III. Survivors' Point
Next morning as Iroedh walked toward the Paris, Bloch stood awaiting her. With him were the female man named Dulac and the male one called O'Mara, the latter with a rectangular leather case slung from one shoulder. Bloch again bore his mysterious weapon.
"Camera," said O'Mara in answer to Iroedh's question, which left her no wiser.
Bloch explained: "A magical picture-making machine. He comes on all these expeditions to make them."
"And what are those? Ornaments?" Iroedh pointed to a row of brass clips in Bloch's belt, each clip holding a number of little brass cylindrical things.
"They're for this." Bloch indicated the tube of dark metal, which Iroedh had learned was called a gon or gyn.
"What's that you're saying, Baldy?" said O'Mara. "Don't go blackguarding me to the young lady, now, just because I don't speak the heathen dialect of her."
Iroedh, not understanding this speech, led the party along the road by which the Avtini had entered the valley. O'Mara made a peculiar shrill noise with his mouth, like that which Subbarau had made the previous day.
"What's that?" asked Iroedh.
"We call it whistling," said Bloch, and tried to show her how. But though she puckered and blew, nothing came out but air.
She gave up and said: "Daktablak, you've asked many questions about our sex castes. Perhaps you'd tell me how your Terran sex system works?"
When Bloch had given her a brief account of Terran monogamy, she said: "Does it make you men happier than we?"
"How should I know? One cannot measure happiness with a meter, and anyway I am not intimately enough acquainted with your people to judge. Among men, some esteem the system highly while others find it extremely distressing."
"How so?"
"Take Subbarau. He is unhappy because his female refused any longer to hibernate in a trance while he was away on his space trips, which take many years each, and left him for another male. And he comes from a country called India, where they take a serious view of such actions."
"Then you must age greatly during such a trip!"
"No, because of the Lorenz-Fitzgerald effect, which slows down time when you go almost as fast as light so that to those on the ship the trip seems to consume only a fraction of the time it actually does."
"I don't understand."
"Confidentially, neither do I, but it does operate that way. Of course this is hard on the mates of the ship people who are left home, so they usually take a medicine that puts them into a profound sleep, in which they do not age appreciably, while their partners are gone."
"How about you? Have you such a mate, and if so, is she on the ship or back on Terra?"
"I am single, unmated, and quite satisfied with my state."
"Like a rogue drone?"
"I suppose so, though I do not rob people as I understand they do."
"How about the Dylak?" asked Iroedh, glancing back to where Barbe Dulac plodded beside O'Mara, each looking frozenly forward. The longer legs of Iroedh and Bloch had enabled them to draw ahead of their companions.
"Oh, she is unhappy also."
"How?"
"She and O'—the man walking beside her—how would you say 'fell in love'?"
There followed several minutes of a search for synonyms, at the end of which Iroedh exclaimed: "I know what you mean! It's our word oedhurh, which now means devotion to one's Community, but which was used by the ancients in the sense of that violent emotion you describe. I've come across it in that sense in some of the old songs and poems. But how can you 'fall into' a condition like that? One 'falls into' a hole in the ground . . ."
When Bloch had straightened her out on English figures of speech, she asked: "Are all men subject to this passion?"
"Some more than others. In the culture of my people, for instance, it plays a substantial part, whereas Subbarau's countrymen take a more detached view of it."
"But you said it made him unhappy."
"I think that was more hurt pride than love."
"And what happened to those two people behind us?"
"They got en—they entered into a contract to mate permanently, such as I told you about."
"Something like when a drone is initiated into adulthood and swears to serve his queen?"
"Yes. They got engaged, as we say, but then Barbe found her man was not what she had thought. He is what we call a roughneck—"
"A rough neck? You mean he has bumps on the skin of his neck, like the creeping thing called an umdhag?"
"A manner of speaking. He is a domineering fellow with a frightful temper, and she would not have fallen for him—"
"You mean she fell out of a window or something to please him? A strange custom—"
"Would not have fallen in love with him, I mean, if they had not been cooped up together so long on the ship. So she broke the engagement, and he has been in a rage ever since. He only insisted on coming along today to make things unpleasant for the rest of us."
