He saw it, a rose pink paled by nearer flame, washing lazily against
the black cliff edge of Lundy Forest. It grew, boiling up over the
barrier in places, spilling through the gap, and the great, agonizing
chord of music muted and dwindled. The flame-perimeter began shrinking
and still the fire mist grew, staining the night sky north and south
beyond eye-reach. The song became a mournful wailing and the soldiers
in the garden moved forward for the mopping up.
"Pia, I've got to go down there. I've got to see a stomper close up."
She was trembling and crying with reaction. "I think they'll be too
busy to mind," she said. "But don't go too far in ... Flinter."
He ran down the stairs and through the unguarded gate toward the
fought-over area. Wounded men were being helped or carried past him,
but no one noticed him. He found a stomper, blaster-torn but not yet
dead, and stopped to watch the four-foot tripart beak snap feebly and
the dark wings writhe and clutch. The paired vertical eyelid folds
rolled apart laterally to reveal three eyes under a single triangular
conjunctiva, lambent in the flame-shot darkness. Soldiers passed
unheeding while Cole stood and wondered. Then a hand jerked violently
at his arm. It was Morgan.
Morgan wordlessly marched him off to a knot of men nearer the mopping
up line and pushed him before Garth Bidgrass. Sweat dripped from
flaring eyebrows down the grim old face, and over a blistered right
cheek. A heavy blaster hung from the old man's body harness.
"Well, Mr. Cole, is this data?" he asked dourly. "Have you come out to
save stompers?"
"I wish I could have saved men, Mr. Bidgrass. I wanted to help," Cole
said.
"Another like this and you may have to," Bidgrass said, less sharply.
"It was close work, lad."
"I can help Dr. Rudall. You must have many wounded."
"Good, good," the old man said approvingly. "The men will take that
kindly and so will I."
"One favor," Cole said. "Will you have your men save half a dozen
living stompers for me? I have another idea."
"Well, I don't know," Bidgrass said. "The men won't like it ... but a
few days, maybe ... yes, I'll save you some."
"Thank you, sir." Cole turned away, catching a thick scowl from Morgan.
Overhead the three moons were strung in a ragged line across the sky,
and Hoggy Darn was rising.
* * * * *
Cole worked around the clock at the hospital, sterilizing instruments
and helping Dr. Rudall with dressings. He was surprised to see other
doctors, many nurses and numerous biofield projectors as modern as any
on Belconti. Some of the wounded were women. All of them, wounded and
unwounded, seemed in a shared mood of exaltation. He caught glimpses of
Pia, working too. She seemed less poised for flight, tired but happy,
and she smiled at him.
After three days Cole saw his stompers in a stone-floored pen at the
slaughter house. Earth breed cattle lowed in adjacent pens. Four
stompers still lived, their bodies blaster torn and their legs crudely
hamstrung so they could not stand. They lay with heads together and the
sun glinted on the blue-black, iridescent scales covering the domed
heads and long necks.
Three shock-headed butchers stood by, assigned to help him. Their
distaste for Cole and the job was so evident that he hurried through
the gross dissection of the two dead stompers at one end of the same
pen. After an hour he thought to ask, as best he could, whether
the living stompers were being given food and water. When one man
understood, black hatred crossed his face and he spat on Cole's shoe.
The ecologist flushed, then shrugged and got on with the job.
It brought him jarring surprises culminating in a tentative conclusion
late on the second day. Then the situation began to fall apart. Working
alone for the moment, Cole opened the stomach of the second stomper and
found in it half-digested parts of a human body. Skull and humerus size
told him it was one of the giants.
First pulling a flap of mesentery over the stomach incision, Cole
went into the office and phoned Dr. Rudall to come at once. Coming
out, he heard angry shouts and saw two of his helpers running to join
the third, who stood pointing into the carcass. Then all three seized
axes, ran across the pen and began hacking at the necks of the living
stompers.
