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Page 31.

Soon the boats began to outpace those on shore, particularly when the cattle had to be transported through the water to go around outcroppings. Nizin waved the boats on impatiently, looking at him like a child who’d just gotten a new electric train set for Christmas. It was just the dozen boats then, with their Thuga rowers and Siirk soldiers, and them, heading into the unknown—and no good, he was sure of that.

He managed to whisper “I love you,” and Maryan whispered the words back to him, and Omas brandished his whip, but Nizin brushed him off. Nizin came and sat down on his haunches and stared into their faces. He motioned with his hands: Speak, speak! I want to see you speak!

“He wants us to speak,” Alex said.

“Careful, he may understand English.”

Nizin bounced with delight and pointed at her. “Ingish! Ingish!” he nodded and motioned for her to say more.

“Go screw yourself?” she opined.

Nizin shrugged. “Ingish.” he shook his head and mumbled several times, “Ingish.” He pointed at Alex and laughed and yelled: “Geedeen!”

“English?” Alex asked.

He nodded joyfully and looked over his shoulder at Kogran, who laughed and nodded. “Geedeen!” they both said.

“Geedeen,” Alex said agreeably, but that seemed to make them mad.

After a while—how often and how many different ways can one say “English” and “Geedeen?”—they tired of this game and retired to their bench.

The hours went by, and the monotony of the shore was unbroken—forests as far as he could see.

Alex began to notice some odd things. For one thing, one or two of the Thuga appeared to be feigning dumbness. They had bright, furtive eyes that they kept pointing downward.

Secondly, the Siirk had a strange ritual whose true and horrifying nature soon revealed itself.

As the daylong cracking of the whip continued, and Alex’s ears tired of it, suddenly, on a nearby boat, a Thuga jumped up, threw his oar in front of him, and dove overboard.

Instantly, all the Siirk rose to their feet and began cheering while those Siirk in the affected boat took turns taking pot shots at the unfortunate. They watched his body float mutely in the waves as the cruel armada kept on course.

The Siirk, one by one, took turns slipping quietly overboard, and furtively swimming to a boat in the rear that was completely enclosed by leather curtains. It was being towed by another boat with a double complement of Thuga overseen by two Siirk with whips and other Siirk with guns. Each of the Siirk made this trip, spending a bit of time back there, and just as quietly slipping back into the water, swimming back to his boat, waiting a moment, and then sneaking on board. The practice, so strange at first, was so constant and so commonplace, that Alex began to ignore it.

Maryan and he managed to sit close to one another, so much so that they could link index fingers and communicate their love in silent little tugs.

They made landfall in the noonday heat and the Siirk sat down to rest in the shade of some great trees overgrowing the beach. Several Thuga built a fire. They produced a huge cooking pot, which they filled with water, and into which they emptied sealed jars of some powder—instant soup, Siirk style. The Thuga made deep lowing noises, looking often at the fire. At least they could express their hunger.

One of the Thuga spooned out a bowl of soup intended for the others, and took a furtive sip. Instantly the lash of Omas descended. Cursing and kicking him, Omas smashed the heavy ball down on him several times. He cringed with what pain the animal must be feeling. The Thuga lay silently for a few moments, with nobody tending to him. He thought he was dead. Then he began to move, slowly, with his arms wrapped around his torso. Staggering painfully, he brought two bowls of soup, one for him and one for Maryan. As he knelt to set the bowls down, and Omas let them lift their nets to eat—showing his brace of muzzle loading pistols in the process, as a warning—He saw that the wounded Thuga glanced sideways at Maryan with a look of cunning. He was one of the bright ones who were somehow different from the rest. They always had water by their side, and Maryan used her jug to wash down one of the creature’s worst gashes, which was not only open to the flesh, but actually dripping blood. He had a bruise around his eyes, and she dabbed that gently with the hem of her dress. He was afraid for her for a second, but the Thuga acknowledged her gesture with the faintest nod and then rose to shuffle back to help feed the others of his kind.

He was slurping the salty, greasy liquid that tasted sort of like pineapples and fish, when he heard a shout.

Several shots rang out.

The Thuga—he’d overpowered a Siirk, and shot that Siirk and another Siirk, threw the empty pistols aside, and ran on powerful legs back west along the beach. Instantly, the Siirk began shouting and betting, while several of their number aimed long rifles and fired. Miraculously, the Thuga moved sharply leftward and vanished into the bush. He had no idea if he’d been hit or not.

