Meet Me at Infinity (25 page)

When he goes out, taking the baby, Agna and Donnia hurry in to resume the feeding. I hold Kamir quietly for a while to comfort her—and myself.

That evening Agna and I take a few minutes off to go down and join the conclave on the beach. The Mnerrin habitually gather here to watch the sunset and chat. Agna leads me around to the five men and their children who have been caring for his young. The babies are all appealing plump little Mnerrin, three girls and two boys, one of whom can already swim strongly, as Agna demonstrates.

Old Maoul is here, too, earnestly debating something with several men.

“They are deciding whether to take the canoes,” Agna tells me. “I think we will. Normally the babies swim, fastened to their father; but that of course slows us down. If they were in a canoe, we could travel faster. The two wounded men and Elia could go in them, too. But some of the older men are afraid that this will change our way of life too much.”

“I can understand that… Hello, Sintana. How goes it?”

The young man has a worried look. ” ‘Om Jhared, do you know any way to keep those canoes from tipping so easily? That is one of the objections to taking them. I thought that if they had a down-thrusting wood piece below, it would stabilize them, but I don’t see how to do that.”

Inventive boy. “That’s what we call a keel. It would indeed stabilize the canoes, but it would also hit rocks, if it was long enough to do good. But there is another way, which we call outriggers.” I smooth off a spot of sand and draw him a picture.

“I see. But there isn’t time to build these, ‘Om Jhared.”

“Well, can you produce two long logs each and some rope? I’ll show you a quick and dirty version.” I make another sketch, showing a canoe with a log loosely lashed on each side. “The idea is that the logs must be loose enough to float when the canoe is loaded. It will slow down the paddling a bit, but you will be surprised at how hard it is to tip. Want to try it?”

“Absolutely! I knew I could count on you, ‘Om Jhared!”

I reflect that it is best I leave before my meager store of information runs out. Meanwhile Agna is looking wistfully at a group still deep in their study of Relations.

“I used to love that,” he says. “But now I am so rusty.”

“My case too,” I tell him. “Tell me, what are those men playing at? It looks like a game I know.”

“Oh, it’s an old game we all love. Legend has it that the other man who came from the skies taught it to our forefathers. Do you really recognize it?”

“Yes, I think it is a game called ‘chess,’ only the pieces are carved a little differently.”

“Yes, ‘chess,’ you say? We call it ‘Shez’! It must be the same. So some legends are true!”

But I have something else on my mind.

“Agna, Donnia says that you know the straight-line direction to the island where I left my sky-ship. Can you show me? Then I can set my instrument here. It would be much quicker than retracing my steps.”

“Yes, I do. Don’t you recall, when we first started home with Kamir, you showed me where you’d come from? Let us go in the water, I’ll give you the line.”

We swim out, and Agna submerges for a few minutes. When he comes up, he has one arm pointed west-southwest. I set my compass pointer.

“You must have thrown something in the sea there,” says Agna disapprovingly. “I could sense alien stuff in the current.”

“Yes, I fear my ship must have sprayed exhaust when I landed. And it will again when I take off. I’m sorry—I hope it will dissipate soon.”

“Oh, it’s almost gone,” Agna concedes.

“The island is such a small, flat one, Agna. Do you think this line will really carry me to it? At least, near enough to see it?”

“Yes,” he says firmly. “If I were swimming, I’d say, seven days.”

“Good enough.” Then something inside me lurches, as if a curtain were rent. “No,
bad!”
I blurt.
“Agna, I don’t want to leave!”

He looks at me with affection. “I know. I, too, will miss you. But speak to Maoul of this. I am not sure you know your own mind.”

“Yes. I will,” I say, near to weeping.

When we get ashore, I confide my feelings to Maoul.

“I know, I know,” he tells me. “You are sending sadness all about. But tell me: if you go, you
can
return, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“While if you stay here, if you refuse this sky-ship, no other may come for you, right?”

“True.”

“And if you go, you may be able to help us against the goldskins? And in other ways, Mavru says?”

“I can try. I can always do something, even if only to send you weapons and supplies.”

“You could not do that if you stay here.”

