It turned, giving him for the first time a clear sight of the so-called “mask.” Difficult to believe that this was not a face! The yellow markings, enclosed in a sort of cartouche of the same color, so perfectly counterfeiting eyes, nose, mouth: but, whatever it was, it was no face. The eyes, like a snail’s, were on top. The old books said that the rork breathing outlet was on top, too. And the mouth lay well beneath the bottom line of the mask.
As he watched, something appeared at the mouth, dropped to the ground. He thought it was a root, could not be sure. The great red leaf trembled and, as the rork munched and mumbled the stalk, was drawn slowly towards the indistinct dark cavern of the mouth —
Rango jostled his arm. The rork was lost to sight. Angered, Lomar turned to the guide, who, not looking at him, pointed below, much closer by.
“Sst, Mist Ran — aim the lookin glass down there … you seece eh big-big tree near brook?”
Lomar, after a moment, did. In the farseer, so quickly that he gave a start, appeared an animal utterly unlike a rork, and much, much smaller. Something was in its mouth, either a small leaper or a large crybaby, perhaps. It was there but an instant, then, suddenly, it scuttled away. First another, then another, the same kind of creature, passed rapidly before his gaze. The grass quivered a bit. Then nothing more. After another minute he put down the farseer.
“What you seece, Mr. Ran?” the Tock demanded — somewhat anxiously, it seemed. “Rips?”
“Was that what they were? Long and low?”
His guide nodded vigorously, his long, dark, now clean hair shaking. “Yace. Rips … How many you seece?”
“Three of them … why?”
“Three? No more? For-sure?”
Lomar assured him there were no more. The Tock reflected, clearly — by his expression — uncertain whether this was good or bad. Then he gestured towards Pia Sol, whose sullen blood-orange disk seemed to hover just a bit over the horizon. “Time to goce make a housey for hide en sleep.”
Rango took considerable pains, stripping the loose, soft bark from chosen trees, trimming branches with his hack; but it was small enough for all that, and had to be entered on hands and knees. Lomar was glad that they had both bathed. Rango insisted on making a fire despite the heater and the ward lamp in Lomar’s field pack, and, as they sat by it after supper, he began to talk.
One star was brighter than all in that black sky, blazing with a blue-white brilliance while the crybabies wailed and sobbed all around them. Rango flung out his hand towards it. “Old Earth,” he said, awe in his voice.
“What’s that?” Lomar was startled.
“Old Earth, Old Earth.”
“World as gives our fathers birth,
“Wish a-may, wish a-might,
“Haves the wish a-wish tonight,”
chanted Rango.
It was, of course, Lomar very well knew, nothing of the sort. It was Pia 3, the ball of slag officially known as Ptolemy Philadelphius, but unofficially called (in the cleaned-up version) “The Dung Heap.” But, being touched by both the fellow’s innocence and the verse which, in one form or another, was old when “our fathers” were still bound to the surface of their native world, he would not for the world have disillusioned him. The Tocks had little enough; they had, in fact, almost nothing.
Except this.
• • •
Had it been possible to plunge at once that next morning into the rufous jungle below, Lomar might have done it. But the descent of the off side of Last Ridge was obviously even a heavier undertaking than the ascent of the nigh side had been. Rango’s frequent noisy swallowing and thong-clutching as they viewed the prospect showed that he was probably far from anxious to put his new-bought charm to the test. And then, suddenly, suddenly, it seemed to Lomar that he had to find out a lot more about the rorks before meeting any of them face (so to speak) to face.
Up till now it had seemed that the Tocks were the one and the only key to the redwing matter. Now it seemed that there was another key — the rorks.
Rango received the sudden change of plans with relief, and hastened eagerly into talk. “Yace, Mist Ran, no-good now. You waist an see — comes Cold Time, wece goin nen. Nen spiders changen skins. Assen gahst no strengths. Lossa Tocks, some men, too, wece comin down to Rorkland. You come, too, Mist Ran. You come, too.”
