He lay wearily on his arms, trying to understand. How had it allhappened so fast? The colony had absorbed her like water into sand,leaving nothing for him. Even the cub had gone in to sleep beside her.
To sleep beside her! How acutely he would feel the absence of her bodytonight. He felt himself out of place: in the wrong tale, immersed inchapters and characters that all around him understood, but which wereto him as incomprehensible as the Valley had been to Sylviana.
But this new life would not have seemed so bleak, perhaps even pleasant,if while it slowly took possession of him, he was not losing the onething in all the world that truly mattered: the love of the woman he hadonce called his. HIS.....
He felt soft fingers touch the back of his head, then slide downward andbegin to massage his neck and aching shoulders. He did not move,knowing by touch alone that it was not his mate. He knew it was Kataya,but was too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to react one wayor the other.
But to the watching figure in the doorway, there was no suchambivalence. Sylviana was furious. How different when the shoe is onthe other foot, was a thought she strangled as soon as it began to forminside her.
She had gone to the spacious bed, surrounded by things she thoughtmissing from her life, only to experience the same emptiness and senseof loss at not feeling the familiar body beside her, and having no oneto tell of her contentment. She tried to shrug it off and just sleep.But she had slept off and on all day, and felt her weariness replaced bya kind of yearning restlessness. PROBABLY JUST MY CONSCIENCE, she hadtold herself. And with this the gentler part of her nature had begun torebel, saying that Kalus was a kind and decent man, who deserved betterthan to be spoken to and treated as if he were some kind of savage.
But these gentle, Christian sentiments were too easily dismissed. Hehad acted abominably, her harder self retorted, and fully deserved thescorn that she had shown him.
And perhaps this was the problem---trying to make herself think morefondly of him through the mind. Because gratitude and compassion arenot lasting in love, while instinct and self-fulfillment never fade. Ifshe could simply have admitted to herself that she missed the securityand intimacy of lying in his arms, and that the crowning pleasure of hernew-found happiness would have been to open herself to him, both bodyand spirit, she could have put aside the hopeless tangle of her emotionsand simply gone to him, and taken him to her, and renewed again the bondof true lovers. As it was she could only toss restlessly, then get upand pace in frustration.
At length she had decided to go to him (or merely allowed the greaterpart of herself to act), telling herself that she should at least saygoodnight, and give him the chance to make it up to her. But as shepassed through the hallway and began to enter the dimly lit compound,she saw a male figure hunched at the table, and another, female formbehind, touching him. Thinking it one of the other couples, she drewback into the shadows of the doorframe. But as her eyes grew moreaccustomed to the half-light, she saw plainly the scene laid out beforeher.
And there she remained, her mind and heart a whirlwind of conflictingimpulses. She wanted to rush at the woman and scratch her eyes out.She wanted to walk up calmly and ask, 'Have you quite finished withmy husband?' Her HUSBAND? She wanted to scream at Kalus, toapologize for being cold, to seduce him, and to have him out of her lifeforever.
But she did none of the things, remaining stock still in the doorway.She forced herself to be calm, and tried to rationalize. Why was she soupset? After all, what had he done? And why did it matter to heranyway? She wanted to break away, and put the whole thing from hermind. But she couldn't. She had to see what he would do.
After a time Kataya sensed the man-child's indifference, or at leasthis unwillingness to yield to her. This did not cool her half-admitteddesire for him, but only made it more patient, tactful. She moved tosit in a corner chair, beside him.
'Why so glum, Kalus? Or are you just ignoring me?'
'I am sorry, Kataya. It's not you. I justfeel. . .overwhelmed.' And with this, he surrendered.
'How so?'
'So much has happened,' he began, feeling as he said the words thebewilderment that lay beneath all other emotions. 'Three weeks agoSylviana and I made love as if there was nothing else in the world. Andfor us, there wasn't. Three months ago we struggled together againstthe Cold World, in a place we called our home. At the time it oftenseemed like Hell, but it brought us closer than you can possiblyimagine. And three days ago. Three days. I lived more or less in theland where I was born, with paradise at my fingers.'
