Part 2

"You mean that tribal law has decreed that?"

"Precisely. They breed fast and eat voraciously. You can't have agriculture and the storage of fruits and grains--any kind of stable handicraft culture even--with vicious tyrants like that on every patch of cultivated land. By rough estimate those beasts consume millions of tons of food a year. Even the small animal life is vanishing."

"And they don't dare kill one," Kallatah said. "It sounds insane."

"All primitive fear taboos are insane," I told her. "They're symptoms of the stark lunacy which possesses the human mind before it gets hold of the tools it needs to grasp the real nature of the physical world. Even when it gets such tools," I qualified, "a society can be psychotic in a more complex way. All societies are probably psychotic in one way or the other, but that's another story entirely."

"But the adult males seem well fed," Kallatah said, her eyes on the trail ahead. "How could starved children grow up into such robust-looking adults?"

"Deprivation has left its marks," I told her. "You've got to remember that only the strongest survive where the infant mortality skyrockets the way it does here. And those that do reach manhood have bad teeth, poor digestion--all kinds of psychosomatic ills. What you are seeing here is the warrior caste strutting its might. A warrior caste will _always_ find a way to eat."

She didn't speak again until we were at the base of the mountain, and the village was coming swiftly toward us through the haze.

"You still haven't told me how you managed to turn aside their wrath," she complained. "Just what did you say to them? Why are they bringing us here? Did you expect me to understand the gibberish you used?"

Dared I be completely honest? I decided it would be tempting fate to tell her exactly what I had said to Geipgos. She'd find out soon enough. Meanwhile, I needed time to plan my strategy and come up with something workable that wouldn't make her hate me too much.

The sudden appearance of the children saved the moment for me, sparing me the necessity of further evasion. They were playing on the plain directly in front of the village, racing to and fro with the eager abandonment of all children everywhere.

They used their five arms to good advantage, tossing mud cakes at one another, blinking and grimacing with a demoniac expressiveness, pretending to be dead from famine one instant, and then, in the twinkling of an eye, coming exuberantly to life again.

For an instant Kallatah's face radiated only maternal solicitude, a gentle sweetness untouched by rancor. Then, all at once, she seemed to realize how emaciated they were, how completely different from ordinary children. Her head came up, and her eyes blazed with indignation.

The blaze grew hotter as the lizards added fuel to it. The revolting creatures were everywhere--on slanting mud banks lush with berry-laden vegetation, on fields that sloped away to mist-filled hollows, even within easy pouncing distance of the children.

They ignored us as we were borne past, their carrion-repulsive heads bobbing to and fro. They were devouring everything edible within reach of their forepaws, swaying back and forth and cramming the food into their mouths with a voracity which was sickening to watch.

Miraculously the children ignored them, and went right on playing.

The procession moved on in silence, straight toward a picture of human misery so tragic and pitiful that no man of good will could have contemplated it without a shudder.

The village consisted of twenty-five or thirty huts, each with its central supporting pole, and spreading straw roof. The women sat about listless and sullen in doorways, apparently not caring at all how unattractive they looked, or what a disillusioning impression their complete lack of amorous allure must have made on the returning, better-nourished warriors.

But there is something about the imminent prospect of a nuptial ceremony that infuses joy into even the most dispirited, and the instant they saw us they leapt up with one accord and came flocking around us. Old and young, tall and short, comely and ugly.

The warriors carried us to the central hut and set the litter down with prideful flourishes of their long arms and broad, straight shoulders. Instantly shouts of jubilation echoed through the village. There were no brass bands, but the brass band spirit was tremendously in evidence.

A child of ten came up, bearing garlands, and a girl with skeleton ribs, and vermilion-painted cheekbones presented Kallatah with a beautiful shell bracelet mottled yellow and black, slipping it on her wrist before she could recoil in protest.

She was still protesting when we were ushered into the hut, Geipgos grinning and bowing and his son standing straight and still and with a smirk of anticipatory amorousness in the midst of the women.

"Geega Drun Fra Hul," Geipgos said. That translated out as: "We will leave you now. Later we will rejoice together in the great joy which has overtaken you. Ah, that I could be as young as you are on such a night as this."

The din outside continued for a moment and then gradually subsided.

We looked at each other.

Night was already descending over the clearing. It falls fast on Dracona--a blanket of impenetrable darkness settling down. Just by craning our necks we could look out into the clearing and see the last glimmer of dusk departing. A star appeared in the sky as if by magic, but we just sat there exchanging meaningful glances, Kallatah's face shadowed and curiously withdrawn.

Suddenly she spoke. "You didn't fool me for a minute."