And Lomar had thought that it might not be until then that he would be coming back to Last Ridge and its tremendous views.
But he was wrong.
The Station Library echoed to his steps. It was free enough of dust and dirt, the clean up Tocks saw to that. But no one was there. Catalogs, stacks and files were open to his touch. The two viewing rooms were as empty as the rest of the place. He threaded the spools to allow for continuous showing, sat back in his seat and depressed the cam on the arm of the chair.
Some of the spools were text clear through, others were 3D and narrative. The words had been written, and the voices spoken, by men and women long, long dead, and were marked throughout with little touches of the archaic. Nothing had been done to add to the material for centuries. However, there was no reason to assume that the rorks were any different now than they were then. And the unworn condition of the repro now unfolding before his eyes gave no reason to assume that many people had ever been interested in learning about them.
There it was, in three dimensions, sound, and color: Rorkland. And there were the rorks, much better, clearer, longer views than he’d gotten with just his farseer. “… fearfully intelligent….” Now, that was odd … He watched with bemused fascination a speed-up of the skin-shedding process the creatures gradually went through in winter, as they lay in their nests, moving sluggishly, when at all. Why, if the ancient observers had been correct, — why, if the rork were strictly herbivorous and attacked only in self-defense, should they be described as fearfully intelligent? Had the author-narrator been suspicious that his contemporaries were wrong and others right? — that the rork ate men, as well as attacking them on sight? And did they indeed venture into Tockland to capture human babies for a more grisly diet than mere redwing?
There was something stirring, tragic, in the views of the original settlers, forebears of the Tocks: clean, alert, vigorous, full of intelligence and zeal. To what had their descendents come!
He emerged from the library slowly and thoughtfully.
And to find the Station in an uproar.
• • •
No one, that month, thought of redwing at all. The Tocks came pouring in from all quarters of their small homeland — some of them from so far off that their grubby-faced and naked brats screamed in terror at the strange sight of Station personnel. The force fields were set up and all Guildsmen supplied with arms and — wonder of wonders! — Manton, the Motor Aide, even parted with several of his precious skimmers. And Edran Lomar found himself in one of them with Tan Carlo Harb, the Station Officer.
The shrill sound of the alarm still seemed to echo in his ears as he looked over the side. Height had been set for ten feet as soon as the vehicle passed out of the treelined streets. “I’m a rather good shot at rips,” the SO said, “but when things are like this, there’s no point in trying for individual kills. No sport in it when you can hardly miss…. I’m upping speed, boy. Hold on. Hold … on.”
After the lurch the ride was smooth again. “How often are things like this?” Lomar asked. “When the rips swarm?”
A new light was in the SO’s eyes, a new color in his cheeks. “Oh, every so often,” he said, vaguely. “If the north end of the continent wasn’t on a plateau, things would be much worse. As it is, well, to tell you the truth, it’s chiefly a rather exciting but hardly a dangerous period. Not for us. Gives us a chance to get the kinks out of our buttocks and the stale air out of our lungs, run around and skim around and shout … and all that. Ha! Look there! Below, left — there!”
There, where the SO’s plump finger pointed, a bush seemed suddenly to explode as at least a dozen leapers sprang out
of it. And springing after them were the yellow-grey brindled bodies of the rips. They were perhaps no larger than large hares, and in shape were not very much unlike them, save for the batlike ears and stiff, erect tails. One of the leapers alone managed to make its escape, its great, terrified bounds covering at least five meters at a time. While other rips ravaged and worried their prey, another set off in pursuit, teeth bared, clods of earth flying from the sharp and non-retractable claws capable of the dreadful damage which gave the beast its name.
“Hold control,” the SO said, abruptly, pressing the release toggle. Lomar hastily activated the instrument set on his side. Scarcely had he time to notice Harb seizing the weapon, when it snapped, releasing the tiny but telltale little burst of mist, and the rip — already dead — stumbled, whirled, and fell.
“Not bad,” said the SO. “Return control.”
