West Of The Sun Part 24

"Yes.... Would you say it was a place where Ann might--oh, how shall I say it?--might attain tranquillity? Not cry too much for the moon?"

"If there is any such place in the Galaxy."

"Time," Elis said. "Little Black-Hair needs time. She is like gra.s.s I have seen growing in too much shade. She is not like our Mashana Dorothy who will make sunshine if the other sun is clouded."

"Listen!" Brodaa's voice. "Listen...."

Paul heard nothing, at first. Up ahead Abara sputtered: "Mister Johnson--hoo-hee--be quiet. Is nothing--be quiet--"

Nisana came broad awake in Paul's arms. Wright's mount halted, as did Susie, but Susie was trembling, raising and swinging her head in a way to make balance difficult; Paul saw the white writhing of her trunk lifted to explore for a scent.... He heard it then: a long rustling, like a repeated tearing of paper behind a closed door; nothing else.... A wet howl from Mister Johnson sent a spasm through Susie's ma.s.s; her muscles bunched; Abara's voice wailed back: "Mister Joh--I cannot hold him--_kaksmas_!"

Transition from realization to stampede was a flash like the pain of a blow. Paul heard Mijok: "My shield--it will hold more." Elis cried something to Brodaa. Then Susie had plunged ahead, uncontrollable; Paul could only bend low above the clinging of Nisana, hold on with hands and knees, hope that no trailing vine or branch would sweep them off into death. Mister Johnson could make no careful choice of a trail now--he would be parting the jungle like a six-ton bullet. "Don't be afraid, Nisana--we can outrun them--"

"My people--"

"Elis and Mijok can outrun them too. They'll carry all they can." In spite of the agony of mere hanging on, mere straining to stay alive, he had to think: _They were loyal and we got them into this...._ Branches slashed across his back, stinging and sc.r.a.ping. Once Susie stumbled and recovered as the group went splattering across some invisible mud, and Paul wondered if Mister Johnson in his terror would run them into quicksand or marsh.

That ended; there was more thick jungle whipping his back for--five minutes?--an hour...? This too ended.

Crazed or purposeful, the beasts charged out into open land through a soft roaring of torn gra.s.s. Paul could twist his head to glance upward at a field of stars. He could not win a backward look for Elis and Mijok: his neck and arm muscles were stiffened in his grasp of Susie's ears, and he dared not risk disturbing Nisana's clutch of him. But to left and right he could make out other shapes under starlight and hear a frantic thudding of hoofs--fleeing asonis, other innocent woodland cattle with a hunger to live. Once he glimpsed a long-bodied thing pa.s.s off to the left in wild leaps lifting it above the gra.s.s tops: uskaran, he thought, the huge tiger cat, no enemy but a brother in panic.

The open ground ended at water; here at last the olifants slowed to a halt, unlike the lesser desperate brutes, for Mister Johnson was still wise, considering the stream, aware of his leadership. Paul could shout to the others now, and they all answered. But his backward staring found only the stars, the white ma.s.s of Mister Smith, the disturbed darkness that must be meadow. "Elis! Mijok!"

No answer could have reached him above the bleating and thunder of terrorized harmless things crossing the field and hurtling blindly into the river. Mister Johnson was wading in deliberately. There was splashing at first, then silence, as cool water came up around Paul's knees and Susie's motion changed to a smooth throbbing and heaving; he saw small foam where the curve of her lifted trunk cut the water. He whispered to Nisana, "We're safe, dear. Big river. Kaksmas won't cross it...." Mister Johnson was leading them in an upstream slant, bearing well to the right while the bobbing frantic heads of other creatures let the moderate current press them away to the left. This way--whether by Mister Johnson's wisdom or Abara's guidance--they might be able to come ash.o.r.e clear of the dangerous pa.s.sage of the stampede.

"My people cannot go through the water. We never--"

"Elis and Mijok can swim. They'll get them across somehow. Maybe the shield will float, Nisana."

The madness behind them dwindled into the faraway. In growing quiet, Wright's voice came back, not loudly: "I am a murderer."

Paul wondered what insight made him call out words not his own: "'What's the profit of any effort if the result is thrown away in a time of weakness?'"

The even motion became a clumsiness of wading in mud. Then there was solid ground. Paul said, "Halt them here if you can, Abara." Mister Johnson must have shared the sense of safety; they all calmed, heads drooping, shaken breathing slowing to sighs. "Down, Susie...." All but Abara descended. This was still open gra.s.sland, but there was a black velvet curtain of jungle not far off. "Doc--still got your flashlight?"

"Eh? No--lost somewhere." The old man spoke vacantly; he stumbled to the edge of the water, sat with his head on his knees. "Mijok-Mijok...."

