John Racham (7 page)

Christine
saw it, screamed with all her breath, and hurled herself around and at the
gravel wall, scrabbling crazily at it, vainly seeking to climb out. Query
shivered, leaned over and thrust the alloy pole at her. She snatched it, tried to
climb crazily up it,
jerldng
at his hold, and the
edge crumbled and yielded under his knees so that he slid, lurched and went
over and headfirst into the ooze. He landed on top of her, and she at once
grabbed him, climbed up and over him in her mad urge to get out, shoving him
deep under. Choking, spitting foul-tasting mud, he managed to get his feet on
the bottom and his head out, to wipe away the slime, to see her go frantically
for that wall again, shrieking, struggling uselessly to dig her nails into the
hard gravel.

And
the disturbed lizard thing bellowed, lifted its blunt head, and came slurping
through the mud, following the noise. Up above and all around Query saw that
strange flare-up of rainbow lanterns again, throwing a limelight glow, like
muted floodlights in an arena. One crooked, flip-
pered
leg smashed him in the chest, kicked him aside as the creature wallowed on its
way through the sludge, heading for its target. The huge, wet, toothless mouth
gaped hungrily.
Christine turned, saw it, shrieked again, and
hammered" at it with her fists, beating at the blind head.
She
might as well have punched at an elephant. The vast slobbering mouth snapped at
her hand and caught her right arm up to the shoulder. She screeched again,
battering away with her other fist. Query remembered the metal tube still in
his grasp, whirled it, swung, and struck at the thing, at where he guessed its
brain might be, if it had one. Mud squirted off. The impact was solid and
gratifying. The creature didn't like it. It opened its enormous maw to bellow
a deafening complaint and dropped the girl.

Query
hit it again, savagely, hard on what should have been its snout. It bellowed
again, right at him, blasting its stinking breath full in his face. He swung
his feeble club again, and saw Evans, filthy and frantic, actually scrambling
up on the thing, onto its lumpy back, to teeter there a moment and then leap
crazily for the edge of the pool. The blunt, blind head was confused now,
swinging uncertainly from side to side, washing the liquid ooze in great waves
of stench. Query backed away, wallowing, hoping to get to one side and deliver
a useful blow. Then he heard Evans shouting; "Over
herel
Come
onl
This way!"

There
he was, on the edge, flat on his face and reaching down and out. Christine saw
him, went splashing and wallowing frantically along the wall to reach him, to
seize his hand and hang on, trying to get up. But the beast had another fix on
the noise, slurped around, and started heading for it. She screamed as she saw
it come, kicking out crazily, Evans hanging on like grim death, trying to hoist
her out against the suck of the mud. Again that great wet maw opened and
snapped hungrily, and caught her struggling feet
And
fastened on them, sucking, holding on. Query smashed at it again, then grabbed,
heaved himself

47
up on its back, stood, ran unsteadily, leaped and thumped down on the side,
rolled over and clapped himself onto her free arm, alongside Evans.

The
bankside
had an edge just here, a small wall that came up
against his chest and gave him support. Her agonized face was close, her eyes wide
in terror.

"Hold
on!" he grunted, as the blind beast swallowed more, gulping her legs down,
the blubbery
hps
clamping on her thighs. The drag was
frightful as the monstrous thing drew back, trying to pull her in and swallow
its mouthful. We
can't
possibly hold against
thatl
he thought, as the sinews in his arms creaked
and ached and his chest felt as if it was caving in.
Something's got to give!
The strain was unbearable now. Then, all at
once, the creature slipped back, and she shot forward over the edge, rolling
all three of them over and over in a tangled heap. Query scrambled up and gave
her a hand as Evans fought his way to his feet. They squandered just one
backward glance to see the blind head lifted, and from that clamped mouth
dangled a pathetic length of black stuff.

"Lucky!"
Query gasped. "Your fancy uniform . . . came in useful . . . after all!
Come on! Run!
Before the damned thing comes out after
us!"
They ran, heavily and wetly, slurping mud, gasping, heedless
of direction, crashing through the undergrowth, blundering around tree boles—
with Christine pinkly and incongruously skin naked and clean from the waist
down. They ran until they dropped at the foot of a massive tree.

"Safe enough . . . here
...
no tracks!"
Query panted. "The thing
...
it
doesn't.
. . get this far!"

"Damned lucky . . . that time!"
Evans choked.
"That thing
...
no teeth!
Lucky!
Thought we were
done for!"

"We're
done!" Christine rolled over on her back, lay heaving for breath, staring
up into the mist.
"Done!
Lucky that time! But
...
we can't go on . . . finished! What's
the use?"

"Chin
up!" Evans grunted, but all the heart was gone out of him.

"What's the point?" she gasped.
"We're done! Lost! No food! Dark! Monsters all over the place!
It's
hopelessl
" She struggled
up on one arm and stared at Query. "You were right! We're all dead!"

