Binder1, page 9
Wadjik grinned at her.
“All right. Joe. Do you mean you don’t know which Udbahr male that was—the one who was singing? Don’t ;you know why I’m going to these prospecting grounds ;of yours? Don’t you know about the remains of a city ;there built by these same Udbahrs?”
“Sure, I’ve seen it. What of it?”
“I’m telling you what of it! They had a high level of civilization once—or at least a higher level than now. ;But that doesn’t mean anything to you—”
“They degenerated. That’s what it means to me. They’re cannibal degenerates. And you want me to ;treat them like human beings—”
“I want you to treat them like intelligent beings— which they are. Even an uneducated, brutal, stupid ;man like you ought to understand—”
“Listen to who’s talking. The kid historian speaks. I thought you were still in school, writing a thesis. You ;didn’t tell me you’d been at this for years—”
“I may be only a graduate student but I’ve learned a few things you never did—”
Looking past Wadjik’s heat-reddened face, flaming under its salve, Kiev saw the upper part of Johnson’s ;countenance beyond. Johnson seemed to be calmly listening, There was nothing to do, Kiev knew, but listen. ;It was the heat—the sickening intoxication of the deadly ;heat in the shelter—that was making the argument. ;When the heat reached its most relentless intensity ;only the instinct keeping men in their thermal bags ;stopped them from killing each other.
Wadjik finally broke off the argument by drawing down into his bag and rolling across the floor of the ;shelter to the lavatory door. He pressed the bottom ;latch through his bag, opened the door, rolled inside ;and shut himself off from the rest of the room. Willy fell ;silent.
Kiev looked sideways at her.
“It’s no use,” he whispered to her. “Save your energy.”
She turned and glared at him.
“And I thought you were different!” She spat and slid down, head and all, into her bag.
Kiev backed into his own cocoon. Fuelled by the feverishness induced by the heat, his mind ran on. ;They were all a little crazy, he thought, all who had ;taken up prospecting. Crazy or they had something to ;hide in their pasts that would keep them from ever ;leaving this planet.
But a man who was clean elsewhere, could become rich in five years if he kept his head—and kept his ;health—both on the trips and back in civilization. On ;Kiev’s first trip into the mountains, two years ago, he ;had not known what he was after. Just a lot of money, ;he had thought, to blow back at the hotels. But now he ;knew better. He was going to take it cool and calm, like ;Johnson—who could never leave the planet.
Kiev meant to keep his own backtrail clear. And he would leave when the time came with enough to buy ;him citizenship and a good business franchise back on ;one of the Old Worlds. He had his picture of the future ;clear in his mind. A modern home on a settled world, a steady, good income. Status. A family.
He had seen enough of the wild edges of civilization. Leave the rest of it to the new kids coming out. He was ;still young but he could look ahead and see thirty up ;there waiting for him.
His thoughts rambled on through the deadly hours as his body temperature was driven slowly upward by the ;heat. In the end his mind rambled and staggered. He ;awoke suddenly.
He had passed from near-delirium into sleep without realizing it. The deadly heat of mid-afternoon had broken towards cool-off and with the first few degrees of ;relief within the shelter he, like all the rest, had dropped ;immediately into exhausted slumber. By now—he ;glanced at the wristwatch on the left sleeve of his ;outergear—the hour was nearly sunset.
He looked about the shelter. Willy, Shant, Wadjik, Johnson were still sleeping.
“Hey,” he croaked at them, speaking above a whisper for the first time in hours. “Time for the drive. Up and at ’em.”
In forty-five minutes they were all dressed, fed and outside, with the shelter folded and packed, along with ;the other equipment, on grav-sleds ready to travel. ;Wadjik and Shant took off to the north, towing their ;own grav-sled. Kiev and Johnson were left with their ;sled and the girl. They looked at her thoughtfully. The ;sun was already down below the peaks to the west. But ;three-quarters of the sky above them was still white ;with a glare too bright to look at directly and the heat, ;even with outersuit and helmet sealed, made every movement a new cause for perspiration. The climate units of ;the suits whined with their effort to keep the occupants ;dry and cool.
