The change from forest to veldt was abrupt. We were so happy to be out of the shadow of it-funny that in my present situation I feel exactly the opposite; I feel exposed, and hurry toward the concealment of the thick underbrush and close-s.p.a.ced heavy trunks. I feel so visible, so vulnerable. And I probably won't find water until I get there. I'm going to turn off this tooth for a few minutes and try not to scream.

All right. Let me see. On our way to the Plathys, we walked across the veldt for two days. Food was plentiful; the zamri are like rabbits, but slow. For some reason they like to cl.u.s.ter around the ecivrel bush, a th.o.r.n.y malodorous plant, and all we would have to do to bag several of them was form a loose circle around the bush and move in, clubbing them as they tried to escape. I would like to find one now. Their blood is sweet.

There's a Plathy song: Sim garlish a sim garlish farla tob-!ka. Soo pan du mairly garlish ezda tob-!ka. Oe vairly tern se garlish mizga mer-!ka. Garlish-!ka. Tern se garlish-!ka.

Translating it into my own language doesn't work well: Sacar sangre y sacar sangre para vivir-si. En sangre damos muerte y sacamos vida-si. Alabamos la sangre de vida que usted nos da-si. Sangre-si. Sangre de vida-si.

Serb, who's a linguist, did a more accurate rendering in English: Take blood and take blood for living-yes. In blood we give death and take living-yes. We worship the blood of life you give us yes. Blood-yes. Blood of life- yes!

But there is really no translation. Except in the love of sweet blood.

I've become too much like them. My human instinct is to keep running and, when I can't run, to hide. But a strong Plathy feeling is to stand in a clearing and shout for them. Let them come for me; let me die in a terrible ecstasy of tearing flesh and cracking bone. Let them suck my soft guts so I can live in them G.o.d. I have to stop. You'll think I'm crazy. Maybe I'm getting there. Why won't it rain?

Gabriel Turned on the tooth while I sit by the water and rest. Maria wants us to record as much as we can, in case. Just in case.

Why the h.e.l.l did I sign up for this? I was going to switch out of xenology and work for an advanced degree in business. But she came on campus recruiting, with all those exotic Earth women. They're just like women anywhere, big surprise. Except her. She is truly weird. Listen to this, tooth: I want her. She is such a mystery. Maybe if we live through this I'll get up the courage to ask. Plumb her, so to speak; make her open up to me, so to speak; get to the bottom of her, so to speak. A nice bottom for a woman of her advanced years.

How can I think of s.e.x at a time like this? With a woman twice my age. If somebody on a follow-up expedition finds this tooth in a fossilized pile of Plathy s.h.i.t, please excuse my digression. If I live to have the tooth extracted and played back, I don't think it will make much difference to my professional reputation. I'll be writing poetry and clerking for my father's export firm.

I ran around the mountain. Collapsed once and slept for I don't know how long.

Got up and ran to the river. Drank too much. Here I sit, too bloated to move. If a Plathy finds me I won't be a fun meal.

I was really getting to like them, before they turned on us. They seemed like such vegetables until it started to get cold. Then it was as if they had turned into a different species. With hindsight, it's no big surprise that they should change again. Or that they should be capable of such terrible violence. We were lulled by their tenderness toward each other and their friendliness toward us, and the subtle alien grace of their dancing and music and sculpture. We should have been cautious, having witnessed the two other changes: the overnight transformation into completely s.e.xual creatures and the slower evolution from lumpish primitives to charming creators, when the snow started to fall.

The change was obvious after the first heavy snowfall, which left about half a meter of the stuff on the ground. The Plathys started singing and laughing spontaneously. They rolled up their maffas and stored them in a cave and began playing in the snow-or at least it seemed like play, they were so carefree and childlike about it. Actually, they were building a city of snow.

The individual buildings, lacules, were uniform domes built up from blocks of snow. Maria called them igloos, after a similar primitive structure on Earth, and the name stuck. Even some of the Plathys used it.

There were twenty-nine domes arranged in a circle, eventually connected by tunnels as the snow deepened. The inside of the circle was kept clear, the snow being constantly shoveled into the s.p.a.ces between the domes. The net result was a high circular wall that kept the wind out. Later we learned it would also keep people in.

