Chapter 16

Jean had traveled with the others, who referred to their collectivity as the tribe, for three weeks before the Old Man returned. The Old Man got his name not because he was especially old, but through his singular character. He was not the Old Man, but the Old Man. He was Jan Andrax and he was Jean’s father.

Helene had explained it all. The refugees from old Marcel Dumezil’s pogrom had taken to the hills knowing they were too few to survive. When the melt returned and the hunters left the colony, Jandrax – Jean still thought of him by the name the colonists called him – and Sabine Conners had stolen all the children under the age of six, and the refugees and the kidnapped children had gone on to follow the melt. They had been on the move ever since. Helene remembered twenty-two separate circuits and they had long since come to know their trek as well as a farmer knows his fields.

Jandrax had outdone himself. Every member of the tribe, however young, whichever sex, had learned at his knee. All were trained in scout lore and geology, geography, natural history, and survival on the planet they called simply – the land.

On the second circuit, Jandrax had spent three days hiding in the rafters of a house in the colony and none had known of his presence. He learned that Angi Dumezil and Lucien Dubois had married, knew they had an infant son, and knew, by simple arithmetic, the son was not Lucien’s but his.

Helene had advised him to steal the child and had offered to raise it herself but Jandrax refused. He still loved Angi, Helene was sure, and would not deprive her of her child. Jan watched the lad’s growth each year. He saw his son become a toddler, then an adolescent, then a man. Then he saw him as a man preparing for the hunt.

The last circuit he had not seen him at all, but the rumors were there for any who chose to listen outside the hunting kraals. It was a game that the young ones played for fun and the elders for information. Jandrax learned that his son was now a cripple through the inattention or malice of another and that he had disappeared.

Jandrax had told no one but Helene and Valikili. Even his wives did not know what had happened to his first born, and old Henri, the other surviving elder, was too senile to trust with the information.

Jandrax had many sons and daughters by his two living wives and by his first wife, now dead. In the early years, the refugees stole wives as they needed them and Marie and Helene had not objected, for survival had depended on increasing their numbers. Still, Jandrax was concerned for his firstborn, probably in part out of memory of Angi. When Vapor told his tale, Helene had known immediately that the stranger was Jean.

Jean in turn told his story. Helene was impressed and the youngsters, who were constantly underfoot, were enthralled. Even those of his own generation gave him respect, though they smiled their skepticism of the events on the island.

Vapor and Jean became friends of a sort, but Nightwind remained distant. They were of the first children stolen from the colony, though they remembered only the tribe and the marches. Nightwind in turn had taken a wife from the daughters of the colony – Paulette Dumezil. more tomorrow

Why was it here? Someone/thing had left it, of course, but for what purpose? To see what he would do? To exchange it for something of his?

He had nothing to match its quality except his rifle or his blade, both of which were indispensable. Finally he took a fishhook, line, and sinker from his supplies and draped them over the spear as an offering. Whoever wanted to contact him would have no difficulty in doing so and Jean’s leg would make it impossible to track that one down. Nevertheless, he took time to examine the tracks left by the spear’s owner. Moccasins; he memorized their design, rolled his coracle, and went on. If the owner of the spear wanted an interview, the opportunity was his. As for Jean, he would simply go about his daily routine.

Nightwind was pleased. The stranger had not taken the lance; therefore he was either honest or cautious. He had left a gift and a fine one. The fishhook was obviously of offworld manufacture and therefore to be treasured. In leaving a gift the colonist had shown himself to be generous – or cautious. He had not left a gift of meat to taunt Nightwind’s hunting prowess, nor had he tried to lie in ambush.

Nightwind hefted his spear and trotted after Jean, thinking to devise other tests. It was not to be.

***

Jean woke to the gentle rocking of the coracle and the first slant of sunlight. He was uneasy about the lance he had found the previous morning and when he raised himself to look toward shore his uneasiness proved itself. This morning he saw not a lance but a dozen moving human forms. They waited for him to pole to shore.

For an instant he considered poling to the opposite end of the pond and running – where? The futility of that action was so apparent that he discarded the thought as soon as it formed.

Trying to seem unafraid, he poled directly toward the crowd on the shore. His heart beat heavily with both fear and anticipation. He had seen no human face for many months.

