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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac44184 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60695 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60695) diff --git a/old/60695-8.txt b/old/60695-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 3cb8532..0000000 --- a/old/60695-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2773 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night of Hoggy Darn, by Richard McKenna - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Night of Hoggy Darn - -Author: Richard McKenna - -Release Date: November 15, 2019 [EBook #60695] - -Most recently updated: April 16, 2023 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN - - BY R. M. McKENNA - - _The talented author of "The Fishdollar Affair" - returns with another compelling story of a frontier - world--grim New Cornwall of the Black Learning._ - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1958. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -Red-haired Flinter Cole sipped his black coffee and looked around the -chrome and white tile galley of Space Freighter _Gorbals_, in which he -was riding down the last joint of a dogleg journey to the hermit planet -of New Cornwall. - -"Nothing's been published about the planet for the last five hundred -years," he said in a nervous, jerky voice. "You people on _Gorbals_ -at least _see_ the place, and I understand you're the only ship that -does." - -"That's right, twice every standard year," said the cook. He was a -placid, squinting man, pink in his crisp whites. "But like I said, no -girls, no drinks, nothing down there but hard looks and a punch in the -nose for being curious. We mostly stay aboard, up in orbit. Them New -Cornish are the biggest, meanest men I ever did see, Doc." - -"I'm not a real doctor yet," Cole said, glancing down at the scholar -grays he was wearing. "If I don't do a good job on New Cornwall I -may never be. This is my Ph. D. trial field assignment. I should be -_stuffing_ myself with data on the ecosystem so I can ask the right -questions when I get there. But there's nothing!" - -"What's a pee aitch dee?" - -"That's being a doctor. I'm an ecologist--that means I deal with -everything alive, and the way it all works in with climate and -geography. I can use _any_ kind of data. I have only six months until -_Gorbals_ comes again to make my survey and report. If I fumble away my -doctorate, and I'm twenty-three already...." Cole knitted shaggy red -eyebrows in worry. - -"Well hell, Doc, I can tell you things like, it's got four moons and -only one whopper of a continent and it's low grav, and the forest there -you won't believe even when you see it--" - -"I need to know about _stompers_. Bidgrass Company wants Belconti U. to -save them from extinction, but they didn't say what the threat is. They -sent travel directions, a visa and passage scrip for just one man. And -I only had two days for packing and library research, before I had to -jump to Tristan in order to catch this ship. I've been running in the -dark ever since. You'd think the Bidgrass people didn't really care." - -"Price of stomper egg what it is, I doubt that," the cook said, -scratching his fat jaw. "But for a fact, they're shipping less these -days. Must be some kind of trouble. I never saw a stomper, but they say -they're big birds that live in the forest." - -"You see? The few old journal articles I did find, said they were -flightless bird-homologs that lived on the plains and preyed on the -great herds of something called darv cattle." - -"Nothing but forest and sea for thousands of miles around Bidgrass -Station, Doc. Stompers are pure hell on big long legs, they say." - -"There again! _I_ read they were harmless to man." - -"Tell you what, you talk to Daley. He's cargo officer and has to go -down with each tender trip. He'll maybe know something can help you." - -The cook turned away to inspect his ovens. Cole put down his cup and -clamped a freckled hand over his chin, thinking. He thought about -stomper eggs, New Cornwall's sole export and apparently, for five -hundred years, its one link with the other planets of Carina sector. -Their reputedly indescribable flavor had endeared them to gourmets on a -hundred planets. They were symbols of conspicuous consumption for the -ostentatious wealthy. No wonder most of the literature under the New -Cornwall reference had turned out to be cookbooks. - -Orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, Cole had never tasted -stomper egg. - -The cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell. - -"Just thought, Doc. I keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from -cargo for when I got a passenger to feed. How'd you like a mess for -chow tonight?" - -"Why not?" Cole said, grinning suddenly. "Anything may be data for an -ecologist, especially if it's good to eat." - - * * * * * - -The stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter -of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. Their -delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. Their flavor was -like--cinnamon? Peppery sandalwood? Yes, yes, and yet unique.... - -Cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and -the other six men had not had any. He groped for a lost feeling--was it -that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat -for all of them? Ridiculous! - -"I'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "Here, Mr. Daley, have some." - -Daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "By me" and slid the platter -along. It rounded the table and returned to Cole untouched. - -"Fall to, Doc," Daley said, grinning. - -Cole was already reaching ... lying in his stateroom and he _was_ the -bunk cradling a taut, messianic body flaming with imageless dreams. -He dreamed himself asleep and slept himself into shamed wakefulness -needing coffee. - -It was ship-night. Cole walked through dimmed lights to the galley and -carried his cup of hot black coffee to main control, where he found -Daley on watch, lounging against the gray enamel computer. - -"I feel like a fool," Cole said. - -"You're a martyr to science, Doc. Which reminds me, Cookie told me you -got questions about Bidgrass Station." - -"Well yes, about stompers. What's wiping them out, what's their habitat -and life pattern, oh anything." - -"I learned quick not to ask about stompers. I gather they're twenty -feet high or so and they're penned up behind a stockade. I never saw -one." - -"Well dammit! I read they couldn't be domesticated." - -"They're not. Bidgrass Station is in a clearing the New Cornish cut -from sea to sea across a narrow neck of land. On the west is this -stockade and beyond it is Lundy Peninsula, a good half-million square -miles of the damndest forest ever grew on any planet. That's where the -stompers are." - -"How thickly settled is this Lundy Peninsula?" - -"Not a soul there, Doc. The settlement is around Car Truro on the east -coast, twelve thousand miles east of Bidgrass. I never been there, but -you can see from the air it isn't much." - -"How big a city is Bidgrass? Does it have a university?" - -Daley smiled again and shook his head. "They got fields and pastures, -but it's more like a military camp than a town. I see barracks for the -workers and egg hunters, hangars and shops, a big egg-processing plant -and warehouses around the landing field. I never get away from the -field, but I'd guess four, five thousand people at Bidgrass." - -Cole sighed and put down his cup on the log desk. - -"What is it they import, one half so precious as the stuff they sell?" - -Daley chuckled and rocked on his toes. "Drugs, chemicals, machinery -parts, hundreds of tons of Warburton energy capsules. Pistols, -blasters, cases of flame charge, tanks of fire mist--you'd think they -had a war on." - -"That's no help. I'll make up for lost time when I get there. I'll beat -their ears off with questions." - -Daley's gnomish face grew serious. "Watch what you ask and who you ask, -Doc. They're suspicious as hell and they hate strangers." - -"They need my help. Besides, I'll deal only with scientists." - -"Bidgrass isn't much like a campus. I don't know, Doc, something's -wrong on that planet and I'm always glad to lift out." - -"Why didn't you and the others eat any of that stomper egg?" Cole asked -abruptly. - -"Because the people at Bidgrass turn sick and want to slug you if you -mention eating it. That's reason enough for me." - -Well, that was data too, Cole thought, heading back to his stateroom. - - * * * * * - -Two days later Daley piloted the cargo tender down in a three-lap -braking spiral around New Cornwall. Cole sat beside him in the cramped -control room, eyes fixed on the view panel. Once he had the bright and -barren moon Cairdween at upper left, above a vastly curving sweep of -sun-glinting ocean, and he caught his breath in wonder. - -"I know the feeling, Doc," Daley said softly. "Like being a giant and -jumping from world to world." - -Clouds obscured much of the sprawling, multi-lobed single continent. -The sharpening of outline and hint of regularity Cole remembered noting -on Tristan and his own planet of Belconti, the mark of man, was absent -here. Yet New Cornwall, as a human settlement, was two hundred years -older than Belconti. - -The forests stretched across the south and west, broken by uplands and -rain shadows, as the old books said. He saw between cloud patches the -glint of lakes and the crumpled leaf drainage pattern of the great -northeastern plain but, oddly, the plain was darker in color than the -pinkish-yellow forest. He mentioned it to Daley. - -"It's flowers and vines and moss makes it that color," the little man -said, busy with controls. "Whole world in that forest top--snakes, -birds, jumping things big as horses. Doc, them trees are _big_." - -"Of course! I read about the epiphytal biota. And low gravity always -conduces to gigantism." - -"There's Lundy," Daley grunted, pointing. - -It looked like a grinning ovoid monster-head straining into the western -ocean at the end of a threadlike neck. Across the neck Bidgrass Station -slashed between parallel lines of forest edge like a collar. Cole -watched it again on the landing approach, noting the half-mile of -clearing between the great wall and the forest edge, the buildings and -fields rectilinear in ordered clumps east of the wall, and then the -light aberration of the tender's lift field blotted it out. - -"Likely I won't see you till next trip," Daley said, taking leave. -"Good luck, Doc." - -Cole shuffled down the personnel ramp, grateful for the weight of his -two bags in the absurdly light gravity. Trucks and cargo lifts were -coming across the white field from the silvery warehouses along its -edge. Men also, shaggy-haired big men in loose blue garments, walking -oddly without the stride and drive of leg muscles. Their faces were -uniformly grim and blank to Cole, standing there uncertainly. Then a -ground car pulled up and a tall old man in the same rough clothing got -out and walked directly toward him. He had white hair, bushy white -eyebrows over deep-set gray eyes, and a commanding beak of a nose. - -"Who might you be?" he demanded. - -"I'm Flinter Cole, from Belconti University. Someone here is expecting -me." - -The old man squinted in thought and bit his lower lip. Finally he said, -"The biologist, hey? Didn't expect you until next _Gorbals_. Didn't -think you could make the connections for this one." - -"It left me no time at all to study up in. But when species extinction -is the issue, time is important. And I'm an ecologist." - -"Well," the old man said. "Well. I'm Garth Bidgrass." - -He shook Cole's hand, a powerful grip quickly released. - -"Hawkins there in the car will take you to the manor house and get you -settled. I'll phone ahead. I'll be tied up checking cargo for a day or -two, I expect. You just rest up awhile." - -He spoke to the driver in what sounded like Old English, then moved -rapidly across the field toward the warehouses in the same strange walk -as the other men. As far as Cole could see, he did not bend his knees -at all. - -Hawkins, also old but frail and stooped, took Cole's bags to the -car. When the ecologist tried to follow him he almost fell headlong, -then managed a stiff-legged shuffle. Momentarily he longed for the -Earth-normal gravity of Belconti and the ship. - -They drove past unfenced fields green with vegetable and cereal crops, -and fenced pastures holding beef and dairy cattle of the old Earth -breeds. It was a typical human ecosystem. Then they passed a group of -field workers, and surprise jolted the ecologist. They were huge--eight -or nine feet tall, both men and women, all with long hair and some of -them naked. They did not look up. - -Cole looked at Hawkins. The old man glared at him from red-rimmed eyes -and chattered something in archaic English. He speeded up, losing the -giants behind a hedge, and the manor house with the palisade behind it -loomed ahead. - -The great fence dwarfed the house. Single baulks of grassy brown timber -ten feet on a side soared two hundred feet into the air, intricately -braced and stayed. High above, a flyer drifted as if on sentry duty. -Half a mile beyond, dwarfing the fence in its turn, arose the -thousand-foot black escarpment of the forest edge. - -The manor house huddled in a walled garden with armed guards at the -gate. It was two-storied and sprawling, with a flat-roofed watch tower -at the southeast corner, and made of the same glassy brown timber. -Hawkins stopped the car by the pillared veranda where a lumpy, gray, -nondescript woman waited. Cole got out, awkwardly careful in the light -gravity. - -The woman would not meet his glance. "I'm Flada Vignoli, Mr. Bidgrass's -niece and housekeeper," she said in a dead voice. "I'll show you your -rooms." She turned away before Cole could respond. - -"Let me carry the bags, I need to," he said to Hawkins, laughing -uncertainly. The old man hoisted his skinny shoulders and spat. - -The rooms were on the second floor, comfortable but archaic in style. -The gray woman told him that Hawkins would bring his meals, that Garth -Bidgrass would see him in a few days to make plans, and that Mr. -Bidgrass thought he should not go about unescorted until he knew more -about local conditions. - -Cole nodded. "I'll want to confer with your leading biologists, Mrs. -Vignoli, as soon as I can. For today, can you get me a copy of your -most recent biotic survey?" - -"Ain't any biologists, ain't any surveys," she said, standing in the -half-closed door. - -"Well, any recent book about stompers or your general zoölogy. It's -important that I start at once." - -The face under the scraggly gray hair went blanker still. "You'll have -to talk to Mr. Bidgrass." She closed the door. - -Cole unpacked, bathed, dressed again and explored his three rooms. Like -a museum, he thought. He looked out his west windows at the palisade -and forest edge. Then he decided to go downstairs, and found his door -was locked. - -The shock was more fear than indignation, he realized, wondering at -himself. He paced his sitting room, thinking about his scholarly status -and the wealth and power of Belconti, until he had the indignation -flaming. Then a knock came at the door and it opened to reveal old -Hawkins with a wheeled food tray. - -"What do you mean, locking me in?" Cole asked hotly. - -He pushed past the food tray into the hall. Hawkins danced and made -shooing motions with his hands, chattering shrilly in the vernacular. -Cole walked to the railing around the stairwell and looked down. At the -foot of the stair a giant figure, man or woman he could not say, sat -and busied itself with something in its lap. - -Cole went back into his room. The food was boiled beef, potatoes and -beets, plain but plentiful, plus bread and coffee. He ate heartily and -looked out his windows again to see night coming on. Finally he tried -the door and it was not locked. He shrugged, pushed the food tray into -the hall and closed the door again. Then he shot the inside bolt. - -In bed, he finally dropped off into a restless, disturbed sleep. - - * * * * * - -Emboldened by morning and a hearty tray breakfast, Cole explored. He -was in a two-floor wing, and the doors into the main house were locked. -Through them he heard voices and domestic clatter. Unlocked across the -second-floor hall was another suite of rooms like his own. Downstairs -was still another suite and along the south side a library. The door -into the garden was locked. - -My kingdom, Cole thought wryly. Prisoner of state! - -He explored the library. Tristanian books, historical romances for the -most part, none less than three hundred years old. No periodicals, -nothing of New Cornwall publication. He drifted from window to window -looking out at the formal garden of flower beds, hedges and white sand -paths. Then he saw the girl. - -She knelt in a sleeveless gray dress trimming a hedge. Her tanned and -rounded arms had dimpled elbows, he noted. She turned suddenly and he -saw, framed by reddish-brown curls, her oval face with small nose and -firm chin. The face was unsuitably grave and the eyes wide. - -She was not staring at his window, Cole decided after a qualm, but -listening. Then she rose, picked up her basket of trimmings and glided -around the corner of the house. Before he could pursue her plump vision -to another window, a man appeared. - -He looked taller than Cole and was built massively as a stone. Straight -black hair fell to his shoulders, cut square across his forehead and -bound by a white fillet. Under the black bar of eyebrow the heavy -face held itself in grim, unsmiling lines. He moved with that odd, -unstriding New Cornish walk that suggested tremendous power held in -leash. - -Cole crossed the hall and watched the blue-clad form enter a door in -the wing opposite. The girl was nowhere. Again Cole felt a twinge of -fear, and boiled up anger to mask it. - -Inside looking out, he thought. Peeping like an ecologist in a bird -blind! - -When Hawkins brought lunch Cole raged at him and demanded to see Garth -Bidgrass. The old man chattered incomprehensibly and danced like a -fighting cock. Thwarted, the ecologist ate moodily and went down to -the library. The garden was empty and he decided on impulse to open a -window. A way of retreat, but from what and to where, he wondered as -he worked at the fastenings. Just as he got it free, a woman stooped -through the library door. She was at least seven feet tall. - -Cole stood erect and held his breath. Not looking at him, the woman -dropped to her knees and began dusting the natural wood half-panelling -that encircled the room between bookcases. She had long blonde hair and -a mild, vacant face; she wore a shapeless blue dress. - -"Hello," Cole said. - -She paid no attention. - -"Hello!" he said more sharply. "Do you speak Galactic English?" - -She looked at him out of empty blue eyes and went back to her work. -He went past her gingerly and up to his room. There he wrote a note to -Garth Bidgrass, paced and fanned his indignation, tore up the note and -wrote a stronger one. When Hawkins brought his dinner, Cole beat down -his chattering objections and stuffed the note into the old man's coat -pocket. - -"See that Bidgrass gets it at once! Do you hear, at once!" he shouted. - -After nightfall, nervous and wakeful, Cole looked out on the garden by -the pale light of two moons. He saw the girl, wearing the same dress, -come out of the opposite wing, and decided on impulse to intercept her. - -As he climbed through the library window he said to himself, "Anything -may be data to an ecologist, especially if it's pretty to look at." - - * * * * * - -He met her full face at the house corner and her hands flew up, -fending. She turned and he said, "Please don't run away from me. I want -to talk to you." - -She turned back with eyes wide and troubled, in what nature had meant -to be a merry, careless face. - -"Do you know who I am?" he asked. - -She nodded. "Uncle Garth says I'm not to talk to you." It was a little -girl's voice, tremulous. - -"Why? What am I, some kind of monster?" - -"N-no. You're an outworlder, from a great, wealthy planet." - -"Belconti is a very ordinary planet. What's your name?" - -"I'm Pia--Pia Vignoli." The voice took on more assurance, but the -plump body stayed poised for flight. - -"Well I'm Flinter Cole, and I have a job to do on this planet. It's -_terribly_ important that I get started. Will you help me?" - -"How can I, Mr. Cole? I'm nobody. I don't know anything." She moved -away, and he followed, awkwardly. - -"Girls know all sorts of things that would interest an ecologist," he -protested. "Tell me all you know about stompers." - -"Oh _no_! I mustn't talk about stompers." - -"Well talk about nothing then, like girls do," he said impatiently. -"What's the name of that moon?" He pointed overhead. - -Tension left her and she smiled a little. "Morwenna," she said. "That -one just setting into Lundy Forest is Annis. You can tell Annis by her -bluish shadows that are never the same." - -"Good girl! How about the other two, the ones that aren't up?" - -"One's Cairdween and the other, the red one--oh, I daren't talk about -moons either." - -"Not even _moons_? Really, Miss Vignoli--" - -"Let's not talk at all. I'll show you how to walk, you do look so funny -all spraddled and scraping your feet. I was born off-planet and I had -to learn it myself." - -She showed him the light down-flex of the foot that threw the body more -forward than up, and he learned to wait out the strange micropause -before his weight settled on the other foot. With a little practice -he got it, walking up and down the moonlit path beside her in an -effortless toe dance. Then he learned to turn corners and to jump. - -"Pia," he said once. "Pia. I like the sound, but it doesn't suit this -rough planet." - -"I was born on Tristan," she murmured. "Please don't ask--" - -"I won't. But no reason why I can't talk. May I call you Pia?" - -He described Belconti and the university, and his doctorate, at stake -in this field assignment. Suddenly she stopped short and pointed to -where a red moon lifted above the dark cliff of the eastern forest. - -"It's late," she said. "There comes Hoggy Darn. Good night, Mr. Cole." - -She danced away faster than he could follow. He crawled back through -his window in the reddish moonlight. - - * * * * * - -Next afternoon Cole faced Garth Bidgrass in the library. The old man -sat with folded arms, craggy face impassive. Cole, standing, leaned his -weight on his hands and thrust his sharp face across the table. His -freckles stood out against his angry pallor, and sunlight from the end -window blazed in his red hair. - -"Let me sum up," he said, thin-lipped. "For obscure reasons I must -be essentially a prisoner. All right. You have no education here, no -biologists of any kind. All right. Now here is what they expect of me -on Belconti: to rough out the planetary ecosystem, set up a functional -profile series for the stomper and its interacting species, make energy -flow charts and outline the problem. If my report is incorrect or -incomplete, Belconti won't send the right task group of specialists. -Then you spend your money for nothing and I lose my doctorate. I must -have skilled helpers, a clerical staff, _masses_ of data!" - -"You've said all that before," Bidgrass said calmly. "I told you, I can -provide none of that." - -"Then it's hopeless! Why did you ever send for an ecologist?" - -"I sent for help. Belconti sent the ecologist." - -"Help me to _help_ you, then. You must try to understand, Mr. Bidgrass, -science can't operate in a vacuum. I can't work up a total planetary -biology. I must _start_ with that data." - -"Do what you can for us," Bidgrass said. "They won't blame you on -Belconti when they know and we won't blame you here if it doesn't help." - -Cole sat down, shaking his head. "But Belconti won't count it as a -field job, not in ecology. You _will_ not understand my position. Let -me put it this way: suppose someone gave you a hatchet and told you, -only one man, to cut down Lundy Forest?" - -"I could start," the old man said. His eyes blazed and he smiled -grimly. "I'd leave my mark on one tree." - -Colt felt suddenly foolish and humbled. - -"All right," he said. "I'll do what I can. What do you think is wiping -out the stompers?" - -"I know what. A parasite bird that lays its eggs on stomper eggs. Its -young hatch first and eat the big egg. The people call them piskies." - -"I'll need to work out its life cycle, look for weak points and natural -enemies. Who knows a lot about these piskies?" - -"I know as much as anybody, and I've never seen a grown one. We believe -they stay in the deep forest. But there are always three to each -stomper egg and they're vicious. Go for a man's eyes or jugular. Egg -hunters kill dozens every day." - -"I'll want dozens, alive if possible, and a lab. Can you do that much?" - -"Yes. You can use Dr. Rudall's lab at the hospital." Bidgrass stood up -and looked at his watch. "The egg harvest should start coming in soon -down at the plant and there may be a dead pisky. Come along and see." - - * * * * * - -As Hawkins guided the car past a group of the giant field workers, Cole -felt Bidgrass' eyes on him. He turned, and the old man said slowly, -"Stick to piskies, Mr. Cole. We'll all be happier." - -"Anything may be data to an ecologist, especially if he overlooks it," -Cole murmured stubbornly. - -Hawkins cackled something about "Hoggy Darn itha hoose" and speeded up. - -In the cavernous, machinery-lined plant Cole met the manager. He -was the same powerful, long-haired man Cole had seen in the garden. -"Morgan," Bidgrass introduced him with the one name, adding, "He -doesn't use Galactic English." - -Morgan bent his head slightly, unsmiling, ignoring Cole's offered hand. -His wide-set eyes were so lustrously black that they seemed to have no -pupils, and under the hostile stare Cole flushed angrily. They walked -through the plant, Morgan talking to Bidgrass in the vernacular. His -voice was deep and resonant, organ-like. - -Bidgrass explained to Cole how stomper egg was vac-frozen under biostat -and sealed in plastic for export. He pointed out a piece of shell, half -an inch thick and highly translucent. From its radius of curvature Cole -realized that stomper eggs were much larger than he had pictured them. -Then someone shouted and Bidgrass said a flyer was coming in. They went -out on the loading dock. - -The flyer alongside carried six men forward of the cargo space and -had four heavy blasters mounted almost like a warcraft. As the dock -crew unloaded two eggs into dollies, other flyers were skittering in, -further along the dock. Bidgrass pointed out to Cole on one huge four -by three-foot egg the bases of broken parasite eggs cemented to its -shell. Through a hole made by piskies, the ecologist noted that the -substance of the large egg was a stiff gel. Morgan flashed a strong -pocket lamp on the shell and growled something. - -"There may be a pisky hiding inside," Bidgrass said. "You are lucky, -Mr. Cole." - -Morgan stepped inside and returned almost at once wearing goggles -and heavy gloves, and carrying a small power saw. He used the light -again, traced an eight-inch square with his finger, and sawed it out. -The others, all but Cole, stood back. Morgan pulled away the piece and -something black flew up, incredibly swift, with a shrill, keening sound. - -Cole looked after it and Morgan struck him heavily in the face, -knocking him to hands and knees. Feet stamped and scraped around him -and Cole saw his own blood dripping on the dock. He stood up dazed and -angry. - -"Morgan saved your eye," Bidgrass told him, "but the pisky took a -nasty gouge at your cheekbone. I'll have Hawkins drive you to the -hospital--you wanted to meet Dr. Rudall anyway." - -Cole examined the crushed pisky on the way to the hospital. Big as his -fist, with a tripartite beak, it was no true bird. The wings were flaps -of black skin that still wrinkled and folded flexibly with residual -life. It had nine toes on each foot and seemed covered with fine scales. - -Dr. Rudall treated Cole's cheek in a surprisingly large and well -appointed dressing room. He was a gray, defeated-looking man and -told Cole in an apologetic voice that he had taken medical training -on Planet Tristan many years ago ... out of touch now. His small lab -looked hopelessly archaic, but he promised to biostat the dead pisky -until Cole could get back to it. - -Hawkins was not with the ground car. Cole drove back to the plant -without him. He wanted another look at the mode of adhesion of pisky -egg on stomper egg. He drove to the further end of the plant and -mounted the dock from outside, to freeze in surprise. Twenty feet away, -the dock crew was unloading a giant. - -He was naked, strapped limply to a plank, and his face was bloody. Half -his reddish hair and beard was singed away. Then a hand hit Cole's -shoulder and spun him around. It was Morgan. - -"Clear out of here, you!" the big man said in fluent, if plain, -Galactic English. "Don't you ever come here without Garth Bidgrass -brings you!" He seemed hardly to move his lips, but the voice rumbled -like thunder. - -"Well," thought Cole, driving back after Hawkins, "datums are data, if -they bite off your head." - - * * * * * - -"For your own safety, Mr. Cole, you must not again leave the company -of either Hawkins or Dr. Rudall when you are away from the house," -Bidgrass told Cole the next morning. "The people have strange beliefs -that would seem sheer nonsense to you, but their impulsive acts, if you -provoke them, will be unpleasantly real." - -"If I knew their beliefs I might know how to behave." - -"It is your very presence that is provoking. If you were made of salt -you would have to stay out of the rain. Here you are an outworlder and -you must stay within certain limits. It's like that." - -"All right," Cole said glumly. - -He worked all day at the hospital dissecting the pisky, but found -no parasites. He noted interesting points of anatomy. The three-part -beak of silicified horn was razor sharp and designed to exert a double -shearing stress. The eye was triune and of fixed focus; the three -eyeballs lay in a narrow isosceles triangle pattern, base down, behind -a common triangular conjunctiva with incurved sides and narrow base. -The wings were elastic and stiffened with a fan of nine multi-jointed -bones that probably gave them grasping and manipulating power in the -living organism. None of it suggested the limit factor he sought. - -Dr. Rudall helped him make cultures in a sterile broth derived from the -pisky's own tissues. In the evening a worker from the plant brought -eleven dead piskies and Cole put them in biostat. He rode home with -Hawkins to his solitary dinner feeling he had made a start. - -Day followed day. Cole remained isolated in his wing, coming and going -through his back door into the garden. He became used to the mute -giant domestics who swept and cleaned. Now and then he exchanged a few -words with the sad Mrs. Vignoli, Pia's mother, he learned, or with -old Bidgrass, in chance meetings. He watched Pia through his windows -sometimes and knew she fled when he came out. There was something -incongruous in the timid wariness with which her plump figure and -should-be-merry face confronted the world. - -Once he caught her and held her wrist. "Why do you run away from me, -Pia?" - -She pulled away gently. "I'll get you in trouble, Mr. Cole. They don't -trust me either. My father was a Tristanian." - -"Who are _they_?" - -"Just they. Morgan, all of them." - -"If we're both outworld, we should stick together. I'm the loneliest -man on this planet, Pia." - -"I know the feeling," she said, looking down. - -He patted her curls. "Let's be friends then, and you help me. Where do -these giant people come from?" - -Her head jerked up angrily. "That has nothing to do with your work! I'm -inworld too, Mr. Cole. My mother is of the old stock." - -Cole let her go in silence. - -He began working evenings in the lab, losing himself in work. Few of -the blue-clad men and women he encountered would look at him, but he -sensed their hostile glances on the back of his neck. He felt islanded -in a sea of dull hatred. Only Dr. Rudall was vaguely friendly. - -Cole found no parasites in hundreds of dissected piskies, but his -cultures were frequently contaminated by a fungus that formed dark red, -globular fruiting bodies. When he turned to cytology he found that what -he had supposed to be an incredibly complex autonomic nervous system -was instead a fungal mycelium, so fine as to be visible only in phase -contrast. He experimented with staining techniques and verified it in a -dozen specimens, then danced the surprised Dr. Rudall around the lab. - -"I've done it! One man against a planet!" he chortled. "We'll culture -it, then work up mutant strains of increasing virulence--oh for a -Belconti geno-mycologist now!" - -"It's not pathogenic, I'm afraid," Dr. Rudall said. "I ... ah ... -read once, that idea was tried centuries ago ... all the native fauna -have fungal symbiotes ... protect them against all known pathogenic -microbiota ... should have mentioned it, I suppose...." - -"_Yes_, you should have told me! My God, there go half the weapons -of applied ecology over the moon ... my time wasted ... _why_ didn't -you tell me?" The ecologist's sharp face flushed red as his hair with -frustrated anger. - -"You didn't ask ... hardly know what ecology means ... didn't realize -it was important ..." the old doctor stammered. - -"_Everything_ is important to an ecologist, especially what people -won't tell him!" Cole stormed. - -He tried to stamp out of the lab, and progressed in a ludicrous -bouncing that enraged him even more. He shouted for Hawkins and went -home early. - - * * * * * - -In his rooms he brooded on his wrongs for an hour, then went downstairs -and thundered on the locked door into the main house, shouting Garth -Bidgrass' name. The sounds beyond hushed. Then Garth Bidgrass opened -the door, looking stern and angry. - -"Come into the library, Mr. Cole," he said. "Try to control yourself." - -In the library Cole poured out his story while Bidgrass, standing with -right elbow resting atop a bookcase, listened gravely. - -"You must understand," Cole finished, "to save the stompers we must -cut down the piskies. Crudely put, the most common method is to find a -disease or a parasite that affects them, and breed more potent strains -of it. But that won't work on piskies, and I could have and should have -known that to begin with." - -"Then you must give up?" - -"_No!_ Something must prey on them or their eggs in their native -habitat, a macrobiotic limit factor I can use. I must learn the adult -pisky's diet; if its range is narrow enough that can be made a limit -factor." - -The old man frowned. "How would you learn all this?" - -"Field study. I want at least twenty intelligent men and a permanent -camp somewhere in Lundy Forest." - -Bidgrass folded his arms and shook his head. "Can't spare the men. And -it's too dangerous--stompers would attack you day and night. I've had -over two hundred egg hunters killed this year, and they're trained men -in teams." - -"Let me go out with a team then, use my own two eyes." - -"Men wouldn't have you. I told you, they're superstitious about -outworlders." - -"Then it's failure! Your money and my doctorate go down the drain." - -"You're young, you'll get your doctorate another place," the old man -said. "You've tried hard, and I'll tell Belconti that." His voice was -placating, but Cole thought he saw a wary glint in the hard gray eyes. - -Cole shrugged. "I suppose I'll settle in and wait for _Gorbals_. But -I've had pleasanter vacations." - -He turned his back and scanned the shelves ostentatiously for a book. -Bidgrass left the room quietly. - -It was a boring evening. Pia was not in the garden. Cole looked at -the barrier and the incredible cliff of Lundy Forest. He would like -to get into that forest, just once. Hundred and fifty days before -_Gorbals_ ... _why_ had they ever sent for him? They seemed to be -conspiring to cheat him of his doctorate. They had, too.... Finally he -slept. - - * * * * * - -He woke to a distant siren wail and doors slamming and feet scraping in -the main house. Dressing in haste, he noted a red glow in the sky to -southward and heard a booming noise. In the hall outside his room he -met Pia, face white and eyes enormous. - -"Stomper attack!" she cried. "Come quickly, you must hide in the -basement with us!" - -He followed her into the main house and downstairs to where Mrs. -Vignoli was herding a crowd of the giant domestics down a doored -staircase. The giant women were tossing their heads nervously. Several -were naked and one was tearing off her dress. Cole drew back. - -"I'm an ecologist, I want to see," he said. "Stompers are data." - -He pushed her gently toward the women and walked out on the front -veranda. From southward came an incredibly rich and powerful chord of -organ music, booming and swelling, impossibly sustained. Old Hawkins -danced in the driveway in grotesque pointed leaps, shrieking "Hoosa -maida! Hoosa maida!" Overhead the moons Cairdween, Morwenna and Annis -of the blue shadows were arranged in a perfect isosceles triangle, -narrow base parallel to the horizon. It stirred something in Cole, but -the swelling music unhinged his thought. With a twinge of panic he -turned, to find Pia at his elbow. - -"They're after me, after us," she cried against the music. - -"I must see. You go find shelter, Pia." - -"With you I feel less alone now," she said. "One can't really hide, -anyway. Come to the watch tower and you'll see." - -He followed her through the house and up two flights to the roof of the -tower on the southeast corner. As they stepped into the night air, the -great organ sound enwrapped them, and Cole saw the southern sky ablaze, -with flyers swooping and black motes hurtling through the glare. -Interwoven pencils of ion-flame flickered in the verging darkness and -the ripping sound of heavy blasters came faintly through the music. - -A hundred-yard section of the barrier was down in flames, and the -great, bobbing, leggy shapes of stompers came bounding through it while -others glided down from the top. Flyers swarmed like angry bees around -the top of the break, firing mounted blasters and tearing away great -masses of wood. The powerful chord of music swelled unendurably in -volume and exultant richness until Cole cried out and shook the girl. - -"It plucks at my backbone and I can't think! Pia, Pia, what _is_ that -music?" - -"It's the stompers singing," she shouted back. - -He shook his head. Bidgrass Station seethed, lights everywhere, roads -crowded with trucks. Around the base of the breakthrough a defense -perimeter flared with the blue-violet of blasters and the angry red -of flame guns. As Cole watched it was overrun and darkened in place -after place, only to reform further out as reserves came into action. -Expanding jerkily, pushed this way and that, the flaming periphery -looked like a fire-membrane stressed past endurance by some savage -contained thing. With a surge of emotion Cole realized it was men down -there, with their guns and their puny muscles and their fragile lives -against two-legged, boat-shaped monsters twenty feet high. - -"Sheer power of biomass," he thought. "Even their shot-down bodies are -missiles, to crush and break." A sudden eddy in the flaming defense -line brought it to within half a mile of the house. Cole could see men -die against the glare, in the great music. - -The girl pressed close to him and whimpered, "Oh, start the fire mist! -Morwenna pity them!" Cole put his arm tightly around her. - -A truck convoy pulled up by the manor house and soldiers were -everywhere, moving quickly and surely. A group hauled a squat, vertical -cylinder on wheels crashing through the ornamental shrubbery. Violet -glowing metal vaning wound about it in a double helix. - -"It's a Corbin powercaster," Pia shouted into Cole's ear. "It -broadcasts power to the portable blasters so the men don't need to -carry pack charges or lose time changing them." - -Cole looked at the soldiers. The same big men he saw every day, the -same closed and hostile faces, but now a wild and savage joy shone in -them. This was their human meaning to themselves, their justification. -The red boundary roared down on them, they would be dying in a few -minutes, but they were braced and fiercely ready. - -The music swelled impossibly loud and Cole knew that he too was going -to die with them, despised outworlder that he was. He hugged the girl -fiercely and tried to kiss her. - -"Let me in your world, Pia!" he cried. - -She pulled away. "Look! The fire mist! Oh thank you, good Morwenna!" - -He saw it, a rose pink paled by nearer flame, washing lazily against -the black cliff edge of Lundy Forest. It grew, boiling up over the -barrier in places, spilling through the gap, and the great, agonizing -chord of music muted and dwindled. The flame-perimeter began shrinking -and still the fire mist grew, staining the night sky north and south -beyond eye-reach. The song became a mournful wailing and the soldiers -in the garden moved forward for the mopping up. - -"Pia, I've got to go down there. I've got to see a stomper close up." - -She was trembling and crying with reaction. "I think they'll be too -busy to mind," she said. "But don't go too far in ... Flinter." - -He ran down the stairs and through the unguarded gate toward the -fought-over area. Wounded men were being helped or carried past him, -but no one noticed him. He found a stomper, blaster-torn but not yet -dead, and stopped to watch the four-foot tripart beak snap feebly and -the dark wings writhe and clutch. The paired vertical eyelid folds -rolled apart laterally to reveal three eyes under a single triangular -conjunctiva, lambent in the flame-shot darkness. Soldiers passed -unheeding while Cole stood and wondered. Then a hand jerked violently -at his arm. It was Morgan. - -Morgan wordlessly marched him off to a knot of men nearer the mopping -up line and pushed him before Garth Bidgrass. Sweat dripped from -flaring eyebrows down the grim old face, and over a blistered right -cheek. A heavy blaster hung from the old man's body harness. - -"Well, Mr. Cole, is this data?" he asked dourly. "Have you come out to -save stompers?" - -"I wish I could have saved men, Mr. Bidgrass. I wanted to help," Cole -said. - -"Another like this and you may have to," Bidgrass said, less sharply. -"It was close work, lad." - -"I can help Dr. Rudall. You must have many wounded." - -"Good, good," the old man said approvingly. "The men will take that -kindly and so will I." - -"One favor," Cole said. "Will you have your men save half a dozen -living stompers for me? I have another idea." - -"Well, I don't know," Bidgrass said. "The men won't like it ... but a -few days, maybe ... yes, I'll save you some." - -"Thank you, sir." Cole turned away, catching a thick scowl from Morgan. -Overhead the three moons were strung in a ragged line across the sky, -and Hoggy Darn was rising. - - * * * * * - -Cole worked around the clock at the hospital, sterilizing instruments -and helping Dr. Rudall with dressings. He was surprised to see other -doctors, many nurses and numerous biofield projectors as modern as any -on Belconti. Some of the wounded were women. All of them, wounded and -unwounded, seemed in a shared mood of exaltation. He caught glimpses of -Pia, working too. She seemed less poised for flight, tired but happy, -and she smiled at him. - -After three days Cole saw his stompers in a stone-floored pen at the -slaughter house. Earth breed cattle lowed in adjacent pens. Four -stompers still lived, their bodies blaster torn and their legs crudely -hamstrung so they could not stand. They lay with heads together and the -sun glinted on the blue-black, iridescent scales covering the domed -heads and long necks. - -Three shock-headed butchers stood by, assigned to help him. Their -distaste for Cole and the job was so evident that he hurried through -the gross dissection of the two dead stompers at one end of the same -pen. After an hour he thought to ask, as best he could, whether -the living stompers were being given food and water. When one man -understood, black hatred crossed his face and he spat on Cole's shoe. -The ecologist flushed, then shrugged and got on with the job. - -It brought him jarring surprises culminating in a tentative conclusion -late on the second day. Then the situation began to fall apart. Working -alone for the moment, Cole opened the stomach of the second stomper and -found in it half-digested parts of a human body. Skull and humerus size -told him it was one of the giants. - -First pulling a flap of mesentery over the stomach incision, Cole -went into the office and phoned Dr. Rudall to come at once. Coming -out, he heard angry shouts and saw two of his helpers running to join -the third, who stood pointing into the carcass. Then all three seized -axes, ran across the pen and began hacking at the necks of the living -stompers. - -The great creatures boomed and writhed, clacking their beaks and half -rising on their wings, unable to defend themselves. The butchers howled -curses, and the stompers broke into a mournful wailing harmonized with -flesh-creeping subsonics. Cole shouted and pleaded, finally wrested an -axe from one and mounted guard over the last living stomper. He stood -embattled, facing a growing crowd of butchers from the plant, when Dr. -Rudall arrived. - -"Dr. Rudall, explain to these maniacs why I must keep this stomper -alive!" he cried angrily. - -"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, they will kill it in spite of you." - -"But Garth Bidgrass ordered--" - -"In spite of him. There are factors you don't understand, Mr. Cole. You -are yourself in great danger." The old doctor's hands trembled. - -Cole thought rapidly. "All right, will they wait a day? I want tissue -explants for a reason I'll explain later. If you'll help me work up the -nutrient tonight--" - -"Our pisky nutrient will work. We can take your samples within the -hour. Let me call the hospital." - -He spoke rapidly to the glowering butchers in the vernacular, then -hurried into the building. An hour later the stomper was dead, and -Hawkins drove Cole and the doctor back to their lab with the explants. - -"I've almost got it," Cole said happily. "Several weeks and two more -bits of information and I'll tell you. In spite of all odds, one man -against a planet--this will found my professional reputation back on -Belconti." - - * * * * * - -Once again Cole faced Garth Bidgrass across the round table in the -library. This time he felt vastly different. - -"The piskies are really baby stompers," he said, watching the craggy -old face for its reaction. It did not change. - -"I suspected it when I saw how the smaller eggs fused with the -large egg, with continuous laminae," Cole went on. "There was the -morphological resemblance, too. But when I dissected two mature -stompers I found immature eggs. Even before entry into the oviduct what -you call pisky eggs are filamented to the main body of cytoplasm." - -Disappointingly, Bidgrass did not marvel. He squinted and cocked -his head. Finally he said, "Do you mean the piskies lay their eggs -internally in the stompers?" - -"Impossible! I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue -and they are _identical_, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now -is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But -that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food -source--that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all -through Carina sector." - -He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and -stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled. - -"I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is -harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. Stop it for a few decades, -or set aside breeding areas, and you can have a whole planetful again." - -The old man scowled and stood up. "We'll not stop," he said gruffly. -"There are still plenty of stompers. Remember last month." He walked to -the end window and back, then sat down again still looking grim. - -"Don't be too sure," Cole objected. "I haven't finished my report. -I made a Harvey analysis on the tissues of one stomper. It involves -culturing clones, measuring growth rates and zones of migration and -working out a complex set of ratios--I won't go into details. But when -I fitted my figures into Harvey's formula it indicated _unmistakably_ -that the stompers have a critical biomass." - -"What does that mean?" - -"Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each -individual is only a part. Can you do that?" - -"Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright. - -"Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any -moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of -critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater -animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into -extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a -species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago -may _already_ have extinguished them as a species?" - -Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light. - -"Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula--do _human beings_ have a -critical biomass?" - -"Yes, biologically," Cole said, surprised. "But in our case a varying -part of the greater animal is carried in our culture, our symbol -system, and is not directly dependent on biomass. A mathematical -anthropologist could tell you more than I can." - -Bidgrass placed his hands palm down on the table and leaned back in -sudden resolution. - -"Mr. Cole, you force me to tell you something I had been minded to -hold back. I already know a good part of what you have just told me. I -_wish_ to exterminate the stompers and I will do so. But I meant for -you to go back to Belconti thinking it was the piskies." - -Cole propped his chin on folded hands and raised his eyebrows. "I half -suspected that. But I fooled you, didn't I?" - -"Yes, and I admire you for it. Now let me tell you more. Stomper egg -brings a very high price and I have kept it higher by storing large -reserves. When it is known the stomper is extinct, the rarity value of -my reserve will be enormous. It will mean an end of this harsh life for -me and for my grandniece after me." - -Cole's lip curled, and red mounted in the old man's face as he talked, -but he went on doggedly. - -"I want the pisky theory and the news of stomper extinction to be -released through Belconti University. The news will spread faster and -be more readily believed and I will avoid a certain moral stigma--" - -"And now I've crossed you up!" - -"You can still do it. I can ease your conscience with a settlement -of--say--five thousand solars a year for life." - -Cole leaped up and leaned across the table. - -"No!" he snapped. "Old man, you don't know how ecologists feel about -the greed-murder of species. What I _will_ do is work through Belconti -on your government at Car Truro, warn it that you are about to destroy -an important planetary resource." - -Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red. - -"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which -you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction. -Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and -you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally -have reported it via the next _Gorbals_ to Belconti and sent along your -notes to date--do you follow me?" - -"Yes. A threat." - -"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole." - - * * * * * - -Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it -would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door, -only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and -smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before. - -"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked. - -"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?" - -"Uncle Garth says now that you know--" She broke off, blushing still -more. - -"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia. -Here, let me." - -He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his -table. Pia _was_ lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth -roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the -small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her -round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced -and she looked more frightened than ever. - -"You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the -woods, Pia. What _are_ you always afraid of?" - -Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said. -"What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear." - -They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate -dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian _kresch_ to follow it. Cole -splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and -held up his own. - -"Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half -mockingly. - -Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a -home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh -Flinter, what you must think--" She began crying in earnest. - -He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about -Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for _Gorbals'_ tender." - -She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both. -Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to -take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and -squeezed her hand in saying good night. - -She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened. - - * * * * * - -Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his -eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small -flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He -followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan -bulking darkly ten feet away. - -"Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the -black bar of eyebrow. - -Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move. - -"You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and -heading east. - -"He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him." - -Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into -blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of -Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest -towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land. - -He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area. -Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the -planet's low gravity. - -The resilient surface gave off a fragrance as they walked about on -it. In a sea all around their island, branches of the great forest -trees thrust up, leafy and flowering and bedecked with a profusion of -epiphytal plants in many shapes and colors. Bright-hued true birds -darted from shadow into sunlight and back again, twittering and crying. - -"It's beautiful," he said. And so was Pia, he thought, watching her on -tiptoe reaching to a great white flower. The attractive firmness of -her skin, the roundness and dimpling, _ripeness_, that was the word he -wanted. And her eyes. - -"Pia, you're not frightened any more!" - -It was true. The long-lashed brown eyes were merry as nature meant them -to be. - -"It's peaceful and safe," she said. "When I come to the forest top I -never want to go back to Bidgrass Station." - -"Too bad we must, and let's pretend we don't," he said, pointing to a -cluster of red-gold fruits. "Are those good to eat?" - -"Too good. That's the trouble with New Cornwall." - -"What do you mean?" - -"Race you back to the flyer," she cried, and danced away, bare limbs -twinkling in the sunlight. He floundered after. - -The lunch was good and she had brought along the rest of the bottle of -_kresch_. They sipped it seated beside the flyer while she tried to -teach him New Cornish folk songs. Her small, clear singing blended with -that of the birds around them. - -"I catch parts of it," he said. "As an undergraduate a few years ago I -studied the pre-space poets. I can read Old English, but it is strange -to my ear." - -"I could teach you." - -"I love one wry-witted ancient named Robert Graves. How does it go: -_If strange things happen where she is_--no, I can't recall it now." - -"I could write the songs out for you." - -"The beauty is in you and your voice. Just sing." - -She sang, something about a king with light streaming from his hair, -coming naked out of the forest to bring love into his kingdom. Small -white clouds drifted in the blue sky, and blue Annis slept just above -the rustling branches that guarded the secret of their island. He -listened and watched her. - -She was softly rounded as the clouds, and her clustered brown curls -made an island of the vivid face expressing the song she sang so -bird-like and naturally. She was vital, compact, self closed, -perfect--like one of the great flowers nodding in the breeze along the -island shore--and his heart yearned across to her. - -"Pia," he said, breaking into the song, "do you really want to get away -from New Cornwall?" - -She nodded, eyes suddenly wide, lips still parted. - -"Come with me to Belconti then. Right now. We'll cross to Car Truro and -wait there for _Gorbals_." - -The light dimmed in her face. "Why Car Truro?" - -"Pia, it's hard to tell you. I'm afraid of your great-uncle.... I want -to contact the planetary government." - -"It's no good at Car Truro, Flinter. Can't you just come back to -Bidgrass Station and ... and ... do what Uncle Garth wants?" - -He could barely hear the last. The fear was back in her eyes. - -"Do you know what he wants?" - -"Yes." The brown curls drooped. - -Cole stood up. "So _that's_ the reason--well, I'll not do it, do you -hear? Garth Bidgrass is an evil, greedy old man and maybe it runs in -the blood." - -She jumped up, eyes more angry now than fearful. "He is not! He's -trying to save you! He's good and noble and ... and _great_! If you -only knew the truth--Morwenna forgive me!" She clapped her hand to her -mouth. - -"_Tell_ me the truth then, since I'm still being made a Belconti fool -of. What _is_ the truth?" - -"I've said too much. Now I'll have to tell Uncle Garth--" She began -crying. - -"Tell him what? That I know he's a liar? That you failed as a--" He -could not quite say the word. - -"It's true I was supposed to make you love me and I tried and I can't -because ... because ..." she ended in incoherent sobbing. - -Cole stroked her hair and comforted her. "I've been hasty again," -he apologized. "I'm still running in the dark, and that makes for -stumbles. Let's go back, and I'll talk to your great-uncle again." - - * * * * * - -In the morning Garth Bidgrass, looking tired and stern, invited Cole -to breakfast with the family. Cole had never been in the large, -wood-panelled room overlooking the south garden through broad windows. -Pia was subdued, Mrs. Vignoli strangely cheerful. The meal, served by a -giant maid, was the customary plain porridge and fried meat. - -The women left when the maid cleared the table. Bidgrass poured more -coffee, then leaned back and looked across at Cole. - -"Mr. Cole, I did you a wrong in having you sent here. I kept you in the -dark for your own protection. Can you believe that?" - -"I can believe that you believe it." - -"You came too soon. You were too curious, too smart. I have had to -compound that wrong with others to Pia and my own good name." - -Cole smiled. "I know I'm curious. But why can't I know--" - -"You can, lad. You've nosed through to it and I'll tell you if you -insist. But it will endanger you even more and I wish you would forego -it." - -Cole shook his head. "I'm an ecologist. If I have the big picture, -maybe I can help." - -"I thought you'd say that. Well, history first, and settle yourself -because it _is_ a big picture and not a pretty one. This planet was -settled directly from Earth in the year 145 After Space, almost eight -hundred years ago. It seemed ideal--native protein was actually -superior to Earth protein in human metabolism. Easy climate, -geophysically stable, no diseases--but planetology was not much of a -science in those days. - -"The colony won political independence in 202 A.S. It had a thriving -trade in luxury foods, mostly stomper egg concentrates--freight was -dear then. Settlements radiated out from Car Truro across the plains. -Food was to be had for the taking in the mild climate and it was a kind -of paradise. _Paradise!