West Of The Sun Part 9

"You kind of stood out," she said, "because Mijok was much better on pitch, my good man. It did sound hollow without something to fill in.

He was on A-flat below the ba.s.s clef and no fooling.... _Why_ haven't we seen other giants?"

"We got something on that this morning. I guess it was while you were in swimming. Each giant male has an inviolate hunting territory, and they don't trespa.s.s. Definite breeding season: the month before the rains. That was five or maybe six red-moon changes ago. Mijok wasn't too clear on the count--doesn't like mathematics much better than I do. The women go where they please, in small groups, with the children who still need care, but I gather the males are expected to stay in their own private grounds until the Red-Moon-before-the-Rains."

Spearman wondered: "Will the pygmies have a season too?"

"Doubt it. Probably like us--except that women are the bosses. The clothes suggest a continuing s.e.x consciousness."

The pygmy leaders halted. A murmuring explained itself as the music of a stream. Paul consulted his memory of the map made from orbit photographs and of his one solo exploration flight in the lifeboat.

There could be few such flights: the charlesite, even with the surplus salvaged from the wrecked boat, must be h.o.a.rded. Ann and Ed had flown over the lake on the day after their recovery, searching for any sign of _Argo_. Returning, Ed's face had been a leather mask of grief, and neither had wanted to talk of it. Later they explained: the lake was a profundity of secret blue; a shelf of sand or possibly white stone ran out some yards offsh.o.r.e, under water marvelously clear, and ended abruptly. Beyond it, where _Argo_ must have fallen, no bottom could even be guessed at; the lifeboat's camera confirmed the presence of an abyss that would have thwarted the most complex twenty-first-century machinery.

This stream, Paul knew, came from the western hills, flowing east and slightly north until it entered the lake northeast of the clearing called home. Another creek joined it east of the spot where they now stood, and Pakriaa's village--if the parallel lines did represent its location--was not far upstream from that junction.

Worn boulders rose above noisy water. The stream was twenty yards wide, sluggish even here in the shallows. A steppingstone crossing.

Nearly all the rivers on the map pa.s.sed through jungle for most of their length; numberless smaller streams would be hidden from the sky.

There was gra.s.sland for fifteen to twenty miles on the eastern side of every range of hills. The prevailing winds were from the west; perhaps a dryness in the lee of the hills favored the gra.s.s. The broadest stretch of such open land lay east of a rugged coastal range seventy miles to the southwest; some of the mountains in that seacoast formation were mighty enough to hold a blur of snow at their summits.

The base of the coastal range was narrow--hardly more than twenty miles. From this the peaks shot up with incredible sheerness to great heights of bare rock that glittered in morning sun like black and red gla.s.s. This grandeur, like nothing known on Earth, was clearly visible from the camp above the near hills, especially at midday, when the mists were gone.

And ten miles offsh.o.r.e from that dizzy range, Paul remembered a mountainous island. On his solo exploration two days ago, with the lifeboat's panoramic camera and a head full of puzzled dreams, he had soared above it, noting a peninsular strip of red sand at its southern end, sheltered mountain valleys--one framing a jewel of lake. In the north was a white beach where landing should be easy, and this was protected by a low headland of red cliffs running out to the very tip of the island. Surely a place to carry in the mind, it seemed to invite human living as did no other near region in this continent of Lucifer. Wright thought so: he listened to Paul's description and named the island Adelphi....

North of the camp, the range of low western hills dwindled to rolling land and was lost in a tremendous expanse of unbroken jungle, which ended only at the sh.o.r.e of one of the great lakes four hundred miles away--an inland sea fourteen hundred miles long. Sixty-odd miles to the south there was that large cl.u.s.ter of parallel lines in jungle, and beyond it the forest gave way to more open ground, prairie, red desert, and bare mountains.

Abro Pakriaa dipped her spear in the water; she lifted a handful, letting it trickle away while she spoke a rippling invocation; then she was lithely crossing on the stones after the bowmen. The bottom was pale sand with varicolored pebbles.

