Charlie nodded his head.
So did the native--he bobbed Charlie's head with a rock.
"Close in on 'em fast but gentle," I radioed the guards.
The native dragged Baxter's limp body through a nearby thicket and into
a small clearing. Abruptly I saw they were up against the base of the
nearest mountain. A bubbling, dancing stream twisted through brown and
green rock and disappeared into a ridge of gray slate. It reappeared
below the hill, steaming, obviously passing through an underground hot
springs.
The alien had Charlie where he wanted him before we could move. He
lashed him securely with stringy vine and, with him thrown over his
shoulder, ran up the slate, which rumbled down ominously behind them.
He tossed Charlie over a wide hole at the top of the ridge. Slate
rained down into the hole. If the Prone hadn't snapped awake and made
his body rigid, he would have tumbled into the hole at that moment.
"So you wake, Familyman," the native said. "How could you admit to
being anything so immoral when you were alone? You surely did not think
you could eat me without help from the others of your evil brothers!"
Charlie licked his lips and moved his eyes; that was about all he
dared move. "You--don't approve of families?"
The native drew himself up to his full elongated height in the screen.
"Like all good People, I was properly abandoned at birth and I proudly
say I have never associated with others except for Mating and Trading."
I noticed abstractly that he finished moving his lips long before the
translation was finished. He was using a very primitive language. I
screwed the button nervously in my ear for Charterson and Von Elderman
to report.
* * * * *
The alien looked at the rigid form of Baxter over the pit. "I suppose
I should have some pity for you. You began your filthy practice too
young to know better. But imagine! Combining with others of your kind
to survive--at the expense of decent individuals like myself. Robbing
us, eating us. The Finger of Fire will come soon and will destroy you.
I have heard Familymen often try to aid one another. Perhaps others of
your kind will die with you!"
He was gone long before the translation was finished, leaving Charlie
Baxter arched across a pit that widened as the alien's descent
disturbed more of the soft shale.
The native was out of sight. I realized his tribe would soon be
extinct. The racial mind for the whole species seemed obsessed with
survival by natural selection, but his tribe had gone off on the
tangent of individualism, which was fine to some extent, but the
Service had learned that a race couldn't survive without _some_ degree
of cooperation and this one's level of mating and trading did not seem
sufficient.
"Captain Jackson!" Von Elderman's voice said in my ear. "We can't reach
him! If we start up that hill, the soft shale is bound to shift and
drop him right into that hole."
"I'll send Bronoski with a personal flyer immediately to make an air
pickup," I said numbly.
It wasn't the guards' fault. Charlie hadn't seemed to be in any
immediate danger and we don't kill intelligent life-forms without
damned good reason--the kind of reason that stands up in court. But
he was now stretched over what I was fairly certain was an active
geyser--"The Finger of Fire," the native had called it, and had assured
Charlie that it would kill him.
I dispatched Bronoski, but that was all I could do. I did not know when
the geyser would spout. Maybe Bronoski would make it. Maybe he wouldn't.
I magnified the view from the useless little Bird and studied
Charlie's face in the screen. If he lay there doing nothing, waiting
for a miracle to happen, he was--I shuddered--cooked. He had to make an
active decision.
If he didn't, he was almost sure to die.
But maybe that was what he wanted. Maybe accident prones really want to
destroy themselves.
It was his bid.
Slate dropped off the rim of the hole into the pit and Charlie
stiffened. More passive acceptance. But maybe I wasn't being fair.
There wasn't much Charlie could do. There wasn't much else for him to
do except give up.
But I noticed his eyes moving. They went up to the bubbling ribbon of
water and down to the steaming stream below the ridge where it emerged.
Charlie smiled. He had made a decision.
He folded his knees and dropped into the hole.
He had naturally made the wrong decision. Bronoski in the flying
platform swung into position above the pit.
* * * * *
Charlie must have figured that he would be washed on through the hot
springs and out into the shallow water below. He would be, but he would
be boiled alive.
Only there are mistakes and mistakes, and sometimes mistakes aren't
mistakes at all.
The geyser exploded, higher, faster and harder than it ever had before.
And Charlie, half-drowned and half-or-more scalded, popped up and
landed in the brush twenty feet away.
Bronoski fought for control of his flyer and finally made a fast pickup.
Doc Selby did a pretty good job with the First Aid Kit. Charlie's neck
and collarbone were broken and over fifty per cent of his skin had to
be replaced. Still, it was lucky Charlie had that concentrated soap in
his pack. Ever been to Earth National Park and seen Old Faithful? You
know what happened--they use soap to get the geyser spouting when it's
off schedule.
We haven't told Charlie that it was anything but an accident that
Bronoski was so handy. And we let him tell us about the changed customs
of the natives. He resumed his regular position of Accident Prone when
he saw realistically that he would inevitably be doing the same work
and that he might as well get paid for it.
I often wonder if it was a genuine mistake the way he dropped into the
geyser. Certainly he would have died if it hadn't been for the soap
concentrates. If he took that into consideration, though, it wasn't a
mistake at all, but a wise choice.
A few days ago, when he was leaving my office--that is, the bridge--I
saw Charlie slip and start to fall. He didn't give up and go limp. He
gave his old dance of struggling to regain his balance. _Only this time
he made it!_