West Of The Sun by Edgar Pangborn (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📕

Abara.... What's the profit of any effort if the result is thrown away in a time of weakness? You discard only if what you have is proven false. We haven't much—we never have much. Some things appear to be empirically certain. Not many ... You know, I believe I've given a few people—call it a wakening of curiosity. I think that's good. Curiosity and patience. Good as far as it goes. I'm not ashamed." He was trying to see Wright's gaunt face. "You picked a tougher subject, didn't you, Chris? Don't worry—give you an A for something more than effort.... Now look, this hanging around here won't do." He caught Paul's hand and heaved himself upright. "I remember—map—damn it. Need another whole day before we pass the hills. Susie—down, Susie—"

But Susie, fumbling at him with her trunk, would not kneel. Paul heard Mijok's agonized whisper: "She knows."[147]

Sears laughed. "All right, make the old man climb." And before anyone could stop him he had tottered a few steps and burned out the last of his strength in a heaving jump toward her neck, which barely lifted him from the ground and dropped him at Paul's feet. Groping for him, Paul saw that he was dead, saw also, above the arching of the trees, a lucid cruelty of morning.

[148]

7

Twice that day Elis dropped far behind to listen and reported there was no pursuit. It was hard to judge their distance from the foothills of the western range, for now there was no open ground—only Wright's compass, the memory of the map, and treetop surveys that Mijok made from time to time. Abara rode Mister Johnson in the lead, making the beasts travel slowly since the pygmies were faint with weariness. Susie trailed forlornly; she had not been willing to abandon the grave till the others went on without her.

The pygmies carried only half a dozen makeshift stretchers; the number of unwounded had diminished too. "They slip away," Brodaa said to Paul. He saw three men carrying children too small to walk; no old women. The fat witch rode his litter, unconcerned at the fatigue of its bearers; the other old man, smeared with white and purple paint, stalked beside him. Brodaa said, "My sister Tamisraa ended life with the white-stone dagger. While Elis and Mijok made the—what word?—grave. We left her body looking north to help the spirit journey. There are many lost who will have no prayers—bad—they may follow us. What is this—burial, Paul-Mason?"

"A Charin custom. Most of us believe the spirit dies with the body: different parts of the same thing."

"Ah?" She did not seem shocked. "Maybe true for your people."

"We live in others," Paul said. "Sears lives so long as we remember him. That will be always...." It seemed to Paul there were scarcely a hundred in this worn line. "We mustn't try to hold them if they want to go. If you, Brodaa, or any others want to leave us, you know you are free."[149]

Her answer was firm and considered: "I will not leave you...."

Wright had not spoken since the burial, nor had Pakriaa. They kept together; Paul was with them sometimes. Behind them Mijok carried his shield. It was Elis who heard the bleat of asonis and stole off to bring back meat for an afternoon meal. It was Elis, before that, who said, "We have done what we could, Paul. We could not have made these people retreat in time to save themselves. If we had abandoned them Lantis would have left no more than a fire leaves in the Red-Moon-of-Dry-Days. Pakriaa is too sick to understand that, yet. She carries a grief like a little one swelling in the womb: it must grow greater before she is delivered of it."

In the afternoon halt, it was Elis who tried to make Wright eat something and sleep, but Wright could do neither.

The giant women Elron and Karison also refused the meat. They sat apart with stout brown Tejron. She was eating, keeping close to her the still unconscious Vestoian, whom the pygmies had given no more than disgusted glares. Tejron might be listening to Karison's undertone—it was in the monosyllables of the old language. The girl Elron held her eyes downcast, fondling the rifle. She and Karison had been much together in a peculiar loneliness since the children were flown to the island: Karison was old, her children grown and gone away before the Charins came; Elron was too young to have given birth. Three of the children at the island were Tejron's; the others were children of Muson and Samis and of a mother who had died in the old life. Tejron wiped her lips and grunted impatiently; she took up her charge in careful arms and left the two. Paul sensed what was to come when Elron set her cherished rifle at his feet. Karison approached Wright, humble but determined: "We must leave you."

Before Wright could speak, Mijok answered her with a sullen anger Paul had never heard from him: "I brought you from the jungle with empty heads. We gave you the words, the beginning of the laws we must make together. You lived like the uskaran, furtive and cruel—"

"No," Wright said. "Mijok, no...."[150]

Karison had winced, but she repeated: "We must go. The old way—we need it."

"Then you must go," Wright said, his spread fingers white-nailed on the ground. "And remember always that you go with our good will."

"That is so." She was torn two ways. "But the old life—"

Elis rumbled: "Elron, come here." The girl would not. "I hoped that in the next Red-Moon-before-the-Rains—"

She muttered, "When the change comes you will return to us—"

Elis laughed, roaring at her, "You're a fool, a child!" The harshness, Paul knew, was calculated, in the hope of changing her mind by shaming her. "You think the old life was a freedom. Freedom to live like an animal without an animal's peace, Elron, because of the thing in you that struggles for knowledge—oh yes, in spite of yourself, and always. Freedom to hunt all day or else sleep on an empty stomach, jump with fear at every creaking branch. Freedom to cram yourself with moss root and slugs from the streams—never enough—in the bad moons when the asonis go north. Freedom to kill the pygmies and be hunted by them, never an end to it—that's your freedom without the laws, without the words. No, so long as you're a fool I don't want you." She turned away, speechless; he shouted after her in a different voice, "He said you go with our good will. That is true. You can't forget us, Elron. You're not the wild thing Mijok brought out of the woods. You'll feel us pulling you back—you feel it now—and you will come back." But she was gone in the shadows, Karison following her, and Elis rubbed his broad forehead on his arms.

