wish--alone!"
He broke off food for the journey. He held out his hand to Saya. He went
on. And again he went upward because to go back was to go to the cañon
of the unknown killer. And his folk docilely followed him. They did not
really reason about it. To follow him had become a pattern, more or less
precarious. In time it could become a habit. Over a period of years it
could even become a tradition.
The procession marched on and up. Burl noticed that the air seemed
clearer, here. It was not the misty, quasi-transparent stuff of the
valley. He could see for miles to right and left, and the curvatures of
the mountain-face. But he could not see the valley.
Then he realized that the cloud-bank he saw was finite--an object. He
had never thought of it specifically before. To him it had seemed simply
the sky.
Now he saw an indefinite lower surface which yet definitely hid the
heights toward which he moved. He and his followers were less than a
thousand feet below it. It appeared to Burl that presently he would run
into an obstacle that would simply keep him from going any further. But
until that happened he obstinately continued to climb.
The thing which was the sky appeared to stir. It moved. A little higher,
and he could see that there were parts of it which were lower than he
was. They moved also. But they did not approach him. And he had no
experience of anything inimical which did not plunge upon its victims.
Therefore he was not afraid.
In fact, a little later he observed that the whiteness retreated before
him, and he was pleased. Weak things such as humans fled aside when
predators approached. Here was something which fled aside at his
approach. His followers undoubtedly observed the same phenomenon. He had
killed a spider. He was a remarkable person. This unknown white stuff
was afraid of him.
Burl, with bland conceit, marched confidently through the cloud-bank,
ever climbing. At its thickest, he could see only feet in each
direction, but always when he advanced threateningly upon opacity, it
cleared before him.
Presently the gray light grew brighter. Burl and his folk were
accustomed to a shadowless illumination such as fungi could endure--the
equivalent of a heavily overcast day on an Earth-type planet. Now the
mist about him took on a luminosity which was of a different kind.
Suddenly he noticed the silence. He had never known even comparative
silence before in all his life. His ears had been assailed every minute
since he had been born by a din which was the noise of creatures. By
stridulations, by chirpings, by screams, or at the least by the clicking
of armor or the deep-toned pulsations of wings. He had always lived in
the uproar of frenzied struggle. Now, that hellish chorus of shrieks and
cries and mating-calls was cut off. The lower surface of the cloud-bank
reflected it. Burl and his people moved upward through an unparalleled
stillness.
They fell silent, marveling. They heard each other's movements. They
could hear each other's voices. But they moved in a vast quietness over
stones which here were not even lichen-covered, but glistened with wet.
And all about them a golden glow hung in the very air. Stillness, and
quietude, and golden light which grew stronger and stronger and
stronger....
It was very remarkable when they came up through the sea of mist upon a
shore of sunshine, and saw blue sky and sunlight for the first time. The
light smote upon their pink skins and brilliantly colored furry
garments. It glinted in changing, ever-more-colorful flashes upon the
cloaks made of butterfly wings. It sparkled upon the great lance carried
by Burl in the lead, and the quite preposterous weapons borne by his
followers.
The little party of twenty humans waded ashore through the last of the
thinning white stuff which was cloud. They gazed about them with
blinking, wondering, astounded eyes. The sky was blue. There was green
grass. And there was sound. The sound was of wind blowing in the trees
and sunshine.
They heard insects, too, but they did not know what it was they heard.
The shrill, small musical whirrings, the high-pitched small cries which
made up a strange new elfin melody, were totally strange. All things
were novel to their eyes, and an enormous exultation filled them. From
deep-buried ancestral memories, they knew that this was somehow right,
was somehow normal. And they breathed clean air for the first time in
many generations.
Burl even shouted, in triumph, and his voice rang echoing among rocks.
The plateau rang with the shouting of a man in triumph!
