West Of The Sun

by Edgar Pangborn

  7

  Twice that day Elis dropped far behind to listen and reported therewas no pursuit. It was hard to judge their distance from the foothillsof the western range, for now there was no open ground--only Wright'scompass, the memory of the map, and treetop surveys that Mijok madefrom time to time. Abara rode Mister Johnson in the lead, making thebeasts travel slowly since the pygmies were faint with weariness.Susie trailed forlornly; she had not been willing to abandon the gravetill the others went on without her.

  The pygmies carried only half a dozen makeshift stretchers; the numberof unwounded had diminished too. "They slip away," Brodaa said toPaul. He saw three men carrying children too small to walk; no oldwomen. The fat witch rode his litter, unconcerned at the fatigue ofits bearers; the other old man, smeared with white and purple paint,stalked beside him. Brodaa said, "My sister Tamisraa ended life withthe white-stone dagger. While Elis and Mijok made the--whatword?--grave. We left her body looking north to help the spiritjourney. There are many lost who will have no prayers--bad--they mayfollow 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 rememberhim. That will be always...." It seemed to Paul there were scarcely ahundred in this worn line. "We mustn't try to hold them if they wantto go. If you, Brodaa, or any others want to leave us, you know youare free."

  Her answer was firm and considered: "I will not leave you...."

  Wright had not spoken since the burial, nor had Pakriaa. They kepttogether; Paul was with them sometimes. Behind them Mijok carried hisshield. It was Elis who heard the bleat of asonis and stole off tobring back meat for an afternoon meal. It was Elis, before that, whosaid, "We have done what we could, Paul. We could not have made thesepeople retreat in time to save themselves. If we had abandoned themLantis would have left no more than a fire leaves in theRed-Moon-of-Dry-Days. Pakriaa is too sick to understand that, yet. Shecarries a grief like a little one swelling in the womb: it must growgreater before she is delivered of it."

  In the afternoon halt, it was Elis who tried to make Wright eatsomething and sleep, but Wright could do neither.

  The giant women Elron and Karison also refused the meat. They satapart with stout brown Tejron. She was eating, keeping close to herthe still unconscious Vestoian, whom the pygmies had given no morethan disgusted glares. Tejron might be listening to Karison'sundertone--it was in the monosyllables of the old language. The girlElron held her eyes downcast, fondling the rifle. She and Karison hadbeen much together in a peculiar loneliness since the children wereflown to the island: Karison was old, her children grown and gone awaybefore the Charins came; Elron was too young to have given birth.Three of the children at the island were Tejron's; the others werechildren of Muson and Samis and of a mother who had died in the oldlife. Tejron wiped her lips and grunted impatiently; she took up hercharge in careful arms and left the two. Paul sensed what was to comewhen Elron set her cherished rifle at his feet. Karison approachedWright, humble but determined: "We must leave you."

  Before Wright could speak, Mijok answered her with a sullen anger Paulhad never heard from him: "I brought you from the jungle with emptyheads. We gave you the words, the beginning of the laws we must maketogether. 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--weneed it."

  "Then you must go," Wright said, his spread fingers white-nailed onthe 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 inthe 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 shamingher. "You think the old life was a freedom. Freedom to live like ananimal without an animal's peace, Elron, because of the thing in youthat struggles for knowledge--oh yes, in spite of yourself, andalways. Freedom to hunt all day or else sleep on an empty stomach,jump with fear at every creaking branch. Freedom to cram yourself withmoss root and slugs from the streams--never enough--in the bad moonswhen the asonis go north. Freedom to kill the pygmies and be hunted bythem, 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." Sheturned 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 comeback." But she was gone in the shadows, Karison following her, andElis 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 howangry _I_ was--only a year ago? You stepping over the border of myterritory, telling me--I've wondered how you did it with our fewstumbling words--telling me every being should be free to go as hepleased 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 beangry 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 toothers. Maybe it will be like the thing you showed us, how a littleseed no bigger than the eye of illuama can become a tree...."

  Pakriaa had watched indifferently; Paul hoped he was right, that herface was not quite so tightly set in lines of rejection and despair.Wright came stiffly to his feet, a hand on Tejron's shoulder, theother wandering into his gray beard. "Abro Brodaa, interpret forme--some of them have no English. Tell them we turn west soon, thensouth through bad country--swamp, heat, uskaran, marsh reptiles maybe,maybe the kaksmas swarm on the west side of the hills. Tell them we gothrough that. When we reach a river we have seen from the air--it hasno falls and flows southwest--we shall make boats."

