Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains (28 page)

“Impure flesh will make them sick, though.”

“No sicker than they already are,” said Brek grimly. He was pale, on the verge of getting sick himself.

One of the smaller mutants looked up from the meager portion of raw meat it held and its eyes focused abruptly, not with hostility, but in the manner of a carnivore sighting prey. Giving a loud grunt, it lurched forward.

“It’s seen us!” Talyra whispered. “It’s coming toward us; it—it looks as if it might want to hurt us. Why, Noren?”

“I don’t know,” Noren lied, struggling to remain steady.

In strength, he and Brek were no match for the attackers; they wouldn’t have been even if Brek had not been crippled by his broken rib. Besides lacking comparable weight, they were weakened by thirst and exhaustion, and the mature male—which was now advancing behind the younger ones—was a huge brute with years of experience in making kills. The mere fact that it had lived past maturity proved that, since among its kind only the victors survived. The mutants had turned to cannibalism because they had no other source of meat, and the eating of meat was deeply ingrained in their biological inheritance. But grown males would have fought to the death in any case. They’d have fought for band dominance and, Noren recalled in dismay, for possession of females, as most animals had done on the Six Worlds—for Talyra, slaughter was not the chief peril. He and Brek had been told these things. They had not, however, been told how to defend themselves, since the possibility that they might have to had never occurred to anyone. Intelligence was their sole armor.

“We can’t let them approach,” Brek said quietly. “Once they grapple with us we’re finished.” He seized a rock, preparing to aim it at the oncoming “savage.”

“Wait,” Noren told him. “They’ll not be frightened off, and if you miss his head you’ll merely enrage them. We’ve got to know more about their ways.” Though the mutants did not use tools, they might throw rocks themselves, and as to whether they could do it purposefully he was not sure. “Wait, Brek,” he said again, “and be ready to aim when they’re nearer; with your injury, you may not get many chances. I’m going to try something.”

Behind him, Talyra stood shaking, recognizing the immediate danger if not its potential aftermath. “Keep back,” Noren ordered, “but gather all the stones you can. Pile them at my feet.” Picking up a small rock, he hurled it as far as he could, aiming not for the mutants but well beyond them.

All three of the creatures turned instantly; what they lacked in wit was partially made up for by keen hearing and fast reactions. Quickly Noren grabbed more stones and threw out a barrage. The mutants remained facing the direction in which it landed, and shortly, they too began flinging one rock after another—but theirs were tossed aimlessly and fell wide of the mark, some even landing in the stream.

“It’s a good diversion,” Brek observed, “but you can’t keep it up forever. If we don’t kill them now, they’ll simply attack again later.”

“I know. This was just a test.” Stopping, Noren outlined the only strategy that seemed feasible. “We draw their attention back to us. Then we stand fast and let them get close, very close. When we’re sure we can’t miss, we make them turn again, and while they’re facing the other way we aim to hit.”

“What’s to say they’ll keep on facing the other way?” protested Brek. “Two of us can’t hit three of them simultaneously.”

“No, but we can each disable a small one, then deal with that big one together.”

“I can throw rocks too, at least I—I think I can,” Talyra ventured, her voice quavering only a little.

Noren frowned. That would add to their chances of success, certainly. She could not throw with sufficient force and accuracy to kill, but she could toss the stones to make the attackers turn, thus allowing him to act faster. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly, “but don’t do it till I give the word—and aim a long way past them.” He drew a deep breath and flung another stone, deliberately directing it to a point only a short distance away. Then he grasped a larger, heavier rock like the one Brek held, and with pounding heart, he waited.

The mutants, confused, advanced slowly. There was ample time to absorb an unforgettable picture of their slouching gait, the filth of their long matted hair, and worst of all, the mindlessness of their faces. This travesty of human life—this housing of animal mentality in men’s bodies—was more hideous than anything Noren had ever encountered. He had seen men behave like brutes; some of the ones who’d abused him at his arrest and recantation had been of a low sort. Some would have killed without hesitation when sufficiently inflamed. But they had not revolted him as these mutants did, for despite their faults they’d been human beings still.