At the center of the group stood one commanding figure, a gray-haired woman. Her physical stature was slight, but she radiated confidence and authority. At her side stood what had once been a mighty man, very dark and short, now stooped with age. Beyond him stood a young man of Jean’s age, his face welcoming, and another of the same age but less friendly. This last one carried the lance Jean had seen the morning before.

Jean grounded the coracle, noting how the remainder of the party held back, and staggered ashore, shamed by the clumsiness his wound engendered. He faced them across a little space, his finger on the trigger of his rifle, both hammers cocked. The woman noted this and smiled. “Welcome home, Jean Dubois. I am Helene Dumezil.” more tomorrow

Chapter 15

Following Nightwind’s instructions, Vapor soon reached the tribe. They were camped on a hillock overlooking a shallow lake where the children were playing with boats of bundled reeds and floating on inflated trihorn stomachs. The smoke from the central fire rose in a cloud, driving back the tiny insects that plague a man, and the scent of several dozen personal amulets made the air slightly acrid.

The barges were drawn up to dry and the elders were gathered in their customary place of comfort near the fire. Vapor could smell the cooking humpox and herby. He was greeted with shouts and teasing as he trotted into camp and Mist-on-water handed her brother a large chunk of steaming meat which he then carried to the fire.

His mother greeted him with a kiss, then let him have several bites in peace before she began her interrogation. She was a strong woman and one of the most outspoken of the elders. Vapor was very proud of her, and no less proud of his dark, taciturn father.

“Tell us of this stranger. Is he a colonist?”

“Yes, Mother, but a strange one. He is self-sufficient. He lives in the world, not hiding in a burrow, and he came across the lake to this place.”

“Searching for what?”

“I do not know, but he has adapted well and looks likely to survive.”

She fed the fire as she considered. “I wonder what is his purpose here?”

“There is one way to know.”

“Ask him?” She seemed amused.

“Yes.”

“And if we do not like his answer?”

“Kill him; but I think that his answer will suit.” Vapor paused dramatically, “He is a cripple, you know.”

She looked at him suddenly and he realized that she read some message there that he had not meant to convey. “How is he crippled?”

“His left leg is stiff from some old wound and gives him pain.”

“How does he bear it?”

“Well.”

“What color is his hair?”

Now Vapor knew something was up. “Pale yellow, like Mud-runner’s.”

“Ah!” She seemed both surprised and pleased. “I told him to take the child, but he would not listen. I told him that the boy was a true son of his father.”

“What?”

“The Old Man, you fool, the Old Man. Do you think his hair was always white?”

***

Jean stared at the lance, completely bewildered. His first thought was that some colonist was here; his second thought was that he had unknowingly returned to the vicinity of the colony. Then he realized that it belonged to one of the others.

Who were the others? The elders would not discuss them and Jean only knew that from time to time, always during the hunts, children or young women would turn up missing and their disappearances were always attributed to the amorphous others. Were they the winged people, or yet another intelligent species? Or were the disappearances engineered by the presence he had known on the island?

Jean pulled the lance free and examined it. It was of some wood he did not recognize, certainly not lal, siskal, or greenhorn. Something from the mountains, then. It was adorned with leer feathers and paint in bands of many colors and headed by a fine blade of iron. That the blade had been fashioned with care was obvious.

Why was it here? Someone/thing had left it, of course, but for what purpose? more tomorrow

Vapor was anxious to return to his people, to milk his weary weeks for all the glory they would afford.“I will go at once. Will you stay to watch the stranger?” Nightwind said that he would and Vapor took up his amulet and set out at a soggy trot along Nightwind’s back trail.

Nightwind had agreed to watch the stranger, but he was not bound to do so in the same manner that Vapor had chosen. Vapor had remained out of sight; Nightwind was more inclined to give the stranger something to chew on. He slipped back into his moccasins as soon as Vapor’s footsteps had retreated, then walked noiselessly down to the edge of the lake. There, in the center of the stranger’s firepit, he thrust his ornate spear.

***

Jean woke late and lay for a time, lulled by the gentle motion of the coracle. He was secure now in his ability to survive – always barring accidents – and for the first time he could relax and let some of the tensions of the last weeks drain away. The melt was a beautiful time – or a beautiful place, depending on one’s orientation. For the colonists it was a time, a season of excitement, of blood and meat, of planting and harvesting. During the melt, the colony rose from its cranky somnolence to prodigious feats of labor, only to sink into lethargy for another year when the melt had passed.

