Eric Russel - Dear Devil

The walker paused, turned, eyed him, eyed Fander, and said, “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll get it yourself—and a heck of a lot of use you’ll be dead and stinking.”

“What, and me immune?” cracked Graypate grinning.

“The Devil will get it,” hedged the other.

Graypate was about to retort, “What do you care?” but altered it slightly in response to Pander’s contacting thoughts. He said, more softly, “Do you care ?”

It caught the other off-balance. He fumbled embarrassedly within his own mind, avoided looking at the Martian, said lamely, “I don’t see reason for any guy to take risks.”

“He’s taking them, because he cares,” Graypate gave back. “And I’m taking them because I’m too old and useless to give a darn.”

With that, he stepped down, marched stubbornly toward the isolated section, Fander slithering by his side, tentacle in hand. The one who wished to flee stayed put, staring after them. The crowd shuffled uneasily, seemed in two minds whether to accept the situation and stick around, or whether to rush Graypate and Fander and drag them away. Speedy and Blacky made to follow the pair but were ordered off.

No adult sickened; nobody died. Children in the affected sector went one after another through the same routine of feverishness, high temperature, and spots, until the epidemic of measles had died out; Not until a month after the last case had been cured by something within its own constitution did Graypate and Fander emerge.

The innocuous course and eventual disappearance of this suspected plague gave the pendulum of confidence a push, swinging it farther. Morale boosted itself almost to the verge of arrogance. More sleds appeared, more mechanics serviced them, more pilots rode them. More people flowed in; more oddments of past knowledge came with them.

Humanity was off to a flying start with the salvaged seeds of past wisdom and the urge to do. The tormented ones of Earth were not primitive savages, but surviving organisms of a greatness nine-tenths destroyed but still remembered, each contributing his mite of know-how to restore at least some of those things which had been boiled away in atomic fires.

When, in the twentieth year, Redhead duplicated the premasticator, there were eight thousand stone houses stand-big around the hill. A community hall seventy times the size of a house, with a great green dome of copper, reared itself upon the eastward fringe. A dam held the lake to the north. A hospital was going up in the west. The nuances and energies and talents of fifty races had built this town and were still building it. Among them were ten Polynesians and four Icelanders and one lean, dusky child who was the last of the Seminoles.

Farms spread wide. One thousand heads of Indian corn rescued from a sheltered valley in the Andes had grown to ten thousand acres. Water buffaloes and goats had been brought from afar to serve in lieu of the horses and sheep that would never be seen again—and no man knew why one species survived while another did not. The horses had died; the water buffalos lived. The canines hunted in ferocious packs; the felines had departed from existence. The small herbs, some tubers, and a few seedy things could be rescued and cultivated for hungry bellies; but there were no flowers for the hungry mind. Humanity carried on, making do with what was available. No more than that could be done.

Pander was a back-number. He had nothing left for which to live but his songs and the affection of the others. In everything but his harp and his songs the Terrans were way ahead of him. He could do no more than give of his own affection in return for theirs and wait with the patience of one whose work is done.

At the end of that year they buried Graypate. He died in his sleep, passing with the undramatic casualness of one who ain’t much use at speechifying. They put him to rest on a knoll behind the community hall, and Pander played his mourning song, and Precious Jewel, who was Speedy’s wife, planted the grave with sweet herbs.

In the spring of the following year Pander summoned Speedy and Blacky and Redhead. He was coiled on a couch, blue and shivering. They held hands so that his touch would speak to them simultaneously.

“I am about to undergo my amafa .”

He had great difficulty in putting it over in understandable thought-forms, for this was something beyond their Earthly experience.

“It is an unavoidable change of age during which my kind must sleep undisturbed.” They reacted as if the casual reference to his kind was a strange and startling revelation, a new aspect previously unthought-of. He continued, “I must be left alone until this hibernation has run its natural course.”

“For how long, Devil?” asked Speedy, with anxiety.

“It may stretch from four of your months to a full year, or—”

“Or what?” Speedy did not wait for a reassuring reply. His agile mind was swift to sense the spice of danger lying far back in the Martian’s thoughts. “Or it may never end?”

“It may never,” admitted Pander, reluctantly. He shivered again, drew his tentacles around himself. The brilliance of his blueness was fading visibly. “The possibility is small, but it is there.”

Speedy’s eyes widened and his breath was taken in a short gasp. His mind was striving to readjust itself and accept the appalling idea that Pander might not be a fixture, permanent, established for all time. Blacky and Redhead were equally aghast.

“We Martians do not last forever,” Pander pointed out, gently. “All are mortal, here and there. He who survives his amafa has many happy years to follow, but some do not survive. It is a trial that must be faced as everything from beginning to end must be faced.”

“But—”

“Our numbers are not large,” Pander went on. “We breed slowly and some of us die halfway through the normal span. By cosmic standards we are a weak and foolish people much in need of the support of the clever and the strong. You are clever and strong. Whenever my people visit you again, or any other still stranger people come, always remember that you are clever and strong.”

“We are strong,” echoed Speedy, dreamily. His gaze swung around to take in the thousands of roofs, the copper dome, the thing of beauty on the hill. “We are strong.”

A prolonged shudder went through the ropy, bee-eyed creature on the couch.

“I do not wish to be left here, an idle sleeper in the midst of life, posing like a bad example to the young. I would rather rest within the little cave where first we made friends and grew to know and understand each other. Wall it up and fix a door for me. Forbid anyone to touch me or let the light of day fall upon me until such time as I emerge of my own accord.” Pander stirred sluggishly, his limbs uncoiling with noticeable lack of sinuousness. “I regret I must ask you to carry me there. Please forgive me; I have left it a little late and cannot… cannot… make it by myself.”

Their faces were pictures of alarm, their minds bells of sorrow. Running for poles, they made a stretcher, edged him onto it, bore him to the cave. A long procession was following by the time they reached it. As they settled him comfortably and began to wall up the entrance, the crowd watched in the same solemn silence with which they had looked upon his verse.

He was already a tightly rolled ball of dull blueness, with filmed eyes, when they fitted the door and closed it, leaving him to darkness and slumber. Next day a tiny, brown-skinned man with eight children, all hugging dolls, came to the door. While the youngsters stared huge-eyed at the door, he fixed upon it a two-word name in metal letters, taking great pains over his self-imposed task and making a neat job of it.