by Anthology
The arithmetic was simple, Paul thought. A scant twelve hundred fighters against a three-sided attack from over ten thousand. Four Charin men with rifles, automatics, scanty ammunition, heavy bows. A handful of giants who knew nothing of war but theory and whose basic nature would revolt at the reality. Spitting wouldn't help. He forced himself to attend to what Wright was saying: "There must be one commander."
"I give no orders to Abro Samiraa and her sisters, my equals."
"Would you and she and the others accept direction from one of us?"
Pakriaa murmured, "I have never seen you fight."
Spearman laughed. Wright said, "You will, Abro Pakriaa. If you will accept one of us as commander, the army can strike as one soldier. There would be less confusion. And Lantis will not expect it."
That brought shrewdness to the little red face. "But you can do nothing hiding behind this pile of stones."
"A temporary shelter while we shoot. You know our fire sticks. This building commands the upper part of the lake and this end of the meadow. We will not be trapped here. There will be no siege. If it is necessary to retreat, we'll know the right moment to do it."
The oldest captain, Nisana, a wiry, quiet woman, said, "Abro Kamisiaa herself spoke of a thing like this."
Pakriaa murmured absently, "Did I give you leave to speak?" But she was not angry; she was considering it. "This is better, Tocwright, what you say now. I will send, learn if my sisters agree. But who will be the leader?"
"That should be decided now," Wright said, and Paul thought: Here it comes, Ed—you get what you want at last. And he remembered that obscure thing which might not have been in Spearman's mind at all: desertion—the thing was a dirty word, and the mind would not speak it. But Wright was staring at him—at him, not at Spearman. "There's only one of us," Wright said, "who ought to lead, in this trouble. That is my feeling, Abro Pakriaa, but I alone cannot decide it. All of us here should vote on it."
Pakriaa understood the nature of a vote. Under her iron monarchy, minor village matters were often decided by that method if her own attitude happened to be neutral. Once made, and approved by herself, a pygmy vote was binding as magic. Her gaze touched the giants with a sour smile. She was visibly counting; then she was studying Paul with new curiosity.
Of the giants, only the two new recruits were not in evidence. Paul glimpsed the red-furred boy peering from the doorway of Mijok's private room; Surok went in to soothe him. Pakriaa said, "I will consent. After the vote I will inform my sisters as quickly as I can."
Wright's fingers were frozen in his gray beard. "Then I ask that Paul Mason take command, his orders to be followed without question."
Paul could not speak. How did this happen? How can I…. He heard Ann, imitating the formality of Wright's words, but with an undertone of passionate protest: "I ask for the leadership of Edmund Spearman."
Spearman frowned at her, flushed, proud, perhaps amazed. He said doubtfully, "Other nominations…? Voice vote?"
"Voice vote, as you wish," Wright said.
"M-make it voice vote," Dorothy whispered, and her face was begging: Is it too much? Can you stand it? Is it what I ought to do…?
"Satisfactory," Spearman said. Paul nodded helplessly.
Dorothy said, "Paul Mason."
Wright glanced at Pakriaa. When Spearman was nominated she had abandoned her patronizing air; she said with enthusiasm, "Spearman."
Mijok's voice rumbled in the depths: "Paul Mason."
The voting went quickly after that. Abara slipped into shadow and shook his head before Wright could call his name. Sears voted for Paul with a wry attempt at a grin. Surok hesitated; his tawny face smiled at Paul with apology and he said, "Spearman." Golden Lisson voted the same way. The other giant women and Elis voted for Paul. The children were quiet, not needing to be told that this was grown-up business. When one of the smallest boys started to hum, little Dunin squatted behind him and covered his mouth.
All the pygmy captains but one had followed Pakriaa's lead, after a pantomime of meditation, probably for the record. Now, with a vote of 10-10, this one captain was full of trouble. She understood that she would be the last to vote and must break the tie. This was Nisana, taciturn, with the white scar of a wound that had destroyed her lower left breast and run jaggedly down her side; Paul had seen her often but knew little of her. She was studying the candidates with a manifestly honest, tormenting effort to decide, and she avoided Pakriaa's astounded glare. The green eyes fixed themselves at last on one candidate with a blinding innocence.
