They were to get used to such nightly storms as they trekked through the forest. In time, the forest dwindled and vanished. They found themselves in a region of snow-capped peaks. They trod the crumbling flanks of mountains, at the edge of the eternal snows, and descended into gulfs and canyons that split the face of the planet to intolerable depths, and down whose intestinal twistings rushed dark streams, foam-streaked, plunging and dashing among black rocks.
There was game, too, now that they had left the forest behind—fleet, six-legged creatures with triple-jointed limbs—proof enough to Jarvis that they no longer walked the face of familiar Earth. But how transliterated here? And in all of this, what was he, and who was Eamus Brock, and what was the liaison between them that kept him struggling to effect their meeting?
Fish in the streams were footed and clawed—heavy of body, too heavy to float. They walked on the bottom but snapped at bait as eagerly as any fish—and when broiled in the coals of their campfire, tasted like fish.
They traveled in a land of plenty, and they saw no other human being, only game animals and, far away, darting in the blue depths of the sky, hordes of huge, glittering butterflies. Sometimes, while they rested and the butterflies darted above them, they heard a sound as of ethereal singing, and Jarvis was enchanted with the music that rained down from the sky. The scale of it rose and fell like a lilting cadenza, smiting through barriers of time and intelligence into the primal hearts that beat in their breasts.
They camped one night on a rocky flat, beside a rushing stream. Tomorrow would provide a problem in getting across, but tonight they must rest. He built their campfire behind a windbreak of boulders, and smiled at the happy sounds Jo and Toby made, calling back and forth to each other, as they gathered dry driftwood on the beach.
They were never so carefree in their lives, he thought. Why not? Man returned to the wild more easily than he had fought his way up from it.
Jarvis had never been a woman’s man. Since the night he had kissed Jo in the tree, he had not made so overt a move again. It seemed to him that she preferred it that way, and so did he. Their relationship remained one of simple, trusting companionship. Between them, Toby was a bond of devotion, and they both poured their affection and protective energies into providing for him as if he were the embodiment of themselves.
They dined on broiled fish and berries gathered from nearby bushes, and after dinner, sat lazily by the fire as the shadows of night closed in, too replete for conversation. The night wind swooped down the gorge, chilled from association with the glaciers of the peaks, and the stars shone hard and bright in a sky of ebon black.
Jarvis was not sure how long the man had been standing there, at the edge of the firelight, when he first noticed him. The sight startled him. A man! He was a giant, clothed in dingy khaki, travel-worn and streaked with grime. His eyes shone brightly against his face that blended with the shadows behind him. Instinctively, Jarvis reached for his rifle.
“You don’t need that, man.” The stranger’s voice was soft and low, carrying an accent of mellow friendliness. “I want only a bit of your fire, if you can spare me room.”
Jarvis stood, ignoring his rifle. “We have food,” he said. “Have you eaten?”
White teeth flashed in an appreciative smile and the stranger advanced to the fire and squatted on the sand. The firelight glinted red and bronze on the coal black skin of his face and hands.
“I wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” he murmured.
“No trouble at all,” Jo averred. She got out the fish they had been saving for breakfast, wrapped it in fresh leaves, and scraped a hole for it in the glowing coals. Already broiled, the fish would take only a minute to heat through.
“I’m Daniels,” offered the stranger. “Once I was a lawyer—” He spread both hands in a gesture of abandonment. “Now I’ve got a mission up north. Where are you folks heading?”
“My name is Jarvis,” Jarvis replied. “This is my family. We’re heading west.”
Daniels nodded sagely, clucking his tongue.
“You’re heading right, man. You’ve got John Daniels’ word on that. There’s salvation to westward. Me, I’ve got to go no’th. But I’ll be getting around to westward by and by.”
Jo scraped the coals away from the leaf-wrapped fish, scooped it up on a piece of bark, and opened the wrapping. The hot fish smoked in the firelight, and the lawyer’s eyes lighted up.
