Gods of the Greataway (22 page)

“But what are we going to do now?” asked the Girl.

Brutus said, “There’s only one thing we can do.”

“What is that, Brutus?” asked Selena eagerly. Zozula, looking at them, suddenly knew where the real power on the People Planet lay; he offered a silent prayer for the True Human race.

“We must obtain a genetic addendum to replace what the Girl and the other neotenites lack.”

“That’s easily said.” Selena was disappointed. “You know as well as I do, the science of synthesizing genes was never perfected. Where do you suggest we obtain the addendum from?”

Brutus bared his teeth in a smile without humor. “From the obvious source. The Bale Wolves themselves.”

T
here
was a silence while they regarded Brutus, who became nervous after a while and began to scratch himself.

Eventually Zozula spoke: “We don’t have the knowledge to prepare a genetic additive, even if a Bale Wolf were available. It’s a good suggestion, but, it’s not practicable, I’m afraid, Brutus.”

The gorilla-man said, “The Rainbow has the knowledge. The creature Caradoc in Dream Earth can probably help me find it. He is very knowledgeable.”

“And Brutus certainly has the ability to carry out the laboratory work,” added Selena.

“And where would we obtain our Bale Wolf?” asked Zozula sceptically.

“From the Nameless Planet,” replied Brutus.

“Do you really suppose he would volunteer his services?”

Brutus scowled. “I’m just a Specialist, trying to help you True Humans. I’m telling you that if you give me a Bale Wolf, I can probably cure your neotenites. I’m not going to catch a Bale Wolf for you; that’s your job.”

“Watch your tongue!” said Zozula imperiously.

Manuel said, “It’s no business of mine, because I’m just a savage Wild Human. But it seems to me that Brutus has a point. If you are to do your duty, as you so often call it, you must get hold of a Bale Wolf, Zozula. I’ll help you.”

“And how
would we find our way to the Nameless Planet, Manuel? Tell me that!”

“Loanna will show us the way.”

The Girl said uneasily, “You remember what they said on the Skytrain? The Bale Wolves are the most terrible creatures in the Galaxy. Nobody has ever survived meeting them.”

“Except Loanna. If she can survive, we can. And anyway,” said Manuel, warming to his theme, “they’re only another kind of human being. It’s not as though we were thinking of attacking the Red Planet.”

“How can anyone capture a Bale Wolf?” asked Zozula. “They can jump happentracks. As soon as we tried to get a net over it, or whatever, it would disappear into the next happentrack, if it didn’t kill us first.”

“Loanna will know a way,” said Manuel confidently.

Selena, who had been listening quietly, said, “We have no alternative, Zozula. None at all. This is the only chance the neotenites have.”

*

Loanna couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

What was the matter with Horst? Why, after all these millennia, wouldn’t he speak to her? After the others had left, they had walked together to his shack, she talking brightly, half crying, immeasurably relieved to be back in the company of a real human being again. At first she had taken Horst’s silence for a quiet joy; but then, as the hours went by, it became clear that it was sullenness. He answered her questions in curt monosyllables and he seemed to flinch from her touch. In a moment of quick irritation — had she waited thirty-six thousand years for
this? —
she asked, “What the hell is the matter with you, Horst?”

He glanced up at her, then glanced away.

“No, look at me.” She insisted. “I really want to know.”

“You’re back, aren’t you?” he said at last. “Isn’t that enough? You beat the Bale Wolves, Loanna. You must be very proud. You certainly ought to be.”

“It’s not enough.”

“What
more could you want?”

“You, Horst.”

He looked at her, a look of sudden wild misery, then jumped to his feet. He made a sound something very like a sob, then set off into the rain at a stumbling run. After a while, she left the shack, too, with some vague idea of finding him later, but initially with a desire to be alone to think.

Thirty-six thousand years was a long time, and it was conceivable that Horst had fallen out of love with her. Maybe he was involved with some girl from the village. But if that was so, why had he gone to the trouble of constructing his astral chart? When first she had seen that monumental undertaking, she had taken it as a measure of his love for her. Now, she wondered if he had built it out of some dogged sense of obligation.

