Craig wished he were a phyto, to touch her smooth arms and shoulders and her firm cheek. He inhaled deeply.
“I know a better kind of kiss,” he said.
“Do you, Roy?” She dropped her eyes.
“Yes, I do,” he said unsteadily. Needles prickled his sweating hands that felt as big as baskets. “Midori, I … someday I …”
“Yes, Roy?”
“Ho the camp!” roared a voice from up the path.
It was Wilde, striding along, grinning with his horse teeth.
“Pop Toyama’s throwing us a party, come along,” he said. He looked closely at Midori and whistled. “Hey there, pretty little Midori, you look good enough to eat,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Wilde.” The small voice was cold.
On the way up the path Wilde told Midori, “I learned the Tanko dance on Belconti. I told Pop if he’d play, you and I’d dance it for him, after we eat.”
“I don’t feel at all like dancing,” Midori said.
Wilde and Cobb flanked Midori at the dinner table and vied in paying rough court to her afterward in the small sitting room. Craig talked to Helen Toyama in a corner. She was a plump, placid woman and she pretended not to hear the rough hunting stories Jordan, Rice and Whelan were telling each other. Papa Toyama kept on his feet, pouring the hot wine. He looked thin and old and fragile. Craig kept his eye on Midori. Wilde was getting red-faced and loud and he wouldn’t keep his hands off Midori. He gulped bowl after bowl of wine. Suddenly he stood up.
“Hey, a toast!” he shouted. “On your feet, men! Guns up for pretty little Midori!”
They stood and drank. Wilde broke his bowl with his hands. He put one fragment in his pocket and handed another to Midori. She shook her head, refusing it. Wilde grinned.
“We’ll see a lot of you folks, soon,” he said. “Meant to tell you. Barim’s moving you in to Base Camp. Our lab men will fly over next week to pick out what they can use of your gear.”
Papa Toyama’s lined, gentle face paled. “We have always understood that Burton Island would remain a sanctuary for the study of phytos,” he said.
“It was never a Mordin understanding, Pop.”
Toyama looked helplessly from Midori to Helen. “How much time have we to close out our projects?” he asked.
Wilde shrugged. “Say a month, if you need that long.”
“We do, and more.” Anger touched the old man’s voice. “Why can’t we at least stay here until the Belconti relief ship comes?”
“This has been our home for twenty years,” Helen said softly.
“I’ll ask the Huntsman to give you all the time he can,” Wilde said more gently. “But as soon as he pulls a harvest of pure-line translocator seed out of the forcing chambers, he wants to seed this island. We figure to get a maximum effect in virgin territory.”
Papa Toyama blinked and nodded. “More wine?” he asked, looking around the room.
When Wilde and Midori danced, Papa Toyama’s music sounded strange to Craig. It sounded sad as the piping of phytos.
These translocator hybrids were sure deathific, the lab men chortled. Their free-systems had high thermal stability; that would get around the sneaky phyto trick of running a fever. Their recombination index was fantastic. There would be a time lag in gross effect, of course. Phyto infiltration of old-strain Thanasis areas was still accelerating. Belconti bastards should’ve started translocation years ago, the lab men grumbled. Scared, making their jobs last, wanted this planet for themselves. But wait. Just wait.
Craig and Jordan became good friends. One afternoon Craig sat waiting for Jordan at a table in the cavernous, smoky beer hall. On the rifle range an hour earlier he had fired three perfect Great Russel patterns and beaten Jordan by ten points. Barim had chanced by, slapped Craig’s shoulder, and called him “stout rifle.” Craig glowed at the memory. He saw Jordan coming with the payoff beer, threading between crowded, noisy tables and the fire pit where the pig carcass turned. Round face beaming, Jordan set four bottles on the rough plank table.
“Drink up, hunter!” he said. “Boy, today you earned it!”
Craig grinned back at him and took a long drink. “My brain was ice,” he said. “It wasn’t like me doing it.”
Jordan drank and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “That’s how it takes you when it’s for real,” he said. “You turn into one big rifle.”
“What’s it like, Jordan? What’s it really like, then?”
