Chapter 67

Time was closing in on their departure from Eden. They'd been at the planet for nearly fourteen Earth months, on the surface for the great majority of that time, and Captain Ziang had set a deadline of only two more weeks before the journey home would have to begin.

All the scientists were hurrying to cram as much additional research as possible into the remaining time. Many were already drafting the breakthrough papers they would publish after their return, papers that would forever immortalize their names within their own fields and afford them a popular renown that few academicians could ever hope to attain.

A few were also making plans for a return visit. To be sure, it would mean yet another year and a half isolated from all human society except that of their crewmates, and probably an irreversible alienation from the mainstream of progress in their various disciplines. But to these Eden was the ultimate scholar's dream—not only a virgin field for research the depths of which would never be plumbed in their lifetimes, but an unparalleled opportunity to teach the knowledge they had to a more avid student than any teacher had ever experienced, and one who had no need of the traditional professorial banes of attendance records that had to be maintained, examinations that needed to be graded, papers that required reading and evaluation, all the administrative trappings of the profession that were so universally detested by its practitioners.

Meiersdottir and Igwanda would not, however, be among their number. It had required little discussion for them to arrive at that conclusion. There might be no military contingent at all in a follow-up mission after he reported that the natives posed no threat to humans, Igwanda told his wife; or at most a reduced one, headed by a more junior officer. He also planned to retire from military service immediately on their return. "There is no place for me to rise, and I have lost my taste for combat; moreover, anything more could only be anticlimactic after this adventure," he said. Meiersdottir's reasons were more pragmatic; she refused to be separated from her husband and now three-month-old child, "and little Meier needs a human society where he can grow up and make the social relationships for himself that I've been trying to teach all these months."

"I would like that for him, my love," Igwanda told her. "I think I told you that my own childhood was fairly peripatetic; my father was also military, and I once counted that in the first sixteen years of my life I lived in as many different communities. It had its compensations, but my social growth was, as you have remarked, rather significantly stunted. I hope that Meier can have a more stable environment in which he can develop along more normal lines."

Meanwhile, major changes in the Edenites' lives were already manifesting themselves visibly. Zo's teachings had led to the beginnings of domestication of some of the local wildlife. Primarily they were food herds, but the trooper had suggested that some could be used as draft animals and the aliens thought the idea had merit. Humans had introduced the wheel, and a few carts had been built and were seen as a great advantage.

Black powder was proving to be another rousing success. In the past clearing land for use had been a daunting task in the rocky and overgrown terrain of the area. Each boulder, each stump had required extensive labor to remove, and Joe told Meiersdottir that lives had been lost as they struggled to manhandle the large, irregularly shaped obstacles out of their way. Now they could quickly reduce the largest rocks to gravel with careful blasting—they were especially eager students of Igwanda's lessons in shaping charges—and accomplish in days what had previously taken them months. And, remarkably, there was not a single accident of the sort that humans have learned to expect from use of explosives; the collective was constantly aware of when and how blasting would be done, so that no alien inadvertently strayed close to a site at the criti­cal moment.

Other human innovations were less well received. Eden's rivers had a strong complement of aquatic life, but the natives had no taste for it; they found the concept of fishing interesting, but saw little value in the results. They were likewise appreciative of the humans' ingenious use of vegetational oils to make artificial light, but preferred their own phosphorescence—it turned out to be generated by biological symbiots that matured in the Edenite females' bodies, were excreted through their hides, could remain alive indefinitely so long as they were nourished by enzymes that the females also produced, and maintained their luminescence even long after death.

And the aliens' geographic restriction also made for some important limitations. In attempts at local exploration Smith, Komosaki and others had found that the effective limit of their linking signal was no more than sixty or seventy kilometers; beyond that the individuals quickly became disoriented. Physicist Shen Bulgarin, who had been attempting to introduce them to electricity, found this especially frustrating inasmuch as the nearest mineable veins of copper were several hundred kilometers distant and accessible bauxite deposits, even if they could master the more difficult art of refining the ore into aluminum, were even further away. Short of direct human intervention, which the scientists were united in opposing because of the dependent relationship it would foster, there seemed no ready answer to this problem.

