Lord Tyger (23 page)

Ras said that he doubted it very much. He would be as far away as possible from the death dealt out by the Bird, not to mention, although he would do so, that Bigagi would be afraid of Ras also and would want to put as much distance as he could between Ras and himself. Moreover, the Wantso did not leave their shelters at night except in extreme emergencies.

Ras said, "An anthropologist, then, is one who studies people? I must be an anthropologist. I studied my parents, and the Wantso, and Gilluk, king of the Sharrikt."

"Not scientifically," she said. "Although, with the methods you used, you could probably describe the Wantso far more deeply than any anthropologist."

She resumed her story. She had lived in Sweden during the war because the Germans had come to Finland to help fight the
Russians. Although the Finns did not subscribe to anti-Semitism and did not allow the Germans to impose this practice while they were in Finland, her father had sent her mother and herself to Sweden. He was killed while fighting side by side with the Germans.

She said this was ironic (a term she had to explain), but he had loved his country, and he hated the Russians as much as the Germans, since he knew that the Russians, despite their official policy, were actively anti-Semitic.

11

A SHORT ACQUAINTANCE

Ras, hearing all the new words and the explanations, felt as if his head were the inside of a termite colony attacked by an anteater. Thoughts ran against each other, fell over, kicking all six legs, banged against his skull, and bit into him.

"You are angry," she said. "Why?"

"I don't know. But what you tell me makes me angry. I feel as if... as if someone was about to attack me with a knife. Or was trying to take something away from me."

"So that's it! You don't like to hear this! It threatens you! It makes all you've believed a lie! Shall I stop talking?"

"Talk," he said grimly.

Her husband had also been an anthropologist. She had met him at the university, where he was a student. After they returned to Helsinki, they were married. They taught at the University of Helsinki and also at Munich. They had made one field trip into the Amazon basin and several to Africa and were on this expedition on an American grant.

The existence of this valley had been known for a long time. A previous expedition, an American one, had intended to fly into the valley in an amphibian plane. But the plane had crashed shortly after take-off and killed everybody aboard.

"There was no explanation of the cause of the crash. I doubt that it was an accident. We had a terrible time getting a permit to come here from the authorities. It was so difficult that we knew somebody was trying to stop us. Mika suspected that the authorities were being bribed, but he couldn't prove it. When he began a determined investigation, we suddenly got a permit. But our troubles didn't stop. My husband had to run off a native who was trying to set our plane on fire the night before we were to fly up here. And then, the attack by the helicopter... someone didn't want us to be here. I think it was the writer of what you call the Letters from God. Someone who is playing God."

Ras said slowly, "If you're telling me the truth... you said this... valley?... had been known for some time. What do you mean?"

"Oh, some airliners forced off course from time to time had reported it, and a military plane went over it once."

"Why didn't I see them?"

"Because they were flying so high. Have you ever seen several long, thin clouds, streamers, suddenly appear high in the sky, last for a few minutes, and then die out?"

Ras shook his head.

"Then you missed them. But if you ever see any, they'll be the frozen exhaust trails of a jet."

This led to more clarifications. Finally, Ras sighed and said, "I think we ought to go to sleep."

He was so disturbed that he abandoned the earlier idea of asking her to lie with him. She looked sleepy, but she did not want to stop talking.

"The copters come from the top of that pillar in the lake. You say that it can't be climbed?"

"I said I hadn't been able to do it yet.".

"Do you intend to try again, perhaps at night, when you can't be seen?"

"It would be much harder to do at night. But I will do it. Later. First, I want to kill Bigagi. And then I want to find Igziyabher. He can answer my questions."

"There is no Igziyabher. Not at the end of this valley, or in the big world outside here. Nowhere."

"I'll see for myself."

He stood up. "I think I'll pile up some more brush. I'm not worried about Bigagi, but there are leopards around here."

He had just finished the construction and thrown some big, heavy branches on the fire when Eeva fell asleep. Again, he felt desire for her. The upset caused by her story and the sorrow for his parents and Wilida had deflated him. But the upset had drained away and the ghosts of Wilida, Mariyam, and Yusufu were thinning, and he could--at this time, at least--think of them without feeling as if a sharp knife were in his chest.

Eeva, as if she were reading his mind, came awake with a snort. She looked with eyes from which the dullness was swiftly polished away. She said, "Don't think about me, Ras. I don't want to shoot you."

"Why won't you lie with me?"

"Because my husband hasn't been dead very long and I still
grieve for him. It's true that we weren't getting along well; we'd been on the edge of a divorce for a long time. Part of the reason for this was... he was infertile. He felt as if he weren't a complete man. I told him we could adopt children, God knew there were enough who needed parents, but he said no. We either had his children or none at all. And... there were other things.

"But even if this weren't so, even if I had no one to sorrow for, I wouldn't have anything to do with you in that way. I don't want to get pregnant and have to bear a child in this wilderness.

"That still isn't all of it. Mostly, I don't love you."

Ras was astonished. "You don't hate me, do you?"

"No."

"I didn't love the female gorillas or any of the Wantso women, except Wilida. But I lay with them. Why can't I lie with you? Don't you like to lie with a man?"

