Koshmar came over. She had seen the hjjk-man too.
“We’ll need to speak with him. He must know useful things about what lies ahead. Do you think you’ll be able to get him to talk?”
“Do you have any reason to think I won’t?” said Thaggoran gruffly.
Koshmar grinned. “Getting tired, old man?”
“I won’t be the first to drop,” he replied in a surly tone.
They were crossing now a parched terrain: the soil was sandy and its surface crunched underfoot, as though no one had walked here in thousands of years. Sparse tufts of stiff blue-green grass sprouted here and there, tough angular stuff that had a glassy sheen. Yesterday Konya had tried to pull up a clump and it had cut his fingers; he had come away bloody and cursing.
All afternoon long as they descended the last hill in the group they could discern the hjjk-man stolidly advancing in their direction. He reached them just before twilight, when they had arrived at the meadow’s eastern edge. Though they were sixty and he was only one, he halted and waited for them with his middle pair of arms crossed over his thorax, seemingly unafraid.
Thaggoran stared intently. His heart thundered, his throat was parched with excitement. Not even the Going Forth itself had had such an impact on him as the advent of this creature.
Long ago, in the glorious days of the Great World before the coming of the death-stars, these insect-beings had built vast hivelike cities in the lands that were too dry for humans and vegetals or too cold for sapphire-eyes or too moist for mechanicals. If no one else wanted a territory, the hjjk-folk would claim it, and once they did there was no relinquishing it. And yet the chroniclers of the Great World had not considered the hjjk-folk the masters of the earth, for all their sturdiness and adaptability: that was the place held by the sapphire-eyed ones, so it was written. The sapphire-eyes were the kings; after them came all the rest, including the humans, who had been the kings themselves in some even more ancient time. And would be again, now, with the Coming Forth. But the sapphire-eyes, Thaggoran knew, could not have survived the winter, and the humans had gone into hiding. Were the hjjk-folk the masters now by default?
In the failing light the hjjk-man’s body had a dull glimmering sheen, as though he were made of polished stone. He was banded in alternating strips of black and yellow from the top to the bottom of his long body — he was slender and tall, taller even than Harruel — and his hard, angular, sharp-beaked face looked much like the Mask of Lirridon that Koshmar had worn on the day of leaving the cocoon. His eyes, enormous and many-faceted, gleamed like dark shinestones. Just below them dangled the segmented coils of bright orange breathing-tubes at either side of his head.
The hjjk-man regarded them in silence until they drew near. Then he said in a curiously incurious way, “Where are you going? It is foolish of you to be here. You will meet your death out here.”
“No,” Koshmar said. “The winter is over.”
“Be that as it may, you will die.” The hjjk-man’s voice was a dry rasping buzz; but it was not, Thaggoran realized after a moment, a spoken sound. He was speaking within their minds: speaking with second sight, one might say. “Just beyond me in the valley your death is waiting. Go forward and see whether I am lying.”
And without another word he began to move past them, as if he had given the tribe all the time he felt it deserved.
“Wait,” Koshmar said, blocking his way. “Tell us what perils lie ahead, hjjk-man.”
“You will see.”
“Tell us now, or you will travel no farther ill this life.”
Coolly the hjjk-man replied, “The rat-wolves are gathering in this valley. They will have your flesh, for you are flesh-folk, and they are very hungry. Let me pass.”
“Wait a little longer,” said Koshmar. “Tell me this: have you seen other humans in your crossing of the valley? Tribes like ours, emerging from their cocoons now that the springtime has come?”
The hjjk-man made a droning sound that might have been one of impatience. It was the first trace of emotion he had shown. “Why would I see humans?” the insect-creature asked. “This valley is not a place where one finds humans.”
“You saw none at all? Not even a few?”
“You speak words without sense or meaning,” said the hjjk-man. “I have no time to spare for such discourse. I ask you now again to allow me to pass.” Thaggoran picked up an odd scent, suddenly, sweet and sharp. He saw droplets of a brown secretion beginning to appear on the hjjk-man’s striped abdomen.
“We should let him go,” he said softly to Koshmar. “He’ll tell us nothing more. And he could be dangerous.”
Koshmar fingered her spear. Harruel, just to her side, took that as a cue and hefted his own, running his hands up and down its shaft. “I’ll kill him, eh?” Harruel murmured. “I’ll put my spear right through his middle. Shall I, Koshmar?”
“No,” she said. “That would be a mistake.” She walked slowly around the hjjk-man, who appeared unperturbed by this turn of the discussion. “One last time,” Koshmar said. “Tell me: are there no other tribes of humans in this region? It would give us great joy to find them. We have come forth to begin the world anew, and we seek our brothers and sisters.”
“You will begin nothing anew, for the rat-wolves will slay you within an hour,” replied the hjjk-man evenly. “And you are fools. There are no humans, flesh-woman.”
“What you say is absurd. You see humans before you at this very moment.”
“I see fools,” said the hjjk-man. “Now let me go on my way, or you will regret it.”
Harruel brandished his spear. Koshmar shook her head.
“Let him pass,” she said. “Save your energies for the rat-wolves.”
Thaggoran watched in keen sorrow as the hjjk-man stalked away toward the hills out of which they had just emerged. He longed to sit down with the strange creature and speak with him of ancient times. Tell me what you know of the Great World, Thaggoran would have said, and I will tell you all that is known to me! Let us talk of the cities of Thisthissima and Glorm, and of the Crystal Mountain and the Tower of Stars and the Tree of Life, and of all the glories past, of your race and mine and of the sleek sapphire-eyes folk who ruled the world, and of the other peoples also. And then let us speak of the swarms of falling stars whose great tails streamed in fire across the sky, and of the thunder of their impact as they struck the earth, and the clouds of flame and smoke that arose when they hit, and the winds and the black rain, and the chill that came over the land and the sea when the sun was blotted out by dust and soot. We can talk of the death of races, thought Thaggoran — of the death of the Great World itself, whose equal will never be seen again.
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.