Then Mrs. Christopher said, “So what happened then?”
Gundersen looked up, blinking. He thought he had told it all.
“Nothing happened then,” he said. “The flood crest subsided.”
“But what was the point of the story?”
He wanted to hurl the empty crab in her tensely smiling face. “The point?” he said. “The point? Why—” He was dizzy, now. He said, “Seven intelligent beings were journeying toward the holiest rite of their religion, and at gunpoint I requisitioned their services on a construction job to save property that meant nothing to them, and they came and hauled logs for me. Isn’t the point obvious enough? Who was spiritually superior there? When you treat a rational autonomous creature as though he’s a mere beast, what does that make you?”
“But it was an emergency,” said Watson. “You needed all the help you could get. Surely other considerations could be laid aside at a time like that. So they were nine days late getting to their rebirth. Is that so bad?”
Gundersen said hollowly, “A nildor goes to rebirth only when the time is ripe, and I can’t tell you how they know the time is ripe, but perhaps it’s astrological, something to do with the conjunction of the moons. A nildor has to get to the place of rebirth at the propitious time, and if he doesn’t make it in time, he isn’t reborn just then. Those seven nildoror were already late, because the heavy rains had washed out the roads in the south. The nine days more that I tacked on made them too late. When they were finished building dikes for me, they simply went back south to rejoin their tribe. I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t until much later that I found out that I had cost them their chance at rebirth and they might have to wait ten or twenty years until they could go again. Or maybe never get another chance.” Gundersen did not feel like talking any more. His throat was dry. His temples throbbed. How cleansing it would be, he thought, to dive into the steaming lake. He got stiffly to his feet, and as he did so he noticed that Srin’gahar had returned and was standing motionless a few hundred meters away, beneath a mighty swordflower tree.
He said to the tourists, “The point is that the nildoror have religion and souls, and that they are people; and that if you can buy the concept of relinquishment at all, you can’t object to relinquishing this planet. The point is also that when Earthmen collide with an alien species they usually do so with maximum misunderstanding. The point is furthermore that I’m not surprised you think of the nildoror the way you do, because I did too, and learned a little better when it was too late to matter, and even so I didn’t learn enough to do me any real good, which is one of the reasons why I came back to this planet. And I’d like you to excuse me now, because this is the propitious time for me to move on, and I have to go.” He walked quickly away from them.
Approaching Srin’gahar, he said, “I’m ready to leave now.”
The nildor knelt. Gundersen remounted.
“Where did you go?” the Earthman asked. “I was worried when you disappeared.”
“I felt that I should leave you alone with your friends,” said Srin’gahar. “Why did you worry? There is an obligation on me to bring you safely to the country of the mist.”
Eight
THE QUALITY OF the land was undoubtedly changing. They were leaving the heart of the equatorial jungle behind, and starting to enter the highlands that led into the mist zone. The climate here was still tropical, but the humidity was not so intense; the atmosphere, instead of holding everything in a constant clammy embrace, released its moisture periodically in rain, and after the rain the texture of the air was clear and light until its wetness was renewed. There was different vegetation in this region: harsh-looking angular stuff, with stiff leaves sharp as blades. Many of the trees had luminous foliage that cast a cold light over the forest by night. There were fewer vines here, and the treetops no longer formed a continuous canopy shutting out most of the sunlight; splashes of brightness dappled the forest floor, in some places extending across broad open plazas and meadows. The soil, leached by the frequent rains, was a pale yellowish hue, not the rich black of the jungle. Small animals frequently sped through the underbrush. At a slower pace moved solemn slug-like creatures, blue-green with ebony mantles, which Gundersen recognized as the mobile fungoids of the highlands — plants that crawled from place to place in quest of fallen boughs or a lightning-shattered tree-trunk. Both nildoror and men considered their taste a great delicacy.
On the evening of the third day northward from the place of the boiling lake Srin’gahar and Gundersen came upon the other four nildoror, who had marched on ahead. They were camped at the foot of a jagged crescent-shaped hill, and evidently had been there at least a day, judging by the destruction they had worked upon the foliage all around their resting-place. Their trunks and faces, smeared and stained with luminous juices, glowed brightly. With them was a sulidor, by far the largest one Gundersen had ever seen, almost twice Gundersen’s own height, with a pendulous snout the length of a man’s forearm. The sulidor stood erect beside a boulder encrusted with blue moss, his legs spread wide and his tail, tripod fashion, bracing his mighty weight. Narrowed eyes surveyed Gundersen from beneath shadowy hoods. His long arms, tipped with terrifying curved claws, hung at rest. The fur of the sulidor was the color of old bronze, and unusually thick.
One of the candidates for rebirth, a female nildor called Luu’khamin, said to Gundersen, “The sulidor’s name is Na-sinisul. He wishes to speak with you.”
“Let him speak, then.”
“He prefers that you know, first, that he is not a sulidor of the ordinary kind. He is one of those who administers the ceremony of rebirth, and we will see him again when we approach the mist country. He is a sulidor of rank and merit, and his words are not to be taken lightly. Will you bear that in mind as you listen to him?”
“I will. I take no one’s words lightly on this world, but I will give him a careful hearing beyond any doubt. Let him speak.”
The sulidor strode a short distance forward and once again planted himself firmly, digging his great spurred feet deep into the resilient soil. When he spoke, it was in nildororu stamped with the accent of the north: thick-tongued, slow, positive.
“I have been on a journey,” said Na-sinisul, “to the Sea of Dust, and now I am returning to my own land to aid in the preparations for the event of rebirth in which these five travelers are to take part. My presence here is purely accidental. Do you understand that I am not in this place for any particular purpose involving you or your companions?”
“I understand,” said Gundersen, astounded by the precise and emphatic manner of the sulidor’s speech. He had known the sulidoror only as dark, savage, ferocious-looking figures lurking in mysterious glades.
Na-sinisul continued, “As I passed near here yesterday, I came by chance to the site of a former station of your Company. Again by chance, I chose to look within, though it was no business of mine to enter that place. Within I found two Earthmen whose bodies had ceased to serve them. They were unable to move and could barely talk. They requested me to send them from this world, but I could not do such a thing on my own authority. Therefore I ask you to follow me to this station and to give me instructions. My time is short here, so it must be done at once.”
“How far is it?”
“We could be there before the rising of the third moon.”
Gundersen said to Srin’gahar, “I don’t remember a Company station here. There should be one a couple of days north of here, but—”