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MacAran asked, "Just how urgent is that now, Judy?"
Judy shrugged. "On Earth, I'd have about two-and-a half months to go. Camilla and I, and Alastair'sgirl Alanna, are running about neck-and-neck; the next batch is due about a month after that. Here--well,it's anybody's guess." She added, quietly, "We expect the winter will set
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in before that. But you were going to tell me about what you found today."
"Fuller's earth," MacAran said, "or something so like it I can't tell the difference." At her blank look he elucidated, "It's used in making cloth. We get small supplies of animal fiber, something like wool, from the rabbit-horns, and they're plentiful and can be raised in quantity on the farm, but fuller's earth will make the cloth easier to handle and shrink."
Janice said, "You never think of asking a geologist for something to make cloth, for goodness' sake."
Judy said, "When you come down to it, every science is interrelated, although on Earth everythingwas so specialized we lost sight of it." She drank the last of her tea. "Are you heading back to Base Camp, Rafe?"
He shook his head. "No, it's into the woods for us, probably back in the hills where we went thatfirst time. There may be streams which rise in the far hills and we're going to check them out. That's why Dr. Frazer is with us--he wants to find further traces of the people we sighted last trip, get some moreaccurate idea of their cultural level. We know they build bridges from tree to tree--we haven't tried toclimb in them, they're evidently a lot lighter than we are and we don't want to break their artifacts orfrighten them."
Judy nodded. "I wish I were going," she said, rather wistfully, "but I'm under orders never to bemore than a few hours from Base Camp until after the baby is born." MacAran caught a look of deeplonging in her eyes and, with that new ability to pick up emotions, reached out for her and said gently, "Don't worry, Judy. We won't trouble anyone we find, whether the little people who build the bridges,or--anyone else. If any of the beings here were hostile to us, we'd have found it out by now. We've nointention of bothering them. One of our reasons for going is to make sure we won't inadvertently infringeon their living space, or disturb anything they need for their survival. Once we know where they'resettled, we'll know where we ought not to settle."
She smiled. "Thank you, Rafe," she said, softly. "That's good to know. If we're thinking along those
lines, I guess I needn't worry."
Shortly after the two groups separated, the food-testing crew
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working back toward Base Camp, while MacAran's crew moved further into the deep hills.
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Twice in the neat ten-day period they saw minor traces of the small furred aliens with the big eyes;once, over a mountain watercourse, a bridge constructed of long linked and woven loops of reed,carefully twined together and fastened with rope ladders leading up toward it from the lower levels of thetrees. Without touching it, Dr. Frazer examined the vines of which it was constructed, saying that theneed for fiber, rope and heavy twines were likely to be greater than the small supplies of what they calledropeweed could provide. Almost a hundred miles further into the hills, they found what looked like a ringof trees planted in a perfect circle, with more of the rope ladders leading up into the trees; but the placelooked deserted and the platform which seemed to have been built across between the trees, ofsomething like wickerwork, was dilapidated and the sky could be seen through wormholes in the bottom.
Frazier looked covetously upward. "I'd give five years off my life to get a look up there. Do they usefurniture? Is it a house, a temple, who knows what? But I can't climb those trees and the rope laddersprobably wouldn't even hold Janice's weight, let alone mine. As I remember, none of them was muchbigger than a ten year-old child."
"There's plenty of time," MacAran said. "The place is deserted, we can come back some day with
ladders and explore to your heart's content. Personally I think it's a farm."
"A
farm
?"
MacAran pointed. On the regularly spaced treetrunks were extraordinarily straight lines; thedelicious grey fungus which MacLeod had discovered before the first of the Winds was growing there inrows as neatly spaced as if they had been drawn on with a ruler. "They could hardly grow as neatly asthis;" MacAran said, "they must have been planted here. Maybe they come back every few months toharvest their crop, and the platform up there could be anything--a resthouse, a storage granary, anovernight camp. Or of course this could be a farm they abandoned years ago."
"It's nice to know the stuff can be cultivated," Frazer said, and began carefully making notes in his
notebook
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about the exact kind of tree on which it was growing, the spacing and height of the rows. "Look at this! It looks for all the world like a simple irrigation system, to divert water
away
from where the fungus is growing and directly to the roots of the tree!"
As they went on into the hills, the location of the alien "farm" firmly fixed on Janice's map, MacAranfound himself thinking about the aliens. Primitive, yes, but what other type of society was seriouslypossible on this world? Their intelligence level must be comparable to that of many men, judging by thesophistication of their devices.
The Captain talks about a return to savagery. But I suspect we couldn't return if we tried. Inthe first place we're a selected group, half of us educated at the upper levels, the rest having been
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through the screening process for the Colonies. We come with knowledge acquired over millions of years of evolution and a few hundred years of forced technology pressured by an over-populated, polluted world. We may not be able to transplant our culture whole, this planet wouldn't survive it, and it would probably be suicide to try. But he doesn't have to worry about dropping back to a primitive level. Whatever we finally do with this world, the end result, I suspect, won't at least be below what we had on Earth, in terms of the human mind making the best use of what it finds. It will be different... probably in a few generations even I couldn't relate it to Earth culture. But humans can't be less than human, and intelligence doesn't function below its own level.
These small aliens had developed according to the needs of this world; a forest people, wearing fur (MacAran, shivering in the icy rain of a summer night, wished he had it) and living in symbiosis with theforests. But as nearly as he could judge their constructs were indicative of a high level of elegance andadaptiveness.
