"You can, lad. You've nosed through to it and I'll tell you if you
insist. But it will endanger you even more and I wish you would forego
it."
Cole shook his head. "I'm an ecologist. If I have the big picture,
maybe I can help."
"I thought you'd say that. Well, history first, and settle yourself
because it _is_ a big picture and not a pretty one. This planet was
settled directly from Earth in the year 145 After Space, almost eight
hundred years ago. It seemed ideal--native protein was actually
superior to Earth protein in human metabolism. Easy climate,
geophysically stable, no diseases--but planetology was not much of a
science in those days.
"The colony won political independence in 202 A.S. It had a thriving
trade in luxury foods, mostly stomper egg concentrates--freight was
dear then. Settlements radiated out from Car Truro across the plains.
Food was to be had for the taking in the mild climate and it was a kind
of paradise. _Paradise!_"
The old man's voice rang hard on the last word and Cole stiffened.
Bidgrass went on.
"Early in the third century our social scientists began to worry about
the unnatural way the culture graded from the complexity of Car Truro
to a simple pattern of mud huts and food gathering along the frontiers.
Children of successive generations were taller than their parents
and much less willing or able to use symbols. By the time a minority
decided the trend should be reversed, the majority of the people could
not be roused to see a danger."
"Earth life is normally resistant to low-grav gigantism," Cole said. "I
wonder--"
"It was all the native foods they ate, but mainly stomper egg. There
are more powerful and quicker-acting substances in the forest fungi,
but then the population was all in the eastern grasslands, where the
stompers ranged."
"I read they were a plains animal."
"Yes, and harmless too, except for their eggs. Well, the minority set
up a dictatorship and began cultivating Earth plants and animals.
They passed laws limiting the mechanical simplicity of households
and regulating diets. They took children from subnormal parents and
educated and fed them in camps. But the normals were too few and the
trend continued.
"Shortly after mid-century the population reached the edge of the
southern forest, and there many were completely wild. They drifted
along the forest edge naked, without tools or fire or language or even
family groupings. Their average stature was nearly eight feet. The
normals knew they were losing. Can you imagine how they _felt_, lad?"
Cole relaxed a little. "Ah ... yes, I can ... I imagine the fight was
inside them, too."
Bidgrass nodded. "Yes, they were all tainted. But they fought. They
asked Earth for help and learned that Earth regarded them as tyrants
oppressing a simple, natural folk. The economy broke down and more
had to be imported. The only way to pay was in stomper egg exports.
In spite of that, in about the year 300, they decided to restrict the
stompers to the western part of the grasslands, thousands of miles
beyond the human range.
"The egg hunters began killing piskies and grown stompers. They killed
off the great, stupid herds of darv cattle on which the stompers fed.
The stompers that survived became wary and hostile, good at hiding and
fierce to attack. But killing off the eastern darv herds broke them and
in a generation they vanished from the eastern plains. Things seemed to
improve and they thought the tide was turned. Then, in the year 374,
came what our bards now call the Black Learning."
"Bards?" Cole said. He drained his coffee cup.
"Morgan could sing you this history to shiver the flesh on your bones,"
the old man said, pouring more coffee. "What I am telling you is
nowhere written down, but it is engraved in thousands of hearts. Well,
to go on.
"We knew some of the stompers had gone into the southern forest--you
see, they have to incubate their eggs in direct sunlight and we kept
finding them along the forest edge. But we had assumed they were eating
the snakes and slugs and fungi native to the forest floor. Now we
learned that a large population of wild humans had grown up unknown to
us in the deep forest--and the stompers were eating them.
"You have seen our forests from a distance, lad. Do you realize how
impossible it is to patrol them? We hadn't the men, money or machines
for it. We appealed, and learned we would get no help from any planet
in Carina sector except for pay. But the egg market fell off, and our
income with it. Ships did come, however, small ones in stealth, to
ground along the forest edge and capture the young women of the wild
people."
Cole struck the table. "How rotten!..." His voice failed.
