He picked a large house to live in and moved in Awina and the chiefs, letting the others stay in three separate houses with their subchiefs. Guards were stationed at the main gate and told to beat the huge drums in the house over the gate if they saw anything suspicious.
Three weeks later, the ship was ready. It was launched from its drydock and Ulysses took the entire force out on its maiden cruise. Its sailors had been given verbal instructions. Now they tried to put their hazy knowledge into effect. They almost capsized the boat several times. But, after a week of steady schooling, they were ready for an extended coastwise voyage. Ulysses, besides building and installing a fore-and-aft rig, had also built and in-stalled a rudder. The Vroomaw boats had used big oars or sweeps to steer.
He christened the boat the New Hope, and one fine dawn they set out for the land of the Neshgai.
The coast was flat with many good beaches and only a few cliffs here and there. The water was comparatively shallow to about two miles off the coast and free of shoals or large rocks. The trees, large oaks, sycamores, fir, pine and several unknown to the Earth of his time, came down close to the beach. There were plenty of animals: deer, antelope, the long-necked giant horse, which he called a girse when he thought in English (which was not often anymore), buffalo, huge wolf-like animals, seals, and porpoises.
He asked Ghlikh why the land between the Neshgai and the Vroomaw was empty of sentients.
"I can only speculate," the little winged man said. "But I would say that it is because all sentients along the coast had gone to live with The Tree."
Ulysses noted the with. Why not on? Ghlikh talked as if there had been an invitation, and the sentients had moved into a house with others.
"Living is easier with The Tree," Ghlikh said. "There one can hide from one's enemies. Food is plentiful and easy to get."
"And snoligosters and hipporats to eat the unwary fisher," Ulysses said. "And if The Tree abounds with game, it also abounds with fierce flesh-eaters, a number of which are not averse to eating man. And if a tribe can hide easier, it can also be approached easier after it's found. That thick vegetation has disadvantages as well as advantages."
Ghlikh shrugged and smiled with an air of superiority.
"True. But it is well that a few die now and then, otherwise the tribes would increase to such numbers that there would be no room and all the food would be eaten. Some must suffer for the good of the many. Moreover, there is no war among the peoples of The Tree. Not as you or the peoples of the plains know it. The Tree counts its tribes, and when a tribe has too many people, then The Tree notifies its neighbours that they may war on it. It also warns the tribe to be attacked. Then the young warriors of the two tribes arrange to meet in combat. Or, sometimes, during short periods, attacks on the dwelling places themselves are allowed. And it is permissible to kill the females and the children. But this does not happen too often. And when it does, it is welcome. The little wars add excitement —and value—to life."
"I wonder why the Neshgai and Vroomaw did not go to live with The Tree?" Ulysses said.
"The Neshgai think they are better than The Tree!" Ghlikh said angrily. "Those ponderous big-bellied long-noses were once savages, like the Wuggrud and the Khrauszmiddum. But then they dug up the buried city of Shabawzing and found many things in it that enabled them to go from savagery to civilisation in three generations. Also, they are so big and clumsy, they cannot live comfortably in The Tree nor climb very far."
"And the Vroomaw?"
"They did live with The Tree—once. But they left, despite the commands of The Tree to stay where they were. They are a very contrary, troublesome, obnoxious people, as you will find if you come across them. They moved to the seashore and built their houses there. Some say that they first allied themselves with the Neshgai, who treacherously enslaved them. And then a number of Vroomaw escaped and came here to build a nation, planning some day to march against their former masters. But it is evident that the Neshgai struck first."
Ghlikh seemed to be very happy about the fate of the humans.
He added, "The Neshgai's turn is next. But their death will come from The Tree, which never forgets nor forgives. The Neshgai are beset now with attacks from the Fishnoom, brothers to the. Wuggrud, and from the Glassim, brothers to the Khrauszmiddum. The Tree has sent them out from his bosom to bedevil the Neshgai and, eventually, to exterminate them."
He added, even more viciously, "And the same fate will come to the peoples of the plains in the north if they do not go to live with The Tree. Eventually, The Tree will grow over the plains, over all the land except for a narrow strip on the coasts. And The Tree will not endure any sentients on the coast. He will kill them, one way or another."
"The Tree?" Ulysses said. "Or the Dhulhulikh, who use The Tree to bend all the others to their will? Who pretend to be servants of The Tree but are, in reality, its masters?"
"What?" Ghlikh said. He shook his head. "You surely do not believe that? You must be crazy!"
Yet he had such a barely concealed, smiling expression that Ulysses wondered if he had not hit upon the truth.
If his theory was more than a theory, it would explain much. But it would still leave much to be explained. How had The Tree originated? He could not believe that The Tree had naturally evolved from any of the plants living in his day.
And then there was the mystery of the origin of all the unrelated types of sentients.
