Footfall

Nat drank, then handed across the mug. “He’s at his limit, that’s all. He gets just so good and no better. We still play, of course. We all need exercise, him most of all.

“Sherry’s sure we’re anthropomorphizing. Maybe the fithp have games we’d be awful at. But I think she’s assuming symmetry where there just isn’t any need for it.

“The fithp have bad hands. They’re just bloody clumsy, and no wonder, with no bones in their grasping digits! I think they’re a young race. God knows humanity never finished evolving in any direction, but I think the fithp are even younger than that. They’re too young to have space travel. They didn’t even discover it for themselves! What got them here was those great granite messages left by an extinct species. They shouldn’t be here at all.”

“They’re doing well, considering their handicaps.”

“We need to know their handicaps. Set up a research station. You have other prisoners now. Study them. They’ve got a mating season-Dawson said so too, and emphasized it-and their mating practice is more reflexive than ours. Can we duplicate their pheromones and drive them nuts?”

The President was still laughing. “Somebody told me once that I’m not fit to mold the future because I’m only allowed to think up to the next election. Who is it that plans for the future of the human race?”

“Speaking.” Nat took the mug, drank deeply, passed it back.

“Then why am I in charge?”

“Somebody told you it was your turn in the barrel, and made you believe it.”

Coffey laughed. “That’s one way to look at it. My God, when I think of what I had to do to get this job! Mr.—”

“Reynolds. Nat Reynolds.”

“Nat, I ought to come down here more often, only I don’t suppose I can.”

“Why?”

“Mr. Clybourne. I’ve sent him off on an errand, but he’ll be back.”

“So you ignore him,” Reynolds said.

“I can’t do that. He’s doing his job, the best he can-and maybe one day I really will need him.”

You might at that, Reynolds thought. “If you’re done warming that mug—”

Things got a little hazy thereafter. Nat remembered making another batch of daquiris. Harpanet cut the melon, but he was fairly clumsy at it. He did none of the drinking. The fithp didn’t use alcohol.

“There’s plenty we can do. Elephant guns. We should be producing them as fast as we can. Who makes elephant guns?”

“There are people I can ask,” said the President. “The British? They made a big double-barreled rifle, a ‘Nitro Express’—”

“Round up all you can find,” Reynolds said. “Send ’em to Africa. Somebody there can use them.” He laughed. “It worries me to excess, there may be a young Zulu warrior somewhere who doesn’t have an elephant gun.”

“Are your stories that bloody too? Ah, I’ve got something. Harpanet, are you willing to speak to your ship?”

“I am. They will take it that I am speaking for your fithp.”

“I know, but you can at least tell them that you were allowed to surrender. They may be afraid to try by now.”

“Good,” said Nat. “Now, Dawson’s sign of the friendly fithp the ‘Don’t Bomb Me’—”

“Yeah,” said the President. “Is it possible they want that sign so they’ll know where our food sources are? So they can bomb them?”

Harpanet reared; displaced mud made a godawful sucking sound. “They would not. Bomb the local-surrender sign? They would not!”

“All right,” Coffey said mildly.

“By the same token, we use it only where appropriate.” Reynolds thought, If it isn’t on the Bellingham greenhouse, they’ll notice. If the sign is too big, they’ll notice. I can’t say any of that where Harpanet can hear. At that moment the President winked at him.

Reynolds looked at the foaming glass and shuddered. “What’s that?”

“One of the last Alka-Seltzer in existence, you ungrateful bastard,” Joe Ransom said. “And Wade found you a vitamin B!. Here.”

“Bless you.” Reynolds washed the tablet down. “I think it was worth it. Even at worst, he needed to get drunk. Did I save civilization? I can’t quite remember.”

“Yeah. We watched you from the TV in the lounge. You got him thinking about the long run. We think you put some iron in his spine.”

“I hope so.” Nat moved gingerly down the hall toward his room. Then he stopped. “It shook up Harpanet a bit. He told me he’d never had a conversation with his herdmaster. Much less an argument.”

“He’ll get over it. Now he thinks you’re more important than he thought.” Ransom glanced at his watch. “My turn, I guess. You know something? I hate mud. Why couldn’t they like swimming in something sensible, like lime Jell-O?”

33. ARCHANGEL

We are done with Hope and Honor,We are lost to Love and Truth,We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.God help us, for we knew the worst too young!—RUDYARD KIPLING, “Gentleman ankers”