The Seed of Earth

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the darkness of that second night, Dawes cradled Carol in his arms. Noonan and Cherry had settled down for the night somewhere downcavern. In the utter darkness, there was no knowing where.

Carol was warm, pliable, with tense reserve of tightstrung nervousness. They were silent a long while, holding each other for warmth.

After a while the girl said, 'How long can we stay living like this? The four of us. I thought you and Noonan were going to fight today, when he told you to shut up and slapped you.'

'Noonan can kill me with his pinky and thumb. It wouldn't have been much of a fight. But I was asking for it. I started to crack up.'

She pressed suddenly hard against him. He wished he could see her face. He would have liked to know whether she looked sympathetic or merely scornful, pitying.

In three days, Dawes was beginning to think that cave life might almost become bearable. It was possible for human beings to adapt to almost any kind of situation, he told himself. Even living in a cold, windy cave on an alien planet.

Food came regularly, about noon each day - the same assortment each time: a newly-killed beast, white grapes, gourds. Noonan's plan of catching an alien and holding him as a hostage proved about as practicable as flying out of the cave, or walking insectlike down the sheer face of the cliff. Each day the alien messenger would fling the food package into the cave and vanish before the watching men could move. They kept guard for two days, but without even coming close to success. The alien would climb the cliff, hurl the bundle in, and scamper away again. After two days Noonan and Dawes completely abandoned the idea of being able to catch one.

But, Dawes decided, you could get used to anything. You could get used to slimy raw meat dripping with blood, to grapes that weren't grapes, to a latrine dug in the sand and to living without soap or depilator or any of the other pretty things of civilization. There were no mirrors - the stream flowed too fast, and the back of the cave was too dark for it to serve - and without mirrors a lot can be overlooked. A tacit understanding not to discuss anyone else's appearance sprang up; Dawes was happy about it.

He saw the stubble sprouting on Noonan's face and the blotches on Cherry's, and knew that he probably looked equally unkempt.

When you live in a goldfish bowl, Dawes thought, you don't waggle fingers at the other goldfish and loudly cry holier-than-thou. There was no percentage in it.

Dawes was able to persuade himself that it was going to be all right, that the four of them would be able to work out a living pattern involving minimum friction, that would endure for however longer their imprisonment continued. But he soon found out how wrong he was.

The aliens were keeping constant watch. They gave no hint of their motives, but milled about ceaselessly in the valley, and occasionally came skittering past the cave mouth for a quick peek in.

And, though the four humans tried to prevent it from happening, tension mounted in the cave. It had to. Civilization didn't wash off as easily as all that.

It began with little things - little trivial wormlike bickerings between them. One time, Noonan objected when Dawes took the largest share of that day's meat for himself, after Noonan had carved the still warm carcass into four rough chunks that were not quite equal.

'Why don't you wait till I hand the stuff out?' Noonan asked.

'Because I'm hungry.'

'I wanted that piece for myself.'

'Why should you get it?'

'I carved,' Noonan said. 'And I'm the biggest. I need the most food.'

They snarled at each other for a second more; then Cherry suggested that they trim a little of the meat from the big piece and add it to one of the other portions, and Dawes nodded. The tension died away. But the dispute was part of the pattern.

And there was the time when Cherry was halfway through her account of the perils of show business for the third time; having reached the point in her autobiography that dealt with Dan's selection, and being unwilling to talk in any great detail about the segment of her life that had followed that event, Cherry had backtracked and was reciting her early struggles once again.

Carol waited patiently until Cherry launched into a by-now-familiar graphic description of how a lecherous old nightclub owner had forced her to submit to a casting-couch routine before he would give her a contract. 'So he backed me into a corner and I could see him starting to drool over me,' Cherry said, 'and I told him, "Look here, Mr. Fletcher, if you think you're going to—"'

Suddenly Carol burst out, with vehemence that was unusual for her, 'How often are you going to tell that filthy story? I'm sick and tired of it!'

'You don't like my stories, go somewhere. All we got to do in this place is talk. So I'm talking. It makes me happy. I know I'm still alive when I talk.'

'You don't have to keep talking the same thing all the time!'

'What else am I gonna talk about? These things happened to me! They are me! Just because you're jealous, because you spent your whole silly little life doing what other people told you to do and never getting any enjoyment out of your stupid life—'

'You can't talk about me like that!' Carol screeched.

They yelled back and forth at each other for a minute or two more, and next thing the argument exploded into a fight, the two women springing at each other and rolling over and over in a tangle of arms and legs, pulling hair, screaming, shouting. Noonan and Dawes had been at the other end of the cave; they came on the run and dragged them apart. Carol had been on top, pounding Cherry's head against the sand, when they were pulled apart.

The winds wailed. Cherry and Carol glowered at each other; then, as Noonan shoved Cherry toward the other girl, they reluctantly shook hands. Dawes looked out into the valley. The aliens outside had increased in number; there were twenty or thirty of them now. They seemed to be enjoying the spectacle in the cave.

The next incident came on the fourth day, when Dawes and Carol were bathing. Carol was at the water's edge, cupping up handfuls and rubbing her face and body to break the shock of climbing in. A sort of convention had sprung up in the cave - when one couple bathed, the other busied themselves elsewhere, to provide at least the impression of privacy. But as he prepared to undress and join Carol in the water, Dawes glanced around and saw Noonan leaning against the cave wall not far from the mouth, watching them.

