"No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll
ask for a fresh pot."
Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much
more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew
his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't
have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they
changed from plains to forest. They learned to practise a gruesome kind
of animal husbandry--oh, I could tell you things. _Something_ had to
figure it out."
"I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on."
"Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try
to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The
people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent
on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was.
"But we spat in his face. We gathered his tribute and still took all
the eggs we could find in the inland clearings. We killed every stomper
we saw. Then, for the first time I think, Grandfather Stomper knew it
was war to the death. He began to fight as never before. Where once
a stomper would carry a captured egg hunter a hundred miles into the
forest and turn him loose, now it killed out of hand. They began making
mass attacks on the station and they didn't come to capture, they came
to kill. So it has gone for forty years now."
The old man's voice changed, less fierce, more solemn. He sat up
straight.
"Lundy Forest is near eight hundred thousand square miles. No one
knows how many millions of wild humans are in it or how many scores of
thousands of stompers. But this I knew long before you came to tell
me about critical biomass: Grandfather Stomper is very near to death.
He ruled this planet for a million years and he fought me for near a
thousand, but his time is come.
"Don't laugh, lad, at what I am about to say now. Mass belief, blind
faith over centuries of people like our ex-wilds and semi-wilds, can do
strange things. To them and even to myself I _represent_ Grandfather
Man, and from them a power comes into me that is more than myself. I
know in a _direct_ way that in the Nights of Hoggy Darn to come I will
at long last kill Grandfather Stomper and the war will be won. That
time is only eight weeks away."
"Then I'll still be here. Grand--Mr. Bidgrass, I want to fight with
you."
"You may and welcome, lad. Must, even, to redeem yourself. Because, for
what you know now, your life is forfeit if the ex-wilds suspect."
"Why so? Are you not _proud_--" Cole half stood and Bidgrass waved him
down.
"Consider, lad. For centuries across the inhabited planets people of
wealth and influence have been eating stomper egg, serving it at state
banquets. But now _you_ know it is human flesh at one remove. How will
they feel toward us when they learn that?"
"How should they feel? Man has to be consumed at some trophic level.
His substance is as much in the biogeochemical cycles as that of a
pig or a chicken. I suppose we _do_ feel he should cap the end of a
food chain and not short-cycle through himself, but I'm damned if I'm
horrified--"
"Any non-ecologist would be. You know that."
The giant maid came in with a pot of coffee and clean cups. Bidgrass
poured and both men sipped in silence. Then Bidgrass said slowly,
"Do you know what the people here call outworlders? Cannibals! For
centuries we have had the feeling that we have been selling our own
flesh to the outworlds in exchange for the weapons to free Grandfather
Man."
He stood up, towering over Cole, and his voice deepened.
"It has left bone-deep marks: of guilt, for making the outworlders
unknowing cannibals; of hatred, because we feel the outworlds left
us no choice. And shame, lad, deep, deep shame, more than a man can
bear, to have been degraded to food animals here in our forests
and across the opulent tables of the other planets. Morgan is only
second-generation normal--his father was killed beside me, last Hoggy
Darn. If Morgan knew you had learned our secret he would kill you out
of hand. I could not stop him. Do you understand now why we didn't
want you until next _Gorbals_? Do you see into the hell you have been
skating over?"
Cole nodded and rubbed his chin. "Yes, I do. But I don't despise
Morgan, I think I love him. On Belconti, Grandfather Man is mainly
concerned to titillate his own appetites, but here, well ... how do
I feel it?... I think what you have just told me makes me more proud
to be a man than I have ever been before. I will carry through the
deception of Belconti University with all my heart. Can't Morgan
understand that?"
"Yes, and kill you anyway. Because you _know_. You will not lightly be
forgiven that."