by John Rickham
“You two,” she snapped, “must enjoy being in a minority!”
‘Vox populi,” I told her, “has never been the source of wisdom. Isn’t that the essential weakness of democracy? Remember, it was the popular ballot that gave the hemlock to Socrates, and crucified Christ.”
“I think,” she said, wriggling free and turning away, “that I will go and make some coffee!”
When she was safely clear, Carson grinned and grasped my hand firmly.
“Nice work. Won’t do her any harm at all to get cut down to size once in a while.”
“That wasn’t my intention, but I’m damned if I intend to tailor my thinking to suit someone else’s opinions.”
“She can’t help being attractive,” he said enigmatically, and left it at that. In a while she came back to sit between us once again and peer through the pigmented craziness outside while we sipped the coffee.
“And yet,” she said, swiping a stream of moisture from her brow, “you can talk about instincts, about running into danger!”
“I can’t explain that”—Carson grinned—”but I can feel it more than ever right now. According to our radar we are about twenty miles from the point we are aiming at, and we shouldn’t have any draft troubles at all, but I’m going to put on the depth sonar, just the same.” He moved a switch, and we all heard a faint and shrill pinging” from somewhere under our feet. The heat was now as tangible as a steaming blanket and the outside light glared like the lighting used on stage to convey mystery and horror, all side-slanting reds and greens. It was at that moment that I heard some thing that was neither sonar nor engine noises.
“Do we have outside sound pickups?” I asked, and Carson flipped a switch at once, without question. Instantly the cabin was full of the rush and rustle of water and winds, and over and through the play of the elements there came a faint and eerie wailing. There were many voices in chorus, with now and then a yelp to break the howls.
“We can’t be that close!” Carson muttered frowning, but he reduced our speed until we were wallowing heavily, and put on the bow light. Vision was treacherous, but after a moment of peering I could make out a head in the water, and then another, then several. Carson saw them as soon as I did, and adjusted the sonar rapidly to a surface scan.
“Swimmers all around us,” he announced quietly, and reached for his beamer, setting it for wide-angle. “Better have yours ready,” he advised, “just in case. There’s no record of the Verlans being hostile, but let’s not gamble on it too far. You make anything out of that howling, Fiona?”
She had her head cocked, listening intently. “A little, not very specific. I think they came looking for us, or for help, and they want us to come with them, to hurry. They will show us the way. Something like that.”
“Suits me,” he said, and trod on the throttle again cautiously.
“The moods are the hard part,” she said. “They do not have many distinct phonemes. Most of the meaning comes from emotional overtones and pitch. Can you hear it? A kind of anxiety, worried about something, needing help—and yet they are half-afraid of us at the same time.”
“According to the sonar, they are giving us a direct route to exactly where we want to go, so that’s all right. And they are keeping up on either side. Escort, eh? I wonder what for?”
I had nothing useful to offer, so I kept silent, but I was studying the heads I could barely see, bobbing in the water on either side. I had the strangest feeling that all this was somehow familiar to me. An hour later, when the radar told us we were almost home, I was still trying to place that elusive thought into something concrete. My vision had adapted surprisingly well, but it didn’t help much. Even a man will look strangely seal-like when he’s swimming with just his head out of the water, especially if he has long hair and a beard. The manner of their swimming was strange, though, as if they lay flat and paddled with their arms and legs.
“Here comes the tricky bit,” said Carson, all at once, cutting off the headlights and reducing speed rapidly. Out there we heard the smash and roar of surf on rocks, and in a moment or two we were able to discern an enormous looming wall of black rock that went up and into the rainbows. It was black as midnight, yet speckled with diamond highlights, and the sea spouted and belched multi-colored foam along its base. As uninviting a prospect as I ever saw, but I couldn’t see why he had put out the headlight.
“There’s an inlet hereabouts,” he explained, “that shows up like a sore thumb on radar, but First Expedition spent eight crazy hours out here trying to find it until somebody thought of putting the light out. The dazzle, the jewel facets, and the spray are enough to drive you out of your mind!”
