West Of The Sun Part 14

"Ed won't go.... Paul?"

_Leave him, with Sears' inner torments and Ed's arrogance?_ "No, Doc."

Ann Bryan said, "I'm staying for the show."

Dorothy lowered her cheek to the brown fuzz of Helen's head; the baby's absurd square of palm found Paul's finger. Helen was almost eight months old--Lucifer months. The new life in Dorothy had been conceived in the last month of the rains. Dorothy said, "I'm going, Nancy, with Helen. As a valuable brood mare, I can't afford heroism.

Neither can you."

The giant women crossed the bridge; they had lingered outside, knowing the Charins needed to talk alone. Ann said, "I've heard the argument.

I'm not pregnant yet. I've learned to shoot d.a.m.n' well."

Wright asked, "Will you abide by a vote when Ed gets back?"

Ann pushed her fingers into black hair, cut short as a man's. "I suppose I must.... If no men get to the island, how do two women and a girl child increase and multiply, or shouldn't I ask?"

Wright mumbled inadequately, "We'll reach the island."

Ann said, "Then you already see it as a retreat?"

Wright was silent. He tried to smile with confidence at the giant women and children, who were sober with reflected unhappiness--all but nine-year-old Dunin, who trotted to Paul and hugged him with her large arms and announced: "I learned six words while you were gone. Hi, listen! 'Brain': that's here and here. 'Me-di-tation': that happens in the brain when it's quiet. Mm-mm.... 'Breast': that's these. And 'breath': that's ooph, like that. 'Breeze': that's a breath with n.o.body blowing it.... I forgotten six."

Dorothy murmured. "Tem--tem--"

Dunin hopped up and down. "'Tempest!' Big _big_ breeze--"

"That's perfect," said Paul. "Perfect...."

Before the five-month rainy season had made travel on the sodden, gasping ground too miserable, Mijok had explored a half circle of territory forty miles in radius east of the hills, for others who might be willing to learn new ways. It was slow work, often discouraging. He had located two bands of free-wandering women and children--twenty in all--and stirred their curiosity and friendliness.

But he had been able to recruit only three other males. There was Rak.

Blackfurred Elis and tawny Surok were in vigorous middle years, hard to convince but quick to learn once the barrier was down.

Kamon was accepted leader of the women. White with age, gaunt, flat-breasted, stooped but quick on her feet, Kamon rarely smiled, but her good nature was profound. "Ann," she said, "you ought to go.

We--if we cannot fight off these southern pygmies, we can escape. But you? One of us would have to carry you. And as Mashana Dorothy says, your womb is needed." (Mashana--sweetheart, mother, hunting companion, friend.)

Wright said, "You, Dorothy, Helen, and the giant children."

That brought murmuring. Kamon checked it: "Only four children still need milk. You, Samis, your b.r.e.a.s.t.s are big: you will go." Kamon turned with gentle deference to one authority she felt to be stronger than her own under the laws: "Doc?" Paul found it comfortable, no longer even amusing, that Wright should be known to the giants by his inevitable nickname. The pygmies disliked the short sound, and initial _D_ always bothered them. To them he was Tocwright, or more often Tocwright-Who-Plays-with Gray-Fur-at-His-Throat.

"Yes, Kamon. Samis too. Paul, how many trips will that take?"

"Three--leaving fuel for about three more of the same length."

Wright nodded. "Ed has a notion of using the lifeboat for a weapon.

Hedgehop, scare 'em to h.e.l.l. But with fuel so low--"

There was shadow at the drawbridge. Ed Spearman flung aside the carca.s.s he had brought. Ann's white face was still, though she clung to him briefly when he kissed her. It had occurred to Paul that Ann's image of love would not be given reality anywhere in the galaxies: she wished moments to be eternities and a human self to be a mirror of desire. _But Dorothy and I--somehow we've learned to let each other live...._ "More news," Spearman said. "I stopped at the village. A spy of Pakriaa's came home last night--must be a sharp article: did the sixty-odd miles up the lake sh.o.r.e in nothing flat, with facts and figures."

"Lantis is moving." Wright dropped his hands to his bony knees.

"No, Doc, but will in a day or so." Spearman sat down, holding Ann's fingers till she pulled them away. He nodded to Sears and Paul. "Good trip?" He had grown even more rugged in a year of Lucifer. He wore only shorts and Earth-made shoes; months of handling a heavy bow had made his upper arms almost as thick as the narrow part of Mijok's forearm. His face had deepened its lines; he had never smiled easily.

"Very good," Sears said. "The island is--" He was silent.

