The Stars, My Brothers
was afraid, not of the present, nor of the future, but of the past.He was afraid of the thing tagged Reed Kieran, the stiff blind voicelessthing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon, companion to dead worldsand dead space, brother to the cold and the dark.
He began to tremble.
Paula shook him. She was talking but he couldn't hear her. He could onlyhear the rush of eternal darkness past his ears, the thin squeak of hisshadow brushing across the stars. Webber's face was somewhere above him,looking angry and disgusted. He was talking to Paula, shaking his head.They were far away. Kieran was losing them, drifting away from them onthe black tide. Then suddenly there was something like an explosion, acrimson flare across the black, a burst of heat against the cold.Shocked and wild, the physical part of him clawed back to reality.
Something hurt him, something threatened him. He put his hand to hischeek and it came away red.
Paula and Webber were yanking at him, trying to get him to move.
* * * * *
A stone whizzed past his head. It struck the side of the flitter with asharp clack, and fell. Kieran's nervous relays finally connected. Hejumped for the open hatch. Automatically he pushed Paula ahead of him,trying to shield her, and she gave him an odd startled look. Webber wasalready inside. More stones rattled around and one grazed Kieran'sthigh. It hurt. His cheek was bleeding freely. He rolled inside theflitter and turned to look back out the hatch. He was mad.
"Who's doing it?" he demanded.
Paula pointed. At first Kieran was distracted by the strangeness of thelandscape. The flitter crouched in a vastness of red-ochre sand lacedwith some low-growing plant that shone like metallic gold in thesunlight. The sand receded in tilted planes lifting gradually to a rangeof mountains on the right, and dropping gradually to infinity on theleft. Directly in front of the flitter and quite literally a stone'sthrow away was the beginning of a thick belt of trees that grew beside ariver, apparently quite a wide one though he could not see much but atawny sparkling of water. The course of the river could be traced clearback to the mountains by the winding line of woods that followed itsbed. The trees themselves were not like any Kieran had seen before.There seemed to be several varieties, all grotesque in shape and exoticin color. There were even some green ones, with long sharp leaves thatlooked like spearheads.
Exotic or not, they made perfectly adequate cover. Stones came whistlingout of the woods, but Kieran could not see anything where Paula waspointing but an occasional shaking of foliage.
"Sakae?" he asked.
Webber snorted. "You'll know it when the Sakae find us. They don't throwstones."
"These are the humans," Paula said. There was an indulgent softness inher voice that irritated Kieran.
"I thought they were our dear little friends," he said.
"You frightened them."
"_I_ frightened them?"
"They've seen the flitter before. But they're extremely alert to modesof behavior, and they knew you weren't acting right. They thought youwere sick."
"So they tried to kill me. Nice fellows."
"Self-preservation," Webber said. "They can't afford the luxury of toomuch kindness."
"They're very kind among themselves," Paula said defensively. To Kieranshe added, "I doubt if they were trying to kill you. They just wanted todrive you away."
"Oh, well," said Kieran, "in that case I wouldn't dream of disappointingthem. Let's go."
Paula glared at him and turned to Webber. "Talk to them."
"I hope there's time," Webber grunted, glancing at the sky. "We'resitting ducks here. Keep your patient quiet--any more of that moaningand flopping and we're sunk."
* * * * *
He picked up a large plastic container and moved closer to the door.
Paula looked at Kieran's cheek. "Let me fix that."
"Don't bother," he said. At this moment he hoped the Sakae, whoever andwhatever they were, would come along and clap these two into somesuitable place for the rest of their lives.
Webber began to "talk".
Kieran stared at him, fascinated. He had expected words--primitivewords, perhaps resembling the click-speech of Earth's stone-agesurvivals, but words of some sort. Webber hooted. It was a softreassuring sound, repeated over and over, but it was not a word. Therattle of stones diminished, then stopped. Webber continued to make hishooting call. Presently it was answered. Webber turned and nodded atPaula, smiling. He reached into the plastic container and drew forth ahandful of brownish objects that smelled to Kieran like dried fruit.Webber tossed these out onto the sand. Now he made a different sound, agrunting and whuffling. There was a silence. Webber made the soundagain.
