Richard McKenna

“ If strange things happen where she is—no, I can't recall it now."
"I could write the songs out for you."
"The beauty is in you and your voice. Just sing."
She sang, something about a king with light streaming from his hair, coming naked out of the forest to bring love into his kingdom. Small white clouds drifted in the blue sky, and blue Annis slept just above the rustling branches that guarded the secret of their island. He listened and watched her. ”

“ Cole looked his question, hitching his chair nearer the table.
"Yes, your notion of the greater animal, critical biomass, that you spoke of. We speak of Grandfather Stomper and we are trying to kill him. He is trying to enslave Grandfather Man. The whole purpose and meaning of human life, to an ex-wild, is to kill Grandfather Stomper and then to reclaim Grandfather Man from the forest. You would have to hear Morgan sing it to appreciate how deeply they feel that, lad." ”

“ Cole laid down his fork.
"They will be waiting in the forest top all around the periphery, in places where we are already building weapons dumps. In the first days of harrying, we will stage in the fighters."
"Morgan will visit each group in the forest top and sing our history," Bidgrass said from the head of the table. "On the evening of the climactic night, as Hoggy Darn rises, they will take a sacramental meal of stomper egg. At no other time is it eaten on this planet." ”

“ And her eyes.
"Pia, you're not frightened any more!"
It was true. The long-lashed brown eyes were merry as nature meant them to be.
"It's peaceful and safe," she said. "When I come to the forest top I never want to go back to Bidgrass Station."
"Too bad we must, and let's pretend we don't," he said, pointing to a cluster of red-gold fruits. "Are those good to eat?"
"Too good. That's the trouble with New Cornwall."
"What do you mean?"
"Race you back to the flyer," she cried, and danced away, bare limbs twinkling in the sunlight. He floundered after. ”

“ What do you think is wiping out the stompers?"
"I know what. A parasite bird that lays its eggs on stomper eggs. Its young hatch first and eat the big egg. The people call them piskies."
"I'll need to work out its life cycle, look for weak points and natural enemies. Who knows a lot about these piskies?"
"I know as much as anybody, and I've never seen a grown one. We believe they stay in the deep forest. But there are always three to each stomper egg and they're vicious. Go for a man's eyes or jugular. Egg hunters kill dozens every day."
"I'll want dozens, alive if possible, and a lab. ”

“ Cole, you must not again leave the company of either Hawkins or Dr. Rudall when you are away from the house," Bidgrass told Cole the next morning. "The people have strange beliefs that would seem sheer nonsense to you, but their impulsive acts, if you provoke them, will be unpleasantly real."
"If I knew their beliefs I might know how to behave."
"It is your very presence that is provoking. If you were made of salt you would have to stay out of the rain. Here you are an outworlder and you must stay within certain limits. ”

“ Parallel lines of tree trunks converged through it to be lost in nebulosity.
"Daylight overpowers the luminous fungi," she said.
"We sleep, then walk again. Shall we find food?"
"No. We must always go to sleep hungry so we will wake again."
They looked, until tired out, for a place of shelter.
They slept, locked together in the cranny of a massive buttress. The man dreamed of his tame home-world. ”

“ Belconti sent the ecologist."
"Help me to help you, then. You must try to understand, Mr. Bidgrass, science can't operate in a vacuum. I can't work up a total planetary biology. I must start with that data."
"Do what you can for us," Bidgrass said. "They won't blame you on Belconti when they know and we won't blame you here if it doesn't help."
Cole sat down, shaking his head. "But Belconti won't count it as a field job, not in ecology. You will not understand my position. Let me put it this way: suppose someone gave you a hatchet and told you, only one man, to cut down Lundy Forest?" ”

“ I understand Morgan now, I think. He's an ex-wild, isn't he?"
"Yes, and our master bard. In some ways he has more power than I."
Cole got up. "Mind if I pull a curtain? That sun is hot."
"No, go ahead. Our coffee is cold," the old man said, rising too. "I'll ask for a fresh pot."
Seated again in the shaded room, Bidgrass resumed, "There's not much more. After the barrier was up it seemed as if Grandfather Stomper knew his time was running out. Don't laugh now. Individual stompers don't have intelligence, symbol-using, that is, as far as we know. But they changed from plains to forest. ”