"Fool you?" I said slowly. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Oh, you understand, all right. You're very clever--_or think you are_."

"I wasn't trying to be clever," I told her. "It looked pretty bad for us. They would have killed us both if I hadn't talked them out of it."

"You could have told me!" she flung at me, her eyes abruptly accusing. "Why did you have to make a secret of it?"

"A secret of what?"

"You didn't think I'd guess straight off? You didn't give me credit for knowing even that much about the psychology of primitives?"

"You're talking in riddles," I protested. "You're taking too much for granted."

"Am I? The things _you_ take for granted are beyond belief. I know exactly how your mind worked. You told yourself they were angry enough to kill impulsively. You had to give them the strongest possible reason for _not_ wanting to kill us. Isn't that so?"

"Well--"

"There's a very old saying that has a universal application," she said, a stinging contempt in her voice. "All the world loves a lover. I thought of it instantly myself."

"You did? If I had known--"

"Keep quiet and let me finish. You told them that I was _your woman_. You probably added that the whole ridiculous insanity was recent enough to be celebrated right here in their own village. Naturally that did it. Whisper the words 'nuptial ceremony' to a primitive and you've transferred to him an inward glow that makes him your friend forever.

"If he's old he remembers what it meant when it happened to him. If he's young there's the rapture of anticipation. Besides, primitives like display and drama, human giggling and embarrassment just as much as you do. You of Earth still throw rice, you know. We have passed beyond such foolishness, but there are times--"

She looked at me and giggled. It was the cruelest thing she could have done because, despite the giggle, there was a cold mockery in her stare that castigated my Earthborn heritage and made me feel ridiculous.

It was then that she _really_ threw the book at me. "Instead of discussing the whole matter as an anthropological problem that could only have been solved by analyzing it in a calmly scientific and detached way you acted as if you thought me capable of making an embarrassing situation out of it."

She stood up abruptly, removing the binding circlet from her hair, and shaking her head until the freed tresses descended in a tumbled red-gold mass to her shoulders.

"Prudishness is both barbaric and childish," she said. "It has nothing to do with modesty and reserve, which are admirable when a man and a woman do not know one another well enough to feel at ease in an atmosphere of mutual respect and admiration."

There was a heavy silence for an instant. Then very calmly and deliberately she took off her weather jacket, folded it, and laid it on the floor at her feet.

"It will do for a pillow," she said. "I hate sleeping without a support for my head."

I stared automatically at her bare shoulders, the way I might have stared if a blinding vision of paradise had appeared to me between sleeping and waking and vanished in a flash.

"What makes all this so amusing is the way it parallels a good many of the farcical situations in the ancient folk writings of Terra," she said. "I've made a comparative study of them, and they really are precious."

The precise set of her waistline seemed to annoy her, and she changed it perceptibly, loosening the binding straps until I caught the barest glimmer of white between them. She stared at me with patronizing pity, as if my startlement was tantamount to a further step downward into the murk of a prudishness so childish that it branded me as a barbarian without a single redeeming trait.

She stared through and beyond me, her eyes stabbing the shadows, her voice derisive in its composure, "For some reason a man has to pretend that a woman is his wife. There's a wealthy relative to impress, or a primitive conveyance breaks down, and a thunderstorm compels the pair to take refuge in a wayside dwelling.

"There is only one sleeping compartment available and what do you suppose the man does? The sane scientific approach would be to behave like an intelligent human being. When a man and a woman are alone together excessive prudishness is ridiculous. Why with such a charming companion available should he not relax as I am doing--be completely natural and human and at his ease? Why should he not sit down and discuss art and philosophy, music and the dance the whole night through?

"But does he--in the ancient folk writings? No. The silly fool gets up, takes a blanket and creeps out into the night. He shivers in the cold for no reason at all. Owls hoot at him, but he still persists in making himself ridiculous until the dawn comes up."

I looked at her for a long moment in silence. It has never been difficult for me to take a hint. I knew, of course, that women have a remarkable capacity for burying their real feelings beneath a dozen or more carefully arranged masks for the sole purpose of keeping a man guessing. But I decided not to even attempt to peel off the masks. It would have been too dangerously time-consuming.

Fortunately I was wearing heavy enough spaceleather to protect me from the cold. I wouldn't need a blanket, and there were no owls on Dracona to hoot at me.

"I'm afraid I'm still too much of a primitive to find our ancient folk writings amusing," I told her.

Without another word, ignoring her abrupt, startled gasp, I swung about and went striding out of the hut into the cool night.