_" - -The old man's voice rang hard on the last word and Cole stiffened. -Bidgrass went on. - -"Early in the third century our social scientists began to worry about -the unnatural way the culture graded from the complexity of Car Truro -to a simple pattern of mud huts and food gathering along the frontiers. -Children of successive generations were taller than their parents -and much less willing or able to use symbols. By the time a minority -decided the trend should be reversed, the majority of the people could -not be roused to see a danger." - -"Earth life is normally resistant to low-grav gigantism," Cole said. "I -wonder--" - -"It was all the native foods they ate, but mainly stomper egg. There -are more powerful and quicker-acting substances in the forest fungi, -but then the population was all in the eastern grasslands, where the -stompers ranged." - -"I read they were a plains animal." - -"Yes, and harmless too, except for their eggs. Well, the minority set -up a dictatorship and began cultivating Earth plants and animals. -They passed laws limiting the mechanical simplicity of households -and regulating diets. They took children from subnormal parents and -educated and fed them in camps. But the normals were too few and the -trend continued. - -"Shortly after mid-century the population reached the edge of the -southern forest, and there many were completely wild. They drifted -along the forest edge naked, without tools or fire or language or even -family groupings. Their average stature was nearly eight feet. The -normals knew they were losing. Can you imagine how they _felt_, lad?" - -Cole relaxed a little. "Ah ... yes, I can ... I imagine the fight was -inside them, too." - -Bidgrass nodded. "Yes, they were all tainted. But they fought. They -asked Earth for help and learned that Earth regarded them as tyrants -oppressing a simple, natural folk. The economy broke down and more -had to be imported. The only way to pay was in stomper egg exports. -In spite of that, in about the year 300, they decided to restrict the -stompers to the western part of the grasslands, thousands of miles -beyond the human range. - -"The egg hunters began killing piskies and grown stompers. They killed -off the great, stupid herds of darv cattle on which the stompers fed. -The stompers that survived became wary and hostile, good at hiding and -fierce to attack. But killing off the eastern darv herds broke them and -in a generation they vanished from the eastern plains. Things seemed to -improve and they thought the tide was turned. Then, in the year 374, -came what our bards now call the Black Learning." - -"Bards?" Cole said. He drained his coffee cup. - -"Morgan could sing you this history to shiver the flesh on your bones," -the old man said, pouring more coffee. "What I am telling you is -nowhere written down, but it is engraved in thousands of hearts. Well, -to go on. - -"We knew some of the stompers had gone into the southern forest--you -see, they have to incubate their eggs in direct sunlight and we kept -finding them along the forest edge. But we had assumed they were eating -the snakes and slugs and fungi native to the forest floor. Now we -learned that a large population of wild humans had grown up unknown to -us in the deep forest--and the stompers were eating them. - -"You have seen our forests from a distance, lad. Do you realize how -impossible it is to patrol them? We hadn't the men, money or machines -for it. We appealed, and learned we would get no help from any planet -in Carina sector except for pay. But the egg market fell off, and our -income with it. Ships did come, however, small ones in stealth, to -ground along the forest edge and capture the young women of the wild -people." - -Cole struck the table. "How rotten!..." His voice failed. - -Bidgrass nodded. "We call that the Lesser Shame. The young women were -without personality or language, yet tractable and responsive to -affection. They were flawless in health and physique, and eight feet -tall. They could be sold for fantastic prices on loosely organized -frontier planets and yes, even to Earth, as we learned. Something dark -in a man responds to that combination. You feel it as I speak--no, -don't protest, I know. We had long had that trouble among our own -people." - -"Did my own people of Belconti--" Again Cole's voice failed. He brushed -back his red hair angrily. - -"Belconti was new then, still a colony. Well, that was the _help_ we -got. We hadn't the power to fight stompers, let alone slave raiders. -But the Galactic Patrol was just getting organized and the sector -admiral agreed to keep a ship in orbit blockading us. We broke off all -contact except with Tristan, and the Patrol let only one freight line -come through to handle our off-planet trade. It was then we began to -hate the other planets. We call it the Turning Away. - -"Now we are forgotten, almost a myth. The Patrol ship has been gone -since two hundred years ago. But we remember." - -"I wish I'd known this," Cole said. "Mr. Bidgrass, things are greatly -changed in Carina sector--" - -Bidgrass held up his hand. "I know, lad. That's why you're here, and -I'll come to it. But let me go on. Early in the fifth century we -decided to exterminate the stompers altogether and in two decades -killed off all the darv cattle. But the stompers went into the forests -in the south and west and from there came out to raid the plains. Not -to kill, but to carry off normal and semi-wild people into the forest -for breeding stock. A stomper's wing is more flexible than a hand. One -of them can carry half a dozen men and women and run a thousand miles -in a day. Some fungi in the forest can dull a man in an hour and take -his mind in a week. Few who were carried in ever came out again. - -"This went on, lad, for _centuries_. From our fortified towns and -hunting camps we ranged along the forest edge like wolves. The stompers -_must_ lay their eggs in direct sunlight. That forced them out where -we could get at them, into clearings and uplands and along the forest -edge. We killed all we could. - -"We found rhythms in their life pattern keyed to our four moons. When -the three lady moons form a tall triangle, the stompers group in the -open to mill and dance and sing. About every three months this happens -over several days and in old times it was the peak raid season. It was -also our chance to kill. The people call the configuration the House of -the Maidens." - -Cole nodded vigorously. "I remember that. Strange how lunar periodicity -is bionative in every planet having a moon." - -"It saved us here, praise Morwenna, but once almost destroyed us. There -is a longer, sixty-two year cycle called the Nights of Hoggy Darn. Then -the red moon passes through the House of the Maidens and the stompers -go completely berserk. The first one after the war was joined fully, in -434, caught us unprepared and cost us more than three-fourths of our -normal population in the week that we remember as the Great Taking. -We were thrown back into Car Truro for decades and the stompers came -back on the plains. They snatched people from the streets of Car Truro -itself. That we call the Dark Time." - -The old man's craggy face shadowed with sorrow and he sighed, leaning -back. Cole opened his mouth but Bidgrass leaned forward again, new, -fierce energy in his voice. - -"We rallied and came back. We fought from the air and killed them in -large numbers when we caught them in the open on Maiden nights. We -drove them back off the plains and harried them along the forest edges -and in the upland clearings where they came to lay eggs. We gathered -all the eggs we could find. They defended their eggs and caused us -steady losses. But we fought. - -"We built our strategy on the Maidens and in time we drove the enemy -out of the southern forest and into the west. Then we crowded him into -Lundy Peninsula, made it a sanctuary for a hundred years to draw him -in. When I was your age we fought out the last Nights of Hoggy Darn a -few miles east of here. Ten years later we finished Bidgrass Station -and the barrier and the continent was free of stompers." - -Cole shifted his chair to get the sun off his neck. "I hardly know what -to say," he began, but Bidgrass raised his hand. - -"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century -things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began -a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people -along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those -they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be -trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had -few machines except what we need for war. Their children, on an Earth -diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and -fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has -always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for -reclamation work. - -"Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now. -That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on -the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a -queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of -religion along the way. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully -drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and -prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty -well believe it myself and even you believe some of it." - -Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table. - -"Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you -spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill -him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and -meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper -and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to -hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad." - -"I feel it, a little. I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an -ex-wild, isn't he?" - -"Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I." - -Cole got up. "Mind if I pull a curtain? That sun is hot." - -"No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll -ask for a fresh pot." - -Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much -more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew -his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't -have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they -changed from plains to forest. They learned to practise a gruesome kind -of animal husbandry--oh, I could tell you things. _Something_ had to -figure it out." - -"I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on." - -"Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try -to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The -people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent -on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was. - -"But we spat in his face. We gathered his tribute and still took all -the eggs we could find in the inland clearings. We killed every stomper -we saw. Then, for the first time I think, Grandfather Stomper knew it -was war to the death. He began to fight as never before. Where once -a stomper would carry a captured egg hunter a hundred miles into the -forest and turn him loose, now it killed out of hand. They began making -mass attacks on the station and they didn't come to capture, they came -to kill. So it has gone for forty years now." - -The old man's voice changed, less fierce, more solemn. He sat up -straight. - -"Lundy Forest is near eight hundred thousand square miles. No one -knows how many millions of wild humans are in it or how many scores of -thousands of stompers. But this I knew long before you came to tell -me about critical biomass: Grandfather Stomper is very near to death. -He ruled this planet for a million years and he fought me for near a -thousand, but his time is come. - -"Don't laugh, lad, at what I am about to say now. Mass belief, blind -faith over centuries of people like our ex-wilds and semi-wilds, can do -strange things. To them and even to myself I _represent_ Grandfather -Man, and from them a power comes into me that is more than myself. I -know in a _direct_ way that in the Nights of Hoggy Darn to come I will -at long last kill Grandfather Stomper and the war will be won. That -time is only eight weeks away." - -"Then I'll still be here. Grand--Mr. Bidgrass, I want to fight with -you." - -"You may and welcome, lad. Must, even, to redeem yourself. Because, for -what you know now, your life is forfeit if the ex-wilds suspect." - -"Why so? Are you not _proud_--" Cole half stood and Bidgrass waved him -down. - -"Consider, lad. For centuries across the inhabited planets people of -wealth and influence have been eating stomper egg, serving it at state -banquets. But now _you_ know it is human flesh at one remove. How will -they feel toward us when they learn that?" - -"How should they feel? Man has to be consumed at some trophic level. -His substance is as much in the biogeochemical cycles as that of a -pig or a chicken. I suppose we _do_ feel he should cap the end of a -food chain and not short-cycle through himself, but I'm damned if I'm -horrified--" - -"Any non-ecologist would be. You know that." - -The giant maid came in with a pot of coffee and clean cups. Bidgrass -poured and both men sipped in silence. Then Bidgrass said slowly, -"Do you know what the people here call outworlders? Cannibals! For -centuries we have had the feeling that we have been selling our own -flesh to the outworlds in exchange for the weapons to free Grandfather -Man." - -He stood up, towering over Cole, and his voice deepened. - -"It has left bone-deep marks: of guilt, for making the outworlders -unknowing cannibals; of hatred, because we feel the outworlds left -us no choice. And shame, lad, deep, deep shame, more than a man can -bear, to have been degraded to food animals here in our forests -and across the opulent tables of the other planets. Morgan is only -second-generation normal--his father was killed beside me, last Hoggy -Darn. If Morgan knew you had learned our secret he would kill you out -of hand. I could not stop him. Do you understand now why we didn't -want you until next _Gorbals_? Do you see into the hell you have been -skating over?" - -Cole nodded and rubbed his chin. "Yes, I do. But I don't despise -Morgan, I think I love him. On Belconti, Grandfather Man is mainly -concerned to titillate his own appetites, but here, well ... how do -I feel it?... I think what you have just told me makes me more proud -to be a man than I have ever been before. I will carry through the -deception of Belconti University with all my heart. Can't Morgan -understand that?" - -"Yes, and kill you anyway. Because you _know_. You will not lightly be -forgiven that." - -Cole shook his head helplessly. "Well _dammit_ then--" - -"Now, now, there's a way out," Bidgrass said, sitting down again. "The -prophecies all foretell a change of heart after Grandfather Stomper -dies. They speak of joy, love, good feeling. Morgan did agree to your -coming here--he wants to hide the past as much as I do and he could see -the value of my plan. In the time of good feeling I hope he will accept -you." - -"I hope so too," Cole said. "Morgan is a strange man. Why is Pia so -afraid of him?" - -"I'll tell you that, lad--maybe it will help you to appreciate your -own danger. Some few of us are educated on Tristan. Twenty-three years -ago my younger brother took my niece Flada there. She ran away and -married a Tristanian named Ralph Vignoli. My brother persuaded them to -come back and live at our installation there, and Ralph swore to keep -secret the little he knew. - -"The ex-wilds of New Cornwall kept wanting Ralph to come here so they -could be sure of the secret. He kept refusing and finally they sent an -emissary to kill him. My brother was killed protecting him. I stepped -in then with a compromise, persuaded Ralph to come here for the sake of -his wife and daughter. Pia was seven at the time. - -"Ralph was a good man and fought well in battles, but two years later -Morgan and some others came to the house in my absence and took him -away. They took him to a clearing in Lundy Forest, where the stompers -come to lay eggs, stripped off his clothing and left him. That was -so the stompers would not take him for an egg hunter and kill him -outright, but would carry him into the forest like they do with strayed -wild stock. Morgan said the command came to him in a dream. - -"I think Pia feels she is partly responsible for Ralph's death. I -think she sometimes fears Morgan will dream about her, her Tristanian -blood...." - -"Poor Pia," Cole said softly. "These _years_ of grief and fear...." - -"They'll be ended come Hoggy Darn again, Morwenna grant. Don't you -grieve her with your death too, lad. Stay close to the house, in the -house." - -Bidgrass rose and gulped the last of his coffee standing. - -"I must go, I'm late," he said, more cheerfully than Cole had ever -heard his voice. "I have a conference with General Arscoate, our -military leader, whom you'll meet soon." - -He went out. Cole went out too, thoughts wrestling with feelings, -looking for Pia. - - * * * * * - -In the days that followed Cole took his meals with the family except -when there were guests not in Bidgrass' confidence. The doors into the -main house remained unlocked and he saw much of Pia, but she seemed -unexpectedly elusive and remote. Cole, busy with his report to Belconti -University, had little time to wonder about it. - -He faked statistics wholesale and cited dozens of nonexistent New -Cornish authorities. To his real data indicating critical biomass he -added imaginary values for the parameters of climate, range, longevity, -fertility period and Ruhan indices to get an estimated figure. Then he -faked field census reports going back fifty years, and drew a curve -dipping below critical ten years before his arrival. He made the latest -field census show new biomass forty-two percent below critical and -juggled figures to make the curve extrapolate to zero in twelve more -years. - -It pained him in his heart to leave out the curious inverse -reproduction data. But it was a masterpiece of deception that should -put the seal on his doctorate, and because it reported the extinction -of a planetary dominant, he knew it would make the journals and the -general news all through the sector. - -The night he finished it, working late in the library, Pia brought him -milk and cookies and sat with him as he explained what he had done. - -"It's right," he defended himself to her against his scholar's -conscience. "Humans on New Cornwall are a threatened species too. The -secret must be hidden forever." - -"Yes," she agreed soberly. "I think if all the sector knew, the -ex-wilds would literally die of shame and rage. Being wild is not so -bad, but--that other!" She shuddered under her gray dress. - -"Pia, sometimes I feel you're still avoiding me. Surely now it's all -right and genuine between us." - -She smiled sadly. "I'll bring you trouble, with Morgan. Father came to -New Cornwall because of me." - -"But I didn't. I've been thinking I may _stay_, partly because of you. -You've been afraid so long it's habitual." - -"Strangely, Flinter, I don't feel it as fear any more. It's like bowing -with sadness, my strength to run is gone. My old dreams--Morgan coming -for me--I have them every night now." - -"Morgan! Always Morgan!" - -She shook her head and smiled faintly. "He has a dark, poetic power. He -is what he is, just like the stompers. I feel ... not hate, not even -fear ... a kind of _dread_." - -He stroked the back of her hand and she pulled it away. - -"An old song runs through my head," she went on. "A prophecy that -Grandfather Stomper cannot be killed while outworld blood pumps through -any heart on the planet. I feel like my own enemy, like ... like your -enemy. You should not have come until next _Gorbals_. Flinter, _stay -away from me_!" - -He talked soothingly, to little avail. When they parted he said -heartily, "Forget those silly prophecies, Pia. I'll look out for you." - -Privately, he wondered how. - - * * * * * - -Cole sat beside Pia and across the food-laden table from General -Arscoate, a large pink-faced man in middle life. - -"It's an old and proven strategy, Mr. Cole," the general explained. -"When Hoggy Darn starts we will harass the enemy from the air in all -but one of the fourteen sizable open spaces in Lundy Forest. That one -is Emrys Upland, the largest. They will concentrate in Emrys, more each -night, until the climactic night of peak frenzy. Then we come down with -all the men and women we can muster and we kill. We may go on killing -stragglers for years after, but Grandfather Stomper will die on that -night." - -"Why not kill from the air?" - -"More firepower on the ground. I can only lift ninety-four flyers all -told. But I will shuttle twenty thousand fighting men into Emrys in an -hour or two on the big night." - -"So quickly? How can you?" Cole laid down his fork. - -"They will be waiting in the forest top all around the periphery, in -places where we are already building weapons dumps. In the first days -of harrying, we will stage in the fighters." - -"Morgan will visit each group in the forest top and sing our history," -Bidgrass said from the head of the table. "On the evening of the -climactic night, as Hoggy Darn rises, they will take a sacramental meal -of stomper egg. At no other time is it eaten on this planet." - -Mrs. Vignoli looked down. "Garth!" Arscoate said. - -"The lad must know, must take it with us," Bidgrass said. "Lad, the -real reason for not killing from the air is that the people _need_ -to kill personally, with their feet on the ground. So our poetry has -always described that last, great fight. I must _personally_ kill -Grandfather Stomper." - -Cole toyed with his knife. "But he is only a metaphor, a totem image--" - -"The people believe in an actual individual who is the stomper -counterpart of Garth here," the general broke in. "You know, Mr. Cole, -the stompers we kill ordinarily are all females. The males are smaller, -with a white crest, and they keep to the deep forest except on Hoggy -Darn nights. Maybe the frenzy then has something to do with mating--no -one knows. But Garth will kill the largest male he can find. The -people, and I expect Garth and I as well, are going to believe that he -has killed Grandfather Stomper in person." - -The general sipped water and looked sternly over his glass at Cole. -Cole glanced at Pia, who seemed lost in a dream of her own, not there -to them. - -"I see. A symbol," he agreed. - -"Not the less real," Arscoate said tartly. "Symbols both mean and are. -Garth here is a symbol too and that is why, old as he is, he must be -in the thick of it. He is like the ancient battle flags of romantic -pre-space history. People before now have actually _seen_ Grandfather -Stomper. I am _not_ a superstitious backworlder, Mr. Cole, but--" - -Cole raised a placatory hand. "I know you are not, general. Forgive me -if I seemed to suggest it." - -"Let's have wine," Bidgrass said, pushing back his chair. "We'll take -it in the parlor and Pia can sing for us." - -When General Arscoate said good-night he told Cole not to worry, that -he would have reliable guards at the manor gate during Garth Bidgrass' -absence in Car Truro. - -"I meant to tell you and Pia in the morning, lad," Bidgrass said. -"Arscoate and I must go to Car Truro. There's heartburning there over -who gets to fight and who must stay behind. It will be only two days." - - * * * * * - -Cole felt uneasy all day. He spent most of it writing the covering -letter for his report and phrasing his resignation from the university -field staff. He wrote personal letters to his uncle and a few friends. -After dinner he finally signed the official letters and took the -completed report to Bidgrass' desk. Then he went to bed and slept -soundly. - -Pia wakened him with frantic shaking. - -"Dress quickly, Flinter. The guard at the gate was just changed and -it's not time." - -She darted out to the hall window while he struggled with clothing, -then back again. - -"_Quickly_, darling! Morgan's crossing the garden, with men. Follow me." - -She led him through the kitchen and out a pantry window, then stooping -along the base of a hedge to where a flowering tree overshadowed the -garden wall. - -"I planned this, out of sight of guard posts, when I was a little -girl," she whispered. "I always knew--over, Flinter, quickly!" - -Outside was rough ground, a road, a wide field of cabbages and then -the barrier. Veiled Annis rode high and bluish in the clear sky. They -crossed the field in soaring leaps, and shouts pursued them. The girl -ran north a hundred yards behind the shadowy buttresses and squeezed -through a narrow crack between two huge timber baulks. Cole barely made -it, skinning his shoulders. - -"I found this too when I was a little girl," Pia whispered. "I had to -enlarge it when my hips grew, but only just enough. Morwenna grant -they're all too big!" - -"Morgan is, for sure," Cole said, rubbing his shoulder. "Pia, I _hate_ -to run." - -"We must still run. My old plan was to reach here unseen, but now they -know and they'll come over the wall in flyers. We'll have to hide in -the thick brush near the forest edge until Uncle Garth returns." - -She pulled a basket out of the shadows. - -"Food," she said. "I brought it last night." - -He carried the basket and they raced across the half-mile belt to -concealment among high shrubbery and enormous mounds of fungi. Flyers -with floodlights came low along the wall and others quartered the -clearing. Cole and Pia stole nearer to the forest edge, into its -shadow. They did not sleep. - -Once he asked, "How about stompers?" - -"They're a chance," she whispered. "Morgan's _sure_." - -With daylight they saw four flyers patrolling instead of the usual one. -At their backs colossal blackish-gray, deeply rugose tree trunks eighty -feet in diameter rose up and up without a branch for many hundreds of -feet. Then branches jutted out enormously and the colorful cascade of -forest-top epiphytes came down the side and hung over their heads a -thousand feet above. - -Pia opened the food basket and they ate, seated on a bank. She wore her -brown dress, her finest, he had learned, and she had new red shoes. She -was quiet, as if tranced. - -Cole remembered the picnic on the forest top, the secret island of -beauty and innocence, and his heart stirred. He saw that the food -basket was the same one. He did not tell her his thoughts. - -They talked of trivial things or were silent for long periods. He held -her hand. Once she roused herself to say, "Tomorrow, about this time, -Uncle Garth will come looking for us." Shortly after, she gasped and -caught his arm, pointing. - -He peered, finally made a gestalt of broken outlines through the -shrubbery. It was a stomper, swinging its head nervously. - -"It smells us," she whispered. "Oh Flinter, forgive me darling. Take -off your clothes, _quickly_!" - -She undressed rapidly and hid her clothes. Cole undressed too, fear -prickling his skin, remembering what Bidgrass had told him. The stomper -moved nearer in a crackle of brush and stopped again. - -Man and girl knelt trembling under a fan of red-orange fungus. The girl -broke off a piece and motioned the man to do the same. - -"When it comes, pretend to eat," she breathed, almost inaudibly. "Don't -look up and don't say a word. Morwenna be with us now." - -The stomper's shadow fell across them. The man's skin prickled and -sweat sprang out. He looked at the girl and she was pale but not tense, -munching on her piece of fungus. She clicked her teeth faintly and he -knew it was a signal. He ate. - -The stomper lifted the man by his right shoulder. It was like two -fingers in a mitten holding him three times his own height off the -ground. He saw the beak and the eye and his sight dimmed in anguish. - -Then the right wing reached down and nipped the left shoulder of the -rosy girl-body placidly crouching there. It swung her up to face the -man momentarily under the great beak and the tri-corn eye, and their -own eyes met. - -Very faintly she smiled and her eyes tried desperately to say, "I'm -sorry" and "Goodbye, Flinter." His eyes cried in agony "No! No! I will -not have it so!" - -Then the two-fingered mitten became a nine-fingered mitten lapping him -in darkness that bounced and swayed and he knew that the stomper was -running into Lundy Forest. The wing was smooth and warm but not soft, -and it smelled of cinnamon and sandalwood. The odor overpowered him and -the man lapsed into stupor. - - * * * * * - -The man woke into a fantastic dream. Luminous surfaces stretched up to -be lost in gloom, with columns of darkness between. The spongy ground -on which he lay shone with faint blue light. Luminous, slanting walls -criss-crossed in front of him. Close at hand, behind and to the right, -enormous bracket fungi ascended into darkness in ten-foot steps that -supported a profusion of higher order fungi in many bizarre shapes. - -He stood up and he was alone. - -He climbed over a slanting root-buttress and saw her lying there. He -called her name and she rose lightly and came to him. Radiant face, -dimpled arms, round breasts, cradling hips: _his woman_. They embraced -without shame and she cried thanks to Morwenna. - -He said, "People have come out of the forest. What are the rules?" - -"We must eat only the seeds of the pure white fungus--that's the least -dangerous. We must walk and walk to keep our bodies so tired and hungry -that they use it all. We must keep to a straight line." - -"We'll live," he said. "Outside among our people, with our minds -whole. We'll alternate left and right each time we round a tree, to -hold our straight line. We'll come out somewhere." - -"I will follow. May Morwenna go with us." - -The fantastic journey wound over great gnarled roots and buttresses -fusing and intermingling until it seemed that the root-complex was -one unthinkably vast organism with many trunks soaring half-seen into -endless darkness. Time had no feeling there. Space was a bubble of -ghostly light a man could leap across. - -Could leap and did, over and over, the woman following. The man climbed -a curiously regular, whitish root higher than his head and it writhed. -Then, swaying back along its length, came a great serpent head with -luminous ovoid eyes. While the man crouched in horror, waving the woman -back, the monstrous jaws gaped and the teeth were blunt choppers and -grinders, weirdly human looking. They bit hugely into a bracket fungus -and worried at it. Man and woman hurried on. - -Strength waned. The woman fell behind. The man turned back to her and -the light was failing. The blue mold was black, the luminous panels -more ghostly. - -"It's night. Shall we sleep?" he asked. - -"It's just come day," the woman said, pointing upward. - -He looked up. Far above, where had been gloom, hung a pinkish-green, -opalescent haze of light. Parallel lines of tree trunks converged -through it to be lost in nebulosity. - -"Daylight overpowers the luminous fungi," she said. - -"We sleep, then walk again. Shall we find food?" - -"No. We must always go to sleep hungry so we will wake again." - -They looked, until tired out, for a place of shelter. - -They slept, locked together in the cranny of a massive buttress. The -man dreamed of his tame home-world. - - * * * * * - -He woke again into nightmare. In a twenty-foot fan-grove of the white -fungus they combed handfuls of black spores out of gill slots. The -birdshot-sized spores had a pleasant, nutty flavor. - -With the strength more walking. _Use it, use it, burn the poison._ Day -faded above, and luminous night below came back to light the way. A -rocky ledge and another, and then a shallow ravine with a black stream -cascading. They drank and the man said, "We'll follow it, find an -upland clearing." - -They heard rapid motion and crouched unbreathing while a stomper minced -by up ahead. It had a white crest. - -On and on, fatigue the whip for greater fatigue and salvation at the -end of endurance. They passed wild humans. A statuesque woman with dull -eyes and yellow hair to her ankles, placidly feeding. Babies big as -four-year-old normals, by themselves, grazing on finger-shaped fungi. -An enormous human, fourteen feet tall, fat-enfolded, too ponderous to -stand even in low gravity, crawling through fungus beds. The man could -not tell its sex. - -On and on, sleep and eat and travel and sleep, darkness above or -darkness below, outside of time. The stream lost, found again, -sourcing out finally under a great rock. And there, lodged in a black -sandbank, the man found a human thigh bone half his own height. He -scoured off the water mold with sand. He was armed. - -The man walked ahead clutching his thigh bone, and the woman followed. -They slept clasped together naked all three, man, woman and thigh bone. - -Stompers passed them and they crouched in sham feeding. The man prayed -without words, _both or neither_. And hatred grew in him. - -Snakes and giant slugs and the beautiful, gigantic, mindless wild -humans, again and again, a familiar part of nightmare. The fat and -truly enormous humans; and the man learned they had been male once. He -remembered from far away where time was linear the voice of Grandfather -Man: _Some are beyond saving, and those they kill._ - -And a stomper passed, white crested, and far ahead a human voice cried -out in wordless pain and protest. The man was minded to deviate from -his line for fear of what they might see, but he did not. When they -came on the boy, larger than the man but beardless and without formed -muscles, the man looked at the tears dropping from the dull eyes -and the blood dropping from the mutilation and killed him with the -thigh bone. _Some are beyond saving._ And the hatred in him flamed to -whiteness. - -On and on, day above and day below in recurrent clash of lights. A -white crested stomper paused and looked at them, crouched apart and -trembling. The man felt the deepest, most anguished fear of all and -beneath it, hatred surged until his teeth ached. - -On and on. The man's stubble softened into beard, his hair touched his -ears. On and on. - -The land sloped upward and became rocky. The trees became smaller and -wider spaced so that whole trunks were visible and the light of upper -day descended. A patch of blue sky, then more as they ran shouting with -gladness, and a bare mountain crest reared in the distance. - -They embraced in wild joy and the woman cried, "Thank you, oh -_loveliest_ Morwenna!" - -"Pia, we're human again," Cole said. "We're back in the world. And I -love you." - - * * * * * - -Fearful of stompers, they moved rapidly away from the forest over -steadily rising ground. The growth became more sparse, the ground more -rocky, and near evening they crossed a wide moorland covered with -coarse grass and scattered blocks of stone. Ahead a long, low fault -scarp bounded it and there they found a cave tunneled into the rock, -too narrow for a stomper. At last they felt safe. Morwenna rode silvery -above the distant forest. - -Water trickled from the cave which widened into a squared-off chamber -in which the water spilled over the rim of a basin that looked cut with -hands. Underfoot were small stone cylinders of various lengths and as -his eyes adjusted Cole saw that they were drill cores. - -"Prospectors made this," he told Pia, "in the old, innocent days -when they still hoped to find heavy metals." Then he saw the graven -initials, T.C.B., and the date, 157 A.S. - -They ate red berries growing in their dooryard, gathered grass for a -bed and slept in a great weariness. - -Next day and the next they ate red berries and fleshy, purple ground -fruits and slept, gaining strength. Secure in their cave mouth they -watched stompers cross the moorland. When night fell they gazed at the -bunched moons, but the three Maidens did not quite form a house and -Hoggy Darn was still pursuing them. - -"A few days," Pia said. - -"If this isn't Emrys Upland, Arscoate will kill us with fire mist." - -She nodded. - -More stompers crossed the moorland, some white crested. They moved -there randomly at night and from the forest came a far-off sound of -stompers singing. The Maidens formed a house and Hoggy Darn grazed the -side of it before they fled. To south and west faint rose glowed in the -night sky. - -"Fire mist," Pia said. "The nights of harrying have begun. Oh Flinter, -if this is really Emrys Upland it will be perfect." - -"What will?" - -"You--us--oh, I can't say yet." - -"Secrets, Pia? Still secrets? Between _us_?" - -"You'll know soon, Flinter. I mustn't spoil it." - -The love in her eyes was tinged with a strangeness. She sought his arms -and hid her face in his shoulder. - -Stompers on the moorland all day so they dared not leave the cave. -Flyers streaking high overhead, scouting. - -"Pia, I believe this _is_ Emrys Upland. I'll help after all with the -great killing." - -"You will help, Flinter." - -"Afterward I'll take you to Belconti." - -"We will never see Belconti, Flinter." - -The strangeness in her eyes troubled him. He could not kiss it away. - -Stompers crowding the moorland all night with their dancing, their -vast singing coming to the cave from all round the compass. Rose banks -distant in the night sky and Hoggy Darn crossing the House of the -Maidens. Red Hoggy Darn, still lagging, still not catching it perfectly -upright. The strangeness of Pia. The waiting, clutching a polished -thigh bone. - - * * * * * - -At last the night when the mighty war song of the stompers went up -unbearably, as the man had heard it that once before, and fire mist -boiled along the distant mountains. Flyers shuttled across the sky, -dropped, rose again. Blasters ripped the night with ion-pencils. Hoggy -Darn gleamed redly on the threshold of the House of the Maidens that -stood almost upright and perfect with silvery Morwenna at the vertex. -Flyers blasted clearings in the throng of stompers, and grounded. Men -boiled out of them, setting up Corbin powercasters here, there, another -place, fighting as soon as their feet hit ground. - -The man stood up and brandished the thigh bone. - -"I must go down and fight. Wait here." - -"I must go too," the girl said calmly. - -"Yes, you must," he agreed. "Come along." - -Stompers rushed by them and bounded over their heads and did not harm -them. Blaster-torn stompers fell heavily beside them, threshing and -snapping, and they were not touched. Men lowered weapons to point at -the man and girl, shouting to one another out of mazed faces silently -in the whelming music of the stomper chorus. Man and girl walked on. - -Unharmed through the forest of singing, leaping shapes, hand in hand -through a screen of fighting men that parted to admit them, they walked -into the light of a glowing Corbin where a tall, gaunt old man stood -watching their approach. The feeling of exalted unreality began to lift -from Cole. - -"Grandfather, give us blasters," he shouted. "We want to fight." - -"The power is on you, lad, and you only half know it," the old man -shouted back. "Stand here by the Corbin. Your fight is not yet." Tears -stood in the fierce old eyes. - -Across the moorland the fighting raged. Islands of men and women -grouped round their Corbins held back the booming, chaotic sea of -stompers that surged against them from all sides. Dikes of dead and -dying grew up, men and stompers mingled. The flyers shuttled down and -up again and more islands of men took shape. Hoggy Darn crossed the -threshold and the savage war song of the stompers shook the night sky. - -In a lull Morgan came in to the Corbin to change the wave track on his -blaster. His face was a mask of iron joy and his eyes blazed. - -"Morgan, if we are both alive after, I will kill you!" Cole shouted. - -"No," Morgan rumbled. "You have been into the forest and come out -again. It took you three weeks. It took me three hundred years. Clasp -hands, my brother in hatred." - -"Yes, brother in hatred." The exalted unreality began coming back -strongly. "I want a blaster!" he howled at Morgan. - -"No, brother in hatred, your fight is not yet." Morgan rejoined the -battle, the ring of men standing braced in blaster harness fifty yards -away, ripping down with interweaving ion-pencils the great forms -leaping inward. Man and girl held hands and watched. - -To the left trouble came to a nearby island. Stompers converged from -all sides, abandoning the other attacks, impossibly many. They overran -the defenders, attacking not them but the powercaster behind them, -and piled up until the Corbin's blue-violet glare was hidden. A great -blossoming of flame tore the pile of stompers apart, but the Corbin was -dark. - -"They blew out the power banks," Pia said. "They've never known to do -that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges." - -It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather -Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war -song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in -total volume. Then it was their own turn. - -Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block -and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired -steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave -of stinking heat rolled over them. All around, survivors struggled to -their feet, using flame pistols to head-shoot wounded stompers, digging -out and connecting emergency pack charges to their blasters. They were -pitifully few and their new, dark island was thirty feet across. - -The moor seemed dark with only the red of flame pistols and the violet -flickering of power pack blasters. It seemed to heave randomly like a -sluggish sea with the seen struggles of dying stompers and the felt -struggles of lesser human bodies. Thinned now, stompers attacked singly -or in small groups. Blasters flickered and ripped and went darkly -silent as power packs discharged. The red of short-range flame pistols -replaced them. But across the fault scarp ridge the tumult swelled to -new heights and Corbin after Corbin there flamed out of existence in a -bloom of rose-purple against the skyline. - -In a lull Bidgrass shouted to Morgan, "That's costing them more than -they have to give, over there. Listen. Can you hear it?" - -"Yes, Father in Hatred," Morgan said. "They will break soon." - -"Yes, when Arscoate lays the fire mist. They will come through here. I -have one charge left." - -"I have two, Father in Hatred. Change packs with me." - -Cole found his voice and his senses once more. - -"I must find a weapon! Grandfather, give me your flame pistol!" - -"Soon, lad. Soon now. Let the power take you," the old man soothed. - -Stompers streamed over the moor again and the fighting flared up. The -war song beat against the man's ears so that he drew the girl nearer -and shook the thigh bone. Blaster fire flickered out altogether and -the red blooming of flame pistols weakened. But more and more stompers -streamed past without attacking. Then the man saw fire mist plume -lazily in the east, point after point coalescing all along the forest -edge. - -"Now!" shouted a great voice beside him. "Now, lad!" - -It was old Bidgrass, striding out like a giant, blaster leveled in its -carrying harness. - -The shout released Cole and he saw it far off, coming down the scrap -rubble to the moor. Huger than any, white crest thirty feet above the -ground, Grandfather Stomper. The war song roared insanely over the -moor. Hoggy Darn gleamed heart-midst of the three lady moons. - -The grim old man aimed and fired. The great bird-shape staggered and -came on, left wing trailing. The old man waited until it was nearly on -top of him and fired again. The stomper jerked its head and the bolt -shattered the great tripart beak but did not kill it. With the right -mitten-wing it reached down and swung its adversary twenty feet up, -held him and haggled at him with its stumps of beak. - -The old man's free right arm flailed wildly. Cole beat the stomper's -leg with the thigh bone and howled in hatred. Then he saw the flame -pistol lying where it had fallen from the holster. He picked it up, but -the power was on him again and he did not use it. He hurled the thigh -bone at the stomper's head, diverting it for a second, and tossed the -pistol to old Bidgrass. He knew they could not fail. - -The old man caught the pistol. When the great head swung back he held -the muzzle against the tri-corn eye and fired. Red plasma-jet burned -into the brain behind it. The stomper bounded once in the air, dropped -its slayer, ran three steps and collapsed. - -The stomper song changed suddenly. It became a mournful lament, a dying -into grieving subsonics. Cole knew that note. He had heard it from the -stompers in the stone-floored pen when the butchers were hacking off -their heads. He knew that Grandfather Stomper was dead forever, after -seven hundred years of war. - -Flyers crossed above, blasters were still at work across the ridge, -but the war was ended. The power, whatever that sense of exalted -unreality might be, left Cole; and he felt naked and ridiculous and -wondered what he was doing there. Then he saw the girl bending above -Garth Bidgrass and regained control of himself. - -The strong old man was smiling wearily. - -"We've won the war, lad," he said. "The next task is yours." - -"I'll help you," Cole said. - -"You'll lead. Oh, I'll live, but not for long. Centuries ago, lad, -there was a prophecy, and until tonight people like myself and Arscoate -thought it was only poetry, however literally Morgan and the other -ex-wilds took it." - -"What was it?" - -"It foretells that on the night Grandfather Stomper shall die the new -Grandfather Man will come naked out of the forest with his beautiful -wife and armed with a thigh bone, and that he will lead us in the even -greater task of reclamation that comes after. _Your_ ritual title of -address is 'Father in Love,' lad, and I'm just a broken old man now. -Take up the burden." - -Cole's throat swelled, choking speech for a moment. - -"I can start," he said. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Night of Hoggy Darn, by Richard McKenna - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - -***** This file should be named 60695-8.txt or 60695-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/9/60695/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Mckenna. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night of Hoggy Darn, by Richard McKenna - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Night of Hoggy Darn - -Author: Richard McKenna - -Release Date: November 15, 2019 [EBook #60695] - -Most recently updated: April 16, 2023] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="349" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN</h1> - -<h2>BY R. M. McKENNA</h2> - -<p class="ph1"><i>The talented author of "The Fishdollar Affair"<br /> -returns with another compelling story of a frontier<br /> -world—grim New Cornwall of the Black Learning.</i></p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1958.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Red-haired Flinter Cole sipped his black coffee and looked around the -chrome and white tile galley of Space Freighter <i>Gorbals</i>, in which he -was riding down the last joint of a dogleg journey to the hermit planet -of New Cornwall.</p> - -<p>"Nothing's been published about the planet for the last five hundred -years," he said in a nervous, jerky voice. "You people on <i>Gorbals</i> -at least <i>see</i> the place, and I understand you're the only ship that -does."</p> - -<p>"That's right, twice every standard year," said the cook. He was a -placid, squinting man, pink in his crisp whites. "But like I said, no -girls, no drinks, nothing down there but hard looks and a punch in the -nose for being curious. We mostly stay aboard, up in orbit. Them New -Cornish are the biggest, meanest men I ever did see, Doc."</p> - -<p>"I'm not a real doctor yet," Cole said, glancing down at the scholar -grays he was wearing. "If I don't do a good job on New Cornwall I -may never be. This is my Ph. D. trial field assignment. I should be -<i>stuffing</i> myself with data on the ecosystem so I can ask the right -questions when I get there. But there's nothing!"</p> - -<p>"What's a pee aitch dee?"</p> - -<p>"That's being a doctor. I'm an ecologist—that means I deal with -everything alive, and the way it all works in with climate and -geography. I can use <i>any</i> kind of data. I have only six months until -<i>Gorbals</i> comes again to make my survey and report. If I fumble away my -doctorate, and I'm twenty-three already...." Cole knitted shaggy red -eyebrows in worry.