Stillman shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am. I knew his parents very well before he was born, and I was present when he arrived.”
“It was a pretty wild idea, anyway,” said Murchison, holding up her hand and clenching it into a fist. “You are looking at a hand clutching at hypothetical straws.
Hewlitt remained silent. He was aware of a strange feeling of temporal double vision. The grass was waist-high as it had been to the four-year-old Hewlitt, the trees and bushes had grown taller and thicker, but so had he, and the smell of sun-warmed vegetation and the droning and ticking sounds of insects were exactly the same. Only the distances between the landmarks had shrunk with age.
“I remember this very well,” he said, and raised his hand to point. “The first bush I played around is there.”
“Can you remember eating anything here?” said Murchison. “A wild berry, perhaps, or did you pull a blade of grass and chew on it? I’m thinking in terms of a possible antidote to the toxic material ingested later.”
“No,” said Hewlitt, and pointed again. “That ruined house was next. But I’m surprised it wasn’t pulled down or rebuilt by now. The whole area is still a wilderness.”
“That is deliberate,” said Stillman. He looked all around him before going on. “This was the place where the battle which finally overthrew their imperial representative was fought, and the area where all the off-wonders are housed. It is intended both as a reminder of the bad old days and the promise of the new. So far it seems to have worked. On public holidays this is a nice, quiet place to picnic, except when the Etlan children find some off-world kids to play with, when the noise can be horrendous.”
The house was little more than a shell with its roof open to the sky and weeds growing in the debris covering the floor. There were scorch marks on one wall, but after the passage of so many years the burnt smell was probably due to memory rather than lingering smoke. A different generation of small animals and insects scampered or crawled through the weeds, and Murchison asked if he remembered being bitten or stung by any of them. He shook his head, but she asked Naydrad to help her gather and trap a few random specimens for later analysis.
“Next,” he said, pointing, “I went to that burned-out fighting vehicle, over there.”
This time it was Fletcher rather than Hewlitt who was doing the exploring. They heard him crawling through the dark interior, muttering not quite under his breath that it was a tighter squeeze for a man than a child, until his head and shoulders reappeared through the entry hatch.
“It is a medium-level-technology mobile gun platform,” he reported, “with control positions for a crew of three. The larger weapon is designed to fire exploding shells; the smaller used beltfed solid projectiles. The ammunition, fuel, and most of the circuit boards have been withdrawn. There is nothing left but a few items of equipment not worth salvaging and a lot of insects. Do you want specimens?”
“Yes, please,” said Murchison. “Different, if possible, to those from the house.”
“To me,” said Fletcher in a disgruntled voice, “one squishy insect looks much like another.”
“If you need information on local insects, ma’am,” said Stillman, that is one of my wife’s subjects. She would be pleased to help. What kind of information are you looking for exactly?”
“We don’t know exactly, Doctor,” Murchison replied. “It is possible that the younger Hewlitt was having too much fun at the time to remember being stung or bitten, and that could have a bearing on what happened to him later.”
“I understand,” said Stillman, “I think.”
They followed him to the vehicle that lay on its side with its stripped tread lying like a metal carpet beside it, and to the other vehicles he had played in, on, and around. The others had stopped speaking, because Hewlitt was talking and remembering every detail as he walked. Finally they came to the tall tree with the twisted branches and green-and-yellow, pear-shaped fruit that overhung the steep slopes of his ravine.
“Those branches only look strong,” said Stillman as Fletcher was about to start climbing. “They won’t bear the weight of an adult.”
“That is not a problem, friend Stillman,” said Pnilicla. The slow beating of its wings increased in frequency and it rose like a stately, iridescent dragonfly to hover above the fruit-bearing branches of the treetop.
“Please be careful, Doctor,” Stillrnan called after it, in a worried voice. “The skin is thin at this time of year and the juice is deadly stuff.”
The Major did not speak again, although it was obvious that he wanted to interrupt several times while Hewlitt was describing how he had picked and eaten the fruit, fallen, and wakened at the bottom of the ravine with the younger Stillman bending over him. While they were climbing down the steep slope to the bottom, he kept his lips pressed so tightly together that they might have been held closed with sutures.
“I feel you wanting to say something, friend Stillman,” said Pnilicla. “What is it?”
The monitor officer looked around the rock- and wreckagestrewn floor of the ravine, then up at the fruit-bearing treetop. Unlike the first time Hewlitt had seen it, the sun was bright and high and showed just how dangerous the place was and how very lucky he had been to survive the fall without serious injury.
Stillman cleared his throat and said, “On Etla that tree belongs to a rare and, in spite of its lethal fruit, protected species. This one is very old and slow-growing and at most is only a few meters taller than when the young Hewlitt fell from it, and this is a deep and dangerous ravine. If he had climbed to the topmost branches, eaten even a single mouthful of that fruit, and then fallen down here, he would have been dead. Twice.
“I have no wish to offend you,” he went on, looking straight at Hewlitt. “My explanation at the time was that you had been overtined, hungry, and thirsty after playing for many hours in the sun. The sight of the fruit at the top made you try to climb the tree, but gave up the attempt and slid down the slope rather than falling to the bottom. The condition of your clothing at the time, plus the fact that there was not a single scratch or a bruise on you, supports this theory. After trying to climb the tree and seeing what you thought was a cluster of edible fruit at the top, you fell asleep so that your memory of the event was a mixture of dreams and reality.
“Sorry,” he ended. “You may not be aware of lying, but neither can you be telling the truth.”
For several minutes the medical team maintained a diplomatic silence while busying themselves with the collection of plant and insect specimens at Murchison’s direction. Hewlitt was well used to the polite disbelief of others, and Stillman was just another doctor who had decided that an overactive imagination was all that ailed him, so his feelings were of irritation and disappointment rather than anger. That was why he was surprised when Pnilicla’s flying showed signs of instability-he knew that it was not his own emotional radiation that was the cause-and less surprised when the empath answered the question before anyone could ask it.
“Friend Fletcher,” it said. “You are radiating high levels of curiosity and excitement. Why?”
The captain was kneeling beside a thick, torpedo-shaped object that was almost hidden by undergrowth and soil washed down from the slopes by rain. Fletcher opened his equipment pack and withdrew what looked like a high-penetration scanner.
“There is evidence of foreign technology here,” he said. “This object is structurally more sophisticated than the other wreckage hereabouts. I’ll be able to tell you more after I’ve had a closer look at the interior.”