'Then why did you leave?'
'Because I couldn't keep lying to her, that we were alone.....She isn't like me. She needs the company of her own kind.' Hespoke now more to himself, and to the darkness. She was silent for amoment, her own feelings and experience submerged.
'And now?'
'That's just it. I can't bring it all up to now. It's likea great wave that just goes on and on. The voyage here. . .sweet Jesus.And just this morning I held her close while she slept, then woke her toa sight that broke both our hearts, and opened to us the possibility ofa child of our own.' Again she felt him drifting, into a world thatdid not even recognize her existence. 'And now all of you, a floodof strange names and faces, and emotions I don't know how to read.It just goes on and on, with Sylviana slipping farther and fartheraway.'
'All waves must eventually end, Kalus. This one will, too. And whenyou find yourself safely landed among us?' She hesitated. 'And ifthe girl is no longer yours? What then?'
'I cannot even think of that. It would be the end of everything, oflife itself.'
Kataya hung her head. WHY MUST IT ALWAYS BE SO?
Kalus saw this gesture of defeat and knew, for all his confusion anddespair, that he had been selfish, and forgotten her. There in thestillness of night he felt her presence acutely, felt the soul insideher and knew she was as achingly alive as himself. And the feelingsthis knowledge aroused in him both troubled and comforted his ownloneliness. He put his hand beneath her chin and raised the lovely,oval face to look at him.
'You are very beautiful, Kataya. I have chosen Sylviana, but you area woman that a man could truly love.' She wrapped her hand about hiswrist, whispered something in a strange language, then broke off andquickly walked away. He watched her go in sadness.
All this time Sylviana had watched them, unable to hear what was said,imagining the worst. Then she saw him lift her face to his, and whispertender words which should have been hers alone.
Confused and angry, she stormed back into her room. Confused and weary,Kalus spread himself on the ground like an animal, missing them both,and staring at the stars. Confused and bitter, Kataya swore she wouldnot let herself want him, and be hurt yet again and again.
All three slept alone, finding no shelter from the mocking night.
Chapter 40
The next day was Sunday, and the one day a week which the hard-workingcolonists had agreed to set aside as a respite from their labors. Thosewho worked the fields, those who maintained the power and water supply,those who scavenged the city for underground vaults filled with booksand computer records, as well as those who performed the experiments,translations, and radio communications (never answered) which were vitalto the group's morale and sense of purpose, all surrendered for thisone day the businesslike security of endeavor, to think and contemplatelike the first pious Jews, who had looked to the heavens and tried tounderstand their world.
In the hushed morning they gathered for the non-denominational service,Christian, Jew, Buddhist and atheist alike, spread about the candle-litconference room. And it was here that Sylviana first felt the depth ofloneliness and sorrow that this handful of survivors carried with themas inescapably as a damaged organ, or the memory of an amputated limb.And she realized that all their surface carelessness and ease, all thejokes about being bored with one another, were mere facade, thenecessary illusions of commonplace existence. It was clear in
thissmall chapel of honesty, that they not only loved and respected oneanother, but clung to each other, and held the value of each human lifehigh above any other aspiration.
Commander Stenmark in particular she watched, and began to wonder atthis grizzled pioneer whose age was so incongruous to all around him,most of whom were under forty. And during the moment of silent prayershe had to restrain with difficulty her own emotions, as she saw thesame face that could be so still and dispassionate, draw close over thefervently folded hands with tears of age, and thanks, and tiredresponsibility flowing like the sudden, relentless Spring. And it waswith warmth and a further shock that she realized this outpouring wasfor her: that something, someone dear to him had been spared. She hadnever felt so honored.
When the service ended they moved outside, and after a light meal,spread themselves more comfortably on the grassy earth of a clear spaceat one end of the compound, backed by a gentle rise and a single, litheand undistorted maple. This in preparation for what remained to themthe greatest pleasure (and diversion) in life. Learning.
