The Nearest Fire (V1.0), page 8
The creature was slow and not used to hunters; I stood still until it settled again behind a rock, then I pounced! I had hunted land-sunners at Itsik in the bara plantation,I but this was a larger specimen. I killed it with a blow from a rock, then saw that what I had snatched up was not a rock. I carried the dead sunner to the beach, and while I skinned and cleaned it, Tsorl examined the brick.
“A fire symbol baked onto the clay,” he said. “Those steps lead to the old Tsatroy villa. What are we supposed to do with that hunk of meat?”
“Raw sunner is not bad,” I said.
“Get some dry leaves, Yolo Ham,” he said, “and we will make a fire.”
I found this hard to believe, but he was the Deputy after all, a scholar who had perfected the Voice Wire and other useful inventions. I gathered the dry stuff, and Tsorl produced from his shoulder pocket a lens rimmed with metal—a burning glass. Making a fire, making the leaves catch fire from the rays of the Great Sun was not difficult,I in fact the leaves blazed up so quickly they were consumed and I had to fetch more. We soon managed a good blaze,I and I cooked the sunner meat wrapped in its thick skin with seawater and herbs. We ate and drank and dozed in the sun.
Before the Great Sun set I climbed up the old steps. They were sunken but not overgrown; the land here had been cleared, and the forest had not grown right back. II came to the top of the headland and stood in awe. This was the work of my own people, the Fire People, and they built as well as the Torlogan, the Great Builders of Torin. A tall weathered arch of brick and stone rose facing the sea and over it in open stonework was the fire symbol.
Inside the arch was a circular courtyard paved with old brick, now overgrown with grasses, waist-high in some places. It was a calm and beautiful place; I could see where the living quarters had opened off the courtyard, but the woodwork and tent hangings of this summer villa had long since fallen or rotted away. I went to fetch Tsorl and found him already plodding up the steps with his ring-walker.
I offered to help him, but he waved me aside. He came to the top of the headland and stood for a long time, staring at the tall archway until the rays of the Great Sun, setting,I streamed through the open work of the fire symbol, until it burned like a live flame.
“I never thought to stand in this place,” he said at last, “but here I am, Tsorl-U-Tsorl, citizen of Tsagul, and II greet the proud spirits of the Fire Clan.”
We cleared a round unroofed place, perhaps an old storeroom, and I gathered lace leaves to make a kind of tent. We lit another fire with embers from the first, which we had banked up on the beach, and covered it with leaves to make smoke against the swarms of insects that were coming out. I had a vial of ointment from Gwell Nu, and we smeared our faces and limbs; it worked fairly well,I but in the islands, so I found, everyone becomes a little lumpy with stings. I slept, closing my mind and trying to drive all phantoms from my dreams; but when I woke once or twice, Tsorl was walking about, restless, as if he communed with the spirits of this lonely place.
When the Great Sun rose again, there was a stirring of creatures in the forests of Tsabeggan and on all the islands of the inner sea. A thousand flame birds flew up shrieking;I small animals, the weljin or tree folk, came swinging out in their morning chorus. I stood in the grassy courtyard and felt a kind of joy. I was part of the island as it woke,I as the morning wind moved the trees and vines and ruffled the grasses.
I was alone, Tsorl was nowhere to be seen, and there were no voices but the voices of the birds and animals;I best of all there were no strange sounds. I wished that II could remain alone, part of the island, a creature sleeping or hunting according to the hour, a creature so free that it had no name… . Then I heard a sound: Tsorl came through the archway.
He had been down to the beach and caught four fish in a net of lace leaf, and he was as pleased as if he had built a new canal system for Tsagul. I looked sideways at the Deputy as he stirred up our fire: he was old, almost as old as Harn, he was crippled, and his honors, his power, had vanished completely. He was like one dead, as if he had truly been buried in the special compound at Itsik. Yet the flame of life had never burned more brightly in him; he was brave and strong, and I was the one who shrank away from the world.
“I have our bearings,” he said. “The old jetty where they brought in the building material for this villa lies to the west. There is a road, and I think it must have led right down to a dock.”