He and Brek stood in full view, calculating how long it would be before one lunged at them, knowing that to move too soon—or too late—would mean sure defeat. Finally, when their taut nerves could endure no more, Noren breathed, “Now, Talyra!” and as the mutants whirled toward the sound of a new hail of stones, he heaved his rock with all the force that was in him. It struck the foremost one’s skull, felling the creature, but Brek’s first throw only grazed its target. Though his second hit true, the largest savage turned and charged before he and Noren could act in unison. Not till it was within instants of seizing Brek were they able to bring it down.

The two of them walked forward, shaking with released tension. The stench of the bodies was overpowering. Noren stared for a moment, realizing that the horror was not quite over, then returned to Talyra. They clung together, her body quivering with sobs. “Darling,” he said gently, “go now. Go to the plateau and wait for me.”

“No—”

“You mustn’t watch the finish, Talyra.”

Grasping his meaning, she obeyed. Noren and Brek, suppressing their sickness, went to the felled mutants, two of which were merely unconscious, and did what had to be done. Afterward they dragged the carcasses some distance downstream and dumped them beside the foul and bloody half-consumed one, covering them with reeds. The females had fled. It was unlikely that there would be another band nearby, for the vegetation that was the mainstay of their diet was more plentiful at lower elevations; and in any case revenge was beyond their conception.

“I’ll sleep here,” Brek said as they returned to the archway, “and guard it, though I doubt that any more will come. There’s no need for you to worry, Noren.”

It was nearly dark by this time. Noren washed in the clear shallow water, letting none touch his lips, and went back through the arch onto the barren plateau. The dead stony landscape was softened by the glow of three crescent moons; it looked unearthly and yet less unreal than most things had been since the space flight. The inertia he’d fought against was gone.

Talyra was waiting near the cascade. At night, the emptiness of the plateau gave a sense of privacy, not desolation, and indeed it did not seem that any place could be desolate when she was there. He knelt on the still-warm pebbles, smoothing a hollow with his hands. “There should be moss, at least,” he mumbled. “This is not fit for you, Talyra. I’ve never brought you anything but hardship—”

She flung herself down beside him, chiding softly, “Oh, Noren as if I cared about
that
! We were almost killed, and now we’re alive; haven’t we cause for joy?”

We cannot stay alive
, his mind told him, but the thought was remote; it was a time for feeling, not thinking. Curiously, the imminence of death freed him to feel. There was a point past which one could not reason, could not analyze… maybe Talyra’s refusal to despair was not so foolish after all. Her joy enveloped him; he knew fierce joy of his own, and surrendered to it as they joined in the ultimate affirmation of survival.

In the morning, when they woke to brilliant sunlight and bathed briefly in the perilous water of the cascade, Talyra drank a very little; but Noren, being far closer to the safe limit than she, carefully rinsed his parched mouth and did not swallow.

*
 
*
 
*

The days that followed were the strangest Noren had ever known. Suspended between life and death, he felt a peculiar lightness, not only from fasting but because burdens were lifted that had been too heavy for him to handle. The whole universe no longer seemed his concern.

Most of the daylight hours they spent at the cliff’s archway, for it provided the only nearby shade and their thirst was too great to permit much movement. At night Brek continued to sleep there while Noren and Talyra returned to the plateau. Their joy in each other overrode all fears, all discomforts; it seemed ample compensation for the painful things. Noren stopped worrying about what was past and what was to come, and lived one moment at a time. Though the moments brought suffering, they brought elation, too. He was free for elation, since there were no grave decisions left to be made.

