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Deyv saw a pair of red eyes glowing in the bush behind a warrior with a torch. He wondered if it could be Jum's or Aejip's. At the moment, he was unbound. If he broke for the jungle, he might make it. No.
There were too many armed Tsimmanbul around. They'd porcupine him with spears before he got forty feet away.
Sloosh said, "I think we could have left the post where it was. The quake has shifted the so-called god a little to its right."
The Archkerri explained what he wanted done. Deyv said, "Why do I have to be tied to the post? I won't run away."
After thinking about this strange proposal, the shaman said, "Well, it's not according to proper procedure. No, you can't be free."
Sloosh asked for a number of objects, and he picked up a flat but thick stone about two feet across. He accompanied Deyv to the post, and after some hesitation Fat Bull joined them.
"I want to know exactly what you're doing when you're doing it," he said. "And speak only my language."
The plant-man waited until Deyv was tied, then he handed him the firefly. "As the Naraka
Deyv extended the firefly in his left hand and began pressing on the insect. Sloosh had wanted to omit the ritual, but Fat Bull had insisted it be retained. At the end, the light beam shot out, but it struck the flat stone. Sloosh, standing to one side, had held it out in his hand. He withdrew it and looked at its surface.
The beam had made a very small depression, warm around the rim.
"It wouldn't damage the metal-stone of its own kind," he said. "I suspect that that is shot with nickeliron."
He pursuaded the shaman to set up another pole but one which had a slot at its top to hold the stone upright. Deyv began triggering flashes while the Archkerri held up some of the objects. Presently, the god-thing was repeating Deyv's words.
"Now," Sloosh said to the shaman, "do you see what a little intelligence may accomplish? You could have done this long ago. And you wouldn't have killed so many people so uselessly."
"They weren't so useless," Fat Bull said. "They made very good eating. Tell me, how long will it be before Phemropit will be able to understand me well?"
"At least as long as it took us to learn your speech and perhaps longer. After all, the god may have a mind which is very alien to ours. He may think in somewhat different categories, though I'm sure many of his must overlap ours."
Fat Bull said that the tribe couldn't stay out there that long. As it was, they took a chance of being attacked by their enemies every time they came here. He hurried off to make arrangements while Sloosh and Deyv continued the lessons. The shaman's people wished to observe the lessons, and they loathed the idea of not eating their captives. But, after Fat Bull berated them, they packed up.
Twelve warriors and three females stayed behind as guards. To make sure that the prisoners wouldn't escape, the guards bound their hands and feet. Only when the captives were exercising or teaching
Phemropit were they untied.
"Actually, I don't need you," the shaman said. "I can give lessons to him myself. But why should I do all the work? Besides, you might arm yourselves and come back for revenge. I'll let you loose when the whole tribe returns to witness the god as he starts for our village."
"What about my sword?" Deyv said. "You promised—"
"I promised you could go free. That's all."
Fat Bull was wearing Deyv's ancient blade in a scabbard. He'd also appropriated Sloosh's huge axe. He was not going to give up such immensely valuable weapons. Deyv didn't blame him; he'd have done the same thing in the shaman's position. He was not, however, going to leave the vicinity without trying to get the weapons back. Probably the shaman knew this and was counting on him to return. Then he'd be able, with a clear conscience, to take him captive again and have him for supper. No doubt, he was hoping to catch all of them again.
"Does that mean we also can't have our cube back?" Sloosh said.
Fat Bull's big dark eyes narrowed. His high forehead and protruding face made him look part-human, part-fish, part-pig.
"I need that to control the god."
Seven sleep-times passed. A messenger came from the village. He said that the male appointed by Fat
Bull to guard and feed the captives' two animals had been found dead and half-eaten in front of the cabin. Evidently, they had somehow gotten to him.
Deyv asked the shaman if that meant that Jum and Aejip would be killed if he called them in from the jungle. He'd seen them twice skulking around its edges.
"Not if you guarantee they won't attack us," Fat Bull said. "Actually, I don't mind much that they put an end to Whistling Eagle. He was very insolent, which is why I punished him by making him stay behind."
Deyv shouted their names until Jum came bouncing in, tail wagging, and, slavering, had swarmed all over him. The cat slunk in, not trusting the Tsimmanbul. Once she was assured that she was safe, she leaped, fawning upon Vana. Deyv's jealousy was only slightly diminished when she came to him afterward and leaned rumbling against his leg.
The lessons continued with, by now, all of Deyv's party except the blind witch and Fat Bull taking turns as teachers. Phemropit didn't tire; he apparently could store information and retrieve it as if he were a machine. He also learned, after the fourth sleep-time, that his light beam would penetrate the flesh of its teachers. He at once softened the beam so that it would only warm their skins.
Once it was time for him to learn abstractions, however, he began having trouble understanding. The concept of sex was for the moment beyond him. He didn't grasp how his interrogators ate or the reason why. He also had trouble comprehending the idea of individuation.
"It will understand these in time," Sloosh said. "But they are not in its experience, and so it just can't visualize or feel them. I refer to Phemropit as it, not him, since it has no sex."
Another series of earth shocks struck the camp. The crack in the beach widened. Some of the trees on the slope toppled over. The huts and the log cabin were tumbled. Sometime afterward a giant wave roared in from the lake, and it and those that followed washed away the earth from beneath the fallen tree. It floated away, leaving the god-thing with its rear hanging over a six-foot-high cliff.
Sloosh asked Phemropit if it could move higher up.
It replied that it could, but it didn't want to unless it was absolutely necessary. The energy required to do this would take too much of its fuel supply. As it was, the lessons, though not drawing on much of its energy, did weaken it. Sloosh didn't understand its explanation fully, but he thought that the thing would have to go into a suspended animation soon. That is, unless it could be provided with the stuff which provided its energy.
"It's been in a sort of hibernation, if I may use a biological analog," the plant-man said. "Then, some human generations ago, it decided to make an effort to force its way up from burial. It did so, but the effort took a lot of its limited fuel. I think that it eats rock which contains radioactive elements. I've explained what these are to you, though none of you seem to understand them."
He looked at them, then said, "If it runs out of the elements needed, it dies. In a sense, that is. It could stay dead for a very long time, yet would have the potential for coming alive again as long as its metalstone body wasn't badly damaged."
Deyv said, "What happens if its energy does run out now? Won't Fat Bull consider that he doesn't have to keep his promise? He won't have much use for a dead, or at least sleeping, god."