The Mount

by Carol Emshwiller

  “I will then.”

  “No!”

  He’d better not.

  When we finally do stop, I’m too tired even to eat. There’s no place to flop down, but I do anyway. Little Master climbs off and sits on my chest so as to be off the rocks. I’m lying on rocks the size of shoes, which are exactly the kind Little Master hates to sit on the most. I don’t like them, either.

  My father starts to get food out, but I must have fallen asleep. I don’t remember anything except seeing him leaning over his pack. I’m half in a dream already. I think how I don’t believe in him any more than in ghosts or fairy tales. Hoots don’t believe in either one. Hoots say only primates think things like that. But my father is ghostly, right in front of me . . . a ghostly giant covered in gray dust . . . god of the mountain. When he says, slide, there’s a landslide. If lightning, my father must have said, lightning. If thunder, my father said, thunder.

  Chapter Nine

  When I wake, it’s night. At least there’s moonlight. I hurt all over from lying on these rocks. I’ll bet I have bruises from it.

  I guess I must have been making noises, because my father is leaning over me. He’s a big shadow-shape blocking out the moon. He’s shaking my shoulder. “It’s all right,” he says. “Wake up. It’s all . . . all. . . .” When he sees I’m awake, he changes from shaking me to patting. I start to sit up, but I’m too stiff, and I lie back down and make another noise by mistake. Which makes my father pat me all the more. There’s something under my head and something is tucked in partly over me. I don’t know what’s under my head, but over me it feels like his knitted vest. Jane sure knits a lot of vests.

  My father brings his canteen, lifts my head, and helps me drink. All of a sudden I worry about what happened to Little Master. Last I knew he was sitting on my chest. What did my father do with him? Then I see the moonlight glistening on his eyes not far from us. They glow so much it almost seems you could light your way with them, though of course you couldn’t. But no wonder Hoots can see in the dark. He’s watching us from above, but he crawls down when he sees me looking at him.

  I say to my father, “But you didn’t wake me.”

  “You needed. . . .”

  I guess I did if I fell asleep before I knew it, right in the middle of him telling me things.

  He says, “Sorry.”

  What’s he sorry about now? That he let me sleep? I won’t ask. He’ll just try to tell me and I don’t feel like waiting for him to struggle it out.

  He helps me up. The moonlight is so bright you can almost see colors. You can’t, but you think you can. We’re past the landslide and back on the trail. And in this moonlight it’s not so hard to go on. If there’s anything along the trail that looks to Little Master like I need to know about it, he’ll tell me.

  I ask Little Master, did he sleep?

  “I got bored. Everybody was asleep.”

  “Didn’t you sleep at all?”

  “Well, a little bit, but we see at night, you know—you know that, and we love full moons. There were lots of moons where we come from. They told me never less than three in the sky at a time. I went up a little bit to see the view, all shiny, just as if back where we come from.”

  “You never, ever, even once saw where you Hoots come from.” But then I think a minute, and then I say, “You know what? Something’s happening to you. You’re getting yourself around. Other Hoots never do that, climb up there on rocks, not even a little bit. I wonder how far you can go?”

  He doesn’t answer, just moves his cheek from mine and puts his chin on top of my head instead. He’s thinking.

  My father trots along ahead of us at a nice, Seattle, long-distance pace. He’d probably be going faster if it wasn’t for me.

  Little Master says, “You’re right, I am.” But it’s so much later I have to think back to remember what he’s talking about.

  We pass another good view place, almost as good in the moonlight as it was in daytime. There’s fires down there in the village. Like signals just for us. At the edge of town there’s this homey glow in three places, as if one fire for each of us, even Little Master. You can hardly see the houses in this moonlight, they’re too much the same color as the rocks they’re on. Those fires almost makes me happy to be going back. Well, I am: There’s food and rest and warmth, and I’ll be glad to see Sunrise. She’ll be glad to see me, too.

