“It doesn’t matter what you call me,” she said. “I’m not going to be here anyway.”
She was still stiff and cold. I let go of her and sat back on my knees so that I could see her face; and it was as unyielding as the rest of her.
“What do you mean, you aren’t going to be here?” She was talking nonsense. She had evidently been hurt or wounded in the leg, but that could hardly be serious.
“Tek and I are going away by ourselves. It’s already decided,” she said. “We were just waiting to make sure you got through this last mistwall all right. You can keep Sunday. He only gets in the way all the time anyway.”
She turned, grabbed hold of the boulder against which she had been leaning, and pulled herself up on one leg.
“Help me back to the pickup,” she said.
My head was whirling with that crazy announcement of hers. I stared down at her bandaged leg.
“What happened to you?” I said, automatically.
“I got hit by a rock, that’s all. It scraped the skin off and bled a little, so I wrapped it up; but it’s only a bruise.”
“Try putting your weight on it.” Something automatic in me was doing the talking. “Maybe it’s broken.”
“It’s not broken. I already tried.” She took hold of my arm with both her hands. “It just hurts to walk on it. Help me.”
I put an arm around her, and she hopped back down the slope on one leg, by my side, until we reached the cab of the pickup, and I helped her up on to the seat. I was operating on reflex. I could not believe what she had said; particularly, just now, when I had just realized how important she was to me. It was the way I had found myself feeling about Waite, multiplied something like a million times. But there were things demanding decisions from me.
Richie and Alan were still in the back of the truck with the body of Waite. I looked at them. Somebody had to take the pickup back through the mistwall with the girl and Waite. Richie was the unhurt one, but his eyes still did not look right.
“How badly are you hurt?” I asked Alan.
“Hurt?” he said. “I didn’t get hurt.”
“You could fool me,” I said dryly. He didn’t seem to get it. “Your head! How bad’s the damage to your head?”
“My head?”
He put up a hand and brought it down covered with blood. His face whitened.
“What is it?” he said. “How bad....” His bloody hand was fluttering up toward the head wound, wanting to touch it, but afraid of what it might feel.
“That’s what I want to know,” I said.
I climbed into the cab and bent over him, gingerly parting the hair over the bloody scalp. It was such a mess I couldn’t see anything.
“Feel anything?” I asked, probing with my fingertips.
“No... no... yes!” he yelped.
I pulled my hands away.
“How bad did that feel?” I asked him. He looked embarrassed.
“Not too bad—I guess,” he said. “But I felt it, where you touched it.”
“All right,” I told him. “Hang on, because I’m going to have to touch it some more.”
I probed around with my fingers, wishing I’d had the sense to bring bandages and water with us. He said nothing to indicate that I was giving him any important amount of pain; and all my fingers could find was a swelling and a relatively small cut.
“It’s really not bad at all,” he said sheepishly, when I’d finished. “I think I just got hit by a rock, come to think of it.”
“All right,” I said. My own hands were a mess now. I wiped them as best I could on the levis I was wearing. “Looks like a bump and a scratch, only. It just put out a lot of blood. If you’re up to it, I want you to stay.”
“I can stay,” he said.
“All right, then. Richie!”
Richie looked at me slowly as if I was someone calling him from a distance.
“Richie! I want you to drive the pickup back through the mistwall. You’re to take the girl and Waite back, then pick up some bandages, some antibiotics and a jerry can of drinking water and bring it back to us. Understand me?”
“Yeah....” said Richie, thickly.
“Come on, then,” I said.
I climbed out of the box of the pickup and he came after me. I saw him into the cab and behind the wheel.
“He’ll take you back to the camp,” I told the girl and closed the door on the driver’s side before she could answer—assuming, that is, that she had intended to answer. The pickup’s motor, which had been idling all this time, growled into gear. Richie swung it about and drove out of sight into the mistwall, headed back.
I looked around. Bill was standing about twenty yards ahead of me. Beside him was Porniarsk, who must have followed us through the mistwall at some time when I wasn’t looking. They seemed to be talking together, looking down into the village, the machine pistol hanging by its strap, carelessly, from Bill’s right arm. It was incautious of him to be so relaxed, I thought. We had driven off one attack, but there was no way of knowing we might not have another at any minute.
I went toward them. As I did, I had to detour around the body of one of the attackers, who had apparently been trying to rush the pickup. It lay face-down, the apelike features hidden, and it reminded me of Waite, somehow. For a moment I wondered if there were others among its fellows that were feeling the impact of this one’s death, as I had felt that of Waite. My mind—it was not quite under control right then, my mind—skittered off to think of the girl again. Of Ellen—I must remember to think of her as Ellen from now on.
It was so strange. She was small and skinny and cantankerous. How could I love her like this? Where did it come from, what I was feeling? Somehow, when I wasn’t paying any attention, she had grown inside me, and now, she took up all the available space there. Another thought came by, blown on the wandering breeze of my not-quite-in-control mind. What about Marie? I couldn’t just kick her out. But maybe there was no need for worry. All Marie had ever seemed to want was the protection inherent in our partnership. It might be she would be completely satisfied with the name of consort alone. After all, there were no laws now, no reason that I couldn’t apparently have two wives instead of one. No one but us three need know Marie was a wife in name only... of course, the girl would have to agree....
I stopped thinking, having reached Bill and Porniarsk. They were still looking down at the village. I looked down, too, and, to my surprise, saw it populated and busy. Black, furry, apelike figures were visible all through its streets and moving in and out of the dome-shaped houses. Most, in fact, seemed to be busy with whatever objects they had under the porch-like roofs before the entrances of their buildings. But a fair number were visible simply sitting in the dust, singly or in pairs, doing nothing; and a small group were in transit from one spot to another.
They were within easy rifle shot of where we stood, and the three of us must have been plainly visible to them; but they paid us no attention whatsoever.
“What the hell?” I said. “Is that the same tribe that hit us just now?”
“Yes,” said Bill.
I looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he nodded at Porniarsk instead.
“Let him tell you.”
Porniarsk creaked his head around to look sideways and up at me.
“They’re experimental animals,” Porniarsk said, “from a time less than a hundred years ahead of that you were in originally when the time storm reached you.”
“You knew about them?” The thought of Waite made my throat tight. “You knew about them waiting to kill us, and you didn’t warn us?”
“I knew only they were experimental animals,” said Porniarsk. “Apparently part of their conditioning is to attack. But if the attack fails, they go back to other activities.”