Hello! Welcome to Fossicker Press's web site. Please feel free to download Kir Bulychev's Those Who Survive and give it a test read. The complete hard copy book can be ordered directly from Xlibris.com, and is only 432 pages long. Information on the animated movie will be posted later.

- JHC

Chapter One

In all the world the only place Oleg knew he would ever be dry and warm was in this house.

A fly was buzzing the candle that sat lit on the wooden table. The candle should have been extinguished hours ago, when the sky turned gray. Mother had forgotten, of course. Out on the street gloom reigned in the constant, misty fog.

Oleg lay sprawled on his cot where he had awakened only moments before. He had been spending his nights guarding the settlement, chasing off the zhakals. On his last night a whole hunting pack had crawled up to the barn and almost carried him off instead.

The night had left him drained, a feeling of emptiness and boredom had overcome him, as though he had no reason at all to feel any excitement about what had happened and about what was to come and no right to feel terror. It was either or, fifty fifty, you returned or you didn't. And what were the odds of survival at fifty percent to the fourth power? There should have been some regularity, there should have been tables, or else you're always re-inventing the bicycle. But anyway they were all ready to ask the Mayor what a bicycle was. There was a paradox here. There were no bicycles, but the Mayor kept reproaching them for not hunting for the meaning hidden by the words.

From the kitchen Oleg heard his mother start to cough. So she was home.

"You didn't go?" Oleg called out.

"You're awake? Want some soup? I've cooked some," His mother asked.

"Then who went after the muzhrumes?"

"Marianna and Dick."

"That's all?"

"Some of the children may have tagged along."

They should have awakened him! Called him.! Marianna hadn't promised, but it would have been natural for them to have called him.

"I'm really not hungry."

"If the rains don't stop the kewkumbers won't ripen before the frost sets in," His mother said. "Mold's growing on everything."

Oleg's mother came into the room, chased the fly away with the palm of her hand and extinguished the candle. Oleg looked up at the ceiling. The spot of yellow mold had grown, changing its shape. The night before it had resembled Vaitkus's profile with a potato nose. But today the nose had puffed up as though stung by a wasp, and the forehead had been distended with a new bump.

Dick's going into the forest was alarming. Why would he want to pick muzhrumes? He was a hunter, a plainsman, or so he kept telling everyone.

"There are lots of flies," His mother said. "They find it too cold in the forest."

"So you've found someone to feel sorry for."

The house was divided down the middle; on the other side lived the Mayor and the Durov twins the Mayor had taken in after their parents had died in the last epidemic. The twins were always sick with something: as soon as one recovered the other immediately fell ill.

If it hadn't been for their constant howling and whimpering at night Oleg would never have agreed to be town watchman. He could hear them now begin to snivel in chorus -- they were hungry. Starved. The Mayor 's monologue - unintelligible, distant, ever present like the wind, -- cut off and a bench squeaked on the wooden floor. That meant the Mayor had gone into the kitchen. Immediately his students started to make a racket.

"And why do you have to go?" Oleg's mother said. "Don't go! You'll be lucky if you return in one piece!"

Now his mother began to cry. She was often crying now-a-days. She would mumble something, turn toward him and then turn abruptly away, and begin to cry silently -- you could tell because she wiped her nose. And she begin to whisper, like some invocation or chant: "I can't take it. I can't take it any more. It would be better if I were dead..." Oleg, if he heard, froze lest he show he wasn't sleeping, as though he were looking at something he had no right to see. Oleg was ashamed to realize that there was no way he could comfort his mother. She cried about things that meant nothing to him. She cried about countries he would never see, about people who were not here and never had been.

Oleg did not remember his mother ever being any different, only the same as she was today. She was a thin, stringy woman with straight, mottled hair gathered behind her in a bun; heavy strands of hair were always getting loose and hung down her cheeks and she had to blow them away from her face. Her face was red with willowwasp pockmarks, there were dark bags under her eyes, and her eyes were too bright as though they blazed.

His mother sat down at the table, ran her coarse palms under callused hands. Well, start crying, why don't you? Will she reach for the photograph now? He was right. She pulled the box towards her, opened it, and pulled out the photograph.

On the other side of the wall the Mayor was cooking the twins something to eat. The twins were sniveling. The students were shouting and horsing around, helping the Mayor feed the infants. As though this was going to be a typical day. As though nothing out of the ordinary was about to happen. But what were they doing in the forest? It will be noon soon. They'll come back for lunch. It's time they got back. They knew what can happen to people in the forest.

His mother kept looking at the photograph. She was in it, with his father. Oleg had seen it a thousand times and a thousand times he had tried to find a resemblance between himself and that man. He couldn't. His father's head was covered with curly blond hair, a face with full lips, a cleft chin jutting forward. In the picture his father was laughing. Mother said he was always laughing. Oleg resembled his mother more -- not the way she was now, but back when the photograph with his father had been taken. Straight black hair and thin lips. Wide, steep eyebrows like arches over bright blue eyes. Skin so pale the red blood vessels showed through. Oleg burned easily. He had thin lips and black hair, like his mother in the photo. His father and mother had been young and very happy. And striking. His father had been in a uniform, and his mother in a dress without shoulders. Something called a sun dress.

That was twenty years ago and Oleg hadn't been born. He was now a little more than fifteen.

"Mother," Oleg said. "Don't, please."

"I won't let you go," His mother said. "I won't let them send you. Over my dead body."

"Mother, enough already." Oleg said and sat up on the cot. "I'd better have some soup."

"You can have it in the kitchen," His mother said. "It hasn't gotten cold yet."

Her eyes were moist. She'd been crying just the same, as though she had buried him already. Or maybe she was crying for his father. For her the photograph was the man. But as much as he had tried, Oleg could remember absolutely nothing about his father.

The boy got to his feet and went into the kitchen. The Mayor was at the hardened clay stove, trying to set fire to some dried wood.

"I'll do it," Oleg said. "You want the water boiling?"

"Yes," The Mayor said. "Thanks. But I have to finish the lesson now. Come get me when it's ready."

***

Marianna had filled the basket with muzhrumes. She'd been lucky. True, she had to go some distance, all the way to the gorge. With Oleg along she would have had too much sense to go so far from the settlement, but with Dick she felt more confident because Dick felt confident with himself, everywhere, even in the forest, even if he preferred the plains. Dick insisted he was a born hunter, but in fact he had been born earlier, before they had built the settlement.

"But you know the forest as well as you know your own home," Dick said.

He spoke too loudly. He was walking in front and a little to one side. A leather jacket with its fur out sat on him like his own skin. He had sewn the jacket himself. Few of the women in the settlement could have sewn it as well.

The forest was sparse and uneven, the trees here rose to hardly more than man height before bending their tops to the side as though they feared to stick out from the mass of their neighbors. The trees were being sensible. The fierce winter winds would have torn away anything that stuck out too far above the rest. The needles dripped chill rain. Marianna's hand gripping the basket had frozen; she stretched her fingers and moved the container to her other hand. The muzhrumes in the basket had begun to shake and chitter. The girl's palm hurt; one of the muzhrumes had stung her with its barb while she was digging them up. Dick had extracted the stinger so there would be no infection. Marianna sipped the bitter antidote from the bottle that always hung from her neck.

Marianna spied a violet blossom nestled between the fat, slippery white roots of a payn.

"Hold on, Dick," She said, "There's a flower there I haven't seen before."

"Don't you think we can do without flowers?" Dick asked. "It's time we got home. I just don't like this place." Dick had a nose for danger.

"Just a second," Marianna said and knelt down by the trunk.

The spongy soft blue bark that covered the payn pulsed slightly, its veins pumping themselves full of water, and the roots had shot out tendrils so as not to miss a single droplet. What she had noticed was a flower. An ordinary flower, a violet, only somewhat brighter in color and larger than those growing around the settlement, and with longer thorns. Marianna yanked it from the ground and held it too high for the flailing roots to grasp hold of the payn, and a moment later dropped the violet into the basket with the muzhrumes that were chirping and twittering so much that Marianna even began to laugh and paid no attention to Dick's cry.

"Duck!"

The word and the danger sank in; Marianna jumped forward, fell, dove into the warm mass of pulsing roots. But too late. Her face burned as though she'd been struck by a whip.

"Your eyes!" Dick shouted. "Are your eyes all right?"

Dick grabbed the girl by the shoulders, pulled her clenched fingers out of the mass of roots and made her sit still despite the intense pain.

"Keep your eyes tight!" He told her and quickly started to extract the thin needles from her face; he continued angrily:

"Idiot, we can't let you loose in the forest. You have to listen. It hurts, doesn't it."

Unexpectedly he threw himself on Marianna and pressed her into the roots.

"That hurts!"

"Another one just flew past," Dick said, half rising. "We'll take a look later. It managed to dust my back."

Two willowasps had flown past three meters above the ground; spheres taut and fat with needle-like spores, but lighter than air with their hydrogen fill. They would fly until the wind carried them against a tree or drove them against the cliffs. Billions of spheres died without issue, but should one find a baer it would riddle the warm pelt with needles carrying its young. In the sporing season you had to be careful in the forest or you would be scarred for life.

"Well, that's all," Dick said. "No needles left. And most important, none got in your eyes."

"Is it bad?" Marianna asked quietly.

"You're beauty hasn't been damaged," Dick said. "Now let's get home fast. Let Egli smear you with grease."

"Right." Marianna ran her palm along her cheek.

Dick noticed and grabbed at her hand.

"There are more than enough muzhrumes, you got a flower. Are you off your head? Do you want to get it infected."