Bidgrass nodded. "We call that the Lesser Shame. The young women were
without personality or language, yet tractable and responsive to
affection. They were flawless in health and physique, and eight feet
tall. They could be sold for fantastic prices on loosely organized
frontier planets and yes, even to Earth, as we learned. Something dark
in a man responds to that combination. You feel it as I speak--no,
don't protest, I know. We had long had that trouble among our own
people."
"Did my own people of Belconti--" Again Cole's voice failed. He brushed
back his red hair angrily.
"Belconti was new then, still a colony. Well, that was the _help_ we
got. We hadn't the power to fight stompers, let alone slave raiders.
But the Galactic Patrol was just getting organized and the sector
admiral agreed to keep a ship in orbit blockading us. We broke off all
contact except with Tristan, and the Patrol let only one freight line
come through to handle our off-planet trade. It was then we began to
hate the other planets. We call it the Turning Away.
"Now we are forgotten, almost a myth. The Patrol ship has been gone
since two hundred years ago. But we remember."
"I wish I'd known this," Cole said. "Mr. Bidgrass, things are greatly
changed in Carina sector--"
Bidgrass held up his hand. "I know, lad. That's why you're here, and
I'll come to it. But let me go on. Early in the fifth century we
decided to exterminate the stompers altogether and in two decades
killed off all the darv cattle. But the stompers went into the forests
in the south and west and from there came out to raid the plains. Not
to kill, but to carry off normal and semi-wild people into the forest
for breeding stock. A stomper's wing is more flexible than a hand. One
of them can carry half a dozen men and women and run a thousand miles
in a day. Some fungi in the forest can dull a man in an hour and take
his mind in a week. Few who were carried in ever came out again.
"This went on, lad, for _centuries_. From our fortified towns and
hunting camps we ranged along the forest edge like wolves. The stompers
_must_ lay their eggs in direct sunlight. That forced them out where
we could get at them, into clearings and uplands and along the forest
edge. We killed all we could.
"We found rhythms in their life pattern keyed to our four moons. When
the three lady moons form a tall triangle, the stompers group in the
open to mill and dance and sing. About every three months this happens
over several days and in old times it was the peak raid season. It was
also our chance to kill. The people call the configuration the House of
the Maidens."
Cole nodded vigorously. "I remember that. Strange how lunar periodicity
is bionative in every planet having a moon."
"It saved us here, praise Morwenna, but once almost destroyed us. There
is a longer, sixty-two year cycle called the Nights of Hoggy Darn. Then
the red moon passes through the House of the Maidens and the stompers
go completely berserk. The first one after the war was joined fully, in
434, caught us unprepared and cost us more than three-fourths of our
normal population in the week that we remember as the Great Taking.
We were thrown back into Car Truro for decades and the stompers came
back on the plains. They snatched people from the streets of Car Truro
itself. That we call the Dark Time."
The old man's craggy face shadowed with sorrow and he sighed, leaning
back. Cole opened his mouth but Bidgrass leaned forward again, new,
fierce energy in his voice.
"We rallied and came back. We fought from the air and killed them in
large numbers when we caught them in the open on Maiden nights. We
drove them back off the plains and harried them along the forest edges
and in the upland clearings where they came to lay eggs. We gathered
all the eggs we could find. They defended their eggs and caused us
steady losses. But we fought.
"We built our strategy on the Maidens and in time we drove the enemy
out of the southern forest and into the west. Then we crowded him into
Lundy Peninsula, made it a sanctuary for a hundred years to draw him
in. When I was your age we fought out the last Nights of Hoggy Darn a
few miles east of here. Ten years later we finished Bidgrass Station
and the barrier and the continent was free of stompers."
Cole shifted his chair to get the sun off his neck. "I hardly know what
to say," he began, but Bidgrass raised his hand.
"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century
things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began
a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people
along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those
they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be
trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had
few machines except what we need for war. Their children, on an Earth
diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and
fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has
always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for
reclamation work.
"Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now.
That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on
the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a
queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of
religion along the way. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully
drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and
prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty
well believe it myself and even you believe some of it."
Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table.
"Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you
spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill
him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and
meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper
and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to
hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad."
"I feel it, a little. I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an
ex-wild, isn't he?"
"Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I."