The tribe, it seemed, had spared no art or effort in making the two appear so primitive that not even their parents would recognize them.
Terry was taking it harder even than Lori; the older woman at least had already given up hope, while it wasn’t until now that Terry was forced to face the fact that this wasn’t merely a reporter’s hazard but a permanent condition.
Alama looked at them both, then gestured for Lori to come to her. As much as the American wanted to throttle the little woman, she obeyed.
The mysterious leader of the tribe, who came barely up to Lori’s shoulders, looked her over approvingly.
“You are now of the People,” Alama said after the examination. “Be one of us, take our way. There is no other trail for you. You join us, take the ceremonies. Lo-rhee die. You will take a new name. Think like us. Act like us. Be us.
There is us, and there is them. All that is not us is them. You must be happy here with us. What do you say?”
Lori sighed. “I think I will be dead soon. Killed by the forest and this life. While I live, I see no other trail.”
And then Alama took on a different aspect, almost soft and human, and she said quietly, “I did not wish this. We did not want any of you. The spirits of fate did this. You must know—I had no choices.”
It was so direct, so out of character, that it startled Lori for a moment. This small leader of this primitive tribe was actually sorry about all this! She realized suddenly that this had been an ordeal for them as well and that Alama, too, had been searching without success for a way out of the mess. Still, Lori could not forgive or forget. Not now. And because of that, she didn’t know what to say.
At that moment there was a commotion on one side of the camp, and Alama looked over, then stood up anxiously to see a very tired warrior woman come through the excited crowd toward her.
Lori was suddenly forgotten as Alama first hugged the scout, then pressed her for information.
“All are well,” the warrior told her. “Some of us stayed with the hurt. One hurt has died, Tagi, and was returned to the Earth properly; the others grow stronger.”
Alama nodded. “My soul goes to her and all of us. What of the Outsiders and their hunt?”
“It is given up, we think. No more go out. There was much busy stuff around the great fire pit, but now there are only a few there. They have strange things with them. Outsiders in green with big weapons guard them.”
“How many?”
“Of the ones that watch the great pit, it changes. As many as four hands are there, but mostly just one hand. Of the green ones with weapons, one hand and one. Two are on guard always. They watch the others, not the fire pit. But the fire pit is what they look at. A great bird like the one the first night comes two times a day, early and then late but in light. Sometimes men come and get off. Sometimes other men get on.”
“And the thing in the fire pit? You see it?”
“It is hard to see it and not be seen. Yes, we see it, by climbing trees at night. It still lights and beats like a heart. It is like a big gemstone, but with sides of many parts of one shape. At the top, one of the shapes changes. It gets deep black. Then it is the same as the rest again.”
Alama frowned. “This shape. Can you draw it here in the dirt?”
“Yes, Mother. It is like this all over, of what we can see.” The scout took a stick and carefully drew a series of connected lines.
Alama gasped and stared at it as if it were the worst kind of magic for quite some time, and it made some of the others afraid to see it.
Lori, peering over, making use of her greater height, recognized it immediately but could not understand why it had had any effect on Alama. Still, the scientist in her was fascinated not only by the shape but by the idea that the entire meteor was made of interconnections of this shape.
She didn’t think a sphere could be covered with hexagons.
Alama stayed by the fire most of the night, staring into it, deep in thought. The sight of the hexagon in the dirt had brought back memories so long buried that they seemed to be from someone else who had lived and died a long time ago. It was almost as if there were two of her inside her head: one Alama, the other someone she’d once been who was so totally different as to be some creature from another world.
But she was a creature from another world. She knew that now, although the details were far too distant, the concepts too vast to fully grasp.
This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? Waiting all those years, until you could find a hexagon that would turn dark? And here it is, come to you, far sooner than you expected it.
There was a sudden realization that she had not made the decision to find the hexagon, that she had not gone to it. Rather, it had found her. It was no accident, certainly; it had been sent. It had been sent to pick her up.
