The Golden Enemy (3 page)

Trembling, he managed to free it, then crouched beside it while he fought down the panic that had seized him. The small dog pressed close for comfort. This, Boy Jaim thought, was like living through one of poor Doubtful's nightmares.

“Can you still whiff the thing?” he whispered finally.

“Yes,” said Doubtful, pointing with his nose. “It—it's off in yonder.”

His arm tightened around Doubtful while he studied the surrounding shadows. Somewhere, surely, there must be a sunny glade where the sled's batteries could recharge. The entire deck and sides were made up of solar cells, most of which had been covered far too long by his equipment. But an hour in the sunlight, with everything removed, should bring the power up again. That is, if there was any sunlight to be found.

They were in one of the most tangled areas he had ever seen. Only little speckles of light dappled the gloom, though far off on his right he made out a faint pencil of brightness that might be the sun beating into a glade. But even as he saw it, the brightness vanished and the speckles of light around them faded.

The clouds had come. It chilled him to realize that the sun might not shine again today.

A sudden crashing somewhere in the direction Doubtful had pointed sent a new stab of fright through him. The hackles on Doubtful's neck rose again. Earlier, when the sled had been working, Boy Jaim hadn't minded the prospect of meeting the creature. Now, in their helplessness, the very thought that it might discover them was terrifying.

“Let's get going,” he whispered. “Quiet …”

Stealthily they began creeping away. Where they had once run blindly in panic, they now inched forward, careful of every movement. From high overhead came a faint rushing of wind. The forest darkened and the rushing increased, masking the progress of their footsteps. But the wind and the deepening gloom only added to Boy Jaim's dread. His eyes roved continually, watching the shadows for a phantom shape that might overwhelm them at any moment.

It was long later when he felt a spattering of cold rain on his shoulders and found they'd reached the first open glade. Hurriedly he drew on his jacket, then glanced upward at the patch of dark gray sky high above. Both wind and rain had eased momentarily, but the heavens seemed ready to explode any second. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Doubtful, he saw, was standing with hackles raised and teeth bared in defiance—futile defiance of something unseen and unheard, whose exact location could only be guessed. Yet its terrible presence could be felt.

All at once Boy Jaim wondered whether the sled would carry Doubtful and himself if he removed everything on deck. The heaviest part of the load was the bag containing the things he'd found at the Barrens. This part of the forest was strange to him though, and if he left the bag here, how could he ever find it again? The objects were priceless. To lose them was unthinkable.

Then he remembered the smoke signals Andru had insisted he always carry. He'd never had to use any, but one signal would give a steady stream of smoke for a full day—unless it rained.

He was wondering how he could keep one smoking through a storm when L'Mara called him again.

“
Boy Jaim
—
Where are you now?
”

“
Down in the woods. Where are you?
”

“
Hunting you in the big sled
—
and don't tell me nothing's wrong, 'cause I know better. How can I find you?
”

“
Keep away from me!
” he ordered in alarm. “
It's not safe here!
”

“
If you don't tell me where you are, I'll keep flying around till I find you
—
and I'm not going home till I do. So there!
”

A sudden violent flash of lightning made him stop arguing with her and begin searching frantically for the box of smoke signals. He found it, tore it open, and hurriedly touched a lighter to one of the sticks. L'Mara had no business flying around in stormy weather, but she was as stubborn as a billy goat and he knew she meant exactly what she'd told him.

As the smoke boiled upward from the glade, he called to her again, then prayed that the rain would hold off until she arrived. The rain came first, and in such a blinding deluge that the signal was immediately extinguished. But L'Mara must have noted its location carefully, for soon the large covered sled appeared overhead and descended cautiously.

He was ready for her, waiting with the precious bag in his hand. The moment the big sled was close enough he heaved the bag over the stern, tossed Doubtful after it, and scrambled aboard with the towline of the small sled.

“Get away from here!” he cried, looping the line over a cleat. “Hurry!”

