by Chad Oliver
They started.
There was little underbrush in this part of the forest. The way was open. But it was hot and sticky in the gloom of the forest floor. The men had no shoes. They were weak from their diet of fruits and eggs. They had to learn how to walk all over again.
They walked. They walked through a nightmare day. They walked through heat and swarms of insects and warm soaking rains. Their feet were cut and bleeding. Their bodies ached. They followed the markers, trusting because they had to trust.
They were close to exhaustion when the long afternoon shadows came, stumbling like drunken men. They could hear the roaring of the big cats, close, fearfully close—
The man-things met them. They pulled them into the trees, settled them in prepared nests. They fed them, gave them water. The creatures gave no sign that they were glad to see them, spoke no word of greeting. But they did what was necessary. They kept them going.
Alston lay in his nest, a nest that had become safe and familiar. For long hours he was too tired to sleep. The vast night rustled and whispered around him. The same unanswerable question buzzed through his brain, merging with the croaking of the tree frogs.
Why?
It was hard to keep track of time, hard to think, hard to do anything except walk until you could walk no more and then fall into a nest for troubled sleep.
It was like living in a dream, a dream where all movements were in slow motion, a dream where day and night fused together in liquid green light. It was a dream where phantoms walked at your side through the forest gloom, phantoms that were as solid and substantial as rocks but could not be touched, could not be reached. And the dream was real. It could hurt you and did.
Some days, in open forest, they did very well. They covered as much as ten miles before they stopped. Other days, when the jungle closed in around them, they barely made it from one circle of leaves to another. Twice, they had to cross rivers—great sluggish streams that wound like snakes through shallow canyons. The man-things could not swim. They shoved floating logs into the water, clustered on them, and kicked their way from one bank to the other. For the men, they made rafts, lashing logs together with ropes. They had never made a raft before, but they got the idea very quickly. They knew the basic principle. They could apply it.
The men kept going, somehow. They were filthy and ragged. Their beards were tangled horrors that were alive with insects. Their eyes were red and sunken. But their feet toughened, their muscles hardened—
They kept going.
In time, they dared to hope.
And one day—still hundreds of miles from home plate—they heard a sound in the sky.
They stared at each other, afraid to believe. They broke into a run, yelling like maniacs. They ran, ran out of the forest, out of the vines and the towering trees and the flower-splotched shadows. They ran, heedless of thorns that stabbed them, brush that whipped their mottled legs. They ran out into the grass with the blue sky over their heads. They didn’t pause to look for the big cats; they would have run right through them.
They fired off their flares.
They danced and waved and shouted.
For a long minute, a desperate minute—nothing.
Then the sound in the sky grew louder.
They saw the plane.
The plane circled, copter blades flashing in the sun.
It came down to get them.
When Alston woke up, he did not know where he was.
Something soft and yielding was beneath him, but it was not a nest. Something covered his body with a feather-touch. The air was strangely silent except for a subdued humming noise. He was still, so very still. There was no swaying. He listened, but he could not hear the wind or the rustling of leaves.
Startled, he opened his eyes. He was in a room, a white room. The white room had a window and a door. A bed was under him, he had a white sheet pulled up across his shoulders. His body felt clean, clean and rested. He saw red flowers in a vase on a small table.
He knew where he was now. He was in the base hospital. He had been there for many days.
He closed his eyes again. His memory came back.
He remembered—
Remembered the shocked expressions on the faces of the men in the plane. Expressions! They had been wonderful to see. He remembered the wild, half-coherent story that he and Tony had tried to tell. Remembered the fantastic feeling of flight, remembered looking down from that plane at the green sea of the tree-tops, seeing no sign of life there, knowing that they were there, asleep in their nests …
Remembered the landing at home plate, the injections, the questions. Endless questions! Interviews, analysis, reports to write, forms to be filled out, notes to be dictated.
It wasn’t easy to come back from the dead.
The search for them had been long abandoned. They had been far off course when the storm had struck their plane. The automatic beam signals had failed. The plane itself had never been found.
But he had come back. He and Tony had returned with a story that would change the history of a planet, but at first that had mattered very little to Alston. There were other things that were more important to a man who had come back from the dead. He saw everything with fresh eyes. He rejoiced in little things: the taste of cooked meat, a day without rain striking his body, a shave, the crisp feel of clean clothing. Tobacco was a joy, the sight of a woman almost an ecstasy. An air-conditioned building was a miracle, and man himself was new.
He could not forget for long, however.
He remembered other things. Great yellow eyes that gleamed in the dark, strong hairy arms that kept him from falling, tails that curled over faraway branches. Smells that carried secrets he could not share, fingers that could tie clever knots, minds that were as quick as his own. He had not been able to thank them for what they had done, but he knew that they wanted no thanks from him. They had accomplished their purpose. He was alive. He had told their story.
He remembered. And, like the man-things, he looked ahead.
Alston knew what was going to happen, knew it as certainly as though he had experienced it already.
The report on the discovery of the man-things would go back to UNECA—indeed, it was already on its way. There would be a flap to end all flaps. There would be speeches, excited editorials, conferences, a thousand committee meetings. It would all take time, but the final decision was inevitable.
