Altogether it was the most uncanny interview that Jupiter Jones had
ever experienced. He stood paralyzed while the Anolyns scrutinized him.
Not a sound passed between the creatures, not an expression marred
their soft white visages. It was impossible to even guess at their
thoughts.
Jupiter had more than a smattering of biology, and he'd been confronted
with weird forms of life before. But nothing so outlandish. He wished
he could get one of the Anolyns on the dissecting table in the Mizar's
laboratory.
Suddenly a thought impinged on his consciousness, an emotionless,
inhuman query:
"Where did you come from?"
He could feel the alien entity that was the octopod probing at his
brain cells with invisible feelers of thought. He could no more resist
answering than if he had been under the influence of salanedrin, the
Venusian truth serum.
"Earth. A planet of the system of Sol." He gave the galactic space
coordinates, but realized that they had no meaning outside their frame
of reference. "From beyond the stars," he amplified.
"How?" There was shock, surprise, scepticism in the thought.
He visualized the starship, the space warp that had flung him hundreds
of parsecs out of his course. But he had the feeling that he might as
well try to explain nuclear physics to a Hottentot.
He was conscious of a growing doubt in the minds of his captors--almost
as if they were afraid of him. All at once, he felt himself turn, start
out of the pavilion.
The Anolyns, he realized, must have finished their examination. But
it was a startling sensation to find himself going back across the
clearing like a sleep walker.
What had they learned? Had they picked his mind clean? One of the
fighting Nehogans separated himself from his fellows and followed him
back to the cages.
Without conscious volition, Jupiter stooped and crawled inside. The
door shut after him with a "click". The lean red-haired Nehogan
squatted on his heels just outside.
Jupiter wiped the sweat off his forehead, and instantly realized that
he had regained control of his muscles.
It was dusk, a hazy burnt amber twilight that made everything appear
as if he were wearing tinted glasses. The pink-skins had broken camp,
loaded the Rik'gans, formed them into a caravan. A detachment of
fighting men moved to the head of the procession.
Jupiter's cage was equipped like the others with stretcher poles. Two
squat porters approached and lifted it to their shoulders, moved into
line with the other captives. One of the Anolyns gave a blast on a
horn. The head of the caravan moved into the jungle.
Imperceptibly, darkness had fallen, but no lights were lit. The
inhabitants of this strange world seemed to see as well by night as by
day.
Jupiter could feel his bearers fall into a rough trot. The cage swayed,
jolted rhythmically--an upsetting motion. He felt progressively worse
and worse.
"Damn!" he thought miserably; "it's making me seasick!"
* * * * *
The next two weeks were a period of orientation for Jupiter. The
caravan travelled by night to avoid the heat. They were fed twice
daily--a thick gruel-like substance in which chunks of meat and
vegetables had been diced--and it never varied.
Neither did Jupiter's guard ever leave him. He was an aloof, ferocious
man with a hawk nose, a copper-red skin and pale blue eyes--ice blue
eyes. His name, Jupiter learned, was Reiloc and he regarded the
cavepeople with contempt, the porters with scorn, the pink-skins with
loathing.
As they wound down out of the mountains onto a broad plain, Jupiter had
managed to pick up a smattering of the language from Lete who occupied
the cage just ahead.
The wild girl was devoured by curiosity, but when Jupiter tried to
explain where he had come from, she grew frightened and silent.
"The Wanderer-from-Beyond!" he overheard her telling Reiloc in a low
voice. "Did you hear him? Is it true, Reiloc?"
The copper-skinned fighting man scratched his head.
"We caught him near your village. He fought with thunder and lightning.
He carried many queer tools in a pack, which no one understands.
It's very strange, too, that the night before, we saw a blazing ship
fall out of the sky. But when we went to investigate, the ship was
unharmed. Then it burst into a blinding ball of light. We didn't stay."
Lete clasped the bars, peered at Jupiter wide-eyed.
"The flaming chariot! It was you who came down from the stars!"
Jupiter nodded.
"The Wanderer!" she repeated in an awed voice. "You are the
Wanderer-from-Beyond! With the Sword of Fire!"
He frowned, started to shake his head.
"Who is this Wanderer supposed to be?"
"But you must be him," Lete almost pleaded. "At night the old men
gather around the fires and tell of his coming." Her voice had
taken on a mystic quality. "Out of the night sky he'll come in
his chariot of flames, they say, like a star fallen to Yogol. The
Wanderer-from-Beyond. He'll come with lighting in his hand--the Sword
of Fire--and drive the Anolyn back into the sea, back into the slime
from whence they arose.
"He'll free all the men of Yogol and restore their knowledge. Then
he'll ascend in a ball of fire, vanish into the beyond."
Jupiter didn't say anything. The legend was only too familiar. Terran
history was full of such folk heroes sent to free the people from their
oppressors. It was always the same fundamentally, and it always cropped
up wherever there was a conquered, downtrodden, helpless people. The
myth seemed to answer some universal human need.
Even Reiloc, he saw, appeared excited and uneasy.
"Suppose I am?" Jupiter suggested.
"Why, then--you'll destroy the Anolyn." Lete's face fell. "But you're
as helpless as we are! You're not the Wanderer after all. You've been
making fun of me."
Reiloc burst into relieved laughter, and Lete looked hurt.
"Stranger things have happened," said Jupiter dryly. He didn't intend
to throw away any possible advantage that might accrue to him if these
savages believed him to be the mythical Wanderer. He was shrewd enough
though, to perceive that he wouldn't appear very impressive in a cage,
and filed the idea away, turning the subject to the Anolyn instead.
* * * * *
This was a hunting party, he learned. They were headed back now for the
city. Jupiter wondered what they called it.
The city didn't have a name, Lete insisted. She called it the city by
the _Dra Dur_, which meant Red Sea. Yes, there were other cities, but
none of them had a name.
"Why should they?" Reiloc grunted.
What were the Anolyn? Such a strange question. Jupiter could see for
himself that they were--well, Anolyn.
Neither Reiloc nor Lete understood what he was driving at. The Anolyn
were different, they admitted, but all things were different.
It was obvious that the cave girl and the fighting man considered
themselves separate species and hated each other cordially.
The humans who associated themselves with the Anolyn, Lete informed him
with scorn in her voice, were "Edir".
"Edir" as near as Jupiter could make out, meant "voluntary slave"; a
term that brought a savage growl from Reiloc and shut him up for three
days.
The Anolyn, Lete told Jupiter, entered into a person once they caught
him, and that person was "Edir" forever. He couldn't escape. Why?
Because no one ever had.
She didn't know what the thing on the back of her neck was, and neither
did Reiloc. The Anolyn had put it there, and it was dangerous to meddle
with it.
And that was as much as Jupiter could learn.
* * * * *
On the fifteenth day they struck a small farming community, and after
that they traveled by day on a paved road between cultivated fields.
Jupiter saw many more of the green tinted Rik'gans being used like
draft animals. There were also black hairy people with tails who were
kept in pens and watched the caravan pass out of sad, lack-luster eyes.
The hairy men were Begans, Lete told him. The Anolyn bred them for
food. Occasionally they ate the Rik'gans, but the meat was coarse and
tough.
Horror sprang into Jupiter's green eyes.
"They eat them?"