But the melt was always present somewhere on the planet; in Jean’s new perspective it was not a time but a place, a moving, eternal spring. The colonists never saw the beauty of the melt for they were too deeply engrossed in harvesting what it offered against the bleak months of winter. While Jean had trekked north, busy with his own survival, the beauty of the place/time had soaked into him, making him thankful for the misfortune that had forced him to follow the melt. Now, lying quietly in the coracle, he watched the sun rise and drive away the night’s chill. The edges of the water were lacy with ice here on the forefront of the melt, making delicate patterns of sunsparkle. All around him were the waxy yellow lal flowers growing on the fast-sprouting bushes, mingled with the green of new leaves. If he stayed in place for many more days the yellow would be supplanted by the red siskal flowers and the purple of the greenhorn, but he need only trek hard once again to reach this region of yellow where the leer abounds and the melt makes war on the last regiments of snow. He felt a curious peace and luxuriated in the beauty around him. His only tempering sadness was that he alone was present to watch the miracle that was the melt.

Surfeited with laziness, he poled to the water’s edge. He stopped, the pole dripping forgotten in his hand.

There, thrust into the ashes of yesterday’s fire stood a proud, feather-ornamented, steel-bladed lance. more tomorrow

Jean’s leg still hurt constantly, but not with the same intensity. He seemed to be getting into the swing of the long march and he felt good, save for a loneliness that became more intense with each kilometer.

Three weeks passed and the game became less plentiful, with a greater proportion of leers. Then he saw his first snow and he fell on his knees before it and gave thanks. He was marching faster than the melt! Overcome with relief, tears coursed down his cheeks.

Jean celebrated by killing a trihorn. He laid over for two days, curing the hide to replace the fast-failing one on his coracle and jerking the meat. Trihorn was a treat after a diet that had consisted almost entirely of herbies, which were easier to kill. If only he could find some way to conserve his ammunition, he would be satisfied, but so far he had been unable to kill with his bow. To come within effective bowshot of a wary animal required better stalking than his leg allowed.

He was only slightly worried, though. It would take, he figured, about two hundred days to reach the colony and he was killing only every third day, now that he had established a system of drying meat. With the coracle to sleep in, he had not had to fire in self defense in three weeks. That came partly from his increasing prowess as an outdoorsman; he knew now the little tricks of staying out of harm’s way. He should be able to get to the colony on his remaining ammunition.

But there was no margin for error. He must not shoot without scoring a kill and he must not get himself into a position where he had to fire to preserve his life, or where he had to kill more than one animal at a time. Leers were out and trihorns could only be taken when he found a solitary bull grazing away from his harem. Mostly he must live on the fleet but harmless herbies.

By the end of the second day, the vegetation around him had become slightly more lush and he had cured the hide, replacing the old one on the coracle. When he put out into the water that night he felt well satisfied.

***

Nightwind came to relieve Vapor of his self appointed guard duty. He dropped beside Vapor on the dry knoll and stripped off thigh-high waterproof moccasins. “What has happened?”

Vapor offered a piece of meat from the fire. “The stranger has decided that he is outrunning the melt and has laid over. He has smoked meat and is sleeping on the water.”

“What?”

Vapor explained about the coracle. Nightwind was incredulous and slipped away to see for himself. When he returned he laughed and called the stranger a crazy one. Vapor shook his head. “No. He does not have a warding amulet.” Vapor touched the aromatic bag that hung in the trees, giving off a scent which was faint to their human noses but horrific to the native fauna. “How would you sleep at night without one?”

Nightwind considered and agreed that the stranger was not so crazy after all. “Vapor, the council would hear you speak of this one. They wish to know whether it would be better to approach, ignore, or kill him.”

Vapor nodded. This was the message he had expected when Nightwind arrived and he was anxious to return. He had taken this reconnaissance on himself, nor would anyone have ordered him to it. The tribe consisted of individuals who cooperated readily enough but were violently independent. Now he wanted to milk his weary weeks for all the glory they would afford. more tomorrow

In the afternoon Jean cut numerous wands of greenhorn and when he reached a knoll he worked through the night for a second time, scraping, curing, and sewing on the project for which he had sacrificed so much.