* * * * *
They had enough food for days. They had brought it from the isolated
thicket not too far beneath the clouds. Had they found other food
immediately, they would have settled down comfortably, in the fashion
normal to creatures whose idea of bliss is a secure hiding-place and
food on hand. Somehow they believed that this high place was secure. But
it was not a hiding-place. And though they did accept, with the
simplicity of children and savages, that they had no enemies here, their
first quest, nevertheless, was for a place in which they could conceal
themselves.
[Illustration]
They found a cave. It was small to hold all of them, so that they would
be crowded in it, but, as it turned out, that was fortunate.
At some time it had been occupied by some other creature, but the dirt
which floored it had settled flat and there were no recent tracks. It
retained faint traces of an odor which was unfamiliar but not
unpleasant. It had no connotation of danger.
Ants stank of formic acid plus the musky odor of their particular city
and kind. One could tell not only the kind of ant but what hill they
came from, from a mere sniff at a well-traveled ant-trail. Spiders had
their own hair-raising odor. The smell of a praying-mantis was acrid,
and of beetles decay, and of course those bugs whose main defense was
smell gave off an effluvium which tended to strangle all but themselves.
The cave's smell was quite different. The humans thought vaguely that it
might be another kind of man. Actually, it _was_ the smell of a
warm-blooded animal. But Burl and his fellows knew of no warm-blooded
creatures but themselves.
They had come above the clouds a bare two hours before sunset--of which
they knew nothing. For an hour they marveled, staying close together.
They were astounded by the sun, more particularly since they could not
look at it. But presently, being savages, they accepted it with the
matter-of-factness of children.
They could not cease to wonder at the vegetation about them. They were
accustomed only to gigantic fungi, and a few feverishly growing plants
striving to flower and bear seed before being devoured. Here they saw
many plants, and at first no insects at all. However, they looked only
for the large things they were accustomed to.
They were astounded by the slenderness of the plants. Grass fascinated
them, and weeds. A large part of their courage came from the absence of
debris upon the ground. In the valley, the habitation of a trapdoor
spider was marked by grisly trophies--armor emptied of all meat but not
yet rotted by the highly specialized bacteria which flourished upon
chitin. The hunting-ground of even a mantis was marked by discarded,
transparent beetle-wings and sharp spiny bits of armor, and mandibles
not tasty enough to be consumed. Here, in the first hour of their
exploration, they saw no sign that any insect from the lowlands had ever
come to this place at all. But they interpreted the fact quite correctly
as rarity, rather than complete absence of huge creatures blundering up
into the sunlight.
They were relieved that they had found a cave. There was no thicket of
trees close-growing enough to shelter them. They were ludicrously amazed
when they found that trees were hard and solid, because the fungi they
knew were easily cut by sawtoothed tools. They found nothing to eat, but
they were not yet hungry. They did not worry about it while they still
had bits of edible mushroom from their climb.
When the sun sank low and the crimson colorings filled the western
horizon, they shivered. They watched the glory of their first sunset
with scared, incredulous eyes. Yellows and reds and purples reared
toward the zenith. It became possible to look and gaze directly at the
sun. They saw it descend behind something they could not guess at. Then
there was dark.
The fact stunned them. So night came like this!
Then they saw the stars as they winked singly into being. And the folk
from the lowland crowded frantically into the cave with its faint odor
of having once been occupied. They filled the cave tightly. But Burl was
somewhat reluctant to admit his fear, and Saya lingered close to him.
They were the last to enter.
* * * * *
Nothing happened. Nothing. The sounds of evening continued. They were
strange but infinitely soothing and somehow what night-sounds ought to
be. Burl and the others could not possibly analyze it, but for the first
time in many generations they were in an environment really similar to
that intended for their race. It had a rightness and a goodness about it
which was perceptible for all its novelty. And because Burl had once
been lost from his tribe, he was capable of estimating novelties a
little better than the rest.
He listened to the night-noises from close by the cave's small entrance.
He heard the breathing of his tribesmen. He felt the heat of their
bodies, keeping the crowded enclosure warm enough for all. Saya was
close beside him. She held fast to his arm for reassurance. He was
wakeful, and thinking very busily and very painfully.