  Brodaa put it into the high music of the pygmy tongue. Paul could seeno change in the saddened faces; by rumor, most of them would alreadyknow this much. But the thin witch was muttering to his grosscolleague, and some soldier faces turned to overhear that instead ofattending to Brodaa.

  "Tell them, Brodaa, this river will take us to Big-Water. We go southalong the coast, to the island where our friends are, where we believeSpearman has gone in the winged boat. Tell them, on this island thereare 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 inpeace."

  The lean witch interrupted Brodaa's translation with a wailingdiatribe, twitching his twigs of arms, lashing the battered soldierswith his oratory. Brodaa turned to Wright in misery: "He says--he sawIsmar change Spearman back to a marsh lizard and the boat to anomasha."

  Mijok laughed savagely. "When did he see that? Ask him."

  Brodaa did, on a thin shout. The scarecrow flashed her a glare ofresentment and a snapping answer.... "He says he saw it in sleeppicture."

  Paul snarled, "Yes, a dream's as near as he came to a battlefield."

  Brodaa was shocked, but Nisana laughed. The fat witch on the litter wasfuming. Coming from Pakriaa's village, he probably had enough English tounderstand it; he leaned forward, embracing his hideous belly, croaking atthe soldiers. Nisana translated in swift whispers: "Says--you Charins allmarsh lizards, changed by Inkar-Goddess-of-Kaksmas.... Says we lose toVestoians because image was broke; Ismar punishes.... Will I kill him,Paul-Mason?"

  Brodaa choked: "You cannot touch Amisura. Your spear will turn--"

&nb
sp; "My spear is lost," said Nisana, loudly enough for all to hear. "ButAksona, Amana, two other men of magic--those I saw killed at AbroSamiraa's village. Vestoian spears was not turn in the hand--I saw."She stepped forward, fingering her white-stone knife, and the fatAmisura cringed, squeaking.

  Wright cried, "I forbid it, Nisana. Let them go. Brodaa!"

  Brodaa said quickly, "He asks sacrifice--you, Paul, Pakriaa--"

  Nisana laughed again. She dropped her white-stone dagger on the groundand slapped the thin witch in the face. The crowd gasped and shrankback. Such a man, Paul knew, was altogether holy, never to be touched;one must not even look him in the eye. But Nisana slapped him againand shoved him sprawling. She caught a pole of Amisura's litter,heaved at it, and he tumbled like a red melon. "_Now_ let themchoose!" She came back to Paul with grin and swagger, patting herscarred chest. "I am little Spearman. I break images too."

  And the pygmies were choosing, not as she or the witches hadhoped--choosing headlong retreat from this sacrilege, dissolving awayinto the forest with sick-eyed backward looks. Paul saw Amisuraweeping, humping pitiably back to his litter on all fours, and heardPakriaa laugh. The two soldiers who had carried Amisura brought thelitter nearer, not daring to touch him; when he flopped on it theybore him away. The other witch had run blindly, covering his insultedface, and Wright said like a machine, "Let them go--let them--"

  Sardonically, Pakriaa had watched the whole incident without rising;now she seemed to want to catch Wright's eye, lifting a skinnyshoulder as if to say: "What can you do with fools?"

  When the panic was over, thirty followers remained....

  In the early evening Mijok reported, after another treetop survey,that the last of the kaksma hills was about three miles southwest.West of them the jungle was level; it was time to turn. Elis hadslipped away and returned with two heavy carcasses like wild boars.Sears had named these stodgy animals pigmors. The _mor_ suffix, he hadinsisted, was an intensely scientific shorthand for "more or less,damn it." The meat was high-flavored and coarse but safe.... HearingMijok's news, Brodaa sighed, thinking perhaps of the long history ofher people, the groping for a narrow path of survival among endlessperils. "We say the great uskaran hears a leaf fall to earth from athousand paces away but the kaksma hears the leaf divide the air as itfalls. Oh--three of your Charin miles, that is great length. Maybeenough."

  The tremendous sheer spires of the coastal range, Mijok said, werevisible in the southwest though nearly a hundred miles off; it wouldbe a clear sweet night, he thought, with no clouds and many stars.They should go at least fifteen miles due west; then the course wouldbe southwest rather than south, to miss the hills....