***

It was apparent to Vapor that the stranger was a colonist and might therefore present a threat. He was a cripple, however, and despite the fine rifle he carried he was no personal threat. The threat lay in what he represented; was he the first of a new wave spreading out to endanger Vapor’s people?

By now Vapor was convinced that this was no ordinary colonist. He had a strange self-sufficiency that no other colonist had ever shown. He lived on the land, not separated from it by walls of timber. When his boat had been destroyed, he had not panicked but had immediately begun a northward trek.

Only once since then had Vapor left him. He had crossed Mist-on-water‘s trail and had run his sister down to tell of this new wonder so that the information could be relayed to the tribe. Then he had returned to his role of unseen observer.

Once the stranger had wasted an afternoon drying meat and curing wood and hides, but otherwise he had made steady progress. He had made crude bows and found them wanting. Vapor’s own bow was a laminate of greenhorn and lal joined by a glue made from trihom hooves. It would cast an arrow swiftly and with power. A man could hunt with it, though not alone and certainly not if he were a cripple. Vapor wondered just what the stranger planned to do with his crude bows and why he bothered with them when he had a rifle.

For two nights now the stranger had not slept. It was plain that he had not learned to extract the juice of the siskal root to make a warding amulet and was therefore unable to trust himself to the mercies of the night. Vapor himself woke several times during the night to watch the work in progress, but he could not understand its meaning.

When morning came, Vapor could see that the stranger was dead on his feet and wondered what he would do now. When he saw, he laughed in amazement and admiration at the stranger’s imagination. He had made a bowl–shaped framework of greenhorn and now he stretched the trihom hide over it and lashed it tight. Then he turned it over and carried it to the shallow lake of snowmelt. It was apparent that this was why he had stopped in this particular place. Carefully loading his gear aboard, he pushed his makeshift coracle away from shore and poled to the center of the lake. There he dropped a stone anchor overside and lay down to sleep in comparative security.

Jean woke a few hours before sunup and poled to shore. He had slept eighteen hours, nearly an entire planet day. By moonlight he broke down and bundled his coracle and started out. He had made several kilometers by the time the sun rose and he walked the day through, rebuilding his coracle in the dusk. The next day he repeated the process, still eating dried meat and the fruits which hung everywhere. He stopped early the third day to hunt and quick-jerk the meat of a herby.

He thought he was doing all right, but he had no way to know. If he marched too quickly he would eventually reach the forefront of the melt and would need only to lay over one or two days to be back at the peak. If he marched too slowly, however, he would soon find game and fruit becoming scarce. So far he could detect no change either way. more tomorrow

Working carefully in the uncertain moonlight, he reloaded the lower barrel, thanking the fates that had sent his finger to that heavier charge. He had fired two shots here and one on the island, all from the upper barrel. This was the first shot from the lower. He could not continue to use his rifle in this manner if he were to survive the half year it would take him to return to the colony.

He should move out, he thought, but he could not face the snowmelt. Instead, with rifle ready he sat at the part of the hillock furthest removed from the longneck’s carcass.

Several things were apparent. He needed waterproof footwear if he was to survive, for the continual wetting would lead to pneumonia and death. It must be made with care, tightly sewn and well greased. He needed a fine hide – the longneck would provide that – and a fat animal from which to render lard. The herby he had killed would have provided grease, had he known that he would need it. Jean would also need a fine bone awl or needle and patience.

It was also apparent, and even more pressing, that he must find a way to sleep without being attacked. So far he had done poorly – almost fatally poorly. Finally, he had to find a way to conserve his ammunition.

When morning came, he ate longneck meat and removed the hide, carefully scraping the inside and rolling it into a bundle. He took a rib to make an awl and started north.

Whatever else he did, every day must carry him onward. Were he to become injured or ill, the melt would pass him by and he would starve.

He cut wands of siskal, lal, and greenhorn as he walked and stripped them of their bark. The colonists had never had to discover which native woods would make bows for they fabricated fiberglass bows in the landing craft’s small workshop. Now he would experiment.

He stopped early that night about half a kilometer past a thicket of dry brush and built a good–sized fire. He hung his bow staves to cure; then cooked herby meat, now slightly high, and the remainder of the longneck. He sliced the meat thin and hung it over the fire on green branches, watching it carefully so that it dried without burning. The result was poor jerky, lacking salt and not having had the time to cure properly, but at least it gave him some emergency supplies. He alternated watching the fire, the meat, and the bow staves and working on the longneck hide. When nightfall was near he killed the fire and retreated to the brush for the night.