Sylviana's story was fascinating, what they had heard of it the nightbefore, but it was Kalus whom they longed to interrogate. For here wasan anthropologist's dream: a young man who had lived among throwbackNeanderthals, who had carved his existence, without medicine or steel,from the harsh realities of a world in which Man not only held noexalted place, but was on the contrary smallish and ill-equipped, aslikely to be hunted as hunter. And the fact that he himself had emergedfrom the recessed traits of three hundred generations, to be born fullyhuman..... They knew nothing yet of the Machine or the Visitors, onlythat for most of his life Kalus had possessed no spoken language, hadbeen an outcast and object of suspicion because of his appearance andgreater intelligence, had met and shared deepest communion with a youngwoman and fellow creature of the twenty-first century. And for now,this was more than enough.
Dr. David Rawlings, cell biologist, spoke first, a strongly built,intense black man in his mid thirties. Apparently the least abashed ofthe company, he assumed the role he had chosen for himself, and whichthe others now expected and took for granted.
'Well,' he said, moving to stand at the fore of the group. 'Isuppose first we should tell you something of ourselves.' And withoutthe wasted words of diplomacy, he did.
'You see before you the surviving crew members of Virgo II, themanned exploration of Mars. Two years into the flight, and not yettwo-thirds of the way there, we received a delayed signal from earth,and at an undesignated interval. The bloody butchers who calledthemselves our leaders had finally done it: missiles and satellitestations vomiting their nuclear death, and pounding the cities flat.The emotions of those conscious---most of us were in a suspended state,so as not to age unnecessarily during the voyage---I can't imagine.But Stenmark, and the Doc, and poor dead Rene' Christian, well, theyhad to do something.
'So they turned the ship about, and upon returning to Earth engagedin a high orbit around it, and tried to make contact, with anybody. Noone there. Even the orbiting agri-colonies and Moon bases hadn'tbeen spared. The latter might have been construed as some kind ofmilitary threat, to the sick and paranoid, but to kill innocentcivilians, farmers for Christ's sake, just to be sure all wasended..... The worst you can think of us isn't bad enough, Kalus, ifyou look at what we did to each other in the end. Maybe we ?commonpeople' of the superpowers didn't take an active part in thedestruction; but we sure as hell sat on our asses, and let thepresidents and the generals make it inevitable.' He subdued, or atleast restrained, his rising passion.
'But that's neither here nor there. Or anywhere, now. That worldis gone, and will never return.' He sighed bitterly.
'Back on the ship, Christian lost her mind when she saw thedevastation, and knew that her husband and son were dead, like all theothers. She couldn't live without them, and so she killed herself.That left only Stenmark and Doc McIntyre to try and decide our fate.The best they could do, under the circumstances, was to re-rig theentire ship---computer, cryogenics, life-support, everything---for avastly different purpose than what they'd been designed for. Theirnew function was, simply, to hold us all in suspension, retain the highorbit, and wake us all when, hopefully, it was safe to return to thesurface.
'It's no coincidence that you, Sylviana, and William---youhaven't met him yet---came out of suspension at approximately thesame time we did. A German scientist named Krause had been advocating acommon de-suspension date, in the event such a travesty ever occurred.He was considered a black pessimist at the time, and partly insane. Butyour father, and Sten, and possibly others, took his advice, and set the?wake up call' for exactly ten thousand years from the first dayof Armageddon, hoping that would give the planet enough time to healitself, and support recognizable life-forms once more.
'So the rest of the crew, myself included, came back from our littlenap to find our world ravaged, Christian dead, and the Commander agedtwenty-five years. The poor compassionate bastard had kept himselfconscious all that extra time, making sure the orbit wouldn't decay,that the converted solar panels and other adjustments he'd made wouldhold up. Probably would have died for us if he thought it wouldhelp.....
