Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Much of the pit’s four-acre floor was in shadow, but reflection from the white limestone of the eastern walls kept it from being wholly dark. Its three occupants could easily have seen the watcher if they had chanced to look toward him. However, his silence and their own occupation combined to leave him unnoticed. He stood motionless in the tunnel mouth a few yards above the pit floor, and looked at them with an expression on his thin face which would have defied reading by the keenest beggar of Rome.

  There was nothing remarkable about those he watched. Two were women: one a girl not yet twenty and the other ten or twelve years older. The third was a boy of five or six. They were playing some game which involved throwing two fist-sized sacks of sand or earth back and forth, apparently at random. The child’s shouts of glee whenever one of his companions missed a catch echoed between the walls of the sinkhole. More decorous chuckles and an occasional cry of encouragement from the older woman reached the witness’s ears at longer intervals.

  The eyes in the lean, pale face seldom left the boy. Unlike the women, whose clothing somewhat hampered their activity, his thin body and thinner limbs were nearly bare. The short, kiltlike garment of brightly dyed wool which was his only covering left him free to leap and twist as the game demanded. It was these actions the watcher followed, marking each move of the pale-skinned body and nervous little hands, noting each bit of clumsiness that let a bag reach the ground, each leap and shriek of triumph as a double catch was made. The tiny fellow was holding his own—perhaps even winning—against his older adversaries, but no one could have been quite sure whether this was due to his own agility or their generosity. Perhaps the watcher was trying to learn as he stood in the shadow of the tunnel mouth.

  The game went on, while shade covered more and more of the garden which made up the pit’s floor. The players began to slow down, though the child’s shouts were as loud as ever; if he was getting tired, he did not intend to admit it. It was the older woman who finally called a halt.

  “Time to rest now, Kyros. The sun is going.” She pointed toward the western lip of the pit.

  “There’s still plenty of light, and I’m not tired.”

  “Perhaps not, but you must be getting hungry. Unless Elitha and I stop playing, there will be no food cooked.” The boy accepted the change of subject without actually surrendering.

  “Can’t I eat before cooking is done?” he asked. “There must be things to eat that don’t have to be cooked.” The older woman raised her eyebrows quizzically at the other.

  “There may be something,” was the answer to the unspoken question. “I will see. You could both stay in the light while it is with us, mistress.” The girl turned toward the watcher, and saw him instantly.

  Her gasp of surprise caught the attention of the other two, and they looked in the same direction. The boy, who had been about to fasten a light woolen cloak about his shoulders, dropped it with a yell of joy and dashed toward the tunnel mouth. The older woman shed the dignity which had marked her even during the game, and sprang after him with a cry.

  “Kyros—wait!”

  The girl echoed the words, but acted as well. She was closer than the boy to the tunnel, and as he rushed past her she reached out quickly and caught him up, swinging him around and almost smothering him for a moment in the folds of her garment. She held him while the other woman passed her, and the silent man came toward them down the slope of rubble which led from the tunnel to the pit’s floor.

  As the two met at its foot the girl let her captive go. He instantly resumed his dash toward the embracing couple; reaching them, he danced up and down and tugged at their clothing until an arm reached out and drew him into the close-locked group. Elitha stopped a few yards away and watched them, quietly smiling.

  At length the older woman stepped back, still gazing at the newcomer. The latter now held the boy on his left arm, looking at him as he had for the many minutes of the game. It was his wife who spoke first.

  “Four months. It has seemed like the year you thought it might be my own.” He nodded, still looking at the child.

  “A hundred and thirty-one days. It was long for me, too. It is good to see that all is well here.” She smiled.

  “Well indeed. Open your mouth and show your father, Kyros.” The boy’s response might have been mere obedience, but looked more like a grin of triumph. The man started, and his grip on the small figure tightened momentarily as he saw the gap in the grin.

  “A tooth—no, two of them! When?”

  “Forty days ago,” his wife said quietly.

  “What trouble?”

  “None. They loosened not long after you had gone. Elitha watched him carefully, and we were very particular about his food. He was very good most of the time, though I never knew him to be so fond of apples. But he kept his hands away from the loose teeth, and finally they just fell out—on the same day.”

  “And?”

  “That was all. No trouble.” Slowly the man put his son down, and for the first time a smile appeared on his face. Elitha spoke for the first time.

  “You two will want to talk. I would like to hear what has happened on your journey, Master, but the meal must be prepared. Kyros and I will leave you and—”

  “But I want to hear, too!” cried the child.

  “I will not talk about my adventures until we have all eaten, Kyros, so you will miss nothing. Go along with Elitha, and be sure she makes food I like. Do you remember what that is?” The gap-toothed grin appeared once more.

  “I remember. You’ll see. Come on, Elitha!” He turned to dash up the slope, and the girl moved quickly to take his hand.

  “All right,” she said. “Stay with me so I don’t fall; the stones are rough.” The man and wife watched soberly as the other two disappeared into the tunnel; then the mother turned quickly to face her husband.

