Krayhayft was smiling. His hands made a wiping motion. "That won't serve. You can't go back to them, Gording. What would they think when your hair changed color?"
Cording laughed. "It was worth trying."
Corbell said, "Shit!"
"No, no, Corbell, you did a fine job of acting. It was the set of your muscles that betrayed you everywhere. I couldn't know why you wanted me to attack you, and I had to find out."
"I'm sorry. I couldn't think of any other way. I still don't know..."
Krayhayft said, "We'll know soon enough. The logic holds. A cat-tail bit you some days before we found you. We saw the mark. Our tradition is that the dikta may not enjoy the company of cat-tails. We know that long ago it was possible to change the nature of a living thing, and we know that it was done to cat-tails. Why should they not make dikta immortality as Boys make spit? But we'll watch you as we go, Gording, to see if you grow young.
"And as we go, Corbell, we will think of some useful punishment for your deception. Already I have an idea.
"And we go now."
IV
By dead of night the tribe moved along the shore. They carried neither food nor water. Jupiter showed a bright gibbous disk above the dark sea. The mystery planet showed too, near Jupiter. Corbell picked out other moons, and a moon shadow on Jupiter's banded face.
One of the children had gone to sleep and was being carried. The others asked a thousand questions of laughing Boys. Corbell listened to the answers. Details of the march ahead... other bands of Boys wondrous machines... the gathering in Sarash-Zillish, nothing he hadn't heard or guessed.
He waited his chance to talk to Gording alone. It never came. Gording marched at the head of the line, under escort. When Corbell tried to catch up he was barred with spear butts.
By morning they were thirsty.
By noon they were very thirsty, and loud were the complaints of the boy-children. Gording was showing the strain of unaccustomed hiking, but he showed it silently, in the slight weave to his walk and the occasional stumble.
In the afternoon they reached a river. The splashing was loud as Boys and boys drank and then swam. Here they camped. Corbell and others caught fish with makeshift hooks and lines of thread that might have come from Dikta City. Corbell was not allowed to clean his fish; he was not allowed a knife.
And this was the thread that would make wonderful strangler's cord, if it didn't cut the strangler's fingers. As he considered his fishline he caught Krayhayft grinning at him. Krayhayft held out his hand. Corbell put the fishline in it.
The river had cut a deep gorge into the former sea bottom, leaving high, sheer cliffs of layered sandstone. All day they followed the twisting, beautifully colored walls. At sunset, where the cliffs constricted and took a sharp turn, they came on a hidden village. The village occupied both sides of the river, joined by a wide bridge. Beyond the village the desolation continued to the horizon.
The villagers made them welcome and fed them. Corbell entertained with a medley of advertising jingles. Afterward Krayhayft began a tale while Corbell made himself comfortable against a convenient boulder.
It seemed to him that the village was a well-placed trap.
If dikta followed a band of Boys from Dikta City, they would have to go around the village, climbing cliffs to do it and leaving traces of themselves, and into more desolation. Unless they wanted to risk raiding the village.
There was a "phone booth" at one end of the bridge. The bridge was a wide arch of prestressed concrete or something better, its lines singularly beautiful. It was the only sign of advanced technology among basic and primitive structures.
There had been bread and corn with tonight's fish. There must be a working "phone booth" here to bring them. But was that a working booth? It was too blatant. It might be a trap.
A voice behind Corbel's ear whispered, "We will not let you use the prilatsil."
Corbell turned to stare rudely at the intruder. He had not been watching the booth.
The Boy was of the village: a pink-eyed, golden-haired albino with a narrow ferret face. He almost lost his footing as he squatted next to Corbell. His loincloth was animal skin.
He was young, then. Corbell had learned to tell. The older Boys were never awkward, and they did not brag of their kills by wearing the skins. He grinned and said, "Try it if you like. We would bruise you."
"I think they'll bruise me anyway," Corbell said. He'd been wondering about Krayhayft's "punishment." Damn Krayhayft. Corbell would be a bag of nerve ends before the blade fell.
"Yes. You lied," said the golden Boy. "I am to be there when punishment comes."
"Sadist," Corbell said in English.
"I can guess the meaning. No. We do not make pain for pleasure, only for instruction. Your pain will be instructive to you and to us." The Boy chuckled gloatingly, making a liar of himself, and got up.
Now, what was that all about? Corbell expected to die as soon as Gording began to grow young. He knew too much. Or would they only wipe his memory? He shivered. It would still be death, though it would let them use the ancient felon's genes.
They left carrying provisions. One of the boy-children stayed behind. Half a dozen villagers came with them, including the young albino.
The continental shelf had been wider in this area. It was still barren. The day was nearly over before they reached, first fruit trees, then cornfields. They camped in the corn.
They passed a larger tribe on the third day. For a time Krayhayft's tribe mingled with Tsilliwheep's tribe, exchanging news. Tsilliwheep was a strange one: large, pudgy, sullen-faced, a classic schoolyard bully with pure white hair. He issued no orders and he mingled with nobody. When his tribe veered away it took two of Krayhayft's tribe and two boy-children.
They passed single human beings at a distance. "Loners," Skatholtz told Corbell. "They tire of others around them. For a time they go alone. Krayhayft has done it six times."
"Why?"
"Maybe to know if they still love themselves. Maybe to know that they can live without help. Maybe they want to give up talking. Tsilliwheep will be a loner soon, I think. He had the look. Corbell, it is very bad manners to speak to a loner, or interfere with him, or offer him help."
Through waist-high corn they marched. In early afternoon a herd of dwarf buffalo passed, tens of thousands of them, blackening the land and raising continuous rolling thunder. The trampled path was a quarter hour's march across: corn churned into the dirt along with the corpses of aged buffalo unable to keep up. For the first time Corbell saw vultures. Vultures had survived unchanged.
Skatholtz bent their path to take them through a ruined city. An earthquake, or Girl weaponry, had shattered most of the buildings, and time had weathered all the sharp edges. Corbell saw sandblasted public prilatsil; he ignored them. He'd seen no evidence that power was still coming to this ruin.
Boys had made a semi-permanent camp at the far edge of the ruined city. Krayhayft's tribe joined them, and contributed ears of corn to their dinner. Corbell saw what they were using for cooking.
What the locals had mounted on rocks above their fireplace was a piece of clear glass seven feet across, curved like an enormous wok: a good enough frying pan except for the dangerous jagged edges. It had to be a piece of a bubble-car.
On the fourth day they passed two tribes, and joined with them for a time, and left them behind. With the second of these groups went the last two boy-children. Corbell couldn't help wondering if that related to his situation. There are things you don't do in front of children.