"After everything disappeared, the buildings, the escape ship, everything," Cal reviewed, "and you, with your wife, found yourself crouching under the trees in what had been your front yard, without any clothes on--what then?"
"That was the beginning of it," Jed Dawkins answered. He looked toward his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things had just begun."
Cal nodded. Dawkins had told his tale simply, without fictitious emotionalism, without straining to get the horror of it across--and thereby succeeded. He glanced at his three crewmen, to see how they were faring. Louie seemed to have gained some control over his nerves, and yet the way he sat there staring at nothing showed he was enduring some special horror of his own. Frank Norton shifted his position, pulled a dry stick from beneath the leaves, looked at it resentfully, and tossed it aside. He settled back down and indicated by his expression that now he could be more comfortable.
One grateful fact, the day was warm, the breeze under the tree was gentle, the ground on which they sat was not too wet for comfort. Except for custom, for modesty, clothes weren't really needed; and perhaps the shock of being without them would pass. Nudists, on Earth, claimed that one very quickly lost all self-consciousness if no one were clothed; that such was part of the value; that sex, for instance, became less of an issue instead of more because, without concealment, one could see instead of imagining, and the sight more often discouraged than enticed. Cal wondered what the militant moralists would make of the idea that clothes encouraged immorality.
"It was a hard thing to believe," Jed was saying. "It wasn't like a natural thing--like a cyclone, or earthquake, or fire, or flood. Nothin' like that. Them things a man can understand. Even if he's dyin', at least he knows, he understands, what's killin' him. I never thought I'd hear myself say it would be a comfort to know what you was dyin' of, but, believe me ..."
He broke off and stared in front of himself. His voice took on a note of perplexity.
"Only nobody died. Nobody even got hurt. We was like little kids screamin' at the top of their lungs when they ain't hurt at all--only scared." He looked abashed. "I got to tell you, real truthful," he said, "most of the yellin' came from the men. The women, by and large, was real swell.
"Fact is," he continued, "come to think of it, I don't recollect ever seein' a woman in real hysterics. Plenty of fake, of course. Say she's tryin' to hook some man into protectin' her; or lay public blame on him for not doin' it. Other times, in real danger, womenfolks, our kind of womenfolks, anyhow, they pitch right in and help. It takes a man to make a jackass outta himself at the wrong time."
Cal nodded and smiled. There was an attempt at a hollow laugh from Louie, as if the shoe had fit. Jed didn't seem to realize it, and made no apology about present company being excepted.
"It wasn't like the aftermath of a storm, either," Jed said, "where you begin pickin' up the pieces to start over. We--we couldn't pick up any pieces."
They couldn't pick up any pieces. In a way, that was worse than the disappearance of things. In a catastrophe, after taking care of those that are hurt, first thing a man does is gather the materials and tools to fix things up again. The women, after soothing them that's hurt, taking care of them as much as possible, first thing they think of is making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.
That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolation following a cyclone or other freak of nature.
Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort of hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, who insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get down to the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men to help him get things back in shape; she could help the other women take care of the needy.
And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded him then, pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being naked too wasn't likely to start up a passel of gossip.
He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out from behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking down that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped was that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them.
Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thing happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else was naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness disappeared all of a sudden, and they didn't think any more about it--not right then, anyhow.
By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the crowd of people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things to think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. She was the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them over their hysterics.
"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon as they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what we need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."
Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have a pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard her asking other women if any of them knew where there might be some dried gourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd, scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones into it until it boiled, Indian style.
It might seem funny to city women, always protected against everything, that Martha wasn't more excited, and helpless. First place, she had her man already, and didn't need to put on such a show. Second place, she was a colonist woman, an experimental colonist woman, trained all her life to take care of the unexpected; and for the experimentals something unexpected was always happening.
Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged, now that he'd been set straight by Martha's example, everybody began to settle down a little, like they would after the first shock of a fire or flood. It was all over. Now it was time to start picking up the pieces, rebuilding.
Only it wasn't all over.
That's when they found out they couldn't build a fire.
Easiest way, without matches, is to string a bow and twirl a stick in a hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece of flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set a wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks together will do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to make the powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of those quartz crystals from the top of the mountain to focus sun rays....
But they couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together, or rub two sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himself what happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for a little bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he must have lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men were more worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks or months, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it came to building a fire.
One of the men tore it then.
He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him over his shoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire.
Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie was staring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation of that same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on with the telling.
Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were having the same feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might have panicked right there if the man had let it rest, but he started explaining it, the way a man does, and makes himself ridiculous.
He kept on yelling how the men shouldn't listen to the women. That it was in the first Garden of Eden that man had made the mistake of listening to woman; that it was Eve who had egged Adam into eating that apple because a woman was never satisfied to leave well enough alone. And now, he said, in this new Eden, man was being given another chance. If he was smart, if he's learned anything at all, this time he wouldn't listen to no woman.
Somebody bust out laughing when he said that, and it kind of eased the tension a little.