We walked through the fallen rooms of the villa and saw more steps and a ramp that led into the forest. There was the road, and it was still not overgrown. It ran under a light roof of vines like a broad grassy trench.
“I must go and hunt,” I said, “and keep eyes open for your strangers.”
“Take care,” said the Deputy.
“You think they are very dangerous?”
He laughed aloud.
“They might consider youI as dangerous!” he said. “You do not see yourself, Yolo Ham. If you take the bully-strings off those muscles, it does not mean they are not there. You could be a wild islander striding among the trees, hunting who knows what game. Do not frighten the strangers. It is just as important not to frighten the strangers as it is not to be afraid of them.”
“What shall I do then?”
“Be quiet and watchful. Look for the camp on level ground. There will be a metal ship, who knows how large,I and you will see it or hear it easily through the trees. See them first and come and report to me.”
I looked at the beckoning roadway and the forest and felt no more than a twinge of my usual fear. I could hardly believe that there were strangers on the island; it was a dream, a miscalculation; they had all flown away again. II had a new redwood pole and my knife and my prison pouch slung across my body. Tsorl watched as I slipped into the trees, but I looked back only once.
I am not much of a hunter; my best results have come by chance like the land-sunner on the stone steps. I hoped to find another sunner or maybe a scrub-deer or even a breadfruit tree. The killing of a weljin would not only be difficult but distasteful—they have sweet voices like children and swing from the trees by their tails. I went along beside the road moving as quietly as possible and spent long periods in stillness, watching. I saw birds, including a walking bird that I might have tried for, but the forest was too thick for sunners.
I turned aside and went toward the foothills, the rising ground at the base of Tsabeggan’s small, perfect fire mountain. If I bent down, I could glimpse the summit and the rising bluffs through gaps in the forest roof. The trees and vines were strange: redwood trees but with fewer stripes on their trunks and branches, fronds of every color from white-green to deepest blue-green that grew straight from the thick mold on the forest floor, vines that glowed of their own light in dark corners from a slippery coating on their matted stems.
The walking bird, large and brown, broke from cover again almost at my feet and ran off uttering a soft cluttering cry. I looked at the pile of brushwood it had left; my luck had not run out—this was its nest. In the warm, feathery place I saw seven eggs, yellow with brown flecks. II stole four, wrapped them in brush and packed them in my prison pouch.
I went on into something like a clearing where a tree had fallen and taken some of the forest covering along with it. I looked back toward the roadway and could just see it, a lighter place among the trees. The sunlight was hot, and there were rocks; it was the place for sunners. I watched and sure enough, there was a frill-necked creature motionless on a rode, soaking up the warmth. I stalked it, struck and missed; it went into an impossibly deep crevice, and I was left ready to curse.
The sounds of the forest came back as the sounds of my scrambling footsteps died away, and one other sound came back. It had been going on for some time, I realized, and I had paid no attention to it. It was a sound I knew well:I the sound of a hammer striking upon rock.
I listened for a long time, but the sound was unmistakable; I began to work my way toward it. The forest was unchanged, there were no rocks, then suddenly there was a long shaft of sunlight that lit up a fragment of an old wall, a Tsatroy wall, and in the sunlight a Moruian child with ordinary streaked blond hair patiently tapping away at the wall.
I was forty paces away; a pair of weljin overhead cried out and the child, the islander, flicked back its hair and saw me. It began to run toward the roadway, a little thin creature in some kind of brown tunic.
“Wait!”
I called and laughed and ran. The child could not run very fast; it was only a matter of a few paces before II could catch it.
“Wait, child. Don’t be afraid!”
We ran, and I deliberately held back a little; we leaped together down onto the roadway, even broader at this point. The child stumbled and fell, almost at my feet.
“There now,” I said, “you’ve taken a tumble! I won’t hurt you, Island Child….”
I seized the thin arm, and the cloth covering it was [surprisingly thick and closely woven. The child turned its head and strained away from me in a spasm of fear. The fear leaped out at me and became my own fear. For this was not a child, not an islander. It was a thin, slight creature with a round pale face under the childish fall of hair and its eyes, yes, its small round staring eyes were a pale sky blue….
