Cycle of Fire

II. DIPLOMACY

IT WAS the taste of water that roused him, as its scent had a few minutes before. For long moments he let the liquid trickle into his mouth without opening his eyes or noticing anything peculiar in its taste. He could feel the strength flow back into his body along with the precious fluid and he simply enjoyed the sensation without even trying to think.

That, of course, could not last after his eyes were open, and finally he did open them. What he saw was sufficient to bring his mind to full alertness almost instantly.

It was not that the human face so close to his was weird in appearance; that appearance had already been engraved on his memory before he collapsed and it caused him no surprise now. It took only a few seconds of consciousness to allow him to realize that this creature was not a person as he understood the term, but that it evidently was not unfriendly and not entirely lacking in good sense. It was providing the water which was reviving him, after all. The tension Dar Lang Ahn felt at this point was due not to surprise at Kruger’s presence or appearance, therefore, but to astonishment at the source of water. The strange thing was actually squeezing into his open mouth one of the pulpy plants. This act gave rise to the first of the misunderstandings which were to complicate the friendship of the two for a long time to come.

Dar Lang Ahn concluded instantly that Kruger must be a native of the volcano region, since he had such surprising knowledge of its plant life. This, naturally, caused him to regard the boy with more than a little uneasiness. Kruger, on his part, had been following the native from the time of the glider crash, had seen him ignore consistently the plants which so closely resembled Earth’s cacti, and had only with the greatest difficulty been able to persuade himself that the little being’s obvious distress was caused by thirst.

Had their positions been reversed Kruger would, of course, have felt properly grateful to anyone or anything which had supplied him with water, whether it was human or a walking pineapple, but he knew perfectly well that “proper gratitude” was not a universal trait even with his own kind. Therefore the moment that Dar Lang Ahn’s eyes opened the boy laid the partly squeezed cactus down within the native’s reach and stepped backward. Personal caution was only part of his reason; he wanted to relieve any possible fear that the creature might feel.

Dar Lang Ahn handled immediate problems first. With one eye held on his strange helper — he did not know for a long time the uneasy sensation that very act could arouse in a human being — he used the other and one hand to find, pick up, and return to his mouth the plant whose juices had revived him. He kept it there for a long time, convinced that he would be able to use the last drop of fluid he could squeeze from it, but before it was quite empty another thought struck him. It made him pause.

Kruger saw the mangled plant leave his new acquaintance’s mouth after what seemed a long time and found himself wondering a little tensely what would happen next. He was not really afraid, since the native was so much smaller than he, but he was experienced — or openminded — enough to realize that size and potentiality for damage might not go quite hand in hand. He hoped, naturally, that some move would be made which he could interpret beyond doubt as a friendly one, but he could not, offhand, imagine what action could be so free of uncertainty. Dar Lang Ahn managed to find one, however.

With an effort that was obvious even to the human being and which nearly dropped the little messenger back into unconsciousness, he rose to his feet. Carefully, still keeping one eye on Kruger, he made his way out into the sunlight to a point some twenty yards from his protecting rock. Here he stopped for a moment and gathered strength, then bent over, wrenched another cactus free, sucked briefly at the oozing base to make sure it was the same sort as the one he had just used up, returned to the rock — and gave the plant to Kruger. The boy mentally took off his hat to a mind apparently quicker than his own, accepted the gift, and drank from it. Five minutes later the two were seated side by side trying to make sense out of each other’s sounds.

Each party, of course, had a few mental reservations about this developing friendship. Dar Lang Ahn could not forget the suspicion naturally engendered by his companion’s familiarity with lava-field vegetation; Kruger was trying to make fit together the other’s apparent ignorance of those same plants and what appeared to be an equally evident intelligence. It occurred to him that Dar was no more a native of this world than he himself, but he had seen the crash of the glider and spent some time examining the aircraft after the pilot had left it. It seemed beyond the pale of possibility that a visitor from another world would be traveling in such a conveyance; either he would be in his ship, or some auxiliary of it, or on foot like Kruger himself. There was a possibility on this line, though, at that. Perhaps this little manlike thing was a castaway like Kruger but had shown more ingenuity than the boy and managed to build the glider himself. That tied in with the speed of thought he — or she or it — had already shown, though it made Nils a trifle uncomfortable.

Human beings have a strong tendency to cling to whatever hypothesis they may evolve to explain some new situation. Hence, while the suggestion that Dar Lang Ahn was a member of a race foreign to this world and quicker-witted than his own hurt his pride, the notion stayed in Kruger’s mind — and grew, during the days that followed, to something like a certainty.

