca saw that he had landed near a pile of gnawed bones and other offal. Carrion insects made a black cloud above it. “Raven,” he choked, “they’re going to eat us.”
“What else?” said the Lochlanna.
“Oa, can’t we make a break?”
“Yes, I think so. I’ve been very clumsily tied. So have you, but I can reach my knot. If you can distract ’em another minute or two—”
Two males approached with clubs raised. The rest of the flock squatted down, instantly quiet again, watching from bright sunken eyes. The silence hammered at Tolteca.
He rolled over, jumped to his feet, and ran. The nearest male uttered a noise that might have been a laugh and pounced to intercept. Tolteca zigzagged from him. Another shaggy form rose in his path. The whole gang began to scream. A club whistled toward Tolteca’s pate. He threw himself forward, down across the wielder’s knees. The blow missed and the ape fell on top of him. He buried his head under the body, shield against other weapons. But his feet were seized and he was dragged forth. He saw two clubbers tower across the sky above him.
Suddenly Raven was there. The Lochlanna chopped with the edge of his hand, straight across the throat of one ape. The creature moaned and crumpled; blood ran from the mouth, bluish red. Raven had already turned on the other. His arms shot forth, he drove his thumbs under the brows and hooked out the eyeballs in a single motion. A third male rushed him, to meet a hideously disabling kick. Even at that instant, Tolteca was a little sickened.
Raven stooped and tugged at his bonds. The apes milled about several meters off, enraged but daunted. “All right, you’re free,” Raven panted. “You have a pocket knife, don’t you? Let me have it.”
Several rocks thudded within centimeters as he got moving. He unclasped the blade on the run and charged the nearest stone-throwing ape, a female. She struck awkwardly at him. He sidestepped. His slash was a calculated piece of savagery. She lurched back yammering. Raven returned to Tolteca, gave him the knife again, and picked up a thighbone. “They’re out of rocks,” he said. “Now we back away very slowly. We want to persuade them we aren’t worth chasing.”
For the first few minutes it went well. He knocked aside a couple of flung clubs. The males snarled, barked, and circled about, but did not venture to rush. When the humans reached the edge of the meadow, though, fury overcame fear. The leader whirled his weapon over his head and scuttled toward them. The rest followed.
“Back against this tree!” Raven commanded. He hefted his thighbone like a sword. When the leader’s club came down, he parried the blow and riposted with a bang across the knuckles. The ape wailed and dropped the club. Raven drove the end of his own into the opened mouth. There was a crunch of splintering palate.
Tolteca also had his hands full. The knife was only good for close-in work, and two of the beasts had assailed him at once. A sharp jawbone ripped across his shoulder. He ignored it, clinched, and stabbed deep. Blood spurted over him. He pushed the wounded creature against the other, which went down under the impact, then rose and fled.
The surviving males retreated, growling and chattering. Raven stooped, seized their dying leader, and threw him at them. The body landed in the grass with a heavy thump. They edged back from it. “Let’s go,” Raven said.
They went, not too swiftly, stopping often to turn about in a threatening way. But there was no pursuit. Raven gusted an enormous sigh. “We’re clear,” he husked. “Animals don’t fight to a finish like men. And . . . we’ve provided them food.”
Tolteca’s throat tightened. When they came back to the guns, which meant final safety, a cramp gripped him. He knelt down and vomited.
Raven seated himself to rest. “That’s no shame on you,” he said. “Reaction. You did pretty well for an amateur.”
“It’s not fear,” Tolteca said. He shuddered with the coldness that ran through him, “It’s what happened back there. What you did.”
“Eh? I got us loose. That’s bad?”
“Your . . . tactics. . . . Did you have to be so vicious?”
“I was simply being efficient, Miguel. Please don’t think I enjoyed it.”
“Oa, no. I’ll give you that much. But—Oh, I don’t know. What sort of a race do we belong to, anyway?” Tolteca covered his face.
After a while he recovered enough to say emptily, “This wouldn’t have happened but for us. The Gwydiona give the apes a wide berth. There’s room for all life on this planet. But we, we had to come blundering in.”
Raven considered him for some time before asking, “Why do you think pain and death are so gruesome?”
“I’m not scared of them,” Tolteca answered with a feeble flicker of resentment.
“I didn’t say that. I was just thinking that down underneath, you don’t feel they belong in life. I do. So do the Gwydiona.” Raven climbed erect. “We’d better get back.”
They limped toward the main trail. They had not quite reached it when Elfavy appeared with three bowmen and Kors.