"Paul Mason."
Pakriaa started as if slapped, but recovered quickly. She said, "Tocwright, is Abara not to vote?"
Abara shuffled a step backward, two steps forward. It brought him nearer the bulk of Sears Oliphant. His bulging eyes tried to escape Wright's look, and Pakriaa's; his ugly lips wobbled. He squeaked: "Paul Mason."
"Twelve-ten," Wright said. "Abro Pakriaa, I am grateful—"
Pakriaa ignored him. She was saying with acid sweetness, "Abroshin Nisana, perhaps you wish to remain here?"
It seemed to Paul that a mechanical force within him was taking over, unsought, at a moment of greatest need. "That would be excellent, Abro Pakriaa. If I am commander, I need one of you here: I am glad to select Abroshin Nisana."
The princess faced him. Her eyelids flickered—usually a sign of pygmy amusement more revealing than laughter, but one never knew, exactly. The machine labored, weighing dangers and advantages. A direct order now might win over Pakriaa or lose her completely and all the twelve hundred. She understood and admired aggressiveness; she was also a bundle of touchy personal pride. And—the slim spear in her hand could strike like a cobra. Paul said, "Abro Pakriaa, you will tell the other leaders our decision, and if they agree, have them come here at once." There was a gray-white shadow at his left. The balance, swinging delicately, was visible in Pakriaa's almost sleepy eyes. He thought: One thing quicker than a pygmy's arm—a giant's. At least he would not be pierced with white-stone, while Mijok stood there.
Pakriaa's arm swung—the harmless right arm, a harmless beckoning gesture to six of her captains, who followed her out of the fortress, leaving Abroshin Nisana staring at the ground and very much alone.
Spearman came alive. He spoke plainly, cheerfully: "Paul, count on me for anything. Do whatever I can." His voice had full sincerity. If his eyes were a little too steady, too candid—never mind it. It was a pleasure to take his hand, thank him, turn to immediate needs.
"Two lifeboat trips right away, Ed, in what's left of daylight. Ann, Samis, and the four smallest giant children on the first. All the carpentry and garden tools. Third trip in the morning." Wright's sudden relaxation was praise….
Ann left, with no more protest than a backward look. But at the last moment she ran back to kiss Wright on the mouth….
And when Ed was returning from the second flight, which had carried Dunin and four other giant children to the island—when it was night and the red eye of the lifeboat was slipping down from above the hills, then the drums began.
4
Paul heard the drums from within the room that was his and Dorothy's—merely a section of the thatched lean-to inside the fortress wall, but Dorothy had given it the reality of a living place. There were no chairs: one sat on a rug which was a cured uskaran pelt, a gift from Abro Brodaa, whose people had hunted down the tigerish beast after it raided her village. The bed was only a clumsy framework with an asonis hide stretched across it. But the shelter had become dear with use, and Dorothy had hung a few of Paul's paintings on the walls—a portrait of Mijok, one of Christopher Wright which had caught something of the old man's brooding alertness. The red jungle flowers were too cloyingly rich to be kept here, but Dorothy had found a blue meadow shrub, and a white bloom that hid in shady ground and recalled the scent of jonquils….
It was too dark to see her plainly; Paul knew her eyes were open on him. Barely audible against his shoulder, she said, "I thought I'd
be insatiable. I only want to be near and not think." Nevertheless thought goaded her. "Ten thousand—ten thousand—What can you do?"
All he could say was rehearsed, mechanical, and she had heard it before. "Frontal attack first, because the pygmies couldn't be led into anything else. But I shall turn it into an ordered retreat—to the island. Drive south, skirt the southern end of the hills, then straight for the coast. We'll be at the island in—oh, soon—"
"But the range—the coastal mountains opposite the island—you can't cross them—they rise so sheer—"
"Remember the river that flows almost due west from these little hills? It comes to the sea north of the range. We'll make rafts to get down that, I think. There aren't any falls. At the coast we'll contrive something—dugouts with outriggers. I've already shown old Rak how to make one; he may be working on it now."