"Because he's unhappy, then, he wants everybody else to be unhappy too?"
"That is about it."
"We sometimes have workers like that," said Iroedh, thinking of Rhodh.
"And he is frightfully jealous of me," continued Bloch, "because she works with me all the time, preparing my specimens and transcribing my notes."
"Why, are you in love with her?"
"I—uh—what?" Bloch looked at her with a startled expression, then said: "No, no, nothing of the sort," and cast a furtive glance at the two following. "But he thinks I am."
To Iroedh his protestations sounded too vehement to be altogether convincing. She asked:
"Could it be that you really are, Daktablak, but dislike to admit it because you fear the wrath of that strong man?"
"Ridiculous, young lady. Let us talk of something else."
"If you wish, though I fear I shall never understand you mysterious men. And your kind of love can't be worth much if it makes everybody so unhappy. Here we turn off."
She led them along a trail that ran from the road across the floor of the valley. Bloch said:
"Iroedh, have you ever heard of another space ship's landing here, before the Paris?"
"No. We have ancient myths of gods coming down from the sky, but nobody believes them any more."
"This was only a few years ago, comparatively speaking. A mixed Osirian-Thothian expedition—"
"What sort of expedition?"
"One manned by people from the planets Osiris and Thoth, in the Procyonic system. Procyon is the second brightest star in the sky from here."
"You mean Ho-olhed?"
"Whatever you call it. The Osirians are something like your uegs, but with scales all over, while the Thothians are only about so high"—he held out a hand at waist level—"and are covered with hair. Their ship alighted on what I think is this same continent, judging from their descriptions and photographs. But after they had been here only a few days a party they had sent out to reconnoiter was attacked. When the only survivor got back to their ship—"
"Who attacked them?" asked Iroedh.
"Avtini, from the account; probably a band of those rogue drones you tell about. Anyway, the survivor told such a wild tale that the captain, an Osirian named Fafashen, got panicky and ordered them to take off for their own system at once. Osirians are really too impulsive and emotional for space exploration."
"I haven't heard of any such thing; but then it might have happened many sixty-fours of borbi from here, and such news wouldn't travel far because one Community normally neither knows nor cares what goes on in the territory of another. The few people like me who are interested in the race as a whole are looked upon as queer."
"I have heard that before too," said Bloch.
The trail now wound slantwise up the slope. Knowing what she faced, Iroedh had worn nothing but her boots and a shoulder strap supporting her lunch bag and a bronze hatchet. When she began hacking at the brush that had overgrown the trail, Bloch said:
"Here, let me!"
He drew from his gear an object the like of which Iroedh had never seen: a thing like a knife, but several times as large, with a straight back edge and a curved cutting edge that made the blade widest about a third of the distance from the point to the hilt. A single slash of this tool sent a swath of plants tumbling.
Iroedh started to exclaim in wonderment, then checked herself. She could not afford to risk the slightest advantage by impulsiveness. Her agile mind had instantly seen the possibilities of the thing as a weapon; in fact she wondered why none of the Avtini had thought of it. Bloch seemed to take it for granted that she was familiar with such a device, but if she made a fuss over it he would guess that she was not and invoke his precious regulations to keep her from learning more about it.
"What's your name for that?" she asked casually.
"A machete."
"A matselh," she said, unconsciously giving the word the Avtinyk ending for tools and other artifacts.
"What would you call it?"
"A valh," she replied, giving the Avtinyk for "knife." "Do you use them as weapons?"
Bloch paused before answering. "One could, though it's a little point-heavy for the purpose. Centuries ago we fought with implements like this, called 'swords.' The best shape for that use would be somewhat lighter and tapering to a narrow point. Now, however, we employ these." He touched the gun. "Or we should if we still had wars. How about your people?" he asked with a trace of suspicion.
"Oh, some Communities use them," Iroedh lied, "though the Avtini prefer the spear. May I try it?"
"Do not cut yourself," he warned, handing over the machete hilt-first.
