West Of The Sun, Edgar Pangborn [world of reading txt] 📗

and midge-like specks dancing in shafts of sunlight. Too quietly, Wright said, "Stop."

Paul raised his rifle as he turned. Only untroubled forest. Wright's warning hand lowered. "Almost saw it. Heard[31] nothing, just felt a—watching. Might be in my head. Let's go on. And don't hurry."

It would have been possible to hurry, even with an eye on the compass. It would have been possible, Paul thought, to run in panic, fall whimpering and waiting. But you wouldn't do it....

No shape in this dim region could be right or wrong; the trees themselves were no sweetly familiar beech or pine. They halted at sight of a new sprawling type of vine, uprooted where a break in the forest ceiling admitted more sunshine. The earth displayed hoof-prints like a pig's. Some scattered tuberous roots were marked by teeth; Dorothy sniffed one. "Spud with garlic for a papa." Paul pocketed a sample. She said, "Not that Lucifer cares, Doc, but what time is it?"

"My watch says we've been walking fifteen minutes. Take it slow." Wright presently added: "I've had another glimpse. Not a good one. Furry, gray and white—white face, splashes of white on a gray body seven or eight feet tall. Human shape. We may be all right if we don't bother him."

"Or blunder into territory where he doesn't want us."

"There is that, Paul."

"Human shape," said Dorothy evenly. "How human?"

"Very. Upright. Good-sized head ... Ah—hear that?" It was Ann's voice, calling, from someplace where there should be sunlight. "Don't answer just yet—no sudden noises."

Close to Paul, Dorothy whispered, "The baby—I don't want to tell the others quite yet."

That made it real—so real that in spite of a patch of beckoning blue Paul had to turn to her.

Behind Wright, he saw it, among the pillars of the trees, retreating in fluid slowness till it was only a black ear, part of a white-furred cheek, an iridescent green eye showing, like a cat's, no white. But the blue was also real....

The edge of the forest was a mass of young growth fighting for the gold coin of sunlight. "Shield your faces"—Wright was panting—"could be poisonous leaves." They broke through to a red-green field, the slim silver of the[32] undamaged boat, the certainty of friends, an expanse of lake no longer blue but sickly white. The boat's nose was thrust under an overhang of branches. Ann Bryan was unsteady and wan, but there was welcome in her gray eyes for Dorothy, who joined her at once and whispered with her. Sears' fat affectionate face carried a determined smile. Ed Spearman came forward, alert and commanding. Wright asked, "How long have you been out in the air?"

"An hour." Ed was impatient. "Sealed overnight. Nothing in the boat for a test of the air, no point in waiting. You——"

"Okay." Wright watched brown wings over the lake. "What are those?"

"Birds or some damn thing. The white on the lake is dead fish. I suppose the ship blew under water or the impact killed them. Our Geiger says the water isn't radioactive. We haven't gone into the meadow—been waiting for you."

In the south the meadow reached the horizon—twenty miles of it, Paul remembered from the air view, before jungle again took over. Near by, threads of smoke were rising straight from the grass. "Abandoned fires? We scared off——"

"Maybe," Spearman said. "Seen no life except those birds."

"Bat wings," Sears Oliphant remarked. "Mammalian, I think—oh my, yes. Can't have furry birds, you know, with a taxonomist in the family, hey?"

Spearman shrugged. "Must get organized. How much damage, Paul?"

"The boat itself. Both wings off, radio dead. Couldn't lock the door...." It was like an Earth landscape. Tall grass carried oatlike ruddy seed clusters on green stems. The lake was bordered by white sand except close by, where jungle reached into water. There was casual buzzing traffic above the grass, reminiscent of bees, wasps, flies. Far up, something drifted on motionless wings, circling. And ten or fifteen miles to the west there was the calm of hills—rounded, old, more green than blue in a sleepy haze, but to paint them, Paul thought, you would[33] shade off into the purple. Paul went on, absently: "We'll have the charlesite of the wrecked boat of course. That gives this one a theoretical twenty hours of jet. We have ammunition for long enough to learn how to use bow and arrow, I think."

