West Of The Sun

by Edgar Pangborn

  1

  "This island is Eden." Sears Oliphant spoke drowsily. Toy bat wingsflickered from the woods crowning the hillside, hovered over a pond:_illuama_. In a scant year of Lucifer time (seventeen months of thecalendar of Earth) native names had become natural, mostly Mijok'snames.

  Two red-moon changes ago, in the final jading month of the rains, thepygmy word "kaksma" had been only a symbol. Now it woke the image of avillage desolate, bones scraped and scarred. The mind's eye winced inpity--a sentry careless, a bridge left in place after dark; thousandsof ratty bodies rustling down from the wet hills, over open ground,swimming swollen streams, finding the bridge before oil on the rainwater in the ditch could be ignited. Small bodies, not swift, leapingor humping along like furry worms, sniffing, squeaking, their stabbingteeth dark with the blood of any flesh that moved. The northernmost ofthe villages allied with Pakriaa's had already returned to jungle.

  But here, ten miles offshore from the coastal range, no kaksmas lived;Sears and Paul, in two days of study on this second visit, hadestablished that. No wide wings lurked in the sky. The hilly islandhad no large meadows where omasha could hunt. Three giants had beenflown to the island a month ago--the girl Arek, her mother Muson, andold Rak. They said it was a place of calm. Their soft talk could beheard up the slope, where a log building was growing. Paul stretched,lean and comfortable, on the grass, glad to be alone for a while withthis least demanding of his friends.

  Sears was fatter, but hardened, a round block of man, with a coarseblack beard, kindness of brown eyes unaltered. Christopher Wright,waiting at the "fortress" by Lake Argo and no doubt frantic for wordof this exploration, had let his beard grow too, sandy gray. Spearmanand Paul had stayed clean-shaven, with soap made from fat and woodashes. "The others must come here, Paul. I suppose Chris won't consenttill Pakriaa agrees--damn, you'd think she could see it. She knows herenemies fear the ocean as she does. Lantis' two-by-four army wouldnever chase after us in their lake boats."

  "Wait a minute, Jocko. Lantis is no two-by-four proposition."

  "Damn pint-size Napoleon with four teats and a grass skirt."

  "Lookee: that settlement south of Lake Argo is thirty miles long.Equivalent of two hundred villages, to Pakriaa's six. Say twentythousand warriors who got their pride hurt a year ago when the crashof _Argo_ swamped their fleet and scared the pants off 'em. They'llhave replaced the fleet. They'll come overland too. Lantis, Queen ofthe World."

  "If they do"--Sears' heavy voice had the tremor that he himselfhated--"the firearms should be at least one ace in the hole."

  "Ye--es. Ed's pistol helped in our one bad scrape with Pakriaaherself. But it was his smashing the idol that stalled 'em, not thegun."

  "Poor little Abro Pakriaa!" Sears spoke with tenderness. "If ever alady was pulled seven ways from Sunday! Wants our way of life, doesn'twant it. Wants to grasp Chris' ethics, doesn't want to. Afraid of Ed'sstrength and aggressiveness, admires 'em too, oh my, yes. Tries tobelieve the god Ismar died or never lived--but can't, quite."

  "And can't understand why our women are gentle--Dorothy anyway----"

  "Nan's toughening up is conscious effort, Paul. Superficial. She'smade herself hunt, shoot well, act hard, because her brain tells hershe should. If we could only find something to restring her violin! Ithink she's given up hope of it: nothing I've found so far has beenany good. She doesn't see that Dorothy does more for us by remainingthe person she always was.... You know, when I go alone to Pak'svillage, I just set. Even the witches have got used to me, not thatthey wouldn't gut me if they could."

  "Jocko"--Paul looked away--"you told me once you were scared all thetime. When you go there alone--or when you tame the olifants for thatmatter--are you sort of grasping the nettle? And does it work?"