Was not Pollux Five a twin of Earth?
Sure it was! There were only a few minor differences, here and there …
Man needed those earthlike planets. They were the ultimate reason for the costly exploration of interstellar space. They were the goal. Such a world would not be abandoned easily. Plain old-fashioned necessity had a way of slicing through even the thickest rhetoric.
And the man-things?
Well, there would be more survey teams sent out. Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists—it would keep them busy for years. But their conclusions were already obvious. Legally, the man-things were “manlike beings.” They could handle symbols, they had a culture, they had a language, they were capable of rational thought. They were even primates. The law made no special provisions for arboreal or nocturnal life-forms. What difference did that make?
Welcome brothers!
,So, by definition, Pollux Five became an inhabited world. The rest followed like clockwork.
The culture—or cultures—of the man-things did not occupy the whole planet. They were restricted to the rain forests, and did not in fact take up all of them. Therefore, the rest of the world—the vast open grasslands—was open to human settlement or use. There was no question of colonialism here. Man would come to Pollux Five, and come to stay.
The man-things, certainly, would be left pretty much alone. Their cultures, according to the usual criteria, were primitive. They might not be able to understand a treaty, which meant an automatic hands-off policy for their territories. Even if they could understand a treaty—and Alston wou
ld not have been at all surprised at that—they would not be much disturbed. Man could not live in the trees. There was plenty of room without advancing into the rain forests.
And that meant—
Alston managed a grim little smile. He understood the man-things better now. He knew why they had gone to such lengths to help him.
Look at it from their point of view. The men had come in their great ships to Pollux Five. They had established a base. They had started to explore the world.
And what had they done, from the very beginning?
They had shot out the big cats around the settlement.
Where man lived, the big cats died.
The man-things were quite capable of putting two and two together. They were smart. More than that, they took the long view, the view of millennia.
They could not have known all the details, of course. But they knew enough. They knew that their only enemies would be destroyed by the men from the ships. They knew that the men could not live in the trees, so their home territories were safe. They could not lose. And if, in time, they could learn to deal with the men—
Oh, they wanted to help.
They did everything in their power to get the lost men home again. They fed them, sheltered them, watched over them. They let them do as they wished, so long as they did not threaten the forest where they lived. They were willing to take risks, but they were not stupid. They did not try to carry a message to the men with guns. They knew that such men could be dangerous.
It was because men were dangerous that they welcomed them.
It took dangerous men to kill the big cats.
They wanted to keep the men around.
The more the merrier.
The man-things were patient. They knew how to wait.
Alston looked at the window. It was getting dark outside.
He shivered. It would take more than a sheet to get him warm again.
The ancestors of man, too, had once come down out of the trees. They hadn’t been as formidable then as the man-things were now. Man had come down to the ground and he had—exploded.
What would the man-things do, given the chance?
And they would be given the chance. In a matter of years, there would be no big cats left except in the game parks.
There would only be men.
Alston knew, intellectually, that it could be a wonderful thing. A partnership, conceivably. Friends, allies—
But in his guts he doubted it.
The word was rival.
Welcome, brother!
Alston sensed the great world outside, that world of grasslands and cats, tall trees and staring yellow eyes.
A twin of Earth, yes.
And a twin of man.
A dark twin.
A primitive twin, perhaps, an infant twin, but a twin that could plan across the centuries.
It would not happen in the light of the sun. No, they would move always in the shadows of the night. They would come down out of the nests that had shielded them for so long, come down to the land that had been denied them.
Alston remembered the lullaby, the lullaby that would never again soothe, the lullaby that haunted him—
“Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top.
When the wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall:
And down will come baby, cradle and all”
He got out of bed and went to the window. He looked out over the gleaming lights of the settlement, looked out beyond the lights, out into that other world, the world of darkness.
Out there in the night, baby was waiting.
FAR FROM THIS EARTH
Stephen Nzau wa Kioko dressed quietly so as not to awaken his wife and son. It was still early—the African sun shed pale light but no heat against the windows—but he felt a nagging irritation even as he tried to move without sound. In the old days, his wife would have been up first. His breakfast would have been waiting for him: the thick hot sweet tea mixed with fresh milk from his cows, the steaming porridge made of the ground maize from his shambas. His son would have already started the beautiful thin cattle and the sheep and the goats out of the kraal on their long walk toward water. Stephen grunted softly with annoyance. Elizabeth seldom got up before noon these days and her complaints would have been a blasphemy to her mother—old Wamwiu, so wrinkled and worn, her gums collapsed over the wreck of her teeth, dead now these twenty years. And Paul—one son, imagine only one son, one child. Paul with his idiot’s beard, his single feather stuck in a headband like a red Indian. Paul!
Stephen set the dials for his breakfast. Fish cakes and eggs, toast and coffee. It didn’t take long, a precise minute and a half. It wasn’t worth the wait. The food was neither good nor bad. It simply kept a man going, like petrol in an engine.