Iroedh took a few awkward swipes at the brush before she got the hang of the tool. She gave an Avtiny smile as she imagined the next stalk to be the neck of an Arsuun of Tvaarm. Swish!
"Come on, come on," said O'Mara, who, with Barbe Dulac, had caught up with Bloch and Iroedh during the discussion. "Let a man be showing you how a trail is cleared."
And he waded into the brush with his own machete, sending great masses of vegetation flying.
Thereafter they took turns, all but Barbe Dulac, who was too small. Sweat darkened the shirts of the three men until the two male ones pulled theirs off. Iroedh thereupon became fascinated by a Terran characteristic:
"Daktablak, how is it that though you say you're a functional male, you and O'Mara have rudimentary breasts like an Avtiny worker? Save that yours are even more rudimentary than ours."
"Your drones do not possess them?"
"No. Are you sure you're males?"
Bloch gave the barking Terran laugh. "I have always believed so."
She persisted: "And why doesn't the little Bardylak take off her tunic too? I should like to study her."
"It is against our custom."
At the request of Barbe Dulac, Bloch translated the last bit of conversation. Iroedh could not understand why Barbe turned red and O'Mara laughed loudly.
"These heathens have no shame at all," said the photographer, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hairy arm. "Here, Baldy," he said to Bloch, "take over."
Though Iroedh could catch only an occasional word, Bloch's manner told her he did not like to be so addressed. The xenologist went to work on the overgrowth in grim silence.
Iroedh dropped back to talk to Barbe Dulac, a process that entailed the usual difficulty when each knows but a few words of the other's language, though by pointing at things and making inquiring noises each soon expanded her vocabulary. The process was further complicated by the fact that the English spoken by the others was not Barbe's native tongue, for she came from a place she called Helvetia and the others Switzerland.
"We have the same sort of inconsistency," said Iroedh. "The Arsuuni call themselves Arshuul, but, as we have no sh sound and a different system of word endings, we call them Arsuuni."
Then Iroedh took her turn at trail cutting, and the grade became too steep for conversation. They hoisted themselves over outcrops from which they could look far across the valley. For a time the trail wound along an almost sheer slope to which a few weeds clung precariously. Although the trail had been adequate when made, time and weather had piled debris on the cliffward side and worn away the outer edge so that they walked nervously along a reverse bank that almost spilled them over the edge when the gravel rolled and slid away under their feet.
Iroedh pointed. "There's the ruin."
"If we live to see it," said O'Mara, mopping his forehead with his wadded-up shirt.
Another half hour brought them to the base of the shoulder on which the fortress stood, and from there it was an easy walk out. Bloch indicated the great blocks of Cyclopean masonry, weighing tons apiece, and asked:
"However did they transport their stones up here?"
Iroedh shrugged. "We don't know, unless they cut them from the cliff. The ancients did many things we can't duplicate."
"And when will we be eating?" said O'Mara.
"Any time," said Bloch.
They got out their lunch. Iroedh, munching her biscuits, asked about the various items of human food.
"Do you mean," she exclaimed, "that your males eat plant food and your females meat?"
"Yes, and the other way round," said Bloch. "Why don't you try a bite of meat?"
"Impossible! Not only is it against our laws, but when a worker has eaten nothing but plant food all her life a bite of meat would poison her. It's a painful death. Though it is said that thousands of years ago, before the reforms, people lived on such mixed diets, nowadays we should consider it a mark of savagery."
O'Mara produced a bottle filled with a yellow-brown liquid, which he unstoppered and drank from.
"Where'd you get that?" asked Bloch.
O'Mara grinned. "Out of Doc Markowicz's stores when the lad wasn't looking. Have a swallow."
He held out the bottle to Bloch, who hesitantly took it and drank.
"Weesky?" said Barbe Dulac. "Let me have some, please!"
"How about the native girl?" said O'Mara. "That's one human custom the darling should try."
"Be careful," said Bloch. "Just a sip. It might not agree with you."
Iroedh tipped her head back as she had seen the others do. Unaccustomed to drinking from such a vessel, she got a whole mouthful. She felt as if she had swallowed a bucket of live coals, and coughed violently, spraying half the mouthful on the ground.