They had a fire going most of the time in the middle of the circle, which served as a center for their daytime activities: music, dance, tumbling, athletic compet.i.tion, and storytelling (which seemed to be a kind of fanciful history combined with moral instruction). Even with the sun up, the temperature rarely got above freezing, but the Plathys thrived in the cold. They would sit for hours on the ice, watching the performances, wearing only their kilts. We wore leggings and boots, jackets, and hats. The Plathys would only dress up if they had to go out at night (which they often did, for reasons they couldn't or wouldn't explain to us), when the temperature dropped to forty or fifty below.

I went out at night a couple of times, but I didn't go far. Too easy to get lost. If it was clear you could see the ring of igloos ghostly in the starlight, but if there was any weather you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face.

The igloos were surprisingly warm, though the only source of heat was one or two small oil lamps, plus metabolism. That metabolism also permeated everything with the weird smell of Plathy sweat, which resembled rotten bananas. Our own dome got pretty high with the aroma of unwashed humans; Plathys would rarely visit for more than a minute or two.

Seems odd to me that the Plathys didn't continue some of their activities, like music and storytelling, during the long nights. Some of them did routine housekeeping ch.o.r.es, mending and straightening, while others concentrated on sculpture. The sculptors seemed to go into a kind of trance, sc.r.a.ping patiently away at their rock or wood with teeth and claws. I never saw one use a tool, though they did carve and whittle when making everyday objects. I once watched an elder through the whole process. He sorted through a pile of rocks and logs until he found a rock he liked. Then he sat back and studied it from every angle, staring for more than an hour before beginning. Then he closed his eyes and started gnawing and scratching. I don't think he opened his eyes until he was done working. When I asked him if he had opened his eyes, he said, "Of course not."

Over the course of six nights he must have spent about sixty hours on the stone.

When he finished, it was a delicate lacy abstraction. The other Plathys came by, one at a time, to compliment him on it-the older ones offering gentle criticism-and after everyone had seen it, he threw it outside for the children to play with. I retrieved it and kept it, which he thought was funny. It had served its purpose, as he had served his purpose for it: finding its soul (its "face inside") and releasing it.

I shouldn't talk about sculpture; that's Herb's area of expertise. The a.s.signment Maria gave me was to memorize the patterns of the athletic compet.i.tions. (I was an athlete in school, twice winning the Hombre de Hierro award for my district.) There's not much to say about it, though. How high can you jump, how fast can you run, how far can you spit. That was an interesting one. They can spit with great force. Another interesting one was wood-eating. Two contestants are given similar pieces of wood- kindling, a few centimeters wide by half a meter long-and they crunch away until one has consumed the whole thing. Since the other doesn't have to continue eating afterward, it's hard to say which one is the actual winner. (When I first saw the contest, I thought they must derive some pleasure from eating wood. When I asked one about it, though, he said it tastes terrible and hurts at both ends. I can imagine.) Another painful sport is. .h.i.tting. It's unlike boxing in that there's no aggression, no real sense of a fight. One contestant hits the other on the head or body with a club.

Then he (or she) hands the club to the opponent, who returns the blow precisely. The contest goes on until one of them drops, which can take several hours.

You ask them why they do this and most of them will not understand-"why" is a really difficult concept for Plathys; they have no word for it-but when you do get a response it's on the order of "This is part of life." Which is uninformative but not so alien. Why do humans lift heavy weights or run till they drop or beat each other senseless in a ring?

Oh my G.o.d. Here comes one.

Maria Finally, water. I wish there were some way to play back this tooth and edit it. I must have raved for some time, before I fell unconscious a few kilometers from here.

I woke up with a curious zamri licking my face. I broke its neck and tore open its throat and drank deeply. That gave me the strength to get here. I drank my fill and then moved one thousand steps downstream, through the cold water, where I now sit concealed behind a bush, picking morsels from the zamri's carca.s.s. When I get back to Earth I think I'll become a vegetarian.

