“We-can’t. This man lives in the jungle, like an animal himsell Somehow he’s learned to get near them. But you can’t expect us to.”
Jason spoke quickly, before the talker could react to the insult. “C
course I expect you to. That’s the whole idea. If you don’t hate the bea~ and expect it to attack you-why it won’t. Think of it as a creature fror
a different planet, something harmless.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s a stingwing!”
As they talked, Bnicco stepped forward, his eyes fixed steadily o the creature perched on the glove. Jason signaled the bowmen to hol their fire. Brucco stopped at a safe distance and kept looking steadily c the stingwing. It rustled its leathery wings uneasily and hissed. drop of poison formed at the tip of each great poison claw on its wing The control room was filled with a deadly silence.
Slowly he raised his hand. Carefully putting it out, over the anima The hand dropped a little, rubbed the stingwings head once, then fe. back to his side. The animal did nothing except stir slightly under th touch.
There was a concerted sigh, as those who had been unknowingl holding their breath, breathed again.
“How did you do it?” Meta asked in a hushed voice.
“Hmm, what?” Brucco said, apparently snapping out of a daze. “01 touching the thing. Simple, really. I just pretended it was one of di training aids I use, a realistic and harmless duplicate. I kept my mm on that single thought and it worked.” He looked down at his ham then back to the stingwing. His voice was quieter now, as if he spol from a distance. “It’s not a training aid, you know. It’s real. Deadl:
The off-worlder is right. He’s right about everything he said.”
With Brucco’s success as an example, Kerk came close to the anima He walked stiffly, as if on the way to his execution, and runnels
sweat poured down his rigid face. But he believed and kept his though directed away from the stingwing and he could touch it unharmed.
Meta tried but couldn’t fight down the horror it raised when si came close. “I am trying,” she said, “and I do believe you now-hi I just can’t do it.”
Skop screamed when they all looked at him, shouted it was all a tric]
and had to be clubbed unconscious when he attacked the bowmen. Understanding had come to Pyrnis.
28
“What do we do now?” Meta asked. Her voice was troubled, questioning. She voiced the thoughts of all the Pyrrans in the room, and the thousands who watched in their screens.
“What will we do?” They turned to Jason, waiting for an answer. For the moment their differences were forgotten. The people from the city were staring expectantly at him, as were the crossbowmen with half-lowered weapons. This stranger had confused and changed the old world they had known, and presented them with a newer and stranger one, with alien problems.
“Hold on,” he said, raising his hand. “I’m no doctor of social ills. I’m not going to try and cure this planet full of musclebound sharpshooters. I’ve just squeezed through up to now, and by the law of averages I should be ten times dead.”
“Even if all you say is true, Jason,” Meta said, “you are still the only person who can help us. What will the future be like?”
Suddenly weary, Jason slumped into the pilot’s chair. He glanced around at the circle of people. They seemed sincere. None of them even appeared to have noticed that he no longer had his hand on the pump switch. For the moment, at least, the war between city and country was forgotten.
“I’ll give you my conclusions,” Jason said, twisting in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position for his aching bones. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the last day or two, searching for the answer. The very first thing I realized, was that the perfect and logical solution wouldn’t do at all. I’m afraid the old ideal of the lion lying down with the lamb doesn’t work out in practice. About all it does is make a fast lunch for the lion. Ideally, now that you all know the real causes of your trouble, you should tear down the perimeter and have the city and forest people mingled in brotherly love. Makes just as pretty a picture as the one of lion and lamb. And would undoubtedly have the same result. Someone would remember how really filthy the grubbers are, or how stupid junkmen can be, and there would be a fresh corpse cooling. The fight would