"I—I'm poisoned!" she gasped between coughs.
"Let us hope not," said Bloch, thumping her back.
When Iroedh's equilibrium was restored he said: "Now let us prowl the ruins."
O'Mara replied: "You prowl, Baldy, while I take a bit of a snooze. The pictures wouldn't be no damn good with the sun so high anyway."
"I, too, should like to rest," said Barbe Dulac.
"How about you, Iroedh?" said Bloch.
Iroedh yawned, "Would you mind if I took a small nap also? I can hardly keep my eyes open."
"Do not tell me that half a swallow of whisky has had that much effect already!"
"I don't think it was that but the fact that I hardly slept last night."
"That is the coffee you drank yesterday. You nap, then, and I shall rouse you after a while."
O'Mara was taking another big swig and arranging his pack as a pillow. Barbe Dulac spoke to him:
"John, won't you get the sunburn, going to sleep with your chest bare?"
"Sure and these stinking little red dwarf stars don't put out enough ultraviolet to matter."
Iroedh asked for a translation, then inquired: "Is your sun, then, different from ours?"
"Very much so," said Barbe Dulac, "It looks about half as big and four times as bright. To us this one looks like a big orange—one of our fruits—in the sky."
"What do you call our sun?"
"Lalande 21185. That's just a number in a star catalogue."
Iroedh was about to ask what a star catalogue was when she saw that Barbe had dropped off. Accustomed to the simplest of sleeping accommodations, Iroedh dozed off herself, sprawled on the shattered pavement of the fort with her head pillowed on a stone.
Later the voices of the other two aroused her. While she struggled to remain asleep, she was brought sharply out of the twilight zone by a loud smack, as of an open hand striking bare flesh.
She opened her eyes to see Barbe Dulac stumble backward, half fall, and recover. A grille of red stripes across the female man's cheek implied that the sound had been that of a slap. Barbe screamed and O'Mara roared:
"That'll learn you to trifle with an honest man!"
He advanced with a curiously unsteady gait. Iroedh, gathering herself to rise, saw the bottle lying empty on the stones.
This conflict left Iroedh at a loss. She was sure it was wrong, but as a member of another species she did not think it incumbent on her to intervene. At that moment, however, Bloch stepped around from behind a section of wall and walked toward O'Mara, saying:
"What's this? Look here, you can't—"
" 'Tis your doing!" cried O'Mara. "No bald-headed old omadhaun is going to steal my girl!"
Bloch halted in hesitation, his bodily attitude bespeaking fear of the other man's violence. He looked toward Barbe, who said something Iroedh could not catch. However, it seemed to stiffen his sinews, for he took another step toward O'Mara.
Smack! O'Mara's big fist shot out and struck the side of Bloch's face. Bloch's head snapped back and he fell supine upon the stones.
"Now," said O'Mara, "will you get up and fight like a man, or must I—"
Bloch got to his feet, moving at first slowly and jerkily, then with more agility. Iroedh, watching with horrified fascination, wondered why neither tried to pick up the gun or the machetes piled against the wall with the other gear. Such a method of settling differences was utterly foreign to the discipline of an Avtiny Community, where violence (except in war, the Royal Duel, and the Cleanup) was unknown.
With a roar O'Mara lowered his head and charged like a bull vakhnag. Bloch stood a fraction of a second holding futile fists before him, then threw himself to one side, leaving one long leg thrust out to trip his assailant. O'Mara tripped, staggered on in a half-falling run, and fetched up against the knee-high parapet that ran along a section of the cliffward side of the stronghold.
Iroedh had a glimpse of O'Mara's boots in the air, then—no O'Mara.
A long dwindling scream came up, cut off by the sound of a body striking a ledge. Sounds followed of the body striking again and again, and there was a rattle of loosened rocks.
"Tonnerre de Dieu!" said Barbe Dulac.
The three survivors hurried to the parapet and looked over. After they had searched for some seconds, Iroedh, catching a glimpse of contrasting color, said:
"Isn't that he in the branches of that khal tree?"