“ Cole sat beside Pia and across the food-laden table from General Arscoate, a large pink-faced man in middle life.
"It's an old and proven strategy, Mr. Cole," the general explained. "When Hoggy Darn starts we will harass the enemy from the air in all but one of the fourteen sizable open spaces in Lundy Forest. That one is Emrys Upland, the largest. They will concentrate in Emrys, more each night, until the climactic night of peak frenzy. Then we come down with all the men and women we can muster and we kill. ”

“ I made a karyotype analysis of pisky and stomper tissue and they are identical, I tell you. My working hypothesis for now is that pisky eggs are fertilized polar bodies. It's not unknown. But that the main body should be sterile and serve as an external food source—that's new, I'm sure. That will get my name in the journals all through Carina sector."
He could not help smiling happily. Bidgrass bit his lower lip and stared keenly, not speaking. Cole became nettled.
"I hope you see the logic," he said. "What threatens your stompers is harvest pressure from your own egg hunters. ”

“ Arscoate said.
"The lad must know, must take it with us," Bidgrass said. "Lad, the real reason for not killing from the air is that the people need to kill personally, with their feet on the ground. So our poetry has always described that last, great fight. I must personally kill Grandfather Stomper."
Cole toyed with his knife. "But he is only a metaphor, a totem image—"
"The people believe in an actual individual who is the stomper counterpart of Garth here," the general broke in. "You know, Mr. Cole, the stompers we kill ordinarily are all females. ”

“ In the library Cole poured out his story while Bidgrass, standing with right elbow resting atop a bookcase, listened gravely.
"You must understand," Cole finished, "to save the stompers we must cut down the piskies. Crudely put, the most common method is to find a disease or a parasite that affects them, and breed more potent strains of it. ”

“ Early in the fifth century we decided to exterminate the stompers altogether and in two decades killed off all the darv cattle. But the stompers went into the forests in the south and west and from there came out to raid the plains. Not to kill, but to carry off normal and semi-wild people into the forest for breeding stock. A stomper's wing is more flexible than a hand. One of them can carry half a dozen men and women and run a thousand miles in a day. Some fungi in the forest can dull a man in an hour and take his mind in a week. ”

“ Something must prey on them or their eggs in their native habitat, a macrobiotic limit factor I can use. I must learn the adult pisky's diet; if its range is narrow enough that can be made a limit factor."
The old man frowned. "How would you learn all this?"
"Field study. I want at least twenty intelligent men and a permanent camp somewhere in Lundy Forest."
Bidgrass folded his arms and shook his head. "Can't spare the men. And it's too dangerous—stompers would attack you day and night. I've had over two hundred egg hunters killed this year, and they're trained men in teams." ”

“ Cole relaxed a little. "Ah ... yes, I can ... I imagine the fight was inside them, too."
Bidgrass nodded. "Yes, they were all tainted. But they fought. They asked Earth for help and learned that Earth regarded them as tyrants oppressing a simple, natural folk. The economy broke down and more had to be imported. The only way to pay was in stomper egg exports. In spite of that, in about the year 300, they decided to restrict the stompers to the western part of the grasslands, thousands of miles beyond the human range.
"The egg hunters began killing piskies and grown stompers. ”

“ Cole found no parasites in hundreds of dissected piskies, but his cultures were frequently contaminated by a fungus that formed dark red, globular fruiting bodies. When he turned to cytology he found that what he had supposed to be an incredibly complex autonomic nervous system was instead a fungal mycelium, so fine as to be visible only in phase contrast. He experimented with staining techniques and verified it in a dozen specimens, then danced the surprised Dr. Rudall around the lab.
"I've done it! One man against a planet!" ”

“ Peeping like an ecologist in a bird blind!
When Hawkins brought lunch Cole raged at him and demanded to see Garth Bidgrass. The old man chattered incomprehensibly and danced like a fighting cock. Thwarted, the ecologist ate moodily and went down to the library. The garden was empty and he decided on impulse to open a window. A way of retreat, but from what and to where, he wondered as he worked at the fastenings. Just as he got it free, a woman stooped through the library door. She was at least seven feet tall. ”

