But dangers were not important. Tupaia's ancestors had learned to deal with fear. They could not afford to let it rule them. They had crossed the wide Pacific Ocean in hollowed tree trunks, with nothing to guide them but wave crests, a distant sight of clouds—and courage. They had reached, and conquered, islands no human had ever seen before—Fiji, Tahiti, Easter, the great calm archipelago of Hawaii—and Te'ehala Tupaia was their worthy descendant.
So he did not fear Cuckoo, or whatever great enemies its forests might conceal. Nor did he fear his companions. Not the stinking, hideous Watcher. Not the Sheliak or the Sirian or the Scorpian robot or the lesser breeds. Not the other Purchased People, catatonically still or in a frenzy of compelled action—not any of them. They were not to be feared. They might even be useful, and if not they could easily die. Te'ehala Tupaia would not shrink from ending their lives at the instant those lives became inconvenient to him.
He became aware of great surges of foul stench, wafted down on him. Overhead the Watcher hung, staring at him with those strange compound eyes. He squealed something peremptorily; the blond girl hurried over and hung her Pmal translator on Tupaia's broad shoulder.
"You are the one who says he is 'free,'" the Watcher declared contemptuously, the Pmal faithfully reproducing his speech. Tupaia muttered assent. "For you that word means nothing! You will work as you are ordered. If you fail, you will die. When you are no longer needed, you will die. And perhaps you will die anyway, for I enjoy a good meal!" And it flew away with great sweeps of the leathery wings.
Tupaia swallowed, and returned the Pmal, and for some time was careful to keep his eyes on his work.
They finished fitting the sections of the raft together, then slid it down to the edge of the lake and loaded it with equipment from the lander, for purposes he could not guess . . . until he saw the blond girl throw off her clothes and step onto the raft. She knelt, shivering, staring out at the water.
When she glanced toward him he saw human fear in her eyes and, for the first time in, at least, some weeks, a hint of human compassion touched him. "What's the matter?" he asked.
She said dully, "They want me to swim down to the bottom of the lake." Tupaia was surprised. "Why not? It's not cold." "I can't swim," she explained simply. "I told them that I'd drown. They said it was known that Earth primates possessed aquatic skills, and they don't. None of them can survive very long under water. The Sirian and the Scorpian would be destroyed at once."
"Huh!" Tupaia said scornfully, and then, condescendingly, "This Earth primate has plenty of aquatic skills. If you get in trouble, I'll come after you." Maybe, he added to himself, and then observed one of the other Purchased People gesturing furiously for him. He moved off, storing the useful information about the vulnerability of the Scorpian and the floating blue eye in his mind.
Behind him, he saw the Watcher swoop down over the raft, squealing something at the girl. Tupaia cursed himself. What had he boasted about his skills for? Now they would watch him more closely than ever, because he might be useful!
There were only a few more bits and pieces to load onto the raft, and Tupaia studied them carefully. At least one, he was almost sure, was some sort of hand weapon, a metal object with an onion-shaped barrel and two stocks. When he reached for it casually and the Scorpian robot, with a fierce flurry of drumbeats, snatched it away, he was certain. Good enough! And there were the woods, hardly a hundred meters away . . .
How far inside would he have to get before he was out of sight—and thus, perhaps, free? Another fifty meters? A hundred? He plotted paths, guessing at his running times, studying likely patches of undergrowth . . . and then he saw something peering at him out of the very spot he had chosen.
An ape?
That was silly! But he had no time to think of it; because there was a flurry of slow, strong wings behind him and an overpowering reek. The Watcher! He lifted his head just in time to have a metal object strike it.
In Cuckoo's light gravity it did not drop fast enough to hurt. He caught it easily. It was a Pmal translator, and through it the Watcher's voice crackled: "You, the creature who is free! Get back to the raft. We're going to let you serve us by diving to the bottom of the lake!"
"All right," said Tupaia, turning obediently—since there was no choice. But he could not help taking one last glance at the patch of undergrowth.
Nothing was there.
He had not imagined it; something had been looking back at him that very closely resembled a terrestrial chimpanzee. None of the others seemed to have noticed it. Or had thought it not worth paying attention to.
Indeed, in some sense it was not. An ape in a jungle? Why not?
Except that this ape had been wearing clothes.
Tupaia emerged from the tepid, transparent water with a shout, exhaling air like the spout of a whale, splashing the side of the raft. The Sirian eye darted away with a crackle of static-electrical fury, and Tupaia marked that confirmation down in his memory: the creature feared water. The blond girl leaned over to drape a Pmal around his neck, and the Sirian demanded: "Have you secured the charge?"
Tupaia pulled himself up contemptuously. "Of course." It was a foolish question, since they already knew the answer, for they had sounded the depths of the lake with arcane methods of their own. Radar? Sonar? Something more incomprehensible still? Tupaia did not know, but he could see the glowing virtual image hanging over the center of the raft. The Sheliak extruded a pseudopod to the controls, lovingly sharpening the image, but Tupaia had seen it sharply enough when he dove down to the bottom.
The time for escape, Tupaia promised himself, was very close.
The lake was forty meters deep at this point, and Tupaia had been down to the bottom six times. Not to see. To do. It was easy enough to see in the aliens' instruments what was there: the end of the white porcelain roadway, at a huge doorway of greenish metal. But the instruments could not do what Tupaia had done. They could not carefully attach sticky lugs to the edge of the doorway, could not fix to each of the lugs an explosive charge, could not carry down the delicate fuses that would blow it open. Blow it open for what? That was not Tupaia's concern. Then, no doubt, the aliens planned to use some other gadget from their bag of tricks that would permit a drone to dive down and enter the water-filled passage beyond—if that was indeed what was beyond—but by that time their foolish schemes would no longer matter to Tupaia, for freedom would be his!
So he waited patiently, the lake water drying on his bronzed skin, while the Sirian eye and the Watcher lifted themselves into the air, one on a web of electrostatic force and the other by the force of his huge, leathery wings, and flew toward the beach. The Sheliak made last-minute adjustments, then gave the order to head for the shore. Obediently the Purchased People on the raft sculled it toward the temple.
It was easy enough to pull the raft onto the beach—in this light gravity, there was no such thing as hard work! Tupaia swatted away some sort of steel-blue insect and reviewed his plans. Yes. This would be his chance. That submarine bomb would create it for him. A huge waterspout—at least a loud noise—there would certainly be some sort of confusion, any kind, enough to let him get into the shelter of the cinnamon-scented trees.
As the Scorpian robot rattled peremptory commands and the Sheliak adjusted the firing mechanism, Tupaia strolled idly toward the tree line. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them trigger the fuse transmitter.