Chapter 26

They were both laughing as they went down the narrow wooden stairway to the ground floor. Katai smiled back at them, standing behind a table that had been bare an hour earlier. Now it was laden with an assortment of fruits, dishes of meats and steaming vegetables, and a pile of huge round flat breads that looked as light as gossamer. Candles burned

at either end of the table, filling the big room with the pungent odor of incense.

Spreading his arms to take in the whole table, Katai said almost apologetically, "I am afraid.that the Peace Enforcers took their eating implements with them and we have none to offer you. We eat with our fingers, of course, and I hope you do not mind doing the same."

Stoner noticed that the old man had teeth in his mouth now. "If you'll show us what to do . . ."

"I will be happy to." But Katai hesitated. "Would you mind if I asked the village council to join us? They are very eager to learn of your story. As I am, also."

An Linh answered, "We will be happy to."

They literally ate off the floor, sitting themselves on a woven grass mat after Katai introduced the twelve men of the village council and they all made their way down the long table. Katai led An Linh and Stoner, showing them how to use the bread puffs as a platter to hold the food they selected from the abundant assortment of dishes that were displayed for them. Over the redolence of the incense candles, Stoner sniffed fragrances hinting of strange, exotic spices.

His mind wandered back to the first time he had been invited to a Mexican fiesta, a lifetime ago when he had been a student in Texas and he and Claude and a gang of the other astronomy students had driven across the border at Laredo. But it wasn't the flat brown Texas back country he saw in his mind's eye. It was a gleaming metallic ring hovering in midair while his entire family, all one hundred of his creche mates, stood linking hands, completing the circle, reaffirming their bonds of genetic kinship and individual harmony as the orange sun set exactly behind the stele that marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. He could feel the tingling of his body fur as he clasped the hands of the mates on either side of him and watched the hundred separate shades of their coats shimmer and shift until they all turned the same golden hue of joy. Before this feast was over they would shed their pelts completely and begin the new year as naked as the moment they had been spawned in the cavern of the sea.

Stoner felt his legs buckling beneath him. He grabbed for the table edge with both hands and leaned heavily, head down, eyes squeezed shut.

"Keith, what's wrong?"

"Are you ill, sir?"

He took a deep breath. The fragrance of the hot food brought his mind back to here and now, to an African village on the planet Earth, to a world in which he was both a fugitive and a hunter.

"I'm all right," he said, his .voice weak and distant. With an effort he straightened up, lifted his bearded chin. "Sorry. I must be more exhausted than I thought I was."

"Food will do you good," suggested Katai.

The old man watched Stoner carefully as they went down the table, then walked across the big room to the mat spread over the cement floor. An Linh followed him and sat at his side. The food tasted good: the meats were hot and spicy, the fruits tangy and refreshing. They drank something chalky white, thick; it had an alcoholic kick to it. Fermented cow's milk, Stoner decided.

While they ate, a group of several dozen children were ushered into the room, escorted by four adult men, and began to serenade the diners. Their high-pitched voices sounded strangely pleasant as they sang, faces serious with concentration, eyes on their leader, about the beautiful woodlands and abundant crops of their country, the lovely animals and the rains that make the land fruitful. Stoner was reminded of a similar song he had learned when he had been a child: "O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties, Above the fruited plain! ..."

He saw that An Linh was enchanted by the children, smiling at them and enjoying their performance so much that she had stopped eating. Not so the elders of the council. They smiled encouragingly, too. No doubt some of those boys and girls were their grandchildren. But they kept on eating all through the concert.

When the children had left and the diners had finished eating, a dozen women entered the room and cleared away the remaining food frqm the table. Except for a few crumbs there was nothing to take away from the circle of diners on the woven mat. One of the advantages of using your fingers, Stoner thought, and eating the dinner plates. There were no insects in sight, no ants or other bugs to bother them. Then he saw a flash of motion, the scurrying of a tiny, long-tailed

lizard. And another one, hanging motionless up near the ceiling. Pest controllers.

Katai spread his hands to silence the whispering conversations among the councilmen, then announced, "We have been honored with guests this night." Turning to Stoner and An Linh, "It is our custom to tell guests of the history of our village. Tonight we will give you the short version"--he smiled--"and emphasize recent events. I doubt that our ancient genealogies will be of much interest to you."

He nodded to one of the council members, a frail, withered gnome, totally bald, who leaned on a gnarled walking stick even while sitting on the mat. He was obviously the oldest man there, possibly the oldest in the village. Yet his voice was strong and rich, like an operatic baritone. Despite Katai's assurance, the village historian began his tale with the primeval moment when the gods created the sun, the moon, and the land. Stoner hunched forward eagerly. As an astrophysicist, cosmology had been an intriguing puzzle to him. Now he listened to the villager's ideas of how the world came into being.