The great creatures boomed and writhed, clacking their beaks and half
rising on their wings, unable to defend themselves. The butchers howled
curses, and the stompers broke into a mournful wailing harmonized with
flesh-creeping subsonics. Cole shouted and pleaded, finally wrested an
axe from one and mounted guard over the last living stomper. He stood
embattled, facing a growing crowd of butchers from the plant, when Dr.
Rudall arrived.
"Dr. Rudall, explain to these maniacs why I must keep this stomper
alive!" he cried angrily.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, they will kill it in spite of you."
"But Garth Bidgrass ordered--"
"In spite of him. There are factors you don't understand, Mr. Cole. You
are yourself in great danger." The old doctor's hands trembled.
Cole thought rapidly. "All right, will they wait a day? I want tissue
explants for a reason I'll explain later. If you'll help me work up the
nutrient tonight--"
"Our pisky nutrient will work. We can take your samples within the
hour. Let me call the hospital."
He spoke rapidly to the glowering butchers in the vernacular, then
hurried into the building. An hour later the stomper was dead, and
Hawkins drove Cole and the doctor back to their lab with the explants.
"I've almost got it," Cole said happily. "Several weeks and two more
bits of information and I'll tell you. In spite of all odds, one man
against a planet--this will found my professional reputation back on
Belconti."
* * * * *
Once again Cole faced Garth Bidgrass across the round table in the
library. This time he felt vastly different.
"The piskies are really baby stompers," he said, watching the craggy
old face for its reaction. It did not change.
"I suspected it when I saw how the smaller eggs fused with the
large egg, with continuous laminae," Cole went on. "There was the
morphological resemblance, too. But when I dissected two mature
stompers I found immature eggs. Even before entry into the oviduct what
you call pisky eggs are filamented to the main body of cytoplasm."
Disappointingly, Bidgrass did not marvel. He squinted and cocked
his head. Finally he said, "Do you mean the piskies lay their eggs
internally in the stompers?"
"Impossible! I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue
and they are _identical_, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now
is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But
that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food
source--that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all
through Carina sector."
He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and
stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled.
"I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is
harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. Stop it for a few decades,
or set aside breeding areas, and you can have a whole planetful again."
The old man scowled and stood up. "We'll not stop," he said gruffly.
"There are still plenty of stompers. Remember last month." He walked to
the end window and back, then sat down again still looking grim.
"Don't be too sure," Cole objected. "I haven't finished my report.
I made a Harvey analysis on the tissues of one stomper. It involves
culturing clones, measuring growth rates and zones of migration and
working out a complex set of ratios--I won't go into details. But when
I fitted my figures into Harvey's formula it indicated _unmistakably_
that the stompers have a critical biomass."
"What does that mean?"
"Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each
individual is only a part. Can you do that?"
"Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright.
"Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any
moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of
critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater
animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into
extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a
species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago
may _already_ have extinguished them as a species?"
Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light.
"Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula--do _human beings_ have a
critical biomass?"
"Yes, biologically," Cole said, surprised. "But in our case a varying
part of the greater animal is carried in our culture, our symbol
system, and is not directly dependent on biomass. A mathematical
anthropologist could tell you more than I can."
Bidgrass placed his hands palm down on the table and leaned back in
sudden resolution.
"Mr. Cole, you force me to tell you something I had been minded to
hold back. I already know a good part of what you have just told me. I
_wish_ to exterminate the stompers and I will do so. But I meant for
you to go back to Belconti thinking it was the piskies."
Cole propped his chin on folded hands and raised his eyebrows. "I half
suspected that. But I fooled you, didn't I?"
"Yes, and I admire you for it. Now let me tell you more. Stomper egg
brings a very high price and I have kept it higher by storing large
reserves. When it is known the stomper is extinct, the rarity value of
my reserve will be enormous. It will mean an end of this harsh life for
me and for my grandniece after me."
Cole's lip curled, and red mounted in the old man's face as he talked,
but he went on doggedly.