What had Judy called them?
The little brothers who are not wise
. And what about the
other
aliens? This planet had evidently brought forth
two
wholly sapient races, and they must co-exist to somedegree. It was a good sign for humanity and the others. But Judy's alien--it was the only name he had andeven now he found himself doubting the very existence of the others--must be near enough to human tofather a child on an Earth-woman, and the thought was strangely disturbing.
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On the fourteenth day of their journey they reached the lower slopes of the great glacier which Camilla had christened
The Wall Around the World
. It soared above them cutting off half the sky, and MacAran knew that even at this oxygen level it was unclimbable. There was nothing beyond these slopesexcept bare ice and rock, buffeted by the eternal icy winds, and nothing was to be gained by going on. But even as MacAran's party turned their back on the enormous mountain mass, his mind rejected that
unclimbable
. He thought, no, nothing is impossible. We can't climb it now. Perhaps not in my lifetime;certainly not for ten, twenty years. But it's not in human nature to accept limits like this. Some day either I'll come back and climb it, or my children will. Or
their
children.
"So that's as far as we go in one direction," Dr. Frazer said. "Next expedition had better go in the
other direction. This way it's all forest, and more forest."
"Well, we can make use of the forests," MacAran said. "Maybe the other direction there's a desert.
Or an ocean. Or for all we know, fertile valleys and even cities. Only time will tell."
He checked the maps they had been making, looking with satisfaction on the filled-in parts, butrealizing that there was a lifetime to go. They camped that night at the very foot of the glacier, and MacAran woke up before dawn, perhaps wakened by the cessation of the soft thick nightly snow. Hewent out and looked at the dark sky and the unfamiliar stars, three of the four moons hanging likejeweled pendants below the high ridge of the mountain above, then his eyes and thoughts went back tothe valley. His people were there, and Camilla, carrying his child. Far to the east was a dim glow wherethe great red sun would rise. MacAran was suddenly overcome with a great and unspeakable content.
He had never been happy on Earth. The Colony would have been better, but even there, he would
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have fitted into a world designed by other men, and not all his kind of men. Here he could have a share in the original design of things, carve out and create what he wanted for himself and his children to come and their children's children. Tragedy and catastrophe had brought them here, madness and death had ravaged them, and yet MacAran
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knew that he was one of the lucky ones. He had found his own place, and it was good.
It took them much of that day and the next to retrace their steps from the foot of the glacier, throughsullen grey weather and heavy gathering cloud, and MacAran, who had begun to mistrust fine weather onthis planet, nevertheless felt the now familiar prickle of disquiet. Toward evening of the second day thesnow began, heavy and harder than anything he had yet seen on this world. Even in their warm clothesthe Earthmen were freezing, and their sense of direction was quickly lost in the world which had turned toa white whirling insanity without color, form or place They dared not stop and yet it soon becameobvious that they could not go on much longer through the deepening layers of soft powdery snow,through which they floundered, clinging to one another. They could only keep going down. Otherdirections no longer had meaning. Under the trees it was a little better, but the howling wind from theheights above them, the creaking and heaving of branch after branch like wind is the gigantic rigging ofsome sailing ship immense beyond imagining, filled the twilight with uncanny voices. Once, trying toshelter beneath a tree, they attempted to set up their tent, but the gale made it flap wildly and twice it waslost and they had to chase the blowing fabric through the snow until it became entangled around a treeand they could, after a fashion, reclaim it. But it was useless to them as shelter, and they grew colder andcolder, their coats keeping them dry indeed, but doing almost nothing against the piercing cold.
Frazer muttered with chattering teeth, as they held on to one another in the lee of a larger tree than
usual, "If It's like this in the summer, what the hell kind of storms are we going to have in the winter?"
MacAran said grimly, "I suspect, in the winter, none of us had better set foot outside the Base Camp." He thought of the storm after the first of the Winds, when he had searched for Camilla throughthe light snow. It had seemed like a blizzard to him then. How little he had known this world! He wasovercome with poignant fear and a sense of regret.
Camilla. She's safe in the settlement, but will weever get back there, will any of us?
He thought with a painful twinge of self-pity that he would neversee his child's face,
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then angrily dismissed the thought. They needn't give up and lie down to die yet, but there had to be some shelter somewhere. Otherwise they wouldn't outlast the night. The tent was no more good to them than a piece of paper, but there had to be a way.
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Think. You were boasting to yourself about what a selected, intelligent group we were. Use
it, or you might as well be an Australian bushman.
You might better. Survival is something they're damn good at. But you've been pampered all your
life.
Survive, damn you.
He gripped Janice by one arm, Dr. Frazer by the other; reached past him to young Domenick, theboy from the Commune who had been studying geology for work in the Colony. He drew them all closetogether, and spoke over the howling of the storm.
"Can anyone see where the trees are thickest? Since there's not likely to be a cave here, or any
shelter, we've got to do the best we can with underbrush, or anything to break the wind and keep dry."
Janice said, her small voice almost inaudible, "It's hard to see, but I had the impression there'ssomething dark over there. If it isn't solid, the trees must be so thick I can't see through them. Is that whatyou mean?"
MacAran had had the same impression himself; now, with it confirmed, he decided to trust it. He'd
been led straight to Camilla, that other time.