This is very close to the place where we met our first cooperative Plathy. There were three of them, young; two ran away when they spotted us, but the third clapped a greeting, and when we clapped back he cautiously joined us. We talked for an hour or so, the other two watching from behind trees.

They were from the Tumlil family, providentially; the family that had hosted Garcia's expedition. This male was too young to actually remember the humans, but he had heard stories about them. He explained about the Walk North. In their third or fourth year, every Plathy goes off on his own, going far enough north to get to where "things are different." He brings back something odd. The elders then rule on how powerful the oddness of the thing is, and according to that power, the youngster is a.s.signed his preliminary rank in the tribe.

(They know that this can eventually make the difference between life and death.

The higher up you start, the more likely you are to wind up an elder. Those who aren't elders are allowed to die when they can no longer provide for themselves; elders are fed and protected indefinitely.) Most of them travel as far as the crater lake island, but a few go all the way to the northern mainland. That was the ambition of the one we were talking to. I interrogated him as to his preparations for a boat, food, and water, and he said a boat would be nice but not necessary, and the sea was full of food and water. He figured he could swim it in three hands of days, twelve. Unless he was chaffing me, they can evidently sleep floating and drink salt water. That will complicate our escape, if they keep pursuing.

I take it that the three of them were cheating a bit by banding together. He repeatedly stressed that they would be going their separate ways as soon as they got to the archipelago. I hope they stayed together the whole way. I'd hate to face that forest alone. Maybe I'll have to, though.

Before he left he gave us directions to his family, but we'd decided to at least start out with a different one from Garcia's, in the interests of objectivity and to see how much information traveled from family to family. Little or none, it turned out. Our Camchai family knew about the Tumlils, since they shared the same area of veldt during the late summer, but none of the Tumlils had mentioned that ten hairless dwarfs had spent one winter with them.

After two days of relatively easy travel, we found the Camchais in their late- summer habitat, the almost treeless gra.s.sland at the foot of the southern mountains.

Duplicating the experience of Garcia's group, we found ourselves unexcitedly welcomed into the tribe: we were shown where the food was, and various Plathys scrounged up the framework and hides to cobble together a maffa for us. Then we joined the family in their typical summertime activity, sitting around.

After a few weeks of trying to cajole information out of them, we witnessed the sudden explosion of s.e.xual activity described earlier. Then they rested some more, five or six days, and began to pull up stakes.

Their supply of stored food was getting low and there was no easy hunting left in that part of the veldt, so they had to move around the mountains to the seash.o.r.e and a wretched diet of fish.

The trek was organized and led by Kalyym, who by virtue of being the youngest elder was considered chief for such practical matters. She was one of the few Plathys we met who wore ornaments; hers was a necklace of dinosaur teeth she'd brought back from her Walk North, the teeth of a large carnivore. She claimed to have killed it, but everyone knew that was a lie, and respected her for being capable of lying past p.u.b.erty.

It was significantly cooler on the other side of the mountains, with a chilly south wind in the evening warning that fall had begun and frost was near. The Plathys still lazed through midday, but in the mornings and evenings they fished with some energy and prepared for the stampede. They stockpiled driftwood and salt and sat around the fire chipping extra flints, complaining about eating fish and looking forward to bounty.

We spent several months in this transitional state, until one morning a lookout shouted a happy cry and the whole family went down to the sh.o.r.e with clubs. Each adult took about three meters of sh.o.r.eline, the children standing behind them with knives.

We could hear them before we could see them-the tolliws, rabbit-sized mammals that chirped like birds. They sounded like what I imagine a distant cloud of locusts sounded like, in old times. The Plathys laughed excitedly.

Then they were visible, one whirring ma.s.s from horizon tohorizon, like an island- sized mat of wriggling wet fur. Mammals schooling like fish. They spilled on to dry land and staggered into the line of waiting Plathys.

At first there was more enthusiasm than result. Everybody had to pick up his first tolliw and bite off its head and extol its gustatory virtues to the others, in as gruesome a display of bad table manners as you could find anywhere in the Confederacion.

Then, after a few too-energetic smashings, they settled into a productive routine: with the little animals milling around their ankles in an almost continuous stream, the adult would choose a large and healthy-looking one and club it with a backhand swipe that lofted the stunned animal in an arc, back to where the child waited with the knife.