In the meantime the muzhrumes had escaped from the basket, crawled in among the roots; a few even managed to bury themselves halfway into the ground. Dick helped Marianna gather them, but they never found the violet. Dick gave Marianna the basket back; it was light but he wanted to keep his hands free. In the forest you only had seconds to react, and the hands of a hunter had to be kept free.

"Look," Marianna said, taking the basket. She caught at Dick with her thin, frozen hand. "Is my face spoiled?"

"Don't be silly," Dick said. "We all have marks on our faces. Me too. Is my face spoiled? They're our tribal tattoo marks."

"Tattoo?"

"You forgot? One of the Mayor's history lessons, how wild tribes decorated themselves with special marks. As a sort of badge of honor."

"But those were savages," Marianna said. "And this hurts."

"We're savages too."

Dick was already walking ahead. He didn't turn as he spoke, but Marianna knew he was listening to everything. He had a hunter's hearing. Marianna jumped over the gray stem of a hunting vine.

"Later on you'll itch, it'll be impossible to sleep. The most important thing to remember is don't scratch yourself. Then you'll be scarred permanently. Only everyone scratches."

"I won't," Marianna said.

"You'll forget while you're sleeping and scratch...."

The rain drove down harder, but they moved along slowly. Anyone who ran without looking where they were going ended up dinner for a vine or oak. The muzhrumes beat against the sides of the basket, but Marianna didn't want to throw them away. Soon They would see the clearing and then the settlement. Someone would certainly be on guard by the stockade. She saw Dick pull his knife out of his belt and shifted his cross-bow into a more comfortable position. She unsheathed her own knife as well, but the blade was too narrow, too thin, and good only for cutting vines or digging out muzhrumes. If the pack of zhakals found you the knife would be of little use. No better than a stick.

***

Oleg finished the soup and placed the pot with the leftovers on a shelf higher up. The students' feet pounded on the hard clay floor of the next room; through the arrow slot in the wall. Oleg saw them rush out the door and jump into an enormous puddle that had swollen over the past few days, splattering mud everywhere. Then one of them shouted: "Wyrm!" and they swirled around in a mass, grabbing for the wyrm.

The critter's scarlet tail rose out of the water and struck at the students' legs. Ruth, Thomas's red haired little girl, began to wail: apparently the wyrm had swatted her bare hand with its burning sucker. The little girl's mother stuck her head from her house opposite, shouting:

"Have you gone crazy! Don't go poking in the water! You could lose your hands. It's home for you all. Now!"

But the students had decided to carry the wyrm over their heads, and Oleg knew why. As the wyrm dried it changed color, first to red, then blue, then it became very interesting, but only to those who did not panic at the sight of wyrms, harmless and cowardly critters that they were. Unlike mothers.

Linda, Thomas's wife, stood at the edge of the puddle and called her daughter, and Oleg, guessing what his mother was about to ask him, said:

"I'll go now."

He went out into the street and looked down to the end, toward the gates in the fence where Thomas stood tense with a cross-bow in his hands. Something's wrong. Oleg thought. Wrong, just like I thought. Dick must've really led Marianna somewhere far off, and something happened. Dick doesn't realize she's different and he didn't watch over her.

The children continued their dance with the wyrm over their heads; the animal had aleady become quite black, it couldn't adapt to captivity any more. Linda Hind pulled her red haired daughter from the parade and dragged her home captive. Oleg ran off toward the fence and only halfway there did he realize he hadn't taken a cross-bow and would be completely useless if anything happened.

"What's up?" Oleg asked Thomas.

"Shakals lurking about. A pack." The man didn't bother to turn around.

"The same ones as last night?"

"Don't know. Didn't used to hunt at night. Waiting for Marianna?"

"She went off hunting muzhrumes with Dick."

"I know. Let them through myself. No need to worry. With Dick, nothing will happen. Born hunter."

Oleg nodded. It was embarrassing but Thomas had no desire to insult the boy. Dick was simply more useful. Dick was a hunter. Oleg wasn't much of one. As though skill at hunting was the greatest thing you could have in the world.

"Of course I understand," Thomas suddenly laughed. He lowered the cross-bow and leaned his back against one of the great boles that formed the fence. "It's a question of priorities. In any small scale society, ours being the example at hand, abilities in, say, mathematics are in less demand than the ability to kill a baer. It just ain't fair, but it is understandable."

Thomas's smile was polite, the long lips bent at the corners of his mouth as though they had trouble fitting a face that was a mass of deep scars, and eyes that were darker still. And the whites of Thomas's eyes had turned yellow. Thomas's liver was diseased. Perhaps that was why he had gone completely bald and coughed all the time. But Thomas was a survivor and knew the road to the mountain pass better than anyone else.

Thomas pointed his cross-bow and, without sighting, fired a bolt. Oleg's eyes followed after the bolt, there was a yowl, and the wood stuck from the hide of a zhakal that hadn't dodged in time. The creature fell out of the branches, as though the tree had been holding on to it but now let it drop. The zhakal's black maw gaped open, the individual hairs of its white coat stuck out like needles. The critter crashed onto the meadow, twitched, and grew quiet.

"Great shot."

"Thank you. We'll have to drag it away before the croes come."

"I'll do it," Oleg said.

"No. He's not alone." Thomas stopped him. "Get your cross-bow first. If the kids do return, they'll have to walk through a pack of them. How many zhakals were there last night?"

"I counted six," Oleg said.

Oleg had just turned to run after his weapon when Thomas's whistle brought him up short. The whistle was loud enough to be heard anywhere in the settlement.

Stop now? No, better get the cross-bow first! It would only take a minute.

"What's happening?" His mother stood in the doorway.

He darted around her, grabbed the cross-bow from the wall, and almost cried out in alarm. Where were his bolts? Under the table? Had the twins carried them off?

"Behind the stove," His mother said. She had hid the quiver from the twins. "What's happening? Is Marianna all right?"

The Mayor had run out with a spear; he could hardly fire a cross-bow with only one hand. Oleg ran around the Mayor, pulling a bolt from the quiver as he ran although he'd always been taught never to do that. All the settlement's children were hurrying to the fence.

"Get back from there!" Oleg shouted in his loudest voice. No one listened to him.

Sergeyev was already standing next to Thomas with a long bow in his hands. The men were listening tensely. Sergeyev lifted a three fingered hand and ordered those running toward them to stop.

And then a cry reached them from the straight gray wall the forest. A human cry, from far off, and brief, cut off; endless silence followed from the settlement. And Oleg imagined -- no, he could see Marianna and Dick out in the forest, behind the wall of rain and thick white trees, in the living, breathing, crawling forest. Marianna stood with her back against the warm and smarting bark of apayn and Dick, half fallen to his knees -- blood dripping from a hand torn by the teeth of a zhakal, trying to pick up the spear.

"Mr Mayor!" Thomas shouted. "Boris, stay at the gate. Oleg, with us."

Aunt Luiza caught up with them at the forest edge; in one hand she carried the enormous ax she'd used to chase off a baer last year, in the other hand she carried a burning torch. Aunt Luiza was a large, fat and terrifying woman -- short gray locks of matted hair rolled down the sides of her head, her loose coveralls blown by the wind to bell shape. Even the trees dragged back their branches in fear and the leaves twisted out of her way; Aunt Luiza was like the wolfwind that ripped down the gorge in winter. And when she stumbled over hunting vynes they slithered behind the nearest tree in fright.

Thomas came to a halt so abruptly that Sergeyev almost ran into him. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. No one else in the settlement could manage such a deafening whistle.

When the sound died away Oleg realized the others had grown completely still. The forest feared human trampling, human fears and human rage. All that could be heard was Aunt Luiza's heavy breathing.

"Here!" Marianna's voice sounded quite close by. She had hardly shouted enough to be heard from one end of the settlement to the other. They ran on and Oleg heard Dick's voice -- rather his roar -- and the furious barking of a zhakal.

Oleg dashed to one side to be able to shoot around Aunt Luiza, but he was blocked by Sergeyev's naked back; Marianna's father hadn't had time to dress, he had come running at Thomas's call, pulling up his leather trousers.

Marianna stood with her back pressed into the soft white bole of a fat old payn just as in Oleg's premonition; it had begun to cave inward as though it were trying to embrace the girl. But Dick still stood; he had driven back an enormous gray zhakal with his knife. The critter dodged the blow, hissing and twisting. Still another zhakal was writhing on its side on the ground, an arrow sticking out of the fur. And five of the critters sat in a row to one side like an audience. The humans had never been able to explain zhakal behavior. The animals did not fall on their prey in a pack but took turns. If the first failed to take down the prey the second took his place, and so on, until they won, without pity or concern for their own fallen. Sergeyev, when he had dissected one of the animals, had difficulty finding the brain.

The audience of zhakals, as on command, turned their muzzles to the people who had rushed onto the field. Oleg thought for a moment the red points of the zhakals' eyes were sizing him up. Could it be they were all going to attack together? That wasn't in the rules.

The zhakal that had been trying to grab Dick's knife with its teeth suddenly jerked to one side; an arrow poked out from the base of the long neck. Thomas had managed to fire while Oleg was still trying to decide what to do. Dick, as though he had been waiting for this, immediately turned on the remaining zhakals and ran at them with his spear. Alongside him were Sergeyev and Aunt Luiza with the ax and firebrand. Before the zhakals could understand what was happening, two lay sprawled dead in the meadow and the rest turned on their claws, the tips of their scaly flat tails arched to the bare backs of their heads, and vanished into the depths of the forest. No one went after them. Oleg went over to Marianna.

"You okay?"

Marianna was crying. She was clutching the chittering basket to her breast and crying bitterly.

"I was stung by a willowasp," Marianna cried. "Now I'll be marked."

"It's a shame you came so fast," Dick said, wiping blood from his cheek. "I was just beginning to have fun."

