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CHAPTER TWO
Three hours later, and some twenty miles
further on, Gershon brough the cart to a halt, reining in the panting, sweating
women in a tiny fold in the steppe. This would have to do for his night's stop;
there was a tiny patch of fodder plants, enough to suffice his animals for the
period, already he was worried about his dwindling supply of crushed fodder
plant now that he had five mouths to feed. Once off the steppe fodder for them
would be hard to find, and he must reserve an ample portion of the dried food
he'd brought with him for his draught animals. The two prospective pacers he
hoped would pay for his board and lodging would have to manage on the milk they
could suckle from the older and larger women; at least he would be spared the
chore of milking those daily to relieve their straining udders. As for the tiny
foal in her cage, she could subsist on her bedding. Progressively more soiled
by her excrement as it would become, it would not diminish her appetite.
He unhitched the two tired women from between
the shafts and put them on a long joint tether to the stake he firmly fixed in
the ground a few feet from the fodder plants. He left their heavy harnesses on
their sweating bodies; bad husbandry, but it would enable him to make an early
start in the morning. The younger animals he tethered a little apart within
reach of the older beasts; moments afterwards all four women were already
kneeling facing each other, paired off, each of the younger ones eagerly
suckling from the udders of her older counterpart. The foal he left where she
was, perched in her cage on the cart. After erecting his tent upwind of the
captive women, he cooked his dinner and ate it. Then he sat on his camp-stool
by the fire and opened his last precious bottle of the best Institute whiskey.
Sitting under the stars, he mused on the day's
events and those of the fortnight previous. Well, he thought comfortably, it
was over now, at least until next year. He thought of the slaughter he'd
witnessed. Suddenly, it struck him how ludicrously ineffective the termagants
really were as predators. Their prey were larger, faster and stronger; a single
kick from one of the women's powerful hind legs would send one of the
light-weight insect spinning for yards. The women could easily escape their
deadly intentions; at the first scent of their enemies they could flee far
beyond their reach. In extremis, the women could face the insects boldly,
forming a solid rank; such a wall of intimidating solid flesh might well send
the predators scuttling off in search of easier prey. But then they were only
women, dull, docile and submissive by nature. And that was as well, he thought
wryly; were they not so easily tamed, his own smaller and weaker male kind
would not have been able to exploit them so successfully. Pitching the end of
his cigar into the embers of his camp-fire, he drained his tumbler and went to
bed.
The next morning he rose before dawn, and by
the time it was light enough he was whipping the panting women between the
shafts into a fast trot across the steppe. They were young and fit, and he
intended to drive them the maximum distance they could cover over such ground.
By evening he hoped to be at the near end of the rough track which would take
him to the Great Trunk Road which crossed the continent from East to West.
There he could make better time.
The two powerful women between the shafts kept
up their steady lope at an average of five miles an hour. Though Gershon was
grudgingly obliged to halt for a few minutes every two hours or so to water
them and to cram a handful of dried fodder between their jaws, they made
excellent time, reaching the beginnings of the track which led off the steppe
just as the sun was setting. Fifty miles, Gershon thought with satisfaction! Before
the evening of the day after tomorrow he would reach the Inn of his friend
Palshon, more than a hundred miles further. And then: human company at last!
His new camping place was bleak and barren;
with no fodder plants. That night he fed the four women on the dried fodder
he'd brought with him; he could expect to find no fresh food for them until the
day after tomorrow. He would reserve the last of the fodder for the draught
animals; the fillies he had brought from the steppe would have to subsist upon the
milk they could suckle. The little foal would do well enough; her bedding,
though now soiled and filthy, would feed her until their destination.
Dawn came grey and dreary; by mid-morning a
fine rain was falling, driven from the South by the rising wind. The muddy
condition of the rough track slowed the women down; the beast on the windward
side kept trying to turn to her left to keep the wind from her flank and
Gershon was obliged to keep pulling on her right-hand rein to keep her on
course. But the rain stopped as the sun was setting, and Gershon was able to
drive on far into the evening under the full moon.
