Part 3

"Think of a species as one great animal that never dies, of which each individual is only a part. Can you do that?"

"Yes!" the old man exploded, sitting bolt upright.

"Well, the weight of a cross-section of the greater animal at any moment in time is its biomass. Many species have a point or value of critical biomass such that, if it falls below that point, the greater animal dies. The species loses its will to live, decays, drills into extinction in spite of all efforts to save it. The stomper is such a species, no doubt whatever. Do you see how the slaughter a month ago may _already_ have extinguished them as a species?"

Bidgrass nodded, smiling grimly. His eyes held a curious light.

"Tell me, Mr. Cole, your Harvey formula--do _human beings_ have a critical biomass?"

"Yes, biologically," Cole said, surprised. "But in our case a varying part of the greater animal is carried in our culture, our symbol system, and is not directly dependent on biomass. A mathematical anthropologist could tell you more than I can."

Bidgrass placed his hands palm down on the table and leaned back in sudden resolution.

"Mr. Cole, you force me to tell you something I had been minded to hold back. I already know a good part of what you have just told me. I _wish_ to exterminate the stompers and I will do so. But I meant for you to go back to Belconti thinking it was the piskies."

Cole propped his chin on folded hands and raised his eyebrows. "I half suspected that. But I fooled you, didn't I?"

"Yes, and I admire you for it. Now let me tell you more. Stomper egg brings a very high price and I have kept it higher by storing large reserves. When it is known the stomper is extinct, the rarity value of my reserve will be enormous. It will mean an end of this harsh life for me and for my grandniece after me."

Cole's lip curled, and red mounted in the old man's face as he talked, but he went on doggedly.

"I want the pisky theory and the news of stomper extinction to be released through Belconti University. The news will spread faster and be more readily believed and I will avoid a certain moral stigma--"

"And now I've crossed you up!"

"You can still do it. I can ease your conscience with a settlement of--say--five thousand solars a year for life."

Cole leaped up and leaned across the table.

"No!" he snapped. "Old man, you don't know how ecologists feel about the greed-murder of species. What I _will_ do is work through Belconti on your government at Car Truro, warn it that you are about to destroy an important planetary resource."

Bidgrass stood up too, scowling darkly red.

"Not so fast, young fellow. I have copies of your early notes in which you call the piskies the critical limit factor in stomper extinction. Almost three hundred people were killed in that stomper attack, and you could easily have been one of them. If you had, I would naturally have reported it via the next _Gorbals_ to Belconti and sent along your notes to date--do you follow me?"

"Yes. A threat."

"A counter-threat. Think it over for a few days, Mr. Cole."

* * * * *

Cole sat glumly in his room waiting for his dinner and wondering if it would be poisoned. When old Hawkins tapped, he pulled open the door, only to find Pia instead with a service for two. She was rosy and smiling in a low-cut, off-shoulder brown dress he had not seen before.

"May I eat dinner with you tonight, Flinter?" she asked.

"Please do," he said, startled. "Am I people now, or something?"

"Uncle Garth says now that you know--" She broke off, blushing still more.

"I don't like what I know," he said somberly, "but it's not you, Pia. Here, let me."

He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his table. Pia _was_ lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced and she looked more frightened than ever.

"You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the woods, Pia. What _are_ you always afraid of?"

Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said. "What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear."

They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian _kresch_ to follow it. Cole splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and held up his own.

"Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half mockingly.

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.

She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened.

* * * * *

Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan bulking darkly ten feet away.

"Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the black bar of eyebrow.

Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move.

"You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and heading east.

"He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him."

Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land.

He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area. Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the planet's low gravity.

The resilient surface gave off a fragrance as they walked about on it. In a sea all around their island, branches of the great forest trees thrust up, leafy and flowering and bedecked with a profusion of epiphytal plants in many shapes and colors. Bright-hued true birds darted from shadow into sunlight and back again, twittering and crying.

"It's beautiful," he said. And so was Pia, he thought, watching her on tiptoe reaching to a great white flower. The attractive firmness of her skin, the roundness and dimpling, _ripeness_, that was the word he wanted. 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.

The lunch was good and she had brought along the rest of the bottle of _kresch_. They sipped it seated beside the flyer while she tried to teach him New Cornish folk songs. Her small, clear singing blended with that of the birds around them.

"I catch parts of it," he said. "As an undergraduate a few years ago I studied the pre-space poets. I can read Old English, but it is strange to my ear."

"I could teach you."

"I love one wry-witted ancient named Robert Graves. How does it go: _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.

She was softly rounded as the clouds, and her clustered brown curls made an island of the vivid face expressing the song she sang so bird-like and naturally. She was vital, compact, self closed, perfect--like one of the great flowers nodding in the breeze along the island shore--and his heart yearned across to her.

