It was a tortuous ascent - yet something had made the trail, and something must use it still. And it led, generally, in the direction they were going.
They sat propped against the mountain at dusk, recovering from the exertion. Veg had not complained, but Cal looked bad and Aquilon hurt all over from the chafing weight of the pack. The air was cooler now, but this only seemed to intensify her thirst; no one would touch the quart of water.
Veg lifted one of the football fungi from its precarious perch. 'You know, I lacked one of these, and my toe was wet.'
Cal lifted his head. 'Give me,' he said.
Veg passed it over and the little man squeezed it experimentally. A few drops of fluid fell to the ground. 'Let's look at this,' he said.
Aquilon passed him a cup and he squeezed some more, letting the juice collect. 'Here,' Veg said. He took the fungus and pressed with both hands.
Liquid spurted between his fingers, rilling the cup and overflowing onto his legs. 'It's a water-sponge!' he exclaimed.
Cal held the brimming vessel and looked into its depths. The fluid was almost transparent. He sniffed it. He put the cup to his lips.
'Hey!' Veg and Aquilon cried together.
'Water,' Cal said complacently. 'We have to be practical. If I survive it, we have a usable source. You two share the jug. By the time you need more, either you'll have it or your load will be lighter.'
Aquilon looked at Veg and he looked at her. Cal was being practical, all right. He claimed to want to die, and without water he certainly would. He had nothing to lose from experimentation - and perhaps could gain a reprieve for them all.
They watched him drink down the cupful.
'I don't remember any mountain between us and the base,' Aquilon said doubtfully. 'Are you sure the compass-' She was fishing for a diversion from the morbid wait they were involved in.
'The compass is correct,' Cal said, stretching out comfortably. 'It works on the gyro-vector principle. This one was set at the base; as long as it runs, it has to be accurate.'
Veg looked at the forbidding trail ahead. 'I wish they'd made the distress signal on the gyro-victim principle, or whatever it is,' he muttered. 'Still almost twenty miles to go. Straight up and down, I figure.'
That brought the conversation to a halt. The dusk was intensifying slowly, but little time remained for them to find a suitable location for the night.
'No time for talk,' Veg said. 'If we can find a good level ledge or somewhere safe, we'll be okay. 'Quilon, leave that pack there; I'll come back for it. But we'd better ditch anything we can spare. You take the rifle and some ammo-' He browsed through the pack, searching for things to remove. Soon there was a meager pile beside the fog-pistol. 'No omnivores here,' he said, seeing her glance at it.
She started to protest, but realized that she lacked the strength to haul either the pack or the surplus items farther. 'You drink the water, then,' she said.
He nodded, to her surprise, and upended the quart. She was sure he wasn't being selfish, though her thirst abruptly multiplied; he had something else in mind. Possibly he intended to conserve his strength to carry her, if Cal-
Veg was already on the move. She dropped the strap and followed him meekly up the mountain.
They climbed. Veg, indefatigable, carried his companion without seeming to lessen the pace at all, and Aquilon, packless as she was, strained to keep up. Night tightened about them; the mist seemed to take on a more physical substance and close in until little beyond the immediate trail was visible. The dust stirred up by their feet coated her body with grime. The path went on, rising to its hidden climax.
'Luck,' Veg exclaimed. Aquilon, mistaking the word, caught up to him and looked ahead. They had come to an ideal ledge, hardly more than a widening of the path, but flat and almost level. The mountain sheered off so sharply above and below that it would be exceedingly difficult for any nocturnal prowler to approach them unaware.
Veg set Cal down. 'Got to pick up that pack,' he said to Aquilon, and disappeared into the night.
'Take the rifle!' she called after him. It was the one thing she had made certain not to leave behind, though even its slight weight had proved to be an enormous encumbrance at this pace. But he was gone, his quick heavy footsteps already muffled in the blank trail below.
Cal remained where he was, asleep or unconscious. Aquilon took off her blouse, afraid to think what his condition might mean, and rolled it up to place under his head so that he would not breathe the dust. She brought out her brush and sketching pad; these, too, she never forgot.
Cal opened his eyes a few minutes later to see her painting. 'My God - where do you find the energy to paint?'
'Your god?' she replied, puzzled, but thrilled to realize that he was better, not worse. Every moment that passed, now, was evidence that the sponge-fungus juice was safe to drink. 'You have such quaint expressions.'
He did not deign to reply, but watched her with a halfsmile.
Aquilon faced the emptiness beyond the fungus-encrusted perimeter and stroked the brush across the surface of the canvasite. Color came once more in magical mechanism but the mechanism stemmed from technology and the magic was her own. The brush was a compact, highly refined instrument, a sorcerer's wand in her practiced fingers. A touch on one of the concealed selection spots could produce and blend any combination of colors in the visible spectrum and feed it through the bristles in meager or generous flow. Veg had marveled that she could perform these shifts of hue and density so subtly, and she had told him that the brush was really an extension of her arm. That, said in jest, was close enough to the truth; she was no longer conscious of the control she exerted. She willed a shade of gray, it came; royal purple, it was there. The brush might as well have been programmed directly to her brain, or perhaps her soul, her creative being; the images she saw merged into a grand whole that reflected in the canvas.
