Part 9 (1/2)

”Just keep it out of here,” he said, but with a hint of resignation in his voice. ”Keep these soldiers out of my way, and especially off my back. Let them hunt for the killer and drill on the field to their heart's content. Pretend they don't exist.”

”Just's jumpy,” I said.

”Forget Just. He's not important. Let Nick take over here-he'll look after things. I want you to go back to Kerman's place. I don't know what we've got here, but it won't give us anything like the full story. Just talk to people. Use your eyes and your head. We can't afford not to have a man on the spot, and I'm too busy.”

”Do you honestly think it will do any good?” I asked.

”Did you have something else urgent to do?” he countered.

I went back to the alien encampment. Eve went with me-she hadn't got the full story from Charlot yet, but he would have time later for recording his thoughts.

”How ill is he?” Eve asked me, once we were clear of the field.

”So what am I?” I said. ”A doctor?”

”You've seen more of him the last couple of days than anyone else,” she said.

”We haven't been talking about his symptoms,” I told her. ”We have a king-size headache here.”

”The landing of all those men is bound to count against Caradoc in the courts,” she said.

”Sure,” I said.

”You don't sound convinced.”

”Now there's a thing,” I said.

”G.o.d,” she said. ”You haven't changed at all. Not since you were in the port in New York. You've got that same chip on your shoulder and it hasn't s.h.i.+fted an inch. Don't you think for once that you could drop that razor's edge from your conversation?”

”You can't teach an old dog,” I said, with a lamentable lack of originality.

”How did Michael manage to stand you for all those years?” she asked.

”With difficulty,” I said. And added: ”But he hadn't any choice.”

”Is that your idea of an excuse?” she asked.

”No,” I replied.

We occupied ourselves with such happy and irrelevant exchanges throughout the long walk. The wind never intervened, but I could feel him disapproving all the way. He was another one who believed that I ought to be making gigantic strides in reuniting myself with the human race. He didn't believe that solitude was a reasonable way of life either.

When we got to the camp, I set about making a nuisance of myself in pretty much the way Charlot had intended that I should. I didn't see any reason to be particularly cagey, but on the other hand, I didn't want to tell them anything they hadn't already worked out for themselves. Most especially, I didn't want to tell them anything that might add to their ideas about how valuable the planet was. So I kept quiet about Charlot's theory of a mutational filter replacing natural selection as the princ.i.p.al agent of evolution.

My questions weren't quite as guarded as their answers, but I had the distinct impression that we could dance around the point for years without ever getting there.

I stuck mainly with the biologists-the cellular biologists, who might have found some interesting anomalies about the way the beasties were put together at subcellular level. But it wasn't really the level at which my own know-how operated. I was no scientist, just an observer who liked to understand how things worked.

All in all, we got pretty well nowhere except frustrated.

Even so, I kept going, and it was getting close to sunset when we began to head back to the s.h.i.+p.

The forest was very quiet, very peaceful, and very pretty, but I no longer had any trouble with my own personal Paradise syndrome. It no longer looked to me anything like Paradise.

It wasn't, of course, that I'd been put off by what I'd learned about the Pharos life-system. It was just that every twenty minutes or so one of those great big black whirlybirds would do a slow sweep across the nearby tree-tops. They were looking for Varly. And they were having about as much success as we were.

13.

Instead of going through town, Eve and I elected to take a more direct route through the forest. Its directness was more theoretical than actual owing to the fact that it is impossible to walk a straight line in a forest, and it was undoubtedly slower than the usual route, but time-saving was not our primary objective. We were avoiding people. At least, we thought we were avoiding people.

We had barely gone halfway when one of the copters made a pa.s.s over our heads, did a tight turn, and commenced to hover over us while a stentorian voice came over a loudspeaker ordering us to stop or be shot.

We stopped.

The loudspeaker kept on bawling at us, giving out extremely precise instructions as to how still we were supposed to stand, what posture to adopt. It also took time out to tell us exactly what wouldn't happen provided we complied with the suggestions.

It took five minutes for the men in the copter to redirect men on the ground to our position, which gave me, at least, plenty of opportunity to get fed up with standing still waving my fingers in the air.

The search party arrived at the double and surrounded us, pointing their guns at us in a wholly futile display of courage and determination.

The boss was a thin man with a face like a rat and incipient acne. He peered at us both with what I supposed to be a regulation snarl, and decided after due thought and process that neither of us was Varly.

”What the h.e.l.l you doin' way out here?” he demanded, with an asperity which suggested that we were wholly to blame for the inconvenience caused him.

”It's a free country,” I said.

”Don' you know there's a dangerous murderer out here someplace?”

”Son,” I said, ”I am fully aware of that fact. I have had the doubtful pleasure of having been on this planet for a good deal longer than you. I have had the misfortune of meeting Mr. Varly. I have even had the dubious pleasure of being pushed aside by Mr. Varly. I am not flattered by being mistaken for Mr. Varly.

If it is all right with you and your merry men, I would like each and every gun barrel to be redirected to some neutral direction, so that I can continue my walk home. It has been a long day.”

”It sure as like h.e.l.l is not all right with me,” he said, mixing his metaphors painfully.

”Well then,” I said, ”perhaps you'll tell me just exactly what you intend to do about it.” I reached out a hand and gently redirected one of the gun barrels with the tip of my forefinger.