"So you were conscious all the time? Tell me."
Dorothy kept her voice low. Paul noticed the towering slimness of the
lifeboat beyond the barrier of branches, reversed--Ed Spearman's work,
he supposed. It pointed toward the west. Turned so, the jet would
blast toward the lake, harming nothing. Its shadow held away the heat
of the sun, a gleaming artifact of twenty-first century man, the one
alien thing in this wilderness morning. The sickness, Dorothy said,
had taken her with a sudden paralysis: she could see, hear, be aware
of boiling fever, but could not move. Then even the sense of heat left
her--she was only observing eyes, ears, and a brain. She had had a
fantasy that she was dead, no longer breathing. "But I breathed." Her
small brown face crinkled with a laughter rich in more than amusement.
"It's a habit I don't mean to abandon."
"Neurotoxin," said Wright, "and a damn funny one. Back on Earth, when
I believed myself to be a doctor, I never heard of anything like it."
The condition had lasted all day, she said; at nightfall her sense of
touch had gradually returned. She could move her hands, later her feet
and head. At length she had sat up, briefly blinded by pain in the
forehead, then she had given way to an overwhelming need for sleep. "I
got a glimpse of you, Paul, and tumbled off into a set of dreams that
were--not so bad, not so bad. I woke before sunrise. Different. Don't
ask me how. Never felt healthier. Not even weak, as you should be
after a fever. But Doc--what if the illness--"
Wright looked away from the terror that had crossed her face. "If you
go on feeling all right, we can assume nothing's wrong with the baby.
Don't borrow trouble, sugarpuss--we've got enough."
"Maybe," Paul suggested, "the illness was just--oh, some of our Earth
metabolism getting burned out of us. A stiff acclimation course."
Wright grunted, pinching his long nose. Paul said, "Wish it had burned
out the yen for a cigarette that I've had for eleven years."
Sears Oliphant, the only other with some medical knowledge, had taken
charge immediately after their collapse. "He is--scared, Paul,"
Dorothy murmured. "Of Lucifer, I mean. I could feel it when I was just
a pair of eyes and ears. More physical shrinking in him than in the
rest of us, and he's fighting it back with all he's got. He's a very
big man, Paul...." Sears looked peaceful enough now, in the dark sleep
of the sickness, his moon face bristling with black beard growth but
relaxed and bland. On another couch of moss, Spearman was more
restless, powerful arms twitching as if he needed to fight the
disaster even in sleep. Ann Bryan was deeply flushed and moaned a
little now and then. "Ed was all right too. Considerate. Took all
Sears' orders without any fuss or question; I don't think he's much
scared. He feels he can bull his way through anything, and maybe he's
right." Dorothy's helpless eyes had also seen Mijok bringing moss in
great armfuls. This, she thought, had helped Ed Spearman to accept the
giant as a man and perhaps as a friend. She remembered Mijok raising
Paul and herself in one careful swing of his arms to set them down
beside each other on the moss. Later she had watched him turning the
lifeboat under direction of Spearman's blunt gestures. Its length was
thirty-four feet, its weight over three tons Earth gravity--more here.
One gray-white arm had lifted the tail and swung the boat on its
landing gear as a man might push a light automobile. "I wasn't afraid.
After dark, when I knew the sickness had got the others, I still
wasn't afraid. Believe me? I could see Mijok moving around. Once I
heard him growl--I think he was driving something off. And then while
the red moon was coming up, he sat by us--his eyes are red in the
dark, Paul, not green. He smells musky at close range, but clean. I
wasn't afraid. Now and then he'd look us over and smile with his funny
black lips and touch the furry back of his finger to our foreheads....
I could see the blue fireflies, Paul. Someday you'll make up stories
about them for the baby.... I heard that crying again--much nearer
than when we heard it that first night by the other lifeboat. Like a
group of children crying, if you can imagine that synchronized, almost
musical. Mijok growled and fretted when it began, but it came no
nearer. It had stopped when I woke."
"Some of Earth's critters sounded human--panthers, owls, frogs--"
"Ye-es. Just possibly something like tree frogs...."
Wright said, "Mijok brought us raw meat this morning before he went to
sleep, something like a deer haunch. The fire bothers him--he
evidently didn't go near it last night after the others collapsed."
"Ed tried to show him about fire," Dorothy said. "I remember. Mijok
was scared, and Sears told Ed to let it wait."
"Meat was good too." Wright smirked. "We got the fire going, and Mijok
did try some cooked and liked it. You and Dorothy can have some
tomorrow if I don't turn purple."
"Not guinea-pig," said Dorothy. "Just pig."
"Hungry?" Wright tossed Paul a ration package.
"Gah!" But he opened it. "Learned any more of Mijok's words?"
