Transit

TWENTY-FIVE

Avery did not bury the baby until shortly before dawn. Barbara would not let him leave the camp in darkness, and so the fragment of wreckage that was Tom and Mary’s child lay in state, mutely on the rocky ground under a brilliant canopy of stars.

For the remainder of the night, no one slept. Physically, Mary was in better condition than any of them had dared hope. But the grief had frozen in her. She became dry-eyed and empty. There was a stone in her heart, and nothing that Tom could do would prise it out. The stone would remain with her, not for always but until time itself had worn the edges off, leaving only a hard, small roundness….

Avery left the camp at first light, taking with him a tomahawk and the now cold little bundle of colder hopes. He did not go very far from the camp. He went to the stream where they got their water, and then looked for a tall tree—one that would be easily identifiable. He found one almost at the water’s edge. Idiotically, he thought to himself: ‘Baby will like that—shade from the sun, and the sound of running water…. He shouldn’t be too lonely here, because we shall be coming close to him every day.’

Then he laid the bundle down and began to hack a little grave out of the soft earth with his. tomahawk.

At last it was deep enough. He laid the baby—still wrapped in one of Tom’s shirts—in soil that was now warmer than its own body.

Avery was no great believer in God. But there were things he felt, things he had to say. Saying them was different than just thinking them—even if there was no one to hear. Speech itself was a kind of ceremony. It was all he had to offer by way of a requiem.

‘Here,’ he said, speaking in a firm but quiet voice, ‘I commit a part of those I love and a part of Earth to the soil of a strange world. If this child had lived, he would have been a native of this world…. Perhaps the first member of an intelligent race ever to be born upon the planet…. But I don’t know about that. There is so much I don’t know…. I don’t even know why we of Earth were brought here, or why God—if there is a god—denied this child the right to live…. But I do know that by this act of burial we establish a bond with this place that cannot be broken. We establish a bond and a kind of possession. For here is part of the substance of two human beings who have learned to share happiness and must now share sorrow. Their stillborn child, in the very nature of things, is now committed to enrich the life of a land in which we were once intruders. This is the ultimate intrusion, for we and the land now share something that is intimate and personal…. I cannot say any more, because I do not know if there is anything more to say. Except that… In the names of Tom and Mary, Barbara and me—Amen.’

Sad, and strangely puzzled by his own thoughts, Avery began to scrape the soil back into the hole. Then, when he had patted down the surface of the mound smoothly, he went back to camp.

As he walked, an absurd kind of mental arithmetic took possession of his mind. One, Tom is wounded; two, Barbara is abducted; three, indirectly a child is killed. One, two and three. What would four, five and six be? What would they all add up to in the end? One, Tom is wounded; two, Barbara is abducted; three, indirectly a child is killed….

A child is killed. That was the important one. For now there was the promise of another child. And would that child, too, have to endure these unnecessary, other-than-normal hazards before and after birth? Must it learn to live with a fear it could not understand?

In the early morning, as he walked along the now well-known track, Avery found an answer to his question….

Breakfast was a sullen, silent meal. Mary could walk, but she chose to stay in the tent, staring at nothing, wanting nothing, eating nothing. The others, however, were hungry. They resented the hunger and they resented the food; but they ate well, nevertheless. In some way—in the obscure chemistry of mind and body—grief had sharpened their appetites. They ate to distract themselves; but the distraction was not enough.

Avery gazed at Barbara as if she was a stranger. For a while he would have to make her into a stranger, because there was something to be done that he would have to do alone.

‘Do you think you can pick up one of those rocks, Tom?’ he asked without preamble, indicating the permanent store of anti-siege ammunition that lay round the camp.

Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘I can pick it up, and I can throw it as well. The shoulder that wasn’t damaged is as good as ever.’

‘Let’s see you, then.’

Tom selected one of the rocks. ‘What do you want me to do—try for a coconut?’

‘Just throw it as far as you can.’

Because of the height of the camp above the rest of the shore, Tom managed to hurl the rock about thirty yards. But the effort made him wince.

However, Avery seemed satisfied. He turned to Barbara. ‘Do you think you can do any better?’

‘This isn’t the time for games, Richard.’