  “Tell me quickly, my own. You said you might be gone a year. Did you come back now because you learned something, or—” She stopped, and tried to make her face inscrutable, but failed signally. The man put an arm about her shoulders.

  “I did learn something, though not nearly what I hoped. I came back because I couldn’t stay away—though I was almost afraid to come, too. If I had known of Kyros’s teeth I might have been able to stay longer.” The woman’s face saddened slightly. “I might have, my Judith; I don’t know that I would have.”

  “What did you learn? Have other healers spoken or written of this trouble? Have they learned how to cure it?”

  “Some of them know of it. It is mentioned in writings, some of them many years old. One man I talked to had seen a person who had it.”

  “And cured him—or her?”

  “No,” the man said slowly. “It was a little boy, like ours. He died, as—” Both their heads turned slowly to the north side of the garden, where three small mounds were framed in carefully tended beds of flowers. The woman looked away again quickly.

  “But not Kyros! There was no trouble when his teeth came out! It’s not like that with him!” Her husband looked at her gravely.

  “You think we have wasted effort, being so careful with him? You have forgotten the bruises, and the lameness he sometimes has? You would go back to live in Rome and let him play and fight with other children?”

  “I wouldn’t go back to Rome in any case, and I’d be afraid to have him play with other children or out of my sight,” she admitted, “but why was there no trouble from the teeth? Or are teeth just different? None of the others”—she glanced toward the graves again—“lived long enough to lose teeth. Little Marc never grew any.” She suddenly collapsed against him, sobbing. “Marc, dear Marc, why do you try? No man can fight the gods, or the demons, who have cursed us—who have cursed me. You’ll only anger them further. You know it. You must know it. It was just not for us to have children. I bore you four sons, and three are gone, and Kyros will—”

  “Will what?” There was sternness in the man’s voice. “Kyros may die, as they did; no man can
win all his battles, and some men lose them all. If he does, though, it will not be because I did not fight.” His voice softened again. “My dearest, I don’t know what I, or you, or we may have done to offend before I started to fight for the lives of my sons, You may be right in thinking that it is a punishment or a curse, but I cannot cringe before a man and don’t like to before a god. Certainly if men had attacked and slain my sons, you would think little of me if I did not fight back. Even when the enemies are not men, and I cannot see them to fight them directly, I can hope to learn how they attack my children. Perhaps I can find a shield, even if there is no sword. A man must fight somehow or he isn’t a man.”

  The mother’s sobs were quieter, though the tears still flowed.

  “He might be a man, but he wouldn’t be you,” she admitted. “But if no healer in all the world has learned how to fight this thing, why do you think it can be fought? Men are not gods.”

  “Once there must have been a healer who first learned how to set broken bones, or cool fevers. How he must have learned is easy to guess—”

  “The gods told him! There is no other way. Either you learn from another person or you learn from the gods.”

  “Then perhaps the gods will tell me what to do to keep Kyros alive.”

  “But surely they will not, if they have brought the sickness to punish us. Why should they tell you how to take it away again?”

  “If they won’t, then maybe the demons will. It’s all the same to me; I will listen to anyone or anything able to help me save my son’s life. Wouldn’t you?”

  Judith was silent. Defending her children was one thing, but defying the gods was quite another. A more thoughtful husband would not have pressed the question; a really tactful one would not have asked it in the first place. Seeing into the minds of other people, even those he loved best, was not a strong point with Marc of Bistrita.

  “Wouldn’t you?” he repeated. There was still no answer, and his wife turned away so that he could not see her face. For several seconds she just stood there; then she began to walk slowly toward the tunnel, stumbling a little as she reached the irregular heap of stones which formed the “stairway” to its mouth. The man watched for a moment in surprise; then he hastened after her to help. He did not repeat the question again; he was sometimes slow, but seldom really stupid.

  No more words were exchanged as they made their way up to the opening and into the deepening darkness beyond. The tunnel was very crooked, and the last trace of daylight from the pit quickly vanished. The only illumination came from pottery oil lamps which were more useful in telling direction than in revealing what was actually underfoot.

  Then the way opened into a cavern some forty feet across. It was well lighted, to eyes accustomed to the blackness of the tunnel; half a dozen lamps flickered around the walls. In a grotto at one side a small fire glowed. An earthenware pot was supported over it on a bronze trivet. Steam from the pot and smoke from the fire swirled together through a crack in the top of the grotto.

  Elitha and the child were kneeling a yard or two from the blaze, working on something which could not easily be made out from across the cavern. As his parents came nearer, however, they saw that the child was cracking nuts with a bit of stone and carefully extracting the meats, which he placed in a clay bowl beside him. The girl was arranging other dishes for the meal, which seemed nearly ready. Except for the background, it was a typical family scene—the sort that Marc of Bistrita had known all too seldom in his forty-five years of life, and was to know very seldom in the future.

  As he and his wife settled to the stone floor by the others, the boy grinned up at them; and it was the tiny distraction of their arrival which changed the atmosphere. The rock which he was using as a nutcracker landed heavily on his finger instead of the intended target. There was a startled cry, and a flood of tears which was stopped without too much trouble; but there was also a portion of skin scraped from the finger, and it was this which took most of the attention of Marc and his wife. The injured spot was oozing blood—not much by ordinary skinned-finger standards, but their standards were not ordinary.

