In the Ocean of Night (41 page)

“Why?”

“We’re uncommon, for one thing. Most life is machine life, he said. And we’re…”

“We’re what?”

Nigel felt oddly uneasy with the word. “Of the universe of essences.”

“What does it mean? I read your classified summary but—”

“I haven’t a clue what it adds up to.”

“The beings in that wreck were in the universe of essences, too, then. They came here to get something.”

“Or give something.”

THIRTEEN

After a day of dazed babbling, Graves awoke in the morning able to speak clearly. Mr. Ichino fried synthetic yeast steak and as they ate Graves confirmed most of the deductions Mr. Ichino had made from the microfilm.

“I’d been on their trail for weeks,” Graves said, propped up in bed. “After them in a ’copter first, then on foot. Got a few long-distance photos, even found some of the vegetation they’d nibbled at, a few rabbit bones, things like that. My trackers pinpointed likely spots. My guide and me, we spotted some just as this damn snow started. Hard as hell, tracking them through this mess.”

“Why not stop?” Mr. Ichino asked.

“They had to slow down
sometime.
Everything does in the winter up here. If I outlasted them I could maybe move in when they were hibernating or something. Take captives.”

“Was that how you got this?” Mr. Ichino gestured at the bandage over Graves’ ribs.

Graves grimaced. “Yeah. Maybe they weren’t holed up at all, just stopped for a while. I came up on ’em in one of those circular clearings that used to be a root system for redwood trees. Got in close. They were sitting around a kind of stone block with something made out of metal on top of it, all of them kind of looking at it and humming, swaying back and forth, a few beating on the ground.”

“You mentioned that earlier when you first woke up.” “Uh, huh. I thought the sound would cover me, all that chanting. My guide circled around to come in at a different angle. They were worshiping that damn thing, that rod. I got a picture and moved and the one up front, the one who was leading them, he saw me. I got scared. Took a shot at him with my rifle, thinking to run them off maybe.

“Then the leader grabbed that rod. He pointed it at me. I thought maybe it was a club, so I got off another shot. I think I hit him. Then he did something to the end of the rod and a beam came out, so close I could feel the heat in the air. Something like a laser, but a lot wider beam width. I was pumping slugs into him like crazy. He wouldn’t go down. He got my guide—killed the boy. Next time he fired he clipped me in the side. But I’d got the son of a bitch by then, he was finished.

“The others had run off. I got over to him and pulled that rod away from him and took off, not even looking where I was going. I guess they picked up my trail a little later—I saw some of them following me. But they’d learned a lesson. They stayed away, out of easy rifle range. Guess they thought I’d drop finally and they’d get their goddamn rod back. Until I saw your smoke I thought I was finished.”

“You nearly were. That burn cut deep and it could have caused infection. I’m surprised you could stand the pain.”

Graves winced, remembering it. “Yeah. Had to keep going, wading through the snow. Knew they’d get me if I stopped, passed out. But it was worth it.”

“Why? What did it get you?”

“Well, the
rod,
” Graves said, startled. “Didn’t you find it in my pack?”

Mr. Ichino suddenly remembered the gray metal tube he had examined and put aside.

“Where is it?” Graves sat up and twisted out of the bed, looking around the cabin. Mr. Ichino walked over to the man’s pack. He found the tube lying under it in a corner. He must have dropped it there.

“Oh, okay,” Graves said weakly, dropping back onto the pillow. “Just don’t touch
any
of those things on the end. It goes off real easy.”

Mr. Ichino handled it gingerly. He couldn’t understand its design. If it was a weapon, there was no butt to absorb recoil or crook into the man’s shoulder. No trigger guard. (No trigger?) A slight raised ridge on one side he hadn’t noticed before. (A sight?)

“What is it?”

“Don’t ask me,” Graves replied. “Some new Army gadget. Pretty effective. Don’t know how they got it.”

“You said the Bigfoot were…
worshipping
it?” “Yeah. Gathered around, some kind of ceremony going on. Looked like a bunch of New Sons or something, wailing away.” He glanced quickly at Mr. Ichino. “Oh, sorry if I offended you. I’m not one of the Brothers, but I respect ’em.”

Mr. Ichino waved it away. “No, I am not one of them. But this weapon…”

“It’s the Army’s, for sure. Who else has got heavy stuff like that? I had to get certificates as long as my arm to carry around that rifle I had. I’ll turn it in when I get back, don’t worry about that. Only thing I care about is the photographs.”

Mr. Ichino put the tube on the kitchen sideboard, frowning. “Photographs?”

“The ones I got of them. Must have three rolls, a lot done with telescopic lenses. They’ll prove the Bigfoot are still up here. Get me some press coverage.”

“I see. You think that’ll do it?”

“Sure. This is my biggest find, easy. It’s even better than I thought it would turn out. The Bigfoot are smart, a lot faster than some ordinary game animal. Might not be the missing link or anything, but they’re close. Damned close.” His voice was fading with fatigue, a sibilant whisper.

“I believe you should sleep.”

“Yeah, sure… sure. Just take care of that film in the pack. Don’t let anythin’, you know… the pack…”

In a few moments he began to breathe regularly.

Mr. Ichino found the film in a side pocket of the pack that he had missed before. They were clear, well-focused shots on self-developing film. The last one, of the clearing, was still in the camera. Seen from behind, the Big-foot were just dark mounds, but the tube could be seen clearly resting on a rectangular stone at the far end of the clearing.

The Bigfoot seemed to know how to use it, as well. But worship it? A strange act.