They looked where she pointed. Bloch got out a small black object with shiny glass eyes and looked through it.
"That is he," he said. "Dead, all right."
He handed the glasses to Iroedh. She almost dropped them with astonishment as the pink-and-olive speck at the foot of the cliff leaped almost to within arms' length. After one long look she handed the glasses back.
"I'm sure he's very dead indeed," she said.
"I fear," said Iroedh, "I don't understand your Terran customs yet. Did the O'Mara leap off the cliff because of his love for Bardylak, or was that some sort of ceremonial execution?"
She stopped her questions when she saw the other two were paying no attention. They were jabbering at each other in their own tongue and Barbe Dulac was making strangled sounds while tears ran down her face. Iroedh understood this to be a Terran gesture symbolizing grief, but found it hard to understand. The female man had come to dislike O'Mara, who had certainly abused her. Why, then, such a display of emotion? Unless, of course, O'Mara was so important to the Terran Community that his death jeopardized its existence.
She caught an occasional word she knew, like "terrible" and "love." Presently the men put their arms around each other and pressed their mouths together, whereupon Barbe Dulac shed more tears than ever.
At last Bloch said to Iroedh: "You saw what occurred, did you not?"
"Yes, though I still don't understand it. Did O'Mara kill himself?"
"No. He was trying to kill me, or something close to it, and when I tripped him he fell over accidentally. Now, among us when one kills another for his own private purposes—"
"You mean as when we kill off surplus drones or defective workers for the good of the Community?"
"No; as if an Avtiny worker killed another merely because she disliked her, or because the other worker had something—"
"Such a thing could never happen!" Iroedh exclaimed.
"Your rogue drones attack workers to steal food and supplies, do they not?"
"That's different. A worker never attacks a fellow worker from the same Community, unless in carrying out the orders of the Council."
"It is different with us. The act is called 'murder' and is punished by death or long imprisonment."
"By 'long imprisonment' do you mean they starve the culprit to death? That's a strange—"
"No, they feed and house them, though not in fancy style."
"Then where's the punishment? Some of our lazier workers would like nothing better"
Bloch made motions of tugging at his vanished hair. "We keep getting off the subject! Just permit me to talk, please. If I go back to the ship and narrate this incident as it happened, some will say I murdered O'Mara because of our rivalry over Barbe. And while I do not believe I should be convicted, since Barbe can testify it was an accident and self-defense, it would cause a great stench and ruin my reputation back on Terra—"
"If the death was justified according to your laws, why should anyone blame you?"
"Never mind; take it from me that my career would be jeopardized. Therefore Barbe and I will not mention any fight or slapping. We will simply say that he got intoxicated on the medicinal whisky and tried to show off by walking on the parapet, and fell over."
"You mean to lie to your own Community?"
"Not exactly; just to withhold part of the truth. He did get drunk and fall over the parapet, after all."
"A strange race, the men. What do you wish of me?"
"Not to spoil our story. Keep silent about the fight."
Iroedh pondered. "Would it be right?"
"We think so. I do not see what good would be accomplished by having an inquest and perhaps a trial when we were only defending ourselves."
"Very well, I'll say nothing. As I'm awake now, shall I explain the ruins to you?"
"Good God, no! We have to get back down, report O'Mara's fall, and endeavor to recover his body."
"Why? His clothes and equipment would be ruined by the fall."
"It is custom," said Bloch, starting to collect the gear.
"Do you eat the bodies of your dead? Or do you make soap of them as we do?"
Barbe Dulac squawked, and Bloch said: "Not ordinarily; we bury them ceremonially."
Iroedh sighed. "What people! Shall I carry his gear?"
Bloch gave Iroedh O'Mara's camera and container of photographic material and machete to carry, and led the way homeward. They wound down the trail, faster this time because it was mostly downhill and the worst brush had been cleared on the way up.
As she picked her way down with O'Mara's equipment banging against her skin as it swung from its straps,
Iroedh wondered on the predicament of her companions. While she liked them as individuals, as one might like a friendly ueg or other tame beast, her first loyalty still lay toward her Community. She would therefore not hesitate to turn their troubles to her own advantage if occasion offered.