The child would slit the animal's throat and set it on a large hide to bleed, and then wait happily for the next one. When the carca.s.s had bled itself nearly dry, the child would give it a squeeze and transfer it to a stack on the sand, eventually working in a smooth a.s.sembly-line fashion. The purpose of the systematic bleeding was to build up on the hide layers of coagulated blood that, when dry, would be cut up into squares and used for snacks.

Large predators were scattered here and there through the swimming herd, fawn- colored animals resembling terrestrial kangaroos, but with fingerlong fangs overhanging the lower jaw. Most of them successfully evaded the Plathys, but occasionally one would be surrounded and clubbed to death amid jubilant screeching and singing.

This went on for what seemed to be a little less than two hours, during which time the oldest elders busied themselves filling a long trench with wood and collecting wet seaweed. When the last stragglers of the school crawled out of the water and followed the others down the beach, there were sixty pyramidal stacks of furry bodies, each stack nearly as tall as a Plathy, ranged down the beach. We could hear the family west of us laughing and clubbing away.

(The statistics of the process bothered me. They seemed to have killed about one out of a hundred of the beasts and then sent the remainder on down the beach, where the next family would presumably do the same, and so on. There were more than a hundred families, we knew. Why didn't they run out of tolliws? For once, Tybru gave me a straightforward answer: they take turns. Only sixteen families "gather" the creatures during each migration, alternating in a rotating order that had been fixed since the dawn of time. The other families took advantage of the migrations of other animals; she was looking forward to two years hence, when it would be their turn for the jukha slaughter. They were the tastiest, and kept well.

By this time it was getting dark. I had been helping the elders set up the long trench of bonfires; now we lit them, and with the evening chill coming in over the sea I was grateful for the snapping flames.

Tybru demonstrated the butchering process so we could lend a hand. Selected internal organs went into hides of brine for pickling; then the skin was torn off and the yellow layer of fat that clung to it was sc.r.a.ped into clay jars for reducing to oil.

More fat was flensed from the body, and then the meat was cut off in thin strips, which were draped over green sticks for smoking. Alas, they had no way to preserve the brains, so most of the Plathys crunched and sucked all night while they worked.

We weren'

t strong enough or experienced enough to keep up with even the children, but we gamely butchered through the night, trying not to cut ourselves on the slippery flint razors, working in the light of guttering torches. The seaweed produced an acrid halogen-smelling smoke that Tybru claimed was good for the lungs. Maybe because of its preservative effect.

The sun came up on a scene out of Hieronymus Bosch: smoke swirling over b.l.o.o.d.y sands littered with bones and heaps of entrails, Plathys and people blood- smeared and haggard with fatigue. We splashed into the icy water and scrubbed off dried blood with handfuls of sand, then stood in the stinging smoke trying to thaw out.

It was time to pack up and go. Already the rich smell of fresh blood was underlaid with a whiff of rot; insects were buzzing, and hardsh.e.l.l scavengers were scuttling up onto the beach. When the sun got high the place would become unlivable, even by Plathy standards.

We rolled up the smoked meat and blood squares into the raw sc.r.a.ped hides, which would later be pegged out and dried in the sun, and followed a trail up into the mountains. We set up our maffas on a plateau about a thousand meters up and waited placidly for the snow.

Someone coming.

Derek I can no longer view them as other than dangerous animals. They mimic humanity-no, what I mean is that we interpret in human terms the things they do.

The animal things they do. Maria, I'm sorry. I can't be a scientist about this, not any more. Not after what I just saw.

Herb and I were supposed to crisscross, going northeast a thousand steps, then northwest a thousand, and so forth. That was supposed to confuse them. They caught Herb.

I heard the scream. Maybe half a kilometer away. I should have run, knowing there was nothing I could do, but Herb and I've been close since school. Undergraduate.

Were close. And there he...

Two of them had run him down in a small clearing, killed him and taken off his head. They were, one of them was . . I can'

t.

I hid in the underbrush. All I had was a club there was nothing I could do. One of them was eating his, his private parts. The other was scooping him out, curious, dissecting him. I ran away. It's a wonder they didn't Oh s.h.i.t. Here they come.

