“I am more practical than that,” said Warren, harshly. “There is the miracle of the fact that the natives of this place are humanoid like ourselves and they don’t need any booster shots. There is a potential miracle in the fact that only the first humans who landed on the planet ever tried to live on Landro without the aid of booster shots.”
“Since you mention it,” said the chaplain, “there is the miracle of the fact that we are here at all.”
Warren blinked at him. “That’s right,” he said. “Tell me, why do you think we’re here? Divine destiny, perhaps. Or the immutable performance of the mysterious forces that move Man along his way.”
“We are here,” said Barnes, “to carry on the survey work that has been continued thus far by parties here before us.”
“And that will be continued,” said Warren, “by the parties that come after us.”
“You forget,” the chaplain said, “that all of us will die. They will be very wary of sending another expedition to replace one that has been wiped out.”
“And you,” said Warren, “forget the miracle.”
The report had been written by the psychologist who had accompanied the third expedition to Landro. Warren had managed, after considerable digging in the file of quadruplicates, to find a copy of it.
“Hog wash,” he said and struck the papers with his fist.
“I could of told you that,” said Bat Ears, “before you ever read it. Ain’t nothing one of them prissy punks can tell an old-timer like me about these abor … abor … abor …”
“Aborigines,” said Warren.
“That’s the word,” said Bat Ears. “That’s the word I wanted.”
“It says here,” declared Warren, “that the natives of Landro have a keen sense of dignity, very delicately tuned—that’s the very words it uses—and an exact code of honor when dealing among themselves.”
Bat Ears snorted and reached for the bottle. He took a drink and sloshed what was left in the bottom discontentedly.
“You sure,” he asked, “that this is all you got?”
“You should know,” snapped Warren.
Bat Ears wagged his head. “Comforting thing,” he said. “Mighty comforting.”
“It says,” went on Warren, “that they also have a system of what amounts to protocol, on a rather primitive basis.”
“I don’t know about this proto-whatever-you-may-call-it,” said Bat Ears, “but that part about the code of honor gets me. Why, them dirty vultures would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. I always keep a shovel handy and when one of them shows up…”
“The report,” said Warren, “goes into that most exhaustively. Explains it.”
“Ain’t no need of explanation,” insisted Bat Ears. “They just want what you got, so they sneak in and take it.”
“Says it’s like stealing from a rich man,” Warren told him. “Like a kid that sees a field with a million melons in it. Kid can’t see anything wrong with taking one melon out of all that million.”
“We ain’t got no million melons,” said Bat Ears.
“It’s just an analogy,” said Warren. “The stuff we have here must look like a million melons to our little friends.”
“Just the same,” protested Bat Ears, “they better keep out of my cook tent …”
“Shut up,” said Warren savagely. “I get you here to talk with you and all you do is drink up my liquor and caterwaul about your cook tent.”
“All right,” said Bat Ears. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“What are we doing about contacting the natives?”
“Can’t contact them,” said Bat Ears, “if we can’t find them. They were around here, thicker than fleas, before we needed them. Now that we need them, can’t find hide nor hair of one.”
“As if they might know that we needed them,” said Warren.
“How would they know?” asked Bat Ears.
“I can’t tell you,” Warren said. “It was just a thought.”
“If you do find them,” asked Bat Ears, “how you going to make them talk?”
“Bribe them,” said Warren. “Buy them. Offer them anything we have.”
Bat Ears shook his head. “It won’t work. Because they know all they got to do is wait. If they just wait long enough, it’s theirs without the asking. I got a better way.”
“Your way won’t work, either.”
“You’re wasting your time, anyhow,” Bat Ears told him. “They ain’t got no cure. It’s just adap … adap …”
“Adaptation.”
“Sure,” said Bat Ears. “That’s the word I meant.”
He took up the bottle, shook it, measured it with his thumb and then, in a sudden gesture, killed it.
He rose quickly to his feet. “I got to sling some grub together,” he said. “You stay here and get her figured out.”
Warren sat quietly in the tent, listening to his footsteps going across the compound of the camp.
There was no hope, of course. He must have known that all along, he told himself, and yet he had postponed the realization of it. Postponed it with talk of miracles and hope that the natives might have the answer—and the native answer, the native cure, he admitted now, was even more fantastic than the hope of a miracle. For how could one expect the little owl-eyed people would know of medicine when they did not know of clothing, when they still carried rudely-chipped stone knives, when their campfire was a thing very laboriously arrived at by the use of stricken flint?
They would die, all twenty-five of them, and in the days to come the little owl-eyed natives would come boldly marching in, no longer skulking, and pick the camp to its last bare bone.
Collins was the first to go. He died hard, as all men die hard when infected by the peculiar virus of Landro. Before he was dead, Peabody had taken to his bed with the dull headache that heralded the onset of the malady. After that the men went down like tenpins. They screamed and moaned in delirium, they lay as dead for days before they finally died, while the fever ate at them like some ravenous animal that had crept in from the moors.
There was little that anyone could do. Make them comfortable, keep them bathed and the bedding washed and changed, feed them broth that Bat Ears made in big kettles on the stove, be sure there was fresh, cold water always available for the fever-anguished throats.
At first the graves were deep and wooden crosses were set up, with the name and other information painted on the cross bar. Then the graves were only shallow holes because there were less hands to dig them and less strength within the hands.
To Warren it was a nightmare of eternity—a ceaseless round of caring for his stricken men, of helping with the graves, of writing in the record book the names of those who died. Sleep came in snatches when he could catch it or when he became so exhausted that he tottered in his tracks and could not keep his eyelids open. Food was something that Bat Ears brought and set in front of him and he gulped without knowing what it was, without tasting what it was.
Time was a forgotten thing and he lost track of days. He asked what day it was and no one knew nor seemed to care. The sun came up and the sun went down and the moors stretched to their gray horizons, with the lonely wind blowing out of them.
Vaguely he became aware of fewer and fewer men who worked beside him, of fewer stricken men upon the cots. And one day he sat down in his tent and looked across at another haggard face and knew it was nearly over.
“It’s a cruel thing, sir,” said the haggard face.
“Yes, Mr. Barnes,” said Warren. “How many are there left?”
“Three,” said the chaplain, “and two of them are nearly gone. Young Falkner seems to be better, though.”
“Any on their feet?”
“Bat Ears, sir. Just you and I and Bat Ears.”