Homo Inferior Part 5

He opened the book again, but he couldn't concentrate on it.

Beyond those hills, across another valley, there were even higher mountains. He had often looked across at them, wondering what they held.

They were probably as desolate as the ones he'd searched. Still, he would rather be out in them, looking, than sitting here, fretting, almost hating the old race because it had somehow bequeathed him a heritage of loneliness.

He got up abruptly and went outside to the aircar.

It was a long way to the second range of mountains. He flew there directly, skimming over the nearer hills, the ones he had spent weeks exploring. He dropped low over the intervening valley, pa.s.sing over the houses and towns, looking down at the gardens. The new race filled all the valleys.

He came into the foothills and swung the car upward, climbing over the steep mountainsides. Within a mile from the valley's edge he was in wild country. He'd thought the other hills were wild, but here the terrain was jagged and rock-strewn, with boulders flung about as if by some giant hand. There were a hundred narrow canyons, opening into each other, steep-sloped, overgrown with brambles and almost impenetrable, a maze with the hills rising around them and cutting off all view of the surrounding country.

Eric dropped down into one of the larger canyons. Immediately he realized how easy it would be to get lost in those hills. There were no landmarks that were not like a hundred jutting others. Without the aircar he would be lost in a few minutes. He wondered suddenly if anyone, old race or new, had ever been here before him.

He set the aircar down on the valley floor and got out and walked away from it, upstream, following the little creek that tumbled past him over the rocks. By the time he had gone a hundred paces the car was out of sight.

It was quiet. Far away birds called to each other, and insects buzzed around him, but other than these sounds there was nothing but his own footsteps and the creek rapids. He relaxed, walking more slowly, looking about him idly, no longer searching for anything.

He rounded another bend, climbed up over a rock that blocked his path and dropped down on the other side of it. Then he froze, staring.

Not ten feet ahead of him lay the ashes of a campfire, still smoldering, still sending a thin wisp of smoke up into the air.

He saw no one. Nothing moved. No tracks showed in the rocky ground.

Except for the fire, the gorge looked as uninhabited as any of the others.

Slowly Eric walked toward the campfire and knelt down and held his hand over the embers. Heat rose about him. The fire hadn't been out for very long.

He turned quickly, glancing about him, but there was no sudden motion anywhere, no indication that anyone was hiding nearby. Perhaps there was n.o.body near. Perhaps whoever had built the fire had left it some time before, and was miles away by now....

He didn't think so. He had a feeling that eyes were watching him. It was a strange feeling, almost as if he could perceive. Wishful thinking, he told himself. Unreal, untrue....

But _someone_ had been here. Someone had built the fire. And it was probably, almost certainly, someone without perception. Someone like himself.

His knees were shaking. His hands trembled, and sweat broke out on the palms. Yet his thoughts seemed calm, icily calm. It was just a nervous reaction, he knew that. A reaction to the sudden knowledge that people _were_ here, out in these hills where he had searched for them but never, deep down, expected to find them. They were probably watching him right now, hidden up among the trees somewhere, afraid to move because then he would see them and start out to capture them.

If there were people here, they must think that he was one of the normal ones. That he could perceive. So they would keep quiet, because a person with perception couldn't possibly perceive a person who lacked it. They would remain motionless, hoping to stay hidden, waiting for him to leave so that they could flee deeper into the hills.

They couldn't know that he was one of them.

He felt helpless, suddenly. So near, so near--and yet he couldn't reach them. The people who lived here in the wild mountain gorges could elude him forever.

No motion. No sound. Only the embers, smoking....

"Listen," he called aloud. "Can you hear me?"

The canyon walls caught his voice, sent it echoing back, fainter and fainter. "... can you hear me can you hear me can you...."

No one answered.

"I'm your friend," he called. "I can't perceive. I'm one of you."

Over and over it echoed. "... one of you one of you one of you...."

"Answer me. I've run away from them too. Answer me!"

"Answer me answer me answer me...."

The echoes died away and it was quiet, too quiet. No sound. Even if they heard him, they wouldn't answer.

He couldn't track them. If they had homes that were easy to find they would have left them by now. He was helpless.

The heat from the fire rose about him, and he tasted smoke and coughed.

Nothing moved. Finally he stood up, turned away from the fire and walked on past it, up the stream.

No one. No tracks. No sign. Only the feeling that other eyes watched him as he walked along, other ears listened for the sound of his pa.s.sing.

He turned back, retraced his steps to the fire. The embers had blackened. The wisp of smoke that curled upward was very thin now.

Otherwise everything was the same as it had been.

He couldn't give up and fly back to the museum. If he did he might never find them again. But even if he didn't, he might never find them.

"Listen!" He screamed the word, so loudly that they could have heard it miles away. "I'm one of you. I can't perceive. Believe me! You've got to believe me!"

"Believe me believe me believe me...."

Nothing. The tension went out of him suddenly and he began to tremble again, and his throat choked up, wanting to cry. He stumbled away from the embers, back in the direction of the aircar.

"Believe me...." This time the words were little more than a whisper, and there was no echo.

"I believe you," a voice said quietly.

He swung about, trying to place it, and saw the woman. She stood at the edge of the trees, above the campfire, half hidden in the undergrowth.

She looked down at him warily, a rock clenched in her hand. She wasn't an attractive sight.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

She looked old, with a leathery skin and gnarled arms and legs. Her grey-white hair was matted, pulled back into a snarled bun behind her head. She wore a shapeless dress of some roughwoven material that hung limply from her shoulders, torn, dirty, ancient. He'd never seen an animal as dirty as she.

"So you can't perceive," the woman cackled. "I believe it, boy. You don't have that look about you."

"I didn't know," Eric said softly. "I never knew until today that there were any others."

She laughed, a high-pitched laugh that broke off into a choking cough.

"There aren't many of us, boy. Not many. Me and Nell--but she's an old, old woman. And Lisa, of course...."

She cackled again, nodding. "I always told Lisa to wait," she said firmly. "I told her that there'd be another young one along."

"Who are you?" Eric said.