Ann muttered, "Paul, don't——"

"What?" Spearman was disgusted. "Oh, you could be right at that, Paul. Hard to realize ... Well, we must make some kind of camp."

Wright began: "Some knowledge of the life around us——"

"Oh my, yes——"

"We'll have to make a camp before we can do any exploring, Doc. Here, out in the open. See anything in the woods?"

"Something followed. More or less human——"

"So we know the camp has to be in the open."

"Do we, Ed?" Wright watched the distant bat wings. Spearman stared. "Can't chance a forest we don't know."

"Still, I mean to look things over a bit. Feel not so good, Ann?"

"All right," she said, glancing from Wright to Spearman, silently begging to know: Who is leader? "Slightly slap-happy, Doc."

"Mm, sure." Wright hitched his rifle. "Going to look at that nearest smoke. You come, Paul—or you, Ed. One of you should stay here."

Spearman leaned against the lifeboat, still-faced. "Paul can go if he wants to. I think it's a risk and a waste of time."

Paul watched him a moment, frightened not by a man whom he had never quite been able to like, but by the withdrawal itself, the sense of a barrier to communication. We start with a division on this first morning of the world...? Paul hugged his own rifle and followed Wright into the long whisper of the grass.

[34]

4

Moist heat pressed down, but the air of the meadow was sweet. There were marks of trampling as well as the swath the boat had cut—trails, places where something might have crouched. Under his breath Wright asked, "Feel all right, Paul?"

Truth was more needed than a show of courage. "Not perfect, Doc. Am I flushed? You are, a little."

"Yes. Trace of fever; may wear off. Here's something——"

They had not come far. Two red bodies barely three feet tall sprawled near each other face down in the grass. Paul noticed oval bulges between shoulder blades modified to accommodate them, the pathos of fingers—seven-fingered hands—holding earth in a final grasp. The male wore a loincloth of black fabric and a quiver almost full of arrows; the female had a grass skirt, and her hand was tight on a stone-headed spear longer than herself. A bow of carved wood lay some distance away; one could see how the little man had crawled in his agony after the bow was lost. Wright turned them over gently—bald skulls, no trace of body hair on skin of a rich copper color exciting to a painter's vision, green eyes with no visible whites in human faces heavily tattooed, wide-open eyes, accusing no one. The bodies were in rigor, a shaft in the man's neck, the woman pierced by an arrow in the side. Blood colored the grass, dry but eloquent.

"War too," said Wright, and pulled out the arrows, showing Paul the stone heads, the intricate carving of the wood, thin-whittled wooden vanes taking the place of feathers. "Stone Age war...."

The male pygmy was the smaller of the two, and softer,[35] his shape not feminine but rounded and smooth. Both seemed mature, so far as age could be guessed at all. The woman was rugged, with a coarser skin and the scar tissue of old wounds; her two pairs of breasts were scarcely more prominent than the ridged muscles of her midget chest.

Wright mulled it over, kneading his wrinkled throat. "Physical refinements of evolution as far along as our own. Straight thigh and neck, perfect upright posture; there was no slouch or belly sag when they were on their feet. Human jaw, big brain case. That furry giant I saw in the woods had complete upright posture too. Oh, it's natural, Paul. You stick fins on an ocean vertebrate, turn him into a four-legged land animal, give him a few hundred million years. Almost bound to free his front limbs if they've stayed unspecialized." In the gaunt face, sadness and pity struggled with a bitter sort of mirth. "The brain gets large, boy, and away you go, to—ach—to the Federation versus the Asian Empire—Lincoln, Rembrandt, the state papers of Abraham Brown. And to you and Dorothy and the baby." Wright stood erect, brushing bony knees, calm again. "I'm almost pleased to find it this primitive. I don't think it can have gone further anywhere on the planet, or we'd have seen cities, farms, roads, in the photographs. Unless——"

"Unless what, Doctor?"