  I’ll bet they heard the rockslide, maybe even all the way down there. I’ll bet they wonder if we’re all right.

  I wish we were coming back with my mom’s picture and Little Master’s doll. We never even thought to get them with those guards’ mounts around. We probably even left some food up there. If I had her picture, I’d hang it in our lean-to. It would make it look civilized. Especially it would if I could have had that silver frame. My father made me a bookcase, but it’s not even half the size of the one I had in my stall, and there’s only four books that really belong to me. (I suppose it’s not democratic to keep a book all to yourself, even the ones you own.) The walls are just rocks and the window is tiny. “Because of the cold,” my father said. The walls are thick, so you have to get right up to the window to see out. All it looks out on are mountains, no fountains, no walkways, no avenues, and no big trees. . . . Vegetables grow right up next to the houses.

  I’d put my mother’s picture across from our cot, I guess, even after what she’s done. She’s beautiful, her hair tied up on top in a fancy hairdo. You don’t see that at the village. I hope she has a good excuse for falling in love. I wonder if we’ll have to rescue the baby, too. I’d be ashamed to have a brother or sister that’s not a Seattle. I’d even be ashamed to have it up here where there’s hardly a decent Seattle for miles around but me and my father. Up here they hardly know what a good one looks like.

  At dawn we stop to eat dry cakes and watch the color come to the mountain tops, our backs to the sun. My father is the most sunrise-watching person I ever met.

  We sit, and pretty soon I’m telling my father about my mother and her new baby. I don’t do it to make him feel bad, I do it to see if maybe he can say something that will help me understand things a little bit better.

  “No dif . . . ferent from me and Jane,” he says.

  “But at least she’s a Tennessee. What if this is with a complete, absolute nothing?”

  “There is no nothing.”

  “But what if it’s somebody who can’t trot at all?”

  He shakes his head—so many times I should have counted, but I didn’t start in time. Then he blows out like that runner did. “Someday you’ll love,” he says.

  “I won’t. That’s wrong.”

  “Human.” He shakes his head again.

  When we get up to go on, he stops me and takes off the belt he gave me. At first I think he’s taking it back, maybe because of what I said about the nothings, but then he takes the knife and makes another hole. I’m getting thinner. It felt like it. I’ve been hungry ever since I left our Hoot home and especially in these last few days. But I hope I’m getting taller, too. Sunrise would know. She keeps track.

  My father takes out an apple he must have been saving since the mounts brought out all that fresh food. It’s bruised and dusty and wilted. “Share. You . . . with . . . him,” he says. It’s such a mess, if I wasn’t so hungry I wouldn’t even look at it, but I take the knife and cut it in half. Little Master makes a sneery face, but I guess he’s hungry, too. He gobbles it as fast as he did that fruit before. Hoots can do that. He only takes two bites. Two of his baby teeth come out as he does it. My voice is changing, and his teeth are falling out. I liked him better with his little white baby teeth. Those big, grownup yellow ones always bothered me. Besides, they make me think of trainers—and creatures (Hoots do it too) that smile big smiles just to show how dangerous they are.

  I wonder about my father. Back there all he got was a few grapes. I say, “You don’t eat.” (I don’t ask it until I finish the apple. I’m really, really hungry.
I can hardly stand it.)

  “I do. Some. But I’m not growing. I remember . . . how it felt . . . when I . . . at your age.”

  Then he starts to give a speech. It’s so hard to keep track of what he’s saying. And here’s another “sorry” or three.

  “I didn’t . . . mean for you. . . .” And then he waves at the rockslide debris behind us. “I thought you . . . were . . . gone by. . . . Safe.”

  “It’s all right. We are safe.”

  This time I’m the one who gets up. I squat for Little Master to mount and then start trotting down the trail. I go at a fast pace. My father will see how strong I am. He’ll watch my legs. He’ll think how it’s worthwhile being a pure Seattle. He’ll think how a nothing really is worth nothing.

