The Collection (50 page)

"Perhaps he will come back to us," said Alwa. His
old eyes misted.

Mr. Smith was coming back all right, and sooner than they
had dared to hope. As soon in fact, as he could make the trip to the shack and
return. He came back dressed in clothing very different from the garb the other
white man had worn. Shining leather boots and the uniform of the Galactic
Guard, and a wide leather belt with a holster for his needle gun.

But the gun was in his hand when, at dusk, he strode into
the compound.

He said, "I am Number One, the Lord of all the Solar
System, and your ruler. Who was chief among you?"

Alwa had been in his hut, but he heard the words and came
out. He understood the words, but not their meaning. He said, "Earthling,
we welcome you back. I am the chief."

"You were the chief. Now you will serve me. I am the
chief."

Alwa's old eyes were bewildered at the strangeness of this.
He said, "I will serve you, yes. All of us. But it is not fitting that an
Earthling should be chief among—"

The whisper of the needle gun. Alwa's wrinkled hands went to
his scrawny neck where, just off the center, was a sudden tiny pin prick of a
hole. A faint trickle of red coursed over the dark blue of his skin. The old
man's knees gave way under him as the rage of the poisoned needle dart struck
him, and he fell. Others started toward him.

"Back," said Mr. Smith. "Let him die slowly
that you may all see what happens to—"

But one of the chief's wives, one who did not understand the
speech of Earth, was already lifting Alwa's head. The needle gun whispered
again, and she fell forward across him.

"I am Number One," said Mr. Smith, "and Lord
of all the planets. All who oppose me, die by—"

And then, suddenly all of them were running toward him. His
finger pressed the trigger and four of them died before the avalanche of their
bodies bore him down and overwhelmed him. Nrana had been first in that rush,
and Nrana died.

The others tied the Earthling up and threw him into one of
the huts. And then, while the women began wailing for the dead, the men made
council.

They elected Kallana chief and he stood before them and
said, "The Father-of-Us, the Mister Gerhardt, deceived us." There was
fear and worry in his voice and apprehension on his blue face. "If this be
indeed the Lord of whom he told us—"

"He is not a god," said another. "He is an
Earthling, but there have been such before on Venus, many many of them who came
long and long ago from the skies. Now they are all dead, killed in strife among
themselves. It is well. This last one is one of them, but he is mad."

And they talked long and the dusk grew into night while they
talked of what they must do. The gleam of firelight upon their bodies, and the
waiting drummer.

The problem was difficult. To harm one who was mad was tabu.
If he was really a god, it would be worse. Thunder and lightning from the sky
would destroy the village. Yet they dared not release him. Even if they took
the evil weapon-that-whispered-its-death and buried it, he might find other
ways to harm them. He might have another where he had gone for the first.

Yes, it was a difficult problem for them, but the eldest and
wisest of them, one M'Ganne, gave them at last the answer.

"O Kallana," he said, "Let us give him to the
kifs
. If
they
harm him—" and old M'Ganne grinned a
toothless, mirthless grin "—it would be their doing and not ours."

Kallana shuddered. "It is the most horrible of all
deaths. And if he is a god—"

"If he is a god, they will not harm him. If he is mad
and not a god, we will not have harmed him. It harms not a man to tie him to a
tree."

Kallana considered well, for the safety of his people was at
stake. Considering, he remembered how Alwa and Nrana had died.

He said, "It is right."

The waiting drummer began the rhythm of the council-end, and
those of the men who were young and fleet lighted torches in the fire and went
out into the forest to seek the
kifs
, who were still in their season of
marching.

And after a while, having found what they sought, they
returned.

They took the Earthling out with them, then, and tied him to
a tree. They left him there, and they left the gag over his lips because they
did not wish to hear his screams when the
kifs
came.

The cloth of the gag would be eaten, too, but by that time,
there would be no flesh under it from which a scream might come.

