The giant stared down at him, firelight flickering off great, dark eyes. 'One daytime skylegs drop down among us. Midget get out, seek peace signs. Elders consider what usefulness can come of this. So midget stay with us for a time and teach us. Want to make peace. Finally Elders ask if midget can have killweeds-of-coldstuff taken down. Midget says no. We must first come in and give up weapons. Midget informative but crazy. Wasting not, we ate it.'
'I see,' murmured Jachal, endeavoring to become more interesting than ever.
A week passed and then another. Jachal did not become a meal. One morning he was preparing to enter his carry sack when the giant waved him away. It slung the sack loosely over its shoulder.
'What's wrong, Apol?' He studied the plain of seedlings that lay west of the campsite.
'No more carry midget. Elders decide. You always running, say you. No more carry. Now you-run with us.'
Jachal at last saw how misinterpretation had kept him alive. He dared not explain that what he'd meant that night weeks ago about always running had had nothing to do with physical movement. Or did it? He was becoming confused himself. And hadn't he always been in excellent shape? He'd had to be to stay ahead of the law.
They'd kept him alive because he was an anomaly, a midget who talked of always running instead of skylegs air cars. Perhaps they saw something familiar, something of themselves, in him.
His calves throbbed in expectation of the ordeal to come. But he had no choice but to try, to do the best he could. Apol was adamant. 'Now you run with us.' He would have to try.
He ran until his lungs threatened to burst, until his legs felt like iron weights, until his chest heaved and his throat roared with pain. He ran until he could run no more, and no one complimented him on his gallant attempt. No human, not the finest marathoner, could hope to keep pace with a Loper.
He gave out and collapsed in a cluster of grasses with horizontal leaves that grew at right angles to the central stalk. The sky was a sweat-smeared blot of blue-white. A wide-eyed oval face peered down into his own. It was not Apol.
It belonged to Breang, the Loper whose leg he'd mended..
'Ja'al run well, for a midget.'
He didn't have the energy to reply, simply nodded weakly and hoped the Loper would understand the gesture.
Long, thin arms of surprising strength were under his own then, helping him up, forcing him to his feet. He tottered there, feeling faint, his body having given up its reserves, his heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to break free.
'Can-can't run-anymore, Breang. Can't.' He smiled faintly. 'Midget-not Loper. Can't run with-'
Breang showed him something. It was the carry sack Apol had employed. 'Rest now. Run later. Run well for midget, Ja'al. Well much.'
Jachal eyed the sack hungrily. He'd never been so tired in his life. But he hesitated, knowing other eyes were on him. 'The Elders say I'm not to be carried.'
'Owe I a leg to you. Can by law lend mine to yours.'
Eye for an eye, legs for a leg, thought Jachal. By accepting his offer, maybe I'm doing Breang a favor. Maybe, he's never said anything to me before this because he owed me and had no way to work off the debt.
He climbed gratefully into the sack. As he did so, he saw a couple of the Elders staring at him. Were they watching approvingly, or was their attention simply a figment invented by his oxygen-starved brain? He didn't know and didn't care. It was dark in the carry sack. He closed his eyes gratefully.
In an hour he was running again.
As the weeks became months he learned why he'd been spared. As he supposed, his declaration that he'd always been a runner had struck an important and responsive chord within the tribe. Running was not merely a means of locomotion to the Lopers. It was their reason for being, their religion, and their gestalt. They did not run to live; they lived to run. It was as important to them as eating and breathing. The feel of air rushing past the moving body, the land disappearing beneath moving feet, oxygen coursing over neck gills-these were the crucial sensations of life, the rationale for existence.
A body at rest was an incomplete form, any other method of transport alien and degrading. One might as well be as inanimate as a rock or dead stalk of grass. Real people defined themselves through movement, through the action of running, by showing-their independence from the fixed earth. This separated them from the inanimate spirits that were fixed to the ground. To be demaru, to be truly alive, one had to run.
Midgets, humans, did not run. They used machines to transport them about on the ground and skylegs to carry them through the air: Therefore, they were not properly alive.
No wonder all efforts to make peace between settlers and Lopers had failed. The Lopers would find the very idea of sitting down at the peace table repugnant.
The tribe hunted and slept and gave birth to an occasional infant who would be up and running in a few months. They killed an elemorph, a monstrous bear-thing that charged and swung great claws at its tormentors but could never quite catch them. They ran it to death.
They ran whenever they weren't hunting or sleeping or giving birth. To run was to be free.
Freedom . . . Jachal had a thought, sidled close to Breang one night beneath a roof of grass thirty feet high. The broad, spatulate leaves curved together overhead, forming the nave of a green cathedral.
'Why do the Lopers hate the midgets so?' he asked. 'Beyond the fighting, beyond the fact the midgets do not run. Why so?'
Breang considered. 'Midgets new grasses make grow. No trouble. Midgets make Veldt even all over. No trouble. Midgets killweeds-of-cold-stuff put up.' His dark eyes studied the green sky. 'Big trouble this.'
That was understandable, Jachal thought. He tried to explain. 'Killweeds-of-cold-stuff is there to protect the farmers not only from you but from the mufleens and other Veldt animals who would trample down or eat the farmer's new grasses, which are very important to them.'
Faces were suddenly intent on him, speculating, judging. Elders and children had stopped chatting and turned to listen.
'No trouble that,' said Breang surprisingly. 'No trouble midgets' new grasses. Understand want to keep out mufleens and morpats and polupreas.' Now it was Breang who was looking at Jachal imploringly.
'Many runs have you lived with us, Ja'al. Much have you learned. Is not the sky clear-blue to you yet?'
Jachal thought back on what he'd just said and on what he'd learned, and suddenly it was sky clear- blue.
'Really stupid,' he was telling the xenologist who'd come by aircraft all the way down from the provincial planetary capital of Yulenst to participate in the conference.
She sat opposite him inside the tent that had been set up outside Embresca. The formalities had been concluded out on the Veldt. Government functionaries were working out the details of the treaty with the various Elders of the different tribes. The discussion was taking place on the run, or course, the inadequate legs of the humans being aided by mechanical supports that gave them the temporary ability to run alongside the Lopers.
'The farmers put up the fences to keep out the grazers of the Veldt as well as the Lopers. All the time they thought the Lopers were against the farms, when in reality all they objected to were the fences.' He paced back and forth. For some reason he was unable to sit still these days.
'The fences cut across many of the old runs, blocked traditional paths across the Veldt. The farmers couldn't understand why the Lopers didn't just go around the fences. They didn't understand that they were preventing the Lopers from their proper way of running. As everyone now ought to know, running is everything to them. It's not just something they do to move from place to place.'
'The Tuaregs of track,' the xenologist replied, brushing at her gray hair. She smiled. 'The gates in the fences will be sufficient, do you think?'
Jachal nodded as he paced. 'That and the agreement which states that any new farm will permit the Lopers free passage through its boundaries.'
'You've opened more than one kind of gate for the Lopers, Jachal Morales.'
He shrugged. 'Sometimes you have to live with people to understand their needs and wants.'
She studied this peculiar man curiously. 'What about you, speaking of gates? What will you do now? I've
