by Anthology
"Here, Commander."
"Form your people in three lines with linked hands. The giant women Karison and Elron, and Elis, will guide them at the head, because their night vision is better than yours and mine. Mijok and Tejron will walk beside us. We must travel all night. I think the Vestoians will not."
"They will not," the princess Brodaa said. He wished he could see truly what was happening in her little face. "They will not because they have no giants or Charins to help them." It carried no hint of the obsequious.
"Thank you, Abro Brodaa. Wait here a moment." He patted Millie's trunk—she was a young beast, nervous but fond of him—and made her kneel. "Help Nisana climb up to me…. Abro Brodaa—the people of your village——"
"Most of them lost." It might have been the oncoming night itself speaking temperately. "These remaining are a few from all the villages. I think they will follow me. And I will go with you…."
In the rest of the night—a silence and a drifting, on the surge and thrust of the great animal under him—it was possible to reach a kind of sleep, knowing his body would not relax enough to fall or to weaken his hold on Nisana, who trusted him. She was deeply asleep in the first part of the night, occasionally snoring, a comic noise like a puppy's whine. All day she had never been out of his sight; she had fought like a hellcat, but singlemindedly, saving her strength to deal with those who threatened him.
It would have been possible to abandon these people; at one time, Paul remembered, he had almost favored it himself, and Ed Spearman had very nearly hinted that it might be better to join forces with the tyranny in the south…. Life seemed cheap to Pakriaa's tribe—others' life. Devil-worshipping cannibals, capable of every cruelty, committed for thousands of years to all the superstitions that ever crippled intelligence. You had to look beyond that, said Christopher Wright the theorist, the doctor, the anthropologist, the impractical daydreamer. Anyway I saved a Vestoian—if she lives. One balanced against how many that I destroyed…? No answer…. Unless you can see a world where the ways of destruction become obsolete under a government of laws. With the devils of human nature—the vanities, the greeds, the follies and needless resentments, the fear of self-knowledge, dread of the unfamiliar, the power lust of the morally blind, the passion for easy solutions, scapegoats, panaceas—how do you see such a world…? You say, Christopher Wright, that no one is expendable. I believe you. But—when I must choose between the life of myself or my friends and the life of the one whom the stream of history has tossed against me as my enemy——
When I do that, I only discover once more that I am caught in the same net with the rest of my kind and cannot escape until all of them escape—escape into a region of living where men do not set traps for each other and the blind do not lead.
Therefore——
"Are you awake, Nisana?" Her even breathing quickened. It seemed to Paul that there was faint color in his glimpses of sky; he remembered the silver moon that had appeared over the jungle with first-light so long ago—yesterday morning. The passage of the red moon around Lucifer was swift: tonight it would be rising two hours before first-light and would be something broader than the gory scimitar he had seen from the knoll.
"I am awake."
"I think the red moon has come back."
"Yes." She pointed over his shoulder; he glimpsed it through a gap in the leaves. "A good moon. Begins the Moon of Little Rains. The small rains make no harm, make the ground sweet. Is better than the moon past—that we call the Moon of Beginnings." She moved restlessly against him. "This country—all forest? How long have I sleep?"
"Most of the night. We're past the open land."
She whispered, "No one has ever come here. We have think always there are bad—what word?—tev—tevils in the north."
"Tomorrow—rather, today—we turn west and then south on the other side of the hills, to the island."
"Ah, the island…. I cannot see this island."
"You'll like it, Nisana. You'll be happy there."
"Happy?" And he remembered that the old pygmy language had no word for happiness.
Wright's voice came thinly in the dark: "Abara, stop them! Sears——"
Millie halted and knelt without an order: Nisana jumped down. Paul saw the shapes of Elis and Sears suddenly bright under Wright's flashlight—the only radion light left. "Easy," Elis said. "I have you." And he lowered the man's bulk to the ground as Susie moaned and shifted her feet. Sears had said nothing, but he was smiling, his face red and vague above the disorder of the black beard.
