Two days had gone by, and nothing had happened to change the situation. He spent two empty days talking to Iano and as many other villagers as he could, and the only knowledge they gained was an insight into the ways of gods, who proved, after all, to be very much like men, on their own grander scale. One or two were plainly saddened by his obvious concern over something they, being unfortunately only men, could not quite grasp. Iano caught something of his mood and was upset by it until his face fell into a puzzled, concerned look that was strange to it. But it only left him and Imbry further apart. There was no bridge between them.
On the third day, the sea was flat and oily, and the air lay dankly still across the village. The tree fronds hung down limply, and the clouds thickened gradually during the night, so mat Imbry woke up to the first sunless day he’d seen. He got up as quietly as he could and left lano’s house, walking slowly across the compound toward the sea. He stood on the beach, looking out across the glassy swells, thinking back to the first hour in which he’d hung above that ocean and slowly come down with the anticipation burning out the disgust in him.
He threw a shell as far out into the water as he could, and watched it skip once, skip twice, teeter in the air, and knife into the water without a splash. Then he turned around and walked slowly back into the village, where one or two women were beginning to light their cook-fires.
He greeted them listlessly, and they answered gravely, their easy smiles dying. He wandered over towards Tylus’s house. And heard Pia crying.
“Hello!”
Tylus came out of the house, and for the first time Imbry saw him looking strained, his lips white at the corners. “Hello, Imbry,” he said in a tired voice.
“What’s wrong, Tylus?”
Tylus shrugged. “The baby’s going to die.”
Imbry stared up at him. “Why?”
“He cut his foot yesterday morning. I put a poultice on it. It didn’t help. His foot’s red today, and it hurts him to touch it. It happens.”
“Oh, no, it doesn’t. Not anymore. Let me look at him.” Imbry came up the short ladder to Tylus’s porch. “It can’t be anything I can’t handle.”
He knew the villagers’ attitude toward death. Culturally, death was the natural result of growing old, or being born weak, and, sometimes, of having a child. Sometimes, too, a healthy person could’ suddenly get a pain in the belly, lie in agony for a day, and then die. Culturally, it usually made the victim an ancestor, and grief for more than a short time was something the villagers were too full of living to indulge in. But sometimes it was harder to take; in this tropical climate, a moderately bad cut could infect like wildfire, and then someone died who didn’t seem to have been ready for it.
Tylus’s eyes lighted up for a moment. Then they became gravely steady.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Imbry. Suppose some other god wants him? Suppose his ancestors object to your stepping in? And—and besides—” Tylus dropped his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re not a god.”
Imbry couldn’t stop to argue. “I’d like to look at him anyway. No matter what might happen.”
The hopelessness drained out of Tylus’s face. He touched Imbry’s arm. “Come into my house,” he said, repeating the social formula gratefully. “Pia! Imbry’s here to make the baby well!”
Imbry strode into the house, pulling his medkit out of his suit. Pia turned away from the baby’s mat, raising her drawn face. Then she jumped up and went to stand next to Tylus, clenching his hand.
The baby was moving his arms feverishly, and his cheeks were flushed. But he’d learned, through the night, not to move the bandaged foot.
Imbry cut the scrap of cloth away with his bandage shears, wincing at the puffy, white-lipped gash. He snapped the pencil light out of its clip and took a good look into the wound.
It was dirty as sin, packed with some kind of herb mixture that was hopelessly embedded in the tissues. Cleaning it thoroughly was out of the question. Cursing softly, he did the best he could, not daring to try the anesthetic syrette in the kit. He had no idea of what even a human child’s dose might be. He had to leave a lot of the poultice in the wound. Working as fast as he could, he spilled an envelope of antibiotics over the gash, slapped on a fresh bandage, and then stood up. Antipyretics were out. The boy’d have to have his fever. There was one gamble he had to take, but he wasn’t going to take any more. He held up the ampule of Antinfect.
“Universal Antitoxin” was etched into the glass. Well, it had better be.
He broke the seal and stabbed the tip of his hyposprayer through the diaphragm. He retracted carefully. It was a three cc ampule. About half of it ought to do. He watched the dial on the sprayer with fierce concentration, inching the knob around until it read “1.5,” and yanking the tip out.
Muttering a prayer, he fired the Antinfect into the boy’s leg. Then he sighed, repacked his kit, and turned around.
“If I haven’t killed him, he’ll be all right.” He gestured down at the bandage. “There’s going to be a lot of stuff coming out of that wound. Let it come. Don’t touch the bandage. I’ll take another look at it in a few hours. Meanwhile, let me know right away if he looks like he’s getting worse” He smiled harshly. “And let me know if he’s getting better, too.”
Pia was looking at him with an awestruck expression on her face. Tylus’ glance clung to the medkit and then traveled up to Imbry’s eyes.
“You are a god,” he said in a whisper. “You are more than a god. You are the god of all other gods.”
“I know,” Imbry growled. “For good and all now, even if the boy dies. I’m a god now no matter what I do.” He strode out of the house and out across the village square, walking in short, vicious strides along the beach until he was out of sight of the village. He stood for a long time, looking out across the gray sea. And then, with a crooked twist to his lips and a beaten hopelessness in his eyes, he walked back into the village because there was nothing else he could do.
Lord knew where the hurricane had been born. Somewhere down the chain of islands—or past them—the mass of air had begun to whirl. Born out of the ocean, it spun over the water for hundreds of miles, marching toward the coast.
The surf below the village sprang into life. It lashed along the strand in frothing, growling columns, and the Ihoni eggs washed out of their nests and rolled far down the slope of the beach before the waves picked them up again and crushed them against the stones and shells.
The trees tore the edges of their fronds against each other, and the broken ends flew away on the wind. The birds in the jungle began to huddle tightly into themselves.
“Your canoe,” Iano said to Imbry as they stood in front of the head man’s house.
Imbry shook his head. “It’ll stand.”
He watched the families taking their few essential belongings out of their houses and storing them inside the overturned canoes that had been brought high inland early in the afternoon.
“What about this storm? Is it liable to be bad?” Iano shook his head noncommittally. “There’re two or three bad ones every season.”
Imbry grunted and looked out over the village square. Even if the storm mashed the houses flat, they’d be up again two days afterward. The sea and the jungle gave food, and the fronded trees gave shelter. He saw no reason why these people wanted gods in the first place.
He saw a commotion at the door of Tylus’s house. Tylus and Pia stood in the doorway. Pia was holding the baby.
“Look! Hey! Look!” Tylus shouted. The other villagers turned, surprised.
“Hey! Come look at my baby! Come look at the boy Imbry made well!” But Tylus himself didn’t follow his own advice. As the other villagers came running, forgetting the possessions piled beside the canoes, he broke through them and ran across the square to Imbry and Iano.