In the lead were Martin and Jarji. They were two of those whose eyes were clear and sensible, and who appeared to know what they were doing here.
"Are you all right?" Jef asked as they got close.
"Of course," said Jarji.
"How did you get here?"
"Martin flew us in," said Jarji. The two reached Jef and halted. "In that craft he flew away from Beau's."
"Yes," said Martin. "I knew you'd end up here."
Jef looked past Jarji at him and their eyes held together.
"Of course you did," said Jef, and was surprised at the calmness of his voice. "You're Will, aren't you?"
"Yes."
They continued to look at each other for a very long moment. Jef had not seen William in over fifteen years; but now, staring at him, he could still wonder at the change in appearance of the brother he had known. The height was essentially the same, the thickness of bone was similar. In everything else, Jef looked without success for what he remembered.
"How long have you known?" asked William at last, a little hoarsely. All the rhythm of Martin's speech had dropped from his voice.
"Just since I woke up in your camp at the pass," Jef said. "Something about you bothered me from the first—I found myself liking you more than there was reason to. But I didn't know until the camp."
"What did I do at the camp?"
"It wasn't just what you did," Jef said. "Something's happened to me here on Everon, and I can see deeper into everything than I ever thought I could, or anyone could. Right now, I feel strange-sort of detached from everything, but with my mind very clear. Part of it seems to come from the fact Mikey hasn't let me eat or rest."
"But the camp?" said Martin. "What happened at the camp to make you sure about me?"
"It was when you called me Jef that I knew for certain," Jef said. "I remember hearing about that once—or reading it, or something—that the voice and the walk are the two hardest things for any actor to disguise. You must have known that, because you made a point all along of calling me 'Mr. Robini.' But I suppose you thought it'd be more likely to wake my suspicions if you kept on doing that after I'd blown up about you and Jarji calling me Jef. Only, you just couldn't manage to call me Jef without sounding like Will."
His brother nodded slowly.
"I thought it must have been something like that," he said. His eyes were dark. "Jef, you know it's my doing? I'm the one who got you into all this?"
"It's all right," said Jef. "It's what I would have wanted."
"All right!" said Jarji. "I think you both owe me at least some idea of what you're talking about!"
They turned to her.
"I started something when I sent Mikey to Earth—started it deliberately," William said. "I began something then that had to end here, with Jef, now. I didn't plan on you and other people being here, too. I couldn't see that kind of result from eight years beforehand."
"Then," said Jarji, "you came here the same time as Jef to make sure he got to this Valley of Thrones."
"Yes," said William. He looked back at Jef. "Jef..."
"I tell you, it's all right," Jef said. "But how could you have been sure I'd get a grant to come here, in the first place?"
"Oh, that," said William. "That just took a little wire-pulling. Anybody with my job could do that, in five minutes."
"Who else knows?"
"Only five other people, with the other four back on Earth at E. Corps headquarters. Even that many was a risk. None of this was official."
"You've lost me again," said Jarji.
"I'm a test case," Jef told her. "He took Mikey back to Earth to grow up with me, as an experiment."
"We couldn't talk to the maolots directly—" William nodded at the inhabitants of the rock columns. "It was an experiment on both sides. They gave me one of their children; I gave my younger brother, to see if we couldn't raise our own interpreters."
He looked at Jef.
"But it's worked, hasn't it?"
"Yes and no," said Jef. "But if you couldn't talk to them, how could you make the deal with them to take Mikey back to Earth?"
"I don't know," said William. "I don't really know how I did it. All I know is that, in the early years on Everon—even before the first wave of colonists was allowed in, I began to see that the maolots seemed to be showing more intelligence than animals should have had. I tried to observe some closely. They led me into the woods—you might as well say, they captured me—and brought me here. I was here, where we are now, for three days and nights with nothing to eat or drink. I think you're right, Jef. Something about being light-headed from exhaustion and deprivation makes communication with them easier. On the fourth day I started to go out of my head, and that's when they brought me Mikey. He looked like a fat, overgrown kitten that couldn't keep his balance even on four legs, he was so new. And then, somehow the other maolots and I got together on what I should do with him. It seems they'd noticed a difference in me, just as I'd noticed something more in them; and so they made this try to bridge the gap between us. They thought at first they could break the barriers just by wearing me down with hunger and thirst; but that didn't work. We're too different, we and they, to talk directly. But there's no doubt what they are. They're the first human-equivalent intelligent aliens we've met out among the stars. It's wonderful. They're our opposite numbers here, in the Everon life-chain."
"Not exactly," said Jef.
William stared at him.
"Why do you say 'not exactly'? What do you mean?"
"I mean that's not quite right," said Jef. "In a way, I think, the truth's even more wonderful than what you say. You see, they don't really talk at all in the sense we do—they feel, for and with each other, but what that feeling is to them, compared to what we're capable of, is like our speech compared to the grunts or howls of a chimp. Believe me. I've just touched the edge of that sort of feeling, once or twice since I've been on Everon. Even at that, I can't really feel with them, but I can come close to feeling with Mikey..."