"Paul, hold the light for me." Wright removed the stained bandage. There was a wide area of inflammation; the lips of the arrow wound were purple. "Pakriaa! You said once you never heard of poison on the arrows——"
Pakriaa gaped, rubbing her eyes. It was Brodaa who answered: "Our people never had it on the arrows. But in the war with Lantis last year some of our soldiers had wounds like this."
"And what happened?"
"Ismar—" Pakriaa stumbled forward. "Ismar took——"
"My sister," said Brodaa, "be quiet, my sister."
"Elis," Paul whispered, "have Tejron and the other women keep watch—we must stay here a while. Where is Mijok?"
"Here." Mijok spoke behind him. "I have put my shield—over there." His voice became a whisper for Paul: "There are only three on it now. One little man, two women. They might live. Paul—is it happening, Paul?"
"I can't say it. I don't know…." Sears was talking, ramblingly, very far from this patch of earth. One could only listen till he was silent. Then Paul said, "I think so, Mijok. He needs to speak; we need to remember."
"What is this—Tel Aviv——"
"The place on the other planet where he was born."
"And there were the vineyards, oh my, yes—the little white and tan goats——" Sears could see it, Paul thought, that small country, a quiet corner of the Federation, where every grain of sand might remember blood spilled in the follies of hatred, where a teacher of mercy had been crucified. But now for Sears it was not a place of history: he saw gardens defying wasteland, the homes and farms, centers of music and learning where he moved, thoroughly at home, discovering the country of his own science, himself a citizen of no one place except the universe. Later he was recalling the hot white streets of Rio, the genial clutter of London, Baltimore, the majestic contradictions of New York.
"Why, yes, Doctor," he said—and he did not mean Christopher Wright, but some friend or instructor whose image might be standing in front of the shadows of Lucifer, "yes, Doctor, you could say I've traveled a great deal, in my sort of blundering fashion. And I would not exactly say that people are the same everywhere, but you'll have noticed yourself—the many common denominators are much more interesting than the seeming-great differences, aren't they, hey…? What? Sorry, Doctor, I've got no damned use for your abstraction Man, and why? Because he doesn't exist, except as a device in a brain that wants to prove something—which may or may not be useful. In any case it's not my dish. There are only men and women. They get born and love and suffer and work and grow old and die; or sometimes, Doctor, they die young. Men and women I can love and touch; sometimes I can even teach them the few things I know. You may take Man to the library; feed him back into your electronic brain and don't bother me with the results so long as I'm alive to see a child discovering his own body—or for that matter a bird coming out of the egg, a minnow in a spot of sunlight, a blade of grass."
Pakriaa wailed: "What is he saying? He is not here." She squirmed past Wright, dropped to the ground, her cheek pressed on Sears' tangled hair, her free arm wandering over his face and shoulder as if she wanted to cover him like a shield. "He talked to me once. Sears, you said—you said——"
He was back among them, gazing around in sane bewilderment. "I should be riding…. Pakriaa—why Pak, I'm all right." Paul moved the torch here and there to pick out his own face, Wright's, Mijok's, the white bulk of Susie looming close by, the pouting ugly mask of Abara,
who had stolen up close, his underlip wobbling in an effort to speak. "I fell asleep—took a tumble?"
"Almost," Wright muttered. "Just lucky chance I saw you tottering. You need to rest a bit."
"Oh no." Sears frowned. "Can't stop." He smiled at Pakriaa, who had lifted herself to watch him pleadingly. "What's the matter, Pakriaa? What's the time?"
"First-light before long," Paul said. "We made good distance, Jocko. The Vestoians won't have traveled in the dark. Plenty of time and we all need rest. Take it easy a while."
But Pakriaa could not hide her knowledge that he was dying; Sears touched her cheek with a curious wandering finger. "You liked looking in the microscope, didn't you?" She nodded. "Remember—must be sure you've got the best focus you can before you make up your mind about anything. But this is more serious, Pak—because I think you love me and you have trouble. I tell you again, you must go to the island with the others. You must live. Now I expect to go there too, but—"
Abara moved away. Paul glimpsed him striding back and forth, striking the air with little fists. When he returned, Paul made way for him.
