Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

She understood it all right and she flew into a royal rage. She shot out a stream of fluent speech so fast that I couldn’t understand a word of it. I thought rapidly and then brought forth another gem of speech, “Hawaiian pau.” I had to repeat it twice before she understood and then she didn’t get the word Hawaiian, but she understood pau, finished, all right and she presently realized that my first speech was the only bit of her language which I knew. When she understood my predicament, she forgot her anger and laughed. I was glad to see her cheerful again, but I was still worried about whether those blacks would return.

For lack of language I was forced to fall back on pantomime in order to make myself understood. She readily understood me and looked worried for a moment until her eye fell on my rifle. She touched it questioningly and then spurned the body of the nearest black with her foot and laughed.

Evidently she thought that my weapon made me invincible, but I knew better. I had only two more clips of pistol cartridges and eighty-five rounds for my rifle, not enough to repel a real attack. I tapped my rifle, shook my head sadly and said “pau.”

The worried look again came into her face and she started talking very slowly and distinctly, repeating the word “Ulm” several times. Gradually my Hawaiian was coming back and while her speech was not the language I had learned in my youth, for she made use of the consonants “s” and “t,” both of which are unknown in Hawaiian, presently I made out her meaning. She was asking me to go with her to Ulm. I had no idea of where Ulm was but I had given up hopes of finding my adjuster and besides, since I had met this girl, I wasn’t so very anxious to find it at once. It seemed to me that it might be a good idea to go to Ulm for a while, and then make a fresh start for the glade with a competent guide. I therefore gave her to understand that her program suited me. She nodded brightly and stepped in front of me and set off toward the northeast.

For perhaps three hours we made our way through the jungle, keeping a pretty straight line as I could tell by my compass. I found later that the people of Ulm have an uncanny sense of direction and can find their way from place to place in their miniature world without the aid of any other guide. The girl kept up a steady talk in her language and as I recalled more of my early Hawaiian, I found that I could understand the sense of most of what she said if she talked very slowly and I was even able to answer her after a fashion.

“What is your name?” I asked her.

“Awlo Sibi Tam,” she replied, raising her head proudly as she did so.

“My name is Courtney,” I told her.

She tried to repeat it, but she had a little trouble with the “r” sound which was evidently strange to her. She repeated it several times as we went along and at last managed to get a very fair rendition. Anyhow, I thought that I had never heard it pronounced so beautifully before.

Suddenly Awlo paused in her talk and listened intently. She turned a terror-stricken face toward me and said, “They are coming.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The Mena,” she replied.

I listened but I could hear nothing.

“Are there many of them?” I asked.

“Many,” she replied, “hundred, I believe. They are following our trail. Can’t you hear them?”

I laid my ear close to the ground and could detect a faint murmur but I would never have recognized what it was.

“What shall we do?” I asked. “This,” I held up my rifle, “will kill about a hundred but no more.”

“Run,” she said, “run as fast as we can. It will be of little use, because the Mena can catch us. You are slow and I am tired, but if we are lucky, we may win to the plains of Ulm and there we are safe.”

Her advice sounded good and I started after her as swiftly as I could. I am a fair average runner, but I could not keep up with Awlo, who fled over the ground like an antelope. I was handicapped by the weight of my rifle but I hung to it like grim death. It was not long before I could plainly hear the shouts of the pursuing Mena.

“Have we far to go?” I gasped.

“No,” she replied over her shoulder. “Hurry!”

I panted along in her wake. The jungle thinned before us and we debouched onto a huge open plain. Awlo stopped and uttered a cry of dismay.

“What is it?” I demanded.

She did not answer but pointed ahead. Our way was barred by a wide, gently flowing river. Over it had been thrown a bridge but a glance showed me that the center span had been removed and a gap twenty feet wide yawned in the middle of the structure.

“Can you swim?” I asked.

She looked at me interrogatively. Evidently the word was a new one.

“Swim, run through the water,” I explained.

An expression of absolute terror passed over her face.

“It is tabu,” she replied. “It is death to enter.”

“It is death to stay on this side,” I told her.

“It is better to die at the hands of the Mena than at the hands of the Gods,” she answered.

She meant it too. She would rather face certain death at the hands of those hideous savages than to enter the stream. There was only one thing to do and that was to look for a place where I could sell my life dearly. With this in mind, I started along the river bank looking for a depression which would shelter us from the spears of the Mena. We made our way through a clump of trees in front of us and it was my turn to cry out, only the cry was one of joy and not of apprehension. There, between the trees and the river bank, stood a familiar looking object—an Electronic Vibration Adjuster.

“We are saved, Awlo,” I cried joyously as I raced for the machine. A glance showed me that it was my first model which I had sent, as I thought, to infinite smallness nearly a year before. I was puzzled for a moment at the fact that it had not shrunk to nothing, but I had no time for philosophical reasoning. The shouts of the Mena were already perilously close.

“Run off a few yards, Awlo,” I commanded, “and don’t be frightened. I can save you easily.”

She obeyed me and I entered the adjuster. A momentary fear came over me that the batteries might be exhausted but I seized the switch and threw it on in the direction of increasing size. The landscape began to diminish its size, although as before, I could feel nothing. I kept my eye on the river until it had shrunk to a point where I knew that I could easily leap it and then I opened my switch and stepped out.

For a moment I could not see Awlo, but I detected her lying face downward on the ground. I bent over her and then I saw something else. The Mena, hundreds of them, had emerged from the jungle and were coming along our trail. I hesitated no longer. As gently as I could, I picked up Awlo and leaped over the river with her. I waited to see whether the Mena were going to make any attempt to follow, but they had evidently caught a glimpse of my gargantuan proportions and they were in full retreat. I found out later that the river was as much taboo to them as it was to Awlo and they would under no circumstances have crossed the stream except by means of a bridge or in boats.

I raised Awlo to the level of my eyes to talk to her but she had fainted. I leaped back to the other side of the river, reentered my adjuster and closed the reducing switch. Since I had the machine under control, I determined not to stop it until I found what had made it cease functioning when it did. My size rapidly grew smaller until I was correctly scaled to my surroundings and then the machine abruptly ceased working. I could not make it reduce either itself or me any further. The only explanation which has ever occurred to me is that the land of Ulm must be at the limit of smallness, that is, the period of vibration of the atoms and their component parts must be at the lower limit of motion and any further reduction would result in contact and consequent nothingness.