The Creatures of Man (29 page)

"Good morning, folks," he said into the mike, speaking slowly and calmingly. "There's no need for hurry or panic. In a moment I will open the door of the bus, and all of you will be permitted to come aboard. Just move toward the door in an orderly fashion, without any crowding, when I give the word. All of us will be having breakfast in Cleveland Dome in half an hour. Okay?"

He heard muffled yells of assent from outside. "Good," he approved, and activated the door switch.

Almost instantly there was a crash behind him as the door between the passenger compartment and the cockpit section was torn open.

Cosman whirled in his chair to stare numbly at the gleaming eyes and bared teeth of a giant dog.

Haddon screeched and Mabry roared
"Good Godamighty!"
Cosman started to fumble for his sidearm but froze when the dog made a snarling lunge at him.

There was a moment during which the three men and the dog were motionless. Then the men stayed that way while the dog rose on his hindlegs to sniff briefly at Mabry's trousers. Next he dropped down to smell Cosman's face, and the driver felt the hair on his neck stiffen as the dog's hot breath moistened the skin around his filter mask.

Then the dog moved over to Haddon and gave him a similar inspection. The muzzle moved down Haddon's arm, and teeth clamped on his trembling hand. Cosman could see blood start to ooze.

"Oh," Haddon said softly in response to the pain. "Oh."

The dog tugged on the hand and Haddon came swiftly to his feet, grimacing. The dog backed out of the cockpit, pulling the young man along.

"W-wait, dog," Haddon was beginning to whimper. "Let me go, dog. I admit I . . . don't like girls . . . but I'll get one. Really I will, dog. I promise! Have lots of babies. That's what you want, don't you? Please . . . lots of babies, dog . . ."

The pleadings had been making Cosman cringe. It was a relief when Haddon was led beyond earshot. Mabry wheezed and coughed.

"I thought the kid was just . . . kind of prissy," he said in a weak voice. "They know better than to send a homosexual out here. Ought to, anyway."

"Maybe he wasn't good on any other job," said Cosman when he found his voice. "Bottom of the barrel." After a moment he added sharply, "Why the hell didn't you cover the door, Mike?"

"How was I to guess a damn dog would come aboard? They don't usually do that," Mabry said defensively. "Doubt if I could've hit him anyway, fast as they move . . . look at him out there! Acting awful damn proud of hisself! Maybe I can get him yet!"

"Careful," Cosman warned as the gun turret swung about. He too had caught a glimpse of the dog that had taken Haddon frisking about, but an older looking dog had growled at it, and it had moved out of sight among the people. Mabry cursed, and his gun remained silent.

"Okay, folks, don't be alarmed," Cosman said into the mike, "and start coming aboard."

The people outside began moving warily toward the bus, and when the dogs made no objection, they moved faster. But nobody was trampled, although there was some pushing and shoving at the door before all were inside. Haddon was not among them.

And the dogs had melted away into the smog. By the time the people were safe inside, no targets were left for Mabry.

"Hell!" he grunted. "Let's go home."

Cosman started the bus moving. It was full day now, but the headlights helped visibility enough to be left on. He checked his map for an underpass to the eastbound side of the expressway.

"I wish I hadn't picked on the kid," Mabry muttered.

Cosman said nothing.

"We're all such damn fools," Mabry went on angrily. "Always lousing ourselves up! This whole mess we're in . . . the world didn't get like it is by itself. We brought it all on ourselves, by our damn stupid mistakes! You know that, Joe?"

Cosman shrugged, and wished Mabry would shut up.

"We made our mess and now we got to live with it. Ain't you ever thought about it, Joe? How different things might be if we'd used some sense, or if our granddaddies had, I mean? It was way back then, when they put domes over the towns and everybody moved inside to get out of the smog.

"Have you ever thought, Joe, what damn fools they were? All they had to do was take all the dogs inside with 'em, or make sure they killed every damn mutt in the country. But they didn't! That was the damn foolishest mistake anybody ever made!"

Cosman nodded slowly. Old Mabry talked a lot of nonsense, but sometimes he hit the nail squarely on the head.

"I guess that's right, Mike," he said. "I can't imagine anything stupider than that."