People always asked her why she didn't use a camera. How could she explain to them the difference between a living brush and a dead machine? It was said that the artist distorted his image, while the camera was exact - but the truth was that the artist captured the living essence while the camera recorded one dead still-image, a mounted fragment of the animated series that was reality. In life there were no frozen scenes. If the lines of her brush were not as literal as those of the photograph, it was because the lines of life were less literal than those of death. By the time a living thing could be reduced to formula, it was no longer living.
But she had given up trying to explain this concept to people. Cal would comprehend it, and therefore he had never needed to ask. Veg had probably never thought about the matter; he accepted things as they were, and that too was good.
For the others - she murmured technical things, such as the fragility of good equipment and perishability of photographic emulsion; the distortion induced by alien radiation and wavelengths, the awkwardness of carrying heavy supplies and setting them up in emergency situations. 'How could you make a color plate of an alien creature who appeared for only half a second unexpectedly, and never again?' she demanded. 'But the brush is even slower!' the nameless arguer insisted. 'Not for me.' She meant that she could hold the image in her mind and paint it accurately before it faded, but they didn't understand.
No - the brush was compact and limitless, as the mind was limitless, and it would never be replaced by machine processing. Not on the frontier. Just as man would never be superseded by automation, where it counted. The machines and machine minds had tried to unravel Nacre - and the insidious molds and fungi had silenced them, while the explorer-colonists suffered and died.
'You match your painting,' Cal said sincerely.
Aquilon turned away from him, overcome by an emotion she did not understand.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to hurt you. You and your work are elegant. No man could look upon either and not respond.'
She put away her painting, but continued to look over the edge. There was nothing there t
o see; it was easy to believe that it was not a drop-off but a celestial curtain enclosing the ledge. There were no stars, of course. 'Do you love me?' she asked, surprising herself.
'I'm afraid I do.'
'That's really why you came - on the tractor.'
He did not deny it.
She faced him again, knowing that her face was now no more than a pale blur shadowed by her hair. The fungi around the fringe of their little camp were luminescent, and soft pastels glowed in silent levels, red, yellow, blue and green. She wished she had realized this before she put away her painting; but probably the effect did not materialize until darkness was complete. The colors seemed bright, but were not; Cal was visible only as a darkness cutting off the decorations.
'Cal,' she whispered, sounding like a frightened little girl. 'Cal - would you love me if I were not beautiful?'
'I would love you.'
She went to him, then, finding his hands in the dark and holding them in hers. 'When I was six,' she said, 'I was pretty. Then the virus came. I was only sick for a day - but after that... I didn't even know....'
"The sickness of our time,' Cal murmured. ' "A terrible beauty is bom."'
'I - I thought I was smiling,' she said. 'And they screamed. Every time I was happy, they beat me, and I didn't know why. I had to learn never to smile...' She caught her breath. 'And they - they named me after the Northwest wind... the cold north wind....'
He stroked her hair. 'That was cruelty.'
'They knew, while I was all confused....'
' "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Forgive me, 'Quilon, for retreating to literature, but I cannot improve upon William Butler Yeats. There is too much sorrow in our existence.'
'I don't want William Butler Yeats!' she flared. 'I want your
'Yet you would change me,' he reminded her gently.
She bowed her head so that the blonde hair obscured any of her face that might still be visible, still holding one of his hands. 'We're different, you and I and Veg. We look ... normal... but we're not. We're torn and frightened and so very much alone....'
That is a half-truth, 'Quilon. We-'
She laid her head on his shoulder, forgetful of his weakness. 'I never realized that before. That there were others. We need each other, Cal, because we're only half-people by ourselves. You don't have the right to die, not by yourself, no matter what happened to you-'
Suddenly, surprisingly, she was sobbing. Cal put his arms around her, leaned back against the rock and the resilient molds upon it, and continued to stroke her fine hair. His manner showed that he had been touched, but remained resigned.
'I wish I could smile again....' she said into his shoulder.
Aquilon woke when Veg's little spotlight played over them. Cal lolled against the rock; he had been too polite to ask her to move, and one of his hands still rested on her bare back. He too came awake, slowly.
'None of that now, friend,' Veg said, not unkindly. Tut her down and come over here. We have a problem.'
Aquilon sat up, lifted Cal's head and rearranged the wadded shirt so that he could face Veg without moving; but he elected to get up anyway. She shrugged and remained to put on her blouse. There seemed to be no doubt now: the fungus water was a success.
