Well, maybe so.
Alvah ate a Spartan breakfast of protein jelly and citron cakes, called in the coordinates and the time to the frog-voiced operator in New York, and headed the floater northward again.
The landscape unrolled itself. If there were any major differences between this country and the districts he had seen yesterday, Alvah was unable to discern them. In the air, he saw an occasional huge flapping shape, ridden by human figures. He avoided them, and they ignored him. Below, tracts of dark-green forest alternated predictably with the pale green, red or violet of cultivated fields. Here and there across the whole visible expanse, isolated buildings stood. At intervals, these huddled closer and closer together and became a settlement. There were perhaps more roads as he moved northward, dustier ones. That was all.
THE dustiness of these roads, it occurred to Alvah, was a matter that required investigation. The day was cloudless and clear; there was no wind at Alvah’s level, and nothing in the behavior of the trees or cultivated plants to suggest that there was any farther down.
He slowed the floater and lowered it toward the nearest road. As he approached, the thread of ocher resolved itself into an irregular series of expanding puffs, each preceded by a black dot, the overall effect being that of a line of black-and-tan exclamation points. They seemed to be moving barely perceptibly, but were actually, Alvah guessed, traveling at a fairly respectable clip.
He transferred his attention to another road. It, too, was filled with hurrying dots, as was the next―and all the traffic was heading in approximately the same direction, westward of Alvah’s course.
He swung the control bar over. The movement below, he was able to determine after twenty minutes flying, converged upon a settlement larger than any he had yet seen. It sprawled for ten miles or more along the southern shore of a long and exceedingly narrow lake. Most of it looked normal enough―a haphazard arrangement of cone-roofed buildings―but On the side away from the lake, there was a fairly extensive area filled with what seemed to be long, narrow sheds. This, in turn, was bounded on two sides by a strip of fenced-in plots in which, as nearly as Alvah could make out through the dust, animals of all sizes and shapes were penned. It was this area which appeared to be the goal of every Muckfoot in the central Plains.
The din was tremendous as Alvah floated down. There were shouts, cries, animal bellowings, sounds of hammering, occasional blurts of something that might be intended to be music, explosions of laughter. The newcomers, he noted, were being herded with much confusion to one or another of the fenced areas, where they left their mounts. Afterward, they straggled across to join the sluggish river of bodies in the avenues between the sheds.
No one looked up or noticed the dim shadow of the floater. Everyone was preoccupied, shouting, elbowing, blowing an instrument, climbing a pole. Alvah found a clear space at some distance from the sheds―as far as he could conveniently get from the penned animals―and landed.
He had no idea what this gathering was about. For all he knew, it might be a war council or some kind of religious observance, in which case his presence might be distinctly unwelcome. But in any case, there were customers here.
He looked dubiously at the stud that controlled his attention catchers. If he used them, he would only be following directives, but he had a strong feeling that it would be a faux pas to do so in this situation. At the other extreme, the obvious thing to do was to get out and go look for someone in authority. This would involve abandoning the protection of the floater, however, and he might blunder into some taboo place or ceremony.
Evidently his proper course was to wait unobtrusively until he was discovered. On the other hand, if he stayed inside the floater with the door shut, the Muckfeet might take more alarm than if he showed himself. Still, wasn’t it possible that they would be merely puzzled by a floater, whereas they would be angered by a floater with a man on its platform? Or, taking it from another angle …
The hell with it.
ALVAH ran the platform out, opened the door and stepped out. He was relieved when, as he was considering the delicate problem of whether or not to lower the stair, a small group of men and urchins came into view around the corner of the nearest shed, a dozen yards away from him.
They stopped when they saw him, and two or three of the smallest children scuttled behind their elders. They exchanged looks and a few words that Alvah couldn’t hear. Then a pudgy little man with a fussed expression crowded forward, and the rest followed him at a discreet distance.
“Hello,” said Alvah tentatively.
The little man came to a halt a yard or so from the platform. He had a white badge of some kind pinned to his shapeless brown jacket, and carried a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Who might you be?” he asked irritably.
“Alvah Gustad is my name. I hope I’m not putting you people out, parking in your area like this, Mr.―”
“Well, I should hope to spit you is, though. Supposed to be a tent go up right there. Got to be one by noon. What did you say your name was, Gus what?”
“Gustad. I don’t believe I caught your name, Mr. ―”
“Don’t signify what my name is. We’re talking about you. What clan you belong to?”
“Uh―Flatbush,” said Alvah at random. “Look, as long as I’m in the way here, you just tell me where to move to and―”
“Some little backwoods clan, I never even heard of it,” said the pudgy man. “I’ll tell you where you can move to. You can just haul that thing back where you come from. Gustad―Flatbush! You ain’t on my list, I know that.”
The other Muckfeet had moved up gradually to surround the little man. One of them, a lanky sad-faced youngster, nudged him with his elbow. “Might just check and see, Jake.”
“Well, I ought to know. My land, Artie, I got my work to do. I can’t spend all day standing here.”
Artie’s long face grew more mournful. “You thought them Keokuks wasn’t on the list, either.”
“Well―all right then, rot it. To Alvah: What’s your marks?”
Alvah blinked. “I don’t―”
“Come down offa there.” Jake turned impatiently to a man behind him. “Give’m a stake.” As Alvah came hesitantly down the stair, he found he was being offered a sharpened length of wood by a seamy-faced brown man, who carried a bundle of others like it under his arm.
Alvah took it, without the least idea of what to do next. The brown man watched him alertly. “You c’n make your marks with that,” he volunteered and pointed to the ground between them.
The others closed in a little.
“Marks?” said Alvah worriedly.
THE brown man hesitated, then took another stake from his bundle. “Like these here,” he said. “These is mine.” He drew a shaky circle and put a dot in the center of it. “George.” A figure four. “Allister―that’s me.” A long rectangle with a loop at each end. “Coffin―that’s m’ clan.”
Jake burst out, “Well, crying in a bucket, he knows that! You know how to sign your name, don’t you?”
“Well,” said Alvah, “yes.” He wrote Alvah Gustad and, as an afterthought, added Flatbush.