Tejron still had her Vestoian, but now the pygmy woman was panting, fully conscious in Tejron's arms and witless with fear. Tejron said, "She's trying to break away. Can't someone talk to her?"

"Pakriaa!" Paul searched for the princess. "Here--please."

Nisana whispered, "I will talk to the Vestoian--yes?"

"Not yet. If Pakriaa--"

Pakriaa said thickly, "I am here. What to say? She is nothing."

"She is nothing to you, Pakriaa? Then Sears chose a poor student.

Brodaa would have spoken to her. I ask you to tell her the war is over and she is among friends."

"Friends? She is Vestoian." Pakriaa approached Wright, who did not look up. "Tocwright--I must speak to the Vestoian kaksma? I owe you my life--will obey you."

He groaned: "I do not want you to obey me. If there is nothing inside to tell you what you should do, then I have nothing to say to you."

Pakriaa flung up her arm across her eyes as if struck. Tejron muttered, "I can't restrain her much longer without hurting her." It was Nisana who gave the Vestoian the message in the pygmy tongue, a ripple of sound that must have conveyed some rea.s.surance, for the struggling ceased.

"Look!" Paul dug his fingers in Wright's shoulder. "Over there--"

The dark spot under starlight was surely the floating shield; behind it, another purposeful splashing, rise and fall of a driving arm.

"Mijok!" Wright was on his feet. "This way! A little upstream--"

Both giants were bleeding from small double stab wounds of the kaksma teeth. There were four pygmies on Mijok's shield. Elis had carried Brodaa and another in his arms and one on his back; they had clung to his fur as he swam the river. Mijok plucked a sodden thing from his thigh; its jaws had clenched in flesh when he smashed its body. He flipped the ratty thing into the water and remarked like a Charin, "d.a.m.ned if I could ever care for 'em."

"The others--"

"We tried to help them into the trees," said Elis. "Could be some safety in that if the swarm pa.s.ses by. But most of them ran blindly, so--beyond that, Doc, don't ever ask us. We must forget some things.

We've all done what we could, so--let's rest a while and go on."

"Oh, we go on," Wright said. "Chaos, or maybe a little bit of light from time to time. What--sixteen of us now...? Which way was the swarm going?"

"North. Our flight was west. I think this place is safe."

Abara called down: "Mister Johnson says it is safe."

Paul said, "No more travel tonight. Wait here for daylight. This is not the river we wanted, but we know it reaches the sea somehow. Let's think about that in the morning. And--if you will, Doc--I'd like to make that my last order. Let Elis be our commander till we reach the island."

"I!" Elis was shocked. "But Paul.... I am a big baby, I wonder and wonder and never find the answer to anything."

Wright laughed; it sounded like laughter. At any rate when his voice found words it was warm, relieved, more like his own than it had been at any time since the drums sounded on Lake Argo. "That doesn't matter, Elis. Paul has done all anyone could, done it well, and leadership's a wearing thing. But you can carry it."

Paul wished he could see the black face in the dark; he might learn from it, he thought, so far as a Charin was capable of learning. Elis said dazedly, "If you all wish it--"

"I wish it," said Abro Brodaa.

"Yes," Mijok said. "Let's not trouble to vote. We know you, Elis."

"I'll do my best...."

Most of the pygmies collapsed in sleep. The bites the giants had received were not numerous enough to be a danger, but both were in some pain, and wakeful; Abara also said he would prefer to watch out the night and not sleep. Paul stretched on the damp gra.s.s, aware of Nisana, sitting near him. He tried to make a mental refuge of Dorothy and the island; for a time it was possible, but twice, as he thought he was drifting into true healing sleep, the present pulled at him and the thought was not of Dorothy, but of Pakriaa, throwing up her arm across her eyes as if Wright's words had been a deeper wound than any she had received in these days of calamity and defeat.

He woke while it was still night. The red moon had risen, changing the river to deep purple; the stampede was all ended, and stillness was everywhere, underlying the low voices of Wright and Elis. He saw the small silhouette of Nisana beside him; he could make out none of the others, but he heard the soft breathing of the olifants, and at least some of them must have gone to the jungle and returned, for there was a steady munching of coa.r.s.e leaves. He thought: _Sears' pets--one of his ten thousand gifts we can never live long enough to a.s.sess. His laughter was another...._

Wright was talking placidly: "We suppose it must have been a similar story on this planet, Elis. The major patterns are the same. The small and simple forms must have grown to greater complexity through their millions of years, undoubtedly in the seas, the good saline medium for our kind. Then other millions of years, while the first creatures to try the land were clumsy amphibians, still needing the sea but developing ways to carry it with them, venture a little further.

There's no hurry in history."

"And before the beginning of life?"