seen before. She hobbled toward him slowly, teetering from side toside as she walked, her hands held out in front of her, her eyes on theground.
"What is it, Mag?" Her voice was as twisted as her body.
"A boy. Valley boy. Just the age for our Lisa, too."
Eric felt his face redden and he opened his mouth to protest, to saysomething, anything, but Mag went right on talking, ignoring him.
"The boy came in an aircar. I thought he was one of the normals--buthe's not. Hasn't their ways. Good looking boy, too."
"Is he?" Nell had reached them. She stopped and looked up, right intoEric's face, and for the first time he realized that she was blind. Hereyes were milky white, without pupils, without irises. Against the brownleather of her skin they looked moist and dead.
"Speak, boy," she croaked. "Let me hear your voice."
"Hello," Eric said, feeling utterly foolish and utterly confused. "I'mEric."
"Eric...." Nell reached out, touched his arm with her hand, ran herfingers up over his shoulders, over his chest.
"It's been a long time since I've heard a man's voice," she said. "Notsince Mag here was a little girl."
"Have you been--here--all that time?" Eric asked, looking around him atthe hut, and the meat hanging to dry, covered with flies, and theleather water bags, and the mounds of refuse, the huge, heaped moundsthat he couldn't stop smelling.
"Yes," Nell said. "I've been here longer than I want to remember, boy.We came here from the other mountains when Mag was only a baby."
* * * * *
They walked toward the hut, and as they neared it he smelled a newsmell, that of stale smoke and stale sweat overlying the general odor ofdecay.
"Let's talk out here," he said, not wanting to go inside.
They sat down on the hard earth and the two women turned their facestoward him, Mag watching him intently, Nell listening, her head cockedto one side like an old crippled bird's.
"I always thought I was the only one like me," Eric said. "The peopledon't know of any others. They don't know you exist. They wouldn'tbelieve it."
"That's the way we want it," Mag said. "That's the only way it can be."
Nell nodded. "I was a girl in the other hills," she said, nodding towardthe west, toward the museum. "There were several of us then. There hadbeen families of us in my father's time, and in his father's time, andmaybe before that even. But when I was a girl there was only my fatherand my mother and another wife of my father's, and a lot ofchildren...."
She paused, still looking toward the west, facing a horizon she could nolonger see. "The normal ones came. We'd hidden from them before. Butthis time we had no chance to hide. I was hunting, with the boy who wasmy father's nephew.
"They surrounded the hut. They didn't make any sound. They don't haveto. I was in the forest when I heard my mother scream."
"Did they kill her?" Eric cried out. "They wouldn't do that."
"No, they didn't kill any of them. They dragged them off to the aircars,all of them. My father, my mother and the other woman, the children. Wewatched from the trees and saw them dragged off, tied with ropes, likewild animals. The cars flew away. Our people never came back."
She stopped, sunken in revery. Mag took up the story. Her voice wasmatter-of-fact, completely casual about those long ago events.
"A bear killed my father. That was after we came back here. Nell wassick. I did the hunting. We almost starved, for a while, but there'slots of game in the hills. It's a good life here. But I've been sorryfor Lisa. She's a woman now. She needs a man. I'm glad you came. I wouldhave hated to send her out looking for a normal one."
"But--" Eric stopped, his head whirling. He didn't know what to say.Anything at all would sound wrong, cruel.
"It's dangerous," Mag went on, "taking up with the normals. They thinkit's wrong. They think we're animals. One of us has to pick a man who'sstupid--a farmer, maybe--and even then it's like being a pet. A beast."
It took a moment for Eric to realize what she was saying, and when hedid realize, the thought horrified him.
"Lisa's father was stupid," Mag said. "He took me in when I came downfrom the hills. He didn't send for the others. Not then. He kept me andfed me and treated me kindly, and I thought I was safe. I thought ourkind and theirs could live together."
She laughed. Deep, bitter lines creased her mouth. "A week later theaircar came. They sneaked up to the garden where I was. He was withthem. He was leading them."
She laughed again. "Their kindness means nothing. Their love meansnothing. To them, we're animals."
The old woman, Nell, rocked back and forth, her face still in revery.Flies crawled over her bare arms, unheeded.
"I got away," Mag said. "I saw them coming. They can't run fast, and Iknew the hiding places. I never went back to the valleys. Nell wouldhave starved without me. And there was Lisa to care for, later...."
The flies settled on Eric's hands and he brushed them away, shivering.
Mag smiled. The bitterness left her face. "I'm glad I don't have to sendLisa down to the valley."
She got up before he could answer, before he could even think ofanything to say or do. Crossing over to the pole where the dried meathung, she pulled a piece of it loose and brought it back to where theysat. Some she gave to the old woman and some she kept for herself andthe rest, most of it, she tossed to Eric.
"You must be hungry, boy."
It was filthy. Dirt clung to it--dust and pollen and grime--and theflies had flown off in clouds when she lifted it down.
The old woman raised her piece and put the edge of it in her mouth andstarted to chew, slowly, eating her way up the strip. Mag tore hers withher teeth, rending it and swallowing it quickly, watching Eric all thetime.
"Eat."
It was unreal. He couldn't be here. These women couldn't exist.
He lifted the meat, feeling his stomach knot with disgust, wanting tofling it from him and run, blindly, down the hill to the aircar. But hedidn't. He had searched too long to flee now. Shuddering, he closed hismind to the flies and the smell and the filth and bit into the meat andchewed it and swallowed it. And all the time, Mag watched him.
The sun passed overhead and began to dip toward the west. The shadows,which had shortened as they sat in front of the hut, lengthened again,until they themselves were half in the shadow of the trees lining thegorge. Still Lisa did not come. It was very quiet. The only sounds thatbroke the silence were their own voices and the buzzing of the flies.
They talked, but communication was difficult between them. Eric tried toaccept their ideas, their way of life, but he couldn't. The things theysaid were strange to him. Their whole pattern of life was strange tohim. He could understand it at all only because he had studied theprimitive peoples of the old race. But he couldn't imagine himself asone of them. He couldn't think of himself as having grown up among them,in the hills, living only to hunt and gather berries and store food forthe wintertime. He couldn't think of himself hiding, creeping throughthe gorges like a hunted animal, flattening himself in the underbrushwhenever an aircar passed by.
He sat and listened to them talk, and his amazement grew. Their beliefswere so different. He listened to their superstitious accounts of theold race, and the way it had been "in the beginning."
He listened to their legends of the old gods who flew through the airand were a mighty people, but who were destroyed by a new race ofdevils. He listened as they told him of their own ancestors, children ofthe gods, who had fled to the hills to await the gods' return. They hadno conception at all of the thousands of years that had elapsed betweenthe old race's passing and their own forefathers' flight into the hills.And when he tried to explain, they shook their heads and wouldn'tbelieve him.
He didn't hear Lisa come. One minute the far end of the clearing wasempty and still and the next minute the girl was walking across ittoward them, a bow in one hand and a pair of rabbits dangling from theother.
She saw him and stopped, t
he rabbits dropping from her hand.
"Here's your young man, Lisa," Mag said. "Valley boy. His name's Eric."
He stared back at her, more in curiosity than in surprise. She wasn'tnearly as unattractive as he had thought she would be. She wouldn't bebad looking at all, he thought, if she were clean. She was fairly talland lean, too skinny really, with thin muscular arms instead of thesoftly rounded arms the valley girls had. She was too brown, but herskin hadn't turned leathery yet, and there was still a little life inthe lank brown hair