Dorothy pressed a hand over his mouth. She stammered, "Make this moment last." But even during the fine sharp agony there were words: "I shall keep—a bonfire on that beach—night and day…." and when his hand was slack in her hair and she seemed to be hardly breathing, Paul heard the drums.
They were far off and everywhere. Only the remembering brain insisted they were on the lake. They were not sound at all, at first. A pressure pain in the back of the skull, a rasping of nerve endings. Nothing but drums. Hollow logs with a hide membrane, rubbed and pounded by tiny painted savages. "You must go tonight after all." Dorothy could not speak. He put Helen in her fumbling arms; he hurried out to the open space, saw the eye of the lifeboat returning. The drums took on a rhythm, a throbbing in 5/8 time, rapid, venomous. But far away. Still not quite sound—Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah—growing no nearer, no louder, but gaining in vicious urgency, relentless as a waterfall, a runaway machine. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah….
Paul hoped that Wright and Sears might be sleeping. It would be an hour yet before Pakriaa could return with the other leaders, if indeed she ever did. Elis and Abara were on sentry duty. The three giant children still at the camp—would they be sleepless, keyed up to vivid fantasies of the island, like Charin children before a great journey?
Kamon sat alone by the gate. A small figure drooped at the other end of the enclosure. Since there was no immediate task for her, Paul had told Abroshin Nisana to rest, but he knew her little bald head turned to follow him. "Kamon—I'm going to have the third flight made tonight. There would be room for you too in the boat. Will you go?"
Black lips and ancient white face smiled up at him. "If you wish."
"I do. Stay close to Dorothy. That will leave four of you giant women here. I wish they could all go. Tejron's sober and wise—she'll keep them together. You're more needed on the island. Don't let Dorothy be much alone."
The old woman mused: "This Charin love is a strange thing. It isn't our natures for two persons to come so close. But I see something good in it, I think…." Paul struggled to hear her over the almost subsonic yammer of the drums. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah—it seemed not to trouble Kamon much, though she would be hearing it even more plainly. "I will stay with her, Paul," she said, and watched the long glide as Spearman brought the boat in.
On the drawbridge Spearman cocked his head at the drums. "That's it." He read Paul's thought: "The rest tonight, huh? Better, I'd think."
"Yes. Get something to eat, why don't you? Kamon is going too."
Spearman nodded, unsurprised. "Not hungry…. Wonder how long they keep it up…."
Wright came from his room with sleepless eyes. "Till they attack, probably. All night, maybe all tomorrow. To soften us up. Damn them…."
Somehow Paul was walking to the boat, carrying the baby for Dorothy. He climbed in with her, adjusted the straps. Helen waked and was fretful till she found the breast "You bore her alone—without any—"
"Alone!" Dorothy was astonished. "I had you. Doc's a fine medical man, whatever he says. Don't you remember how Mijok held out his arm for me to grab when it got tough? He said, 'I am a tree.'" Now she was holding his look with an indestructible smile until the rest came and Paul had to back out of the cramped cabin to give them room; then had to stand aside while the bright relic of twenty-first-century man spat its green flame and hot gases at the lake and leaped to soaring and slid into moonless darkness above the hills. The drums wept, raved, obscenely whispered.
Paul did not know Sears Oliphant was with him till he heard the voice: "I think, Paul—the drums defeat their purpose. They make me sore instead of scared. I think you won't need to worry about me, Paul."
"I never have." He glanced at the fat man's holstered automatic, remembered the cleanness of the rifle hanging in Sears' room. "My father used to say most men are good watchdogs, who know they're scared but stand guard in spite of it; only a few are rabbits and possums." Paul turned his back on the hills. Nothing was there to see, nothing at all. "I wish you'd known my father. He was a tall man. Nuts about animals—always brought 'em into the talk—illustration, example. Couldn't stand to see even a wasp beating against the glass; you never knew when a deer mouse would climb out of his pocket and run down his pants leg." Paul laughed. The drums fretted in 5/8, passionate, soft, cruel.
Sears watched blue fireflies over a lake so peacefully still that the sapphire reflections were as real as their cause. "A teacher, wasn't he?"
