Moccasin looked beautiful in her finely cured hide vest and trousers and her thigh-high white moccasins. By the standards of the tribe, who came near to worshipping fertility, she was even more beautiful for her round belly, sure indication of her pregnancy.

Jean dropped beside her where she knelt at Nightwind’s fire. Nightwind was out on a hunt and Jean had chosen to make his advances in full sight of the tribe. He could not chance a clandestine meeting but this might be taken as innocent conversation between childhood friends.

Moccasin looked shocked to see him and turned her face away. Suddenly he was unsure of himself and unwilling to pursue his intentions. “Paulette.”

Her head came up sharply. “Do not call me that; I am Moccasin.”

“Paulette, do you wish to stay here? Would you rather return to the colony?”

“Why do you taunt me; you aren’t of the tribe.”

“I am not taunting you.”

“Are you asking if I want you to rescue me?” She cocked her head in the attitude of derision so often affected by the girls of the tribe. “Well, what do you offer?”

Now it was Jean’s turn to hesitate, for he was not sure how far his duties to her ran. He had known her when they were children and had desired her as a young man, but much had passed between that time and this.

Moccasin gestured toward the others. “They mock me, they belittle me, but my day will come. I have talked to the older women who were captives in their time. They made their own paths here and so can I.”

She looked around her again, at the lushness of the eternal melt just visible beyond the firelight. “Could I leave all this? This wild freedom, this eternal beauty. Could I exchange all this for a drab wooden cubicle and a man who is brutalized by too much slaughter in one season and too much leisure in the other? I can be one of them,” she gestured toward Mist-an-water and her comrades. “How could I ever go back to being what I was?

“Could you?”

Chapter 17

Night closed about the town, enfolding it in arms of darkness. Anton Dumezil, the elder, lay silent in the apartment that his own father had occupied and stared at the ceiling. Anton Dumezil, the younger, lay beside his wife staring likewise. Each wondered in the privacy of his own mind how went the machinations that each had set against the other.

Anton the elder swung his feet to the floor and paced his rickety way about his apartment. His feet crushed the fur of the same rug that Nightwind had wrapped himself in a year earlier. His arthritic hips would not let him sleep, nor would his own son’s knowledge of those same hips. He could not hunt again. The preparations had been made, the barges were loaded, the melt was on, but Old Anton would not make his kill this year. His own son was leading barge number one.

His mind rushed back over the years to the night he had stood over his father’s corpse, knife in hand. Young Anton didn’t have that kind of nerve. He was a weakling. If he wrested power from his father, he would not hold it long.

Old Anton was tired of power, tired of the responsibility of leading his fractious following, but he dared not relinquish it. He had taken this scepter by midnight murder and now he could not let it go if he wished to remain alive. more tomorrow

Jean showed Mist-on–water how to fire his rifle and she in turn instructed him in the fine points of archery and use of the lance. His leg still hurt with exertion, but he ignored it as always and found that he, could hold his own with Vapor and the others as long as they kept their speed to a fast walk. He could not trot or run.

Jean and Mist went hunting using Jean‘s technique of a slow stalk upwind and she killed a herby with the rifle. No other young member of the tribe had ever fired a rifle and she did an impromptu war dance around the carcass.

The lake lay far to the south and preparations for the turnabout were underway. For weeks the tribe had killed in excess, drying the meat against the flight. Now it came.

The herds had been restless for days. The herbies were milling in the brush, unsure of themselves, and the trihorns were even more belligerent than usual. Longnecks came within sight of the camp and the tribe’s children were held close at hand. All nature seethed with the imminent change.

Then they started. Here a humpox turned its shaggy head southward and there a herd of trihorns stampeded nervously, now trotting, now running, south. The herbies were quick on their heels.

The sun was southing, The melt growth still lay untouched to the north but the wildlife had turned away back toward the southeast, cutting away from the crumpled swath they had made and into the dry region of unharvested growth. The sun, too, had turned south, but there was no snow to melt. Snow there was – for it had followed the melt – but it lay far to the south and the herds were hurrying on to find it.

Some of the animals continued north. Always there were a few less gifted with instinctive intelligence and they went on into a fool’s paradise of heavy growth, munching their way toward starvation.

The tribe, too, turned southward. Now the animals were wary and lean. Jandrax could still kill them and now Jean’s rifle proved its worth. There was some fresh meat and some dried fruit and seeds, but mostly the tribe subsisted on the meat that they had dried in previous weeks.

They moved at the speed of the sun and even the tribe’s boisterousness was subdued by the barren land. It was low winter for a springtime tribe and their spirits were not accustomed to it.

The animals grew gaunt and many died. The children of the tribe ranged wide cutting seedpods for the domestic herbies and the elders rode more now, for they were the first to feel the short rations. Jean’s leg hurt constantly and he was hard pressed to keep up and to hunt. Mist-on-water was with him often, but had the decency not to comment on the pain she read in his face.

