The Golden People Read online

  Adam could feel his breathing quicken and his hands tremble. The sun beat down upon the barren arena. The pack around him gurgled and howled, but only softly.

  He made Shorty run to and fro in quick uncertain rushes, as if he were seeking hopelessly to escape. He was no longer entirely pretending; he could feel himself living as a Tenoka child, out there alone in the canyon.

  Now the animals' deadly circle was less than four meters wide. Adam had to fight down genuine panic. He made Shorty spin wildly, and cry out in his high child's voice.

  Something struck the yesman from behind. Shorty's legs were now slaved to human reflexes, so he was knocked on his face. Adam felt the impact, scaled down by the feedback system, as a pat between his shoulder blades. He made Shorty roll over on the ground, and stared up at a circle of nightmare-handsome faces. He could feel his living breath sawing in his throat, and could see the kindly sky, the sky remote and indifferent beyond the sinuous gray necks, the clustered evil power.

  The thought came flickering through Adam's mind: How many in all the universe, have seen the universe this way—

  A massive foot was coming slowly down on Shorty's midsection—not with any weight on it. A dead victim would be no sport at all. Adam had to choke off a scream as one huge head, human-masked, sank toward Shorty's face. The unspeakable mouth was gaping over him. Now, he thought, now, and he thrust up an arm, and the big yellow-brown teeth closed deliberately on Shorty's child-sized fingers.

  He closed Shorty's fingers on one big tooth, yanked it out like a thumbtack, and flipped it away.

  Adam heard his own near-hysterical laugh at the reaction he saw in the geryon's face as the long neck whipped up and back, away from him. Another similar head loomed over Shorty now, lowering uncertainly. Adam drove an arm up, hard and fast this time. Shorty's fusion-powered arm was slaved to follow Adam's. The metal fingers stabbed through thick neck hide, and drove on spearlike through yielding tissue, until Adam could feel in his fist the greater hardness of the neck vertebrae. He clutched at bone, and squeezed, and had the sensation of crumpling paper in his hand.

  He had Shorty out from underneath the thing quickly, before the mountainous convulsions of its death had ceased. Before the other animals could make up their minds that now it was time to run, Adam maneuvered Shorty between them and the narrow entrance to the canyon.

  Startled and confused, unable to sense any familiar danger, the geryons ran in circles within the high-walled box, raising clouds of dust in the sunlight. Moving rapidly at last, they jumped and plunged and bellowed. And now the biggest animal turned toward Shorty, looking past the yesman to the one way out of the canyon. Adam/Shorty blocked the path, even as the animal charged him with a snarling howl; in a flash the geryon looked to Adam like the one that had been first to bite the little girl.

  He leaned forward, bracing Shorty's feet on firm rock footing beneath him. The geryon did not try to avoid the small figure in its path. The impact that came through to Adam felt like a swat from a pillow, and in it he could distinguish a sudden snapping yielding, that must mean that heavy bone had broken. The geryon fell sideways with a hideous scream, and the pack that had started to follow it halted again, its members colliding with each other in confusion.

  Adam/Shorty strode toward them. Most of them scattered before him, not yet in panic, but wary, not knowing what was harming their kind. As one of the bigger geryons dodged past him he caught it by the tail in Shorty's mangling grip, braced his feet on rock again and swung the two-ton squirming mass around hand over hand to face the yesman. The huge head came around biting; Adam swung Shorty's fist with all his strength. Much of the geryon's head vanished in a gory explosion, spattering the other beasts nearby. They howled and turned to frantic flight from Shorty, scrambling in every direction to escape.

  Adam pushed his latest victim aside and stamped after the animals on Shorty's tiny feet. With horror he saw that a couple of geryons were already climbing the steep canyon walls, their efforts so fueled by desperation that it looked as if they might succeed.

  He grabbed up a loose rock the size of a basketball, and let fly with it at one of the madly scrambling animals. The yesman's throwing arm was slaved to human speed, so the impact was not all that Adam had hoped for, but still the target beast came sliding and rolling down the slope.

