by David Brin
Headlights! Dennis blinked. Now, why does that surprise me? Did I think the makers of a road like this one wouldn’t be able to illuminate it?
Hidden by the undergrowth, he squinted against the bright beam. Vague figures marched behind it, bipedal, with swinging arms.
The procession passed below his blind. He heard the low, chuffing snorts of beasts. Shading his eyes, he made out giant quadrupeds pulling hulking vehicles that slid soundlessly along the road. Each conveyance sent a bright beam spearing ahead of it into the gloom.
Behind each came a formation of striding bipeds. Dennis caught glimpses of heavy, coweled clothing and what seemed to be sharp, glinting weapons, held at high port.
But each time his night vision began to return, another giant sled came around the corner to the west, its bright beam dazzling him and sending him flat against the ground again. It was frustrating, but there didn’t seem to be any way to get a better look!
More of the swaggering, coweled figures passed, then more quadrupeds, pulling hulking, eerily silent wagons. Dennis tried to make out how they moved. He neither heard nor saw any turning wheels. Yet hovercraft would give out blasts of compressed air, wouldn’t they?
Antigravity? Nothing else seemed to fit. But if that was so, why were they using animal power?
Could these be descendants of some fallen civilization, patching their commerce together with rude fragments of their forefathers’ science? It seemed to fit what he observed.
The idea of antigravity excited Dennis. Might that be the difference in physical laws Brady had talked about during those last moments on Earth?
A last troop of the hooded “warriors” passed below. These rode rather than walked. Their mounts tossed thickly maned heads and nickered, seeming to him so much like shaggy ponies that Dennis mistrusted his observation. It would be too tempting to interpret what he saw in Terran terms.
He rubbed his eyes and stared. But silhouettes were all he could make out.
One animal among the riders carried a smaller figure, coweled in a cloak of faded white—standing out in the deep gloom outside of the headlights. Something he saw in the smaller entity’s carriage told him that this one was a prisoner. It carried no shiny weapons, and its arms lay motionless on the animal’s neck. The hooded head slumped forward dejectedly.
As the riders passed below, the white-hooded prisoner’s head lifted, then started to turn as if to look up into the undergrowth where he was hiding! Dennis ducked down, feeling his throat suddenly go dry.
One of the dark silhouettes ahead turned around in its saddle and pulled on a tether. The prisoner’s mount stumbled forward, and the party passed below.
Dennis blinked and shook his head to clear it. For a moment, in the glare and confusion, he had experienced a queer illusion. It had seemed to him that the prisoner’s white cloak had opened—for a brief, timeless instant—and the starlight had shown him the sad, forlorn face of a beautiful girl.
7
For a long while the image lingered in his brain—so long, in fact, that Dennis hardly noticed the end of the procession.
He felt a bit lightheaded. Yeah, that must have been it. Too much excitement had gotten him seeing things.
Dennis watched the last glimmer of the caravan pass around the far bend to the east. He still knew next to nothing about the technology and culture of the locals. All he had learned was that the natives shared some of humanity’s less savory habits—such as the way they treated one another.
A moment later a tiny mutter of sound drifted up from the road below.
Dennis suddenly remembered the image on the camp-watch display. There had been one more tiny green dot, following the caravan from behind. In all the excitement he had forgotten about it!
He crept forward to get a better view. There were no more bright, blinding lights. Now he might get a good look!
He slid quietly to within feet of the road itself. At first he saw nothing. Then a tiny noise made him look to the right.
A glint of glass and plastic reflected the faint glow of the departing procession. A tiny articulated arm waved in the dim starlight. On almost silent, spinning treads, the Sahara Tech exploration robot whizzed down the alien highway eastward … following Dennis’s instructions to the letter.
… finding out about the natives.
Dennis barely stifled a shout. Idiot machine! He rushed out onto the highway, tripping over a tree root and rolling most of the way. He made it to his feet in time to see the robot, one of its arms waving as if in farewell, pass around the bend and out of sight.
Dennis cursed softly but soundly. That robot’s tapes doubtless carried all the information he needed. But he couldn’t chase it or call out without bringing himself to the attention of the caravan guards!
He was still muttering softly, standing there in the middle of the dark road, when something alive dropped onto his head from an overhanging branch. Dennis gasped in alarm as the thing wrapped itself tightly over his eyes, sending him stumbling, reeling into the trees.
8
“What was the big idea, scaring me half to death?” Dennis accused hoarsely. “I might have run into something and hurt both of us!”
The object of his ire watched him from a rock a few feet away, green eyes gleaming in the light from the camp stove. The pixolet yawned complacently, apparently of the opinion Dennis was making a big deal out of nothing.
“Damn all machines and natives! Just where have you been the past four days, anyway? Here I rescue you from a fate worse than boredom at the hands of Bernald Brady, and in return all I ask is a friend who knows the neighborhood. What happens? That ‘friend’ up and leaves me all alone, until isolation eventually gets me so I’m talking to myself … or worse, to a stubby little flying pig who can’t understand a word I’m saying…!”
