Читать книгу West of the Sun - Edgar Pangborn - Страница 8

CHAPTER 4

Moist heat pressed down, but the air of the meadow was sweet. There were marks of trampling as well as the swath the boat had cut—trails, places where something might have crouched. Under his breath Wright asked, “Feel all right, Paul?”

Truth was more needed than a show of courage. “Not perfect, Doc. Am I flushed? You are, a little.”

“Yes. Trace of fever; may wear off. Here’s something—”

They had not come far. Two red bodies barely three feet tall sprawled near each other face down in the grass. Paul noticed oval bulges between shoulder blades modified to accommodate them, the pathos of fingers—seven-fingered hands—holding earth in a final grasp. The male wore a loincloth of black fabric and a quiver almost full of arrows; the female had a grass skirt, and her hand was tight on a stone-headed spear longer than herself. A bow of carved wood lay some distance away; one could see how the little man had crawled in his agony after the bow was lost. Wright turned them over gently—bald skulls, no trace of body hair on skin of a rich copper color exciting to a painter’s vision, green eyes with no visible whites in human faces heavily tattooed, wide-open eyes, accusing no one. The bodies were in rigor, a shaft in the man’s neck, the woman pierced by an arrow in the side. Blood colored the grass, dry but eloquent.

“War too,” said Wright, and pulled out the arrows, showing Paul the stone heads, the intricate carving of the wood, thin-whittled wooden vanes taking the place of feathers. “Stone Age war.…”

The male pygmy was the smaller of the two, and softer, his shape not feminine but rounded and smooth. Both seemed mature, so far as age could be guessed at all. The woman was rugged, with a coarser skin and the scar tissue of old wounds; her two pairs of breasts were scarcely more prominent than the ridged muscles of her midget chest.

Wright mulled it over, kneading his wrinkled throat. “Physical refinements of evolution as far along as our own. Straight thigh and neck, perfect upright posture; there was no slouch or belly sag when they were on their feet. Human jaw, big brain case. That furry giant I saw in the woods had complete upright posture too. Oh, it’s natural, Paul. You stick fins on an ocean vertebrate, turn him into a four-legged land animal, give him a few hundred million years. Almost bound to free his front limbs if they’ve stayed unspecialized.” In the gaunt face, sadness and pity struggled with a bitter sort of mirth. “The brain gets large, boy, and away you go, to—ach—to the Federation versus the Asian Empire—Lincoln, Rembrandt, the state papers of Abraham Brown. And to you and Dorothy and the baby.” Wright stood erect, brushing bony knees, calm again. “I’m almost pleased to find it this primitive. I don’t think it can have gone further anywhere on the planet, or we’d have seen cities, farms, roads, in the photographs. Unless—”

“Unless what, Doctor?”

“Oh—unless there might be forms with no Earth parallel. In the forests perhaps—even underground. Thought of that? But that’s speculations, and our little soldiers here are fact. They have a civilization—arrows say so, tattooing, garments. Rigid, tradition-bound—or maybe not, depending on how much language they’ve developed to tie ’emselves in knots with.”

“Bow and arrow—why, suh, almost as advanced as not being afraid to end a sentence with a preposition.”

“Hell with you. Twenty thousand years ago, or whenever it was we reached our present physique, if there’d been anything external to teach men how to behave like grown-ups—. Well, we had to sweat it out—tribal wars, bigger wars, venerated fears, errors, and stupidities. But maybe here—”

“Are we big enough?”

Wright shut his eyes. His thin cheeks were too bright; there was a tremor in the rifle tip. “Wish I knew, Paul. We have to try.”

Ed Spearman yelled, “Look out!” A rifle banged, and a pistol.

A brown darkness had come swooping from the lake. Others followed—mud-brown, squealing. They had banked at the noise of the shots to circle overhead. Paul fired; a near one tumbled, screeching, thrashing a narrow wolfish head on a long neck, black teeth snapping in the death throes—but even now it was trying to hobble forward and get at them. The others wheeled lower until Wright’s rifle spoke, and Spearman’s; there was the dry slap of Dorothy’s automatic pistol. “Back to the trees!” The wounded thing on the ground set up a bubbling howl.