He dressed with care: short-sleeved white shirt and tie, brown trousers creased for eternity, the soft gray boots that were the only concession made to outdoor work. He stepped outside and the door closed silently behind him.
Stephen’s house stood on a high ridge, flanked by a thousand other houses that were exactly like it except for minor variations in color. He hated the houses and his hate was a constant source of surprise to him. As a boy, he had dreamed of houses like these. He had told himself that one day he would live in such a house, but he had not really believed it—not even after the promised uhuru had actually come and so many things had suddenly seemed possible. He remembered the old house, the sun-dried brick that crumbled when the rains came, the thatch on the roof, the good rich smell of smoke from the cooking fire. He had been told that the old house was not a good one and he had believed it—then.
He stood for a moment, drinking in the morning. To the north, not far away, he could see the outskirts of Nairobi. Already, a smudge was staining the air above the industrial complexes that ringed the city. He looked westward, across the plain that had once been Masailand. The great sky, that vast incredible Kenya sky, stretched away as it always had. The grass still grew—taller now, with better land management—and the flat-topped little acacia trees were still starkly black in the new sun. Unhappily, perhaps, a man could see far across that ancient savannah, and he could see clearly. Stephen could not ignore the glint of the electric fence that sealed off the game park and he could see the swollen metallic bubbles and gleaming towers of Safariland in the distance. Safariland was not open yet; the copters and the monorail would not begin to disgorge the tourists from Nairobi for another two hours. Filled or empty, though, it made no difference across the miles. Safariland was an alien thing, a growth that cut the earth but had no roots. Stephen knew it for what it was: garish, tasteless, a polished machine that sucked in money the way a hippo swallowed vegetation. And yet, he was strangely drawn to it. In a way, it was a part of his youth. He had wanted this, or something like this. It had not been forced upon him. He had welcomed it, grasped for it, fought for it. He had it now, and of course it was too late. The boy would have been enchanted, but the man was too old. The man had learned the hard way that the best dreams are not always those that come true. Still, a man can dream again, he must. …
Stephen tore his eyes away. He had more urgent problems. For one, the problem of the disappearing rhino horns. For another, the problem of the cattle that ate the forbidden grass—
He climbed into his car. It was only three years old, a Chevrolet. It was painted with black and white stripes that were supposed to look like zebra markings. There was neat, discreet lettering across each of the front doors: WARDEN, KENYA GAME COMMISSION. There was a good rifle, a .375 Magnum, clamped under the dashboard. On the back seat, resting casually as though it had just been tossed in as an afterthought, was a wooden staff about six feet long with a fork in one end. It was always there now when Stephen worked.
He drove the car down from the hills and turned west, away from the city. The climbing sun was behind him. Ahead of him was the grassland and the wind.
He showed his identifi
cation at the gate, trying not to look at the huge signs. He had to look at them, of course; that was the kind of sign they were. One read: SEE WILD AFRICAN ANIMALS IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT! That wasn’t too bad, although many of the animals in the park were not really wild any longer and one could quibble about how natural the carefully managed habitat was. Another sign: SEE SAVAGE MASAI WARRIORS SPEAR A LION! The Masai weren’t very savage these days, those that were left, and the spearing was a bloodless charade. Another: SEE SPEKE DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE! That was staged in Safariland; the park was a long way from Lake Victoria. Another: SEE MAU MAU FREEDOM FIGHTERS! Well, they were at least in the right country, although the Mau Mau in Safariland were a far cry from the ragged, desperate men Stephen had known—when? Long ago, long ago. He had been a boy of seven when the Emergency had been declared. Another: SEE THE BASE ON THE MOON! It was a long way from the Mau Mau to the conquest of space, in more ways than one. But the broad theme of Safariland was exactly what the name suggested. A safari was just a journey, an expedition preferably into lands unknown. As a matter of fact, the space exploration exhibits at Safariland were among the best in the world. They were almost as good as those at Disneyland, which Stephen had visited. The Kenya government had been anxious to emphasize the future as well as the past in Safariland, and money had been spent.
Stephen drove into the park and there were no more signs. That was a blessing. At this time of the day, before the vehicles fanned out over the roads, a man could almost believe …
He remembered this country as it had once been, not so very long ago. Stephen was a Kamba, and he had been born in 1945 in the hills near Machakos. (No tourist had ever heard of the Kamba; his people had not been colorful like the Masai or leaders in Mau Mau like the Kikuyu. A couple of anthropologists had written books about the Kamba, but no one had read them.) Stephen was now a man of fifty-five, but he had known this land well as a younger man. It had once been Masailand, which bordered on his own tribal territory of Ukambani. He had been here when there was no game park. He remembered the brown grasses, the clouds of red dust, the scummy green water in the shrinking pools. He remembered the Masai as they had been: the tall thin warriors with their cloaks the color of the red ocher they smeared on their faces, the long iron-bladed spears, the great herds of skinny zebu cattle, the brush fences around the brown breadloaf houses plastered with mud and manure, the flies everywhere. He remembered the fear that came with the Masai raids on the Kamba kraals, remembered his own father running for his bow and poisoned arrows….