Loanna walked through the rain and soon reached the top of the cliff. Below her, the water surged against the rocks, and as the heavy swell rolled into a cave far below her, the ground trembled. A few stones rattled down the cliff face. The land was under siege and within her lifetime would yield to the ocean. She would see the factory crumble and fall, and she would see the True Humans and the Specialists evacuate to Earth and the ocean cow bellow its death cries into the wind. And, perhaps, she would leave for Earth herself.

But all that was a long time in the future, and there was an infinity of chances of accidental death before that happened, before the People Planet became a world of water. For instance, she could slip and fall from this cliff …

She got a grip on herself and came to a decision. She would tackle Horst and find out what his problem was. After all, at one time they had shared every thought. It was ridiculous to be frightened of finding out the truth. She had survived far worse things.

And with that last thought the nightmares came flooding back like a tide, and the shivering started. The Bale Wolves … For thirty-six thousand years she had clung to the memory of Horst, shutting out the memory of each previous day’s torture because she knew that if she allowed the effects to accumulate, she would go mad. And the imperfections of her own mind had helped her, as the creatures had slapped her and hissed at her and sucked her blood and done whatever their limited imaginations permitted, because she began to forget specific incidents. Once they built a baby and cooked it and ate it in front of her, and she didn’t forget that. But otherwise one day was much like the last, and after a while one torture was much like the last, until eventually she was able to treat each day as it came, with Horst the only bright beacon in her memory. Horst, always Horst; her one love, her one hope.

She stepped back
from the cliff. She turned her steps in the direction of the Stones.

Horst was not in sight, but she heard his voice from inside the shack and she felt a glow of joy.

Someone else said, “So you see, it’s important to the human race that we get hold of a Bale Wolf. We thought probably Loanna would be able to take us to them.”

And then Horst’s voice. “I’m sure she’ll take you.”

Then a voice that she recognized as the pathetic neotenite they called the Girl. “It’s a lot to ask. We’ll understand if she can’t face them again.”

Horst said, “Loanna isn’t afraid.”

Loanna felt a blinding flash of rage. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she strode into the shack and confronted the meeting. Zozula was there, and Selena and the young Wild Human and the Girl, all sitting on the floor around Horst.

“You have a damned nerve, Horst!” she said, furious. “If you think I’m going anywhere near those Bale Wolves again, whether the future of the human race depends on it or not, you’re crazy! You simply don’t know what I’ve been through. And now you want me to go back?”

“What’s the matter?” mumbled Horst. “Are you frightened of them?”

“Of course I’m frightened of them!”

“Well, you didn’t give that impression when you took off with them.”

“They were safely in a drogue! Horst, you spent a whole night with them. You know what they’re like!”

“I thought
you were braver than I.”

“Well, I wasn’t. I hadn’t been in their clutches, that’s all. I hadn’t been affected by them. Now I have — and I’m not going to let it happen again! I’m sorry, you people,” she addressed the others, “but I won’t take you. I can’t. I wouldn’t be able to compose myself for the Outer Think. It would be impossible!”

Horst’s demeanor changed. He took a deep breath and his shoulders lifted as though shrugging off a burden. “Impossible?” he repeated.

“Well, you know that, Horst. Look what happened to you.”

“Maybe I was a coward.”

“Cowardice had nothing to do with it.” She was talking more quietly now. Hesitantly, she sat beside Horst. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?”

“For a very long time.”

“Don’t think it anymore.” She took his hand. “I know what you went through, that night at the baby factory. And I know you did it for me, because we couldn’t have children. You’re no coward, Horst, and neither am I. There are certain things that we simply can’t do, no matter how much we may try. We can’t be blamed for that. Blame the structure of the Greataway, if you like, but don’t blame yourself.”

She kissed him.

Manuel cleared his throat and frowned at the others. Quietly they got to their feet and left.

*

It was a silent party that rode back to Boss Castle. Even the shrugleggers seemed depressed, plodding dismally through the rain, sensing the disappointment of their riders.

As they dismounted, Manuel burst out: “Well, you can hardly blame her!”

