The Loafers of Refuge (3 page)

He had been working steadily towards the Whitecap Mountains, a low range fifteen miles to the east, knowing his best chance of finding a warm den lay in the crevices to be found at their base. He was numb and tired when he finally arrived at the first up thrusting rock; it was barren of caves, a solid wall of granite rising for a hundred feet out of the thick woods. He ran along the base, keeping an eye out for holes, knowing that his condition was getting serious and he must find a spot soon or suffer frostbitten hands and feet.

He finally found a cave, but it was too large for his use, as were the next and the next. The fourth was just a tiny crevice in the rockface, a hole only a few feet deep and so low he could barely squeeze inside. Best of all, there was a large pile of snow caught on a shelf a few feet away.

Working as swiftly as numb hands permitted he closed the edges of the crevice with snow, packing it in hard and fast, leaving only a small hole in the centre. Then he crawled inside and finished his snowwall from there. When his den was
airtight he arranged his heavy blanket so that it covered him completely and curled into a tight ball, seeking warmth.

After a time the feeling of coldness began to pass. He lay there and concentrated on being warm; he thought of home and bed and comfort and mother, and finally the numbness disappeared and he knew he was safe.

When the first feeling of hunger stirred, hours later, he came out of his cocoon sufficiently to reach for his snowbank and eat a mouthful of the dry, powdery snow. He had eaten a good meal that morning, knowing it would be his last for many days, and now there was nothing but snow to quench his thirst, and no food at all. He was not allowed to eat even the berries which still clung, dry and hard, to the
kitzl
trees. He had not told his mother the real purpose of the Loafer initiation rites, but it was perfectly true that its most obvious outward characteristic was a strict fast.

That evening he slept, still curled into a warm ball, and when he awoke after dark he was so ravenously hungry he thought he would not be able to endure it. To make matters worse he wasn’t sleepy at all.

He made his first tentative efforts, as he had been coached, knowing it was too soon but having nothing else to do, and was not surprised when he failed. After a long, long time of lying motionless in the darkness he fell into a light sleep, and his dreams were distorted and strange.

The next two days passed peacefully. His stomach turned numb and stopped hurting, and the first sickness passed. He continued to eat snow regularly, but needed less of it now and knew his metabolic rate had slowed and that he could live for a few weeks before hunger finally killed him. On the fourth day, when the snow before his eyes lightened and became dimly visible, he found that he had slept without a dream for the entire night and knew it was time to try again.
When the time of peaceful sleep at night comes, dream during the day
had been one of the maxims pounded into his head during the weeks of coaching.

He closed his eyes again and relaxed, letting his mind float in a peaceful vacuum. When he felt ready he concentrated on his first animals. He thought of the barnacles clinging
to the rocky shore, thought of their delicate little fans waving in the turbulent water, of the diatoms floating in the bountiful sea which the moving fans swept through the open shell, bringing the barnacles the food of life. And dim, faint and unreal, so closely balanced with vision he could not be certain if it were fact or fancy, he felt the sucking of water on his shell, the pull and tug of the receding sea. And then he was back in the cave, suddenly shivering for the first time in days, but with a new and growing feeling of awareness.

Tentatively, hesitantly, he tried it again, concentrating on the dim feeling of the pulling sea, the power in the waves, the sensations, poor and faint though they were, in the soft body. And this time he felt his consciousness begin to fade, to expand outward towards the distant shore, felt the strong, elastic link that tied him to his body in the cave, and then found the secret of motion and gained a measure of control. He felt the land slipping along beneath him, knew he was approaching the seashore, was conscious of the flying spray when he reached it and descended to the dark rocks. He felt the life below him pulsing and glowing with a strange, fiery beauty, and he easily found that life, eased himself into it, became a part of it, felt with it and lived with it, and was a mollusc.

The creature continued to fan the water running in swift rivulets over the rock on which it was anchored, continued to feed on the invisible particles floating in the sea, and he became one with it, and ate.