We were heaving wildly now as we ran across the hack-swell, getting ever closer to that pounding surf, but all at once he livened the engine again and I saw the scanty break in the foam ahead of us. We shuddered ahead, and for one nerve-racking spell that boiling froth brushed us on either side, then we were through and into comparative calm, with the sinister black walls standing up on either side like some immense prison barrier. Now he put the headlights on again, and the swords of radiance cut tunnels through the dimness and struck blinding dazzles from the rock wall.
“Okay, you two,” he said, “I’ll juggle her as close alongside as I can, then you hop out and tie up. No problem. This rock is so cubic in structure it stands up like columns and bricks.”
He was quite right. I took the forward rope, stout nylon with a preformed loop, and clung to the guard-rail until I could step ashore. Then, it was a simple matter to find an upright and make secure. Although much smaller in dimensions, that rock formation reminded me very strongly of that curious phenomenon, off the Irish coast, known as the Devil’s Causeway. By the time Fiona had signaled that the stem was fast, Carson had cut the engines and dropped fenders over the side.
“We could be in luck,” he said, as we gathered to talk. “Instead of having, to spend a day or two locating a pack of Verlans, they’ve come looking for us. And that must mean something. That’s your angle, Fiona. As soon as we can climb up out of this cleft to the top, we wait and they will make the next move. That will be your cue. You know what we want, to find Uhumeelee, or someone who knows about him.”
“Do we carry arms?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Just as a precaution. Don’t shoot unless there’s absolutely no other course. And we can take headlights too. Hold on while I get them.” He was back in minutes with one for each of us. They were nothing more than springy plastic bead bands with built-in spotlights powered by miniature cells. “Good for about eight hours,” he explained, “but don’t use them unless you have to. For one thing, they ruin your dim-vision, and they could blind the Verlans. And, with one of these in the middle of your forehead, you’re a target. Right? Let’s go.”
Of course he was right about the adaptation. By the time we gained the top, after about fifty feet or so of scrambling from one flat ledge to another, I could see with reasonable accuracy up to five or six yards. That was fine, but what I hadn’t expected was the near-gale we ran into as soon as we gained the top. It was a thoroughly unnerving experience to lean into a forty-mile-an-hour hot blast of swirling colors. It was so exactly like being swept up by a roaring sea of water that it was several seconds before I could overcome the instinctive fear of gulping in a lungful of water when I had to breathe. Then I felt Carson’s hand on my arm, and Fiona’s head coming close until we were touching each other.
“This is no good!” he shouted. “Let’s head upwind until we find a lee of some kind. Better hook on!” The last phrase didn’t make sense to me until I saw him guide her hand to the small of his back, where she took a good hold of the waistband of his shorts. Then I realized that I had to do the same with her loincloth, and we set away. That wind was fairly steady, but every so often it would shriek up to a savagery that had me staggering, and I am certain Fiona would have been blown away entirely had she not been anchored between us. This kept on for almost thr
ee quarters of an hour, until, thankfully, we felt the violence grow less. Within a further ten minutes we sighted a dark bulk of trees and then we had only random gusts to deal with. Ten minutes more and all the gale was up in the treetops, roaring and rushing, leaving us with the calm. We came to one giant bole and halted.
“This will do us,” Carson decided. “But it is going to be fun going back. Between us, I think we would be wise to abandon dignity and crawl. Better than diving over the cliff at a mad run. This wind, though, must be seasonal. I don’t recall anything like it—” he interrupted himself to cock his bead and listen. Fiona went tense in the dimness.
“Don’t move!” she whispered. “They’re all around us. Hear them?”
I could. Under the constant surf-roar of the gale-tossed branches up there I heard a dozen, a hundred, faint howls and yelps, calls questing from one to the other. She had tried to teach us what she knew of the Verlan tongue, but her understanding was far ahead of ours, so I watched her. All at once I saw her beautiful bosom swell as she drew a deep breath and then let out a high, ululating howl. I had heard her do this kind of thing before—what the ship’s officers must have thought, I dare not imagine—hut it still seemed as strange now as it had done then, that such an animal sound could come from one so slim and lovely. Yet not altogether animal. I recognized the call. It said, in effect, we are friends, but carried an overtone of curiosity. She made a sign, and I tried my best to imitate her sound, as Carson also did. Then she tried a different one. “What do you want?” It was too complex for us, so we kept quiet.
