Chapter 2

Paul glanced down at sunrise-tinted snow on the highest peak of the coastal range, thirteen thousand feet above the sea. Prairie spread for thirty miles east of its base; then came a region of forest and small lakes fed by the outlet of Lake Argo, which was the core of the empire of Lantis, Queen of the World.

Pakriaa’s information on Lantis was a murky blend of truth and fantasy. Lantis claimed birth from Ismar-Creator-and-Destroyer. Pakriaa had different theories. Originally ruler of a single village, Lantis consolidated by conquest. Instead of annihilating defeated villages she took their populations captive, sorting out three categories: potential followers, slave laborers, and meat. Many in the first class became fanatically converted; those in the second provided a year or so of work before dying of whippings and other abuse; captives of the third class were forced to eat the green-flowered weed that numbed the brain and were bled out at the right stage of fatness. In fifteen years one riverside village had swollen to a city of sixty thousand, fed by expeditions far to the east, and Lantis named her city Vestoia--Country of Freedom and Joy. “Got anything new in the ‘scope?”

Sears groaned: “There are more boats above the falls.”

The boats, they knew, were broad canoes roofed like sampans against the omasha, but with no sail. “Not moving, are they?”

“No--anchored maybe.” Sears mopped his round face.

Without the telescope, Paul could see brownness on the water of Lake Argo’s southern end, near the spot where the outlet tumbled over a high falls to a smaller lake. It meant that hundreds more must have been portaged past the falls from Vestoia during his two days on the island...

The fifty red-green flowing miles became a pain of delay. Sears too would be aching for the gray square of their “fortress” to claim the eye in the north, touched by early sunlight, a brave structure twelve feet high, fifty square, built of split stone by the labor of giant friends. Outside it ran a moat twenty feet wide, ten deep, with a drawbridge of logs, bark matting, grass-fiber ropes, the bottom flooded with lake water. There was room within for living quarters, a supply of smoked meat, dried vegetables.

Lantis understood scaling ladders, Pakriaa said. Lantis had patience for a siege. There was no defense, Pakriaa said, in these measures. The only defense was to attack, to retreat, and attack again. It had always been so in the old wars. It was still so with this Lantis and her Big-Village-Vestoia, this bastard begotten of a red worm and Inkar, goddess of kaksmas. It would always be so--at least, until ... Paul remembered Dorothy, cherishing Helen at her brown breast, asking neutrally, “Until what, Abro Pakriaa?”

Pakriaa had studied the giants’ walls with contempt. “Until I shame this worm spawn Lantis into meeting me alone. She must respect custom. Her first answer is a--what word?--rejection, because she has fear. I have sent a second challenge. She will meet me, or her own people will condemn her. I will pin her belly to the ground. Her government will be mine.” There had been no mistaking it: for the first time in the year since the idol of Ismar fell and was not restored, Pakriaa was making vast decisions wholly her own, with only perfunctory interest in what the Charins might think. In her wrath against the mighty soldier ruler in the south there was natural grief at the outrages of past years, but something else too. Her red face glaring southward said: She has what I desire; she is doing what I would do. Pakriaa had finished her answer quietly: “It is I who will be Queen of the World.”

Three days ago. It could have been a mistake to leave the camp at all. Now--a streak of sunshine on gray at the end of familiar meadow. With fuel for only a few more flights, Paul knew he had never made a better landing. The drawbridge was down. Dorothy ran to meet him. Sears was shouting, “Chris! It’s perfect--no kaksmas--everything Paul said it was--”

Paul stammered, “You look like a million dollars.”

“Dollars. What’re those?”

“I forget. What’s news?”

“Your funny mouth is tickling my ear.”

“That isn’t news, Dope. Helen--”

“Full of the best gurgles. Come and see.” He thought: _How do I tell her of the boats, the thirty-mile hive of savage hatreds_--but Sears was already talking of it. Wright had no smile for Paul, only a warm gray-eyed stare and pressure of the hand. Paul asked, “Where’s Ed? Mijok and the boys?”

Ann looked up from cutting a square of hide. She had not come to meet them. Ann’s way nowadays; one’s mind insisted: _It doesn’t mean anything_. “Ed’s hunting. Should have been back last night.”

Dorothy added: “Mijok’s off missionarying, with Elis and Surok. They took Blondie--Lisson, I mean: moral support.”

