The first ones out of the cave were two children. They tumbled out of the same cave, off to Lee’s left, giggling and running.
When they saw Lee, they stopped dead. As though someone had turned them off. Lee could feel his heart beating as they stared at him. He stood just as still as they did, perhaps a hundred meters from them. They looked about five and ten years old, he judged. If their lifespans are the same as ours.
The taller of the two boys took a step toward Lee, then turned and ran back into the cave. The younger boy followed him.
For several minutes nothing happened. Then Lee heard voices echoing from inside the cave. Angry? Frightened? They’re not laughing.
Four men appeared at the mouth of the cave. Their hands were empty. They simply stood there and gaped at him, from the shadows of the cave’s mouth.
Now we’ll start learning their customs about strangers, Lee said to himself.
Very deliberately, he turned away from them and took a few steps up the beach. Then he stopped, turned again, and walked back to his original spot.
Two of the men disappeared inside the cave. The other two stood there. Lee couldn’t tell what the expressions on their faces meant. Suddenly other people appeared at a few of the other cave entrances. They’re interconnected.
Lee tried a smile and waved. There were women among the onlookers now, and a few children. One of the boys who saw him first—at least, it looked like him—started chattering to an adult. The man silenced him with a brusque gesture.
It was getting hot. Lee could feel perspiration dripping along his ribs as Sirius climbed above the horizon and shone straight at the cliffs. Slowly, he squatted down on the sand.
A few of the men from the first cave stepped out onto the beach. Two of them were carrying bone spears. Others edged out from their caves. They slowly drew together, keeping close to the rocky cliff wall, and started talking in low, earnest tones.
They’re puzzled. All right. Just play it cool. Don’t make any sudden moves.
He leaned forward slightly and traced a triangle on the sand with one finger.
When he looked up again, a grizzled, white-haired man had taken a step or two away from the conference group. Lee smiled at him, and the elder froze in his tracks. With a shrug, Lee looked back at the first cave. The boy was still there, with a woman standing beside him, gripping his shoulder. Lee waved and smiled. The boy’s hand fluttered momentarily.
The old man said something to the group, and one of the younger men stepped out to join him. Neither held a weapon. They walked to within a few meters of Lee, and the old man said something, as loudly and bravely as he could.
Lee bowed his head. «Good morning. I am Professor Sidney Lee of the University of Ottawa, which is one hell of a long way from here.»
They squatted down and started talking, both of them at once, pointing to the caves and then all around the beach and finally out to sea.
Lee held up his hands and said, «It ought to be clear to you that I’m from someplace else, and I don’t speak your language. Now if you want to start teaching me—»
They shook their heads, talked to each other, said something else to Lee.
Lee smiled at them and waited for them to stop talking. When they did, he pointed to himself and said very clearly, «Lee.»
He spent an hour at it, repeating only that one syllable, no matter what they said to him or to each other. The heat was getting fierce; Sirius was a blue flame searing his skin, baking the juices out of him.
The younger man got up and, with a shake of his head, spoke a few final words to the elder and walked back to the group that still stood knotted by the base of the cliff. The old man rose, slowly and stiffly. He beckoned to Lee to do the same.
As Lee got to his feet he saw the other men start to head out for the surf. A few boys followed behind, carrying several bone spears for their—what? Fathers? Older brothers?
As long as the spears are for the fish and not me, Lee thought.
The old man was saying something to him. Pointing toward the caves. He took a step in that direction, then motioned for Lee to come along. Lee hesitated. The old man smiled a toothless smile and repeated his invitation.
Grinning back at him in realization, Lee said aloud, «Okay. If you’re not scared of me, I guess I don’t have to be scared of you.»
It took more than a year before Lee learned their language well enough to understand roughly what they were saying. It was an odd language, sparse and practically devoid of pronouns.
His speaking of their words made the adults smile, when they thought he couldn’t see them doing it. The children still giggled at his speech, but the old man—Ardraka—always scolded them when they did.
They called the planet Makta and Lee saw to it that Rasmussen entered that as its official name in the expedition’s log. He made a point of walking the beach alone one night each week, to talk with the others at the ship and make a personal report. He quickly found that most of what he saw, heard and said inside the caves never got out to the relay transceiver buried up the beach; the cliff’s rock walls were too much of a barrier.
Ardraka was the oldest of the clan and the nominal chief. His son, Ardra, was the younger man who had also come out to talk with Lee that first day. Ardra actually gave most of the orders. Ardraka could overrule him whenever he chose to, but he seldom exercised the right.
There were only forty-three people in the clan, nearly half of them elderly looking. Eleven were pre-adolescent children; two of them infants. There were no obvious pregnancies. Ardraka must have been about fifty, judging by his oldest son’s apparent age. But the old man had the wrinkled, sunken look of an eighty-year-old. The people themselves had very little idea of time beyond the basic rhythm of night and day.
They came out of the caves only during the early morning and evening hours. The blazing midday heat of Sirius was too much for them to face. They ate crustaceans and the small fish that dwelt in the shallows along the beach, insects, and the grubby vegetation that clung to the base of the cliffs. Occasionally they found a large fish that had blundered into the shallows; then they feasted.
They had no wood, no metal, no fire. Their only tools were from the precious bones of the rare big fish, and hand-worked rock.
They died of disease and injury, and aged prematurely from poor diet and overwork. They had to search constantly for food, especially since half their day was taken away from them by Sirius’ blowtorch heat. They were more apt to be prowling the beach at night, hunting seaworms and crabs, than by daylight. Grote and I damn near barged right into them, Lee realized after watching a few of the night gathering sessions.
There were some dangers. One morning he was watching one of the teenaged boys, a good swimmer, venture out past the shallows in search of fish. A sharklike creature found him first.
When he screamed, half a dozen men grabbed spears and dove into the surf. Lee found himself dashing into the water alongside them, empty-handed. He swam out to the youngster, already dead, sprawled face down in the water, half of him gone, blood staining the swells. Lee helped to pull the remains back to shore.
There wasn’t anything definite, no one said a word to him about it, but their attitude toward him changed. He was fully accepted now. He hadn’t saved the boy’s life, hadn’t shown uncommon bravery. But he had shared a danger with them, and a sorrow.
Wheel the horse inside the gates of Troy, Lee found himself thinking. Nobody ever told you to beware of men bearing gifts.
After he got to really understand their language Lee found that Ardraka often singled him out for long talks. It was almost funny. There was something that the old man was fishing for, just as Lee was trying to learn where these people really came from.