The jungle noises stopped, too. And, for a long while, there was nothing but hot gusts of random breeze. Then, all at once, there was someone standing and watching us, not ten feet away, by a tree.
We all kept very still. He was about five feet tall, distinctly manlike, his shoulders hunched, knees bent and arms half-spread as if ready for instant flight. His body, lean and wiry up to the waist and deep chested with flat muscles above, was covered entirely with a gray-brown pelt. Apart from bare pinkish patches on his belly and breast, the effect was that of sealskin. His short neck bore a head distinctly human, but with the nose advanced into a muzzle. His ears were too large and mobile, and his big bright eyes were well-hooded with brow-ridges. I had read, in the data we had gathered, that the Verlan were of canine origin, but it was one thing to read that, another to see it in fact and to realize with a start that I had often seen just such a look in the eyes of my dogs at home. After a long wait, Fiona drew another breath and made, very gently, the “we are friends” sound at him again.
His ears flicked forward, his head swung from side to side uneasily, and then he howled in reply. She said, “He wants us to follow.”
“Okay with us,” Carson murmured. “Tell him to lead on.”
She yelped, made a gesture, and the Verlan turned and ran in a curious crouching trot, yelping as he went, arousing echoes of his call from the dimness. We followed as fast as we were able, winding in and out among the trees.
“What about finding the way back?” I asked. “Just in case we have to?”
“No problem,” he said, patting his hip. “I have a pocket-gyro. I’d like to know just what our guide there is running us into. This is contrary to all the reports, which claim that the Verlan are hard to find. This lot seems to want us pretty badly.” His emphasis on “lot” was hardly needed. The mewling and yelping all around told of a host of the creatures. As we plunged on deeper into the forest the breeze lessened until there was hardly a breath, and the heat was tremendous. Fiona, just a little ahead of us, gleamed in the dimness, her loincloth plastered to her hips, and we were just as badly off. I began to wonder how long we could last without drink. And there was increasing tension, not anything to hear, but that I could feel in every nerve.
We came at last to a kind of crest and began scrambling down the other side into a glade. There was the chatter and splash of water ahead, so we were in the valley slopes of some stream. Then we struck a clearing and could see the water that made the noise, where it fell over a rock-edge to our right. In front, in the focus of the open space, stood what looked like a very primitive hut, made by standing long branches against each other and piling them with shorter ones and leaves. All around were hordes of Verlan, all descending the slopes with us, converging on the hut. Closer to the hut, I saw that it was about seven or eight feet long and barely high enough to admit a man on his knees. Our guide went on, Fiona following, leading us, but the rest of the Verlan now held back in a ring. The yelping grew keener. Fiona stopped and turned to us. “I’m stuck,” she confessed, “I don’t know what they’re saying, now.”
V
“CAN’T YOU EVEN guess?” Carson demanded, and she shook her head.
“These are new sounds altogether. They are not talking to me, to us, any more. They seem to be calling someone inside that hut affair.”
The howling was hideous now, and despite the twitches of nerves up and down my spine, I had again that strange impression that this was familiar in some way. Then we saw movement at the vee-opening of the hut, and a Verlan man emerged, crawling on all fours and favoring his right arm. He was old, his pelt almost white, and he seemed frail, with hardly the strength to move himself. The pack fell silent as he stopped for breath and then struggled to get erect. By now it was obvious that his right arm was useless, possibly broken. He stood watching us, and again I saw that curious half-expectant, half-fearful stance. One or two voices lifted in the waiting pack, and Fiona gripped my arm.
