The compleat collected s.., p.613
The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 613
"If you are considering it now," he continued, in a tone that suggested that he owed them an apology for even mentioning the idea, "put it from your minds. You must do as the others are doing, and work hard and live off the fruits of the new land until the first harvest is in, and thereafter for as long as is necessary. The only difference between you is that they have to work and you must walk, and you must also carry your future and that of your descendants with you."
While he was speaking he watched them carefully. Many of those closest to him were looking angry, and the rest were too distant for their expressions to be read in the firelight.
He laughed quietly, in case there were some who could not see his smile, and went on, "Perhaps that last remark is something of an exaggeration. I did not mean to suggest that if we arrived in the main colony, ragged and starving and carrying nothing but a load of personal miseries, that they would not be pleased to see us. Nor would they make us any less welcome, nor hesitate to feed and shelter us. But were we to arrive bearing our allocation of seed grains, unbroken and uneaten, that would be much, much better because it would tell them, far better than any powers of eloquence could convey, the kind of people who had come among them."
His tone deepened as he continued, "On this world there is no money, no means of buying what you want other than by the barter and exchange of goods and services, and it is likely to remain thus for generations to come. There is, however, a form of negotiable currency that will be accepted, and gladly, by everyone. It is the riches represented by the unbroken seals on the seed containers you carry. This load will be useful, even valuable, to the colony. But there is the seed you carry within you as well as that which now burdens your backs, and the link between the two is closer than you realize.
"Consider."
Even though they were quiet now, Nolan was beginning to worry lest they were simply assembling the arguments that would demolish his, but the voice he used was firm and confident.
"Our principal reason for going to the colony is to find wives," he said, then dipped his head in a small bow toward Ulechitzl and Golden Rain, "and husbands. For colonists of a new world, the choice of a mate is very important. Doubtless you have your individual, and very personal, preferences regarding the kind of person with whom you want to spend the rest of your lives, those who will work by your sides, and who will love and comfort you and be the mothers and fathers of your children. But remember, the preferences of those you would have as your mates are equally important, to them, and on a colony world the requirements for a husband will be high.
"The as-yet-unattached females of the colony will be seeking husbands," he continued, "but husbands who are strong in mind as well as in body. They will want men who are adaptable, self-controlled, resourceful, and worthy of respect. Men who will not run from responsibility or collapse like a whimpering child if a crop falls short of expectations, or some other calamity threatens. They will be waiting and anxious to see who and how many of us have survived the landing, and they will be welcoming. But if we should arrive without our seed containers, as helpless objects of their pity and with nothing to offer but tales of woe and excuses, impress them we will not.
"That is why we must bend our minds toward that which awaits us at the end of this journey," he said very seriously, "and away from the heat and hunger, the stench and the scratches, that plague its beginning. If we can do that, I believe that we will impress them as no other member of the colony has done.
"Please think about what I have said."
They began to talk quietly among themselves, too quietly and much too quickly for Nolan to understand their words. Then suddenly the man beside Brenner said something in a loud, guttural voice that made the pilot burst into laughter. For a moment Nolan was so furious with the stupid insensitivity of the man that he wanted to go for him with teeth, fists, and feet.
"Pilot Brenner," he said harshly, "this is not a matter for laughter."
"Ease your mind, Healer," said the pilot quietly. "Most of the people here will try to do, and think, as you suggest. They will try very hard. But one of them has said that his future wife might not be impressed by a husband who eats mice."
Nolan gave a long, silent sigh of relief, and for a moment he felt so light that he could have been back on the ship in the weightless condition.
"By the time Wolfgang marries her," he said gravely, "she might be eating mice, too."
Chapter Thirty-Two
FOR ELEVEN days they traveled across the flat country that lay to the north, through jungle so thick that it hid all sight of the high ground ahead, the inland sea to the west, and even, for long periods every day, the sun. The areas of swampland had become smaller and less numerous and the hilltops fewer still.
Very often their nightly campsites were on thickly wooded hummocks that gave no clear view of the following day's journey, which was the reason why Brenner was given the lead position every day with the Healer close beside him. If the pilot lost his bearings, Nolan wanted to know about it before too much time and distance were wasted.
He was walking beside the pilot with Golden Rain twenty paces behind them when they moved onto what seemed to be a very extensive carpet of the low-growing plants favored by the mice. There were still many colonists who would not eat the mice, but enough of them did to make this area an important find. He made the prearranged sign that meant that the column should come to a silent halt, which Golden Rain relayed to the others before moving quickly forward to join Brenner and Nolan. She did so in time to see what the other two were already seeing—that the come-lately colonists of Earth were not the only creatures who preyed on the mice.