"Don't talk like a fool," Aunt Luiza said.

"The third or fourth would have had you for dinner," Sergeyev added.

***

On the way back to the settlement Dick began to shake from the toxins of the zhakal bite. They hurried to Vaitkus's house. Vaitkus himself was sick in bed, but his wife Egli pulled lotions and antidotes for zhakal poison from the medicine box in the corner for him, then washed Marianna's wounds thoroughly and made her lay down and get some sleep. Dick left; the fever had come on him, he felt sick and looked bad, and he did not want other people to see him.

Egli put a bowl of the sugar they obtained from the roots of one of the swamp grasses on the table. Only she and Marianna were able to distinguish the sweet sedge from the usually poisonous variety, and a few of the younger kids who knew by smell which grass was sweet and which bit back. Then Egli poured hot water into the cups, and everyone ladled out himself a spoonful of thick gray sugary gelatin. No formalities. Everyone liked visiting the Vaitkuses.

"Nothing too serious?" Thomas asked Egli. "Dick can still go?"

"He's like a cat. He'll heal fast."

"Any doubts?" Sergeyev asked the other man.

"No doubts..." Thomas answered. "No other choice, really. Are you prepared to wait three more years? We'll die out from poverty."

"We won't die out," Vaitkus said from his bed. His beard and a mop of hair on his head covered all his face. All that could be seen was the red nose and the bright points of his eyes. "We're going terminally wild."

"All the same," Thomas said. "If I could get my hands on Daniel Defoe I'd wring his neck! Miserable liar!"

Vaitkus laughed; it sounded more like a cough.

Oleg had heard this conversation before. Now it was all small talk and banter. He'd have preferred to drop by the barn where the Mayor and his students were preparing the dead zhakals' hides, to have a word with the Mayor . Simply speak with him for a while. But then he looked at the bowl with sugar and decided to stay and have some more. He and his mother had finished their sugar ration at home the week before. He started to draw the spoon through the bowl but took only half a spoonful. Well, he hadn't come here to have dinner.

"Drink this, Marianna," Egli said. "You're tired."

"Thank you," Marianna said. "I'll go let the muzhrumes soak first, then I'll get some sleep."

Oleg looked Marianna over, as though he was seeing her for the first time, the spoon hung idly over the bowl. Marianna's lips were drawn precisely, a little darker at the edges, very remarkable lips, unlike anyone else's in the settlement. Although she did look a little like Sergeyev. Quite a lot. Of course she also resembled her mother, but Oleg didn't remember the woman. And maybe she looked like her grandfather as well? A remarkable thing, genetics. The Mayor had conducted an experiment for the students with peas in the hothouse pit behind the barn, Marianna's domain. Well, not with real peas, but with a local plant that could pass for a lentil. Everything had agreed with theory, but with some differences, Different rules for assortment of the chromosomes, evidently. Marianna had a triangular face, wide cheekbones and forehead, and a sharp chin, so there were a lot of spaces for eyes to rest on her face, and Oleg's eyes occupied all the free spaces. And a very long neck, with a long red scar she'd had since childhood on one side.

Marianna was used to it, and she'd survive the willowwasps. And it hardly mattered if someone had marks on their face or not, did it? Everyone had them. And instead of a necklace of pearls around her neck Marianna had a string with a wooden flask of antidote, like everyone else in the settlement.

"You should reconsider; this little jaunt might end tragically," Sergeyev said.

"If I thought that I wouldn't have anything to do with it," Thomas said.

Vaitkus began to laugh again, a gurgle that started from somewhere in the middle of his beard.

"Fellows, Dick and Oleg are the hope of our colony, its future. Thomas, you are one of our four last men."

"Amen to that," Luiza said in her basso voice and began to blow loudly into her cup to cool the boiled water.

"You haven't convinced me," Thomas said. "But if you're so much afraid, let Marianna stay here."

"I'm afraid for my daughter, yes. But we're talking about more important things."

"I'll go soak the muzhrumes," Marianna said and got easily to her feet.

"Skin and bones." Aunt Luiza looked after her.

Walking past her father, Marianna ran the ends of her fingers along his shoulders. He lifted a three fingered hand to touch the back of his daughter's palm but she had already taken her hand away and quickly headed for the door. The door opened, letting in the rain's gentle droning, and closed loudly behind the girl. Oleg had almost darted after Marianna, but stopped himself. Somehow he felt uncomfortable.

One of Vaitkus's sons toddled out of the second room. How old was he now? The first boy had been born in the spring, and the other not long ago, when the snow fell. That meant half a year. In all Vaitkus had six children. The world record.

"Sug-gaa.," The child said angrily.

"I'll show you sugar!" Egli said in exasperation. "You want your teeth to ache. Like mine? And who said you could walk barefoot? Did I?"

She picked up the boy and carried him out of the room.

Oleg saw that he had forgotten himself and begun to spoon sugar from the bowl again. In anger he poured the spoon full back. Then he wiped the empty spoon with his tongue.

"Let me pour you some more hot water," Aunt Luiza said. "I keep worrying about our children. They're always so underfed."

"There's nothing more we can do," Egli said, coming back into the room. After her came the deep-throated wailing of a Vaitkus-fils. "We can go muzhrume hunting now. They have vitamins. Worse with proteins...."

"We'll be going now," Aunt Luiza said. "You look quite worn out."

"You know why." Egli tried for a smile, but the smile became a grimace; the thought was painful.

A month ago Egli had given birth to another child, a stillborn daughter. The Mayor said that she was too old to give birth now. And her body was exhausted. But she thought it her duty. "The species has to continue. Don't you understand?" Oleg understood, although talk about such things was unpleasant, because for some reason it was as though they weren't supposed to talk about such things.

"Thanks for the hospitality," Aunt Luiza said.

"How you manage to put on weight I can't understand," Thomas said, watching Aunt Luiza's enormous bulk moving toward the door.

"Not from living the good life, I can tell you," Luiza said without turning. At the door way she stopped and said to Oleg: "With all the commotion you forgot to stop in at Kristina's. They're waiting for you. Naughty."

Of course. Damn! He should have dropped by more than an hour ago.

Oleg got to his feet.

"I'll go now."

"Well, it has to be done. I can do it, for discipline," Aunt Luiza said. "I'll drop by to see her myself. I'll go after I feed my own pack."

"You don't have to."

Oleg jumped off the house platform into the street after Aunt Luiza and immediately remembered he had forgotten to thank Egli for the hot water and sugar; everthing had become awkward.

The two walked together; it wasn't very far. The whole settlement could be circumnavigated in about five minutes along the fence perimeter.

Two lines of houses sitting on stilts, under slanting lean-to roofs, huddled together, clutched at each other on either side of a straight swath of mud that cut the settlement in half from the gates in the palisade fence to the common barn and warehouse. Roofs covered with the long flat reddish leaves of water tulips glistened in the rain, puddles everywhere reflected the ever cloudy sky. Four houses on one side, six on the other. Of course after last year's epidemic, three stood empty.

Kristina's house was the next to last, with only Dick's beyond. Aunt Luiza lived opposite.

"Aren't you afraid to be going?" Aunt Luiza asked.

"It has to be done," Oleg answered.

"A true answer, worthy sir." For some reason Aunt Luiza started to laugh.

"Will Sergeyev let Marianna go?" Oleg asked.

"Your Marianna will be going," Luiza said. "She'll be going."

"Nothing's going to happen to us," Oleg said. "Four people. All armed. It's not our first time in the forest."

"In the forest, no," Luiza agreed. "But when you get to the mountains it will be totally different."

They stopped in the road between her house and Kristina's. Luiza's door had already been opened and they could see the boy Louisa had adopted, Kazik, waiting.

"The mountains are horrible," Luiza said. "I'll remember how we trudged through them the rest of my life. People died as you watched and you could do nothing..... When we got up in the morning... some people were frozen to the ground."

"It's summer now," Oleg said. "No snow."

"Don't delude yourself. There's always snow in the mountains."

"If we can't make it there, we'll come back," Oleg said.

"Just make sure you do."

Luiza headed for her own door. Kazik ran out to meet her. Oleg turned to Kristina's door.

Kristina's house was stuffy, there was a bitter smell in the air. The mold had covered the insides like wallpaper; although the mold was yellow and orange it did nothing to brighten the room; - there was never any light.

"Hello," Oleg said, holding the door open to see who was where in the dark. "You're not sleeping?"

"Oh, someone's come," Kristina said. "I thought you wouldn't, guessed you'd forgotten. What with preparing to go into the mountains why should you remember me?"

"Don't listen to her, Oleg." A small voice said almost in a whisper. That was Liz. "She's always grumbling. She grumbles at me. You get sick of it."

Oleg found a stool, groped for it with his hands and sought the candle; he pulled iron and flint from his belt pouch.

"Why are you sitting in the darkness?" He asked.

"The lamp's out of oil," Liz said.

"But where's the can?"

"We have no oil," Kristina said. "Who needs two helpless women like us? Who'd bring us oil?"

"There's oil on the shelf to your right," Liz said. "When are you leaving?"

"After lunch," Oleg said. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay. Just weak."

"Egli said that you'll be able to get up in two or three days. If you want we can take you over to Luiza's."

"I won't leave mama," Liz said.

"Fine," Kristina said. "Get her away from here. Why should she die with me?"

Kristina was not Liz's mother, but they had always lived together. When they had arrived at the settlement Liz was less than a year old, the youngest of the children. Her mother had frozen to death in the mountain pass and her father hadn't even made it that far. Kristina had carried Liz through those days. That was when she had been strong and brave. When she had eyes.

