The Best of Hal Clement

by Hal Clement

  “Have you figured out why he didn’t meet us, if he was coming back for that purpose?”

  “He could have stepped into a collapsed bubble, which I don’t think he’d do—or he could have broken through a new one. We haven’t found him in any bubble hole, though. Possibly he simply got led off by the ground. Personally, I think it would be best just to backtrack to those hilltops, particularly to the one where I think he was, and see where he would be most likely to go at each choice.”

  Talles nodded, remembered that his helmet was not following his head motion, and made the affirmative hand gesture.

  “Right. Or at least reasonable,” he agreed. “Just the same, it seems pretty likely that he’s had some sort of accident. Otherwise, the chances are, he’d have come within radio range of someone hours ago. If the accident occurred at the beginning, just as he started back toward us—well, he should still be somewhere around here. It seems to me we should keep at what we’re doing right now—search this area. It’s the best chance.”

  “Maybe,” returned Marie. “But it would make sense for at least one person to follow back and try my idea. I’d be willing to go by myself—” She fell silent. She knew the dangers of traveling alone on Moon territory. She was putting Jim Talles in a completely impossible position.

  But Talles didn’t consider it impossible. He didn’t even stop to think. “Take the crawler,” he said.

  Marie stood motionless for perhaps a second, a startled expression behind her faceplate. Then she whirled and leaped toward the vehicle.

  “Just don’t turn your brains off,” he added as she swung into the cab. Then the machine was rolling smoothly away behind its shadow toward the hilltop where they had started searching. It stayed in sight for several minutes, finally vanished over a ridge.

  A sensibly calculated risk, Talles told himself. Even if he did have to worry now about two kids instead of one.

  A seventh hour.

  An eight and ninth. Another small group of helpers arrived, with the cheerful news that they had seen nothing of either Marie or the crawler, much less of Rick. The news was cheerful only because Talles was able to convince himself that it meant the girl must have found a reasonable branch-off point on the backtrail. The orderly search went on.

  Peter Willett caught the first glimpse of the returning crawler. He was so nearly asleep that it took him several seconds to digest what his eyes were trying to tell him. The reaction of Jim Talles to Peter’s call was almost as slow. Jim had managed to make the young people take some sort of rest in brief shifts but had had none himself. He watched the slowly approaching machine for perhaps half a minute before finding his voice.

  “Marie! Have you found him? Is he all right?” Then, as he took in the astonishingly slow speed at which the machine was approaching, he croaked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Sorry, Uncle Jim,” came Rick’s voice. “Marie is asleep. She told me which way to go and explained the crawler’s controls, then just could not stay awake. Say, I’m not very good at driving this thing. Maybe I’d better stop here and let you come and take over.”

  * * *

  Four hours later, at North-Down, Marie was awake enough to make light of the matter.

  “Once you understand how a fellow thinks, it’s easy enough to guess what he’ll do. The only really difficult choice after I took the crawler was my first one, between a fairly wide and level gully that led southwest and a narrow one that went more nearly west, the way Rick would want to go. I didn’t think the narrow one would go through, so I picked the other. I still don’t know whether Rick wasted any time on the dead end. At the next guessing point I had a footprint to help, but it was wrong. Rick must have started one way and then changed his mind. Another blind alley. After that it was easy, until I came to a fault where you could see the Sun coming through—it had to be a clear path west. Partway through it there’s a thirty-foot downstep in loose soil, and I could see where the edge had broken away—”

  “Bixby’s Grave,” remarked one of her adult listeners. “How did he get that far off course?”

  “That whole area is mostly fault cracks,” pointed out Marie. “Most of the time the Sun can’t be seen, and sunlight on rocks overhead can be very tricky. Anyway, Rick had left prints in the gully, so I knew I was right by then. It was too narrow for the crawler and I’d gone in on foot. I didn’t dare follow Rick over the edge. But I flashed my light on the walls over the step, and he saw it and flashed his. So I went back to the crawler and got a rope and that was all.”

  “All?” asked Jim Talles. “I wouldn’t say so.”

  “Well, except for the luck. Rick said he’d been asleep down there for a while—the other end was blocked, and the crack the sun was shining through didn’t come within forty feet of his level. If he’d been asleep when I flashed my light, he’d be there now and I’d still be looking for the other end of the crack so as to guess my way away from him. But how did you know about that? Or were you guessing, too?”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind; I neither knew nor guessed. I—”

  “I know what I want you to tell me,” cut in Jeb McCulloch. “I know you were right, but what made you decide that Rick had gone along the road to Lick E instead of the way up to Pic G as had been planned? I imagine that’s what Jim would like you to explain, though I realize he must know the answer.”

  “Easy enough,” Marie D’Nombu smiled. “Which way is Pic G from North-Down?”

  “Straight north, of course.”

  “Right. And Rick knew that from the maps. How did you find north, Rick?”

  The boy was surprised. “North Star, of course. You can see—”

  Marie shook her head, and grinned at McCulloch.

  “No, Rick. It’s too bad you didn’t get here and start your hike a couple of hours later. Polaris would have been set by then, instead of hanging right above Lick E Pass—and when you couldn’t find it you might have remembered that it isn’t the North Star here.”

  A Question of Guilt

  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 sink-hole. 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 mm. 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