"No. He won't have many. Nouns, simple descriptives. Must have some
continuing association with his own breed, or he'd have no words at
all. A hunter--with only nature's weapons, I think. That haunch was
torn, not cut--some hoofed animal smaller than a pony, fresh-killed
and well bled. He must have got it while Dorothy slept. It may have
strayed into the camp during the night. I think Mijok lives in the
woods, maybe not even a shelter or a permanent mate. Anthropology IA."
said Wright, and bowed in mimic apology to the sleeping giant. "Those
pygmies will be something else again--Neolithic. Wish I understood
that bulge between the shoulder blades. All the creatures we've seen
have it--even that damn black reptile, I believe, though things were
too mixed up to be sure."
Mijok woke--all at once, like a cat. He stretched, extending his arms
twelve feet from wrist to wrist. He smiled down at Paul. He studied
the helpless ones, peering longest at Ann Bryan; the black-haired girl
was breathing harshly, fidgeting. Now and then her eyes flickered open
and perhaps they saw. Softly as smoke Mijok stepped into the shadow of
the trees and listened. Wright remarked, "Speaking of that reptile,
we should set up a monument to it. Nothing luckier could have happened
than that chance to lend Mijok a hand." His gray eyes fixed on Paul,
lids lowered in a speculative smile. "I'm not the only one who
remembers, Paul, that you were the first to go to his help. He hasn't
forgotten.... Dot, you're sure Ed understood that we have a friend
there?"
"He seemed to, Doc. I watched them. They got along--practically
buddies."
Paul saw the bandage was still on Mijok's arm, earth-stained and with
fragments of gray moss, but not disarranged; the bandage on his own
shoulder had been removed. The flying beast's attack had left only a
heavy scratch, which looked clean; there was no pain, only an itching.
The meadow was empty of brown wings. The dead fish were gone from the
lake. Perhaps other scavengers had been busy in the thirteen-hour
night. The water was an innocent blue, a luminous stillness under the
sun.
Mijok stole out into the grass, gazing westward along the line where
meadow met jungle. Returning, he squatted by Wright and muttered,
"_Migan_." He spread a hand three feet above the ground; two fingers
drooped and indicated the motion of walking legs. Paul suggested:
"Pygmies?"
"Could be." Mijok stared eloquently at Wright's rifle then crouched at
the barrier of branches, complaining in his throat. Taking up his own
rifle, Paul joined him. Dorothy hurried to the lifeboat and came back
with field glasses for him and Wright and herself. In spite of the
great planet's heavy pull, her body moved with even more light
easiness than it had shown in the unreal years of _Argo_. With the
glasses, vague motion a quarter mile away in the meadow leaped
shockingly into precision.
The pygmies were not approaching but heading out from the edge of the
forest, a group of nine, barely taller than the grass, bald red heads
and shoulders in single file. The rearmost had a burden: seven others
carried bows, with quivers on the right hip. "Left-handed," Paul
observed aloud. The leader was the tallest--a woman, with a long
spear. All were sending anxious glances at the sky and toward the
human shelter; their motions suggested a fear so deep it must be pain,
yet something drew them out there in spite of it. The pygmy with the
burden, a rolled-up hide, was also a woman. The leader was bald as
the others, slender, muscular, her head round, with prominent forehead
and thin nose, tattooed cheeks. The bowmen had only simple loincloths,
and belts for their arrow quivers. The women's knee-length grass
skirts were like the Melanesian, but the leader's was dyed a brilliant
blue. Her two little pairs of breasts were youthfully firm and
pointed. Dorothy murmured, "American civilization would have gone mad
about those people."
"What a girl!" Wright sighed. "I mean Dorothy--the Dope."
"Even a dope can be jealous. Do you s'pose Mrs. Mijok has--Oh! Oh,
poor darling! Not funny after all, gentlemen----"
The pygmy leader had turned full face, as the nine paused at trampled
grass. She wore a necklace of shell. These had no glitter, but their
yellow and blue made handsome splashes against the red of her skin.
Reason told Paul that she could see at most only dazzling spots where
sunlight might be touching the glasses he had thrust through wilted
leaves. It made no difference: she was staring directly into him,
making her grief a part of his life. A still-faced grief, too profound
for any tears, if she knew of tears. The green cat eyes lowered; she
stabbed her spear into the ground and lifted her arms, a giving,
yielding motion. Her lips moved--in prayer, surely, since all but one
of the men were bowed, performing ritual gestures toward whatever lay
on the ground. The one who did not bow never ceased to watch the sky.
The prayer was brief. The woman's left hand dropped meaningly, the
hide was unrolled, and its bearer raised what the grass had hidden--no
more than a skull and a few bones, a broken spear, a muddy scrap that
might have been a grass skirt. The hide was folded gently over these;
the group went on.
"Dorothy--those things you saw running when we were circling down--I
missed 'em," Wright said. "Poor eyesight, and seems to me the air was
still misty from _Argo's_ crash in the lake. They were going south,
away from here? And they could have been--people like these?"
