"Oh, Dorothy! Well, we----"
"Yes, I saw the lifeboat go down on the channel. It didn't sink." She
shut her eyes. "It was a misty evening, lover, more ways than one.
Remember, Dunin?"
"I'll always remember."
"Paul, I know that when the open-sea current below the island took the
lifeboat it must have been smashed against the cliffs--oh, of
course--and for nine years the sea spiders will have used the pieces
of it for their little castles and hideaways. All the same--Ed and Ann
could have managed to swim ashore. Cross the range somehow or go
around it."
"Nothing to eat. Barren rock straight up from the beaches, where there
are any beaches, for ninety miles south of the only place where they
could have landed and for twenty miles north of it."
"But no kaksmas in the coast range either; no omasha, this side. There
_are_ beaches here and there. They might have found--shellfish--blue
seaweed."
"Nine years----"
"It _is_ smoke. Our people wouldn't be up there...."
"You've never wanted to talk much about that day."
"No, I--haven't. I didn't behave too well myself. Yes, there are
things I've never told.... Paul, Ed Spearman was like somebody I
didn't know. He did say in so many words that he planned to go to
Vestoia, not to--to throw himself on the mercy of Lantis, but to 'give
her civilization'--he said. We tried, Ann and I, tried to reason with
him against that. I think he had some alternative plan--maybe flying
south of Vestoia as far as the fuel would take him and starting a
community of his own--with Ann and me, you know, and himself the old
man of the tribe."
"And without us," said Dunin mildly.
"Yes, dear, I recall that. He put that in words...." In a way, Paul
did not want her to go on, living it over again, but she had a need to
speak of it. "I suppose his plans made a kind of sense if you accepted
the premise. As I couldn't, of course. When he said you were all
lost, I believed (I had to believe) that he was--not lying perhaps,
but telling something he hadn't truly seen. I know that was where I
let go--I raged and screamed, and when he grabbed my arm (probably
just wanting to quiet me down)--well, if he's living he'll have two or
three white scars down his cheek. Uh-huh: the Dope comes clean. I ever
think I was trying to get hold of my pistol when Arek took it away,
and took his away too. After that she forced him to give a precise
account of everything that had happened, every detail. She made him
tell it five or six times, watching for contradictions. She
was--justice embodied. I was afraid of her myself even while I loved
her for it. I knew what he told us then was the truth: the fuel was
low, he'd come direct to the island with no real knowledge of what had
happened to you. He was saner after the telling. He lost a--a certain
look of exalted listening, as if somebody behind Arek's shoulder were
telling him what to do. Arek never gave back his pistol. We were on
the beach. The giants had been bringing wood all day for a beacon
fire. I remember the exact shape of a big shell at my feet, the look
of a bit of driftwood tossed in by the channel breakers...."
"And Ann--"
"Oh, Ann! Tom two or three ways as usual. She was very much in love
with him, you know, from our first days on Lucifer. But her mind was a
battleground with no armistice. I think Ed always knew that. When he
pleaded with her--reasonably too--she couldn't think, she could only
cry and say: 'I won't go with you--I won't go.' He stopped
trying--suddenly, as if he'd knowingly turned off a light inside
himself--unsteady light and the only one he had, I reckon. He said,
'So much for the human race: but I'll see what one man can do here
before I'm dead without issue.' And he walked off to the lifeboat,
while Arek let his pistol dangle from her finger--and, Paul, I shall
always think he knew Ann would run after him. I saw her tugging,
trying to pull him out of the boat--but she was pulled in and it was
gone."
"And I remember," said Dunin, "what you did after we lost sight of
it."
"What I did...? What was that, Dunin? I'm blank there."
"You went to the beacon fire and put on more wood."
"Well," she said vaguely, "of course. We all did.... That _is_ smoke,
Paul. Lantis' pygmies or the wild giants couldn't be there on the
cliffs."
Dunin said, "Oh, there are no giants in that country, Dorothy. Those
low hills I remember west of the first camp--those kaksma hills were
an impassable boundary in the old days. The country west of
them--nobody went there, ever. And south of them--Vestoia. My wild
kindred are all very far north of here...."
_Argo IV_ eased up to the wharf, where Elis and Arek handled her like
a toy, making her fast with ropes of a fabric as good as linen. Wright
was there with them, and Tejron, and Pakriaa and Nisana, who were
inseparable. "Too far," said Wright, and handed Paul the field
glasses. "Just smoke."