  "Don't ask me, friend. Because I don't exactly know. I was never abrave man." Brown eyes misted in what was partly laughter. "Oy, thewitches! There's the big enemy in the battle for Pakriaa's mind. Chrismay claim they aren't real witch doctors, just advisers, low-grademagicians. I'm not so sure. Priests of Ismar, and when Ed clobberedthe idol Pakriaa did consider having 'em all burned alive. Point is,she didn't do it. They gnaw away in the dark at all we try to teachher. That proposed bonfire, by the way, is gossip passed on to me inconfidence by Abara."

  "There's a dear little man."

  "Ain't he though?" Smiling into late sky, Paul envisaged the wizenedred midget riding the white monsters that Sears had tamed and insistedon naming olifants-with-an-f. A painting might grow out of that, hethought, squat coppery lump astride of massive white--it might, if thedesire to paint should ever wake again and be as strong as it once wason _Argo_, when his mind's eye could remember Earth withoutdistortion. Abara, popeyed and potbellied, a favorite in Pakriaa'sharem, had been commissioned by her as a student and go-between at thelakeside camp; Sears had not only adopted him as an olifant trainer,but suspected him of furtively possessing a sense of humor. "Well--thegiants. Lantis will always have thought of them as wild animals----"

  "Sears"--Paul rolled over and pressed his face in the grass--"can weask or even permit the giants to tangle in a pygmy war?"

  "Ah.... It's tormenting Chris too, ever since Lantis sent thatultimatum." He snarled in his beard, "Thirty fat meat slaves every twomonths! There's politics for you. Dirtiest way she could answer Pak'schallenge to personal combat, and the automatic refusal makes anexcuse to come and clean up. Sounds like home.... Mijok wants to helpfight--says he does."

  "It's still our responsibility." Paul sat up. His eyes kept returningto the towering courage of the trees. Brave as any cathedral spire,scarcely one was free from the clutch of the purple-leaf vine. "Asfor moving here to the island, Pak sees it, but the idea's too new.You just don't pull up stakes, venture on the Big Water, crossingforbidden kaksma country."

  Sears chewed a grass blade. "Anyway we've got to bring Dorothy and thebaby here, and Ann. Dorothy won't fuss, will she, son?"

  "Since there _is_ Helen--no, she won't. I still dream sometimes, as Idid during her first pregnancy. Things, shapes, trying to pull heraway--or she's where I can't find her, can't push through the leaves."

  "She told me. It's something else that's made you blue lately."

  "No."

  Sears watched him. "Yes.... Want to start back tomorrow?"

  "Might as well. We've learned all we need."

  "Mm.... Second thoughts about the daddy of Dorothy's second----"

  "No no. We settled that. She's proud to be carrying it."

  "Good genetics could be damn bad psychology."

  "No, Jocko. Don't think that. She's close to me as ever."

  Sears waited and spoke softly: "New York late on a rainy night, a fewcar lights moving, street-lamp reflections like golden fish----"

  "Orange paintbrush in New Hampshire meadows----We'd better stop."

  "We better. I want boat whistles--floating city coming out of the fog.Call it a slow-healing wound.... And look across the channel."

  Paul saw it presently: a cliff formation in the coastal range made abrow, nose, and chin. Below this, rounded rock could be a shoulderstraining in heroic effort; then, tumbled reality of mountain-fancymust supply whatever held the figure in bondage. "Yes. He looks west.Past us, at the sun."

  "Why, no, Paul. I think he looks west of the sun...."

  A red-furred girl wandered down from the woods. "I got tired." Arekhad lived twenty-two years; she was seven feet tall, not yetadolescent but near it. In the next Red-Moon-before-the-Rains, tenmonths away, she might take adult part in the frenzy of love if herbody demanded it: if not, she would go apart with the other children,whose play also became innocently erotic at that time, and help carefor the youngest. Sears grinned as she sat down with them. "Tired orlazy?"

  "Both. You Charins are never lazy enough." The name Charin, Paulthought, was almost natural now, a pygmy word for "halfway," intendedby Pakriaa merely to convey that Wright and his breed were halfway insize between her people and the giants, but Wright took sardonicsatisfa
ction in it as a generic name. "Work and loafing are both good.Why can Ed Spearman never sit still in the sun? Or maybe I like totalk too much."