Lomar looked back to see the rip pack tearing the body of its mate to bloody pieces. One of them raised a reddened snout and seemed to gaze back toward him with milky eyes. He shuddered.
“Lemmings,” said Harb, his voice reflecting satisfaction.
“Sir?”
“Don’t you know the natural history of your own world, Lomar? Lemmings. An extinct mammal that lived in Iceland or Greenland … was it Scotland? … never mind, doesn’t matter. Lemmings; I’ve been trying to think of that name ever since I stepped into the skimmer. I thought that you’d be able to tell me something about them. Too bad. Well. The lemmings used to swarm now and then, just as the rips do. Something about their metabolism, or am I thinking of something else? Suddenly they’d increase in numbers, incredible, tremendous increase. And then they’d pour out, over-running the country until, according to the quaint old legends, they would reach the sea — ”
“I bet that stopped them.”
“If so, Lomar, you would lose your money. No, as a matter of fact — or fancy, as it may be — that did not stop them. They had swum across ponds and lakes and rivers and so they assumed — one would suppose — that the ocean was just another of the same. So, in they’d plunge, millions and millions of them,” Harb said, enthusiastically, “and swim until they drowned…. Oh, I suppose some of them must have gotten back to shore or else never went in the water at all, otherwise there would’ve been no more to carry on the species. But the rips, on the other hand — see them? Look. See? See? In-cred-ible.”
Pack after pack passed beneath them as they skimmed southward. They ate the crybabies taking their diurnal sleep, they devoured the leapers as they fled, they consumed the slow and the harmless and they lapped up the ordinary carnivores of the North country with little more difficulty. The rips crunched nestlings and fledgings and jumped, again and again, after birds and daybats on the wing. Several times several of them lunged and tore at the shadow of the skimmer on the ground, and sprang toward the craft itself.
A grunt of alarm escaped Lomar as the rips hurtled aloft, bared muzzles exposing bloody tushes, glazed and seemingly sightless eyes staring insanely. Harb gave a quick burble of amusement. “We’re ten feet up,” he said, “although it may not seem so. They can’t jump more than half that distance. Oho — Last Ridge up ahead. We’ll skim down and take a look at Upper Rorkland a bit. You’ll see something there!
“And don’t let the fact that your testicles have probably retreated bother you … If I didn’t know that Starchy Manton watches over every gear, sprocket, diode and transducer in these vessels as if they were parts of his own tender flesh I wouldn’t risk my ass flying two feet over the nursery; certainly not over all the swarming rips in Creation; hold on!”
The skimmer slid down the angle of the air. Ran Lomar held on tightly, opened his eyes wide. Scarlet-crimson and huge were the redwing leaves in the great valley of the rorks, but what held his attention — gripped it, would not let it go — was the great wave that advanced slanting up the valley. A greyish-yellow wave —
“There they are,” said Harb, in a low voice. “Can you count them? You can count the stars, maybe, but not them.”
The rips seemed to have no end to their numbers. None at all. On and on came the wave, the skimmer hovering where she stood, the wave boiling and moiling beneath, onward and onward —
“Oh,” said Harb. “Look you there. I’ve heard it. I didn’t believe it. I’m not sure I believe it now.”
“What? What?”
“The Tocks have always said it. But I never saw it. I never saw it before. Oh, look — ”
Where he pointed and where Lomar looked was a line, a thin line, of great dark forms, bounding and leaping on spidery legs; charging forward ahead of the great grey-yellow wave of rips.
“The Tocks told me. They often told me. ‘The rork,’ they said … ‘The rork lead them on. They lead them on to attack us’.”
And the wave rolled on, rolled on, and broke upon the gaunt and granite-hard escarpment of the cliffs of Last Ridge.
• • •
The difficult ascent of the Ridge limited the number of the swarming predators that could make their way onto the plateau. Limited — hut did not stop them. Stories were told of entire Tock families devoured alive, of screaming fugitives trapped and overwhelmed within very near reach of the force fields which so safely ringed around the Station, the great generators smoothly toiling to their tasks. And one or two or a few more, attacked by single beasts, were able to defend themselves with their hacks, slashing the slashers.