</p> - -<p>"Well hell, Doc, I can tell you things like, it's got four moons and -only one whopper of a continent and it's low grav, and the forest there -you won't believe even when you see it—"</p> - -<p>"I need to know about <i>stompers</i>. Bidgrass Company wants Belconti U. to -save them from extinction, but they didn't say what the threat is. They -sent travel directions, a visa and passage scrip for just one man. And -I only had two days for packing and library research, before I had to -jump to Tristan in order to catch this ship. I've been running in the -dark ever since. You'd think the Bidgrass people didn't really care."</p> - -<p>"Price of stomper egg what it is, I doubt that," the cook said, -scratching his fat jaw. "But for a fact, they're shipping less these -days. Must be some kind of trouble. I never saw a stomper, but they say -they're big birds that live in the forest."</p> - -<p>"You see? The few old journal articles I did find, said they were -flightless bird-homologs that lived on the plains and preyed on the -great herds of something called darv cattle."</p> - -<p>"Nothing but forest and sea for thousands of miles around Bidgrass -Station, Doc. Stompers are pure hell on big long legs, they say."</p> - -<p>"There again! <i>I</i> read they were harmless to man."</p> - -<p>"Tell you what, you talk to Daley. He's cargo officer and has to go -down with each tender trip. He'll maybe know something can help you."</p> - -<p>The cook turned away to inspect his ovens. Cole put down his cup and -clamped a freckled hand over his chin, thinking. He thought about -stomper eggs, New Cornwall's sole export and apparently, for five -hundred years, its one link with the other planets of Carina sector. -Their reputedly indescribable flavor had endeared them to gourmets on a -hundred planets. They were symbols of conspicuous consumption for the -ostentatious wealthy. No wonder most of the literature under the New -Cornwall reference had turned out to be cookbooks.</p> - -<p>Orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, Cole had never tasted -stomper egg.</p> - -<p>The cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell.</p> - -<p>"Just thought, Doc. I keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from -cargo for when I got a passenger to feed. How'd you like a mess for -chow tonight?"</p> - -<p>"Why not?" Cole said, grinning suddenly. "Anything may be data for an -ecologist, especially if it's good to eat."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter -of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. Their -delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. Their flavor was -like—cinnamon? Peppery sandalwood? Yes, yes, and yet unique....</p> - -<p>Cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and -the other six men had not had any. He groped for a lost feeling—was it -that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat -for all of them? Ridiculous!</p> - -<p>"I'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "Here, Mr. Daley, have some."</p> - -<p>Daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "By me" and slid the platter -along. It rounded the table and returned to Cole untouched.</p> - -<p>"Fall to, Doc," Daley said, grinning.</p> - -<p>Cole was already reaching ... lying in his stateroom and he <i>was</i> the -bunk cradling a taut, messianic body flaming with imageless dreams. -He dreamed himself asleep and slept himself into shamed wakefulness -needing coffee.</p> - -<p>It was ship-night. Cole walked through dimmed lights to the galley and -carried his cup of hot black coffee to main control, where he found -Daley on watch, lounging against the gray enamel computer.</p> - -<p>"I feel like a fool," Cole said.</p> - -<p>"You're a martyr to science, Doc. Which reminds me, Cookie told me you -got questions about Bidgrass Station."</p> - -<p>"Well yes, about stompers. What's wiping them out, what's their habitat -and life pattern, oh anything."</p> - -<p>"I learned quick not to ask about stompers. I gather they're twenty -feet high or so and they're penned up behind a stockade. I never saw -one."</p> - -<p>"Well dammit! I read they couldn't be domesticated."</p> - -<p>"They're not. Bidgrass Station is in a clearing the New Cornish cut -from sea to sea across a narrow neck of land. On the west is this -stockade and beyond it is Lundy Peninsula, a good half-million square -miles of the damndest forest ever grew on any planet. That's where the -stompers are."</p> - -<p>"How thickly settled is this Lundy Peninsula?"</p> - -<p>"Not a soul there, Doc. The settlement is around Car Truro on the east -coast, twelve thousand miles east of Bidgrass. I never been there, but -you can see from the air it isn't much."</p> - -<p>"How big a city is Bidgrass? Does it have a university?"</p> - -<p>Daley smiled again and shook his head. "They got fields and pastures, -but it's more like a military camp than a town. I see barracks for the -workers and egg hunters, hangars and shops, a big egg-processing plant -and warehouses around the landing field. I never get away from the -field, but I'd guess four, five thousand people at Bidgrass."</p> - -<p>Cole sighed and put down his cup on the log desk.</p> - -<p>"What is it they import, one half so precious as the stuff they sell?"</p> - -<p>Daley chuckled and rocked on his toes. "Drugs, chemicals, machinery -parts, hundreds of tons of Warburton energy capsules. Pistols, -blasters, cases of flame charge, tanks of fire mist—you'd think they -had a war on."</p> - -<p>"That's no help. I'll make up for lost time when I get there. I'll beat -their ears off with questions."</p> - -<p>Daley's gnomish face grew serious. "Watch what you ask and who you ask, -Doc. They're suspicious as hell and they hate strangers."</p> - -<p>"They need my help. Besides, I'll deal only with scientists."</p> - -<p>"Bidgrass isn't much like a campus. I don't know, Doc, something's -wrong on that planet and I'm always glad to lift out."</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you and the others eat any of that stomper egg?" Cole asked -abruptly.</p> - -<p>"Because the people at Bidgrass turn sick and want to slug you if you -mention eating it. That's reason enough for me."</p> - -<p>Well, that was data too, Cole thought, heading back to his stateroom.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Two days later Daley piloted the cargo tender down in a three-lap -braking spiral around New Cornwall. Cole sat beside him in the cramped -control room, eyes fixed on the view panel. Once he had the bright and -barren moon Cairdween at upper left, above a vastly curving sweep of -sun-glinting ocean, and he caught his breath in wonder.</p> - -<p>"I know the feeling, Doc," Daley said softly. "Like being a giant and -jumping from world to world."</p> - -<p>Clouds obscured much of the sprawling, multi-lobed single continent. -The sharpening of outline and hint of regularity Cole remembered noting -on Tristan and his own planet of Belconti, the mark of man, was absent -here. Yet New Cornwall, as a human settlement, was two hundred years -older than Belconti.</p> - -<p>The forests stretched across the south and west, broken by uplands and -rain shadows, as the old books said. He saw between cloud patches the -glint of lakes and the crumpled leaf drainage pattern of the great -northeastern plain but, oddly, the plain was darker in color than the -pinkish-yellow forest. He mentioned it to Daley.</p> - -<p>"It's flowers and vines and moss makes it that color," the little man -said, busy with controls. "Whole world in that forest top—snakes, -birds, jumping things big as horses. Doc, them trees are <i>big</i>."</p> - -<p>"Of course! I read about the epiphytal biota. And low gravity always -conduces to gigantism."</p> - -<p>"There's Lundy," Daley grunted, pointing.</p> - -<p>It looked like a grinning ovoid monster-head straining into the western -ocean at the end of a threadlike neck. Across the neck Bidgrass Station -slashed between parallel lines of forest edge like a collar. Cole -watched it again on the landing approach, noting the half-mile of -clearing between the great wall and the forest edge, the buildings and -fields rectilinear in ordered clumps east of the wall, and then the -light aberration of the tender's lift field blotted it out.</p> - -<p>"Likely I won't see you till next trip," Daley said, taking leave. -"Good luck, Doc."</p> - -<p>Cole shuffled down the personnel ramp, grateful for the weight of his -two bags in the absurdly light gravity. Trucks and cargo lifts were -coming across the white field from the silvery warehouses along its -edge. Men also, shaggy-haired big men in loose blue garments, walking -oddly without the stride and drive of leg muscles. Their faces were -uniformly grim and blank to Cole, standing there uncertainly. Then a -ground car pulled up and a tall old man in the same rough clothing got -out and walked directly toward him. He had white hair, bushy white -eyebrows over deep-set gray eyes, and a commanding beak of a nose.</p> - -<p>"Who might you be?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>"I'm Flinter Cole, from Belconti University. Someone here is expecting -me."</p> - -<p>The old man squinted in thought and bit his lower lip. Finally he said, -"The biologist, hey? Didn't expect you until next <i>Gorbals</i>. Didn't -think you could make the connections for this one."</p> - -<p>"It left me no time at all to study up in. But when species extinction -is the issue, time is important. And I'm an ecologist."</p> - -<p>"Well," the old man said. "Well. I'm Garth Bidgrass."</p> - -<p>He shook Cole's hand, a powerful grip quickly released.</p> - -<p>"Hawkins there in the car will take you to the manor house and get you -settled. I'll phone ahead. I'll be tied up checking cargo for a day or -two, I expect. You just rest up awhile."</p> - -<p>He spoke to the driver in what sounded like Old English, then moved -rapidly across the field toward the warehouses in the same strange walk -as the other men. As far as Cole could see, he did not bend his knees -at all.</p> - -<p>Hawkins, also old but frail and stooped, took Cole's bags to the -car. When the ecologist tried to follow him he almost fell headlong, -then managed a stiff-legged shuffle. Momentarily he longed for the -Earth-normal gravity of Belconti and the ship.</p> - -<p>They drove past unfenced fields green with vegetable and cereal crops, -and fenced pastures holding beef and dairy cattle of the old Earth -breeds. It was a typical human ecosystem. Then they passed a group of -field workers, and surprise jolted the ecologist. They were huge—eight -or nine feet tall, both men and women, all with long hair and some of -them naked. They did not look up.</p> - -<p>Cole looked at Hawkins. The old man glared at him from red-rimmed eyes -and chattered something in archaic English. He speeded up, losing the -giants behind a hedge, and the manor house with the palisade behind it -loomed ahead.</p> - -<p>The great fence dwarfed the house. Single baulks of grassy brown timber -ten feet on a side soared two hundred feet into the air, intricately -braced and stayed. High above, a flyer drifted as if on sentry duty. -Half a mile beyond, dwarfing the fence in its turn, arose the -thousand-foot black escarpment of the forest edge.</p> - -<p>The manor house huddled in a walled garden with armed guards at the -gate. It was two-storied and sprawling, with a flat-roofed watch tower -at the southeast corner, and made of the same glassy brown timber. -Hawkins stopped the car by the pillared veranda where a lumpy, gray, -nondescript woman waited. Cole got out, awkwardly careful in the light -gravity.</p> - -<p>The woman would not meet his glance. "I'm Flada Vignoli, Mr. Bidgrass's -niece and housekeeper," she said in a dead voice. "I'll show you your -rooms." She turned away before Cole could respond.</p> - -<p>"Let me carry the bags, I need to," he said to Hawkins, laughing -uncertainly. The old man hoisted his skinny shoulders and spat.</p> - -<p>The rooms were on the second floor, comfortable but archaic in style. -The gray woman told him that Hawkins would bring his meals, that Garth -Bidgrass would see him in a few days to make plans, and that Mr. -Bidgrass thought he should not go about unescorted until he knew more -about local conditions.</p> - -<p>Cole nodded. "I'll want to confer with your leading biologists, Mrs. -Vignoli, as soon as I can. For today, can you get me a copy of your -most recent biotic survey?"</p> - -<p>"Ain't any biologists, ain't any surveys," she said, standing in the -half-closed door.</p> - -<p>"Well, any recent book about stompers or your general zoölogy. It's -important that I start at once."</p> - -<p>The face under the scraggly gray hair went blanker still. "You'll have -to talk to Mr. Bidgrass." She closed the door.</p> - -<p>Cole unpacked, bathed, dressed again and explored his three rooms. Like -a museum, he thought. He looked out his west windows at the palisade -and forest edge. Then he decided to go downstairs, and found his door -was locked.</p> - -<p>The shock was more fear than indignation, he realized, wondering at -himself. He paced his sitting room, thinking about his scholarly status -and the wealth and power of Belconti, until he had the indignation -flaming. Then a knock came at the door and it opened to reveal old -Hawkins with a wheeled food tray.</p> - -<p>"What do you mean, locking me in?" Cole asked hotly.</p> - -<p>He pushed past the food tray into the hall. Hawkins danced and made -shooing motions with his hands, chattering shrilly in the vernacular. -Cole walked to the railing around the stairwell and looked down. At the -foot of the stair a giant figure, man or woman he could not say, sat -and busied itself with something in its lap.</p> - -<p>Cole went back into his room. The food was boiled beef, potatoes and -beets, plain but plentiful, plus bread and coffee. He ate heartily and -looked out his windows again to see night coming on. Finally he tried -the door and it was not locked. He shrugged, pushed the food tray into -the hall and closed the door again. Then he shot the inside bolt.</p> - -<p>In bed, he finally dropped off into a restless, disturbed sleep.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Emboldened by morning and a hearty tray breakfast, Cole explored. He -was in a two-floor wing, and the doors into the main house were locked. -Through them he heard voices and domestic clatter. Unlocked across the -second-floor hall was another suite of rooms like his own. Downstairs -was still another suite and along the south side a library. The door -into the garden was locked.</p> - -<p>My kingdom, Cole thought wryly. Prisoner of state!</p> - -<p>He explored the library. Tristanian books, historical romances for the -most part, none less than three hundred years old. No periodicals, -nothing of New Cornwall publication. He drifted from window to window -looking out at the formal garden of flower beds, hedges and white sand -paths. Then he saw the girl.</p> - -<p>She knelt in a sleeveless gray dress trimming a hedge. Her tanned and -rounded arms had dimpled elbows, he noted. She turned suddenly and he -saw, framed by reddish-brown curls, her oval face with small nose and -firm chin. The face was unsuitably grave and the eyes wide.</p> - -<p>She was not staring at his window, Cole decided after a qualm, but -listening. Then she rose, picked up her basket of trimmings and glided -around the corner of the house. Before he could pursue her plump vision -to another window, a man appeared.</p> - -<p>He looked taller than Cole and was built massively as a stone. Straight -black hair fell to his shoulders, cut square across his forehead and -bound by a white fillet. Under the black bar of eyebrow the heavy -face held itself in grim, unsmiling lines. He moved with that odd, -unstriding New Cornish walk that suggested tremendous power held in -leash.</p> - -<p>Cole crossed the hall and watched the blue-clad form enter a door in -the wing opposite. The girl was nowhere. Again Cole felt a twinge of -fear, and boiled up anger to mask it.</p> - -<p>Inside looking out, he thought. Peeping like an ecologist in a bird -blind!</p> - -<p>When Hawkins brought lunch Cole raged at him and demanded to see Garth -Bidgrass. The old man chattered incomprehensibly and danced like a -fighting cock. Thwarted, the ecologist ate moodily and went down to -the library. The garden was empty and he decided on impulse to open a -window. A way of retreat, but from what and to where, he wondered as -he worked at the fastenings. Just as he got it free, a woman stooped -through the library door. She was at least seven feet tall.</p> - -<p>Cole stood erect and held his breath. Not looking at him, the woman -dropped to her knees and began dusting the natural wood half-panelling -that encircled the room between bookcases. She had long blonde hair and -a mild, vacant face; she wore a shapeless blue dress.</p> - -<p>"Hello," Cole said.</p> - -<p>She paid no attention.</p> - -<p>"Hello!" he said more sharply. "Do you speak Galactic English?"</p> - -<p>She looked at him out of empty blue eyes and went back to her work. -He went past her gingerly and up to his room. There he wrote a note to -Garth Bidgrass, paced and fanned his indignation, tore up the note and -wrote a stronger one. When Hawkins brought his dinner, Cole beat down -his chattering objections and stuffed the note into the old man's coat -pocket.</p> - -<p>"See that Bidgrass gets it at once! Do you hear, at once!" he shouted.</p> - -<p>After nightfall, nervous and wakeful, Cole looked out on the garden by -the pale light of two moons. He saw the girl, wearing the same dress, -come out of the opposite wing, and decided on impulse to intercept her.</p> - -<p>As he climbed through the library window he said to himself, "Anything -may be data to an ecologist, especially if it's pretty to look at."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He met her full face at the house corner and her hands flew up, -fending. She turned and he said, "Please don't run away from me. I want -to talk to you."</p> - -<p>She turned back with eyes wide and troubled, in what nature had meant -to be a merry, careless face.</p> - -<p>"Do you know who I am?" he asked.</p> - -<p>She nodded. "Uncle Garth says I'm not to talk to you." It was a little -girl's voice, tremulous.</p> - -<p>"Why? What am I, some kind of monster?"</p> - -<p>"N-no. You're an outworlder, from a great, wealthy planet."</p> - -<p>"Belconti is a very ordinary planet. What's your name?"</p> - -<p>"I'm Pia—Pia Vignoli." The voice took on more assurance, but the -plump body stayed poised for flight.</p> - -<p>"Well I'm Flinter Cole, and I have a job to do on this planet. It's -<i>terribly</i> important that I get started. Will you help me?"</p> - -<p>"How can I, Mr. Cole? I'm nobody. I don't know anything." She moved -away, and he followed, awkwardly.</p> - -<p>"Girls know all sorts of things that would interest an ecologist," he -protested. "Tell me all you know about stompers."</p> - -<p>"Oh <i>no</i>! I mustn't talk about stompers."</p> - -<p>"Well talk about nothing then, like girls do," he said impatiently. -"What's the name of that moon?" He pointed overhead.</p> - -<p>Tension left her and she smiled a little. "Morwenna," she said. "That -one just setting into Lundy Forest is Annis. You can tell Annis by her -bluish shadows that are never the same."</p> - -<p>"Good girl! How about the other two, the ones that aren't up?"</p> - -<p>"One's Cairdween and the other, the red one—oh, I daren't talk about -moons either."</p> - -<p>"Not even <i>moons</i>? Really, Miss Vignoli—"</p> - -<p>"Let's not talk at all. I'll show you how to walk, you do look so funny -all spraddled and scraping your feet. I was born off-planet and I had -to learn it myself."</p> - -<p>She showed him the light down-flex of the foot that threw the body more -forward than up, and he learned to wait out the strange micropause -before his weight settled on the other foot. With a little practice -he got it, walking up and down the moonlit path beside her in an -effortless toe dance. Then he learned to turn corners and to jump.</p> - -<p>"Pia," he said once. "Pia. I like the sound, but it doesn't suit this -rough planet."</p> - -<p>"I was born on Tristan," she murmured. "Please don't ask—"</p> - -<p>"I won't. But no reason why I can't talk. May I call you Pia?"</p> - -<p>He described Belconti and the university, and his doctorate, at stake -in this field assignment. Suddenly she stopped short and pointed to -where a red moon lifted above the dark cliff of the eastern forest.</p> - -<p>"It's late," she said. "There comes Hoggy Darn. Good night, Mr. Cole."</p> - -<p>She danced away faster than he could follow. He crawled back through -his window in the reddish moonlight.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Next afternoon Cole faced Garth Bidgrass in the library. The old man -sat with folded arms, craggy face impassive. Cole, standing, leaned his -weight on his hands and thrust his sharp face across the table. His -freckles stood out against his angry pallor, and sunlight from the end -window blazed in his red hair.</p> - -<p>"Let me sum up," he said, thin-lipped. "For obscure reasons I must -be essentially a prisoner. All right. You have no education here, no -biologists of any kind. All right. Now here is what they expect of me -on Belconti: to rough out the planetary ecosystem, set up a functional -profile series for the stomper and its interacting species, make energy -flow charts and outline the problem. If my report is incorrect or -incomplete, Belconti won't send the right task group of specialists. -Then you spend your money for nothing and I lose my doctorate. I must -have skilled helpers, a clerical staff, <i>masses</i> of data!"</p> - -<p>"You've said all that before," Bidgrass said calmly. "I told you, I can -provide none of that."</p> - -<p>"Then it's hopeless! Why did you ever send for an ecologist?"</p> - -<p>"I sent for help. Belconti sent the ecologist."</p> - -<p>"Help me to <i>help</i> you, then. You must try to understand, Mr. Bidgrass, -science can't operate in a vacuum. I can't work up a total planetary -biology. I must <i>start</i> with that data."</p> - -<p>"Do what you can for us," Bidgrass said. "They won't blame you on -Belconti when they know and we won't blame you here if it doesn't help."</p> - -<p>Cole sat down, shaking his head. "But Belconti won't count it as a -field job, not in ecology. You <i>will</i> not understand my position. Let -me put it this way: suppose someone gave you a hatchet and told you, -only one man, to cut down Lundy Forest?"</p> - -<p>"I could start," the old man said. His eyes blazed and he smiled -grimly. "I'd leave my mark on one tree."</p> - -<p>Colt felt suddenly foolish and humbled.</p> - -<p>"All right," he said. "I'll do what I can. What do you think is wiping -out the stompers?"</p> - -<p>"I know what. A parasite bird that lays its eggs on stomper eggs. Its -young hatch first and eat the big egg. The people call them piskies."</p> - -<p>"I'll need to work out its life cycle, look for weak points and natural -enemies. Who knows a lot about these piskies?"</p> - -<p>"I know as much as anybody, and I've never seen a grown one. We believe -they stay in the deep forest. But there are always three to each -stomper egg and they're vicious. Go for a man's eyes or jugular. Egg -hunters kill dozens every day."</p> - -<p>"I'll want dozens, alive if possible, and a lab. Can you do that much?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. You can use Dr. Rudall's lab at the hospital." Bidgrass stood up -and looked at his watch. "The egg harvest should start coming in soon -down at the plant and there may be a dead pisky. Come along and see."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As Hawkins guided the car past a group of the giant field workers, Cole -felt Bidgrass' eyes on him. He turned, and the old man said slowly, -"Stick to piskies, Mr. Cole. We'll all be happier."</p> - -<p>"Anything may be data to an ecologist, especially if he overlooks it," -Cole murmured stubbornly.</p> - -<p>Hawkins cackled something about "Hoggy Darn itha hoose" and speeded up.</p> - -<p>In the cavernous, machinery-lined plant Cole met the manager. He -was the same powerful, long-haired man Cole had seen in the garden. -"Morgan," Bidgrass introduced him with the one name, adding, "He -doesn't use Galactic English."</p> - -<p>Morgan bent his head slightly, unsmiling, ignoring Cole's offered hand. -His wide-set eyes were so lustrously black that they seemed to have no -pupils, and under the hostile stare Cole flushed angrily. They walked -through the plant, Morgan talking to Bidgrass in the vernacular. His -voice was deep and resonant, organ-like.</p> - -<p>Bidgrass explained to Cole how stomper egg was vac-frozen under biostat -and sealed in plastic for export. He pointed out a piece of shell, half -an inch thick and highly translucent. From its radius of curvature Cole -realized that stomper eggs were much larger than he had pictured them. -Then someone shouted and Bidgrass said a flyer was coming in. They went -out on the loading dock.</p> - -<p>The flyer alongside carried six men forward of the cargo space and -had four heavy blasters mounted almost like a warcraft. As the dock -crew unloaded two eggs into dollies, other flyers were skittering in, -further along the dock. Bidgrass pointed out to Cole on one huge four -by three-foot egg the bases of broken parasite eggs cemented to its -shell. Through a hole made by piskies, the ecologist noted that the -substance of the large egg was a stiff gel. Morgan flashed a strong -pocket lamp on the shell and growled something.</p> - -<p>"There may be a pisky hiding inside," Bidgrass said. "You are lucky, -Mr. Cole."</p> - -<p>Morgan stepped inside and returned almost at once wearing goggles -and heavy gloves, and carrying a small power saw. He used the light -again, traced an eight-inch square with his finger, and sawed it out. -The others, all but Cole, stood back. Morgan pulled away the piece and -something black flew up, incredibly swift, with a shrill, keening sound.</p> - -<p>Cole looked after it and Morgan struck him heavily in the face, -knocking him to hands and knees. Feet stamped and scraped around him -and Cole saw his own blood dripping on the dock. He stood up dazed and -angry.</p> - -<p>"Morgan saved your eye," Bidgrass told him, "but the pisky took a -nasty gouge at your cheekbone. I'll have Hawkins drive you to the -hospital—you wanted to meet Dr. Rudall anyway."</p> - -<p>Cole examined the crushed pisky on the way to the hospital. Big as his -fist, with a tripartite beak, it was no true bird. The wings were flaps -of black skin that still wrinkled and folded flexibly with residual -life. It had nine toes on each foot and seemed covered with fine scales.</p> - -<p>Dr. Rudall treated Cole's cheek in a surprisingly large and well -appointed dressing room. He was a gray, defeated-looking man and -told Cole in an apologetic voice that he had taken medical training -on Planet Tristan many years ago ... out of touch now. His small lab -looked hopelessly archaic, but he promised to biostat the dead pisky -until Cole could get back to it.</p> - -<p>Hawkins was not with the ground car. Cole drove back to the plant -without him. He wanted another look at the mode of adhesion of pisky -egg on stomper egg. He drove to the further end of the plant and -mounted the dock from outside, to freeze in surprise. Twenty feet away, -the dock crew was unloading a giant.</p> - -<p>He was naked, strapped limply to a plank, and his face was bloody. Half -his reddish hair and beard was singed away. Then a hand hit Cole's -shoulder and spun him around. It was Morgan.</p> - -<p>"Clear out of here, you!" the big man said in fluent, if plain, -Galactic English. "Don't you ever come here without Garth Bidgrass -brings you!" He seemed hardly to move his lips, but the voice rumbled -like thunder.</p> - -<p>"Well," thought Cole, driving back after Hawkins, "datums are data, if -they bite off your head."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"For your own safety, Mr. Cole, you must not again leave the company -of either Hawkins or Dr. Rudall when you are away from the house," -Bidgrass told Cole the next morning. "The people have strange beliefs -that would seem sheer nonsense to you, but their impulsive acts, if you -provoke them, will be unpleasantly real."</p> - -<p>"If I knew their beliefs I might know how to behave."</p> - -<p>"It is your very presence that is provoking. If you were made of salt -you would have to stay out of the rain. Here you are an outworlder and -you must stay within certain limits. It's like that."</p> - -<p>"All right," Cole said glumly.</p> - -<p>He worked all day at the hospital dissecting the pisky, but found -no parasites. He noted interesting points of anatomy. The three-part -beak of silicified horn was razor sharp and designed to exert a double -shearing stress. The eye was triune and of fixed focus; the three -eyeballs lay in a narrow isosceles triangle pattern, base down, behind -a common triangular conjunctiva with incurved sides and narrow base. -The wings were elastic and stiffened with a fan of nine multi-jointed -bones that probably gave them grasping and manipulating power in the -living organism. None of it suggested the limit factor he sought.</p> - -<p>Dr. Rudall helped him make cultures in a sterile broth derived from the -pisky's own tissues. In the evening a worker from the plant brought -eleven dead piskies and Cole put them in biostat. He rode home with -Hawkins to his solitary dinner feeling he had made a start.</p> - -<p>Day followed day. Cole remained isolated in his wing, coming and going -through his back door into the garden. He became used to the mute -giant domestics who swept and cleaned. Now and then he exchanged a few -words with the sad Mrs. Vignoli, Pia's mother, he learned, or with -old Bidgrass, in chance meetings. He watched Pia through his windows -sometimes and knew she fled when he came out. There was something -incongruous in the timid wariness with which her plump figure and -should-be-merry face confronted the world.</p> - -<p>Once he caught her and held her wrist. "Why do you run away from me, -Pia?"</p> - -<p>She pulled away gently. "I'll get you in trouble, Mr. Cole. They don't -trust me either. My father was a Tristanian."</p> - -<p>"Who are <i>they</i>?"</p> - -<p>"Just they. Morgan, all of them."</p> - -<p>"If we're both outworld, we should stick together. I'm the loneliest -man on this planet, Pia."</p> - -<p>"I know the feeling," she said, looking down.</p> - -<p>He patted her curls. "Let's be friends then, and you help me. Where do -these giant people come from?"</p> - -<p>Her head jerked up angrily. "That has nothing to do with your work! I'm -inworld too, Mr. Cole. My mother is of the old stock."</p> - -<p>Cole let her go in silence.</p> - -<p>He began working evenings in the lab, losing himself in work. Few of -the blue-clad men and women he encountered would look at him, but he -sensed their hostile glances on the back of his neck. He felt islanded -in a sea of dull hatred. Only Dr. Rudall was vaguely friendly.</p> - -<p>Cole found no parasites in hundreds of dissected piskies, but his -cultures were frequently contaminated by a fungus that formed dark red, -globular fruiting bodies. When he turned to cytology he found that what -he had supposed to be an incredibly complex autonomic nervous system -was instead a fungal mycelium, so fine as to be visible only in phase -contrast. He experimented with staining techniques and verified it in a -dozen specimens, then danced the surprised Dr. Rudall around the lab.</p> - -<p>"I've done it! One man against a planet!" he chortled. "We'll culture -it, then work up mutant strains of increasing virulence—oh for a -Belconti geno-mycologist now!"</p> - -<p>"It's not pathogenic, I'm afraid," Dr. Rudall said. "I ... ah ... -read once, that idea was tried centuries ago ... all the native fauna -have fungal symbiotes ... protect them against all known pathogenic -microbiota ... should have mentioned it, I suppose...."</p> - -<p>"<i>Yes</i>, you should have told me! My God, there go half the weapons -of applied ecology over the moon ... my time wasted ... <i>why</i> didn't -you tell me?" The ecologist's sharp face flushed red as his hair with -frustrated anger.</p> - -<p>"You didn't ask ... hardly know what ecology means ... didn't realize -it was important ..." the old doctor stammered.</p> - -<p>"<i>Everything</i> is important to an ecologist, especially what people -won't tell him!" Cole stormed.</p> - -<p>He tried to stamp out of the lab, and progressed in a ludicrous -bouncing that enraged him even more. He shouted for Hawkins and went -home early.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In his rooms he brooded on his wrongs for an hour, then went downstairs -and thundered on the locked door into the main house, shouting Garth -Bidgrass' name. The sounds beyond hushed. Then Garth Bidgrass opened -the door, looking stern and angry.</p> - -<p>"Come into the library, Mr. Cole," he said. "Try to control yourself."</p> - -<p>In the library Cole poured out his story while Bidgrass, standing with -right elbow resting atop a bookcase, listened gravely.</p> - -<p>"You must understand," Cole finished, "to save the stompers we must -cut down the piskies. Crudely put, the most common method is to find a -disease or a parasite that affects them, and breed more potent strains -of it. But that won't work on piskies, and I could have and should have -known that to begin with."</p> - -<p>"Then you must give up?"</p> - -<p>"<i>No!</i> Something must prey on them or their eggs in their native -habitat, a macrobiotic limit factor I can use. I must learn the adult -pisky's diet; if its range is narrow enough that can be made a limit -factor."</p> - -<p>The old man frowned. "How would you learn all this?"</p> - -<p>"Field study. I want at least twenty intelligent men and a permanent -camp somewhere in Lundy Forest."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass folded his arms and shook his head. "Can't spare the men. And -it's too dangerous—stompers would attack you day and night. I've had -over two hundred egg hunters killed this year, and they're trained men -in teams."</p> - -<p>"Let me go out with a team then, use my own two eyes."</p> - -<p>"Men wouldn't have you. I told you, they're superstitious about -outworlders."</p> - -<p>"Then it's failure! Your money and my doctorate go down the drain."</p> - -<p>"You're young, you'll get your doctorate another place," the old man -said. "You've tried hard, and I'll tell Belconti that." His voice was -placating, but Cole thought he saw a wary glint in the hard gray eyes.</p> - -<p>Cole shrugged. "I suppose I'll settle in and wait for <i>Gorbals</i>. But -I've had pleasanter vacations."</p> - -<p>He turned his back and scanned the shelves ostentatiously for a book. -Bidgrass left the room quietly.</p> - -<p>It was a boring evening. Pia was not in the garden. Cole looked at -the barrier and the incredible cliff of Lundy Forest. He would like -to get into that forest, just once. Hundred and fifty days before -<i>Gorbals</i> ... <i>why</i> had they ever sent for him? They seemed to be -conspiring to cheat him of his doctorate. They had, too.... Finally he -slept.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He woke to a distant siren wail and doors slamming and feet scraping in -the main house. Dressing in haste, he noted a red glow in the sky to -southward and heard a booming noise. In the hall outside his room he -met Pia, face white and eyes enormous.</p> - -<p>"Stomper attack!" she cried. "Come quickly, you must hide in the -basement with us!"</p> - -<p>He followed her into the main house and downstairs to where Mrs. -Vignoli was herding a crowd of the giant domestics down a doored -staircase. The giant women were tossing their heads nervously. Several -were naked and one was tearing off her dress. Cole drew back.</p> - -<p>"I'm an ecologist, I want to see," he said. "Stompers are data."</p> - -<p>He pushed her gently toward the women and walked out on the front -veranda. From southward came an incredibly rich and powerful chord of -organ music, booming and swelling, impossibly sustained. Old Hawkins -danced in the driveway in grotesque pointed leaps, shrieking "Hoosa -maida! Hoosa maida!" Overhead the moons Cairdween, Morwenna and Annis -of the blue shadows were arranged in a perfect isosceles triangle, -narrow base parallel to the horizon. It stirred something in Cole, but -the swelling music unhinged his thought. With a twinge of panic he -turned, to find Pia at his elbow.</p> - -<p>"They're after me, after us," she cried against the music.</p> - -<p>"I must see. You go find shelter, Pia."</p> - -<p>"With you I feel less alone now," she said. "One can't really hide, -anyway. Come to the watch tower and you'll see."</p> - -<p>He followed her through the house and up two flights to the roof of the -tower on the southeast corner. As they stepped into the night air, the -great organ sound enwrapped them, and Cole saw the southern sky ablaze, -with flyers swooping and black motes hurtling through the glare. -Interwoven pencils of ion-flame flickered in the verging darkness and -the ripping sound of heavy blasters came faintly through the music.</p> - -<p>A hundred-yard section of the barrier was down in flames, and the -great, bobbing, leggy shapes of stompers came bounding through it while -others glided down from the top. Flyers swarmed like angry bees around -the top of the break, firing mounted blasters and tearing away great -masses of wood. The powerful chord of music swelled unendurably in -volume and exultant richness until Cole cried out and shook the girl.</p> - -<p>"It plucks at my backbone and I can't think! Pia, Pia, what <i>is</i> that -music?"</p> - -<p>"It's the stompers singing," she shouted back.</p> - -<p>He shook his head. Bidgrass Station seethed, lights everywhere, roads -crowded with trucks. Around the base of the breakthrough a defense -perimeter flared with the blue-violet of blasters and the angry red -of flame guns. As Cole watched it was overrun and darkened in place -after place, only to reform further out as reserves came into action. -Expanding jerkily, pushed this way and that, the flaming periphery -looked like a fire-membrane stressed past endurance by some savage -contained thing. With a surge of emotion Cole realized it was men down -there, with their guns and their puny muscles and their fragile lives -against two-legged, boat-shaped monsters twenty feet high.</p> - -<p>"Sheer power of biomass," he thought. "Even their shot-down bodies are -missiles, to crush and break." A sudden eddy in the flaming defense -line brought it to within half a mile of the house. Cole could see men -die against the glare, in the great music.</p> - -<p>The girl pressed close to him and whimpered, "Oh, start the fire mist! -Morwenna pity them!" Cole put his arm tightly around her.</p> - -<p>A truck convoy pulled up by the manor house and soldiers were -everywhere, moving quickly and surely. A group hauled a squat, vertical -cylinder on wheels crashing through the ornamental shrubbery. Violet -glowing metal vaning wound about it in a double helix.</p> - -<p>"It's a Corbin powercaster," Pia shouted into Cole's ear. "It -broadcasts power to the portable blasters so the men don't need to -carry pack charges or lose time changing them."</p> - -<p>Cole looked at the soldiers. The same big men he saw every day, the -same closed and hostile faces, but now a wild and savage joy shone in -them. This was their human meaning to themselves, their justification. -The red boundary roared down on them, they would be dying in a few -minutes, but they were braced and fiercely ready.</p> - -<p>The music swelled impossibly loud and Cole knew that he too was going -to die with them, despised outworlder that he was. He hugged the girl -fiercely and tried to kiss her.</p> - -<p>"Let me in your world, Pia!" he cried.</p> - -<p>She pulled away. "Look! The fire mist! Oh thank you, good Morwenna!"</p> - -<p>He saw it, a rose pink paled by nearer flame, washing lazily against -the black cliff edge of Lundy Forest. It grew, boiling up over the -barrier in places, spilling through the gap, and the great, agonizing -chord of music muted and dwindled. The flame-perimeter began shrinking -and still the fire mist grew, staining the night sky north and south -beyond eye-reach. The song became a mournful wailing and the soldiers -in the garden moved forward for the mopping up.</p> - -<p>"Pia, I've got to go down there. I've got to see a stomper close up."</p> - -<p>She was trembling and crying with reaction. "I think they'll be too -busy to mind," she said. "But don't go too far in ... Flinter."</p> - -<p>He ran down the stairs and through the unguarded gate toward the -fought-over area. Wounded men were being helped or carried past him, -but no one noticed him. He found a stomper, blaster-torn but not yet -dead, and stopped to watch the four-foot tripart beak snap feebly and -the dark wings writhe and clutch. The paired vertical eyelid folds -rolled apart laterally to reveal three eyes under a single triangular -conjunctiva, lambent in the flame-shot darkness. Soldiers passed -unheeding while Cole stood and wondered. Then a hand jerked violently -at his arm. It was Morgan.</p> - -<p>Morgan wordlessly marched him off to a knot of men nearer the mopping -up line and pushed him before Garth Bidgrass. Sweat dripped from -flaring eyebrows down the grim old face, and over a blistered right -cheek. A heavy blaster hung from the old man's body harness.</p> - -<p>"Well, Mr. Cole, is this data?" he asked dourly. "Have you come out to -save stompers?"</p> - -<p>"I wish I could have saved men, Mr. Bidgrass. I wanted to help," Cole -said.</p> - -<p>"Another like this and you may have to," Bidgrass said, less sharply. -"It was close work, lad."</p> - -<p>"I can help Dr. Rudall. You must have many wounded."</p> - -<p>"Good, good," the old man said approvingly. "The men will take that -kindly and so will I."</p> - -<p>"One favor," Cole said. "Will you have your men save half a dozen -living stompers for me? I have another idea."</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know," Bidgrass said. "The men won't like it ... but a -few days, maybe ... yes, I'll save you some."</p> - -<p>"Thank you, sir." Cole turned away, catching a thick scowl from Morgan. -Overhead the three moons were strung in a ragged line across the sky, -and Hoggy Darn was rising.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole worked around the clock at the hospital, sterilizing instruments -and helping Dr. Rudall with dressings. He was surprised to see other -doctors, many nurses and numerous biofield projectors as modern as any -on Belconti. Some of the wounded were women. All of them, wounded and -unwounded, seemed in a shared mood of exaltation. He caught glimpses of -Pia, working too. She seemed less poised for flight, tired but happy, -and she smiled at him.</p> - -<p>After three days Cole saw his stompers in a stone-floored pen at the -slaughter house. Earth breed cattle lowed in adjacent pens. Four -stompers still lived, their bodies blaster torn and their legs crudely -hamstrung so they could not stand. They lay with heads together and the -sun glinted on the blue-black, iridescent scales covering the domed -heads and long necks.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="650" height="421" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Three shock-headed butchers stood by, assigned to help him. Their -distaste for Cole and the job was so evident that he hurried through -the gross dissection of the two dead stompers at one end of the same -pen. After an hour he thought to ask, as best he could, whether -the living stompers were being given food and water. When one man -understood, black hatred crossed his face and he spat on Cole's shoe. -The ecologist flushed, then shrugged and got on with the job.</p> - -<p>It brought him jarring surprises culminating in a tentative conclusion -late on the second day. Then the situation began to fall apart. Working -alone for the moment, Cole opened the stomach of the second stomper and -found in it half-digested parts of a human body. Skull and humerus size -told him it was one of the giants.</p> - -<p>First pulling a flap of mesentery over the stomach incision, Cole -went into the office and phoned Dr. Rudall to come at once. Coming -out, he heard angry shouts and saw two of his helpers running to join -the third, who stood pointing into the carcass. Then all three seized -axes, ran across the pen and began hacking at the necks of the living -stompers.</p> - -<p>The great creatures boomed and writhed, clacking their beaks and half -rising on their wings, unable to defend themselves. The butchers howled -curses, and the stompers broke into a mournful wailing harmonized with -flesh-creeping subsonics. Cole shouted and pleaded, finally wrested an -axe from one and mounted guard over the last living stomper. He stood -embattled, facing a growing crowd of butchers from the plant, when Dr. -Rudall arrived.</p> - -<p>"Dr. Rudall, explain to these maniacs why I must keep this stomper -alive!" he cried angrily.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, they will kill it in spite of you."</p> - -<p>"But Garth Bidgrass ordered—"</p> - -<p>"In spite of him. There are factors you don't understand, Mr. Cole. You -are yourself in great danger." The old doctor's hands trembled.</p> - -<p>Cole thought rapidly. "All right, will they wait a day? I want tissue -explants for a reason I'll explain later. If you'll help me work up the -nutrient tonight—"</p> - -<p>"Our pisky nutrient will work. We can take your samples within the -hour. Let me call the hospital."</p> - -<p>He spoke rapidly to the glowering butchers in the vernacular, then -hurried into the building. An hour later the stomper was dead, and -Hawkins drove Cole and the doctor back to their lab with the explants.</p> - -<p>"I've almost got it," Cole said happily. "Several weeks and two more -bits of information and I'll tell you. In spite of all odds, one man -against a planet—this will found my professional reputation back on -Belconti."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Once again Cole faced Garth Bidgrass across the round table in the -library. This time he felt vastly different.</p> - -<p>"The piskies are really baby stompers," he said, watching the craggy -old face for its reaction. It did not change.</p> - -<p>"I suspected it when I saw how the smaller eggs fused with the -large egg, with continuous laminae," Cole went on. "There was the -morphological resemblance, too. But when I dissected two mature -stompers I found immature eggs. Even before entry into the oviduct what -you call pisky eggs are filamented to the main body of cytoplasm."</p> - -<p>Disappointingly, Bidgrass did not marvel. He squinted and cocked -his head. Finally he said, "Do you mean the piskies lay their eggs -internally in the stompers?"</p> - -<p>"Impossible! I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue -and they are <i>identical</i>, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now -is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But -that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food -source—that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all -through Carina sector."</p> - -<p>He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and -stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled.</p> - -<p>"I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is -harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. Stop it for a few decades, -or set aside breeding areas, and you can have a whole planetful again."</p> - -<p>The old man scowled and stood up. "We'll not stop," he said gruffly. -"There are still plenty of stompers. Remember last month." He walked to -the end window and back, then sat down again still looking grim.</p> - -<p>"Don't be too sure," Cole objected. "I haven't finished my report. -I made a Harvey analysis on the tissues of one stomper. It involves -culturing clones, measuring growth rates and zones of migration and -working out a complex set of ratios—I won't go into details. But when -I fitted my figures into Harvey's formula it indicated <i>unmistakably</i> -that the stompers have a critical biomass."</p> - -<p>"What does that mean?"</p> - -<p>"Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each -individual is only a part. Can you do that?"</p> - -<p>"Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright.</p> - -<p>"Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any -moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of -critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater -animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into -extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a -species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago -may <i>already</i> have extinguished them as a species?"</p> - -<p>Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light.</p> - -<p>"Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula—do <i>human beings</i> have a -critical biomass?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, biologically," Cole said, surprised. "But in our case a varying -part of the greater animal is carried in our culture, our symbol -system, and is not directly dependent on biomass. A mathematical -anthropologist could tell you more than I can."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass placed his hands palm down on the table and leaned back in -sudden resolution.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Cole, you force me to tell you something I had been minded to -hold back. I already know a good part of what you have just told me. I -<i>wish</i> to exterminate the stompers and I will do so. But I meant for -you to go back to Belconti thinking it was the piskies."</p> - -<p>Cole propped his chin on folded hands and raised his eyebrows. "I half -suspected that. But I fooled you, didn't I?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and I admire you for it. Now let me tell you more. Stomper egg -brings a very high price and I have kept it higher by storing large -reserves. When it is known the stomper is extinct, the rarity value of -my reserve will be enormous. It will mean an end of this harsh life for -me and for my grandniece after me."</p> - -<p>Cole's lip curled, and red mounted in the old man's face as he talked, -but he went on doggedly.</p> - -<p>"I want the pisky theory and the news of stomper extinction to be -released through Belconti University. The news will spread faster and -be more readily believed and I will avoid a certain moral stigma—"</p> - -<p>"And now I've crossed you up!"</p> - -<p>"You can still do it. I can ease your conscience with a settlement -of—say—five thousand solars a year for life."</p> - -<p>Cole leaped up and leaned across the table.</p> - -<p>"No!" he snapped. "Old man, you don't know how ecologists feel about -the greed-murder of species. What I <i>will</i> do is work through Belconti -on your government at Car Truro, warn it that you are about to destroy -an important planetary resource."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red.</p> - -<p>"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which -you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction. -Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and -you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally -have reported it via the next <i>Gorbals</i> to Belconti and sent along your -notes to date—do you follow me?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. A threat."</p> - -<p>"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it -would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door, -only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and -smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before.</p> - -<p>"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?"</p> - -<p>"Uncle Garth says now that you know—" She broke off, blushing still -more.</p> - -<p>"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia. -Here, let me."</p> - -<p>He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his -table. Pia <i>was</i> lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth -roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the -small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her -round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced -and she looked more frightened than ever.</p> - -<p>"You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the -woods, Pia. What <i>are</i> you always afraid of?"</p> - -<p>Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said. -"What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear."</p> - -<p>They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate -dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian <i>kresch</i> to follow it. Cole -splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and -held up his own.</p> - -<p>"Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half -mockingly.</p> - -<p>Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a -home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh -Flinter, what you must think—" She began crying in earnest.</p> - -<p>He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about -Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for <i>Gorbals'</i> tender."</p> - -<p>She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both. -Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to -take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and -squeezed her hand in saying good night.</p> - -<p>She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his -eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small -flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He -followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan -bulking darkly ten feet away.</p> - -<p>"Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the -black bar of eyebrow.</p> - -<p>Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move.</p> - -<p>"You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and -heading east.</p> - -<p>"He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him."</p> - -<p>Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into -blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of -Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest -towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land.