Binichi halted suddenly and wheeled to face the human.
“You’re intruding,” said Binichi, “on something that is my own concern.”
“But—” Chuck looked helplessly at him. “The sun is quite strong in these latitudes. I don’t think you understand—” He turned to appeal to the Tomah. “Tell him what the sun’s like in a country like this.”
“Surely,” said the envoy, “this has nothing to do with you or me. If his health becomes imperfect, it will be an indication that he isn’t fit to survive. He’s only a Lugh; but certainly he has the right, like all living things, to make such a choice for himself.”
“But he might be mistaken—”
“If he is mistaken, it will be a sign that he is unfit to survive. I don’t agree with Lughs—as you people know. But any creature has the basic right to entertain death if he so wishes. To interfere with him in that would be the highest immorality.”
“But don’t you want to—” began Chuck, incredulously, turning toward the Lugh.
“Let’s go on,” said Binichi, turning away.
They went on again.
After a while, the grasslands of the early plateau gave way to more forest.
Chuck was plodding along in the late hours of the afternoon with his eyes on the ground a few feet in front of him and his head singing, when a new sound began to penetrate his consciousness. He listened to it, more idly than otherwise, for some seconds—and then abruptly, it registered.
It was a noise like yelping, back along the trail he had just passed.
He checked and straightened and turned about. Binichi was no longer in sight.
“Binichi!” he called. There was no answer, only the yelping. He began to run clumsily, back the way he had come.
Some eight or so yards back, he traced the yelping to a small clearing in a hollow. Breaking through the brush and trees that grew about its lip, he looked down on the Lugh. Binichi was braced at bay upon his clubbed tail, jaws agape, and turning to face half a dozen weasel-shaped creatures the size of small dogs that yelped and darted in and out at him, tearing and slashing.
The Lugh’s sharp, tooth-studded jaws were more than a match for the jaws of any one of his attackers, but—here on land—they had many times his speed. No matter which way he turned, one was always at his back, and harrying him. But, like the envoy when he had been knocked into the sea, Binichi made no sound; and, although his eyes met those of Chuck, standing at the clearing edge, he gave no call for help.
Chuck looked about him desperately for a stick or stone he could use as a club. But the ground was bare of everything but the light wands of the bushes, and the trees overhead had all green, sound limbs firmly attached to their trunks. There was a stir in the bushes beside him.
Chuck turned and saw the envoy. He pushed through to stand beside Chuck, and also looked down at the fight going on in the clearing.
“Come on!” said Chuck, starting down into the clearing. Then he halted, for the envoy had not moved. “What’s the matter?”
“Matter?” said the envoy, looking at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Those things will kill him!”
“You”—the envoy turned his head as if peering at Chuck—“appear to think we should interfere. You people have this strange attitude to the natural occurrences of life that I’ve noticed before.”
“Do you people just stand by and watch each other get killed?”
“Of course not. Where another Tomah is concerned, it is of course different.”
“He saved your life from those fish!” cried Chuck.
“I believe you asked him to. You were perfectly free to ask, just as he was perfectly free to accept or refuse. I’m in no way responsible for anything either of you have done.”
“He’s an intelligent being!” said Chuck desperately. “Like you. Like me. We’re all alike.”
“Certainly we aren’t,” said the envoy, stiffening. “You and I are not at all alike, except that we are both civilized. He’s not even that. He’s a Lugh.”
“I told him he’d promised to sit down at Base and discuss with you,” cried Chuck, his tongue loosened by the fever. “I said he was dodging his promise if he let you die. And he went out and saved you. But you won’t save him.”
The envoy turned his head to look at Binichi, now all but swarmed under by the predators.
“Thank you for correcting me,” he said. “I hadn’t realized there could be honor in this Lugh.”
He went down the slope of the hollow in a sudden, blurring rush that seemingly moved him off at top speed from a standing start. He struck the embattled group like a projectile and emerged coated by the predators. For a split second it seemed to Chuck that he had merely thrown another life into the jaws of the attackers. And then the Tomah claw glittered and flashed, right and left like a black scimitar, lightning-swift out of the ruck—and the clearing was emptied, except for four furry bodies that twitched or lay about the hollow.
The envoy turned to the nearest and began to eat. Without a glance or word directed at his rescuer, Binichi, bleeding from a score of superficial cuts and scratches, turned about and climbed slowly up the slope of the hollow to where Chuck stood.
“Shall we go on?” he said.
Chuck looked past him at the feeding envoy.
“Perhaps we should wait for him,” he said.
“Why?” said Binichi. “It’s up to him to keep up, if he wants to. The Tomah is no concern of ours.”
He headed off in the direction they had been going. Chuck waggled his head despairingly, and plodded after.
IV
The envoy caught up to them a little further on; and shortly after that, as the rays of the setting sun were beginning to level through the trees, giving the whole forest a cathedral look, they came on water, and stopped for the night.
It seemed to Chuck that the sun went down very quickly—quicker than it ever had before; and a sudden chill struck through to his very bones. Teeth chattering, he managed to start a fire and drag enough dead wood to it to keep it going while they slept.
Binichi had gone into the waters of the small lake a few yards off, and was not to be seen. But through the long, fever-ridden night hours that were a patchwork of dizzy wakefulness and dreams and half-dreams, Chuck was aware of the smooth, dark insectlike head of the Tomah watching him across the fire with what seemed to be an absorbing fascination.
Toward morning, he slept. He awoke to find the sun risen and Binichi already out of the lake. Chuck did not feel as bad, now, as he had earlier. He moved in a sort of fuzziness; and, although his body was slow responding, as if it was something operated by his mind from such a remote distance that mental directions to his limbs took a long time to be carried out, it was not so actively uncomfortable.
They led off, Chuck in the middle as before. They were moving out of the forest now, into more open country where the trees were interspersed with meadows. Chuck remembered now that he had not eaten in some time; but when he chewed on his food, the taste was uninteresting and he put it back in his pack.
Nor was he too clear about the country he was traversing. It was there all right, but it seemed more than a little unreal. Sometimes things, particularly things far off, appeared distorted. And he began remarking expressions on the faces of his two companions that he would not have believed physically possible to them. Binichi’s mouth, in particular, had become remarkably mobile. It was no longer fixed by physiology into a grin. Watching out of the corner of his eye, Chuck caught glimpses of it twisted into all sorts of shapes; sad, sly, cheerful, frowning. And the Tomah was not much better. As the sun mounted up the clear arch of the sky, Chuck discovered the envoy squinting and winking at him, as if to convey some secret message.