  In the crowding darkness Mister Johnson's leading was again a thing ofwisdom; his lifted trunk and sensitive eyes avoided dense growth anddrooping vines that could endanger the riders. From each necessarydetour he came back willingly to the course, under guidance of Abara'ssense of compass direction, and the other four followed him as the armfollows the hand. Tonight Paul rode old Susie--she seemed to feelhappier for it--carrying Nisana again; Wright was on Miss Ponsonby,with Pakriaa. Tejron, unfamiliar with the beasts but ready to learn,had climbed on Millie's back and kept her balance without trouble,holding the wounded Vestoian, who stirred and whimpered but was nottruly conscious. Behind Paul was the more nervous bull Mister Smithwithout a rider, and Elis and Mijok walked beside him, Mijok with hisshield, Elis holding Brodaa's hand. The thirty who had dared to choosethe forbidden unknown trailed behind Brodaa with linked fingers, ninebowmen among them; there were few weapons, no wounded except onMijok's shield, and this held only two, for one of the women had died.The wounded archer was yellow-faced with loss of blood from a hipinjury, but that was clean and closed; he was free from the signs offear, almost cheerful. The woman was a sturdy black-skirted soldier ofthe ranks, gashed in the face and with a leg torn from knee to ankle.

  Another night of silence and of drifting--for a while. Wright's voicefloated back: "I am thinking of Dorothy and Ann, and your daughter."

  "And not of Ed Spearman?"

  "Oh.... The fuel must have been getting low, Paul. Nothing the boatcould do for us after we were back in the woods. He must be at theisland."

  Paul could only say, "I hope so." The thing Spearman had almost saidwhen his anger and disappointment were high, the hint at joiningforces with Lantis in abandonment of everything thus farachieved--nothing could be gained by speaking of that now. But some ofSpearman's words murmured on in darkness: "_Lantis--terrificorganization ... monetary system ... whole world for the taking ...pretty idealism that never worked even on Earth...._"

  There had always been strain and mutual exasperation in argument withEd Spearman--long ago, on the ship _Argo_. The Collectivist Party,surviving as an innocuous political group after the horrors of theCivil War of 2010-13, lived strongly in Spearman's mind, not onlybecause his father had fought for it. Lacking the frenzied dogmatismof the antique communism it resembled, it was nevertheless communism'snatural heir, a party of iron doctrines simplified for minds thatresented analysis and magnified Man out of a dislike for men. Likecommunism, it needed to imagine a class war and felt that it had atight vested monopoly of the underdog. The C.P., said one of its latetwentieth-century prophets as humorless as his predecessors, "believedin Man." You could always fluster a collectivist by asking for alogical breakdown of that--and make an enemy: they were usually goodhaters and made a virtue of it. The years following the Civil War hadbeen troubled though materially prosperous, darkened by the build-upof yet another monolithic state under Jenga the Mongol, who hadinherited the desolation of the Russo-Chinese war of 1970-76; in thoseyears the Collectivist Party in the Federation, unsupported by anyconveniently foreign deity, had become not much more than aserio-comic decayed socialism with a dash of bitters. But it wasalive; at the time _Argo_ left the spaceport it had had ten senatorsand a larger handful of delegates in the Federation Congress. It wasrespectable, no longer subversive, and owned a small hard core of theaggressively sincere.... Not Wright nor Sears nor anyone had ever beenable to convince Edmund Spearman that evil means breed a further evil,which swallows up any good that may have been imagined in thebeginning. Spearman could admit that (himself in no way an evil man)he would not do evil--if he could help it. But in the region of theorySpearman held quite simply that you can't make an omelette withoutbreaking eggs, and that settled it....

  "They should be safe," Wright said. "You and Jocko saw the island."

  "It's beautiful. I know they're all right."

  "Yes.... Would you say it was a place where Ann might--oh, how shall Isay it?--might attain tranquillity? Not cry too much for the moon?"

  "If there is any such place in the Galaxy."

  "Time," Elis said. "Little Black-Hair needs time. She is like grass Ihave seen growing in too much shade. She is not like our MashanaDorothy who will make sunshine if the other sun is clouded."

  "Listen!" Brodaa's voice. "Listen...."

  Paul heard nothing, at first. Up ahead Abara sputtered: "MisterJohnson--hoo-hee--be quiet. Is nothing--be quiet--"

  Nisana came broad awake in Paul's arms. Wright's mount halted, as didSusie, but Susie was trembling, raising and swinging her head in a wayto make balance difficult; Paul saw the white writhing of her trunklifted to explore for a scent.... He heard it then: a long rustling,like a repeated tearing of paper behind a closed door; nothingelse.... A wet howl from Mister Johnson sent a spasm through Susie'smass; her muscles bunched; Abara's voice wailed back: "Mister Joh--Icannot hold him--_kaksmas_!"