That night Gershon sat with his whiskey over
his tiny fire, watching his two fillies strain on their tethers, whimpering
with hunger. Worried that they might dislodge the stake they were tied to, he
rose and blindfolded them. He also blindfolded his draught animals; they, too,
were hungry though he'd fed them almost all the remaining dried fodder, keeping
only a couple of handfuls for tomorrow's journey.
By an hour after sunrise the next morning the
sun was beating down on the steppe from a cloudless sky. Now Gershon cursed the
heat as he whipped on his sweating beasts. But the ground was sloping gently
ever downwards as they left the huge plateau of the steppe and the going
improved dramatically. A cool refreshing breeze blew down from the steppe
behind them and Gershon's beasts developed new energy and determination. So
well and quickly did they pull that Gershon was able to drive into the stable
yard at Palshon's on the stroke of six in the evening.
His host was absent, and the elderly and
cranky android to whom he deputed the care of his animals told him that his
Master was out with his heavy-haulage team, pulling a freight cart out of the notorious
muddy section of the Trunk Road, something he was often called upon to do, and
which was so profitable that it was darkly muttered that he had something to do
with the astonishingly frequent flooding of this section of road.
Gershon pulled himself a huge mug of his
host's beer, then went outside and spent a few minutes leaning on the fence of
the field in which his four women had been put. His draught animals were
grazing on their knees; the two fillies on all-fours as usual. When their arms
had been amputated, they would soon learn to graze like their elders. Then he
went into the animal shed where he looked at the little foal tethered in the
sty in which she would spend the rest of her short life before being taken out
and slaughtered. She was happy enough, her little snout buried in her trough,
and she recognised his touch, for when he stroked her back she lifted her head
to nuzzle his fingers affectionately.
The rumble of wheels, the creak of leather
harnesses and the rattle of heavy chains from outside announced the arrival of
Palshon and his team along with the rescued freight wagon and its exhausted
women who had previously tried in vain to drag it though the mud. Its driver
and his mate were cheerful individuals; in spite of the trouble and expense
they had suffered at being bogged down, they were laughing and joking with
their rescuer and exchanging insults with him in the normal everyday fashion
while Palshon led his plodding team by leashes attached to the rings in the
broad, flat noses of his leading pair of eight huge women, yoked together in
twos, walking in single file with their heavy yokes linked by thick chains.
Gershon stared at the team with his usual
admiration and envy. So many big and powerful beasts, none of them less than
seven feet in height, thick-bodied, broad-hipped and broad-shouldered, with
muscular, protruding haunches, were a rare sight. Moreover, that lucky
scoundrel Palshon had bred from all of these great, hulking women successfully,
and their enormous, sagging udders were bulging with milk. Like everyone else,
he was certain that Palshon had acquired them by some underhand means; like
everyone else he could not quite imagine how. Then he laughed ruefully. Palshon
was something of a rascal, but he was a generous host and good company, and he
made the best beer for two hundred miles around. For these qualities much might
be forgiven.
The reins and halters of their various women
were given to androids and the four men trooped into Palshon's rambling old
house where they all immediately drew huge tankards of beer, The wagon driver
and his colleague began a leisurely haggling with their rescuer on the price of
his efforts, finally settling on a fee of two pairs of boots, ten feet of
iron-wood chain and a crate of brandy. Gershon himself offered the foal as the
price of a three night stay – for he meant to take a brief holiday – and
Palshon raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Thought you'd want to be back at the
Institute at a time like this!” he told Gershon quizzically, and the other men
nodded solemnly.
“What for?” Gershon enquired in puzzlement.
The three men stared at him in amazement, then
Palshon snapped his fingers in realisation.
“Of course!” he exclaimed. “You've been out
on the steppe. Knowing you, you never bothered to switch on your laptop! You
must be the only man on the planet not to have heard the news.”
“What bloody news?” cried the exasperated
Gershon.
Palshon took a long and deliberate drink from
his tankard.
“There was a full planet-wide holocast,” he
told Gershon in tones of wonder. “Pictures from the Dimension Gate. They've
found life; intelligent life – and no-one knows what to make of it!”
Gershon stared at the others in stunned
amazement. Of course he should be at the Institute at this time. No doubt his
laptop already held increasingly impatient messages from his superior demanding
his presence. Palshon broke the spell.