“I’m not going to join you,” Willy snapped. “I won’t be a party to any killing of the natives.”
“We can’t leave you behind,” Kiev answered. “Unless you can handle a gun—and will use it. If any of the males break away from the drive they’ll double back ;and you’d make an easy meal.”
Inside the transparent helmet her fact was pale even in the heat.
“You can stick with the grav-sled,” said Kiev. “You don’t have to join the drive. Just keep up.”
She did not look at him or speak. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of an answer, he thought. ;“Move out, then,” said Johnson.
They began to climb the cliffs towards the brightness in the sky, the grav-sled trailing behind them on slave ;circuit, its load piled high. Willy, looking small in her ;suit, trudged behind it. Under the crown of the cliffs ;they turned about, deployed to cover both sides of the ;clearing below and began their drive.
They worked forward, each man firing into every rock niche or cranny that might have an Udbahr sealed ;up within it. Deep, booming sounds—made by the air ;and moisture within each cranny exploding outward— ;began to echo between the cliffs. Soon a shout came ;over Kiev’s suit intercom in Johnson’s deep voice.
“One running! One running! Eleven o’clock, sixty meters, down in the cleft there.”
Kiev jerked his gaze ahead and caught a glimpse of an adult-sized, humanlike, brown figure with a greenishly ;naked, round skull and large tarsier-like eyes, vanishing ;up a narrow cut.
“No clothing,” called Kiev over the intercom. “Must be a female, or a young male.”
“Or maybe old Hehog playing it incognito—” Johnson began but was interrupted.
“One running! One running!” bellowed Wadjik’s voice distantly over the intercom. “Two o’clock, near clifftop.” ;“One running! Deep in the pass there at three o’clock!” ;chimed in Johnson, again. “Keep them moving!”
The sounds of the blasting attack were now routing out Udbahrs who had denned up for the day. Most ;were females or young, innocent of either clothing or ;weapons. But here and there was a heavier, male figure, running with spear or throwing-stick in hand and ;wearing anything from a rope of twisted rock vines or ;rat furs around his waist to some tattered article of ;clothing, stolen, scavenged—or just possibly taken as a ;war prize—from the dead body of a human prospector.
The males were slowed by their insistence on herding the females and the young ahead of them. They always did this, even though nearly all prospectors made ;it a point to kill only the grown males—the warriors ;who were liable to attack if left alive. The pattern was ;old, familiar—one of the things that made most prospectors swear the Udbahrs had to be animal rather than ;intelligent. The females and young were gathering into ;a herd as they ran, joining up beyond the screen of the ;males following them. When the herd was complete— ;when all who should be in it had been accounted for— ;the males would choose their ground, stop and turn to ;fight and hold up the pursuers while the females and ;young escaped.
They always reacted the same way, no matter whether the tactic were favorable or not in the terrain where ;they were being driven. Kiev thought suddenly. Everything the Udbahrs did was by rote. And strange to ;creatures who reasoned like men. No matter what Willy ;said, it was hard to think of them as any kind of people— ;let alone people with whom you could become involved. For example, if he, Johnson, Shant and Wadjik ;quit driving the natives now and pulled back, the Udbahr ;males would immediately turn around and start trying ;to kill each other. It was only when they were being ;driven or were joining for an attack on prospectors that ;the males had ever been known to cooperate.
So, as it always went, it went this sunset hour on the Udbahr Planet. By the time the last light of the day star ;was beginning to evaporate from the western sky and ;the great ghostly circle of the nearer moon was beginning to be visible against a more reasonably lighted sky, ;some half dozen of the Udbahr males disappeared suddenly among the boulders and rocks at the mouth of a ;pass down which the herd of females and young were ;vanishing.
“Hold up,” Johnson gasped over the intercom. “Hold it up. They’ve forted. Stop and breathe.”
Kiev checked his weary legs and collapsed into sitting position on a boulder, panting. His body was damp all ;over in spite of the efforts of his suit to keep him dry. ;His head rang with a headache induced by exhaustion ;and the heat.