“Nobody can ever say.” Jordan looked upward into the smoke. “You don’t eat for two days, they take you through the hunt ceremonies, you get to feeling light-headed and funny, like you don’t have a name or a family anymore. Then …” His nostrils flared and he clenched his fists. “Then … well, for me … there was Great Russel coming at me, getting bigger and bigger … filling the whole world … just him and me in the world.” Jordan’s face paled and he closed his eyes. “That’s the moment! Oh, oh oh, that’s the moment!” He sighed, then looked solemnly at Craig. “I fired the pattern like it was somebody else, the way you just said. Three-sided and I felt it hit wide, but I picked it up with a spare.”
Craig’s heart thudded. He leaned forward. “Were you scared then, even the least little bit?”
“You ain’t scared then, because you’re Great Russel himself.” Jordan leaned forward too, whispering. “You feel your own shots hit you, Craig, and you know you can’t never be scared again. It’s like a holy dance you and Great Russel been practicing for a million years. After that, somewhere inside you, you never stop doing that dance until you die.” Jordan sighed again, leaned back and reached for his bottle.
“I dream about it lots,” Craig said. His hands were shaking. “I wake up scared and sweating. Well, anyway, I mailed my application to the Hunt College by the ship you came here on.”
“You’ll gun through, Craig. Did you hear the Huntsman call you ‘stout rifle’?”
“Yeah, like from a long way off.” Craig grinned happily.
“Move your fat rump, Jordan,” a jovial voice shouted.
It was Joe Breen, the bald, squat lab man. He had six bottles clasped in his hairy arms. Sidis came behind him. Joe put down his bottles.
“This is Sidis, my Belconti seeing-eye,” he said.
“We know Sidis, he’s an old ringwaller himself,” Jordan said. “Hi, Sidis. You’re getting fat.”
“Hello, Jordan, Roy,” Sidis said. “Don’t see you around much.”
He and Joe sat down. Joe uncapped bottles.
“We’re in the field most all the time now,” Craig said.
“You’ll be out more, soon as we pull the pure-line translocator seed,” Joe said. “We almost got it. Sidis has kittens every day.”
“You grow ’em, we’ll plant ’em, eh, Craig?” Jordan said. “Sidis, why don’t you get off Joe’s neck and come ringwalling again?”
“Too much to learn here in the labs,” Sidis said. “We’re all going to make our reputations out of this, if Joe and his pals don’t kill us before we can publish.”
“Damn the labs; give me the field. Right, Craig?”
“Right. It’s clean and good out with the phytos,” Craig said. “This resorption they got, it does away with things being dirty and rotten and dead—”
“Well, arrow my guts!” Joe thumped down his bottle. “Beer must make you poetical, Blanky,” he snorted. “What you really mean is, they eat their own dead and their own dung. Now make a poem out of that!”
Craig felt the familiar helpless anger. “With them everything is alive all the time without stopping,” he said. “All you can say they eat is water and sunshine.”
“They eat water and fart helium,” Joe said. “I been reading some old reports. Some old-timer name of Toyama thought they could catalyze hydrogen fusion.”
“They do. That’s established,” Sidis said. “They can grow at night and underground and in the winter. When you stop to think about it, they’re pretty wonderful.”
“Damn if you ain’t a poet too,” Joe said. “All you Belcontis are poets.”
“We’re not, but I wish we had more poets,” Sidis said. “Roy, you haven’t forgotten what I told you once?”
“I ain’t a poet,” Craig said. “I can’t rhyme nothing.”
“Craig’s all right. Barim called him ‘stout rifle’ on the range this afternoon,” Jordan said. He wanted to change the subject. “Joe, that old guy Toyama, he’s still here. Out on Burton Island. We got orders to move him in to Base Camp on our next field trip.”
“Great Russel, he must’ve been here twenty years!” Joe said. “How’s he ever stood it?”
“Got his wife along,” Jordan said. “Craig here is going on three years. He’s standing it.”
“He’s turning into a damned poet,” Joe said. “Blanky, you better go home for sure on the next relief ship, while you’re still a kind of a man.”
Craig found Midori alone in her house. It looked bare. Her paintings lay strapped together beside crates of books and clothing. She smiled, but she looked tired and sad.