For almost a month the seemingly endless swarms of rips rolled on out of the unknown interior. They reached the sea, but did not plunge into it to their destruction. There they mated, as was their practice in every breeding season, and there they laid their eggs, leathery clusters of them, and covered them with sand.
And then, afterward, for hundreds of miles, up and down the ragged shores of the sullen sea, in great numbers they died.
The silence seemed long and unnatural.
The Tocks trooped back to the outlands with much less despatch than they had fled therefrom. For those of them who had reached safety in time the whole period had been much of a lark; fed from Guild stores (reluctantly, but fed nonetheless), they had been free from their labors to roam the streets of the small settlement which was to them Babylon the Great — not that they had ever heard of it — but now it was all over.
“Some of them had the brass to turn up at the Store today for rations,” Second Aide Arlan told Lomar, with an outraged titter. “Sent them away with a flea in their ear — ‘Gather redwing, confound you,’ the fellow told them. ‘Holiday is over. Chop weed if you want to eat’.”
And gather redwing they did. For a while. But then there was an outbreak of Tock fever.
And production dropped to almost nothing.
CHAPTER THREE
The Cape of Smokes, it was said, marked the beginning of South Tockland. The name, Ran had vaguely thought, referred to some volcanic activity, past or present. But it became clear enough as the Station’s single, small watercraft came abaft of the Cape that the tiny wisp of white which presently appeared was man-made.
“Signal,” said the quartermaster. “They’ll be waiting for us.”
“Welcoming committee?” asked Ran. But the QM only grunted.
The utter failure of Lomar’s efforts with the Tame Tocks had thrown him into a depression which passed, in turn, to indifference. He went on a camp-out trip with Lindel, but it had not lasted long. It was pleasant for a while around their fire in the crisp autumnal air, but when she had tried to rally him to return to his work, he had lost his temper. What work? he demanded, angrily? Let him alone … And she had. So completely, in fact, that when he returned from a long and sullen walk she was gone.
Then he and Reldon had gone on a joint drunk together which left him with a bad hangover and a hot, confused memory of musky revels with a pubescent but artful Tocky girl.
All in all, it seemed time for some sort of change.
The redwing output of South Tockland had never amounted to as much as the hi
ghest production of the North; but, then, neither had it ever fallen below the lowest. He’d failed on what was, so to speak, home ground. What had he to lose by looking over things at the continent’s other end?
“Nothing that I can think of,” admitted SO Harb, plucking meditatively at his plump lower lip. “Don’t imagine that it will do much, if any, good either. All that they want down there are guns and gunmakings. They’d like us to issue them standard Guild weapons, if you please, you know. Ostensibly to kill rorks so the gathering can be safer — actually, to pursue their rotten little feuds of wars. Fat chance, ha. There’s only one place, after all, this whole savage world over, where they could get ammunition fit for standard weapons, and that’s right here. So every weapon the Station supplied them would forever be aimed, in the long run, right at our own heads.
“Ergo, thank you, but no, thank you. However … speaking of guns reminds me. There is one chap, cute, down in South Barbaria or South Savageland, who might be of some help to you, personally. Name of … name of … Fout, I can’t remember it. Squawman. Used to be Station armorer. Look him up. And now, another wee drinkie? …”
Hardly could the inhabitants be wilder than their own untamed coastland, Ran Lomar thought, as they rounded Cape of Smokes. He examined the black, bleak fiords through his farseer, hoping to line up on something human or of human provenance. The smoke, however, issued up from among a mass of broken rocks from which the fire’s makers could see without being seen. Not until they were well South did he see anything of the sort he was looking for — a long, thin boat of the open type, its bow riding high out of the water and a man at the stern with a steering oar. There was a stumpy mast and a ragged sail held by a cord on which a ragged boy had his hand.
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