Beyond the stream, Pakriaa followed a path a short way and pressed into undergrowth. Spearman grumbled, "Good path for once, and we have to--"

"Path's probably b.o.o.by-trapped. She expects us to know that."

"h.e.l.l...." It was difficult pa.s.sage, stooping on a trail meant for little folk; it ended at a ditch six feet wide and five deep. The ditch made a right angle, both lines stretching away straightly as far as the eye could go; the inner side of the ditch was heaped with dry sticks and bundles of gra.s.s. Pakriaa trilled orders to an old black-skirted woman with a whip, in charge of a gang of four women and three men, all totally naked. They were struggling to shove a movable bridge into place across the ditch--two logs bearing a mat of vines and bark. It was grunting work for them, and when the end of the bridge was in reach, Pakriaa's escort made no motion to help. Spearman started to; Paul interfered. "We'd lose face. Those are slaves. Women tied together at the ankles--one of the men a eunuch. Look at the brands on their cheeks. Nan, you're the dominant s.e.x--try to look more like the president of a women's club."

Her finely modeled face had dignity enough, he thought, if she could keep the worry out of it.... The old woman in the black skirt bowed arrogantly to Pakriaa; the slaves cringed, with the hating stare of the trapped. All were scarred and young except for the eunuch, who was wrinkled and flabby. One female had a recent chest wound; the effort at the bridge had made it bleed, but she ignored it. Paul saw Spearman's face settle into lines of poker blankness and thought: _Good_. _And if, to patience and courage, he could add (I hear you, Doc) charity and self-knowledge--Oh, be quiet, critic, be quiet._...

Trees had been felled--some time ago, for the stumps were rotted--and the s.p.a.cing was such that the tops of the trees left standing provided a gap twenty feet wide, the entire length of the village. There would be two other such gaps, visible from the sky as parallel lines, admitting full midday sunlight but shutting out the omasha.

"Nan--let's try to learn something about that big settlement in the south--the other parallel lines."

It was surprisingly easy to convey the question to Pakriaa with the help of signs, but her response when she understood it was a shrill snarl and shaking of her spear, a repet.i.tion of a name, "Vestoia,"

which seemed to be the place, and of another name, "Lantis," a name that caught in her throat and made her spit. Paul said, "We make faces at the south too, and do it fast." It seemed to appease the princess: she even smiled.

The area bordering the ditch had been left wild, a barrier of vines, brush, untended trees. Inside were orderly rows of plants, some broad-leaved, resembling beets, some bushy; another type was rangy with cosmos-shaped blooms of startling emerald green. Near the row of trees was a path which Pakriaa followed; under the trees stood gra.s.s-thatched structures. Paul counted thirty, well separated, before the princess left the path, and no sound came from them. The trees were mostly of the same species, thin-trunked towers with dark serrated leaves, blazing with scarlet blossoms like the one Pakriaa wore. They were the source of an odor like frangipani which filled the village, heady and sweet but clean. It was no primitive agriculture in this part-sunny corridor: rich darkness of earth was drawn up about the plants; there was not a weed in sight. And there was no trace of the strangling purple vines.

Pakriaa's male attendants had slipped away; her spearwomen accompanied her through an opening into the next corridor, where her people were waiting for her, the soldier women in three formal ranks. There were about fifty in each rank, and here again were dyed skirts of every color but the regal blue that was Abro Pakriaa's. Small faces maintained the flat indifference of the unliving copper they resembled.

Pakriaa's intricate oratory flowed over them. More than two thirds of the stiff soldiers were gashed with recent wounds, ranging from scratches to lost hands or b.r.e.a.s.t.s or eyes. Some had deep body wounds so ugly it was amazing that they could stand upright, but there seemed to be no evidence of infection and there was no wavering in the lines while Pakriaa declaimed. Her right hand soared with spread fingers. The lifeboat? The name Torothee occurred; when it was repeated the women swayed with unchanging faces, murmuring it in unison like a breath of wind. Pakriaa faced her guests. Tears were not unknown to her; laughter might be. She clenched and relaxed her hands, the fourteen fingers rising and falling until Paul lost count of the motions--more than twenty. She pointed to the soldiers, repeating the display more slowly and only ten times; then one hand rose alone with the thumb curled under. Paul muttered, "I think she's saying only 146 are left after the war, from--maybe three hundred."