The boat sailed on along the coast, putting in close to shore and anchoring when the skies were too cloudy to give light for safe navigation. When the moon was visible, the boat sailed all night. Ghlikh and Khyuks provided information from time to time about the Neshgai. Mostly, they sat huddled on a platform before the base of the mast, their wings almost brushing the creaking wood, blankets over their shoulders, and their heads close together. Though they hated each other, they now talked to each other. They were too lonely, miserable and scared not to take refuge in their native speech from time to time.
Ulysses did not know what to do with them. They had given him most of the information he wanted. He was sure that there was other information he could get, if only he knew the right questions. But he was worried that they would escape some day and would bring back a horde of their fellows. Every day that passed increased the probabilities of their getting away.
He did not want to kill them, though that was the only logical thing to do. However, it was true that they still had not revealed the location of their base city. Only in the air, so they claimed, could they find their way back home.
He used this rationalisation for not killing them. They might be able someday to point out the way to their base. If they must do it from the air, so be it. Apparently, no one knew about balloons or dirigibles, and so the bat-men were very smug in thinking that their secret was safe.
The sixth day, Ulysses saw his first porpoise-men. He had taken the ship away from the coast because a great rock stood in their way. Before the ship was within two hundred yards of the rock, he saw the curious animals on a shelf of the rock a few feet above the surface of the sea. He took the New Hope as close to the rock as he dared—the leads-man was singing out four fathoms—and he and his crew stared at the four creatures sunning themselves on the ledge. They looked more like the legendary mermen of his time than the porpoise-centaurs described by Ghlikh. From the breasts down, they were fish-like. Rather, porpoise-like, since the fins were horizontal, not vertical. The skin of the lower body was the same light bronze as the upper. The genitals of both male and female were hidden within folds of the lower body. The bodies from the breasts up were quite human, and the fingers, contrary to what he had expected, were not webbed. The noses were very thin; Ghlikh said the nostrils could be closed tightly with muscular action. The eyeballs could be covered by a rigid transparent sheath which came down from under the eyelids. The hair on their heads was very short and sleek, looking from this distance more like seal fur than hair. Two had black hair, one was an ash-blond, and
the fourth had auburn hair.
Ulysses waved at them and smiled. A woman and a man waved back at him. Ghlikh, who had come upon the poopdeck, said, "That is well done. It is not good to be unfriendly with the Sea-Folk. They can take the bottom right out of a boat if they wish."
"How friendly do they get?"
"They sometimes trade with the Neshgai and the humans. They bring in strange sea stones or fish or goods from sunken ships and exchange these for wine or beer."
Ulysses wondered if they could become allies in his war against the Neshgai, that is, if he had a war against the Neshgai. Ghlikh did not think they would take sides, unless one side gravely offended them. But even the arrogant Neshgai treated them with courtesy and occasional gifts. The Neshgai had a large fleet which they did not want to see on the bottom of the ocean.
The rock and its strange burden dropped behind them. Ghlikh said, "Another day at this rate, and you will be along the coast ruled by the Neshgai. Then what?"
"We shall see," Ulysses said. "You are fluent in their speech?"
"Very fluent," Ghlikh said. "Moreover, many of them can speak Ayrata."
"I hope they're not too astonished when they see me and my crew. I would not want them to attack just because they panicked."
An hour after dawn of the following day, they passed an enormous symbol carved out of stone. It was a great X inside a broken circle. This was the symbol of Nesh, the ancestral eponymous god of the Neshgai, Ghlikh said. This carving, which could be seen for many miles out to sea, marked the western boundary of their country.
"You will see a good harbour soon," Ghlikh said. "And a town and a garrison of troops. And some merchant ships and some swift naval vessels."
"Merchant ships?" Ulysses said, ignoring the threat in his tone. "With whom do they trade?"
"With each other mainly. But some of their great ships sail far around the coast to the north and trade with the peoples there along the coast."
Ulysses began to feel excited. This was not so much from the danger of confronting the unknown as from a new idea. Perhaps the Neshgai did not have to be his enemy. Perhaps they would be friendly, and they would help him. They certainly had a common interest in combating the great Tree or whoever was using The Tree. And possibly they might be working with the humans, not making the humans work for them. Who knew what lies the bat-people had fed him?
Presently the shore curved deeply inward, and then he saw a breakwater to his left. It was composed of huge blocks of stone which extended for several miles. More than just a breakwater, it was a high wall to protect the harbour and the town within from hostile ships. On the tops of the cliff he could see some huge grey buildings and then, as he went by the first of the entrances, a number of ships and a town on the slope of the hill behind.
They had passed a tower on top of the break-water and seen figures behind some of the narrow slits of windows. Something roared, and he looked back to see a giant form on top of the tower. It was holding an immense trumpet to its great mouth. The elephantine proboscis was lifted above the instrument as if it, not the instrument, were trumpeting.
Ulysses decided that it would look better if he went in to meet them instead of them coming out. Surely they would not believe that this small ship would be entering to attack. He took the ship in between the wide gates of the breakwater. He waved at the people in the tower and was surprised to see that most of them were humans. They wore leather helmets and carried shields which he supposed were of wood. They brandished spears— stone-tipped, of course—or held bows and arrows on him. Behind them towered the grey-skinned figures of the Neshgai. Presumably, the giants were the officers.
