Part 44 (1/2)

”Or at least leaving it alone,” Veg said. ”It's a decent bird...”

”We appear,” Cal remarked, ”to have a multiple difference of opinion. Veg feels that we should leave his Orn-bird alone; 'Quilon feels we should help it; I feel the needs of our own species must take precedence. We must have room to expand.”

”Lebensraum,” Aquilon whispered tersely.

The word shook him. How bitterly she had drawn the parallel: Adolph Hitler's pretext for conquest. The Third Reich had to have room to live -- at the expense of its neighbors. Their living needs were not considered.

”What do birds eat?” Veg asked.

Cal felt Aquilon shudder. She was a practicing vegetarian at the moment, eschewing the omnivorous way of life. If her comment about Lebensraum had shaken Cal, Veg's question had shaken her. For they all knew what birds ate, especially big birds. They were carnivorous or omnivorous.

They hashed it through, but their positions were set by those two words: Lebensraum and Omnivore. Cal was on one side, accepting both concepts and their applicability to the present situation of Earth; Veg was on the other, accepting neither. Aquilon, torn between the two, finally had to go with Cal: when one omnivore contested with another for territory, might was right.

It was a subtle, seemingly minor distinction, but it touched on deep currents. They had all waged an interplanetary struggle against the omnivore -- yet they themselves were aspects of the omnivore. The words they said now were hardly more than chips floating on the sea, hinting at the implacable surges beneath. In the end Veg got up and left the raft.

Cal felt a pain as though his heart were physically breaking; he knew the rift was fundamental. Perhaps Veg would return -- but once Cal made his report to Earth, which would set in motion Earth's exploitation of Paleo and the probable extinction of dinosaurs and Orn-birds alike, their friends.h.i.+p would never be the same.

Beside him, Aquilon was sobbing. Cal knew that some streak of perversity in him had made him argue the omnivore's case; he had no more sympathy with the appet.i.tes of the omnivore than Veg did. Let Paleo remain unspoiled!

No, the issue had to be brought out, examined, even though it hurt.

They slept side by side. Cal did not touch her, though he longed for her with a loin-consuming pa.s.sion. She was not a proper subject for l.u.s.t, she was Aquilon, fair and perfect...

In the morning they checked for Veg but could not find him. ”I think he's all right,” Aquilon said. ”He's with the birds. We should leave him alone and go to make the report. He'll never go with us.”

That d.a.m.ned report! ”I hate this schism,” Cal said.

”So do I. But how can we bridge it? We talked it all out.”

They had talked nothing out! But words today were as pointless as the words of yesterday.

They set sail on the Nacre, dispatching the mantas to locate Veg and return with news of him. While they were at sea, there was a dancing of the waves, indicating a small tremor or earthquake. ”I hope that's the extent of it!” Cal said.

They beached the raft with some difficulty, then set out on foot.

And in the afternoon the tyrannosaurus picked up their trail.

The mantas were ready to help, but Cal warned them off. ”If we think our kind is superior, we should be ready to prove it,” he said.

”Against a carnosaur?” she demanded incredulously. ”Ten tons of appet.i.te? The ultimate predator?”

”The ultimate reptilian predator, perhaps,” he said. ”Though I suspect the earlier allosaurus might have been more efficient. The mantas would be the ultimate fungoid predators. And man stakes his claim to being the ultimate mammalian predator. So it is proper that the champions meet in single combat.”

Suddenly she saw it. ”The mammals and the reptiles, meeting on the field of honor. The decisive combat. The carnosaur has size and power; the man has brain. It is a fair compromise, in its fas.h.i.+on. It relieves the conscience of difficult moral decisions.”

”Precisely,” Cal said, smiling grimly. ”I knew you'd understand. And so will Veg. You had better hide in a tree. I must do this alone.”

She scrambled away as the ground shuddered, and not from any geologic tremor. Tyrannosaurus rex, king of predators, was closing in for the kill! The tyrant lizard's tread rocked the land, and the cras.h.i.+ng of saplings became loud.