Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “It might be all right,” he said slowly. “It would be a bit hard to see whether the fang was going into a vein, but maybe that’s not very important.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted, “but anyway, what I really wanted to know is, is there any real reason why the tube has to be gold?”

  “Only that I can’t think of anything else to use which I have here and can handle. The clay seems to be hopeless.”

  “You mean there isn’t anything else you can make a tube out of. But what about tubes already made?”

  “What sort? I can’t think of any.”

  “When Elitha cleans a chicken, there is small tubing—veins, I suppose—”

  “I don’t like that idea too much. I’d have to tan it or something to keep it from rotting, and I don’t know how. But wait a minute; how about a hollow reed?”

  “All right, I should think, if you can find one small enough. I started thinking of chickens, though, and kept on that way; how about the quill of a feather?” Marc raised his eyebrows and was silent for a long moment; then, still without a word, he headed toward the garden. Judith, smiling, followed.

  They never had more than four chickens—there was little for the birds to eat but the insect life in the sinkhole—but there was no difficulty in finding dropped feathers. A few of these were brought back to the cave. Marc tried to take the largest of them apart, using a tiny steel knife which was one of his dearest possessions. After he had ruined this one, Judith took over and quickly produced several tiny tubes, from perhaps half an inch to over two inches in length. All were satisfactorily hollow—at least, it was possible to suck water through any of them—and all seemed strong enough. One of the longer ones had just the right inner diameter to enclose on the snake fangs, to Marc’s delight.

  This emotion faded during the next hour as he tried to fasten the two together with rosin, and repeatedly blocked the tiny channel in the fang with the sticky material. After having to boil the intractable object three times to melt the adhesive out of it, he let the woman take over once more. He himself set about preparing the golden cup which would form the top of the apparatus. Even with his lack of manual skill, the task was not too hard. He formed a clay bowl about the size of his two cupped hands, dried it hurriedly over the charcoal, and began to pour small quantities of melted gold into it, rocking the vessel about so that the metal would harden in a thin coating over its inner surface. This was far from professional technique, but it worked. With the metal hardened, he had no trouble breaking the clay away and punching a hole in the bottom of the resulting cup. A little careful reaming enlarged the perforation to the point where it would admit the upper end of the quill. A little more work with the rosin, which even Marc could manage this time, produced an apparently finished device.

  Judith was delighted. Her husband was more reserved in his enthusiasm, but did feel more encouraged when a quantity of water poured into the bowl began to drip slowly from the end of the bit of ivory.

  “That’s done it!” the woman exclaimed. “Don’t you feel as though you’d started to live again, Marc? Come on—let’s go out to the garden. I feel as though I hadn’t seen Kyros for days—and now I can bear to look at him!” She turned toward the passage, and then turned back as her attention was caught by the expression on Marc’s face—the old frown of uncertainty. “Marc—what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing for sure. Supposing that we do have a way of giving Kyros blood when he needs it; where does the blood come from?”

  “Why, from you and me, of course. He has our blood now; what else would be right?” Marc did not have the knowledge to be able to pick holes in this argument. He had had something else in mind anyway, so he merely nodded and tried to put on an appropriate expression. He succeeded well enough for the lamplight, and Judith led the way into the garden without further question. Even Marc, despite the major doubt which he had managed to conceal from his wife, was able to join in the family amusements for the rest of the day.

  Since it was not the night for the trip beyond the garden, he was able to enjoy himself for the next day as well. Judith seemed to have shed all her worries, and played with Kyros as she had with her firstborn in the days before the curse had ever shown itself. Her joy did much to make the man forget some of his own problems, but not all he could have wished. The thought of what he would have to do that night kept obtruding, even while he entertained Kyros with stories after the evening meal; and for once he was in no great hurry to get the youngster off to bed. Even Judith noticed this, but fortunately attributed it to a relief like her own, and asked no questions. In fact, and very luckily, she actually retired herself before the boy did.

