They returned to the vessel, noting on the way that it had knocked over the statues of the ancestors and the tables in front of them. The nose of the vessel was almost touching the opposite wall. Sloosh and The
Shemibob were outside now, pushing it away from the wall. Before Deyv got to them, they had turned the vessel around to face the gate. From within the opened door came the baby's crying.
Vana hastened inside to take care of her. Deyv asked, "Why didn't you steer it into the swamp?"
"Because my cabbage-head friend suggested that we could still get the tribes to follow us through the gateway."
"Why is it that when someone thinks of something that another should have thought of, the first person is subjected to insults by the second?" Sloosh asked.
The Shemibob laughed and said, "His idea puts us in more jeopardy. But it might work."
She told Deyv what it was. They got busy then, carrying the wooden statues into the vessel. It was he who suggested that they could strengthen the plan by picking off the eggs from the soul-egg tree. The
Shemibob replied that that would take more time, which they might not have.
Deyv climbed the ladder to the walk behind the wall and looked the situation over. By then most of the people had come out from the swamp and were massed along the bottom of the hill. The six shamans were sitting in a circle, with the Chaufi'ng apparently doing most of the talking. At least, his hands were flying more and faster than the others'.
Many of the people were staggering or lying on their backs. Sloosh had been right when he'd said that they'd drugged themselves to gain courage.
Deyv climbed back down and reported.
"I think we've got enough time."
The Shemibob sent Vana to watch the tribes. Then the three worked swiftly, knocking off the ripe soul eggs with a pole or breaking off the others with clubs. When they had piled all the eggs in a back room on the lowest level, they sat down to rest awhile.
Presently, Vana called out that the warriors were gathering at the foot of the path. Deyv ran to help her observe. He had been with her for only a moment when the men, waving their spears, yelling, hopping, whirling, came slowly up toward them. He helped her get down with the baby, and they sped back to the vessel.
"They're going to attack."
"Are the shamans leading them?" Sloosh said.
"No. They're watching from the bottom."
"I thought not."
They got into the craft. The Shemibob and Sloosh went up into the pilot room. Deyv wanted to go with them, but she said that he might tip the vessel over. As it was, the two controllers had to be very careful about shifting their weight.
"There has to be some way this vessel maintained its stability, but we've not been able to locate the controls. You stay below with Vana."
The vessel moved again across the earth of the enclosure, tipped down, and began bumping along. Deyv hoped that it had enough energy to carry them far past the tradespeople. If the power failed while they were still on the hill or only a little ways past it, they'd be in a bad way again.
They were, he could tell, going down the slope. Then the floor became level, though there was some bobbings, due to their disturbance of the water. A little time passed, far too little, he thought. And there was a cessation of movement.
Sloosh came down first.
"We got about a mile. Get rid of all the eggs now and all the statues later. Except Tsi'kzheep. I'll carry it."
The vessel was floating in water about two feet deep. They threw out the eggs, which sank into the mud.
The vessel was pushed toward a bed of tall reeds, and the statues were removed and hidden within these.
Sloosh pulled the rod, hoping that there was enough energy to collapse the vessel for the final time. This was half-realized.
"Well, at least it'll be easier to conceal," Sloosh said. He picked it up and waded to the muddy shore and disappeared in the jungle. When he came back he said, "Help me wipe out my tracks."
After this was done they headed for the hill of the gateway. Now and then they could hear voices of their pursuers faintly.
"I hope they don't get faint hearts when they get near the gateway," he said. "But they must be very angry because we took their ancestors and their eggs."
The Shemibob said that they could always make more statues and wait until new eggs had grown.
"Let's hope they're so furious and drugged they won't think of that," the plant-man said. "Anyway,
Be'nyar said that her tribe believed that it would be safe and prosperous only as long as Tsi'kzheep was in existence. That suggests that they wouldn't think of replacing it."
Once they were some distance away from the place where they'd dropped the eggs and the statues, they did their best to leave tracks, torn leaves, and broken branches behind them. The baby began crying again. Vana started to hush her up. The Shemibob said that she should be allowed to bawl. The pursuers might hear her and so know that they were on the right trail.
By the time they reached their goal, they were all, except for the baby, very tired. They rested awhile at the bottom. Before they'd gotten their wind back, they heard voices among the trees in the swamp.
"They didn't follow us," Deyv said. "They must've taken a shortcut. They figured that we'd be coming here."
The Archkerri said that that was good. If the tribes had taken the same path, they might have stumbled over the statues. They rose and toiled up the slope to the tree above and by which the swelling dwindling abomination shone. One by one they pulled themselves up on the lift, Keem excepted. Vana held her.
After throwing their weapons through the shimmering, they sat down on the great branch, keeping their faces away from the gateway.
"I hope all this was worth it," Deyv said. "If we go through, and then we find that we're back on Earth again—"
Sloosh said, "I have a theory about that. Not that it will make you feel any easier about our ending up on this world. I think that it's possible that most of the gateways admit to a younger world. Just as heat won't radiate from one body tp a hotter body, so the gateways won't let objects through from one world to an, older world or one just as old. Admittedly, the analogy could be false, I have no evidence to support it. But—"
"How then do you provide for those gateways that only admit objects from one place on this planet to another?" The Shemibob asked.
"Those are local aberrations. By 'aberrations,' I mean that they are anomalies only from our viewpoints.
They're just as natural as anything else. But the sentient tends to think in terms of anything as either malignant or beneficial, that is, how it affects him. The malignant is, therefore, unnatural.
Philosophically, I don't admit such terms. But as a living being who's concerned about survival, though not to the extent of these humans, I sometimes lapse into egoism."
"You still haven't given an explanation of the local routes."
"I'll think of something. Just now I'm too busy with them."
He pointed at the first of the pursuers to emerge from the cover of the trees.
Others followed. When the stragglers caught up, there were an estimated five hundred and twenty gathered at the foot of the hill. These included the young children.
"The mothers wanted to be in at the death so fiercely they even brought along their infants," Sloosh said.
''They are very angry about the sacrilege. Good, I didn't like to think that the babies would be abandoned to starve to death."
"You forget that they would have gone back after them if they decided to go through the gateway," Deyv said.
"I doubt it. By then they would have recovered from the effects of the drug."