As they shot upward he crouched in the stern and stared down into the dimness of the glade. There was an instant when something huge seemed to take form at the spot where he had been, but it may have been only an illusion caused by the rain. Or his imagination.

The next moment they were over the forest and swinging in a long curve southward to avoid the storm. He shook the rain from his clothes and crept into the cabin.

L'Mara flashed him a wide-eyed look like a frightened squirrel, and her small mouth trembled with a rush of unspoken questions. He shook his head and wiped moisture from his face with a hand that was far from steady.

“You ought to have better sense than to be out in this kind of weather,” he growled at her, merely to be saying something aloud. “If Andru knew about it—”

“He's not home,” she snapped. “And anyhow I'm old enough to know what I'm doing. So there!”

“Well, thanks for picking me up. If you hadn't come when you did … My sled was down, and that thing—”

“What
was
it down there?” she burst out suddenly. “A—a sort of bear?”

There was no use trying to hide anything from her. Their minds were so closely adjusted that fears as well as thoughts could be communicated, often without their even trying.

“I don't know,” he muttered, shaking his head. “It had a footprint like a bear, but the print was huge. Doubtful said it had the scent of a bear, only—”

“It was a phantom,” Doubtful mumbled. “I've seen things like it in my sleep.”

“Father won't believe this,” she said presently, after she had heard what had happened. “Why should
all
the creatures turn against us? It—it's just plain crazy!”

“I want to talk it over with Emmon,” he told her. “Let's head straight there.”

Remembering her present, he opened the heavy sack and took out something carefully wrapped in his rain jacket. It was the only ceramic object he had found, and he had wrapped it for protection from the other treasures, all of which were of metal. How it had survived the terrible forces of the remote past was a miracle, for nothing like it had ever been discovered. It represented a small, tan, fluffy-haired creature with erect ears and great wondering green eyes.

L'Mara squealed with quick delight. “Oh! Isn't it
beauti
ful! What
is
it?”

Boy Jaim shrugged. “Doubtful says he's chased something like it in his dreams. Emmon ought to be able to tell us about it. He has all the records on extinct creatures.”

The sky remained overcast, but presently they were out of the storm area and flying over the hills and meadows west of the Five Communities. Usually the meadows were dotted with mixed herds of deer and fleecy-haired goats, but today the deer had vanished. The few goats in sight were huddled in the orchards near the scattered dwellings.

Boy Jaim peered down, wondering at the goats, then forgot them momentarily as the sun broke through the clouds and glinted on a hill far ahead. The entire hill was terraced for orchards and gardens. Through the trees at the top shone the red-tiled roof of an ancient house where the community's teacher, Emmon the Elder, had been gathering his scraps of wisdom and passing them on again, for longer than anyone could remember.

Most of the neat, whitewashed homes in the Five Communities were strung through the valleys on winding, crisscrossing paths that followed the stone walls. The walls were everywhere. Built to keep out grazing animals, they surrounded the small fields and the lush gardens in which the houses nestled, and wound all the way to the top of old Emmon's hill.

The Elder's stepped gardens, tended mainly by his pupils, usually gave forth a pleasant medley of bee drone, birdsong, and splash of water from the many springs. Today no birds were singing, and there was a discordant new sound Boy Jaim had not heard there before. It came from the closed gate near the bottom of the hill—the worried baa-baa-a-ing of goats demanding attention.

After landing on the upper terrace he stood a moment trying to ignore the goats, pretending he could hear only the bees, the music of the water, and the other little familiar sounds that were part of his happy, peaceful world. He loved it all, and wanted life to go on just as it was. Why couldn't it?

Then his brown face tightened, and he got his bag and followed L'Mara past the row of moored air sleds to the entrance.

Just inside the doorway he paused uncertainly and set the bag down. He had not expected, this early in the afternoon, to find the place full of Emmon's pupils. They always made him feel uncomfortable. All of them, small L'Mara included, could assemble a sled unit—a puzzle that still gave him difficulties—or repair the tricky solar machines that relieved everyone from drudgery.