On the third try the people came out of the woods.
In all there were perhaps twenty-five of them. They came slowly andfurtively, moving a step or two at a time, then halting and peering,prepared to run. The able-bodied men came first, with one in the lead, afine-looking chap in early middle age who was apparently the chief. Thewomen, the old men, and the children followed, trickling gradually outof the shadow of the trees but remaining where they could disappear in aflash if alarmed. They were all perfectly naked, tall and slender andlarge-eyed, their muscles strung for speed and agility rather thanmassive strength. Their bodies gleamed a light bronze color in the sun,and Kieran noticed that the men were beardless and smooth-skinned. Bothmen and women had long hair, ranging in color from black to tawny, andvery clean and glistening. They were a beautiful people, as deer are abeautiful people, graceful, innocent, and wild. The men came to thedried fruits which had been scattered for them. They picked them up andsniffed them, bit them, then began to eat, repeating thegrunt-and-whuffle call. The women and children and old men decidedeverything was safe and joined them. Webber tossed out more fruit, andthen got out himself, carrying the plastic box.
* * * * *
"What does he do next?" whispered Kieran to Paula. "Scratch their ears?I used to tame squirrels this way when I was a kid."
"Shut up," she warned him. Webber beckoned and she nudged him to moveout of the flitter. "Slow and careful."
Kieran slid out of the flitter. Big glistening eyes swung to watch him.The eating stopped. Some of the little ones scuttled for the trees.Kieran froze. Webber hooted and whuffled some more and the tensionrelaxed. Kieran approached the group with Paula. There was suddenly notruth in what he was doing. He was an actor in a bad scene, minglingwith impossible characters in an improbable setting. Webber makingridiculous noises and tossing his dried fruit around like a caricatureof somebody sowing, Paula with her brisk professionalism all dissolvedin misty-eyed fondness, himself an alien in this time and place, andthese perfectly normal-appearing people behaving like orang-utans withtheir fur shaved off. He started to laugh and then thought better of it.Once started, he might not be able to stop.
"Let them get used to you," said Webber softly.
Paula obviously had been here before. She had begun to make noises too,a modified hooting more like a pigeon's call. Kieran just stood still.The people moved in around them, sniffing, touching. There was noconversation, no laughing or giggling even among the little girls. Aparticularly beautiful young woman stood just behind the chief, watchingthe strangers with big yellow cat-eyes. Kieran took her to be the man'sdaughter. He smiled at her. She continued to stare, deadpan andblank-eyed, with no answering flicker of a smile. It was as though shehad never seen one before. Kieran shivered. All this silence andunresponsiveness became eerie.
"I'm happy to tell you," he murmured to Paula, "that I don't think muchof your little pets?"
She could not allow herself to be sharply angry. She only said, in awhisper, "They are not pets, they are not animals. They--"
She broke off. Something had come over the naked people. Every head hadlifted, every eye had turned away from the strangers. They werelistening. Even the littlest ones were still.
Kieran could not hear anything except the wind in
the trees.
"What--?" he started to ask.
Webber made an imperative gesture for silence. The tableau held for abrief second longer. Then the brown-haired man who seemed to be theleader made a short harsh noise. The people turned and vanished into thetrees.
"The Sakae," Webber said. "Get out of sight." He ran toward the flitter.Paula grabbed Kieran's sleeve and pushed him toward the trees.
"What's going on?" he demanded as he ran.
"Their ears are better than ours. There's a patrol ship coming, Ithink."
* * * * *
The shadows took them in, orange-and-gold-splashed shadows under strangetrees. Kieran looked back. Webber had been inside