Gabriel I think my wrist is broken. Maybe just sprained. But I killed the son of a b.i.t.c.h. He came around a bend in the river and I was on him with the spear. Element of surprise.

I got him two good ones in the thorax before he grabbed me-where are their G.o.dd.a.m.ned vital organs? A human would've dropped dead. He grabbed me by the wrist and slammed me to the ground. I rolled away, retrieved the spear, and impaled him as he jumped on me. He made a lot of noise and finally decided to die, after sc.r.a.ping my arm pretty well. For some reason he wasn't armed. Thank G.o.d. He was Embrek, the one who taught me how to fish. We got along so well. What the h.e.l.l happened?

It was the first time it rained instead of snowing. All the music and everything stopped. They moped around all day and wouldn't talk. When it got dark they went wild.

They burst into our igloo, four of them, and started ripping off our clothes. Nanci, Susan, and Marcus resisted and were killed right there. One bite each. The rest of us were stripped and led or carried out into the cold, into the center of the compound.

The cheerful fire was black mud now, starting to glaze with ice.

All the family except the oldest elders were there, standing around like zombies.

No one spoke; no one took notice of anybody else. We all stood naked in the darkness. Kalyym eventually brought out a single oil candle, so we could be mocked by its flickering warm light.

The nature of the rite became clear after a couple of hours. It was a winnowing process. If you lost consciousness the Plathys would gather around you and try to poke and kick you awake. If you stood up they would go back to ignoring you. If you stayed down, you would die. After a certain number of pokes and kicks, Kalyym or some other elder would tear open the thorax in a single rip. Even worse than the blood was the sudden rush of steam into the cold air. Like life escaping the body.

Then they would feed.

We knew we wouldn't last the night. But the slippery walls were impossible to scale, and the largest Plathys stood guard at every entrance to the ring of igloos.

After some whispered discussion, we agreed we had to do the obvious: rush the Plathy who stood guard in front of our own igloo. The ones who survived would rush in, quickly gather weapons and clothing, and try to make it out the back entrance before the Plathys could react. Then run for the caves.

We were lucky. We rushed the guard from six different directions. Crouching to slash at Derek, he turned his back to me, and I leaped, striking him between the shoulders with both feet. He sprawled face down in the mud, and didn't get up. We scrambled into the igloo and I stood guard with a spear while the others gathered up things. A couple of Plathys stuck their heads in the entrance and snarled, but they evidently didn't want to risk the spear.

We weren't immediately followed, and for the first hour or so we made good time.

Then it started to rain again, which slowed us down to a crawl. With no stars, we had to rely on Maria's sense of direction, which is pretty good. We found the caves just at dawn, and got a few hours' sleep before Mylab found us and we had to kill him.

How long is this phase going to last? If it goes as long as the summer or winter phases, they're sure to track us down. We may be safe inside the dome, if we can get that far-Noise ... Maria!

Maria I might as well say it. It might be of some interest. None of us is going to live anyhow. I'm beyond embarra.s.sment, beyond dignity. Nothing to be embarra.s.sed about anyhow, not really.

The thing that was splashing up the stream turned out to be Gabriel. I ran out of hiding and grabbed him, hugged him; we were both a little hysterical about it.

Anyhow he got hard and we took care of it, and then we went back to my hiding place and took care of it again. It was the first happy thing that's happened to me in a long time. Now I'm watching him sleep and fighting the impulse to wake him up to try for thirds. One more time before we die.

It's a strange state, feeling like a girl again, all tickled and excited inside, and at the same time feeling doomed. Like a patient with a terminal disease, high on medicine and mortality. There's no way we can outrun them. They'll sniff us down and tear us apart, maybe today, maybe tomorrow. They'll get us. Oh, wake up, Gab.

Be rational. This ferocity is just another change of state. They don't know what they're doing. Like the s.e.x and birth phases. Tomorrow they may go back to being bovine sweet things. Or artisans again. Or maybe they'll discover the wheel for a week. What a weird, f.u.c.ked-up bunch of ...

