6
A sorry day moved into evening, and when evening became an approach tomoonless dark, this day of retreat was in Paul's mind a passage ofdistorted images, true or false.
True that he was now limping through forest stillness between Nisanaand a skinny ghost who was Christopher Wright and Wright carriedPakriaa, who moaned at times like a child with a nightmare, and upahead were five white drifting mountains, one of them ridden by a manwho was silent in pain, Sears Oliphant. It might or might not be truethat at some time during the day Paul had thrashed on the ground witha broken head in front of some squalling danger until black arms swepthim up away from--whatever it was.
Tejron and the two other giant women Karison and Elron, and Mijok,still lived. Elis was walking behind Paul, unhurt; therefore the mindof Elis would still be probing at the borderland of known and unknown,searching and incorruptible. All true. Apparently true that the gashin Paul's side had stiffened, his right leg was knotting itself insome unimportant distress, and his bandaged forehead no longerthrobbed.
The first contact with the Vestoian land army had been a swiftskirmish and ordered withdrawal. Abro Brodaa's archers had crumpledthe first enemy charge. After that the Vestoians had crashed into thewoods with no caution, driven by the horror of brown wings that stillpursued them. Paul had had a final glimpse of the green headdress ofLantis, Queen of the World; his two shots before the rifle jammed hadnot touched her. Once, under cover of the trees, the Vestoians hadpaused to reorganize, giving Paul's retreating force a little timeand distance and the help of forest obscurity.
The spearwomen sent ahead to clear the villages had poured throughPakriaa's settlement and Brodaa's, rounding up old people, children,and the chattering pack of male witches, sending them west to joinWright's group of wounded--if they could find it. But at the thirdvillage upstream--it had been Abro Samiraa's--there was delay. Perhapsthe people had refused to go where there were giants. Paul's rearguard had halted south of the village to protect the evacuation; herethe Vestoians caught up with them.
They had fought it out for two hours in the misery of bush and brierand purple vine outside the village ditch, while the jungle worldsteamed in the growth of mid-morning. Paul's horizon had narrowed tothe knot of fighters who stayed with him--Nisana, Brodaa, Elis, anunknown black-skirted soldier who fell at his feet with a bleedingmouth. Somewhere in that hell he had lost his rifle. It was Brodaa(this must be true, for it was Elis who told him of it)--Brodaa whohad guided them out of the trap, regrouped the remnant of the rearguard north of Samiraa's village while the Vestoians paused to setthat village afire and rejoice over its dying.
Paul could remember that regrouping: black Elis had set him on hisfeet, supporting him till he could walk. There were many twittering,mad-eyed bowmen among the survivors. Brodaa had sent runners to givethe other three villages a final warning; she herself decided againsttrying to reach them with this fragment of an army numbering less thanthree hundred. The only way to save anything at all was to flee north,join Wright's group, hope that the remaining villages would delay theconquerors and that at least some of their non-combatants couldscatter before Lantis, Queen of the World, took them for slaves, meat,and sacrifice.
The rest of the day had been a running, a harsh drive into countryunknown even to Elis. There had been, for Paul and Elis at least, abreath of second wind when they found the tracks of the olifants. Theyhad caught up with Wright's refugees in the early afternoon, but therecould be no pause, even though it was quiet here at the edge offorest and western meadow and the sound of screaming in the villageswas an hour behind them....
Paul noticed that he was naked except for ammunition belt and an emptyholster. Perhaps his present clarity of mind was the true madness, theearlier fog of pain and anger the mind's more natural climate. But onemight as well reason and take stock. He remembered the map. Was itsaved? No matter: a copy had been flown to the island with Dorothy andthe baby.