“Hear that? Doesn’t it sound like Uhuineeleel”
I heard it only remotely, because now that sense of familiarity had crisped into knowledge. I knew. I remembered where I had met something like this before. And I knew what to do. It had to be done quickly, and with confidence. I started straight down the remainder of the slope, straight toward the old man, and as I went I was a boy again, a lad of fifteen, all alone in the kennel-yard with our Irish Wolf-hounds. Three-and-a-half pair, we had, and they were mine to take responsibility for. And now the leader, Mooney, had broken his leg. Sam Blake, our kennelman, had told me often, and his words rang again in my ear, “You’ll always know when a dog’s bad hurt, because he’s afraid of you then. That’s the animal in him. If you’re going to do anything at all for him, you have to get friends again, treat him right.” I could hear the words now as I drew close to the old man, saw him retreat half a step away. I put out my hand.
“It’s all right, boy. All right, now. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s all right.” It doesn’t really matter what you say, it’s the tone of voice that matters, and the smile, the whole air of confidence. I touched him gently on the shoulder, and he stiffened, his lip lifting, and I saw, for the first time, that be had very useful fangs in the upper jaw. But, weight for weight, he was very little bigger than my hounds had been.
“Let me look, now, boy. Just keep still and let me see what’s the matter. Quite all right, nothing to worry about.” I could feel the tension give just a little, and went closer still, using my eyes and fingers, murmuring all the time. I noticed, incidentally, that he wore a fine braided collar around his neck and a pouch dangled from it, but I had more important things to attend to. Sam had taught me all he knew about this kind of thing, and though be might have been puzzled for a moment by a man-dog. I think he would have seen what I saw just as fast as I did. It was nothing more than a dislocation, unless my anatomy lessons were all wrong. I knew what to do. I had no idea how old the injury was, which makes a considerable difference, but there was no way of finding out, so the only thing to do was put it right. I investigated that shoulder and arm as best I could, touching gently, and the old man twisted his head to watch, but kept still otherwise.
“Steady now, boy,” I said, maneuvering for a good bold. “This is going to hurt a bit, just a bit, but it will be all over very quickly.” I was stroking him now with both hands, talking all the while, raising the injured arm delicately until it was where I wanted i
t, and with my other arm around him, not too tight. Then, all in one quick twist and squeeze, it was done and I stood away, still within touching distance, still talking. He had given one shrill yelp, but now he moved the arm, and I nodded, took his hand and moved it more. It was all right, probably painful, but all right. He howled, and the intonation alone was enough to tell me that he was talking to his fellows. For a while there was quite an interchange, then I smiled again, patted his shoulder and stood further away. I heard Carson come to a halt by my side, on my left, Fiona arriving at my right a moment later.
“It took a year off my life,” he muttered, “when I saw you go marching down here. What did you do to him?”
“Dislocated shoulder. I put it back. He’ll be as good as new in a day.”
“How did you know?” she demanded.
“Seen it before. I used to have Wolfhounds, big as these fellows. It’s just a knack, that’s all.”
‘Yeah? What’s he saying now, Fiona?”
“I’m not quite sure. Give me a minute.” She yowled at the old man and he yelped back at her for a while, then she turned to us. “This is Uhumeelee, no doubt about it. And he wants you, Alan. Something be wants you to do.”
The old man was pawing my arm and holding out the pouch that hung at his neck. She translated haltingly. “Take and touch. Take—better do it.”
The pouch was of some kind of fiber with a spring to it that kept it shut. Inside was a thick tube of rubbery stuff. Carson nodded.
“That’s the gem in there, just as Gaunt said. But why is he offering it to you? Gallint said he wasn’t allowed to touch it.”
“If it cures things,” Fiona said, in sudden animation, “perhaps he wants you to touch him with it!”
“I think you’ve got something there. Try that, Noble.”
When I squeezed the end of the rubbery cover I felt the thing inside move, and show itself at the other end. I heard Fiona gasp. I couldn’t blame her. I had a rod of living fire in my fingers, a crystal cylinder that glowed with every color imaginable, that definitely had internal structures and designs, that was like nothing I have ever seen before, and utterly beyond my power to describe. And that was only the first inch or so protruding from its sheath. But when I went to touch the old man with it he backed off, yelping, and became quite agitated. So that was wrong, somehow.