"Oh—unless there might be forms with no Earth parallel. In the forests perhaps—even underground. Thought of that? But that's speculations, and our little soldiers here are fact. They have a civilization—arrows say so, tattooing, garments. Rigid, tradition-bound—or maybe not, depending on how much language they've developed to tie 'emselves in knots with."

"Bow and arrow—why, suh, almost as advanced as not being afraid to end a sentence with a preposition."

"Hell with you. Twenty thousand years ago, or whenever it was we reached our present physique, if there'd been anything external to teach men how to behave like grown-ups——. Well, we had to sweat it out—tribal wars, bigger wars, venerated fears, errors, and stupidities. But maybe here——"

"Are we big enough?"[36]

Wright shut his eyes. His thin cheeks were too bright; there was a tremor in the rifle tip. "Wish I knew, Paul. We have to try."

Ed Spearman yelled, "Look out!" A rifle banged, and a pistol.

A brown darkness had come swooping from the lake. Others followed—mud-brown, squealing. They had banked at the noise of the shots to circle overhead. Paul fired; a near one tumbled, screeching, thrashing a narrow wolfish head on a long neck, black teeth snapping in the death throes—but even now it was trying to hobble forward and get at them. The others wheeled lower until Wright's rifle spoke, and Spearman's; there was the dry slap of Dorothy's automatic pistol. "Back to the trees!" The wounded thing on the ground set up a bubbling howl.

More were coming, with weaving of pointed red-eyed heads on mobile necks. Paul ran, Wright loping beside him, hearing the crash of their friends' weapons. Something slammed Paul's shoulder, flopped against his leg, tripping him. He tumbled over a shape furry and violent that smelled of fish and carrion. He fought clear of it, sobbing in animal wrath, and reached the shelter of the trees and Dorothy's embrace. Sweat blinded him. Wright was clutching him too, getting his jacket off.

"Flesh wound. The hind foot got you——"

"I saw it." Ann Bryan choked. "Saw it happen. Filthy claws——"

Wright had a bottle of antiseptic. "Son, you ain't going to like this. Hang on to the lady." But the pain was a welcome flare. Paul's eyes cleared as Wright made him a bandage of gauze, with Dorothy's help. He could look from the shelter of overhanging branches at a confusion of wings. The creatures had not followed as far as the lifeboat; perhaps its shining mass disturbed them.

Spearman groaned: "You would go out."

Wright snapped at him. "Camp in the open—some disadvantages——"

"Granted. But you sure learned it the hard way." "Eating"—Ann pointed, nauseated—"their own wounded—"

Wright stepped between her and the loud orgy in the[37] meadow. "Wing spread, fifteen feet. Well—sky's bad, woods maybe. What do you suggest?"

"Clear underbrush," Spearman said, "so we can see into the woods. Pile it just beyond this overhang of branches for a barrier, leave a space so we can reach the lifeboat. We can get to the lake for water without going much in the open."

"Good," said Wright. A peace offering. Spearman smiled neutrally.

"If the water's safe," said Sears Oliphant.

Wright grinned at the fat man. "Pal, it better be."

"Miracles?" Sears' shoulders shot up amiably. "We can hope it is, with boiling. Gotta have it. Canteens won't last the day, in this heat."

Paul helped Ed unpack tools from the lifeboat. "One sickle," Spearman noted. "No scythe. Garden gadgets. Pruning shears. One ax, one damned hatchet. No scythe, no scythe——. There were two or three on the ship."

"Maybe the lake's not so deep."

"Maybe we'll play hell trying to find out too. Those things weren't much scared by the shooting...."

Hot, tedious work created a circle of clear shaded ground which must be called home. A fire was boiling lake water in the few aluminum vessels. It had a fishy, mud-bottom taste and could not be cooled, but it eased thirst. Paul had glimpsed Ann in the lifeboat, opening her violin case, closing it, sick-faced. He had marveled again at the mystery of a Federation governing two-thirds of a world, which had genially allowed a