Wright whispered, "If they wanted it—it had to be so."

Elis waited for his angry breathing to calm. "Mijok, do you remember? In the old days I couldn't even have been your friend. Remember how angry I was—only a year ago? You stepping over the border of my territory, telling me—I've wondered how you did it with our few stumbling words—telling me every being should be free to go as he pleased anywhere in the world? You were in danger, Mijok. I am older, bigger, heavier—I nearly went for your throat. Long ago. So—don't be angry with these two."

Tejron sat by Wright, holding the Vestoian like a nursing[151] baby. "Maybe," she said, "maybe they will take some of what you teach us to others. Maybe it will be like the thing you showed us, how a little seed no bigger than the eye of illuama can become a tree...."

Pakriaa had watched indifferently; Paul hoped he was right, that her face was not quite so tightly set in lines of rejection and despair. Wright came stiffly to his feet, a hand on Tejron's shoulder, the other wandering into his gray beard. "Abro Brodaa, interpret for me—some of them have no English. Tell them we turn west soon, then south through bad country—swamp, heat, uskaran, marsh reptiles maybe, maybe the kaksmas swarm on the west side of the hills. Tell them we go through that. When we reach a river we have seen from the air—it has no falls and flows southwest—we shall make boats."

Brodaa put it into the high music of the pygmy tongue. Paul could see no change in the saddened faces; by rumor, most of them would already know this much. But the thin witch was muttering to his gross colleague, and some soldier faces turned to overhear that instead of attending to Brodaa.

"Tell them, Brodaa, this river will take us to Big-Water. We go south along the coast, to the island where our friends are, where we believe Spearman has gone in the winged boat. Tell them, on this island there are no kaksmas, the omasha never come, nor the lake boats of Lantis. There is game, good ground, room for all. Tell them—No, wait.... Oh, Brodaa, tell them in your own way that we hope to live there in peace."

The lean witch interrupted Brodaa's translation with a wailing diatribe, twitching his twigs of arms, lashing the battered soldiers with his oratory. Brodaa turned to Wright in misery: "He says—he saw Ismar change Spearman back to a marsh lizard and the boat to an omasha."

Mijok laughed savagely. "When did he see that? Ask him."

Brodaa did, on a thin shout. The scarecrow flashed her a glare of resentment and a snapping answer.... "He says he saw it in sleep picture."

Paul snarled, "Yes, a dream's as near as he came to a battlefield."

Brodaa was shocked, but Nisana laughed. The fat witch[152] on the litter was fuming. Coming from Pakriaa's village, he probably had enough English to understand it; he leaned forward, embracing his hideous belly, croaking at the soldiers. Nisana translated in swift whispers: "Says—you Charins all marsh lizards, changed by Inkar-Goddess-of-Kaksmas.... Says we lose to Vestoians because image was broke; Ismar punishes.... Will I kill him, Paul-Mason?"

Brodaa choked: "You cannot touch Amisura. Your spear will turn—"

"My spear is lost," said Nisana, loudly enough for all to hear. "But Aksona, Amana, two other men of magic—those I saw killed at Abro Samiraa's village. Vestoian spears was not turn in the hand—I saw." She stepped forward, fingering her white-stone knife, and the fat Amisura cringed, squeaking.

Wright cried, "I forbid it, Nisana. Let them go. Brodaa!"

Brodaa said quickly, "He asks sacrifice—you, Paul, Pakriaa—"

Nisana laughed again. She dropped her white-stone dagger on the ground and slapped the thin witch in the face. The crowd gasped and shrank back. Such a man, Paul knew, was altogether holy, never to be touched; one must not even look him in the eye. But Nisana slapped him again and shoved him sprawling. She caught a pole of Amisura's litter, heaved at it, and he tumbled like a red melon. "Now let them choose!" She came back to Paul with grin and swagger, patting her scarred chest. "I am little Spearman. I break images too."

And the pygmies were choosing, not as she or the witches had hoped—choosing headlong retreat from this sacrilege, dissolving away into the forest with sick-eyed backward looks. Paul saw Amisura weeping, humping pitiably back to his litter on all fours, and heard Pakriaa laugh. The two soldiers who had carried Amisura brought the litter nearer, not daring to touch him; when he flopped on it they bore him away. The other witch had run blindly, covering his insulted face, and Wright said like a machine, "Let them go—let them—"

Sardonically, Pakriaa had watched the whole incident without rising; now she seemed to want to catch Wright's[153] eye, lifting a skinny shoulder as if to say: "What can you do with fools?"

When the panic was over, thirty followers remained....

In the early evening Mijok reported, after another treetop survey, that the last of the kaksma hills was about three miles southwest. West of them the jungle was level; it was time to turn. Elis had slipped away and returned with two heavy carcasses like wild boars. Sears had named these stodgy animals pigmors. The mor suffix, he had insisted, was an intensely scientific shorthand for "more or less, damn it." The meat was high-flavored and coarse but safe.... Hearing Mijok's news, Brodaa sighed, thinking perhaps of the long history of her people, the groping for a narrow path of survival among endless perils. "We say the great uskaran hears a leaf fall to earth from a thousand paces away but the kaksma hears the leaf divide the air as it falls. Oh—three of your Charin miles, that is great length. Maybe enough."

The tremendous sheer spires of the coastal range, Mijok said, were visible in the