"—for a teaching is a gift, Pakriaa, not to be thrown away—"
Abara stammered. "You have talk to me too, Sears—"
"Why, to all of you. Certainly to you, Abara…. What's the profit of any effort if the result is thrown away in a time of weakness? You discard only if what you have is proven false. We haven't much—we never have much. Some things appear to be empirically certain. Not many…. You know, I believe I've given a few people—call it a wakening of curiosity. I think that's good. Curiosity and patience. Good as far as it goes. I'm not ashamed." He was trying to see Wright's gaunt face. "You picked a tougher subject, didn't you, Chris? Don't worry—give you an A for something more than effort…. Now look, this hanging around here won't do." He caught Paul's hand and heaved himself upright. "I remember—map—damn it. Need another whole day before we pass the hills. Susie—down, Susie—"
But Susie, fumbling at him with her trunk, would not kneel. Paul heard Mijok's agonized whisper: "She knows."
Sears laughed. "All right, make the old man climb." And before anyone could stop him he had tottered a few steps and burned out the last of his strength in a heaving jump toward her neck, which barely lifted him from the ground and dropped him at Paul's feet. Groping for him, Paul saw that he was dead, saw also, above the arching of the trees, a lucid cruelty of morning.
7
Twice that day Elis dropped far behind to listen and reported there was no pursuit. It was hard to judge their distance from the foothills of the western range, for now there was no open ground—only Wright's compass, the memory of the map, and treetop surveys that Mijok made from time to time. Abara rode Mister Johnson in the lead, making the beasts travel slowly since the pygmies were faint with weariness. Susie trailed forlornly; she had not been willing to abandon the grave till the others went on without her.
The pygmies carried only half a dozen makeshift stretchers; the number of unwounded had diminished too. "They slip away," Brodaa said to Paul. He saw three men carrying children too small to walk; no old women. The fat witch rode his litter, unconcerned at the fatigue of its bearers; the other old man, smeared with white and purple paint, stalked beside him. Brodaa said, "My sister Tamisraa ended life with the white-stone dagger. While Elis and Mijok made the—what word?—grave. We left her body looking north to help the spirit journey. There are many lost who will have no prayers—bad—they may follow us. What is this—burial, Paul-Mason?"
"A Charin custom. Most of us believe the spirit dies with the body: different parts of the same thing."
"Ah?" She did not seem shocked. "Maybe true for your people."
"We live in others," Paul said. "Sears lives so long as we remember him. That will be always…." It seemed to Paul there were scarcely a hundred in this worn line. "We mustn't try to hold them if they want to go. If you, Brodaa, or any others want to leave us, you know you are free."
Her answer was firm and considered: "I will not leave you…."
Wright had not spoken since the burial, nor had Pakriaa. They kept together; Paul was with them sometimes. Behind them Mijok carried his shield. It was Elis who heard the bleat of asonis and stole off to bring back meat for an afternoon meal. It was Elis, before that, who said, "We have done what we could, Paul. We could not have made these people retreat in time to save themselves. If we had abandoned them Lantis would have left no more than a fire leaves in the Red-Moon-of-Dry-Days. Pakriaa is too sick to understand that, yet. She carries a grief like a little one swelling in the womb: it must grow greater before she is delivered of it."
In the afternoon halt, it was Elis who tried to make Wright eat something and sleep, but Wright could do neither.
The giant women Elron and Karison also refused the meat. They sat apart with stout brown Tejron. She was eating, keeping close to her the still unconscious Vestoian, whom the pygmies had given no more than disgusted glares. Tejron might be listening to Karison's undertone—it was in the monosyllables of the old language. The girl Elron held her eyes downcast, fondling the rifle. She and Karison had been much together in a peculiar loneliness since the children were flown to the island: Karison was old, her children grown and gone away before the Charins came; Elron was too young to have given birth. Three of the children at the island were Tejron's; the others were children of Muson and Samis and of a mother who had died in the old life. Tejron wiped her lips and grunted impatiently; she took up her charge in careful arms and left the two. Paul sensed what was to come when Elron set her cherished rifle at his feet. Karison approached Wright, humble but determined: "We must leave you."