“ We knew some of the stompers had gone into the southern forest—you see, they have to incubate their eggs in direct sunlight and we kept finding them along the forest edge. But we had assumed they were eating the snakes and slugs and fungi native to the forest floor. Now we learned that a large population of wild humans had grown up unknown to us in the deep forest—and the stompers were eating them. ”

“ Pia said. "They've never known to do that before. Now the men still living have only pack charges."
It was a new tactic, a death-hour flash of insight for Grandfather Stomper. Across the moor, island after island went dark and the war song grew in savage exultation, but the man thought it dwindled in total volume. Then it was their own turn.
Cole and Pia crouched away from the Corbin in the lee of a stone block and two still-twitching stompers. Beside them Morgan and Bidgrass fired steadily at the shapes hurtling above. When the Corbin blew, a wave of stinking heat rolled over them. ”

“ You're an outworlder, from a great, wealthy planet."
"Belconti is a very ordinary planet. What's your name?"
"I'm Pia—Pia Vignoli." The voice took on more assurance, but the plump body stayed poised for flight.
"Well I'm Flinter Cole, and I have a job to do on this planet. It's terribly important that I get started. Will you help me?"
"How can I, Mr. Cole? I'm nobody. I don't know anything." She moved away, and he followed, awkwardly.
"Girls know all sorts of things that would interest an ecologist," he protested. "Tell me all you know about stompers." ”

“ Cole struck the table. "How rotten!..." His voice failed.
Bidgrass nodded. "We call that the Lesser Shame. The young women were without personality or language, yet tractable and responsive to affection. They were flawless in health and physique, and eight feet tall. They could be sold for fantastic prices on loosely organized frontier planets and yes, even to Earth, as we learned. Something dark in a man responds to that combination. You feel it as I speak—no, don't protest, I know. We had long had that trouble among our own people."
"Did my own people of Belconti—" Again Cole's voice failed. ”

“ When they came on the boy, larger than the man but beardless and without formed muscles, the man looked at the tears dropping from the dull eyes and the blood dropping from the mutilation and killed him with the thigh bone. Some are beyond saving. ”

“ Where once a stomper would carry a captured egg hunter a hundred miles into the forest and turn him loose, now it killed out of hand. They began making mass attacks on the station and they didn't come to capture, they came to kill. ”

“ You can use Dr. Rudall's lab at the hospital." Bidgrass stood up and looked at his watch. "The egg harvest should start coming in soon down at the plant and there may be a dead pisky. Come along and see."
As Hawkins guided the car past a group of the giant field workers, Cole felt Bidgrass' eyes on him. He turned, and the old man said slowly, "Stick to piskies, Mr. Cole. We'll all be happier."
"Anything may be data to an ecologist, especially if he overlooks it," Cole murmured stubbornly.
Hawkins cackled something about "Hoggy Darn itha hoose" and speeded up. ”

“ Babies big as four-year-old normals, by themselves, grazing on finger-shaped fungi. An enormous human, fourteen feet tall, fat-enfolded, too ponderous to stand even in low gravity, crawling through fungus beds. ”

“ Big as his fist, with a tripartite beak, it was no true bird. The wings were flaps of black skin that still wrinkled and folded flexibly with residual life. It had nine toes on each foot and seemed covered with fine scales.
Dr. Rudall treated Cole's cheek in a surprisingly large and well appointed dressing room. He was a gray, defeated-looking man and told Cole in an apologetic voice that he had taken medical training on Planet Tristan many years ago ... out of touch now. His small lab looked hopelessly archaic, but he promised to biostat the dead pisky until Cole could get back to it. ”

“ Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh Flinter, what you must think—" She began crying in earnest.
He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for Gorbals' tender."
She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both. Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and squeezed her hand in saying good night. ”

“ Their children, on an Earth diet, come back toward normal in size and intelligence. The fourth and fifth generations are normal enough to join in the war. But war has always come first and we have never been able to spare many normals for reclamation work.
"Even so, ex-wilds make up more than half our normal population now. That's about forty thousand; there are nearly a hundred thousand on the reclamation ladder, mostly around Car Truro. The ex-wilds have a queer, poetic strain, and mainly through them we've developed a sort of religion along the way. ”