Dennis found he could hold his hands steady at last. He poured a cup of soup for himself. Blowing on it, he muttered as his temper slowly wound down. “Stupid, practical joking E.T.s … damned fickle aliens …”
He glanced over his cup at the diminutive native animal. Its tongue was hanging out. Its eyes met his.
Dennis let out a sigh of surrender. He poured some soup into the overturned pot cover. The pixolet hopped over and lapped at it daintily, looking up at him from time to time.
When both had finished, Dennis rinsed out the utensils and crawled back into his sleeping bag. He picked up the camp-alarm and worked on its settings. Pix leaped over beside him and watched.
Dennis tried to ignore it but couldn’t maintain his ire for long—not with it looking at him that way, purring, watching with apparent fascination the adjustments he made to the little machine.
Dennis shrugged and picked up the small creature. “What is it about you and machines? You sure can’t use them. See?” He shook its little paws. “No hands!”
With the stove turned off, the forest night settled in around. In a little island in the quiet, Dennis soon found himself telling the pixolet about the constellations and all the other things he had discovered.
And he realized it was good to have company again, even if it was an alien creature who didn’t understand a single word he said.
3
Nom de Terre
1
The next day the road began to descend into a broad river valley.
Riding on Dennis’s shoulder, the pixolet peeped and grabbed a cluster of berries from an overhanging branch. It munched on a few of the purple fruits, and juice ran down its jaws. When it offered some to Dennis, he politely declined.
Dennis was feeling pretty good. His old camping skills had obviously come back. His backpack was snug now that he had found the right knots. His boots—broken in now—felt like supple extensions of his own feet as he stepped along the resilient highway. He was making good time.
But he could tell the forest would end soon. He still faced the problem of what he would do when he found civilization.
What sort of creatures were the autochtho
nes? Would they have the technology to help him rebuild his half of the zievatron?
More important, would they decide to arrange his pieces neatly, by size and color, like someone had already done to the zievatron?
Maybe it might be a good idea to spy on the natives, as a first step.
“Easily suggested,” Dennis mocked himself. If their facial features are a little different, I’ll just use some river mud to make fake antennae and eye stalks and be in business! I might have to remove my nose and lengthen my neck a bit, of course, but only a few inches, at most.
“I wonder if I’ll need scales.”
As he hiked along, a number of fantasy scenarios occurred to him.
I know! I’ll keep my eye out for the country estate of the eccentric squire scientist G’zvreep. I’ll recognize it by the observatory dome protruding prominently from the west wing of his manor house.
Right, Dennis. When you knock, the kindly old native savant will answer the door himself, having sent the servants to bed while he scans the skies for comets. On seeing you he’ll flap his thorax in momentary revulsion at your two hideously flat eyes, your millions of tiny cranial tendrils. But when you raise your hand in the universal gesture of peace, he’ll hustle you inside and say, “Enter quickly! Thank Gixgax you came here first!”
In a meadow by the road, Dennis found the remains of a campsite. Coals were still warm in the firepit.
Dennis put down his pack. He set up the campwatch on one large stone and the pixolet on another. “All right, bright eyes,” he said to the creature, “let’s see if you’re good for anything but company. You can keep a lookout while I do some serious detective work.”
Pix cocked its head quizzically, then yawned.
“Hmmph. Well, it just goes to show how little you know. I’ve found something already!” Dennis pointed to the ground. “Look. Footprints!”
Pixolet sniffed, apparently unimpressed. Dennis sighed. Where was an appreciative audience when you needed one?
There were many deep impressions in the ground—apparently made by the large draft animals—and smaller hoofprints like those an unshod pony might leave. The droppings, too, indicated that this world must indeed have close analogs to horses.
After finishing with the animals, he searched for a clear set of bipedal prints and soon realized that everyone in the caravan had worn shoes.
From the sharp outlines of the corrugated tread, it was apparent these people used boots not unlike his own! Here certainly was evidence of technology. The tread patterns were all identical … as if some computer had come up with the perfect design that was mass-produced thereafter. He hurried about looking at the prints until a thought occurred to him.
Dennis grabbed his own left foot. Awkwardly, he tried to look at the sole of his own boot. Moving too quickly, he overbalanced and fell on his backside.
He stared at the pattern of his own boot and sighed. It was identical! Either the computers here had come up with the same design as those on Earth had, or …
He looked around. The bootprints were everywhere. No doubt nearly all of them were his own.
There was a peeping that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Dennis turned and glared at the pixolet. It wore its accustomed grin.
“Don’t you dare say one word!” Dennis warned the creature.
For once, Pix did as told.
There weren’t many more clues. By the firepit he found a few crumbly sticks of dried meat. Over where the animals had been staked there were scatterings of spilled grain.
By a tall tree Dennis found a red stain in the earth. It felt sticky, like blood.
There were scuffmarks in the ground, and loose tufts of fur. Then he found one long golden strand that glinted in the morning light. He looked at it for a long moment, then carefully stuffed it into a button-down shoulder pocket.
A bit closer to the forest, he found a dead animal.
It looked like a larger cousin of the pixolet’s. It had the snub nose and needle teeth, but it was the size and build of a mastiff.