They felt no hunger after the first; although they were weak from it, their stomachs did not torment them. The plants the mutants ate were no temptation. To taste that vegetation was out of the question, for while they might escape poisoning and eventually adapt, as the mutants’ ancestors had done, the chance of rescue was too small to warrant such a course. None of them even considered living on indefinitely in the mountains. There was an unspoken agreement between them that death would be preferable, not only because of the subhuman offspring that might come with the years, but because if Noren and Brek should be poisoned or killed, Talyra might be left at the mercy of the bestial creatures that would sooner or later reappear. At her insistence Noren had explained their ways, and she was aware that for a woman there was more to be feared than cannibalism.

So hunger was accepted, then ignored. It was thirst that brought anguish, all the more so because they were within sight and sound of the tantalizing stream. With calm realism, they estimated the maximum length of time it would be possible to survive without food and calculated the amount of water that could be safely consumed each day if the entire limit were spread over that time. Brek and Talyra had to endure nothing worse than a continuous craving that they were obliged to deny. Noren’s quota was considerably less, and he suffered intensely, drinking only as much as was essential to prevent high fever. Although moistening his skin provided some relief, it could not be done too often. During the worst hours, the long hot afternoons when he waited with burning forehead and throat afire for the shadow of the crag beyond the arch to tell him that it was time to permit himself a few more drops, be wondered why he had changed his mind about the pointlessness of restraint. To his amazement, he could find no answer. He knew only that something inside him would not let him go to Talyra if the limit were to be passed. The fact that their present situation made this irrational did not seem to alter it.

Brek’s injury was increasingly painful; the attack on the mutants had been a strain. Talyra redid the bandages and also bandaged their raw, blistered feet, using the carefully saved metal scrap to cut strips from her own tunic and Noren’s. All the metal they’d salvaged was piled neatly near the cliff where, Noren felt privately, it would remain until the light of the Mother Star touched it—by which time, one way or another, its loss would have ceased to count.

He no longer dwelt on such speculations; but while he was turning away from abstract thought, Brek was thinking more deeply than in the past. “Noren,” he said the fifth evening, when Talyra had gone on ahead, “we—we were wrong… what we planned, I mean. This may sound crazy to you, but if it weren’t for Talyra, and for the aircar being destroyed… I’d almost be glad we crashed. We were going to die anyway, and it’s better like this. We aren’t harming people by it.”

“The truth wouldn’t have harmed people,” Noren protested indignantly. “Truth
doesn’t
.”

“No, not if it doesn’t destroy their faith in a greater truth. I agree it’s no kindness to deceive people about important things, not even to spare them unhappiness. That’s why I let you persuade me. Only now—well, now I’m not sure that what we were going to say is true.”

“You’re afraid to acknowledge it?” Feverish and irritable from the searing thirst that made speech an effort, Noren replied with rancor. “You know as well as I do that there’s no more chance of the human race surviving on this planet than there is of our staying alive here in the mountains.”

“We’ve managed to hold on so far.”

“What’s that got to do with it? We’ve had certain resources, resources that won’t last indefinitely. That’s
fact
, Brek! When they’re gone, we’ll die. I’m afraid, too, but not so afraid I can’t face up to it.”

Brek looked at him strangely. “Is that what you set out to prove, Noren?”

With a rage he did not wholly understand, Noren turned his back and started toward the plateau; but Brek was not ready to drop the issue. “I should have seen it sooner,” he declared. “I’m sorry for you, Noren, if what you said that last night in camp is what you believe! But I don’t really think it is.”

“I do believe it.” Noren said doggedly. “I’ve learned too much to believe anything else. There won’t be a magical, miraculous breakthrough ‘in the last generation of our endurance,’ as ritual has it, any more than there’ll be a magic rescue for us now. What do you expect, some unpredictable solution that we’re led to by the spirit of the Mother Star, the way Talyra does?”

Brek leaned back against the cliff wall, looking up at the section of fading sky framed by the arch. Then, slowly, he asserted, “It’s not impossible.”