Homo Inferior
Page 6
that fell matted about her shoulders.
"Hello, Lisa," he said.
"Hello." Her eyes never left him. She stared at him, her lips trembling,her whole body tensed. She looked as if she were going to turn and runat any moment, as if only his quietness kept her from fleeing.
With a sudden shock Eric realized that she too was afraid--afraid ofhim. His own hesitation fell away and he smiled at her.
Mag got up and went over to the girl and put her arm around Lisa'sshoulders. "Don't be afraid of him, child," Mag said. "He's a nice boy.Not like one of _them_."
Lisa trembled.
Eric watched her, pitying her. She was as helpless as he before the calmassumption of the older women. More helpless, because she had probablynever thought of defying them, of escaping the pattern of their lives.
"Don't worry, Lisa," he said. "I won't hurt you."
Slowly she walked toward him, poised, waiting for a hostile move. Shecame within a few feet of him and then sank to her haunches, stillwatching him, still poised.
She was as savage as the others. A graceful, dirty savage.
"You're really one of us?" she said. "You can't perceive?"
"No," he said. "I can't perceive."
"He's not like them," Mag said flatly. "If you'd ever been among them,you'd know their ways."
"I've never seen a man before, up close," Lisa said.
Her eyes pleaded with him, and suddenly he knew why he pitied her. Itwas because she felt helpless before him, and begged him not to harmher, and thought of him as something above her, more powerful than she,and dangerous. He looked across at her and felt protective, and it was anew feeling to him, absolutely new. Because always before, around thenormals, even around his own parents and Walden, he had been thehelpless one.
He liked this new feeling, and wished it could last. But it couldn't. Hecouldn't do as the old women expected him to, leave the valley and hisparents, leave the books and the museum and the ship, just to hide inthe hills like a beast with them.
He had come to find his people, but these three were not they.
"You two go on off and talk," Mag said. "We're old. We don't matter now.You've got things to settle between you."
She cackled again and got up and went into the hut and old Nell got upalso and followed her.
The girl shivered. She drew back a little, away from him. Her eyes neverleft his face.
"Don't be afraid, Lisa," he said gently. "I won't hurt you. I won't eventouch you. But I would like to talk to you."
"All right," she said.
They got up and walked to the end of the gorge, the girl keeping alwaysa few feet from him. At the boulders she stopped and faced him, her backagainst a rock, her thin body still trembling.
"Lisa," he said. "I want to be your friend."
Her eyes widened. "How can you?" she said. "Men are friends. Women arefriends. But you're a man and I'm a woman and it's different."
He shook his head helplessly, trying to think of a way to explain thingsto her. He couldn't say that he found her dirty and unattractive andalmost another species. He couldn't say that he'd searched the hills,often thinking of the relationship between man and woman, but that shewasn't the woman, that she never could be the woman for him. He couldn'ttell her that he pitied her in perhaps the same way that the normalspitied him.
Still, he wanted to talk to her. He wanted to be her friend. Because hewas sure now that he could search the mountains forever, and perhapsfind other people, even if those he found were like her, and Mag andNell.
"Listen, Lisa," he said. "I can't live up here. I live in the valley. Icame in an aircar, and it's down in the canyon below here. I have to goback--soon. Before it gets completely dark."
"Why?"
"If I don't the normals will come looking for me. They'll find theaircar and then they'll find us. And you and your family will be takenaway. Don't you understand?"
"You're going?" Lisa said.
"In a little while. I must."
She looked at him, strangely. She looked at his clothes, at his face, athis body. Then she looked at her own hands and touched her own coarsedress, and she nodded.
"You won't come back," she said. "You don't like me. I'm not what youwere searching for."
He couldn't answer. Her words hurt him. The very fact that she couldrecognize their difference from each other hurt him. He pitied her stillmore.
"I'll come back," he said, "Of course I will. As often as I can. You'rethe only other people I've ever known who didn't perceive."
She looked up into his face again. Her eyes were very large. They werethe only beautiful thing about her.
"Even if you do come back, you won't want me."
There wasn't any answer at all.
* * * * *
It was dusk when Eric got back to the museum. He landed the aircar andclimbed out and walked across to the building, still feeling unreal,still not believing that the events of this day had actually happened.
He nodded to Prior and the old caretaker nodded back and then stoodstaring at him, troubled and curious. Eric didn't notice the other'sexpression, nor the fact that Prior followed him to the top of thespiral ramp and remained there for a while, watching.
Eric stood at the bottom of the well where he had so often stood before,staring across at the ship, then looking up, up, up its sleek length towhere its nose pointed yearningly toward the night sky. But tonight hefound no comfort in the sight, no sense of kinship with its builders.Tonight the ship was a dead and empty thing.
"_You won't want me--_" Her voice, her eyes, came between him and thestars.
He had thought of finding his people and sharing with them their commonheritage from the past, the knowledge of the old race and its thoughtsand its science and its philosophy. He had thought of sharing with themthe old desire for the stars, the old hunger, the old loneliness thatthe new race could never understand. He had been wrong.
_His people...._ He pushed the thought away.
He looked up at the stars that were merely pin-pricks of light at thetop of the well and wondered if anyone, old race or new or somethingdifferent from either, lived among them now. And he felt small, and eventhe ship was small, and his own problems and his own search wereunimportant. He sat down and leaned back against the smooth wall andclosed his eyes, blotting out the ship and the stars, and finally, evenLisa's face before him.
The old caretaker found him sleeping there, and sighed, and went awayagain, still frowning. Eric slept on, unheeding. When he awoke it waslate morning and the stars were gone and clouds drifted across the mouthof the well.
There was no answer here. The starship would never fly.
And Eric went back to the mountains.
* * * * *
It was two weeks later that the councilmen stood facing Walden acrossthe great museum table. They had come together, Abbot and Drew and theothers, and they faced him together, frowning. Their thoughts werehidden. Walden could catch only glimpses of what lay beneath theirworry.
"Every day." Abbot's eyes were hard, unyielding. "Why, Walden? Why doeshe go there every day?"
"Does it matter?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. We can't tell--yet."
The ring of faces, of buried perceptions, of fear, anxiety, and a worrythat could no longer be shrugged off. And Eric away, as he was every daynow, somewhere in the distant hills.
"The boy's all right." Walden checked his own rush of worry.
"Is he?"
The worry in the open now, the fear uncontained, and no morevacillation. Their thoughts hidden from Walden, their plans hidden, andnothing he could do, no way to warn Eric, yet.
Abbot smiled, humorlessly. "The boy had better be all right...."
* * * * *
Eric landed in the canyon and made sure that the aircar was hidden undera ledge, with branches drawn about it so that no one could spot it fromabove. Then he turned and started for th
e slope, and as he reached itLisa ran down to meet him.
"You're late," she called.
"Am I? Have you really been waiting for me?"
"Of course." She came over to meet him, laughing, openly glad that hehad come.
He smiled back at her and walked along beside her, having to take longstrides to match her skipping ones, and he too was glad that he'd come.Lately he felt like this every day. It was a feeling he couldn'tanalyze. Nothing had changed. The girl was still too thin and too brownand too dirty, although now she had begun to wash her dress and her bodyin the mountain stream and to comb the