Saya was filled with a tumult that was combined fear of the unknown and
relief from much greater fear of the familiar ... and warm, proud
memories of the sight of Burl leading and commanding the others, and
memories of the look and feel of sunshine, and pictures of sky and
grass and trees which she had never seen before. Emotion-filled memories
of Burl as he killed a spider! Flinging a ball-fungus at a hatchling
mantis, saving a young boy. Grandly leading the others up the
mountainside which it had never occurred to anybody else to climb.
Keeping onward sternly when it seemed that the solid ground had twisted
and would drop them into a misplaced sky. And now, between her and the
doorway to the strange and very beautiful night outside.
Saya felt an absorbed, impassioned, delectable disquiet from the touch
of Burl's arm beneath her fingers.
He stirred. She whispered a question.
"I am going out," he murmured in her ear. "I wish to see the lights. To
see if they come nearer, or move."
It had occurred to him that the first few stars they had seen glowed in
darkness like the giant fireflies of the valley. They were comparable in
size to all the enlarged insect kingdom. They were a yard and more in
length, and sometimes at night they soared and wheeled above the lowland
fungus jungles, and the segmented larval females of their kind, which
never grew wings, grew frantic at the sight. They climbed recklessly
upon the flat tops of toadstools and waved their dimmer twinned lanterns
at the flying males.
But this was not the lowland. Burl freed his arm from Saya's fingers. He
crept through the constricted opening of the cave, carrying his lance
before him. He already had a vague idea that it should be not only an
instrument but a weapon. He imagined stabbing enemy creatures with
it--but only vaguely, as yet.
He stood upright in the open air. There was coolness. Night had fallen,
but only a little while since. There were smells in the air such as Burl
had never smelled before--green things growing, and the peculiar clean
odor of wind that has been bathed in sunshine, and the peculiarly
satisfying fragrance of coniferous trees.
But Burl raised his eyes to the heavens. He saw the stars in all their
glory, and he was the first man in at least forty generations to look at
them from this planet. There were myriads upon myriads of them, varying
in brightness from stabbing lights to infinitesimal twinklings. They
were of every possible color. They hung in the sky above him, immobile
and unthreatening. They had not come nearer. They were very beautiful.
[Illustration: "_... he was the first man in ... forty generations to
look at them._"]
Burl stared. And then he noticed that he was breathing deeply, with a
new zest. He was filling his lungs with clean, cool, fragrant air such
as men were intended to breathe from the beginning, and of which Burl
and many others had been deprived. It was almost intoxicating to feel so
splendidly alive and unafraid.
There was a rustling. Saya stood beside him, trembling a little. To
leave the others had required great courage. But she had come to realize
that if any danger befell Burl she wished to share it. So she had come.
They shared the starlight.
They heard the nightwind and the orchestra of night-singers. They
wandered aside from the cave-mouth, and Saya found completely primitive
and wholly atavistic pride in the courage of Burl, who was actually not
afraid of the dark! Her own uneasiness became merely something to give
more savor to her pride in him. She stayed close beside him, not only
for reassurance but also for joy in being close to him.
Presently they heard a new sound in the night. It was very far away and
not in the least like any sound they had ever heard before. It changed
in pitch. Insect-cries do not. It was a baying, yelping sound. It rose
in pitch, and held the higher note, and abruptly dropped in pitch before
it ceased. Minutes later it came again.
Saya shivered, but Burl said thoughtfully:
"That is a good sound."
He didn't know why. Saya shivered once more. She said reluctantly:
"I am cold."
It had been a rare sensation in the lowlands. It came only after one of
the infrequent thunderstorms, when wetted human bodies were exposed to
the gusty winds that otherwise rarely blew there. But here the nights
grew cold, after sundown. The heat in the ground radiated to outer space
at night, not being trapped by a layer of clouds. Before dawn, the
temperature would be close to freezing, though anything worse than a
light fleeting hoar-frost would be rare on this plateau.
