West Of The Sun Part 22

It would have been possible to abandon these people; at one time, Paul remembered, he had almost favored it himself, and Ed Spearman had very nearly hinted that it might be better to join forces with the tyranny in the south.... Life seemed cheap to Pakriaa's tribe--others' life.

Devil-worshipping cannibals, capable of every cruelty, committed for thousands of years to all the superst.i.tions that ever crippled intelligence. You had to look beyond that, said Christopher Wright the theorist, the doctor, the anthropologist, the impractical daydreamer.

_Anyway I saved a Vestoian--if she lives. One balanced against how many that I destroyed...? No answer.... Unless you can see a world where the ways of destruction become obsolete under a government of laws. With the devils of human nature--the vanities, the greeds, the follies and needless resentments, the fear of self-knowledge, dread of the unfamiliar, the power l.u.s.t of the morally blind, the pa.s.sion for easy solutions, scapegoats, panaceas--how do you see such a world...?

You say, Christopher Wright, that no one is expendable. I believe you.

But--when I must choose between the life of myself or my friends and the life of the one whom the stream of history has tossed against me as my enemy----_

_When I do that, I only discover once more that I am caught in the same net with the rest of my kind and cannot escape until all of them escape--escape into a region of living where men do not set traps for each other and the blind do not lead._

_Therefore----_

"Are you awake, Nisana?" Her even breathing quickened. It seemed to Paul that there was faint color in his glimpses of sky; he remembered the silver moon that had appeared over the jungle with first-light so long ago--yesterday morning. The pa.s.sage of the red moon around Lucifer was swift: tonight it would be rising two hours before first-light and would be something broader than the gory scimitar he had seen from the knoll.

"I am awake."

"I think the red moon has come back."

"Yes." She pointed over his shoulder; he glimpsed it through a gap in the leaves. "A good moon. Begins the Moon of Little Rains. The small rains make no harm, make the ground sweet. Is better than the moon past--that we call the Moon of Beginnings." She moved restlessly against him. "This country--all forest? How long have I sleep?"

"Most of the night. We're past the open land."

She whispered, "No one has ever come here. We have think always there are bad--what word?--tev--tevils in the north."

"Tomorrow--rather, today--we turn west and then south on the other side of the hills, to the island."

"Ah, the island.... I cannot see this island."

"You'll like it, Nisana. You'll be happy there."

"Happy?" And he remembered that the old pygmy language had no word for happiness.

Wright's voice came thinly in the dark: "Abara, stop them! Sears----"

Millie halted and knelt without an order: Nisana jumped down. Paul saw the shapes of Elis and Sears suddenly bright under Wright's flashlight--the only radion light left. "Easy," Elis said. "I have you." And he lowered the man's bulk to the ground as Susie moaned and shifted her feet. Sears had said nothing, but he was smiling, his face red and vague above the disorder of the black beard.

"Paul, hold the light for me." Wright removed the stained bandage.

There was a wide area of inflammation; the lips of the arrow wound were purple. "Pakriaa! You said once you never heard of poison on the arrows----"

Pakriaa gaped, rubbing her eyes. It was Brodaa who answered: "Our people never had it on the arrows. But in the war with Lantis last year some of our soldiers had wounds like this."

"And what happened?"

"Ismar--" Pakriaa stumbled forward. "Ismar took----"

"My sister," said Brodaa, "be quiet, my sister."

"Elis," Paul whispered, "have Tejron and the other women keep watch--we must stay here a while. Where is Mijok?"

"Here." Mijok spoke behind him. "I have put my shield--over there."

His voice became a whisper for Paul: "There are only three on it now.

One little man, two women. They might live. Paul--is it happening, Paul?"

"I can't say it. I don't know...." Sears was talking, ramblingly, very far from this patch of earth. One could only listen till he was silent. Then Paul said, "I think so, Mijok. He needs to speak; we need to remember."

"What is this--Tel Aviv----"

"The place on the other planet where he was born."

"And there were the vineyards, oh my, yes--the little white and tan goats----" Sears could see it, Paul thought, that small country, a quiet corner of the Federation, where every grain of sand might remember blood spilled in the follies of hatred, where a teacher of mercy had been crucified. But now for Sears it was not a place of history: he saw gardens defying wasteland, the homes and farms, centers of music and learning where he moved, thoroughly at home, discovering the country of his own science, himself a citizen of no one place except the universe. Later he was recalling the hot white streets of Rio, the genial clutter of London, Baltimore, the majestic contradictions of New York.

