Part 9 (2/2)

Not clearly but very dimly, the Burl who had been shocked back to the viewpoint which was normal to the race of men saw that human beings could be more than the fugitive vermin on which other creatures preyed.

It was not easy to envision, but he found it impossible to imagine sinking back to his former state. As a practical matter, if he was to remain as leader his tribesmen would have to change.

It was a long time before he reached the neighborhood of the hiding-place of which he had not been told the night before. He sniffed and listened. Presently he heard faint, murmurous noises. He traced them, hearing clearly the sound of hushed weeping and excited, timid chattering. He heard old Tama shrilly bewailing fate and the stupidity of Burl in getting himself killed.

He pushed boldly through the toadstool-growth and found his tribe all gathered together and trembling. They were shaken. They chattered together--not discussing or planning, but nervously recalling the terrifying experience they had gone through.

Burl stepped through the screen of fungi and men gaped at him. Then they leaped up to flee, thinking he might be pursued. Tet and Dik babbled shrilly. Burl cuffed them. It was an excellent thing for him to do. No man had struck another man in Burl's memory. Cuffings were reserved for children. But Burl cuffed the men who had fled from the cliff-edge. And because they had not been through Burl's experiences, they took the cuffings like children.

He took Jon and Jak by the ear and heaved them out of the hiding-place.

He followed them, and then drove them to where they could see the base of the cliff from whose top they had tumbled stones--and then run away.

He showed them the carca.s.s of the spider, now being carted away piecemeal by ants. He told them angrily how it had been killed.

They looked at him fearfully.

He was exasperated. He scowled at them. And then he saw them s.h.i.+fting uneasily. There were clickings. A single, foraging black ant--rather large, quite sixteen inches long--moved into view. It seemed to be wandering purposelessly, but was actually seeking carrion to take back to its fellows. It moved toward the men. They were alive, therefore, it did not think of them as food--though it could regard them as enemies.

Burl moved forward and struck with his club. It was butchery. It was unprecedented. When the creature lay still he commanded one of his typo for followers to take it up. Inside its armored legs there would be meat. He mentioned the fact, pungently. Their faces expressed amazed wonderment.

There was another clicking. Another solitary ant. Burl handed his club to Dor, pus.h.i.+ng him forward. Dor hesitated. Though he was not afraid of one wandering ant, he held back uneasily. Burl barked at him.

Dor struck clumsily and botched the job. Burl had to use his spear to finish it. But a second bit of prey lay before the men.

Then, quite suddenly, this completely unprecedented form of foraging became understandable to Burl's followers. Jak giggled nervously.

An hour later Burl led them back to the tribe's hiding-place. The others had been terror-stricken, not knowing where the men had gone. But their terror changed to mute amazement when the men carried huge quant.i.ties of meat and edible mushroom into the hiding-place. The tribe held what amounted to a banquet.

Dik and Tet swaggered under a burden of ant-carca.s.s. This was not, of course, in any way revolting. Back on Earth, even thousands of years before, Arabs had eaten locusts cooked in b.u.t.ter and salted. All men had eaten crabs and other crustaceans, whose feeding habits were similar to those of ants. If Burl and his tribesmen had thought to be fastidious, ants on the forgotten planet would still have been considered edible, since they had not lost the habits of extreme cleanliness which made them notable on Earth.

This feast of all the tribe, in which men had brought back not only mushroom to be eaten, but actual prey--small prey--of their hunting, was very probably the first such occasion in at least thirty generations of the forty-odd since the planet's unintended colonization. Like the other events, which began with Burl trying to spear a fish with a rhinoceros-beetle's horn, it was not only novel, on that world, but would in time have almost incredibly far-reaching consequences. Perhaps the most significant thing about it was its timing. It came at very nearly the latest instant at which it could have done any good.

There was a reason which n.o.body in the tribe would ever remember to a.s.sociate with the significance of this banquet. A long time before--months in terms of Earth-time--there had been a strong breeze that blew for three days and nights. It was an extremely unusual windstorm. It had seemed the stranger, then, because during all its duration everyone in the tribe had been sick, suffering continuously.

When the windstorm had ended, the suffering ceased. A long time pa.s.sed and n.o.body remembered it any longer.

There was no reason why they should. Yet, since that time there had been a new kind of thing growing among the innumerable moulds and rusts and toadstools of the lowlands. Burl had seen them on his travels, and the expeditionary force against the clotho spider had seen them on the journey up to the cliff-edge. Red puffb.a.l.l.s, developing first underground, were now pus.h.i.+ng the soil aside to expose taut, crimson parchment spheres to the open air. The tribesmen left them alone because they were strange; and strange things were always dangerous. Puffb.a.l.l.s they were familiar with--big, misshapen things which shot at a touch a powder into the air. The particles of powder were spores--the seed from which they grew. Spores had remained infinitely small even on the forgotten planet where fungi grew huge. Only their capacity for growth had increased. The red growths were puffb.a.l.l.s, but of a new and different kind.

As the tribe ate and admired, the hunters boasting of their courage, one of the new red mushrooms reached maturity.

This particular growing thing was perhaps two feet across, its main part spherical. Almost eighteen inches of the thing rose above-ground. A tawny and menacing red, the sphere was contained in a parchment-like skin that was pulled taut. There was internal tension. But the skin was tough and would not yield, yet the inexorable pressure of life within demanded that it stretch. It was growing within, but the skin without had ceased to grow.

This one happened to be on a low hillside a good half-mile from the place where Burl and his fellows banqueted. Its tough, red parchment skin was tensed unendurably. Suddenly it ripped apart with an explosive tearing noise. The dry spores within billowed out and up like the smoke of a sh.e.l.l-explosion, spurting skyward for twenty feet and more. At the top of their ascent they spread out and eddied like a cloud of reddish smoke. They hung in the air. They drifted in the sluggish breeze. They spread as they floated, forming a gradually extending, descending dust-cloud in the humid air.

A bee, flying back toward its hive, droned into the thin ma.s.s of dust.

It was preoccupied. The dust-cloud was not opaque, but only a thick haze. The bee flew into it.

For half a dozen wing-beats nothing happened. Then the bee veered sharply. Its deep-toned humming rose in pitch. It made convulsive movements in mid-air. It lost balance and crashed heavily to the ground.

There its legs kicked and heaved violently but without purpose. The wings beat furiously but without rhythm or effect. Its body bent in paroxysmic flexings. It stung blindly at nothing.

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