_I have a woman who loves me; I have a daughter. I have my life._
On his left, just visible in twilight beyond a meadow turningbrilliant with blue fireflies, there were the low western hills, thehills rotten with the burrows of kaksmas, and they were nearer, muchnearer than he had ever seen them except from the lifeboat. (_But EdSpearman went there; he walked in the hills alone and found iron ore,and now he is----Never mind where he is. If the charlesite was givingout he did right to fly to the island and abandon us. What else couldhe do?_) Well, it was right too that the hills should be nearer: theedge of the forest slanted northwest, narrowing the meadow. And thisfar north the hills were smaller, more broken up. Yet it would not doto approach them closely: even the least of the hills (so pygmy andgiant tradition said) could be the dwelling place of day-blind ratlikekillers numerous enough to destroy this entire party and still behungry. The retreat must struggle north until the hills were wellbehind, shut away by level jungle--where the kaksmas still might come,to be sure, but only to the distance of half a night's journey fromtheir burrows. "Doc--can you estimate what distance we've made sincewe caught up with you?"
"Maybe twenty miles," the old man said. "In more time than _Argo_ onceneeded to travel twenty million miles. What is man?"
"Man? A mathematical absurdity.... Aren't you tired? I could carryPakriaa a while."
"No, I'm not tired, son. I like to have her...."
Rifles--in the beginning there had been only five, and one shotgun.The shotgun had been taken to the island. Dorothy and Ann had theirpistols there, too. Paul's rifle was lost. Lisson's had been lost whenshe died. That should leave three. Wright had one slung at his back.Peering up ahead, Paul saw another in the red-brown hand of the younggiantess Elron. Sears must have lost his. So two at least remained.And one automatic--Wright's. "Those two new recruits Mijokbrought----I'm in a fog--I only just remembered----"
"Lost," said Wright, staring ahead. "The boy didn't understand. He raninto the mess on the beach like a horse running into a fire. That wasbefore you got back from the south. The other had more sense. Saw thepygmies spilling out of the boats and ran for the woods. Naturally wedidn't try to hold him. Perhaps he's reached his home territory. Ihope so."
Behind him Elis spoke softly: "It was not very far, Doc. When we reachthe island and start the new settlement----"
"Oh, Elis----"
"When that has been done I'll come back and find him, give him thewords--him and many others. I promise you that. Let me believe it."
"Believe it, Elis. But the boy Danik is dead. He was bright, curious.He should have lived 150 years."
"We overtake mystery," Elis said, "and leave it behind."
"Men have never overtaken the mystery of untimely death."
"There is chaos," said Elis. "Chance. Mystery is great jungle around asmall clearing. I accept that. We make a wider clearing."
Paul felt Nisana's finger hook over his. Pakriaa groaned, perhaps insleep. The darkness had blotted away the hills; even the small shapeof Nisana was growing too dim. Elis said, "You're limping, Paul.Abroshin Nisana is tired. There are still three of the animals withoutriders. You and Doc----"
"Yes," Wright said. "We might make better time." Nisana trilled anorder to Abara, who rode the colossal bulk of Mister Johnson at thehead of the line. The animals halted without sound. "We must go on allnight, Paul--right? What became of your--prisoner?"
"My----" the mental clarity must be a fraud, Paul thought, if newmemories could flash into it so abruptly. At some time--it must havebeen after Elis had carried him clear of the nightmare at Samiraa'svillage--he had stumbled on a Vestoian soldier unconscious from a headwound and loss of blood but not dead. He had still been carrying herwhen they caught up with Wright. With this, the memory of that reunionbecame whole--the wordless suffering on the shield that Mijok carried,the improvised stretchers, the bewilderment and exhaustion in the redfaces, the very smell of defeat--with this also a picture of thehorribly fat witch from Pakriaa's village carried on a litter by twospearwomen, and one other witch, a lank
skeleton with white and purplelines emphasizing the prominence of his ribs, striding beside hiscolleague and shooting glances of wrath from left to right and back.Someone had gently taken the unconscious soldier. "She's safe, Doc.Tejron took her--still has her, I'm sure."
"Good." Wright added with a harshness canceling humor: "Now if onlyfriend Lantis will initial a copy of the Geneva Convention...." He wasfumbling in the twilight before one of the white beasts, uncertainwhat to do.
The old cow olifant Susie, carrying Sears, fretted at the delay,sampling the air and rumbling. Paul petted her trunk to soothe her;Sears' voice came down to him: "Paul? Take this, will you?" He wasreaching down the case that held his microscope, safe somehow out ofthe inferno of the day. "My grip's not too good, got nothing to tie itto--bare's a baby's bottom, like you. We look like the last days of aTurkish bath, hey?"
