Accordingly, the stowaways’ brains were fried. This left untouched the race from which they had come, which was equally guilty since it had produced the offenders. The Quaatar “captain” ordered the ship to be returned to the penultimate planet, where the brain block ray, still on the same setting, was set to cover the entire surface of the world during one complete revolution.
When the Quaatar departed, they left monitors behind to send images they later watched with great gratification as several generations of the creatures struggled to compensate for their new handicap. The ray had not made them completely mindless. It had merely wiped out the memory of certain things. This loss was a considerable handicap, however, and by the time several generations had passed, there were only fifteen or twenty thousand of them left.
“Can they ever get it back?” a junior Quaatar asked its elder. Very young Quaatar sometimes had ideas, before their brains solidified.
The senior drew itself up pompously. “There is no it! The it no longer exists!”
“Legend says everything exists, you know, where Keeper keeps everything.”
“Tah. Is dirty K’Famir legend! If kept, is in a place these filth could never find, never!”
“Somebody says Pthas did.”
“Tss,” the senior sneered. “Dirty K’Famir legend says Pthas went many places nobody wanted them. K’Famir say Keeper much annoyed by visit of Pthas. K’Famir say Keeper changed rules, told Pthas only person walking seven roads at once can ever see Keeper. That is like saying nobody, never. That is good thing. Seven is unlucky for Quaatar. Six is enough number.”
“If something had seven all-same-time universes, it could…”
“Enough!” roared the senior. “You are bad-lucking us with utterance? You want go in hold with sacrifices? You want skinning?”
The junior member tardily, wisely, kept silent.
Before continuing their journey, the Quaatar celebrated by torturing several of the non-Quaatar crew members, whose families later received the generous life insurance payments that had been guaranteed by the mining interests before the crew members could have been ordered onto the Quaatar vessel. Thereafter the Quaatar often talked about their vengeance with others of their kind, though always without mentioning the return to the planet of origin or the use to which certain crew members had been put. The return had not been approved by the chiefs of Quaatar, and both the torture of crew members and the use of the brain block was specifically forbidden by the Galactic Court, a body greatly feared though not at all respected by the Quaatar.
In time the Quaatar crew died, those with whom they had spoken died, and nothing about the happening was remembered except the prejudice that had been engendered against a race of bipedal, naked, rather ugly creatures, forever anathema to the Quaatar. The bipeds were Crnk-cha zibitzi, that is half-brained defilers, which was the worst thing they could have been. When humans finally made it off their home planet, the Quaatar greeted their appearance with revulsion, knowing immediately they were not fit for anything but killing, which was generally true of all other races except the Thongal, K’Famir, and Frossians, who were considered merely dirty and occasionally useful.
On the planet where the stowaways had left the ship, however, the people did go on living. They all knew that something was wrong, but they didn’t know what it was. Something was missing, something they’d had before and didn’t have anymore. Still, the growths were good to eat, with juicy roots, fruits, nuts, succulent leaves. The women had babies that grew very fast, for there was no hunger on this world. No hunger, no danger, no threats. A good place, this world, even though it had no moon at all. Very soon the word for moon was forgotten.
“Wake up little one,” said Ahn’s woman to the new baby. “Wake up, take milk, grow up fast.” The older children played follow the leader, yelling to one another. “Up the tree, over the stump, down the bank, into the water, back again,” they cried. “Right, left, right, left, right, left!”
“The fruit is ripe,” the women called. “We should all pick it now, it’s so juicy and good. We can dry what’s left over.” Lots of women were having babies.
Seasons were long in this new world, but eventually the winter came, not a cruel winter, just chilly and unpleasant. The people took mud from the riverbank and piled it into walls. They learned to make thick walls, let them dry, then tunnel through them to get from one room to another. When the rooms were nice and dry, they could build new rooms on top. They made baskets from tree roots and limber branches. “We’re going out to get fruit,” they cried. “We’ll bring a basketful.”
They cleared everything from around the mud houses, making a smooth, packed-down place where the women could sit making baskets and the children could play. If the children were too noisy, the men would cry, “Cross the ground! Go into the woods!” The woods were safe; there were no beasts. The words for beasts were forgotten.
Rooms piled on rooms until their dwelling was as high as they could build it. “We have to make room for more,” they said. Some of them went a day’s journey away and started another tower to house some of the children the women were having. Soon each tower had daughter towers out in the woods, many cleaned places for the women to work and the children to play. They had to go farther now to get fruit and roots, but it was still a very good place.
Time went by. Daughter towers had granddaughter towers and great-granddaughter towers. The people fought over picking grounds. “This is