Those men with the “strange stuff.” Scientists certainly, trying to figure out what it was. She wondered what those very smart men thought of it. It must be confusing the hell out of them.
What kind of emergency would trigger it to find her? What could she do if she went? She had helped last time, certainly, but he had done most of the real work. He just didn’t want to do it anymore. Could she do it without him? Did she want to? Was it sent for her because he had refused? Or would refuse? As murky as memories of that time were, she could remember nothing covering this kind of thing.
And if she did decide to go, she would have to have the help of the People with all those guards around, but she had no doubt that somehow a path would be opened for her. She could make it, but what about her People? How many might die so she could get through? That they would do it for her she had no doubts, but was it right to ask? And if she didn’t go, he most certainly would. Somehow the system would make him go, and he would restart it all again, just as he always did.
She hated this world. It was filth and death and decay without end. She had been hiding from that, as much as she could hide, these past centuries, waiting, waiting, until one day she might again have the stars. When a woman could be a captain of a great ship and not a wife or lover or chattel slave.
She sighed. She would do what she could for the People, but like all others except him, they would die. Perhaps, just perhaps, she could at least try to solve her more direct moral dilemma at the same time.
In the morning she summoned both Lori and Terry to her. The language was inadequate for the task, but they had no other in common.
“The scouts say that there is a way out for all of you. All of us.”
“Us?” Terry asked, more than hateful at what had been done to her.
“Yes. Us. Not a way to your village or mine but to another place. A place where you will no longer be of or look like the People. A place where you may be free. It is a—different kind of place. It is where I came from many, many lives ago.”
“Where do you come from?” Lori asked, wondering where this was leading.
Alama pointed up. “From there. From after there. From the stars behind the stars.”
Oh, great! Terry thought sourly. First she’s the Amazon Queen from Hell, now she thinks she’s E.T.
Lori, however, while not ready to accept it, was ready to at least not reject it. “You come from the stars?”
The small woman nodded. “I am here since the first tribes. I am in a trap. My way out is sent. You can come or stay and be of the People. You choose. I must go.”
“The star that made the great fire pit that brought us here. That is a boat to the stars?” Lori, too, was having trouble fitting the language to these concepts.
“Not a boat. A door. A boat is not needed.”
“And if we go there with you, they can take away these marks? These bones? This glue?”
Alama smiled. “The sacred word of Alama. You will not see those things again if you go.” She paused. “One thing more. The men with you die. Left here, they die. They go with me if you help and live. You will have to carry them. Can you? Run and climb and carry heavy man?”
“I do not know. I can try.”
“You can leave the hateful one to die!” Terry told her. “I will not carry him!”
“Both must go or not one of them. I cannot choose on your saying. If the one is evil, he will find the other place a way to change or die. It has a way of law, it seems. You need not choose now. First I must find a place for the People to live and prepare them for my going. And it will be hard to get to the door. Many men, many big weapons so that no more go away like you. For now I give you leave. Go to the tree in back of me. There in quiet voice you may speak your own tongue on this. There and no other place or time but I choose.”
It was another unexpected gesture, but if she really believed what she was saying, then it hardly mattered to them anymore. They were anxious to take advantage of it, no matter what.
“Is she crazy or what?” Terry whispered in the first English she’d tried in she didn’t know how long.
“I don’t think she is,” Lori replied. “I know it sounds mad, but it’s no crazier than this. Look, I heard the other women talking. They were preparing to ritually kill Campos and Gus. Like you, I don’t care about Campos, but I can see her point. But if it’s Gus and Campos or nothing, I say take them both.”
“You really think you can just walk into this meteor and come out on some other world?”