The gods created the land but saw that it was dry and lifeless, so they created the clouds that yielded rain. Only when they saw that rain made the land bountiful did they create men. Not one single original man, Stoner heard, but men. Many of them. And women, to serve them. But even with women and land and rain and food growing out of the ground, the men were not satisfied. They quarreled among themselves and killed one another. This displeased the gods mightily, and the gods therefore decided to stop the rain and let the land--and mankind--wither into death. So the rains stopped, and drought turned the land to dust. And the men began to die.

One of the gods took pity on the starving, dying men and stole fire from a volcano's pit and gave it to one tribe of men. The tribe of Katai. The men of this village. Since they were nobler than most men, the men of Katai shared this wonderful gift with other men, and soon all the people of the land had fire. With fire, not only could men warm themselves and protect themselves against the beasts of the forests, they could also make clouds of their own, and the clouds would yield rain. This is why, the village historian said quite sen-

ously, a drought may be broken by building big bonfires and sending clouds of smoke into the empty sky. Naturally, he added, the smoke clouds will yield rain only if the men prepare the fire in precisely the correct way, according to ancient ritual, and placate the gods with gifts and prayers. For if the gods are angry with men, not even the greatest fire will produce a single drop of rain.

An Linh seemed to be nodding off to sleep, chin dropping, eyes closing, while the old villager droned on. Stoner listened, fascinated, as the historian jumped ahead to the time when fierce nomadic warriors swept across the land, converting every village to a new religion that worshiped only one god called Allah. The villagers accepted Allah and added him to their other gods, although'to the warriors they pretended to worship only the warriors' god. Generations later a new kind of man came upon their village, offering gifts of steel tools if the villagers would accept a new god whose symbol was a cross. The villagers accepted the gifts gladly, together with the new god. The men of the cross also thought that their god was the only god, yet the villagers knew better. One of their oldest gods died every year, to be reborn in the planting season; this was nothing new. And although the men of the cross said that their god was a jealous god and would have no other gods worshiped with him, the villagers soon found that there were many different men of the cross, who fought against each other, even killing one another while their god of peace and love watched impassively from his cross.

One group of strangers eventually won out over the others and took command of the land. This is why the men of the village, to this day, can speak their foreign tongue. But several generations ago the strangers grew weary of being in a land that was not truly theirs. Although the men of Katai did nothing to harm them, the strangers went away and the authority of the land returned to its rightful owners.

"Our village is part of a great nation," Katai took over. "So we are told. We pay a tax each year to this great nation, yet we see nothing of its greatness."

An Linh was sound asleep, leaning against Stoner, who had put his arm around her shoulders. The village elders said not a word about her; they ignored her presence among them.

He asked, "But didn't your national government build the solar power system for you?"

"We built it for ourselves!" snapped one of the councilmen.

Katai raised a placating hand. "We did build it ourselves, but we had help and guidance."

"From your central government," Stoner said.

"Oh, no." Katai smiled as if the thought of getting help from the national government were something of a joke. "No, we received our help from the Peace Enforcers."

"The Peace Enforcers?"

The village of Katai had been squarely in the path of the war burning through central Africa, Katai explained, when a contingent from the International Peacekeeping Force arrived. For two whole days and two nights the air was filled with huge hovering machines that alighted on the ground and disgorged hundreds of men and women in the sky-blue uniforms of the Peace Enforcers. And their equipment: trucks and crates and tents and machines of every description. All the while the sky far overhead was crisscrossed by aircraft flying so high that nothing could be seen of them except the thin white trails they left behind them.

Far from being warriors, the Peace Enforcers were engineers, medical doctors, and--strangest surprise of all--even farmers. They came from many distant lands. Some of them were as dark as any man of Katai, while others were so milky white that they could not go outside in the sunlight unless they slathered their faces and arms with a liquid that protected their skin against burning.

The village was put under their protection, and Katai was told that a battle had been fought miles away to stop the advancing invaders from coming any closer. A strange battle, from what Katai learned. No man among the Peace Enforcers actually did any fighting; they stayed in their camp just outside the village and sent strange flying machines off to slaughter the enemy.

The Peace Enforcers soon saw that the village of Katai faced a serious problem. Each day the men of the village had to walk miles to find firewood. In bygone years, gathering firewood had been women's work. But the forest moved farther away each year, and now it was so far distant that only men could go out to cut the wood. The villagers knew that they were killing the forest, but what else could they do? Without wood they would have no fires. Without fire, they were little better than the beasts of the field. That was when

the Peace Enforcers showed the villagers how to build the solar power station. With help from these strangers, the villagers began to get their energy from the sun itself, and now many of the village men--and even women--were building heaters and stoves for every home in Katai village.