And the two of them had stayed together. Then Kristina went blind. It had been the willowwasps -- at the time they hadn't known what to do. So now she sat. She rarely left her house. Only in summer. If it wasn't raining. Everyone else was used to the constant rain and didn't even notice it, but not her. If it rained she wouldn't leave the house for anything; if it was dry she would sit on the porch, guess who the passers-by were from the way they walked, and complain.

The Mayor said that Kristina wasn't entirely normal any more. Once upon a time she had been a famous astrophysicist. Liz once staid to Oleg: "Try to imagine being in her position; her life was looking at the stars, and then found herself in a forest where there weren't any stars, and then she went completely blind as well. You can't understand her."

Oleg looked around and found the jar of grease on the shelf. It wasn't empty yet. He poured some in the lamp, and lit it. Immediately the room became bright. He could see the wide bed on which Kristina and Liz huddled together under skins. Oleg was always surprised at how similar the two were; it was hard to believe they weren't even related. Both had pale white skin and yellow hair, with wide squarish faces and small lips. Liz had green eyes. Kristina's eyes were closed, but the Mayor and his mother said they had once been green as well.

"There's enough oil to last the week," Oleg said. "Then the Mayor will bring more. You don't have to ration it. Why sit in the dark?"

"I'm sorry I got sick," Liz said. "I wanted to go with you."

"You'll go next year."

"You mean in three years?"

"In a year."

"After this year means after three of our years. I have weak lungs."

"It's a long time 'til winter. You'll get better."

Oleg understood that this girl with the wide face was not talking about what awaited him. When she spoke of going with him she didn't mean into the mountains. She wanted Oleg to remain with her always. She was afraid. She was completely alone. Oleg tried to be polite but he didn't always succeed. Liz was a pest -- her eyes were always asking for something.

Kristina got up off the bed, picked up her stick and walked over to the hearth. She was able to do everything for herself but preferred that her neighbors help her.

"...go out of my minds," The woman mumbled. "I was someone. I used to do real work. And men would turn their heads when I walked by. Now I have to live in this stye and everyone's abandoned me... damned by fate...."

"Oleg," Liz said. She rose half way on her elbows revealing a breast that had grown large and white since the end of winter. Oleg turned away. "Oleg, don't go. You won't return. I know you won't return. I have a premonition..."

"Can I bring you some water?" Oleg asked quickly.

"We have some," Liz said. "You just don't want to hear me out. Just for once in your life!"

"I'd better get going."

"Yes," She said bitterly.

Her words reached him at the door:

"Oleg, would you look for cold medicines there? For Kristina. You won't forget?"

"I won't forget."

"You will," Kristina said. "There'll be nothing surprising at all about that."

"Oleg!"

"What is it?"

"You haven't said good-bye to me."

"Au revoir."

***

The Mayor was washing himself over the basin in the kitchen.

"The critters you killed weren't fully grown," He said. "The coats are poor quality, summer coats."

"That was Dick and Sergeyev."

"Are you angry? Were you with Kristina?"

"They're all right. Just bring them some grease. And they're out of bowtatoes too."

"Don't get upset. Come into my room. We can finally have our talk."

"Just don't take too long." Oleg's mother called from behind the partition.

The Mayor grinned sourly. Oleg held the rag so the old man could wipe his left hand more easily. The Mayor had lost the right hand fifteen years ago when they had made the first attempt to go back across the mountain pass.

Oleg went into the Mayor's room, sat down at the table polished by the students' elbows and pushed the home-made bacus to one side, the counters made from dried nuts rattling in their grooves. How many times had he sat at this table? Several thousand, certainly. Nearly everything he knew, he had learned at this table.

"For me the worst thing is sending you," The old man said, sitting down opposite him in his teacher's seat. "I thought that in a few years you will take my place teaching the children."

"I'll be back," Oleg said. He thought: What's Marianna doing now? She must have finished soaking the muzhrumes already, then she has to go through the herbarium and select what she'll be taking along. Is she getting ready? Is she talking to her father?

"Are you listening to me."

"Yes, certainly, teacher."

"But at the same time it was I who insisted they take you with them up to the mountain pass. In fact you're more necessary than Dick or Marianna. You can be my eyes and my hands."

The old man raised the one hand and looked it over with interest, as though no one was looking. And was lost in thought. Oleg said nothing, his eyes roaming the rest of the room. The old man sometimes fell silent like that, unexpectedly, for a minute or two. Everyone had some weakness of his own. The fire from the lamp illuminated the polished little pocket microscope on the wall. It had once been part of a much larger portable medical lab, but everything else had been lost; it didn't even have a real lens any more. A thousand times Sergeyev had told the Mayor the empty tube was just a great luxury. "Let me bring it to the workshop, Borya. I can get you two knives from it.." But the Mayor never surrendered it.

"Sorry," The old man said. He blinked his gray eyes twice, stroked the carefully trimmed white beard that caused Aunt Luiza to call him 'Mister Fashionplate.'

"I've been doing some thinking. You know about what? Back in the history of Earth there were a number of cases -- groups of people cut off from the general current of civilization by accident or disaster. And here we're in a position to carry out a qualitative analysis..."

The old man fell silent again and pursed his lips, lost in his own thoughts again. Oleg was used to this. He liked sitting next to the old man, simply saying nothing, and it seemed to him that the knowledge of the old man was so great that the air of the room was simply filled with it.

"Well, naturally one should study temporal diapason. Diapason -- it's a concord of notes, and by extension of that meaning a range of possibilities effected over time. remember?"

The old man always explained the words which his students hadn't encountered before.

"To regress a single individual to barbarism all you need is a few years. It's because man is born tabula rasa. a blank sheet of paper. It's known that children who fell among wolves or tigers at an early age -- they used to tell such tales in India and Africa -- after a number of years were hopelessly behind their contemporaries in linguistic skills. They remained feral. A feral person is..."

"I remember."

"Yes. Hmn.... They were never able live among other people afterwards. They even walked on all fours."

"What if they were adults."

"The wolves didn't take in adults."

"And on desert islands? Like Tasmania and...."

"That depended on the circumstances, but people inevitably experienced regression. The degree of regression..."

The old man glanced at Oleg. The later nodded his head -- he knew that word.

"The degree of regression depends on the level which the person had reached at the moment of isolation and on his character. But we cannot pose an historical experiment on a single developed personality. We are talking about the social experience of the group. Is it possible for a group of people under conditions of isolation to maintain the level of culture which held at the moment of separation?"

"Maybe," Oleg said. "There's us."

"You can't," The old man said. "For a child five years is enough to turn him into a savage. For an isolated band, if it doesn't die out, it will take two or three generations. For a large group or a tribe -- several generations. For a nation -- a century maybe. But the process is irreversible. It's been proven by history. For example, the Tasmanian and Australian aborigines..."

Oleg's mother entered the room. Her hair was combed and she had put on her best and only real dress.

"I'll come and sit with you," She said.

"Take a chair, Irina," The old man said. "We were speaking about social progress. Or more precisely, regress."

"I've already heard," Oleg's mother said. "Have you decided how much longer it will take before we walk on all fours? I've already told you -- we'll all be dead before then. Thank God. I've had enough."

"But Oleg hasn't," The old man said. "And my twins haven't."

"It's because of him I'm still living," Oleg's mother said. "So why do you want to send him to certain death?"

"In your point of view death threatens us here every day just because we get up, Ira." He spoke as the tribal Mayor . "The forest out there -- that's death. Winter is death. The spring floods are death. The hurricanes are death. A bee sting is death and a flea-bite is worse than death. There's no way of telling where death will come from or what form it will take."

"It will come whenever it wants and choose whomever it wants," Mother said. "One after the other until no one is left."

"There are more of us now than there were five years ago. Our main problem isn't physical survival, but moral."

"We are fewer! You and I are fewer! You understand. There aren't enough of us left! How will these puppies survive without us?"

"We might," Oleg said. "Would you go off into the forest alone?"

"It would be better to hang ourselves. I fear going out into the street at times."

"But I am going on the climb now. And I'll return. With the hoard."

"We almost didn't save Dick and Marianna today."

"That was an accident. You certainly know that zhakals don't hunt in packs."

"I don't know any such thing! Did they all run off as a pack or not? Did they?"

"Yes."

"That means they hunt in packs."

Oleg couldn't think of a reply. His mother grew silent as well. The Mayor sighed, waited for a pause in the argument and continued his monologue.

"For some reason or other I remembered another bit of history today. It seems like I haven't thought of it for a thousand years, but today I remembered it. Perhaps it was your going and this place...

"It happened in 1530 AD, shortly after the discovery of America. A German ship was hunting whales to the south of Iceland. It was caught by a storm and driven to the north west, into uncharted waters. For some days the ship sailed the waves among icebergs. Icebergs are..."

"It's a mountain of ice in the water. I know," Oleg said.

"Correct. After several days the snow capped mountainous shores of an unknown land appeared. Now they call it Greenland. The ship let down anchor and the sailors went ashore. And you can imagine their surprise when they soon saw a half ruined church and then the remains of stone cabins. In one of the cabins they found the corpse of a red haired man in clothing sewn from sealskins, along with a worn down, rusty knife. And all around them emptiness, cold, snow..."

"Borya, there's no need to frighten the boy," Oleg's mother said. Her fingers nervously rapped on the table. "Pseudohistoric fairy tales...."

"Just a moment. This is no fairy tale. It's been very carefully researched and documented. The dead man was the last of the Vikings. You remember what Vikings were, Oleg?"

"You told us all about Vikings."

"The Vikings were sea rovers. They conquered whole countries like France and England. They settled Iceland, came ashore in America, which they called Vinland, even founded a kingdom of their own in Sicily.