There were three of them, each covered with brown and green mottled skin or short fur that blended with the background vegetation and made it difficult to be precise about their shape until one of them moved to the attack. Then it could be seen that the body was round and fat, in size and shape like that of a young pig, and standing on four short and disproportionately thin legs. There the pig resemblance ended, because from the shoulders there grew a long, flexible neck that tapered to a tiny, conical head, while from the rear projected a tail that was twice the neck's length, highly mobile, but, unlike the neck, it widened to terminate as a large, flat, and fleshy oval that was less than an inch thick. As Nolan watched it became plain that the tail was the animal's principal natural weapon.
The creature's method of hunting was to pick its way slowly and silently on its pipestem legs among the ground vegetation until it saw a bunch of leaves that moved. Still quietly and carefully the creature turned away from its prey, raising its tail high and turning its head to the rear so as to keep the area in view. Then suddenly the tail came swinging down like a fleshy flyswatter; it turned and pushed its pointed head under the flattened leaves to come up with a stunned or dead mouse between its teeth.
Nolan had been thinking that it was much better equipped for catching mice than the colonists, whose narrow, heavy, and at times overly enthusiastic feet not only killed their prey but destroyed it utterly, when beside him he saw Golden Rain notching an arrow to her bow.
She brought one of the creatures down with her second shot. By then Brenner had dropped his pack and gone after one of the survivors, making the kind of noises that were attributed to Golden Rain's ancestors. The thin, short legs made the creature slow on its feet, and the pilot caught it by its tail and smashed its head against a tree trunk. Nolan immobilized the third one by jumping on its tail and cracking the skull with his staff.
That day they had made camp early so that the Healer could skin, dissect, and prepare drawings of the creature that he called animal specimen two, and that everyone else called a "thumper", for his catalog. Following the removal of entrails and other suspect material, he had followed the usual test procedure by cutting off two sections and cleaning them thoroughly before requesting that one be roasted and the other boiled to remove harmful bacteria.
It was then that the trouble started.
In vain did Nolan explain to them that as a food source animal two was as yet an unknown quantity. Examination of the stomach contents had revealed vegetable matter along with partly digested mouse, so that the creature was an omnivore like themselves.
But the fact that the human beings had eaten mice without ill effects, and that the twos also ate them as a regular part of their diet, was a strong indication, but by no means a certainty, that the larger creatures were also safe to eat. He reminded them that the initial test sample should be large enough for the results to be meaningful, but small enough for any toxic material present not to be lethal. If the test material was harmful or potentially lethal, the stomach would probably reject it within the first hour. If it remained for two to four hours while giving continuous, acute discomfort, vomiting, or diarrhea, it would be classified as inedible. And if it remained for four hours or more without any serious symptoms until it had passed through the digestive and waste-elimination systems, only then would it be considered safe to eat. Finally he warned them that the odor of the test specimen was not an important datum in the test.
No matter how appetizing it smelled while it was being cooked.
In spite of all his warnings, more than half of them insisted on helping him test the specimen, so much so that when Aisling Gheal showed briefly through the branches overhead, there was little remaining of the three animals save their skins, and Golden Rain said that those she wanted to use to make long moccasins that would give better protection against thorn bushes than her coveralls.
Before he went to sleep that night, Nolan attached two strips of the thumper's hide to his arm, one with the fur facing outward and the other facing in, so that he could test for skin allergies.
In the seven weeks that followed, they continued northward over steadily rising ground ahead with the inland sea to westward. The store of Earth food had long since gone, and in spite of everyone having adapted to living off the countryside, they were constantly hungry, but not weak from hunger. When the surface conditions allowed it, they walked in a line abreast, making a wide sweep forward in search of the groves that harbored the thumpers' mice. Many of them carried the wooden spears they had fashioned, or the bows and arrows they had made to Golden Rain's directions. A few of them had become more proficient in their use than was she herself. She had also taught them how to make the long thumper-hide boots, because by then the legs of everyone's coveralls were in ribbons.
Nolan had long since packed away his uniform, saying that everyone should know who and what he was by now. He refused to reduce his load by throwing it away, nor would he allow Brenner to discard his uniform, because, he told the pilot, that would give a bad example to the others and there might come a time when they themselves would need this reminder of who and what they were. And so it was that the two ship's officers dressed as did the colonists in hide boots, kilts, and the sleeveless leather waistcoats that left the arms free while protecting the shoulders and backs against chafing by the pack straps, and became indistinguishable from everyone else.
Except for Ulechitzl and Golden Rain, that was. They insisted on cutting fringes at appropriate places, and stitching on designs of dried berries, and somehow managed to add style to the crude garments. They, at least, fastened the fronts of their waistcoats with hide thongs, but not always high or tightly enough. More and more often he caught the other men looking at them, and just as often he found that he was looking at them himself.
Oh yes, he thought worriedly, they were all hungry but very healthy.
When Brenner finally completed the delicate task of removing the farspeaker from the spacesuit upper section, Nolan picked up that load as well. The helmet was bulky rather than heavy, but he did not mind, because he had a use for it when next they reached a large body of water.
Every few days Nolan was able to add to his list of edible roots and berries, but to be palatable the majority of them had to be boiled or stewed with the meat of animal specimen two. So popular was the thumper meat that they tried to catch every animal they found.
