Then he was off. There was no question of following him. That big,
awkward bird ran so fast that in a few minutes we could no longer hear
the beat of his huge claws on the rocks, even in the perfectly still,
dry air.
"How fast do you figure he's going?" I asked Rene.
"How the hell would I know?"
"Roughly."
"Roughly? Maybe fifty miles an hour."
"But that's incredible!"
"The big point-tails on Aldebaran kappa can do eighty with a native on
their backs."
"Ah!" I said. "So _that's_ it! Maybe tomorrow night...."
But we could hear the drumming of the returning dodo.
"Don't be stupid," Rene said. "He can't carry both of us and you'd be a
fool either to go alone or stay here alone."
"As a tribute to my deceased uncle, I'm going to be a fool."
I stuck my flashlight into one of my many pockets and climbed onto the
huge bird's back. The down beneath his outer feathers was as soft and
strong as heavy fur. I dug in with my hands and feet, my head braced
against the thickened part of his neck.
He started off with a lurch that brought my stomach out of hiding. I
kept my eyes squeezed closed. I couldn't have seen anything, anyway.
Not even the impossible creature that was rushing through the darkness
carrying me, for all I knew, straight to damnation.
The night rushed past my ears in a wild keening and it crossed my mind
to wonder what Mr. Picks, my supervisor, would say if he saw me now.
I had a sudden vision of Mr. Picks, even more neatly dressed than I
always was, with middle-cost neck clasp and stud discreetly shining
from a plain, square-edged bag shirt and dun suit. I pictured him
opening a refined little box and holding it two feet under the
customer's eyes with a gesture of faint, unconscious supplication. A
comfortable, warm, happy picture in which my place, one counter behind
Mr. Picks, was reassuringly assured.
Then, out of nowhere, into the picture galloped a yellow-skinned
monster astride a huge, white bird. It turned out to be me and I
tumbled off the bird, crying, "Mr. Picks! I don't know what came over
me!"
But I was answered only by a multitude of squawks, rustles and
scratchings.
The bird was home.
* * * * *
I could almost see vague forms. The darkness was beginning to give a
little. I was warm, itchy and uncomfortable under whatever it was that
Rene had sprayed on me.
Warm?
Perfume trees?
All I could smell were bird roosts.
I stood up, finding my limbs weak, trembling and painful. First, I
glanced at my watch. Five hours terran time since we left the ship. At
fifty miles per hour, we'd have gone two hundred and fifty miles.
If we'd gone due north, as the bird started out, we must be in the snow
zone. And I was _warm_!
I switched my flash around. All I could see were birds. There seemed to
be hundreds of them. I couldn't tell which one was my bearer.
"Where is the perfume?" I bawled.
All I got was squawks. Some of the birds were, in fact, standing on
one foot and tucking their heads away.
It was growing lighter. The birds were going to bed.
Feverishly, I pulled out Uncle Izzy's old volume of poetry.
Brushing from my mind a vision of Mr. Picks in a state of shock and
another picture of Uncle Isadore snickering triumphantly, I stood
on that desert land enchanted--on that home by horror haunted, and
solemnly read "The Dodo" to a colony of wingless birds.
My dodo identified himself at the proper place, but I kept on, waiting
for something to show me my inheritance.
"Then methought the air grew denser," I read.
"Perfume from an unseen censor!" a bird croaked from the back row.
"Where?" I cried, pushing my way through the birds crowding around me
in various stages of roost and curiosity.
"Then," I repeated, "the air grew denser."
"Perfume," the bird now in front of me said, "from an unseen censor."
He began to scratch at the ground assiduously under one of four dim
shapes about the level of my eyes. Then he yawned gapingly, gave up and
went to sleep.
I sat down to wait, because it was almost dawn and the last dodo had
tucked his head into his feathers.
Daylight showed me four little trees, nothing like the usual scraggy
vegetation of Alvarla. They _must_ be perfume trees, I thought. But
they were too young to have blossoms or pods.