There was no fire from the towers. They must have thought as he did, that one small ship could not be entering with belligerent intent.
He was not so sure a moment later when he saw a large vessel, a long low galley-type craft, moving swiftly toward him. It was manned with many soldiers, two-thirds of them humans, and it was steered by a rudder. It had no sails. It also had no oarsmen.
His eyes widened then, and he had the sickening feeling that he had just stuck his head into a guillotine. He had seen or heard nothing to indicate that the Neshgai were so advanced technologically.
But when the galley swung around behind them and then came partway alonside to ride herd, it emitted no sound other than the hissing of water cut by the sharp bow and the slap of waves on its side. If the craft held an internal combustion motor, it also had excellent noise-repressing devices.
"What drives that?" he said to Ghlikh.
"I do not know, Lord," Ghlikh said.
His emphasis of Lord indicated that he believed that Ulysses' day as a god was about over. But he did not seem particularly glad. Perhaps the bat-people were in danger of being enslaved also. Yet, this did not seem likely, since Ghlikh had said that the Dhulhulikh traded with the Neshgai.
He stared at the ship. How to reconcile its advanced method of propulsion with the primitive weapons of its personnel?
He shrugged. He would find out in time. If he did not, he would have more important matters to concern him. Patience had always been a virtue of his, and he had strengthened it enormously since awakening. Perhaps his unimaginably long "stonehood" had enabled his psyche to absorb some of the endurance of inert and hard matter.
His ship lowered sail, and the oarsmen back-oared to slow the ship down, then raised them as the ship began to slide in alongside the dock to which an officer on the galley had waved them. Humans clad only in kilts took the ropes thrown out by the furry crew and brought the vessel alongside many rubbery-looking bags. The galley slid in a minute later and then reversed its invisible noiseless engines and stopped an inch from ramming into the structure before it.
Ulysses got a close view of the Neshgai then. They stood ten feet or over and had short heavy columnar legs and big feet that splayed out. Their bodies were long—he would guess that they had much back trouble among them—and their arms were thickly muscled. Their hands had four fingers each.
The heads were much like the carved head he had seen in the Vroomaw village. Their ears were enormous, but much smaller in proportion to the head than an elephant's. The forehead was very broad and knobbed at the temples. They had no eyebrows, but their eyelashes were very long. The eyes were brown, green or blue. The skinny wrinkled proboscis, when dangling, fell to their chests. The mouths were wide and had everted lips —almost negroid lips, in fact. Two tiny tusks protruded at right angles to the plane of the face. Their mouths contained only four molars, and this, of course, would affect their speech. Their Ayrata, the trade language, would have a mushy sound. It was so indistinct that it was almost a new language. But after the ear was tuned to it, the language became intelligible. However, the humans had difficulty reproducing Neshgai sounds and so their Ayrata was a compromise between that which other well-toothed peoples spoke and that which the Neshgai spoke. Fortunately, the Neshgai could understand the particular Ayrata of their slaves.
Their skins were varied from a very light grey to a brownish-grey.
They wore peaked leather helmets with four flaps, much like Sherlock Holmes' deerstalker cap, Ulysses thought. They wore enormous beads, stones of various sorts strung on leather cords, around their thick necks. Heavy breastplates of bone painted in red, black and green covered their relatively narrow chests. Their only clothing—universal among humans and Neshgai alike—was a kilt. The officers' legs were bound in green puttees, and their enormous feet were shod in sandals. Some wore cloaks of a heavy cloth with great white feathers sticking out of the hems.
To Ulysses, these creatures combined a somewhat repulsive alienness with an aura of power and wisdom. This last resulted from his own attitude toward elephants, of course. Then he reminded himself that the Neshgai might be descended from probiscidea but they were not elephants, any more than he was just an ape. And though their giant size and doubtless great strength gave them advantages, they would also give them certain disadvantages. The
re was a debit side to everything.
A magnificent Neshgai stood apart and ahead of the others on the dock. It was he who spoke to Ulysses while everybody else listened respectfully. He trumpeted shrilly through the long nose—a salutation, as Ulysses would learn—and then delivered a short speech. Though he knew it was in Ayrata, Ulysses could understand little of it because of the strange sounds. He asked Ghlikh to translate, warning him not to lie.
"And what will you do to me, Lord?" Ghlikh said, looking sidewise at him with undisguised hate.
"I may kill you here and now," Ulysses said. "Do not start gloating yet."
Ghlikh snarled wordlessly at him and then repeated in more intelligible Ayrata what the official, Gooshgoozh, had said.
The sum of it was that Ulysses should surrender himself and his furry crew to Gooshgoozh. He would be conducted into the city, into the main administration building itself, the home of the ruler and of his chief aid, Shegnif. There he would be interviewed by Shegnif. Unless Ulysses agreed to surrender at once, Gooshgoozh would order his forces to attack them.
The Stone God Awakens Page 14