Instantly, the overseers got to work, using the lighter end of their whips on the cringing Thuga, until Nizin signaled enough. Couldn’t whip them dead because then who would row?

After two days’ journey, they came to a Siirk settlement on the coast.

This was a rude frontier community hewn from the plentiful lumber in the surrounding forests. No sightseeing for the Thuga or them. He glimpsed a wooden wharf, and unpainted wooden houses rising up a hillside beyond that. Siirk walked about, barely noticing their convoy. Boats larger and smaller than ours seemed to come and go here. He noted several barges towing logs out to sea, and could only guess that they must let them drift west or southwest on some current.

The group went ashore a mile or two southwest of the village. Only one boat went aground, held by its Thuga rowers while they and Omas, Nizin, and Kogran debarked. Nizin led the way, and the other two Siirk walked behind them. The ever-present nets hung over them, and they had to hold them up with their hands to keep from stumbling over them. As usual, Omas brandished a pistol to warn them against trying to escape.

They walked up a twisting path so poorly defined that he doubted many souls had gone this way. But Nizin seemed to know his way.

The path led up through moderately thick woods, up onto a lovely grassy hilltop, into more woods, still climbing, until they came to a flat clearing in the woods. In the middle of the clearing was a wrecked spacecraft.

The wreck was a cylinder about 100 feet long and 25 feet in diameter—He thought immediately of the cylindrical shapes he’d seen piled up on the sea floor. It was a skeleton, really—much of the upper part was missing, though all the ribs were still in place. Where the skin was intact, it gleamed like a mirror—something he only remembered from Alex Kirk’s life. It gleamed like liquid mercury under a sheet of glass. It gleamed brighter than chrome. It was blinding in its beauty. They marched right up to the wreck and they could see the inside now—instrument panels up front, pilot and co-pilot seats overgrown with vines, and then twin rows of seats like in a bus toward the front, and an empty cargo compartment in the rear half.

“It doesn’t have any wings,” said Maryan.

“Could have been slung under an airframe,” he guessed. “Maybe dangled from a balloon?”

The Siirk said agitatedly: “Geedeen!”

Nizin grabbed his net and towed him into the ship, making him stumble. Tough old bird. He staggered over the debris—moldy carpeting, soil, vines, weeds up to his thighs. He towed him to a shiny square of the wondrous mirror-material. He slammed his fist against it, several times, and a broken image appeared. A human—talking... “Greetings. This is a robotic rescue appliance. To ensure that this machine has been summoned by a bona fide human, please speak aloud the name of this continent now, in English.”

Static kept corrupting the image.

The little spiel played over and over again, and Nizin threw himself against it in fury, pounding both fists against the speaker’s face. Then he shook him so violently that he nearly passed out. He could smell his last sweet, greasy meal on his breath, and the stench of corruption rising from his gorge where it was being digested. “Geedeen!” he shrieked. “Ingish!” he threw him against the bulkhead and pointed at the screen.

He knew what he wanted him to do.

Kogran and Omas held Maryan between them. Kogran pulled out a knife whose blade glinted a dull leaden color, and he pointed it at her neck.

“Ingish!”

“Okay,” he said.

Nizin grinned. He waved for Kogran to lower the knife. He recognized Nizin’s cunning—he knew he could control him by using her, and that suited him in the desperate sense that, if anything happened to her, he’d kill himself and then they’d have what they really deserved—nothing at all.

He faced the still babbling screen and cleared his throat. “North America.”

Nothing happened. Sweat broke out around his neck. “North America.”

Nizin gazed at him in wonder. “Nofameka?”

“North America, you stupid mutt,” he said to the speaker, and pounded on it with his fist. “North America, you pile of turds.”

It was clearly broken. He looked at Nizin and shrugged. He was scared. “Broken. Kaputt.”

Nizin seemed to take this in stride, to his surprise. “Nofameka? Boken. Kambutt.” he nodded thoughtfully.

Then he turned around and kicked the broken craft. He waved to his followers to return to the ship, and gave him a shove with the flat of his foot for good measure. “Geedeen!” he yelled as they marched at full tilt down to the boats.

He was sure Nizin had more up his sleeve than reptilian scales.