‘It isn’t a game. Now have a shot.’

Barbara managed to beat Tom’s effort by some ten yards.

‘Not bad,’ said Avery. ‘If Camp Two was attacked, I should think the pair of you could keep them happy for quite a time—providing you didn’t forget to dodge the javelins.’

‘I’m not entirely eager to get myself punctured a second time,’ observed Tom grimly. ‘But we have the gun and we have you. So if they try to take us by storm —and what wouldn’t I give to see them try! —it will just be like committing suicide the hard way.’

‘You won’t have the gun, and you won’t have me,’ retorted Avery. ‘Not for a few hours, anyway…. I don’t want to know whether you can conduct a massacre—just whether you can hold the fort.’

Tom understood. ‘We can hold the fort, if we have to…. But why don’t you wait a few days, then—’

‘Waiting doesn’t seem to be such a good idea,’ cut in Avery.

Barbara didn’t want to understand. ‘Richard, you are not going to go prancing off, today of all days. We have only just got back, and there’s enough meat for the time being, and we can’t let Mary feel ’

‘Mary will be all right,’ said Tom gently. ‘Don’t worry, Barbara. Richard hasn’t done too badly by us so far. He knows what he’s doing now.’

And then Barbara couldn’t avoid understanding. ‘Darling, you can’t just ’

‘Commit murder?’ supplied Avery. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, once. But I stopped being civilized the day before yesterday. All we wanted was to live in peace. As things stand, we can only live in fear. Unless we do something about it, what happened to Tom may happen to me—oh, yes, I’m scared for myself, all right—but even if nothing at all happens, and I wouldn’t bet on it, there’s still the fear…. You are carrying a baby. I don’t want to risk any more variations on the theme of what happened to Mary.’

‘Seconded and carried,’ said Tom heavily. ‘Incidentally, it has just occurred to me that they may have a little something similar to our pop-gun.’

‘Good luck to them, then,’ returned Avery grimly. ‘I’m not a hero, and I don’t much care for the medieval concept of chivalry. So I shan’t be challenging anybody to a duel…. I expect that whoever dumped us in this place tried to make sure it was a pretty fair match…. But to hell with cricket! If I have to fight, then I’ll damn well fight efficiently. No heroics—just plain, honest assassination, carried out as safely as possible.’

‘My dear fellow,’ said Tom with an attempt at lightness, ‘it becomes increasingly clear that you would not have benefited by a public school education—I’m happy to say.’

‘Darling,’ said Barbara. ‘Just come back, that’s all—

Just come back.’

Avery kissed her briefly, almost impersonally. ‘Look after Mary. And tell her that I’ve gone hunting….’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘That’s what it amounts to really, a glorified form of pest control.’

He took the loaded gun and an extra twelve rounds of ammunition. And he took a tomahawk and a knife. Barbara went with him as far as the trees; but he did not kiss her a second time. He merely held her for a moment. Already he had begun to hate himself, had begun to feel unclean because of the thoughts in his mind and the somehow grossly physical lust for vengeance.

He was actually eager to get at the golden people. The knowledge appalled him. As he walked, the gun in his pocket slapped against his leg rhythmically. It seemed to have a will of its own. At times, it seemed as if he was simply following the gun.

He knew now the direction to take, and he was in a hurry. He thought he would reach the enemy camp— how easy it was to think of them as enemies!—in less than a couple of hours.

But strange things began to happen. Things that did not augur well for the future. Twice he caught his foot in the exposed roots of trees, and fell down. Once he came across a small family of rhinotypes and had to make a wide detour. One rhinotype would have been no problem; but five invited respect.

Eventually, he struck the stream that supplied the golden people with water. Struck was an almost literal description, because he fell into it. He was walking too close to the edge, and the soft earth gave way, so that he fell spluttering into about five feet of water. As he got to his feet, he glimpsed a long shape on the opposite bank and heard a splash. He scrambled out quickly. The ‘crocodile’, floating in a kind of relaxed frustration, met his frightened gaze with an unwavering and baleful glare.

It was not until Avery had travelled another mile or so that he realized he had lost the gun. Letting out a string of profanities, he retraced his steps to the stream. The ‘crocodile’ was still in the water; but on the far bank— either he had not noticed it before or it had not been there before—was the part carcass of something un-identifiably animal.