  What Elitha saw and thought was impossible to tell. She finally took the child to his rest, leaving the man alone by the fire. As usual, he stood thinking for a time, then checked to make sure Judith was asleep, went to the work cave briefly, took a lamp, and set out on his usual trip.

  He was much later than usual getting back, and he went down to the underground stream and washed very carefully before going to sleep.

  He slept late—deliberately. He needed to think, without having Judith see his face as he did so. What could he tell her? And how could he tell it? Could she stand any part of the knowledge, after what had happened in the last few days? But if she weren’t told, what would happen if Kyros started to go the way of his brothers? For that matter, what would happen then even if she had been told? The questions raced endlessly around in his mind, with no answers to any of them.

  The fight had to go on—Kyros was the only remaining child—Judith could never help now—the boy had lived longer than any of the others; maybe he would be spared—or maybe it would happen today—there must be something he could do—no, that was childish, unless the gods really had made the world for men instead of for themselves—what had gone wrong? What had he done wrong? What could he do—what else could he do?

  No answer. He couldn’t tell Judith—that was evasion, not an answer, but he couldn’t. Maybe nothing would happen to Kyros, for a while anyway. That was an evasion too, but he could hope. In fact, as Judith had said not long before, what else could he do but hope?

  At that thought he rolled from his pallet and stood up. He was a man. He could do more than hope; he could fight!

  So he told himself.

  At least, there need be no more night excursions—unless some new idea should come up. And even if hoping were not enough by itself, whatever hope could be summoned up would be useful. And Kyros had lived longer than his brothers. Maybe Marc went to wash again, and joined his family.

  The hope lasted for nearly three weeks. Judith was happy most of the time. She was able to dismiss Kyros’ occasional sore knee as an aftermath of the earlier fall. Even Marc, who remembered more objectively what had happened to the other boys, saw nothing menacing in it. When one sore knee became two, he was concerned, but could still see no connection with the curse. In fact he never did. What might have been an informative if harrowing year or more was cut short; Kyros fell again.

  Perhaps it was the joint trouble. Perhaps, as Judith promptly decided, it was his mother’s relaxation of care. Perhaps it would have happened anyway; the boy was becoming increasingly independent. None of the adults saw the accident.

  Elitha was up on the surface gathering fuel, Marc was in his workroom; and although Judith was in the garden, her attention had wandered for a moment from the boy. Kyros himself was not doing anything particularly dangerous—or at least, what he was doing would not have been very dangerous for anyone else. He was backing away from the side of the sinkhole, looking up to see whether Elitha was near the head of the ladder, and tripped. The fall might have been harmless even for him, since he landed on the soft soil of the garden; but by sheer bad luck he fell at a place where he himself had set a sharpened stick in the ground for one of his games. It went through the fleshy part of his right arm, a few inches below the shoulder. His shriek was quite loud enough to get hi
s mother’s attention, and hers was audible both to Elitha and Marc.

  Just how the stick was extracted from the arm was never well established. Judith may have pulled it out herself in the first moments of panic. Since it was firmly fixed in the ground, Kyros’ own attempt to get up may have been responsible. However it happened, when Marc reached the scene there was work for him. He quickly tore a strip of cloth from his garment, thankful that the wound was no nearer the shoulder—half an inch higher a tourniquet would have been impossible to apply.

  He should not have been thankful. His effort to tie the limb off above the injury was badly misjudged. The stick had not come anywhere near an artery, but had torn several veins; until Marc gave up on the tourniquet idea and jammed cloth directly into the wounds, blood continued to flow at a frightening rate. Marc didn’t know why. Even with the cloth right over the wounds blood kept coming, though much more slowly.

  Judith, in a state of shock, had stood back and done nothing while her husband worked. By the time he was done, Elitha had descended the ladder and was standing beside her; and as Marc gathered up his now unconscious son and carried him into the cave, the younger woman guided the almost equally pale mother in the same direction. There is no telling how long she would have stood staring at the soaked ground without that help. Even as she walked, she seemed neither to know nor to care where she was going; she looked at nothing—not even at the child in her husband’s arms.