“I have a recording of the holocast,” he
said. “You're welcome to watch it, and to download it afterwards. Who knows;
you may even be able to make sense of it!” he added with a chuckle.
Palshon and the other two went on to sit on
the sagging verandah while Palshon's androids prepared dinner and Gershon was
left to clear the cluttered surface of his host's battered Holocube and watch
his recording.
Having moved the litter of soiled plates,
glasses, and empty beer bottles from the flat top of the machine, he sat down
and thought a command at it. Nothing happened, and he sighed, rose, and gave
the cube a smart kick. At this it burst into life with a swirl of colours
appearing in the air above it. These resolved themselves into a list of what
was recorded in its memory, and Gershon selected the latest. Immediately a
three-dimensional tableau appeared in the air above the cube, half life-size,
of two men talking. Gershon recognised them both at once. One was Morsith, the
planet's sole and self-appointed news commentator; the other was Bronsith, head
of Engineering at Western University and custodian of the Dimension Gate since
its inception. Taking a huge swig of his beer, Gershon settled down to watch
and listen.
Bronsith was talking, using audible speech,
about the Earth-shaking significance of the pictures just received though the
Gate; a brilliant technical achievement which, he succeeded in implying, could
only have been brought to fruition under his own inspired leadership.
“Get on with it!” muttered Gershon,
impatient to see the pictures.
Morsith seemed to have realised the danger of
his guest boring his audience; with out more ado the first still hologram
appeared above the holocube. Gershon froze the display, and examined the image
carefully.
It was of a man, a quite ordinary-looking chap
of about Gershon's own age, standing on a paved strip before a building of
imposing size. Gershon marvelled at the man's image; except for his complicated
and uncomfortable looking clothing he would have passed unnoticed on this
planet. The merest hint of a companion was evident in the picture, and Gershon
advanced the hologram to the next picture. But that turned out to be one of the
rear view of the man as he walked away; Gershon swore loudly and advanced the
image again.
This picture was of the departed man's
companion, another man as Gershon took him for at first, but dressed with
refreshing normalcy in the simple tunic and sandals of Gershon's world. Then he
looked more closely before leaning back in his chair, his jaw dropping open in
amazement. Bringing the image up to full life-size, he looked at it with
fascination.
Despite its clothing, the figure was
definitely feminine; of that there could be no doubt. The operator of the
mental camera must have shared something of Gershon's stunned astonishment, for
he zoomed the image up to the the woman's head and shoulders and Gershon gaped
afresh. There was no collar around the woman's neck; she was unleashed and
untethered!
Gershon sat
stunned; the fact that the animal was clothed dwarfed by this new
impossibility. A women, in public, free of any restraint! His thoughts whirled
helplessly. How would anyone know who owned her? Who would be held responsible
for her actions? How could the man have left her free to wander about wherever
she listed?
The image changed to one of the lower half of
the creature's body. The shape of its hips and thighs made its femininity yet
more obvious. Its simple tunic, very like Gershon's own in design but far
thinner and flimsier, ended, like his, just below mid-thigh. Its feet were clad
in sandals like his too, but impossibly small and dainty. Gershon brought up a
full-length image of the animal and studied its skin, so different from that of
his own planet's animals in its non-mottled, virtually monochrome tanned pinkish
white. Its hair was a startling pale gold in hue, and it had not been shorn by
its owner for some time. It would make a fine cloth when it was spun, he
thought. Its face was unusual too, as flat and expressive as that of a human
being, without the short, blunt muzzle of a native woman. She would find it
difficult to feed, Gershon thought; perhaps her owner had trained her to eat
from his hand. That prompted him to zoom in on its bare left fore leg and
follow it down from the shoulder to the paw at its end. By now he was prepared
for anything, and the vision of the slender, delicate fingers and opposable
thumb didn't shock him as much as it might have done.
The image faded and became a short video clip.
The woman stood quite easily on her hind legs, showing no signs of dropping to
all-fours as a native woman still possessing her fore legs would have done by
now. She was quite young; past puberty but as yet unbred as her firm little
udders and slim waist indicated, though incredibly small for her years, barely
the height of a ten month old foal. Gershon estimated her age at thirteen
months, the equivalent of twenty-two human years of development. The camera
drew back, revealing the figure of another woman sitting on its haunches at her
feet. Immediately the camera zoomed in on it.