She said, "How can I explain to you what I mean? You're completely the innocent, not in the deed but in the knowledge of certain things. You're Rousseau's Noble Savage; in some respects, anyway."

"Rousseau?"

There were more explanations. Ras, half listening, thought of crawling over upon her. It would be easy to take the gun away as she slept. She must know that. Yet she slept. Did she want him to take the gun?

Force. She had said something about evil men forcing unwilling women. That had been one of the many puzzlers. He had never forced a woman or even known of the idea. Perhaps, though, that was not quite true. When he had surprised the Wantso women at night, he had used their fear of him as a ghost
to get his way. At the time, he had not, however, expected a refusal or even thought of refusal on any ground except that he was a ghost.

"I don't understand why you don't want me," Ras said. "It has been weeks since you have had a man, and you have not been sick. Am I ugly? My parents and the Wantso women told me I was beautiful. And I am not like the Wantso men. No stone knife has made me unable to get more than a half erection. My temper is not that of a half-starved leopard; I laugh and joke, and I like to talk and to listen. I love to caress, to love. I love laughter and fun and the feel of flesh. If you don't love me, you don't hate me, either, and you haven't said you didn't like me or told me I'm repulsive. So I don't understand."

"You're hurt," she said. "I suppose you think you have reason to be. But don't be hurt. My background is alien to yours. I am from a different society, so different that you can't imagine. So don't be hurt. Just take my word for it that I have good reasons for saying no."

Ras sighed and said,
"No
is a short word but a wide one. There can be a whole world behind it."

"A world you'd be better off never to know," Eeva said. "Unfortunately, the world isn't going to let you alone. It's growing smaller every day, and its humans have less and less room, and they're going to spill over into this valley. There will be others to follow my husband and me. Then... I don't know. I hate to think of it. What will they make of you; what will they do to you?"

Her words made him uneasy. Something enormous and black and deadly was over on the other side of the mountains. She spoke so convincingly. Perhaps the sky was not blue stone.

"Just go to sleep and forget about it while you can," she said.

He said, "What am I supposed to do? Jack off?"

Eeva said something in what he presumed was Finnish. It sounded as if it were a curse.

"I don't care what you do! Just don't try to force me! Now--go to sleep!"

The moon was up when she awoke again. She sat up, the gun in her hand, and said shrilly, "What is it? Ras! What's shaking the branches? Ras! A leopard!"

Ras did not stop. The shadows of branches and leaves dappled most of him, but a shaft of moonlight struck him in the center of the body so that she could see what he was doing. Silver spurted.

"Jumala!
" she said disgustedly. And then in English, "You filthy beast!"

Ras said, panting, "It's better than suffering."

She was silent for a while and then spoke, "Who were you thinking of?"

He groaned and said, "Wilida!"

Eeva made a sound of disgust. She said, "And you want me to make love to you, so you can pretend that I am your black woman. Ugh! I can smell that foul stuff. Go down to the river and wash."

"Does it excite you?" Ras said.

"I ought to shoot you!"

"Does it excite you?"

There was no answer. Ras closed his eyes and presently was asleep. In the morning, Eeva said nothing for a long while. Her
eyes were red and had bluish bags under them. She moved stiffly, as if she had been in a cramped position all night. Ras grinned at her and said that she looked as if she were a hundred years old. He had expected her to snarl or strike out at him, as his parents had sometimes done when he had teased them too much before they had had breakfast.

Instead, she wept. He put his hand on her shoulder to tell her he felt sorry for her, but she jerked away.

Then, on seeing him send a high arc of urine over the top of the branchy wall, she screamed at him.

"Don't you have any shame at all? I hate you! Are you a man or a baby? You make me want to vomit, the way you act, think, eat! Especially your eating manners! You grunt and gobble and dribble and slobber like a pig! That's what you are, a pig!"

She began to weep again. Ras said, "I think I'll go on alone. You make me angry all the time. Anyway, I can go much faster without you. And, also, when I'm not angry with you, then I want to lie with you, and that is hard on me. I don't like that."

Eeva cried even more loudly. Between sobs, she said, "I am so scared. And I'm lonely!"

"Why should you be? You're with me. You're safe. And you have me to talk to, to make love to, if you weren't so crazy."

"I'm
the one that's crazy?" she yelled. After a while, she stopped snuffling, and she dried her eyes. "I always thought I was so strong. I
am
very capable. I've never been in a situation I couldn't handle. You should see me on a field trip. I'm as capable as any man. I'm not a coward, either. Only... this... it's all so sudden, so savage, so utterly strange. And so hard. I don't think I can get out of this valley, and it may be a long time before
anybody comes looking for me. And somebody wants to kill me; why, I don't know."

"You be my woman, and you'll be safe."

"I can take care of myself," she said.

Ras laughed.

"I just had a moment of weakness," she said. "I'll be all right. I feel much better now."

"You look like a red-eyed hyena."

"Jumala!
What do you expect? I don't have any make-up, I've been half-starved and never sleeping for more than a half hour at a time, I'm dirty, my clothes are torn and almost rotted off, my hair is a mess, and..."