Mijok fondled the fat man's arm with a hand mild as silk. "Now, Jock,
now. We'll give 'em hell, that's what we'll do. Hey, Paul?"
3
Abara trotted between Sears and Paul in the forest aisle, a silent
ugly man with popeyes, bulging underlip, jutting ears; thirty inches
tall. He was twenty-six. His potbellied softness had the beginning sag
of middle age. There was politics, Paul guessed, in his presence at
the camp--it was not because the queen had tired of him that he was
temporarily detached from the harem. His body was agile for all its
pokiness, his mind even more nimble; his English, when he stooped to
use it, was good. After the noon meal Abara had appeared, crossing the
drawbridge like a wisp of red smoke, ignoring the giants, reminding
Sears obliquely that it was three days since he had visited the
clearing near the camp, where the white olifants had learned to come.
Sears' love for the great leaf eaters had deepened with familiarity.
He had easily persuaded the others to guarantee their permanent
protection in the laws. He had taught the pygmies to call them
olifants, a shrewd stroke, conveying to the Neolithic mind that the
animals were of Sears' totem. Even during the long ordeal of the rains
he had gone alone for whole days and nights, following olifant trails,
sitting in patience where a broad-leaf tree they enjoyed was abundant.
Deep forest was no place for a man who moved slowly and shrank from
discomfort and danger, yet Sears held to this undertaking as
stubbornly as Wright to his dreams of a community of good will under a
government of laws. And before all except Paul and Wright, Sears was
able to preserve a manner like the face of Lake Argo on a still
morning. That calm gave him, in the eyes of the pygmies, more puzzling
divinity than they found in the others. Abara worshiped from behind a
mask of cynical blankness. Pakriaa seemed almost to love him openly.
She was not arrogant with him; when he spoke she listened. She
assigned soldiers to collect the insects, fish, small animals he
wanted for study; she brought him gifts--an earthenware vessel with
ritual painting, odd flowers, ornaments of wood and bone and clay. She
liked to sit by him when he was at the microscope and peek, mystified,
into the country of the lens.
Sears had let the olifants grow used to him. He talked to them. He
learned they like to be rubbed above the tip of the trunk and on the
vast flat tops of their heads--for this luxury they would kneel,
rumbling and sighing. Eventually he dared climb into the natural
saddle between hump and skull: they allowed it. They were never
excited nor in a hurry. The kaksmas they probably avoided by keen
scent and flight in times of danger; they kept clear of the omasha by
going into open ground only at night.
The clearing was silent except for muted trilling of illuama. The
ground was trodden; purple-leaf vines hung dead and brown, ripped out
by trunks and tusks. Sears said that once, with no notion of conveying
the idea, he had tugged peevishly at a vine under the nose of his
favorite cow. "So, she came and fetched it loose--tired of watching me
act like a damn fool."
Abara said, "I will whistle, me...." Two came, spectrally calm.
"Susie!" Sears called. "Been a good girl, hey?" The old cow let down
her many tons to have her head scratched. Another arrived on
fog-silent feet; then two bulls together, munching leaves. The five
were placid, enjoying the hot stillness and Sears' purring talk. The
largest bull stood ten feet at the shoulder, Paul estimated, as
Abara's two-feet-six approached him, seized a lowered ear, and climbed
up. Abara piped: "We walk now, Mister Johnson."
Mister Johnson's pale eyes noted Paul's bulging jacket; the boneless
finger of his trunk groped suggestively till Paul produced a
melon-like fruit. "Hoo-hee!" Abara crowed. "We thank you." They
vanished in the shadows.
"Susie, want to dig some vines?" But Sears halted in the act of
climbing her neck. Spearman had joined them, with a good hunter's
quiet.
"You really have something there." Spearman was cordial and flushed.
"Pygmies still make the best wine. Ours is no damn good, yet."
"Meant to ask how the last turned out."
"Needs ripening, like everything else."
"In fact," said Paul, "you're slightly plastered."
"But slightly." Ed grinned. "How if I climb on one of those?"
Sears was doubtful. "Have to get acquainted first. Mister Smith over
there--he shook me off the first time. Not rough--just wasn't ready."
"They pull vines at command? You can steer 'em?"
"Sure. If they like you. Knee pressure."
"Abara's good?"
"They prefer him to me. Arek is better still. I miss her."
"Mijok rides, doesn't he?"
"Mijok and Elis. Surok's a bit skittish. I guess Pak thinks it's
undignified--or else the damned witches disapprove."
"Hm.... We have, maybe, three days before Lantis hits us--"
"Lantis--I'd succeeded in forgetting her for three minutes." Sears
drooped his head against the column of Mister Smith's foreleg; eyes
closed, he cursed without humor. He dredged up almost forgotten words
from the old years of Earth, from bars, docks, dissecting rooms, at
least four major religions. He cursed Lantis root and branch, ancestry
and posterity, heart, body, and brain. Regaining a trace of mirth, he
outlined a program of correction that would have kept hell under
forced draft for a thousand years. Still with closed eyes, he asked,
"What's the point, Ed? What's the damned point?"
"How many of these critters have you tamed?"
"Five. There's another smelling around, not ready yet."
"And five riders--you ride 'em, don't you, Paul?" Paul nodded.
Abara and Mister Johnson returned in silence, under the trees behind
Spearman, who was unaware of them. Sears said, "Paul's good. Good
balance."
"So you have a rider for each mount.... Well, I talked it over with
Doc--he says it's your department. What if a bunch of those animals,
with armed riders--"
"No," said Sears. "Quite impractical."
"Why?"
"Well.... They won't go in the open--omasha."
"They will at night, you told me."
"They are not fighters."
"If they go where you order 'em--"
Sears said, "No. If Paul and I and the two strongest giants were
trying that, what's left? You, Doc, Surok, and the giant women."