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...Blind burrowers burrowing deeper; offal-eating murk-beasts now showing formidable incisors and great rows of ridged molars; giant caterpillars growing smaller but looking larger because of increasing coats.
...The contours of valleys still like the torsos of women, flowing and rolling, or perhaps like instruments of music.
...Gone much windblasted stone, but ever the frost.
...Sounds in the morning as always, harsh, brittle, metallic.
They were sure that they were halfway to heaven.
Picture that.
The Deadland log told him as much as he really needed to know. But he read back through the old reports, too.
Then he mixed himself a drink and stared out the third floor window.
"...Will die," he said, then finished his drink, outfitted himself, and abandoned his post.
It was three days before he found a camp.
He landed the flier at a distance and approached on foot. He was far to the south of Deadland, where the air was warmer and caused him to feel constantly short of breath.
They were wearing animal skins--skins which had been cut for a better fit and greater protection, skins which were tied about them. He counted sixteen lean-to arrangements and three campfires. He flinched as he regarded the fires, but he continued to advance.
When they saw him, all their little noises stopped, a brief cry went up, and there was silence.
He entered the camp.
The creatures stood unmoving about him. He heard some bustling within the large lean-to at the end of the clearing.
He walked about the camp.
A slab of dried meat hung from the center of a tripod of poles.
Several long spears stood before each dwelling place. He advanced and studied one. A stone which had been flaked into a leaf-shaped spearhead was affixed to its end.
There was the outline of a cat carved upon a block of wood...
He heard a footfall and turned.
One of the Redforms moved slowly toward him. It appeared older than the others. Its shoulders sloped; as it opened its mouth to make a series of popping noises, he saw that some of its teeth were missing; its hair was grizzled and thin. It bore something in its hands, but Jarry's attention was drawn to the hands themselves.
Each hand bore an opposing digit.
He looked about him quickly, studying the hands of the others. All of them seemed to have thumbs. He studied their appearance more closely.
They now had foreheads.
He returned his attention to the old Redform.
It placed something at his feet, and then it backed away from him.
He looked down.
A chunk of dried meat and a piece of fruit lay upon a broad leaf.
He picked up the meat, closed his eyes, bit off a piece, chewed and swallowed. He wrapped the rest in the leaf and placed it in the side pocket of his pack.
He extended his hand and the Redform drew back.
He lowered his hand, unrolled the blanket he had carried with him and spread it upon the ground. He seated himself, pointed to the Redform, then indicated a position across from him at the other end of the blanket.
The creature hesitated, then advanced and seated itself.
"We are going to learn to talk with one another," he said slowly. Then he placed his hand upon his breast and said, "Jarry."
Jarry stood before the reawakened executives of December.
"They are intelligent," he told them. "It's all in my report."
"So?" asked Yan Turl.
"I don't think they will be able to adapt. They have come very far, very rapidly. But I don't think they can go much further. I don't think they can make it all the way."
"Are you a biologist, an ecologist, a chemist?"
"No."
"Then on what do you base your opinion?"
"I observed them at close range for six weeks."
"Then it's only a feeling you have...?"
"You know there are no experts on a thing like this. It's never happened before."
"Granting their intelligence--granting even that what you have said concerning their adaptability is correct--what do you suggest we do about it?"
"Slow down the change. Give them a better chance. If they can't make it the rest of the way, then stop short of our goal. It's already livable here. We can adapt the rest of the way."
"Slow it down? How much?"
"Supposing we took another seven or eight thousand years?"
"Impossible!"
"Entirely!"
"Too much!"
"Why?"
"Because everyone stands a three-month watch every two hundred fifty years. That's one year of personal time for every thousand. You're asking for too much of everyone's time."
"But the life of an entire race may be at stake!"
"You do not know that for certain."
"No, I don't. But do you feel it is something to take a chance with?"
"Do you want to put it to an executive vote?"
"No--I can see that I'll lose. I want to put it before the entire membership."
"Impossible. They're all asleep."
"Then wake them up."
"That would be quite a project."
"Don't you think the fate of a race is worth the effort? Especially since we're the ones who forced intelligence upon them? We're the ones who made them evolve, cursed them with intellect."
"Enough! They were right at the threshold. They might have become intelligent had we not come along"
"But you can't say for certain! You don't really know! And it doesn't really matter how it happened. They're here and we're here, and they think we're gods--maybe because we do nothing for them but make them miserable. We have some responsibility to an intelligent race, though. At least to the extent of not murdering it."
"Perhaps we could do a long-range study..."
"They could be dead by then. I formally move, in my capacity as Treasurer, that we awaken the full membership and put the matter to a vote."
"I don't hear any second to your motion."
"Selda?" he said.
She looked away.
"Tarebell? Clond? Bondici?"
There was silence in the cavern that was high and wide about him.
"All right. I can see when I'm beaten. We will be our own serpents when we come into our Eden. I'm going now, back to Deadland, to finish my tour of duty."
"You don't have to. In fact, it might be better if you sleep the whole thing out..."
"No. If it's going to be this way, the guilt will be mine also. I want to watch, to share it fully."
"So be it," said Turl.
Two weeks later, when Installation Nineteen tried to raise the Deadland Station on the radio, there was no response.
After a time, a flier was dispatched.
The Deadland Station was a shapeless lump of melted metal.
Jarry Dark was nowhere to be found.
Later than afternoon, Installation Eight went dead.
A flier was immediately dispatched.
Installation Eight no longer existed. Its attendants were found several miles away, walking. They told how Jarry Dark had forced them from the station at gunpoint. Then he had burnt it to the ground, with the fire-ca
At about the time they were telling this story, Installation Six became silent.
The order went out: MAINTAIN CONTINUOUS RADIO CONTACT WITH TWO OTHER STATIOINS AT ALL TIMES.
The other order went out: GO ARMED AT ALL TIMES. TAKE ANY VISITOR PRISONER.
Jarry waited. At the bottom of a chasm, parked beneath a shelf of rock, Jarry waited. An opened bottle stood upon the control board of his flier. Next to it was a small case of white metal.
Jarry took a long, last drink from the bottle as he waited for the broadcast he knew would come.
When it did, he stretched out on the seat and took a nap.
When he awakened, the light of day was waning.
The broadcast was still going on...