Spearman grunted. "You're sold too? Well, here's the news. One: you remember Pakriaa's second challenge, sent by two warriors, correct and formal--trust Pak for that. One of those messengers is returning. The spy ran on ahead--with part of the body of the other amba.s.sador." He studied the sickened faces. "Two: the spy says Lantis plans to send four thousand on the lake boats, another six thousand overland.

Pakriaa--who is in a state of mind I don't know how to describe, not jitters exactly--Pakriaa thinks we may feel the lake-boat drums tomorrow. She doesn't know what they are, by the way--invention of Lantis, I guess. From her description they must be drums, maybe hollow logs mounted on boats. She heard them last year in the war we interrupted. You feel them before you hear them, she says: she thinks it was a lake devil consulting with the Queen of the World. Three: the spy wasn't sure, but thinks Lantis has already sent six hundred east of the lake to make a big circle, come down on the settlement from the northeast."

"Smart," Paul said. "To drive us into the kaksma hills?"

"The kaksma hills." Spearman's gray eyes squinted in a sort of laughter. "They're not so bad. The critters may be all they say, after dark, but--I'd better own up: I've gone that way on my last three solo trips. Safe enough in daylight, when they're half blind. I killed a few today."

Sears asked quickly, "Bring back specimens?"

Spearman teased the fat man with waiting and chuckled and nodded at the asonis carca.s.s. "Tied to one of the hoofs. Don't look so worried, Doc--I waded plenty of streams on the way back." He rose with heavy grace and strolled out on the bridge. "Come a minute, some of you."

Paul joined him; Wright stayed as he was; Sears was examining the kaksma's gray, thick-tailed body, holding back its pinkish lip. Paul caught a repellent glimpse of the jutting upper canines; the molars were shearing tools like a cat's. He saw the spade claws of the forefeet. The jet eyes were like a mole's. "Look," Spearman said, "the hills. Notice that hogback at the southern end--it's five miles long.

Riddled with burrows. They must live on small game on the meadow below and hunt the other side of the hills too, where it's jungle." His fingers dug at Paul's shoulder. He spoke loudly enough to be heard by all: "Listen: the earth at the burrows is red ocher. Understand?

Hemat.i.te."

Wright let out his breath sharply. "So--"

"Yeah. Just a five-mile mountain of iron ore. Merely what I've been looking for ever since we crashed. For a start. From iron to steel to--ah.... And just when we've _got_ it--G.o.d! with organized pygmy labor--" He strode back into the fortress, glancing obliquely at the silent giant women. "The pygmies do understand work, you know. Well, never mind it now. Of course we must get the baby and the women to your island right away. As a temporary refuge, we must use it." He watched Wright with unqualified sadness. "Apart from that, you know what I think of your Island of Lotos-Eaters--"

"That's not just, Ed."

"Adelphi then. Well, the women and Helen--"

"And the giant children, with Samis to nurse the youngest."

Spearman asked evenly, "Paul, how's the charlesite?"

"After the trips Doc mentioned, enough for three more."

Ann's keen ears caught a far-off sound. "Mijok's coming back."

The music grew slowly manifest: Mijok, in an Earth song more than two hundred years old. Long-flowing chanteys and slower spirituals suited him. He had teased Ann to teach him all she knew, even after she lost interest. Swift melodies and rapid syllables were beyond him--the depth of his tone rendered them grotesque. More than a mile away, he was wallowing in "Shenandoah"--Mijok, to whom the ocean was only a word and a river steamboat the cloudiest of legends. Other voices, true on pitch, followed his solo:

"_Away--we're bound away...._"

Paul asked, "How many, Nan?"

Ann shut her eyes. "Four, besides Mijok and--yes, Lisson's singing. At least two new recruits. Ah--they can sing before they talk." She hurried into that thatched house-within-a-house which was her comer of privacy on Lucifer. The giant women were smiling, though Kamon's eyes followed Ann with trouble and pity. They hummed in three-part counterpoint. Their voices had the range of a Charin baritone; Paul missed Muson, who could approach the tenor. Sears' ba.s.s moved in, a well-behaved trombone teasing a crowd of ba.s.soons. Dorothy's alto added a warm thread of sound....

The tall children and women poured out over the bridge when Mijok and his companions were still distant. Musical thunder in the woods pulsed along the ground. Spearman smiled indulgently. "Just like a bunch of kids."

"Yes," Wright said. "The pygmies are more serious. They have wars."

Sears stopped humming and mumbled, "Don't, Chris...."

Mijok brought in his triumph, beaming and warm. "And my smallest woman?" Dorothy placed the naked morsel that was Helen in his waiting hands. Mijok was bemused. "How can anything be so small?"