Though he tried to hide his fears from Felicia, she immediately saw the danger Brad was in.
“They’ll kill you too!”
Attempting to ease her alarm, he said soothingly, “No, I think Kosoff is right. There’s no way that an oversized tiger can fly a hundred thousand klicks through the vacuum of space and get here to Gamma. The talk about monsters and death time is mythology, just a scary tale. Nothing to worry about.”
Still, once he’d finished his nightly talk with her, Brad rummaged through his equipment case until he found the laser pistol—and the video chip that showed how to use it.
He slept fitfully that night, awakened time and again by wild dreams that jumbled his memories of the deadly avalanche at Tithonium Chasma with new terrors of giant six-legged beasts tearing him apart with their fangs and claws.
He awoke weary, emotionally drained, soaked with cold perspiration.
As he scrubbed himself down with the antiseptic pads from the lavatory supplies, Brad decided to question Drrm more closely about the death time. After all, he reasoned, Drrm’s the closest thing these people have to a village chief. If anyone can shed more light on this situation, he’ll be the one.
After popping his breakfast pills and pulling on his biosuit, Brad ducked out of his shelter and headed for the village.
It was unusually windy, he realized. Flat gray clouds were scudding across the normally blue sky. Even inside his cumbersome helmet, Brad could hear the wind moaning and the trees sighing.
Don’t let your nerves get the better of you, Brad told himself. Weather changes are normal. You’ve lived most of your life on Mars, where the air’s so thin that there’s hardly any weather to speak of. Well, yeah, there’s the dust storms now and then, but you get through them all right.
Still, he looked up at the threatening sky and saw, through a gap in the ominous clouds, the curving bulk of Beta looming bigger than ever in the sky, like a baleful blood-red eye glaring down at him.
* * *
Drrm was standing at the entrance to the building Brad thought of as the village’s longhouse. The Gamman was alone, gazing off at the farm fields at the village’s edge. Everyone else seemed to be in the fields, working.
“Hello, Drrm,” Brad called as he approached.
“Hello, Brrd.”
Standing beside the village chief, Brad asked, “Is everyone working in the fields today?”
Drrm replied, “Everyone. Death time coming.”
Brad tried to think of a diplomatic way of broaching the subject, but after several moments he simply asked, “Can you tell me about the death time?”
“Monsters from Beta kill everyone.”
“Except the Rememberer,” Brad prompted.
Drrm seemed to sigh. “Sometimes even the Rememberer is killed. Then the new Folk must learn for themselves how to live.”
“And new Folk arise from the farm fields?”
“Yes.”
“Can you show me?”
Drrm fell silent. He’s thinking it over, Brad thought. He’s trying to figure out how much he should tell me.
At last Drrm said, “You are not one of the Folk. You are a Stranger.”
“I come from a different village, that’s true.”
“Only the Folk may see the seedlings. It is forbidden to Strangers.”
Brad made a mental connection. “Then Strangers come to this village?”
“Now and then.”
“Why?”
“To tell us of their villages. To share food. To trade tools.”
“Are the Strangers also killed in the death time?”
“Of course. How can there be enough food for the new Strangers if the old Strangers do not die?”
“And the Folk, here in this village, they die to make room for the new Folk?”
“Yes.”
Brad waved his arm in the direction of the hills he had come from. “But this world is almost empty! There’s plenty of room for new Folk, new Strangers, new villages.”
Drrm’s tone of voice changed. “That is not our way.”
Is he shocked? Brad wondered. Angered? Have I committed blasphemy?
Nevertheless, Brad pushed on. “But you don’t have to die. You can live—”
“No, Brrd. We die so that new Folk can live.”
Brad fell silent. I’m treading on ground that’s sacred to them, he realized.
Drrm said, “Even if we wished to live, the monsters from Beta would find us and kill us. That is the way the world is.”
Remembering the big cats he had seen on Beta, Brad realized that the Gammans had no weapons to protect themselves, beyond simple hunting sticks and scythes. They don’t even seem to have the concept of self-defense. They are ready to be killed. So that their next generation might live. To be slaughtered when the next death time comes.
“Once, long ages ago,” Drrm said wistfully, “the Folk and Strangers covered this world with villages. Mighty villages, with buildings that reached toward the sky. There were many of us then, more than can be counted.”
More mythology? Brad wondered. Or am I getting a history lesson?
Drrm continued, “The Sky Masters became angry. They destroyed the villages and killed almost everyone. They made the long winters and sent the monsters from Beta that kill those who live today.”
“The Sky Masters? Who are they?”
“Masters of us all. They rule the world.”
“Where are they?”
“Everywhere.”
“But I’ve never seen them.”
“Neither have I. They are invisible, of course. But they see us. They watch us. They allow us to live, but only if we obey their rules. If we try to break their rules, they will destroy us forever.”
Brad closed his eyes for a moment. That’s some religion you’ve got. But as he stared at Drrm, standing beside him, he thought the Gamman looked forlorn, utterly sad, defeated.
* * *
That evening, back in his shelter, Brad called Kosoff and Littlejohn. As usual, they were in Kosoff’s office, waiting for Brad’s call.
“You heard my conversation with Drrm?” he asked.
As he waited for their response, Brad picked up the laser pistol. The thermionic nuclear power pack in its grip was good for several hundred shots, depending on what power level he used. That ought to give me some chance against those cats, he told himself.
“Interesting mythology,” Littlejohn replied at last. Smiling tolerantly, he added, “It always astounds me how complex and detailed mythological tales can be.”
“That’s because they don’t have to deal with facts,” Kosoff said.
“No,” Brad answered, even before he realized he had spoken. “Mythologies deal with facts. They’re attempts to understand the facts of the world that the myth-makers live in. Attempts to make some sense out of conditions that are beyond the scope of the culture’s knowledge. When they run out of facts, they make up stories that fill in the blanks of their understanding.”
As he waited for their reply, Brad began to wonder if there was some way to help the Gammans, some way to show them that they didn’t have to die.
At last Littlejohn said, “Good for you, Brad. You’ve grasped the essence of mythological storytelling.”
Kosoff interjected, “But that doesn’t mean those aliens’ tale about their death time is scientifically valid.”
Doesn’t it? Brad asked himself.