"Yes. Hundreds or thousands of them. I suppose the crash of _Argo_
must have seemed like the heavens falling. The lifeboats too."
"I think we interrupted a war."
"These would be survivors? Live in this part of the jungle maybe?
Looking for what's left after those--those flying beasts--"
"It makes sense," Wright said. "They're more afraid of the sky than of
our setup over here. Maybe we're gods who came down to help them. If
we did help them. Look: they've found another.... Yes, now the
prayer.... Wish Mijok wasn't so afraid of them. Inevitable. To them I
suppose he's an ugly wild animal. Different species, similar enough to
be shocked at the similarity. 'Tain't good."
"Do we try for a foot in both camps?"
"Paul, I think I'll take a rain check on answering that.... Ach--if I
could go out there now--communicate--"
"No!" Dorothy gasped. "Not while the others are still sick."
"You're right of course." Wright fretted at his beard stubble. "I get
sillier all the time. As Ed would tell me if he were up and around.
It's the high oxygen...."
There were brown splashes in the sky. The pygmies saw the peril first
and darted for the woods--an orderly flight however--the woman with
the hide in front, the blue-skirted woman next, then the bowmen. Three
of the latter turned bravely and shot arrows that glittered and
whined. The brown beasts wheeled and flapped angrily upward, though
the buzzing arrows dropped far short of them. The pygmies gained the
trees; the omasha scouted the edge of the woods, squawking, three of
them drifting toward the lifeboat, weaving heads surveying the ground.
Paul gave way to unfamiliar savage enjoyment. "Do we, Doc?"
"Yes," said Wright, and took aim himself.
All three were brought down, at a cost of four irreplaceable rifle
bullets and two shots from Dorothy's automatic. Mijok bellowed with
satisfaction but recoiled as Wright dragged a dirty brown carcass into
the clearing. "A dissection is in order." Mijok grumbled and fidgeted.
"Don't fret, Mijok." Wright pegged down the wings of the dead animal
with sharp sticks and drew an incision on the leathery belly with his
hunting knife. "Good head shot, Paul--this one's yours. We'll do a
brain job from one of the others, but I think we'll let that wait for
Sears--oh my, yes...! Doesn't weigh over thirty pounds. Hollow bones
like a bird's, very likely. Hope they'll keep."
"You hope," Dorothy sniffed. "What do you do when I turn housewife and
instruct you to get that awful mess the hell off my nice clean floor?"
"Dope! And you my best and only medical student." He worked at the
cutting dubiously, inexpertly. "Conventional mammalian setup, more or
less. Small lungs, big stomach. Hah--two pairs of kidneys?" He spread
the viscera out on the wing. "Short intestine, also like a bird. And
she was preparing a blessed event multiplied by--count 'em--six."
"Too many," said Paul. "Altogether too industrious."
"What I really want to know--Oh...?" With the lungs removed, it could
be seen that the hump on the back was caused by a great enlargement of
four thoracic vertebrae, which swelled into the chest cavity as well
as outward. Wright cut away spinal cartilage. "Damn, I _wish_ Sears
was doing this. Well, it's neural tissue, nothing else--a big swelling
of the spinal cord." He sliced at the ugly head, but the hermorrhage
from a .30-caliber bullet confused the picture. "The brain looks too
simple. Could that lump in the cord be the hind brain? I hereby leave
the theories to Sears. But, son, you might slit the stomach and see
what the old lady had for breakfast."
Paul's clumsy cut on the slippery stomach bag made it plain what the
omasha had eaten--among other things, an almost complete
seven-fingered hand. Dorothy choked and walked away, saying, "I am
going to be--"
"Cheer up." Paul held her forehead. "Never mind the clean floor--"
"Go away. I mean stay very close. Sorry to be so physiological. Me a
medic student! Even blood bothers me."
"Never mind, sugar--"
"Sugar yourself, and wash your paws. We smell."
Mijok was muttering in alarm. Wright had abandoned the dissection and
gone out in the meadow, cautious but swift, to the spot where
yesterday they had found the pygmy soldiers. He took up a small skull
and arm bone, pathetically clean--perhaps there were insect scavengers
that followed after the omasha--and the discarded bow. But instead of
bringing back these relics, Wright held them high over his head,
facing westward. Tall and gray in the heavy sun, he stepped twenty
paces further toward the region where the pygmies had entered the
jungle; then he set the bones down in the grass and strode back to the
shelter, fingers twitching, lips moving in his old habit of talking
half to himself, half to the world. "The omasha," he said, "cracked
the enlarged vertebrae--favorite morsel maybe."
Mijok moaned, blinking and sighing. He stared long at the silent grace
of the lifeboat, then at Christopher Wright. He too was talking to
himself. Abruptly, something gave way in him. He was kneeling before
Wright, bending forward, taking Wright's hands and pressing them
against the gray-white fur of his face and his closed eyes. "Oh, now,"
Wright said, "now, friend--"