Pakriaa laid her spear at Ann's feet. Paul advised: "Give her your knife, same way." Pakriaa took it and placed it across the spear and stood back, motioning to Ann to do the same. When the three had withdrawn, Pakriaa still made impatient gestures. Paul whispered, "Ed, you and I are trifling males. We stand further back."

"We do like h.e.l.l," said Spearman in his throat.

"We do, just the same. It's nothing but ceremony. Safety's off on my .38. We can handle anything. Stand back."

Ed Spearman stood back, muttering. At a shrill summons from Pakriaa, a shuffling procession swung out from the tree shadows. These were all men, decrepit, ancient, dirty; some limped and two had empty eye sockets and one, from a pathological fatness, could barely waddle.

They were striped and splotched with paint in elaborate designs, mostly of white and yellow, and their skins, either with dirt or age, had darkened to dull mahogany. They formed a hobbling circle around the crossed knife and spear; each grotesque, as he pa.s.sed the weapons, spat on them and scattered on them a handful of earth until the place became a low mound. As they did this, they muttered and howled and squeaked, performing precise evolutions with twiddling fingers. They carried white thigh-bones like clubs, and sh.e.l.l ornaments jangled on their raddled throats and ankles. It was, on the surface, a simple ceremony of peace and friendship, but the casual contempt of these male witches cast a foulness over it. Their sidelong glances at the strangers were poisonous with furtive malignancy. "Medicine men,"

said Paul under his breath. "Distant equivalent of the wise women in some patriarchal groups. Ed, we stay on the good side of those loopy scarecrows, or it's just too bad." And with a certain hunger he studied the mask of the man who had never offered the relaxation of friendship, wondering how far it was physically possible for Spearman to accept a world in which engineering science was the dream and crude survival the reality.

The ceremony ended in a dribble of anticlimax. The hideous old men merely shambled away from the mound toward the shadows after a ceremonial whoop that caused the soldiers to relax. But they did not quite go. They huddled and squatted under the trees. They stared. They spat and scratched and consulted together. Some of the green eyes were close-lidded, veiled; others were wide, making no effort to conceal a hatred compounded of jealousy and fear. The fat monster nursed his obscene belly between scrawny knees and whispered a stream of information into the close ear of a witch with empty eye sockets, and the whispering dark lips wore a destroying smile.

8

Abro Pakriaa motioned her guests to be seated before a large building; the fibers of this structure were dyed the blue of her skirt. The soldiers stalked about in a show of nonchalance. Young men and naked children had come timidly from the houses. The youngest children were disproportionately tiny, large-headed but no bigger than house cats.

Perhaps childbirth for this race was no more than a pa.s.sing inconvenience. There were many pairs of obviously identical twins. The children stayed near the protective men, all but the older girls, who ventured somewhat closer.

It was a village without laughter. No scampering, no horseplay, no evidence of any tenderness except between the men and the smallest children. Curiosity burned in all of them, but its overt expression was limited to the dead-pan stare.

Pakriaa entered her blue building alone, greeted by a flutter of voices from within, and she was gone several minutes. When Pakriaa had seated her guests, most of the ancient painted males had shuffled across the clearing--even the fat horror whose walking must have been pain--to settle in the shadows on the other side and continue their baleful watching. Paul noticed that even the spear-carrying women skipped clear to give them elbow-room and never looked directly at them. The fat witch found a place to squat that gave him a clear view of all three visitors; as he gazed he sucked toothlessly at the k.n.o.b of his thighbone club.