"And they had an important colony in Greenland. There were several settlements with stone houses and churches. Then the Vikings stopped sending their ships out to sea. Their colonies fell to other people or were abandoned. Contact with Greenland came to an end. And at the same time the climate grew worse. The herds of cattle died out, and Greenland's population started to drop. The reason for this was the loss of contact with the rest of the world. The Greenlanders, once heroic seamen, forgot the art of constructing sea-going ships, because they had no trees. Their numbers dwindled. It's known the last marriage in Greenland was celebrated in the middle of the fifteenth century. The descendants of the Vikings became primitives. They were too few to withstand the elements, make progress or even preserve what they had. You can imagine the tragedy -- the last wedding in an entire country?" The Mayor glanced at Oleg's mother.

"Your analogies are less than convincing." Oleg's mother said. "However many the Vikings were, however few, nothing would have saved them."

"But there were alternatives. Had the German ship come thirty years earlier everything might have turned out differently. The Vikings could have sailed to the continent and returned to the human family. Or else once they had re-established contact with other countries, traders might have come, new settlers, perhaps even new tools, knowledge..... Everything would have been different."

"Well, no one is going to sail the seas to us." Oleg's mother said.

"Our salvation will not to be found in adapting to nature." The old man said with certainty. This time he had turned to Oleg. "We need help. Help from the rest of the human race. And that's why I insist that your son go to the mountain pass. We still remember, and our duty is not to break that thread of memory."

"Empty words." Oleg's mother said tiredly. "Shall I pour you more hot water?"

"Pour away." The Mayor said. "Let us indulge ourselves with hot water. We're threatened by loss of our past. The people who remember what we need all the fewer. Some are dying, some others are simply too busy staying alive from day to day. And now we have a new generation. You and Marianna are just the transition stage. You're like a knot uniting us with our future. Have you any idea, any image of what it's going to be like?"

"We're not afraid of the forest." Oleg said. "We know the muzhrumes and the trees, we can hunt on the plains..."

"What I am afraid of is a future ruled by a new type of man, a Dick-the-Hunter; for me he's a symbol of our failure. a symbol of the surrender of mankind in the struggle with nature...."

"Richard is a fine boy." Oleg's mother said from the kitchen. "He hasn't had it easy growing up alone."

"It's not his character I worry about." Boris said. "It's everyone else becoming like him that I fear. When are you going to learn to ignore trifles, Irina?"

"I may ignore trifles or not, but if Dick hadn't killed that baer this winter we'd all have starved to death."

"Dick already thinks of himself as a native here. He stopped coming to class five years ago. I'm not even certain if he remembers the alphabet."

"And why should he?" Oleg's mother asked. "There aren't any books at all and nowhere to write letters to. And no one else."

"Dick knows a lot of songs." Oleg said. "And he composes some himself."

Oleg had become somewhat ashamed that he was so pleased at hearing the old man's displeasure toward Dick he felt he had to defend the other boy.

"We're not talking about the songs. ongs are the dawn of civilization. But for the younger kids Dick has become their idol.

"Dick is the hunter!" The Mayor turned to Oleg's mother. "And for you he is an example. 'Look at Dick. What a good kid.' To the girls he's a knight in shining armor. Haven't you ever seen what sort of eyes he casts at Marianna."

"Let him look. They'll get married. That's good for the settlement."

"Mother!" Oleg couldn't stand it any longer.

"But what?"

As usual his mother had noticed nothing of what was going on around her. She lived in some sort of other world of her own, re-living the past.

"And does a world of Dicks suit you?" The Mayor as ashen. He even slammed his fist on the table. "A world of successful, quick footed savages."

"And what do you offer in its place?"

"This." The old man placed his heavy palm on Oleg's head. "An Oleg-world. Your world and my world, the world you are so willing to toss away, even though there's nothing else to put in its place."

"You're not right, Borya." Oleg's mother said. She went into the kitchen took the pot with the boiling water from the fire and brought it into the other room. "The sugar's all gone."

"Mine too." The old man said. "The roots are almost dried out now, losing their sweetness. Egli says that we'll have to wait another month for more. Have some bread. Can't you see our chances of rebuilding civilization are doomed if a world of Dick the Hunters replaces us."

"I can't, Borya." Mother said. "We should survive. I'm not talking about myself personally but about the settlement. The children. When I look at Dick or Marianna I have hope. You call them wild, and I think that they might be able to adapt. And if they die now, we all die. The risk is too great."

"And you mean to say that I haven't adapted." Oleg asked.

"You have adapted less than the others, yes."

"You're simply afraid for me." Oleg said. "You don't want me to go to the mountains. But I can shoot a cross-bow better than Dick."

"Of course I'm afraid for you. You're my only son. You're all I have left. And with every day you're drifting further and further away from me, going off somewhere, becoming strange."

The old man paced slowly about the room as he usually did when he was displeased with his students. Stooping down he lifted a globe from the stool. He had made it from a giant muzhrume which had grown that winter beside the barn. The Mayor had drawn all the continents and seas of the Earth from memory. The globe had turned pale with time, and in two years it had withered like a round apple.

Oleg saw a small point of reddish fungus on the table Unlike the yellow fungus this was poisonous. He carefully wiped away the spot with his sleeve. It's dumb when your own mother prefers someone else to you. In fact it's a betrayal. A very real betrayal.

"We're going to die, you know." The old man said.

"I know it very well. We've lived long enough." Oleg's mother said.

"All the same we're not forcing the issue, we're clutching onto life as best we can."

"We're cowards." Mother said.

"You've always had Oleg."

"He's the only reason I chose to live."

"You and I are going to die." The old man continued. "But the settlement should live. Otherwise our lives would have no meaning."

"A settlement of hunters will have a better chance of survival."

"The settlement of Olegs will have a better chance of survival in the long run." The old man said. "If Dick and others like him rule our tribe, in a hundred years time no one will know who we were or where we came from. The rule of the strong will triumph, the laws of primitive tribes."

"And they'll be fruitful and multiply." Oleg's mother said. "They'll become many. They'll invent the wheel and, in a few thousand years, the steam engine." Oleg's mother began to laugh. To laugh and cry at the same time.

"You're joking, aren't you?" Oleg asked.

"Irina is right." The old man said. "A struggle for simple survival will lead to hopeless regression. To survive at the price of adapting to nature rather than adapting nature to us means surrender."

"And living." Mother insisted.

"She doesn't think so." Oleg said to the old man.

"No. She doesn't" The old man agreed. "I've known Irina for twenty years now. I know she doesn't think like me."

"In general, I prefer not to think at all anymore." Mother said.

"You're lying." The Mayor said. "We're all thinking about the future, fearing and hoping. Otherwise we stop being people. It is precisely the weight of the knowledge which Dick has chosen not to burden himself with, which will save us, not the simple laws of the forest. For so long as that alternative remains we can still hope."

"And for the sake of this alternative you are send my son to the mountain."

"For the sake of the preservation of knowledge, for your sake and mine. For the sake of the struggle with savagery, isn't that clear?"

"You always were an egoist." Irina said.

"But your blind maternal egoism isn't to be taken into account?"

"Why do you need Oleg? He won't survive the trip. He's too weak."

She should never have said that. She herself understood this and looked at her son, pleading with her eyes.

"I'm not ashamed. Mom." Oleg said. "But I want to go. I want to go more than the others do, maybe. Dick would rather not go at all. The dyr are starting to herd together. The real hunting's on the plains."

"He's needed for the climb." The old man said. "As much as I may disapprove of his power over us in the long term, today his experience, his strength might save us."

"Save us!" Mother tore her eyes from Oleg. "You harp on salvation. How can you deceive yourself? Our people have gone back up to the mountain pass three times. How many returned? With what?"

"That was before we even knew what we were doing. We didn't know the local rules. We went when there was still snow in the pass. Now we know that it only melts at the end of summer. You have to pay for any knowledge."

"If they hadn't died how much better-off would we be? There would even be more hands providing food for the children."

"We'd still be regressing and powerless to stop it. Either we are a part of the human race and guard its knowledge or we're savages."

"You're an idealist, Borya. A bit of bread today is more important than an abstract pineapple."

"You really remember the taste of pineapple?" The old man turned to Oleg and added: "Pineapple is a tropical fruit with a very specific taste."

"I understand." Oleg said. "She's trying to be funny."

Chapter Two

"Paper." The Mayor repeated. "Even a dozen pages."

"You'll have it." Thomas said.

Those who were to depart had gathered by the gate in the fence. The others had come to see them off. They were all pretending the climb was just an ordinary jaunt. As though they were going for roots in the swamp. But everyone knew their farewells could be forever.

Those going on the climb were warmly dressed -- the clothing had been gathered from all over the settlement. Aunt Luiza herself had gone about collecting, taking this piece of clothing in or letting that out to the necessary sizes. Oleg had never before been so warmly dressed. Only Dick carried nothing that was not his own. He had done all his own sewing. The rain had almost stopped, and water-tygers were splashing and squeaking in the puddles around the bases of the trees that formed their palisade. That meant good weather.

Thomas looked over the water-tygers and said:

"The rain's stopping. You'll have to strengthen the fence."

"Don't think about it." Aunt Luiza said. "We'll handle it."

"What are you going to bring back for me, Pa?" Thomas's daughter Ruth asked.

"Don't." His wife Linda said. "Don't even think about that. All that matters is that your father comes home. Bundle up or you'll catch a cold again."

"Coming back from the pass you head to the right." Vaitkus told Thomas again. "Remember?"

"I'll remember." Thomas laughed. "It's like I can see it now. You should be in bed."

Oleg's mother held him by the hand and he was unable to tear the hand away. He felt Dick's eyes on him, smirking. Irina wanted to go with them as far as the cemetery, but Sergeyev wouldn't let her pass through the gate. He let no one else through but the Mayor and Luiza.