  "Never," Sears chuckled. "Well--his best pleasure is in action. Maybeit's the technician in him--he must always be doing something."

  "Like always waking, never sleeping." She sprawled in comfort; herbroad hands plucked grass, scattered it over the furry softness of herfour breasts. "Green rain.... I want to stay on this island. Will theycome?"

  "We hope so. Mijok will as soon as Doc does."

  She sighed. "Mijok is a beautiful male. I think I'll take him for myfirst when I'm ready.... And soon the pretty boat will be no moregood. It's sad we can't make another. Tell me again about CaptainJensen. He was as tall as me? He had hair on his head, red like myfur. He spoke----"

  "Like storm wind," said Paul, supplying the wanted note in a favoritefairy tale, remembering a brother on Earth who was--perhaps--not dead.

  "Hear the ocean," Arek whispered. Paul could hardly separate the soundfrom the mutter of the pond's outlet. This ridge of high ground endedshort of the island's northern limit. A white beach, where thelifeboat was shaded from late sun, faced the mainland. West of thebeach a red stone cliff ran to the tip of the island, shouldering awaythe sea. Wind out of the west allowed no soil to gather on it. Now andthen a rainbow flashed and died above the rock, when a wave ofuncommon grandeur spent itself in a tower of foam. "Hear what it says?'I--will--try--aga-a-ain....' Why must the others wait to come here?"

  "Pakriaa's people are not ready."

  "Oh, Sears!" Arek laughed unhappily and sat up. "I think of how mymother taught me the three terrors. She took me to the hills, beat twostones before a burrow till one blundered out maddened, afraid ofnothing but the light. She crushed it, made me smell it. I was sick;then we fled. I think of how she flung an _asonis_ carcass into meadowgrass, so the omasha came. She wounded one with a stone, made me watchwhile the others tore it apart. Later still, when I could runfast--ah, through night to a village of the Red Bald----"

  "Please, dear--pygmies. That's a name they accept."

  "I'm sorry, Sears.... Yes, we hid in the dark, waited until a sentrymoved--careless.... It was wrong. You've shown us how such things arewrong. And memory's someone talking behind you, out of the big dark."

  "The laws we've agreed on----"

  "I do honor them," she said gently. "The law against murder was myfirst writing lesson. But--what if Pakriaa's tribe--"

  "They're slower," Sears said in distress, and the distress would be asmuch a message to Arek as any words. There was no hiding the heartfrom these people: green eyes and black ears missed no smallestnuance.

  "When will they know they must not dig pits, with poisoned stakes--"

  "But Pakriaa's tribe don't do that now. Do they?"

  Arek admitted: "I suppose not. But the six other villages----"

  "Five, dear. The kaksmas. And only two months ago, Arek."

  She stared at Paul with shock. "I _had_ almost forgotten. But they dostill hate us. The day before you flew us here, Paul, I met Pakriaaand two of her soldiers in the woods. I gave them the good-daygreeting. Oh, if one of you had been there she would have answeredit.... Wouldn't the island be better without them? Some of _you_ don'tlike them. Even Dorothy only tries to like them. Since the baby wasborn, Paul, she--shrinks when they come to the fortress. They don'tknow it, but I do."

  Dimly, Paul had known it, known also that it was a thing Dorothy wouldconsciously reject. "Time, Arek. You'll live a hundred and fiftyyears or better--more than three pygmy lifetimes. You'll see themchange."

  Speaking almost like a Charin, Arek said, "They'd better."

  They strolled up the hill; the other giants' labor had ceased. Thebuilding was a sturdy oblong, intended as storehouse and temporarycommunal dwelling for them all, including (Wright hoped) some ofPakriaa's people. Rafters were not yet in place. For that, Rak neededthe strength of another like himself: chubby Muson tired easily.Someday a road would climb from the beach, traversing the ridge whichwas the backbone of the northern half of the island. Here, wherespring water filled the pond and rushed on down to carve a smallharbor below the beach, would be Jensen City, and the three races ofLucifer would learn to live there in good will and pleasure under agovernment of laws. So Wright said--peering at photographs, teasinghis gray beard, tapping thin fingers on the map drawn on the paper ofEarth, on the new maps of whitebark. Paul could see it too--sometimes;glimpse the houses, gardens, open places. South of the pond, a wheatfield, for on Lucifer the wheat of Earth grew to four feet and borerichly. Near the field, perhaps the house for Dorothy and himself,with no doorway lower than ten feet.

