"Why," said Wright, "he'd never turn them against us. Not if he's the
man I used to know, or anything like that man. He came a long way with
us once." But Paul had to wonder: _Was he ever with us?_
There were six giants in the party: Mijok, Arek, Muson, Elis,
Sears-Danik, Dunin. Elis was the year's Governor at Adelphi, but
Dorothy had held that position the year before and would assume its
simple duties in his absence. Nisana's eldest twin daughters had
wanted to come, but Nisana had not allowed it, requiring them to stay
in school under Brodaa's temperate discipline; the only pygmies here
were herself, Pakriaa, and Miniaan. The group had come 120 miles
overland, after _Argo IV_ set them on a beach north of the coastal
range: this had seemed better than taking the sloop south, where
harbor would be uncertain and the winds and currents unknown. The
first twenty miles ashore had been a retracing of Abara's long-ago
journey with the olifants, through swampy and treacherous jungle.
After rounding the range they could follow the eastern edge of the
grassland that spread on its lee side, traveling in the open only at
night, to avoid omasha. For all of one day they were bedeviled by a
swarm of biting flies, and since there were brown wings circling they
could not escape into full sunlight, where the flies would not follow.
Eventually Pakriaa found an evil-smelling plant and remembered its use
from old times. The juice of the root was a protection; the smell was
almost as distressing as the bites but less dangerous. Miniaan of
Vestoia had never heard of the plant's use: perhaps that explained why
Vestoia had never exploited the otherwise pleasant region due west of
Lake Argo.
There was fitful sleep in the daylight following Miniaan's return, and
then an evening meal. Arek and Muson and the two young giants seemed
untroubled by tomorrow, full of speculative curiosity. Mijok was
uneasy, though he would not put it in words; Elis, too, would be
remembering. Wright said again, "He came a long way with us.... Jensen
chose him--remember that: chose him from among seven hundred other
physically fine youths who had the same training, the same kind of
courage, who wanted the--privilege, as he did."
"I can always wonder what Jensen himself would have made of Lucifer."
Wright said, almost with reproach, "Jensen was a great engineer, Paul,
but he was also a student of history. Compared with what his
leadership would have been, mine has been weak, vacillating,
academic--it was bound to be. I take credit for some achievements.
I've said give protoplasm a chance. We have done that. We've
established the climate of liberty under law (for our very small
group) and proved that a human mind can by-pass twenty thousand years
of blundering, with no other help than a flexible language and the few
basic rules of civilized action--as the so-called savages of Earth
always proved it whenever they had a chance to secure a genuine
education and fair treatment. But--in our material development there
must have been a thousand lost opportunities--things Jensen (and
probably Ed Spearman) would have seen at once."