Robert Silverberg - At Winter's End

But the hjjk-man was nearly out of sight already, disappearing beyond the crest of the hills to the east.

Thaggoran shrugged. It was folly to think that the hjjk-man would have taken part in any such courteous exchange of knowledge. In the time of the Great World it was said of them, so Thaggoran understood, that they were beings who had not the slightest warmth, who knew nothing of friendship or kindness or love, who had, in fact, no souls. The Long Winter was not likely to have improved them in those regards.

A few days farther westward the tribe camped one afternoon in what appeared to be the bed of a dry lake, scooped low below the valley floor. For everyone, no matter how young, there were tasks to do. Some were sent off to gather twigs and scraps of dried grass for the main fire, some looked for greenery to build the second, smokier fire that they had learned kept the fireburs away, some set about herding the livestock into a close group, some joined Torlyri in chanting the guarding-rites to ward off the menaces of the night.

Hresh and Haniman were given tinder-gathering duties. That offended Hresh, that he should be assigned the same sort of job as fat, useless Haniman. He envied Orbin, who had gone off with the men to round up the livestock. Of course, Orbin was very strong for his age. Still, it was humiliating to be paired with Haniman this way. Hresh wondered if Koshmar really thought so little of him.

“Where shall we look?” Haniman asked.

“You go wherever you want to,” Hresh replied bluntly. “Just so long as it isn’t where I’m going.”

“Aren’t we going to work together?”

“You do your work and I’ll do mine. But you keep out of my way, understand?”

“Hresh—”

“Go on. Move. I don’t want to have to look at you.”

For a moment something almost like a spark of anger showed in Haniman’s little round eyes. Hresh wondered if he was actually going to have to fight him. Haniman was slow and awkward, but he was at least half again heavier than Hresh. All he needs to do is sit on me, Hresh thought. But let him try. Let him try.

Haniman’s moment of anger, if that was what it was, passed. Haniman was no fighter. He gave Hresh a reproachful look and went off by himself, kicking at the ground.

Carrying a little wicker basket, Hresh headed out into the territory just west and a little north of the campsite and began foraging about for anything that looked as though it could be burned. There seemed to be very little. He moved farther outward. It was still a barren zone. He went farther still.

Night was coming on swiftly now, and great jagged streaks of violent color, rich purple and angry throbbing scarlet and a somber heavy yellow, made the western sky beautiful and frightful. Behind him everything had turned black already, a stunning all-engulfing darkness broken only by the dim flickering smoky flare of the campfire.

Hresh went a little farther, creeping carefully around a wide shoulder of rock. He knew that what he was doing was rash. He was getting very far from camp now. Too far, perhaps. He could barely make out the sound of the chanting from here, and when he looked back over his shoulder none of the other tribesfolk were in sight.

But still he roamed on and on through this mysterious chilly domain without walls or corridors, where the dark sky was an astounding open dome that went up beyond all comprehension to the distant stars that hung from heaven’s roof.

He had to see everything. How else would he be able to understand what the world was like?

And seeing everything necessarily meant exposing himself to certain dangers. He was Hresh-full-of-questions, after all, and it was in the nature of Hresh-full-of-questions to seek answers, regardless of the risk. There is great merit, he thought, in having a soul as restless as mine. They didn’t understand that about him, yet, because he was only a boy. But one day they would, he vowed.

It seemed to him that he heard voices in the distance, borne toward him on the wind. Excitement surged in him. What if he were to find the campsite of another tribe just up ahead?

The thought made him giddy. Old Thaggoran claimed that other tribes existed, that there were cocoons just like theirs all over the world; and Thaggoran knew everything, or almost. But nobody, not even Thaggoran, had any real way of knowing whether that was true. Hresh wanted to believe that it was: dozens or even hundreds of little tribes, each in its own cocoon, waiting through generation after generation for the Time of Coming Forth. Yet no evidence for such a thing existed except in the chronicles. Certainly there had never been any contact with another tribe, at least not since the earliest days of the Long Winter. How could there be, when no one ever left his home cocoon?

But now Koshmar’s people were making their way in the open world. There might well be other tribes out here too. To Hresh that was a fantastic notion. He had known only the same band of sixty people all the eight years of his life. Now and then someone new was allowed to be born, at those times when someone old had reached the limit-age and was thrust outside the hatch to die — but otherwise it was just the same people all the time, Koshmar and Torlyri and Harruel and Taniane and Minbain and Orbin and the rest. The idea of stumbling upon a band of completely other people was wondrous.

Hresh tried to imagine what they would look like. Maybe some would have yellow eyes, or green fur. There might be men taller than Harruel. Their chieftain would not be a woman but a young boy. Why not? It was a different tribe, wasn’t it? They would do everything differently. Instead of an old man of the tribe they would have three old women, who kept the chronicles on bright sheets of grassglass and spoke in unison. Hresh laughed. They would have different names from ours, too. They will be called things like Migg-wungus and Kik-kik-kik and Pinnipoppim, he decided, names that no one in Koshmar’s tribe had ever heard. Another tribe! Incredible!

Hresh moved less cautiously now. In his eagerness to find the source of the voices ahead, he broke into a half-trot, jogging through the gathering darkness.

Another tribe, yes! The voices grew more distinct.

He pictured them sitting around a smoldering campfire just beyond the next clump of rocks. He saw himself stepping boldly into their midst. “I am Hresh of Koshmar’s cocoon,” he would say, “and my people are just over there. We mean to begin the world anew, for this is the great springtime!” And they would embrace him and give him velvetberry wine to drink, and they would say to him, “We too mean to begin the world anew. Take us to your chieftain!” And he would run back to camp, laughing and shouting, crying out that he had found other humans, a whole tribe of them, men and women and boys and girls, with names like Migg-wungus and Kik-kik-kik and—

Suddenly he halted, nostrils flaring, sensing-organ rigid and quivering. Something was wrong.

In the stillness of the night he heard the sounds of the other tribe very clearly, now. Very odd sounds they were, too, a high-pitched chittering sort of squeak mixed with a thick snuffling sort of noise — a peculiar sound, an ugly sound—

Not the sound of some other tribe, no.

Not human sounds at all.

Hresh sent forth his second sight in the way that Thaggoran had taught him to do. For a moment everything was muddled and indistinct, but then he tuned his perceptions more carefully and things came into focus for him. There were a dozen creatures just on the far side of those rocks. Their bodies were about as long as a man’s, but they moved on all fours, and their limbs looked quick and powerfully muscled. Their glaring red eyes were small and bright and fierce, their teeth were long and keen and protruded like daggers from their whiskery snouts, their hides were covered in dense gray fur, and their sensing-organs were held out straight and twitching behind them like long narrow whips, pink and almost hairless.