"I'm afraid you're right," he
muttered, dabbing at his leg and seeing the plastic of his uniform come away
with the mud. "I did try to tell you.
Might as well be
civilized about it!"

"Not
dead yet!" the old man mumbled stubbornly. Query ignored him, made the
effort, got to his feet, leaned on the tree, and plucked at his rotting
uniform, pulling it away in flaking patches. Symbolism again he thought. Naked
I came into the world; naked I die! There was something satisfying about it,
and he felt just that little bit cooler, easier, when he had brushed away the
last shreds of civilization from his skin. A man ought to feel defenseless,
like this, he thought, but I don't. I feel at home. He peered into the dark
green mystery all around and smiled. I said I'd be back, didn't I?
he
thought. Well, here I am!

But
there was no sense this time of unseen watchers. A little disappointed, he sat
again, setting his back to the tree. And saw Christine's eyes on him. She had
been watch
ing
him.

"I
hope you don't mind." He sketched his nakedness with a gesture of
indifference. "There didn't seem much point in trying to pretend
anymore."

"That's
right," she said quietly.
"Pretending.
That's all it was.
Uniform and drill, cadet school and
routine, gold braid and snappy salutes.
Trying to be the boy he always
wanted me to be." She glanced over there, and they both saw that
exhaustion had taken natural toll on the old man; he was fast asleep. "It
was all
pretense
. I've never really lived. Not like
you.
All my life, trying to be something else."

"Like me?" he
frowned. "I haven't lived all that much."

"I know about you. I read you up, on the
way here. Your
files,
and your civil record.
Artist and designer.
That's the kind of thing I would have
liked.
To deal with shape and beauty and color.
Purpose.
Create new ideas. You said civilized. That's
civilized. That's what intelligence should do, make beauty. Create things.
There's nothing beautiful or creative about the Service, about war and
destruction."

"Depends on the point of view, I
suppose," he said. "To the military mind I suppose there is beauty in
a uniform,

49 in a drill, in slick efficiency, in
everything working together."

"You must have hated
it!"

"Right.
But then, I'm not the military type. And it doesn't seem to matter a
damn now either way, does it?"

"I
hated it too, inside, where I could never get the chance to say it and mean it.
I can say it now, to you. You understand." She plucked at the soiled
shreds of the upper tunic of her uniform, pulled them away and crumbled the
rotted stuff, threw it aside, brushing the last flakes from her skin with her
fingers. "I wish I had done
that years
ago,"
she sighed. "So many things I wish, now that it is too late." She sat
in silence awhile, staring in front of her, and he saw that she was trembling.
Then she turned her head, her eyes wide on his. "You're not afraid to die,
are you?"

He
moved to sit close to her, to put his arm around her, and she put her face to
his chest blindly. "I can't help you," he said, very softly.
"Death has always been inevitable to me. And I've known about it longer
than you. I knew we were dead when that drive blew. The rest was just a matter
of waiting for it to happen."

"But
you helped to rescue me.
Several times.
You hit me.
You pulled me out of the wreck. You dragged me inshore. And . . . that monster
thing
...
it had me . . . and you
helped to save me!"

"Blind instinct, nothing more.
That's built into us. It's very hard to
fight."

She
lifted her face suddenly, very close to his, her eyes huge and dark. "I
don't know your name—yes, I do. Stephen. Stephen, I don't want to die. Isn't it
instinctive to want to go on living?"

"To want to, certainly.
I'd rather go on living, if I had the
choice. But we don't have any choice, anymore, Christine. It's just
a
matter of waiting for it."

Her
face came closer, and it seemed inevitable that their lips should meet and
cling for
a
long while. She urged closer to him,
hungrily, pulling him down to the damp soil, clinging to him. She moved her
lips away from his just far enough to whisper, "We're still alive,
Stephen, for
a
while yet. A little while
only,
and so much life to live . . .

50
all the things I've never
done .
.
and
she clung to him again, savagely, ". . . the primitive things!"

Query
couldn't stop himself, even if he had wanted to. And he saw nothing but good in
this, in making the happiest possible use of their last moments. It was a
place and a time to be primitive.

Something
of the strain, the shocks, the terrors of the recent past surged up out of both
of them, lent fire to their embrace. And then, after the frenzied fire had burned
low, she lay back in the crook of his arm and sighed and looked up at him
contentedly.

"That
was primitive," she breathed, "and good.
Beautiful.
It's all beautiful now.
Even this place.
Isn't
it?"

"And
you. You're very beautiful, Christine, now that you are being just you."

She
smiled sleepily, found his hand and brought it to her breast and held it there,
full and warm in his palm. "I'm glad," she said; and in another
moment she was fast asleep. Query kept quite still, aware of the rise and fall
of her bosom and the steady beat of her heart. He felt sad now, that this had
to come to him so
late, that
he had to lose himself on
this dark and primitive planet in order to find the simplicity of life lovingly
offered to him. And he wondered about her, about the kind of life she must have
led, armored in uniform and regulation, having to be cold and stern and stiff,
when all the while there was the fire of life beating inside.