  Picking up some more rocks, Adam trotted Shorty forward. Something feral and howling took over completely now inside his own skull. The world shrank to a rocky arena where time was hate…

  "Don't forget to bring us a sample for Biology," someone's voice reminded him.

  "What? Oh, sure." Adam turned Shorty back to the first beast that he had slain—it was about the least damaged of any—grabbed it by one leg, and began to pull it toward the canyon exit. He noticed that his arms were all red, glistening and slimy. "I need a bath," he muttered.

  "Huh? You're still here in the scoutship, remember?"

  "Sure—I mean I'm sweating." I'd better pull myself together, he thought, or Psych will be examining me half to death.

  The carcass that he was towing caught and tore and abraded on rocks. Shorty could pull the leg right off if the operator wasn't careful, and naturally the biologists wanted a specimen that was in reasonably good condition.

  Already the scavenger birds were gathering overhead. They came from kilometers around in no time.

  Adam stopped, got Shorty right underneath the hulk, and lifted it. It did not feel heavy to him, but it was an awkward thing to handle. The awkwardness was worse after he got out of the canyon and away from the rocky slope. Now the ground was softer under Shorty's tiny feet, and the burdened yesman kept sinking into the soil. Even when Shorty sank waist deep, almost swimming in the alien earth, Adam could still plow ahead with little physical effort.

  The dead beast wobbled repulsively in Adam's grip, the geryon head trailing on the long broken neck, the human face that was no longer handsome abrading away on the ground.

  He, Adam Mann, or someone else, would probably have to repeat today's performance, over and over, until every geryon that survived in the Stem had learned to fear and flee from Tenoka children. A good cause, but an unpleasant job.

  The "touch" of the dead bulk became suddenly so repellent that he dropped it.

  "Pretty tough going here," he said. "Can't you send a scout or a copter?"

  Presently a voice from Alpha One reached him. "All right, a couple of biologists are coming down anyway, and they can pick up the specimen right there. They'll be there in a minute or two. Good job, Mann."

  As soon as he saw the scout descending, Adam abandoned the dead geryon and began walking Shorty in the direction of his own scoutship. Blood was drying thickly on the yesman and swarms of insects were beginning to follow it. The parallel themes of Galactic insect life were strongly supported here.

  He trudged on, a little metal man under the enormous sky of Golden.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Nine

  The man in the canoe, gliding on the tranquil river, lifted the hand-carved wooden paddle out of the water, and a moment later lowered the small outboard motor into operating position at the squared-off stern. The canoe was handmade too, of bark and wood, designed in the native Tenoka style, except for that square stern. Now, as the craft glided from Field to Stem between moss-grown marker poles, the outboard purred smoothly into life, propelling Adam Mann toward the small boat dock at Far Landing.

  People from Earth, as it had turned out, could live perfectly well on the surface of Golden without benefit of groundsuits. They could live perfectly well inside the Field, as long as they were willing to leave all high technology behind them. One implication of that was that seven years ago a certain Earthman, if he had been allowed to take the risk and remove his groundsuit's helmet, might have had some small chance of saving a certain ins

  Tenoka child from death at the fangs of timid monsters.

  Or, on the other hand he might not.

  After seven years, Adam
Mann no longer remembered that day's horror very often, or thought about it at all that much.

  An Earthman like Adam Mann, who a few years ago had surprised the few friends who thought , they knew him well, by resigning from the Space Force, giving up an enviable career to live a mostly primitive life on one particular strange planet— well, such a man with his planeteering experience might have made himself wealthy on a raw world just opened to colonization. In fact, everyone who learned of his decision to resign from the Space Force assumed that that had been his motive.

  If it had been, he didn't have a lot of wealth to show for it as yet. Nor any great prospects of much in the foreseeable future. But he was doing all right.