“Probably not. If we aren’t machine-gunned by the armed guards, we’ll wind up splat on top of that thing as targets or we’ll be burned to death. But there was something really weird about that meteor. You remember it. And Alama—she knows too much about too many things to be only an aboriginal priestess. Besides, have you looked at a reflection of yourself? You look like something out of National Geographic. So do I. I know I couldn’t go back like this, and I probably won’t make it a year out here. Or, worse, maybe I will. Can you imagine living the rest of your life with these people? At this point I am willing to accept even space creatures. The bottom line is, if it really doesn’t matter anymore if I live or die, what have I got to lose?”
Terry shook her head in wonder at the situation. “I don’t know. I sure don’t want to live as one of the tribe forever, but I couldn’t go back looking like this. Some of the women said that the tattoos use some kind of stuff that penetrates deeply, that they’ve seen the color on skulls. So much for plastic surgery. But the truth is, I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching lately, and bad as it is, I’d rather live like this than die. I dunno—I’ve interviewed too many saucer nuts in my time to accept a story like that.”
Lori understood, in a way. “Still, how many leaders of Stone Age tribes could spin a story like that? These people don’t know anything outside the rain forest. Something was sure screwy about the way that meteor came in, the way it hit, the way it just sat there, the pulsing—even the dark shape on top that winked in and out. If I were normal, I would be on your side, but I’m not normal, I’m a Ph.D. turned into a Stone Age jungle girl. She may be crazy, but I’m desperate. Besides, think of poor Gus. If we try and Alama’s crazy, at least Gus will get out and get attention. If we don’t go along, they’re going to kill him.”
“You really think you can carry him all the way to that meteor?”
“Ordinarily, no. But I’ve got to.”
Terry stared at the strange little woman by the fire. “I wonder how she’s going to do it.”
Meteor Site A, Upper Amazon Basin
IT WAS IRONIC THAT THE TWO WOMEN ADAPTED QUICKER AND better to the life of the People after being offered a way out. Terry in particular took some delight in looking after the two men, particularly Campos, who had no idea who she was. Bound and drugged most of the time, allowed only a little exercise under watchful blowguns, neither was in great shape, but they at least seemed to have stabilized a bit.
Terry and Lori took the ceremonies of full initiation into the tribe, which involved a rather complex set of rituals culminating in drinking the blood of all the members of the tribe, which had been mixed with some juice in a gourd. This didn’t free them from work, but it gave them equal status with the others. Both spent long periods learning the ways of the People; Alama encouraged them and seemed quite pleased by their actions.
They finally picked a village site, well hidden and deep in the densest region of the jungle but located within two or three days walk of several more traditional tribal villages, so that they could at least get the one thing from men that nature could not provide. Making the huts, building the specialized structures of sticks and straw, coping with the driving rains—it was a real education.
Terry went along on a scouting expedition to one of the villages and saw that the tribe had at least some remote contact with the outside world. The bronze cross and small empty hut showed that missionaries had been there.
It said something about how easily she was adapting to the life that Terry never once considered that such contact provided a means of escape. Instead, she was quite pleased with how confidently she now moved through the forest and how well she had adapted to the hard life and way of survival of the People.
It was almost as if, Lori thought, Terry had burned all her mental bridges and was acting out some sort of fantasy. Lori, too, had acclimated well. She had certainly learned a lot of skills and had grown strong and self-reliant in her own way.
All of which pleased Alama no end. If she could get those two through, she thought, they would probably be the best prepared individuals ever to be dumped on that world.
Now, though, she would have to face the first barrier to be overcome.
She had told the tribe that the thing from the sky had come for her, to take her home. They hadn’t questioned it, but they were not at all happy about it. They had the law and well-trained leaders, but now they would have to see if they could survive on their own. Oddly, she felt worse about putting them in danger to get to the meteor than about leaving. After all the millennia, she was tired of the dying; she wanted, needed a challenge. This time, more than ever, she felt that she was ready for it.
Only the one small stand of trees remained for any sort of cover; the darkness would have to suffice the rest of the way, although the meteor still glowed brightly like some great floodlight in the ground, waiting for her.