They strolled up the hill; the other giants' labor had ceased. The
building was a sturdy oblong, intended as storehouse and temporary
communal dwelling for them all, including (Wright hoped) some of
Pakriaa's people. Rafters were not yet in place. For that, Rak needed
the strength of another like himself: chubby Muson tired easily.
Someday a road would climb from the beach, traversing the ridge which
was the backbone of the northern half of the island. Here, where
spring water filled the pond and rushed on down to carve a small
harbor below the beach, would be Jensen City, and the three races of
Lucifer would learn to live there in good will and pleasure under a
government of laws. So Wright said--peering at photographs, teasing
his gray beard, tapping thin fingers on the map drawn on the paper of
Earth, on the new maps of whitebark. Paul could see it too--sometimes;
glimpse the houses, gardens, open places. South of the pond, a wheat
field, for on Lucifer the wheat of Earth grew to four feet and bore
richly. 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 of
genus _Charin_, species _Semisapiens_ beating against the indifference of
nature, the resentment of other life. He could see his people destroyed, by
accident or anger, the giant friends adrift with only hints of the new life
and spoiled for the old. Then he would stop trying to foresee and would
make 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 the
coolness of bare ground within; Rak pointed at the top of the walls
where rafters would rest. "Slow," he said, "and good." Rak could not
be sure how old he was. When Mijok had first persuaded him to the camp
ten months ago, Rak had won his English with the grave precision of a
mason selecting fieldstone. His language had none of the flexibility
and scope that Mijok and others had achieved, but it served him.
After absorbing basic arithmetic, Rak had deliberated on the problem
of his age--squatting at the gate of the stone fortress by Lake Argo,
spreading out rows of colored pebbles to indicate years, rainy
seasons, episodes of hunting or fear or passion too keen to forget. At
last 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 his
belly--"and there." He pointed at the red crescent moon.
"I'll cook supper," Arek said. Muson bubbled and shadowboxed with her
daughter. Muson would laugh at anything--the flutter of a leaf, a
breath of breeze on her red-brown fur. Paul followed to help Arek trim
the carcass of an asonis killed the night before. Hornless,
short-legged, fat, the bovine animal was abundant on the island; its
one enemy here was what Arek called _usran_, a catlike carnivore the
size of a lynx, which could tackle only the young asonis or feeble
stragglers. 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 before
the prey could even struggle--these were Rak's way still. In the old
life, Rak's age would have led him eventually to a few dim years with
a band of women, who would have fed him until he chose to wander into
deep jungle, preventing any from following. When far away, he would
have sat in the shadows to wait--for starvation or the black marsh
reptiles or a great mainland cat, _uskaran_, which never attacked a
giant in the prime of strength. Rak would have taken no harm from the
young men in this weakness: his own territory would have been
inviolate, and he would have joined the women, in a taciturn farewell
to life, only when teeth and arms had failed. ("We're gentle people,"
Mijok said, puzzled at it himself. "In the Red-Moon-before-the-Rains
we only play at fighting. It's not like what we see the other
creatures do at that time. How could one 'possess' a woman? Do I
possess the wind because I like to run against the touch of it...?")
The meat hung from a makeshift tripod; Arek jumped back, startled, as
a furry thing scampered down. It was like a kinkajou except for the
hump on the back (a true hindbrain in the spine: Sears had long ago
verified that guess of Wright's). "Little rascal," Paul said. "Let's
tame 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 a
whistling whine; it elongated itself, grabbed, sat back on stubby hind
legs to eat in clever paws; it washed itself with a squirrel's
pertness. Arek chuckled, examining the idea, and went on with her
work; 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.