</p> - -<p>He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area. -Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the -planet's low gravity.</p> - -<p>The resilient surface gave off a fragrance as they walked about on -it. In a sea all around their island, branches of the great forest -trees thrust up, leafy and flowering and bedecked with a profusion of -epiphytal plants in many shapes and colors. Bright-hued true birds -darted from shadow into sunlight and back again, twittering and crying.</p> - -<p>"It's beautiful," he said. And so was Pia, he thought, watching her on -tiptoe reaching to a great white flower. The attractive firmness of -her skin, the roundness and dimpling, <i>ripeness</i>, that was the word he -wanted. And her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Pia, you're not frightened any more!"</p> - -<p>It was true. The long-lashed brown eyes were merry as nature meant them -to be.</p> - -<p>"It's peaceful and safe," she said. "When I come to the forest top I -never want to go back to Bidgrass Station."</p> - -<p>"Too bad we must, and let's pretend we don't," he said, pointing to a -cluster of red-gold fruits. "Are those good to eat?"</p> - -<p>"Too good. That's the trouble with New Cornwall."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Race you back to the flyer," she cried, and danced away, bare limbs -twinkling in the sunlight. He floundered after.</p> - -<p>The lunch was good and she had brought along the rest of the bottle of -<i>kresch</i>. They sipped it seated beside the flyer while she tried to -teach him New Cornish folk songs. Her small, clear singing blended with -that of the birds around them.</p> - -<p>"I catch parts of it," he said. "As an undergraduate a few years ago I -studied the pre-space poets. I can read Old English, but it is strange -to my ear."</p> - -<p>"I could teach you."</p> - -<p>"I love one wry-witted ancient named Robert Graves. How does it go: -<i>If strange things happen where she is</i>—no, I can't recall it now."</p> - -<p>"I could write the songs out for you."</p> - -<p>"The beauty is in you and your voice. Just sing."</p> - -<p>She sang, something about a king with light streaming from his hair, -coming naked out of the forest to bring love into his kingdom. Small -white clouds drifted in the blue sky, and blue Annis slept just above -the rustling branches that guarded the secret of their island. He -listened and watched her.</p> - -<p>She was softly rounded as the clouds, and her clustered brown curls -made an island of the vivid face expressing the song she sang so -bird-like and naturally. She was vital, compact, self closed, -perfect—like one of the great flowers nodding in the breeze along the -island shore—and his heart yearned across to her.</p> - -<p>"Pia," he said, breaking into the song, "do you really want to get away -from New Cornwall?"</p> - -<p>She nodded, eyes suddenly wide, lips still parted.</p> - -<p>"Come with me to Belconti then. Right now. We'll cross to Car Truro and -wait there for <i>Gorbals</i>."</p> - -<p>The light dimmed in her face. "Why Car Truro?"</p> - -<p>"Pia, it's hard to tell you. I'm afraid of your great-uncle.... I want -to contact the planetary government."</p> - -<p>"It's no good at Car Truro, Flinter. Can't you just come back to -Bidgrass Station and ... and ... do what Uncle Garth wants?"</p> - -<p>He could barely hear the last. The fear was back in her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Do you know what he wants?"</p> - -<p>"Yes." The brown curls drooped.</p> - -<p>Cole stood up. "So <i>that's</i> the reason—well, I'll not do it, do you -hear? Garth Bidgrass is an evil, greedy old man and maybe it runs in -the blood."</p> - -<p>She jumped up, eyes more angry now than fearful. "He is not! He's -trying to save you! He's good and noble and ... and <i>great</i>! If you -only knew the truth—Morwenna forgive me!" She clapped her hand to her -mouth.</p> - -<p>"<i>Tell</i> me the truth then, since I'm still being made a Belconti fool -of. What <i>is</i> the truth?"</p> - -<p>"I've said too much. Now I'll have to tell Uncle Garth—" She began -crying.</p> - -<p>"Tell him what? That I know he's a liar? That you failed as a—" He -could not quite say the word.</p> - -<p>"It's true I was supposed to make you love me and I tried and I can't -because ... because ..." she ended in incoherent sobbing.</p> - -<p>Cole stroked her hair and comforted her. "I've been hasty again," -he apologized. "I'm still running in the dark, and that makes for -stumbles. Let's go back, and I'll talk to your great-uncle again."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the morning Garth Bidgrass, looking tired and stern, invited Cole -to breakfast with the family. Cole had never been in the large, -wood-panelled room overlooking the south garden through broad windows. -Pia was subdued, Mrs. Vignoli strangely cheerful. The meal, served by a -giant maid, was the customary plain porridge and fried meat.</p> - -<p>The women left when the maid cleared the table. Bidgrass poured more -coffee, then leaned back and looked across at Cole.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Cole, I did you a wrong in having you sent here. I kept you in the -dark for your own protection. Can you believe that?"</p> - -<p>"I can believe that you believe it."</p> - -<p>"You came too soon. You were too curious, too smart. I have had to -compound that wrong with others to Pia and my own good name."</p> - -<p>Cole smiled. "I know I'm curious. But why can't I know—"</p> - -<p>"You can, lad. You've nosed through to it and I'll tell you if you -insist. But it will endanger you even more and I wish you would forego -it."</p> - -<p>Cole shook his head. "I'm an ecologist. If I have the big picture, -maybe I can help."</p> - -<p>"I thought you'd say that. Well, history first, and settle yourself -because it <i>is</i> a big picture and not a pretty one. This planet was -settled directly from Earth in the year 145 After Space, almost eight -hundred years ago. It seemed ideal—native protein was actually -superior to Earth protein in human metabolism. Easy climate, -geophysically stable, no diseases—but planetology was not much of a -science in those days.</p> - -<p>"The colony won political independence in 202 A.S. It had a thriving -trade in luxury foods, mostly stomper egg concentrates—freight was -dear then. Settlements radiated out from Car Truro across the plains. -Food was to be had for the taking in the mild climate and it was a kind -of paradise. <i>Paradise!</i>"</p> - -<p>The old man's voice rang hard on the last word and Cole stiffened. -Bidgrass went on.</p> - -<p>"Early in the third century our social scientists began to worry about -the unnatural way the culture graded from the complexity of Car Truro -to a simple pattern of mud huts and food gathering along the frontiers. -Children of successive generations were taller than their parents -and much less willing or able to use symbols. By the time a minority -decided the trend should be reversed, the majority of the people could -not be roused to see a danger."</p> - -<p>"Earth life is normally resistant to low-grav gigantism," Cole said. "I -wonder—"</p> - -<p>"It was all the native foods they ate, but mainly stomper egg. There -are more powerful and quicker-acting substances in the forest fungi, -but then the population was all in the eastern grasslands, where the -stompers ranged."</p> - -<p>"I read they were a plains animal."</p> - -<p>"Yes, and harmless too, except for their eggs. Well, the minority set -up a dictatorship and began cultivating Earth plants and animals. -They passed laws limiting the mechanical simplicity of households -and regulating diets. They took children from subnormal parents and -educated and fed them in camps. But the normals were too few and the -trend continued.</p> - -<p>"Shortly after mid-century the population reached the edge of the -southern forest, and there many were completely wild. They drifted -along the forest edge naked, without tools or fire or language or even -family groupings. Their average stature was nearly eight feet. The -normals knew they were losing. Can you imagine how they <i>felt</i>, lad?"</p> - -<p>Cole relaxed a little. "Ah ... yes, I can ... I imagine the fight was -inside them, too."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass nodded. "Yes, they were all tainted. But they fought. They -asked Earth for help and learned that Earth regarded them as tyrants -oppressing a simple, natural folk. The economy broke down and more -had to be imported. The only way to pay was in stomper egg exports. -In spite of that, in about the year 300, they decided to restrict the -stompers to the western part of the grasslands, thousands of miles -beyond the human range.</p> - -<p>"The egg hunters began killing piskies and grown stompers. They killed -off the great, stupid herds of darv cattle on which the stompers fed. -The stompers that survived became wary and hostile, good at hiding and -fierce to attack. But killing off the eastern darv herds broke them and -in a generation they vanished from the eastern plains. Things seemed to -improve and they thought the tide was turned. Then, in the year 374, -came what our bards now call the Black Learning."</p> - -<p>"Bards?" Cole said. He drained his coffee cup.</p> - -<p>"Morgan could sing you this history to shiver the flesh on your bones," -the old man said, pouring more coffee. "What I am telling you is -nowhere written down, but it is engraved in thousands of hearts. Well, -to go on.</p> - -<p>"We knew some of the stompers had gone into the southern forest—you -see, they have to incubate their eggs in direct sunlight and we kept -finding them along the forest edge. But we had assumed they were eating -the snakes and slugs and fungi native to the forest floor. Now we -learned that a large population of wild humans had grown up unknown to -us in the deep forest—and the stompers were eating them.</p> - -<p>"You have seen our forests from a distance, lad. Do you realize how -impossible it is to patrol them? We hadn't the men, money or machines -for it. We appealed, and learned we would get no help from any planet -in Carina sector except for pay. But the egg market fell off, and our -income with it. Ships did come, however, small ones in stealth, to -ground along the forest edge and capture the young women of the wild -people."</p> - -<p>Cole struck the table. "How rotten!..." His voice failed.</p> - -<p>Bidgrass nodded. "We call that the Lesser Shame. The young women were -without personality or language, yet tractable and responsive to -affection. They were flawless in health and physique, and eight feet -tall. They could be sold for fantastic prices on loosely organized -frontier planets and yes, even to Earth, as we learned. Something dark -in a man responds to that combination. You feel it as I speak—no, -don't protest, I know. We had long had that trouble among our own -people."</p> - -<p>"Did my own people of Belconti—" Again Cole's voice failed. He brushed -back his red hair angrily.</p> - -<p>"Belconti was new then, still a colony. Well, that was the <i>help</i> we -got. We hadn't the power to fight stompers, let alone slave raiders. -But the Galactic Patrol was just getting organized and the sector -admiral agreed to keep a ship in orbit blockading us. We broke off all -contact except with Tristan, and the Patrol let only one freight line -come through to handle our off-planet trade. It was then we began to -hate the other planets. We call it the Turning Away.</p> - -<p>"Now we are forgotten, almost a myth. The Patrol ship has been gone -since two hundred years ago. But we remember."</p> - -<p>"I wish I'd known this," Cole said. "Mr. Bidgrass, things are greatly -changed in Carina sector—"</p> - -<p>Bidgrass held up his hand. "I know, lad. That's why you're here, and -I'll come to it. But let me go on. Early in the fifth century we -decided to exterminate the stompers altogether and in two decades -killed off all the darv cattle. But the stompers went into the forests -in the south and west and from there came out to raid the plains. Not -to kill, but to carry off normal and semi-wild people into the forest -for breeding stock. A stomper's wing is more flexible than a hand. One -of them can carry half a dozen men and women and run a thousand miles -in a day. Some fungi in the forest can dull a man in an hour and take -his mind in a week. Few who were carried in ever came out again.</p> - -<p>"This went on, lad, for <i>centuries</i>. From our fortified towns and -hunting camps we ranged along the forest edge like wolves. The stompers -<i>must</i> lay their eggs in direct sunlight. That forced them out where -we could get at them, into clearings and uplands and along the forest -edge. We killed all we could.</p> - -<p>"We found rhythms in their life pattern keyed to our four moons. When -the three lady moons form a tall triangle, the stompers group in the -open to mill and dance and sing. About every three months this happens -over several days and in old times it was the peak raid season. It was -also our chance to kill. The people call the configuration the House of -the Maidens."</p> - -<p>Cole nodded vigorously. "I remember that. Strange how lunar periodicity -is bionative in every planet having a moon."</p> - -<p>"It saved us here, praise Morwenna, but once almost destroyed us. There -is a longer, sixty-two year cycle called the Nights of Hoggy Darn. Then -the red moon passes through the House of the Maidens and the stompers -go completely berserk. The first one after the war was joined fully, in -434, caught us unprepared and cost us more than three-fourths of our -normal population in the week that we remember as the Great Taking. -We were thrown back into Car Truro for decades and the stompers came -back on the plains. They snatched people from the streets of Car Truro -itself. That we call the Dark Time."</p> - -<p>The old man's craggy face shadowed with sorrow and he sighed, leaning -back. Cole opened his mouth but Bidgrass leaned forward again, new, -fierce energy in his voice.</p> - -<p>"We rallied and came back. We fought from the air and killed them in -large numbers when we caught them in the open on Maiden nights. We -drove them back off the plains and harried them along the forest edges -and in the upland clearings where they came to lay eggs. We gathered -all the eggs we could find. They defended their eggs and caused us -steady losses. But we fought.</p> - -<p>"We built our strategy on the Maidens and in time we drove the enemy -out of the southern forest and into the west. Then we crowded him into -Lundy Peninsula, made it a sanctuary for a hundred years to draw him -in. When I was your age we fought out the last Nights of Hoggy Darn a -few miles east of here. Ten years later we finished Bidgrass Station -and the barrier and the continent was free of stompers."</p> - -<p>Cole shifted his chair to get the sun off his neck. "I hardly know what -to say," he began, but Bidgrass raised his hand.</p> - -<p>"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century -things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began -a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people -along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those -they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be -trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had -few machines except what we need for war. Their children, on an Earth -diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and -fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has -always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for -reclamation work.</p> - -<p>"Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now. -That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on -the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a -queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of -religion along the way. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully -drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and -prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty -well believe it myself and even you believe some of it."</p> - -<p>Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table.</p> - -<p>"Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you -spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill -him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and -meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper -and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to -hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad."</p> - -<p>"I feel it, a little. I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an -ex-wild, isn't he?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I."</p> - -<p>Cole got up. "Mind if I pull a curtain? That sun is hot."</p> - -<p>"No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll -ask for a fresh pot."</p> - -<p>Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much -more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew -his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't -have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they -changed from plains to forest. They learned to practise a gruesome kind -of animal husbandry—oh, I could tell you things. <i>Something</i> had to -figure it out."</p> - -<p>"I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on."</p> - -<p>"Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try -to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The -people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent -on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was.</p> - -<p>"But we spat in his face. We gathered his tribute and still took all -the eggs we could find in the inland clearings. We killed every stomper -we saw. Then, for the first time I think, Grandfather Stomper knew it -was war to the death. He began to fight as never before. Where once -a stomper would carry a captured egg hunter a hundred miles into the -forest and turn him loose, now it killed out of hand. They began making -mass attacks on the station and they didn't come to capture, they came -to kill. So it has gone for forty years now."</p> - -<p>The old man's voice changed, less fierce, more solemn. He sat up -straight.</p> - -<p>"Lundy Forest is near eight hundred thousand square miles. No one -knows how many millions of wild humans are in it or how many scores of -thousands of stompers. But this I knew long before you came to tell -me about critical biomass: Grandfather Stomper is very near to death. -He ruled this planet for a million years and he fought me for near a -thousand, but his time is come.</p> - -<p>"Don't laugh, lad, at what I am about to say now. Mass belief, blind -faith over centuries of people like our ex-wilds and semi-wilds, can do -strange things. To them and even to myself I <i>represent</i> Grandfather -Man, and from them a power comes into me that is more than myself. I -know in a <i>direct</i> way that in the Nights of Hoggy Darn to come I will -at long last kill Grandfather Stomper and the war will be won. That -time is only eight weeks away."</p> - -<p>"Then I'll still be here. Grand—Mr. Bidgrass, I want to fight with -you."</p> - -<p>"You may and welcome, lad. Must, even, to redeem yourself. Because, for -what you know now, your life is forfeit if the ex-wilds suspect."</p> - -<p>"Why so? Are you not <i>proud</i>—" Cole half stood and Bidgrass waved him -down.</p> - -<p>"Consider, lad. For centuries across the inhabited planets people of -wealth and influence have been eating stomper egg, serving it at state -banquets. But now <i>you</i> know it is human flesh at one remove. How will -they feel toward us when they learn that?"</p> - -<p>"How should they feel? Man has to be consumed at some trophic level. -His substance is as much in the biogeochemical cycles as that of a -pig or a chicken. I suppose we <i>do</i> feel he should cap the end of a -food chain and not short-cycle through himself, but I'm damned if I'm -horrified—"</p> - -<p>"Any non-ecologist would be. You know that."</p> - -<p>The giant maid came in with a pot of coffee and clean cups. Bidgrass -poured and both men sipped in silence. Then Bidgrass said slowly, -"Do you know what the people here call outworlders? Cannibals! For -centuries we have had the feeling that we have been selling our own -flesh to the outworlds in exchange for the weapons to free Grandfather -Man."</p> - -<p>He stood up, towering over Cole, and his voice deepened.</p> - -<p>"It has left bone-deep marks: of guilt, for making the outworlders -unknowing cannibals; of hatred, because we feel the outworlds left -us no choice. And shame, lad, deep, deep shame, more than a man can -bear, to have been degraded to food animals here in our forests -and across the opulent tables of the other planets. Morgan is only -second-generation normal—his father was killed beside me, last Hoggy -Darn. If Morgan knew you had learned our secret he would kill you out -of hand. I could not stop him. Do you understand now why we didn't -want you until next <i>Gorbals</i>? Do you see into the hell you have been -skating over?"</p> - -<p>Cole nodded and rubbed his chin. "Yes, I do. But I don't despise -Morgan, I think I love him. On Belconti, Grandfather Man is mainly -concerned to titillate his own appetites, but here, well ... how do -I feel it?... I think what you have just told me makes me more proud -to be a man than I have ever been before. I will carry through the -deception of Belconti University with all my heart. Can't Morgan -understand that?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and kill you anyway. Because you <i>know</i>. You will not lightly be -forgiven that."</p> - -<p>Cole shook his head helplessly. "Well <i>dammit</i> then—"</p> - -<p>"Now, now, there's a way out," Bidgrass said, sitting down again. "The -prophecies all foretell a change of heart after Grandfather Stomper -dies. They speak of joy, love, good feeling. Morgan did agree to your -coming here—he wants to hide the past as much as I do and he could see -the value of my plan. In the time of good feeling I hope he will accept -you."</p> - -<p>"I hope so too," Cole said. "Morgan is a strange man. Why is Pia so -afraid of him?"</p> - -<p>"I'll tell you that, lad—maybe it will help you to appreciate your -own danger. Some few of us are educated on Tristan. Twenty-three years -ago my younger brother took my niece Flada there. She ran away and -married a Tristanian named Ralph Vignoli. My brother persuaded them to -come back and live at our installation there, and Ralph swore to keep -secret the little he knew.</p> - -<p>"The ex-wilds of New Cornwall kept wanting Ralph to come here so they -could be sure of the secret. He kept refusing and finally they sent an -emissary to kill him. My brother was killed protecting him. I stepped -in then with a compromise, persuaded Ralph to come here for the sake of -his wife and daughter. Pia was seven at the time.</p> - -<p>"Ralph was a good man and fought well in battles, but two years later -Morgan and some others came to the house in my absence and took him -away. They took him to a clearing in Lundy Forest, where the stompers -come to lay eggs, stripped off his clothing and left him. That was -so the stompers would not take him for an egg hunter and kill him -outright, but would carry him into the forest like they do with strayed -wild stock. Morgan said the command came to him in a dream.</p> - -<p>"I think Pia feels she is partly responsible for Ralph's death. I -think she sometimes fears Morgan will dream about her, her Tristanian -blood...."</p> - -<p>"Poor Pia," Cole said softly. "These <i>years</i> of grief and fear...."</p> - -<p>"They'll be ended come Hoggy Darn again, Morwenna grant. Don't you -grieve her with your death too, lad. Stay close to the house, in the -house."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass rose and gulped the last of his coffee standing.</p> - -<p>"I must go, I'm late," he said, more cheerfully than Cole had ever -heard his voice. "I have a conference with General Arscoate, our -military leader, whom you'll meet soon."</p> - -<p>He went out. Cole went out too, thoughts wrestling with feelings, -looking for Pia.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the days that followed Cole took his meals with the family except -when there were guests not in Bidgrass' confidence. The doors into the -main house remained unlocked and he saw much of Pia, but she seemed -unexpectedly elusive and remote. Cole, busy with his report to Belconti -University, had little time to wonder about it.</p> - -<p>He faked statistics wholesale and cited dozens of nonexistent New -Cornish authorities. To his real data indicating critical biomass he -added imaginary values for the parameters of climate, range, longevity, -fertility period and Ruhan indices to get an estimated figure. Then he -faked field census reports going back fifty years, and drew a curve -dipping below critical ten years before his arrival. He made the latest -field census show new biomass forty-two percent below critical and -juggled figures to make the curve extrapolate to zero in twelve more -years.</p> - -<p>It pained him in his heart to leave out the curious inverse -reproduction data. But it was a masterpiece of deception that should -put the seal on his doctorate, and because it reported the extinction -of a planetary dominant, he knew it would make the journals and the -general news all through the sector.</p> - -<p>The night he finished it, working late in the library, Pia brought him -milk and cookies and sat with him as he explained what he had done.</p> - -<p>"It's right," he defended himself to her against his scholar's -conscience. "Humans on New Cornwall are a threatened species too. The -secret must be hidden forever."</p> - -<p>"Yes," she agreed soberly. "I think if all the sector knew, the -ex-wilds would literally die of shame and rage. Being wild is not so -bad, but—that other!" She shuddered under her gray dress.</p> - -<p>"Pia, sometimes I feel you're still avoiding me. Surely now it's all -right and genuine between us."</p> - -<p>She smiled sadly. "I'll bring you trouble, with Morgan. Father came to -New Cornwall because of me."</p> - -<p>"But I didn't. I've been thinking I may <i>stay</i>, partly because of you. -You've been afraid so long it's habitual."</p> - -<p>"Strangely, Flinter, I don't feel it as fear any more. It's like bowing -with sadness, my strength to run is gone. My old dreams—Morgan coming -for me—I have them every night now."</p> - -<p>"Morgan! Always Morgan!"</p> - -<p>She shook her head and smiled faintly. "He has a dark, poetic power. He -is what he is, just like the stompers. I feel ... not hate, not even -fear ... a kind of <i>dread</i>."</p> - -<p>He stroked the back of her hand and she pulled it away.</p> - -<p>"An old song runs through my head," she went on. "A prophecy that -Grandfather Stomper cannot be killed while outworld blood pumps through -any heart on the planet. I feel like my own enemy, like ... like your -enemy. You should not have come until next <i>Gorbals</i>. Flinter, <i>stay -away from me</i>!"</p> - -<p>He talked soothingly, to little avail. When they parted he said -heartily, "Forget those silly prophecies, Pia. I'll look out for you."</p> - -<p>Privately, he wondered how.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole sat beside Pia and across the food-laden table from General -Arscoate, a large pink-faced man in middle life.</p> - -<p>"It's an old and proven strategy, Mr. Cole," the general explained. -"When Hoggy Darn starts we will harass the enemy from the air in all -but one of the fourteen sizable open spaces in Lundy Forest. That one -is Emrys Upland, the largest. They will concentrate in Emrys, more each -night, until the climactic night of peak frenzy. Then we come down with -all the men and women we can muster and we kill. We may go on killing -stragglers for years after, but Grandfather Stomper will die on that -night."</p> - -<p>"Why not kill from the air?"</p> - -<p>"More firepower on the ground. I can only lift ninety-four flyers all -told. But I will shuttle twenty thousand fighting men into Emrys in an -hour or two on the big night."</p> - -<p>"So quickly? How can you?" Cole laid down his fork.</p> - -<p>"They will be waiting in the forest top all around the periphery, in -places where we are already building weapons dumps. In the first days -of harrying, we will stage in the fighters."</p> - -<p>"Morgan will visit each group in the forest top and sing our history," -Bidgrass said from the head of the table. "On the evening of the -climactic night, as Hoggy Darn rises, they will take a sacramental meal -of stomper egg. At no other time is it eaten on this planet."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Vignoli looked down. "Garth!" Arscoate said.</p> - -<p>"The lad must know, must take it with us," Bidgrass said. "Lad, the -real reason for not killing from the air is that the people <i>need</i> -to kill personally, with their feet on the ground. So our poetry has -always described that last, great fight. I must <i>personally</i> kill -Grandfather Stomper."</p> - -<p>Cole toyed with his knife. "But he is only a metaphor, a totem image—"</p> - -<p>"The people believe in an actual individual who is the stomper -counterpart of Garth here," the general broke in. "You know, Mr. Cole, -the stompers we kill ordinarily are all females. The males are smaller, -with a white crest, and they keep to the deep forest except on Hoggy -Darn nights. Maybe the frenzy then has something to do with mating—no -one knows. But Garth will kill the largest male he can find. The -people, and I expect Garth and I as well, are going to believe that he -has killed Grandfather Stomper in person."</p> - -<p>The general sipped water and looked sternly over his glass at Cole. -Cole glanced at Pia, who seemed lost in a dream of her own, not there -to them.</p> - -<p>"I see. A symbol," he agreed.</p> - -<p>"Not the less real," Arscoate said tartly. "Symbols both mean and are. -Garth here is a symbol too and that is why, old as he is, he must be -in the thick of it. He is like the ancient battle flags of romantic -pre-space history. People before now have actually <i>seen</i> Grandfather -Stomper. I am <i>not</i> a superstitious backworlder, Mr. Cole, but—"</p> - -<p>Cole raised a placatory hand. "I know you are not, general. Forgive me -if I seemed to suggest it."</p> - -<p>"Let's have wine," Bidgrass said, pushing back his chair. "We'll take -it in the parlor and Pia can sing for us."</p> - -<p>When General Arscoate said good-night he told Cole not to worry, that -he would have reliable guards at the manor gate during Garth Bidgrass' -absence in Car Truro.</p> - -<p>"I meant to tell you and Pia in the morning, lad," Bidgrass said. -"Arscoate and I must go to Car Truro. There's heartburning there over -who gets to fight and who must stay behind. It will be only two days."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole felt uneasy all day. He spent most of it writing the covering -letter for his report and phrasing his resignation from the university -field staff. He wrote personal letters to his uncle and a few friends. -After dinner he finally signed the official letters and took the -completed report to Bidgrass' desk. Then he went to bed and slept -soundly.</p> - -<p>Pia wakened him with frantic shaking.</p> - -<p>"Dress quickly, Flinter. The guard at the gate was just changed and -it's not time."</p> - -<p>She darted out to the hall window while he struggled with clothing, -then back again.</p> - -<p>"<i>Quickly</i>, darling! Morgan's crossing the garden, with men. Follow me."</p> - -<p>She led him through the kitchen and out a pantry window, then stooping -along the base of a hedge to where a flowering tree overshadowed the -garden wall.</p> - -<p>"I planned this, out of sight of guard posts, when I was a little -girl," she whispered. "I always knew—over, Flinter, quickly!"</p> - -<p>Outside was rough ground, a road, a wide field of cabbages and then -the barrier. Veiled Annis rode high and bluish in the clear sky. They -crossed the field in soaring leaps, and shouts pursued them. The girl -ran north a hundred yards behind the shadowy buttresses and squeezed -through a narrow crack between two huge timber baulks. Cole barely made -it, skinning his shoulders.</p> - -<p>"I found this too when I was a little girl," Pia whispered. "I had to -enlarge it when my hips grew, but only just enough. Morwenna grant -they're all too big!"</p> - -<p>"Morgan is, for sure," Cole said, rubbing his shoulder. "Pia, I <i>hate</i> -to run."</p> - -<p>"We must still run. My old plan was to reach here unseen, but now they -know and they'll come over the wall in flyers. We'll have to hide in -the thick brush near the forest edge until Uncle Garth returns."</p> - -<p>She pulled a basket out of the shadows.</p> - -<p>"Food," she said. "I brought it last night."</p> - -<p>He carried the basket and they raced across the half-mile belt to -concealment among high shrubbery and enormous mounds of fungi. Flyers -with floodlights came low along the wall and others quartered the -clearing. Cole and Pia stole nearer to the forest edge, into its -shadow. They did not sleep.</p> - -<p>Once he asked, "How about stompers?"</p> - -<p>"They're a chance," she whispered. "Morgan's <i>sure</i>."</p> - -<p>With daylight they saw four flyers patrolling instead of the usual one. -At their backs colossal blackish-gray, deeply rugose tree trunks eighty -feet in diameter rose up and up without a branch for many hundreds of -feet. Then branches jutted out enormously and the colorful cascade of -forest-top epiphytes came down the side and hung over their heads a -thousand feet above.</p> - -<p>Pia opened the food basket and they ate, seated on a bank. She wore her -brown dress, her finest, he had learned, and she had new red shoes. She -was quiet, as if tranced.</p> - -<p>Cole remembered the picnic on the forest top, the secret island of -beauty and innocence, and his heart stirred. He saw that the food -basket was the same one. He did not tell her his thoughts.</p> - -<p>They talked of trivial things or were silent for long periods. He held -her hand. Once she roused herself to say, "Tomorrow, about this time, -Uncle Garth will come looking for us." Shortly after, she gasped and -caught his arm, pointing.</p> - -<p>He peered, finally made a gestalt of broken outlines through the -shrubbery. It was a stomper, swinging its head nervously.</p> - -<p>"It smells us," she whispered. "Oh Flinter, forgive me darling. Take -off your clothes, <i>quickly</i>!"</p> - -<p>She undressed rapidly and hid her clothes. Cole undressed too, fear -prickling his skin, remembering what Bidgrass had told him. The stomper -moved nearer in a crackle of brush and stopped again.</p> - -<p>Man and girl knelt trembling under a fan of red-orange fungus. The girl -broke off a piece and motioned the man to do the same.</p> - -<p>"When it comes, pretend to eat," she breathed, almost inaudibly. "Don't -look up and don't say a word. Morwenna be with us now."</p> - -<p>The stomper's shadow fell across them. The man's skin prickled and -sweat sprang out. He looked at the girl and she was pale but not tense, -munching on her piece of fungus. She clicked her teeth faintly and he -knew it was a signal. He ate.</p> - -<p>The stomper lifted the man by his right shoulder. It was like two -fingers in a mitten holding him three times his own height off the -ground. He saw the beak and the eye and his sight dimmed in anguish.</p> - -<p>Then the right wing reached down and nipped the left shoulder of the -rosy girl-body placidly crouching there. It swung her up to face the -man momentarily under the great beak and the tri-corn eye, and their -own eyes met.</p> - -<p>Very faintly she smiled and her eyes tried desperately to say, "I'm -sorry" and "Goodbye, Flinter." His eyes cried in agony "No! No! I will -not have it so!"</p> - -<p>Then the two-fingered mitten became a nine-fingered mitten lapping him -in darkness that bounced and swayed and he knew that the stomper was -running into Lundy Forest. The wing was smooth and warm but not soft, -and it smelled of cinnamon and sandalwood. The odor overpowered him and -the man lapsed into stupor.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The man woke into a fantastic dream. Luminous surfaces stretched up to -be lost in gloom, with columns of darkness between. The spongy ground -on which he lay shone with faint blue light. Luminous, slanting walls -criss-crossed in front of him. Close at hand, behind and to the right, -enormous bracket fungi ascended into darkness in ten-foot steps that -supported a profusion of higher order fungi in many bizarre shapes.</p> - -<p>He stood up and he was alone.</p> - -<p>He climbed over a slanting root-buttress and saw her lying there. He -called her name and she rose lightly and came to him. Radiant face, -dimpled arms, round breasts, cradling hips: <i>his woman</i>. They embraced -without shame and she cried thanks to Morwenna.</p> - -<p>He said, "People have come out of the forest. What are the rules?"</p> - -<p>"We must eat only the seeds of the pure white fungus—that's the least -dangerous. We must walk and walk to keep our bodies so tired and hungry -that they use it all. We must keep to a straight line."</p> - -<p>"We'll live," he said. "Outside among our people, with our minds -whole. We'll alternate left and right each time we round a tree, to -hold our straight line. We'll come out somewhere."</p> - -<p>"I will follow. May Morwenna go with us."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="650" height="341" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The fantastic journey wound over great gnarled roots and buttresses -fusing and intermingling until it seemed that the root-complex was -one unthinkably vast organism with many trunks soaring half-seen into -endless darkness. Time had no feeling there. Space was a bubble of -ghostly light a man could leap across.</p> - -<p>Could leap and did, over and over, the woman following. The man climbed -a curiously regular, whitish root higher than his head and it writhed. -Then, swaying back along its length, came a great serpent head with -luminous ovoid eyes. While the man crouched in horror, waving the woman -back, the monstrous jaws gaped and the teeth were blunt choppers and -grinders, weirdly human looking. They bit hugely into a bracket fungus -and worried at it. Man and woman hurried on.</p> - -<p>Strength waned. The woman fell behind. The man turned back to her and -the light was failing. The blue mold was black, the luminous panels -more ghostly.</p> - -<p>"It's night. Shall we sleep?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"It's just come day," the woman said, pointing upward.</p> - -<p>He looked up. Far above, where had been gloom, hung a pinkish-green, -opalescent haze of light. Parallel lines of tree trunks converged -through it to be lost in nebulosity.</p> - -<p>"Daylight overpowers the luminous fungi," she said.</p> - -<p>"We sleep, then walk again. Shall we find food?"</p> - -<p>"No. We must always go to sleep hungry so we will wake again."</p> - -<p>They looked, until tired out, for a place of shelter.</p> - -<p>They slept, locked together in the cranny of a massive buttress. The -man dreamed of his tame home-world.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He woke again into nightmare. In a twenty-foot fan-grove of the white -fungus they combed handfuls of black spores out of gill slots. The -birdshot-sized spores had a pleasant, nutty flavor.</p> - -<p>With the strength more walking. <i>Use it, use it, burn the poison.</i> Day -faded above, and luminous night below came back to light the way. A -rocky ledge and another, and then a shallow ravine with a black stream -cascading. They drank and the man said, "We'll follow it, find an -upland clearing."</p> - -<p>They heard rapid motion and crouched unbreathing while a stomper minced -by up ahead. It had a white crest.</p> - -<p>On and on, fatigue the whip for greater fatigue and salvation at the -end of endurance. They passed wild humans. A statuesque woman with dull -eyes and yellow hair to her ankles, placidly feeding. Babies big as -four-year-old normals, by themselves, grazing on finger-shaped fungi. -An enormous human, fourteen feet tall, fat-enfolded, too ponderous to -stand even in low gravity, crawling through fungus beds. The man could -not tell its sex.</p> - -<p>On and on, sleep and eat and travel and sleep, darkness above or -darkness below, outside of time. The stream lost, found again, -sourcing out finally under a great rock. And there, lodged in a black -sandbank, the man found a human thigh bone half his own height. He -scoured off the water mold with sand. He was armed.</p> - -<p>The man walked ahead clutching his thigh bone, and the woman followed. -They slept clasped together naked all three, man, woman and thigh bone.</p> - -<p>Stompers passed them and they crouched in sham feeding. The man prayed -without words, <i>both or neither</i>. And hatred grew in him.</p> - -<p>Snakes and giant slugs and the beautiful, gigantic, mindless wild -humans, again and again, a familiar part of nightmare. The fat and -truly enormous humans; and the man learned they had been male once. He -remembered from far away where time was linear the voice of Grandfather -Man: <i>Some are beyond saving, and those they kill.</i></p> - -<p>And a stomper passed, white crested, and far ahead a human voice cried -out in wordless pain and protest. The man was minded to deviate from -his line for fear of what they might see, but he did not. When they -came on the boy, larger than the man but beardless and without formed -muscles, the man looked at the tears dropping from the dull eyes -and the blood dropping from the mutilation and killed him with the -thigh bone. <i>Some are beyond saving.</i> And the hatred in him flamed to -whiteness.</p> - -<p>On and on, day above and day below in recurrent clash of lights. A -white crested stomper paused and looked at them, crouched apart and -trembling. The man felt the deepest, most anguished fear of all and -beneath it, hatred surged until his teeth ached.</p> - -<p>On and on. The man's stubble softened into beard, his hair touched his -ears. On and on.</p> - -<p>The land sloped upward and became rocky. The trees became smaller and -wider spaced so that whole trunks were visible and the light of upper -day descended. A patch of blue sky, then more as they ran shouting with -gladness, and a bare mountain crest reared in the distance.</p> - -<p>They embraced in wild joy and the woman cried, "Thank you, oh -<i>loveliest</i> Morwenna!"</p> - -<p>"Pia, we're human again," Cole said. "We're back in the world. And I -love you."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Fearful of stompers, they moved rapidly away from the forest over -steadily rising ground. The growth became more sparse, the ground more -rocky, and near evening they crossed a wide moorland covered with -coarse grass and scattered blocks of stone. Ahead a long, low fault -scarp bounded it and there they found a cave tunneled into the rock, -too narrow for a stomper. At last they felt safe. Morwenna rode silvery -above the distant forest.</p> - -<p>Water trickled from the cave which widened into a squared-off chamber -in which the water spilled over the rim of a basin that looked cut with -hands. Underfoot were small stone cylinders of various lengths and as -his eyes adjusted Cole saw that they were drill cores.</p> - -<p>"Prospectors made this," he told Pia, "in the old, innocent days -when they still hoped to find heavy metals." Then he saw the graven -initials, T.C.B., and the date, 157 A.S.</p> - -<p>They ate red berries growing in their dooryard, gathered grass for a -bed and slept in a great weariness.</p> - -<p>Next day and the next they ate red berries and fleshy, purple ground -fruits and slept, gaining strength. Secure in their cave mouth they -watched stompers cross the moorland. When night fell they gazed at the -bunched moons, but the three Maidens did not quite form a house and -Hoggy Darn was still pursuing them.</p> - -<p>"A few days," Pia said.</p> - -<p>"If this isn't Emrys Upland, Arscoate will kill us with fire mist."</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>More stompers crossed the moorland, some white crested. They moved -there randomly at night and from the forest came a far-off sound of -stompers singing. The Maidens formed a house and Hoggy Darn grazed the -side of it before they fled. To south and west faint rose glowed in the -night sky.</p> - -<p>"Fire mist," Pia said. "The nights of harrying have begun. Oh Flinter, -if this is really Emrys Upland it will be perfect."</p> - -<p>"What will?"</p> - -<p>"You—us—oh, I can't say yet."</p> - -<p>"Secrets, Pia? Still secrets? Between <i>us</i>?"</p> - -<p>"You'll know soon, Flinter. I mustn't spoil it."</p> - -<p>The love in her eyes was tinged with a strangeness. She sought his arms -and hid her face in his shoulder.</p> - -<p>Stompers on the moorland all day so they dared not leave the cave. -Flyers streaking high overhead, scouting.</p> - -<p>"Pia, I believe this <i>is</i> Emrys Upland. I'll help after all with the -great killing."</p> - -<p>"You will help, Flinter."</p> - -<p>"Afterward I'll take you to Belconti."</p> - -<p>"We will never see Belconti, Flinter."</p> - -<p>The strangeness in her eyes troubled him. He could not kiss it away.</p> - -<p>Stompers crowding the moorland all night with their dancing, their -vast singing coming to the cave from all round the compass. Rose banks -distant in the night sky and Hoggy Darn crossing the House of the -Maidens. Red Hoggy Darn, still lagging, still not catching it perfectly -upright. The strangeness of Pia. The waiting, clutching a polished -thigh bone.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>At last the night when the mighty war song of the stompers went up -unbearably, as the man had heard it that once before, and fire mist -boiled along the distant mountains. Flyers shuttled across the sky, -dropped, rose again. Blasters ripped the night with ion-pencils. Hoggy -Darn gleamed redly on the threshold of the House of the Maidens that -stood almost upright and perfect with silvery Morwenna at the vertex. -Flyers blasted clearings in the throng of stompers, and grounded. Men -boiled out of them, setting up Corbin powercasters here, there, another -place, fighting as soon as their feet hit ground.</p> - -<p>The man stood up and brandished the thigh bone.</p> - -<p>"I must go down and fight. Wait here."</p> - -<p>"I must go too," the girl said calmly.</p> - -<p>"Yes, you must," he agreed. "Come along."</p> - -<p>Stompers rushed by them and bounded over their heads and did not harm -them. Blaster-torn stompers fell heavily beside them, threshing and -snapping, and they were not touched. Men lowered weapons to point at -the man and girl, shouting to one another out of mazed faces silently -in the whelming music of the stomper chorus. Man and girl walked on.</p> - -<p>Unharmed through the forest of singing, leaping shapes, hand in hand -through a screen of fighting men that parted to admit them, they walked -into the light of a glowing Corbin where a tall, gaunt old man stood -watching their approach. The feeling of exalted unreality began to lift -from Cole.</p> - -<p>"Grandfather, give us blasters," he shouted. "We want to fight."</p> - -<p>"The power is on you, lad, and you only half know it," the old man -shouted back. "Stand here by the Corbin. Your fight is not yet." Tears -stood in the fierce old eyes.</p> - -<p>Across the moorland the fighting raged. Islands of men and women -grouped round their Corbins held back the booming, chaotic sea of -stompers that surged against them from all sides. Dikes of dead and -dying grew up, men and stompers mingled. The flyers shuttled down and -up again and more islands of men took shape. Hoggy Darn crossed the -threshold and the savage war song of the stompers shook the night sky.</p> - -<p>In a lull Morgan came in to the Corbin to change the wave track on his -blaster. His face was a mask of iron joy and his eyes blazed.</p> - -<p>"Morgan, if we are both alive after, I will kill you!" Cole shouted.</p> - -<p>"No," Morgan rumbled. "You have been into the forest and come out -again. It took you three weeks. It took me three hundred years. Clasp -hands, my brother in hatred."</p> - -<p>"Yes, brother in hatred." The exalted unreality began coming back -strongly. "I want a blaster!" he howled at Morgan.</p> - -<p>"No, brother in hatred, your fight is not yet." Morgan rejoined the -battle, the ring of men standing braced in blaster harness fifty yards -away, ripping down with interweaving ion-pencils the great forms -leaping inward. Man and girl held hands and watched.</p> - -<p>To the left trouble came to a nearby island. Stompers converged from -all sides, abandoning the other attacks, impossibly many. They overran -the defenders, attacking not them but the powercaster behind them, -and piled up until the Corbin's blue-violet glare was hidden. A great -blossoming of flame tore the pile of stompers apart, but the Corbin was -dark.</p> - -<p>"They blew out the power banks," Pia said. "They've never known to do -that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges."</p> - -<p>It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather -Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war -song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in -total volume. Then it was their own turn.</p> - -<p>Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block -and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired -steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave -of stinking heat rolled over them. All around, survivors struggled to -their feet, using flame pistols to head-shoot wounded stompers, digging -out and connecting emergency pack charges to their blasters. They were -pitifully few and their new, dark island was thirty feet across.</p> - -<p>The moor seemed dark with only the red of flame pistols and the violet -flickering of power pack blasters. It seemed to heave randomly like a -sluggish sea with the seen struggles of dying stompers and the felt -struggles of lesser human bodies. Thinned now, stompers attacked singly -or in small groups. Blasters flickered and ripped and went darkly -silent as power packs discharged. The red of short-range flame pistols -replaced them. But across the fault scarp ridge the tumult swelled to -new heights and Corbin after Corbin there flamed out of existence in a -bloom of rose-purple against the skyline.</p> - -<p>In a lull Bidgrass shouted to Morgan, "That's costing them more than -they have to give, over there. Listen. Can you hear it?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, Father in Hatred," Morgan said. "They will break soon."</p> - -<p>"Yes, when Arscoate lays the fire mist. They will come through here. I -have one charge left."</p> - -<p>"I have two, Father in Hatred. Change packs with me."</p> - -<p>Cole found his voice and his senses once more.</p> - -<p>"I must find a weapon! Grandfather, give me your flame pistol!"</p> - -<p>"Soon, lad. Soon now. Let the power take you," the old man soothed.</p> - -<p>Stompers streamed over the moor again and the fighting flared up. The -war song beat against the man's ears so that he drew the girl nearer -and shook the thigh bone. Blaster fire flickered out altogether and -the red blooming of flame pistols weakened. But more and more stompers -streamed past without attacking. Then the man saw fire mist plume -lazily in the east, point after point coalescing all along the forest -edge.</p> - -<p>"Now!" shouted a great voice beside him. "Now, lad!"</p> - -<p>It was old Bidgrass, striding out like a giant, blaster leveled in its -carrying harness.</p> - -<p>The shout released Cole and he saw it far off, coming down the scrap -rubble to the moor. Huger than any, white crest thirty feet above the -ground, Grandfather Stomper. The war song roared insanely over the -moor. Hoggy Darn gleamed heart-midst of the three lady moons.</p> - -<p>The grim old man aimed and fired. The great bird-shape staggered and -came on, left wing trailing. The old man waited until it was nearly on -top of him and fired again. The stomper jerked its head and the bolt -shattered the great tripart beak but did not kill it. With the right -mitten-wing it reached down and swung its adversary twenty feet up, -held him and haggled at him with its stumps of beak.</p> - -<p>The old man's free right arm flailed wildly. Cole beat the stomper's -leg with the thigh bone and howled in hatred. Then he saw the flame -pistol lying where it had fallen from the holster. He picked it up, but -the power was on him again and he did not use it. He hurled the thigh -bone at the stomper's head, diverting it for a second, and tossed the -pistol to old Bidgrass. He knew they could not fail.</p> - -<p>The old man caught the pistol. When the great head swung back he held -the muzzle against the tri-corn eye and fired. Red plasma-jet burned -into the brain behind it. The stomper bounded once in the air, dropped -its slayer, ran three steps and collapsed.</p> - -<p>The stomper song changed suddenly. It became a mournful lament, a dying -into grieving subsonics. Cole knew that note. He had heard it from the -stompers in the stone-floored pen when the butchers were hacking off -their heads. He knew that Grandfather Stomper was dead forever, after -seven hundred years of war.</p> - -<p>Flyers crossed above, blasters were still at work across the ridge, -but the war was ended. The power, whatever that sense of exalted -unreality might be, left Cole; and he felt naked and ridiculous and -wondered what he was doing there. Then he saw the girl bending above -Garth Bidgrass and regained control of himself.</p> - -<p>The strong old man was smiling wearily.</p> - -<p>"We've won the war, lad," he said. "The next task is yours."</p> - -<p>"I'll help you," Cole said.</p> - -<p>"You'll lead. Oh, I'll live, but not for long. Centuries ago, lad, -there was a prophecy, and until tonight people like myself and Arscoate -thought it was only poetry, however literally Morgan and the other -ex-wilds took it."</p> - -<p>"What was it?"</p> - -<p>"It foretells that on the night Grandfather Stomper shall die the new -Grandfather Man will come naked out of the forest with his beautiful -wife and armed with a thigh bone, and that he will lead us in the even -greater task of reclamation that comes after. <i>Your</i> ritual title of -address is 'Father in Love,' lad, and I'm just a broken old man now. -Take up the burden."