The Udbahr males hidden among the rocks near the mouth of the pass began to sing their individual songs ;of defiance.
Kiev’s breathing eased. His headache receded to a dull ache and finally disappeared. The last of the daylight was all but gone from the sky behind them. The ;nearer moon, twice as large as the single moon of Earth ;by which all moons were measured, was sharply outlined, bright in the sky, illuminating the scene with a ;sort of continuing twilight.
“What’re you waiting for?” Willy’s voice said dully in his earphones. “Why don’t you go and kill them?”
He turned to look for her and was astonished to find her, with the grav-sled, almost beside him. She had sat ;down on the ground, her back bowed as if in deep ;discouragement, her face turned away and hidden from ;him within the transparent helmet.
“They’ll come to us,” he muttered, without thinking.
Suddenly she curled up completely into a huddled ball of silver outerwear suit and crystalline helmet. The ;sheer, unutterable anguish of her pose squeezed at his ;throat.
He dropped down to his knees beside her and put his arms around her. She did not respond.
“You don’t understand—” he said. And then he had the sense to tongue off the interphone and speak to her ;directly and privately through the closeness of their ;helmets, alone. “You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. You like to do this. You like it.”
Her voice was muffled, dead.
His heart turned over at the sound of it and suddenly, unexpectedly, he realized that he had somehow managed to fall in love with her. He felt sick inside. It ;was all wrong—all messed up. He had meant to go ;looking for a woman—but eventually, after he’d made ;his stake and gone back to some civilized world. He had ;not planned anything like this involvement with a girl ;he had known only five days and who had all sorts of ;wild notions about how things should be. He did not ;know what to do except kneel there, holding her.
“If you don’t like it why do you do it?” her voice said. “If you really don’t like it—then don’t do it. Now. Let ;these go.”
“I can’t,” he said.
The singing broke off suddenly in a concerted howl from the Udbahr males, mingled with a triumphant cry ;over the intercom from Wadjik.
“Got one.” And then: “Look out. Stones.”
Kiev jerked into the shelter of a boulder, dragging Willy with him. Two rocks, each about half the size of ;his fist, dug up the ground where they had crouched ;together.
“You see?”
He pushed her roughly from him and drew his side-arm. Leaning around the boulder, he searched the rocks of the slope below the pass, watching the vernier ;needle of the heat-indicator slide back and forth on the ;weapon’s barrel. It jumped suddenly and he stopped ;moving.
He peered into the gun’s rear sights, thumbing the near lens to telescopic. He held his aim on the warm ;location, studying the small area framed in the sight ;screen. Suddenly he made it out—a tiny patch of brown ;between a larger boulder and a bit of upright, broken ;rock.
He aimed carefully.
“Don’t do it.”
He jerked involuntarily, sending his beam wide of the mark at the sound of her voice. A patch of bare ;gravel boomed and flew. The bit of brown color disappeared from between the rocks. He leaned the front of ;his helmet wearily against the near side of the boulder ;before him.
“Damn you,” he said helplessly. “What are you doing to me?”
“I’m trying to save you,” she said fiercely, “from being a murderer.”
Another stone hit the top of the boulder behind which they hid and caromed off- their heads.
“How about saving me from that?” he said emptily. “Don’t you understand? If we don’t kill them they’ll try ;to kill us—”
“I don’t believe it.” She, too, had shut off her intercom. Her voice came to him distantly through two thicknesses of transparent material. “Have you ever ;tried? Has anyone ever tried?”
Another sudden valley of stones was followed by more dull explosions as the heat of the human weapons ;found and destroyed live targets. Shant and Wadjik ;were howling in triumph and shooting steadily.
“We got five—they’re on the run,” Shant whooped. “Kiev! Johnson! They’re on the run!”
The explosions ceased. Kiev peered cautiously around his boulder, stood up slowly. Wadjik, Shant, and Johnson had risen from positions in a semicircle facing the ;distant pass.
“Any get away?” Johnson was asking.