  Transition from realization to stampede was a flash like the pain of ablow. Paul heard Mijok: "My shield--it will hold more." Elis criedsomething to Brodaa. Then Susie had plunged ahead, uncontrollable;Paul could only bend low above the clinging of Nisana, hold on withhands and knees, hope that no trailing vine or branch would sweep themoff into death. Mister Johnson could make no careful choice of a trailnow--he would be parting the jungle like a six-ton bullet. "Don't beafraid, Nisana--
we can outrun them--"

  "My people--"

  "Elis and Mijok can outrun them too. They'll carry all they can." Inspite of the agony of mere hanging on, mere straining to stay alive,he had to think: _They were loyal and we got them into this...._Branches slashed across his back, stinging and scraping. Once Susiestumbled and recovered as the group went splattering across someinvisible mud, and Paul wondered if Mister Johnson in his terror wouldrun them into quicksand or marsh.

  That ended; there was more thick jungle whipping his back for--fiveminutes?--an hour...? This too ended.

  Crazed or purposeful, the beasts charged out into open land through asoft roaring of torn grass. Paul could twist his head to glance upwardat a field of stars. He could not win a backward look for Elis andMijok: his neck and arm muscles were stiffened in his grasp of Susie'sears, and he dared not risk disturbing Nisana's clutch of him. But toleft and right he could make out other shapes under starlight and heara frantic thudding of hoofs--fleeing asonis, other innocent woodlandcattle with a hunger to live. Once he glimpsed a long-bodied thingpass off to the left in wild leaps lifting it above the grass tops:uskaran, he thought, the huge tiger cat, no enemy but a brother inpanic.

  The open ground ended at water; here at last the olifants slowed to ahalt, unlike the lesser desperate brutes, for Mister Johnson was stillwise, considering the stream, aware of his leadership. Paul couldshout to the others now, and they all answered. But his backwardstaring found only the stars, the white mass of Mister Smith, thedisturbed darkness that must be meadow. "Elis! Mijok!"

  No answer could have reached him above the bleating and thunder ofterrorized harmless things crossing the field and hurtling blindlyinto the river. Mister Johnson was wading in deliberately. There wassplashing at first, then silence, as cool water came up around Paul'sknees and Susie's motion changed to a smooth throbbing and heaving; hesaw small foam where the curve of her lifted trunk cut the water. Hewhispered to Nisana, "We're safe, dear. Big river. Kaksmas won't crossit...." Mister Johnson was leading them in an upstream slant, bearingwell to the right while the bobbing frantic heads of other creatureslet the moderate current press them away to the left. Thisway--whether by Mister Johnson's wisdom or Abara's guidance--theymight be able to come ashore clear of the dangerous passage of thestampede.

  "My people cannot go through the water. We never--"

  "Elis and Mijok can swim. They'll get them across somehow. Maybe theshield will float, Nisana."

  The madness behind them dwindled into the faraway. In growing quiet,Wright's voice came back, not loudly: "I am a murderer."

  Paul wondered what insight made him call out words not his own:"'What's the profit of any effort if the result is thrown away in atime of weakness?'"

  The even motion became a clumsiness of wading in mud. Then there wassolid ground. Paul said, "Halt them here if you can, Abara." MisterJohnson must have shared the sense of safety; they all calmed, headsdrooping, shaken breathing slowing to sighs. "Down, Susie...." All butAbara descended. This was still open grassland, but there was a blackvelvet curtain of jungle not far off. "Doc--still got yourflashlight?"

  "Eh? No--lost somewhere." The old man spoke vacantly; he stumbled to theedge of the water, sat with his head on his knees. "Mijok-Mijok...."

  Tejron still had her Vestoian, but now the pygmy woman was panting,fully conscious in Tejron's arms and witless with fear. Tejron said,"She's trying to break away. Can't someone talk to her?"

  "Pakriaa!" Paul searched for the princess. "Here--please."

  Nisana whispered, "I will talk to the Vestoian--yes?"

  "Not yet. If Pakriaa--"

  Pakriaa said thickly, "I am here. What to say? She is nothing."

  "She is nothing to you, Pakriaa? Then Sears chose a poor student.Brodaa would have spoken to her. I ask you to tell her the war is overand she is among friends."

  "Friends? She is Vestoian." Pakriaa approached Wright, who did notlook up. "Tocwright--I must speak to the Vestoian kaksma? I owe you mylife--will obey you."

  He groaned: "I do not want you to obey me. If there is nothing insideto tell you what you should do, then I have nothing to say to you."