If the upright woman was small, its companion
was diminutive, and she was the most oddly shaped woman Gershon had ever seen.
She stood on all-fours, on four short stubby legs, both those and her whole
body covered in thick hair, even her face with its long sharp muzzle was
obscured by fur. Genetic engineering, thought Gershon with awe. His own race
had often debated the advantages of improving on the basic humanoid design of
their animals, but nothing had ever come of it. The tiny woman DID wear a
collar, and she was leashed too, at which Gershon heaved a sigh of relief.
Impossibly, however, the end of the leash was held in the right fore paw of her
companion, grasped lightly but firmly in those incredible fingers.
Then the bigger woman began to move off along
the smooth pavement, the smaller one trotting at her side. Their path was
bordered by a tall hedge on one side, and by a strip of tilled soil, gay with
flowers and colourful shrubs, on the other. After a few yards, the smaller
woman pulled back on her leash and stopped. The bigger one turned and looked
down at her, then led her onto a patch of bare soil where the little beast
squatted, obviously to relieve itself. Its companion stood by, looking both
bored and faintly embarrassed, if a woman was capable of such complicated
emotions. Gershon was half prepared to see it lift the hem of its tunic and
squat by the side of its sister animal, but it showed no signs of doing so.
Probably its owner had made certain it opened its bowels and emptied its
bladder before he let it out, he thought. And then the clip ended and a
hologram of Morsith and Bronsith exchanging platitudes re-appeared.
Impatiently Gershon re-started the recording
to see the images once more. This time he downloaded them into his laptop. He
watched them on his computer's monitor over and over again, his stupefaction
undiminished with each viewing. Finally a shouted invitation from his host for
him to join them for dinner on the verandah broke into his consciousness. He
closed down his laptop and went outside.
Over their simple and substantial meal,
Gershon tried to parry the questions of his companions. He was flattered by
their evident belief in his professional knowledge, but, in reality, he was
obliged to admit to himself that he was no wiser than these laymen. He had many
times tried to envisage other intelligences; with his colleagues he had argued
about their possible physical appearances and had even built crude models of
what he'd imagined they would look like, but this .. this absolute physical
resemblance to his own people was downright uncanny. And the odd behaviour of
the alien woman – it was impossible for an animal to behave as he had seen her
do; it was as though she possessed some rudimentary intelligence. In the end
Gershon had no alternative but to ascribe the beast's conduct to her owner's
rigorous training even as he privately doubted the possibility of such long and
intense instruction over the short period of her life time to date. And with that
they had to be content.
After dinner Gershon excused himself from the
inevitable drinking bout to play back over and over again his recording of the
images he'd seen earlier. He meant to be thoroughly familiar with the happening
when he answered Sisath's frantic massages at last.
Satisfied with the extent of his grasp on the
subject, he opened his message file. Sure enough, twenty-two messages awaited
him from his superior. He read them cursorily; as he'd thought they amounted to
an impassioned plea for him to return to the Institute. He thought up an image
of the time of day. Ideal, he thought; Sisath would have dined by now and would
be in his large and untidy Study finding what peace he could in a bottle of his
own fearsome home-made Brandy. He thought a quick command at his laptop, and a
real-time hologram of Sisath appeared in miniature before his eyes.
Sisath looked up, startled, a mixture of
relief and his usual irascibility on his broad face. Immediately he burst into
a torrent of questions, the gist of them being enquiries as to where Gershon
was and how long it would take him to return. Informed of his whereabouts by
his junior, Sisath looked thoughtful. Then he spoke decisively. Gershon must,
he told him, leave first thing the next morning for the near Public Post Inn.
There he would find reserved for him a light, single seater cart and two
first-class pacers ready harnessed. He would drive down the main Trunk Road as
fast as possible, changing pacers every four hours. In this way, with good weather
and luck, he could cover as much as a hundred and twenty miles a day, arriving
at the Institute in the early evening in four days' time. Ignoring Gershon's
groans of anguish, the older man broke the connection.
Gershon joined the others and indulged himself
in their sympathy; a journey of nearly five hundred miles in the next four days
was no joke. Then, along with the rest, he got thoroughly drunk.
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