A woman said, real disgusted, that if the men was too helpless to start a little fire, least they could do was scrape up some dry leaves because in a few hours it would get dark. Magic or no magic, watchers or no watchers, night would fall, and she for one liked a soft bed. That caused them to look up at the sky, and sure enough the sun, Ceti, was already half way down the sky from where it had been at noon. At least the world was turning and time was moving. That, at least. About three hours had passed in what seemed like minutes.
Somebody else, one of the men this time, said why didn't they go a little farther than scraping up some leaves. Why didn't they get busy and knock together some shelters in case it rained during the night--the way it often did.
Now any one of them, man or woman, ought to have been able to put up a small shelter in less time than it takes to tell about it, even without no tools. Break off a limb, or take a sharp stone, dig holes in the ground with it. Take straight saplings, trim them, stick them upright in the ground, tamp in the dirt good and hard, lash them together with vines, lash other poles together to make the frame of the roof, lift that onto the poles and lash them all together with braces. Thatch it with grass, and there you were.
But there they weren't. They couldn't do it.
Things just wouldn't behave. They dug a hole, and it filled right up again. They couldn't cut down a sapling, because the sharp stone, the only tool they had, would fly out of their hands. They even tried lashing some saplings together where they grew, and the saplings were like things alive. They wouldn't be bound. The vines slithered out of their hands and dropped to the ground, and the saplings sprang up again straight.
Not only that. They could scrape together some leaves into a pile, all right, but when anybody tried to lie down in them the leaves would scatter as if blown by a wind. Only there wasn't any wind.
Some of the women got pretty disgusted with their menfolks. They tried it themselves, and the same things happened. After that, they was a little more forgiving.
A couple more hours had passed while they were trying that. The sun got low. People began to realize they were getting hungry, and they began to realize there wasn't any way to cook supper.
Now there wasn't any real hardship, not physical. Nobody'd been hurt. Shook up a little, scared for sure. But not hurt.
The river was still flowing good, clean water. All they had to do was go down to the river bank and cup the water in their hands, lift it to their lips; or even better, lie down on the bank and lower their faces into the water. They could do that. It helped a little to know they could.
The wild bushes and trees all around had plenty of fruit and nuts to eat. One thing you could say for Eden, the fruit didn't seem to depend on seasons. There was always something ripe, and plenty of it.
The people wandered off from the village site then, to forage their supper, for all the world like animals grazing in a pasture. They sort of hung together, in herds, glad to be together--then.
By dark they all came back and sat around in a circle, the way people in the wilds sit around a campfire. It seemed funny without a campfire. The darker it got, the funnier it felt. The more you thought about it, the stranger it got. The excitement had begun to wear off, and people were starting to think a little. It got stranger and stranger. In the dusk you could see the same thought in all the gleaming eyes.
They couldn't have fire!
Maybe the strangest thing of all, nobody was trying to explain what had happened. Now you take mankind, he's always right in there with an explanation for everything. Maybe it's not the right one, maybe, looking back, it's a silly one--but at the time he believes it, and that's a comfort.
But this was like being in a dream, knowing it's a dream, knowing it can't happen this way, and so it doesn't have to be explained. And yet, isn't that the worst part of a bad dream? No explanation for what's happening in it? Nothing you can do about it, either?
Somebody said, it being dark and all, they should get some sleep. Somebody mentioned being thankful there weren't any children. That was one of the hardships of being an experimental colonist, you couldn't have children. Wouldn't be right to expose children to hardships they'd have to suffer helpless. Only here, the way kids were, he wouldn't have been surprised if kids would have taken to it a lot easier than the grown folks.
The people sort of bedded down all together, the way a herd of animals take shelter, each, even in its sleep, taking comfort from the presence and protection of the others. They bedded around on the ground, making themselves comfortable as possible. One thing you could say, experimental colonists might not be long on brains, the way scientists are, but they weren't picked for that. They were picked for endurance, and the brainy will often crack up under a strain that the enduring kind hardly notices. Far as endurance went, physical, this wasn't bad.
Up through the leaves, and in between the trees, the stars were as bright as ever--brighter because there wasn't no fire to dim their glow. They couldn't see Earth, of course, but everybody knew right where to look for Sol. There it was, a tiny little spot of light in its constellation. It was still there.
Somebody said into the darkness that it was only two more days until the regular monthly communication with Earth was due. That as soon as E.H.Q. didn't hear from them, there'd be a rescue party out here in nothing flat. So, at worst, it meant living this way only five or six more days.
That made everybody feel better. It was a comforting thing to look up through the leaves, to see Sol in the sky, to know they weren't forgotten back home; that on Earth people would soon be buzzing around like a disturbed hive of hornets, with stingers cocked and ready as soon as the message didn't get through.
Yep, somebody said, just like the museum collection of Western movies where the U.S. cavalry always got there in time. At least they weren't being attacked by no Indians, somebody said.
Or were they? Maybe everybody asked that to themselves, but nobody said it.
Most everybody got some sleep. No one really suffered, any discomfort just showed them how soft they were getting with easy living. Considering everything, they were coming along just fine. And in a few days everything would be all right again. They went to sleep thinking that even if there was some equivalent to the old-time Indians attacking them, rescue would soon be here and they would be safe.
Because man always wins.