  At other times he could see only defeat--the arrogance and blind drive ofgenus _Charin_, species _Semisapiens_ beating against the indifference ofnature, the resentment of other life. He could see his people destroyed, byaccident or anger, the giant friends adrift with only hints of the new lifeand spoiled for the old. Then he would stop trying to foresee and wouldmake his mind's ear listen to Wright insisting: "_Give protoplasm a chance.Patience is the well-spring._..."

  The walls were eleven feet in height. Rak and Muson rested on thecoolness of bare ground within; Rak pointed at the top of the wallswhere rafters would rest. "Slow," he said, "and good." Rak could notbe sure how old he was. When Mijok had first persuaded him to the campten months ago, Rak had won his English with the grave precision of amason selecting fieldstone. His language had none of the flexibilityand scope that Mijok and others had achieved, but it served him.After absorbing basic arithmetic, Rak had deliberated on the problemof his age--squatting at the gate of the stone fortress by Lake Argo,spreading out rows of colored pebbles to indicate years, rainyseasons, episodes of hunting or fear or passion too keen to forget. Atlast he had come up with the figure of 130 years. "But," he said,"there are two times. In here"--he patted an ancient scar on hisbelly--"and there." He pointed at the red crescent moon.

  "I'll cook supper," Arek said. Muson bubbled and shadowboxed with herdaughter. Muson would laugh at anything--the flutter of a leaf, abreath of breeze on her red-brown fur. Paul followed to help Arek trimthe carcass of an asonis killed the night before. Hornless,short-legged, fat, the bovine animal was abundant on the island; itsone enemy here was what Arek called _usran_, a catlike carnivore thesize of a lynx, which could tackle only the young asonis or feeblestragglers. Rak hunted in the old way. Bow, club, spear, even rifle,had been explained to him, but the stalk, the single rush and leap,the grasp of a muzzle and backward jerk that snapped the neck beforethe prey could even struggle--these were Rak's way still. In the oldlife, Rak's age would have led him eventually to a few dim years witha band of women, who would have fed him until he chose to wander intodeep jungle, preventing any from following. When far away, he wouldhave sat in the shadows to wait--for starvation or the black marshreptiles or a great mainland cat, _uskaran_, which never attacked agiant in the prime of strength. Rak would have taken no harm from theyoung men in this weakness: his own territory would have beeninviolate, and he would have joined the women, in a taciturn farewellto life, only when teeth and arms had failed. ("We're gentle people,"Mijok said, puzzled at it himself. "In the Red-Moon-before-the-Rainswe only play at fighting. It's not like what we see the othercreatures do at that time. How could one 'possess' a woman? Do Ipossess the wind because I like to run against the touch of it...?")

  The meat hung from a makeshift tripod; Arek jumped back, startled, asa furry thing scampered down. It was like a kinkajou except for thehump on the back (a true hindbrain in the spine: Sears had long agoverified that guess of Wright's). "Little rascal," Paul said. "Let'stame it."

  "What?" Arek was bewildered. "Do what?"

  "Do these live on the mainland?"

  "I never saw one till I came here. Too small to eat. Tame it?"

  "Watch." Paul tossed a bit of meat. The visitor's chatter changed to awhistling whine; it elongated itself, grabbed, sat back on stubby hindlegs to eat in clever paws; it washed
itself with a squirrel'spertness. Arek chuckled, examining the idea, and went on with herwork; she had become a hypercritical cook, under Dorothy's guidance."Jocko, biologist, stand by: I propose to name an animile. Genus_Kink_, species _quasikinkajou_." Genus Kink did not retreat at Sears'quiet approach, but wriggled a black nose.