When he grew tired at last, and reluctantly left his host and let the elastic string draw him back to his body, he felt that he had full control, that the ability to travel, the first requisite, had come.

When he opened his eyes inside the cave the snow was a dim white wall before him, and he was thirsty. He ate heavily of the snow, feeling with his hands that a hard fall had come during the night and sealed his little hole even tighter in its isolation. When his thirst was quenched he closed his eyes again and concentrated, and this time willed that he would hover in the air outside, and received a consciousness of being there. After a moment, by some sense other than sight, he located a large animal snug in a bed of leaves in the thick
brush. His consciousness descended and hovered by it. The dim animal mind sensed his presence and the beast looked about uneasily. Carey opened his sense of perception, let the brute impressions flood in, and felt the pangs of an empty belly, felt the cold of a deep chill that would not be stilled till he rose and fled like a silent shadow through the deep snow. He had found a runner, one of those strange herbivores who ran like maniacs through the heavy woods in the midst of winter, running without aim or sense or purpose, while no enemy pursued. And for the first time he understood. The animal’s protection against cold was poor and he kept alive in extremely cold weather by exercise. But exercise called for great quantities of food for strength and energy, and in the winter food was scarce. Many runners froze, to become food for the carnivores.

He tried to enter the beast mind, to impose his will on the slim body, and felt the wild panic that greeted his efforts, the hysteria of a mind that could not understand invasion. He hastily withdrew, and then hovered on the fringes of the creature’s consciousness and attempted to influence it by less direct means, sending it images of food and mates, of warmth and comfort, and gradually he found the keys to the animal’s conduct, found the urges of nature that drove it, and so gained a measure of control. And now he knew the truth, of what he had been taught about how a Controller worked. The beast minds could not tolerate invasion, went into blind panic if someone actually attempted to take over. A Controller worked subtly, from just outside the animal’s consciousness, influencing, probing, pushing with gentle insistence towards whatever act he desired performed.

When he awoke on his eighth day Carey ate snow out of the centre of his barrier and then enlarged the hole with his hands and crawled out. He was so weak from hunger he could barely stand, but the fresh cold air revived him and he began to look about for food. A warm spell had come and melted most of the snow lying in the open land. It was thick only in the banks and crevices such as his own.

His body had little internal warmth left. He knew that, like the runner, he must exercise or freeze, and to work he must
eat. He found a kitzl tree nearby, with a few fruits the greedy fatbirds and other fowl had not eaten, and filled his stomach, eating slowly and masticating thoroughly. When his pinched, shrunken stomach was full he set off through the woods, feeling the numbing cold beginning to creep into his bones. He stepped up the pace, turning his walk into a fast shuffle, working up to a trot and then into an easy, loping run. The cold retreated, and he knew that if his strength lasted he would not freeze.

He checked his directions and saw, from familiar landmarks, that he was much closer to home than Loafertown. The wilderness about him was silent, its life quiet in the brightness of day. He ran through the woods, his wirtl-clad feet silent on the carpeted floor, and headed for the farmhouse.

He came out of the woods on the edge of the Stevens’s place, and decided he felt strong enough to continue on home without assistance. He had no desire to get into explanations with his brother’s wife’s people.

Carey was approaching the end of his strength when he trotted into the yard from the rear and headed for the back door of the house. As he passed the barn he heard a muffled, grumbling roar that swelled and grew into an angry rumbling: the unmistakable battle-cry of an engaged grogroc. Over it came the shrill, frightened voice of Uncle Harvey, and he was screaming for help.

His tired legs carried him into the barn and, nerveless, brought him to a halt. The door to the peanut stall was smashed into splinters, some of which clung jaggedly to the neck of the grogroc, bringing small amounts of blood to the surface and aggravating its always uncertain temper. Harvey, pitchfork in hand, was crowded into the open corner where they parked the tractor, and ten tons of hoofed death was advancing steadily towards him, lashing the heavy tail and working itself up into the fury of a charge.