  Inside, Marc laid the boy down near the fire and spoke to the women. “Get his bedding here.” Elitha obeyed. Judith stood motionless, but gradually brought her eyes down to what lay before her. Very slowly she spoke.

  “I said it was my curse. You wouldn’t believe me. Now I’ve killed the last of my children.”

  “You haven’t killed him.” Marc’s tone was harsh, but he didn’t know how else to speak at the moment. “In the first place he is not dead, and in the second this was not your fault.”

  “Then whose was it? I was the only one there. It was my place to look after him. I failed to do it.”

  “There was nothing you could have done, unless you were to spend your whole life holding his hand—not even then; that would not have kept a stone from falling on him. No one—no one—can foresee everything.”

  “Except the gods. They foresee. They waited until only I was there. You would not believe. You believe now—you must! Who could help but see it?”

  “I could help it. I don’t believe. Judith, what has happened is not your fault, and what will happen will not be your fault—unless you do nothing.” He stood up and moved aside as Elitha appeared with the rough blankets and gently began to arrange them. “There are things we can do, dearest; the bleeding is slow, now—little faster than it was on his last hurt. The things we have done before are still right; keep him warm, keep him quiet so that his blood does not flow so fast—it has worked before. It will work again. Time after time I have seen men—and women and children—recover from far worse hurts than this.”

  Judith shook her head negatively and firmly; but Marc took her shoulder and turned her to face him.

  “It is not your fault,” he repeated slowly and emphatically. “Not your fault, ever. You make mistakes, so do I—all people do; but what happened just now was not your mistake any more than it was mine or Elitha’s or Kyros’ own. It is not your fault!”

  The headshaking continued for a few seconds after he began to talk, but gradually it decreased as he went on. The woman’s eyes met those of her husband and stayed fixed on them as though she were trying to read his mind and learn what sincerity lay behind his words. Even more slowly the tense, frightened expression on her face relaxed; but then, quite abruptly, a new one took its place. She grasped his arm suddenly.

  “That’s right, Marc! There is something we can do! He’s lost nearly all his blood, and what is left may go before he stops bleeding. He needs more. We can give it to him! Come—come quickly! Get your knife and the funnel—I can fight, too! I can give him my blood. Come on!”

  This time it was the man’s face which blanched, and his voice which fell almost to inaudibility.

  “No,” was all he said. Judith stood shocked.

  “No? Why not? You made it—you saw it work—you know he needs my blood—”

  “No. It works with water, but not with blood. I couldn’t think how to tell you. The night after we made it I tried it out—I had to be sure.” He bared his left arm and showed a scar inside the elbow. “I filled it with my own blood. A few drops went through the fang—and then stopped. Your blood and mine do harden, my dear. It hardened very quickly in the fang. I had no way even to clean it out; there was nothing small enough to push through that tiny channel.” Judith’s expression went dead again as he spoke, but she did not freeze into her earlier state of shock. She answered after only a short pause.

  “Very well. We’ll keep him warm, and quiet, and feed him if he awakens. But Marc, my own”—her hand reached out and gripped his arm, as firmly as any man’s hand ever gripped it—“you must find a way. You believe it can be found. I am not so sure, so you must do it—you must—he is all we have—” She let go and knelt beside Kyros again. Marc nodded.

  “I will. What I can do, I will.” He thought briefly, and spoke to the girl, who had been listening intently. “Elitha, have food ready at all times. We ourselves must eat, however little we want to, and the boy will need it when he awakens.” The girl silently set about obeying, though her eyes were as often on Kyros or Judith or Marc as on her work. Marc seated himself at a little distance from the others and thought. He never knew how many hours passed.

  He was brought back to awareness by Elitha’s voice. “You must sleep, Mistress. I will watch.”