But the meat-supply problem was complicated by the fact that the groves that sheltered the mouselike ones did not always contain twos. That was why, when the colonists were advancing in a wide line abreast, the one who first discovered a likely two feeding place would climb the nearest tree so that he could look above the surrounding undergrowth into the grove to see whether thumpers were present. If there were none, and the colonists were not hungry enough to hunt mice, he would climb down and move forward again. If thumpers were present he would signal the fact quietly to those on either side, and the line would curve forward to encircle the area and then close in. The thumpers who survived the arrows and spears rarely escaped the feet.
Nolan suggested that they capture and keep a few of the thumpers alive, to be taken with them as a source of fresh meat when they were traveling through areas where the creatures were scarce. As well, the observation of their eating habits would give him more information on local plant life that might also be edible to humans.
The first serious accident happened while Brenner, excited at having discovered a grove with at least twenty thumpers in it, was climbing down from his vantage point. Apparently he had been gripping a thin upper branch and jumping onto a lower and stronger one when both branches had snapped off short, and he had fallen ten feet to the ground on his head, shoulder, and arm. His calls for help went unheard because the others were too excited by their record catch to hear anything but their own self-congratulations, and by the time Nolan noticed the pilot's absence and found him, Brenner was unconscious.
As Nolan slipped from the role of jungle hunter to that of Healer, his first feelings were of surprise and relief. This was the first serious casualty their party had suffered, and the injuries sustained from a fall of that distance could have been much worse. The indications were that in an effort to protect his head while falling, Brenner had raised his right arm. He had succeeded in that Nolan could feel only a large temporal edema that was still swelling, and no signs of a depressed fracture. In spite of Brenner's being deeply unconscious, Nolan was pleased to see that both of the pupils were reacting to light.
But in protecting his head Brenner had dislocated his right shoulder, broken both the radius and ulna on the right arm, and cracked two ribs just below the armpit. The fractures were clean and uncomplicated and the bleeding from a few surface abrasions minimal.
Subdued now and no longer trying to tell Nolan of the results of the hunt, the others gathered around while he worked. The Healer paused long enough to tell them that they would not be traveling farther that day and to make camp by the stream they had crossed a few hundred paces back, and that he needed a litter. Ulechitzl and Wolfgang remained to assist him.
He was glad that Brenner was unconscious as he relocated the shoulder and reduced the fractures, because there was no anesthetic available and the process would have been painful without one. For splints he used four of the thin straight twigs from the branch that had been the pilot's downfall, because the wood was light, brittle, and easily snapped to the required length. He strapped up the damaged ribs and immobilized the fractured forearm by binding it transversely across the pilot's chest. He thought of applying a wet pad to the bump, but decided against it because it was too hot and humid for there to be any cooling by evaporation. Brenner was still unconscious when they transferred him to the litter, and Wolfgang helped Nolan carry it to the officers' tent, which some helpful colonist had already erected for them.
Laypeople could be sensitive and emotional about apparent cruelty to the sick or injured, so it was only when the pilot and Nolan were alone inside the tent and hidden from sight of the others that the Healer knelt down beside his patient and began slapping him firmly and repeatedly on the face.
After about twenty seconds of it, Brenner opened his eyes and mumbled something in his native tongue which he translated a moment later to, "Bloody hell and damnation, Healer, what are you doing?"
Relieved at this verbal evidence of clear thinking, Nolan smiled and said, "I was surrendering to a momentary sadistic impulse. Now listen carefully. You fell from a tree and sustained injuries to your arm, ribs, and shoulder, all of which have been treated. More important and serious, and the reason why I was slapping your face, was the blow to your head. Any cranial injury that results in unconsciousness is potentially serious and now that you are awake you must try to remain conscious until I am satisfied that the blow has not addled your wits. Do you understand what I have been saying to you?"
Brenner nodded, winced, and a grunt of pain escaped between his clenched teeth.
"Moving your head may be uncomfortable just now," said Nolan unnecessarily. "Just answer yes or no. Can you see how many fingers I am holding up?"
The pilot took a deep breath, and winced again. "Yes, three," he replied. "Now my chest hurts, and my arm."
"I know," said Nolan sympathetically, and went on, "Can you remember the exact details of your fall? Can you recall the circumstances and incidents immediately preceding and following it, and your thoughts at those times? Can you remember conversations and events which occurred earlier today, and yesterday?"
There were more questions, to which the answers were invariably yes, and finally Nolan laughed quietly and said, "Your mind seems to be as clear as it ever was, but to make sure I would like you to remain wakeful for at least another two hours. Will you do that for me?"
"I'm not likely to sleep," said Brenner in an aggrieved voice, pausing for breath between every few words. "My arm and shoulder and chest hurt, and my head feels worse than the morning after a night in the beer cellars. Damnation, Healer, why didn't you let me sleep and be comfortable?"