</p> - -<p>Cole's throat swelled, choking speech for a moment.</p> - -<p>"I can start," he said.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Night of Hoggy Darn, by Richard McKenna - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - -***** This file should be named 60695-h.htm or 60695-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/9/60695/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Night of Hoggy Darn - -Author: Richard McKenna - -Release Date: November 15, 2019 [EBook #60695] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN - - BY R. M. McKENNA - - _The talented author of "The Fishdollar Affair" - returns with another compelling story of a frontier - world--grim New Cornwall of the Black Learning._ - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1958. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -Red-haired Flinter Cole sipped his black coffee and looked around the -chrome and white tile galley of Space Freighter _Gorbals_, in which he -was riding down the last joint of a dogleg journey to the hermit planet -of New Cornwall. - -"Nothing's been published about the planet for the last five hundred -years," he said in a nervous, jerky voice. "You people on _Gorbals_ -at least _see_ the place, and I understand you're the only ship that -does." - -"That's right, twice every standard year," said the cook. He was a -placid, squinting man, pink in his crisp whites. "But like I said, no -girls, no drinks, nothing down there but hard looks and a punch in the -nose for being curious. We mostly stay aboard, up in orbit. Them New -Cornish are the biggest, meanest men I ever did see, Doc." - -"I'm not a real doctor yet," Cole said, glancing down at the scholar -grays he was wearing. "If I don't do a good job on New Cornwall I -may never be. This is my Ph. D. trial field assignment. I should be -_stuffing_ myself with data on the ecosystem so I can ask the right -questions when I get there. But there's nothing!" - -"What's a pee aitch dee?" - -"That's being a doctor. I'm an ecologist--that means I deal with -everything alive, and the way it all works in with climate and -geography. I can use _any_ kind of data. I have only six months until -_Gorbals_ comes again to make my survey and report. If I fumble away my -doctorate, and I'm twenty-three already...." Cole knitted shaggy red -eyebrows in worry. - -"Well hell, Doc, I can tell you things like, it's got four moons and -only one whopper of a continent and it's low grav, and the forest there -you won't believe even when you see it--" - -"I need to know about _stompers_. Bidgrass Company wants Belconti U. to -save them from extinction, but they didn't say what the threat is. They -sent travel directions, a visa and passage scrip for just one man. And -I only had two days for packing and library research, before I had to -jump to Tristan in order to catch this ship. I've been running in the -dark ever since. You'd think the Bidgrass people didn't really care." - -"Price of stomper egg what it is, I doubt that," the cook said, -scratching his fat jaw. "But for a fact, they're shipping less these -days. Must be some kind of trouble. I never saw a stomper, but they say -they're big birds that live in the forest." - -"You see? The few old journal articles I did find, said they were -flightless bird-homologs that lived on the plains and preyed on the -great herds of something called darv cattle." - -"Nothing but forest and sea for thousands of miles around Bidgrass -Station, Doc. Stompers are pure hell on big long legs, they say." - -"There again! _I_ read they were harmless to man." - -"Tell you what, you talk to Daley. He's cargo officer and has to go -down with each tender trip. He'll maybe know something can help you." - -The cook turned away to inspect his ovens. Cole put down his cup and -clamped a freckled hand over his chin, thinking. He thought about -stomper eggs, New Cornwall's sole export and apparently, for five -hundred years, its one link with the other planets of Carina sector. -Their reputedly indescribable flavor had endeared them to gourmets on a -hundred planets. They were symbols of conspicuous consumption for the -ostentatious wealthy. No wonder most of the literature under the New -Cornwall reference had turned out to be cookbooks. - -Orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, Cole had never tasted -stomper egg. - -The cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell. - -"Just thought, Doc. I keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from -cargo for when I got a passenger to feed. How'd you like a mess for -chow tonight?" - -"Why not?" Cole said, grinning suddenly. "Anything may be data for an -ecologist, especially if it's good to eat." - - * * * * * - -The stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter -of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. Their -delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. Their flavor was -like--cinnamon? Peppery sandalwood? Yes, yes, and yet unique.... - -Cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and -the other six men had not had any. He groped for a lost feeling--was it -that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat -for all of them? Ridiculous! - -"I'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "Here, Mr. Daley, have some." - -Daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "By me" and slid the platter -along. It rounded the table and returned to Cole untouched. - -"Fall to, Doc," Daley said, grinning. - -Cole was already reaching ... lying in his stateroom and he _was_ the -bunk cradling a taut, messianic body flaming with imageless dreams. -He dreamed himself asleep and slept himself into shamed wakefulness -needing coffee. - -It was ship-night. Cole walked through dimmed lights to the galley and -carried his cup of hot black coffee to main control, where he found -Daley on watch, lounging against the gray enamel computer. - -"I feel like a fool," Cole said. - -"You're a martyr to science, Doc. Which reminds me, Cookie told me you -got questions about Bidgrass Station." - -"Well yes, about stompers. What's wiping them out, what's their habitat -and life pattern, oh anything." - -"I learned quick not to ask about stompers. I gather they're twenty -feet high or so and they're penned up behind a stockade. I never saw -one." - -"Well dammit! I read they couldn't be domesticated." - -"They're not. Bidgrass Station is in a clearing the New Cornish cut -from sea to sea across a narrow neck of land. On the west is this -stockade and beyond it is Lundy Peninsula, a good half-million square -miles of the damndest forest ever grew on any planet. That's where the -stompers are." - -"How thickly settled is this Lundy Peninsula?" - -"Not a soul there, Doc. The settlement is around Car Truro on the east -coast, twelve thousand miles east of Bidgrass. I never been there, but -you can see from the air it isn't much." - -"How big a city is Bidgrass? Does it have a university?" - -Daley smiled again and shook his head. "They got fields and pastures, -but it's more like a military camp than a town. I see barracks for the -workers and egg hunters, hangars and shops, a big egg-processing plant -and warehouses around the landing field. I never get away from the -field, but I'd guess four, five thousand people at Bidgrass." - -Cole sighed and put down his cup on the log desk. - -"What is it they import, one half so precious as the stuff they sell?" - -Daley chuckled and rocked on his toes. "Drugs, chemicals, machinery -parts, hundreds of tons of Warburton energy capsules. Pistols, -blasters, cases of flame charge, tanks of fire mist--you'd think they -had a war on." - -"That's no help. I'll make up for lost time when I get there. I'll beat -their ears off with questions." - -Daley's gnomish face grew serious. "Watch what you ask and who you ask, -Doc. They're suspicious as hell and they hate strangers." - -"They need my help. Besides, I'll deal only with scientists." - -"Bidgrass isn't much like a campus. I don't know, Doc, something's -wrong on that planet and I'm always glad to lift out." - -"Why didn't you and the others eat any of that stomper egg?" Cole asked -abruptly. - -"Because the people at Bidgrass turn sick and want to slug you if you -mention eating it. That's reason enough for me." - -Well, that was data too, Cole thought, heading back to his stateroom. - - * * * * * - -Two days later Daley piloted the cargo tender down in a three-lap -braking spiral around New Cornwall. Cole sat beside him in the cramped -control room, eyes fixed on the view panel. Once he had the bright and -barren moon Cairdween at upper left, above a vastly curving sweep of -sun-glinting ocean, and he caught his breath in wonder. - -"I know the feeling, Doc," Daley said softly. "Like being a giant and -jumping from world to world." - -Clouds obscured much of the sprawling, multi-lobed single continent. -The sharpening of outline and hint of regularity Cole remembered noting -on Tristan and his own planet of Belconti, the mark of man, was absent -here. Yet New Cornwall, as a human settlement, was two hundred years -older than Belconti. - -The forests stretched across the south and west, broken by uplands and -rain shadows, as the old books said. He saw between cloud patches the -glint of lakes and the crumpled leaf drainage pattern of the great -northeastern plain but, oddly, the plain was darker in color than the -pinkish-yellow forest. He mentioned it to Daley. - -"It's flowers and vines and moss makes it that color," the little man -said, busy with controls. "Whole world in that forest top--snakes, -birds, jumping things big as horses. Doc, them trees are _big_." - -"Of course! I read about the epiphytal biota. And low gravity always -conduces to gigantism." - -"There's Lundy," Daley grunted, pointing. - -It looked like a grinning ovoid monster-head straining into the western -ocean at the end of a threadlike neck. Across the neck Bidgrass Station -slashed between parallel lines of forest edge like a collar. Cole -watched it again on the landing approach, noting the half-mile of -clearing between the great wall and the forest edge, the buildings and -fields rectilinear in ordered clumps east of the wall, and then the -light aberration of the tender's lift field blotted it out. - -"Likely I won't see you till next trip," Daley said, taking leave. -"Good luck, Doc." - -Cole shuffled down the personnel ramp, grateful for the weight of his -two bags in the absurdly light gravity. Trucks and cargo lifts were -coming across the white field from the silvery warehouses along its -edge. Men also, shaggy-haired big men in loose blue garments, walking -oddly without the stride and drive of leg muscles. Their faces were -uniformly grim and blank to Cole, standing there uncertainly. Then a -ground car pulled up and a tall old man in the same rough clothing got -out and walked directly toward him. He had white hair, bushy white -eyebrows over deep-set gray eyes, and a commanding beak of a nose. - -"Who might you be?" he demanded. - -"I'm Flinter Cole, from Belconti University. Someone here is expecting -me." - -The old man squinted in thought and bit his lower lip. Finally he said, -"The biologist, hey? Didn't expect you until next _Gorbals_. Didn't -think you could make the connections for this one." - -"It left me no time at all to study up in. But when species extinction -is the issue, time is important. And I'm an ecologist." - -"Well," the old man said. "Well. I'm Garth Bidgrass." - -He shook Cole's hand, a powerful grip quickly released. - -"Hawkins there in the car will take you to the manor house and get you -settled. I'll phone ahead. I'll be tied up checking cargo for a day or -two, I expect. You just rest up awhile." - -He spoke to the driver in what sounded like Old English, then moved -rapidly across the field toward the warehouses in the same strange walk -as the other men. As far as Cole could see, he did not bend his knees -at all. - -Hawkins, also old but frail and stooped, took Cole's bags to the -car. When the ecologist tried to follow him he almost fell headlong, -then managed a stiff-legged shuffle. Momentarily he longed for the -Earth-normal gravity of Belconti and the ship. - -They drove past unfenced fields green with vegetable and cereal crops, -and fenced pastures holding beef and dairy cattle of the old Earth -breeds. It was a typical human ecosystem. Then they passed a group of -field workers, and surprise jolted the ecologist. They were huge--eight -or nine feet tall, both men and women, all with long hair and some of -them naked. They did not look up. - -Cole looked at Hawkins. The old man glared at him from red-rimmed eyes -and chattered something in archaic English. He speeded up, losing the -giants behind a hedge, and the manor house with the palisade behind it -loomed ahead. - -The great fence dwarfed the house. Single baulks of grassy brown timber -ten feet on a side soared two hundred feet into the air, intricately -braced and stayed. High above, a flyer drifted as if on sentry duty. -Half a mile beyond, dwarfing the fence in its turn, arose the -thousand-foot black escarpment of the forest edge. - -The manor house huddled in a walled garden with armed guards at the -gate. It was two-storied and sprawling, with a flat-roofed watch tower -at the southeast corner, and made of the same glassy brown timber. -Hawkins stopped the car by the pillared veranda where a lumpy, gray, -nondescript woman waited. Cole got out, awkwardly careful in the light -gravity. - -The woman would not meet his glance. "I'm Flada Vignoli, Mr. Bidgrass's -niece and housekeeper," she said in a dead voice. "I'll show you your -rooms." She turned away before Cole could respond. - -"Let me carry the bags, I need to," he said to Hawkins, laughing -uncertainly. The old man hoisted his skinny shoulders and spat. - -The rooms were on the second floor, comfortable but archaic in style. -The gray woman told him that Hawkins would bring his meals, that Garth -Bidgrass would see him in a few days to make plans, and that Mr. -Bidgrass thought he should not go about unescorted until he knew more -about local conditions. - -Cole nodded. "I'll want to confer with your leading biologists, Mrs. -Vignoli, as soon as I can. For today, can you get me a copy of your -most recent biotic survey?" - -"Ain't any biologists, ain't any surveys," she said, standing in the -half-closed door. - -"Well, any recent book about stompers or your general zoölogy. It's -important that I start at once." - -The face under the scraggly gray hair went blanker still. "You'll have -to talk to Mr. Bidgrass." She closed the door. - -Cole unpacked, bathed, dressed again and explored his three rooms. Like -a museum, he thought. He looked out his west windows at the palisade -and forest edge. Then he decided to go downstairs, and found his door -was locked. - -The shock was more fear than indignation, he realized, wondering at -himself. He paced his sitting room, thinking about his scholarly status -and the wealth and power of Belconti, until he had the indignation -flaming. Then a knock came at the door and it opened to reveal old -Hawkins with a wheeled food tray. - -"What do you mean, locking me in?" Cole asked hotly. - -He pushed past the food tray into the hall. Hawkins danced and made -shooing motions with his hands, chattering shrilly in the vernacular. -Cole walked to the railing around the stairwell and looked down. At the -foot of the stair a giant figure, man or woman he could not say, sat -and busied itself with something in its lap. - -Cole went back into his room. The food was boiled beef, potatoes and -beets, plain but plentiful, plus bread and coffee. He ate heartily and -looked out his windows again to see night coming on. Finally he tried -the door and it was not locked. He shrugged, pushed the food tray into -the hall and closed the door again. Then he shot the inside bolt. - -In bed, he finally dropped off into a restless, disturbed sleep. - - * * * * * - -Emboldened by morning and a hearty tray breakfast, Cole explored. He -was in a two-floor wing, and the doors into the main house were locked. -Through them he heard voices and domestic clatter. Unlocked across the -second-floor hall was another suite of rooms like his own. Downstairs -was still another suite and along the south side a library. The door -into the garden was locked. - -My kingdom, Cole thought wryly. Prisoner of state! - -He explored the library. Tristanian books, historical romances for the -most part, none less than three hundred years old. No periodicals, -nothing of New Cornwall publication. He drifted from window to window -looking out at the formal garden of flower beds, hedges and white sand -paths. Then he saw the girl. - -She knelt in a sleeveless gray dress trimming a hedge. Her tanned and -rounded arms had dimpled elbows, he noted. She turned suddenly and he -saw, framed by reddish-brown curls, her oval face with small nose and -firm chin. The face was unsuitably grave and the eyes wide. - -She was not staring at his window, Cole decided after a qualm, but -listening. Then she rose, picked up her basket of trimmings and glided -around the corner of the house. Before he could pursue her plump vision -to another window, a man appeared. - -He looked taller than Cole and was built massively as a stone. Straight -black hair fell to his shoulders, cut square across his forehead and -bound by a white fillet. Under the black bar of eyebrow the heavy -face held itself in grim, unsmiling lines. He moved with that odd, -unstriding New Cornish walk that suggested tremendous power held in -leash. - -Cole crossed the hall and watched the blue-clad form enter a door in -the wing opposite. The girl was nowhere. Again Cole felt a twinge of -fear, and boiled up anger to mask it. - -Inside looking out, he thought. Peeping like an ecologist in a bird -blind! - -When Hawkins brought lunch Cole raged at him and demanded to see Garth -Bidgrass. The old man chattered incomprehensibly and danced like a -fighting cock. Thwarted, the ecologist ate moodily and went down to -the library. The garden was empty and he decided on impulse to open a -window. A way of retreat, but from what and to where, he wondered as -he worked at the fastenings. Just as he got it free, a woman stooped -through the library door. She was at least seven feet tall. - -Cole stood erect and held his breath. Not looking at him, the woman -dropped to her knees and began dusting the natural wood half-panelling -that encircled the room between bookcases. She had long blonde hair and -a mild, vacant face; she wore a shapeless blue dress. - -"Hello," Cole said. - -She paid no attention. - -"Hello!" he said more sharply. "Do you speak Galactic English?" - -She looked at him out of empty blue eyes and went back to her work. -He went past her gingerly and up to his room. There he wrote a note to -Garth Bidgrass, paced and fanned his indignation, tore up the note and -wrote a stronger one. When Hawkins brought his dinner, Cole beat down -his chattering objections and stuffed the note into the old man's coat -pocket. - -"See that Bidgrass gets it at once! Do you hear, at once!" he shouted. - -After nightfall, nervous and wakeful, Cole looked out on the garden by -the pale light of two moons. He saw the girl, wearing the same dress, -come out of the opposite wing, and decided on impulse to intercept her. - -As he climbed through the library window he said to himself, "Anything -may be data to an ecologist, especially if it's pretty to look at." - - * * * * * - -He met her full face at the house corner and her hands flew up, -fending. She turned and he said, "Please don't run away from me. I want -to talk to you." - -She turned back with eyes wide and troubled, in what nature had meant -to be a merry, careless face. - -"Do you know who I am?" he asked. - -She nodded. "Uncle Garth says I'm not to talk to you." It was a little -girl's voice, tremulous. - -"Why? What am I, some kind of monster?" - -"N-no. You're an outworlder, from a great, wealthy planet." - -"Belconti is a very ordinary planet. What's your name?" - -"I'm Pia--Pia Vignoli." The voice took on more assurance, but the -plump body stayed poised for flight. - -"Well I'm Flinter Cole, and I have a job to do on this planet. It's -_terribly_ important that I get started. Will you help me?" - -"How can I, Mr. Cole? I'm nobody. I don't know anything." She moved -away, and he followed, awkwardly. - -"Girls know all sorts of things that would interest an ecologist," he -protested. "Tell me all you know about stompers." - -"Oh _no_! I mustn't talk about stompers." - -"Well talk about nothing then, like girls do," he said impatiently. -"What's the name of that moon?" He pointed overhead. - -Tension left her and she smiled a little. "Morwenna," she said. "That -one just setting into Lundy Forest is Annis. You can tell Annis by her -bluish shadows that are never the same." - -"Good girl! How about the other two, the ones that aren't up?" - -"One's Cairdween and the other, the red one--oh, I daren't talk about -moons either." - -"Not even _moons_? Really, Miss Vignoli--" - -"Let's not talk at all. I'll show you how to walk, you do look so funny -all spraddled and scraping your feet. I was born off-planet and I had -to learn it myself." - -She showed him the light down-flex of the foot that threw the body more -forward than up, and he learned to wait out the strange micropause -before his weight settled on the other foot. With a little practice -he got it, walking up and down the moonlit path beside her in an -effortless toe dance. Then he learned to turn corners and to jump. - -"Pia," he said once. "Pia. I like the sound, but it doesn't suit this -rough planet." - -"I was born on Tristan," she murmured. "Please don't ask--" - -"I won't. But no reason why I can't talk. May I call you Pia?" - -He described Belconti and the university, and his doctorate, at stake -in this field assignment. Suddenly she stopped short and pointed to -where a red moon lifted above the dark cliff of the eastern forest. - -"It's late," she said. "There comes Hoggy Darn. Good night, Mr. Cole." - -She danced away faster than he could follow. He crawled back through -his window in the reddish moonlight. - - * * * * * - -Next afternoon Cole faced Garth Bidgrass in the library. The old man -sat with folded arms, craggy face impassive. Cole, standing, leaned his -weight on his hands and thrust his sharp face across the table. His -freckles stood out against his angry pallor, and sunlight from the end -window blazed in his red hair. - -"Let me sum up," he said, thin-lipped. "For obscure reasons I must -be essentially a prisoner. All right. You have no education here, no -biologists of any kind. All right. Now here is what they expect of me -on Belconti: to rough out the planetary ecosystem, set up a functional -profile series for the stomper and its interacting species, make energy -flow charts and outline the problem. If my report is incorrect or -incomplete, Belconti won't send the right task group of specialists. -Then you spend your money for nothing and I lose my doctorate. I must -have skilled helpers, a clerical staff, _masses_ of data!" - -"You've said all that before," Bidgrass said calmly. "I told you, I can -provide none of that." - -"Then it's hopeless! Why did you ever send for an ecologist?" - -"I sent for help. Belconti sent the ecologist." - -"Help me to _help_ you, then. You must try to understand, Mr. Bidgrass, -science can't operate in a vacuum. I can't work up a total planetary -biology. I must _start_ with that data." - -"Do what you can for us," Bidgrass said. "They won't blame you on -Belconti when they know and we won't blame you here if it doesn't help." - -Cole sat down, shaking his head. "But Belconti won't count it as a -field job, not in ecology. You _will_ not understand my position. Let -me put it this way: suppose someone gave you a hatchet and told you, -only one man, to cut down Lundy Forest?" - -"I could start," the old man said. His eyes blazed and he smiled -grimly. "I'd leave my mark on one tree." - -Colt felt suddenly foolish and humbled. - -"All right," he said. "I'll do what I can. What do you think is wiping -out the stompers?" - -"I know what. A parasite bird that lays its eggs on stomper eggs. Its -young hatch first and eat the big egg. The people call them piskies." - -"I'll need to work out its life cycle, look for weak points and natural -enemies. Who knows a lot about these piskies?" - -"I know as much as anybody, and I've never seen a grown one. We believe -they stay in the deep forest. But there are always three to each -stomper egg and they're vicious. Go for a man's eyes or jugular. Egg -hunters kill dozens every day." - -"I'll want dozens, alive if possible, and a lab. Can you do that much?" - -"Yes. You can use Dr. Rudall's lab at the hospital." Bidgrass stood up -and looked at his watch. "The egg harvest should start coming in soon -down at the plant and there may be a dead pisky. Come along and see." - - * * * * * - -As Hawkins guided the car past a group of the giant field workers, Cole -felt Bidgrass' eyes on him. He turned, and the old man said slowly, -"Stick to piskies, Mr. Cole. We'll all be happier." - -"Anything may be data to an ecologist, especially if he overlooks it," -Cole murmured stubbornly. - -Hawkins cackled something about "Hoggy Darn itha hoose" and speeded up. - -In the cavernous, machinery-lined plant Cole met the manager. He -was the same powerful, long-haired man Cole had seen in the garden. -"Morgan," Bidgrass introduced him with the one name, adding, "He -doesn't use Galactic English." - -Morgan bent his head slightly, unsmiling, ignoring Cole's offered hand. -His wide-set eyes were so lustrously black that they seemed to have no -pupils, and under the hostile stare Cole flushed angrily. They walked -through the plant, Morgan talking to Bidgrass in the vernacular. His -voice was deep and resonant, organ-like. - -Bidgrass explained to Cole how stomper egg was vac-frozen under biostat -and sealed in plastic for export. He pointed out a piece of shell, half -an inch thick and highly translucent. From its radius of curvature Cole -realized that stomper eggs were much larger than he had pictured them. -Then someone shouted and Bidgrass said a flyer was coming in. They went -out on the loading dock. - -The flyer alongside carried six men forward of the cargo space and -had four heavy blasters mounted almost like a warcraft. As the dock -crew unloaded two eggs into dollies, other flyers were skittering in, -further along the dock. Bidgrass pointed out to Cole on one huge four -by three-foot egg the bases of broken parasite eggs cemented to its -shell. Through a hole made by piskies, the ecologist noted that the -substance of the large egg was a stiff gel. Morgan flashed a strong -pocket lamp on the shell and growled something. - -"There may be a pisky hiding inside," Bidgrass said. "You are lucky, -Mr. Cole." - -Morgan stepped inside and returned almost at once wearing goggles -and heavy gloves, and carrying a small power saw. He used the light -again, traced an eight-inch square with his finger, and sawed it out. -The others, all but Cole, stood back. Morgan pulled away the piece and -something black flew up, incredibly swift, with a shrill, keening sound. - -Cole looked after it and Morgan struck him heavily in the face, -knocking him to hands and knees. Feet stamped and scraped around him -and Cole saw his own blood dripping on the clock. He stood up dazed and -angry. - -"Morgan saved your eye," Bidgrass told him, "but the pisky took a -nasty gouge at your cheekbone. I'll have Hawkins drive you to the -hospital--you wanted to meet Dr. Rudall anyway." - -Cole examined the crushed pisky on the way to the hospital. Big as his -fist, with a tripartite beak, it was no true bird. The wings were flaps -of black skin that still wrinkled and folded flexibly with residual -life. It had nine toes on each foot and seemed covered with fine scales. - -Dr. Rudall treated Cole's cheek in a surprisingly large and well -appointed dressing room. He was a gray, defeated-looking man and -told Cole in an apologetic voice that he had taken medical training -on Planet Tristan many years ago ... out of touch now. His small lab -looked hopelessly archaic, but he promised to biostat the dead pisky -until Cole could get back to it. - -Hawkins was not with the ground car. Cole drove back to the plant -without him. He wanted another look at the mode of adhesion of pisky -egg on stomper egg. He drove to the further end of the plant and -mounted the dock from outside, to freeze in surprise. Twenty feet away, -the dock crew was unloading a giant. - -He was naked, strapped limply to a plank, and his face was bloody. Half -his reddish hair and beard was singed away. Then a hand hit Cole's -shoulder and spun him around. It was Morgan. - -"Clear out of here, you!" the big man said in fluent, if plain, -Galactic English. "Don't you ever come here without Garth Bidgrass -brings you!" He seemed hardly to move his lips, but the voice rumbled -like thunder. - -"Well," thought Cole, driving back after Hawkins, "datums are data, if -they bite off your head." - - * * * * * - -"For your own safety, Mr. Cole, you must not again leave the company -of either Hawkins or Dr. Rudall when you are away from the house," -Bidgrass told Cole the next morning. "The people have strange beliefs -that would seem sheer nonsense to you, but their impulsive acts, if you -provoke them, will be unpleasantly real." - -"If I knew their beliefs I might know how to behave." - -"It is your very presence that is provoking. If you were made of salt -you would have to stay out of the rain. Here you are an outworlder and -you must stay within certain limits. It's like that." - -"All right," Cole said glumly. - -He worked all day at the hospital dissecting the pisky, but found -no parasites. He noted interesting points of anatomy. The three-part -beak of silicified horn was razor sharp and designed to exert a double -shearing stress. The eye was triune and of fixed focus; the three -eyeballs lay in a narrow isosceles triangle pattern, base down, behind -a common triangular conjunctiva with incurved sides and narrow base. -The wings were elastic and stiffened with a fan of nine multi-jointed -bones that probably gave them grasping and manipulating power in the -living organism. None of it suggested the limit factor he sought. - -Dr. Rudall helped him make cultures in a sterile broth derived from the -pisky's own tissues. In the evening a worker from the plant brought -eleven dead piskies and Cole put them in biostat. He rode home with -Hawkins to his solitary dinner feeling he had made a start. - -Day followed day. Cole remained isolated in his wing, coming and going -through his back door into the garden. He became used to the mute -giant domestics who swept and cleaned. Now and then he exchanged a few -words with the sad Mrs. Vignoli, Pia's mother, he learned, or with -old Bidgrass, in chance meetings. He watched Pia through his windows -sometimes and knew she fled when he came out. There was something -incongruous in the timid wariness with which her plump figure and -should-be-merry face confronted the world. - -Once he caught her and held her wrist. "Why do you run away from me, -Pia?" - -She pulled away gently. "I'll get you in trouble, Mr. Cole. They don't -trust me either. My father was a Tristanian." - -"Who are _they_?" - -"Just they. Morgan, all of them." - -"If we're both outworld, we should stick together. I'm the loneliest -man on this planet, Pia." - -"I know the feeling," she said, looking down. - -He patted her curls. "Let's be friends then, and you help me. Where do -these giant people come from?" - -Her head jerked up angrily. "That has nothing to do with your work! I'm -inworld too, Mr. Cole. My mother is of the old stock." - -Cole let her go in silence. - -He began working evenings in the lab, losing himself in work. Few of -the blue-clad men and women he encountered would look at him, but he -sensed their hostile glances on the back of his neck. He felt islanded -in a sea of dull hatred. Only Dr. Rudall was vaguely friendly. - -Cole found no parasites in hundreds of dissected piskies, but his -cultures were frequently contaminated by a fungus that formed dark red, -globular fruiting bodies. When he turned to cytology he found that what -he had supposed to be an incredibly complex autonomic nervous system -was instead a fungal mycelium, so fine as to be visible only in phase -contrast. He experimented with staining techniques and verified it in a -dozen specimens, then danced the surprised Dr. Rudall around the lab. - -"I've done it! One man against a planet!" he chortled. "We'll culture -it, then work up mutant strains of increasing virulence--oh for a -Belconti geno-mycologist now!" - -"It's not pathogenic, I'm afraid," Dr. Rudall said. "I ... ah ... -read once, that idea was tried centuries ago ... all the native fauna -have fungal symbiotes ... protect them against all known pathogenic -microbiota ... should have mentioned it, I suppose...." - -"_Yes_, you should have told me! My God, there go half the weapons -of applied ecology over the moon ... my time wasted ... _why_ didn't -you tell me?" The ecologist's sharp face flushed red as his hair with -frustrated anger. - -"You didn't ask ... hardly know what ecology means ... didn't realize -it was important ..." the old doctor stammered. - -"_Everything_ is important to an ecologist, especially what people -won't tell him!" Cole stormed. - -He tried to stamp out of the lab, and progressed in a ludicrous -bouncing that enraged him even more. He shouted for Hawkins and went -home early. - - * * * * * - -In his rooms he brooded on his wrongs for an hour, then went downstairs -and thundered on the locked door into the main house, shouting Garth -Bidgrass' name. The sounds beyond hushed. Then Garth Bidgrass opened -the door, looking stern and angry. - -"Come into the library, Mr. Cole," he said. "Try to control yourself." - -In the library Cole poured out his story while Bidgrass, standing with -right elbow resting atop a bookcase, listened gravely. - -"You must understand," Cole finished, "to save the stompers we must -cut down the piskies. Crudely put, the most common method is to find a -disease or a parasite that affects them, and breed more potent strains -of it. But that won't work on piskies, and I could have and should have -known that to begin with." - -"Then you must give up?" - -"_No!_ Something must prey on them or their eggs in their native -habitat, a macrobiotic limit factor I can use. I must learn the adult -pisky's diet; if its range is narrow enough that can be made a limit -factor." - -The old man frowned. "How would you learn all this?" - -"Field study. I want at least twenty intelligent men and a permanent -camp somewhere in Lundy Forest." - -Bidgrass folded his arms and shook his head. "Can't spare the men. And -it's too dangerous--stompers would attack you day and night. I've had -over two hundred egg hunters killed this year, and they're trained men -in teams." - -"Let me go out with a team then, use my own two eyes." - -"Men wouldn't have you. I told you, they're superstitious about -outworlders." - -"Then it's failure! Your money and my doctorate go down the drain." - -"You're young, you'll get your doctorate another place," the old man -said. "You've tried hard, and I'll tell Belconti that." His voice was -placating, but Cole thought he saw a wary glint in the hard gray eyes. - -Cole shrugged. "I suppose I'll settle in and wait for _Gorbals_. But -I've had pleasanter vacations." - -He turned his back and scanned the shelves ostentatiously for a book. -Bidgrass left the room quietly. - -It was a boring evening. Pia was not in the garden. Cole looked at -the barrier and the incredible cliff of Lundy Forest. He would like -to get into that forest, just once. Hundred and fifty days before -_Gorbals_ ... _why_ had they ever sent for him? They seemed to be -conspiring to cheat him of his doctorate. They had, too.... Finally he -slept. - - * * * * * - -He woke to a distant siren wail and doors slamming and feet scraping in -the main house. Dressing in haste, he noted a red glow in the sky to -southward and heard a booming noise. In the hall outside his room he -met Pia, face white and eyes enormous. - -"Stomper attack!" she cried. "Come quickly, you must hide in the -basement with us!" - -He followed her into the main house and downstairs to where Mrs. -Vignoli was herding a crowd of the giant domestics down a doored -staircase. The giant women were tossing their heads nervously. Several -were naked and one was tearing off her dress. Cole drew back. - -"I'm an ecologist, I want to see," he said. "Stompers are data." - -He pushed her gently toward the women and walked out on the front -veranda. From southward came an incredibly rich and powerful chord of -organ music, booming and swelling, impossibly sustained. Old Hawkins -danced in the driveway in grotesque pointed leaps, shrieking "Hoosa -maida! Hoosa maida!" Overhead the moons Cairdween, Morwenna and Annis -of the blue shadows were arranged in a perfect isosceles triangle, -narrow base parallel to the horizon. It stirred something in Cole, but -the swelling music unhinged his thought. With a twinge of panic he -turned, to find Pia at his elbow. - -"They're after me, after us," she cried against the music. - -"I must see. You go find shelter, Pia." - -"With you I feel less alone now," she said. "One can't really hide, -anyway. Come to the watch tower and you'll see." - -He followed her through the house and up two flights to the roof of the -tower on the southeast corner. As they stepped into the night air, the -great organ sound enwrapped them, and Cole saw the southern sky ablaze, -with flyers swooping and black motes hurtling through the glare. -Interwoven pencils of ion-flame flickered in the verging darkness and -the ripping sound of heavy blasters came faintly through the music. - -A hundred-yard section of the barrier was down in flames, and the -great, bobbing, leggy shapes of stompers came bounding through it while -others glided down from the top. Flyers swarmed like angry bees around -the top of the break, firing mounted blasters and tearing away great -masses of wood. The powerful chord of music swelled unendurably in -volume and exultant richness until Cole cried out and shook the girl. - -"It plucks at my backbone and I can't think! Pia, Pia, what _is_ that -music?" - -"It's the stompers singing," she shouted back. - -He shook his head. Bidgrass Station seethed, lights everywhere, roads -crowded with trucks. Around the base of the breakthrough a defense -perimeter flared with the blue-violet of blasters and the angry red -of flame guns. As Cole watched it was overrun and darkened in place -after place, only to reform further out as reserves came into action. -Expanding jerkily, pushed this way and that, the flaming periphery -looked like a fire-membrane stressed past endurance by some savage -contained thing. With a surge of emotion Cole realized it was men down -there, with their guns and their puny muscles and their fragile lives -against two-legged, boat-shaped monsters twenty feet high. - -"Sheer power of biomass," he thought. "Even their shot-down bodies are -missiles, to crush and break." A sudden eddy in the flaming defense -line brought it to within half a mile of the house. Cole could see men -die against the glare, in the great music. - -The girl pressed close to him and whimpered, "Oh, start the fire mist! -Morwenna pity them!" Cole put his arm tightly around her. - -A truck convoy pulled up by the manor house and soldiers were -everywhere, moving quickly and surely. A group hauled a squat, vertical -cylinder on wheels crashing through the ornamental shrubbery. Violet -glowing metal vaning wound about it in a double helix. - -"It's a Corbin powercaster," Pia shouted into Cole's ear. "It -broadcasts power to the portable blasters so the men don't need to -carry pack charges or lose time changing them." - -Cole looked at the soldiers. The same big men he saw every day, the -same closed and hostile faces, but now a wild and savage joy shone in -them. This was their human meaning to themselves, their justification. -The red boundary roared down on them, they would be dying in a few -minutes, but they were braced and fiercely ready. - -The music swelled impossibly loud and Cole knew that he too was going -to die with them, despised outworlder that he was. He hugged the girl -fiercely and tried to kiss her. - -"Let me in your world, Pia!" he cried. - -She pulled away. "Look! The fire mist! Oh thank you, good Morwenna!" - -He saw it, a rose pink paled by nearer flame, washing lazily against -the black cliff edge of Lundy Forest. It grew, boiling up over the -barrier in places, spilling through the gap, and the great, agonizing -chord of music muted and dwindled. The flame-perimeter began shrinking -and still the fire mist grew, staining the night sky north and south -beyond eye-reach. The song became a mournful wailing and the soldiers -in the garden moved forward for the mopping up. - -"Pia, I've got to go down there. I've got to see a stomper close up." - -She was trembling and crying with reaction. "I think they'll be too -busy to mind," she said. "But don't go too far in ... Flinter." - -He ran down the stairs and through the unguarded gate toward the -fought-over area. Wounded men were being helped or carried past him, -but no one noticed him. He found a stomper, blaster-torn but not yet -dead, and stopped to watch the four-foot tripart beak snap feebly and -the dark wings writhe and clutch. The paired vertical eyelid folds -rolled apart laterally to reveal three eyes under a single triangular -conjunctiva, lambent in the flame-shot darkness. Soldiers passed -unheeding while Cole stood and wondered. Then a hand jerked violently -at his arm. It was Morgan. - -Morgan wordlessly marched him off to a knot of men nearer the mopping -up line and pushed him before Garth Bidgrass. Sweat dripped from -flaring eyebrows down the grim old face, and over a blistered right -cheek. A heavy blaster hung from the old man's body harness. - -"Well, Mr. Cole, is this data?" he asked dourly. "Have you come out to -save stompers?" - -"I wish I could have saved men, Mr. Bidgrass. I wanted to help," Cole -said. - -"Another like this and you may have to," Bidgrass said, less sharply. -"It was close work, lad." - -"I can help Dr. Rudall. You must have many wounded." - -"Good, good," the old man said approvingly. "The men will take that -kindly and so will I." - -"One favor," Cole said. "Will you have your men save half a dozen -living stompers for me? I have another idea." - -"Well, I don't know," Bidgrass said. "The men won't like it ... but a -few days, maybe ... yes, I'll save you some." - -"Thank you, sir." Cole turned away, catching a thick scowl from Morgan. -Overhead the three moons were strung in a ragged line across the sky, -and Hoggy Darn was rising. - - * * * * * - -Cole worked around the clock at the hospital, sterilizing instruments -and helping Dr. Rudall with dressings. He was surprised to see other -doctors, many nurses and numerous biofield projectors as modern as any -on Belconti. Some of the wounded were women. All of them, wounded and -unwounded, seemed in a shared mood of exaltation. He caught glimpses of -Pia, working too. She seemed less poised for flight, tired but happy, -and she smiled at him. - -After three days Cole saw his stompers in a stone-floored pen at the -slaughter house. Earth breed cattle lowed in adjacent pens. Four -stompers still lived, their bodies blaster torn and their legs crudely -hamstrung so they could not stand. They lay with heads together and the -sun glinted on the blue-black, iridescent scales covering the domed -heads and long necks. - -Three shock-headed butchers stood by, assigned to help him. Their -distaste for Cole and the job was so evident that he hurried through -the gross dissection of the two dead stompers at one end of the same -pen. After an hour he thought to ask, as best he could, whether -the living stompers were being given food and water. When one man -understood, black hatred crossed his face and he spat on Cole's shoe. -The ecologist flushed, then shrugged and got on with the job. - -It brought him jarring surprises culminating in a tentative conclusion -late on the second day. Then the situation began to fall apart. Working -alone for the moment, Cole opened the stomach of the second stomper and -found in it half-digested parts of a human body. Skull and humerus size -told him it was one of the giants. - -First pulling a flap of mesentery over the stomach incision, Cole -went into the office and phoned Dr. Rudall to come at once. Coming -out, he heard angry shouts and saw two of his helpers running to join -the third, who stood pointing into the carcass. Then all three seized -axes, ran across the pen and began hacking at the necks of the living -stompers. - -The great creatures boomed and writhed, clacking their beaks and half -rising on their wings, unable to defend themselves. The butchers howled -curses, and the stompers broke into a mournful wailing harmonized with -flesh-creeping subsonics. Cole shouted and pleaded, finally wrested an -axe from one and mounted guard over the last living stomper. He stood -embattled, facing a growing crowd of butchers from the plant, when Dr. -Rudall arrived. - -"Dr. Rudall, explain to these maniacs why I must keep this stomper -alive!" he cried angrily. - -"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, they will kill it in spite of you." - -"But Garth Bidgrass ordered--" - -"In spite of him. There are factors you don't understand, Mr. Cole. You -are yourself in great danger." The old doctor's hands trembled. - -Cole thought rapidly. "All right will they wait a day? I want tissue -explants for a reason I'll explain later. If you'll help me work up the -nutrient tonight--" - -"Our pisky nutrient will work. We can take your samples within the -hour. Let me call the hospital." - -He spoke rapidly to the glowering butchers in the vernacular, then -hurried into the building. An hour later the stomper was dead, and -Hawkins drove Cole and the doctor back to their lab with the explants. - -"I've almost got it," Cole said happily. "Several weeks and two more -bits of information and I'll tell you. In spite of all odds, one man -against a planet--this will found my professional reputation back on -Belconti." - - * * * * * - -Once again Cole faced Garth Bidgrass across the round table in the -library. This time he felt vastly different. - -"The piskies are really baby stompers," he said, watching the craggy -old face for its reaction. It did not change. - -"I suspected it when I saw how the smaller eggs fused with the -large egg, with continuous laminae," Cole went on. "There was the -morphological resemblance, too. But when I dissected two mature -stompers I found immature eggs. Even before entry into the oviduct what -you call pisky eggs are filamented to the main body of cytoplasm." - -Disappointingly, Bidgrass did not marvel. He squinted and cocked -his head. Finally he said, "Do you mean the piskies lay their eggs -internally in the stompers?" - -"Impossible! I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue -and they are _identical_, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now -is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But -that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food -source--that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all -through Carina sector." - -He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and -stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled. - -"I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is -harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. Stop it for a few decades, -or set aside breeding areas, and you can have a whole planetful again." - -The old man scowled and stood up. "We'll not stop," he said gruffly. -"There are still plenty of stompers. Remember last month." He walked to -the end window and back, then sat down again still looking grim. - -"Don't be too sure," Cole objected. "I haven't finished my report. -I made a Harvey analysis on the tissues of one stomper. It involves -culturing clones, measuring growth rates and zones of migration and -working out a complex set of ratios--I won't go into details. But when -I fitted my figures into Harvey's formula it indicated _unmistakably_ -that the stompers have a critical biomass." - -"What does that mean?" - -"Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each -individual is only a part. Can you do that?" - -"Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright. - -"Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any -moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of -critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater -animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into -extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a -species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago -may _already_ have extinguished them as a species?" - -Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light. - -"Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula--do _human beings_ have a -critical biomass?" - -"Yes, biologically," Cole said, surprised. "But in our case a varying -part of the greater animal is carried in our culture, our symbol -system, and is not directly dependent on biomass. A mathematical -anthropologist could tell you more than I can." - -Bidgrass placed his hands palm down on the table and leaned back in -sudden resolution. - -"Mr. Cole, you force me to tell you something I had been minded to -hold back. I already know a good part of what you have just told me. I -_wish_ to exterminate the stompers and I will do so. But I meant for -you to go back to Belconti thinking it was the piskies." - -Cole propped his chin on folded hands and raised his eyebrows. "I half -suspected that. But I fooled you, didn't I?" - -"Yes, and I admire you for it. Now let me tell you more. Stomper egg -brings a very high price and I have kept it higher by storing large -reserves. When it is known the stomper is extinct, the rarity value of -my reserve will be enormous. It will mean an end of this harsh life for -me and for my grandniece after me." - -Cole's lip curled, and red mounted in the old man's face as he talked, -but he went on doggedly. - -"I want the pisky theory and the news of stomper extinction to be -released through Belconti University. The news will spread faster and -be more readily believed and I will avoid a certain moral stigma--" - -"And now I've crossed you up!" - -"You can still do it. I can ease your conscience with a settlement -of--say--five thousand solars a year for life." - -Cole leaped up and leaned across the table. - -"No!" he snapped. "Old man, you don't know how ecologists feel about -the greed-murder of species. What I _will_ do is work through Belconti -on your government at Car Truro, warn it that you are about to destroy -an important planetary resource." - -Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red. - -"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which -you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction. -Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and -you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally -have reported it via the next _Gorbals_ to Belconti and sent along your -notes to date--do you follow me?" - -"Yes. A threat." - -"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole." - - * * * * * - -Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it -would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door, -only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and -smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before. - -"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked. - -"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?" - -"Uncle Garth says now that you know--" She broke off, blushing still -more. - -"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia. -Here, let me." - -He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his -table. Pia _was_ lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth -roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the -small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her -round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced -and she looked more frightened than ever. - -"You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the -woods, Pia. What _are_ you always afraid of?" - -Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said. -"What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear." - -They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate -dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian _kresch_ to follow it. Cole -splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and -held up his own. - -"Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half -mockingly. - -Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a -home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh -Flinter, what you must think--" She began crying in earnest. - -He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about -Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for _Gorbals'_ tender." - -She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both. -Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to -take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and -squeezed her hand in saying good night. - -She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened. - - * * * * * - -Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his -eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small -flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He -followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan -bulking darkly ten feet away. - -"Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the -black bar of eyebrow. - -Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move. - -"You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and -heading east. - -"He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him." - -Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into -blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of -Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest -towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land. - -He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area. -Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the -planet's low gravity. - -The resilient surface gave off a fragrance as they walked about on -it. In a sea all around their island, branches of the great forest -trees thrust up, leafy and flowering and bedecked with a profusion of -epiphytal plants in many shapes and colors. Bright-hued true birds -darted from shadow into sunlight and back again, twittering and crying. - -"It's beautiful," he said. And so was Pia, he thought, watching her on -tiptoe reaching to a great white flower. The attractive firmness of -her skin, the roundness and dimpling, _ripeness_, that was the word he -wanted. And her eyes. - -"Pia, you're not frightened any more!" - -It was true. The long-lashed brown eyes were merry as nature meant them -to be. - -"It's peaceful and safe," she said. "When I come to the forest top I -never want to go back to Bidgrass Station." - -"Too bad we must, and let's pretend we don't," he said, pointing to a -cluster of red-gold fruits. "Are those good to eat?" - -"Too good. That's the trouble with New Cornwall." - -"What do you mean?" - -"Race you back to the flyer," she cried, and danced away, bare limbs -twinkling in the sunlight. He floundered after. - -The lunch was good and she had brought along the rest of the bottle of -_kresch_. They sipped it seated beside the flyer while she tried to -teach him New Cornish folk songs. Her small, clear singing blended with -that of the birds around them. - -"I catch parts of it," he said. "As an undergraduate a few years ago I -studied the pre-space poets. I can read Old English, but it is strange -to my ear." - -"I could teach you." - -"I love one wry-witted ancient named Robert Graves. How does it go: -_If strange things happen where she is_--no, I can't recall it now." - -"I could write the songs out for you." - -"The beauty is in you and your voice. Just sing." - -She sang, something about a king with light streaming from his hair, -coming naked out of the forest to bring love into his kingdom. Small -white clouds drifted in the blue sky, and blue Annis slept just above -the rustling branches that guarded the secret of their island. He -listened and watched her. - -She was softly rounded as the clouds, and her clustered brown curls -made an island of the vivid face expressing the song she sang so -bird-like and naturally. She was vital, compact, self closed, -perfect--like one of the great flowers nodding in the breeze along the -island shore--and his heart yearned across to her. - -"Pia," he said, breaking into the song, "do you really want to get away -from New Cornwall?" - -She nodded, eyes suddenly wide, lips still parted. - -"Come with me to Belconti then. Right now. We'll cross to Car Truro and -wait there for _Gorbals_." - -The light dimmed in her face. "Why Car Truro?" - -"Pia, it's hard to tell you. I'm afraid of your great-uncle.... I want -to contact the planetary government." - -"It's no good at Car Truro, Flinter. Can't you just come back to -Bidgrass Station and ... and ... do what Uncle Garth wants?" - -He could barely hear the last. The fear was back in her eyes. - -"Do you know what he wants?" - -"Yes." The brown curls drooped. - -Cole stood up. "So _that's_ the reason--well, I'll not do it, do you -hear? Garth Bidgrass is an evil, greedy old man and maybe it runs in -the blood." - -She jumped up, eyes more angry now than fearful. "He is not! He's -trying to save you! He's good and noble and ... and _great_! If you -only knew the truth--Morwenna forgive me!" She clapped her hand to her -mouth. - -"_Tell_ me the truth then, since I'm still being made a Belconti fool -of. What _is_ the truth?" - -"I've said too much. Now I'll have to tell Uncle Garth--" She began -crying. - -"Tell him what? That I know he's a liar? That you failed as a--" He -could not quite say the word. - -"It's true I was supposed to make you love me and I tried and I can't -because ... because ..." she ended in incoherent sobbing. - -Cole stroked her hair and comforted her. "I've been hasty again," -he apologized. "I'm still running in the dark, and that makes for -stumbles. Let's go back, and I'll talk to your great-uncle again." - - * * * * * - -In the morning Garth Bidgrass, looking tired and stern, invited Cole -to breakfast with the family. Cole had never been in the large, -wood-panelled room overlooking the south garden through broad windows. -Pia was subdued, Mrs. Vignoli strangely cheerful. The meal, served by a -giant maid, was the customary plain porridge and fried meat. - -The women left when the maid cleared the table. Bidgrass poured more -coffee, then leaned back and looked across at Cole. - -"Mr. Cole, I did you a wrong in having you sent here. I kept you in the -dark for your own protection. Can you believe that?" - -"I can believe that you believe it." - -"You came too soon. You were too curious, too smart. I have had to -compound that wrong with others to Pia and my own good name." - -Cole smiled. "I know I'm curious. But why can't I know--" - -"You can, lad. You've nosed through to it and I'll tell you if you -insist. But it will endanger you even more and I wish you would forego -it." - -Cole shook his head. "I'm an ecologist. If I have the big picture, -maybe I can help." - -"I thought you'd say that. Well, history first, and settle yourself -because it _is_ a big picture and not a pretty one. This planet was -settled directly from Earth in the year 145 After Space, almost eight -hundred years ago. It seemed ideal--native protein was actually -superior to Earth protein in human metabolism. Easy climate, -geophysically stable, no diseases--but planetology was not much of a -science in those days. - -"The colony won political independence in 202 A.S. It had a thriving -trade in luxury foods, mostly stomper egg concentrates--freight was -dear then. Settlements radiated out from Car Truro across the plains. -Food was to be had for the taking in the mild climate and it was a kind -of paradise. _Paradise!