Before Wright could speak, Mijok answered her with a sullen anger Paul had never heard from him: "I brought you from the jungle with empty heads. We gave you the words, the beginning of the laws we must make together. You lived like the uskaran, furtive and cruel—"
"No," Wright said. "Mijok, no…."
Karison had winced, but she repeated: "We must go. The old way—we need it."
"Then you must go," Wright said, his spread fingers white-nailed on the ground. "And remember always that you go with our good will."
"That is so." She was torn two ways. "But the old life—"
Elis rumbled: "Elron, come here." The girl would not. "I hoped that in the next Red-Moon-before-the-Rains—"
She muttered, "When the change comes you will return to us—"
Elis laughed, roaring at her, "You're a fool, a child!" The harshness, Paul knew, was calculated, in the hope of changing her mind by shaming her. "You think the old life was a freedom. Freedom to live like an animal without an animal's peace, Elron, because of the thing in you that struggles for knowledge—oh yes, in spite of yourself, and always. Freedom to hunt all day or else sleep on an empty stomach, jump with fear at every creaking branch. Freedom to cram yourself with moss root and slugs from the streams—never enough—in the bad moons when the asonis go north. Freedom to kill the pygmies and be hunted by them, never an end to it—that's your freedom without the laws, without the words. No, so long as you're a fool I don't want you." She turned away, speechless; he shouted after her in a different voice, "He said you go with our good will. That is true. You can't forget us, Elron. You're not the wild thing Mijok brought out of the woods. You'll feel us pulling you back—you feel it now—and you will come back." But she was gone in the shadows, Karison following her, and Elis rubbed his broad forehead on his arms.
Wright whispered, "If they wanted it—it had to be so."
Elis waited for his angry breathing to calm. "Mijok, do you remember? In the old days I couldn't even have been your friend. Remember how angry I was—only a year ago? You stepping over the border of my territory, telling me—I've wondered how you did it with our few stumbling words—telling me every being should be free to go as he pleased anywhere in the world? You were in danger, Mijok. I am older, bigger, heavier—I nearly went for your throat. Long ago. So—don't be
angry with these two."
Tejron sat by Wright, holding the Vestoian like a nursing baby. "Maybe," she said, "maybe they will take some of what you teach us to others. Maybe it will be like the thing you showed us, how a little seed no bigger than the eye of illuama can become a tree…."
Pakriaa had watched indifferently; Paul hoped he was right, that her face was not quite so tightly set in lines of rejection and despair. Wright came stiffly to his feet, a hand on Tejron's shoulder, the other wandering into his gray beard. "Abro Brodaa, interpret for me—some of them have no English. Tell them we turn west soon, then south through bad country—swamp, heat, uskaran, marsh reptiles maybe, maybe the kaksmas swarm on the west side of the hills. Tell them we go through that. When we reach a river we have seen from the air—it has no falls and flows southwest—we shall make boats."
Brodaa put it into the high music of the pygmy tongue. Paul could see no change in the saddened faces; by rumor, most of them would already know this much. But the thin witch was muttering to his gross colleague, and some soldier faces turned to overhear that instead of attending to Brodaa.
"Tell them, Brodaa, this river will take us to Big-Water. We go south along the coast, to the island where our friends are, where we believe Spearman has gone in the winged boat. Tell them, on this island there are no kaksmas, the omasha never come, nor the lake boats of Lantis. There is game, good ground, room for all. Tell them—No, wait…. Oh, Brodaa, tell them in your own way that we hope to live there in peace."
The lean witch interrupted Brodaa's translation with a wailing diatribe, twitching his twigs of arms, lashing the battered soldiers with his oratory. Brodaa turned to Wright in misery: "He says—he saw Ismar change Spearman back to a marsh lizard and the boat to an omasha."
Mijok laughed savagely. "When did he see that? Ask him."
Brodaa did, on a thin shout. The scarecrow flashed her a glare of resentment and a snapping answer…. "He says he saw it in sleep picture."