Mr. Ichino smiled. Graves had become so engrossed with his pursuit of the Bigfoot that he had lost sight of his original aim. The Wasco event first drew his attention— how did Bigfoot relate to that? Graves had not had time to ask.

Use of that gray tube would certainly keep the Bigfoot free of men. Woe to the unlucky hunter who stumbled on a band of Bigfoot with the fire weapon.

Still…it seemed highly unlikely that the creatures could survive indefinitely with men all around them. True, they were masters of concealment—or so the historical record implied. But did they merely hide in the thick forests…or was there a place where they could retreat? A refuge from the storm of mankind…

A place with still-functioning life systems. A warren which sheltered its charges, mutely following ancient instructions. Commands now robbed of their point, but still carried out.

A subterranean Eden for these early men, spilling with food and warmth and mating grounds. A holy place that evaporated one day in a spray of nuclear sleet, leaving one or two foraging bands of Bigfoot in the wilderness, small tribes who had somehow wandered from Eden and perhaps had wished to return but were now adrift in a sea of trees and a world of men, pursued by machines that beat at the air with spinning wings and carried a fanatic hunter, a man born in some place surely far distant from Eden…

FOURTEEN

Sitting upright in bed next to him, eyes hooded by the cone of light from the reading lamp above, her raised knees forming a tent from the sheets, she seemed all blades of bone and a soft sheen of skin. She had slumped down in concentration, reading the faxes of their day’s output, seeking correlations. Nigel sat upright and, surveyed from his high angle, she gave the appearance of a terrain, a perspective of hills and secret valleys flowing together to a sum of great wealth. A spreading river valley. A world so rich that each stretch of tendon and alignment of bone gave onto new acreage, fresh forests, clean divisions between the bushy recesses and the new knobbed mountains.

“Ummm?” She sensed his attention. “Nikka…”

Something in his voice made her look up.

“Have you… ever… felt that there is someone inside who is always apart?”

“How…?”

“Always watching. Every so often…do you feel that there is a… way you ought to be seeing the world? Another way?”

“You mean… better?”

“Better, yes.
Different.
”

“More of it.”

“
All
of it. That we ought to be…be
immersed
in it.” After a time: “I think we all feel that. Sometimes.” “Certainly.” He sighed. “But we go on. Business as usual.”

“Not always. We learn something. Or some do, anyway.”

“Else what’s the point of growing older?”

“If we don’t get wiser? I suppose.”

“Um.” He stared distantly at the unintelligible faxes in his hand.

“Why…?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“Maybe it has something to do with this.”

“This?”

“The work.”

“Oh. Yes. I suppose. But this has always been with me, right on from the first. When I was a little runt.”

“We’re trying to sense something new here. Something bigger…”

“Yes. Maybe that makes me feel this way.”

“What way?”

“There are times when I despair of ever knowing anything, anything at all, fundamentally.”

“Well,” Nikka said, clearly groping for words, “more study…”

“Hell. No, it’s … Nikka, the world is
dense.
There are layers. I keep feeling—and it’s not simply this bloody wreck, no, it’s everything, it’s
life
—I ought to be getting it. The grainy… grainy…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say it.”

“In your society,” she said softly, “there are not many ways to approach this. In mine there are perhaps a few more.”

“
Right.
” He nodded, a faint flash of irritation crossing his face. “Look, I’m not getting very far, talking this way.”

“It is not a talking sort of thing.”

“No. And it keeps coming to mind while I work on these faxes.”

“The fact that we see so little.”

“We understand even less than we see. What
can
we assume we have in common with the builders of that smashed ship? The only similarity was our—to quote the Snark—animal nature.”

“I wonder if we, we animals, felt the same way about the others, then.”

“Others?” He raised an eyebrow. “The computer civilizations? The abacus superminds?”

“You always say that as though it were a joke.”

He shrugged. “Maybe it is.”

“Perhaps that is what we may all have in common.” “What?”

“Contempt for machines.”

“I suppose.” He became suddenly thoughtful. “We made
them,
after all, not the other way around.”

“Yet we are uncommon.”

“Unstable. Suicidal. We reach too far. And the god-damned desk calculators—”

“Outlast us.”

“Fair humbling, isn’t it? If we
animals
could only get ourselves in order…”

“And communicate …” Nikka smiled, leading him on. “Is that what you mean?”

“Something along those lines. Maybe these aliens came to find another intelligent organic life form. They had our limitations—mortality, war. But they came seeking.”

“Perhaps they wanted to tell us about something God-awful coming to get us from Aquila.”

“What good would that do? A million years ago we had no technology.”

“Then they could, well, give it to us.”

“They didn’t.”

“No. But maybe they tried to pass on something else.” “It must be that. They couldn’t get anything from a tribal society like ours.”

“Yes. Though they could get contact, of course. It must be damned lonely, being an animal in a galaxy of desk calculators.”

“Whatever they brought us, I can’t see that it’s done us a load of good.”

“Ummm. Plenty of technology, but we’re still suicidal. One war—”

“Bang.”

“Quite.”

“Then we must press on here. With the decoding.” Grimly: “Quite.”

Mr. Ichino watched the snow stream through the box of light cast out from the window. The minute dabs of white were like leaves in a churning river of air, swept through the yellow beam and away into vastness. It was a light snowfall, adding perhaps only a few centimeters to the drifts. But it was more than enough to seal him and Graves into this stale space for a few more days.

“You… you takin’ care of my… stuff …”

“Of course,” Mr. Ichino said mildly, turning back to study Graves’s lined face. “You need not trouble yourself about it. Rest.”

Graves rolled his eyes weakly, searching the cabin. “Don’t wan’… them…”

“Sleep.”