Dar had an advantage over his new acquaintance in this respect. His strongest prejudices were not those in favor of his own ideas but those the Teachers and their books had instilled into him. Neither had ever mentioned anything like Nils Kruger, so he was free to form idea after idea concerning the strange creature’s nature. He liked none of them. Therefore, he continued to think, while the strength flowed back into his muscles.

One thing was evident: this creature was intelligent and presumably had some natural means of communication. So far it had not shown evidence of possessing a voice, but that could easily be checked. Tentatively, Dar Lang Ahn spoke a few words to the larger being.

Kruger answered at once, producing a series of perfectly meaningless noises as far as Dar was concerned but at least showing that he did possess a language. This was one of the few experiences shared by the two which left them with the same impression; on this occasion they decided simultaneously that language lessons were in order and settled down to conduct them. It was too hot to travel, anyway, and Dar still needed to get some strength back.

The shadow of the rock ledge was growing narrower as the two suns separated — the near-eclipse had occurred during Dar’s wait for death — but it was still broad enough to shield both of them. Kruger settled down with his back against the ledge; Dar resumed his former position, using the pack for a pillow.

There are several ways to learn a language. Unfortunately, there was only one possible with the resources at hand and even for that the material was a trifle scanty. A lava field with an occasional cactus, a respectable number of shadows, and two suns shining on it furnishes demonstration material for very few nouns and practically no verbs. Plenty of adjectives may apply to it, but it is decidedly difficult to make clear just which one is being used at the moment.

Kruger thought of drawing pictures, but he had neither pencil nor paper and the sketches he made on the lava surface with a broken bit of rock didn’t look like much even to their author when he had finished. They certainly meant nothing to Dar.

Nevertheless a few sounds gradually acquired more or less the same meaning to both parties. To describe their exchange of ideas as a conversation would be rank deception, but ideas did get across. By the time the red sun had disappeared below the southeastern horizon it was mutually understood that they would proceed together to the edge of the lava field to find something more drinkable than cactus juice and more edible than the rather nauseating pulp of the plants.

Kruger was not too happy about this, as a matter of fact. In the months he had been on the planet he had walked some three thousand miles northward to get away from the periodically intolerable heat of the red sun, and in the last few hundred had realized that he was seeing progressively more of the blue one. The reason was obvious enough: the blue star was a “circumpolar” in the northern part of the northern hemisphere — or, as the Alphard’s navigator would have to put it, its declination seen from this planet was at least several degrees north. The trouble was that Kruger had not the faintest idea of the motion of the planet relative to the blue star; he could not even guess whether it would produce a noticeable seasonal effect or not and if it did, how long the seasons would last.

He had been toying with the idea of heading southward again for several weeks before he had seen Dar’s glider in flight. That was the first intimation he had had, other than the rather doubtful cases of lights seen from space by the Alphard’s observers, that there were people of any sort on the planet; he had set out in the direction the glider had been taking. It was sheer luck that he had been close enough to see Dar’s crash — or rather that the crash had occurred so close to the spot where Kruger had happened to be. He had followed the little pilot for several days; he had leaped the same crevasses as Dar had, taking an even deadlier risk with his greater weight and not-so-much-greater strength, but not daring to lose track of the being; and he had been shocked profoundly to discover his guide down and apparently helpless in the midst of the lava desert. He had hoped even then, somewhat illogically, that he could learn from the creature of some place to the south, out of the permanent glare of the blue sun, where he could find shelter and civilized company; after all, while the glider had been going north, it must have been coming from somewhere.

Still, if the pilot wanted to continue to the north there seemed nothing to do but string along. Presumably he was trying to reach a place where he would be comfortable; Kruger realized that he himself had no means of telling just what that would mean in terms of temperature, food, and water, but at least his companion did not enjoy the lava plain any better than a human being would. With that much in common the risk of staying with him seemed well worth taking.

It was a good deal cooler when the red sun finally set, and Kruger knew from past experience that it would be seven or eight earthly days before it rose again in this latitude. They were both hungry, but far from starving, and Dar Lang Ahn had recovered much of his strength in the sixty or seventy hours since Kruger’s arrival. The blue star had moved around to the southwest, but it would be quite a number of earthly days yet before it would hamper their travel by shining in their faces.

They traveled more slowly than Dar had when he thought he was alone. The principal reason lay in Kruger’s physical make-up; no human being can be as agile as the small, loose-jointed natives of Abyormen. Enough of the travel was climbing for Dar’s clawed hands and feet to make a good deal of difference, and weak though the native still was he had to hold back frequently for his bulkier companion.