The head stared at him dully from a spot three feet from the rest of the body. It had been sheared off, along with part of the shoulder, as if by a guillotine—or a high-power laser.
He stared at the carnage until the buzzing of the watch-alarm carried over from the firepit. Dennis looked up anxiously. What was coming?
He turned just as six ragged doglike things suddenly emerged from the line of trees. He did not have time to form a more accurate impression. They snarled—a low, gravelly sound—then charged.
The needier was in his hand before he had time to think. He had practiced drawing and blasting knots in tree trunks during the past few days of hiking. The exercise probably saved his life.
Balanced, legs apart, Dennis aimed just ahead of the beasts and fired.
The ground in front of the pack exploded, but the crazed things charged straight through the spray of dirt and grass single-mindedly. Dennis had no choice. He lifted his aim and fired again.
The pack tumbled into a howling mass. It divided almost instantly into the fleeing and the dead.
Dennis watched the survivors stumble away, howling in pain, their fellows bloody and still behind them. He looked down at the small weapon in his hand.
Powered by stored sunlight, the needier could peel tiny slivers off of any odd-shaped lump of metal he crammed into its ammo chamber, and fire them at high velocity. Dennis had thought it little better than a toy when he started out from the zievatron but he had begun to gain confidence in it with all the practice on the trail.
Now he stared at it in amazement.
What a killer, he thought.
2
Soon he could tell he was drawing near civilization.
The highway perceptibly widened as it dropped from the mountain pass. Some of the hillside meadows now showed signs of cultivation. A thick hedgerow now separated the highway from open fields on both sides. Through the branches he could see herds of grazing animals on the slopes.
He would run into traffic soon. A happenstance encounter on the road wasn’t the best kind of first contact. He didn’t want to face the sort of weapon that had severed the head of the beast back at the campsite. Dennis decided it might be best to continue his travels off the road for a while.
He searched for a break in the hedge. Pix awakened from its nap atop his backpack when Dennis drew his machete and started to chop at a thin spot in the windbreak. The little beast leaped for a high branch, then crouched and looked down at Dennis reproachfully for interrupting its siesta.
Dennis didn’t find the going easy. The heavy blade bounced back from the branches, barely chipping them.
He looked at it in disgust. He had not used the machete much until now. It was covered with rust spots and the edge was dull. Dennis cursed Bernald Brady, taking what consolation he could from the fact that he had not misjudged the fellow after all.
As he sucked at scratches on the back of his right hand, he had an idea. What about the beautiful native knife he had found by the airlock? He shrugged out of his pack and retrieved the cloth-wrapped artifact from one of the bottom pouches. With a wary glance up and down the highway, he laid the cloth on the ground and unfolded it.
His eyes went wide.
A week ago he had put away a beautiful, sharp, resilient knife, an obvious product of high-tech craftsmanship.
What lay before him was still impressive, but it looked a lot more like a finely chipped piece of obsidian tied to a wooden handle by tightly wound leather strips. It was sharp and well made, but a far cry from the advanced tool he remembered first picking up.
His head felt light. A phenomenon, he remarked internally, touching the object lightly.
He was brought back to the present by a peeping cry from above. The pixolet chirped at him twice, shaking its head vigorously. Then it soared off into the thicket.
Dennis reached into his thigh pocket and pulled out the camp-watch. The little screen showed red lights on the
road, coming this way.
He rewrapped the artifact. The mystery would keep. He hefted the pack once more and set to hacking in earnest with the machete. He had to get off the road!
Brambles caught at his pack and at the arm he kept up to protect his face as he bulled his way through the thicket. Finally, like a pip squeezed from a melon, he flew into the meadow and sprawled onto the grass.
Dennis rolled over, breathing heavily.
At least this time I’ll get a good look at them, he thought as he crawled away from the break in the hedge. At last I’ll find out what the natives look like!
He drew out the camp-watch again. The display showed a great many yellow lights, apparently depicting the herds of grazing animals Dennis had seen on the hillsides. To one side of the screen he saw two red dots and two yellow, coming this way down the road.
A pair of riders.
Pix’s green marker was nowhere to be seen. The fickle creature must have left him again.
He was concentrating so hard on the red dots on the road that it took him a moment to notice that two small pink lights had detached themselves from a nearby herd of yellows to the south. They were moving rapidly toward the center of the screen.
Toward the center, Dennis realized … that’s me.
“Haaaa-aayy-oooaaoo!!”
It came from behind him, a high, shrill cry that sent a shiver down his back. With the ululation came the sound of running footsteps. Someone was charging down on him from the rear!
Dennis clawed at his holster, holding little hope he could scramble about in time. At any instant he expected the sudden flash of some alien death ray to cut him down.
“Haaayyoo-oh!”
Encumbered by the pack, he rolled over onto his stomach, trying to bring his weapon up. He held the needier out in two shaky hands ready to fire at … the dog.
He blinked, poised to shoot … the small dog that growled at him, then hopped back to take cover behind a pair of small legs … the stubby, scuff-kneed legs of a small boy.