They left him, and went back to the compound, and the drums
took up the rhythm of propitiation to the gods for what they had done. For they
had, they knew, cut very close to the corner of a tabu—but the provocation had
been great and they hoped they would not be punished.

All night the drums would throb.

The man tied to the tree struggled with his bonds, but they
were strong and his writhings made the knots but tighten.

His eyes became accustomed to the darkness.

He tried to shout, "I am Number One, Lord of—"

And then, because he could not shout and because he could
not loosen himself, there came a rift in his madness. He remembered who he was,
and all the old hatreds and bitterness welled up in him.

He remembered, too, what had happened in the compound, and
wondered why the Venusian natives had not killed him. Why, instead, they had
tied him here alone in the darkness of the jungle.

Afar, he heard the throbbing of the drums, and they were
like the beating of the heart of night, and there was a louder, nearer sound
that was the pulse of blood in his ears as the fear came to him.

The fear that he knew why they had tied him here. The
horrible, gibbering fear that, for the last time, an army marched against him.

He had time to savor that fear to the uttermost, to have it
become a creeping certainty that crawled into the black corners of his soul as
would the soldiers of the coming army crawl into his ears and nostrils while
others would eat away his eyelids to get at the eyes behind them.

And then, and only then, did he hear the sound that was like
the rustle of dry leaves, in a dank, black jungle where there were no dry
leaves to rustle nor breeze to rustle them.

Horribly, Number One, the last of the dictators, did not go
mad again; not exactly, but he laughed, and laughed and laughed....

The big sun was crimson in a violet sky. At the edge of the
brown plain, dotted with brown bushes, lay the red jungle.

McGarry strode toward it. It was tough work and dangerous
work, searching in those red jungles, but it had to be done. And he'd searched
a thousand of them; this was just one more.

He said, "Here we go, Dorothy. All set?"

The little five-limbed creature that rested on his shoulder
didn't answer, but then it never did. It couldn't talk, but it was something to
talk to. It was company. In size and weight it felt amazingly like a hand
resting on his shoulder.

He'd had Dorothy for . . . How long? At a guess, four years.
He'd been here about five, as nearly as he could reckon it, and it had been
about a year before he'd found her. Anyway, he assumed Dorothy was of the
gentler sex, if for no other reason than the gentle way she rested on his
shoulder, like a woman's hand.

"Dorothy," he said, "reckon we'd better get
ready for trouble. Might be lions or tigers in there."

He unbuckled his sol-gun holster and let his hand rest on
the butt of the weapon, ready to draw it quickly. For the thousandth time, at
least, he thanked his lucky stars that the weapon he'd managed to salvage from
the wreckage of his spacer had been a sol-gun, the one and only weapon that
worked practically forever without refills or ammunition. A sol-gun merely
needed exposure to the rays of a sun—any bright and close sun—for an hour or
two a day; it soaked up energy. And, when you pulled the trigger, it dished it
out. With any weapon but a sol-gun, he'd never have lasted five years here on
Kruger III.

Yes, even before he quite reached the edge of the red
jungle, he saw a lion. Nothing like any lion ever seen on Earth, of course.
This one was bright magenta, just enough different in color from the purplish
bushes it crouched behind so that he could see it. It had eight legs, all
jointless and as supple and strong as an elephant's trunk, and a scaly head
with a bill like a toucan's.

McGarry called it a lion. He had as much right to call it
that as anything else, because it had never been named. Or if it had, the namer
had never returned to Earth to report on the flora and fauna of Kruger III.
Only one spacer had ever landed here before McGarry's, as far as the records
showed, and it had never taken off again. He was looking for it now; he'd been
looking for it systematically for the five years he'd been here.

If he found it, it might—just barely might—contain, intact,
some of the electronic tubes which had been smashed in the crash landing of his
own spacer. And if it did, he could get back to Earth.

He stopped ten paces short of the edge of the red jungle and
aimed the sol-gun at the bushes behind which the lion crouched. He pulled the
trigger, and there was a bright green flash, brief but beautiful—oh, so
beautiful—and then the bushes weren't there any more, nor was the eight-legged
lion.