"For a while, till he settled in New Hampshire. They wouldn't let him teach nineteenth and twentieth-century history as he saw it. He saw it in terms of ethical conflict, the man versus the state, self-reliance versus the various dreary socialisms, enlightened altruism versus don't-stick-your-neck-out, and he didn't give a good god-damn whether the first atomic submersible was built in 1952 or '53. Doc would have loved him too: he knew what was meant by a government of laws. He made his students search out not only theory but the actual dismal consequences of the doctrine that the end justifies the means—Alexander, Augustus, Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler. That was regarded as 'wilfully minimizing the significance of technological advance.' He didn't minimize it; he just recognized that other matters were vastly more important, and he didn't care to see the machine built up into one more mumbo jumbo. So he sent me through college by breeding children's riding ponies and selling hatching eggs. Not a bad life, or so he said…. Jocko, will Pakriaa come back?"
"I believe so…. Ah, Chris—nice evening for the month of Charin."
Wright was a paleness in the dark; stern, weary, tall, watching the lake, talking to himself: "The month we named for ourselves—end of Year One—oh, I do call that a pardonable vanity…. Paul, I was wholly selfish in choosing you. I've given you a burden no one should have to carry."
"We're all carrying it."
"Thank you, son." Wright moved away to stand alone at the rim of the lake, listening to the crawling thunder of the drums. Twice, Paul heard him speak, with an intensity beyond pain: "No one is expendable. No one is expendable…."
Sears exclaimed, "Look!" There were five white cloud-like shapes at the edge of the woods. "Oh, they've never done this before. Susie! What's the matter? There now, girl, come tell the old man—"
Paul followed him. "It's the drums—don't you think?"
The five had been complaining softly, but that ceased as Sears moved among them, patting their legs, soothing them. "But Paul—their grounds are mostly north of here—there now, Mister Smith, you old bastard—so why didn't they travel away from the sound? Take it easy, Millie, Miss Ponsonby—"
"The wild ones probably did. But these had to come to you."
"Oh…. That detachment of Lantis—the one in the northeast—"
"Don't think so, Jocko. Pakriaa's spies are all around up there—we'll have warning. Elis is posted half a mile north of us—he'd know—smell 'em if he didn't hear 'em. However, I'll go talk with him…."
The depth of forest muted the drums—a little; they were still a cumulative torture of anger in the inner darkness of the mind. Paul saved the fading power of his Earth-made radion flashlight by following his sense of the trail. He had learned to move as
softly in the jungle as any Charin could hope to do—more softly than Spearman, softly enough to steal within spear range of the asonis. There was not much danger here, unless it might be from the uskaran, a beast Paul had glimpsed alive only once and then dimly, a striped thing slipping snakily out of his vision in a sun-striped afternoon; the rug in his and Dorothy's room could almost have been a tiger pelt. The black reptiles were lovers of hot sun and shallow water, never going inland. The squeak and rustle of a kaksma horde, it was said, could be heard far off except during the rains, when all noises were smothered in the long rush and whispering of waters. For all his silence, black Elis was aware of him before Paul knew he had reached the sentry post. "Paul—isn't it?" The night vision of the giants was better than the Charins' but not like a cat's; they hunted at night only if the moon was strong.
"Yes. Everything quiet?"
"Quieter than my heart."
Paul still could not see him. "Saving my flashlight. Where are you?" Elis chuckled and slipped an invisible hand around Paul's. "The olifants came to the meadow. We wondered what disturbed them."
"Drums. Nothing in the northeast yet. But a great many of the pygmies are moving from the upper villages. I heard, and smelled the red flowers." The people of Lantis, Pakriaa said, never wore those flowers, and it would not be the nature of Elis to exaggerate his powers of smell and hearing.
"I think the animals wanted Sears. Could that be, Elis?"
"Alojna—" Elis murmured the old word for them: it meant "white cloud." "Two things nobody knows—the thoughts of Alojna and the journeys of the red moon and the white moon when we cannot see them. So we used to say. You give us a hint of knowledge of both things, and more than a hint of much greater mysteries." Elis had always been tireless in questioning Wright; more than Mijok, he was haunted by a need to grope after intangibles, push outward the uneasy border between known and unknown. "So there's never an end of mystery?"