The Andre Norton MEGAPACK ®. Andre Norton
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of patient plodding; two, three. Raf, led by the hand, helped over rocks and obstacles which were only dark blurs to his watering eyes, raged inwardly and sometimes outwardly, against the slowness of their advance, his own helplessness. His fear grew until he refused to credit the fact that the blurs were sharpening in outline, that he could now count five fingers on the hand he sometimes waved despairingly before his face.
When he spoke of the future, he never said “if we reach the ship” but always “when,” refusing to admit that perhaps they would not be in time. And Dalgard by his anxiety, tried to get more news from the north.
“When we get there, will you come back to earth with us?” the pilot asked suddenly on the fifth day.
It was a question Dalgard had once asked himself. But now he knew the answer; there was only one he dared give.
“We are not ready—”
“I don’t understand what you mean.” Raf was almost querulous. “It is your home world. Pax is gone; the Federation would welcome you eagerly. Just think what it would mean—a Terran colony among the stars!”
“A Terran colony.” Dalgard put out a hand, steadied Raf over a stretch of rough shingle. “Yes, once we were a Terran colony. But—can you now truthfully swear that I am a Terran like yourself?”
Raf faced the misty figure, trying to force his memory to put features there, to sharpen outlines. The scout was of middle height, a little shorter in stature than the crewmen with whom the pilot had lived so long. His hair was fair, as was his skin under its sun tan. He was unusually light on his feet and possessed a wiry strength Raf could testify to. But there was that disconcerting habit of mind reading and other elusive differences.
Dalgard smiled, though the other could not see that.
“You see,” deliberately he used the mind touch as if to accent those differences the more, “once our roots were the same, but now from these roots different plants have grown. And we must be left to ourselves a space before we mingle once more. My father’s father’s father’s father was a Terran, but I am—what? We have something that you have not, just as you have developed during centuries of separation qualities of mind and body we do not know. You live with machines. And, since we could not keep machines in this world, having no power to repair or rebuild, we have been forced to turn in other directions. To go back to the old ways now would be throwing away clues to mysteries we have not yet fully explored, turning aside from discoveries ready to be made. To you I am a barbarian, hardly higher in the scale of civilization than the mermen—”
Raf flushed, would have given a quick and polite denial, had he not known that his thoughts had been read. Dalgard laughed. His amusement was not directed against the pilot, rather it invited him to share the joke. And reluctantly, Raf’s peeling lips relaxed in a smile.
“But,” he offered one argument the other had not cited, “what if you do go down this other path of yours so far that we no longer have any common meeting ground?” He had forgotten his own problem in the other’s.
“I do not believe that will ever happen. Perhaps our bodies may change; climate, food, ways of life can all influence the body. Our minds may change; already my people with each new generation are better equipped to use the mind touch, can communicate more clearly with the animals and the mermen. But those who were in the beginning born of Terra shall always have a common heritage. There are and will be other lost colonies among the stars. We could not have been the only outlaws who broke forth during the rule of Pax, and before the blight of that dictatorship, there were at least two expeditions that went forth on Galactic explorations.
“A thousand years from now stranger will meet with stranger, but when they make the sign of peace and sit down with one another, they shall find that words come more easily, though one may seem outwardly monstrous to the other. Only, now we must go our own way. We are youths setting forth on our journey of testing, while the Elders wish us well but stand aside.”
“You don’t want what we have to offer?” This was a new idea to Raf.
“Did you truly want what the city people had to offer?”
That caught the pilot up. He could remember with unusual distinctness how he had disliked, somehow feared the things they had brought from the city storehouse, how he had privately hoped that Hobart and Lablet would be content to let well enough alone and not bring that knowledge of an alien race back with them. If he had not secretly known that aversion, he would not have been able to destroy the globe and the treasures piled about it.
“But”—his protest was hot, angry—“we are not them! We can do much for you.”
“Can you?” The calm question sank into his mind as might a stone into a troubled pool, and the ripples of its passing changed an idea or two. “I wish that you might see Homeport. Perhaps then it would be easier for you to understand. No, your knowledge is not corrupt, it would not carry with it the same seeds of disaster as that of Those Others. But it would be too easy for us to accept, to walk a softer road, to forget what we have so far won. Just give us time—”
Raf cupped his palms over his watering eyes. He wanted badly to see clearly the other’s face, to be able to read his expression. Yet it seemed that somehow he was able to see that sober face, as sincere as the words in his mind.
“You will come again,” Dalgard said with certainty. “And we shall be waiting because you, Raf Kurbi, made it possible.” There was something so solemn about that that Raf looked up in surprise.
“When you destroyed the core of Those Other’s holding, you gave us our chance. For had you not done that we, the mermen, the other harmless, happy creatures of this world, would have been wiped out. There would be no new beginning here, only a dark and horrible end.”
Raf blinked; to his surprise that other figure standing in the direct sunlight did not waver, and beyond the proudly held head was a stretch of turquoise sky. He could see the color!
“Yes, you shall see with your eyes—and with your mind,” now Dalgard spoke aloud. “And if the Spirit which rules all space is kind, you shall return to your own people. For you have served His cause well.”
Then, as if he were embarrassed by his own solemnity, Dalgard ended with a most prosaic inquiry: “Would you like shellfish for eating?”
Moments later, wading out into the water-swirled sand, his boots kicked off, his toes feeling for the elusive shelled creatures no one could see, Raf felt happier, freer than he could ever remember having been before. It was going to be all right. He could see! He would find the ship! He laughed aloud at nothing and heard an answering chuckle and then a whoop of triumph from the scout stooping to claw one of their prey out of hiding.
It was after they had eaten that Dalgard asked another question, one which did not seem important to Raf. “You have a close friend among the crew of your ship?”
Raf hesitated. Now that he was obliged to consider the point, did he have any friends—let alone a close one—among the crew of the RS 10? Certainly he did not claim Wonstead who had shared his quarters—he honestly did not care if he never saw him again. The officers, the experts such as Lablet—quickly face and character of each swept through his mind and was as swiftly discarded. There was Soriki—He could not claim the com-tech as any special friend, but at least during their period together among the aliens he had come to know him better.
Now, as if Dalgard had read his mind—and he probably had, thought Raf with a flash of the old resentment—he had another question.
“And what was he—is he like?”
Though the pilot could see little reason for this he answered as best he could, trying to build first a physical picture of the com-tech and then doing a little guessing as to what lay under the other’s space-burned skin.
Dalgard lay on his back, gazing up into the blue-green sky. Yet Raf knew that he was intent on every word. A merman padded up, settled down cross-legged beside the scout, as if he too were enthralled by the pilot’s halting description of a man he