The two of them went back to the cave. It was warm there. The cave was
so packed with humans that their body-heat kept the air from growing
chill. Burl and Saya crouched among the rest, and became drowsy and
comfortable. Presently Saya dropped off to sleep, her hand trustfully in
Burl's.
But he remained awake for a long time, blinking. He thought of the
stars, but they were too strange. He thought of the trees and grass. But
most of the impressions of this upper world were so remote from previous
knowledge that he could only accept them as they were and defer
reflection upon them until later. But he did feel an enormous
complacency, what with having brought his followers to an effective
paradise of safety, and having arrived at a completely satisfactory
emotional status with Saya.
But the last thing he actually thought about, before his eyes blinked
shut in sleep, was that yelping noise he had heard in the night. It was
totally novel in kind, yet there was something buried among his racial
heritages that told him it was good.
* * * * *
Burl was first awake of all the tribesmen and he looked out into a cold
and pallid grayness. He saw trees. One side of the cluster was brightly
lighted, the other side was dark. He heard tiny singing noises of the
creatures of this place. Presently he crawled out of the cave to scout
for danger.
The air was biting in its chill. It was an excellent reason why giant
insects could not survive here, but it was particularly invigorating as
he breathed it in. Then he summoned courage to move to where he could
peer at the source of this strange light.
He saw the top of the sun as it peered above the eastern cloud-bank. The
sky grew lighter. He blinked at the sun and saw it rise more fully into
view. He thought to look upward, and the stars that had bewildered him
were nearly gone.
He ran to call Saya.
The rest of the tribe waked as he roused her. One by one they followed,
to watch their first sunrise. The men and women gaped at the sun as it
filled the east with colorings and rose above the seemingly steaming
layer of clouds and then appeared to spring free of the horizon and swim
on upward.
The children blinked and shivered and crept to their mothers for warmth.
The women enclosed them in their cloaks, and they thawed and peered out
once more at the glory of sunshine and the day. Soon, though, they
realized that warmth came from the glaring body in the sky. The
children presently discovered a game. It was the first game they had
ever played, and it consisted simply of running into a shaded place
until they shivered, and then of running out into the sunshine again
where they were warm. Until this dawning they had never been free enough
from fear to play at all. But this discovery of the nightly chill and of
the utility of cloaks for warmth up here as well as it had been against
the nightly rain of the lowlands, was a specific suggestion of the value
of clothing. Which was to have another significance, a short time later.
In this first dawn of their experience, the tribesmen ate of the edible
mushroom they had brought up the mountain-flank. But there was not an
indefinite amount of food left. Burl shared the meal Saya brought him.
She touched him fondly. But he regarded his happy fellows with something
like a scowl. They were quite contented, and they had for the moment no
need of his guidance. They did not look to him for orders. And Burl
wanted attention.
He spoke abruptly.
"We do not want to go back to the place we came from," he said sternly.
"We must look for food here, so we can stay for always. Today we look
for food."
It was a seizure of the initiative. It was the linking of what the folk
most craved with obedience to Burl. It was the instinct of a leader. The
eating men murmured agreement. There was a certain definite idea of
goodness--not moral virtue, but of the desirable--becoming associated
with what Burl did and what Burl commanded. His tribe was becoming a
group of which he was the leader, rather than only a loose association
held together only by the fear of solitude.
He led them exploring as soon as they had eaten. All of them, of course.
None had yet become confident enough to be left behind. They straggled
irregularly behind Burl and Saya. They came to a brook and regarded it
with amazement. There were no leeches. No fungus. No swiftly drifting
islands of scum. It was clear. Greatly daring, Burl tasted it and it was
water, but such as he had never tasted before. It was clean, fresh,
sparkling water, not fouled by drainage through mould or rust.