“Man! That sure smells good! I’m sure obliged to you, ma’am!”
He took the bark platter and broke off morsels of fish between powerful fingers and popped them in his mouth, shaking his head and muttering compliments on Jo’s campfire accomplishments.
Jarvis stirred uneasily. “What do you mean about getting around to westward later?” he wanted to know.
“There’s others like us up north,” Daniels said, irrelevantly. “I got to see them out of it for sure. But you’ll get along by yourself, all right. You kind of got to, so there’s no use frettin’ about it. I’ll see you out west, all right.”
“Where—where out west?”
“Where? Why, where Eamus Brock is, that’s where.”
Jarvis started and sat bolt upright.
“What do you know about Eamus Brock?”
“Everything—nothing,” Daniels murmured, licking the last of the fish from his fingers. “Mind if I lie down here and sleep a little? I got to get going real early…”
He lay back on the sand and closed his eyes.
Jarvis felt his jaw tighten. “Who is Eamus Brock? Where is he?”
The Negro muttered drowsily. “The greatest man ever lived, that’s who Eamus Brock is. Where he is? Just follow you nose, man—you nose lead you right to him!”
A gentle snore terminated the sentence and Daniels slept, a slight smile relaxing his heavy lips. Frustrated, Jarvis got up and rounded the fire, intending to shake the giant into wakefulness, but Jo’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“Let him sleep,” she murmured. “The poor devil is worn out. You can ask him again in the morning.”
CHAPTER 5
But the morning found John Daniels gone. He had grasped his meager hour of sleep and left without disturbing them.
The presence of the giant Negro in the wilderness had posed many questions for which Jarvis desired answers. But one thing Daniels had vouchsafed him, and that was hope. He was another human being in search of Eamus Brock, and that brought substantiality to the dream that persisted in haunting him—that Eamus Brock still wanted him, Jarvis, and further, wanted him to bring Toby into his presence.
How did this weird feeling of his and the meeting with Daniels connect up with the real Eamus Brock? Only time, he felt, could provide the answer, and only by moving on continuing ever westward, could he hope to take full advantage of what time had to offer.
He broke camp in a pensive mood, shouldered his pack, hefted his rifle and looked around for his companions. Jo was smothering the last coals of the fire with handfuls of sand.
He said, a little sharper than he intended, “Where’s Toby?”
“He was here a minute ago—”
At that moment, they heard the sound of Toby’s laughter and the boy came running from behind a screen of boulders, clutching a furry, squirming creature in his arms.
“I’ve caught a baby elephant!” he cried, and put it down on the ground at their feet.
It was anything but an elephant, Jarvis saw, though it did faintly resemble one, having a sinuous trunk which it waved up at him in a friendly manner, belied by the grim appearance of two tiny, needle-sharp little tusks. Jarvis stepped back from the animal, watching it narrowly for signs of a vicious nature.
“That was a dangerous thing to do, Toby,” he reproved.
“Aw, it’s tame!” Toby objected. “With that long no
se and little, beady eyes, he looks just like Mr. Murchison, who used to be our neighbor! That’s the name I’ve given him. Isn’t it a dandy? Here, Mr. Murchison!”
“We’ll have to leave it,” Jarvis said kindly. “Come along, now.”
Toby looked disappointed, but followed obediently as Jarvis set out. A few moments later, the man looked back, and Mr. Murchison was bringing up the rear of their little column, waving his trunk amiably and pattering along on his six, nimble-jointed little legs.
Jarvis glanced up along the canyon walls, measuring the declivity with his eye, seeking some sign of a falling back of the rocky escarpment that would indicate a broadening and shallowing of the stream, where they might cross. A swarm of the bright-hued lepidoptera fluttering in the sunlight on flashing wings, their song trilling faintly down the canyon, attracted his attention.