  A couple of hours earlier on this mild winter morning, Adam had looked out of the window of his isolated cabin on the Field side of the river, and had seen a shuttle descending to the Stem City spaceport. The civilian starships were coming out to Golden more and more frequently now, bringing with them tourists and adventurers and business people from Earth and a hundred other worlds. Three hundred thousand colonists were now living in Stem City, amid a continual roar of construction. On Earth demand was high for certain exotic products of this world, among them natural furs. Furs like those in the silvery bundle that now rode in the bottom of Adam Mann's canoe.

  No road had yet been built between Stem City and the Far Landing dock, but copters had begun to fly the route on a regular schedule. Adam could see one such aircraft just landing now on a meadow behind the dock. The aircraft sat there with its rotor quietly idling, while a few people dressed entirely in plain black clothing disembarked from the passenger compartment. They stretched, and looked round them, and then got to work unloading from the copter's cargo bay an assortment of small containers and primitive tools. There were spades, hoes, and axes. Adam knew some of the black-clad folk, though these particular individuals were too far away at the moment to identify. They were religious colonists, who had planted themselves back in the wilderness, a few kilometers beyond even Adam's cabin.

  There was only one traditional-looking tourist getting off the copter this time, a blond woman who was wearing jeans and a bulky jacket against the chill of the mild low-latitude winter day. The woman separated herself a little from the black-clad folk, and appeared to be looking round her as if uncertain what to do next.

  Now she raised to. her face what Adam supposed were binoculars, and swept them around until they were aimed at him. They stayed fixed on him for half a minute.

  All right, girl, he thought. We'll see about you. Just as soon as I get these furs checked in. Lately he had encountered several examples of an interesting phenomenon, the attractive female tourist from Earth or from some other heavily civilized planet, who was ready to be briefly fascinated by the half-savage fur hunter and his peculiar world.

  The copter landing area passed out of Adam's sight, behind a rank of riverside brush. The canoe was nearing the dock now, and Adam swung his outboard up out of the water and shut it off. There was only one real building at Far Landing, a lonely trading shack of log construction. Outside the shack's door, a couple of Tenoka men were standing, in their usual costume of almost nothing at all, arguing about something with the bored-looking Space Force guard. The Great Council of Tenoka subtribes had granted their friends from far-off Earth theoretically limited rights to occupy the Stem area, and had in exchange accepted a mountain of trade goods and the permanent right of free medical care for any Tenoka who could reach one of the new hospitals in the Stem. So far the Tenoka appeared to be generally still satisfied with the bargain they had made.

  Adam tied his canoe up beside a new and very similar Tenoka craft—it had a squared stern and a motor too—and tossed his bundle of furs up onto the dock. From the corner of his eye he could see that the blond woman was approaching, from around the corner of the trading shack, but he finished his tying-up before he raised his head to look at her.

  When he raised his head he stood still. Very still indeed, for a long long moment. "Merit Creston," he said then, softly. It had been years, too many years, but as far as he could see at the moment, Merit had scarcely changed.

  Merit was standing above him, laughing down at him, laughing very much like a little girl who has just successfully carried off a joke. Adam hopped up onto the dock beside her. The smile on his own face felt strange, as if, somewhere along the line and without his realizing it, smiling had become abnormal.

  "Adam, it's been so long." She took his hands in hers. Merit as an adult was just about his own height, her hair as uniquely blond as it had been in girlhood but cut somewhat shorter now. Her body in maturity remained as graceful as ever.

  "Too long. Much too long. I wonder that you know me." He took stock of himself: long-haired, bearded, none too clean. He was dressed in hunter's clothes, some of native leather, with a long hunting knife of Earth steel sheathed in Tenoka leather at his belt. "You know I quit the Space Force."

  "Yes, I'd heard that." Merit looked out across the wide placid river, where a sky free of human technology arched down to a horizon that was notched only by the trees of the winter-brown forest. "I wondered why—now I think I can see the reason. Or part of it, anyway. It's so beautiful here."

