1
"This island is Eden." Sears Oliphant spoke drowsily. Toy bat wings
flickered from the woods crowning the hillside, hovered over a pond:
_illuama_. In a scant year of Lucifer time (seventeen months of the
calendar of Earth) native names had become natural, mostly Mijok's
names.
Two red-moon changes ago, in the final jading month of the rains, the
pygmy word "kaksma" had been only a symbol. Now it woke the image of a
village desolate, bones scraped and scarred. The mind's eye winced in
pity--a sentry careless, a bridge left in place after dark; thousands
of ratty bodies rustling down from the wet hills, over open ground,
swimming swollen streams, finding the bridge before oil on the rain
water in the ditch could be ignited. Small bodies, not swift, leaping
or humping along like furry worms, sniffing, squeaking, their stabbing
teeth dark with the blood of any flesh that moved. The northernmost of
the 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, had
established that. No wide wings lurked in the sky. The hilly island
had no large meadows where omasha could hunt. Three giants had been
flown to the island a month ago--the girl Arek, her mother Muson, and
old Rak. They said it was a place of calm. Their soft talk could be
heard up the slope, where a log building was growing. Paul stretched,
lean and comfortable, on the grass, glad to be alone for a while with
this least demanding of his friends.
Sears was fatter, but hardened, a round block of man, with a coarse
black beard, kindness of brown eyes unaltered. Christopher Wright,
waiting at the "fortress" by Lake Argo and no doubt frantic for word
of this exploration, had let his beard grow too, sandy gray. Spearman
and Paul had stayed clean-shaven, with soap made from fat and wood
ashes. "The others must come here, Paul. I suppose Chris won't consent
till Pakriaa agrees--damn, you'd think she could see it. She knows her
enemies fear the ocean as she does. Lantis' two-by-four army would
never 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 twenty
thousand warriors who got their pride hurt a year ago when the crash
of _Argo_ swamped their fleet and scared the pants off 'em. They'll
have replaced the fleet. They'll come overland too. Lantis, Queen of
the World."
"If they do"--Sears' heavy voice had the tremor that he himself
hated--"the firearms should be at least one ace in the hole."
"Ye--es. Ed's pistol helped in our one bad scrape with Pakriaa
herself. But it was his smashing the idol that stalled 'em, not the
gun."
"Poor little Abro Pakriaa!" Sears spoke with tenderness. "If ever a
lady was pulled seven ways from Sunday! Wants our way of life, doesn't
want it. Wants to grasp Chris' ethics, doesn't want to. Afraid of Ed's
strength and aggressiveness, admires 'em too, oh my, yes. Tries to
believe 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's
made herself hunt, shoot well, act hard, because her brain tells her
she should. If we could only find something to restring her violin! I
think she's given up hope of it: nothing I've found so far has been
any good. She doesn't see that Dorothy does more for us by remaining
the person she always was.... You know, when I go alone to Pak's
village, I just set. Even the witches have got used to me, not that
they wouldn't gut me if they could."
"Jocko"--Paul looked away--"you told me once you were scared all the
time. When you go there alone--or when you tame the olifants for that
matter--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 a
brave man." Brown eyes misted in what was partly laughter. "Oy, the
witches! There's the big enemy in the battle for Pakriaa's mind. Chris
may claim they aren't real witch doctors, just advisers, low-grade
magicians. I'm not so sure. Priests of Ismar, and when Ed clobbered
the 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 teach
her. That proposed bonfire, by the way, is gossip passed on to me in
confidence by Abara."
"There's a dear little man."
"Ain't he though?" Smiling into late sky, Paul envisaged the wizened
red midget riding the white monsters that Sears had tamed and insisted
on naming olifants-with-an-f. A painting might grow out of that, he
thought, squat coppery lump astride of massive white--it might, if the
desire to paint should ever wake again and be as strong as it once was
on _Argo_, when his mind's eye could remember Earth without
distortion. Abara, popeyed and potbellied, a favorite in Pakriaa's
harem, had been commissioned by her as a student and go-between at the
lakeside camp; Sears had not only adopted him as an olifant trainer,
but suspected him of furtively possessing a sense of humor. "Well--the
giants. Lantis will always have thought of them as wild animals----"
"Sears"--Paul rolled over and pressed his face in the grass--"can we
ask or even permit the giants to tangle in a pygmy war?"
"Ah.... It's tormenting Chris too, ever since Lantis sent that
ultimatum." He snarled in his beard, "Thirty fat meat slaves every two
months! There's politics for you. Dirtiest way she could answer Pak's
challenge to personal combat, and the automatic refusal makes an
excuse to come and clean up. Sounds like home.... Mijok wants to help
fight--says he does."
"It's still our responsibility." Paul sat up. His eyes kept returning
to the towering courage of the trees. Brave as any cathedral spire,
scarcely one was free from the clutch of the purple-leaf vine. "As
for 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, crossing
forbidden kaksma country."
Sears chewed a grass blade. "Anyway we've got to bring Dorothy and the
baby here, and Ann. Dorothy won't fuss, will she, son?"
"Since there _is_ Helen--no, she won't. I still dream sometimes, as I
did during her first pregnancy. Things, shapes, trying to pull her
away--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."