The Peace Enforcers also helped the farmers with medicines for their livestock and new kinds of seed, which, they said, will grow well even in a dry year. Katai had his doubts about that, but since the gods had sent enough rain for a good crop, there was no need to worry about a dry year. Not yet.

Not everything the Peace Enforcers offered was accepted by the villagers, Katai pointed out. The strangers suggested-- even insisted--that his people should stop selecting male children over female and return to the old way, where a husband could not choose whether his wife bore him a son or a daughter. By choosing to have so many boys, the Peace Enforcers said, villages such as Katai have created a huge imbalance of men over women, and this is one of the causes of the war. Too many men, they claimed, lead to violence and fighting. Katai himself thought that perhaps the wise strangers were correct, but he knew that any man in his right mind would choose to have sons rather than daughters. How could he, or any of the elders, tell their young men to stop selecting sons?

Except for that, the village benefited and grew rich from the strangers from the sky. The solar array was a sign to all the world that the village of Katai was protected by the Peace Enforcers. High in the sky, up where the stars shine, the Peace Enforcers have a machine that watches over the village night and day. If any invaders should try to attack Katai, the Peace Enforcers will return to drive them away. Thus peace has come to the village. And with peace, abundant crops.

Stoner took it all in. The Peace Enforcers had done a good job here. These people trusted them. In time, they might even make inroads in the areas of birth control and population growth that lay at the heart of the region's troubles. But what about the other villages he had seen, burned out and looted? Had they been under the protection of the Peace Enforcers also? If so, how much did that protection mean? Could a small contingent of men and women actually protect a village, a region, a nation against war? No matter how sophisticated their technology, or how dedicated they were,

Stoner doubted it. There were too many young men, too many weapons, too much poverty and fear and anger.

"Now you must tell us your story," Katai said. The men of the council nodded and muttered agreement.

How much should I tell them? he wondered. How much can they understand?

Then he decided that they were human beings, nothing less, and they could understand anything that any human could understand. He decided to tell them the entire story, just as they had told theirs, from the beginning.

"Many years ago," he began, "I lived in the land called America. I was a scientist, a man who studied the stars."

"I, too, study the stars," said one of the councilmen with a bright, eager smile.

Stoner nodded and returned his smile. "In my native land, we have built enormous machines to help us in such studies. And one of the machines we built was placed in space, among the stars themselves, alongside the machine that watches this village for the Peace Enforcers."

An Linh stirred slightly, but Stoner held her and went on with his story. He began to enjoy the challenge of putting his tale into terms that the village elders could understand. They recognized the alien for what he was, a visitor from another star. They saw nothing impossible or fearful in that--at least, nothing more fearful than the various strangers who had invaded their village over the centuries.

Stoner told them about his voyage to the alien spacecraft, and how he was frozen there and eventually recovered and brought back to Earth.

"You slept for eighteen years?" asked an incredulous councilman.

"Yes, I did."

"What did you dream?" asked another.

Stoner paused. "I don't know. I cannot remember any of my dreams."

They muttered among themselves for a few moments before Katai said, "But now that you have awakened, what brings you here to our village? And where did you find this woman?"

Stoner glanced down at An Linh. In sleep her face looked more childlike than womanly.

"We seek the Peace Enforcers," he said. "My daughter married one of them. I have not seen her in twenty years."

"And this woman with you?"

"She was being pursued by evil men. I am protecting her."

That puzzled them, and Stoner had to admit that the situation puzzled him as well. Had he taken An Linn under his protection, or had she sought him out and clung to him? Some of both, he decided. The rare hermit aside, no human being likes to be alone. Even holy men who have shunned civilization end up by creating a monastic order of monks and building temples and castles, transforming their tiny slice of wilderness into an ordered, sheltered habitat with rigid rules of conduct and thick stone walls.

"The Peace Enforcers will come in the morning," said Katai. "I have spoken with them on the radio they left with us. They will send a helicopter for you in the morning."

For a moment Stoner was surprised that Katai knew the word "helicopter." Then, as he grinned his thanks to the old man, he marveled at how supple the human mind can be. Radio, helicopter, Peace Enforcers with remotely controlled drone weapons, modern electronics, observation satellites-- all these strange new bits of technology were miracles on the day the villagers first saw them and commonplace a few weeks later. Just like people anywhere. The first space missions were the biggest peacetime media events of the century, but by the time the third team of astronauts reached the moon, hardly anyone cared.

