The sun had gone down below the trees, but the sky was blue and clear and there was still plenty of light. He could not see anything nearby that he wanted to explore, and he was beginning to feel hungry. It was time to go home, sneak back through the window, and ask his mother for something to eat. But he could see nothing but trees and long grass in every direction.
When he climbed onto the top of the largest vehicle he could find, the view was better. Not far away there was a tall tree standing on the edge of a deep ravine. It had lots of thick, twisting, leafy branches growing close to the ground and nearly all the way to the top, where there was a cluster of bare, thinner branches with fruit hanging from them. From the top he should be able to see his house.
It was another adventure, he told himself as he began to climb, but this time it was real instead of a pretend one. He was not feeling scared, just hungry and all alone, and he wanted to see where his house was so that he could return and eat and end this game. As he climbed higher he could look down through the branches onto the floor of the ravine, where there were more rusting shapes, including a fat, round one directly below him. Then he climbed up into sunlight and was dazzled so that the inside of the ravine became dark and blurred.
Still he could not see any houses, because smaller trees instead of long grass were in the way, so he climbed higher. Then two things happened at once: he reached the top of the tree where the clusters of fruit were and he saw his house. The house was closer than he had expected, and between him and it there was a signpost in the shape of a small tree with funny branches on it. But his arms and legs were very tired, he felt hot and thirsty as well as hungry, and the clusters of fruit were hanging just above him, bobbing gently in the wind that was beginning to blow through the high branches.
At the end of a great adventure, he thought, there should be a reward. The fruit had to be it.
The branch he was sitting on was thick and strong, and one of its twists took it within reach of a fruit cluster. No longer feeling tired, he crawled along it, gripping the twigs growing from it to hold himself steady. The sun was beginning to go down behind the trees, and below him the lower branches were getting harder to see and the ravine was just a dark green blur. He stopped looking down, because the cluster of fruit above him was almost touching his head.
When he tried to pull off the first one, it squashed in his hand. With the second one he was more careful and it came away in one piece.
It looked like a big pear, but none of the pears he had seen in the Earth vegetation tapes had dark green- and-yellow stripes running vertically from the stem to the heavy end. He already knew from the way the first one had squashed that it was full of juice, and this one was so heavy and squishy that it felt like a small balloon filled with water. The juice that had spilled over his hand was drying already and was making it feel nice and cool. He watched the last damp patch on his wrist steaming as it dried off.
He still felt hungry and wanted to eat something solid, but he was hot as well after his climb and a drink of cold juice would be nice, too, so he held on to the branch with only his legs and took the fruit in both cupped hands.
The juice had a funny taste, not nice but not nasty, either. Not wanting to make a mess, he bit out a tiny hole with his teeth and sucked the fruit empty. When he used his fingers to widen the hole, the skin split open along one of the green-and-yellow lines and he discovered that it was not empty. As well as the juice there was a soft, yellow spongy mass with black seeds in the center. He spat out the seeds because they burned his tongue, and the rest of it had the same taste as the juice but it helped fill his stomach better.
He was still not sure whether he liked the fruit or not. While he was trying to make up his mind about eating another one, he felt a pain in his stomach that came and went and grew steadily worse every time.
For the first time since leaving the house he felt scared and wanted to go home. He began bumping himself backward along the branch toward the main trunk, where he could climb down again, but the stomach pains were so bad that they made him yell out loud, and tears were making it hard for him to see what he was doing. Then one very bad pain made him grab his stomach with both hands, and he felt himself falling sideways. For a moment he hung upside down with his legs still wrapped tightly around the branch, but when he tried to pull himself upright again the pains got so bad that he could think about nothing else. He felt himself falling.
He saw sunlit leaves whipping past him, then others that were in shadow, and felt branches hitting his back, arms, and legs; then it was dark for a moment and nothing was hitting him. He knew where he was when he hit the steep slope of the ravine and began rolling to the bottom, then all at once his arms, legs, and back were feeling as sore as his stomach. The side of his head and body hit something that broke under his weight, and the pain in his stomach and everything else faded away.
He wakened to the sound of many voices, two of them belonging to his parents, and with a spotlight shining down onto the floor of the ravine around him. In the beam he could see an adult wearing Monitor Corps uniform and an antigravity belt floating down to him. His parents and some other-species people were scrambling down the slopes using their hands, feet, or whatever. The monitor landed beside him and knelt down.
“So you’re awake, young man,” he said. “What have you been doing to yourself. But first, where does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt now,” he replied, pushing a hand against his stomach and then feeling the side of his head. “It doesn’t hurt anywhere.”
“Good,” said the man. From a satchel hanging from his shoulder he produced a flat instrument with a tiny lighted screen on one side and began moving it slowly across the surface of Hewlitt’s head, limbs, and body.
“I ate some fruit from that tree up there,” he went on. “It gave me a bad tummy ache and I fell off.”
“That is a very tall tree,” said the other, in the same tone of voice Hewlitt’s father used when he thought he was being told a very tall story. “Put your hand down again and don’t move until I’ve finished scanning you. Did you fall asleep at any time since the fall?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but I don’t know how long. The sun was going down when I fell. You woke me up.
“Out for four, maybe five hours,” said the man in a quiet, worried voice. “When I help you to sit up, tell me if anything hurts, right? I want to do a head scan.”
This time the scanner was moved very slowly over the front, top, and sides of his head and down to the back of his neck; then the monitor put the instrument back in his satchel and stood up. Before he could speak, Hewlitt’s parents arrived. His mother knelt down and grabbed him so tightly in both arms that he could hardly breathe, and she cried while his dad asked questions.
“He is a very fortunate young man,” he heard the medic say in a quiet voice. “As you can see, his clothes are cut to ribbons, probably from playing among the war relics and from a long slide down into the ravine, but there isn’t a scratch on him. He told me that he had eaten some fruit from that Pessinith tree up there. He says it gave him stomach cramps and that he fell from it and has been unconscious since before sunset. Now it isn’t my job to argue with an overimaginative child, but look at the facts. The stomach disorder has disappeared; a fall from the top of that tree should have resulted in cuts, abrasions, fractures, and concussion, but his skin isn’t even broken. A four-hour period of unconsciousness should be accompanied by some form of traumatic wounding that I could not have missed.
“From the state of his clothing,” the monitor went on, “I would guess that he overtired himself playing among the wreckage, and when he climbed down here he simply fell asleep. The stomach ache and his alleged fall could be an appeal for sympathy and an attempt to divert parental wrath.”
His mother had stopped crying and was asking him if he was really all right, but between her words he could hear his father saying that the wrath would be minimal because they were so glad to find him safe and sound.
“Children wander off and get lost sometimes,” said the monitor, “and sometimes it doesn’t end so well. We’ll give him a ride home in our gravity sled, but only because he may still be overtired. I’ll call in and check on him again tomorrow, although it really isn’t necessary-he is in fine shape. You have a very healthy young man there, and there isn’t a thing wrong with him…
The warm feeling of his mother’s arms around him and the sight of the floodlit ravine and the overtalkative monitor medic faded, to be replaced by the familiar surroundings of Ward Seven and another monitor officer who was watching him and saying nothing.
CHAPTER 8