"How d'you feel?" Nisana tore shreds from what remained of her purpleskirt; she looped them about the case, fastened it to Paul'sammunition belt.
"Feel good," Sears said. Each word was a thick struggle for normalspeech. "Arrowhead came off; Chris got it out. Manicure scissors forforceps; you may slice me cross-ways and call me ham and eggs if itain't so. Right, Chris? You there?"
"I'm here, Jocko," Wright said, and under his breath to Paul: "Medicalkit lost. I don't think the spleen is injured, but----" Aloud he said,"Of course, with your gut what I needed was a hook and line. Paul, howdo you make one of these ten-foot roller coasters kneel down?"
"Let me--that's Miss Ponsonby--she knows me." At Paul's order, tons ofgentleness knelt on the earth; Paul held Pakriaa while Wrightstruggled into the hollow between hump and head, and Pakriaa waseither asleep or not caring.... "Abro Brodaa?"
"Here, Commander."
"Form your people in three lines with linked hands. The giant womenKarison and Elron, and Elis, will guide them at the head, becausetheir night vision is better than yours and mine. Mijok and Tejronwill walk beside us. We must travel all night. I think the Vestoianswill not."
"They will not," the princess Brodaa said. He wished he could seetruly what was happening in her little face. "They will not becausethey have no giants or Charins to help them." It carried no hint ofthe obsequious.
"Thank you, Abro Brodaa. Wait here a moment." He patted Millie'strunk--she was a young beast, nervous but fond of him--and made herkneel. "Help Nisana climb up to me.... Abro Brodaa--the people of yourvillage----"
"Most of them lost." It might have been the oncoming night itselfspeaking temperately. "These remaining are a few from all thevillages. 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 andthrust of the great animal under him--it was possible to reach a kindof sleep, knowing his body would not relax enough to fall or to weakenhis hold on Nisana, who trusted him. She was deeply asleep in thefirst part of the night, occasionally snoring, a comic noise like apuppy's whine. All day she had never been out of his sight; she hadfought like a hellcat, but singlemindedly, saving her strength to dealwith those who threatened him.
It would have been possible to abandon these people; at one time, Paulremembered, he had almost favored it himself, and Ed Spearman had verynearly hinted that it might be better to join forces with the tyrannyin the south.... Life seemed cheap to Pakriaa's tribe--others' life.Devil-worshipping cannibals, capable of every cruelty, committed forthousands of years to all the superstitions that ever crippledintelligence. You had to look beyond that, said Christopher Wright thetheorist, the doctor, the anthropologist, the impractical daydreamer._Anyway I saved a Vestoian--if she lives. One balanced against howmany that I destroyed...? No answer.... Unless you can see a worldwhere the ways of destruction become obsolete under a government oflaws. With the devils of human nature--the vanities, the greeds, thefollies and needless resentments, the fear of self-knowledge, dread ofthe unfamiliar, the power lust of the morally blind, the passion foreasy 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 andthe life of the one whom the stream of history has tossed against meas my enemy----_
_When I do that, I only discover once more that I am caught in thesame net with the rest of my kind and cannot escape until all of themescape--escape into a region of living where men do not set traps foreach other and the blind do not lead._
_Therefore----_
"Are you awake, Nisana?" Her even breathing quickened. It seemed toPaul that there was faint color in his glimpses of sky; he rememberedthe silver moon that had appeared over the jungle with first-light solong ago--yesterday morning. The passage of the red moon aroundLucifer was swift: tonight it would be rising two hours beforefirst-light and would be something broader than the gory scimitar hehad 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 inthe leaves. "A good moon. Begins the Moon of Little Rains. The smallrains make no harm, make the ground sweet. Is better than the moonpast--that we call the Moon of Beginnings." She moved restlesslyagainst 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 thereare bad--what word?--tev--tevils in the north."
"Tomorrow--rather, today--we turn west and then south on the otherside 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 forhappiness.