  Rak asked in solemn curiosity, "For what is it good?"

  "To make us laugh," Paul said, "so long as we're kind to it."

  "Ah?" Rak moved his fingers to aid the patient mill of his mind.

  "Dance-Nose," said Muson, who already understood. She shook all over."Come, Funny-Nose." It would not--yet, but Muson could be patient too.

  Sears whispered in his beard, "Less homesick?"

  "Yes...."

  After the meal Arek wanted Paul to come out on the cliffs. Thoughthere seemed no danger from the omasha, she carried a long stick andPaul took his pistol. The slope leveled out to the bare rock of theheadland; the ocean voice was the humming of a thousand giants. Theway was easy, with no crevasses, no peril while the wind was mild.Arek had often been out here alone. Yesterday Paul had seen herstanding for an hour, watching the west where unbroken water met asun-reddened horizon. In her earlier years there might have been dimmention of the sea by her almost wordless people, but no trueknowledge: the mainland coast was steaming vine-choked jungle, ortidal marsh, and shut away by the kaksma hills. Paul wondered whatmember of his race could stand for an hour in contemplation like athinking tree, not shifting a foot nor raising an arm...?

  "Paul, why did you leave Earth?" Arek patted the rock beside her.

  Below the troubled water laughed, endlessly defeated and returning.Cloud fantasies gathered below a lucid green, and the wind was afriend. "I have doubted sometimes whether we ought to have done so."

  "That wasn't my meaning. We love you. Didn't you know? But I'vewondered what sent you away from such a place. Ann says it wasbeautiful."

  "A--drive of restlessness. We took boundaries as a challenge. I usedto think that a great virtue. Now I call it neither good nor evil."

  "I think it is good."

  "Everywhere, we carry good _and_ evil."

  "What you do here is good. You teach us. You do kind things."

  "We can be bad. But for Doc Wright and his dreams that Ed Spearmanfinds so impractical, we'd have done you harm." Helpless at herinnocence, Paul saw she did not believe him. "On Earth, we fought eachother. We hunted for lies to make ourselves feel big. We created greatinstitutions built on vanity--tickling lies: imperialism,communism--most of the isms you find so puzzling when we talk of Earthhistory. The anger of Charins rarely focused itself on the actualcauses of unhappiness or injustice. Instead we hunted for scapegoats,easy solutions. We wouldn't study ourselves. Always we itched forsomething external to take the blame for our own follies and crimes."

  "I don't understand."

  "As if you stumbled on a root, Arek, and then banged your fist on thetree that grew it, to blame it for your own clumsiness."

  "But Paul--only a very small child would act like that."

  "Darling, let's watch the sunset." She felt his pain, touched hisknee, and was silent until he said, "A poor naughty child...."

  "There was a thing Ed Spearman said to me--what I wanted to talk toyou about. I've never gone to Pakriaa's village. You know, even Mijokwon't go there except with one of you. I asked Ed if Pakriaa stillkept that stockade for drugging and fattening prisoners--in spite ofher agreeing to the laws. He said yes, she did. I said it was notright. I said we made a law against slavery too. He said, 'Forget it,baby--one thing at a time.' I am not a baby. How can the laws governus unless all obey them?"

  "Ed--meant no harm, Arek. He only meant it does take time. The pygmieshave more to unlearn. You--started clean. And--well--with the army ofLantis likely to come back at any time--we can't afford--"

  Yet it seemed natural that this giant child, who had herself donemurder in the old days, should answer his troubled evasions not onlywith reproach but with command: "If the laws are to govern us theymust be respected by everyone. I wish I had gone to that village andtorn down the stockade with my hands."

  "And they would have killed you with a hundred spears and Pakriaa'speople would hate us forever, learning nothing but more hatred."

  Arek cried a little, rubbing at the unfamiliar wetness. "Maybe I beginto see, how difficult.... The sun's going." But they sat quietly inthe warm and undemanding wind until the first sapphire glint offireflies dotted the slope where Jensen City might one day shine. Arekstood, reaching down an affectionate hand.