waist, anchoring it to a middle limb . . . not too easy as the spider puppy seemed to think it was a game
and was ticklish as well.
"There! Stop squirming, Chipsie, and listen. Ellie wants you to go home."
"Home?"
"Yes, home. Go back to the ship."
"Ellie go home?"
"Ellie can't go home."
"No."
"Honey, you've _got_ to."
"No."
"Look, Chipsie. You find Maggie and tell her Ellie said to give you some candy. You give Maggie
this." She tugged at the tied note.
"Candy?"
"Go home. Find Maggie. Maggie will give you candy."
"Ellie go home."
"Please, Chipsie."
"Ellie," Max said urgently, "something is coming."
Eldreth looked up, saw a centaur coming through the trees. She pointed. "Look, Chipsie! They're
coming! They'll catch Chipsie! Go home! Run!"
The spider puppy squealed in terror and scurried for the trees. Once on a branch she looked back
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and whimpered. "Go home!" screamed Ellie. "Find Maggie!"
Mr. Chips shot a glance at the centaur, then disappeared. They had no time to worry further, the
centaur was almost up to them. He glanced at them and went on by; it was what followed the centaur
that grabbed their attention. Ellie suppressed a shriek. "Max! They've caught everybody."
"No," he corrected grimly. "Look again." The gathering gloom had caused him to make the same
mistake; it seemed that the entire ship's company trotted after the centaur in single file, ankle leashed to
ankle by living ropes. But only the first glance gave such an impression. These creatures were more than
humanoid--but such degraded creatures had never sailed between the stars.
They shuffled quickly along like well-trained animals. One or two looked at Ellie and Max in passing,
but their stares were bovine, incurious. Small children not on leash trotted with their mothers, and once
Max was startled to see a wrinkled little head peeping out of a pouch--these man-creatures were
marsupials, too.
Max controlled a desire to retch and as they passed out of sight he turned to Ellie. "Gosh!"
"Max," Eldreth said hoarsely, "do you suppose we've died and gone to our punishment?"
"Huh? Don't be silly. Things are bad enough."
"I mean it. That was something right out of Dante's Inferno."
Max was swallowing uneasily and not feeling good-tempered. "Look, you can pretend you're dead if
you want to. Me, I'm alive and I mean to stay so. Those things weren't men. Don't let it throw you."
"But they _were_ men. Men and women and children."
"No, they weren't. Being shaped like us doesn't make them men. Being a man is something else
entirely." He scowled. "Maybe the centaurs are 'men.'"
"Oh, no--"
"Don't be too sure. They seem to run things in this country."
The discussion was cut short by another arrival. It was almost dark and they did not see the centaur
until he entered their clearing. He was followed by three of the--Max decided to call them 'men' though
he resented the necessity--followed by three men. They were not on leashes. All three were bearing
burdens. The centaur spoke to them; they distributed what they carried.
One of them set down a large clay bowl filled with water in the space separating Max and Ellie. It
was the first artifact that any human had seen on Charity and did not indicate a high level of mechanical
culture, being crudely modeled and clearly not thrown on a potter's wheel; it held water, no more could
be said for it. A second porter dumped a double armful of small fruits beside the bowl. Two of them
splashed into the bowl, he did not bother to fish them out.
Max had to look twice to see what the third slave was carrying. It looked as if he had three large
ovoid balls slung by ropes in each of his hands; second inspection showed them to be animals about the
size of opossums which he carried by their tails. He went around the clearing, stopping every few feet
and lifting one of his burdens to a lower branch. When he had finished they were surrounded by six small
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creatures, each hanging by its tail. The centaur followed the slave, Max saw him stroke each animal and
press a spot on its neck. In each case the entire body of the little animal lit up, began to shine like a firefly
with soft silvery light.
The clearing was softly illuminated thereby--well enough, Max thought, to read large print. One of the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]