Pepin saw a school moving through a. glade once as he sat on a rock staring down into the frond forest.
'The new tenants,' he said aloud, after he'd conquered his nausea, ' are arriving - and the Earth ignores Man. She is not hostile, she is not friendly. She no longer supports him. She has forgotten him. Now she fosters new children.'
Pepin was given to talking to himself. It was the only time when words came easily-when he was alone.
Pepin tried to talk with Kop, the merchant and his fellow residents at the Inn, but though they were polite enough, his questions, his statements and his arguments made them frown and puzzle and excuse themselves early.
One fellow resident, a mild-mannered and friendly man called Mokof, middle-aged with a slight stoop, made greater attempts to understand Pepin, but was incapable, rather than unwilling, of helping him.
'With your talk of the past and philosophy, you would be happier in that odd city of Lanjis Liho by the sea,' he said pleasantly one day as they sat outside the Inn, tankards at their sides, watching the fountain play in the plaza.
Pepin had heard Lanjis Liho mentioned, but had been so curious about other matters, that he had not asked of the city before. Now he raised one fair, near-invisible eyebrow.
'I once knew a man from Lanjis Liho,' Mokof continued in answer.' He had a strange name which I forget-it was similar to your last name in type. He had a scar on his face. Got into trouble by eating his food at the wrong time, saved himself by fixing the Great Regulator for us. We know nothing of these machines these days. He believed that he could travel in Time, though I saw little evidence of this while he was here. All the folk of Lanjis Liho are like him, I hear-bizarre, if you follow me-they know nothing of clocks, for instance, have no means of measuring the hours. Their ruler is called Chronarch and he lives in a palace called the House of Time, though only an oozer knows why they should emphasize Time when they can't even tell it.'
Mokof could tell Pepin very little more that was not merely opinion or speculation, but Lanjis Liho by the sea sounded an interesting place. Also Pepin was attracted by the words ' time travel' - for his true wish was to return to Earth's past.
During the seventh week of his stay in Barbart, he decided to journey eastwards towards Lanjis Liho by the sea.
Pepin Hunchback set off on foot for Lanjis Liho. Mokof in particular tried to dissuade him - it was a long journey and the land was dangerous with oozers. He could easily lose his direction without a good steed.But he had tried to ride the seal-beasts which were the mounts of most Earthmen. These creatures, with their strongly muscled forefins and razor-sharp tails, were reliable and fairly fast.
They had built-up saddles of silicon to give the rider a straight seat. Part of their equipment also included a long gun, called a piercer, which fired a ray from its ruby core, and a torch fed by batteries which supplied the traveller with light in the moonless, near-starless night.
Pepin Hunchback took a torch and balanced a piercer over his shoulder. He liked the feeling both gave him. But he did not trust himself to a seal-beast.
He left in the dark morning, with food and a flask in the pack on his back, still dressed in his cloth-of-metal suit.
The citizens of Barbart, like those of Moon, were not regretful when he had gone. He had disturbed them when they believed they had conquered all disturbances within themselves.
For seven weeks he had interrupted their purpose and the purpose they wished to transmit to any children they might have.
That purpose was to die peacefully and generously on an Earth which no longer desired their presence.
Pepin was disappointed as he limped away from Barbart in the Land of Fronds. He had expected to find dynamic vitality on Earth - people prepared for change, but not for death. Somewhere on the planet - possibly in Lanjis Liho by the sea-he would find heroes. From what Mokof had hinted, he might even find a means of travelling into the past. This is what he wanted most, but he had never expected to achieve it.
The moss of the frond forests was springy and helped his walking, but by evening it was beginning to give way to hard, brown earth over which dust scurried. Ahead of him, ominous in the waning light, was a barren plain, cracked and almost featureless. Here and there chunks of rock stood up. He selected one as his goal, realizing, even as night fell, cold and pitch dark, that to sleep would be to risk his life. Oozers, he had been told, only slept when they had fed-and there was little to feed on save Man.
He depressed the grip of his torch and its light illuminated a distance of a few yards round him. He continued to walk, warm enough in his suit. As he walked, his mind became almost blank. He was so weary that he could not tell how long he had marched by the degrees of weariness. But when a silhouette of rock became apparent in the torch-light, he stopped, took off his pack, leant his back against the rock and slid down it. He did not care about the oozers and he was fortunate because no oozers scented his blood and came to care about him.
Dawn came dark brown, the muddy clouds streaming across the sky, blocking out much of the sun's dim light. Pepin opened his pack and took out the flask of specially distilled fresh water.
He could not drink the salt-water which the folk of Earth drank.
They, in turn, had adapted to the extent where they could not bear to drink fresh water. He took two tablets from a box and swallowed them. Having breakfasted, he heaved his aching body up, adjusted the pack on his back, slung the torch into its sheath at his side, shouldered the piercer and looked about him.
In the west, the frond forests were out of sight and the plain looked as endless in that direction as it did in the other. Yet the plain to the east was now further broken by low hills and many more rocks.
He set off eastwards.
In the east, he reflected, our ancestors believed Paradise lay. Perhaps I will find my Paradise in the east.
If Paradise existed, and Pepin was entitled to enter, he came very close to entering two days later as he collapsed descending a salt-encrusted hill and rolled many feet down it, knocking himself unconscious.
As it was, the Hooknosed Wanderer saved him from this chance of Paradise.
The Hooknosed Wanderer was a burrower, a gossiper, a quester after secrets. Amongst all the Earth folk he was perhaps the only aimless nomad. No one knew his origin, no one thought to ask. He was as familiar in Barbart as he was in Lanjis Liho.
His knowledge of Earth, past and present, was extensive, but few ever availed themselves of it. He was a short man with a huge nose, receding chin, and a close-fitting hood and jerkin which made him resemble a beaked turtle.
He saw the fallen tangle that was Pepin Hunchback at much the same time as the school of oozers scented Pepin's blood.
He was riding a big, fat seal-beast and leading another on which was heaped a preposterous burden of rolled fabric, digging equipment, a small stove, angular bundles-in fact the Hooknosed Wanderer's entire household tied precariously to the seal-beast's back. The seal-beast seemed mildly pleased with itself that it was capable of carrying this load.
In the Hooknosed Wanderer's right hand, borne like a lance resting in a special grip on his stirrup, was his piercer. He saw Pepin, he saw the oozers.
He rode closer, raised his piercer, pressed the charger and then the trigger-stud. The concentrated light was scarcely visible, but it bit into the oozer school instantaneously. They were of the black variety. The Hooknosed Wanderer moved the piercer about very gradually and burned, every oozer to death.