“This is the Mother of this tribe, Rand,” he said.
From the rear of the great house came a dull booming sound. The converter translated it: “Welcome, strange ones.”
Rand looked up and back. At first he saw nothing. Then he spied the Mother, high on the wall. She sat on a wide, deep shelf eight or nine feet above the floor, peering down at them.
She was a strange sight. He had never seen anything so weird before.
The Mother was at least twice the size of the ordinary aliens. Her body was a pale greenish-white color, and it was tremendously swollen. She might have been barrel-shaped like the others, once. But now she hardly had any shape at all. She was just a great mass of wrinkled and bloated flesh.
Her legs were tiny, flimsy things. They could never hold up her immense weight, Rand knew. Her eyes, round and bulging, were the size of dishes. Her mouth was an enormous slit in her huge body. She seemed to be terribly old … hundreds, thousands, millions of years old.
The aliens who were guarding the three Earthmen bowed before her. Leswick signaled, and Rand bowed too. Even Dombey got the idea and touched one knee to the floor.
The Mother said, “I am the Mother. You are welcome here, you strangers from another hive. How different you are!”
Rand was tongue-tied with awe. He tried to say something, but no words would come. What could you say to a creature like this? She was like something out of a dream.
“Tell the Mother about our Mother,” Leswick urged him in a dry, insistent voice.
“Our—Mother?” Rand repeated.
“Go ahead, Rand. Tell—her—about—our Mother. Describe our Mother’s wonderful metal body. Speak of our Mother’s marvelous thirty-megacycle carrier beam.”
Rand felt like he was sinking in a quicksand swamp of bewilderment. But only for a moment. Then he caught on and took the hint.
“Yes,” he said. “Our Mother is located to the east, many days’ journey from here. She is taller than we are, and does not move from the place where she stands. Set in her forehead is an eye of great beauty.”
He went on to describe the signal beacon with the most complete details he could supply. As he spoke, his mind protested against the sheer madness of what was taking place. What was the point of making believe that the beacon was their “Mother”? How—
He kept talking until he had run out of things to say.
Then the huge alien being said, “Yes. We know the place and we have seen your Mother. We know her and we have wondered for a long time where her children might be.”
“We wish to return to her,” Leswick said anxiously. “We did not mean to enter your hive, but we became lost in the jungle. We want nothing more than to finish our journey toward our Mother.”
“We understand,” came the solemn reply.
“Then you will help us?”
“Yes,” the Mother said. “Yes, we will cause our people to guide you to your Mother. We know your sorrow and we take pity upon you, strange ones from another hive.”
Leswick dropped to his knees. Rand did the same. Only Dombey remained standing. And then even he, overcome by superstitious awe, lowered himself heavily to the floor.
“We thank you for this kindness, Mother of this hive,” said Leswick with great solemnity.
“Yes, we thank you,” Rand added.
And Dombey chimed in, loud and clear and deep. “Yeah, thanks, Mother. Thanks.”
Chapter 14
Much later, Rand began to understand.
These beings were organized much like ants or bees. Although they weren’t insects, they had an insect-like type of society. Leswick had guessed it first, and he had been right.
Most of the villagers were workers or soldiers. They were all of the same sex—or rather, they didn’t have any sex at all. They never produced young ones. That was why they lived in small huts, one by one.
The Mother was the only member of the tribe who ever had children. She was really and truly the tribe’s mother. Just as a queen bee lays all the eggs in the hive, the Mother here gave birth to all the villagers and ruled the tribe.
The fat, sleepy loafers outside the great house were her husbands. They were like the drones or males of a beehive. Their only job was to keep the population of the tribe growing.
No children were in sight in the village because each year’s brood was probably hatched at the same time. Very likely the last brood was already full-grown, and the new young ones weren’t due yet. All the workers looked the same since they were all produced by the Mother.
It made sense, now that Rand had had some time to think it over. But he wondered how Leswick had figured it out so quickly. And how had the little philosopher known that that stuff about their own “hive” and “Mother” would work?
Certainly the aliens were friendly now. That night they threw a feast for the three Earthmen in the plaza outside the great house of the Mother. The main course was a kind of thick blue-green jelly with a delicious spicy taste.
Afterwards the aliens gave a concert. At least, Rand thought it was a concert. A dozen of the barrel-shaped beings lined up in a row and made humming-booming noises for about half an hour. Rand was afraid it would be embarrassing if he asked what they were doing. So when it was over he made a little speech of thanks for the music, and hoped he was right.
The Earthmen slept that night in village huts, one man to a hut. Rand didn’t find it pleasant to lie down on the bare dirt floor of the hut. Stray insects kept wandering across it and him. The hut had no windows, and the air was hot and stuffy inside. But he knew he had to be polite. He and Dombey and Leswick were guests here. They had to accept the hospitality of the aliens.
In the morning, ten of the villagers escorted them into the jungle. Five marched in front of them, five in back. They carried their swords in their hands, ready for trouble.
At a steady pace they led the three wanderers farther toward the east. Toward the rescue signal beacon. Toward their Mother.
Rand was depressed and upset despite himself. At first he couldn’t understand what was bothering him. They hadn’t been harmed by the aliens, had they? They had come through the dangers in good shape. They even had gained a team of guides to take them to the beacon.
So why did he feel so miserable?
He realized why, after a while. It was because Leswick, not Tom Rand, had got them safely through the village. Leswick, for whom he felt only scorn and contempt. Leswick, the phony philosopher. Leswick had handled the situation beautifully. Rand hadn’t been able to do a thing.
I was so proud of myself, Rand thought. I got us off the Clyde F. Bohmer okay. I got us down here to Tuesday okay. I built a detector and a water purifier. I was the clever boy, I was the one the others couldn’t survive without.
But it took Dombey to get us through the jungle.
And it took Leswick to deal with the aliens.
In mid-morning, when they were far from the village, Rand said to Leswick, “Tell me something.”
“Such as?”
“How did you know the aliens were what they were? And how did you know what would make them let us go?”
The Metaphysical Synthesist smiled mildly. “How did I know? That’s a tricky word, Rand. It means different things to you and me. To you, it’s impossible to know anything unless you can feel it and measure it and calculate from it.”
“And you?”
Leswick shrugged. “I work from intuition. Hunches. I don’t need every last scrap of evidence there is, before I make up my mind. I jump to conclusions. For you, one and one always make two. For me, one and one can make three, five, seventeen—it all depends on the situation.”