They circled into the woods away from the river, coming back. They found no animals, but they each caught several of the little lizards and ate them. When they came back to the driftwood place, Lame One and Other She were back too, and had brought a hatta-zosa they had killed. They all ate, and by this time the sun was making colors in the sky, very pretty. They all watched until the colors were gone, and then went to the sleeping-place they had found. Everybody was happy, and they talked for a long time before going to sleep.
The next morning the sun made red colors all over the sky, even before it came out of its sleeping-place. They were prettier than last sundown-time, but everybody knew that it would rain, and nobody liked rain. They went to where Lame One and Other She had killed the hatta-zosa the day before, and killed three more of them. By the time they had eaten the last one, drops of rain were beginning to fall, and the sun had hidden itself and the sky was gray and black. They ran all the way back to the sleeping-place.
For a long time, they huddled together under the fallen trees; they could not keep completely dry, but they were out of the worst of the rain. Their fur was wet and clung to them, but they were not really cold, and they had eaten plenty of meat, which made them feel good.
Finally, the rain stopped. The things in the woods began to stir again, and after a while there were thin gleams of sunlight. Everybody was glad. They crawled out and talked about what they would do, and decided to go away from the river, toward the high ground, where they had not been before, and see what was there. Because they might find a better sleeping-place, they carried with them the knife and chopper Stonebreaker had made, and the bright-things.
They went to sun-upward, bearing up the slope toward the sun’s left hand. They found many of the pink finger-things growing in shady places, and ate them. Zatku had been eating there, too; they hunted in tight circles, and soon found one, and then another. By this time they were all praising Wise One for bringing them to this good place, even Big She.
“Better than to sun’s right hand,” he told them. “More warm; this is everybody-know thing. We go to top of mountain, down other side. Everything better there.”
Big She tried to argue; this was a good place; why go someplace else? Fruitfinder agreed with her. The others all said, “Wise One know best.”
“How you know, better across mountain?” Big She challenged.
“Because is so. Is everybody-know thing.” He tried to think how he knew, but couldn’t. He knew why he wanted to go toward the sun’s left hand, but he couldn’t explain about finding the Big One Place without starting more quarreling. “Long-ago People tell,” he said. That was something they would not argue about. “Long-ago People hear from other People,” he went on, improvising. “Far-far to sun’s left hand is good place. Always warm. Always find good-to-eat things. Many zatku, many hatta-zosa, all kinds of good-to-eat growing-things. Everything all the time, not something one time, something another time. Groundberries, redberries, treenuts, all good things all the time.”
He didn’t know there was anything like that to the sun’s left hand at all; he was just making talk that it was so. But he was Wise One; the others thought that he knew.
“You listen to Wise One,” Stabber said. “Wise One take us to good place.”
“I not hear talk like that,” Big She objected.
“You not remember,” Stabber jeered. “You not remember hesh-nazza day before.”
“My mother make talk like that.” He wondered if maybe she hadn’t, and wished he could remember more about her. A gotza had killed her when he had been very small. “Old One make talk, say she heard from other People.” He turned to Carries-Bright-Things. “Old One your mother; she tell you.”
Carries-Bright-Things looked puzzled. He knew she couldn’t remember anything like that, but she thought she ought to. Finally, she nodded.
“Yes. Old One tell me,” she said.
“Everybody-know thing,” Lame One said. “All long-ago People tell about good place to sun’s left hand.”
Other She fidgeted. She couldn’t remember anything like that at all, but all the others said they did. Maybe she had forgotten. They started off again, and found another zatku.
But Wise One hadn’t heard any such long-ago People stories. He had just made talk that he had. He couldn’t understand how he had been able to make not-so talk like that.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS ELECTION day at Hoksu-Mitto. Not Fuzzy tribal election; this was for Big Ones, for delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and it had been going on all over the planet, starting hours ago at Kellytown on Epsilon Continent.
Voting was a simple matter. Jack Holloway had exercised his right of suffrage in his own living room after finishing breakfast by screening the Constabulary post two hundred odd miles south of him and transmitting his fingerprints there. Then he loaded his pipe, and before he had it drawing properly the robot at Constabulary Fifteen had sent his prints to Red Hill. The election robot there had transmitted them to the planetary election office in Central Courts Building in Mallorysport on Alpha Continent, then reported back that Jack Holloway, of Hoksu-Mitto, formerly Holloway’s Camp, was a properly registered voter, and the machine gave a small cluck and ejected a photoprinted ballot. He marked the ballot with an X after the name of the Hon. Horace Stannery, an undistinguished and rather less-than-brilliant lawyer in Red Hill but a loyal Company and Government man, and held it up to the transmitting screen.
The whole thing was handled precisely and secretly by incorruptible robots. At least, that was what all the school civics books said. He carried the ballot original over and put it in the drawer of his big table. Hang onto that, he thought; be a museum-piece in half a century. Then he put on the telecast screen while he drank another cup of coffee.
The Gamma Continent vote was all in, what there was of it. Ten seats on the Convention, eight of them Government-CZC regulars. In his own district on Beta, seventy-eight votes, his own included, had given Stannery sixty-two, with the remaining sixteen divided between the two wildcat candidates. It was rather like that all over the continent. Alpha, where a hundred ten out of a hundred fifty seats were being contested, hadn’t begun to vote yet; it was only 0445 there.
He kept a telecast screen on in his office throughout the morning. By noon, nine out of ten of the Rainsford-Grego slate were well in the lead everywhere. The polls had closed on Epsilon Continent: eighteen out of eighteen regulars elected. It went on like that all afternoon, and by cocktail time the election looked safe. They’d really have something to drink a toast to this afternoon.
The Fuzzies didn’t seem to know that anything out of the ordinary was happening.
GERD VAN RIEBEEK was bothered. Not seriously worried, just nagged by a few small uncertainties and doubts. In the last three weeks, the Protection Force patrol, working to a radius of five hundred miles from Hoksu-Mitto, hadn’t reported seeing a single harpy. In that time, there had been two shot in the Fuzzy country south of the Divide, and another one in the Yellowsand Valley to the north. But not one anywhere near Hoksu-Mitto in the last week. It was looking like Zarathustran pseudopterodactyls were becoming about as extinct as the Terran variety.
There hadn’t been many to start with, of course. Their kills would have wiped out everything else long ago if there had been. Say, one harpy to about a hundred or two hundred square miles. And once Homo s. terra moved into the area, those wouldn’t last long. People liked to be able to let the children run around outdoors, for one thing, and nobody wanted all the calves in a veldbeest herd eaten up before they could grow up. The harpy might have been lord of the Zarathustran skies before the Terrans came, but what chance had it against an aircar rated at Mach 3, carrying a couple of machine guns?