More were coming, with weaving of pointed red-eyed heads on mobile necks. Paul ran, Wright loping beside him, hearing the crash of their friends’ weapons. Something slammed Paul’s shoulder, flopped against his leg, tripping him. He tumbled over a shape furry and violent that smelled of fish and carrion. He fought clear of it, sobbing in animal wrath, and reached the shelter of the trees and Dorothy’s embrace. Sweat blinded him. Wright was clutching him too, getting his jacket off.

“Flesh wound. The hind foot got you—”

“I saw it.” Ann Bryan choked. “Saw it happen. Filthy claws—”

Wright had a bottle of antiseptic. “Son, you ain’t going to like this. Hang on to the lady.” But the pain was a welcome flare. Paul’s eyes cleared as Wright made him a bandage of gauze, with Dorothy’s help. He could look from the shelter of overhanging branches at a confusion of wings. The creatures had not followed as far as the lifeboat; perhaps its shining mass disturbed them.

Spearman groaned: “You would go out.”

Wright snapped at him. “Camp in the open—some disadvantages—”

“Granted. But you sure learned it the hard way.” “Eating”—Ann pointed, nauseated—”their own wounded—”

Wright stepped between her and the loud orgy in the meadow. “Wing spread, fifteen feet. Well—sky’s bad, woods maybe. What do you suggest?”

“Clear underbrush,” Spearman said, “so we can see into the woods. Pile it just beyond this overhang of branches for a barrier, leave a space so we can reach the lifeboat. We can get to the lake for water without going much in the open.”

“Good,” said Wright. A peace offering. Spearman smiled neutrally.

“If the water’s safe,” said Sears Oliphant.

Wright grinned at the fat man. “Pal, it better be.”

“Miracles?” Sears’ shoulders shot up amiably. “We can hope it is, with boiling. Gotta have it. Canteens won’t last the day, in this heat.”

Paul helped Ed unpack tools from the lifeboat. “One sickle,” Spearman noted. “No scythe. Garden gadgets. Pruning shears. One ax, one damned hatchet. No scythe, no scythe—. There were two or three on the ship.”

“Maybe the lake’s not so deep.”

“Maybe we’ll play hell trying to find out too. Those things weren’t much scared by the shooting.…”

Hot, tedious work created a circle of clear shaded ground which must be called home. A fire was boiling lake water in the few aluminum vessels. It had a fishy, mud-bottom taste and could not be cooled, but it eased thirst. Paul had glimpsed Ann in the lifeboat, opening her violin case, closing it, sick-faced. He had marveled again at the mystery of a Federation governing two-thirds of a world, which had genially allowed a fourteen-year-old musician to carry her violin on man’s greatest venture—with enough strings to last two or three years and no means of restringing the bow. Later Ann threw herself into the labor of clearing brush but tired quickly from her own violence. Sears’ microscope occupied a camp table; Paul and Dorothy joined him in a pause for rest. “Got anything for the local news-paper?”

“Unboiled lake water-assorted wrigglers.” Sears mopped his cheeks. “’Twas never meant my name should be Linnaeus. Have a look.” The world on the slide seemed not unlike what Sears had once shown him in water from the hydroponics room of Argo: protoplasmic abundance no mind could grasp. “So far, nothing basically different from what you’d find in lake water on Earth—except for the trifle that every species is unknown, hey? I suppose that’s why they heaved a taxonomist into space, to see what the poor cluck would do, hey? Now, those red dots are something like algae. Notice a big ciliated schlemihl blundering around? He could almost be old man paramecium, oh my, yes. Gi’me your sickle, muscle man.”

“Hot work, Jocko. Take it slow and easy.”

“Believe me, Mistuh Mason, I will. What—”

In undergrowth beyond the clearing there was deep-throated fury, a crashing of branches. A gray and white man shape staggered out of concealment, wrenching at what looked like swollen black rope. But the rope had a head, gripping the giant’s forearm; a black loop circled the giant’s loins and his free arm, tearing and pounding, could not loosen it. A saurian hind leg groped, hooking for purchase into gray fur.

