When Walter found her, curled up and cold in the nest by the canal, he knelt down beside her and cried. Val sneered at the scattered loose leaves that covered her face.
“Looks like the kid tried to bury her after she died.”
Raising his bow, Val glanced around—searching. His Nebish eyes couldn’t see the orphan—a shaggy head among the smooth shapes of Sirenia and cetaceans splashing along the opposite bank of the canal. The herd of water mammals passed. One pair of eyes studied the hunters with a mixture of childish fear and hate. Val saw, but didn’t see. The concept of a swimming infant was alien to the four-toed mind. All he saw were the death traps of Outside—harsh sun, dense undergrowth and deep waters.
“She was like a flower,” sniffed melancholy Walter. “A beautiful blossom—dying to give birth. Only the husk remains.”
“Well she died for nothing!” snarled Val. “How could she expect her son to survive Outside when she can’t?”
“He has the good gene,” mumbled Walter reverently.
“And Olga to protect him—I suppose,” scoffed Val.
“As a matter of fact—yes,” said a third voice. The new metallic sound came over their helmet coms. It sounded close. “Olga will protect her children,” it said.
Old Walter glanced up hopefully. “Olga?” he said. The voice had the same eerie loose-foil sibilance he had heard at 50:00. Dyspnea pressed on his oxygen dissociation curve. Pulse raced.
Val tightened his grip on his bow and fumbled for an arrow. Stumbling in his thick suit, he spun around searching the skies. Doberman’s bronze hull approached over the tree-tops.
The craft landed and opened its hatch. Gitar floated out on his peanut magnet’s sandwich field. Val nocked an arrow.
“Planning on shooting me?” asked Gitar, pushing the arrow aside with his tractor beam.
Val lowered his bow sullenly.
Gitar hovered over the nest with Dee Pen’s body. His voice lost its metallic quality—sounded almost human—as it came over their communicators.
“I am sorry I was not here to care for her when she came Outside. Do you know where the child is?” said Gitar.
“Why are you concerned?” asked Walter weakly.
“He is the next generation. He has the good gene.”
“Bad gene,” interrupted Val.
Gitar turned toward the truculent young man.
“You are still thinking as an agent of the hive. Of course the gene is bad in your eyes. I am not interested in hive creatures. I’ve come to help individuals—five-toed men.”
“Come?” gasped Walter. “From where? From whom?”
“Olga,” said Gitar. “Olga wants to save her five-toed men from the hive. That includes all who carry the gene—”
Walter sat up, animated. “When Olga comes again—can she take us with her?” he gasped and collapsed.
Val knelt down beside his old, fat friend and opened his visor. The cyanotic domino mask had returned. He attempted to lift him, but he was much too heavy.
Gitar called—“Rhea!”
The coweye stepped hesitantly from the Huntercraft and glanced around. Val recoiled. She gently picked up Walter and placed him inside the craft.
“Medikit under the seat,” suggested Gitar.
Val collected his wits and climbed in. Opening the kit, he found vials of vasopressors and steroids. Nudging his friend’s systolic pressure with the molecules, he brought pinkness back to his face—erasing the domino mask.
Gitar took his place in the empty socket that had housed the powercell. Lights came on. The hatch closed. The internal environment cooled. Gitar began to play a light musical tune. He asked Val if he had ever been this close to a coweye before.
“I’m not even going to talk about it,” said Val stiffly. “The only reason I’m staying here is Walter. He needs help.”
“Relax,” said Gitar. “This is a truce until his strength returns. Rhea, fix Walter a bowl of tea.”
Val watched the coweye rummage around in the back of the craft where her belongings were stored—bowls, baskets, Neolithic weapons and tools—and a large bundle of poles and hides that probably represented her shelter.
Val moved to block the proffered brew.
“I’ll drink it—whatever it is,” gasped Walter. “If the guitar can make a dead buckeye walk, maybe he can help me get back on my feet.”
Walter drank and felt refreshed.
“Actually I did not make the dead man walk,” explained Gitar. “I was just holding him up with my tractor beam.” He pressed on each of them with the beam to demonstrate. It felt like a cold, hard hand.
“Why?” asked Walter, sitting up straighter. “Was it some sort of a warrior funeral rite?”
“Not really,” said Gitar. “I needed another five-toed for stud. I used the body of the buckeye to lure one Outside.”
“Didn’t work too well,” chuckled Val. “You got me. I’m a four-toed hunter.”
Gitar didn’t answer immediately. He played a tune with a strong rolling base while he tried to lock onto Val’s thoracic autonomies. He sang a melancholy ballad of a buckeye and a hunter meeting in the gardens—only one walked away.
The words irritated Val.
“It may sound fine and noble, but many of those hunters were eaten. Nothing noble about men going out to protect their crops and getting eaten themselves.”
“Strong eating the strong. It is necessary when all the good protein is concentrated in one species,” said Gitar.
Val stood up to leave.
“This is stupid—‘If you can’t mate them; eat them.’ What kind of reasoning is that? I want no part of it.”
“Wait,” said Walter.
Val spun around and pointed to the coweye sitting cross-legged in the corner.
“Next you are going to try to mate me to—that!”
“You have already,” said Gitar.
Val paused, open-mouthed.
The coweye turned her back and lifted her flowing mane. A puckered white asterisk marked her left scapular area—the old scar of Val’s arrow. Then she leaned over a small basket and lifted out a sleeping jungle bunny. The infant was about a year old, and had Val’s thin face and delicate features. It also had its mother’s broad palms and five-toed feet.
“We call her little Rea. She’s a girl,” said Gitar.
Val sat down next to Walter.
“Bred true,” said Gitar, launching into a joyous paean.
“I carry the gene?” mumbled Val.
“Look at your finger tips—the simple patterns—just an arch or a simple whorl. Wide ridge width. Few triradii. The four-toed fingerprint is full of double whorls and multiple triradii,” said Gitar.
Val couldn’t focus.
“It figures,” said old Walter. “The hive has been sending its best men Outside to fight for generations—getting rid of the troublemakers, the gamma A, the independant nonconformists.”
Val moaned. “I’ve been hunting my own kind.”
“The five-toed gene has always been its own worst enemy,” said Walter.
Gitar’s music grabbed Val’s autonomies and shook them—singing of freedom—strength—and the future when Olga would return. All of Val’s hive training fell away when the infant woke up and smiled at him. He picked up the infant, awkwardly at first—then gained confidence. This was his child—a natural child… a hybrid.
Gitar seemed proud of his breeding efforts.
“Where will we live?” asked Val.
“Outside. There is no room for you in the hive,” said Gitar. “Olga sent me to breed a new population of the five-toeds. I’ll try to concentrate them on the surface—keep the genes pure. My guitar identity will enable me to smuggle my thoracic autonomic resonator into shaft caps. I can call out those with high autonomic tone—some will have the gene and survive. I estimate that the incidence of the gene is one per billion now. It was less than one part per million prior to Olga’s last return. But she carried off the cream of the crop.”