Carey saw what must have occurred. Harvey had been up in the loft when the big beast entered, probably working on the silo chute that needed overhauling, and instead of remaining quietly hidden until the grogroc ate his fill and left Harvey had tried to sneak down and out of the back door,
intending to get a gun from the house. The creature had seen him, and its always smouldering temper had been aroused.

Carey turned, to get the arc-rifle hanging always ready above the kitchen door, then hesitated. His new and stronger receptive senses told him the grogroc was tensing himself to charge. He felt the surge of anger and blind, arrogant temper washing over the dull brain, knew that Harvey would be smashed to a shapeless, bloody pulp before he reached the kitchen.

And with the feeling of awareness came the knowledge of what he must do.

There was no time to think, to feel frightened. He knew that a grogroc already angry was hard to control, that only the best and most experienced Controllers even tried. To attempt to calm the great beast would be to risk getting killed along with Harvey, but he had to try.

Carey walked swiftly towards the grogroc. As he strode by the whipping tail he projected himself, and felt the scene before him fade into poor focus. The mind of the great herbivore was a red blur of light in the dimness. He flew to that blur, hovered just outside the fringe of the beast’s awareness, saw the world about him with dim, poor eyes as his body continued walking, and then he was standing by the head of the monster, one hand resting caressingly on the massive shoulder.

The great horned head started to swing as Carey’s presence penetrated the fog of anger surrounding the beast, and the disembodied part of Carey projected
calm-empty-belly-ripe-fruit-calm-sunlight-shade-contentment-calm.

The shoulder slipped away from his hand, the long horns came sweeping towards him and he knew he had failed. With a wrench that hurt he was back in his body, dodging desperately, and the points missed him by inches as he sprang to one side. In the seconds before the beast could turn to lunge at him he projected again, plunging directly into the red animal mind before him, battling with frenzied determination for direct control of the great muscles.

There was instant, blind panic. The head stopped swinging and the beast stood quietly, trembling, as he fought this
internal battle. With a distant part of his consciousness Carey felt his body walk through a strange, dim world, walk up to Harvey and lead the frightened man out of the back door. When it closed behind them he gave up the struggle and retreated to the fringes of the grogroc’s awareness.

The panic faded. Anger was gone, washed away in the frightened desperation of its struggle for control of self, Hunger pangs returned, and Carey sensed them, magnified them beyond endurance. The great beast turned full-length in the barn, smashing an upright post with the swing of its tail, and headed for the peanut stall.

The grogroc ate another hundred pounds of the succulent nuts, enough to stay the hunger pangs for at least an hour, and then Carey fed it strong images of waquil-fruit, filled its mind with the taste and smell of the good, dry, filling food, and the peanuts no longer seemed worthwhile. It went out of the door, grumbling and grunting, and headed for the large grove at Loafertown.

His body had continued towards the house with Harvey. Carey relaxed his effort at projection, let himself be drawn back, became again one entity. His vision returned to normal and he found himself looking into Harvey’s anxious face. There was a new respect in the crippled man’s eyes as he stared at his husky nephew, now thin and gaunt. With full consciousness came bodily weakness, and Carey’s steps faltered. His face turned white with exhaustion and a deep, underlying fatigue. Harvey stepped swiftly forward, caught him before he fell, and supported him as they continued their slow walk.

Maud, just back from a visit to the Stevens’s, opened the door to her brother and son, and took the fainting boy into her arms. No, boy no longer. Something old and primitive stirred deep within her, stirred and came briefly to the surface, and she knew that within the circle of her arms she held a man.

“
C
AREY
!” D
OREEN GALLED
excitedly. “It’s C.G., for you!”

Carey rose from the kitchen table, where he had been having a mid-morning coffee break with Uncle Harvey, and went to answer the radio. Central Government had been calling on him fairly often lately, since he and Timmy had succeeded in stopping that rodent invasion of the farms to the North in the middle of the winter. It had been the strongest test yet of their still developing powers, and they were quite proud of the accomplishment.