Trust between the humans and Edenites had progressed so far that Igwanda had long since relaxed his ban against significant accumulation of technologically advanced equipment on the surface. As a result a rather remarkable assemblage of machinery and electronics had been set up in the pavilion, which had required yet another expansion to accommodate it. A small quantity of less advanced devices were to be left behind for the Edenites' use, but the rest had to be returned to the Gardener. In his role as logistics coordinator Igwanda was supervising the loading of some especially delicate equipment onto the lander when Akakha suddenly approached him in apparent agitation.

"Igwanda, it is important I speak to you now."

"All right, Akakha," the colonel said. He waved the soldiers who were doing the work to take a break, and then turned his full attention to the native.

"We have trouble with animals. You have shown us how to keep them near us, but can you tell us quickly how to make them go away from us?"

The colonel looked at him uncomprehendingly.

"There is a kind of animal here that you have not seen. They are not big"—he gestured to the height of a medium-size dog—"but they are always together in many numbers. They hunt other animals, and because they are many they can hunt animals much bigger and strong­er."

"Actually, I have seen them," Igwanda told him, recalling the pack from their first landing. "We also have such animals at home. Hunting packs, we call them."

"A very large pack has chosen to hunt some of us," the native continued. "The ones who are hunted have found a cave where they are protected for now, but the pack will not go away. It has been three days and still they stay and wait outside. Those in the cave have no more water, they will die soon if the pack does not leave."

"How many in the pack?" asked Igwanda.

"We do not know, but perhaps one hundred, perhaps more. There are thirty-three of us in the cave."

"Akakha, when I saw them I did not think so, but do they think together as you do?"

"No. But they act together, when one attacks all do."

"Well, the simplest approach would be to send out a large relief party and use your spears on them," the colonel said.

"No, others cannot go there in time, they will begin to die very soon from no water or from the pack."

"Could our lander go there?" It went squarely against the non-interventionist policy they had established, but Igwanda had seen quite enough death among the natives. "It can go much faster than you, and our weapons will kill or drive off any pack."

"There is no place for it close. It is all woodland and rocks."

"Well," the colonel said aimlessly. This wasn't an easy problem. "If they have been there three days the pack must be very hungry," he mused as he cast about for an idea.

"When they first came on us we killed many by throwing our spears. The others ate the ones we killed. Now they are hungry again, but this time for us."

"Well, then, it is time to put something else on the menu," Igwanda said briskly. Akakha looked puzzled at the phrasing, but the colonel ignored him. "Do those in the cave still have any spears?"

"Yes, they have some, but not enough for throwing, then they will have none."

"You will not be throwing them, and you will need only about ten. But are there other sticks that the ones in the cave can reach, or something else more or less straight and as strong as a spear or stronger? But only about this long." He held out his hands about a meter apart. "If possible we want forty-eight of them."

"Wait," said the alien. It was nearly thirty seconds later when he answered. "There are some sticks in the cave. And if we need only ten spears we can break some. But Igwanda, are you sure we should do this?"

"I can think of no plan that is sure, but if the situation is as desperate as you say I think this is the best hope for the ones who are trapped. You will need at least one stick for twenty-four of you, and two for each one is much better."

"Then we will do it," the alien said.

"Now you should start a fire near the mouth, the opening of the cave if you have not already done so."

"There is fire there, it is part of how we have kept the pack away. They are afraid of fire."

"Better and better," said Igwanda with a pleased expression. "Now you must find something that will burn with flame that you can attach to the end of each stick. That is a torch. Whatever you use must burn well but slowly, so the fire lasts for at least as long as we have been talking here—the longer it will burn the better. If there is nothing else take off your clothes and tie them to the sticks."