A number of times as they walked up the hill Oleg turned to look back. His mother stood there, her hand raised, as though she wanted to wave to them and had forgotten what to say. She was trying not to cry.

Over the gate he could make out the heads of the adults: Mother, Egli, Sergeyev, Vaitkus, and lower down, through the bramble laced chinks in the fence, the dark forms of the children. A tiny column of people, and after them, the sloping reddish roofs of a small cluster of huts glistening in the rain.

Oleg looked back for the last time from the hill. They all still stood by the fence, only some of the smaller children had run off to one side and made for the puddle. From the height of the hill he could see the street -- a rut between the huts. And the door of Kristina's house. A woman was standing in the doorway, but from the hill he could not make out if it was Kristina or Liz. And then he walked further and the top of the hill cut the settlement off from view.

The graveyard was fenced in like the settlement of the living.. Dick looked inside to see if some animal were lurking there before pulling the gate wide. If it was me I'd have forgotten to do that. Oleg thought.

Inside, it was eerie. The graves were weighted down with slates of a soft shale quarried from the nearby cliff. They numbered more than the people in the settlement, although the settlement was all of sixteen years old. Oleg's father wasn't here; he hadn't even made it as far as the mountain pass.

Dick stopped before two individual slabs better kept than the others. His father and mother.

The Mayor pulled his clothing tighter against the cold and damp of the rising wind and slowly walked from grave to grave. He had known them all. Sixteen years ago they had numbered some thirty-six adults and four children. Nine adults and three of those children remained. Three. Dick, Liz, and Oleg. Twelve of the children had been born in the settlement, including Marianna. That meant, seventeen years ago there had been forty people, now there were a little more than twenty. The math was simple. No, not so simple. The graves were more numerous than all the children who had died or perished. The ones who were here.

Into his ear, as though she had listened in on his thoughts, Aunt Luiza said:

"The majority died in the first five years."

"Naturally." The Mayor agreed. "We paid for every bit of knowledge in blood."

Oleg stopped in front of the slabs in the center of the graveyard. The slabs were unkempt, dirty, crooked, the tenacious rusty paws of the moss had started to wind around them and turn them into little round hills.

Oleg wanted to go back, to take one more look at the settlement; he knew that his mother was still standing by the gate hoping to see him again. Oleg even walked a little toward the gates in the fence but then Thomas said:

"It's time to go. It will be getting dark soon, and we have to make it to the cliff."

"Oh!" Marianna said. She was running her fingers nervously along the bag that hung over her shoulder.

"Forget something?" Dick asked.

"No. Maybe. I wanted to take one last look at dad...."

"Let's be going, Marianna." Thomas said. "The sooner we get going the sooner we return."

Oleg saw that Marianna's eyes were full of tears. Anything else and they'd pour down her cheeks.

Marianna trailed after the others. Oleg walked over to her and said:

"I wanted to go back too. Or just take another look from the top of the hill."

They walked side by side and said nothing.

Thirty paces from the fence the wall of underbrush, sticky and crafty, began.

Luiza kissed them all. The Mayor shook their hands. Oleg was the last.

"I'm putting my hopes on you." He said. "More than Thomas. Thomas will look after the interests of the settlement, for today. You have to think about the future. Do you understand me?"

"Pretty well." Oleg said. "Look after mother, make certain she doesn't sit around doing nothing but worry. I'll get you that lab kit."

"Thank you. Return as fast as you can."

Dick used the end of his spear to jerk back the sticky tentacles and entered the underbrush first.

"Stay close behind me." He said. "Before they can react."

Oleg didn't look back. There was no time to look back. If you turned back the branches would stick themselves to your boots, and whether you pulled them off or not you'd stink for three weeks. The underbrush worked at being unpleasant.

***

They made it to the cliffs by evening, just as Thomas had calculated.

The forest stopped some ways off from the cliff wall; the scarlet fangs of rock jutted up from naked valleys covered by circles of lichen. Rags of clouds flew by so low the sharp crags disemboweled them and they scattered to fine mist, lost in the gray overcast. Thomas had told them the cave where he had spent the night the last time was dry and could be reached easily. Everyone, other than Dick, was tired, but if Dick had been tired he wouldn't have admitted it to any of the others anyway. The only sign was that his teeth chattered.

"It was colder the last time." Thomas said. "We figured it would be easier to cross the swamp in the cold. But the mountain pass was closed. I remember we were walking about here and we could hear the frosty ground cracking beneath our feet."

An off-white circular area about twelve meters in diameter lay between the travelers and the cliffs ahead.

"You were here and you could hear he ground cracking beneath you, you say?" Dick asked. He was walking ahead of the others. Abruptly he stopped at the edge of the spot; the surface almost glistened like the bark of a payn.

"In fact, yes." Thomas stopped beside Dick.

Oleg held back. An hour ago he had taken Marianna's bag so she wouldn't be worn out. Marianna hadn't wanted to surrender it, but Thomas said:

"He's right. Tomorrow I'll help you, after that Dick."

"Why are we doing this now?" Dick said. "We're carrying a lot of stuff we don't need in the bags and no one noticed that Marianna can't carry as much as the rest of us. It should have been thought of earlier. Two months we've been getting ready for this and no one thought of it."

Interesting, and who was thinking of it? So you're a thinker as well as everything else. Oleg thought but said nothing.

Even though it was Dick who said it, they did have to carry a lot if they weren't going to worry about food, and he was going to eat. They had taken both preserved meat, roots, and dried muzhrumes, but most of the weight was in the form of dried wood, without which they could neither boil water nor chase away animals.

"You know what this looks like?" Marianna said when she caught up with the men at the border of the white spot.. "The top of a muzhrume. The biggest I've ever seen."

"Could be." Dick said. "Best we walk around it."

"Why?" Asked Oleg. "We'll have to clamber along the rocks at the base of the cliff."

"Why don't I test it, then?" Marianna got down on her knees and pulled out her knife.

"What do you plan to do?" Thomas asked.

"Cut off a small piece. And smell it. If it's one of the edible varieties think how great that would be! It could feed the whole settlement."

"It's not worth cutting." Dick said. "I don't like your muzhrume very much, if it really is one."

But Marianna had already thrust her knife into the edge of the spot. Before she could cut anything off the white spot suddenly distended, convulsed and twitched and then billowed in Marianna's direction, knocking the knife out of her hand.. Dick grabbed the girl and pulled her back with him, and the two of them clattered across the stones. Thomas jumped back after them, his cross-bow raised.

From where he sat on the stones Dick began to laugh.

"To kill it you'd have to fire the arrow from the woods or beyond."

"Well I told you it was a muzhrume." Marianna said. "There was no reason to be afraid, Dick. It smells just like one."

The white spot continued to shudder; ripples, born in the center, moved to the edges like the circles raised in water by a stone. But the center of the muzhrume kept rising and rising, as though it were about to burst. Then dark cracks appeared in the center; the cracks ran to the sides, widened, and from the center emerged the spikes of enormous petals. The petals started to twist back and forth, although no flower appeared.

"That's beautiful." Marianna said. "It's simply beautiful, isn't it?"

"And you wanted to walk on it." Oleg said to Dick in the voice of an older person, although they were the same age.

Thomas threw his cross-bow over his back and bent down to pick up Marianna's knife.

"Researchers in the field find it useful to think first, then conduct their experiments."

"That may have nothing to do with us." Marianna said. "It's simply showing how beautiful it is!"

"So long as nothing is hiding in it." Dick said. "Shall we be going? It's getting dark and we still haven't found the caves. We came especially at this time so we could spend the night safe in a place we knew."

They walked around the white spot across a vast sloping field of scree at the base of the cliffs. From where he stood above it Oleg tried to look down into the core of the flower, butit was too dark. The petals gradually retracted again as the giant muzhrume slowly quieted down.

"What will we call it?" Marianna asked.

"Todestule." Thomas answered.

"Is that some kind of muzhrume?"

"Yes." Thomas wheezed out. "Large and poisonous. A red cap... white spots on red cap."

"Not very similar." Dick said.

"But it sounds pretty." Marianna added.

For a long time now it was Thomas who had the task of bestowing names on the beasts of the fields. The names he chose were familiar, and not always appropriate. Why think of new ones? Just so long as they had similar characteristics. Everyone knew muzhrumes grew in the earth and you could dry them out and preserve them. That meant that orange or blue balls that dug themselves into the ground, but which you could dry, fry and roast and eat if you first de-veined them henceforth bore the name muzhrume. The zhakals roamed in packs, devoured carrion, were cowardly and greedy. It was unimportant that the zhakals here were reptilian. And baers had coats of long, bushy hair and were large... Although here their fur were the sprouts of willowasps, which looked like long strands of greenish hair.

Oleg started to pant while they picked their way across the scree, the stones slipping from beneath his feet. Marianna's back-pack dragged at his hand, his own weighed down his shoulders. Oleg was counting his steps. Where was that damned cave?

The air began to turn blue; the day had been overcast from the beginning and already he was having trouble making out objects ahead. A grey cloud lifted from the earth. It was time to go to ground. Even Dick wouldn't risk the forest at night. They left the darkness to the night prowlers. If you went outside the stockade at night you didn't come back. But here, so far from the settlement... Oleg glanced back; it seemed something was following him. Now, only a cloud. He didn't notice he had quickened his pace until Thomas almost raised his voice.

"Don't run into me. You'll knock me down. Keep a distance."

But despite everything Oleg could not get away from the feeling that something was following him.

Thomas's back vanished -- he had cut in front of Marianna. Now Marianna was walking in front of Oleg. She had a narrow back, narrow even in a warm jacket. Marianna stumbled. She had trouble seeing in the twilight. Egli had called it night blindness. "Night blindness, but not the ordinary kind, rather it's endemic. Endemic means it's a property of the environment, the locality." Oleg found the Mayor 's voice repeating the words in his ears, as though the old man were at his side.

