For a while, hope was kindled. Nausea, after all, can be lived with. Only Koresz suspected the truth, from his examination of the colony’s fecal waste. Diarrhea, no. But it was obvious to him that most of the “food” was being passed right through without use. Soon enough, it became obvious to everyone that the food was not sustaining them.
The children seemed somewhat more resilient than the adults. That fact, which Indira at first found reassuring, became another source of anxiety.
Who will take care of them when the adults are gone?
And the children were all very young. The oldest was only five. Most of them were three or four years old. That had been the Society’s doing. The planning board had concluded, based on obscure psychological reasoning which Indira personally found suspect (but wasn’t about to argue with, since she was a beneficiary), that the ideal colonists for the Magellan’s expedition would be professional single parents in their mid-thirties with young (but not crib-age) children.
When all seemed lost, the owoc had saved them. The owoc, and the quick mind of Julius Cohen.
The colonists had known the owoc were there, almost from the beginning. The large creatures were impossible to miss. At first the humans had been afraid of the things, because of their size. But, in truth, the creatures seemed very timid. Certainly they never made any threatening motions, and they soon enough began to avoid the humans, staying on the southern side of the valley.
Julius had studied them, for several days. He reported that the creatures seemed to be herbivores, and explained that herbivores are seldom dangerous, so long as they do not feel threatened. Thereafter, the colonists made it a point not to venture onto the southern portion of the valley.
Then a child wandered off, a small boy named Manuel. His absence was not noticed for some time, partly because it was hard to keep track of each individual in the swarm of children, and partly because the adults were now greatly weakened and listless.
Eventually, his absence was noticed. Indira and Julius went in search. The four other adults who were still alive were too weak to do more than watch the children in the camp.
After two hours of scouring the immediate vicinity, they began searching toward the south. After another hour, they heard the faint sounds of a crying child coming from a grove of tall, vaguely fern-like growths. As quickly as their weakened condition permitted, they plunged into the thick foliage. The cries grew louder.
They came to the edge of a small clearing. Through a screen of ferns, they could see one of the herbivores, staring down at the tiny figure of the four year old boy. Manuel was sprawled before the huge creature, crying.
He was wearing, Indira noted absently, a khaki jumpsuit.
She and Julius hesitated, frozen between their fear for the boy and their uncertainty of how to scare away such a formidable-looking beast.
The creature reached down with four of its arms and lifted the boy. It drew him toward its beak. The beak gaped open.
Indecision vanished. Indira and Julius began frantically pushing their way through the last screen of ferns.
Suddenly, a stream of thick paste gushed from the creature’s beak. The paste splattered over the child’s head and shoulders.
Manuel’s wails were extinguished, as a large portion of the paste went into his open mouth. The boy coughed and spluttered.
Indira felt a hand on her shoulder. Then, to her astonishment, Julius forced her to the ground.
“Stop!” he hissed.
She stared back at him. Slowly, Julius lowered himself next to her.
“It’s not trying to hurt the boy,” he whispered urgently. “It’s trying to feed him.”
“What?”
“It’s true. I’ve watched them—that’s exactly how they feed their own young.”
She looked back. In truth, the huge creature did not seem to be threatening the boy. It was simply holding him up, watching Manuel with its huge eyes (so uncannily like human eyes, except that they were four times larger).
The expression on the boy’s face was almost comical. Utter bewilderment. His face, head and upper body were covered with paste. It was difficult to tell how much, for the color of the paste blended almost perfectly with his clothing.