They came to the region of scanty growth. Snow had fallen here, though not in abundance, and every day southward brought them to greater moisture. It was not the unfolding of the melt as the colonists experienced it, for every day saw them in the latitude of the lal, but each day there were more young shoots and soon the headlong flight had slowed to the even pace of the long march.

Jean felt more at one with the tribe for their shared tribulation. He had been wrong in characterizing them as the children of eternal spring, for this ordeal was theirs twice yearly.

Now they were heading southward again and every day brought them closer to the colony and – home? more tomorrow

In the months that followed, Jandrax and Jean shared in the hunt and in the telling of tales. Jean learned from his father of the precursor ruins scattered about Harmony and they speculated on the nature of the presence. Jandrax questioned Jean closely about the colony, the details of Angi’s life after the purge. They discussed how old Marcel Dumezil had been killed mysteriously in his sleep. Jandrax refused credit for that act and pointed out that it had been done during low winter when the tribe was elsewhere. They speculated as to who might have done it and concluded that it could very well have been his son Anton.

“The other Anton, old Dumezil’s grandson, the one who betrayed you. What did you do about him? Did you kill him?” Jean stung under the implied criticism and explained, then added, “How could I challenge him when I don’t know that he withheld fire? Primers do fail.”

“Rarely.”

“Rarely – but they do fail and I am not content to take his life while my reasoning may be wrong.”

Jandrax merely nodded, offering no advice. “What about your son?”

“Once again, I don’t know that he is mine.”

“But you are sure in your own mind?”

“Yes.”

“What will you do about him?”

Jean shrugged, “I don’t know – yet. Before I decide that, I must know if I am welcome here. I am a stranger, after all. My original intention was to return to the colony.”

“And now? . . . ”

“Now I am not sure. There is little for me there, but I wonder if there is anything for me here. Your people are independent to the point of cruelty. They have your arrogance, but they have never had to face up to the opinions of others. They consider themselves the lords of creation and the colonists as subhumans.”

“They accept you.”

“Yes, they accept me. But did they ever inquire as to whether or not I accept them?”

“Do you?”

“No, not entirely, although I confess a certain respect for their independence. But it it is an independence based on childish bravado and an unwarranted sense of superiority.”

Jandrax was silent then, pondering. He stirred his chota and sipped. “It is an old story, Jean, played out on Earth centuries before either of us was born – the story of the nomad and the oasis. The nomad lives his life wild and, he thinks, free, looking down upon the dwellers in the oasis while all the time he is dependent on them. It is thus with us. Likewise the oasis dweller looks with a mixture of fear and derision at the ignorant nomad, whose crude existence lies beyond the pale of civilization.”

“You don’t depend on the colony.”

“No? Where did our women come from?”

Jean waved his hand as if to brush away a side issue. “You have women enough now. Nightwind could have found a woman without kidnapping Paulette.”

Jandrax shook his head. “There is more to it than having an equal number of males and females. Our gene pool is too small, not only among us but on the whole planet. We – the tribe and the colonists – need each other. The day will come when we trade together again. I think it is inevitable.”

“The elders don’t even acknowledge your existence.”

“So? We exist. Let them acknowledge or not, they can’t keep their children in ignorance forever. Did you not speculate on the disappearances? The day will come when they can no longer ignore us.” more tomorrow

He forced her back to the mud and overcame her.

She lay on her back, panting, and the entire camp was leaping about in mad abandon. He grinned down at her and she smiled, this time without derision.

“Stubborn would be a good name for you, but I don’t think you’re afraid of women at all.”

“Ha!” came an exclamation from beyond the fire, “I see I got back just in time for the entertainment.” The speaker entered the firelight. Jean would have known him even if his express pistol had not hung at his side like a badge of authority. His pale hair had turned white, but otherwise his face and frame were ageless. Jean grinned up at him, never letting go of Mist-on-water’s struggling form and said, “Welcome back, Papa.”

Jan Andrax squatted down beside his son, ignoring his squirming rug, and nodded with satisfaction. “I don’t know how you got here, but I’ll bet it’s some tale.”

***

Jean ate that night with Jandrax and his wives and retold his story, including the details of his encounter on the island. Jandrax shook his head and asked, “Did you tell anyone else this story?”

“Of course. Everyone else has heard it.”

“Damn! How did they take it?”

“With skepticism.”

“Only skepticism, not outright disbelief?”

“No.”

Jandrax cursed. Jean was taken aback by his vehemence. “Come, Papa; even Mentor Louis Dumezil recognized the possibility of further enlightenment.”

“Jean, we aren’t even speaking the same language. You know that the original crew members were cast out for religious reasons.”