"Do you want to take my hand?" Oleg asked.

They were walking side by side through the swamp in the mist, wallowing in it up to their knees.

"No." Marianna said. "Thanks anyway."

"Stop!" Dick's hollow voice reached them from far ahead. "The caves."

***

They were lucky to find the cave empty; a baer could have been using it or, worse, one of the night wraiths that roamed outside the stockade and sometimes shook at the palisade walls trying to get in. They were drawn to the human settlement and feared it.

Once Marianna had come home dragging a young gote out of the forest on a leash. The gote had a loud and piercing voice, worse than the twins. A green mop of hair hung to the ground, it stamped armor-covered feet and howled.

"It bleats." Vaitkus had said with some pleasure. "I could get used to the voices of domestic animals."

"So we'll call it a gote." Thomas had said.

The gote had lived in the settlement until winter, when night stretched from hesitant dawn to abrupt sundown almost without interruption. It got used to people, ate almost nothing and stuck around the workshop where Sergeyev fashioned furniture and carved plates and bowls all the time, where it was warm and Oleg enjoyed helping Sergeyev. Then one night the wraiths came and carried the gote away. Marianna found a few scraps of green fur beyond the graveyard, but by then it was already spring. She could have been mistaken.

Vaitkus had looked at the remains and said:

"So we'll have to put aside the development of animal husbandry for the future, I guess."

"You mean gotes' milk, more to the point." Egli had added.

The cave had one drawback -- a large entrance. They stretched a tent of sewn fish skins across the space and lit a fire -- the night walkers hated fire. The cave grew warm and Oleg lay flat with pleasure on the smooth stone floor. Marianna lay down beside him.

"I feel exhausted!" Marianna said. "It was terrible."

"Me too." Oleg said quietly. "I kept thinking that something was coming up behind us."

"I'm glad I didn't know that." Marianna said.

Dick untied the bundles of dried sticks. They had brought along the very best, slow burning wood. Thomas opened the bag of dried muzhrumes and reached for the tripod and crosspiece to hold the kettle over the fire.

"Oleg." He said. "Bring me some water."

Oleg had the water in a gourd container. All Thomas had to do was take two steps and grab the water himself. Oleg understood that Thomas was speaking as his teacher. The older man didn't want to have to order Oleg to carry out this or that job. It wasn't as if he hadn't been working -- they had hung the tent and lit the fire together. Next time I won't be too tired to do housekeeping; I did drag Marianna's bag along today.

Naturally Oleg said nothing aloud. He didn't even have a chance to get to his feet. Dick stretched out a long arm and deposited Oleg's bag by Thomas's side.

"Let him rest." Dick said without any feeling beyond indifference. "He's dead tired. He carried two packs today."

"Go lay down." Thomas agreed.

Oleg sat up.

"Is there anything that has to be done?" He asked. "If there's anything you want I can do it."

"Wait a moment, Thomas." Marianna said. "I'll boil the water myself. You don't know how many muzhrumes to put in."

"I had the feeling that something was coming up behind us." Dick said.

"You too?" Oleg asked.

Then they heard heavy steps on the other side of the screened cave entrance. Dick ran for his cross-bow. Thomas leaned toward the fire to grab a log. The clattering animal steps died away and it grew very quiet. They could hear the occasional patter of rain dripping from the cave overhang.

"We got here just in time." Marianna said.

"Quiet."

The shiny curtain of fish hides reflected the dancing fire. It was dead silent.

Dick held the spear over his head and went to the curtain. He carefully edged the corner to one side and looked out.

Oleg looked at Dick's broad tense back and waited. He should have taken a spear as well... No, now the screen and what lay beyond it was Dick's business. The unfairness of the situation was evident to Oleg, but he could console himself that he was there for other reasons. He was here to spot things the others weren't interested in. The Mayor was counting on him....

Marianna kept busy by the fire, going through the muzhrumes and the dried berries. She always cooked them separately and then mixed them together. She was on her knees, the sleeves of her jacket rolled up, her fine hands a mass of cuts and scars. Oleg thought Marianna's hands were beautiful. The scars were nothing: everyone had scars.

Thomas was looking a Marianna's quick hands. He was watching the girl bury herself in religious rites that held no meaning for him, who would always be a stranger here. He noted each scar on her hands -- the price the forest extracted for each quantum of knowledge -- and thought about the gulf which the settlement had dug between him and these teenagers. He watched them delighted now to fall asleep on a stone floor, covered with nothing and not feeling the damp, penetrating cold. Nor did they find the smell of these short legged plants they called muzhrumes without his objections revolting. They knew all the different local smells. Even the children here smelled different. Even his own children. Should his own daughter Ruth ever find herself lost in the in the forest she might die or she might not die, but she certainly would not starve. The forest might be dangerous, insidious, and crafty, but it was theirs. If he, Thomas Hind, was a man in this forest, these kids were fawns, baby rabbits or even better, wolf cubs. They were not the strongest of the local fauna certainly, but they were more cunning than most, and they would survive...

Marianna examined a doubtful muzhrume, gave it a pinch, and threw it away. On the surface it looked just like any other muzhrume....

Again something heavy was moving around outside in the darkness past the cave entrance; it almost touched the half transparent curtain. Damned night stalkers. They make as much of a racket as elephants, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were poisonous... The kids are tired, but Dick looks like he's ready to go chasing shakals in the underbrush. Oleg is weaker. Of course. The kid isn't stupid...

Something touched the curtain, sending the sewn hides to shivering. Their night visitor had evidently had decided to pull it down. Thomas lifted a burning stick and got to the curtain even before Dick. He looked out into the twilight and mist. A dark shadow floated off into the distance, merging with the gray fog as though some jester were trailing behind him a child's balloon....

"I don't know what it is." Thomas said before the kids could ask him. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"We'll have to keep watch all night by the fire." Dick said.

"I'd rather not sleep at all." Oleg said.

"I could use a good pistol now." Thomas said.

"You'll have soup in five minutes." Marianna said. "Tasty soup. Aunt Luiza picked out all the white muzhrumes for us, or she tried."

Far in the distance some things banged and came crashing through the undergrowth. Then they heard the light hammering of numerous feet and bleating. A number of voices.

Marianna jumped to her feet.

"Gotes!"

"Yours got eaten long ago." Dick said. "What's doing the chasing."

"Alleyfants with fangs, and venom." Thomas blurted out unexpectedly.

"What?" Marianna asked in surprise.

Dick began to laugh. "We might as well call them that."

The bleating turned into a shrill cry, like the cry of a child. It cut off abruptly. All was silent but for the hammering of feet.

"I think they have something to do with the giant white muzhrume. I think it releases them." Oleg said.

"What?"

"The poisonous alleyfants."

"Those are evil spirits. Kristina told us all about them." Marianna said.

"There are no such things." Oleg replied.

"Go further into the forest and say that," Disk challenged.

"Quiet, all of you." Thomas told them.

The fleeing gotes were quite close by. After them came their pursuer, moving in soft and infrequent steps.

The people stepped back behind their camp fire, leaving the flames between themselves and the curtain, and the strange and terrifying animals on the other side.

The curtain was jerked to one side. It was torn slantwise, and a green furred animal about the height of a man rushed into the cave; it had a rounded body on four legs, with a bony spine down the back jutting up out of the mat of hair like a chain of sharp hills from a forest.

The animal was shivering rapidly and softly. Small red eyes looked uncomprehending at their doom.

Dick took careful aim with the cross-bow.

"Stop that!" Marianna shouted at him.. "It's just a gote."

"You're right." Dick whispered, not moving from where he stood, not even moving his lips. "It's meat."

But Marianna had already run around the fire and was approaching the gote.

"Wait..." Thomas tried to stop her. Marianna shook his hand away.

"It's my gote." She said.

"Your gote was something's supper long ago." Dick said, but he dropped his hand from the cross-bow's trigger; they already had enough meat. There would be no pleasure in just killing. A hunter should kill only as much as he can carry back.

The gote was terrified. And froze in its tracks. It was obvious that whatever crept around outside was more fearsome than Marianna. Marianna bent down and quickly picked up a tasty white muzhrume from the basket and offered it to the gote. The animal snorted, sniffed, opened its hippopotamus mouth wide and obediently crunched down the gift.

***

Oleg kept the first watch. The gote didn't leave. It huddled in place by the cave wall as though trying to merge with it, kept one eye on Oleg and sniffed noisily from time to time. Then it began to rub its body against the wall.

"You're starting to get fleas." Oleg said. "Stop making a racket or I'll chuck you out."

The gote looked up at Oleg, eyes not blinking. The animal gave the impression it was listening to him and understanding all he said. In fact the animal was listening to what was going on outside.

Staring at the dying fire Oleg found himself dozing off without realizing what was happening. It seemed he was not sleeping but watching the blue sparks and flames twist together in their final dance upward over the burning wood. Then the gote snorted and began to bleat, drumming hooves in terror. Oleg jumped to his feet, not realizing right away where he was, and it was only after a second or two he understood that the gote had left its old spot and had retreated in panic into the depths of the cave and that a gray and pimpled mass like extruded dough was slowly insinuating itself into the cave through the hole in the curtain.

The mass seemed determined, eager, and the gote bleated in desperation, begging to be saved - the animal had evidently decided that the dough had come especially for him.

Oleg reached his hand over the stones but could not find his crossbow nor he could not drag his eyes away from the approaching mass. He was able to think that, even for a night crawler, this the mass of dough was exceptionally ugly. It exuded a stiflingly bitter smell. Then he saw a cross-bow's arrow suddenly appear - impaled half way into the side of the creature, and the mass easily and quickly gathered itself up and pulled back, and vanished; the awning fluttered gently as it pulled the last of its body out through the hole.