“It’s hard, Roy. I don’t want to leave here,” she said. “I can’t bear to think of what you’re going to do to this island.”
“I never think about what we do, except that it just has to be,” he said. “Can I help you pack?”
“I’m finished. We’ve worked for days, packing. And now Barim won’t give us transportation for our cases of specimens.” She looked ready to cry. “Papa Toyama’s heart is broken,” she said.
Craig bit his lip. “Heck, we can carry fifty tons,” he said. “We got the room. Why don’t I ask Mr. Wilde to take ’em anyway?”
She grasped his arm and looked up at him. “Would you, Roy? I … don’t want to ask him a favor. The cases are stacked outside the lab building.”
Craig found his chance after supper at the Toyamas. Wilde left off paying court to Midori and carried his wine bowl outside. Craig followed and asked him. Wilde was looking up at the sky. Both moons rode high in a clear field of stars.
“What’s in the cases, did you say?” Wilde asked.
“Specimens, slides and stuff. It’s kind of like art to ’em.”
“All ours now. I’m supposed to destroy it.” Wilde said. “Oh, hell! All right, if you want to strong-back the stuff aboard.” He chuckled. “I about got Midori talked into taking one last walk down to that pool of hers. I’ll tell her you’re loading the cases.” He nudged Craig. “Might help, huh?”
When he had the eighty-odd cases stowed and lashed, Craig lifted the flyer to a hundred feet to test his trim. Through his side window he saw Wilde and Midori come out of the Toyama house and disappear together down the gorge path. Wilde had his arm across her shoulders. Craig grounded and went back, but he could not rejoin the party. For an hour he paced outside in dull, aching anger. Then his crewmates came out, arguing noisily.
“Ho Craig! Where been, boy?” Jordan slapped his shoulder. “I just bet Cobb you could outgun him tomorrow, like you did me. We’ll stick old Cobbo for the beer, eh, boy?”
“Like hell,” Cobb said.
“Like shooting birds in a cage,” Jordan said. “Come along, Craig. Get some sleep. You got to be right tomorrow.”
“I ain’t sleepy,” Craig said.
“Bet old Bork’s shooting himself a cage bird about now,” Cobb said.
They all laughed except Craig.
On the trip to Base Camp next morning Craig, at the controls, heard Wilde singing hunt songs and making jokes back in the main cabin. He seemed to be still drunk. With high good humor he even helped his crew deliver the baggage to Belconti quarters. Craig had no chance to speak to Midori. He was not sure he wanted a chance. That afternoon Cobb outgunned Craig badly. Jordan tried to console him, but Craig drank himself sodden. He woke the next morning to Jordan’s insistent shaking.
“Wake up, damn it! We’re going out again, right away!” Jordan said. “Don’t let Bork catch you sleeping late. Something went wrong for him last night over in Belconti quarters, and he’s mad as a split snake.”
Still dizzy and sick four hours later, and wearing his black pro suit, Craig grounded the flyer again at Burton Island. They had a cargo of pure-line translocator seed. The men got out. Wilde wore a black frown.
“Jordan and Blanky, you seed that gorge path all the way to the waterfall,” he ordered.
“I thought we picked high, sunny places,” Jordan objected. “It’s shady down there.”
“Seed it, I told you!” Wilde bared his horse teeth. “Come on, Rice, Cobb, Whelan! Get going around these buildings!”
When they had finished the seeding, Jordan and Craig rested briefly on the quartz boulder near the pool. For the first time, Craig let himself look around. Phytos danced piping above their heads. The stems marching up the steep slopes transmuted the golden sun glare to a strong, silvery moonlight. It sparkled on the quartz ledge and the cascading water.
“Say, it’s pretty down here,” Jordan said. “Kind of twangs your string, don’t it? It’ll make a nice hunting camp someday.”
“Let’s go up,” Craig said. “They’ll be waiting.”
Lifting out of the field at sunset, Craig looked down at the deserted station from his side window. Midori’s house looked small and forlorn and accusing.
