"Yes...."
After the meal Arek wanted Paul to come out on the cliffs. Though
there seemed no danger from the omasha, she carried a long stick and
Paul took his pistol. The slope leveled out to the bare rock of the
headland; the ocean voice was the humming of a thousand giants. The
way was easy, with no crevasses, no peril while the wind was mild.
Arek had often been out here alone. Yesterday Paul had seen her
standing for an hour, watching the west where unbroken water met a
sun-reddened horizon. In her earlier years there might have been dim
mention of the sea by her almost wordless people, but no true
knowledge: the mainland coast was steaming vine-choked jungle, or
tidal marsh, and shut away by the kaksma hills. Paul wondered what
member of his race could stand for an hour in contemplation like a
thinking tree, not shifting a foot nor raising an arm...?
"Paul, why did you leave Earth?" Arek patted the rock beside her.
Below the troubled water laughed, endlessly defeated and returning.
Cloud fantasies gathered below a lucid green, and the wind was a
friend. "I have doubted sometimes whether we ought to have done so."
"That wasn't my meaning. We love you. Didn't you know? But I've
wondered what sent you away from such a place. Ann says it was
beautiful."
"A--drive of restlessness. We took boundaries as a challenge. I used
to think that a great virtue. Now I call it neither good nor evil."
"I think it is good."
"Everywhere, we carry good _and_ evil."
"What you do here is good. You teach us. You do kind things."
"We can be bad. But for Doc Wright and his dreams that Ed Spearman
finds so impractical, we'd have done you harm." Helpless at her
innocence, Paul saw she did not believe him. "On Earth, we fought each
other. We hunted for lies to make ourselves feel big. We created great
institutions built on vanity--tickling lies: imperialism,
communism--most of the isms you find so puzzling when we talk of Earth
history. The anger of Charins rarely focused itself on the actual
causes of unhappiness or injustice. Instead we hunted for scapegoats,
easy solutions. We wouldn't study ourselves. Always we itched for
something external to take the blame for our own follies and crimes."
"I don't understand."
"As if you stumbled on a root, Arek, and then banged your fist on the
tree that grew it, to blame it for your own clumsiness."
"But Paul--only a very small child would act like that."
"Darling, let's watch the sunset." She felt his pain, touched his
knee, and was silent until he said, "A poor naughty child...."
"There was a thing Ed Spearman said to me--what I wanted to talk to
you about. I've never gone to Pakriaa's village. You know, even Mijok
won't go there except with one of you. I asked Ed if Pakriaa still
kept that stockade for drugging and fattening prisoners--in spite of
her agreeing to the laws. He said yes, she did. I said it was not
right. I said we made a law against slavery too. He said, 'Forget it,
baby--one thing at a time.' I am not a baby. How can the laws govern
us unless all obey them?"
"Ed--meant no harm, Arek. He only meant it does take time. The pygmies
have more to unlearn. You--started clean. And--well--with the army of
Lantis likely to come back at any time--we can't afford--"
Yet it seemed natural that this giant child, who had herself done
murder in the old days, should answer his troubled evasions not only
with reproach but with command: "If the laws are to govern us they
must be respected by everyone. I wish I had gone to that village and
torn down the stockade with my hands."
"And they would have killed you with a hundred spears and Pakriaa's
people would hate us forever, learning nothing but more hatred."
Arek cried a little, rubbing at the unfamiliar wetness. "Maybe I begin
to see, how difficult.... The sun's going." But they sat quietly in
the warm and undemanding wind until the first sapphire glint of
fireflies dotted the slope where Jensen City might one day shine. Arek
stood, reaching down an affectionate hand.
2
Paul glanced down at sunrise-tinted snow on the highest peak of the
coastal range, thirteen thousand feet above the sea. Prairie spread
for thirty miles east of its base; then came a region of forest and
small lakes fed by the outlet of Lake Argo, which was the core of the
empire of Lantis, Queen of the World.
Pakriaa's information on Lantis was a murky blend of truth and
fantasy. Lantis claimed birth from Ismar-Creator-and-Destroyer.
Pakriaa had different theories. Originally ruler of a single village,
Lantis consolidated by conquest. Instead of annihilating defeated
villages she took their populations captive, sorting out three
categories: potential followers, slave laborers, and meat. Many in the
first class became fanatically converted; those in the second provided
a year or so of work before dying of whippings and other abuse;
captives of the third class were forced to eat the green-flowered weed
that numbed the brain and were bled out at the right stage of fatness.
In fifteen years one riverside village had swollen to a city of sixty
thousand, fed by expeditions far to the east, and Lantis named her
city Vestoia--Country of Freedom and Joy. "Got anything new in the
'scope?"