He stopped.
"I'm sorry. There're no words in our way of talking that even come close to describing it. You'll just have to take my word for it."
"But if we can't communicate at all, then everything we've tried is no good!" William said. His face suddenly looked gaunt and old. "If the whole business has only got you to where you can barely communicate with Mikey, then the experiment's failed. We were dreaming of developing methods for talking to whoever, or whatever, is at the top of the ecological chains on the other new worlds. But if all we've managed to come up with is a special case—"
"It's better than that," said Jef. "It's just that it's too big a thing for me to see more than the edges of it. There're all sorts of good possibilities, if things go right here. A lot of bad ones if they don't."
"What do you mean?" Jarji demanded.
He looked at her. He found himself shrugging helplessly.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't really understand what I get from them—or even from Mikey—the way you understand someone who speaks to you in words. There's never that concrete certainty that something's been said. I just sort of absorb a feeling—"
Exasperation and frustration came close to waking his recently rediscovered ability to anger for a second.
"You know what a feeling's like!" he said. "There's no shape or size to it, no hard and fast terms to it. It's like that."
"But go on," said Jarji. "You were saying you absorb a feeling—"
"Yes." He tried to explain it to them. "I soak up the feeling, the emotion or whatever they're putting out to me; and then, inside me, in my own mind, little by little, I make sense of it. You know what it feels like to have something on your mind you can't quite grasp; and have it there, and have it there until suddenly it begins to make sense. What I get from them, and Mikey, is like that."
"What do you get from all this, then?" William swung his hand about to indicate not only the three of them, but the other humans and the varifo
rm animals that had come to cluster close around them.
"We've all been brought here so they can come to some kind of decision about us all—not just about me and Mikey. Something more than... We're a part of..."
Jef ran out of words and abandoned them. He looked around beyond the immediate circle of Will, Jarji and himself. All together, the group surrounding him made a small, tight gathering. A bull wisent, his heavy head lowered, his hair-shaded eyes clouded and dulled, stood only a step or two away from Jef. Almost as close were Armage and Beau, but on opposite sides of him, so that there was space between them. The two big men looked at each other with less of the stunned expression than was shown by the wisent and many of the others, but still without full understanding of where they were—although as he watched, with his new sensitivity Jef could feel them slowly coming back to full consciousness.
Beyond were a number of other variform animals; and men and women, some of whom he identified as having been at the dinner Armage had given for William. Among them was Yvis Suchi; and with her was the one Everon-native figure in the group.
It was her jimi, still associated with her at the end of the leash terminating in the collar about his neck. But now their situations were curiously reversed. Yvis's eyes were as unseeing as those of a sleepwalker. She held to her end of the leash as unthinkingly as if it had been glued to the palm of her hand. The jimi, on his part, grasped his own end of the leash at a body's width below its connection with his collar, and with that hold he was obviously leading Yvis about, instead of the other way around. Even as Jef watched, Yvis turned like a somnambulist to wander outwards from the group; and the jimi, without releasing his grip on the leash, moved to her side, took her arm gently and turned her back into the gathering. He held to her for a moment after he had turned her back, stroking her arm gently, and looking up into her unseeing eyes. There was no intelligence, but an obvious affection in his actions. Satisfied at last that she would stay where she was, he let her go and stepped back to continue patiently waiting with her at leash-end.
The rest of the humans there also seemed more or less dazed. So, too, did the variform Earth animals—the eland, the dog, cat, pig, chicken and duck Jef saw scattered among the humans. The variform animals seemed much more heavily affected than the humans—with one or two exceptions like Yvis Suchi. The humans showed signs of coming out of their dazes. Both Armage and Beau were now beginning to show definite signals of returning awareness. They were now staring somewhat stupidly but angrily at one another, like individuals who had just roused from sleep to find an intruder in their bedrooms.
Something was about to happen. That which the maolots had brought them all here together for was waiting to happen; and on what happened would turn...
The implications of what he had just seen of the jimi and Yvis Suchi suddenly crashed in upon Jef's conscious mind like a tidal wave.
"My God!" he said out loud. "We're on trial! That's what everything's been aimed at from the first—from the moment they first gave you Mikey, Will!"
"Trial?"
It was the heavy voice of Armage and the man himself, apparently almost back to his full senses, was turning toward them.
"That's what I said," Jef answered him, as well as Will and Jarji, who were watching him closely, now. "I should have realized it before now. They saw the difference between humans and themselves from the moment the first teams landed here. It's a difference that doesn't allow them and us to live together—here on Everon or anyplace else—"
"Anyplace else?" Will broke in.
"Yes." Jef looked at him, and from him to Jarji. "Anywhere."
"What are you talking about?" Beau broke in. "Are you saying these maolots think they can push us right off Everon?"
"Off of any world," Jef answered, still looking at Will and Jarji.