I released the thin arm and stumbled backward. We stared at each other, each straining to master our fear. II believe we knew even then that each meant the other no harm, but the presence of some being absolutely strange brought its own absolute fear.
The stranger rose slowly to its feet, eyes fixed on me, and stood erect in a special position. Its small whitish hands were held away from its body palms outward. This meant little to me, but I deliberately laid aside my pole and my knife on its thong. I placed my own hands fiat on my chest in the position that meant “no weapons.”
I stared, reporting already in my mind to Tsorl-U-Tsorl. What I saw was a creature of a similar shape to a Moruian, but with the proportions altered, the body lines different, the set of the muscles and bones quite odd. Shorter than myself by about a head, slight but well-balanced. It stood astride on heavy matte-surfaced boots of some unknown substance with metal fastenings running over the front of the foot. It wore tight brown trunk hose and a loose greenish tunic of close-woven cloth marked with heavy seams and curious square pockets.
A slender neck and a round head under the childish hair. Suddenly the creature spoke. It raised a hand, placed it upon its chest and uttered two sounds. The voice was so strange that I could not take in the sounds at first. A voice not deep but resonant and musical; yet the sound of the human voice is a harsh music. Two sounds repeated, a two-sound word?
“Ka-ren….”
I did not understand. I stood bewildered, then summoning all my courage, I held out my hands in the sign of first greeting and lowered my head politely. The creature was pleased, it smiled a perfectly recognizable smile and showed small white teeth. It nodded its flaxen head, held out its hands and bowed its body.
It repeated the word: “Ka-ren!” It pointed toward me and I took a step backward.
I spoke up and said: ‘Ta van!"
It is a formal greeting: Good wind. The stranger tried to copy the sound but could hardly do it, and for the first time we smiled together, we laughed.
The stranger moved slowly and took from one pocket a small gray box. It spoke into the box, and to my surprise a voice came out of the box, replying. I had a moment of panic, but then I thought of the Voice Wire. This was some such thing surely, even though it was wireless. The conversation lasted only a moment, and I thought the creature, my stranger, shut off the crackling voice in the midst of some excited speech.
Then it turned away from me and took a few steps on the Tsatroy road, using a gesture I understood well enough. It beckoned me to follow. I stood there, wondering, then I did follow, leaving a good distance between us. I took up my knife again, but left my redwood pole lying on the path. I reasoned that if the strangers were all as small as this one and as well-meaning, there could be little danger.
6
First Contact
We wandered on steadily,I and I saw that the trees gave way to a wide clearing, the place of the Tsatroy dock. It was like a field now with the grasses grown tall and a few clumps of lace leaves and vines that had grown up again. The scene would have been strange enough—the clearing,I the remains of the Tsatroy paving and walls, the secluded harbor of Tsabeggan—but the strangers had turned it into a place strange beyond dreams.
The grasses were crisscrossed with paths; everywhere there bloomed white and red and yellow patches upon the grass tips. The trees and vines were tied up with squares of paper; transparent domes, small balloons of every size popped up beside the paths. The grass had been bent down in one place and there stood the tent. It was round and pearly blue, and the fabric was divided into triangular sections. Its size was enough to make me step sideways;I it was as large as a good-sized round house in Tsagul.
As I watched my stranger go into the clearing, I understood the meaning of the paths; the strangers, all of them, were fanatical about walking on the grasses. Everything that grew upon Torin was precious. If they could have managed it, they would have floated above the ground so as not to disturb a single unknown grass frond. My stranger tiptoed along a narrow path, and I followed, very carefully.
To right and left I saw the heads of grass tied up in colored pieces of fine netted cloth. Under the dear domes there were seed heads, flowers, perhaps families of insects. One large dome housed an ordinary pair of lace-spinners,I good-sized browns that might have fetched a few credits at a fair up the Datse. On a platform by the dock stood another creature, even stranger than the first, calmly making a silkbeam of the strangest specimen of them all—myself,I Yolo Harn, picking my way into camp.