_" - -The old man's voice rang hard on the last word and Cole stiffened. -Bidgrass went on. - -"Early in the third century our social scientists began to worry about -the unnatural way the culture graded from the complexity of Car Truro -to a simple pattern of mud huts and food gathering along the frontiers. -Children of successive generations were taller than their parents -and much less willing or able to use symbols. By the time a minority -decided the trend should be reversed, the majority of the people could -not be roused to see a danger." - -"Earth life is normally resistant to low-grav gigantism," Cole said. "I -wonder--" - -"It was all the native foods they ate, but mainly stomper egg. There -are more powerful and quicker-acting substances in the forest fungi, -but then the population was all in the eastern grasslands, where the -stompers ranged." - -"I read they were a plains animal." - -"Yes, and harmless too, except for their eggs. Well, the minority set -up a dictatorship and began cultivating Earth plants and animals. -They passed laws limiting the mechanical simplicity of households -and regulating diets. They took children from subnormal parents and -educated and fed them in camps. But the normals were too few and the -trend continued. - -"Shortly after mid-century the population reached the edge of the -southern forest, and there many were completely wild. They drifted -along the forest edge naked, without tools or fire or language or even -family groupings. Their average stature was nearly eight feet. The -normals knew they were losing. Can you imagine how they _felt_, lad?" - -Cole relaxed a little. "Ah ... yes, I can ... I imagine the fight was -inside them, too." - -Bidgrass nodded. "Yes, they were all tainted. But they fought. They -asked Earth for help and learned that Earth regarded them as tyrants -oppressing a simple, natural folk. The economy broke down and more -had to be imported. The only way to pay was in stomper egg exports. -In spite of that, in about the year 300, they decided to restrict the -stompers to the western part of the grasslands, thousands of miles -beyond the human range. - -"The egg hunters began killing piskies and grown stompers. They killed -off the great, stupid herds of darv cattle on which the stompers fed. -The stompers that survived became wary and hostile, good at hiding and -fierce to attack. But killing off the eastern darv herds broke them and -in a generation they vanished from the eastern plains. Things seemed to -improve and they thought the tide was turned. Then, in the year 374, -came what our bards now call the Black Learning." - -"Bards?" Cole said. He drained his coffee cup. - -"Morgan could sing you this history to shiver the flesh on your bones," -the old man said, pouring more coffee. "What I am telling you is -nowhere written down, but it is engraved in thousands of hearts. Well, -to go on. - -"We knew some of the stompers had gone into the southern forest--you -see, they have to incubate their eggs in direct sunlight and we kept -finding them along the forest edge. But we had assumed they were eating -the snakes and slugs and fungi native to the forest floor. Now we -learned that a large population of wild humans had grown up unknown to -us in the deep forest--and the stompers were eating them. - -"You have seen our forests from a distance, lad. Do you realize how -impossible it is to patrol them? We hadn't the men, money or machines -for it. We appealed, and learned we would get no help from any planet -in Carina sector except for pay. But the egg market fell off, and our -income with it. Ships did come, however, small ones in stealth, to -ground along the forest edge and capture the young women of the wild -people." - -Cole struck the table. "How rotten!..." His voice failed. - -Bidgrass nodded. "We call that the Lesser Shame. The young women were -without personality or language, yet tractable and responsive to -affection. They were flawless in health and physique, and eight feet -tall. They could be sold for fantastic prices on loosely organized -frontier planets and yes, even to Earth, as we learned. Something dark -in a man responds to that combination. You feel it as I speak--no, -don't protest, I know. We had long had that trouble among our own -people." - -"Did my own people of Belconti--" Again Cole's voice failed. He brushed -back his red hair angrily. - -"Belconti was new then, still a colony. Well, that was the _help_ we -got. We hadn't the power to fight stompers, let alone slave raiders. -But the Galactic Patrol was just getting organized and the sector -admiral agreed to keep a ship in orbit blockading us. We broke off all -contact except with Tristan, and the Patrol let only one freight line -come through to handle our off-planet trade. It was then we began to -hate the other planets. We call it the Turning Away. - -"Now we are forgotten, almost a myth. The Patrol ship has been gone -since two hundred years ago. But we remember." - -"I wish I'd known this," Cole said. "Mr. Bidgrass, things are greatly -changed in Carina sector--" - -Bidgrass held up his hand. "I know, lad. That's why you're here, and -I'll come to it. But let me go on. Early in the fifth century we -decided to exterminate the stompers altogether and in two decades -killed off all the darv cattle. But the stompers went into the forests -in the south and west and from there came out to raid the plains. Not -to kill, but to carry off normal and semi-wild people into the forest -for breeding stock. A stomper's wing is more flexible than a hand. One -of them can carry half a dozen men and women and run a thousand miles -in a day. Some fungi in the forest can dull a man in an hour and take -his mind in a week. Few who were carried in ever came out again. - -"This went on, lad, for _centuries_. From our fortified towns and -hunting camps we ranged along the forest edge like wolves. The stompers -_must_ lay their eggs in direct sunlight. That forced them out where -we could get at them, into clearings and uplands and along the forest -edge. We killed all we could. - -"We found rhythms in their life pattern keyed to our four moons. When -the three lady moons form a tall triangle, the stompers group in the -open to mill and dance and sing. About every three months this happens -over several days and in old times it was the peak raid season. It was -also our chance to kill. The people call the configuration the House of -the Maidens." - -Cole nodded vigorously. "I remember that. Strange how lunar periodicity -is bionative in every planet having a moon." - -"It saved us here, praise Morwenna, but once almost destroyed us. There -is a longer, sixty-two year cycle called the Nights of Hoggy Darn. Then -the red moon passes through the House of the Maidens and the stompers -go completely berserk. The first one after the war was joined fully, in -434, caught us unprepared and cost us more than three-fourths of our -normal population in the week that we remember as the Great Taking. -We were thrown back into Car Truro for decades and the stompers came -back on the plains. They snatched people from the streets of Car Truro -itself. That we call the Dark Time." - -The old man's craggy face shadowed with sorrow and he sighed, leaning -back. Cole opened his mouth but Bidgrass leaned forward again, new, -fierce energy in his voice. - -"We rallied and came back. We fought from the air and killed them in -large numbers when we caught them in the open on Maiden nights. We -drove them back off the plains and harried them along the forest edges -and in the upland clearings where they came to lay eggs. We gathered -all the eggs we could find. They defended their eggs and caused us -steady losses. But we fought. - -"We built our strategy on the Maidens and in time we drove the enemy -out of the southern forest and into the west. Then we crowded him into -Lundy Peninsula, made it a sanctuary for a hundred years to draw him -in. When I was your age we fought out the last Nights of Hoggy Darn a -few miles east of here. Ten years later we finished Bidgrass Station -and the barrier and the continent was free of stompers." - -Cole shifted his chair to get the sun off his neck. "I hardly know what -to say," he began, but Bidgrass raised his hand. - -"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century -things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began -a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people -along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those -they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be -trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had -few machines except what we need for war. Their children, on an Earth -diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and -fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has -always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for -reclamation work. - -"Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now. -That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on -the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a -queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of -religion along the way. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully -drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and -prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty -well believe it myself and even you believe some of it." - -Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table. - -"Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you -spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill -him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and -meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper -and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to -hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad." - -"I feel it, a little. I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an -ex-wild, isn't he?" - -"Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I." - -Cole got up. "Mind if I pull a curtain? That sun is hot." - -"No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll -ask for a fresh pot." - -Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much -more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew -his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't -have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they -changed from plains to forest. They learned to practise a gruesome kind -of animal husbandry--oh, I could tell you things. _Something_ had to -figure it out." - -"I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on." - -"Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try -to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The -people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent -on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was. - -"But we spat in his face. We gathered his tribute and still took all -the eggs we could find in the inland clearings. We killed every stomper -we saw. Then, for the first time I think, Grandfather Stomper knew it -was war to the death. He began to fight as never before. Where once -a stomper would carry a captured egg hunter a hundred miles into the -forest and turn him loose, now it killed out of hand. They began making -mass attacks on the station and they didn't come to capture, they came -to kill. So it has gone for forty years now." - -The old man's voice changed, less fierce, more solemn. He sat up -straight. - -"Lundy Forest is near eight hundred thousand square miles. No one -knows how many millions of wild humans are in it or how many scores of -thousands of stompers. But this I knew long before you came to tell -me about critical biomass: Grandfather Stomper is very near to death. -He ruled this planet for a million years and he fought me for near a -thousand, but his time is come. - -"Don't laugh, lad, at what I am about to say now. Mass belief, blind -faith over centuries of people like our ex-wilds and semi-wilds, can do -strange things. To them and even to myself I _represent_ Grandfather -Man, and from them a power comes into me that is more than myself. I -know in a _direct_ way that in the Nights of Hoggy Darn to come I will -at long last kill Grandfather Stomper and the war will be won. That -time is only eight weeks away." - -"Then I'll still be here. Grand--Mr. Bidgrass, I want to fight with -you." - -"You may and welcome, lad. Must, even, to redeem yourself. Because, for -what you know now, your life is forfeit if the ex-wilds suspect." - -"Why so? Are you not _proud_--" Cole half stood and Bidgrass waved him -down. - -"Consider, lad. For centuries across the inhabited planets people of -wealth and influence have been eating stomper egg, serving it at state -banquets. But now _you_ know it is human flesh at one remove. How will -they feel toward us when they learn that?" - -"How should they feel? Man has to be consumed at some trophic level. -His substance is as much in the biogeochemical cycles as that of a -pig or a chicken. I suppose we _do_ feel he should cap the end of a -food chain and not short-cycle through himself, but I'm damned if I'm -horrified--" - -"Any non-ecologist would be. You know that." - -The giant maid came in with a pot of coffee and clean cups. Bidgrass -poured and both men sipped in silence. Then Bidgrass said slowly, -"Do you know what the people here call outworlders? Cannibals! For -centuries we have had the feeling that we have been selling our own -flesh to the outworlds in exchange for the weapons to free Grandfather -Man." - -He stood up, towering over Cole, and his voice deepened. - -"It has left bone-deep marks: of guilt, for making the outworlders -unknowing cannibals; of hatred, because we feel the outworlds left -us no choice. And shame, lad, deep, deep shame, more than a man can -bear, to have been degraded to food animals here in our forests -and across the opulent tables of the other planets. Morgan is only -second-generation normal--his father was killed beside me, last Hoggy -Darn. If Morgan knew you had learned our secret he would kill you out -of hand. I could not stop him. Do you understand now why we didn't -want you until next _Gorbals_? Do you see into the hell you have been -skating over?" - -Cole nodded and rubbed his chin. "Yes, I do. But I don't despise -Morgan, I think I love him. On Belconti, Grandfather Man is mainly -concerned to titillate his own appetites, but here, well ... how do -I feel it?... I think what you have just told me makes me more proud -to be a man than I have ever been before. I will carry through the -deception of Belconti University with all my heart. Can't Morgan -understand that?" - -"Yes, and kill you anyway. Because you _know_. You will not lightly be -forgiven that." - -Cole shook his head helplessly. "Well _dammit_ then--" - -"Now, now, there's a way out," Bidgrass said, sitting down again. "The -prophecies all foretell a change of heart after Grandfather Stomper -dies. They speak of joy, love, good feeling. Morgan did agree to your -coming here--he wants to hide the past as much as I do and he could see -the value of my plan. In the time of good feeling I hope he will accept -you." - -"I hope so too," Cole said. "Morgan is a strange man. Why is Pia so -afraid of him?" - -"I'll tell you that, lad--maybe it will help you to appreciate your -own danger. Some few of us are educated on Tristan. Twenty-three years -ago my younger brother took my niece Flada there. She ran away and -married a Tristanian named Ralph Vignoli. My brother persuaded them to -come back and live at our installation there, and Ralph swore to keep -secret the little he knew. - -"The ex-wilds of New Cornwall kept wanting Ralph to come here so they -could be sure of the secret. He kept refusing and finally they sent an -emissary to kill him. My brother was killed protecting him. I stepped -in then with a compromise, persuaded Ralph to come here for the sake of -his wife and daughter. Pia was seven at the time. - -"Ralph was a good man and fought well in battles, but two years later -Morgan and some others came to the house in my absence and took him -away. They took him to a clearing in Lundy Forest, where the stompers -come to lay eggs, stripped off his clothing and left him. That was -so the stompers would not take him for an egg hunter and kill him -outright, but would carry him into the forest like they do with strayed -wild stock. Morgan said the command came to him in a dream. - -"I think Pia feels she is partly responsible for Ralph's death. I -think she sometimes fears Morgan will dream about her, her Tristanian -blood...." - -"Poor Pia," Cole said softly. "These _years_ of grief and fear...." - -"They'll be ended come Hoggy Darn again, Morwenna grant. Don't you -grieve her with your death too, lad. Stay close to the house, in the -house." - -Bidgrass rose and gulped the last of his coffee standing. - -"I must go, I'm late," he said, more cheerfully than Cole had ever -heard his voice. "I have a conference with General Arscoate, our -military leader, whom you'll meet soon." - -He went out. Cole went out too, thoughts wrestling with feelings, -looking for Pia. - - * * * * * - -In the days that followed Cole took his meals with the family except -when there were guests not in Bidgrass' confidence. The doors into the -main house remained unlocked and he saw much of Pia, but she seemed -unexpectedly elusive and remote. Cole, busy with his report to Belconti -University, had little time to wonder about it. - -He faked statistics wholesale and cited dozens of nonexistent New -Cornish authorities. To his real data indicating critical biomass he -added imaginary values for the parameters of climate, range, longevity, -fertility period and Ruhan indices to get an estimated figure. Then he -faked field census reports going back fifty years, and drew a curve -dipping below critical ten years before his arrival. He made the latest -field census show new biomass forty-two percent below critical and -juggled figures to make the curve extrapolate to zero in twelve more -years. - -It pained him in his heart to leave out the curious inverse -reproduction data. But it was a masterpiece of deception that should -put the seal on his doctorate, and because it reported the extinction -of a planetary dominant, he knew it would make the journals and the -general news all through the sector. - -The night he finished it, working late in the library, Pia brought him -milk and cookies and sat with him as he explained what he had done. - -"It's right," he defended himself to her against his scholar's -conscience. "Humans on New Cornwall are a threatened species too. The -secret must be hidden forever." - -"Yes," she agreed soberly. "I think if all the sector knew, the -ex-wilds would literally die of shame and rage. Being wild is not so -bad, but--that other!" She shuddered under her gray dress. - -"Pia, sometimes I feel you're still avoiding me. Surely now it's all -right and genuine between us." - -She smiled sadly. "I'll bring you trouble, with Morgan. Father came to -New Cornwall because of me." - -"But I didn't. I've been thinking I may _stay_, partly because of you. -You've been afraid so long it's habitual." - -"Strangely, Flinter, I don't feel it as fear any more. It's like bowing -with sadness, my strength to run is gone. My old dreams--Morgan coming -for me--I have them every night now." - -"Morgan! Always Morgan!" - -She shook her head and smiled faintly. "He has a dark, poetic power. He -is what he is, just like the stompers. I feel ... not hate, not even -fear ... a kind of _dread_." - -He stroked the back of her hand and she pulled it away. - -"An old song runs through my head," she went on. "A prophecy that -Grandfather Stomper cannot be killed while outworld blood pumps through -any heart on the planet. I feel like my own enemy, like ... like your -enemy. You should not have come until next _Gorbals_. Flinter, _stay -away from me_!" - -He talked soothingly, to little avail. When they parted he said -heartily, "Forget those silly prophecies, Pia. I'll look out for you." - -Privately, he wondered how. - - * * * * * - -Cole sat beside Pia and across the food-laden table from General -Arscoate, a large pink-faced man in middle life. - -"It's an old and proven strategy, Mr. Cole," the general explained. -"When Hoggy Darn starts we will harass the enemy from the air in all -but one of the fourteen sizable open spaces in Lundy Forest. That one -is Emrys Upland, the largest. They will concentrate in Emrys, more each -night, until the climactic night of peak frenzy. Then we come down with -all the men and women we can muster and we kill. We may go on killing -stragglers for years after, but Grandfather Stomper will die on that -night." - -"Why not kill from the air?" - -"More firepower on the ground. I can only lift ninety-four flyers all -told. But I will shuttle twenty thousand fighting men into Emrys in an -hour or two on the big night." - -"So quickly? How can you?" Cole laid down his fork. - -"They will be waiting in the forest top all around the periphery, in -places where we are already building weapons dumps. In the first days -of harrying, we will stage in the fighters." - -"Morgan will visit each group in the forest top and sing our history," -Bidgrass said from the head of the table. "On the evening of the -climactic night, as Hoggy Darn rises, they will take a sacramental meal -of stomper egg. At no other time is it eaten on this planet." - -Mrs. Vignoli looked down. "Garth!" Arscoate said. - -"The lad must know, must take it with us," Bidgrass said. "Lad, the -real reason for not killing from the air is that the people _need_ -to kill personally, with their feet on the ground. So our poetry has -always described that last, great fight. I must _personally_ kill -Grandfather Stomper." - -Cole toyed with his knife. "But he is only a metaphor, a totem image--" - -"The people believe in an actual individual who is the stomper -counterpart of Garth here," the general broke in. "You know, Mr. Cole, -the stompers we kill ordinarily are all females. The males are smaller, -with a white crest, and they keep to the deep forest except on Hoggy -Darn nights. Maybe the frenzy then has something to do with mating--no -one knows. But Garth will kill the largest male he can find. The -people, and I expect Garth and I as well, are going to believe that he -has killed Grandfather Stomper in person." - -The general sipped water and looked sternly over his glass at Cole. -Cole glanced at Pia, who seemed lost in a dream of her own, not there -to them. - -"I see. A symbol," he agreed. - -"Not the less real," Arscoate said tartly. "Symbols both mean and are. -Garth here is a symbol too and that is why, old as he is, he must be -in the thick of it. He is like the ancient battle flags of romantic -pre-space history. People before now have actually _seen_ Grandfather -Stomper. I am _not_ a superstitious backworlder, Mr. Cole, but--" - -Cole raised a placatory hand. "I know you are not, general. Forgive me -if I seemed to suggest it." - -"Let's have wine," Bidgrass said, pushing back his chair. "We'll take -it in the parlor and Pia can sing for us." - -When General Arscoate said good-night he told Cole not to worry, that -he would have reliable guards at the manor gate during Garth Bidgrass' -absence in Car Truro. - -"I meant to tell you and Pia in the morning, lad," Bidgrass said. -"Arscoate and I must go to Car Truro. There's heartburning there over -who gets to fight and who must stay behind. It will be only two days." - - * * * * * - -Cole felt uneasy all day. He spent most of it writing the covering -letter for his report and phrasing his resignation from the university -field staff. He wrote personal letters to his uncle and a few friends. -After dinner he finally signed the official letters and took the -completed report to Bidgrass' desk. Then he went to bed and slept -soundly. - -Pia wakened him with frantic shaking. - -"Dress quickly, Flinter. The guard at the gate was just changed and -it's not time." - -She darted out to the hall window while he struggled with clothing, -then back again. - -"_Quickly_, darling! Morgan's crossing the garden, with men. Follow me." - -She led him through the kitchen and out a pantry window, then stooping -along the base of a hedge to where a flowering tree overshadowed the -garden wall. - -"I planned this, out of sight of guard posts, when I was a little -girl," she whispered. "I always knew--over, Flinter, quickly!" - -Outside was rough ground, a road, a wide field of cabbages and then -the barrier. Veiled Annis rode high and bluish in the clear sky. They -crossed the field in soaring leaps, and shouts pursued them. The girl -ran north a hundred yards behind the shadowy buttresses and squeezed -through a narrow crack between two huge timber baulks. Cole barely made -it, skinning his shoulders. - -"I found this too when I was a little girl," Pia whispered. "I had to -enlarge it when my hips grew, but only just enough. Morwenna grant -they're all too big!" - -"Morgan is, for sure," Cole said, rubbing his shoulder. "Pia, I _hate_ -to run." - -"We must still run. My old plan was to reach here unseen, but now they -know and they'll come over the wall in flyers. We'll have to hide in -the thick brush near the forest edge until Uncle Garth returns." - -She pulled a basket out of the shadows. - -"Food," she said. "I brought it last night." - -He carried the basket and they raced across the half-mile belt to -concealment among high shrubbery and enormous mounds of fungi. Flyers -with floodlights came low along the wall and others quartered the -clearing. Cole and Pia stole nearer to the forest edge, into its -shadow. They did not sleep. - -Once he asked, "How about stompers?" - -"They're a chance," she whispered. "Morgan's _sure_." - -With daylight they saw four flyers patrolling instead of the usual one. -At their backs colossal blackish-gray, deeply rugose tree trunks eighty -feet in diameter rose up and up without a branch for many hundreds of -feet. Then branches jutted out enormously and the colorful cascade of -forest-top epiphytes came down the side and hung over their heads a -thousand feet above. - -Pia opened the food basket and they ate, seated on a bank. She wore her -brown dress, her finest, he had learned, and she had new red shoes. She -was quiet, as if tranced. - -Cole remembered the picnic on the forest top, the secret island of -beauty and innocence, and his heart stirred. He saw that the food -basket was the same one. He did not tell her his thoughts. - -They talked of trivial things or were silent for long periods. He held -her hand. Once she roused herself to say, "Tomorrow, about this time, -Uncle Garth will come looking for us." Shortly after, she gasped and -caught his arm, pointing. - -He peered, finally made a gestalt of broken outlines through the -shrubbery. It was a stomper, swinging its head nervously. - -"It smells us," she whispered. "Oh Flinter, forgive me darling. Take -off your clothes, _quickly_!" - -She undressed rapidly and hid her clothes. Cole undressed too, fear -prickling his skin, remembering what Bidgrass had told him. The stomper -moved nearer in a crackle of brush and stopped again. - -Man and girl knelt trembling under a fan of red-orange fungus. The girl -broke off a piece and motioned the man to do the same. - -"When it comes, pretend to eat," she breathed, almost inaudibly. "Don't -look up and don't say a word. Morwenna be with us now." - -The stomper's shadow fell across them. The man's skin prickled and -sweat sprang out. He looked at the girl and she was pale but not tense, -munching on her piece of fungus. She clicked her teeth faintly and he -knew it was a signal. He ate. - -The stomper lifted the man by his right shoulder. It was like two -fingers in a mitten holding him three times his own height off the -ground. He saw the beak and the eye and his sight dimmed in anguish. - -Then the right wing reached down and nipped the left shoulder of the -rosy girl-body placidly crouching there. It swung her up to face the -man momentarily under the great beak and the tri-corn eye, and their -own eyes met. - -Very faintly she smiled and her eyes tried desperately to say, "I'm -sorry" and "Goodbye, Flinter." His eyes cried in agony "No! No! I will -not have it so!" - -Then the two-fingered mitten became a nine-fingered mitten lapping him -in darkness that bounced and swayed and he knew that the stomper was -running into Lundy Forest. The wing was smooth and warm but not soft, -and it smelled of cinnamon and sandalwood. The odor overpowered him and -the man lapsed into stupor. - - * * * * * - -The man woke into a fantastic dream. Luminous surfaces stretched up to -be lost in gloom, with columns of darkness between. The spongy ground -on which he lay shone with faint blue light. Luminous, slanting walls -criss-crossed in front of him. Close at hand, behind and to the right, -enormous bracket fungi ascended into darkness in ten-foot steps that -supported a profusion of higher order fungi in many bizarre shapes. - -He stood up and he was alone. - -He climbed over a slanting root-buttress and saw her lying there. He -called her name and she rose lightly and came to him. Radiant face, -dimpled arms, round breasts, cradling hips: _his woman_. They embraced -without shame and she cried thanks to Morwenna. - -He said, "People have come out of the forest. What are the rules?" - -"We must eat only the seeds of the pure white fungus--that's the least -dangerous. We must walk and walk to keep our bodies so tired and hungry -that they use it all. We must keep to a straight line." - -"We'll live," he said. "Outside among our people, with our minds -whole. We'll alternate left and right each time we round a tree, to -hold our straight line. We'll come out somewhere." - -"I will follow. May Morwenna go with us." - -The fantastic journey wound over great gnarled roots and buttresses -fusing and intermingling until it seemed that the root-complex was -one unthinkably vast organism with many trunks soaring half-seen into -endless darkness. Time had no feeling there. Space was a bubble of -ghostly light a man could leap across. - -Could leap and did, over and over, the woman following. The man climbed -a curiously regular, whitish root higher than his head and it writhed. -Then, swaying bark along its length, came a great serpent head with -luminous ovoid eyes. While the man crouched in horror, waving the woman -back, the monstrous jaws gaped and the teeth were blunt choppers and -grinders, weirdly human looking. They bit hugely into a bracket fungus -and worried at it. Man and woman hurried on. - -Strength waned. The woman fell behind. The man turned back to her and -the light was failing. The blue mold was black, the luminous panels -more ghostly. - -"It's night. Shall we sleep?" he asked. - -"It's just come day," the woman said, pointing upward. - -He looked up. Far above, where had been gloom, hung a pinkish-green, -opalescent haze of light. Parallel lines of tree trunks converged -through it to be lost in nebulosity. - -"Daylight overpowers the luminous fungi," she said. - -"We sleep, then walk again. Shall we find food?" - -"No. We must always go to sleep hungry so we will wake again." - -They looked, until tired out, for a place of shelter. - -They slept, locked together in the cranny of a massive buttress. The -man dreamed of his tame home-world. - - * * * * * - -He woke again into nightmare. In a twenty-foot fan-grove of the white -fungus they combed handfuls of black spores out of gill slots. The -birdshot-sized spores had a pleasant, nutty flavor. - -With the strength more walking. _Use it, use it, burn the poison._ Day -faded above, and luminous night below came back to light the way. A -rocky ledge and another, and then a shallow ravine with a black stream -cascading. They drank and the man said, "We'll follow it, find an -upland clearing." - -They heard rapid motion and crouched unbreathing while a stomper minced -by up ahead. It had a white crest. - -On and on, fatigue the whip for greater fatigue and salvation at the -end of endurance. They passed wild humans. A statuesque woman with dull -eyes and yellow hair to her ankles, placidly feeding. Babies big as -four-year-old normals, by themselves, grazing on finger-shaped fungi. -An enormous human, fourteen feet tall, fat-enfolded, too ponderous to -stand even in low gravity, crawling through fungus beds. The man could -not tell its sex. - -On and on, sleep and eat and travel and sleep, darkness above or -darkness below, outside of time. The stream lost, found again, -sourcing out finally under a great rock. And there, lodged in a black -sandbank, the man found a human thigh bone half his own height. He -scoured off the water mold with sand. He was armed. - -The man walked ahead clutching his thigh bone, and the woman followed. -They slept clasped together naked all three, man, woman and thigh bone. - -Stompers passed them and they crouched in sham feeding. The man prayed -without words, _both or neither_. And hatred grew in him. - -Snakes and giant slugs and the beautiful, gigantic, mindless wild -humans, again and again, a familiar part of nightmare. The fat and -truly enormous humans; and the man learned they had been male once. He -remembered from far away where time was linear the voice of Grandfather -Man: _Some are beyond saving, and those they kill._ - -And a stomper passed, white crested, and far ahead a human voice cried -out in wordless pain and protest. The man was minded to deviate from -his line for fear of what they might see, but he did not. When they -came on the boy, larger than the man but beardless and without formed -muscles, the man looked at the tears dropping from the dull eyes -and the blood dropping from the mutilation and killed him with the -thigh bone. _Some are beyond saving._ And the hatred in him flamed to -whiteness. - -On and on, day above and day below in recurrent clash of lights. A -white crested stomper paused and looked at them, crouched apart and -trembling. The man felt the deepest, most anguished fear of all and -beneath it, hatred surged until his teeth ached. - -On and on. The man's stubble softened into beard, his hair touched his -ears. On and on. - -The land sloped upward and became rocky. The trees became smaller and -wider spaced so that whole trunks were visible and the light of upper -day descended. A patch of blue sky, then more as they ran shouting with -gladness, and a bare mountain crest reared in the distance. - -They embraced in wild joy and the woman cried, "Thank you, oh -_loveliest_ Morwenna!" - -"Pia, we're human again," Cole said. "We're back in the world. And I -love you." - - * * * * * - -Fearful of stompers, they moved rapidly away from the forest over -steadily rising ground. The growth became more sparse, the ground more -rocky, and near evening they crossed a wide moorland covered with -coarse grass and scattered blocks of stone. Ahead a long, low fault -scarp bounded it and there they found a cave tunneled into the rock, -too narrow for a stomper. At last they felt safe. Morwenna rode silvery -above the distant forest. - -Water trickled from the cave which widened into a squared-off chamber -in which the water spilled over the rim of a basin that looked cut with -hands. Underfoot were small stone cylinders of various lengths and as -his eyes adjusted Cole saw that they were drill cores. - -"Prospectors made this," he told Pia, "in the old, innocent days -when they still hoped to find heavy metals." Then he saw the graven -initials, T.C.B., and the date, 157 A.S. - -They ate red berries growing in their dooryard, gathered grass for a -bed and slept in a great weariness. - -Next day and the next they ate red berries and fleshy, purple ground -fruits and slept, gaining strength. Secure in their cave mouth they -watched stompers cross the moorland. When night fell they gazed at the -bunched moons, but the three Maidens did not quite form a house and -Hoggy Darn was still pursuing them. - -"A few days," Pia said. - -"If this isn't Emrys Upland, Arscoate will kill us with fire mist." - -She nodded. - -More stompers crossed the moorland, some white crested. They moved -there randomly at night and from the forest came a far-off sound of -stompers singing. The Maidens formed a house and Hoggy Darn grazed the -side of it before they fled. To south and west faint rose glowed in the -night sky. - -"Fire mist," Pia said. "The nights of harrying have begun. Oh Flinter, -if this is really Emrys Upland it will be perfect." - -"What will?" - -"You--us--oh, I can't say yet." - -"Secrets, Pia? Still secrets? Between _us_?" - -"You'll know soon, Flinter. I mustn't spoil it." - -The love in her eyes was tinged with a strangeness. She sought his arms -and hid her face in his shoulder. - -Stompers on the moorland all day so they dared not leave the cave. -Flyers streaking high overhead, scouting. - -"Pia, I believe this _is_ Emrys Upland. I'll help after all with the -great killing." - -"You will help, Flinter." - -"Afterward I'll take you to Belconti." - -"We will never see Belconti, Flinter." - -The strangeness in her eyes troubled him. He could not kiss it away. - -Stompers crowding the moorland all night with their dancing, their -vast singing coming to the cave from all round the compass. Rose banks -distant in the night sky and Hoggy Darn crossing the House of the -Maidens. Red Hoggy Darn, still lagging, still not catching it perfectly -upright. The strangeness of Pia. The waiting, clutching a polished -thigh bone. - - * * * * * - -At last the night when the mighty war song of the stompers went up -unbearably, as the man had heard it that once before, and fire mist -boiled along the distant mountains. Flyers shuttled across the sky, -dropped, rose again. Blasters ripped the night with ion-pencils. Hoggy -Darn gleamed redly on the threshold of the House of the Maidens that -stood almost upright and perfect with silvery Morwenna at the vertex. -Flyers blasted clearings in the throng of stompers, and grounded. Men -boiled out of them, setting up Corbin powercasters here, there, another -place, fighting as soon as their feet hit ground. - -The man stood up and brandished the thigh bone. - -"I must go down and fight. Wait here." - -"I must go too," the girl said calmly. - -"Yes, you must," he agreed. "Come along." - -Stampers rushed by them and bounded over their heads and did not harm -them. Blaster-torn stompers fell heavily beside them, threshing and -snapping, and they were not touched. Men lowered weapons to point at -the man and girl, shouting to one another out of mazed faces silently -in the whelming music of the stomper chorus. Man and girl walked on. - -Unharmed through the forest of singing, leaping shapes, hand in hand -through a screen of fighting men that parted to admit them, they walked -into the light of a glowing Corbin where a tall, gaunt old man stood -watching their approach. The feeling of exalted unreality began to lift -from Cole. - -"Grandfather, give us blasters," he shouted. "We want to fight." - -"The power is on you, lad, and you only half know it," the old man -shouted back. "Stand here by the Corbin. Your fight is not yet." Tears -stood in the fierce old eyes. - -Across the moorland the fighting raged. Islands of men and women -grouped round their Corbins held back the booming, chaotic sea of -stompers that surged against them from all sides. Dikes of dead and -dying grew up, men and stompers mingled. The flyers shuttled down and -up again and more islands of men took shape. Hoggy Darn crossed the -threshold and the savage war song of the stompers shook the night sky. - -In a lull Morgan came in to the Corbin to change the wave track on his -blaster. His face was a mask of iron joy and his eyes blazed. - -"Morgan, if we are both alive after, I will kill you!" Cole shouted. - -"No," Morgan rumbled. "You have been into the forest and come out -again. It took you three weeks. It took me three hundred years. Clasp -hands, my brother in hatred." - -"Yes, brother in hatred." The exalted unreality began coming back -strongly. "I want a blaster!" he howled at Morgan. - -"No, brother in hatred, your fight is not yet." Morgan rejoined the -battle, the ring of men standing braced in blaster harness fifty yards -away, ripping down with interweaving ion-pencils the great forms -leaping inward. Man and girl held hands and watched. - -To the left trouble came to a nearby island. Stompers converged from -all sides, abandoning the other attacks, impossibly many. They overran -the defenders, attacking not them but the powercaster behind them, -and piled up until the Corbin's blue-violet glare was hidden. A great -blossoming of flame tore the pile of stompers apart, but the Corbin was -dark. - -"They blew out the power banks," Pia said. "They've never known to do -that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges." - -It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather -Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war -song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in -total volume. Then it was their own turn. - -Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block -and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired -steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave -of stinking heat rolled over them. All around, survivors struggled to -their feet, using flame pistols to head-shoot wounded stompers, digging -out and connecting emergency pack charges to their blasters. They were -pitifully few and their new, dark island was thirty feet across. - -The moor seemed dark with only the red of flame pistols and the violet -flickering of power pack blasters. It seemed to heave randomly like a -sluggish sea with the seen struggles of dying stompers and the felt -struggles of lesser human bodies. Thinned now, stompers attacked singly -or in small groups. Blasters flickered and ripped and went darkly -silent as power packs discharged. The red of short-range flame pistols -replaced them. But across the fault scarp ridge the tumult swelled to -new heights and Corbin after Corbin there flamed out of existence in a -bloom of rose-purple against the skyline. - -In a lull Bidgrass shouted to Morgan, "That's costing them more than -they have to give, over there. Listen. Can you hear it?" - -"Yes, Father in Hatred," Morgan said. "They will break soon." - -"Yes, when Arscoate lays the fire mist. They will come through here. I -have one charge left." - -"I have two, Father in Hatred. Change packs with me." - -Cole found his voice and his senses once more. - -"I must find a weapon! Grandfather, give me your flame pistol!" - -"Soon, lad. Soon now. Let the power take you," the old man soothed. - -Stompers streamed over the moor again and the fighting flared up. The -war song beat against the man's ears so that he drew the girl nearer -and shook the thigh bone. Blaster fire flickered out altogether and -the red blooming of flame pistols weakened. But more and more stompers -streamed past without attacking. Then the man saw fire mist plume -lazily in the east, point after point coalescing all along the forest -edge. - -"Now!" shouted a great voice beside him. "Now, lad!" - -It was old Bidgrass, striding out like a giant, blaster leveled in its -carrying harness. - -The shout released Cole and he saw it far off, coming down the scrap -rubble to the moor. Huger than any, white crest thirty feet above the -ground, Grandfather Stomper. The war song roared insanely over the -moor. Hoggy Darn gleamed heart-midst of the three lady moons. - -The grim old man aimed and fired. The great bird-shape staggered and -came on, left wing trailing. The old man waited until it was nearly on -top of him and fired again. The stomper jerked its head and the bolt -shattered the great tripart beak but did not kill it. With the right -mitten-wing it reached down and swung its adversary twenty feet up, -held him and haggled at him with its stumps of beak. - -The old man's free right arm flailed wildly. Cole beat the stomper's -leg with the thigh bone and howled in hatred. Then he saw the flame -pistol lying where it had fallen from the holster. He picked it up, but -the power was on him again and he did not use it. He hurled the thigh -bone at the stomper's head, diverting it for a second, and tossed the -pistol to old Bidgrass. He knew they could not fail. - -The old man caught the pistol. When the great head swung back he held -the muzzle against the tri-corn eye and fired. Red plasma-jet burned -into the brain behind it. The stomper bounded once in the air, dropped -its slayer, ran three steps and collapsed. - -The stomper song changed suddenly. It became a mournful lament, a dying -into grieving subsonics. Cole knew that note. He had heard it from the -stompers in the stone-floored pen when the butchers were hacking off -their heads. He knew that Grandfather Stomper was dead forever, after -seven hundred years of war. - -Flyers crossed above, blasters were still at work across the ridge, -but the war was ended. The power, whatever that sense of exalted -unreality might be, left Cole; and he felt naked and ridiculous and -wondered what he was doing there. Then he saw the girl bending above -Garth Bidgrass and regained control of himself. - -The strong old man was smiling wearily. - -"We've won the war, lad," he said. "The next task is yours." - -"I'll help you," Cole said. - -"You'll lead. Oh, I'll live, but not for long. Centuries ago, lad, -there was a prophecy, and until tonight people like myself and Arscoate -thought it was only poetry, however literally Morgan and the other -ex-wilds took it." - -"What was it?" - -"It foretells that on the night Grandfather Stomper shall die the new -Grandfather Man will come naked out of the forest with his beautiful -wife and armed with a thigh bone, and that he will lead us in the even -greater task of reclamation that comes after. _Your_ ritual title of -address is 'Father in Love,' lad, and I'm just a broken old man now. -Take up the burden." - -Cole's throat swelled, choking speech for a moment. - -"I can start," he said. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Night of Hoggy Darn, by Richard McKenna - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - -***** This file should be named 60695-8.txt or 60695-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/9/60695/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Night of Hoggy Darn - -Author: Richard McKenna - -Release Date: November 15, 2019 [EBook #60695] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="349" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN</h1> - -<h2>BY R. M. McKENNA</h2> - -<p class="ph1"><i>The talented author of "The Fishdollar Affair"<br /> -returns with another compelling story of a frontier<br /> -world—grim New Cornwall of the Black Learning.</i></p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1958.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Red-haired Flinter Cole sipped his black coffee and looked around the -chrome and white tile galley of Space Freighter <i>Gorbals</i>, in which he -was riding down the last joint of a dogleg journey to the hermit planet -of New Cornwall.</p> - -<p>"Nothing's been published about the planet for the last five hundred -years," he said in a nervous, jerky voice. "You people on <i>Gorbals</i> -at least <i>see</i> the place, and I understand you're the only ship that -does."</p> - -<p>"That's right, twice every standard year," said the cook. He was a -placid, squinting man, pink in his crisp whites. "But like I said, no -girls, no drinks, nothing down there but hard looks and a punch in the -nose for being curious. We mostly stay aboard, up in orbit. Them New -Cornish are the biggest, meanest men I ever did see, Doc."</p> - -<p>"I'm not a real doctor yet," Cole said, glancing down at the scholar -grays he was wearing. "If I don't do a good job on New Cornwall I -may never be. This is my Ph. D. trial field assignment. I should be -<i>stuffing</i> myself with data on the ecosystem so I can ask the right -questions when I get there. But there's nothing!"</p> - -<p>"What's a pee aitch dee?"</p> - -<p>"That's being a doctor. I'm an ecologist—that means I deal with -everything alive, and the way it all works in with climate and -geography. I can use <i>any</i> kind of data. I have only six months until -<i>Gorbals</i> comes again to make my survey and report. If I fumble away my -doctorate, and I'm twenty-three already...." Cole knitted shaggy red -eyebrows in worry.</p> - -<p>"Well hell, Doc, I can tell you things like, it's got four moons and -only one whopper of a continent and it's low grav, and the forest there -you won't believe even when you see it—"</p> - -<p>"I need to know about <i>stompers</i>. Bidgrass Company wants Belconti U. to -save them from extinction, but they didn't say what the threat is. They -sent travel directions, a visa and passage scrip for just one man. And -I only had two days for packing and library research, before I had to -jump to Tristan in order to catch this ship. I've been running in the -dark ever since. You'd think the Bidgrass people didn't really care."