That was the next shock. There was a stirring among the tall, ruddy-leafed stalks, and a creature appeared, holding half a dozen banana-shaped fruits (or husks, or something) and staring at them.
It was nothing Patsy had ever encountered before, though even at first glimpse there was something about it that looked vaguely familiar. What it looked like was a scale model of one of the ancient big-bodied, long-necked dinosaurs, maybe the kind that was called apatosaurus-though in this case an apatosaurus that was covered with curly hair all over its body, strands poking out from the colorful embroidered shirt and kilt it wore on its tubby, watermelon-size body, and curly bangs that hung over its tiny, lashed eyes-and a very small apatosaurus, at most a couple of meters from the end of the tail that rose behind it to the little head on the end of its sinuous, long neck. It stood on its hind legs, and its front legs-no, Patsy decided, you’d definitely have to call them arms and hands-were holding what it had just collected.
If the watchers were startled, the creature was petrified with fear. It made a sharp mewing sound, dropping its harvest, and flopped itself onto the machine in the path. Patsy saw what the basket was for. It supported the creature’s belly as it lay flat, its legs pumping reciprocating levers that turned the rear wheels, its hands on a tiller that evidently guided the wheel in front. As the vehicle rolled away the long neck swayed around so that the fear-filled eyes could stare back at them.
When he was out of sight Patrice shook herself. “He doesn’t look like one of the Seven Ugly Dwarfs,” she said thoughtfully, “and he’s definitely not a Beloved Leader. But I could swear I’ve seen somebody like him before.”
Patsy had the same feeling. She said, “Maybe he’s a prisoner like us. Maybe there are other intelligent races of captives around-even those things in the water last night, maybe?”
“Oh, hell, no,” Patrice said positively. “This thing had a velocipede and it wore clothes; they didn’t.”
Rosaleen sighed and turned, automatically reaching for Martin’s arm. “Think about it, Patrice. If you live in the water, what do you need with a velocipede? Or clothes, for that matter. People like us wear clothes to protect us against the weather, but there isn’t any weather underwater. In any case, it’s time for my bath.”
Martin looked alarmed. “That’s risky. Maybe that thing went to get help.”
“Yes, perhaps so,” Rosaleen said, “but it’s time for me to clean myself up a bit. You’ve all been very polite, but I really need a bath.”
“We’ll take a couple of spears along,” Patsy promised.
“You’ll take me, too!” Martin insisted.
“We will not” Patrice said indignantly.
But in the long run prudence won over modesty-what was left of modesty, after those long nude days in their first pen. The compromise they finally reached was that Martin would come along to carry Rosaleen to the bathing pond, while Jimmy Lin stayed behind to keep an eye on the place where they had seen the dinosaur with the velocipede. Then Martin would stay nearby as long as they were in the water; but he would concede enough to their modesty to sit with his back to them. “And no peeking,” Rosaleen called good-naturedly as they began to undress.
Patsy was the first to be naked, but she paused before getting into the water, appalled at the sight of Rosaleen’s nude body. The woman was skeletal. Her breasts, never ample, were mere flaps of flesh; her ribs showed; her hip joints protruded, and so did her knees and elbows.
Patrice had begun helping Rosaleen toward the water; Patsy turned away in embarrassment and splashed in. The water was still cold, but bearable. After the first shock Patsy began to swim. She couldn’t help glancing around at the woods every few moments, but, really, there wasn’t much to fear. Was there? And it was so wonderful, so fine, to be free in the cleansing water after all that time of filth and deprivation….?
She rolled over on her back to look back at where Patrice was helping Rosaleen in the shallows. She noticed that Patrice was holding one of Dan’s metal spears, and wondered if she shouldn’t have one, too-wondered a moment later whether she wasn’t being reckless in swimming out so far from the others. Treading water, she looked around.
That was when she saw the tiny pairs of eyes on the surface of the pond, three or four sets of them, nearer to the other bathers than to herself.
She screamed a warning and didn’t wait to see if they would respond. She began to swim as fast as she could toward the shore. Yells and screams spurred her on; when she reached the bank she stood up to look. Martin was there already, splashing fully dressed in the shallows, furiously stabbing at something in the water with his own spear. She didn’t see the eyes; she did see the water swirling there as though something large were moving under the surface. Patrice was hurrying Rosaleen out of the water, peering back over her shoulder in panic.
Patsy began to run along the bank toward them, pausing to catch up another spear from the stack beside their clothes. Martin might need help. …
Martin did need help. Something huge and slate gray erupted from the water behind him; he screamed something-in Spanish, Patsy thought, though she could not make out the words- and fell back into the water. “Oh, God!” Patrice cried. “It got him!”
Patsy didn’t hesitate. She splashed into the shallows to where Martin was half floating, half resting on the muddy bottom of the lake. She didn’t see the creature that had attacked him. There was a stain in the water-blood? From Martin? But it was some distance away, and the surface was swirling there; something was there and bleeding. When she reached Martin’s body it was motionless. Dead? Patsy tried to imagine what it was like to be killed, to die suddenly, without warning. . . .
But maybe he wasn’t dead. The spear in one hand, she wrapped her fingers in his long, coarse hair, trying to pull him ashore. The man weighed twice as much as she. She was barely able to move him, and his face was underwater, time passing; if he hadn’t been killed by the amphibian he might drown. When Patrice splashed in to join her she let her take over with the task of pulling the general toward dry land, while she remained in the water, on guard with the spear, watching the swirl of bloody water. Across the pond something was heaving itself out of the water; a good sign, Patsy thought hopefully. They were running away. The thing didn’t really look like a hippo, more like a walrus; and it galumphed across the ground in its pinniped fashion. It stopped, turning to look at her with those protuberant eyes, then leaned forward, scooped up some mud, formed it into a ball and threw it at her with its finlike paws.
The mud fell far short, splashing in the middle of the pool. Patsy almost laughed at that pitiful display of hostility. Why, they’re as frightened as we are, she thought. It did not occur to her that there had been several of the creatures.
She didn’t even see the one that was coming up behind her.
She never saw it at all, only felt the sudden touch of something cold on her back, and then the sharp agony of an electric shock; and then Patsy Adcock’s question was answered, and she knew at last what it was like to die.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dan
Before Dannerman and Pat had gone a hundred meters they weren’t walking hand in hand anymore. They were arm in arm. Very soon thereafter their arms were around each other’s waists, and their pace had slowed-no longer a march, now an affectionate stroll. They weren’t so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t take note of what was around them. That was what they were there for: to explore their surroundings. Dannerman observed that the path they were on had once been trodden hard by some creature’s feet-but not recently, since it was now broken here and there with clumps of the wiry grass spikes. It was Pat who first saw the trees that looked so much like cherries (though the bright red fruits that hung from their branches were segmented with hard scales like tiny, ruby-colored pineapples), and it was Dannerman who pointed out the hill that rose off to their left, looming a good hundred meters over the surrounding terrain. (“We could climb that and see everything for kilometers around. Maybe next time.”) But they both knew that the thing they were most interested in exploring was not geography; and when Pat looked up at Dannerman, he naturally kissed her; and when they moved their faces away the only question was which of them could first get out of their clothes. They wasted no time. The weeks of enforced abstinence and excessive intimacy were all the foreplay they needed.