If these were really butterflies, Jarvis thought, they must be larger than any of their species on Earth. He was quite convinced by now that they had been mysteriously transported to some alien world remote from Earth, yet somehow connected with it. He knew for fact that terrestrial butterflies were voiceless: whereas the song of these was not unlike the trill of birdsong, yet more as if emitted by a human throat. The song consisted of a sustained note, rising and falling, cascading, trilling, then swooping to new heights of melody. There was beat and measure in the cadence of it, and the fluttering creatures sang in unison, like an unearthly choir as they darted and swarmed high up.
The swarm paused in its drift, the individual members taking up a motion of circling flight, a swirling of the individuals in the mass, at the same time that their lilting melody rose to new and higher flights that cut with piercing sound into Jarvis’ being in its wail of promised ecstasy.
Then it seemed to him that he understood the reason for this excited swarming and for the exalted tempo of their hymn. The butterflies were pairing off, each becoming a unit of flight, whirling and gyrating in a pulse of sound and color. The music of their song was suddenly shrill, exultant and final in its expression of ultimate delight.
Two by two, the butterflies danced in mid-air, a mating dance in which male wooed female, telling in song and movement the passionate story of his love. Then, as Jarvis watched, one pair broke away from the others and came fluttering away down the canyon by themselves, toward the human watchers. They swung in gyrating arcs, passing each other at a hair’s breadth, swooping, falling, closing in on each other, sustaining the suspense of their desire to mate. The rest of the creatures hovered in silent flight. Only the two who gyred and swooped continued the song in a bubbling ecstasy of love, pouring out their mutual longing in the most beautiful melody ever heard.
It had been some kind of contest, Jarvis thought, in which the mating pair had won and earned the privilege of continuing their nuptials alone. And then, only a brief distance away, the fluttering pair met and clung, and their song became a fiercely exultant paean, a hymn of triumph, as they tumbled through the air, careening wildly on the gusty currents in the canyon, oblivious in their joy to the danger that lay below.
Jarvis’ breath stuck in his throat in sudden fear. These two were about to dash themselves into the ground, or be drowned in the rushing stream. But then they rose on planing wings, and again they fluttered and again they fell, and abandon told against them. They struck the flank of a house-size boulder, then tumbled down its face into a tragic, broken heap at its base.
A sudden, shrilling call lanced down from above. He horde of butterflies had abandoned the random character of their flight and was diving directly toward the feebly twitching pair by the rock. Even as Jarvis ditched his pack and began to run toward them, the swarm arrived first, swooped upon the male, ripped off his wings and tore him to pieces in a frenzy of blood lust. Then they began to gorge, bending and bucking above the mutilated carcass, gorgeous wings scintillating with the colors of the rainbow. It was a hideous commingling of beauty and horror.
Jarvis charged, shouting and brandishing his rifle as a few of the swarm were about to fall upon the second of the injured pair. They became aware of him then, and fluttered aloft on blazing wings, the swarm following, their song welling up, hideous now and cacophonic in a blast of devilish victory.
The one still fluttered feebly on the ground, and Jarvis bent over it, torn with pity. Its two-foot wingspread beat the air ineffectually, and he grasped its body in his hands, carefully so as not to harm it further, and turned to Toby running up behind him.
“Beat it!” he said gruffly. “Go back and tell Jo to get here, quick!”
He turned back to the fragile creature in his hands, his heart beating a curious rhythm, his eyes alight with the wonder of his discovery. This was no lepidoptera he held. It had no butterfly body at all. It was a winged, naked, miniature, female human being, scarcely twelve inches tall!
CHAPTER 6
Jo splinted the butterfly creature’s broken leg with a calm proficiency admired by Jarvis. They had no salve for the bruises and abrasions; but Jo made substitute with a good washing with water from the stream. There was no remedy for the torn gauze of her wings—that would have to mend itself.
The exotic little face, drawn now with suffering, was a perfect replica of its human counterpart. It was fairy-like, with a certain elfin beauty, and blue-eyed, with long, sweeping lashes and arching brows, dainty nose and full, red lips. Her long hair gleamed like threads of hammered gold, from the midst of which stirred tiny antennae that furthered the fairy illusion.