“One, maybe two—” Shant cut himself short. “Look out—duck. Twelve o’clock, fifty meters.”
At once Kiev was again down behind his boulder. He dragged down Willy, tongued on his intercom.
“What is it?”
“That chunk of feldspar about a meter high—”
Kiev looked down the slope until his eyes found the rock. A glint that came and went behind and above it, ;winking in the waxing light of the nearer moon that ;now seemed as bright as a dull, cloudy day back on ;Earth. The flash came and went, came and went.
Kiev recognized it presently as a reflection from the top curve of a transparent helmet bobbing back and ;forth like the head of someone dancing just behind the ;boulder. A male Udbahr’s voice began to sing behind ;the rock.
Man with a head-and-a-half ;
come and get your half-head.
Man with a head-and-a-half ;
Come so I can kill you.
Ancient, my enemy.
Ancient, my enemy—
“Hehog,” snapped Johnson’s voice over the intercom.
Silence held for a minute. Then Wadjik’s voice came thinly through the phones.
“What are you waiting for, Kiev?”
Kiev said nothing. The transparent curve of the helmet top rose again, bobbed and danced behind the boulder. It danced higher. Within it now was a bald, ;round, greenish skull with reddish, staring tarsier eyes ;and—finally revealed—the lipless gash of a fixedly grinning mouth.
“What is it? What’s Wadjik mean?” Willy asked.
Her voice rang loud in Kiev’s helmet phones. She had reactivated her intercom.
“It’s Hehog down there,” Kiev said between stiff jaws. “That’s my helmet he’s wearing. He’s had it ever ;since he first took it off me my first trip into the ;mountains.”
“Took it off you?”
“I was new. I’d never been on a drive before,” muttered Kiev. “I got hit in the chest by a stone, had the wind knocked out of me. Next thing I knew Hehog was ;lifting off my helmet. My partners came up shooting ;and drove him off.”
“What about it, Kiev?” The voice was Johnson’s. “Do you want us to spread out and get behind him? Or you ;want to go down and get the helmet by yourself?”
Kiev grunted under his breath, took his sidearm into his left hand and flexed the cramped fingers of his right. ;They had been squeezing the gunbutt as if to mash it ;out of all recognizable shape.
“I’m going alone,” he said over the intercom. “Stay back.”
He got his heels under him and was ready to rise when he was unexpectedly yanked backward to the ;gravel. Willy had pulled him down.
“You’re not going.”
He tongued off his intercom, turned and jerked her hand loose from his suit.
“You don’t understand,” he shouted at her through his helmet. “That’s the trouble with you. You don’t ;understand a damn thing.”
He pushed her from him, rose and dived for the protection of a boulder four meters down the slope in ;front of him and a couple of meters to his right.
A flicker of movement came from below as he moved— the upward leap of a throwing-stick behind the rock ;where Hehog hid. Kiev glimpsed something dark racing through the air towards him. A rock fragment struck ;and burst on the boulder-face, spraying him with stone ;chips and splinters.
Reckless now, he threw himself towards the next bit of rock cover farther down the slope. His foot caught on ;a stony outcropping in the shale. He tripped and rolled, ;tumbling helplessly to a stop beside the very boulder ;behind which Hehog crouched, throwing-stick in one ;hand, stone-tipped spear in the other.
Kiev sprawled on his back. He stared helplessly up into the great eyes and humorlessly grinning mouth ;looming over him inside the other helmet less than an ;arm’s length away. The spear twitched in the brown ;hand—but that was all.
Hehog stared into Kiev’s eyes. Kiev was aware of Willy and the others shouting through his helmet phones. ;A couple of shots blasted grooves into the boulder-top ;above his head. And with a sudden, wordless cry Hehog ;bounded to his feet and dodged away among the boulder towards the pass.
The bright beams of shots from the human guns followed him but lost him. He vanished into the pass.
Kiev climbed to his feet, shaking inside. He awoke to the fact that he was still holding his sidearm. A bitter ;understanding broke upon him with the hard, unsparing clarity of an Udbahr Planet dawn.
