Among the basic problems which life on Talwin must solve was: How could hibernators and estivators prevent carnivores active in the opposite part of the year from eating them? Different species solved it in different ways: by camouflage; by shells or spines or poisonous tissues; by tunneling deep, preferably under rock; by seeking areas where glaciers would cover them; by being so prolific that a percentage were bound to escape attention; and on and on. The Domrath, who were large and possessed weapons, lashed out in blind berserkergang if they were roused; winter animals tended to develop an instinct to leave them alone. They remained subject to a few predators, but against these they constructed shelters, or went troglodyte as here.
Shivering with hands in jacket pockets, breath puffing forth to join the mists, Flandry stood by while G’ung shepherded his males into the den. They moved somnambulistically. “I think we can go inside,” murmured the Merseian nearest the Terran. “Best together, ready for trouble. We can’t predict how they’ll react, and when I asked earlier, they told me they never remember this period clearly.”
“Avoid contact,” advised another.
The scientists formed up with a precision learned in their military service. Flandry joined. They hadn’t issued him weapons, though otherwise they had treated him pretty much as an equal; but he could duck inside their square if violence broke loose.
It didn’t. The Domrath seemed wholly unaware of them.
This cave was small. Larger ones contained larger groups, each of which had entered in a body. The floor had been heaped beforehand with leaves, hay, and coarse-woven blankets. The air within was less bleak than outside—according to Wythan Scarcheek’s thermometer. Slowly, grunting, rustling the damp material, the Domrath groped and burrowed into it. They lay close together, the stronger protecting the weaker.
G’ung stayed alone on his feet. Heavily he peered through the gloom; heavily he moved to close a gate installed in the mouth. It was a timber framework covered with hides and secured by a leather loop to a post.
“Ngugakathch,” he mumbled like one who talks in his sleep. “Shoa t’kuhkeh.” No translation came from the computer. It didn’t have those words. A magical formula, a prayer, a wish, a noise? How many years before the meaning was revealed?
“Best get out,” a Merseian, shadowy in mist and murk, whispered.
“No, we can undo the catch after they’re unconscious,” the leader said as softly. “And reclose it from the outside; the crack’ll be wide enough to reach through. Watch this. Watch well. No one has found anything quite similar.”
A camera lens gleamed.
They would sleep, those bulky friendly creatures—
Flandry reflected—through more than a Terran year of ice age. No, not sleep; hibernate: comatose, barely alive, nursing the body’s fuel as a man in illimitable darkness would nurse the single lamp he had. A sharp stimulus could trigger wakefulness, by some chemical chain the Merseians had not traced; and the murderous rage that followed was a survival mechanism, to dispose of any threat and return to rest before too great a reserve was spent. Even undisturbed, they were not few who would never wake again.
The first who did were the pregnant females. They responded to the weak warmth of early spring, went out into the storms and floods of that season, joined forces and nourished themselves on what food could be gotten, free of competition from their tribesmates. Those were revived by higher temperatures, when the explosion of plant growth was well underway. They came forth gaunt and irritable, and did little but eat till they were fleshed out.
Then—at least in this part of the continent—tribes customarily met with tribes at appointed places. Fast-breaking Festival was held, a religious ceremony which also reinforced interpersonal relationships and gave opportunity for new ones.
Afterward the groups dispersed. Coastal dwellers sought the shorelands where rising sea level and melting ice created teeming marshes. Inlanders foraged and hunted in the jungles, whose day-by-day waxing could almost be seen. The infants were born.
Full summer brought the ripeness of wair roots and other vegetables, the fat maturity of land and water animals. And its heat called up the full strength and ingenuity of the Domrath. That was needful to them; now they must gather for fall. Females, held closer to home by their young than the males, became the primary transmitters of what culture there was.
Autumn: retirement toward the hibernation dens; rest, merrymaking, gorging, breeding.
Winter and the long sleep.
G’ung fumbled with the gate. Leaned against the wall nearby was a stone-headed spear.
How long have they lived this way, locked into this cycle? Flandry mused. Will they ever break free of it? And if they do, what next? It’s amazing how far they’ve come under these handicaps. Strike off the manacles of Talwin’s year…somehow…and, hm, it could turn out that the new dominators of this part of the galaxy will look a bit like old god Ganesh.
His communicator, and the Merseians’, said with Cnif hu Vanden’s voice: “Dominic Flandry.”
“Quiet!” breathed the leader.
“Uh, I’ll go outside,” the man proposed. He slipped by the creakily closing gate and stood alone on the ledge. Fog eddied and dripped. Darkness was moving in. The cold deepened.
“Switch over to local band, Cnif,” he said, and did himself. His free hand clenched till the nails bit. “What is this?”
“A call for you from base.” The xenophysiologist, who had been assigned to watch the bus while the rest accompanied the last Domrath, sounded puzzled. “From your female. I explained you were out and could call her back later, but she insisted the matter is urgent.”
“What—?”
“You don’t understand? I certainly don’t. She lets weeks go by with never a word to you, and suddenly calls—speaking fair Eriau, too—and can’t wait. That’s what comes of your human sex-equality nonsense. Not that the sex of a non-Merseian concerns us…Well, I said I’d try to switch you in. Shall I?”
“Yes, of course,” Flandry said. “Thank you.” He appreciated Cnif s thoughtfulness. They’d gotten moderately close on this often rugged trip, helping each other—on this often monotonous trip, when days of waiting for something noteworthy were beguiled by swapping yarns. You could do worse than pass your life among friends like Cnif and Djana—
A click, a faint crackling, and her utterance, unnaturally leveclass="underline" “Nicky?”
“Here, wishing I were there,” he acknowledged, trying for lightness. But the volcano growled in stone and air.
“Don’t show surprise,” said the quick Anglic words. “This is terrible news.”
“I’m alone,” he answered. How very alone. Night gnawed at his vision.
“Nicky, darling, I have to say goodbye to you. Forever.”
“What? You mean you—” He heard his speech at once loud and muffled in the clouds, hers tiny and as if infinitely removed.
“No. You. Listen. I may be interrupted any minute.”
Even while she spoke, he wondered what had wrought the change in her. She should have been half incoherent, not giving him the bayonet-bare account she did. “You must have been told, the Merseian ship’s arrived. They’ll take you away for interrogation. You’ll be a vegetable before they kill you. Your party’s due back soon, isn’t it? Escape first. Die decently, Nicky. Die free and yourself.”
It was strange how detached he felt, and stranger still that he noticed it. Perhaps he hadn’t yet realized the import. He had seen beings mortally wounded, gaping at their hurts without immediate comprehension that their lives were running out of them. “How do you know, Djana? How can you be sure?”