She gasped and ran to meet them. Tolteca thought she might have been some wood nymph fleeing through the green arches. But though he looked much the gorier, it was Raven whom her hands seized. “What happened? Oh, I grew so worried—”
“We had trouble with
the apes,” Raven said. He urged her away from him, gently, with a rather sour smile. “Easy, there, milady. No great harm was done, but I’m a mess, and a bit too sore for embraces.”
I wouldn’t have done that, thought Tolteca desolately. Harsh-voiced, he related the incident.
Beodag whistled. “So they are on the verge of toolmaking! But I swear I’ve never observed that. I’ve never been attacked, either.”
“And yet the bands you’ve met live a good deal closer to human settlement, don’t they?” Raven asked.
Beodag nodded.
“That settles the matter,” Raven declared. “Whatever the source of your trouble at Bale time, the mountain apes are not it.”
“What? But if they have weapons—”
“This flock does. It must be far ahead of the others. Probably inbreeding of a mutation has made the local apes more intelligent than average. The others haven’t even gotten to their stage, in spite of observing humans using implements, which I don’t imagine these have ever done. And our friends here couldn’t break into a house. A shinbone is no good as a crowbar. Besides, they lack the persistence. They could have overcome us, and should have after the harm we did, but gave up. Anyhow, why would they want to plunder a building? Human artifacts mean nothing to them. They threw aside not only our guns but our daggers. We can forget about them.”
The Gwydiona men looked uneasy. Elfavy’s eyes blurred. “Can’t you forget that obsession for one day?” she pleaded. “It could have been such a beautiful day for you.”
“All right,” Raven said wearily. “I’ll think about medicine and bandages and a pot of tea instead. Satisfied?”
“Yes,” she said. Her smile was shaky. “For now I am satisfied.”
IX
Festival dwelt in Instar. Tolteca was reminded of Carnival Week on Nuevamerica—not the commercialized feverishness of the cities, but masquerade and street dancing in the hinterlands, where folk still made their own pleasure. Oddly enough, for a people otherwise so ceremonious, the Gwydiona celebrated the time just before Bale by scrapping formality. Courtesy, honesty, nonviolence seemed too ingrained to lose. But men shouted and made horseplay, women dressed with a lavishness that would have been snickered at anytime else in the planet’s long year, schools became playgrounds, each formerly simple meal was a banquet, and quite a few families broke out the wine and got humanly drunk. A wreath of jule, roses, and pungent margwy herb hung on every door; no hour of day or night lacked music.
And so it was over this whole world, thought Tolteca: in every town on every inhabited island, the year had turned green and the people were soon bound for their shrines.
He came striding down a gravel path. The sun stood at late morning and the boy Byord walked with a hand in his. Far and holy above western forests, the mountain peaks dreamed.
“What did you do then?” asked Byord, breathless.
“We stayed in the City and had fun till it rained,” said Tolteca. “Then when it was safe, we proceeded to our goal, looked it over—a fine site indeed—and at last came back here.”
He didn’t want to relate, or remember, the ugly episode in the forest. “Exactly when did we get back?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“Uh, yes, now I place it. Hard to keep track of time here, when nobody pays much attention to clocks and everything is so pleasant.”
“The City—gol! What’s it like?”
“Don’t you know?”
“’Course not, ’cept they told my cousin a little about it in school. I wasn’t born, last Bale. But I’m big enough already to go with my mother.”
“The City is very beautiful,” said Tolteca. He wondered how children as young as this fitted into a prolonged religious meditation, if that was what it was, and how they kept so well afterward the secret of what had happened.
Byord’s mind sprang to another marvel. “Tell me ’bout planets, please. When I get big, I want to be a spaceman. Like you.”
“Why not?” said Tolteca. Byord could get as good a scientific education here as anywhere in the known galaxy. By the time he was of an age to enroll, the astro academies on worlds like Nuevamerica would doubtless be eager to accept Gwydiona cadets. Gwydion itself would be more than a refueling stop, a decade hence. A people this gifted couldn’t help themselves; they were certain to become curious about the universe (as if they weren’t already so interested that only the intelligence of their questions made the number endurable)—and, yes, to influence it. The Empire had fallen, human society was once more in flux. What better ideal for the next civilization than Gwydion?
And why count myself out? thought Tolteca. When we build our spaceports here—there’ll soon be more than one—they’ll require Namerican administrators, engineers, factors, liaison officers. Why shouldn’t I become one, and live my life under Ynis and She?
He glanced down at the tangled head beside him. He’d always shrunk from the idea of acquiring a ready-made family. But why not? Byord was a polite and talented boy who still remained very much a boy. It would be a pleasure to raise him. Even today’s outing—undertaken frankly to ingratiate one Miguel Tolteca with Elfavy Simnon—had been a lot of fun.
