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wanted to find two people, not a patch of burnt ground. Most of the natives
didn't know anything at all about the forest nomads they'd been brought
here as a labor force by the colonists. But Linda was nevertheless confident
that we could find exactly what we needed in the Anacaon village. While Linda
was handling her end of the operation Max found other things to do as well,
and for much of the time Eve and I were at a loose end. It was a familiar
feeling.
"How much longer is it all going to take?" Eve wanted to know.
"Max reckons a week yet before we find them," I told her. "Figure another week
to get back home. Then refigure in standard instead of this local
quicktime. It still comes to a fair number of days."
"Charlot will be angry."
"Sure he will," I said. "So what?"
She didn't feel the need to answer that one. "Surely it would be easier
to locate the forest people using a helicopter," she said.
I shrugged. "If they don't give us a copter there's not much we can do except
walk," I said. "But don't be too quick to put it down to natural cussedness.
Take a look at the trees around you."
She looked. She didn't see anything significant. "They don't have leaves," she
said finally.
"Too true they don't," I told her.
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The trees were equipped with membranous drapes mounted on rubbery
branches. To increase their photosynthetic activity thev extended the
drapes like the pages of a book. "That trick wouldn't work if the trees were
more densely packed," I pointed out. "This is open country, but it's probably
as close as those trees can grow without having things get in their way. In a
jungle, things have to be done differently. All available space has to be
used to maximum effect. I think we'll find that inside the rain forest those
membranes will be arrayed horizontally rather than vertically. The trees
will be like giant umbrellas. The canopy will be just that. I'll lay odds that
from up top the jungle is just an expanse of solid green."
She tried to visualize it.
"What will it be like inside,"
she asked. "On the ground?"
"Dark," I said.
"And we have to walk around in there for more than a week?"
"Probably be more comfortable," I said. "You sleeping well?"
She shook her head, knowing already what I was about to say.
"Our circadian rhythms disturbed by the short day," I said, going ahead
anyway. "In there we might be able toget back to a twenty-four-hour cycle."
This was distinctly optimistic. For one thing there's dark and there's a pitch
black, and there's a big difference. For another, all the rest of the party
were attuned to a seventeen-hour day, and wouldn't appreciate our
wanting to switch to twenty-four for our own convenience.
"Anyway," I continued, "I wouldn't worry about little things like walking
around in the dark if I were in your position. I'd be much more disposed to
worry about all the difficulties which this lot might yet think to throw at
us."
And that, of course, was sheer pessimism, just to even the score.
"I don't like this world," she said feelingly.
"That's the expanding civilized universe for you," I said, with my customary
fatalism. "This is what worlds are like these days. What do you expect? Your
brother didn't like it either. He always used to prefer the rim, and he always
liked to deal with the natives direct. He wasn't a man-hater by
any means, but he despised the second-stage invaders the exploiters and
the money-men and the politicians. He liked things simple, not packed and
predigested to some fancy recipe. You know the syndrome primitive man against
the elements. The archetypal Western hero."
"Yes," she said, "I know."
I didn't often talk to her about her brother. It was an uncomfortable issue,
ever since the charming discussion we'd had in New York port about whether or
not and to what degree I'd been responsible for his death.
"You felt the same way," she said, after a few moments silence.
"Not a lot," I claimed.  Mythical man was never my type. I'm no romantic the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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