  “I can’t leave him.” Judith’s voice was drowsy.

  “You need not leave him. I have brought your bed here. I will watch while you sleep, and call you if there is need.”

  Marc expected an argument, but the mother silently went to the blankets her maid had spread. That was a relief. He had been afraid to leave before, unsure of what Judith might need; while she slept, he could work. He made his way to the cavern where his materials lay, sat down before the workbench with the funnel and tube in front of him, and resumed his thinking.

  Elitha, as she well knew, had been right. Sleep is a necessity.

  He awoke abruptly, aware of two things. The girl’s voice was sounding in his ear and her hand pulled frantically at his shoulder; and the funnel was gone from the bench top.

  “Master! My lord! Come—come quickly!” He snapped to his feet, took one look at Elitha’s face, and preceded her to the main cave as fast as his still slightly numb muscles would carry him. He need not have hurried.

  Kyros lay as he had. Judith was crouched beside him; she neither spoke nor moved as Marc approached. The funnel of gold lay beside the child’s bare arm. The quill had been cut off at an angle, and its end was stained. A cut had been made inside the boy’s elbow at the same point where Marc had withdrawn his own blood for the test which had failed. The fang was not in sight.

  He picked up the cut quill. There was no blood in it, and no sign that there had been any. Blood would be of no use to Kyros now.

  For long minutes Marc and Elitha stood silent as the older woman. She seemed unaware of them; but at last she spoke. She uttered only three words, and Marc had no answer.

  “I did it.”

  Slowly she rose to her feet. Her husband tried to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off silently and disappeared into their sleeping cave.

  And the next noon, when Marc came back from the fourth grave, she had disappeared from there as well.

  The discovery cleared the numbness which had gripped him ever since seeing the body of his last child. He suddenly realized that there was still something to live for.

  “Elitha!” His voice sounded faintly in the garden, but the girl heard it and came running. As he heard her footsteps in the tunnel, he called, “When did you last see
her?”

  “Not—not since she went to the sleeping room last night, sir,” the girl answered breathlessly. “What has happened?”

  “I don’t know. She’s not here.”

  “She is not in the garden, I am sure. I called her when you took the little one there, but there was no answer. I hoped she was asleep, and didn’t call again or look. Have you tried the workshop? Or she might have gone to wash.”

  “Not yet. You look in the workshop; I’ll go down to the river. Hurry!” He was back in minutes, to find Elitha waiting. The girl reported that there was no sign of Judith, but that one of the lamps was also gone.

  “Then she must have gone into the gardens of stone,” said Marc. “You wait here to help her if she comes back; I’ll search the way to the entrance first. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “But, sir—” Elitha started to speak, but paused. “Yes?” he asked impatiently. The girl hesitated a moment longer, as though gathering her courage.

  “I might have missed her if she went through the garden quietly. Maybe she went to—to the other place.”

  “What other place?”

  “The one you used to visit late at night.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I saw you, many times.” Marc wanted to ask further, but managed to bring his mind back to the immediate problem. “Did you ever tell her?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then I don’t see how she could be there—she couldn’t know about it. I’ll search there if nothing else works, but the entryway is more likely. Wait.” He disappeared from the girl’s view into the passage that led through the “gardens of stone.”

  He traversed it at reckless speed, more alert for a glimmer of light ahead than for any of the dangers of the way. Time and again only a combination of subconscious memory and luck saved him from a bad fall. There were places where the floor was wet; these he examined eagerly for footprints, but he had found no trace of his wife when he reached the entrance.

  Here he sought carefully for the missing lamp, which would presumably have been left behind if Judith had gone outside, but there was no sign of it. He looked in and around the gully for footprints and other traces in the brush. He was not an experienced hunter or tracker—what little he knew was a relic of his early childhood—but when he had finished he was almost certain that Judith had not left the cave that way. When his mind was made up on this point, he instantly began to retrace his path to the living caves.