“Avoid contact,” advised another.
The scientists formed up with a precision learned in their military
service. Flandry joined. They hadn’t issued him weapons, though
otherwise they had treated him pretty much as an equal; but he could
duck inside their square if violence broke loose.
It didn’t. The Domrath seemed wholly unaware of them.
This cave was small. Larger ones contained larger groups, each of which
had entered in a body. The floor had been heaped beforehand with leaves,
hay, and coarse-woven blankets. The air within was less bleak than
outside–according to Wythan Scarcheek’s thermometer. Slowly, grunting,
rustling the damp material, the Domrath groped and burrowed into it.
They lay close together, the stronger protecting the weaker.
G’ung stayed alone on his feet. Heavily he peered through the gloom;
heavily he moved to close a gate installed in the mouth. It was a timber
framework covered with hides and secured by a leather loop to a post.
“Ngugakathch,” he mumbled like one who talks in his sleep. “Shoa
t’kuhkeh.” No translation came from the computer. It didn’t have those
words. A magical formula, a prayer, a wish, a noise? How many years
before the meaning was revealed?
“Best get out,” a Merseian, shadowy in mist and murk, whispered.
“No, we can undo the catch after they’re unconscious,” the leader said
as softly. “And reclose it from the outside; the crack’ll be wide enough
to reach through. Watch this. Watch well. No one has found anything
quite similar.”
A camera lens gleamed.
They would sleep, those bulky friendly creatures–
Flandry reflected–through more than a Terran year of ice age. No, not
sleep; hibernate: comatose, barely alive, nursing the body’s fuel as a
man in illimitable darkness would nurse the single lamp he had. A sharp
stimulus could trigger wakefulness, by some chemical chain the Merseians
had not traced; and the murderous rage that followed was a survival
mechanism, to dispose of any threat and return to rest before too great
a reserve was spent. Even undisturbed, they were not few who would never
wake again.
The first who did were the pregnant females. They responded to the weak
warmth of early spring, went out into the storms and floods of that
season, joined forces and nourished themselves on what food could be
gotten, free of competition from their tribesmates. Those were revived
by higher temperatures, when the explosion of plant growth was well
underway. They came forth gaunt and irritable, and did little but eat
till they were fleshed out.
Then–at least in this part of the continent–tribes customarily met
with tribes at appointed places. Fast-breaking Festival was held, a
religious ceremony which also reinforced interpersonal relationships and
gave opportunity for new ones.
Afterward the groups dispersed. Coastal dwellers sought the shorelands
where rising sea level and melting ice created teeming marshes.
Inlanders foraged and hunted in the jungles, whose day-by-day waxing
could almost be seen. The infants were born.
Full summer brought the ripeness of wair roots and other vegetables, the
fat maturity of land and water animals. And its heat called up the full
strength and ingenuity of the Domrath. That was needful to them; now
they must gather for fall. Females, held closer to home by their young
than the males, became the primary transmitters of what culture there
was.
Autumn: retirement toward the hibernation dens; rest, merrymaking,
gorging, breeding.
Winter and the long sleep.
G’ung fumbled with the gate. Leaned against the wall nearby was a
stone-headed spear. How long have they lived this way, locked into this
cycle? Flandry mused. Will they ever break free of it? And if they do,
what next? It’s amazing how far they’ve come under these handicaps.
Strike off the manacles of Talwin’s year … somehow … and, hm, it
could turn out that the new dominators of this part of the galaxy will
look a bit like old god Ganesh.
His communicator, and the Merseians’, said with Cnif hu Vanden’s voice:
“Dominic Flandry.”
“Quiet!” breathed the leader.
“Uh, I’ll go outside,” the man proposed. He slipped by the creakily
closing gate and stood alone on the ledge. Fog eddied and dripped.
Darkness was moving in. The cold deepened.
“Switch over to local band, Cnif,” he said, and did himself. His free