Paul’s hunting knife was out; there was time only for recognition. The gray and white being was everything human caught in a coil. Paul forced himself through a barrier of fear, hearing Wright yell, “Don’t shoot, Ed! Put that away.” There was no shot. Paul knew he was between Spearman and the confusion of combat; someone was blundering behind him. A black reptilian tail stretched into bushes, grasping something for anchorage. Paul slashed at that. The mass of heaving life rolled on the ground as the giant lost his footing, serpent teeth still buried in his forearm. Green eyes were pleading in a universal language.

Wright was clutching a black neck, with no strength to move it, and Paul stabbed at scaled hide behind a triangular head, but the skin was like metal. The forelimbs were degenerate vestiges, the hind legs cruelly functional. At last the steel penetrated; Paul twisted it, probing for a brain. The giant had ceased struggling; the furred face was close. Paul could feel the difficult breath, sense a rigid waiting.… The teeth let go. The giant leaped free, returning at once with a stone the size of Paul’s chest, to fling it down on the slow-dying body, repeating the action till his enemy was a smear of black and red.

Now in returning quiet a furred man eight feet tall watched them openly. Wright said, “Ed, put away that gun. This man is a friend.”

“Man!” Spearman holstered his automatic, ready for a draw. “Your daydreams will kill us all yet.”

“Smile, all of you—maybe his mouth does the same thing.” Wright stepped to the trembling monster, hands open. Ann was sobbing in reaction, smothering the sound. Wright pointed at himself. “Man.” He touched the gray fur. “Man.…”

The giant drew back, not with violence. Paul felt Dorothy’s small fingers shivering on his arm. The giant sucked his wound and spat, turning his head away from Wright to do it. “Man—man.…” Wright’s hand, small and pale as an oyster shell, spread beside the huge palm, six fingers, long four-jointed thumb. “Paul—your first-aid kit. I want just the gauze.”

Spearman said, “Are you crazy?”

“It’s a chance,” Sears Oliphant said in a level, careful voice. “Doc knows what he’s doing. Ed, you should know you can’t stop him.”

Wright was pointing to Paul’s bandaged shoulder and to the giant’s wound. The high furred forehead puckered in obvious effort. Dorothy was choking on a word or two: “Doc—must you—”

“He knows we’re friends. He’s been watching a long time. He saw Paul get hurt and then bandaged.” The giant’s trembling was only a spasmodic shuddering. “Man—man.…” Wright snipped off gauze. “And he knows that thing is a weapon, Ed. Will you put it away?”

“He could break you in two. You know that, don’t you?”

“But he won’t. Give protoplasm a chance.” Now Wright was winding gauze lightly, firmly, hiding the already clotting blood, and the giant made no move of rejection. “Man—man.”

“Man.” The giant murmured it cautiously, prolonging the vowel; he touched his chest. “Essa kana.” A finger ran exploringly over the gauze.

“Essa kana—man,” said Wright, and swayed on his feet.

The giant pointed at the bloody mess on the ground and rumbled: “Kawan.” He shuddered, and his arm swept in a loose gesture that appeared to indicate the curving quarter mile where lake and jungle met each other in a black-water marsh. Then he was staring out, muttering, at the wings in the meadow, and presently he touched Paul’s bandage with fantastic lightness. “Omasha,” he said, pointing at the flying beasts. He indicated the rifle wobbling in Sears’ arm and held up two fingers. “Omasha.”

“Yes, we killed two omasha. Sears-man. Paul-man. Wright-man.”

The giant rumpled his chest fur. “Mijok.”

“Mijok-man.… Mijok, why didn’t I have you in Anthropology IA fifteen years ago? We’d’ve cleaned up the joint.” Mijok knew laughter; his booming in response to Wright’s tone and smile could mean nothing else. But Wright staggered and was breathing hard. Dorothy whispered, “Paul—”

It could not be pushed aside any more—the pain separate from the smart of his shoulder, tightness in the eyeballs, chill, nausea. “The air—”

Wright’s knees buckled. Sears had dropped the rifle and was helping him to the lifeboat, Paul watching the action in a daze of stupidity. Wright’s eyes had gone empty.… Paul was uncertain how he himself came to be sitting on the ground. Dorothy’s face was somewhere; he touched it. Her brown cheek was fire-hot, and she was trying to speak. “Paul—take care of you—always—”

The face of Mijok was there too—red vapor turning black.