The Seed of Earth

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Unsheathed gunsnouts greeted them as they appeared, footsore, dirty, chilled, at the colony stockades. The gunbarrels came snaking out of spyholes in the wall; the colonists were on guard now against any shapes of the forest, it seemed.

'Take it easy,' Noonan called out. 'We're friends. Humans.'

A voice said distinctly behind the stockade, 'Christ! Those aren't aliens! It's—'

'They've come back!' someone yelled.

The gunsnouts disappeared. The stockade gate creaked open and people came rushing out, familiar people, friends. Dawes recognized Sid Nolan, Dave Matthews, Matt Zachary, and Lee Donaldson. There were a few others whose names he could not at all remember.

They dragged the four returnees within, slammed the stockade gate shut. Marya Brannick appeared with blankets, and the wanderers were quickly clad. Inquisitive eyes goggled at the four weary ones. Questions bubbled up.

'Where were you?'

'What happened?'

'How did you get free?'

Dawes shook all the questioners off. 'Where's Haas?' he asked. 'We'd better talk to him first.'

Dave Matthews shook his head gravely. 'Haas - isn't here anymore.'

'Did the aliens get him?' asked Noonan.

'No. Not the aliens.'

"Where is he, then?' Dawes demanded.

Matthews shrugged. 'We had some trouble here, after the aliens broke in and kidnapped you. Howard Stoker and a couple of his buddies thought Haas ought to quit as Colony Director. He - got killed.'

'Killed? So Stoker's in charge now?'

Matthews smiled gloomily. 'No. There was a - well, a counter-revolution, you might call it. In the name of law and order we executed Stoker, Harris and Hawes. Lee Donaldson's the Director now.'

'What's happening to the four surplus women, if those men are dead?'

'We're having trouble over that,' Matthews admitted.

'The colony's kind of split on the subject of polygamy right now. But—'

'Let our troubles wait till later,' Lee Donaldson broke in brusquely.' I want to hear about these people. Where were you?'

'We were taken to a cave in one of the cliffs beyond the forest,' Dawes said. 'We were prisoners. The aliens were keeping us. But we escaped,' he grinned. He felt very tired after the forest trek, but yet invigorated. Tougher, harder. And he was saddened to learn that there had been dissension in the colony.

'Did they hurt you?' Donaldson asked.

Dawes thought about that for a moment. 'No,' he said finally. 'Not - not physically.'

He looked around. There hadn't been much progress in the colony in his absence. It still looked bare and hardly begun. He saw troubled faces. There had been bitter quarrelling here, he realized.

'What about the aliens?' he asked. 'Did they make any further attacks?'

'No!' Matthews said. 'We've seen them skulking around, outside the stockade. But they haven't tried to break in again. We keep a constant patrol, now.'

'And there's been trouble here, hasn't there?'

'Trouble?'

Dawes nodded. 'Arguments. Dissension.'

Lee Donaldson tightened his jaw muscles tensely.

'We've had some difficulties. Haas was our best leader, and he's dead. It hasn't been so easy to make the people work together since Stoker got his big idea. We do more arguing than working these days.'

Dawes sighed. He wanted to tell Matthews and Donaldson what they had learned in the cave, how the aliens thrived vicariously on strife, how the colonists would never be completely free of the shadowy neckless beings until they learned to function like parts of a well-machined instrument, as a colony must if it is to survive.

But there was time for that later, he thought.

You didn't make people see things in a minute, or in ten minutes. It could take days - or forever. But there was time to begin healing the colony's wounds later.

In a way, Dawes thought, it was a good thing that the colony had something like the aliens waiting outside to feed on their hate. It would be like having a perpetual visible conscience; hate would not enter the colony for fear of the aliens without.

He turned away. Suddenly he wanted to be alone with himself - with the new self that had come out of the cave.

Something had grown with him in those five days, and it hadn't been just the silky beard stubbling his cheeks. It was something else.

He understood now why selection was necessary, why the seed of Earth had to be carried from world to world.

It was because the stars were there, and because it was in the nature of man to climb outward, transcending himself, changing himself. As he had changed, for he had changed, in those few catalytic days in the cave.

They had been days of hardening for him. No longer was he filled with vague angry resentment; no longer did he hate selection and all its minions, Local Chairman Brewer and District Chairman Mulholland. He forgave them. More; he admired them, and pitied them because they had to stay behind in this greatest of all human adventures.

In the twilight Dawes walked away from the group, down toward the bubble-home he had chosen and from which he had been taken by the aliens. His suitcase and Carol's still lay half-open on the ground - the bubble hadn't been entered since the night of the kidnapping.

Shrugging out of the blanket, he took spare clothing from his suitcase and dressed slowly. He stood for a long time, thinking. They would none of them be the same any more - not Noonan, who for the first time in his life had run into a problem he couldn't solve with his fists, or Carol, who had gone into the cave innocent and come out otherwise, or Cherry, whose metal shell had broken open to give him a moment of tenderness.

But Dawes knew that he had changed most of all, and yet not changed. The thing that was inside him, the curiosity, the seeking mind - now, it was alive and truly working for the first time. How wrong it had been to dream of that cozy, dead existence in his nice Ohio home with his nice Ohio wife and his nice Ohio children I He realized now that he wanted to get out into the wilderness and see the aliens again, find out why they were the way they were, what they had wanted from the prisoners in the cave, how they had taken it, what they were really like. Osiris held a million mysteries. And through the miracle of selection he had been put here to solve them.

I'm different now.

It was a hard fact to assimilate. He realized with a jolt, looking at Carol's suitcase, that she was still his wife.

He didn't want her any more. The boy Mike Dawes had been taken by her innocence and shyness, but that boy no longer existed. And he needed someone more solid, someone who could share problems with him instead of simply clinging dependently.

Someone was knocking outside the bubble.

'Come on in,' Dawes said.

It was Cherry.

She looked flustered and confused. 'You just walked away from everybody like that,' she said. 'You feeling okay, Mike?'

'I just wanted to think. I had to be by myself for a little while. I'm okay.'

She was looking at him earnestly. Glancing away, she saw the two suitcases.

'Carol's with Noonan,' she said.

'I figured as much,' said Dawes without a trace of a quiver in his voice. 'I don't care. Really, I don't.'

It was funny, he thought, how lousy deals turned out to be the biggest things in your life. Being picked by the lottery, and then being grabbed by the aliens on top of that. And losing your wife to a man like Noonan. And none of it mattered - each loss was a find, each finish a beginning.

An animal honked in the forest, and Dawes grinned. A whole world lay out there beyond the stockade, waiting to have its secrets pried open in the years to come. And he'd do it.

He said, 'If Noonan's with Carol - where are you going to stay, Cherry?'

'I haven't figured that out yet.'

He smiled. Carol had left her suitcase here, but nothing else. If Noonan could be happy with her, let him be.

Cherry stepped forward awkwardly. Dawes wanted to tell her that he forgave her and loved her and needed her, and that he saw through her toughness and through the scars life had left on her. But he couldn't say any of those things out loud, and he realized he wasn't finished growing up, quite yet. She would help him, though. And he would help her.

Funny. Getting picked in the lottery had seemed like the end of the world to him, once. But he couldn't have been more wrong.

He smiled at Cherry. The girl before him was like a stranger, even after the days in the cave. Everything was oddly brand new. He tipped her face up the inch or two that separated them in height, and kissed her, listening to the wind of the alien world - his world.

'Hello,' she said tenderly.

'Hello,' he said.