Orbit 2

The sun was low when they reached the height of land above the valley. “Kruger Valley,” Kinross called it, since the girl demanded a name. The stupendous wooded slope rising on three sides from the cave mouth was touched with a glory by the declining sun and her pose of matter-of-fact assurance broke once more.

“Nothing like that in the Coast Ranges,” she whispered. “I just know it.”

When they started down the slope west of the forested area, Kinross was impressed too. Trees stood out in clear view, unique, individual. The coarse grass was plain to see, as well as clumps of flowers in bright colors. Small, brightly varicolored birds flitted ahead of them and Kinross knew that he was really seeing them. The flat sameness of color and the smooth regularity of form were gone from the land. Kinross with rising excitement pointed out to Garcia rock outcrops, gullies and patches of erosion-bared earth.

“Something’s happened, Garcia,” he said. “Here, inside the re-entry barrier, the land sticks backward into time now.”

“Looks sure enough real,” the Mexican agreed. “Wonder if we could light a fire tonight?”

“Yes, and chop trees,” Kinross almost shouted. “Mary will need a shelter.”

“Of course a fire,” the woman said. “We shall want to roast things, I suppose.”

“Maybe knock down some birds,” Garcia said. “I’m hungry for meat.”

“No!” the girl cried in outrage. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Not these pretty little ones,” Garcia hastily assured her. “What do you call them, anyway?”

“They’re pittas,” she said. “Noisy little paint pots, aren’t they? They say ‘walk-to-woRK, walk-to-woRK.’ ”

“That’s what we’re doing, I guess,” Garcia chuckled.

They picked their way down the fairly steep hillside, Kinross preparing the girl for what she would find down by the stream, when she interrupted him.

“Who are they?” she asked, pointing to the left.

Kinross and Garcia could see nothing. “What is it you see?” Kinross asked.

“A whole band of blacks, myalls,” she whispered, obviously disturbed. “On their knees, in the bush.”

“Now I partly see them,” the Mexican said. “It’s worse than the birds were this morning.”

“I can’t see a thing,” Kinross complained. “Only trees and shrubs.”

“Look slantwise,” Garcia urged. “Let your eyes go slack. Every kid knows how to do that.”

Kinross tried to unfocus his gaze and suddenly he saw them, dozens of them. Dwarfs, black with red eyes. Naked and grotesquely formed, huge hands and feet, knobbed joints, slubber lips, limbs knotted with muscles. They were looking back at him, but without apparent interest. Alarm bit into him.

“My God!” he breathed.

“They’re a pack of devils,” Garcia muttered. “Kinross, what in hell are they?”

“They’re blacks,” the girl said. “Back in the earlies they used to spear white men sometimes in the Coast Ranges, but they’re tame enough now. We must just walk by and pretend not to see them. They’re supposed to be in the spirit world.”

“They’re dwarfs, pygmies,” Kinross objected. “Do you have pygmies in Queensland?”

“They’re on their knees,” she answered sharply, “hiding from us in one of their spirit places. Come along! Walk by and pretend not to see them.”

“Let’s try,” Kinross assented.

They walked on without incident until they reached the valley floor. As they walked along the level Garcia began looking sharply to left and right.

“Kinross, something’s dogging us, slipping through the brush after us on both sides,” he said.

“Those black things?” Kinross asked, stomach muscles knotting.

“No, can’t see well, but they’re taller and graylike.” “I can see them,” the girl said. “They’re gins, Binghi women of that mob we passed. They look like ghosts when they smear themselves with wood ashes.”

“What are they after?” Kinross asked, half seeing the elusive shapes in the corner of his eye.

“They want to trail us to our camp so they can steal and beg,” the girl said. “Mind you send them away straight off when they come in.”

Garcia said, “They got nice shapes, now that I know they’re women. Kinross, can you see them yet?”

“Just partly,” Kinross said.

The flitting shapes left them before they reached the stream. As they stood doubtfully on the bank, distant shouting came from the hillside they had just descended. Kinross saw Kerbeck charging through the scrub, black motes scattering before him.

“God!” he gasped. “Kerbeck’s fighting the black things!”

“Winning, too,” Garcia commented, less perturbed than Kinross. “Look at ’em run.”

“He shouldn’t,” the girl said. “They’ll creep back and spear him tonight. All of us, perhaps.” She shuddered.

Kerbeck came plunging down the hill in great leaps. He crossed the quarter mile of valley floor, in and out of sight, looming up bronzed and gigantic. His floating hair and beard were an aureole in the light of the westering sun. He shouldered Kinross aside and grasped the girl by her upper arms, staring fixedly into her eyes. He was humming and buzzing frantically.

Kinross pulled vainly at one of the great arms, protesting. Then the Swede quieted, releasing the girl, smiling and humming placidly.

“It’s all right,” the girl said. “He wanted to be sure that my eyes had pupils.”

Kinross looked blankly from her blue-violet eyes to the flat blue eyes of the huge Norseman.

“He’s been chasing the devil-devils,” she explained. “He thought I might be one. Their eyes don’t have pupils, just black smudges on white eyeballs.” Kerbeck hummed happily. Kinross shook his head.

“She’s right, Kinross,” Garcia said. “I got part of it. It’s another one of them things, you got to listen sidewayslike.”

“They turn into trees and rocks when he catches them,” the girl added. “He’s been up a gum tree for days about them and he’s glad you two are back.”

“Oh lord!” Kinross groaned. “I feel like a damned infant. So you do agree they’re devils now?”

“No more!” she said sharply. “They’re abos on a spiritland walkabout. The whole push of you are mad as snakes.”

“Let’s make a fire,” Kinross said, turning away.

There was plenty of dried grass and fallen branches, unlike before. Garcia had matches, soon had a fire. Kinross borrowed Kerbeck’s belt knife to trim poles from the branches the giant Swede obligingly pulled off the trees, and work on a small hut went forward rapidly. Garcia cut fronds from a palmettolike tree to weave between the upright poles, and the girl gathered brownish wool from the top of it to make herself a bed. “Burrawang,” she called it. She pronounced the finished effort a passable “humpy.”

Under the darkness they roasted nubbly breadfruit in the coals and peeled bananas. Kerbeck melted into the night. All ate in silence. Finally the girl said, “Where are we? Fair truth, now. Where are we?”

“Like I told you this morning—” Kinross began, but she stopped him.

“I know. I believe it has to seem that way to you. But do you know where I am?”

Both men murmured their question.

“In Alcheringa,” she said. “In the Binghi spirit land. I fell into it somehow, riding through one of the old sacred places. There are picture writings all along the South Herbert. Today, when I saw the abos, I knew.

“Mary, they were dwarfs,” Kinross said. “They were not human.”

“When the abos go back to the spirit land they are not human either,” she said. “And at the same time something more than human. I’ve heard mobs of talk about it. But those gins — they shouldn’t be here. Nor I. It’s frightful bad luck for a woman to enter the spirit land. When I was a little girl I used to think it blanky unfair. .”