Fred Saberhagen The Water of Thought

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very long.
"We must find the man-hominid," Magnuson said firmly. "He is one of our tribe
now. Have you any idea where he is?"
Red Circles gave the Kappan equivalent of a shrug. "Who can say where one of
the Forest People might hide?"
"We must search for him."
Red Circles shifted his feet uneasily, but his voice was stubborn. "I
and these men are busy, and the men who were with you here are now going to
have to come with me as well. We are going to get more Thought-Water. Kaleta
defiled the vat, and the chief priest tells me it must be restocked at once.
So we are going all the way upstream, to the Sacred Pool. Once you asked many
questions about the Water of
Thought, Magnuson. Now you are one of us, and you can learn all about it."
This time it appeared that Red Circles was not going to knuckle under. Still
it was plain that he wanted no quarrel, that he was trying to
persuade Magnuson. Once
Magnuson would have needed no persuading; he would have made a great effort to
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discover the source of the Water of Thought. Even now, the idea was tempting.
This would be his last chance for any such discovery, for tomorrow or the next
day the
Space Force would be here, and he expected to be under arrest.
But there was no time to spare for any purpose but the most important one.
"We go downstream," said Magnuson, putting his full authority into his
voice.
"We must track down the man-hominid, and keep him with us. He is
alone and confused, and I can understand why he runs away. But he is the
proof of a very great magic, much more important even than the
Water of Thought; he is a man made from an animal!"
All Magnuson's authority availed him nothing. "You go downstream, if you
want,"
Red Circles said. "But am chief of all these warriors." He
turned, and shouted
I
commandingly to his men: "We go up!"
Boris was beginning to suspect that he just might, after all, be the
dynamic-leader type. He had now persuaded about twenty-five of the
younger hominid men to follow him downriver against the villages. The
two who had fought the Shining
Monster with him had come back to the tribal gathering-place unscathed, and
had been a great help in recruiting, with their tale of an easy
dance through combat following Yellow Monster's instructions. It was against
all the Space Force rules, of course, to exacerbate local warfare, but
Boris could see no other way to go that offered so good a chance of
getting his pursuers off his neck and perhaps even of rescuing Brenda. He was
gambling that only a few villagers would be at home, that those who were there
would flee, and that casualties on both sides would be at a minimum. He
would gamble more than that to help Brenda.
"Run forward and make much noise when we come to the first village," Boris
told his company as they were setting out. "And remember to look for a female
monster;
she is my friend."
His boys grunted cheerful assent; following a determined leader was still a
new and exciting game to them.
When they got to the Warriors' Village they charged whooping
downhill, with
Boris in the van, and took the place by surprise. As Boris had hoped, there
was not a warrior home. The women and children all evacuated the
huts with miraculous speed, and went screaming panic and murder down the
path toward the Workers'
Village.
Thankfully there was no real murder, or even injury; the hominids
were not culturally advanced enough to enjoy pillage and rapine. They
shrieked good-naturedly to urge the fleeing enemy on, and waved good-by with
clubs.
"Remember, look for female monsters!" Boris led a hut-to-hut search, aided by
those of his irregulars who chose to help. It did not take long to
make sure that
Brenda and Jane were elsewhere. Nor was there any sign of Kaleta.
All this was fun! The hominids were ready to follow Boris downhill again.
"We will frighten another village!" he shouted encouragingly, waving them on.
He had a hard time keeping up with them now, though he had stopped to borrow a
pair of some warrior's new moccasins, which were an excellent fit, or at least
felt like it after the sleeve-socks, which Boris now joyfully
discarded. Shoes were a higher invention than the wheel, and he meant to
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insist on the point at the next scholarly meeting he attended.
Boris and his small, leathery army swept into the Workers' Village to
find that panic had preceded them, and the huts and workshops were
already empty of people. From the direction of the quarry there came a
querulous hominid yipping;
not words, but the frightened monkey-call of the young, though here in deeper,
adult voices.
"It is the Dark People," said the hominid standing nearest Boris. In the next
instant he ran toward the quarry, yipping a response. The others all cascaded
after him.
"Wait! Not yet!" Boris had not foreseen this. "We'll get them out of there,
but not yet!"
He might as well have shouted to recall the wind. His army was
gone. But he could not blame them.
Seemingly alone in a deserted village, he ran from hut to hut.
"Brenda? Jane!"
No one. No answer.
In one hut he noticed a quivering mass of bedding, but pulling it aside
uncovered only an ancient and terrified villager.
Boris took the downstream path again, this time alone. For the thousandth time
he scanned the empty greenish sky for any sign of rescuing or
searching copters.
Nothing. There was no use expecting any help beyond what he could give
himself.
As he neared the Temple Village he studied the banks of the stream closely,
and its shape. He was looking for the pool where Magnuson had ordered him to
throw in the second groundsuit, and the energy rifles. The suit might well be
full of mud by now, but Magnuson had not realized that an energy rifle
would not be fouled by submersion.
He recognized the pool at once when he came to it, and waded out into the dark
water, searching the muddy bottom with arms and legs. The current
was not
particularly strong here, and what he was looking for could not be far away.
Unless someone had beaten him to it.
Boris went under water to examine the deepest part of the bottom. When he came
up for a breath, Morton was standing on the bank twenty meters away, still
wearing the battered suit, Number One. He was watching Boris. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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