McGarry chuckled softly. "Did you see that, Dorothy?
That was
green
, the one color you don't have on this bloody red planet
of yours. The most beautiful color in the universe, Dorothy.
Green
! And
I know where there's a world that's mostly green, and we're going to get there,
you and I. Sure we are. It's the world I came from, and it's the most beautiful
place there is, Dorothy. You'll love it."

He turned and looked back over the brown plain with brown
bushes, the violet sky above, the crimson sun. The eternally crimson sun
Kruger, the sun that never set on the day side of this planet, which always
faced it as one side of Earth's moon always faces Earth.

No day and night—unless one passed the shadow line into the
night side, which was too freezingly cold to sustain life. No seasons. A
uniform, never-changing temperature, no wind, no storms.

He thought for the thousandth—or the millionth —time that it
wouldn't be a bad planet to live on, if only it were green like Earth, if only
there was something green upon it besides the occasional flash of his sol-gun.
Breathable atmosphere, moderate temperature—ranging from about forty Fahrenheit
near the shadow line to about ninety at the point directly under the red sun,
where its rays were straight instead of slanting. Plenty of food, and he'd
learned long ago which plants and animals were, for him, edible, and which made
him ill. Nothing he'd tried was poisonous.

Yes, a wonderful world. He'd even got used, by now, to the
solitude of being the only intelligent creature on it. Dorothy was helpful,
there. Something to talk to, even if she didn't talk back.

Except—Oh, God—he wanted to see a green world again.

Earth, the only planet in the universe where green was the
predominant color, where plant life was based on chlorophyll.

Other planets, even in the solar system, Earth's neighbors,
had no more to offer than greenish streaks in rare rocks, an occasional tiny
life-form of a shade that might be brownish green if you wanted to call it
that. Why, you could live years on any planet but Earth, anywhere in the
system, and never see green.

McGarry sighed. He'd been thinking to himself, but now he
thought out loud, to Dorothy, continuing his thoughts without a break. It
didn't matter to Dorothy. "Yes, Dorothy," he said, "it's the
only planet worth living on—Earth! Green fields, grassy lawns, green trees.
Dorothy, I'll never leave it again, once I get back there, I'll build me a
shack out in the woods, in the middle of trees, but not trees so thick that
grass doesn't grow under them.
Green
grass. I'll paint the shack green,
Dorothy. We've even got green pigments back on Earth."

He sighed and looked at the red jungle ahead of him.

"What's that you asked, Dorothy?" She hadn't asked
anything but it was a game to pretend that she talked back. A game that helped
him to keep sane. "Will I get married when I get back? Is that what you
asked?"

He gave it consideration. "Well, it's like this,
Dorothy. Maybe and maybe not. You were named after a woman back on Earth, you
know. A woman I was going to marry. But five years is a long time, Dorothy.
I've been reported missing and presumed dead. I doubt if she's waited this
long. If she has, well, yes, I'll marry her, Dorothy.”

"Did you ask, what if she hasn't? Well, I don't know.
Let's not worry about that till we get back, huh? Of course, if I could find a
woman who was
green
, or even one with green hair, I'd love her to
pieces. But on Earth, almost everything is
green
except the women."

He chuckled at that and, sol-gun ready, went on into the
jungle, the red jungle that had nothing green except the occasional flash of
his sol-gun.

Funny about that. Back on Earth a sol-gun flashed blue. Here
under a red sun it flashed green when he fired it. But the explanation was
simple enough. A sol-gun drew energy from a nearby star and the flash it made
when fired was the complementary color of its source of energy. Drawing energy
from Sol, a yellow sun, it flashed blue. From Kruger, a red sun, green.

Maybe that, he thought, had been the one thing, aside from
Dorothy's company, that had kept him sane. A flash of green several times a
day. Something green to remind him what the color was. To keep his eye attuned
to it, if he ever saw it again.