“No… Oh, I see what you mean. If I truly love you and want to help you, I should go.… And I should take the course which is not irrevocable, which again means I should go.”

“That is my thought.”

I sigh deeply. “Then it is my thought, too. Thank you, Father Maoul.… But oh, I shall miss this world so.”

He too sighs. “It has been for you a happy time, out of your real life, which we cannot imagine. But for us this is real life, with all its good and evil.”

I see what he means, and bow my head. To me, this is still a dreamworld, though the people are real. I have not been truly into life here, as I would have to be if I stayed. As I would have to be if I come back to stay. Dreams must end.

“You are wise.”

He shrugs this off. I see Agna looking at me anxiously. It is time to go back and feed.

And just then, in the midst of everything, I hear a loud, familiar sound from the hut. Everyone looks up.

“What is that?”

“A beep from my transponder. That is, a signal that the ship which will carry me away has come into your sun’s system. I now have only a few days to get back to that island. If they have to wait, they will charge me money, and I can only pay for two days.”

“Pay?” asks Maoul.

“A system of portable value we use for returning the favors of people we may never meet again.”

“Legend says,” Maoul tells me, “that the one who came here before tried to explain something of this. To us it sounded unharmonious.”

“Unharmonious” is a term they use for, roughly,
uncivilized
and perhaps inhumane. It amuses me to hear our great economic system so brusquely—if perhaps justly—dismissed.

I bid Maoul good night and return with Agna to the hut.

That night Kamir faints for the first time.

The last day passes quietly. I cannot bring myself to start until the Mnerrin leave.

I watch them making up seaproof packets of their scant possessions and, one by one, placing them in the canoes. They consist primarily of a few small looms and supplies of thread, a musical instrument someone has been working on, some pots, several large pieces of cloth. I reflect on how little of their rich life would remain for archaeology if anything happens to the Mnerrin themselves.

When it comes to the spears and shields, the canoe-paddlers object. “There will be no room left for the babies and the wounded men.” In the end a few are taken.

I watch a burial party taking the body of the last woman up into the hills. In the past I have avoided looking at such scenes, though I knew they went on. But now I wonder how soon I may have to undertake such a grim trip myself.

Kamir is all over her fainting fit and says she is looking forward to traveling again. I marvel at how she can do with no food except the clear broths we make for her. She drinks more water than before; perhaps it has some richness in it. I would give an arm for an intravenous feeding rig. There will be one on that big ship. I have wasted hours trying to figure how I could get it to her.

The last night there is much singing. Kamir asks to be taken to the beach. I pick her up, almost weeping to find how light she is. She who only weeks ago had been my strong little mermaid, rolling me in the sand…. Now she scarcely weighs as much as the canteens I bring with us.

On the beach I pack moss around her poor knobby knees and hips, and prop her up where she can greet all. The Mnerrin are kind to her, particularly Sintana and his friends, who rally her about “fighting like a man.”

The singing rises around us, sweet and true. Kamir joins in, surprisingly strongly. I hold my face up to the moons and wish I could howl like a hound. Dreamworld or not, I love these people, love Kamir. Even love my dead son, and the other two… Of that last night I shall say no more.

The next morning there is a surprise—one of the rare fogs has closed in. It makes no difference to the Mnerrin
‘s
plans. The canoes are loaded; I see the fathers of toddlers tying them to the thwarts. The first shift of paddlers is in place.

And then they simply walk into the sea. Many turn to wave at us and for the last time I get the impact of so many blue, blue eyes. Then they are gone under sea and into the fog, leaving only the dark shapes of the canoes.

The paddlers dig in rhythmically, and the canoes, too, fade and vanish into the white wall.

It is very lonely on the beach.

But it is time for us to go, too. Donnia and Sintana carry the boat to the beach and return for the sac of babies. I am astonished to see how they have grown in the last days; the skin now seems almost too small for the full-size infants within. I carry Kamir down and arrange her in the stern beside me. The babies, and a big pot of fish, go in front, where she can touch them. It has been arranged to stop every hour for feeding, since I can do little while driving the boat, and Kamir is so weak.