'You've seen the worst in us, Kalus. But that damn Swede overthere . .is the best. And a lot of others like him paid the same priceas the political cowboys, and blind hedonists who elected them. Death.
'So. That's the long and short of it. We dealt with our feelingsand our fears as best we could, and landed here, for a variety ofreasons, just over a year ago. We found William underground, andapparently you found us. So maybe our efforts aren't entirelyfutile. And who's to say, there may be others scattered around theplanet, each feeling as isolated and cut off as we do.'
He concluded as frankly as he had begun. 'But now I'm heartilysick of standing here and telling you our troubles, and I should hopeyou're as tired of hearing them. Apologies to the meek, and you seethe kind of ?Earth' you've inherited. We'll let thecustomary interval of moody silence pass, and then we'll begin ourscientific questioning.' With that he moved off and sat on the hardground, leaving the raw taste of truth, accepted willingly or not, inthe mouths of those around him.
Just as he had said, an interval of silence ensued. Then, to thesurprise of all, Kalus rose without prodding and moved to stand beforethem.
'This will not be easy for me,' he said. 'But I begin to seethat it is important, if only for myself. I feared at first that youwould think me a mindless animal. But I see now that isn't true.Kataya told me not to be ashamed of what I am, and inside, in the heartof me, I'm not. I am proud. Because I survived for twenty-two yearsa world that would kill most of you in a week. That is not said to hurtyou, and I begin to see that you are strong in other ways. It is onlythe truth. Here on the Island there is shelter from predators---thereare no giant spiders or lizards---and you have the knowledge to bringfood from the land without killing. My people have none of thesethings.
'We call ourselves the hill-tribe. Yes we, Sylviana, I will notrenounce them.' She started to glare at him, then colored when shesaw others (including Kataya) watching her, and looked away.
'We live in a cave of many entrances, in the heart of the Wild, withenemies all around us. We survive by being shrewd and fiercelydetermined, and by showing any creature that comes too close there is ahigh price to pay for thinking us weak and afraid.
'But we are not cruel, if we can avoid it, and do not kill withoutneed. If there was some way we could live in peace and well-fedcontentment, we would throw away our spears and never kill again. Butno one has ever shown us how to do this, if such a way exists.'
A gleam came into his eyes such as Sylviana had not seen for manymonths: when he first looked out from the smaller cave, and beheld thepower and majesty of the Mantis. 'Go ahead,' he told them, almostdefiantly. 'Ask me any question. Thank you Kataya, and DavidRawlings. You have made me feel strong and unashamed.'
At this there was another brief space in which th
e company feltreluctant to speak. But it did not last. Their desire to know, and totouch new life, was stronger than their natural timidity.
'Yes, I have a question,' said a woman. 'You say that yourpeople have no spoken language.' (Sylviana had told the doctor, whoin turn had passed it on to the others). 'And yet you have a name.How is that?'
'My people all have names, but no sounds to go with them. My name isa sign made with the hands, or a figure drawn in the dirt, so that I canbe identified to others at need, such as during a hunt. The Machinecalled me Kalus, to my mind as well as my ears, just as it gave names toall the elements of my world. I have always wondered how this wasdone.'
Brushing over this last information, which none understood and whichthey could always come back to, they asked several more questions aboutthe hill-people, until one of the younger men produced a greaseboard andmarker, and approached him.
'Your sign, the one that identifies you. Could you draw it?'Kalus took the board, and after being shown how to use it, drew astraight line, horizontal, then a long curving tooth like a saber at theend of it, pointing downward.
'This represents the upper jaw of the hill-cat, one of the greatesthunters of our world. My first father made it for me, hoping that Iwould be as fierce and cunning. All our names our similar. When he waskilled by a bear. . .I drew it in anger on the ground, then with my footblurred away the sharp point, to show that I was no great predator, butonly a man. Like this.' He smeared the lower half of the tusk,leaving only a squarish root. 'That has been my mark ever since.'