And
his eyelids drooped too, and he rested his head on hers, and slept. His dream
was a strange one peopled with things unseen but felt, that were positive and
yet utterly strange. Eyes
watched,
eyes that he
couldn't see. Minds touched his, wondered at him, ruffled through his thoughts
like some casual stranger turning the pages of a book.
Yet
kindly.
Curious.
And he had the sense of
someone wonderfully intelligent and wise who was intrigued at him as an adult
might be at the momentary cleverness of a child. And he knew a longing, just as
a child might, to know more. Tell me more!

He came awake suddenly and totally and kept
quite still, absolutely certain that he was not alone.
Heavy
in the crook of his arm, Christine still slept, peaceful as a child.
Query moved his head a fraction to stare aside and

51
he saw feet.
Bare feet.
Human feet, over there.
Very slowly he eased free and
raised his head more, came up to a sitting position and stared. And there was a
man over there, ten feet away.

A man.
No
more than about five feet six and lean, sinewy, completely
poised,
his skin a pale tint against the dark blue green of the vegetation. Hair was
a dark
fuzz on his skull but nowhere else. Eyes were dark
and intent, bright with intelligence. In his right hand, low down, he held the
end of a rod—cane—something slim and dark, and his left hand, angled across his
chest, held the upper end of it, bent it back under tension as if it was some
kind of bow.
A weapon at the ready.
But a man, that
was the main thing.
A totally humanlike and adult man.

VII

Q
uery
got slowly
to
his feet. In the face of that unmistakable weapon and the competent threat
backing it, he had no desire to do anything fast or provocative. Now he had the
awareness very strongly of many eyes watching him all around. This man wasn't
alone. And yet there was no real threat now that he could feel it properly,
more a sense of readiness. And also that curious feeling that he knew exactly
what this man was thinking. That he was as good as saying, right now,
This
is a weapon. One false move and you get it!

He
stooped slowly to nudge Christine awake, moved to stir the old man with his
foot. "Don't do anything sudden," he cautioned, "but we have
some company come to call."

And
the strange man moved now, relaxing the tension in his weapon, dropping his
left hand, letting the rod rest on his right shoulder. Evans snorted a time or
two,
rolled over and struggled to his feet.

"Eh? What? By God, who
the hell's that?"

"Take
it easy!" Query warned. "We're not in any trouble yet. Let's hope
they're friendly." He tried to read the man's features, which were almost
Oriental, but not quite. He felt sure this was no enemy, but that was just a
feel-

52
ing
without evidence.
He heard Christine stir and move and get
up—and gasp and cling to him anxiously.

"Who's that?" she
cried, and he touched her shoulder.

"Local inhabitants,
obviously."

"They're
cannibals!" she gasped. "They'll eat us!"

"Where
the hell did you get that idea from?" he snapped. "For heaven's sake,
woman, use your head!
Cannibals?"

"That'll
do!" Evans growled. "We'll have none of that kind of talk, Query.
Mind your manners!"

"And
you, you stupid, fat, flabby, old fool!" Query rapped. "Will you
never learn? These people are the local inhabitants. They are all around us.
They have us helpless. If you have any brains left in that stupid skull of
yours, you have to see that it's up to us to be friendly.
Rational.
If you start throwing a panic or blustering from some mythical authority, we've
had it!" He shook Christine free, stood her away. "Come on,
now!" he said. "All
that talk
about the
primitive. Well, here it is. Take a look at it!"

"Damned insubordination!"
Evans roared. "You expect me to kowtow
to a naked, bloody savage, man!" He lurched around to face the stranger,
ready to stride toward him.
"Here, you.
Can you
talk? Eh? What the . . . ?" His loud-voiced approach choked off as a
snaking black thong flicked from one side and snapped around his ankle, sending
him prone. In short order came three more: one for the other foot, one catching
each wrist; the old man was helpless. Christine cried out and started to run to
her
father,
and another snaking thong caught her
ankle. Within seconds she was flat on her face and just as helpless as the old
man. Query held still, turning only his head to follow back those black thongs.

There
was a woman at the business end of each one. Native women, just like the man,
about the same height and slim, but definitely and beautifully female. And competent,
too, judging by the way they kept the tension on their lines. Whips, he
concluded.
Possibly some kind of creeper with a thickened
handhold stem.
And now there were men appearing out of the dark shadows,
men just like the first one, each with a tube against his shoulder.

Query knew they were all looking at him,
watching, waiting to see what he would do next. Edgy curiosity, that was all.
No harm done. He felt no fear at all, just a sense

53 of shame at his stupid companions and bewilderment at what he ought
to do next.
And
there was no time to wonder at the greatest wonder of
all,
that
he was positive he knew what they were all thinking. He knew, for
one thing, that the first man who had shown, and who still stood there waiting,
was the head man.
The man in charge.
He looked at him
again now, helplessly.
Give
me a minute,
he
thought,
to
talk to them. Maybe I can get some sense into their heads!