For a surprised second or two, Dawes had no idea of what to say. The convention in the cave had always been a completely unspoken one, and he knew Noonan cared very little about his own privacy or anybody else's. But still, thought Dawes, in angry annoyance, there was such a thing as common decency, even here in the cave.

While he stared silently at Noonan, the big man smiled coldly and said, 'Something wrong?'

'What are you looking at?' Dawes demanded.

'You want me to tell you?'

'Just suppose you keep your eyes where they belong!'

Dawes was angered by the big man's casual amorality.

It was just as easy for Noonan to look the other way and avoid such frictions.

'Mike,' Carol whispered warningly. 'Don't make trouble with him. Don't start a ruckus. Why can't you just ignore him?'

'No,' he said. 'There are some things you just don't do.

He isn't going to get away with this.'

He became uncomfortably aware of Cherry's mocking eyes on him, and Noonan's. Carol stood at the water's edge with her hands uncertainly shielding her body from view. 'Get into the water,' he ordered the girl brusquely.

'I don't want him looking at you that way.'

Silently, she obeyed him. Dawes walked downcavern to where Noonan waited, still leaning against the wall.

The older man seemed to tower two or three feet above him, even leaning.

Dawes said sharply, 'Are you trying to make it worse in here? You didn't have to look at her that way. There was no call for that.'

'I'll put my eyes wherever I damned please, sonnyboy. And I'm tired of your niceness. This isn't any private hotel we got here.'

'You don't have to go out of your way to make life tough here,' Dawes returned. 'I don't want you watching Carol when we bathe, from now on, Noonan. Do you understand that? We can at least pretend we're civilized - even if some of us don't happen to be.'

Noonan hit him. This time, Dawes expected the blow, and was ready for it. He rolled agilely to one side and in the same motion directed an open-handed slap at Noonan's face.

The big man took it like the brush of a gnat's wing, laughed, and tapped Dawes sharply in the pit of the stomach. Dawes felt his knees start to buckle. He caught himself, sucked in his breath.

He swung wildly at Noonan, missed his face by a foot, and swung again. This time Noonan opened one big hand, grabbed Dawes' flailing arm, and twisted it.

Yelling, Dawes tried to break loose. He succeeded in clawing at Noonan's throat with his free arm, distracting the big man's attention for a moment. Dawes ripped loose from Noonan. He danced back a couple of feet, panting, feeling the excitement of combat even though he knew he was yet to score a telling point in the contest.

He darted forward and flicked out a fist. Noonan clubbed his hand aside, stepped forward, hit Dawes almost gently on the point of his right shoulder. The impact stunned him; he felt the surge of pain ripple down his arm to his fingers. Desperately he tried to land a blow, but once again Noonan caught his wrist.

This time there was no breaking loose. Noonan inexorably forced him to the ground.

'I'm gonna put my eyes wherever I please,' Noonan said quietly. There was no malice in his voice, nor anger; just a level affirmation of victory. 'You hear that, Dawes?

You ain't giving any orders inside here. If I want to look at your girl, I'll look at her, and you ain't gonna tell me I can't do it. Understand that, Dawes?'

'For God's sake, Noonan - act like a human being,'

Dawes whispered harshly.

As if in answer, Noonan tucked both of Dawes' wrists in one massive paw and slapped him a few times with the other, until Dawes' head reeled.

Cherry said, 'That's enough, Ky. He's only a kid. You want to kill him?'

'I want to show him he can't go telling Ky Noonan what to do!'

The big hand ground Dawes' wrists together, while the other descended, whack-whack, quick stunning backhand and forehand blows across Dawes' cheeks. Finally Noonan tired of the sport. He released Dawes, scooping him up and throwing him sprawling back upcavern.

'You didn't need to do that to him, Ky,' Cherry said reproachfully.

'Shut up!' Noonan snarled. 'You trying to tell me what I should do, too?'

Dawes lay where he had fallen, not making any effort to get up. His wrists ached painfully where Noonan's grip had pressed them together, and his cheeks were raw and hot, partly out of shame and partly from the impact of Noonan's angry blows. He hadn't even stood a chance in the fight. It was worse than Don Quixote tilting off at windmills; Noonan could have killed him with two swings of his arm.

Carol had remained upcavern by the stream during the entire fight. Now she came over to him. She looked down at him without speaking, without smiling, without offering a word of sympathy. Dawes could not tell whether the grave look in her eyes was one of pity or of contempt.

After a while she walked away, back to the stream, and began to dress.

Dawes elbowed himself to a sitting position and massaged his wrists. Downcavern he saw that Noonan had stretched out for a nap. Cherry was drawing sketches in the sand. The cave was very silent.

He walked slowly back to the stream, knelt by it, and sloshed water over his face; the shock of the sudden coldness eased some of the pain of Noonan's slaps. Shaking himself dry, Dawes went downcavern, past Cherry and Noonan, to stare out of the mouth of the cave. The clearing below was packed with aliens. He wondered if they had enjoyed the performance.