He contented himself with searching along the water’s edge for a few minutes, but he did not find the gun. Then he tried to get the ‘crocodile’ away by throwing things at it, but the creature was not discouraged and even seemed to think it was some kind of game.

Presently, he gave the task up.

The gun was gone. Now he had nothing but a tomahawk and a knife. The sensible thing to do would be to go back to Camp Two. Enough had happened to convince any reasonable person that the project was hardly likely to have a satisfactory end after such a disastrous beginning. But Avery was no longer a reasonable person.

He was a man obsessed by the thought of killing.

He cursed the ‘crocodile’, he cursed the gun, he cursed the golden people—and he went on. Half an hour later, he had reached their camp.

He approached it cautiously, and observed it from a discreet distance for what seemed like hours but was, in reality, doubtless only a few minutes. There was no sign of life—not even a fire. Ergo no one was at home.

Avery waited a little longer, just to make sure. At last he could control himself no more, and went marching in.

The portable bridge lay conveniently across the moat and, filled with a sense of anticlimax, Avery walked boldly over it.

He saw the hut where he had flung his burning bundle. The doorway was charred, but otherwise its structure was sound. He looked around in bewilderment. Then suddenly he heard a noise, and knew that the place was not entirely deserted.

It came from the undamaged hut, and it was a long low moan. Avery tiptoed across to the side of the doorway, waited and listened. Presently, there was another moan. It was hard to tell whether it was made by a man or a woman.

Avery could not stand the suspense any longer. He began to think his mind was playing tricks. Suddenly, with tomahawk raised and knife in hand, he sprang through the doorway.

Then he froze, and his bloodlust died.

The woman who had saved his life, who had taken the javelin thrust that had been meant for him, was lying on a kind of bed. In her hand was a small, dark, dullish object shaped like an egg with a kind of handle. The small end of the egg was pointing at him. There seemed to be a shimmering at its centre. Perhaps it was an optical illusion.

Zleetri’s abdomen was heavily bandaged, but the stain of her wound showed through.

She and Avery stared intently at each other for a moment or two, then another moan forced its way through her lips. She was no longer the powerful, independent golden woman. She was only a drab heap of flesh, shrunken by pain and loneliness and loss of blood. She was dying.

Avery knew nothing about her, except that she was dying. He remembered only why he had come here and . was ashamed.

Slowly, he laid the tomahawk and the knife down. The egg-shaped mechanism in her hand followed his movements.

‘Zleetri,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry.’ He took a step towards her. The light at the end of the thing in her hand winked momentarily bright, and he felt a sharp burning on the skin of his stomach. But then the light faded, and the burning sensation with it. She laid the instrument down on her breast.

And she smiled at him.

He went to her side and knelt down.

‘Ree-char,’ she said. ‘Ree-char.’

Avery took the thing from her weak fingers and put it to one side. He held her hand.

Oh, God! he thought. Why can’t we talk to each other? Why can’t I give her some comfort? Why can’t I tell her even the inadequate things. There, but for her charity, lies Richard Avery. Oh, God! Why are there such barriers—such stupid, senseless barriers of language between us?

But there is no God, he thought angrily. There is no God—because a baby has died, because a woman is dying and because we who are left want to slaughter each other like animals. What has God to do with such predicaments? There is no other god but life. Life is the only holy thing. And when that goes that is the death of God.

She moaned again. ‘Ree-char!’ She gripped his hand tightly. Her voice was beseeching. She could say nothing but his name, yet her eyes were eloquent.

Remembering the sign she had made, he touched his fingers to her forehead and to his. ‘Dear Zleetri,’ he murmured. ‘Dear enemy, dear friend. Why—why in heaven’s name couldn’t we find out how to live with one another? But you aren’t concerned with that any more, are you?… Did you know that even to us of a different race you and your kind are beautiful? We hated you, and yet we admired you. You, I think, despised us and perhaps you underestimated us But no more of that. I

wish I could help you. You were such a proud and lovely being…. I wish I could help you….’

‘Ree-char/’ The word was a scream, a tired scream torn from a tired body. She writhed in pain, yet was hardly strong enough to move her limbs.