She remembered the forgotten epic, the Lay of Idhios, which in its last canto told how the drone Idhios had used his knowledge of the liaison of Queen Vinir with the drone Santius to force the queen to steal the Treasure of Inimdhad and give it to him. That was back in the bad barbarous days when workers laid eggs and queens had but a single drone apiece, called the king, who presumed to dictate to the queen whom she should be fertilized by.
Evidently, in dealing with creatures of primitive social organization like the men or her own remote ancestors, one could sometimes extort goods and services from one by threatening to reveal something to her discredit. Could she force Bloch to help Elham against Tvaarm by threatening to tell Subbarau on him? For an instant she thought she had an answer to her Community's problem, and imagined Bloch mowing down the Arsuuni giants with his magical gun.
But then second thoughts dampened her enthusiasm. Bloch was not the head man in his Community. She could not use her knowledge to force the whole complement of the Paris to help Elham, because their leader was Subbarau, over whom she had no hold.
She might try to force Bloch to come back to Elham alone to fight for the Avtini—but that might not work either. Accustomed to a highly organized and disciplined Community, Iroedh realized that Bloch could probably not wander off at his own sweet will.
Another thought struck her. "Bardylak!"
"Yes?" said Barbe Dulac.
"Have you, in the sky ship, one of those machines that tells when a man is lying?"
"I understand we do. Nobody has to submit to it, but if an accused refuses, it makes the officers all the more suspicious."
So it wouldn't be necessary for Subbarau to find evidence of irregularities, but merely to have his suspicions aroused, and the true story of O'Mara's death would come out.
Then could she make Bloch reveal some bit of technical knowledge that would give the Avtini the advantage they needed? If, for example, he'd lend her the gun . . . A dubious expedient. The gun was a complicated mechanism, and if not used right might blow a hole in the user instead of the target. To tell the truth, Iroedh was definitely afraid of it. Besides, one needed a supply of the little brass things that went with it.
But something simpler, now, like the machete whose scabbard was slapping against her thigh. Anybody could understand that.
Then she remembered how the Idhios continued. As the triumphant Idhios turned away, his eyes upon the treasure in his hands, Queen Vinir had driven a knife into his back and slain him. She explained that Idhios had tried to fertilize her without her consent—an impossible situation under modern Community organization, but one that in ancient days, apparently, occurred often and was deemed a serious crime.
The lesson was that when you try to force a being of primitive social organization to do something for you by threatening to disclose her secret, take care she does not kill you to close your mouth forever.
However, if the Lay contained this warning, it also pointed the way out. For it transpired that Idhios had written an account of the relationship of Queen Vinir with Santius and left it with his friend Gunes with instructions to deliver it to King Aithles, the queen's one official drone, if anything happened to Idhios. So Gunes had given the tablet to the king, and the epic ended with King Aithles's minions holding Queen Vinir and her lover with their necks across the windowsill of the palace while the king hewed off their heads with a hatchet so that the heads fell into the moat.
Though as a result of her studies Iroedh was more broadminded than most Avtiny workers, even she could not visualize the slaying of a queen by a drone without a shudder. No wonder all the Avtiny Communities forbade the Lay of Idhios!
Would any such elaborate maneuver be necessary in her case, however?
They had nearly reached the floor of the valley of Gliid. Where the trail grew wider Bloch and Barbe Dulac walked side by side holding hands and paying Iroedh no heed.
While Iroedh had at first been a little irked at being ignored, she now began to calculate how to turn their absorption in each other to her advantage. She hefted the machete. Perhaps in the excitement of telling their story and organizing the search for O'Mara's body they'd never miss it.
She said: "Daktablak! If you like, I'll run ahead to our camp and ask our leader to assign some of us to help you recover the corpse."
"That will be splendid; thank you, Iroedh," said Bloch vaguely, and turned his attention back to Barbe.
Iroedh jogged off toward the main road, taking O'Mara's possessions with her.