Most people were wide awake by dawn. Some had slept in little bits, waking often enough to keep a sense of continuity. Others, those who slept better, awoke with a start; looked around themselves wildly, realized they were lying out in the open plumb naked in front of other people; maybe wondered for an instant what kind of party they'd been to the night before; and nearly bolted in panic before they remembered.
Most everyone felt sort of surprised that things weren't back to normal, with yesterday being something soonest forgot soonest mended. It takes time for folks to realize--things.
Not having a hot drink for breakfast was another little hardship, a reminder of how soft they'd got. But nobody complained. Seemed like everybody had woke with a determination to make the best of things and help one another do the same. Everybody was pitching in together to make the best of things. Once they bit into the cool fruit on the trees around them, even not having a hot drink to start the day didn't seem to matter.
Some of the women got together and decided it would help things get back to normal if the people covered their nakedness, or least parts of it. It might be all right just among themselves, they said, because everybody was in the same fix and knew what happened--but how would they feel when the rescue ship landed and they had to walk out in front of strange men with nothing on?
They picked some big green leaves without any trouble. But when they strove to pin them together with thorns, the thorns just slipped out and fell to the ground. Then they tried sewing the leaves together with bindweed. Same thing. The bindweed slithered out and fell to the ground.
One woman figured to stick some leaves together with thick mud from the river and paste them with more mud on her body. It wouldn't stick, peeled right off like she was oiled. One man said he could do it without leaves, just cover himself with mud. He lay down in a muddy pool and got himself covered with wet clay.
He was a sight. All at once he looked vulgar, obscene. And nobody had, before. That did it. Somebody said they were humans, not pigs, and if the men on the rescue ship had never seen a naked body before it was time they did. What was so wrong about the human body, anyhow?
They made the muddy man go bathe himself in the river, and gave up trying to cover themselves. All at once the desire to cover themselves was a nasty kind of thinking, something to be ashamed of.
Midmorning somebody got to wondering if the ten colonists who'd broken off from the main colony and moved across the ridge were all right.
Soon as he reminded them, everybody began to laugh. What fools they'd all been. Showed you how a bit of trouble could keep a man from thinking straight. Here they'd been eating and sleeping like animals when, all the while, just across the ridge there'd be houses and beds, fires and clothes. Sure, those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences forgotten.
In a body, they started for the ridge. Everybody knew just where the dissidents had built their homes. But when they got to the top of the ridge there weren't no houses there. Nothing but virgin woods, same as this side. That shook them up. They'd been so sure.
Maybe it was the jolt of that, maybe it was a measure that we still weren't thinking straight, something--they didn't go on down and join forces. Nobody thought of it, somehow. They went back down and congregated around where the village had been. Maybe it was the beginning of something that would come later, something Cal would see for himself. That they were already not thinking the way humans do. Thinking and behaving more the way dumb animals do.
Nothing else worth mentioning happened that day, nor the next. In some ways it was still like a dream. The way people were just accepting things, without question, maybe without curiosity. Jed remembered one time an E had said there was a wider gap between the thinking man and the average man than there was between that average man and the ape. He'd resented it at the time, of course, but now he thought of it again and began to realize what the E had meant.
Two or three people commented on how easy it was to go back to nature, wondered why they hadn't all done it before. How stupid it was for man to knock himself out chasing all over the universe, undergoing such hardships, when all a man could ever want was right here.
Jed tried to put down this kind of talk when it came up. He reminded them it was Lotus Land thinking, and would be the ruination of a prime bunch of colonists. He reminded them they'd been through hardships worse than this, and had ought to keep their wits about them.
Funny thing, though. He couldn't get very excited about it. Just did it because it was his duty. Maybe not even that strong, maybe because once upon a time, long ago, hardly remembered, it had been his duty.
It was the next day that things got real rough.
Somebody, in a clearer-thinking moment, said they couldn't be sure when the rescue ship would get here; that when the rescuers came and didn't see any village they wouldn't know what to think--maybe they'd just go away. Shows we weren't thinking so straight after all, to believe that you'd go away just because you didn't find our village.
Anyhow, hadn't we ought to work out some kind of a message? Maybe scrape some kind of a message on the ground? They decided the smooth sand above the tide line down on the sea shore was the best place for it.
Nobody had anything else to do, so the whole colony, all forty of them, walked the couple of miles down to the seashore. They picked out a nice stretch of white sand, and with a broken piece of driftwood they started to scratch a message, just a big SOS. The driftwood wriggled out of their hands like a snake. Nobody could hold it. Several men tried together, made no difference.
Somebody started scooping out a furrow with his hands. The furrow closed up and smoothed out right behind him. Somebody tried piling up sand, first in letters, then in code signals. Made no difference. Sand smoothed right out again.
Then somebody got a bright idea. All right, he said. Didn't need to use a stick, or scoop out a furrow, or pile up the sand. They had their bare feet, didn't they? They could tromp out the letters that way. Footprints, close together, would be as good as a furrow.
That's when it happened.
Jed tried it himself. And his footprints disappeared. They just weren't there. Everybody looked behind himself, where he'd been walking. Nobody was leaving any footprints.