I slowed my stride the instant I found myself alone under the stars. So far I'd gained a respite. But I knew that what remained to be done could backfire and destroy me. She'd stepped into a situation more complicated than any we could have planned together. Nature had set the stage for it before her arrival, and the performance was about to begin. If the first act went wrong the music might well become a dirge, and the final curtain descend on a funeral landscape as bleak as a fire-ravaged tinder box.

A half mile from the village there was a hill where I could get a clear view of the volcano, and the cloud that hung poised above it night and day, its peculiar configuration giving it the aspect of a gigantic black moth flailing the air with soot-encrusted wings. For centuries that cloud had hung there, and would probably remain until the volcano burnt itself out.

I skirted the shadows until I was clear of the village and then I walked with my shoulders squared until I reached the hill. On Dracona a man must walk boldly if he is to walk at all.

It was cold on the hill--chillingly bleak and depressing. But I knew that my spaceleather would keep me warm enough. Thinking of Kallatah's violet eyes and the incredible glints of gold in her hair I threw myself down and lay stretched out at full length in the velvety darkness.

My eyes were on the cloud when the strange, startling play of colors began. First a flash of red on the underside of the cloud, and then a flash of dazzling violet piercing the cloud. Red, violet, and then red again--each color lingering for perhaps ten seconds.

I took out my instruments then, and made a careful check. My equipment consisted of a tiny electro-magnetic linear strain seismograph which was sensitive to a tremor as faint as one ten-billionth of an inch, and a vertical recorder which gave me a picture in two dimensions of the surface tension at the edge of the crater ten thousand times enlarged.

I watched the cloud and studied the instruments, waiting until I was completely sure. Then I arose, brushed the dirt from my knees, returned the instruments to their cases, and started back down the hill.

When I reached the village there was no stir of movement anywhere. I did not trade on my luck by pausing to explore the shadows. I went straight to Geipgos' hut, pushed the boughs aside, and crept inside on my hands and knees.

Geipgos was sleeping on a couch of matted vines with his arms interlocked on his chest, the green sheen of his skin, and the prominence of his cheekbones giving him an eerily mummified aspect.

I knelt at his side, got out the little reflector and strapped it to my forehead. I had to pause an instant to control the trembling of my hands.

The light came on in a sudden, blinding glare. I was hardly aware that I had switched it on until I found myself staring directly into Geipgos' startled eyes.

To get anywhere with hypnosis you've got to start fast. I looked Geipgos straight in the eye, passing my hand swiftly back and forth before his face, giving him no chance to realize that he was no longer asleep. The abrupt, almost intolerable glare was my greatest immediate asset.

"Yon Honi Erun," I whispered. "The Servants of the Mountain are very evil."

Geipgos blinked furiously, and his eyes widened in stark, incredulous terror.

I went on quickly: "You have always known them to be wicked--monstrously wicked and hateful. How repulsive they are in appearance alone, with their long scaly bodies so like the bodies of the shadow monsters which you feared would tear you piecemeal when as a child you disobeyed your parents.

"Do you not remember how you ran screaming from your father's wrath and hid in the dark, wishing that you might be a man grown, mighty in your contempt and defiance? You have always known the Servants of the Mountain to be hateful. But in your great fear you dared not say to yourself: 'They have brought me nothing but disaster!'"

Geipgos groaned and his eyes rolled.

"You dared not say," I went on relentlessly, "what you knew in your heart to be true. You dared not say: 'The Servants of the Mountain are false servants. They have brought my _people_ nothing but disaster! When a man is hungry must he starve? Must the fruits of his labor, the harvest that he has sown not only for himself alone, but for the adored ones of his heart be snatched from him?'"

Geipgos' eyes took on a strange glaze and his lips began to tremble.

"Soon the sky will be red," I told him. "Soon the ground will shake. Soon the wrath of the mountain will be terrible against its false servants."

Geipgos tried to rise, but I gripped his arm and compelled him to keep his eyes riveted on the reflector. "They are not true servants, for they anger the mountain. The mountain would drive them forth, but without your help how can the mountain free itself? The mountain has no legs. It cannot walk about and seek out its false servants when they descend on the village."

For the first time in Geipgos' life a deeply buried part of his mind was stirring tumultuously. I could tell by the way he gnashed his teeth, and swung his five arms about that he was raging inwardly.

You cannot hypnotize a man against his will. You can not force him to do something that will outrage his moral sense. But what I wanted Geipgos to do had the sanction of nature and common sense, and the sanction as well of the wild, unruly part of himself that has shaped his destiny from childhood. I was playing both ends off against the middle--against a ridiculous straw man of a hated taboo.

"When you have done what you must do the mountain will cease to be angry," I told him. "It will rejoice with you."