Cargy was a hard boy to take by surprise.

Although he was just ten years old (or twelve and a fraction, Earth reckoning) he had knocked about his world enough to know it pretty well. His world was Merga, where surprises were commonplace.

And if his world was strange, so was his time. Humanity had arrived on Merga only ninety Earth years earlier, and had barely had time to settle down, get in an argument among themselves, and resolve the dispute with a war.

Cargy was orphaned by the war at the age of five, on his own as a runaway at six, an independent tradesman at eight. He knew his world well enough to find a unique niche for himself in the Mergan-human ecology. He considered himself a success, and viewed his world with eyes more calculating than startled.

In fact, when he saw the crossed-eyed man, it had been so long since anything had struck him as strange that he stopped in his tracks and stared.

Maybe the man was staring back. Anyway, his face turned toward Cargy and he propped up on an elbow as if to get a better look at the boy and the wagon he was tugging. The man's eyes were hidden behind goggles of opaque black plastic into which crossed slits had been cut for him to see through.

Cargy couldn't guess the purpose of such goggles, and in general he didn't like the looks of the man sprawled in a patch of padgrass beside the trail. He had a beggarly look, and Cargy knew how vicious beggars could be. This fellow seemed very old, and scrawny, and maybe sick, but he'd had the strength to walk to this spot in the foothills, a good twenty miles from anywhere. Cargy didn't like getting too close to old Crossed-Eyes.

But he couldn't go around him. The hillside on both flanks of the trail was a tangle of sackle trees and bladebriar. If Cargy were to get on into town and about his business, he had to pull his wagon down the trail and past the man.

He scowled, shifted his grip on the wagon handle to his left hand, and moved forward. He had learned early that timidity didn't pay.

Crossed-Eyes was smiling at him as he got close.

"Headed for Port City, son?"

The voice was whispery and cracked with age, but it didn't have the sly whine Cargy had expected. And now he saw the man's clothes were too good for a beggar. Also, a backpack lay on the grass at the man's side. Like he was a hunter, or one of those off-planet sport-guys who liked to hike over a few foothills so they could brag about "exploring" the wilds of Merga. But Cargy could see that Crossed-Eyes was too old to be anything like that.

"Yes, sir," he replied to the man's question.

"What's in your wagon?"

"Wildfruit."

"What kind?"

"All kinds. Shavolits, blues, jokones, swerlemins, muskers, hawbuttons, greenlins . . .

"I haven't eaten a hawbutton in years," said the man. "Too dangerous for me to climb for them. Are you selling them?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll take half a dozen."

Cargy went to the back of his wagon and tugged out a corner of the spacesheet that covered his load. He picked out six of the dark brown, fully ripened fruits and handed them to the man.

"They're three minals each," he said.

Painfully, Crossed-Eyes dug into a trouser pocket and brought out a hakon. "Keep the change, son," he said.

"Thank you, sir," said Cargy, quickly pocketing the coin. The man had overpaid like an off-worlder, even with nobody around to impress. Cargy was more puzzled than ever. Instead of pulling his wagon on down the trail, he squatted on his heels and watched the man eat.

The slitted goggles were the big mystery, but what bothered Cargy more than that was the realization that the old guy looked awfully sick and might be fixing to die. He didn't do too well with the hawbuttons, either. He gobbled one, worried down a second, and just messed with a third.

"I overestimated my appetite, son. You can have these three back. What's your name?"

"Cargy Darrow, sir."

"Glad to know you, Cargy. I'm Thomis Mead."

The name sounded vaguely familiar. "Glad to know you, Mr. Mead." They sat in silence for a while, then Cargy asked, "Are you sick, mister?"

"Yes, but it won't last much longer," the man nodded, and Cargy knew he didn't mean he'd soon get better. He meant it the other way.

"Was you trying to walk to town?" the boy asked.

"Yes, and I might have made it but . . ." Mead pulled up a trouser leg to reveal a swollen ankle. "A bad sprain. I can't walk on it."

"Oh." Cargy looked at the ankle, then at the pallor of the man's face, and felt annoyed.