  Though we can see the village, it takes us most of the rest of the day to get down. Sunrise and Jane and a couple of young nothings (they sure look like nothing to me) come up to meet us. They bring us goat’s milk and cheese and squash cake. We all sit and eat even though we’ll be down soon. Those young ones look at my father like he’s special. And they even look at me like that. Well, compared to them we are. Well, compared to anybody we are. Those two nothings whisper to each other. I can tell they’re whispering about me because they keep glancing at me. I keep my leg muscles tightened up so they’ll see what legs are supposed to look like.

  Dirty as my father is, Jane hugs him first thing. I don’t like to watch that hugging sort of thing. Even if you turn away fast, you can’t miss the way her hand rubs up and down on the back of his neck, which I’m sure is all sweaty. Then she hugs me. So does Sunrise. Usually Sunrise knows better.

  Even as Jane hugs him, my father asks about the guards’ mounts.

  “We put up some tents next to the mess hall. Those men are odd. They fight among themselves a lot and hardly ever talk.”

  “Like me.”

  “Not at all like you.”

  We sit and eat. This odd food is beginning to taste good. Or I’m so hungry I like anything. Right now it’s as if nothing ever tasted better. I know it isn’t as scientifically made for us Sams and Sues as our dry cakes. It can’t be. Dry cakes may not taste so good, but they were made especially for us, and we can last forever on them. Hoots say taste doesn’t matter, anyway, but I’ve noticed Little Master cares about it, too. Of course he’s still young. He doesn’t know any better. And being with us is spoiling him, just like being with these Wilds is spoiling me.

  When we get back to the village, we have another supper and then collapse. Little Master curls up with me, and Sunrise piles a big fluffy quilt over us. That night there’s one of those mountain storms, but I’m so tired I only wake up enough to know it’s happening. Normally I’d be at the window in two seconds, Little Master, too, but now we can’t stay awake to appreciate it. Once, in a thunderstorm, right from this window, I saw a fireball roll down the mountain. I wouldn’t mind seeing that again.

  We don’t wake up till most of the way through the next day, when Sunrise brings us breakfast in bed.

  “You’ll never sleep tonight if you don’t get up pretty soon.” She pats us both even though everybody knows you’re not supposed to pat Hoots.

  I finally get almost enough to eat.

  After, there’s something special I want to do. I sneak us into the hills behind the village. That’s easy. Our hut is on the edge of things, and there’s a deep ditch just behind it where the water runs off when the snow melts. Now it’s dry and full of jackrabbits. There’s a fox lives around there, too. (I’ve seen the fox and a rabbit just sit there together as if they were friends, which makes sense since those jackrabbits are just as big as the fox.)

  We drop down into the ditch, trot along it, and come out after we get around the corner. We came here to hide sometimes. I know it really isn’t a secret place. They probably knew where we were, but they let us be. None of the other children wanted to come when we were here, or even when we weren’t. Probably having a Hoot here contaminated it. Or maybe it was me. I never wanted to be with them, either. I’d rather be with those mounts, even if it means fighting. At least they’re all Seattles.

  First I find my secret piece of mirror. Then I feel around my lip where a mustache should be. I do feel something there, and I do see a little bit of fuzz.

  But that’s not why I came out here. I want to find out just how far Little Master can walk. And I want it to be a secret.

  First I feel his legs. Not that I don’t feel them around my neck all the time, but that’s different. I can tell they’re a lot better than they used to be. Then I set him off walking, first slightly downhill, but then back up, and down and up again. He can go pretty far. He says he could go farther if he had to. I say he can go even farther if we work on it, and I say too bad we don’t have a go-round.

  I work him like our old trainer did. I yell the same yells, “Do! Do it! Do it!” He tells me to stop yelling and not to forget he’s The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All. I say, “This is how you Hoots always do. They yelled at us all the time. They didn’t care who you were.”