  As he remembered, Merit was not one who used that word lightly or often. He asked, seriously: "How are you?"

  Merit looked back at him, studying him carefully. Or maybe the impression of care being taken was only a result of her turning her head to free her eyes of a strand of wind-blown hair. "Fine."

  "And how are Ray, and all the others?"

  Merit smiled faintly. "All well, as far as I know. Ray is fine too, he's here on Golden. We both arrived this morning."

  "Welcome to my planet!" In sudden jubilation Adam cried out, and lifted Merit into the air—hey, this was Merit! She squealed, a vulnerable and almost childlike sound, carefulness forgotten. And he kissed her.

  Then Merit was resting easily in the circle of Adam's arms, eyes examining eyes at close range. She said: "Someone else was on the ship, traveling with us—my husband."

  "Well." It hit him hard. For just a moment, it really hit him hard. He hoped he didn't let it show. He said: "I'll congratulate the lucky man when I meet him. Felicitations for you. Does he beat you frequently?"

  Merit gave the little girl's laugh that he remembered. "Hardly at all."

  "Would I know him?"

  "Oh, I don't suppose so." Merit disentangled herself gently from his embrace, and stood gracefully trying to keep her hair from blowing in her eyes. "I don't know why you should. His name is Vito Ling. He's a physicist, specializing in field theory, and he works for Earth Universities Research Foundation."

  "Then he's not one of Doc's kids? I don't remember the name. And tell me, how is Doc?"

  "No, Vito's not a Jovian." The remnant of Merit's laughter faded from her face and voice. "Doc's dead, Adam. Suddenly, about a year ago."

  After a moment he asked her: "How?"

  "A heart defect. Evidently it developed rather rapidly, between his regular checkups. He was alone in the lab when he collapsed. By the time someone found him—it was too late."

  "And no one—none of you—sensed—" Adam made a gesture of futility.

  "None of us. They're so undependable, our parapsych talents. Usually most undependable just when they would seem to be most valuable. Maybe it was…"

  "What?"

  "I was going to say that maybe the reason we sensed nothing was because Doc felt no fear at dying. No wish to tell us anything. His life with us was a hard one, in some ways, I'm afraid."

  Adam squeezed her shoulders. "That was the life Doc chose, the one he wanted." He took Merit's arm and they walked along the dock. "So now tell me about your life, my lady."

  Merit's cheerfulness returned. "I'm here partly just to be with Vito. I must admit he's taken up most of my life for the past two years. Now naturally you want to know what he's like. He's tall, and dark, and brilliant, and quick-tempered."

&n
bsp; "And not a Jovian."

  "No. I said not."

  Adam asked it bluntly. "Since he's not a Jovian, does it ever bother him to be left out, when you and the others start with your parapsych tricks?"

  "We don't try to make our friends feel that way. Did you ever feel that way?"

  "Yeah. I did. I know you don't try. You're right. But even so…"

  There was pride in Merit's eyes. "And Vito won't let it bother him. His ego is neither small nor fragile. He won't see anything more in Jovians than gifted humans."

  "Are you anything more? I can remember Doc soul-searching over that."

  The question did not seem to surprise her; but she replied to it only with one of her own. "Do you want us to be?"

  "I don't know. I've thought about it, and I don't know. I suppose you and Ray and the ninety-eight others are all still just one big happy family, too."

  Merit shrugged. "We have our differences. We always have. But in a sense, yes, I think we're definitely like a family, if you can imagine a family of a hundred people. Maybe all the more like a family because we do have differences, and surmount them. I suppose Ray is really the father now."

  Their walk had reversed itself where the riverside path began to grow difficult, and now their course brought them back to where the bundle of furs still lay on the dock. Adam scooped the bundle up, and said: "Let me take care of these." Merit came into the trading shack with him, and observed with interest the transaction between Adam and another Earthman behind a counter. The clerk opened the fur bundle and examined each item closely, then wrangled briefly over quality and prices before noting down the amount to be credited to Adam's Stem City bank account.