The houses were lightly framed of wood, with walls of interwoven fiber two thirds of the way to the eaves, joints bound and roofs thatched with the same material, a design similar to what Paul remembered from a year spent in the Republic of Oceania. The modern citizens of that many-islanded republic, Paul recollected, still preferred the ancestral savage building pattern to stone or plastic; it suited the climate and the friendly, unpretentious way of life. But none of the buildings here was raised on supports: snakes and vicious insects were evidently no problem. There were no domestic animals, apparently no parasites nor self-evident diseases; except for wounds and the dirt of the old men, the pygmy skins looked clear and healthy. There were not even any bad smells except the mildly disagreeable oil the males used to anoint their bodies.

Pakriaa returned, with her make-up on. She had flowers behind both ears, and one tied by its stem to Dorothy's locket. Heavy white circles were drawn about the lady's eyes and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and navel; blue bracelets dangled at her wrists; her skirt had been replaced by an innocently unconcealing fringe of sh.e.l.ls--similar to snail sh.e.l.ls, Paul thought. Pakriaa's anklets of wooden beads were orange. The top of her bald head was robin's-egg blue. Two males, with the brand marks that must mean slavery, followed her with a seat--a block of wood, cleverly carved with stylized animal figures. It brought her face on a level with Ann's. Ann said politely, "Why the h.e.l.l can't I be handsome too?" And Pakriaa inclined her head. A boy without the slave brand came with a wooden bowl; Pakriaa sipped the greenish liquid and offered the bowl to Ann. Spearman rumbled. Paul said, "Protocol. You gotta, Nan, but don't offer us any--we're meek males."

Ann swallowed some; her eyes watered; she repressed choking.

"Alcoholic, I do mean...."

Feasting followed--a laborious hour of it, as food arrived without pause in the hands of branded men from the other side of the sheltering trees. Wood smoke drifted from that direction, and a hum of voices. All the dishes included meat cut in tiny cubes--stewed, fried, boiled, or smothered in unknown vegetables. Only one course was aggressively horrid, carrion swimming in peppery sauce, clearly a favorite of Pakriaa's, for she belched wonderfully and patted her stomach in self-applause. Ann remarked, "Another go at that and I start looking for another planet."

In time even Pakriaa had had enough. She clapped her broad hands.

Greasy-mouthed and bulging, the soldiers formed a swaying, stamping line. Spearman burped helplessly. "All that inside, and they can dance?"

Ann suggested: "Maybe it helps...."

It was an hour-long narrative dance, vastly monotonous, a picture of war. Some of those most cruelly wounded pranced into solo pantomimes bragging of how the injuries had been received. In climax, a straw figure of a woman was dragged to the center of the clearing: an image carefully made, brightly painted, the face hideous, the s.e.xual features grossly exaggerated. Shrilling what seemed to be a name ("Lantis! Lantis!"), the soldiers swarmed on this effigy, squealing, stabbing, defiling, tearing it into shreds, which they carried away as treasures or mementos.

When the soldier women had finished in yawning exhaustion, a crowd of dainty men performed another sort of dance, purely an erotic show, indicating that the role of the male was seductive, half infantile, submissive all the way. Occasionally a soldier pulled a dancer out of the line, slapping his face until he stopped the squealing that was evidently required of him, and wandered away with him; but most of the soldiers were too tired, gorged, or wounded to be interested. Later, some twenty soldiers formed a group, and men brought them babies to be nursed, morsels of humanity, quite silent, far smaller in proportion than Earth's newborn. The mothers' arms were careful and competent, without tenderness; they held the infants two at a time, examining them shrewdly, often exchanging them with other soldiers. There were a few cooing demonstrations of affection by the men toward these infants, demonstrations which the soldiers ignored. Ann whispered, "I could spend a lot of time hating these little devils."

"Try not to."

"I know, Paul, but--"

"At least they have a civilization." Spearman was arguing with himself. "A potential technology. That's good gardening. Good tools, weapons."

"Nan, see if you can ask Mrs. President to show us the town."

Pakriaa caught on swiftly and was delighted....