  “But a Sam should never do that to a Hoot. Especially not to me.”

  “Well, I’m the Seattle of The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All. Remember how you picked me out from the four best? Us four weren’t just anybody. We were already picked out from thousands.”

  “Hoots are better than the best of any of you.”

  “They’re not.”

  “Are! Are, are! You know they are.” He crouches on those stronger legs of his as if for the leap-and-choke.

  Leap-and-choke! Hasn’t he learned anything?

  “Haven’t you learned anything?”

  All sorts of thoughts go through my head in about half a second. How he can walk farther now, maybe all the way back to the village. How he could leap twice as far on those legs and grab me, even though I’m more than two yards away. Maybe now it’s the run-and-leap-and-choke.

  “Do you really want to do this to the one-and-only mount of all the mounts around here that will accept you and that you’ve learned to communicate with by the slightest, slightest, tiniest pressure? The mount that knows what you mean every time you wiggle? You don’t know any other life than with me.” (Of course the opposite is true, too.) “Think, for heaven’s sake! Do you ever think?”

  I guess I got through to him, because his ears collapse, clunk, completely down on each side of those absolutely huge eyes, which always look watery, but now more than ever.

  “Besides, around here in the wild with the Wilds, I’m the one in charge.” But I say that in a nice way.

  “Don’t tell and tell and tell me like you did. You were being exactly like a trainer.”

  “I was. On purpose. I promise I won’t do that anymore. But you promised things before, crossed your heart you wouldn’t even look like you’d choke me. You have to promise that over again.”

  Then I see how his feet are bloody. Now I’m thinking, don’t I know anything! Don’t I have my eyes open! I’m the one that should be crossing my heart and being sorry.

  “I’m stupid,” I say. “Stupid, stupid, and you’re the smart one. Why didn’t you say?”

  “I was trying to be a good Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All.”

  “I guess you proved that.”

  I squat and he mounts. He hangs on tight, his cheek tight up next to mine, and I trot him back.

  I’m thinking to wash him and bandage him up, but when we come back there’s a meeting going on. There’s mounts all over the place sitting on the ground and on rocks. My father and the runner are there. Everybody is. The runner is telling about other Wilds who will join with us and which Hoot towns are sealed off and have lots of prisoners.

  When Little Master and I climb up from the ditch, we’re practically right in the middle of it. I sit down at the top of the bank. Little Master crouches behind me, sort of piggyback, so as not to be too noticeable.

  They talk about breaking through the white lines and letting all us prisoners out. They talk about where to g
o first. They’re going to vote.

  The Wild Sams and Sues up here in the village all believe the same thing, and all the mounts believe a different thing. Which proves a lot about democracy. What’s the sense of any of it, if all the Wilds agree and there are only twenty-one mounts? The mounts will lose every single time.

  Then my father gives a speech. Except of course he can’t give it, but it’s his. He wrote it out last night in the middle of the night instead of sleeping, and Jane is supposed to give it for him. She starts to. Except she’s nervous. All those mounts scare her.

  “The Hoots are here to stay,” she says. I can hardly hear her. “They’ve no way of going back where they came from. They’ll need some kind of transport that isn’t us. Do you think they’d have to ride around on us if they had the machinery not to do it?”

  Jane is terrible. I’ve heard enough speeches back when there were contests in the arena and the Hoots would talk about the races in their big, resonating, ho, hoing voices. I could never do that, but my voice is better than Jane’s. It may yodel when I don’t want it to, but it’s loud, and it means what it says. And I’m not afraid of mounts, even though they knocked me down and spit at me and tripped me.

  I put Little Master down, go right out, and push Jane away and grab the paper from her. I start over from the beginning.

  “The Hoots are here to stay.”

  When I say it, good and loud, the mounts yell and boo and wave their fists like punching the air. It’s that same one-two, one-two. All the mounts do it.