The Girl said sadly, “You’re right, Manuel.” A caracal-man helped her down from the shruglegger, grinning slyly. They walked through to Selena’s quarters.

Selena herself seemed ill at ease. Manuel drifted over to the painting of
She
and stood regarding it. The Girl snorted unpleasantly, and it was Zozula who finally spoke.

“Nobody
could have done more than we have. Nobody could have tried harder.”

Selena said heavily. “It’s the end of everything. We might as well close the People Planet down, now. I feel sorry for our Specialists. We’re taking away the whole purpose of their existence. But we can’t justify maintaining this place on the basis of the occasional fluky True Human birth — not now that we know what the real problem is.”

“I feel sorry for us,” said Zozula. “There’s no reason for our existence, either, now.”

Manuel swung round from the painting. “You True Humans give up easily, don’t you?”

With heavy sarcasm, Zozula said, “Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell us what you have in mind, Manuel. Have you rediscovered the Outer Think all by yourself? Don’t keep it a secret. By what means are we going to locate the Bale Wolves?”

“The Celestial Steam Locomotive,” said Manuel …

“Oh, no,” said the Girl softly. She remembered Dream Earth and the terrible creature who had held her prisoner, that black-cloaked monster who still tapped his way through her dreams with a white stick and dead eyes. “Oh, no, Manuel.”

“I’ll look after you, Girl.”

“The Locomotive, eh?” said Zozula pensively. “Now, that’s not a bad idea, Manuel. We have nothing to lose. Unless they’ve already met the Bale Wolves and been wiped out. The Locomotive may no longer exist.”

“I think …” Manuel struggled to find the right words. “I think the Locomotive always existed and always will. I don’t think it’s connected with Time, the way we are, Zozula.”

“You could be right. And right or wrong, it’s our only chance,” Zozula’s mood became buoyant. “Selena! We will depart for Earth immediately — Manuel, the Girl and I. Let those fox-people know. And I’d like you and Brutus to stay here and prepare for the Bale Wolf.”

“Can I speak to you in private for a moment?” Selena took his arm and led him into the next room, closing the door behind them. Here a huge window looked out over a vast expanse of tossing grey broken only by the island of the ocean cow’s breathing apparatus a kilometer away. She stood with her back to Zozula, watching the waves. “Do you remember … a long time ago, when we found something was wrong with the tissue bank, we decided to use samples from our own bodies. We thought we might clone ourselves, as a last resort.”

“Yes, but
it didn’t work. We probably left it until too late — we were too old. And it wasn’t an ethical approach, anyway. Our duty hardly includes populating the world with duplicates of ourselves. We should never have tried it.”

“But we did try it.”

“What are you getting at?”

Selena took a deep breath and swung round from the window, facing him. “It didn’t fail completely.”

“Oh? I didn’t realize that. But it doesn’t matter. As I said, it was unethical.”

“It was very unethical, Zo. And I was the guilty one. You see, I took the only successful baby we produced and raised it myself.”

“What!” He stared at her. “You mean there was another True Human up here, that we didn’t know about? But how did you manage to conceal it? What happened to it?”

“He’s alive.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

He flushed a little, still staring at her. “Look here, Selena, this is unforgivable. Why did you do it?”

“Oh …” She shrugged. “I don’t know. At first it was a kind of superstition, I think. I had an idea the baby might turn out well, so I didn’t want to entrust him to the Specialists. I know that doesn’t sound logical, Zo. After all, they’re trained for the job, but …” Her voice trailed off.

“So you and the caracals raised it in secret?”

“Him. He’s male. You make it sound so … furtive, Zo. Really, it was more like research work. That’s how I thought of it …
Tried
to think of it. Oh, I know I’ve done wrong. All I can say is, it won’t happen again. It was a mistake, because the man has grown up a little narrow in his outlook. It’s time he saw something of Earth.”

“I’ll
say it is,” said Zozula grimly. “How old is he?”

“Oh … fifty years or so.”

“What!”

“Well, I …” Again she shrugged helplessly. “You’d better see him,” she said.

She opened a door. “You can come and meet our head Cuidador now,” she called.

Mentor entered, smiling, saw Zozula and stopped dead.