The problem was that he couldn't hurry on alone into town to get help for this old man Mead. Sackle trees were far less active and dangerous than many other Mergan plant species, but they could be deadly to an old man who couldn't stay alert and who might pass out any moment. And the hillside was thick with sackle trees.

The only thing Cargy could do would require a considerable business sacrifice. Grumpily he said, "I guess I can pull you to town in my wagon."

"Thank you, Cargy. I'll pay you well for your trouble."

Cargy began unloading. The wagon was big enough for Mead to ride in, if he sat with his knees drawn up, but it couldn't contain the man plus the load of wildfruit. Ungraciously, the boy asked, "Why'd you try to walk, anyway? They send out clopters for sick people."

With a dry chuckle Mead said, "Not unless they're called, and I let my transceiver rot on me. I hadn't tried to use it for perhaps twenty years, and etchmold got into the circuits. The supply serviceman was due to come by my place in six weeks, but I didn't think I could wait that long. I started walking."

Cargy felt a touch of disgust for anybody who would let etchmold ruin a perfectly good radio. All you had to do was switch the set on for a second or two, say once every ten days, because etchmold couldn't stand electricity, no more than any other kind of Mergan life could. And . . . and to have a radio, and not use it for twenty years! It didn't make sense!

The old man must have read the boy's expression. He explained, "You see, son, when I was a young man something happened that stopped me from caring about much of anything. I was interested enough in staying alive to eat regularly, but that was about all. I went to my place in Dappliner Valley, quit seeing people, and sort of vegetated. Recently I've started to care a little more, and . . ."

The name of Dappliner Valley rang a bell with Cargy. Only one man was known to live in that isolated spot. The boy now knew who Thomis Mead was.

"You're a. . . . a
first-comer!
" he exclaimed in awe.

The old man smiled. "That's right, son. Probably the last of the first-comers still alive."

Cargy's formal education had been limited by the war to less than three weeks, but even before that he had been taught by his father that the first-comers were the real heroes of Merga. They were the special band of explorers and scientists who had come from the older planets ahead of everybody else to find out about this world, to see if it was a safe place to live, or what would have to be done to make it safe.

The voracious plant life had gotten many of them, while they were finding out what the different species did to kill their animal prey, and how men could defend themselves. There was a big memorial statue to the first-comers in Port City. Cargy had heard people read aloud the names carved on the statue's base. That was why Mead's name had sounded familiar.

"What happened to you," he prompted, "must've been awful bad."

"It didn't upset me at the time," Mead replied distantly, "since it left me not giving a damn. But thinking back, and caring a little after all this time, I suppose it was, as you say, awful bad. But it's nothing for a youngster like you to think about, son."

"Yes, sir."

Cargy felt a bit better about this rescue mission, now that he knew old Mead was a hero. As for his business losses . . . well, he'd make out some way. He had counted on getting at least three kons for this load of wildfruit, which he was now bundling into an old spacesheet to leave by the trail where it would probably ruin before he could get back to it.

As for Mead's promise that he would be "paid well for his trouble," Cargy knew from experience just how little adults valued the time and effort of a boy. Maybe Mead would give him another hakon, or perhaps a whole kon, and that would be that. It wouldn't pay for the meals of meat he craved, and for recharging his defense batteries, much less for the new batteries and new boots he was beginning to need.

Regretfully he dragged the big bundle off the trail and maneuvered his wagon to the old man's side.

"You can get in now," he said.

Slowly, with stifled grunts, Mead lifted himself into the wagon bed. It was a tight fit as the wagon was hardly more than a toy, and in fact had probably been constructed by some father for a son of about Cargy's age. Cargy had stolen it from a yard in the Port City suburbs and had disguised it with a coat of dark green paint. The wagon had enabled him to triple the size of his business, since he was no longer limited to the wildfruit he could carry in a sack over his shoulder.

There wasn't even room to tuck Mead's backpack in with him, so the old man had to wear it. He said he was used to it and didn't mind its weight.

Cargy grasped the wagon handle and resumed his journey to Port City. He glanced back occasionally at his passenger, but Mead kept his head slumped forward and didn't speak. The boy wondered if the man's eyes were open behind the goggles, or if he were dozing.