"I want the pisky theory and the news of stomper extinction to be
released through Belconti University. The news will spread faster and
be more readily believed and I will avoid a certain moral stigma--"
"And now I've crossed you up!"
"You can still do it. I can ease your conscience with a settlement
of--say--five thousand solars a year for life."
Cole leaped up and leaned across the table.
"No!" he snapped. "Old man, you don't know how ecologists feel about
the greed-murder of species. What I _will_ do is work through Belconti
on your government at Car Truro, warn it that you are about to destroy
an important planetary resource."
Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red.
"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which
you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction.
Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and
you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally
have reported it via the next _Gorbals_ to Belconti and sent along your
notes to date--do you follow me?"
"Yes. A threat."
"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole."
* * * * *
Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it
would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door,
only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and
smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before.
"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked.
"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?"
"Uncle Garth says now that you know--" She broke off, blushing still
more.
"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia.
Here, let me."
He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his
table. Pia _was_ lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth
roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the
small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her
round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced
and she looked more frightened than ever.
"You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the
woods, Pia. What _are_ you always afraid of?"
Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said.
"What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear."
They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate
dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian _kresch_ to follow it. Cole
splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and
held up his own.
"Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half
mockingly.
Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a
home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh
Flinter, what you must think--" She began crying in earnest.
He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about
Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for _Gorbals'_ tender."
She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both.
Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to
take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and
squeezed her hand in saying good night.
She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened.
* * * * *
Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his
eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small
flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He
followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan
bulking darkly ten feet away.
"Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the
black bar of eyebrow.
Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move.
"You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and
heading east.
"He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him."
Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into
blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of
Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest
towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land.
He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area.
Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the
planet's low gravity.
The resilient surface gave off a fragrance as they walked about on
it. In a sea all around their island, branches of the great forest
trees thrust up, leafy and flowering and bedecked with a profusion of
epiphytal plants in many shapes and colors. Bright-hued true birds
darted from shadow into sunlight and back again, twittering and crying.
"It's beautiful," he said. And so was Pia, he thought, watching her on
tiptoe reaching to a great white flower. The attractive firmness of
her skin, the roundness and dimpling, _ripeness_, that was the word he
wanted. And her eyes.
"Pia, you're not frightened any more!"
It was true. The long-lashed brown eyes were merry as nature meant them
to be.
"It's peaceful and safe," she said. "When I come to the forest top I
never want to go back to Bidgrass Station."
"Too bad we must, and let's pretend we don't," he said, pointing to a
cluster of red-gold fruits. "Are those good to eat?"
"Too good. That's the trouble with New Cornwall."
"What do you mean?"
"Race you back to the flyer," she cried, and danced away, bare limbs
twinkling in the sunlight. He floundered after.
The lunch was good and she had brought along the rest of the bottle of
_kresch_. They sipped it seated beside the flyer while she tried to
teach him New Cornish folk songs. Her small, clear singing blended with
that of the birds around them.
"I catch parts of it," he said. "As an undergraduate a few years ago I
studied the pre-space poets. I can read Old English, but it is strange
to my ear."
"I could teach you."
"I love one wry-witted ancient named Robert Graves. How does it go:
_If strange things happen where she is_--no, I can't recall it now."
"I could write the songs out for you."
"The beauty is in you and your voice. Just sing."
She sang, something about a king with light streaming from his hair,
coming naked out of the forest to bring love into his kingdom. Small
white clouds drifted in the blue sky, and blue Annis slept just above
the rustling branches that guarded the secret of their island. He
listened and watched her.
She was softly rounded as the clouds, and her clustered brown curls
made an island of the vivid face expressing the song she sang so
bird-like and naturally. She was vital, compact, self closed,
perfect--like one of the great flowers nodding in the breeze along the
island shore--and his heart yearned across to her.
"Pia," he said, breaking into the song, "do you really want to get away
from New Cornwall?"
She nodded, eyes suddenly wide, lips still parted.
"Come with me to Belconti then. Right now. We'll cross to Car Truro and
wait there for _Gorbals_."