He had lost time and he knew it, but it had been necessary. He hiked straight through the next day, eating dried meat and the seeds and fruits that he found and by nightfall felt that he had gained some distance. Again his leg throbbed, though perhaps not so much as before. Near nightfall he stalked and killed a big trihorn.

Once again he did not sleep, but sat the night through beside the carcass, working by firelight to jerk the meat and preserve the hide. It was for the hide that he had killed the animal.

In the morning he started out under the burden of the trihorn hide, carrying three strung bows. Throughout the day he tried them, firing cut reeds at impromptu targets and concluded that the greenhorn was too limber for use. The siskal broke during the morning. The lal was a poor bow wood, but he could do no better. more tomorrow

Chapter 14

The first day, Jean merely walked. He had enough meat for at least three days and he gathered such fruits as he came across on his trek. During the morning he kept to the lake shore, but about noon he came to a small river which he could not cross and turned inland.

This was the first obstacle he had encountered and already he was wondering if it were not insuperable. He had no boat and could not swim with his bad leg. There were no logs with which to make a raft. By nightfall he was far inland and no better off than he had been. Finally he burrowed into a thicket of dry greenhorn, a remnant of the last melt, and wrapped himself in the remains of the sail. He had to have sleep so he trusted the greenhorn to give warning of the approach of any animal. Three times during the night he was wakened by something rustling in the dry brush, but each creature retreated when he shouted.

In the morning he hunted again, even though he needed no meat. This time he carefully removed and emptied the herby’s stomach, tied off one end, and inflated it. With fresh meat and his few possessions wrapped in the sail and his rifle and ammunition held high, he floated across the river on the inflated stomach. It was barely buoyant enough to keep his head and rifle above the water.

He had lost time going upriver so he made no move to return to the lake. Nothing was there for him now. All day he walked, dragging his bad leg in ankle-deep mud, splashing clumsily through knee-deep pools of snowmelt. He was constantly cold from the wet.

That night he was close to despair. His leg throbbed unmercifully and he had walked past sundown looking for another dry brush thicket. He had found none, and now he dared not sleep for fear of longnecks. He wrapped himself in the sail and sat cross-legged atop a bare knoll; he had no fire for nothing was dry enough to burn. His rifle lay across his knees as he struggled to stay awake. The cold that had been with him all day intensified now. His head nodded and soon he was asleep.

What woke him he could not have said, but when he opened his eyes he was looking into the snarling face of a longneck. The creature had been overcome with curiosity at his strange figure and had not attacked at once. Jean grabbed convulsively for his rifle, thumbing the hammer and squeezing the trigger in one motion. In his haste he had grabbed the forward hammer and the 17mm short barrel went off like a small cannon, blowing a gratifyingly large hole in the carnivore and shocking the night into wakefulness.

He sat for a long time with the longneck at his feet, the blood black in the wan moonlight, shivering uncontrollably. Then he slit the hide and ate, the still warm juices returning life to his frozen body. Nothing moved. Jean got to his feet and surveyed the nightworld around him. In every direction the world was a shallow lake, save for his low hillock. He should leave the place because the smell of blood would soon attract other predators, but to do so would be to expose himself again to the numbing waters. more tomorrow

He dropped down on a broken stave and sat inert. Slowly he forced himself to consider the meaning and implications of his plight.

Jean could not return, yet he had not entirely planned to return. He realized then that he had been thinking, in the back of his mind, of returning to the island, to the abode of peace, there to spend his life in the company of the semi-human dilwildi. The fear that had driven him away had abated over the subsequent weeks, but he had not acknowledged his plans even to himself.

Now he could not return to the island, nor could he return to the colony by water. The wood in the gig would not make a raft even if he could recover it all, and there were no trees here. Perhaps there were trees in the mountains that his map had shown to be several hundred kilometers to the west, but there was no way he could reach them, nor cut them down, nor return them to the lake. The bushes that grew during the melt were all but useless for wood.