  The two women paled visibly, even in the poor light of the cavern. The man showed little facial change, but he acted. He drew a dagger from inside the cloak which still enveloped him and made a small cut in his own finger. The boy did not see this; his mother was still comforting him. Both women saw and understood, however, and both were visibly distracted during the meal which followed. Marc had seated himself so that his own cut was not visible to the boy, and had begun to tell the promised adventures; but the eyes of mother and maid flickered constantly from one injured fmger to the other. Twice Elitha spilled food. Several times Judith was unable to answer questions asked by her son, or made random comments which quite failed to fit the situation. Kyros became quite indignant, at last.

  “Mother! Aren’t you listening to what Daddy says?” The shrill, shocked voice did catch her attention. “Didn’t you hear what he told the soldier at—”

  “I’m afraid I was thinking of something else, little one,” she interrupted. “I’m sorry; I’ll be good and listen more carefully. What would you have said to the soldier?” The question turned the youngster’s thoughts back to his father’s account, and saved her from having to explain what she could possibly be thinking about which was more interesting than adventures in the outside world. She tried to listen to Marc’s words, but neither her eyes nor her thoughts could leave the two trifling injuries while the meal lasted, or for the hour or more afterward while Elitha cleared the dishes. She almost hated the man as his talk went on; she wanted to get the child to his bed so that the conversation could turn to the only point which meant a thing to her then. Marc, whatever his failings as a diplomat, could hardly have been entirely ignorant of this; but in spite of his wife’s feelings he focused his entire attention on the boy. He kept the child enthralled with accounts of what had happened—or might have happened—on the six-week walk to Rome, and the stay there, and the return. The tales went on while the little fellow gradually ceased his excited responses and settled at Judith’s side, with his eyes still fixed on his father’s face. They went on while Elitha finished her work and seated herself at Kyros’ other side. They went on until yawns too big to conceal began to appear on the small face; and then the stories ceased abruptly.

  “Time you slept now, son,” Marc said gently.

  “No! You haven’t said what happened after—”

  “But you’re sleepy. If I tell you now, you’ll forget and I’ll just have to tell you all over again next time.”

  “I’m not sleepy!”

  “You are, Kyros. You’re very sleepy. You’ve been yawning all through my story from Rome to Rimini. Elitha will take you to your room, and you will sleep. Perhaps tomorrow we can finish the story.” For a long moment the eyes of the man and his son held each other in silence; then the youngster gave a shrug which he must have acquired from his father’s mannerisms, took Elitha’s proffered hand, and got to his feet. He tried to look reproachfully at Marc, but the gap-toothed grin broke through in spite of his efforts. He finally laughed, gave good-night hugs to his parents, and went off happily with the girl.

  The mother waited until the two were presumably out of hearing along the passage, and then turned to her husband.

  “I told you. He’s going to be all right. The finger has stopped bleeding.”

  “True.” The man’s answer was slow, as though he were trying to find the happy medium between absolute truth and the woman’s peace of mind. “It’s stopped now. It took time, though. Mine had stopped while we were eating, but his was still flowing after we were finished—long after Elitha had replenished the fire at least twice.”

  “It wasn’t flowing very hard.”

  “It wasn’t much of a cut. The one I gave myself was worse—I made sure of that. No, my dear, the curse is still there; maybe not as badly as with the others; maybe I won’t have to fight as hard as I expected; but if w
e are to see Kyros grow to manhood I will have to fight.”

  “But how can such a thing be fought? You said it yourself—there is no enemy one can see. There is nothing you can do. It isn’t like the broken bones you mentioned; a person could see what was sensible to do, in something like that.”

  “It is very much like a fever, though, in one way,” her husband pointed out. “There is nothing one can see to fight, but we have learned about medicines which cool the body. I talked to one of Aurelius’ army healers when I was in Rome, and he reminded me of that. I knew it, of course, but I had been feeling as discouraged as you, and he was trying to point out grounds for hope.”

  “But you can’t just try one medicine after another on Kyros.”

  “Of course not. I want to save him, not poison him. I don’t yet know the battle plan, my dearest, but I will fight as a general rather than a soldier who simply slashes at all in his path. I must think and work both; it will take time—probably a long time.”

  “And I cannot help you. That’s the worst part; I can only watch the boy—”

  “Which is the most important of the task.” Judith ignored the interjection.

  “—and will have no idea whether each new day’s play may give him a hurt from which you are not yet armed to save him.”

  He laid a hand on her shoulder, and with the other turned her face toward him.

  “You can help, dear heart, and you will. You are wiser than I in many ways—I learned that before we had known each other a week. We have talked and thought, studied and lived together for twelve years now; how could I doubt your ability to help? You would not have left Rome with me, and come to live in this wilderness, if you had not been so much like me as to value this sort of life more than all Rome could offer. You know why I loved you, and why I still love you.”