"Pia," he said, breaking into the song, "do you really want to get away from New Cornwall?"

She nodded, eyes suddenly wide, lips still parted.

"Come with me to Belconti then. Right now. We'll cross to Car Truro and wait there for _Gorbals_."

The light dimmed in her face. "Why Car Truro?"

"Pia, it's hard to tell you. I'm afraid of your great-uncle.... I want to contact the planetary government."

"It's no good at Car Truro, Flinter. Can't you just come back to Bidgrass Station and ... and ... do what Uncle Garth wants?"

He could barely hear the last. The fear was back in her eyes.

"Do you know what he wants?"

"Yes." The brown curls drooped.

Cole stood up. "So _that's_ the reason--well, I'll not do it, do you hear? Garth Bidgrass is an evil, greedy old man and maybe it runs in the blood."

She jumped up, eyes more angry now than fearful. "He is not! He's trying to save you! He's good and noble and ... and _great_! If you only knew the truth--Morwenna forgive me!" She clapped her hand to her mouth.

"_Tell_ me the truth then, since I'm still being made a Belconti fool of. What _is_ the truth?"

"I've said too much. Now I'll have to tell Uncle Garth--" She began crying.

"Tell him what? That I know he's a liar? That you failed as a--" He could not quite say the word.

"It's true I was supposed to make you love me and I tried and I can't because ... because ..." she ended in incoherent sobbing.

Cole stroked her hair and comforted her. "I've been hasty again," he apologized. "I'm still running in the dark, and that makes for stumbles. Let's go back, and I'll talk to your great-uncle again."

* * * * *

In the morning Garth Bidgrass, looking tired and stern, invited Cole to breakfast with the family. Cole had never been in the large, wood-panelled room overlooking the south garden through broad windows. Pia was subdued, Mrs. Vignoli strangely cheerful. The meal, served by a giant maid, was the customary plain porridge and fried meat.

The women left when the maid cleared the table. Bidgrass poured more coffee, then leaned back and looked across at Cole.

"Mr. Cole, I did you a wrong in having you sent here. I kept you in the dark for your own protection. Can you believe that?"

"I can believe that you believe it."

"You came too soon. You were too curious, too smart. I have had to compound that wrong with others to Pia and my own good name."

Cole smiled. "I know I'm curious. But why can't I know--"

"You can, lad. You've nosed through to it and I'll tell you if you insist. But it will endanger you even more and I wish you would forego it."

Cole shook his head. "I'm an ecologist. If I have the big picture, maybe I can help."

"I thought you'd say that. Well, history first, and settle yourself because it _is_ a big picture and not a pretty one. This planet was settled directly from Earth in the year 145 After Space, almost eight hundred years ago. It seemed ideal--native protein was actually superior to Earth protein in human metabolism. Easy climate, geophysically stable, no diseases--but planetology was not much of a science in those days.

"The colony won political independence in 202 A.S. It had a thriving trade in luxury foods, mostly stomper egg concentrates--freight was dear then. Settlements radiated out from Car Truro across the plains. Food was to be had for the taking in the mild climate and it was a kind of paradise. _Paradise!_"

The old man's voice rang hard on the last word and Cole stiffened. Bidgrass went on.

"Early in the third century our social scientists began to worry about the unnatural way the culture graded from the complexity of Car Truro to a simple pattern of mud huts and food gathering along the frontiers. Children of successive generations were taller than their parents and much less willing or able to use symbols. By the time a minority decided the trend should be reversed, the majority of the people could not be roused to see a danger."

"Earth life is normally resistant to low-grav gigantism," Cole said. "I wonder--"

"It was all the native foods they ate, but mainly stomper egg. There are more powerful and quicker-acting substances in the forest fungi, but then the population was all in the eastern grasslands, where the stompers ranged."

"I read they were a plains animal."

"Yes, and harmless too, except for their eggs. Well, the minority set up a dictatorship and began cultivating Earth plants and animals. They passed laws limiting the mechanical simplicity of households and regulating diets. They took children from subnormal parents and educated and fed them in camps. But the normals were too few and the trend continued.

"Shortly after mid-century the population reached the edge of the southern forest, and there many were completely wild. They drifted along the forest edge naked, without tools or fire or language or even family groupings. Their average stature was nearly eight feet. The normals knew they were losing. Can you imagine how they _felt_, lad?"

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. They killed off the great, stupid herds of darv cattle on which the stompers fed. The stompers that survived became wary and hostile, good at hiding and fierce to attack. But killing off the eastern darv herds broke them and in a generation they vanished from the eastern plains. Things seemed to improve and they thought the tide was turned. Then, in the year 374, came what our bards now call the Black Learning."