The rest of the tribe tasted. A child slipped on a muddy place and sat
down hard on white stuff that yielded and almost splashed. The child
howled. Saya picked it up. Then she looked where it had been for spines
or small stinging things.
She stared blankly.
She went to Burl with a tiny white thing in her hand. It was a mushroom.
But it was a _tiny_, clean, appetizing object. Saya had no words for it.
She was amazed.
Burl smelled it carefully. He tasted it. And it was actually no more and
no less than a normal mushroom, growing in a shaded place upon
enormously rich soil. It had been protected from sunlight, but it had
not the means nor the stimulus to become a monster.
Burl ate it. He carefully composed his features. Then he announced the
find to his followers.
There was food here, he told them. But in this splendid world to which
he had led them, food was small. There would be no great enemies here,
but the food would have to be sought in small objects rather than great
ones. They must look at this place and seek others like it, where food
would be found....
The tribesmen were doubtful. But they plucked mushrooms--whole
ones!--instead of merely breaking off parts of their tops. In deep
astonishment they recognized miniatures of what they had known only in
gigantic forms. They tasted. The tiny mushrooms had the same savor, but
they were not coarse or stringy or tough like the giants. They melted in
the mouth! Life in this place to which Burl had led them was delectable!
Truly the doings of Burl were astonishing!
When a child found a beetle on a leaf, and they recognized it, they were
entranced, for instead of being bigger than a man and a thing to flee
from, it was less than an inch in size and helpless against them. From
that moment on, they would follow Burl anywhere and obey him in any
matter, in the happy conviction that he could do nothing that was not
desirable in all respects.
The belief, of course, was not quite accurate. Tender tiny mushrooms as
a staple, instead of the tough and chewy provender they were used to, in
time would cause them to have toothaches. But they could not anticipate
it, and it was actually very far away in time.
They struggled after Burl through vast patches of bushes with thorns on
them. They were not used to thorns, and they deeply distrusted the
bushes and even the glistening fruit on them, which eventually they
would know were blackberries. Near midday they heard noises in the
distance.
The sounds were made up of cries of varying pitch, some of which were
sharp and abrupt, and others longer and less loud. The people did not
understand them in the least. They could have been the cries of human
beings, but they were assuredly not cries of pain. Also they were not
language. They seemed to convey an impression of enormous, zestful
excitement. They had no overtone of horror. And Burl and his folk had
known of no excitement among insects except the frenzy of ferocity. They
were unable to imagine even the nature of the tumult.
To Burl the cries seemed to have somewhat the timbre of the yelping
sounds he had heard the night before. And he had felt instinctively
drawn to that sound. He liked it.
He led the way boldly in the direction of the noise. And presently he
came out of breast-high weeds with Saya close behind him and the others
trailing. He emerged upon a space of bare stone, a little upraised. He
looked down into a small and grassy amphitheater. The tumult came from
its center.
A pack of dogs were joyously attacking something that Burl could not see
clearly. They _were dogs_. They barked zestfully, and they yelped and
snarled and yapped in a dozen different voices, and they darted at the
unseen something and darted away, and they were having a thoroughly
enjoyable time, though it might not be so good for the thing they
attacked.
One of them saw the humans and stopped stock-still and barked. The
others whirled and saw the humans as they came out into view. The tumult
ceased entirely.
There was silence. The men for the first time saw creatures with only
four legs. They had never before seen any moving thing with fewer than
six--except men. Spiders had eight. The dogs did not have mandibles.
They did not act like insects.
And the dogs saw men, whom they had never seen before. Much more
important, they smelled men. And the difference between man-smell and
that of insects was vast. Through many generations the dogs had not
smelled anything with warm blood save their own kind. The difference in
smell between insect and man was so great that the dogs did not react
with suspicion, but with curiosity. This was an unparalleled smell. It
was even a good smell.
The dogs regarded the men with their heads on one side, sniffing them in
the deepest possible amazement--amazement so intense that they could not
feel hostility. One of them whined a little because he did not
understand.
* * * * *