At Base Camp six men died of a mutant free-system before the immunizer could be synthesized. An escaped control virus wiped out a translocator seed crop and Wilde’s men got an unscheduled rest after months of driving work. The once roaring, jovial atmosphere of Base Camp had turned glum. The lab men muttered about Belconti sabotage. They drank a great deal, not happily.
On his first free day Craig checked out a sports flyer, found Midori in the Belconti quarters, and asked her to go riding. She came, wearing a white blouse and pearls and a blue-and-yellow flare skirt. She seemed sad, her small face half dreaming and her eyes unfocused. Craig forgot about being angry with her and wanted to cheer her. When he was a mile up and heading south, he tried.
“You look pretty in that dress, like a phyto,” he said.
She smiled faintly. “My poor phytos. How I miss them,” she said. “Where are we going, Roy?”
“Russel Island, down ahead there. I want you to see Great Russel.”
“I want to see him,” she said. A moment later she cried out and grasped his arm. “Look at that color in the sky! Over to the right!”
It was a patch of softly twinkling, shifting colors far off and high in the otherwise cloudless sky.
“Migratory phytos,” he said. “We see ’em all the time.”
“I know. Let’s go up close. Please, Roy.”
He arrowed the flyer toward the green-golden cloud. It resolved into millions of phytos, each with its opalescent hydrogen sac inflated and drifting northwest in the trade wind.
“They stain the air with beauty!” Midori cried. Her face was vividly awake and her eyes sparkled. “Go clear inside, please, Roy!”
She used to look like that when she was painting in the gorge, Craig remembered. It was the way he liked her best. He matched wind speed inside the cloud and at once lost all sense of motion. Vividly colored phytos obscured land, sea and sky. Craig felt lost and dizzy. He moved closer to Midori. She slid open her window to let in the piping and the spicy perfume.
“It’s so beautiful I can’t bear it,” she said. “They have no eyes, Roy. We must know for them how beautiful they are.”
She began piping and trilling in her clear voice. A phyto patterned in scarlet and green and silver dropped to her outstretched hand and she sang to it. It deflated its balloon and quivered velvety wings. Craig shifted uneasily.
“It acts almost like it knows you,” he said.
“It knows I love it.”
“Love? Something so different?” He frowned. “That ain’t how I mean love.”
She looked up. “How do you understand love?”
“Well, you want to protect people you love, fight for ‘em, do things for ’em.�
�� He was blushing. “What could you do for a phyto?”
“Stop trying to exterminate them,” she said softly.
“Don’t start that again. I don’t like to think about it either. But I know it just has to be.”
“It will never be,” she said. “I know. Look at all the different color patterns out there. Papa Toyama remembers when phytos were almost all green. They developed the new pigments and patterns to make countersubstances against Thanasis.” She lowered her voice. “Think of it, Roy. All the colors and patterns are new ideas in this planet’s strange, inconceivably powerful biochemical mind. This cloud is a message, from one part of it to another part of it. Doesn’t it frighten you?”
“You scare me.” He moved slightly away from her. “I didn’t know they been changing like that.”
“Who stays here long enough to notice? Who cares enough to look and see?” Her lips trembled. “But just think of the agony and the changings, through all the long years men have been trying to kill this planet. What if something … somehow … suddenly understands?”
Craig’s neck-hair bristled. He moved further away. He felt weird and alone, without time or place or motion in that piping, perfumed phyto cloud-world. He couldn’t face Midori’s eyes.
“Damn it, this planet belongs to Great Russel!” he said harshly. “We’ll win yet! At least they’ll never take back Base or Russel Islands. Their seeds can’t walk on water.”
She kept her eyes on his, judging or pleading or questioning, he could not tell. He could not bear them. He dropped his own eyes.
“Shake that thing off your hand!” he ordered. “Close your window. I’m getting out of here!”
Half an hour later Craig hovered the flyer over the wholesome green grass and honest oak trees of Russel Island. He found Great Russel and held him in the magniviewer and they watched him catch and kill a buffalo. Midori gasped.
“Ten feet high at the shoulder. Four tons, and light on his feet as a cat,” Craig said proudly. “That long, reddish hair is like wire. Them bluish bare spots are like armor plate.”
Worldmakers Page 15