Whatever the origin of this creature, Jarvis felt sure it did not stem from the Tertiary apes that had spewed Mankind into the stream of Time. Its origin was unearthly, as was its appearance and very being.
“We’ll have to take her with us,” said Jo, distressed. “I’ll weave a little basket and carry her on my shoulders.”
Jarvis shrugged. Between Toby and his Mr. Murchison and Jo and this winged creature, he was accumulating quite a following.
Later, he dropped his eyes to the creature cuddled in the tiny basket Jo had woven from stream-aide rushes. Was the creature human? What was the quality of being human—intellect—soul—what?
Jo said, softly, “Might not our descendants look like this a billion years from now?”
Jarvis started. He had thought of anything but that. How ancient was this world? Or was it really their own world, as Jo had hinted, ages in advance of them? He shrugged irritably.
“I do not think it likely. If you’re ready now, we’ll be leaving.”
The injured butterfly maid ate only berries that Jo gathered for her along the way. The meat Jarvis had carefully preserved by smoking over a campfire she disdained. Water Jo gave her from the tips of her fingers that had been dipped in the stream.
They came upon a ford and crossed over to the far bank and trudged up a slanting break in the canyon wall. Jo was carrying the basket in her arms.
“See her look at you, Jeff!” she exclaimed.
“I’ve noticed,” he replied noncommittally.
“And how she looks!” Jo observed. “In a way that needs about four feet more of stature to back up!”
“Are you jealous?” he wanted to know, cognizant of the erotic glances the little minx in the casket darted at him from half-masked eyes. “Remember, she’s an alien thing. The expressions familiar to us may mean something different to her species.”
“That expression?” scoffed Jo, laughing. “Believe it if you will, but you can’t fool a woman…meaning myself.”
Jarvis submitted pleasantly to Jo’s good-natured chaffing, though he thought she was stretching a point or two. The butterfly girl’s look of avid carnality couldn’t have real meaning, considering the discrepancy in size between them.
They made a dry camp that night in the cindery bed of what had once been the cone of a volcano. They drank sparingly from the canteen, husbanding
the water against tomorrow’s need. Jo used a few drops to rub down the butterfly girl, but Mr. Murchison used no water at all, contenting himself with munching the few dry tussocks of grass that grew among the cinders.
From his last observation post, Jarvis had made mental notes of the blasted plain over which they must travel to continue westward. It was heaped and dotted with boulders, torn and fissured, scarred with outcroppings of obsidian in slabs and sheets among the omnipresent lava.
* * * *
The second nightfall found them destitute of water, and the awful stretch ahead went on interminably.
“I saw blue hills in the distance today,” Jarvis said, licking dry lips, feeling the cake of accumulated dust in his sprouting beard. “But we’ll have to find water tomorrow to make it.”
“We’ll be out of food tomorrow, whether we find water or not,” Jo pointed out without optimism. “There’s no game among these rocks.”
Her words blasted Jarvis’ hope that she had not noticed.
“Tomorrow is another day,” he said, and refused to pursue the subject further.
He was keenly conscious of Toby’s presence, and the responsibility of the boy’s welfare weighed heavily upon him.
They had found no water by mid-afternoon of the next day, though the glassy excoriations of the plain had given way to a dusty turf of brown, wiry grass. Occasional twisted bushes and stunted trees enhanced the bleakness of the broad, gentle slope whose descent they followed. They had crossed the ridge of the mountains at some unguessed altitude and were now descending the farther flank.
They came to what was in its season a stream bed, dry now, its bottom rock hard, its banks lined with dusty, gnarled skeletons of sparsely-leafed trees of an unknown species. Jarvis’ heart beat a little faster. Somewhere downstream there might be a spring, not yet dry, which would provide the water they needed.
His mouth felt choked and dry, filled with the thick cake of his tongue. His skin itched and burned with heat and dryness. He suffered from thirst and knew that his companions did also, though no word of complaint was voiced.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 59