Oleg was finally able to move his eyes; his cross-bow lay two centimeters from his outspread fingers. Dick was sitting on his side, alert, awake as though he hadn't laid down to sleep. He put down his cross-bow and said:

"Maybe it wasn't worth shooting. I should have waited."

"Shot what?" Marianna asked, not getting up, but reaching out her hand and stroking the armored hooves of the gote, which had turned to Marianna in terror for comfort, sobbing like a child.

"Oleg froze, and that critter almost got him." Dick said without the desire to upbraid Oleg or shame him, just saying what he was thinking. He always said what he thought. "There was no time to start the fire going again."

"You fell asleep?" Thomas asked Oleg.

Thomas was laying with the bag of dried meat under his head wrapped in his blanket, shivering. He's never gotten really used to the cold. None of the adults have. He'll have the worst trouble of any of us when it becomes really cold. Oleg thought.

"I fell asleep. I didn't even notice it. The gote woke me up."

"Smart of the gote." Marianna said.

"Good for the gote." Dick said, turning onto his side. His palm rested on the cross-bow's gunstock; the wood was intricately carved and polished. He had made it himself. "They'd have eaten us all..." He fell asleep without finishing.

Thomas couldn't sleep. He got up and took Oleg's place on watch. The boy only argued a little before agreeing; his eyes closed almost at once and he slumped exhausted on the cave floor. Thomas clutched the blanket tighter around his shoulders. It would have been better to throw more wood on the fire's embers, but they had to guard and ration out their supply.They didn't have very much, and it would be cold... Thomas remembered the first time they had come across the mountain pass. Fatally, hopelessly cold. Even worse when they went the second time. Of course, only two of them had returned from that second climb -- he and Vaitkus.

Thomas glanced at the kids. Why didn't they feel how bitter and cold it was sleeping on the stone? What sort of changes had occurred in their metabolisms over the years? They were true savages, looking on him -- the old man -- with the native's polite condescension. That's why they frightened Boris so; with each passing year they became better adapted to this world of damp forest and gray clouds. And Boris was both right and wrong. He was right that the transition to savagery was unavoidable. Thomas could see that in his own daughter and the other kids. But what other solution, what other chance of survival did they have? There was the mountain pass, but that was a symbol no one believed in any longer, even if it was impossible to deny.

The gote paced back and forth, clattering on the stones with armored hooves. Dick opened his eyes without moving, listened for a moment, and fell back to sleep. In her sleep Marianna had edged closer to Oleg and placed her head on his shoulder. To be much more comfortable. Far off in the forest something howled; a slowly dying roar transfixed him. Thomas pulled out one of the thicker logs and fed the fire.

***

It grew light at first dawning and a blue mist poured through the hole in the curtain; in the distance, in the forest, the early wakers were greeting the new day. Dick, who had kept the watch on the dying fire and busied himself by shaving down pieces of wood for arrows carefully placed the sticks in his bag and quietly dropped off to sleep, so no one had seen when the gote left the cave. When Marianna awoke she was furious; she ran outside and checked around the base of the cliff wall outside, but she could find no trace of the gote anywhere.

"I hate him." Marianna said when she returned.

"Why, because he didn't thank you?" Oleg asked.

"He'd have been better off with us. Less danger."

"Too bad I didn't shoot him at dawn." Dick said. "I thought about it, but decided it would be better to do it during the day."

"That's rotten." Marianna said. "He did save us during the night."

"That's really irrelevant." Dick said. "Don't you understand? And anyway the gote was just thinking of his own hide."

Oleg picked up the skin bag and set off to search for water.

"Don't forget your spear." Marianna said.

"And don't walk off too far." Thomas added.

"I'm not a baby." Oleg shot back. But he took his spear.

The morning mist had yet to completely dissipate; it still hid out in hollows. The clouds had sunk almost to the level of the ground and in some places collums rose from the pillows of mist to connect the clouds and the land, as though the clouds were stretching out arms to the mist calling it after as they flew past. But the mist wanted to sleep and didn't like flying about the sky. Oleg had thought that he would have agreed to fly off to the south with the clouds in the mist's place, to the great forests, in the direction of the sea, where Sergeyev had gone with Vaitkus and Dick last year. Poznansky had been with them at the time, but hadn't returned. They hadn't been able to get very far and hadn't seen the sea; the forests were too vast, filled with predatory vines, animals and poisonous reptiles, and the warmer it got the more animals there were, all of them dangerous to human beings. But if you could fly with the clouds, then you could sail over the tops of the trees and over the sea like the floaters, which sometimes darted like shadows about the clouds in good weather, but which never come to ground. People could fly, evidently they could fly somewhat faster than the clouds themselves. But in the settlement everyone was forced to begin all over again at the beginning. And that was difficult because there were no tools and no time to make them.

Oleg had dreamed of building an aerial balloon, but for a balloon you needed far too much in the way of fish hides and thread, and no one other than the very youngest and the oldest had wanted to help him.

"In theory, it's not a bad idea." Sergeyev had said then. "In about a hundred years we'll certainly get around to it."

The Mayor had answered:

"In a hundred years we'll all have succeeded in forgetting the very idea. We'll have filled the clouds with invented gods who won't be thrilled at us mortals getting too close to them."

And nothing at all had come of the idea of the balloon.

As Oleg walked downslope toward the sound of flowing water. There would be springs coming out of the cliffs. Then he went onto the stone scree and could see the top of the enormous muzhrume that had opened itself yesterday evening. The white spot had risen during the night and was sticking out of the earth. The cover of mist had flowed off the white circle, and Oleg saw that slowly the petals were once again opening themselves from within the muzhrume, and from the mist on the far side of the little valley a series of spongy, soft looking gray spheres a little darker than the muzhrume rolled triumphantly out of the trees. They came in a line, one after the other, well spaced out. First one, then a second, a third, a fourth... What had their night visitor been? The poisonous alleyfant, a piece of dough?

"The hunters return home." Oleg said in a low voice and suddenly realized the spheres were heading in his direction and moving faster than the uniformity of their movement hinted.

Oleg stumbled backwards on the scree and one after the other the spheres stepped onto the muzhrume's resilient top and headed for the center, to the yawning petals. Then the first sphere, gently pushing the leaves apart, passed inside. A moment later the second followed, then the third. A moment later, as if it was checking that everything was in order in the daytime world, the last. And vanished. And slowly, satisfied, the petals retreated to their position within the center, and the giant muzhrume sank gently into the ground, resuming the appearance of a frozen island.

Oleg started to shiver. An icy wind had sprung out of the west, stinging his face and hands. It was west they were headed. He remembered what was waiting for them. But this wasn't what frightened Oleg; he feared they would fail, they would not best the mountain pass any more now than they had in the past. Dick would be delighted -- he could return to his beloved plains. Marianna would console herself in finding new grasses and muzhrumes. Thomas was used to failure and didn't believe they'd succeed anyway. The would only really disappoint Oleg. And the Mayor .

***

All day they walked through the open moorland, only infrequently encountering thickets of underbrush and no really tall bushes. In these places it was empty and devoid of life, but walking was easy, and they weren't tired yet. Thomas said they had guessed the time correctly. Summer this year was warm; last year at this time the barrenlands had still carried an impassable mantle of snow. Dick was bored, from impatience he vanished off to the side, reappearing after half an hour without any game, disappointed.

The gote was lucky. The animal reappeared during one of Dick's absences. Otherwise, Oleg decided, Dick would have certainly shot it. It was the same gote as the night before. It came blundering out of the underbrush with a crash, causing them meet it with raised cross-bows. But they recognized it from some distance away. A hairy giant, it's spinal comb taller than Oleg, noisily overjoyed it had met up with its friends from the night before again. The gote ran past them, throwing up heavy hind quarters, crashing spinal plates together and bleating deafeningly.

The gote was with them for the journey. He was even delighted when he spotted Dick's return from a kilometer off, and then crawled into the center of their file, not wanting to be either off to one side or the last, and getting underfoot. Oleg thought the gote would trample him with its sharp hooves but the animal proved far more agile than they first thought.

The animal's sense of smell and hearing were remarkable. It could sense the presence of living beings for several kilometers, and toward evening Marianna had already convinced herself there were real thoughts behind the sounds and the gote was telling them a field with tasty muzhrumes lay up ahead, but when they got to it and looked down at their feet they saw it was crawling with hunting vines.

The party stopped for the night some time before it began to grow dark. The real climb upward would begin just ahead of them, and Thomas said they would have to hunt for a particular valley in the morning. The mouth of a stream flowed out of it. Then they would head up the valley, which would then narrow into a gorge. They would be in the valley for no less than two days.

There was no cave or any other cover hereabouts and they slept in the tent, which the gote did not like, and although the there was no danger that night, the gote demanded that they let him inside where it was warm all the same, and in the end he huddled on top of the tent, bleating his disappointment at all of them, but they endured it because the animal would be standing guard for them; it was already clear that if any undesired guest came the gote would raise such a cry he would wake them all.

***

Toward morning Oleg became terribly cold. He hadn't been able to sleep, he felt like he had been plunged into an icy swamp and was unable to extricate himself. Oleg began to shake. Then suddenly he grew warmer and slept more easily. He awoke when the gote decided to find itself a spot higher up on the tent. Oleg pulled up his feet, opened his eyes and saw Thomas had exchanged places with him in the night and now lay on the outside. The older man was white from the cold; he lay with teeth clenched, his eyes closed and pretending to sleep. Oleg felt ashamed. Even back in the village they had decided