Most of the old men of the council were obviously sleepy. Stoner rose slowly to his feet, lifting An Linh in his arms, and thanked them for their hospitality.

"How can I repay you?" he asked.

The man who studied the stars replied, "If you are not too sleepy, you could come outside with me and we could examine the sky together."

"I'd be glad to."

Stoner carried An Linh upstairs and deposited her sleeping form gently on the cot. Then he hurried down again and, together with the village stargazer and Katai, stepped out into the deeply dark night.

There were no lights at all outside the village's central building. The other councilmen were making their way back

to their homes by the faint glow of a crescent moon and fainter glimmerings of the stars. Throwing his head back, Stoner saw the resplendent heavens: Orion and his Dogs, the Bull, the Twins, the shimmering band of the Milky Way glowing against the darkness. He felt a thrill he had not known since childhood as he picked out individual stars, like old friends, and renewed acquaintances.

Hello, Altair, he said silently. Hello, Rigel and old Beetle Juice, Sinus and Procyon, Castor and Pollux. Still in your places, I see. Still as bright and dependable as ever.

One of the points of light was moving slowly from west to east. A satellite. Maybe the alien's spacecraft, Stoner thought. He closed his eyes and saw the stars from a different view, a vantage point deep in space above the alien world, a sky that no human eye had ever seen. Not the velvet softness of Earth's night with its inconstant moon and scattering of stars. This sky was ablaze with stars, hundreds of thousands of them, gleaming and glittering like heaps of multicolored jewels strewn so thickly that no darkness pierced their display. Stars so thick that they dazzled the eye, so close that you could almost touch them.

"Is that the machine that watches our village?"

Stoner snapped his eyes open. He was in Africa, the night was dark, the stars above few and feeble. Insects buzzed and chirruped in the shadows.

"That is an artificial satellite, yes," he answered the stargazer.

"Is it true that the stars influence our destiny?" Katai asked.

Stoner felt himself smile in the darkness. Of course it's true, he told himself. But to the village leader he said, "That depends on what you mean by 'influence.' "

They launched into a discussion of philosophy and astronomy as the stars wheeled slowly above them. Katai grew weary, finally, and bade them good night. Stoner and the stargazer, whose name was Zahed, debated the possibilities of predestination, discussed the origin of the universe, the nature of time, the orbital mechanics of artificial satellites.

Zahed produced a pair of binoculars, a gift from one of the Peace Enforcers, and they took turns studying the slim crescent of the moon. Stoner saw pinpoints of light shining on

the darkened part and told his newfound friend that they must be the lights from human settlements on the moon.

"Oh, yes," said Zahed quite matter-of-factly, "there are several villages on the moon now. I have seen them on the television."

The moon went down, and they turned their attention to the stars. The binoculars were not powerful enough to separate Castor into its three binary components. But they could see the shining veils of luminosity that hung among the blazing stars of the Pleiades. As he peered through the binoculars, resting them against a low fence to keep them steady, Stoner wondered if this star cluster might be the home of the alien. No, he decided. The view from the homeworld is clear, not shrouded with nebulosity. And the Pleiades is too poor a cluster to make the heavens glow the way I saw them.

At last the stars began to dim and the sky turned gray, then milky white. A brilliant star rose above the eastern horizon, far brighter than Sinus.

"That is the planet Venus," Stoner said.

"Yes, I know," replied Zahed. "One of the Russians among the Peace Enforcers told me that it is a world like ours, but so hot that the ground glows like burning coals."

Nodding, Stoner agreed. "True enough."

The sun rose, huge and red, its glare overpowering the lesser lights, driving even beautiful Venus from sight. The true jealous god, Stoner thought. He will have no other gods sharing our adoration.

Then he heard the faint whickering sound of a distant helicopter.

Zahed heard it, too. "The Peace Enforcers. Katai said they would be here in the morning."

"They must get up early."

"They are like you," said the stargazer. "They never sleep."

Stoner laughed. "I haven't seen your eyes close all night."

"I will sleep later, during the afternoon, when the sun climbs high and it is too hot to do anything else."

Stoner could see the helicopter now, a dark spot moving fast across the sky to the west of the village.

And he saw a white streak leap up from the wooded hills out in the distance, crossing the sky almost faster than the

eye could follow, heading directly for the approaching helicopter.

Before he could say a word, the rocket hit the helicopter and exploded in a blazing fireball. The helicopter blew apart, dark, smoking pieces raining down onto the dusty plain below. One of the pieces looked like a human being, and Stoner imagined he could hear the man screaming to his death.