There must be some survival value in it. Certainly it serves to cull the weakest members out. And killing most of the females before p.u.b.erty compensates for the size of the litters-or could the size of the litters be a response to the scarcity of females? Lamarckism either way. Can't think straight.

At any rate it certainly can't be instinctive behavior in regard to us, since we aren't part of their normal environment. Maybe we've unknowingly triggered aberrant behavior. Stress response. Olfactory catalyst. Violent displacement activity. Who knows? Maybe whoever reads this tooth will be able to make some sense of it. You will excuse me for the time being. I have to wake him up.

Brenda Maria and Gab were waiting for me when I got to the mouth of the river. Gab has a badly sprained wrist; I splinted and bound it. His grip is still good, and fortunately he's left-handed. Maria's okay physically, just a little weak, but I wonder about her psychological state. Almost euphoric, which hardly seems appropriate.

We waited an extra half day, but the others are either dead or lost. They can catch up with us at the dome. We have axe, spear, and two knives. Gab turned one of the knives into a spear for me. Two water bladders. We filled the bladders, drank to saturation, and waded out into the sea.

The water seems icy cold, probably more than ten degrees colder than when we walked through it before. Numb from the waist down after a few minutes. When the water is shallow or you get to walk along a sandbar, sensation returns, deep stinging pain. It was a good thing we'd found that second water island; only 10 kilometers of wading and limping along the wet sand.

We'd rolled up our furs and shouldered them, so they were fairly dry. Couldn't risk a fire (and probably couldn't have found enough dry stuff to make one), so we just huddled together for warmth. We whispered, mapping out our strategy, such as it was, and kept an eye out to the south. Though if we'd been followed by even one Plathy we'd be pretty helpless.

Thirty kilometers to the next water hole. We decided to stay here for a couple of days, eating the sulfurous oysters and regaining strength. It would have to be a fast push, going all the way on less than five liters of water.

In fact we stayed four days. Gab came down with bad diarrhea, and we couldn't push on until his body could hold fluid. It was just as well. We were all bone-tired and stressed to the limit.

The first night we just collapsed in a hamster pile and slept like the dead. The next day we gathered enough soft dry gra.s.s to make a kind of mattress, and spread our furs into a piecemeal blanket. We still huddled for warmth and rea.s.surance, and after a certain amount of nonverbal discussion, Gab unleashed his singular talent on both of us impartially.

That was interesting. Something Maria said indicated that Gab was new to her. I'd thought that nothing-male, female, or Plathy-was safe around him. Maybe Maria's strength intimidated him, or her age. Or being the authority figure. That must be why she was in such a strange mood when I caught up with them. Anyhow, I'm glad for her.

Gab entertained us with poetry and songs in three languages. It's odd that all three of us know English. Maria had to learn it for her study of the Eskimos, and I did a residency in Ma.s.sachusetts. Gab picked it up just for the h.e.l.l of it, along with a couple of other Earth languages, besides Spanish and Pan-Swahili, and all three Selvan dialects. He's quite a boy. Maria was the only one who could speak Plathy better than he. They tried duets on the blood songs and s.h.i.t songs, but it doesn't sound too convincing. The consonants !ka and !ko you just can't do unless you have teeth like beartraps.

The stress triggered my period a week early. When we fled the igloo I hadn't had time to gather up my moss pads and leather strap contraption, so I just sort of dripped all over the island. It obviously upset Gab, but I'm not going to waddle around with a handful of gra.s.s for his precious male sensibilities. (His rather gruesome sickness didn't do much for my sensibilities, either, doctor or no.) We spent the last day in futile basket weaving, trying to craft something that would hold water for more than a few minutes. We all knew that it could be done, but it couldn't be done by us, not with the gra.s.s on the island. Maria did manage to cobble together a bucket out of her kilt by working a framework of sticks around it. That will double our amount of water, but she'll have to cradle it with both arms.

Thirty kilometers. I hope we make it.

Maria We were almost dead from thirst and exposure by the time we got to the water hole island. We had long since lost track of our progress, since the vegetation on the islands was radically different from summer's, and some of the sh.o.r.elines had changed. We just hoped each large island would be the one, and finally one was.