</p> - -<p>"Price of stomper egg what it is, I doubt that," the cook said, -scratching his fat jaw. "But for a fact, they're shipping less these -days. Must be some kind of trouble. I never saw a stomper, but they say -they're big birds that live in the forest."</p> - -<p>"You see? The few old journal articles I did find, said they were -flightless bird-homologs that lived on the plains and preyed on the -great herds of something called darv cattle."</p> - -<p>"Nothing but forest and sea for thousands of miles around Bidgrass -Station, Doc. Stompers are pure hell on big long legs, they say."</p> - -<p>"There again! <i>I</i> read they were harmless to man."</p> - -<p>"Tell you what, you talk to Daley. He's cargo officer and has to go -down with each tender trip. He'll maybe know something can help you."</p> - -<p>The cook turned away to inspect his ovens. Cole put down his cup and -clamped a freckled hand over his chin, thinking. He thought about -stomper eggs, New Cornwall's sole export and apparently, for five -hundred years, its one link with the other planets of Carina sector. -Their reputedly indescribable flavor had endeared them to gourmets on a -hundred planets. They were symbols of conspicuous consumption for the -ostentatious wealthy. No wonder most of the literature under the New -Cornwall reference had turned out to be cookbooks.</p> - -<p>Orphaned and impecunious, a self-made scholar, Cole had never tasted -stomper egg.</p> - -<p>The cook slammed an oven door on the fresh bread smell.</p> - -<p>"Just thought, Doc. I keep a can or two of stomper egg, squeeze it from -cargo for when I got a passenger to feed. How'd you like a mess for -chow tonight?"</p> - -<p>"Why not?" Cole said, grinning suddenly. "Anything may be data for an -ecologist, especially if it's good to eat."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The stomper egg came to the officers' mess table as a heaped platter -of bite-sized golden spheres, deep-fried in bittra oil. Their -delicate, porous texture hardly required chewing. Their flavor was -like—cinnamon? Peppery sandalwood? Yes, yes, and yet unique....</p> - -<p>Cole realized in confusion that he had eaten half the platterful and -the other six men had not had any. He groped for a lost feeling—was it -that he and the others formed a connected biomass and that he could eat -for all of them? Ridiculous!</p> - -<p>"I'm a pig," he laughed weakly. "Here, Mr. Daley, have some."</p> - -<p>Daley, a gingery, spry little man, said "By me" and slid the platter -along. It rounded the table and returned to Cole untouched.</p> - -<p>"Fall to, Doc," Daley said, grinning.</p> - -<p>Cole was already reaching ... lying in his stateroom and he <i>was</i> the -bunk cradling a taut, messianic body flaming with imageless dreams. -He dreamed himself asleep and slept himself into shamed wakefulness -needing coffee.</p> - -<p>It was ship-night. Cole walked through dimmed lights to the galley and -carried his cup of hot black coffee to main control, where he found -Daley on watch, lounging against the gray enamel computer.</p> - -<p>"I feel like a fool," Cole said.</p> - -<p>"You're a martyr to science, Doc. Which reminds me, Cookie told me you -got questions about Bidgrass Station."</p> - -<p>"Well yes, about stompers. What's wiping them out, what's their habitat -and life pattern, oh anything."</p> - -<p>"I learned quick not to ask about stompers. I gather they're twenty -feet high or so and they're penned up behind a stockade. I never saw -one."</p> - -<p>"Well dammit! I read they couldn't be domesticated."</p> - -<p>"They're not. Bidgrass Station is in a clearing the New Cornish cut -from sea to sea across a narrow neck of land. On the west is this -stockade and beyond it is Lundy Peninsula, a good half-million square -miles of the damndest forest ever grew on any planet. That's where the -stompers are."</p> - -<p>"How thickly settled is this Lundy Peninsula?"</p> - -<p>"Not a soul there, Doc. The settlement is around Car Truro on the east -coast, twelve thousand miles east of Bidgrass. I never been there, but -you can see from the air it isn't much."</p> - -<p>"How big a city is Bidgrass? Does it have a university?"</p> - -<p>Daley smiled again and shook his head. "They got fields and pastures, -but it's more like a military camp than a town. I see barracks for the -workers and egg hunters, hangars and shops, a big egg-processing plant -and warehouses around the landing field. I never get away from the -field, but I'd guess four, five thousand people at Bidgrass."</p> - -<p>Cole sighed and put down his cup on the log desk.</p> - -<p>"What is it they import, one half so precious as the stuff they sell?"</p> - -<p>Daley chuckled and rocked on his toes. "Drugs, chemicals, machinery -parts, hundreds of tons of Warburton energy capsules. Pistols, -blasters, cases of flame charge, tanks of fire mist—you'd think they -had a war on."</p> - -<p>"That's no help. I'll make up for lost time when I get there. I'll beat -their ears off with questions."</p> - -<p>Daley's gnomish face grew serious. "Watch what you ask and who you ask, -Doc. They're suspicious as hell and they hate strangers."</p> - -<p>"They need my help. Besides, I'll deal only with scientists."</p> - -<p>"Bidgrass isn't much like a campus. I don't know, Doc, something's -wrong on that planet and I'm always glad to lift out."</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you and the others eat any of that stomper egg?" Cole asked -abruptly.</p> - -<p>"Because the people at Bidgrass turn sick and want to slug you if you -mention eating it. That's reason enough for me."</p> - -<p>Well, that was data too, Cole thought, heading back to his stateroom.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Two days later Daley piloted the cargo tender down in a three-lap -braking spiral around New Cornwall. Cole sat beside him in the cramped -control room, eyes fixed on the view panel. Once he had the bright and -barren moon Cairdween at upper left, above a vastly curving sweep of -sun-glinting ocean, and he caught his breath in wonder.</p> - -<p>"I know the feeling, Doc," Daley said softly. "Like being a giant and -jumping from world to world."</p> - -<p>Clouds obscured much of the sprawling, multi-lobed single continent. -The sharpening of outline and hint of regularity Cole remembered noting -on Tristan and his own planet of Belconti, the mark of man, was absent -here. Yet New Cornwall, as a human settlement, was two hundred years -older than Belconti.</p> - -<p>The forests stretched across the south and west, broken by uplands and -rain shadows, as the old books said. He saw between cloud patches the -glint of lakes and the crumpled leaf drainage pattern of the great -northeastern plain but, oddly, the plain was darker in color than the -pinkish-yellow forest. He mentioned it to Daley.</p> - -<p>"It's flowers and vines and moss makes it that color," the little man -said, busy with controls. "Whole world in that forest top—snakes, -birds, jumping things big as horses. Doc, them trees are <i>big</i>."</p> - -<p>"Of course! I read about the epiphytal biota. And low gravity always -conduces to gigantism."</p> - -<p>"There's Lundy," Daley grunted, pointing.</p> - -<p>It looked like a grinning ovoid monster-head straining into the western -ocean at the end of a threadlike neck. Across the neck Bidgrass Station -slashed between parallel lines of forest edge like a collar. Cole -watched it again on the landing approach, noting the half-mile of -clearing between the great wall and the forest edge, the buildings and -fields rectilinear in ordered clumps east of the wall, and then the -light aberration of the tender's lift field blotted it out.</p> - -<p>"Likely I won't see you till next trip," Daley said, taking leave. -"Good luck, Doc."</p> - -<p>Cole shuffled down the personnel ramp, grateful for the weight of his -two bags in the absurdly light gravity. Trucks and cargo lifts were -coming across the white field from the silvery warehouses along its -edge. Men also, shaggy-haired big men in loose blue garments, walking -oddly without the stride and drive of leg muscles. Their faces were -uniformly grim and blank to Cole, standing there uncertainly. Then a -ground car pulled up and a tall old man in the same rough clothing got -out and walked directly toward him. He had white hair, bushy white -eyebrows over deep-set gray eyes, and a commanding beak of a nose.</p> - -<p>"Who might you be?" he demanded.</p> - -<p>"I'm Flinter Cole, from Belconti University. Someone here is expecting -me."</p> - -<p>The old man squinted in thought and bit his lower lip. Finally he said, -"The biologist, hey? Didn't expect you until next <i>Gorbals</i>. Didn't -think you could make the connections for this one."</p> - -<p>"It left me no time at all to study up in. But when species extinction -is the issue, time is important. And I'm an ecologist."</p> - -<p>"Well," the old man said. "Well. I'm Garth Bidgrass."</p> - -<p>He shook Cole's hand, a powerful grip quickly released.</p> - -<p>"Hawkins there in the car will take you to the manor house and get you -settled. I'll phone ahead. I'll be tied up checking cargo for a day or -two, I expect. You just rest up awhile."</p> - -<p>He spoke to the driver in what sounded like Old English, then moved -rapidly across the field toward the warehouses in the same strange walk -as the other men. As far as Cole could see, he did not bend his knees -at all.</p> - -<p>Hawkins, also old but frail and stooped, took Cole's bags to the -car. When the ecologist tried to follow him he almost fell headlong, -then managed a stiff-legged shuffle. Momentarily he longed for the -Earth-normal gravity of Belconti and the ship.</p> - -<p>They drove past unfenced fields green with vegetable and cereal crops, -and fenced pastures holding beef and dairy cattle of the old Earth -breeds. It was a typical human ecosystem. Then they passed a group of -field workers, and surprise jolted the ecologist. They were huge—eight -or nine feet tall, both men and women, all with long hair and some of -them naked. They did not look up.</p> - -<p>Cole looked at Hawkins. The old man glared at him from red-rimmed eyes -and chattered something in archaic English. He speeded up, losing the -giants behind a hedge, and the manor house with the palisade behind it -loomed ahead.</p> - -<p>The great fence dwarfed the house. Single baulks of grassy brown timber -ten feet on a side soared two hundred feet into the air, intricately -braced and stayed. High above, a flyer drifted as if on sentry duty. -Half a mile beyond, dwarfing the fence in its turn, arose the -thousand-foot black escarpment of the forest edge.</p> - -<p>The manor house huddled in a walled garden with armed guards at the -gate. It was two-storied and sprawling, with a flat-roofed watch tower -at the southeast corner, and made of the same glassy brown timber. -Hawkins stopped the car by the pillared veranda where a lumpy, gray, -nondescript woman waited. Cole got out, awkwardly careful in the light -gravity.</p> - -<p>The woman would not meet his glance. "I'm Flada Vignoli, Mr. Bidgrass's -niece and housekeeper," she said in a dead voice. "I'll show you your -rooms." She turned away before Cole could respond.</p> - -<p>"Let me carry the bags, I need to," he said to Hawkins, laughing -uncertainly. The old man hoisted his skinny shoulders and spat.</p> - -<p>The rooms were on the second floor, comfortable but archaic in style. -The gray woman told him that Hawkins would bring his meals, that Garth -Bidgrass would see him in a few days to make plans, and that Mr. -Bidgrass thought he should not go about unescorted until he knew more -about local conditions.</p> - -<p>Cole nodded. "I'll want to confer with your leading biologists, Mrs. -Vignoli, as soon as I can. For today, can you get me a copy of your -most recent biotic survey?"</p> - -<p>"Ain't any biologists, ain't any surveys," she said, standing in the -half-closed door.</p> - -<p>"Well, any recent book about stompers or your general zoölogy. It's -important that I start at once."</p> - -<p>The face under the scraggly gray hair went blanker still. "You'll have -to talk to Mr. Bidgrass." She closed the door.</p> - -<p>Cole unpacked, bathed, dressed again and explored his three rooms. Like -a museum, he thought. He looked out his west windows at the palisade -and forest edge. Then he decided to go downstairs, and found his door -was locked.</p> - -<p>The shock was more fear than indignation, he realized, wondering at -himself. He paced his sitting room, thinking about his scholarly status -and the wealth and power of Belconti, until he had the indignation -flaming. Then a knock came at the door and it opened to reveal old -Hawkins with a wheeled food tray.</p> - -<p>"What do you mean, locking me in?" Cole asked hotly.</p> - -<p>He pushed past the food tray into the hall. Hawkins danced and made -shooing motions with his hands, chattering shrilly in the vernacular. -Cole walked to the railing around the stairwell and looked down. At the -foot of the stair a giant figure, man or woman he could not say, sat -and busied itself with something in its lap.</p> - -<p>Cole went back into his room. The food was boiled beef, potatoes and -beets, plain but plentiful, plus bread and coffee. He ate heartily and -looked out his windows again to see night coming on. Finally he tried -the door and it was not locked. He shrugged, pushed the food tray into -the hall and closed the door again. Then he shot the inside bolt.</p> - -<p>In bed, he finally dropped off into a restless, disturbed sleep.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Emboldened by morning and a hearty tray breakfast, Cole explored. He -was in a two-floor wing, and the doors into the main house were locked. -Through them he heard voices and domestic clatter. Unlocked across the -second-floor hall was another suite of rooms like his own. Downstairs -was still another suite and along the south side a library. The door -into the garden was locked.</p> - -<p>My kingdom, Cole thought wryly. Prisoner of state!</p> - -<p>He explored the library. Tristanian books, historical romances for the -most part, none less than three hundred years old. No periodicals, -nothing of New Cornwall publication. He drifted from window to window -looking out at the formal garden of flower beds, hedges and white sand -paths. Then he saw the girl.</p> - -<p>She knelt in a sleeveless gray dress trimming a hedge. Her tanned and -rounded arms had dimpled elbows, he noted. She turned suddenly and he -saw, framed by reddish-brown curls, her oval face with small nose and -firm chin. The face was unsuitably grave and the eyes wide.</p> - -<p>She was not staring at his window, Cole decided after a qualm, but -listening. Then she rose, picked up her basket of trimmings and glided -around the corner of the house. Before he could pursue her plump vision -to another window, a man appeared.</p> - -<p>He looked taller than Cole and was built massively as a stone. Straight -black hair fell to his shoulders, cut square across his forehead and -bound by a white fillet. Under the black bar of eyebrow the heavy -face held itself in grim, unsmiling lines. He moved with that odd, -unstriding New Cornish walk that suggested tremendous power held in -leash.</p> - -<p>Cole crossed the hall and watched the blue-clad form enter a door in -the wing opposite. The girl was nowhere. Again Cole felt a twinge of -fear, and boiled up anger to mask it.</p> - -<p>Inside looking out, he thought. Peeping like an ecologist in a bird -blind!</p> - -<p>When Hawkins brought lunch Cole raged at him and demanded to see Garth -Bidgrass. The old man chattered incomprehensibly and danced like a -fighting cock. Thwarted, the ecologist ate moodily and went down to -the library. The garden was empty and he decided on impulse to open a -window. A way of retreat, but from what and to where, he wondered as -he worked at the fastenings. Just as he got it free, a woman stooped -through the library door. She was at least seven feet tall.</p> - -<p>Cole stood erect and held his breath. Not looking at him, the woman -dropped to her knees and began dusting the natural wood half-panelling -that encircled the room between bookcases. She had long blonde hair and -a mild, vacant face; she wore a shapeless blue dress.</p> - -<p>"Hello," Cole said.</p> - -<p>She paid no attention.</p> - -<p>"Hello!" he said more sharply. "Do you speak Galactic English?"</p> - -<p>She looked at him out of empty blue eyes and went back to her work. -He went past her gingerly and up to his room. There he wrote a note to -Garth Bidgrass, paced and fanned his indignation, tore up the note and -wrote a stronger one. When Hawkins brought his dinner, Cole beat down -his chattering objections and stuffed the note into the old man's coat -pocket.</p> - -<p>"See that Bidgrass gets it at once! Do you hear, at once!" he shouted.</p> - -<p>After nightfall, nervous and wakeful, Cole looked out on the garden by -the pale light of two moons. He saw the girl, wearing the same dress, -come out of the opposite wing, and decided on impulse to intercept her.</p> - -<p>As he climbed through the library window he said to himself, "Anything -may be data to an ecologist, especially if it's pretty to look at."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He met her full face at the house corner and her hands flew up, -fending. She turned and he said, "Please don't run away from me. I want -to talk to you."</p> - -<p>She turned back with eyes wide and troubled, in what nature had meant -to be a merry, careless face.</p> - -<p>"Do you know who I am?" he asked.</p> - -<p>She nodded. "Uncle Garth says I'm not to talk to you." It was a little -girl's voice, tremulous.</p> - -<p>"Why? What am I, some kind of monster?"</p> - -<p>"N-no. You're an outworlder, from a great, wealthy planet."</p> - -<p>"Belconti is a very ordinary planet. What's your name?"</p> - -<p>"I'm Pia—Pia Vignoli." The voice took on more assurance, but the -plump body stayed poised for flight.</p> - -<p>"Well I'm Flinter Cole, and I have a job to do on this planet. It's -<i>terribly</i> important that I get started. Will you help me?"</p> - -<p>"How can I, Mr. Cole? I'm nobody. I don't know anything." She moved -away, and he followed, awkwardly.</p> - -<p>"Girls know all sorts of things that would interest an ecologist," he -protested. "Tell me all you know about stompers."</p> - -<p>"Oh <i>no</i>! I mustn't talk about stompers."</p> - -<p>"Well talk about nothing then, like girls do," he said impatiently. -"What's the name of that moon?" He pointed overhead.</p> - -<p>Tension left her and she smiled a little. "Morwenna," she said. "That -one just setting into Lundy Forest is Annis. You can tell Annis by her -bluish shadows that are never the same."</p> - -<p>"Good girl! How about the other two, the ones that aren't up?"</p> - -<p>"One's Cairdween and the other, the red one—oh, I daren't talk about -moons either."</p> - -<p>"Not even <i>moons</i>? Really, Miss Vignoli—"</p> - -<p>"Let's not talk at all. I'll show you how to walk, you do look so funny -all spraddled and scraping your feet. I was born off-planet and I had -to learn it myself."</p> - -<p>She showed him the light down-flex of the foot that threw the body more -forward than up, and he learned to wait out the strange micropause -before his weight settled on the other foot. With a little practice -he got it, walking up and down the moonlit path beside her in an -effortless toe dance. Then he learned to turn corners and to jump.</p> - -<p>"Pia," he said once. "Pia. I like the sound, but it doesn't suit this -rough planet."</p> - -<p>"I was born on Tristan," she murmured. "Please don't ask—"</p> - -<p>"I won't. But no reason why I can't talk. May I call you Pia?"</p> - -<p>He described Belconti and the university, and his doctorate, at stake -in this field assignment. Suddenly she stopped short and pointed to -where a red moon lifted above the dark cliff of the eastern forest.</p> - -<p>"It's late," she said. "There comes Hoggy Darn. Good night, Mr. Cole."</p> - -<p>She danced away faster than he could follow. He crawled back through -his window in the reddish moonlight.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Next afternoon Cole faced Garth Bidgrass in the library. The old man -sat with folded arms, craggy face impassive. Cole, standing, leaned his -weight on his hands and thrust his sharp face across the table. His -freckles stood out against his angry pallor, and sunlight from the end -window blazed in his red hair.</p> - -<p>"Let me sum up," he said, thin-lipped. "For obscure reasons I must -be essentially a prisoner. All right. You have no education here, no -biologists of any kind. All right. Now here is what they expect of me -on Belconti: to rough out the planetary ecosystem, set up a functional -profile series for the stomper and its interacting species, make energy -flow charts and outline the problem. If my report is incorrect or -incomplete, Belconti won't send the right task group of specialists. -Then you spend your money for nothing and I lose my doctorate. I must -have skilled helpers, a clerical staff, <i>masses</i> of data!"</p> - -<p>"You've said all that before," Bidgrass said calmly. "I told you, I can -provide none of that."</p> - -<p>"Then it's hopeless! Why did you ever send for an ecologist?"</p> - -<p>"I sent for help. Belconti sent the ecologist."</p> - -<p>"Help me to <i>help</i> you, then. You must try to understand, Mr. Bidgrass, -science can't operate in a vacuum. I can't work up a total planetary -biology. I must <i>start</i> with that data."</p> - -<p>"Do what you can for us," Bidgrass said. "They won't blame you on -Belconti when they know and we won't blame you here if it doesn't help."</p> - -<p>Cole sat down, shaking his head. "But Belconti won't count it as a -field job, not in ecology. You <i>will</i> not understand my position. Let -me put it this way: suppose someone gave you a hatchet and told you, -only one man, to cut down Lundy Forest?"</p> - -<p>"I could start," the old man said. His eyes blazed and he smiled -grimly. "I'd leave my mark on one tree."</p> - -<p>Colt felt suddenly foolish and humbled.</p> - -<p>"All right," he said. "I'll do what I can. What do you think is wiping -out the stompers?"</p> - -<p>"I know what. A parasite bird that lays its eggs on stomper eggs. Its -young hatch first and eat the big egg. The people call them piskies."</p> - -<p>"I'll need to work out its life cycle, look for weak points and natural -enemies. Who knows a lot about these piskies?"</p> - -<p>"I know as much as anybody, and I've never seen a grown one. We believe -they stay in the deep forest. But there are always three to each -stomper egg and they're vicious. Go for a man's eyes or jugular. Egg -hunters kill dozens every day."</p> - -<p>"I'll want dozens, alive if possible, and a lab. Can you do that much?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. You can use Dr. Rudall's lab at the hospital." Bidgrass stood up -and looked at his watch. "The egg harvest should start coming in soon -down at the plant and there may be a dead pisky. Come along and see."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>As Hawkins guided the car past a group of the giant field workers, Cole -felt Bidgrass' eyes on him. He turned, and the old man said slowly, -"Stick to piskies, Mr. Cole. We'll all be happier."</p> - -<p>"Anything may be data to an ecologist, especially if he overlooks it," -Cole murmured stubbornly.</p> - -<p>Hawkins cackled something about "Hoggy Darn itha hoose" and speeded up.</p> - -<p>In the cavernous, machinery-lined plant Cole met the manager. He -was the same powerful, long-haired man Cole had seen in the garden. -"Morgan," Bidgrass introduced him with the one name, adding, "He -doesn't use Galactic English."</p> - -<p>Morgan bent his head slightly, unsmiling, ignoring Cole's offered hand. -His wide-set eyes were so lustrously black that they seemed to have no -pupils, and under the hostile stare Cole flushed angrily. They walked -through the plant, Morgan talking to Bidgrass in the vernacular. His -voice was deep and resonant, organ-like.</p> - -<p>Bidgrass explained to Cole how stomper egg was vac-frozen under biostat -and sealed in plastic for export. He pointed out a piece of shell, half -an inch thick and highly translucent. From its radius of curvature Cole -realized that stomper eggs were much larger than he had pictured them. -Then someone shouted and Bidgrass said a flyer was coming in. They went -out on the loading dock.</p> - -<p>The flyer alongside carried six men forward of the cargo space and -had four heavy blasters mounted almost like a warcraft. As the dock -crew unloaded two eggs into dollies, other flyers were skittering in, -further along the dock. Bidgrass pointed out to Cole on one huge four -by three-foot egg the bases of broken parasite eggs cemented to its -shell. Through a hole made by piskies, the ecologist noted that the -substance of the large egg was a stiff gel. Morgan flashed a strong -pocket lamp on the shell and growled something.</p> - -<p>"There may be a pisky hiding inside," Bidgrass said. "You are lucky, -Mr. Cole."</p> - -<p>Morgan stepped inside and returned almost at once wearing goggles -and heavy gloves, and carrying a small power saw. He used the light -again, traced an eight-inch square with his finger, and sawed it out. -The others, all but Cole, stood back. Morgan pulled away the piece and -something black flew up, incredibly swift, with a shrill, keening sound.</p> - -<p>Cole looked after it and Morgan struck him heavily in the face, -knocking him to hands and knees. Feet stamped and scraped around him -and Cole saw his own blood dripping on the clock. He stood up dazed and -angry.</p> - -<p>"Morgan saved your eye," Bidgrass told him, "but the pisky took a -nasty gouge at your cheekbone. I'll have Hawkins drive you to the -hospital—you wanted to meet Dr. Rudall anyway."</p> - -<p>Cole examined the crushed pisky on the way to the hospital. Big as his -fist, with a tripartite beak, it was no true bird. The wings were flaps -of black skin that still wrinkled and folded flexibly with residual -life. It had nine toes on each foot and seemed covered with fine scales.</p> - -<p>Dr. Rudall treated Cole's cheek in a surprisingly large and well -appointed dressing room. He was a gray, defeated-looking man and -told Cole in an apologetic voice that he had taken medical training -on Planet Tristan many years ago ... out of touch now. His small lab -looked hopelessly archaic, but he promised to biostat the dead pisky -until Cole could get back to it.</p> - -<p>Hawkins was not with the ground car. Cole drove back to the plant -without him. He wanted another look at the mode of adhesion of pisky -egg on stomper egg. He drove to the further end of the plant and -mounted the dock from outside, to freeze in surprise. Twenty feet away, -the dock crew was unloading a giant.</p> - -<p>He was naked, strapped limply to a plank, and his face was bloody. Half -his reddish hair and beard was singed away. Then a hand hit Cole's -shoulder and spun him around. It was Morgan.</p> - -<p>"Clear out of here, you!" the big man said in fluent, if plain, -Galactic English. "Don't you ever come here without Garth Bidgrass -brings you!" He seemed hardly to move his lips, but the voice rumbled -like thunder.</p> - -<p>"Well," thought Cole, driving back after Hawkins, "datums are data, if -they bite off your head."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"For your own safety, Mr. Cole, you must not again leave the company -of either Hawkins or Dr. Rudall when you are away from the house," -Bidgrass told Cole the next morning. "The people have strange beliefs -that would seem sheer nonsense to you, but their impulsive acts, if you -provoke them, will be unpleasantly real."</p> - -<p>"If I knew their beliefs I might know how to behave."</p> - -<p>"It is your very presence that is provoking. If you were made of salt -you would have to stay out of the rain. Here you are an outworlder and -you must stay within certain limits. It's like that."</p> - -<p>"All right," Cole said glumly.</p> - -<p>He worked all day at the hospital dissecting the pisky, but found -no parasites. He noted interesting points of anatomy. The three-part -beak of silicified horn was razor sharp and designed to exert a double -shearing stress. The eye was triune and of fixed focus; the three -eyeballs lay in a narrow isosceles triangle pattern, base down, behind -a common triangular conjunctiva with incurved sides and narrow base. -The wings were elastic and stiffened with a fan of nine multi-jointed -bones that probably gave them grasping and manipulating power in the -living organism. None of it suggested the limit factor he sought.</p> - -<p>Dr. Rudall helped him make cultures in a sterile broth derived from the -pisky's own tissues. In the evening a worker from the plant brought -eleven dead piskies and Cole put them in biostat. He rode home with -Hawkins to his solitary dinner feeling he had made a start.</p> - -<p>Day followed day. Cole remained isolated in his wing, coming and going -through his back door into the garden. He became used to the mute -giant domestics who swept and cleaned. Now and then he exchanged a few -words with the sad Mrs. Vignoli, Pia's mother, he learned, or with -old Bidgrass, in chance meetings. He watched Pia through his windows -sometimes and knew she fled when he came out. There was something -incongruous in the timid wariness with which her plump figure and -should-be-merry face confronted the world.</p> - -<p>Once he caught her and held her wrist. "Why do you run away from me, -Pia?"</p> - -<p>She pulled away gently. "I'll get you in trouble, Mr. Cole. They don't -trust me either. My father was a Tristanian."</p> - -<p>"Who are <i>they</i>?"</p> - -<p>"Just they. Morgan, all of them."</p> - -<p>"If we're both outworld, we should stick together. I'm the loneliest -man on this planet, Pia."</p> - -<p>"I know the feeling," she said, looking down.</p> - -<p>He patted her curls. "Let's be friends then, and you help me. Where do -these giant people come from?"</p> - -<p>Her head jerked up angrily. "That has nothing to do with your work! I'm -inworld too, Mr. Cole. My mother is of the old stock."</p> - -<p>Cole let her go in silence.</p> - -<p>He began working evenings in the lab, losing himself in work. Few of -the blue-clad men and women he encountered would look at him, but he -sensed their hostile glances on the back of his neck. He felt islanded -in a sea of dull hatred. Only Dr. Rudall was vaguely friendly.</p> - -<p>Cole found no parasites in hundreds of dissected piskies, but his -cultures were frequently contaminated by a fungus that formed dark red, -globular fruiting bodies. When he turned to cytology he found that what -he had supposed to be an incredibly complex autonomic nervous system -was instead a fungal mycelium, so fine as to be visible only in phase -contrast. He experimented with staining techniques and verified it in a -dozen specimens, then danced the surprised Dr. Rudall around the lab.</p> - -<p>"I've done it! One man against a planet!" he chortled. "We'll culture -it, then work up mutant strains of increasing virulence—oh for a -Belconti geno-mycologist now!"</p> - -<p>"It's not pathogenic, I'm afraid," Dr. Rudall said. "I ... ah ... -read once, that idea was tried centuries ago ... all the native fauna -have fungal symbiotes ... protect them against all known pathogenic -microbiota ... should have mentioned it, I suppose...."</p> - -<p>"<i>Yes</i>, you should have told me! My God, there go half the weapons -of applied ecology over the moon ... my time wasted ... <i>why</i> didn't -you tell me?" The ecologist's sharp face flushed red as his hair with -frustrated anger.</p> - -<p>"You didn't ask ... hardly know what ecology means ... didn't realize -it was important ..." the old doctor stammered.</p> - -<p>"<i>Everything</i> is important to an ecologist, especially what people -won't tell him!" Cole stormed.</p> - -<p>He tried to stamp out of the lab, and progressed in a ludicrous -bouncing that enraged him even more. He shouted for Hawkins and went -home early.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In his rooms he brooded on his wrongs for an hour, then went downstairs -and thundered on the locked door into the main house, shouting Garth -Bidgrass' name. The sounds beyond hushed. Then Garth Bidgrass opened -the door, looking stern and angry.</p> - -<p>"Come into the library, Mr. Cole," he said. "Try to control yourself."</p> - -<p>In the library Cole poured out his story while Bidgrass, standing with -right elbow resting atop a bookcase, listened gravely.</p> - -<p>"You must understand," Cole finished, "to save the stompers we must -cut down the piskies. Crudely put, the most common method is to find a -disease or a parasite that affects them, and breed more potent strains -of it. But that won't work on piskies, and I could have and should have -known that to begin with."</p> - -<p>"Then you must give up?"</p> - -<p>"<i>No!</i> Something must prey on them or their eggs in their native -habitat, a macrobiotic limit factor I can use. I must learn the adult -pisky's diet; if its range is narrow enough that can be made a limit -factor."</p> - -<p>The old man frowned. "How would you learn all this?"</p> - -<p>"Field study. I want at least twenty intelligent men and a permanent -camp somewhere in Lundy Forest."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass folded his arms and shook his head. "Can't spare the men. And -it's too dangerous—stompers would attack you day and night. I've had -over two hundred egg hunters killed this year, and they're trained men -in teams."</p> - -<p>"Let me go out with a team then, use my own two eyes."</p> - -<p>"Men wouldn't have you. I told you, they're superstitious about -outworlders."</p> - -<p>"Then it's failure! Your money and my doctorate go down the drain."</p> - -<p>"You're young, you'll get your doctorate another place," the old man -said. "You've tried hard, and I'll tell Belconti that." His voice was -placating, but Cole thought he saw a wary glint in the hard gray eyes.</p> - -<p>Cole shrugged. "I suppose I'll settle in and wait for <i>Gorbals</i>. But -I've had pleasanter vacations."</p> - -<p>He turned his back and scanned the shelves ostentatiously for a book. -Bidgrass left the room quietly.</p> - -<p>It was a boring evening. Pia was not in the garden. Cole looked at -the barrier and the incredible cliff of Lundy Forest. He would like -to get into that forest, just once. Hundred and fifty days before -<i>Gorbals</i> ... <i>why</i> had they ever sent for him? They seemed to be -conspiring to cheat him of his doctorate. They had, too.... Finally he -slept.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He woke to a distant siren wail and doors slamming and feet scraping in -the main house. Dressing in haste, he noted a red glow in the sky to -southward and heard a booming noise. In the hall outside his room he -met Pia, face white and eyes enormous.</p> - -<p>"Stomper attack!" she cried. "Come quickly, you must hide in the -basement with us!"</p> - -<p>He followed her into the main house and downstairs to where Mrs. -Vignoli was herding a crowd of the giant domestics down a doored -staircase. The giant women were tossing their heads nervously. Several -were naked and one was tearing off her dress. Cole drew back.</p> - -<p>"I'm an ecologist, I want to see," he said. "Stompers are data."</p> - -<p>He pushed her gently toward the women and walked out on the front -veranda. From southward came an incredibly rich and powerful chord of -organ music, booming and swelling, impossibly sustained. Old Hawkins -danced in the driveway in grotesque pointed leaps, shrieking "Hoosa -maida! Hoosa maida!" Overhead the moons Cairdween, Morwenna and Annis -of the blue shadows were arranged in a perfect isosceles triangle, -narrow base parallel to the horizon. It stirred something in Cole, but -the swelling music unhinged his thought. With a twinge of panic he -turned, to find Pia at his elbow.</p> - -<p>"They're after me, after us," she cried against the music.</p> - -<p>"I must see. You go find shelter, Pia."</p> - -<p>"With you I feel less alone now," she said. "One can't really hide, -anyway. Come to the watch tower and you'll see."</p> - -<p>He followed her through the house and up two flights to the roof of the -tower on the southeast corner. As they stepped into the night air, the -great organ sound enwrapped them, and Cole saw the southern sky ablaze, -with flyers swooping and black motes hurtling through the glare. -Interwoven pencils of ion-flame flickered in the verging darkness and -the ripping sound of heavy blasters came faintly through the music.</p> - -<p>A hundred-yard section of the barrier was down in flames, and the -great, bobbing, leggy shapes of stompers came bounding through it while -others glided down from the top. Flyers swarmed like angry bees around -the top of the break, firing mounted blasters and tearing away great -masses of wood. The powerful chord of music swelled unendurably in -volume and exultant richness until Cole cried out and shook the girl.</p> - -<p>"It plucks at my backbone and I can't think! Pia, Pia, what <i>is</i> that -music?"</p> - -<p>"It's the stompers singing," she shouted back.</p> - -<p>He shook his head. Bidgrass Station seethed, lights everywhere, roads -crowded with trucks. Around the base of the breakthrough a defense -perimeter flared with the blue-violet of blasters and the angry red -of flame guns. As Cole watched it was overrun and darkened in place -after place, only to reform further out as reserves came into action. -Expanding jerkily, pushed this way and that, the flaming periphery -looked like a fire-membrane stressed past endurance by some savage -contained thing. With a surge of emotion Cole realized it was men down -there, with their guns and their puny muscles and their fragile lives -against two-legged, boat-shaped monsters twenty feet high.</p> - -<p>"Sheer power of biomass," he thought. "Even their shot-down bodies are -missiles, to crush and break." A sudden eddy in the flaming defense -line brought it to within half a mile of the house. Cole could see men -die against the glare, in the great music.</p> - -<p>The girl pressed close to him and whimpered, "Oh, start the fire mist! -Morwenna pity them!" Cole put his arm tightly around her.</p> - -<p>A truck convoy pulled up by the manor house and soldiers were -everywhere, moving quickly and surely. A group hauled a squat, vertical -cylinder on wheels crashing through the ornamental shrubbery. Violet -glowing metal vaning wound about it in a double helix.</p> - -<p>"It's a Corbin powercaster," Pia shouted into Cole's ear. "It -broadcasts power to the portable blasters so the men don't need to -carry pack charges or lose time changing them."</p> - -<p>Cole looked at the soldiers. The same big men he saw every day, the -same closed and hostile faces, but now a wild and savage joy shone in -them. This was their human meaning to themselves, their justification. -The red boundary roared down on them, they would be dying in a few -minutes, but they were braced and fiercely ready.</p> - -<p>The music swelled impossibly loud and Cole knew that he too was going -to die with them, despised outworlder that he was. He hugged the girl -fiercely and tried to kiss her.</p> - -<p>"Let me in your world, Pia!" he cried.</p> - -<p>She pulled away. "Look! The fire mist! Oh thank you, good Morwenna!"</p> - -<p>He saw it, a rose pink paled by nearer flame, washing lazily against -the black cliff edge of Lundy Forest. It grew, boiling up over the -barrier in places, spilling through the gap, and the great, agonizing -chord of music muted and dwindled. The flame-perimeter began shrinking -and still the fire mist grew, staining the night sky north and south -beyond eye-reach. The song became a mournful wailing and the soldiers -in the garden moved forward for the mopping up.</p> - -<p>"Pia, I've got to go down there. I've got to see a stomper close up."</p> - -<p>She was trembling and crying with reaction. "I think they'll be too -busy to mind," she said. "But don't go too far in ... Flinter."</p> - -<p>He ran down the stairs and through the unguarded gate toward the -fought-over area. Wounded men were being helped or carried past him, -but no one noticed him. He found a stomper, blaster-torn but not yet -dead, and stopped to watch the four-foot tripart beak snap feebly and -the dark wings writhe and clutch. The paired vertical eyelid folds -rolled apart laterally to reveal three eyes under a single triangular -conjunctiva, lambent in the flame-shot darkness. Soldiers passed -unheeding while Cole stood and wondered. Then a hand jerked violently -at his arm. It was Morgan.</p> - -<p>Morgan wordlessly marched him off to a knot of men nearer the mopping -up line and pushed him before Garth Bidgrass. Sweat dripped from -flaring eyebrows down the grim old face, and over a blistered right -cheek. A heavy blaster hung from the old man's body harness.</p> - -<p>"Well, Mr. Cole, is this data?" he asked dourly. "Have you come out to -save stompers?"</p> - -<p>"I wish I could have saved men, Mr. Bidgrass. I wanted to help," Cole -said.</p> - -<p>"Another like this and you may have to," Bidgrass said, less sharply. -"It was close work, lad."</p> - -<p>"I can help Dr. Rudall. You must have many wounded."</p> - -<p>"Good, good," the old man said approvingly. "The men will take that -kindly and so will I."</p> - -<p>"One favor," Cole said. "Will you have your men save half a dozen -living stompers for me? I have another idea."</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know," Bidgrass said. "The men won't like it ... but a -few days, maybe ... yes, I'll save you some."</p> - -<p>"Thank you, sir." Cole turned away, catching a thick scowl from Morgan. -Overhead the three moons were strung in a ragged line across the sky, -and Hoggy Darn was rising.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole worked around the clock at the hospital, sterilizing instruments -and helping Dr. Rudall with dressings. He was surprised to see other -doctors, many nurses and numerous biofield projectors as modern as any -on Belconti. Some of the wounded were women. All of them, wounded and -unwounded, seemed in a shared mood of exaltation. He caught glimpses of -Pia, working too. She seemed less poised for flight, tired but happy, -and she smiled at him.</p> - -<p>After three days Cole saw his stompers in a stone-floored pen at the -slaughter house. Earth breed cattle lowed in adjacent pens. Four -stompers still lived, their bodies blaster torn and their legs crudely -hamstrung so they could not stand. They lay with heads together and the -sun glinted on the blue-black, iridescent scales covering the domed -heads and long necks.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="650" height="421" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Three shock-headed butchers stood by, assigned to help him. Their -distaste for Cole and the job was so evident that he hurried through -the gross dissection of the two dead stompers at one end of the same -pen. After an hour he thought to ask, as best he could, whether -the living stompers were being given food and water. When one man -understood, black hatred crossed his face and he spat on Cole's shoe. -The ecologist flushed, then shrugged and got on with the job.</p> - -<p>It brought him jarring surprises culminating in a tentative conclusion -late on the second day. Then the situation began to fall apart. Working -alone for the moment, Cole opened the stomach of the second stomper and -found in it half-digested parts of a human body. Skull and humerus size -told him it was one of the giants.</p> - -<p>First pulling a flap of mesentery over the stomach incision, Cole -went into the office and phoned Dr. Rudall to come at once. Coming -out, he heard angry shouts and saw two of his helpers running to join -the third, who stood pointing into the carcass. Then all three seized -axes, ran across the pen and began hacking at the necks of the living -stompers.</p> - -<p>The great creatures boomed and writhed, clacking their beaks and half -rising on their wings, unable to defend themselves. The butchers howled -curses, and the stompers broke into a mournful wailing harmonized with -flesh-creeping subsonics. Cole shouted and pleaded, finally wrested an -axe from one and mounted guard over the last living stomper. He stood -embattled, facing a growing crowd of butchers from the plant, when Dr. -Rudall arrived.</p> - -<p>"Dr. Rudall, explain to these maniacs why I must keep this stomper -alive!" he cried angrily.</p> - -<p>"I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, they will kill it in spite of you."</p> - -<p>"But Garth Bidgrass ordered—"</p> - -<p>"In spite of him. There are factors you don't understand, Mr. Cole. You -are yourself in great danger." The old doctor's hands trembled.</p> - -<p>Cole thought rapidly. "All right will they wait a day? I want tissue -explants for a reason I'll explain later. If you'll help me work up the -nutrient tonight—"</p> - -<p>"Our pisky nutrient will work. We can take your samples within the -hour. Let me call the hospital."</p> - -<p>He spoke rapidly to the glowering butchers in the vernacular, then -hurried into the building. An hour later the stomper was dead, and -Hawkins drove Cole and the doctor back to their lab with the explants.</p> - -<p>"I've almost got it," Cole said happily. "Several weeks and two more -bits of information and I'll tell you. In spite of all odds, one man -against a planet—this will found my professional reputation back on -Belconti."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Once again Cole faced Garth Bidgrass across the round table in the -library. This time he felt vastly different.</p> - -<p>"The piskies are really baby stompers," he said, watching the craggy -old face for its reaction. It did not change.</p> - -<p>"I suspected it when I saw how the smaller eggs fused with the -large egg, with continuous laminae," Cole went on. "There was the -morphological resemblance, too. But when I dissected two mature -stompers I found immature eggs. Even before entry into the oviduct what -you call pisky eggs are filamented to the main body of cytoplasm."</p> - -<p>Disappointingly, Bidgrass did not marvel. He squinted and cocked -his head. Finally he said, "Do you mean the piskies lay their eggs -internally in the stompers?"</p> - -<p>"Impossible! I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue -and they are <i>identical</i>, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now -is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But -that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food -source—that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all -through Carina sector."</p> - -<p>He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and -stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled.</p> - -<p>"I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is -harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. Stop it for a few decades, -or set aside breeding areas, and you can have a whole planetful again."</p> - -<p>The old man scowled and stood up. "We'll not stop," he said gruffly. -"There are still plenty of stompers. Remember last month." He walked to -the end window and back, then sat down again still looking grim.</p> - -<p>"Don't be too sure," Cole objected. "I haven't finished my report. -I made a Harvey analysis on the tissues of one stomper. It involves -culturing clones, measuring growth rates and zones of migration and -working out a complex set of ratios—I won't go into details. But when -I fitted my figures into Harvey's formula it indicated <i>unmistakably</i> -that the stompers have a critical biomass."</p> - -<p>"What does that mean?"</p> - -<p>"Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each -individual is only a part. Can you do that?"</p> - -<p>"Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright.</p> - -<p>"Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any -moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of -critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater -animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into -extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a -species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago -may <i>already</i> have extinguished them as a species?"</p> - -<p>Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light.</p> - -<p>"Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula—do <i>human beings</i> have a -critical biomass?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, biologically," Cole said, surprised. "But in our case a varying -part of the greater animal is carried in our culture, our symbol -system, and is not directly dependent on biomass. A mathematical -anthropologist could tell you more than I can."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass placed his hands palm down on the table and leaned back in -sudden resolution.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Cole, you force me to tell you something I had been minded to -hold back. I already know a good part of what you have just told me. I -<i>wish</i> to exterminate the stompers and I will do so. But I meant for -you to go back to Belconti thinking it was the piskies."</p> - -<p>Cole propped his chin on folded hands and raised his eyebrows. "I half -suspected that. But I fooled you, didn't I?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and I admire you for it. Now let me tell you more. Stomper egg -brings a very high price and I have kept it higher by storing large -reserves. When it is known the stomper is extinct, the rarity value of -my reserve will be enormous. It will mean an end of this harsh life for -me and for my grandniece after me."</p> - -<p>Cole's lip curled, and red mounted in the old man's face as he talked, -but he went on doggedly.</p> - -<p>"I want the pisky theory and the news of stomper extinction to be -released through Belconti University. The news will spread faster and -be more readily believed and I will avoid a certain moral stigma—"</p> - -<p>"And now I've crossed you up!"</p> - -<p>"You can still do it. I can ease your conscience with a settlement -of—say—five thousand solars a year for life."</p> - -<p>Cole leaped up and leaned across the table.</p> - -<p>"No!" he snapped. "Old man, you don't know how ecologists feel about -the greed-murder of species. What I <i>will</i> do is work through Belconti -on your government at Car Truro, warn it that you are about to destroy -an important planetary resource."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red.</p> - -<p>"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which -you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction. -Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and -you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally -have reported it via the next <i>Gorbals</i> to Belconti and sent along your -notes to date—do you follow me?"</p> - -<p>"Yes. A threat."</p> - -<p>"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it -would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door, -only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and -smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before.</p> - -<p>"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?"</p> - -<p>"Uncle Garth says now that you know—" She broke off, blushing still -more.</p> - -<p>"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia. -Here, let me."</p> - -<p>He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his -table. Pia <i>was</i> lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth -roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the -small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her -round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced -and she looked more frightened than ever.</p> - -<p>"You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the -woods, Pia. What <i>are</i> you always afraid of?"</p> - -<p>Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said. -"What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear."</p> - -<p>They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate -dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian <i>kresch</i> to follow it. Cole -splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and -held up his own.</p> - -<p>"Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half -mockingly.</p> - -<p>Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a -home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh -Flinter, what you must think—" She began crying in earnest.</p> - -<p>He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about -Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for <i>Gorbals'</i> tender."</p> - -<p>She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both. -Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to -take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and -squeezed her hand in saying good night.</p> - -<p>She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his -eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small -flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He -followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan -bulking darkly ten feet away.</p> - -<p>"Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the -black bar of eyebrow.</p> - -<p>Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move.</p> - -<p>"You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and -heading east.</p> - -<p>"He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him."</p> - -<p>Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into -blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of -Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest -towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land.</p> - -<p>He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area. -Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the -planet's low gravity.</p> - -<p>The resilient surface gave off a fragrance as they walked about on -it. In a sea all around their island, branches of the great forest -trees thrust up, leafy and flowering and bedecked with a profusion of -epiphytal plants in many shapes and colors. Bright-hued true birds -darted from shadow into sunlight and back again, twittering and crying.