Then the two Mnerrin wade out into the bay. I follow, expecting them to want Agna’s heading once they are past the reef. Instead, they simply submerge briefly and start off, straight on target. Wonderful instrument, those guide-hairs! Even Sintana’s fuzz seems long enough to give him some help.

Then we set off behind them, much as we had arrived, except that different arms are flashing ahead. And Kamir lies dying at my side. We settle into the dreamlike trance of travel over the blue sea, and the mists gradually clear.

And that’s about it.

On the third day there is a tear in the babies’ envelope and the whole skin looks dry and different. Kamir is excited; her eyes glow, she seems to be keeping herself alive on sheer will. But she can’t speak. “I will see them!” she whispers to me.

On the fourth morning it is difficult to feed. Donnia says that the babies must come out. He grasps the edges of the torn skin and pushes it down. It peels away; a shriveled placenta comes with it. As we tear it loose, the two babies roll out on the moss. One is exposed, I see it breathing, but the other is still in its fetal covering. I cut it free quickly, and the baby takes a great gulp of air and begins to cry—the immemorial infant squall. It is a Mnerrin baby, and so is the other, a girl and a boy.

Kamir tries to crawl toward them, her eyes burning hungrily. “Wait; darling,” I tell her. We swab the babies off, and put them in her arms.

“They’re perfect,” Donnia says.

But after a moment her head falls to one side. She has fainted, I hope, and I take her in my arms. She breathes for a minute or two; that is all. She is dead in my arms, with the babies in hers.

Gently we take them from her and feed them. To me they seem sturdy little things, but Donnia says they are thin. “We have work to do.”

There is an island nearby, a pretty one with a mountain. We take Kamir’s body there, up above the dunes, with a headstone on which I inscribe words too emotion-laden to repeat here.

And we continue.…

After a time it becomes clear that my batteries will more than hold out, so I suggest that both men get in the boat. Thus burdened, our progress becomes something of a wallow, but still much faster than swimming. On the way, I teach Donnia and Sintana to drive it.

And so we arrive, on the morning of the seventh day, at the small island I had left a lifetime ago. The little space-lander is just as I left it, my camp is untouched. As though on signal, my transponder beeps again that evening, signifying that the ship is taking up an orbit above us. I signal her and arrange a rendezvous at dawn my time.

Then I busy myself with a quick check and turn to giving away everything I can possibly spare. The lander’s big batteries will recharge the boat and the laser; I estimate their battery lives at years with a little care. My best knife I send to Mavru via Donnia, along with the big medikit. The laser is for Sintana and the little one for Maoul. Everything else—blankets, lenses, a small microscope, emergency cook pans, and all—I heap on them.

“Use your judgment. Something nice for Agna—and this waterproof drawing pad and stylus for the older man who does Relations. God, I wish there were more.”

“It is ample,” says Sintana. His eyes are on the lander, I sense that both are anxious to see it go up.

But there isn’t room for them to stay on the island, with the exhaust. So I bid them farewell and send them out in the boat. They seem reluctant to have me leave. As they motor out I catch a last gleam of blue.

Waiting to lift, I allow myself to think of what has haunted me, ever since the goldskins’ coming:

On ancient Terra there was once another race of Humans. They were big-brained and, some think, unaesthetically formed. They flourished for a time, leaving few signs in the stone records except their bones and a grave lined with flowers. We call them Neanderthals.

And then came Cro-Magnon, our direct ancestors, and after that Neanderthal was seen no more.

What happened no one knows, whether some interbred, or whether they were wiped out in one of our first acts of genocide. (We left no living close relatives.) What thoughts Neanderthal thought, what intellectual discoveries he made, no one will ever know. They were strong; the fact that they disappeared at Cro-Magnon’s advance must have been partly a matter of temperament. Perhaps they were noncombative.

Have I been seeing the start of just such a tragedy? I have no illusions about the Mnerrins’ ability to defend themselves against Homo Ferox. Their wonderful artifacts of song and thought reside in their minds, their art of Relations is literally written on the sands. If they go under, no one will ever know that here men were following the thinking of Pythagoras, in a wholly different technological context. But they do not need the technology, except now, for self-defense.