Wright was hag-ridden. “Sears, if it were only Pakriaa’s tribe--but--not fuel enough to fly all the giants over. We cannot abandon them.”

“Then let’s get the women there and the rest of us go overland.”

Ann said, “I’m going overland.”

Wright muttered, “Damn it, Nancy--”

Sears patted her shoulder and ignored her speech as she ignored the touch. “Chris, I’ve labored, myself, over that damn knotty little brain of Pakriaa’s. She can’t see things our way. We need a hundred years.”

The conference lengthened into the morning. Sometimes it seemed to Paul that his teacher’s stubbornness degenerated into the obsession of a man who won’t leave a blazing house until the rugs are saved. Wright longed for the island, which he had seen only in photographs. There had always been some compelling reason why he must stay by the fortress, if only to hoe voracious weeds out of the gardens. Yet to Wright it was unthinkable that the island community should start without the pygmies: he returned to it with haggard insistence. “I know--I can’t actually like Pakriaa--she’s got a mind like a greased eel; but we’ve made a beginning. They speak our tongue--well. A people intelligent as they are--”

Paul thought: _It’s not Lucifer that’s aged him--it’s us. We are not big enough_. Aloud he suggested: “Doc, can’t we make a start without them and just keep the door open? Bring them in when we’re stronger ourselves?”

“Oh, son, if we desert Pak now, she’s finished. Over-confidence. Lantis will go over her like a tide. We might just turn that tide. If not, we must be ready to help her escape with--whatever’s left ... Well, at least we agree on this: Helen and the women must go to the island, at once.”

“Tomorrow.” Dorothy choked. “If the boats haven’t started yet--”

“All right, dear. Tomorrow. And one man should go with them.”

“You,” Paul said. “You.”

Wright said inexorably, “No.” His stare groped at Sears Oliphant.

Sears was nakedly desperate. “Chris, I beg of you--you must not ask me to go away from this battle.” He was sweating, white. “I am--in a sense--a religious man. The--Armageddon within, your own phrase--please understand without my saying any more. Don’t ask me to go.”

“Ed won’t go ... Paul?”

Leave him, with Sears’ inner torments and Ed’s arrogance? “No, Doc.”

Ann Bryan said, “I’m staying for the show.”

Dorothy lowered her cheek to the brown fuzz of Helen’s head; the baby’s absurd square of palm found Paul’s finger. Helen was almost eight months old--Lucifer months. The new life in Dorothy had been conceived in the last month of the rains. Dorothy said, “I’m going, Nancy, with Helen. As a valuable brood mare, I can’t afford heroism. Neither can you.”

The giant women crossed the bridge; they had lingered outside, knowing the Charins needed to talk alone. Ann said, “I’ve heard the argument. I’m not pregnant yet. I’ve learned to shoot damn’ well.”

Wright asked, “Will you abide by a vote when Ed gets back?”

Ann pushed her fingers into black hair, cut short as a man’s. “I suppose I must ... If no men get to the island, how do two women and a girl child increase and multiply, or shouldn’t I ask?”

Wright mumbled inadequately, “We’ll reach the island.”

Ann said, “Then you already see it as a retreat?”

Wright was silent. He tried to smile with confidence at the giant women and children, who were sober with reflected unhappiness--all but nine-year-old Dunin, who trotted to Paul and hugged him with her large arms and announced: “I learned six words while you were gone. Hi, listen! ‘Brain’: that’s here and here. ‘Me-di-tation’: that happens in the brain when it’s quiet. Mm-mm... ‘Breast’: that’s these. And ‘breath’: that’s ooph, like that. ‘Breeze’: that’s a breath with nobody blowing it ... I forgotten six.”

Dorothy murmured. “Tem--tem--”

Dunin hopped up and down. “‘Tempest!’ Big big breeze--”

“That’s perfect,” said Paul. “Perfect...”

Before the five-month rainy season had made travel on the sodden, gasping ground too miserable, Mijok had explored a half circle of territory forty miles in radius east of the hills, for others who might be willing to learn new ways. It was slow work, often discouraging. He had located two bands of free-wandering women and children--twenty in all--and stirred their curiosity and friendliness. But he had been able to recruit only three other males. There was Rak. Blackfurred Elis and tawny Surok were in vigorous middle years, hard to convince but quick to learn once the barrier was down.