He could not go by water and he could not remain where he was. Soon the melt would pass, and he would starve here. Without shovels he could not dig a permafrost cellar, nor could he hope to fill one while hunting alone. He would starve if he remained, nor did he wish to remain cut off from his fellows in such a desolate place. Solitude might have been acceptable amid the beauty of the island but not here.

He would follow the herds. There was no other hope.

For years the younger colonists had speculated whether the others lived nearby or followed the herds. Only a few would champion the latter position. It seemed absurd that anyone could survive constant migration, or that anyone could trek so many kilometers every year. Now Jean would get a chance to prove or disprove the theory. It was not a prospect that pleased him.

He searched through the wreckage of the gig, recovering his few belongings. These he bundled together and then he laid out the torn sail. It was too large to carry so he carefully cut out a sleeping robe from the best of it and then sat before a fire made of the pieces of his gig and made himself a fresh pair of moccasins from part of the remainder.

As he sat, he calculated that the melt moved at an average rate of thirty-five kilometers per day. He would be hard pressed to maintain that pace day after day, especially since he would also have to hunt and avoid being hunted at the same time.

He would not survive. Somewhere he would be too slow and a trihorn or longneck would get him. Or he would run out of ammunition. Or, worst of all and most likely, his leg would not let him keep up the pace and he would slowly fall behind the melt until low winter and starvation overtook him.

If so, so be it. His earlier shock had given way to a new fatalism. His one great adventure was ended and an even greater one had begun. It would be better to die thus than to have lived out a miserable life as a half-man in the colony. Yet he did not look forward to death as he had before, for it would be sweeter still to survive and return.

Night was about him and the fire was low. He had not slept the night before and now he must. He might die from sleeping, but there was no help for it. He put his finger through the trigger guard, his thumb on the hammer, and let go of consciousness. more tomorrow

Vapor slipped away from the fire after half an hour. By that time he knew everything that could be learned from it. The aroma of the meat told him that it was hump ox and the absence of caterwauling nearby told him that the stranger had sense enough to make camp far from the scene of his kill. He carried a muzzleloading rifle, but of a different design from those Vapor had seen before.

The other wore a full beard and shaggy hair, neither yet streaked with gray, though his face was lined with worry or some great sorrow, giving him the false appearance of age. He had been injured at some time in the past, for he unconsciously stroked his left thigh in the manner of one remembering some old pain.

His clothing was of fur, of course, but much more conservatively cut than that which Vapor’s people wore. Also it was quite heavy and the fire was high. Perhaps this one was ill or he was not inured to the climate or he did not know how to avoid the carnivores at night. Perhaps a combination of these factors existed.

Vapor was curious, but Grandaddy Longneck was getting too close for comfort. Vapor could smell the creature upwind of where he lay. It would not do to become careless while watching the stranger. He slipped away into the night.

By first light he was backtracking the stranger and soon he reached the humpox. Only bones and tattered hide remained. Vapor made a large circle about the site in order to get beyond the area which the carnivores had churned. There he found the stranger’s back trail again and followed it toward the lake.

Vapor was amazed at what he read in the mud.

The stranger was a cripple! His right footprint was uniformly deeper than his left and showed a dragging trail where he lurched each time his left foot was down. His left footprint was shallow and smudged where he twisted to thrust his good leg forward. That such a one should be here was incredible.

He soon observed the lurching gait for himself as he came up behind Jean making his way toward the lake. Vapor followed close behind, chafing at the slowness of their progress.

The stranger reached the bluff overlooking the lake and turned north, worked his way to the beach down a stream and turned north again. Vapor stayed on the embankment out of sight. Then he saw how the stranger had come and at the same time realized that he was about to get a new insight into his character.

He had come by boat, but he would not leave in that manner, for the gig remained only as memory and a scattering of shattered staves and timbers. Vapor could read the story in the mud even from the embankment above. A small herd of trihorns had been spooked by a pair of longnecks and had stampeded down the beach, running over the boat in the darkness and in their panic.

The stranger broke into a lurching trot, then stopped dead. Vapor settled down to see how he would handle this new situation.

***

Jean’s emotions ran the gamut, from disbelief to anger, to self–recrimination, to fear, to grief, and back to disbelief. The gig was shattered beyond repair and scattered over three-hundred meters of beach.

He dropped down on a broken stave and sat inert. Slowly he forced himself to consider the meaning and implications of his plight. more tomorrow