"You're insane!" burst out Armage. "I don't care what they are, they've got no technology. They couldn't stand up to what we can bring in here—"
"Who's going to bring it?" Jef was hardly conscious of the fact that he was answering the Constable and Beau. He was seeing more deeply into what confronted them every moment and the words into which he resolved what he saw were only the briefest notations of something his conscious mind was just beginning to grasp.
"Bring it in? We'll bring it in. Just a minute—" He moved toward Jef.
"Stay back, please," said Jef almost absently. He had no time to concentrate on other humans now, when vast shapes were finally taking meaningful shape in his head. "Let me think."
Armage had stopped at Jef's words, but now he moved forward again, and Beau also rolled closer.
Will moved between Jef and both of them.
"You'll stay back," he said. All the lilt of Martin's speech was back in his voice. "Indeed, you'll stay back!"
For a moment more the two big men hesitated. Then, as if they had been practicing such teamwork for years, they moved forward again, spreading out a little, one on each side of Will.
"It's all right, Will," said Jef.
He hardly recognized himself in this moment, but he was suddenly sure of what he could do. He stepped past Will and lifted his hands slightly, one toward each of the two men.
"Stop," he said.
He reached out. His fingers did not touch either of them; but the feeling that had been growing inside him all this time seemed to coil momentarily within the very center of his body, and then suddenly extend itself through his fingertips like a living act of will, invisible but solid, and both men stopped as if their muscles had refused them.
"Wait there," he said, dropping his hands. "Let me think."
He realized then that he had not meant "think." What he had meant was this process of feeling and resolving in which he was now engaged and of which thinking was only a small part. He reached inward into himself again, and went on, more for himself than the others, resolving what he felt and knew into the verbal form with which he was most familiar.
"We don't fit," he said. "That's the trouble. We refuse to fit. Worse, we destroy..." He hesitated. "In self-defense they've got to integrate with or destroy us... here on Everon and on every world where we live."
"Earth?" said Will. He was watching Jef closely.
"Earth, too," Jef said absently.
"How?" burst out Armage. The other humans, awakening, were now beginning to drift closer to the five of them. "Will you tell me? How could they do anything to us?"
"Because this world is all theirs," said Jef, "and any other world they want to touch."
"What did you mean when you started to talk about who'd bring things in to fight them?" Jarji asked.
"Ships bringing any sort of weapons from Earth would never get here," Jef said musingly. "They can reach their own, anywhere. Of course! Why didn't I realize? They had to be able to reach Mikey, all the years he was with me on Earth. If they hadn't, he'd never have been able to fit in back here again. He'd have been—insane, I suppose you'd call it. They used Mikey and me, both, to get a look at Earth and the human race there."
He turned to Will.
"Will," he said, "there's nothing we can use to fight them—but they can use everything we have against us." Beau grunted.
"A maolot can pilot a spaceship?"
"Not necessarily a maolot. Look—" Jef pointed to the jimi with Yvis Suchi. "Those paws can do anything our hands can do."
"There aren't any jimis on Earth—or anything else that's Everon," said Beau.
Jef glanced his way for a second. "I thought I heard some talk of getting permission to export jimis as pets to Earthside," he said. "But it doesn't matter. There're the strains of all the variforms from which your Earth-derived animals were bred. They can reach those, because they can reach the ones here."
"Reach the ones here? What are you talking about?" demanded Armage.
Jef nodded at the wisent almost within reach of them.
"Look at him, and the other variforms with us here. They all walked out to us on their own. No one led them
. They've been touched by Everon now, and Everon controls them when it wants to, just like it controls its own native creatures. Look again—"
He pointed toward the columns, sweeping his arm along. Between the bases of the columns flanking the open space, here and there a dot of color could be seen—the blue of a clock-bird, the grey and white of a galusha, the green of a leaf-stalker—showing where those creatures also waited below the patiently waiting maolots.
"I don't believe it," muttered Armage.
"No," grunted Beau savagely. "But then you never did know anything about Everon." They were staring at each other.
"Even if that was true," said Armage, "a few laboratory experimental animals can't take over Earth. There're hardly any animals left on Earth, compared to the number of humans."
"There're rats. As many rats as people, or more, even now," said Jef. "There're insects. There're water-life and insects. Finally, there're plants. If Everon flora can change itself so that it poisons variform elands, Earth plants can turn poisonous, too. The weather can turn against us. Humans can't live on Earth if they sterilize the world we live on."
"All right," Beau rumbled, deep in his chest, "what do they want from us here, then?"
"That's right!" said Armage suddenly. "Maybe we could split this world up. Make a deal. Give them a lot of the wild area as a reservation—"
"Beau was right," said Will, looking at him. "You're a fool."
"Fool! I've worked too hard to lose everything to maolots!"
"Do you think that matters?" Jef said. But he said it without heat or emphasis, almost sadly. "It's bigger than that. We're not here to bargain. We're here to see if we can show some reason—"
He broke off.
"Reason, Jef?" Jarji prompted him. "Go on."
He heard her as if from a very long distance away. His mind was suddenly spinning, helplessly adrift like an oarless rowboat on an angry sea far from land.