Chion snorted. "Go die, old man. By sunset tonight you'll be charred
bone. Who are you to order us? We are young, we want to live longer."
Eleven days. The words were unbelievable to Sim. Eleven days. Now he
understood why there was war. Who wouldn't fight to have his life
lengthened by almost half its total. So many more days of youth and
love and seeing and living! Yes. Why not, indeed!
"Three extra days," called Dienc, stridently, "_if_ you live to enjoy
them. If you're not killed in battle. _If. If!_ You have never won yet.
You have always lost!"
"But this time," Chion declared sharply, "We'll win!"
Sim was bewildered. "But we are all of the same ancestors. Why don't we
all share the best cliffs?"
Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp stone in his hand. "Those who live
in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's
attitude when he has power. The cliffs there, besides, are smaller,
there's room for only three hundred people in them."
Three extra days.
"I'll go with you," Sim said to Chion.
"Fine!" Chion was very glad, much too glad at the decision.
Dienc gasped.
Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. "If I fight, and win, I will be half a
mile closer to the Ship. And I'll have three extra days in which to
strive to reach the Ship. That seems the only thing for me to do."
Dienc nodded, sadly. "It _is_ the only thing. I believe you. Go along
now."
"Good-bye," said Sim.
The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as at a little joke on
himself. "That's right--I won't see you again, will I? Good-bye, then."
And they shook hands.
They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others,
all children growing swiftly into fighting men. And the light in
Chion's eyes was not a good thing to see.
* * * * *
Lyte went with him. She chose his rocks for him and carried them. She
would not go back, no matter how he pleaded. The sun was just beyond
the horizon and they marched across the valley.
"Please, Lyte, go back!"
"And wait for Chion to return?" she said. "He plans that when you die I
will be his mate." She shook out her unbelievable blue-white curls of
hair defiantly. "But I'll be with you. If you fall, I fall."
Sim's face hardened. He was tall. The world had shrunk during the
night. Children packs screamed by hilarious in their food-searching and
he looked at them with alien wonder: could it be only four days ago
he'd been like these? Strange. There was a sense of many days in his
mind, as if he'd really lived a thousand days. There was a dimension
of incident and thought so thick, so multi-colored, so richly diverse
in his head that it was not to be believed so much could happen in so
short a time.
The fighting men ran in clusters of two or three. Sim looked ahead at
the rising line of small ebon cliffs. This, then, he said to himself,
is my fourth day. And still I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything,
not even--he heard the light tread of Lyte beside him--not even to her
who bears my weapons and picks me ripe berries.
One-half of his life was gone. Or a third of it--IF he won this battle.
_If._
He ran easily, lifting, letting fall his legs. This is the day of my
physical awareness, as I run I feed, as I feed I grow and as I grow I
turn eyes to Lyte with a kind of dizzying vertigo. And she looks upon
me with the same gentleness of thought. This is the day of our youth.
Are we wasting it? Are we losing it on a dream, a folly?
Distantly he heard laughter. As a child he'd questioned it. Now he
understood laughter. This particular laughter was made of climbing
high rocks and plucking the greenest blades and drinking the headiest
vintage from the morning ices and eating of the rock-fruits and tasting
of young lips in new appetite.
They neared the cliffs of the enemy.
He saw the slender erectness of Lyte. The new surprise of her white
breasts; the neck where if you touched you could time her pulse; the
fingers which cupped in your own were animate and supple and never
still; the....
Lyte snapped her head to one side. "Look ahead!" she cried. "See what
is to come--look only ahead."
He felt that they were racing by part of their lives, leaving their
youth on the pathside, without so much as a glance.
"I am blind with looking at stones," he said, running.
"Find new stones, then!"
"I see stones--" His voice grew gentle as the palm of her hand. The
landscape floated under him. Everything was like a fine wind, blowing
dreamily. "I see stones that make a ravine that lies in a cool shadow
where the stone-berries are thick as tears. You touch a boulder and the
berries fall in silent red avalanches, and the grass is very tender...."
"I do not see it!" She increased her pace, turning her head away.
He saw the floss upon her neck, like the small moss that grows silvery
and light on the cool side of pebbles, that stirs if you breathe the
lightest breath upon it. He looked upon himself, his hands clenched as
he heaved himself forward toward death. Already his hands were veined
and youth-swollen.
They were the hands of a young boy whose fingers are made for touching,
which are suddenly sensitive and with more surface, and are nervous,
and seem not a part of him because they are so big for the slender
lengths of his arms. His neck, through which the blood ached and
pumped, was building out with age, too, with tiny blue tendrils of
veins imbedded and flaring in it.