‘Ree-char!’ She pointed to the thing he had taken from her.

He understood. He thought he understood, and put it back in her hand.

She tried to hold it, turning the small end towards her breast. She tried twice, and each time it dropped out of her shaking fingers. Then she pleaded for his help.

It was not in words—not even in a look. It was something fundamental, something so deep as to be able to bridge the chasm between race and race.

Avery nodded his comprehension, then kissed her lightly on the forehead. She managed to smile at him— there was even a flicker of pride in her face—and he knew that he had not offended.

He took the weapon—for such it surely was—placed it carefully in her hand with her forefinger resting on a small stud, and then helped her to lift her arm so that the thing pointed to her breast.

‘Zleetri,’ he said. ‘Sleep well, my dear one.’

She pressed the stud. There was a sudden shaft of light, a thin brief arrow of radiance. But no sound. And instantly a tiny hole had been burned into her body.

She gave a great sigh, as of utter contentment. Then her body sagged. Zleetri was dead.

Avery stared wonderingly at her for a few moments, as if he were in a trance. Then he came back to life, back to a harsh frame of reality. His mind began to operate again.

If Zleetri had been left alone, it was surely not because the rest had taken it into their heads to go hunting. They could hardly be as callous as that. And if they were not hunting, and if they were all absent—then, goddammit, they must have cooked up something really important. There was only one answer. He snatched up his weapons and turned to go.

He had already got out of the hut. Then suddenly he stopped and turned back. He went to Zleetri’s body and took the weapon, putting it in his pocket. Then he laid her arms by her side and closed her eyes. He wanted to do something else—he desperately wanted to do something else for her. But there was nothing more. Nothing at all.

He went outside once more and tossed the weapon into the moat. Then he crossed the little bridge at a run.

Please, he gasped, as he sprinted through the trees and across patches of grassland, please let me get back in time!

He tried to imagine what would be happening at Camp Two. Then he tried not to imagine. What a bloody, cretinous oaf he had been to choose to make his reprisal raid today! Great, stupid, bloody-minded minds think alike, he told himself bitterly. He and the rest of the golden people must have passed very close to each other on their missions of vengeance.

As if to punish himself for his stupidity, he pushed his weary limbs to the limit of endurance. Literally to the limit. For it was not until he fell down, tried to get up, and fell down again, that he realized he would have to walk for a spell. In any case, he told himself bitterly, what good would he be if he got back to Camp Two a complete physical wreck.

But it was not long before he started to run once more. Eventually he had to ration himself to a hundred paces running and a hundred paces walking.

When he was still half a mile away from Camp Two, he noticed the plume of smoke above the tree tops. He had run himself into a state when he could not think clearly. He gave a last burst, and knew that he would have to walk the rest of the way. In any case, it would be a fine bloody thing—and about all he deserved—if he ran straight into the enemy. As his heart-beats slowed down a little and the non-thinking fog cleared out of his head, he began to wonder about the plume of smoke. It was a thick one—far too thick for an ordinary camp fire.

Sanity came back, and he kept to the trees as much as possible. He did not break out of cover until he was no more than about seventy yards from the rock.

He had already discovered what the plume of smoke was. By direct assault, Camp Two was pretty well impregnable. So the golden people, logically enough, were simultaneously attacking and trying to bum the occupants out. While two men kept the defenders busy by an exchange of rocks—they were obviously saving their javelins for the in-fighting stage—the remaining woman was bombarding them with fire arrows from a distance of perhaps fifty yards.

The entire scene was at the same time frightening, farcical, absurd and utterly deadly. It was a frolic and a nightmare. It was a glorious children’s adventure. But the play was macabre and in earnest. There would be no cream cakes for tea after this escapade. Only death or injury for the vanquished.

The woman with the cross-bow and fire arrows was extremely methodical. She was less than twenty yards from Avery, and, fortunately her back was towards him.

She had set up a little fire and was dipping the treated arrow-heads into its flames.

