Their young, up to the time of "marriage" or group assimilation, seemed to have little personality and only rudimentary or possibly instinctive mental processes. Their elders expected no more of them in the way of intelligent behavior than a human expects of a child still in the womb. There were always many such uncompleted persons attached to any ego group; they were cared for like dearly beloved pets or helpless babies, although they were often as large and as apparently mature to Earth eyes as were their elders.
Lazarus grew bored with paradise more quickly than did the majority of his cousins. "It can't always," he complained to Libby, who was lying near him on the fine grass, "be time for tea."
"What's fretting you, Lazarus?"
"Nothing in particular." Lazarus set the point of his knife on his right elbow, flipped it with his other hand, watched it bury its point in the ground. "It's just that -this place reminds me of a well-run zoo. It's got about as much future." He grunted scornfully. "It's 'Never-Never Land."
"But what in particular is worrying you?"
"Nothing. That's what worries me. Honest to goodness, Andy, don't you see anything wrong in being turned out to pasture like this?"
Libby grinned sheepishly. "I guess it's my hillbilly blood. 'When it don't rain, the roof don't leak; when it rains, I cain't fix it nohow," he quoted. "Seems to me we're doing tolerably well. What irks you?"
"Well-" Lazarus' pale-blue eyes stared far away; he paused in his idle play with his knife. "When I was a young man a long time ago, I was beached in the South Seas-"
"Hawaii?'
"No. Farther south. Damned if I know what they call it today. I got hard up, mighty hard up, and sold my sextant. Pretty soon-or maybe quite a while-I could have passed for a native. I lived like one. It didn't seem to matter. But one day I caught a look at myself in a mirror." Lazarus sighed gustily. "I beat my way out of that place shipmate to a cargo of green hides, which may give you some idea how. scared and desperate I was!"
Libby did not comment. "What do you do with your time, Lib?" Lazarus persisted.
"Me? Same as always. Think about mathematics. Try to figure out a dodge for a space drive like' the one that got us here."
"Any luck on that?" Lazarus was suddenly alert.
"Not yet. Gimme time. Or I just watch the clouds integrate. There are amusing mathematical relationships everywhere if you are on the lookout for them. In the ripples on the water, or the shapes of busts-elegant fifth-order functions."
"Huh? You mean 'fourth order."
"Fifth order. You omitted the time variable. I like fifth-order equations," Libby said dreamily. "You find 'em in fish, too."
"Huinmph!" said Lazarus, and stood up suddenly. "That may be all right for you, but it's not my pidgin."
"Going some place?"
"Goin' to take a walk."
Lazarus walked north. He walked the rest of that day, slept on the ground as usual that night, and was up and moving, still to the north, at dawn. The next day was followed by another like it, and still another. The going"was easy, much like strolling in a park... too easy, in Lazarus' opinion. For the sight of a volcano, or a really worthwhile waterfall, he felt willing to pay four bits and throw in a jackknife.
The food plants were sometimes strange, but abundant and satisfactory. He occasionally met one or more of the Little People going about their mysterious affairs: they never bothered him nor asked why he was traveling but simply greeted him with the usual assumption of previous acquaintanceship. He began to long for one who would turn out to be a stranger; he felt watched.
Presently the nights grew colder, the days less balmy, and the Little People less numerous. When at last he had not seen one for an entire day, he camped for the night, remained there the next day-took out his soul and examined it.
He had to admit that he could find no reasonable fault with the planet nor its inhabitants. But just as definitely it was not to his taste. No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other- but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.
The hegira of the Families had been a mistake. It would have been a more human, a mqre mature and manly thing, to have stayed and fought for their rights, even if they had died insisting on them. Instead they had fled across half a universe (Lazarus was reckless about his magnitudes) looking for a place to light. They had found one, a good one-but already occupied by beings so superior as to make them intolerable for men... yet so supremely indifferent in their superiority to men that they had not even bothered to wipe them out, but had whisked them away to this-this -over-manicured country club.
And that in itself was the unbearable humiliation. The New Frontiers was the culmination of five hundred years of human scientific research, the best that men could do-but it had been flicked across the deeps of space as casually as a man might restore a baby bird to its nest.
The Little People did not seem to want to kick them out but the Little People, in their own way, were as demoralizing to men as were the gods of the Jockaira. One at a time they might be morons - but taken as groups each rapport group was a genius that threw the best minds that men could offer into the shade. Even Andy. Human beings could not hope to compete with that type of organization any more than a backroom shop could compete with an automated cybernated factory. Yet to form any such group identities, even if they could which he doubted, would be, Lazarus felt very sure, to give up whatever it was that made them men.
He admitted that he was prejudiced in favor of men. He was a man.
The uncounted days slid past while he argued with himself over the things that bothered him-problems that had made sad the soul of his breed since the first apeman had risen to self-awareness, questions never solved by full belly nor fine machinery. And the endless quiet days did no more to give him final answers than did all the soul searchings of his ancestors. Why? What shall it profit a man? No answer came back -save one: a firm unreasoned conviction that he was not intended for, or not ready for, this timeless snug harbor of ease.
His troubled reveries were interrupted by the appearance of one of the Little People. "... greetings, old friend your wife King wishes you to return to your home... he has need of your advice..."
"What's the trouble?" Lazarus demanded.
But the little creature either could or would not tell him. Lazarus gave his belt a hitch and headed south. "... there is no need to go slowly..." a thought came after him.
Lazarus let himself be led to a clearing beyond a clump of trees. There he found an egg-shaped object about six feet long, featureless except for a door in the side. The native went in through the door, Lazarus squeezed his larger bulk in after him; the door closed.
It opened almost at once and Lazarus saw that they were on the beach just below the human settlement. He had to admit that it was a good trick.
Lazarus hurried to the ship's boat parked on the beach in which Captain King shared with Barstow a semblance of community headquarters. "You sent for me, Skipper. What's up?"
King's austere face was grave. "It's about Mary Sperling."
Lazarus felt a sudden cold tug at his heart. "Dead?"
"No. Not exactly. She's gone over to the Little People. 'Married' into one of their groups."
"What? But that's impossible!"
Lazarus was wrong. There was no faint possibility of interbreeding between Earthmen and natives but there was no barrier, if sympathy existed, to a human merging into one of their rapport groups, drowning his personality in the ego of the many.