Lyte handed him food to eat.
"I am not hungry," he said.
"Eat, keep your mouth full," she commanded sharply. "So you will not
talk to me this way!"
"If I could only kiss you," he pleaded. "Just one time."
"After the battle there may be time."
"Gods!" He roared, anguished. "Who cares for battles!"
Ahead of them, rocks hailed down, thudding. A man fell with his skull
split wide. The war was begun.
Lyte passed the weapons to him. They ran without another word until
they entered the killing ground. Then he spoke, not looking at her, his
cheeks coloring. "Thank you," he said.
She ducked as a slung stone shot by her head. "It was not an easy
thing for me," she admitted. "Sim! Be careful!"
The boulders began to roll in a synthetic avalanche from the
battlements of the enemy!
* * * * *
Only one thought was in his mind now. To kill, to lessen the life of
someone else so he could live, to gain a foothold here and live long
enough to make a stab at the ship. He ducked, he weaved, he clutched
stones and hurled them up. His left hand held a flat stone shield with
which he diverted the swiftly plummeting rocks. There was a spatting
sound everywhere. Lyte ran with him, encouraging him. Two men dropped
before him, slain, their breasts cleaved to the bone, their blood
springing out in unbelievable founts.
It was a useless conflict. Sim realized instantly how insane the
venture was. They could never storm the cliff. A solid wall of rocks
rained down. A dozen men dropped with shards of ebony in their brains,
a half dozen more showed drooping, broken arms. One screamed and the
upthrust white joint of his knee was exposed as the flesh was pulled
away by two successive blows of well-aimed granite. Men stumbled over
one another.
The muscles in his cheeks pulled tight and he began to wonder why he
had ever come. But his raised eyes, as he danced from side to side,
weaving and bobbing, sought always the cliffs. He wanted to live there
so intensely, to have his chance. He would have to stick it out. But
the heart was gone from him.
Lyte screamed piercingly. Sim, his heart panicking, twisted and saw
that her hand was loose at the wrist, with an ugly wound bleeding
profusely on the back of the knuckles. She clamped it under her armpit
to soothe the pain. The anger rose in him and exploded. In his fury he
raced forward, throwing his missiles with deadly accuracy. He saw a man
topple and flail down, falling from one level to another of the caves,
a victim of his shot. He must have been screaming, for his lungs were
bursting open and closed and his throat was raw, and the ground spun
madly under his racing feet.
The stone that clipped his head sent him reeling and plunging back.
He ate sand. The universe dissolved into purple whorls. He could not
get up. He lay and knew that this was his last day, his last time. The
battle raged around him, dimly he felt Lyte over him. Her hands cooled
his head, she tried to drag him out of range, but he lay gasping and
telling her to leave him.
"Stop!" shouted a voice. The whole war seemed to give pause. "Retreat!"
commanded the voice swiftly. And as Sim watched, lying upon his side,
his comrades turned and fled back toward home.
"The sun is coming, our time is up!" He saw their muscled backs, their
moving, tensing, flickering legs go up and down. The dead were left
upon the field. The wounded cried for help. But there was no time for
the wounded. There was only time for swift men to run the gauntlet
home and, their lungs aching and raw with heated air, burst into their
tunnels before the sun burnt and killed them.
The sun!
Sim saw another figure racing toward him. It was Chion! Lyte was
helping Sim to his feet, whispering helpfully to him. "Can you walk?"
she asked. And he groaned and said, "I think so." "Walk then," she
said. "Walk slowly, and then faster and faster. We'll make it. Walk
slowly, start carefully. We'll make it, I know we will."
Sim got to his feet, stood swaying. Chion raced up, a strange
expression cutting lines in his cheeks, his eyes shining with battle.
Pushing Lyte abruptly aside he seized upon a rock and dealt Sim a
jolting blow upon his ankle that laid wide the flesh. All of this was
done quite silently.
Now he stood back, still not speaking, grinning like an animal from the
night mountains, his chest panting in and out, looking from the thing
he had done, to Lyte, and back. He got his breath. "He'll never make
it," he nodded at Sim. "We'll have to leave him here. Come along, Lyte."
Lyte, like a cat-animal, sprang upon Chion, searching for his eyes,
shrieking through her exposed, hard-pressed teeth. Her fingers stroked
great bloody furrows down Chion's arms and again, instantly, down his
neck. Chion, with an oath, sprang away from her. She hurled a rock at
him. Grunting, he let it miss him, then ran off a few yards. "Fool!"
he cried, turning to scorn her. "Come along with me. Sim will be dead
in a few minutes. Come along!"