Beyond her, Avery could see that one of the tents at Camp Two had disappeared—into ashes, presumably— and the other was already burning. Mary—at least, it appeared to be Mary—was trying to beat the fire out while the other two kept the attackers at bay with their siege ammunition. One of the golden people kept trying to get in close to scale the rock while the other attempted to cover him. So far, apart from the destruction caused by the fire arrows, the attackers did not appear to be getting the best of the exchange. But perhaps the battle had not been going very long. Nevertheless, if Camp Two had been at ground level, doubtless it would all have been over by now.

Avery took a deep breath, willed some energy into his aching limbs, and sprinted towards the woman, tomahawk raised. He could so easily have killed her. Intent upon her task, she did not even hear him coming.

He could so easily have killed her. But even as the tomahawk was descending, the thought of Zleetri flashed through his mind. He saw again her once magnificent body. He saw it beaten and shrivelled by death.

He could not kill.

Instead he flung himself bodily upon the woman, knocking all the breath out of her with an anguished grunt. Then he smashed the flat of his hand hard into the back of her neck.

He snatched the cross-bow and tomahawked it into uselessness. He did not even turn to see how the woman was faring. She was coughing, retching and sobbing all at once. She would be out of action for quite a while.

He picked himself up, glanced at the rock, and saw Barbara and Tom dodging a rain of fairly small missiles and at the same time trying to stop one of the golden people from circling round to climb up behind them.

The sight acted as a booster to Avery’s fatigue-heavy limbs. He lifted his tomahawk, gave a dreadful cry that was almost a snarl and rushed upon the nearest attacker.

The man turned in surprise. But he reacted almost instantly. He dropped the stones from his hands and picked up the two javelins that were lying at his feet.

Avery was fifteen yards away and closing the distance fast. As the first javelin came, he flung the tomahawk. The javelin missed. So did the tomahawk.

Avery still had his knife, and came on without pause. The second javelin was raised; and this time the look on his antagonist’s face told Avery that he could not miss.

But, ridiculously, the look of triumph gave way to a look of total surprise. The man swayed uncertainly. The javelin fell from his hand even as Avery buried the blade of the hunting knife in hard golden flesh just below the rib cage.

The man fell forward, almost taking Avery with him. It was only then that he saw the other tomahawk—Tom’s favourite—with its cutting edge buried deep between the shoulder blades.

Avery stared round him in a daze. Everything seemed to have stopped. The whole scene appeared frozen as in a photograph. A few yards down the shore, the woman had managed to get herself up into a half-sitting position. Barbara stood poised on the rock with a tent pole in her hand. Tom was huddled up like a bundle of old clothes at the base of the rock. Mary was leaning over to look down at Tom. The other golden man had retreated a few paces. There was a blank look on his face. Clearly, he found it hard to believe what he saw.

Then the scene snapped back into movement. The remaining attacker backed warily away, back towards the woman—whose moans became drowned in Mary’s sudden scream and Tom’s volley of groaning obscenities. Barbara held grimly on to the tent pole, and the man at Avery’s feet was the only motionless person, for death had been no less swift than surprising.

Avery went towards Tom. But Tom, despite a ten-foot drop and the wound in his shoulder, was already picking himself up.

‘Did you see that shot?’ he gasped.

‘For Christ’s sake! Are you hurt?’

‘Balls to that! Of course I’m hurt. I’ve still got a hole in my shoulder you could stick a cigar in. Let’s cry about it later…. Did you see the shot, Richard? I got the bastard plumb centre—threw myself overboard in the process, but it was worth it.’

He tried to put his weight on his left leg, and sat down suddenly with a yelp.

‘Now I’ve buggered myself at the other end, too…. Look at them, Richard. Look at the master race.’

Mary and Barbara were both calling down to them, talking together. But Tom didn’t seem to hear.

Avery followed his gaze along the shore. The golden people, the only two that were left now, were in full retreat. The man was half supporting the woman. They were limping along as fast as they could, expecting to be pursued, and hoping that they could reach the relative security of the trees.

Avery sighed. ‘Do you think I ought to ’

‘No,’ said Tom, magnanimous in victory. ‘Let the poor devils go. They’ve got problems. Somehow I don’t think they’ll be coming back. They’ve had too much pride knocked out of them…. You know, Richard,’ he moved his leg and winced. ‘It’s beginning to look like game, set and match.’