Veg set the pack down and flashed the light on it. 'Do you see that?' he asked gravely.
'Somebody cut the straps!'
Veg laughed, a little hollowly. 'Something, more likely,' he corrected Cal. 'Genuine surplus alligator-hide leather straps. Never liked 'em much myself, but you know I didn't do that. I had a terrible time toting that bundle all the way up here, and holding the beam too, to see the trail. Had to hold everything in my arms.'
'But what could have-'
'Who else but Brother Manta?'
Aquilon considered, still on the far side of the shelf. 'Yes, the manta could have done it. That means there're more than one in this area. But I really don't see why... and why just the straps?'
'It's just as well those creatures aren't equipped to climb very well,' Cal said.
Veg took him by the shoulders and turned him around to face the trail below. Aquilon looked past them in the same direction.
There, less than twenty feet away, at the edge of the shelf, a single luminous eye was watching them.
Morning: the eye remained. They had slept, fitfully, under its awesome scrutiny. There was nothing else to do. Veg refused to fire at it, and they knew they could not escape it. This, she thought, might be the attitude of the herbivores: why flee or fight such a creature? Neither attempt could help.
By daylight there was certainty. It was the eye of another manta, perhaps the third they had seen, hunched near the end of their little plateau. Its stationary form was not so frightening, but knowing what they did of its nature they were hardly able to ignore it, either.
Aquilon got up, shaking off the inevitable film of dust and stretching her limbs in a natural but dazzling manner. 'I wish we'd saved the other one for food,' she said. 'I can mend the pack, but we still have to eat.'
'We can try some of the white fungus,' Veg said. 'If the water's good, maybe the rest of it is too. That'll take care of us, at least until we get to the base.'
'But even Earth mushrooms can kill you, and many of these are worse,' Aquilon protested. 'How can we take the chance?' She was hungry enough to do it, however.
'I tried some last night,' Veg said, a little sheepishly. 'Tasted terrible, but didn't hurt me. Better than the dust.'
So he had followed Cal's example that quickly! 'The dust?' she asked, shocked. 'You tried eating-'
'The dust is organic,' Cal said. 'The sun never touches the surface of Nacre. That's why you don't see anything green, except as an occasional fungus decoration. But the living cells drift down steadily. Highly nutritious sediment, if you can stomach it, and the herbivores evidently have no trouble.'
'Oh, I see,' she said. 'And the omnivores eat the herbivores ... and so must our manta.'
'The ecological pyramid,' Cal agreed. 'It has to exist. Of course, the omnivores eat dust too, and fungus, or they'd be misnamed.'
Veg carved a chunk from one of the more succulent footballs. 'Whatever the manta is, it sure is fast on its foot. Probably has to be, to keep clear of the omnivore.' He glanced at the animal, which sat unmoving at the edge. 'Try this, 'Quilon, if you're hungry.' He held out a chunk of white substance.
She reached to take it.
The manta bounded into the air, its body assuming something like the dread racing shape. It hurtled between them.
Aquilon fell back with a cry. Veg stood frozen as the creature came to rest beside him, near the fungus. They stared at it.
'Are you sure it's tame?' Aquilon asked facetiously.
Veg watched it baffled. 'I thought I was done for, last night,' he admitted. 'When I saw that eye coming after me, and me without the rifle. But all it did was follow - that's when I began to be sorry about blasting that other. Maybe it wasn't attacking.'
Cal spoke up from the far side. 'I don't think it was attacking just now. It seemed to be trying to keep the two of you apart.'
'Hands off the damsel?' Veg asked thoughtfully. 'But last night the two of you were pretty close-'
Aquilon flushed. 'Maybe it thought we were-'
'Now wait a minute,' Veg exclaimed in mock anger. 'A moralistic manta I can do without - at least, if it figures me as the extra man.'
'Perhaps we should marry?' she murmured sweetly.
'I could never marry a-' Veg stopped, but it was there between them, a joke that hurt. She had mistaken his gallantry for genuine interest and he had set her straight. They were man and woman, but there was a fundamental difference in practice. She had thought his vegetarianism was only a personal preference, but now she saw that it affected his whole outlook on life.
By mutual consent they turned away from that subject, too.
'The fungus!' Aquilon said excitedly. 'Maybe it is poisonous. M
aybe it was trying to stop us from eating it!'
Veg still held the white mass. Slowly he brought it to his mouth, eyeing the creature beside him. The manta looked back, motionless. Veg took a bite.
Nothing happened.
'You try it,' he said, tossing the remainder to Aquilon.
She caught it deftly and repeated the process as the manta swiveled smoothly to watch her. The faint putrescence of it made her gag. It was like eating rotten potato, but she forced her teeth to close on it. The manta did not respond. She looked at Cal, offering the morsel, but he shook his head negatively.
Of Man and Manta Omnibus Page 8