It never occurred to him that he had talents the others did not possess. He stood biting his lip, listening to Emmon's sharp voice in the big room beyond.

The Elder was a shriveled little gnomelike man, egg bald, white-bearded, and frail as a feather. Even so, he seemed to have boundless energy. “It has happened before,” he was saying, warming to one of his favorite subjects. “And it will happen again. Almost without warning—unless we learn to read the signs. Many things could cause it: a slight wobbling of the planet, a shifting of its core, or even a cloud of cosmic dust. Hal Suppose our sun ran into such a cloud—what would become of us?” He jabbed a finger at a listener. “You tell us, Betta.”

“We—we'd freeze,” said the girl.

“Quickly?”

“Well, it depends. On the size of the cloud, I mean, and how dense it was. If it was a thin cloud, I suppose it would just slowly get colder, and we'd have another ice age. But that wouldn't be half as bad as what would happen if, well, if the earth's core shifted.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Well, that would be just awful. I mean, it would start earthquakes and volcanoes, and the earth's crust would buckle and the oceans would pour over the land. And at the same time there'd be terrible winds that would turn the air over and chill it in space, and the temperature would drop hundreds of degrees in almost no time—”

“Hey, we'd freeze in seconds!” one of the boys exclaimed. “Has that ever really happened—just like that, I mean?”

“Of course it's happened!” old Emmon said sharply. “That's what I'm trying to impress upon you, Hiras. It must have happened several times in the past, changing the planet greatly. Naturally there was terrible destruction of life.”

“Is that what killed off the ancients at the Barrens?” Hiras asked.

L'Mara said, “I read that a meteor killed them off, but I don't believe it. I always had a feeling they were just plain murderous, though Father thinks they were demented. Could so many people be demented?”

“Ha!” said the Elder. “Possibly. It's all a point of view. In one sense they almost had to be demented to live in those ghastly beehives of cities, roaring around on wheels, and to be forever so incredibly busy—though heaven knows what they were so busy about. No one has ever learned.” He shook his head. “However, many things happened at the Barrens. But what with continents changing and sinking, and the polar ice melting and flooding things, we've few records left to help us. We may never know the truth unless we learn to make better use of the Pool of Knowledge.”

There was a sudden silence. Then young Hiras asked, “Is there really a Pool of Knowledge, sir?”

Old Emmon looked at him witheringly. “Where do you think inspiration comes from? Out of man's trifling little brain? Ha!” He pointed a trembling finger aloft. “All that ever has been, all that ever can be and will be, is forever out there waiting. We have only to learn to see it …”

He paused and peered around him. Suddenly he blinked and looked hard at L'Mara. “My dear girl,
what
is that object in your hands?”

It was evident that L'Mara had almost forgotten what she held. “I—I don't know, sir. I've been hoping you knew.”

The Elder came forward. The others crowded around.

“Why, I declare!” he exclaimed. “It must be a cat!”

L'Mara looked at him blankly, and the Elder added, “A cat, my dear, is an extinct household pet. I have a description of one somewhere in the library. The creature was carnivorous, and some members of its family were exceedingly large and fierce.” He shuddered slightly. “I consider it fortunate that all carnivorous creatures are extinct. There are the bears, of course, and a dog or two—but these days the worst thing they eat is fish.”

“Don't forget about man,” said L'Mara.

“Eh? Man?”

“Yes, sir. Wasn't he once a flesh eater? And he still eats fish sometimes.”

“Please,” the Elder begged, looking pained. “I find the subject revolting.” Then, looking up, he noticed for the first time that Boy Jaim was standing in the doorway. “Well! So you're back again from your wandering. About time! Did you find this cat L'Mara has?”

Boy Jaim had been paying little attention to the conversation. His mind was on the goats. He could hear them faintly, far down at the bottom of the hill, and suddenly he knew what had happened. Emmon should be told about it—but not here, with so many others present.