The second stranger was taller than the first, as tall as myself, slender, dressed in the same costume of trunk hose, boots and square jacket. Its face was longer: Moruians look upon Lisa Child as the “beautiful” human, but this is because her face most nearly approaches a Moruian face. At this moment the thing I noticed was the color of her skin: a warm, silky color between dark brown and black.
I found another platform laid down in the grass where I would not tread on any dome or pocket, and I simply stood and stared all around me in a circle as far as my eyes could see. My stranger at the sight of its companion ran on and stood beside it, a little for protection, I could see,I for its fear of me had not gone. The two of them bowed to me and talked to each other in nervous, noisy whispers. They went over the same business as before—hand on the chest and a two-sound word.
“Karen!”
“Lisa!”
There was a kind of explosion inside the blue tent. It sounded to me like a wild beast, a mountain wolf or even a small sea-sunner. As I watched, trembling, the noise was repeated, it grew louder … it was a voice, a terrible human voice Out of the blue tent bounced a broad, strong,I hairy, pink-faced stranger making a terrible noise and wrestling with another silkbeam.
The others cried out together,I “Sam!”
The noisy one checked in its stride, pulled off its hat, bowed at me and let loose another noisy whisper of absolute amazement. Then it slapped its own hairy chest and said, “Sam.” And I understood. Sam. Karen. Lisa. The first things that the strangers had thought of were their own names.
I felt foolish and shy, but my fear was under control. I laid my hand on my own chest and said as loudly as I could:
“Yolo Harn!”
They were very pleased. We smiled together and tried to say each other’s names. Lisa turned from her silkbeam on its thin legs and began some ritual with a brown box that stood waist-high on the platform. Shallow trays came out of the box, and I saw that they were full of food: the strangers were preparing a meal. I sat politely on my own platform—a square of hard blue fabric like the tent—in the midst of their grass garden and stared.
So it was the beginning, the time in camp, and already it was captured on the film in their silkbeams, the camera. I have seen that particular film many times with the soundtrack of the human voices and a few sounds of my own. Karen-Ru confided later that they were not sure whether I would be frightened by the camera; there had been tribes of forest dwellers on their home world who feared that the camera stole away their souls if it made a likeness. I had no such fear, but it was very strange and in the end a little sad to see that string of pictures.
There is the clear island day, the fantastic campground, the road leading out of the dark forest. Karen comes down the road, jerky, frightened; then slowly, steadily with the deliberate walk that also betrayed wariness and fear, along comes Yolo Ham. Tall, thin, oddly muscular, colored by the sun … a close-up of the face, and the camera lingers then flits away, as if frightened by what it saw. As the camera pictures the newcomer picking its way on the paths, there is a burst of speech in the background: Karen whispering to Lisa.
“Are you getting himI …I peaceful, I’m sure … oh heaven, I’m shaking all overI …I hope I did right.I …”
Lisa replying,I “Humanoid is right.I …I See the eyes though. Sure it’s a mate?”
“I think so, but very young .I . . young boy. SmileI …I he’s very smart.”
“He’s civilized.”
“You think so? Out of the forest? Where is Sam?”
Then a close-up of Karen speaking her name, and a shot of Yolo bowing. Voices of both girls in the background,I speaking their names, and, overlapping, the muffled sounds of Sam in the tent. Part of Sam’s missed because the camera is on the newcomer, laughing nervously at Sam. Sam at last, panting, cussing.
“Where in blue blazes did you get this character, Karen? Have you tried names? What about names?”
He slaps his chest.
“Sam!”
And the newcomer, looking as shy as she felt, replies,I “Yolo Harn…
The Moruian voice: whistling, hooting, with two changes of register, so I am told, for every human change. The voice and face of a Moruian on film. I saw the film and remembered the day, and when times were bad II thought of that day very often. I stepped so quickly into the camp; the humans were so eager to have me come. Yet we cannot go back to that perfect beginning of our friendship again. It is not the camera that steals away our souls, it is time.