Wright's voice came thinly in the dark: "Abara, stop them! Sears----"
Millie halted and knelt without an order: Nisana jumped down. Paul sawthe shapes of Elis and Sears suddenly bright under Wright'sflashlight--the only radion light left. "Easy," Elis said. "I haveyou." And he lowered the man's bulk to the ground as Susie moaned andshifted her feet. Sears had said nothing, but he was smiling, his facered 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 woundwere purple. "Pakriaa! You said once you never heard of poison on thearrows----"
Pakriaa gaped, rubbing her eyes. It was Brodaa who answered: "Ourpeople never had it on the arrows. But in the war with Lantis lastyear 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 keepwatch--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, veryfar from this patch of earth. One could only listen till he wassilent. Then Paul said, "I think so, Mijok. He needs to speak; we needto 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 tangoats----" Sears could see it, Paul thought, that small country, aquiet corner of the Federation, where every grain of sand mightremember blood spilled in the follies of hatred, where a teacher ofmercy had been crucified. But now for Sears it was not a place ofhistory: 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 noone place except the universe. Later he was recalling the hot whitestreets of Rio, the genial clutter of London, Baltimore, the majesticcontradictions of New York.
&nb
sp; "Why, yes, Doctor," he said--and he did not mean Christopher Wright,but some friend or instructor whose image might be standing in frontof the shadows of Lucifer, "yes, Doctor, you could say I've traveled agreat deal, in my sort of blundering fashion. And I would not exactlysay that people are the same everywhere, but you'll have noticedyourself--the many common denominators are much more interesting thanthe 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 toprove something--which may or may not be useful. In any case it's notmy dish. There are only men and women. They get born and love andsuffer and work and grow old and die; or sometimes, Doctor, they dieyoung. Men and women I can love and touch; sometimes I can even teachthem the few things I know. You may take Man to the library; feed himback into your electronic brain and don't bother me with the resultsso long as I'm alive to see a child discovering his own body--or forthat matter a bird coming out of the egg, a minnow in a spot ofsunlight, a blade of grass."
Pakriaa wailed: "What is he saying? He is not here." She squirmed pastWright, dropped to the ground, her cheek pressed on Sears' tangledhair, her free arm wandering over his face and shoulder as if shewanted to cover him like a shield. "He talked to me once. Sears, yousaid--you said----"
He was back among them, gazing around in sane bewilderment. "I shouldbe riding.... Pakriaa--why Pak, I'm all right." Paul moved the torchhere and there to pick out his own face, Wright's, Mijok's, the whitebulk of Susie looming close by, the pouting ugly mask of Abara, whohad stolen up close, his underlip wobbling in an effort to speak. "Ifell asleep--took a tumble?"
"Almost," Wright muttered. "Just lucky chance I saw you tottering. Youneed to rest a bit."
"Oh no." Sears frowned. "Can't stop." He smiled at Pakriaa, who hadlifted 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 weall need rest. Take it easy a while."
But Pakriaa could not hide her knowledge that he was dying; Searstouched her cheek with a curious wandering finger. "You liked lookingin the microscope, didn't you?" She nodded. "Remember--must be sureyou've got the best focus you can before you make up your mind aboutanything. But this is more serious, Pak--because I think you love meand you have trouble. I tell you again, you must go to the island withthe others. You must live. Now I expect to go there too, but--"
Abara moved away. Paul glimpsed him striding back and forth, strikingthe 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 ofany effort if the result is thrown away in a time of weakness? Youdiscard only if what you have is proven false. We haven't much--wenever have much. Some things appear to be empirically certain. Notmany.... You know, I believe I've given a few people--call it awakening of curiosity. I think that's good. Curiosity and patience.Good as far as it goes. I'm not ashamed." He was trying to seeWright's gaunt face. "You picked a tougher subject, didn't you, Chris?Don't worry--give you an A for something more than effort.... Nowlook, this hanging around here won't do." He caught Paul's hand andheaved himself upright. "I remember--map--damn it. Need another wholeday before we pass the hills. Susie--down, Susie--"
But Susie, fumbling at him with her trunk, would not kneel. Paul heardMijok's agonized whisper: "She knows."
Sears laughed. "All right, make the old man climb." And before anyonecould stop him he had tottered a few steps and burned out the last ofhis strength in a heaving jump toward her neck, which barely liftedhim 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, alucid cruelty of morning.
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