Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

He was aware of Binichi staring at him.

“What’s wrong?” asked the Lugh. “You showed no emotion when I hurt the—” His translator failed on a word.

“What?” said Chuck. “I didn’t understand. When you hurt what?”

“One of those who would have eaten the Tomah.”

“I…” Chuck hesitated. He could not say that it was because this small land creature had had a voice to express its pain while the sea-dweller had not. “It’s our custom to kill our meat before eating it.”

Binichi bubbled.

“This will be too new to the Tomah for ritual,” he said.

Reinforcement for this remark came a moment or two later when the envoy came back up the near wall of the gully to rejoin them.

“This is a paradise of plenty, this land,” he said. “Only once in my life before was I ever lucky enough to taste meat.” He lifted his head to them. “Shall we go on?”

“We should try to get to some water soon,” said Chuck, glancing at Binichi.

“I have been searching for it,” said the envoy. “Now I smell it not far off. We should reach it before dark.”

They went on; and gradually the gullies thinned out and they found themselves on darker earth, among more and larger trees. Just as the sunset was reddening the sky above the upthrust outline of the near hills, they entered a small glen where a stream trickled down from a higher slope and spread out into a small pool. Binichi trotted past them without a word, and plunged in.

Chuck woke when the morning sun was just beginning to touch the glen. For a moment he lay still under the mass of small-leaved branches with which he had covered himself the night before, a little bewildered to find himself no longer on the raft. Then memory returned and with it sensation, spreading through the stiff limbs of his body.

For the first time, he realized that his strength was ebbing. He had had first the envoy and then Binichi to worry about, and so he had been able to keep his mind off his own state.

His stomach was hollow with hunger that the last night’s meager rations he had packed from the raft had done little to assuage. His muscles were cramped from the unusual exercise and he had the sick, dizzy feeling that comes from general overexposure. Also, right now, his throat was dry and aching for water.

He pulled himself up out of the leaves, stumbled to the edge of the pond and fell to hands and knees on its squashy margin. He drank; and as he raised his head and ran a wrist across his lips after quenching his thirst, the head of Binichi parted the surface almost where his lips had been.

“Time to go?” said the Lugh. He turned to one side and heaved himself up out onto the edge of the bank.

“We’ll leave in just a little while,” Chuck said. “I’m not fully awake yet.” He sat back stiffly and exhaustedly on the ground and stretched his arms out to bring some life back into them. He levered himself to his feet and walked up and down, swinging his arms. After a little while his protesting muscles began to warm a little and loosen. He got one of the high-calorie candy bars from his food pack and chewed on it.

“All right,” he said. And the envoy turned to lead the way up, out of the glen.

With the bit of food, the exercise, and the new warmth of the sun, Chuck began to feel better as they proceeded. They were breasting the near slopes of the hills now, and shortly before noon they came over the top of them, and paused to rest.

The land did not drop again, but swelled away in a gently rising plateau, into distance. And on its far horizon, insubstantial as clouds, rose the blue peaks of mountains.

“Base is over those mountains,” said Chuck.

“Will we have to cross them?” The envoy’s translator produced the words evenly, like a casual and unimportant query.

“No.” Chuck turned to the Tomah. “How far in from the coast have we come so far?”

“I would estimate”—the translator hesitated a second over the translation of units—“thirty-two and some fraction of a mile.”

“Another sixty miles, then,” said Chuck, “and we should be within the range of the airfoils they’ll have out looking for us.” He looked again at the mountains and they seemed to waver before his eyes. Reaching up in an automatic gesture to brush the waveriness away, the back of his hand touched his forehead; and, startled, he pressed the hand against it. It was burning hot.

Feverish! thought Chuck And his mind somersaulted at the impossibility of the fact.

He could see the two others looking at him with the completely remote and unempathetic curiosity of peoples who had nothing in common with either his life or his death. A small rat’s-jaw of fear gnawed at him suddenly. It had never occurred to him since the crash that there could be any danger that he would not make it safely back to Base. Now, for the first time, he faced that possibility. If the worst came to the worst, it came home to him suddenly, he could count on no help from either the Tomah, or the Lugh.

“What will they look like, these airfoils?” asked Binichi.

“Like a circle made out of bright material,” said Chuck. “A round platform about twelve feet across.”

“And there will be others of your people in them?”

“On them. No,” said Chuck. “Anyway, I don’t think so. We’re too short of personnel. They operate on remote-beamed power from the ship and flash back pictures of the ground they cover. Once they send back a picture of us, Base’ll know where to find us.”

He levered himself painfully to his feet.

“Let’s travel,” he said.

They started out again. The walking was more level and easy now than it had been coming up through the hills. Plodding along, Chuck’s eyes were suddenly attracted by a peculiarity of Binichi’s back and sides. The Lugh was completely covered by a short close hair, which was snow-white under the belly, but shaded to a gray on the back. It seemed to Chuck, now, however, that this gray back hair had taken on a slight hint of rosiness.

“Hey!” he said, stopping. “You’re getting sunburned.”

The other two halted also; and Binichi looked up at him, inquiringly. Chuck repeated himself in simpler terms that his translator could handle.

“Let’s go on,” said Binichi, taking up the march again.

“Wait!” said Chuck, as he and the envoy moved to follow up the Lugh. “Don’t you know that can be dangerous? Here—” He fumbled out of his own jacket. “We humans get sunburned, too, but we evidently aren’t as susceptible as you. Now, I can tie the arms of this around your neck and you’ll have some protection—”

Binichi halted suddenly and wheeled to face the human.

“You’re intruding,” said Binichi, “on something that is my own concern.”

“But—” Chuck looked helplessly at him. “The sun is quite strong in these latitudes. I don’t think you understand—” He turned to appeal to the Tomah. “Tell him what the sun’s like in a country like this.”

“Surely,” said the envoy, “this has nothing to do with you or me. If his health becomes imperfect, it will be an indication that he isn’t fit to survive. He’s only a Lugh; but certainly he has the right, like all living things, to make such a choice for himself.”

“But he might be mistaken—”

“If he is mistaken, it will be a sign that he is unfit to survive. I don’t agree with Lughs—as you people know. But any creature has the basic right to entertain death if he so wishes. To interfere with him in that would be the highest immorality.”

“But don’t you want to—” began Chuck, incredulously, turning toward the Lugh.

“Let’s go on,” said Binichi, turning away.