Nevertheless they did make fair progress. No more major cracks were encountered, and after a few dozen hours of travel patches of soil began to appear here and there on the lava. Vegetation became thicker and from time to time pools of water stood in hollows in the lava. Evidently they were nearing the edge of the flow, since the lava itself was too porous to retain the liquid. The pools were scummed and crusted with rather smelly vegetation similar to the algae with which Kruger was familiar, and both travelers were willing to stick a little longer to cactus juice rather than drink from them; but their very presence improved morale. Dar hitched his pack of books a little higher and seemed to double his speed. The going became easier as more and more of the irregularities in the lava were filled with soil, though the soil itself was becoming more and more covered with vegetation. The plants at first were small in size, reminiscent to Kruger of lawn shrubs, but as the frequency of ponds increased and the amount of lava showing above the dirt grew smaller, the plants became larger, ranging finally to full-sized trees.

Most of these growths were as familiar to Kruger as to Dar, since the boy had seen them in profusion during his journey from the south; and he kept his eyes open for some whose stems or leaves he had learned were safe. He was in no mood to try any others; when Dar saw something he knew and offered it to his companion, Kruger shook his head.

“Nothing doing. Everything I’ve eaten on this world I had to try first, with no means of telling whether it would feed me or kill me. Out of five tries I got two bad bellyaches, and I’m lucky that was all. I’ll wait until we see something I know, thanks.”

Dar understood absolutely nothing of this except the refusal, which he filed in his mind as something else requiring explanation. He took as a working hypothesis the idea that the boy knew and disliked the leaf in question; that supposition at least fitted in with the theory that Kruger was a native of the lava region.

By the time the blue sun had moved around to the west the trees were thick enough to shade them from it most of the time, and the undergrowth dense enough to impede them both quite seriously. Neither had any cutting tools except for a small sheath knife which had been part of Kruger’s space-suit kit, and this was virtually useless for cutting a path.

The result was that they traveled very slowly. The impatience Dar felt did not show in his outward expression, at least to one as unfamiliar with his facial expression as Kruger was.

Language lessons continued as they traveled, with somewhat more speed because of the better supply of referents. Kruger felt that they should by now be getting ideas across to each other quite well and couldn’t understand why this didn’t seem to be happening. A lot of nouns were clear to both and a fair number of verbs. Adjectives, now that a great many articles were at hand for comparison, were increasing in supply. Once there are trees of various sizes the meaning of “big” and “little” can get across; if the attempt is made with a big rock and a small cactus there is no way to tell whether size, color, shape, or something entirely different from any of these is under discussion.

Nevertheless something was wrong. Kruger was gradually coming to suspect that his companion’s language contained only irregular verbs and that each noun belonged to a different declension. Dar, for his part, more than suspected that Kruger’s language was richer in homonyms than any useful tongue should be; the sound “tree,” for example, seemed to mean a vegetable growth with long, feathery, purplish leaves, and another with a much shorter trunk and nearly round leaves, and still another which actually varied in size from one specimen to the next.

They did not dare let the language problems occupy their full attention. The jungle contained animal life and not all of it was harmless. Dar’s sense of smell warned them of some flesh-eaters but by no means all; several times he had to resort to his crossbow while Kruger stood by holding his knife and hoping for the best. On one or two occasions animals apparently were frightened off by the alien human odor. Kruger wondered whether any of them would refuse to eat his flesh for similar reasons but felt no impulse to solve this problem experimentally.

In their first hundred hours in the jungle Dar killed a medium-sized creature which he proceeded to dissect with his companion’s knife and eat with great glee. Kruger accepted a piece of the raw flesh with some inner doubts but decided to take a chance. It was against all the rules, of course, but if he had obeyed the rules about testing all food before eating it he would have starved some months before. In the present case the stuff was edible if not delicious and after eight or ten hours of waiting he decided that he had added another item to his limited list of permissible foods.

When they first entered the jungle Dar had changed their course to the northeast. Kruger had endeavored to find out why and, as their stock of useful words increased, finally got the idea that his companion was trying to reach either a lake or sea — at any rate a great deal of water seemed to be involved. This seemed desirable, although there was no longer a drinking problem owing to the numerous brooks they crossed. Kruger had already found out that rain could be expected quite regularly this far north for a hundred hours or so before and perhaps half as long after the rising of the red sun. Where he had started his journey, much farther south, this star was in the sky all the time while the blue one followed a rising and setting pattern of its own; there the weather was much less predictable.

The rain he was expecting had not arrived, however, when he noticed that something seemed to have attracted Dar’s attention. Kruger knew his companion could hear, though he was still unsure of the location of his ears, so he began to listen himself. At first nothing but the usual forest sounds were detectable — leaves and branches moving in the wind, the scurrying of thousands of tiny living things, the occasional drip of water from leaves, which never seemed to cease no matter how long a time had passed since it had rained — but Dar changed course a trifle; certainly he must hear something. They had gone another half-mile before it began to register on Kruger’s ears.