"Bards?" Cole said. He drained his coffee cup.

"Morgan could sing you this history to shiver the flesh on your bones," the old man said, pouring more coffee. "What I am telling you is nowhere written down, but it is engraved in thousands of hearts. Well, to go on.

"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.

"You have seen our forests from a distance, lad. Do you realize how impossible it is to patrol them? We hadn't the men, money or machines for it. We appealed, and learned we would get no help from any planet in Carina sector except for pay. But the egg market fell off, and our income with it. Ships did come, however, small ones in stealth, to ground along the forest edge and capture the young women of the wild people."

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. He brushed back his red hair angrily.

"Belconti was new then, still a colony. Well, that was the _help_ we got. We hadn't the power to fight stompers, let alone slave raiders. But the Galactic Patrol was just getting organized and the sector admiral agreed to keep a ship in orbit blockading us. We broke off all contact except with Tristan, and the Patrol let only one freight line come through to handle our off-planet trade. It was then we began to hate the other planets. We call it the Turning Away.

"Now we are forgotten, almost a myth. The Patrol ship has been gone since two hundred years ago. But we remember."

"I wish I'd known this," Cole said. "Mr. Bidgrass, things are greatly changed in Carina sector--"

Bidgrass held up his hand. "I know, lad. That's why you're here, and I'll come to it. But let me go on. 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. Few who were carried in ever came out again.

"This went on, lad, for _centuries_. From our fortified towns and hunting camps we ranged along the forest edge like wolves. The stompers _must_ lay their eggs in direct sunlight. That forced them out where we could get at them, into clearings and uplands and along the forest edge. We killed all we could.

"We found rhythms in their life pattern keyed to our four moons. When the three lady moons form a tall triangle, the stompers group in the open to mill and dance and sing. About every three months this happens over several days and in old times it was the peak raid season. It was also our chance to kill. The people call the configuration the House of the Maidens."

Cole nodded vigorously. "I remember that. Strange how lunar periodicity is bionative in every planet having a moon."

"It saved us here, praise Morwenna, but once almost destroyed us. There is a longer, sixty-two year cycle called the Nights of Hoggy Darn. Then the red moon passes through the House of the Maidens and the stompers go completely berserk. The first one after the war was joined fully, in 434, caught us unprepared and cost us more than three-fourths of our normal population in the week that we remember as the Great Taking. We were thrown back into Car Truro for decades and the stompers came back on the plains. They snatched people from the streets of Car Truro itself. That we call the Dark Time."

The old man's craggy face shadowed with sorrow and he sighed, leaning back. Cole opened his mouth but Bidgrass leaned forward again, new, fierce energy in his voice.

"We rallied and came back. We fought from the air and killed them in large numbers when we caught them in the open on Maiden nights. We drove them back off the plains and harried them along the forest edges and in the upland clearings where they came to lay eggs. We gathered all the eggs we could find. They defended their eggs and caused us steady losses. But we fought.

"We built our strategy on the Maidens and in time we drove the enemy out of the southern forest and into the west. Then we crowded him into Lundy Peninsula, made it a sanctuary for a hundred years to draw him in. When I was your age we fought out the last Nights of Hoggy Darn a few miles east of here. Ten years later we finished Bidgrass Station and the barrier and the continent was free of stompers."

Cole shifted his chair to get the sun off his neck. "I hardly know what to say," he began, but Bidgrass raised his hand.

"I've more to tell you, that you must know. By the late seventh century things were normal around Car Truro as regards regression. We began a pilot program of reclamation. The egg hunters captured wild people along the forest edge, still do. But some are beyond saving, and those they kill. We have to pen them like animals at first, but they can be trained to work in the fields, and for a long time now we have had few machines except what we need for war. 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. It helps the subnormals who are so powerfully drawn to run back to the forests. It's a strange mixture of poetry and prophecy, but it's breath of life to the ex-wilds. I guess I pretty well believe it myself and even you believe some of it."

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."

"I feel it, a little. 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. They learned to practise a gruesome kind of animal husbandry--oh, I could tell you things. _Something_ had to figure it out."

"I'm not laughing," Cole said. "You're talking sound ecology. Go on."

"Well, they began laying eggs right along the barrier and didn't try to defend them. We picked up hundreds, even thousands, every day. The people said Grandfather Stomper was trying to make peace, to pay rent on Lundy Forest. And maybe he was.

"But we spat in his face. We gathered his tribute and still took all the eggs we could find in the inland clearings. We killed every stomper we saw. Then, for the first time I think, Grandfather Stomper knew it was war to the death. He began to fight as never before. 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. So it has gone for forty years now."

The old man's voice changed, less fierce, more solemn. He sat up straight.