  Pakriaa flung up her arm across her eyes as if struck. Tejronmuttered, "I can't restrain her much longer without hurting her." Itwas Nisana who gave the Vestoian the message in the pygmy tongue, aripple of sound that must have conveyed some reassurance, for thestruggling ceased.

  "Look!" Paul dug his fingers in Wright's shoulder. "Over there--"

  The dark spot under starlight was surely the floating shield; behindit, another purposeful splashing, rise and fall of a driving arm.

  "Mijok!" Wright was on his feet. "This way! A little upstream--"

  Both giants were bleeding from small double stab wounds of the kaksmateeth. There were four pygmies on Mijok's shield. Elis had carriedBrodaa and another in his arms and one on his back; they had clung tohis fur as he swam the river. Mijok plucked a sodden thing from histhigh; its jaws had clenched in flesh when he smashed its body. Heflipped the ratty thing into the water and remarked like a Charin,"Damned if I could ever care for 'em."

  "The others--"

  "We tried to help them into the trees," said Elis. "Could be somesafety in that if the swarm passes by. But most of them ran blindly,so--beyond that, Doc, don't ever ask us. We must forget some things.We've all done what we could, so--let's rest a while and go on."

  "Oh, we go on," Wright said. "Chaos, or maybe a little bit of lightfrom time to time. What--sixteen of us now...? Which way was the swarmgoing?"

  "North. Our flight was west. I think this place is safe."

  Abara called down: "Mister Johnson says it is safe."

  Paul said, "No more travel tonight. Wait here for daylight. This isnot the river we wanted, but we know it reaches the sea somehow. Let'sthink about that in the morning. And--if you will, Doc--I'd like tomake that my last order. Let Elis be our commander till we reach theisland."

  "I!" Elis was shocked. "But Paul.... I am a big baby, I wonder andwonder and never find the answer to anything."

  Wright laughed; it sounded like laughter. At any rate when his voicefound words it was warm, relieved, more like his own than it had beenat any time since the drums sounded on Lake Argo. "That doesn'tmatter, Elis. Paul has done all anyone could, done it well, andleadership's a wearing thing. But you can carry it."

  Paul wished he could see the black face in the dark; he might learnfrom it, he thought, so far as a Charin was capable of learning. Elissaid dazedly, "If you all wish it--"

  "I wish it," said Abro Brodaa.

  "Yes," Mijok said. "Let's not trouble to vote. We know you, Elis."

  "I'll do my best...."

  Most of the pygmies collapsed in sleep. The bites the giants hadreceived were not numerous enough to be a danger, but both were insome pain, and wakeful; Abara also said he would prefer to watch outthe night and not sleep. Paul stretched on the damp grass, aware ofNisana, sitting near him. He tried to make a mental refuge of Dorothyand the island; for a time it was possible, but twice, as he thoughthe was drifting into true healing sleep, the present pulled at him andthe thought was not of Dorothy, but of Pakriaa, throwing up her armacross her eyes as if Wright's words had been a deeper wound than anyshe had received in these days of calamity and defeat.

  He woke while it was still night. The red moon had risen, changing theriver to deep purple; the stampede was all ended, and stillness waseverywhere, underlying the low voices of Wright and Elis. He saw thesmall silhouette of Nisana beside him; he could make out none of theothers, but he heard the soft breathing of the olifants, and at leastsome of them must have gone to the jungle and returned, for there wasa steady munching of coarse leaves. He thought: _Sears' pets--one ofhis ten thousand gifts we can never live long enough to assess. Hislaughter was another...._

  Wright was talking placidly: "We suppose it must have been a similarstory on this planet, Elis. The major patterns are the same. The smalland simple forms must have grown to greater comp
lexity through theirmillions of years, undoubtedly in the seas, the good saline medium forour kind. Then other millions of years, while the first creatures totry the land were clumsy amphibians, still needing the sea butdeveloping ways to carry it with them, venture a little further.There's no hurry in history."

  "And before the beginning of life?"

  "Difficult, Elis. We think (there are other theories) that each starwith planets was once two--a binary, our astronomers called it--"

  Someone thin and small came near to Paul, speaking delicately, in anextremity of pain, and not to him. "Nisana," Pakriaa said. "Nisana--"

  Nisana was looking up, a little afraid, uncertain. "Princess?"

  "Only Pakriaa.... Nisana--I saw how you spoke to the Vestoian, how shewas quiet. If you will bring her--and Tejron too? And we go andlisten--Tocwright is talking about the stars--the world--I think,maybe, we tell her what he says? Will you come with me, Nisana?"

  Part Three

  The Year Ten