“Yes,” Jean answered, “But only Nur Mohammet was not a Monist, so Helene told me; you were tarred with the same brush, but you surely haven’t all become Muslims since then.”

Jandrax got up to pace. “Jean, for twenty years Helene has been preaching Monism and I have been scoffing.”

Jean was bewildered now. “Are you trying to tell me that you don’t accept the Monomythos? That’s absurd.”

Jandrax opened and closed his hands spasmodically.

That old, hated, trapped feeling had returned at this reminder that he was enmeshed in a community too small for anonymity. “I do not believe in your presence,” he said, “or your winged girl. I do not accept the Monomythos or any supernatural being. I believe only in life, death, and oblivion.”

“My God! That’s horrible.”

“At times, Son. At times – do you want to be a prophet?”

“No!”

“You will be if you don’t watch yourself. I have infected the tribe with enough of my discontent to make them susceptible to a new doctrine.”

“I am a Monist,” Jean snapped. “I don’t want to start a new religion.”

“Neither did Jesus.”

Jean could only shudder at the blasphemy.

“They are ripe for a religion tied to this particular planet. Earth is three planets and five generations removed. They no longer need the Gods of Earth.”

“I cannot deny what I have seen.”

“Visions always come to lone and lonely men, cast out from their people and suffering great personal tribulations. They are nothing more than projections of unconscious needs in conditions of deprivation.”

“No. I saw what I saw.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“And if you are wrong?”

Jandrax scowled still more deeply. “Then I would truly fear. I have seen what men can do under the delusion that they have a god’s approval. If they really had it . . . unthinkable!” more tomorrow

Jean sat beside the fire one night as Vapor made the rounds of the young girls, teasing each in turn and caressing where they would allow it. The girls were as fiercely independent as their brothers and their prowess as hunters and survivors was no less. Vapor dropped beside Jean with a grin and began his customary teasing. As always Jean took it in serious silence.

“Jean Dubois. What a name; you need a good name like mine. Vapor – now there is a name.”

“Vapor is the promise of substance which fades away when confronted,” called one of the girls who was watching from the edge of the firelight. Vapor snarled back at her, then turned his attention back to Jean.

“Let’s see, what would be a good name for you? Turtle for your speed, hey. I’ve never seen a turtle, but you remind me of the tales the Old Man tells.”

“1 am happy with my name as it is.”

“Ha, girls, do you hear that? I try to do him a favor and he is ‘happy with my name as it is’,” Vapor mocked. “What you need is a name to suit you. Let’s see, Mud? No. Herby? No, you aren’t domesticated.” The girls broke into laughter at this.

“I know what I’ll call you – Stubborn. Then every time you refuse to answer to your name you will be proving it.” 

Jean looked straight at Vapor and said, “Go ahead. Call me Stubborn and I’ll call you Big-mouth-without-teeth.”

Vapor dissolved into laughter, rolling on the ground and leaping up to pound Jean on the back. Jean smiled within himself; he was learning to hold his own with these wildly independent people. He knew that his solitary march had been watched for weeks before he was contacted and that if he had not made it on his own, they would not even have bothered burying him. But he had made it, and they were willing to accept him because he had shown himself not to need them. It was backward logic by his own life-way, but he respected and understood it.

Mist-on-water stood up and cast her knife aside. Even around the fire the tribe seldom went unarmed. “Stubborn-Jean,” she said, “I think I’ll call you Afraid-of-women. Eleven times I have said that I wrestle better than you and eleven times I have been spurned. I swear, Stubborn-Jean-afraid-of-women, that I will never ask you again.”

Jean realized that the entire camp was silent, watching, and he knew that there was more to this challenge than met the eye. Helene sat near the fire, watching, her eyes sparkling slightly. He stood up, casting his blade aside also. Vapor whooped and Mist-on-water charged.

She hit him low on the left side, driving her shoulder into his scarred thigh and striking up at his crotch with her fist. Completely unprepared for this, Jean took both blows and went down in agony. His head swam and his throat tightened on the surge his stomach sent rising. He rolled over and looked up to where she stood, legs straddled, her firm breasts pushing against her fur vest, head cocked to one side, taunting. The others were hooting their derision.

He staggered to his feet and ignored her, starting back toward the fire. All around him were taunting voices. Mist turned away in contempt and he moved when she turned, lunging forward on his good leg and reaching for her. His fingers caught in the waistband of her hide trousers and he heaved as he fell, jerking her down so that her rump hit the muddy ground with a splat.

He was upon her before she could retreat and they fought in earnest. She had been schooled by Jandrax himself, but Jean’s training had been but little worse and he was both angry and aroused. She was vicious, kicking, biting, and tearing his hair, but he would not be moved. He forced her back to the mud and overcame her. more tomorrow