When earlier, one of the Namerican spacemen had expressed a desire to settle here, Raven had warned him he’d go berserk in one standard year. But what did Raven know about it? The prediction was doubtless true for him. Lochlanna society, caste-ridden, haughty, ritualistic, and murderous, had nothing in common with Gwydion. But Nuevamerica, now—Oh, I don’t pretend I wouldn’t miss the lights and tall buildings, theaters, bars, parties, excitement, once in a while. But what’s to prevent me and my family from taking vacation trips there? As for our everyday lives, here are a calm, rational, but merry people with a really meaningful, implemented ideal of beauty, uncrowded in a nature which has never been trampled on. And not static, either. They have their scientific research, innovations in the arts, engineering projects. Look how they welcome the chance to have regular interstellar contact. How could I fail to fall in love with Gwydion?
Specifically, with—Tolteca shut that thought off. He came from a civilization where all problems were practical problems. So let’s not moon about, but rather take the indicated steps to get what we want. Raven had an inside track at the moment, but that needn’t be too great a handicap, especially since Raven showed no signs of wanting to remain here. Since Byord was pestering him for yarns of other planets, Tolteca reminisced aloud, with some editing, and the rest of their walk passed quickly.
They entered the town. It seemed to have become queerly deserted in their absence. Where the dwellers had swarmed in the streets a few hours ago, they now were indoors. Here and there a man hurried from one place to another, carrying some burden, but that only emphasized the emptiness. However, though the air was quiet beneath the sun, one could hear an underlying murmur, voices behind walls.
Byord broke free of Tolteca’s hand and skipped on the pavement. “We’re going soon, we’re going soon,” he caroled.
“How do you know?” asked Tolteca. He had been told some while ago that there was no fixed date for Bale time.
Every freckle grinned. “I know, Adult Miguel! Aren’t you comin’ too?”
“I think I’d better stay and take care of your pets,” said Tolteca. Byord maintained the usual small-boy zoo of bugs and amphibia.
“There’s Granther! Hey, Granther!” Byord broke into a run. Dawyd, emerging from his house, braced himself. When the cyclone had struck him and been duly hugged, he pushed it toward the door.
“Go on inside, now,” he said. “Your mother’s making ready. She has to wash at least a few kilos of dirt off you, and pack your lunch, before we start.”
“Thanks, Adult Miguel!” Byord whizzed through the entrance.
Dawyd chuckled. “I hope you aren’t too exhausted,” he said.
“Not at all,” Tolteca answered. “I enjoyed it. We followed the river upstream to the House of the Philosophers. I never imagined a pla
ce devoted to abstract thinking would include picnic grounds and a carousel.”
“Why not? Philosophers are human too, I’m told. It is refreshing for them to watch the children, romp with them . . . and perhaps a little respect for knowledge rubs off on the youngsters.” Dawyd started down the street. “I have a job to do. Would you like to accompany me? You being a technical man, this may interest you.”
Tolteca fell into step. “Are you leaving very soon, then?” he inquired.
“Yes. The signs have become clear, even to me. Older people are not so sensitive; the young adults have been wild this whole morning.” Dawyd’s eyes glittered. His lined brown face held less than its normal serenity.
“It is about ten hours on foot by the direct path to the Holy City,” he added after a moment. “Less, of course, for a man unencumbered by children and the aged. If you should, yourself, feel the time upon you, I do hope you will follow and join us there.”
Tolteca drew a long breath, as if to smell the tokens. The air was alive with the blooming of a hundred flowers, trees, bushes, vines; nectar-gathering insects droned in the sunlight. “What are the signs?” he asked. “No one has told me.”
On other occasions, Dawyd, like the rest of his people, had grown a little uneasy at questions about Bale, and changed the subject—which was a simple task with so much to discuss, twelve hundred years of separate history. Now the physician laughed aloud. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “I know, that is all. How do buds know when to unfold?”
“But haven’t you ever, in the rest of the year, made any scientific study of—”
“Here we are.” Dawyd halted at the fused stone building in the center of town. It looked square and bleak above them. The portal stood open and they entered, walking down cool shadowy halls. Another man passed, holding a wrench. Dawyd waved at him. “A technician,” he explained, “making a final check on the central power controls. Everything vital, or potentially dangerous, is stored here during Bale. Motor vehicles in a garage at the end of yonder corridor, for instance. My duty—Here we are.”
Flandry's Legacy: The Technic Civilization Saga Page 51