"Why, yes, Doctor," he said--and he did not mean Christopher Wright, but some friend or instructor whose image might be standing in front of the shadows of Lucifer, "yes, Doctor, you could say I've traveled a great deal, in my sort of blundering fashion. And I would not exactly say that people are the same everywhere, but you'll have noticed yourself--the many common denominators are much more interesting than the seeming-great differences, aren't they, hey...? What? Sorry, Doctor, I've got no d.a.m.ned use for your abstraction Man, and why?

Because he doesn't exist, except as a device in a brain that wants to prove something--which may or may not be useful. In any case it's not my dish. There are only men and women. They get born and love and suffer and work and grow old and die; or sometimes, Doctor, they die young. Men and women I can love and touch; sometimes I can even teach them the few things I know. You may take Man to the library; feed him back into your electronic brain and don't bother me with the results so long as I'm alive to see a child discovering his own body--or for that matter a bird coming out of the egg, a minnow in a spot of sunlight, a blade of gra.s.s."

Pakriaa wailed: "What is he saying? He is not here." She squirmed past Wright, dropped to the ground, her cheek pressed on Sears' tangled hair, her free arm wandering over his face and shoulder as if she wanted to cover him like a shield. "He talked to me once. Sears, you said--you said----"

He was back among them, gazing around in sane bewilderment. "I should be riding.... Pakriaa--why Pak, I'm all right." Paul moved the torch here and there to pick out his own face, Wright's, Mijok's, the white bulk of Susie looming close by, the pouting ugly mask of Abara, who had stolen up close, his underlip wobbling in an effort to speak. "I fell asleep--took a tumble?"

"Almost," Wright muttered. "Just lucky chance I saw you tottering. You need to rest a bit."

"Oh no." Sears frowned. "Can't stop." He smiled at Pakriaa, who had lifted herself to watch him pleadingly. "What's the matter, Pakriaa?

What's the time?"

"First-light before long," Paul said. "We made good distance, Jocko.

The Vestoians won't have traveled in the dark. Plenty of time and we all need rest. Take it easy a while."

But Pakriaa could not hide her knowledge that he was dying; Sears touched her cheek with a curious wandering finger. "You liked looking in the microscope, didn't you?" She nodded. "Remember--must be sure you've got the best focus you can before you make up your mind about anything. But this is more serious, Pak--because I think you love me and you have trouble. I tell you again, you must go to the island with the others. You must live. Now I expect to go there too, but--"

Abara moved away. Paul glimpsed him striding back and forth, striking the air with little fists. When he returned, Paul made way for him.

"--for a teaching is a gift, Pakriaa, not to be thrown away--"

Abara stammered. "You have talk to me too, Sears--"

"Why, to all of you. Certainly to you, Abara.... What's the profit of any effort if the result is thrown away in a time of weakness? You discard only if what you have is proven false. We haven't much--we never have much. Some things appear to be empirically certain. Not many.... You know, I believe I've given a few people--call it a wakening of curiosity. I think that's good. Curiosity and patience.

Good as far as it goes. I'm not ashamed." He was trying to see Wright's gaunt face. "You picked a tougher subject, didn't you, Chris?

Don't worry--give you an A for something more than effort.... Now look, this hanging around here won't do." He caught Paul's hand and heaved himself upright. "I remember--map--d.a.m.n it. Need another whole day before we pa.s.s the hills. Susie--down, Susie--"

But Susie, fumbling at him with her trunk, would not kneel. Paul heard Mijok's agonized whisper: "She knows."

Sears laughed. "All right, make the old man climb." And before anyone could stop him he had tottered a few steps and burned out the last of his strength in a heaving jump toward her neck, which barely lifted him from the ground and dropped him at Paul's feet. Groping for him, Paul saw that he was dead, saw also, above the arching of the trees, a lucid cruelty of morning.

7

Twice that day Elis dropped far behind to listen and reported there was no pursuit. It was hard to judge their distance from the foothills of the western range, for now there was no open ground--only Wright's compa.s.s, the memory of the map, and treetop surveys that Mijok made from time to time. Abara rode Mister Johnson in the lead, making the beasts travel slowly since the pygmies were faint with weariness.

Susie trailed forlornly; she had not been willing to abandon the grave till the others went on without her.

The pygmies carried only half a dozen makeshift stretchers; the number of unwounded had diminished too. "They slip away," Brodaa said to Paul. He saw three men carrying children too small to walk; no old women. The fat witch rode his litter, unconcerned at the fatigue of its bearers; the other old man, smeared with white and purple paint, stalked beside him. Brodaa said, "My sister Tamisraa ended life with the white-stone dagger. While Elis and Mijok made the--what word?--grave. We left her body looking north to help the spirit journey. There are many lost who will have no prayers--bad--they may follow us. What is this--burial, Paul-Mason?"