McCann wore a suit of sewn skin and a Davy Crocket hat; he had a crossbow on his back, and a belt of flechettes over his shoulder. He looked capable, tough and well-adapted.
Malenfant wrapped up his coverall and other bits of gear in a skin pack that he wore on his back. He insisted Nemoto do the same; he wanted to be sure they didn’t have to return here if they got the chance to get away.
A party of six Hams was gathered in the courtyard. They were all squat, burly men. The Hams wore their peculiar wrappings of skin, tied in place by bits of thong or vegetable rope, not shaped or sewn. They carried weapons, spears and clubs on loops of rope or tucked into their belts, and their broad elliptical heads were shaded by hats of woven grass.
One of them was Thomas, the man who had rescued Malenfant and Nemoto from the wild Runners in the first place.
Malenfant couldn’t figure out why the Hams had gotten the lens to him (or come to that how they knew he would be interested). Maybe they just like the story, Malenfant thought, the guy who flies to another world in search of his wife. Just like the American taxpayer. Or maybe there are aspects of these quasi people none of us will ever understand.
When Malenfant approached to thank him, Thomas shook his hand, an oddly delicate gesture he must have learned from the stranded English, taking care not to crush Malenfant’s bones. But, when Malenfant questioned him away from the others, he would say nothing of where he had found Emma’s lens.
Two Hams opened the gates of the stockade, and the little party formed up. McCann was to ride in a kind of litter — ‘What a Portugoose would call a machila, I’m told.’ The litter, just a platform of wood, was to be borne by two Hams, and McCann had offered the same to Malenfant and Nemoto.
Malenfant had refused.
Nemoto had been sceptical. “You are sentimental, Malenfant. After a few hours you may long for a ride. And besides, the Hams are well capable of bearing our weight. They are treated well—”
“That’s not the point.”
“Survival is the point. What else?”
Anyhow, with the sun still climbing — with McCann’s litter in the van, Malenfant and Nemoto walking in the centre with Hams beside and behind them — the little party set off.
McCann said they would take a roundabout route to the lander. It would take longer, but would avoid the densest forest and so would be less problematic.
They walked through the forest. The air was laden with moisture and without a breath of wind. The sweat was soon dripping from Malenfant’s scalp into his eyes, and his buckskin was clinging to his back as if glued there.
The Hams walked barefoot along a trail that was invisible to Malenfant, with their feet splayed at wide angles, making fast, short steps, almost delicate. Malenfant tried to keep up. But the brown sheets of dead leaves on top of wet mud made him slip, or he would walk into thorny lianas, or trip over the surface roots that splayed out from the boles of the largest trees. As the feet and legs of the Ham in front began to blur, he realized he was going to have to imitate the Ham’s small movements, but he lost further ground as he tried to master the oddly precise mincing motions.
McCann walked alongside Malenfant, musing. “Hear how quiet it is. One does miss birdsong. Africa is full of birds, of course: parrots and plovers, kingfishers and skimmers. How sad a world without the song of birds, Malenfant.”
Here was a canthium tree: a massive straight black trunk, branches spreading high above the palms. “Keep away from it,” McCann said. “The flowers stink like corpses — to attract flies, you see, which carry its pollen. The pre-sapients keep away from it. The trunk is covered in biting ants—” He froze, and held Malenfant’s arm. “Look there. An Elf.” He dropped to all fours and crawled forward, hiding behind a tree.
Malenfant followed suit. The two of them finished lying in cold mud, side by side, peering through a brush of greenery.
A man sat on a bough, a few feet off the ground — a dwarfish, naked, hairy man with a face like a chimp’s, and no forehead to speak of. He had long legs like a human, long arms like an ape. He pulled twigs towards his face and bit off leaves, with thick, active lips. His face was black, his eyes brown, sheltered by a thick brow of bone. He moved slowly, thoughtfully.
A twig cracked.
The Elf stopped eating. He leaned forward, rocked from side to side to see better. He urinated, a stream of acrid piss that splashed to the floor not feet from Malenfant’s face.
Then he turned away and called. “Oo-hah!”
Suddenly there were more of them, more Elves, shadowy figures with glinting eyes and empty hands. They had black faces and palms and soles. If they had crouched like chimpanzees it would have been okay, but they didn’t; they stood eerily upright, as if their bodies had been distorted in some hideous lab. They were wrong, and Malenfant shivered.
“There are ways to trap them,” McCann whispered. “Though their more robust cousins the Nutcrackers provide better meat. You hunt with special spears, twelve feet long. Then you goad the Nutcracker-man, until he charges onto your spear point…”
The first Elf man stood up straight on his bough. He opened his mouth wide, revealing pink gums and impressive canines, and let out a series of short, piercing barks. He slapped the tree trunk and rattled a branch.
The others joined in, whooping with rage. Their hair was suddenly erect, which made them look twice the size, and they stamped and shook branches in a frenzy. It was quite a display, Malenfant thought, a mass of noise and movement.
Then the man in the tree turned, bent over and let out an explosion of faeces that showered over Malenfant and McCann.
Malenfant brushed gloopy shit off his head. “Jesus. What a situation.”
McCann was laughing.
Now McCann’s Hams stood up. They yelled and banged their spears together, or against-logs and tree trunks.
The Elves turned and ran, melting into the green shadows as fast as they had appeared.
Malenfant was relieved when they broke out of the forest, just as McCann had promised, and he found himself walking through a more open country, a kind of parkland of grass and scattered clumps of trees.
Nemoto trudged sourly beside him, her small face hidden by a broad straw hat.
There were herbs in the grass, and when they were crushed by bare Neandertal feet they sent up a rich aroma. The sun was strong on Malenfant’s face, and the blue Earth rode high in the sky. Malenfant felt lifted, exhilarated — even giddy, he thought, anoxic perhaps, and he made sure he kept his breathing deep and even, making the most of the thin air.
McCann noticed Malenfant’s mood. With a touch of the stubby whip he called a sjambok, he directed his Ham bearers to carry him closer to Malenfant. “Quite a day, isn’t it, Malenfant? You know, I believe that with a knight’s move of that mopani tree over here one might take that kopje, with the thicket of wild banana, over there.”
Malenfant forced a laugh. “Remember, I’m a checkers man.”
McCann was clutching a battered Gladstone bag on his lap, from which he extracted water and ointments to dab on his face, neck and wrists. He looked sideways at Malenfant, as if apologetically. “I fear I may have come across as something less than a man to you, on our first meetings.”
“Not at all.”
“It’s just that one is so desperate for company. But you mustn’t think that I am protesting my lot. I draw strength from the teachings of my father — I grew up in a kirk on the Scottish borders — which took a grip on my mind from early days. My father made me a fatalist in creed: man is but a playing-piece in the hands of the Maker. Chess again, eh? And so it was foreordained that I should be brought to this distant shore. But I admit to a great deal of pleasure in my new home on a day like today. Much of it is familiar. In my time here I’ve spotted wildebeest, kudu, impala. There are few birds in flight, but you’ll find flightless, clucking versions of quail, partridge, pheasant…”