</p> - -<p>"It's beautiful," he said. And so was Pia, he thought, watching her on -tiptoe reaching to a great white flower. The attractive firmness of -her skin, the roundness and dimpling, <i>ripeness</i>, that was the word he -wanted. And her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Pia, you're not frightened any more!"</p> - -<p>It was true. The long-lashed brown eyes were merry as nature meant them -to be.</p> - -<p>"It's peaceful and safe," she said. "When I come to the forest top I -never want to go back to Bidgrass Station."</p> - -<p>"Too bad we must, and let's pretend we don't," he said, pointing to a -cluster of red-gold fruits. "Are those good to eat?"</p> - -<p>"Too good. That's the trouble with New Cornwall."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Race you back to the flyer," she cried, and danced away, bare limbs -twinkling in the sunlight. He floundered after.</p> - -<p>The lunch was good and she had brought along the rest of the bottle of -<i>kresch</i>. They sipped it seated beside the flyer while she tried to -teach him New Cornish folk songs. Her small, clear singing blended with -that of the birds around them.</p> - -<p>"I catch parts of it," he said. "As an undergraduate a few years ago I -studied the pre-space poets. I can read Old English, but it is strange -to my ear."</p> - -<p>"I could teach you."</p> - -<p>"I love one wry-witted ancient named Robert Graves. How does it go: -<i>If strange things happen where she is</i>—no, I can't recall it now."</p> - -<p>"I could write the songs out for you."</p> - -<p>"The beauty is in you and your voice. Just sing."</p> - -<p>She sang, something about a king with light streaming from his hair, -coming naked out of the forest to bring love into his kingdom. Small -white clouds drifted in the blue sky, and blue Annis slept just above -the rustling branches that guarded the secret of their island. He -listened and watched her.</p> - -<p>She was softly rounded as the clouds, and her clustered brown curls -made an island of the vivid face expressing the song she sang so -bird-like and naturally. She was vital, compact, self closed, -perfect—like one of the great flowers nodding in the breeze along the -island shore—and his heart yearned across to her.</p> - -<p>"Pia," he said, breaking into the song, "do you really want to get away -from New Cornwall?"</p> - -<p>She nodded, eyes suddenly wide, lips still parted.</p> - -<p>"Come with me to Belconti then. Right now. We'll cross to Car Truro and -wait there for <i>Gorbals</i>."</p> - -<p>The light dimmed in her face. "Why Car Truro?"</p> - -<p>"Pia, it's hard to tell you. I'm afraid of your great-uncle.... I want -to contact the planetary government."</p> - -<p>"It's no good at Car Truro, Flinter. Can't you just come back to -Bidgrass Station and ... and ... do what Uncle Garth wants?"</p> - -<p>He could barely hear the last. The fear was back in her eyes.</p> - -<p>"Do you know what he wants?"</p> - -<p>"Yes." The brown curls drooped.</p> - -<p>Cole stood up. "So <i>that's</i> the reason—well, I'll not do it, do you -hear? Garth Bidgrass is an evil, greedy old man and maybe it runs in -the blood."</p> - -<p>She jumped up, eyes more angry now than fearful. "He is not! He's -trying to save you! He's good and noble and ... and <i>great</i>! If you -only knew the truth—Morwenna forgive me!" She clapped her hand to her -mouth.</p> - -<p>"<i>Tell</i> me the truth then, since I'm still being made a Belconti fool -of. What <i>is</i> the truth?"</p> - -<p>"I've said too much. Now I'll have to tell Uncle Garth—" She began -crying.</p> - -<p>"Tell him what? That I know he's a liar? That you failed as a—" He -could not quite say the word.</p> - -<p>"It's true I was supposed to make you love me and I tried and I can't -because ... because ..." she ended in incoherent sobbing.</p> - -<p>Cole stroked her hair and comforted her. "I've been hasty again," -he apologized. "I'm still running in the dark, and that makes for -stumbles. Let's go back, and I'll talk to your great-uncle again."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the morning Garth Bidgrass, looking tired and stern, invited Cole -to breakfast with the family. Cole had never been in the large, -wood-panelled room overlooking the south garden through broad windows. -Pia was subdued, Mrs. Vignoli strangely cheerful. The meal, served by a -giant maid, was the customary plain porridge and fried meat.</p> - -<p>The women left when the maid cleared the table. Bidgrass poured more -coffee, then leaned back and looked across at Cole.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Cole, I did you a wrong in having you sent here. I kept you in the -dark for your own protection. Can you believe that?"</p> - -<p>"I can believe that you believe it."</p> - -<p>"You came too soon. You were too curious, too smart. I have had to -compound that wrong with others to Pia and my own good name."</p> - -<p>Cole smiled. "I know I'm curious. But why can't I know—"</p> - -<p>"You can, lad. You've nosed through to it and I'll tell you if you -insist. But it will endanger you even more and I wish you would forego -it."</p> - -<p>Cole shook his head. "I'm an ecologist. If I have the big picture, -maybe I can help."</p> - -<p>"I thought you'd say that. Well, history first, and settle yourself -because it <i>is</i> a big picture and not a pretty one. This planet was -settled directly from Earth in the year 145 After Space, almost eight -hundred years ago. It seemed ideal—native protein was actually -superior to Earth protein in human metabolism. Easy climate, -geophysically stable, no diseases—but planetology was not much of a -science in those days.</p> - -<p>"The colony won political independence in 202 A.S. It had a thriving -trade in luxury foods, mostly stomper egg concentrates—freight was -dear then. Settlements radiated out from Car Truro across the plains. -Food was to be had for the taking in the mild climate and it was a kind -of paradise. <i>Paradise!</i>"</p> - -<p>The old man's voice rang hard on the last word and Cole stiffened. -Bidgrass went on.</p> - -<p>"Early in the third century our social scientists began to worry about -the unnatural way the culture graded from the complexity of Car Truro -to a simple pattern of mud huts and food gathering along the frontiers. -Children of successive generations were taller than their parents -and much less willing or able to use symbols. By the time a minority -decided the trend should be reversed, the majority of the people could -not be roused to see a danger."</p> - -<p>"Earth life is normally resistant to low-grav gigantism," Cole said. "I -wonder—"</p> - -<p>"It was all the native foods they ate, but mainly stomper egg. There -are more powerful and quicker-acting substances in the forest fungi, -but then the population was all in the eastern grasslands, where the -stompers ranged."</p> - -<p>"I read they were a plains animal."</p> - -<p>"Yes, and harmless too, except for their eggs. Well, the minority set -up a dictatorship and began cultivating Earth plants and animals. -They passed laws limiting the mechanical simplicity of households -and regulating diets. They took children from subnormal parents and -educated and fed them in camps. But the normals were too few and the -trend continued.</p> - -<p>"Shortly after mid-century the population reached the edge of the -southern forest, and there many were completely wild. They drifted -along the forest edge naked, without tools or fire or language or even -family groupings. Their average stature was nearly eight feet. The -normals knew they were losing. Can you imagine how they <i>felt</i>, lad?"</p> - -<p>Cole relaxed a little. "Ah ... yes, I can ... I imagine the fight was -inside them, too."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass nodded. "Yes, they were all tainted. But they fought. They -asked Earth for help and learned that Earth regarded them as tyrants -oppressing a simple, natural folk. The economy broke down and more -had to be imported. The only way to pay was in stomper egg exports. -In spite of that, in about the year 300, they decided to restrict the -stompers to the western part of the grasslands, thousands of miles -beyond the human range.</p> - -<p>"The egg hunters began killing piskies and grown stompers. They killed -off the great, stupid herds of darv cattle on which the stompers fed. -The stompers that survived became wary and hostile, good at hiding and -fierce to attack. But killing off the eastern darv herds broke them and -in a generation they vanished from the eastern plains. Things seemed to -improve and they thought the tide was turned. Then, in the year 374, -came what our bards now call the Black Learning."</p> - -<p>"Bards?" Cole said. He drained his coffee cup.</p> - -<p>"Morgan could sing you this history to shiver the flesh on your bones," -the old man said, pouring more coffee. "What I am telling you is -nowhere written down, but it is engraved in thousands of hearts. Well, -to go on.</p> - -<p>"We knew some of the stompers had gone into the southern forest—you -see, they have to incubate their eggs in direct sunlight and we kept -finding them along the forest edge. But we had assumed they were eating -the snakes and slugs and fungi native to the forest floor. Now we -learned that a large population of wild humans had grown up unknown to -us in the deep forest—and the stompers were eating them.</p> - -<p>"You have seen our forests from a distance, lad. Do you realize how -impossible it is to patrol them? We hadn't the men, money or machines -for it. We appealed, and learned we would get no help from any planet -in Carina sector except for pay. But the egg market fell off, and our -income with it. Ships did come, however, small ones in stealth, to -ground along the forest edge and capture the young women of the wild -people."</p> - -<p>Cole struck the table. "How rotten!..." His voice failed.</p> - -<p>Bidgrass nodded. "We call that the Lesser Shame. The young women were -without personality or language, yet tractable and responsive to -affection. They were flawless in health and physique, and eight feet -tall. They could be sold for fantastic prices on loosely organized -frontier planets and yes, even to Earth, as we learned. Something dark -in a man responds to that combination. You feel it as I speak—no, -don't protest, I know. We had long had that trouble among our own -people."</p> - -<p>"Did my own people of Belconti—" Again Cole's voice failed. He brushed -back his red hair angrily.</p> - -<p>"Belconti was new then, still a colony. Well, that was the <i>help</i> we -got. We hadn't the power to fight stompers, let alone slave raiders. -But the Galactic Patrol was just getting organized and the sector -admiral agreed to keep a ship in orbit blockading us. We broke off all -contact except with Tristan, and the Patrol let only one freight line -come through to handle our off-planet trade. It was then we began to -hate the other planets. We call it the Turning Away.</p> - -<p>"Now we are forgotten, almost a myth. The Patrol ship has been gone -since two hundred years ago. But we remember."</p> - -<p>"I wish I'd known this," Cole said. "Mr. Bidgrass, things are greatly -changed in Carina sector—"</p> - -<p>Bidgrass held up his hand. "I know, lad. That's why you're here, and -I'll come to it. But let me go on. Early in the fifth century we -decided to exterminate the stompers altogether and in two decades -killed off all the darv cattle. But the stompers went into the forests -in the south and west and from there came out to raid the plains. Not -to kill, but to carry off normal and semi-wild people into the forest -for breeding stock. A stomper's wing is more flexible than a hand. One -of them can carry half a dozen men and women and run a thousand miles -in a day. Some fungi in the forest can dull a man in an hour and take -his mind in a week. Few who were carried in ever came out again.</p> - -<p>"This went on, lad, for <i>centuries</i>. From our fortified towns and -hunting camps we ranged along the forest edge like wolves. The stompers -<i>must</i> lay their eggs in direct sunlight. That forced them out where -we could get at them, into clearings and uplands and along the forest -edge. We killed all we could.</p> - -<p>"We found rhythms in their life pattern keyed to our four moons. When -the three lady moons form a tall triangle, the stompers group in the -open to mill and dance and sing. About every three months this happens -over several days and in old times it was the peak raid season. It was -also our chance to kill. The people call the configuration the House of -the Maidens."</p> - -<p>Cole nodded vigorously. "I remember that. Strange how lunar periodicity -is bionative in every planet having a moon."</p> - -<p>"It saved us here, praise Morwenna, but once almost destroyed us. There -is a longer, sixty-two year cycle called the Nights of Hoggy Darn. Then -the red moon passes through the House of the Maidens and the stompers -go completely berserk. The first one after the war was joined fully, in -434, caught us unprepared and cost us more than three-fourths of our -normal population in the week that we remember as the Great Taking. -We were thrown back into Car Truro for decades and the stompers came -back on the plains. They snatched people from the streets of Car Truro -itself. That we call the Dark Time."</p> - -<p>The old man's craggy face shadowed with sorrow and he sighed, leaning -back. Cole opened his mouth but Bidgrass leaned forward again, new, -fierce energy in his voice.</p> - -<p>"We rallied and came back. We fought from the air and killed them in -large numbers when we caught them in the open on Maiden nights. We -drove them back off the plains and harried them along the forest edges -and in the upland clearings where they came to lay eggs. We gathered -all the eggs we could find. They defended their eggs and caused us -steady losses. But we fought.</p> - -<p>"We built our strategy on the Maidens and in time we drove the enemy -out of the southern forest and into the west. Then we crowded him into -Lundy Peninsula, made it a sanctuary for a hundred years to draw him -in. When I was your age we fought out the last Nights of Hoggy Darn a -few miles east of here. Ten years later we finished Bidgrass Station -and the barrier and the continent was free of stompers."</p> - -<p>Cole shifted his chair to get the sun off his neck. "I hardly know what -to say," he began, but Bidgrass raised his hand.</p> - -<p>"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century -things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began -a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people -along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those -they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be -trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had -few machines except what we need for war. Their children, on an Earth -diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and -fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has -always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for -reclamation work.</p> - -<p>"Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now. -That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on -the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a -queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of -religion along the way. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully -drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and -prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty -well believe it myself and even you believe some of it."</p> - -<p>Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table.</p> - -<p>"Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you -spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill -him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and -meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper -and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to -hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad."</p> - -<p>"I feel it, a little. I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an -ex-wild, isn't he?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I."</p> - -<p>Cole got up. "Mind if I pull a curtain? That sun is hot."</p> - -<p>"No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll -ask for a fresh pot."</p> - -<p>Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much -more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew -his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't -have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they -changed from plains to forest. They learned to practise a gruesome kind -of animal husbandry—oh, I could tell you things. <i>Something</i> had to -figure it out."</p> - -<p>"I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on."</p> - -<p>"Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try -to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The -people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent -on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was.</p> - -<p>"But we spat in his face. We gathered his tribute and still took all -the eggs we could find in the inland clearings. We killed every stomper -we saw. Then, for the first time I think, Grandfather Stomper knew it -was war to the death. He began to fight as never before. Where once -a stomper would carry a captured egg hunter a hundred miles into the -forest and turn him loose, now it killed out of hand. They began making -mass attacks on the station and they didn't come to capture, they came -to kill. So it has gone for forty years now."</p> - -<p>The old man's voice changed, less fierce, more solemn. He sat up -straight.</p> - -<p>"Lundy Forest is near eight hundred thousand square miles. No one -knows how many millions of wild humans are in it or how many scores of -thousands of stompers. But this I knew long before you came to tell -me about critical biomass: Grandfather Stomper is very near to death. -He ruled this planet for a million years and he fought me for near a -thousand, but his time is come.</p> - -<p>"Don't laugh, lad, at what I am about to say now. Mass belief, blind -faith over centuries of people like our ex-wilds and semi-wilds, can do -strange things. To them and even to myself I <i>represent</i> Grandfather -Man, and from them a power comes into me that is more than myself. I -know in a <i>direct</i> way that in the Nights of Hoggy Darn to come I will -at long last kill Grandfather Stomper and the war will be won. That -time is only eight weeks away."</p> - -<p>"Then I'll still be here. Grand—Mr. Bidgrass, I want to fight with -you."</p> - -<p>"You may and welcome, lad. Must, even, to redeem yourself. Because, for -what you know now, your life is forfeit if the ex-wilds suspect."</p> - -<p>"Why so? Are you not <i>proud</i>—" Cole half stood and Bidgrass waved him -down.</p> - -<p>"Consider, lad. For centuries across the inhabited planets people of -wealth and influence have been eating stomper egg, serving it at state -banquets. But now <i>you</i> know it is human flesh at one remove. How will -they feel toward us when they learn that?"</p> - -<p>"How should they feel? Man has to be consumed at some trophic level. -His substance is as much in the biogeochemical cycles as that of a -pig or a chicken. I suppose we <i>do</i> feel he should cap the end of a -food chain and not short-cycle through himself, but I'm damned if I'm -horrified—"</p> - -<p>"Any non-ecologist would be. You know that."</p> - -<p>The giant maid came in with a pot of coffee and clean cups. Bidgrass -poured and both men sipped in silence. Then Bidgrass said slowly, -"Do you know what the people here call outworlders? Cannibals! For -centuries we have had the feeling that we have been selling our own -flesh to the outworlds in exchange for the weapons to free Grandfather -Man."</p> - -<p>He stood up, towering over Cole, and his voice deepened.</p> - -<p>"It has left bone-deep marks: of guilt, for making the outworlders -unknowing cannibals; of hatred, because we feel the outworlds left -us no choice. And shame, lad, deep, deep shame, more than a man can -bear, to have been degraded to food animals here in our forests -and across the opulent tables of the other planets. Morgan is only -second-generation normal—his father was killed beside me, last Hoggy -Darn. If Morgan knew you had learned our secret he would kill you out -of hand. I could not stop him. Do you understand now why we didn't -want you until next <i>Gorbals</i>? Do you see into the hell you have been -skating over?"</p> - -<p>Cole nodded and rubbed his chin. "Yes, I do. But I don't despise -Morgan, I think I love him. On Belconti, Grandfather Man is mainly -concerned to titillate his own appetites, but here, well ... how do -I feel it?... I think what you have just told me makes me more proud -to be a man than I have ever been before. I will carry through the -deception of Belconti University with all my heart. Can't Morgan -understand that?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and kill you anyway. Because you <i>know</i>. You will not lightly be -forgiven that."</p> - -<p>Cole shook his head helplessly. "Well <i>dammit</i> then—"</p> - -<p>"Now, now, there's a way out," Bidgrass said, sitting down again. "The -prophecies all foretell a change of heart after Grandfather Stomper -dies. They speak of joy, love, good feeling. Morgan did agree to your -coming here—he wants to hide the past as much as I do and he could see -the value of my plan. In the time of good feeling I hope he will accept -you."</p> - -<p>"I hope so too," Cole said. "Morgan is a strange man. Why is Pia so -afraid of him?"</p> - -<p>"I'll tell you that, lad—maybe it will help you to appreciate your -own danger. Some few of us are educated on Tristan. Twenty-three years -ago my younger brother took my niece Flada there. She ran away and -married a Tristanian named Ralph Vignoli. My brother persuaded them to -come back and live at our installation there, and Ralph swore to keep -secret the little he knew.</p> - -<p>"The ex-wilds of New Cornwall kept wanting Ralph to come here so they -could be sure of the secret. He kept refusing and finally they sent an -emissary to kill him. My brother was killed protecting him. I stepped -in then with a compromise, persuaded Ralph to come here for the sake of -his wife and daughter. Pia was seven at the time.</p> - -<p>"Ralph was a good man and fought well in battles, but two years later -Morgan and some others came to the house in my absence and took him -away. They took him to a clearing in Lundy Forest, where the stompers -come to lay eggs, stripped off his clothing and left him. That was -so the stompers would not take him for an egg hunter and kill him -outright, but would carry him into the forest like they do with strayed -wild stock. Morgan said the command came to him in a dream.</p> - -<p>"I think Pia feels she is partly responsible for Ralph's death. I -think she sometimes fears Morgan will dream about her, her Tristanian -blood...."</p> - -<p>"Poor Pia," Cole said softly. "These <i>years</i> of grief and fear...."</p> - -<p>"They'll be ended come Hoggy Darn again, Morwenna grant. Don't you -grieve her with your death too, lad. Stay close to the house, in the -house."</p> - -<p>Bidgrass rose and gulped the last of his coffee standing.</p> - -<p>"I must go, I'm late," he said, more cheerfully than Cole had ever -heard his voice. "I have a conference with General Arscoate, our -military leader, whom you'll meet soon."</p> - -<p>He went out. Cole went out too, thoughts wrestling with feelings, -looking for Pia.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In the days that followed Cole took his meals with the family except -when there were guests not in Bidgrass' confidence. The doors into the -main house remained unlocked and he saw much of Pia, but she seemed -unexpectedly elusive and remote. Cole, busy with his report to Belconti -University, had little time to wonder about it.</p> - -<p>He faked statistics wholesale and cited dozens of nonexistent New -Cornish authorities. To his real data indicating critical biomass he -added imaginary values for the parameters of climate, range, longevity, -fertility period and Ruhan indices to get an estimated figure. Then he -faked field census reports going back fifty years, and drew a curve -dipping below critical ten years before his arrival. He made the latest -field census show new biomass forty-two percent below critical and -juggled figures to make the curve extrapolate to zero in twelve more -years.</p> - -<p>It pained him in his heart to leave out the curious inverse -reproduction data. But it was a masterpiece of deception that should -put the seal on his doctorate, and because it reported the extinction -of a planetary dominant, he knew it would make the journals and the -general news all through the sector.</p> - -<p>The night he finished it, working late in the library, Pia brought him -milk and cookies and sat with him as he explained what he had done.</p> - -<p>"It's right," he defended himself to her against his scholar's -conscience. "Humans on New Cornwall are a threatened species too. The -secret must be hidden forever."</p> - -<p>"Yes," she agreed soberly. "I think if all the sector knew, the -ex-wilds would literally die of shame and rage. Being wild is not so -bad, but—that other!" She shuddered under her gray dress.</p> - -<p>"Pia, sometimes I feel you're still avoiding me. Surely now it's all -right and genuine between us."</p> - -<p>She smiled sadly. "I'll bring you trouble, with Morgan. Father came to -New Cornwall because of me."</p> - -<p>"But I didn't. I've been thinking I may <i>stay</i>, partly because of you. -You've been afraid so long it's habitual."</p> - -<p>"Strangely, Flinter, I don't feel it as fear any more. It's like bowing -with sadness, my strength to run is gone. My old dreams—Morgan coming -for me—I have them every night now."</p> - -<p>"Morgan! Always Morgan!"</p> - -<p>She shook her head and smiled faintly. "He has a dark, poetic power. He -is what he is, just like the stompers. I feel ... not hate, not even -fear ... a kind of <i>dread</i>."</p> - -<p>He stroked the back of her hand and she pulled it away.</p> - -<p>"An old song runs through my head," she went on. "A prophecy that -Grandfather Stomper cannot be killed while outworld blood pumps through -any heart on the planet. I feel like my own enemy, like ... like your -enemy. You should not have come until next <i>Gorbals</i>. Flinter, <i>stay -away from me</i>!"</p> - -<p>He talked soothingly, to little avail. When they parted he said -heartily, "Forget those silly prophecies, Pia. I'll look out for you."</p> - -<p>Privately, he wondered how.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole sat beside Pia and across the food-laden table from General -Arscoate, a large pink-faced man in middle life.</p> - -<p>"It's an old and proven strategy, Mr. Cole," the general explained. -"When Hoggy Darn starts we will harass the enemy from the air in all -but one of the fourteen sizable open spaces in Lundy Forest. That one -is Emrys Upland, the largest. They will concentrate in Emrys, more each -night, until the climactic night of peak frenzy. Then we come down with -all the men and women we can muster and we kill. We may go on killing -stragglers for years after, but Grandfather Stomper will die on that -night."</p> - -<p>"Why not kill from the air?"</p> - -<p>"More firepower on the ground. I can only lift ninety-four flyers all -told. But I will shuttle twenty thousand fighting men into Emrys in an -hour or two on the big night."</p> - -<p>"So quickly? How can you?" Cole laid down his fork.</p> - -<p>"They will be waiting in the forest top all around the periphery, in -places where we are already building weapons dumps. In the first days -of harrying, we will stage in the fighters."</p> - -<p>"Morgan will visit each group in the forest top and sing our history," -Bidgrass said from the head of the table. "On the evening of the -climactic night, as Hoggy Darn rises, they will take a sacramental meal -of stomper egg. At no other time is it eaten on this planet."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Vignoli looked down. "Garth!" Arscoate said.</p> - -<p>"The lad must know, must take it with us," Bidgrass said. "Lad, the -real reason for not killing from the air is that the people <i>need</i> -to kill personally, with their feet on the ground. So our poetry has -always described that last, great fight. I must <i>personally</i> kill -Grandfather Stomper."</p> - -<p>Cole toyed with his knife. "But he is only a metaphor, a totem image—"</p> - -<p>"The people believe in an actual individual who is the stomper -counterpart of Garth here," the general broke in. "You know, Mr. Cole, -the stompers we kill ordinarily are all females. The males are smaller, -with a white crest, and they keep to the deep forest except on Hoggy -Darn nights. Maybe the frenzy then has something to do with mating—no -one knows. But Garth will kill the largest male he can find. The -people, and I expect Garth and I as well, are going to believe that he -has killed Grandfather Stomper in person."</p> - -<p>The general sipped water and looked sternly over his glass at Cole. -Cole glanced at Pia, who seemed lost in a dream of her own, not there -to them.</p> - -<p>"I see. A symbol," he agreed.</p> - -<p>"Not the less real," Arscoate said tartly. "Symbols both mean and are. -Garth here is a symbol too and that is why, old as he is, he must be -in the thick of it. He is like the ancient battle flags of romantic -pre-space history. People before now have actually <i>seen</i> Grandfather -Stomper. I am <i>not</i> a superstitious backworlder, Mr. Cole, but—"</p> - -<p>Cole raised a placatory hand. "I know you are not, general. Forgive me -if I seemed to suggest it."</p> - -<p>"Let's have wine," Bidgrass said, pushing back his chair. "We'll take -it in the parlor and Pia can sing for us."</p> - -<p>When General Arscoate said good-night he told Cole not to worry, that -he would have reliable guards at the manor gate during Garth Bidgrass' -absence in Car Truro.</p> - -<p>"I meant to tell you and Pia in the morning, lad," Bidgrass said. -"Arscoate and I must go to Car Truro. There's heartburning there over -who gets to fight and who must stay behind. It will be only two days."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Cole felt uneasy all day. He spent most of it writing the covering -letter for his report and phrasing his resignation from the university -field staff. He wrote personal letters to his uncle and a few friends. -After dinner he finally signed the official letters and took the -completed report to Bidgrass' desk. Then he went to bed and slept -soundly.</p> - -<p>Pia wakened him with frantic shaking.</p> - -<p>"Dress quickly, Flinter. The guard at the gate was just changed and -it's not time."</p> - -<p>She darted out to the hall window while he struggled with clothing, -then back again.</p> - -<p>"<i>Quickly</i>, darling! Morgan's crossing the garden, with men. Follow me."</p> - -<p>She led him through the kitchen and out a pantry window, then stooping -along the base of a hedge to where a flowering tree overshadowed the -garden wall.</p> - -<p>"I planned this, out of sight of guard posts, when I was a little -girl," she whispered. "I always knew—over, Flinter, quickly!"</p> - -<p>Outside was rough ground, a road, a wide field of cabbages and then -the barrier. Veiled Annis rode high and bluish in the clear sky. They -crossed the field in soaring leaps, and shouts pursued them. The girl -ran north a hundred yards behind the shadowy buttresses and squeezed -through a narrow crack between two huge timber baulks. Cole barely made -it, skinning his shoulders.</p> - -<p>"I found this too when I was a little girl," Pia whispered. "I had to -enlarge it when my hips grew, but only just enough. Morwenna grant -they're all too big!"</p> - -<p>"Morgan is, for sure," Cole said, rubbing his shoulder. "Pia, I <i>hate</i> -to run."</p> - -<p>"We must still run. My old plan was to reach here unseen, but now they -know and they'll come over the wall in flyers. We'll have to hide in -the thick brush near the forest edge until Uncle Garth returns."</p> - -<p>She pulled a basket out of the shadows.</p> - -<p>"Food," she said. "I brought it last night."</p> - -<p>He carried the basket and they raced across the half-mile belt to -concealment among high shrubbery and enormous mounds of fungi. Flyers -with floodlights came low along the wall and others quartered the -clearing. Cole and Pia stole nearer to the forest edge, into its -shadow. They did not sleep.</p> - -<p>Once he asked, "How about stompers?"</p> - -<p>"They're a chance," she whispered. "Morgan's <i>sure</i>."</p> - -<p>With daylight they saw four flyers patrolling instead of the usual one. -At their backs colossal blackish-gray, deeply rugose tree trunks eighty -feet in diameter rose up and up without a branch for many hundreds of -feet. Then branches jutted out enormously and the colorful cascade of -forest-top epiphytes came down the side and hung over their heads a -thousand feet above.</p> - -<p>Pia opened the food basket and they ate, seated on a bank. She wore her -brown dress, her finest, he had learned, and she had new red shoes. She -was quiet, as if tranced.</p> - -<p>Cole remembered the picnic on the forest top, the secret island of -beauty and innocence, and his heart stirred. He saw that the food -basket was the same one. He did not tell her his thoughts.</p> - -<p>They talked of trivial things or were silent for long periods. He held -her hand. Once she roused herself to say, "Tomorrow, about this time, -Uncle Garth will come looking for us." Shortly after, she gasped and -caught his arm, pointing.</p> - -<p>He peered, finally made a gestalt of broken outlines through the -shrubbery. It was a stomper, swinging its head nervously.</p> - -<p>"It smells us," she whispered. "Oh Flinter, forgive me darling. Take -off your clothes, <i>quickly</i>!"</p> - -<p>She undressed rapidly and hid her clothes. Cole undressed too, fear -prickling his skin, remembering what Bidgrass had told him. The stomper -moved nearer in a crackle of brush and stopped again.</p> - -<p>Man and girl knelt trembling under a fan of red-orange fungus. The girl -broke off a piece and motioned the man to do the same.</p> - -<p>"When it comes, pretend to eat," she breathed, almost inaudibly. "Don't -look up and don't say a word. Morwenna be with us now."</p> - -<p>The stomper's shadow fell across them. The man's skin prickled and -sweat sprang out. He looked at the girl and she was pale but not tense, -munching on her piece of fungus. She clicked her teeth faintly and he -knew it was a signal. He ate.</p> - -<p>The stomper lifted the man by his right shoulder. It was like two -fingers in a mitten holding him three times his own height off the -ground. He saw the beak and the eye and his sight dimmed in anguish.</p> - -<p>Then the right wing reached down and nipped the left shoulder of the -rosy girl-body placidly crouching there. It swung her up to face the -man momentarily under the great beak and the tri-corn eye, and their -own eyes met.</p> - -<p>Very faintly she smiled and her eyes tried desperately to say, "I'm -sorry" and "Goodbye, Flinter." His eyes cried in agony "No! No! I will -not have it so!"</p> - -<p>Then the two-fingered mitten became a nine-fingered mitten lapping him -in darkness that bounced and swayed and he knew that the stomper was -running into Lundy Forest. The wing was smooth and warm but not soft, -and it smelled of cinnamon and sandalwood. The odor overpowered him and -the man lapsed into stupor.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The man woke into a fantastic dream. Luminous surfaces stretched up to -be lost in gloom, with columns of darkness between. The spongy ground -on which he lay shone with faint blue light. Luminous, slanting walls -criss-crossed in front of him. Close at hand, behind and to the right, -enormous bracket fungi ascended into darkness in ten-foot steps that -supported a profusion of higher order fungi in many bizarre shapes.</p> - -<p>He stood up and he was alone.</p> - -<p>He climbed over a slanting root-buttress and saw her lying there. He -called her name and she rose lightly and came to him. Radiant face, -dimpled arms, round breasts, cradling hips: <i>his woman</i>. They embraced -without shame and she cried thanks to Morwenna.</p> - -<p>He said, "People have come out of the forest. What are the rules?"</p> - -<p>"We must eat only the seeds of the pure white fungus—that's the least -dangerous. We must walk and walk to keep our bodies so tired and hungry -that they use it all. We must keep to a straight line."</p> - -<p>"We'll live," he said. "Outside among our people, with our minds -whole. We'll alternate left and right each time we round a tree, to -hold our straight line. We'll come out somewhere."</p> - -<p>"I will follow. May Morwenna go with us."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="650" height="341" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The fantastic journey wound over great gnarled roots and buttresses -fusing and intermingling until it seemed that the root-complex was -one unthinkably vast organism with many trunks soaring half-seen into -endless darkness. Time had no feeling there. Space was a bubble of -ghostly light a man could leap across.</p> - -<p>Could leap and did, over and over, the woman following. The man climbed -a curiously regular, whitish root higher than his head and it writhed. -Then, swaying bark along its length, came a great serpent head with -luminous ovoid eyes. While the man crouched in horror, waving the woman -back, the monstrous jaws gaped and the teeth were blunt choppers and -grinders, weirdly human looking. They bit hugely into a bracket fungus -and worried at it. Man and woman hurried on.</p> - -<p>Strength waned. The woman fell behind. The man turned back to her and -the light was failing. The blue mold was black, the luminous panels -more ghostly.</p> - -<p>"It's night. Shall we sleep?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"It's just come day," the woman said, pointing upward.</p> - -<p>He looked up. Far above, where had been gloom, hung a pinkish-green, -opalescent haze of light. Parallel lines of tree trunks converged -through it to be lost in nebulosity.</p> - -<p>"Daylight overpowers the luminous fungi," she said.</p> - -<p>"We sleep, then walk again. Shall we find food?"</p> - -<p>"No. We must always go to sleep hungry so we will wake again."</p> - -<p>They looked, until tired out, for a place of shelter.</p> - -<p>They slept, locked together in the cranny of a massive buttress. The -man dreamed of his tame home-world.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He woke again into nightmare. In a twenty-foot fan-grove of the white -fungus they combed handfuls of black spores out of gill slots. The -birdshot-sized spores had a pleasant, nutty flavor.</p> - -<p>With the strength more walking. <i>Use it, use it, burn the poison.</i> Day -faded above, and luminous night below came back to light the way. A -rocky ledge and another, and then a shallow ravine with a black stream -cascading. They drank and the man said, "We'll follow it, find an -upland clearing."</p> - -<p>They heard rapid motion and crouched unbreathing while a stomper minced -by up ahead. It had a white crest.</p> - -<p>On and on, fatigue the whip for greater fatigue and salvation at the -end of endurance. They passed wild humans. A statuesque woman with dull -eyes and yellow hair to her ankles, placidly feeding. Babies big as -four-year-old normals, by themselves, grazing on finger-shaped fungi. -An enormous human, fourteen feet tall, fat-enfolded, too ponderous to -stand even in low gravity, crawling through fungus beds. The man could -not tell its sex.</p> - -<p>On and on, sleep and eat and travel and sleep, darkness above or -darkness below, outside of time. The stream lost, found again, -sourcing out finally under a great rock. And there, lodged in a black -sandbank, the man found a human thigh bone half his own height. He -scoured off the water mold with sand. He was armed.</p> - -<p>The man walked ahead clutching his thigh bone, and the woman followed. -They slept clasped together naked all three, man, woman and thigh bone.</p> - -<p>Stompers passed them and they crouched in sham feeding. The man prayed -without words, <i>both or neither</i>. And hatred grew in him.</p> - -<p>Snakes and giant slugs and the beautiful, gigantic, mindless wild -humans, again and again, a familiar part of nightmare. The fat and -truly enormous humans; and the man learned they had been male once. He -remembered from far away where time was linear the voice of Grandfather -Man: <i>Some are beyond saving, and those they kill.</i></p> - -<p>And a stomper passed, white crested, and far ahead a human voice cried -out in wordless pain and protest. The man was minded to deviate from -his line for fear of what they might see, but he did not. When they -came on the boy, larger than the man but beardless and without formed -muscles, the man looked at the tears dropping from the dull eyes -and the blood dropping from the mutilation and killed him with the -thigh bone. <i>Some are beyond saving.</i> And the hatred in him flamed to -whiteness.</p> - -<p>On and on, day above and day below in recurrent clash of lights. A -white crested stomper paused and looked at them, crouched apart and -trembling. The man felt the deepest, most anguished fear of all and -beneath it, hatred surged until his teeth ached.</p> - -<p>On and on. The man's stubble softened into beard, his hair touched his -ears. On and on.</p> - -<p>The land sloped upward and became rocky. The trees became smaller and -wider spaced so that whole trunks were visible and the light of upper -day descended. A patch of blue sky, then more as they ran shouting with -gladness, and a bare mountain crest reared in the distance.</p> - -<p>They embraced in wild joy and the woman cried, "Thank you, oh -<i>loveliest</i> Morwenna!"</p> - -<p>"Pia, we're human again," Cole said. "We're back in the world. And I -love you."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Fearful of stompers, they moved rapidly away from the forest over -steadily rising ground. The growth became more sparse, the ground more -rocky, and near evening they crossed a wide moorland covered with -coarse grass and scattered blocks of stone. Ahead a long, low fault -scarp bounded it and there they found a cave tunneled into the rock, -too narrow for a stomper. At last they felt safe. Morwenna rode silvery -above the distant forest.</p> - -<p>Water trickled from the cave which widened into a squared-off chamber -in which the water spilled over the rim of a basin that looked cut with -hands. Underfoot were small stone cylinders of various lengths and as -his eyes adjusted Cole saw that they were drill cores.</p> - -<p>"Prospectors made this," he told Pia, "in the old, innocent days -when they still hoped to find heavy metals." Then he saw the graven -initials, T.C.B., and the date, 157 A.S.</p> - -<p>They ate red berries growing in their dooryard, gathered grass for a -bed and slept in a great weariness.</p> - -<p>Next day and the next they ate red berries and fleshy, purple ground -fruits and slept, gaining strength. Secure in their cave mouth they -watched stompers cross the moorland. When night fell they gazed at the -bunched moons, but the three Maidens did not quite form a house and -Hoggy Darn was still pursuing them.</p> - -<p>"A few days," Pia said.</p> - -<p>"If this isn't Emrys Upland, Arscoate will kill us with fire mist."</p> - -<p>She nodded.</p> - -<p>More stompers crossed the moorland, some white crested. They moved -there randomly at night and from the forest came a far-off sound of -stompers singing. The Maidens formed a house and Hoggy Darn grazed the -side of it before they fled. To south and west faint rose glowed in the -night sky.</p> - -<p>"Fire mist," Pia said. "The nights of harrying have begun. Oh Flinter, -if this is really Emrys Upland it will be perfect."</p> - -<p>"What will?"</p> - -<p>"You—us—oh, I can't say yet."</p> - -<p>"Secrets, Pia? Still secrets? Between <i>us</i>?"</p> - -<p>"You'll know soon, Flinter. I mustn't spoil it."</p> - -<p>The love in her eyes was tinged with a strangeness. She sought his arms -and hid her face in his shoulder.</p> - -<p>Stompers on the moorland all day so they dared not leave the cave. -Flyers streaking high overhead, scouting.</p> - -<p>"Pia, I believe this <i>is</i> Emrys Upland. I'll help after all with the -great killing."</p> - -<p>"You will help, Flinter."</p> - -<p>"Afterward I'll take you to Belconti."</p> - -<p>"We will never see Belconti, Flinter."</p> - -<p>The strangeness in her eyes troubled him. He could not kiss it away.</p> - -<p>Stompers crowding the moorland all night with their dancing, their -vast singing coming to the cave from all round the compass. Rose banks -distant in the night sky and Hoggy Darn crossing the House of the -Maidens. Red Hoggy Darn, still lagging, still not catching it perfectly -upright. The strangeness of Pia. The waiting, clutching a polished -thigh bone.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>At last the night when the mighty war song of the stompers went up -unbearably, as the man had heard it that once before, and fire mist -boiled along the distant mountains. Flyers shuttled across the sky, -dropped, rose again. Blasters ripped the night with ion-pencils. Hoggy -Darn gleamed redly on the threshold of the House of the Maidens that -stood almost upright and perfect with silvery Morwenna at the vertex. -Flyers blasted clearings in the throng of stompers, and grounded. Men -boiled out of them, setting up Corbin powercasters here, there, another -place, fighting as soon as their feet hit ground.</p> - -<p>The man stood up and brandished the thigh bone.</p> - -<p>"I must go down and fight. Wait here."</p> - -<p>"I must go too," the girl said calmly.</p> - -<p>"Yes, you must," he agreed. "Come along."</p> - -<p>Stampers rushed by them and bounded over their heads and did not harm -them. Blaster-torn stompers fell heavily beside them, threshing and -snapping, and they were not touched. Men lowered weapons to point at -the man and girl, shouting to one another out of mazed faces silently -in the whelming music of the stomper chorus. Man and girl walked on.</p> - -<p>Unharmed through the forest of singing, leaping shapes, hand in hand -through a screen of fighting men that parted to admit them, they walked -into the light of a glowing Corbin where a tall, gaunt old man stood -watching their approach. The feeling of exalted unreality began to lift -from Cole.</p> - -<p>"Grandfather, give us blasters," he shouted. "We want to fight."</p> - -<p>"The power is on you, lad, and you only half know it," the old man -shouted back. "Stand here by the Corbin. Your fight is not yet." Tears -stood in the fierce old eyes.</p> - -<p>Across the moorland the fighting raged. Islands of men and women -grouped round their Corbins held back the booming, chaotic sea of -stompers that surged against them from all sides. Dikes of dead and -dying grew up, men and stompers mingled. The flyers shuttled down and -up again and more islands of men took shape. Hoggy Darn crossed the -threshold and the savage war song of the stompers shook the night sky.</p> - -<p>In a lull Morgan came in to the Corbin to change the wave track on his -blaster. His face was a mask of iron joy and his eyes blazed.</p> - -<p>"Morgan, if we are both alive after, I will kill you!" Cole shouted.</p> - -<p>"No," Morgan rumbled. "You have been into the forest and come out -again. It took you three weeks. It took me three hundred years. Clasp -hands, my brother in hatred."</p> - -<p>"Yes, brother in hatred." The exalted unreality began coming back -strongly. "I want a blaster!" he howled at Morgan.</p> - -<p>"No, brother in hatred, your fight is not yet." Morgan rejoined the -battle, the ring of men standing braced in blaster harness fifty yards -away, ripping down with interweaving ion-pencils the great forms -leaping inward. Man and girl held hands and watched.</p> - -<p>To the left trouble came to a nearby island. Stompers converged from -all sides, abandoning the other attacks, impossibly many. They overran -the defenders, attacking not them but the powercaster behind them, -and piled up until the Corbin's blue-violet glare was hidden. A great -blossoming of flame tore the pile of stompers apart, but the Corbin was -dark.</p> - -<p>"They blew out the power banks," Pia said. "They've never known to do -that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges."</p> - -<p>It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather -Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war -song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in -total volume. Then it was their own turn.</p> - -<p>Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block -and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired -steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave -of stinking heat rolled over them. All around, survivors struggled to -their feet, using flame pistols to head-shoot wounded stompers, digging -out and connecting emergency pack charges to their blasters. They were -pitifully few and their new, dark island was thirty feet across.</p> - -<p>The moor seemed dark with only the red of flame pistols and the violet -flickering of power pack blasters. It seemed to heave randomly like a -sluggish sea with the seen struggles of dying stompers and the felt -struggles of lesser human bodies. Thinned now, stompers attacked singly -or in small groups. Blasters flickered and ripped and went darkly -silent as power packs discharged. The red of short-range flame pistols -replaced them. But across the fault scarp ridge the tumult swelled to -new heights and Corbin after Corbin there flamed out of existence in a -bloom of rose-purple against the skyline.</p> - -<p>In a lull Bidgrass shouted to Morgan, "That's costing them more than -they have to give, over there. Listen. Can you hear it?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, Father in Hatred," Morgan said. "They will break soon."</p> - -<p>"Yes, when Arscoate lays the fire mist. They will come through here. I -have one charge left."</p> - -<p>"I have two, Father in Hatred. Change packs with me."</p> - -<p>Cole found his voice and his senses once more.</p> - -<p>"I must find a weapon! Grandfather, give me your flame pistol!"</p> - -<p>"Soon, lad. Soon now. Let the power take you," the old man soothed.</p> - -<p>Stompers streamed over the moor again and the fighting flared up. The -war song beat against the man's ears so that he drew the girl nearer -and shook the thigh bone. Blaster fire flickered out altogether and -the red blooming of flame pistols weakened. But more and more stompers -streamed past without attacking. Then the man saw fire mist plume -lazily in the east, point after point coalescing all along the forest -edge.</p> - -<p>"Now!" shouted a great voice beside him. "Now, lad!"</p> - -<p>It was old Bidgrass, striding out like a giant, blaster leveled in its -carrying harness.</p> - -<p>The shout released Cole and he saw it far off, coming down the scrap -rubble to the moor. Huger than any, white crest thirty feet above the -ground, Grandfather Stomper. The war song roared insanely over the -moor. Hoggy Darn gleamed heart-midst of the three lady moons.</p> - -<p>The grim old man aimed and fired. The great bird-shape staggered and -came on, left wing trailing. The old man waited until it was nearly on -top of him and fired again. The stomper jerked its head and the bolt -shattered the great tripart beak but did not kill it. With the right -mitten-wing it reached down and swung its adversary twenty feet up, -held him and haggled at him with its stumps of beak.</p> - -<p>The old man's free right arm flailed wildly. Cole beat the stomper's -leg with the thigh bone and howled in hatred. Then he saw the flame -pistol lying where it had fallen from the holster. He picked it up, but -the power was on him again and he did not use it. He hurled the thigh -bone at the stomper's head, diverting it for a second, and tossed the -pistol to old Bidgrass. He knew they could not fail.</p> - -<p>The old man caught the pistol. When the great head swung back he held -the muzzle against the tri-corn eye and fired. Red plasma-jet burned -into the brain behind it. The stomper bounded once in the air, dropped -its slayer, ran three steps and collapsed.</p> - -<p>The stomper song changed suddenly. It became a mournful lament, a dying -into grieving subsonics. Cole knew that note. He had heard it from the -stompers in the stone-floored pen when the butchers were hacking off -their heads. He knew that Grandfather Stomper was dead forever, after -seven hundred years of war.</p> - -<p>Flyers crossed above, blasters were still at work across the ridge, -but the war was ended. The power, whatever that sense of exalted -unreality might be, left Cole; and he felt naked and ridiculous and -wondered what he was doing there. Then he saw the girl bending above -Garth Bidgrass and regained control of himself.</p> - -<p>The strong old man was smiling wearily.</p> - -<p>"We've won the war, lad," he said. "The next task is yours."</p> - -<p>"I'll help you," Cole said.</p> - -<p>"You'll lead. Oh, I'll live, but not for long. Centuries ago, lad, -there was a prophecy, and until tonight people like myself and Arscoate -thought it was only poetry, however literally Morgan and the other -ex-wilds took it."</p> - -<p>"What was it?"</p> - -<p>"It foretells that on the night Grandfather Stomper shall die the new -Grandfather Man will come naked out of the forest with his beautiful -wife and armed with a thigh bone, and that he will lead us in the even -greater task of reclamation that comes after. <i>Your</i> ritual title of -address is 'Father in Love,' lad, and I'm just a broken old man now. -Take up the burden."</p> - -<p>Cole's throat swelled, choking speech for a moment.</p> - -<p>"I can start," he said.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Night of Hoggy Darn, by Richard McKenna - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF HOGGY DARN *** - -***** This file should be named 60695-h.htm or 60695-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/6/9/60695/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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