When it finally did he stopped with an exclamation. Dar Lang Ahn swiveled one eye back toward him and stopped too. He knew as little of human facial expressions as Kruger knew of his, but even so he recognized the change of skin color that the sound produced in the boy’s features.

“What?” Dar uttered the sound they had come to agree upon as a general interrogative.

“I think we’d better stay away from that.”

“What?” It was a repetition of the former question, not the more specific interrogative which would have suggested understanding of Kruger’s words.

“It sounds like …” The boy stopped; there were simply no available words. He fell back on signs. Unfortunately his first gesture was back in the direction from which they had come, and Dar took it to mean that Kruger had encountered this thing, whatever it was, before they had met. He was right but he did not grasp his companion’s extreme reluctance to meet it again. After a few moments’ silent regard of the boy’s signals he gave it up and started on his way once more.

“Stop!” This was another word on which they had managed to agree, and Dar obeyed, wondering. They were far from the lava field; was it possible that this creature knew something about jungle that Dar himself didn’t? The sound was strange to the native, of course; that was why he wanted to investigate it. Was the giant actually afraid of it? If so, some thought was indicated. If whatever was making this sound could harm Kruger it was more than likely to be able to do as much to Dar. On the other hand perhaps it was merely a matter of dislike. In that case Dar would be passing up a chance for knowledge which might prove worthwhile material for a book. The question seemed to lie, then, between a risk of losing what books he had and one of failing to improve them. The risk of life involved meant nothing, of course, but both the other points were serious.

Perhaps he could get a better measure of the risk by seeing how far Kruger was prepared to go to keep them from this phenomenon. With this thought in mind Dar Lang Ahn deliberately turned once more and again started walking toward the irregular, dull, “Plop, plop, plop,” that was now coming clearly through the trees.

Kruger was in a quandary. He had never dreamed of having to impress his opinions on Dar by force; he was not sure what the result of trying it would be. In any case he did not want to do anything that might give rise to enmity or even any more distrust than could be helped. In the circumstances he did the only thing that was left. Dar, rolling an eye back toward the human being, saw him start to follow and proceeded on his way assured that there was no real danger. He increased his speed, so far as the undergrowth rendered that possible. In a few minutes the vegetation cleared enough so that real walking could take the place of the laborious pushing aside of branches and vines. To Dar, this was a help; to Kruger, a confirmation of a fact that the increasing sound had already proved.

“Dar! Stop!” The native obeyed, wondering what had happened to change the situation; then he watched in surprise while Kruger forged past him and took up the lead. With his own equivalent of a shrug, he followed. The human being was going more slowly than he would have liked but perhaps there was a reason for it.

There was. In another hundred yards the undergrowth vanished, and at almost the same point the trees stopped. In front of them lay a bare, smooth-surfaced clearing nearly fifty yards across.

To Dar, this was simply a spot in which travel was easy; he would almost certainly have plunged on into the open, eager to get across and resume his journey toward the source of the mysterious sound. However, he was stopped. For the first time in their relationship Kruger not only touched him but blocked his path firmly with an arm more than strong enough to do the job. Dar looked at his companion in surprise, then his eyes traveled on about the clearing. His efforts to force his way past his big companion ceased and both eyes focused on the center of the open space.

The source of the sound was there. The clearing, for the most part, seemed to be floored with some smooth, hard material, but the center was in a constant state of motion — a great cauldron of liquid, sticky mud, heaving upward every few seconds to give birth to a great bubble which burst with the “plop” they had been hearing and released a cloud of vapor that drifted lazily away.

Kruger let his companion look for a minute or two; then, repeating his word to “Stop!” he went back on their trail a few paces. Rocks are not ordinarily easy to find on a jungle floor, but they were still close enough to the big flow for occasional outcrops of lava to be present. He found one of these, with a good deal of effort knocked off a fair-sized corner, brought it back, and tossed it out onto the apparently hard surface. The crust of dried mud gave, and the lava boulder vanished with a splash.

“I don’t like these places,” Kruger said firmly, indifferent to the fact that Dar could not understand him. “I went through one myself a few months ago and when I got out by working back up the tree root that had stopped my sinking — and incidentally knocked me out for quite a while — I found my name carved on the tree with several remarks about what a nice young fellow I’d been. I don’t blame them for leaving me; they have every reason to suppose I’m still sinking. Living through it once, though, doesn’t mean I’m going to try it again; my space suit is a long, long walk from here!”

Dar said nothing but promised himself to heed the advice of his friend as long as they were anywhere near the big fellow’s native volcanic region. This was certainly something for the book!