Then I told him what had to be done. I implanted the command with as much majesty as I could summon, dimming the reflector with my palm so that he could see me clearly.

"The mountain will rejoice with you," I repeated. "The sky will cease to be red. The ground will cease to tremble."

I left him then. I left him and hugged the shadows, moving stealthily from hut to hut. Into thirty huts I crept and roused the sleeping warriors with the same hypnotic dazzlement. And to each I whispered the same words, and imposed upon them the same urgent post-hypnotic command.

It is always unwise to take pride in a difficult task accomplished with ease until the last obstacle has been overcome, the last hurdle surmounted.

I almost did--until I walked through the high-arching entrance of the thirty-first hut, and found myself confronting a warrior wide awake and on his feet.

"I have been awaiting your coming," Geipgos' son said.

Our Earth heritage is rich in legends. The great poets, the myth-makers, have all paid homage to the shining strength, the courage and daring which sets a king's son apart from ordinary mortals.

_And the king's son came in his wrath and smote them. Terrible was he in battle, shod in fire and fury, rallying the vanquished with his might._

I had never believed it. But I was startled and must have shown it, for into Slagoon's eyes came a look of mocking triumph.

"Gru Huhu Frum," he said. "I followed you when you left the village. I watched you making magic on the hill."

"It was not magic, son of Geipgos," I said. "I was talking to the mountain. Would you doubt the word of a guest?"

"I would doubt the word of a guest who does not speak the truth."

There was no need for further speech between us.

I measured him with my eyes, the length and breadth and thickness of him. He had kept himself in fine physical trim, despite the demon of hunger which must have dogged his footsteps night and day. A lean panther is more dangerous than a well-fed one; a man with gaunt cheeks and protruding ribs a treacherous adversary if his muscles have retained their resiliency, and the will to wrestle and slay is strong in him.

He had five hands to my two. He was armed and I was weaponless and his weapon was a cruel one, a curving blade with a bone handle, ground to a deadly sharpness.

When you're girding for a life-and-death struggle it's best to whittle your adversary down to size. I told myself that I was a civilized man with a resolution he could never hope to match. He would fight like a savage, granted. But I was sure that two hands guided by a trained intelligence could grip and hold, twist and bend twice as well as five hands animated by a blind urge to kill.

I squared my shoulders and started walking straight toward him. I was encouraged by the way he returned my stare, as if the look of confidence in my eyes had planted a sudden, disturbing doubt in his mind. It was enough to assure me that if I kept my head and closed in relentlessly my chances would be good.

I gave him no opportunity to strike at me with his mind. I advanced to within six feet of him, and maneuvered myself into a crouching position with a grimace so scornful that his eyes remained riveted on my face.

I came up out of the crouch like a coiled spring unwinding. With shattering violence I hurled myself against him, bone against bone, solid cartilage against hard gristle. He let out a yell, and went careening backwards like a feather in the path of a hurricane.

Subconsciously I must have expected him to crack his skull against the baked mud wall of the hut, and flatten out at my feet. Otherwise why was my next move so long delayed? He must have gotten at my mind a little, for I stood like a man bemused while he hit the wall, twisted about, and came swinging back toward me, his eyes filmed with pain and shock.

The lunge he made was so accurately gauged that the bone handle of the knife grazed my cheek. He was trading on his reflexes, the sure instinct of a primitive strong in battle, confident of his own strength. I leapt back, and sent my right fist crashing into his stomach. The blow staggered him, but not enough. With a deliberation unbelievable in one so hurt he slashed at me twice.

Just in time I ducked out of range, bent low and came up in a weaving crouch. I started hitting him, raining blows on his face and chest. I thought I heard his jaw crack, but as I whirled back to get a good look at him he laughed like an insane monkey, and transferred the knife to another hand.

He lunged again and I ducked again, and it went on in the same nightmare fashion until the knife was gleaming at the tip of an attenuated arm that followed my movements like a zigzagging lightning bolt.

He transferred the knife eight times, his laughter an insane echo as he weaved about. Desperately I dove for him and tried to knock the weapon away, but each time he was too quick for me.

His eyes burned with defiance and derision. But I suddenly saw that his mouth was beginning to sag, the lower lip trembling with unmistakable weakness.

I don't quite know how I got the knife away from him. But get it I did. I closed in suddenly, struck him a body blow that sent him reeling, followed him as he went backwards and wrested the weapon from him before he could recover his balance. I hit him again, and he went down, and I stood wrathfully over him.

He looked at me, his eyes filled with bewilderment and horror.

"Trag Unil Deguna," I said. "I've beaten you man to man in honest combat."