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too empty to care. With urgency blunted, he could search more slowly and thoroughly. Thus he found the
traces of a burrow, dug into the sand, and came upon a female digger. She was heavy with a
half-completed new specimen and he caught her easily. This too would have been better if treated with
heat and acid, but even raw materials tasted good in his grinder.
Now to get something for One. Though she, better than he, could slow down her functioning when
nourishment was scarce, a state of coma while the monster was abroad could be dangerous.
After hunting for another hour, Zero had the good luck to start a rotor. It crashed off among the rods
and crystals, faster than he could run, but he put a crossbow bolt through its hub. Dismembered and
packed into his carrier, it made an immensely cheering burden.
He returned to his prizes. Moving quickly in comparison to the windy clatter of the forest, he came upon
them unobserved. They had quit attempting to escape-he saw the wire was shiny where they had tried to
saw it on a sharp rock- and were busy with other tasks. One of them had removed a box-like object
from its back and inserted its head (?) and arms through gasketed holes. A second was just removing a
similar box from its lower section. The third had plugged a flexible tube from a bottle into its face.
Zero approached. "Let me inspect those," he said, before thinking how ridiculous it was to address
them. They shrank away from him. He caught the one with the bottle and unplugged the tube. Some
liquid ran out. Zero extended his chemical sensor and tasted cautiously. Water. Very pure. He did not
recall ever having encountered water so free of dissolved minerals.
Thoughtfully, he released the unit. It stoppered the tube. So, Zero reflected, they required water like him,
and carried a supply with them. That was natural; they (or, rather, the monster they served) could not
know where the local springs and streams were. But why did they suck through a tube? Did they lack a
proper liquid-ingestion orifice? Evidently. The small hole in the head, into which the tube had fitted, had
automatically closed as the nipple was withdrawn.
The other two had removed their boxes. Zero studied these and their contents. There were fragments of
mushy material in both, vaguely similar to normal body sludge. Nourishment or waste ? Why such a
clumsy system ? It was as if the interior mechanism must be absolutely protected from contact with the
environment.
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He gave the boxes back and looked more thoroughly at their users. They were not quite so awkward as
they seemed at first. The humps on their backs were detachable carriers like his. Some of the objects
dangling at their waists or strapped to their arms must also be tools. (Not weapons or means of escape,
else they would have used them before now. Specialized artificial attachments, then, analogous to a torch
or a surgical ratchet.) The basic bipedal shape was smoother than his own, nearly featureless except for
limb joints. The head was somewhat more complicated, though less so than a person's. Upon the
cylindrical foundation grew various parts, including the sound-wave generators which babbled as he
stood there watching. The face was a glassy plate, behind which moved... what? Some kind of jointed,
partly flexible mechanism.
There was no longer any possibility of radio communication with-or through-them. Zero made a few
experimental gestures, but the units merely stirred about. Two of them embraced. The third waved its
arms and made sonic yelps. All at once it squatted and drew geometrical shapes in the sand, very much
like the courtship figures drawn by a male dunerunner.
So ... they not only had mechanical autonomy, like the spy eyes of a boxroller, but were capable of
some independent behavior. They were more than simple remote-control limbs and sensors of the
monster. Most probably they were domesticated motiles.
But if so, then the monster race had modified their type even more profoundly than the person race had
modified the type of its own tamed motiles down in the lowlands. These bipeds were comically weak in
proportion to size; they lacked grinders and liquid-ingestion orifices; they used sonics to a degree that
argued their radio abilities were primitive; they required ancillary apparatus; in short, they were not
functional by themselves. Only the care and shelter furnished by their masters allowed them to remain
long in existence.
But what are the masters? Even the monster may well be only another motile. Certainly it appeared to
lack limbs. The masters may be persons like us, come from beyond the sea or the mountains with skills
and powers transcending our own.
But then what do they want? Why have they not tried to communicate with us? Have they come to take
our land away?
The question was jolting. Zero got hastily into motion. With his rack loaded, he had no room for his
prizes. Besides, being crammed into it for hours was doubtless harmful to them; they moved a good deal
more strongly now, after a rest, than when he first took them out. He simply left them tied together, cut
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the wire loose from the stump, and kept that end in one hand. Since he continued to exercise due caution
about leaving a trailt he did not move too fast for them to keep up. From time to time they would stagger
and lean on each other for support-apparently their energy cells polarized more quickly than his-but he
found they could continue if he let them pause a while, lie down, use their curious artifacts.
The day passed. At this time of year, not long past the vernal equinox, the sun was up for about twenty [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]