Snowl

I fell face down into it, and emptied my stomach.

"What's this? What's this?"

I raised my head and saw him trotting toward me, bear-like in his heavy clothing, a large axe in his hand. He chopped the axe down into the snow and left it there, the handle angling upward for his return, and ran over to me, shouting, "What are you doing? You'll kill yourself I"

He picked me up, and cleaned my face with a handful of snow. Past him I could see black peaks, snow everywhere, pale moonlight. Moonlight! Where was I?

He carried me inside and put me back to bed. "I didn't want to make a mess in here," I said.

"Sure," he said. "But stay here now. Do you want to try biscuits?"

78

"Yes." I was very hungry now, hungrier than before I'd eaten the stew.

He brought me three pale, hard, bumpy biscuits, and I lay on my back, covered by furs, the biscuits sitting on my chest. I nibbled at them, slowly, and they tasted of salt and soda. But they stayed down. I ate all three, and then I closed my eyes and slept.

XXI

I said, "AM I on earth?"

He turned to look at me. "You're awake, eh?" He'd been sewing hides together, and he now put them down on the table, got to his feet and came over to look at me. "How do you feel?"

"Better. But weak."

"You want to try the stew again?"

"I think so. And a biscuit with it, to help it stay down."

"Just the thing."

I managed to sit up by myself this time, and prop myself against the wall, while he got a bowl of stew and two more biscuits and brought them over to me. I took the bowl in my cupped right hand again, but then there was no way for me to hold a biscuit. He saw my difficulty and said, "That's all right; just a minute." He brought a chair over and sat down beside me and said, "When you want some biscuit, hand me the bowl."

"Thank you."

"We'll have to get you strong," he said, and smiled within his beard.

I chewed meat, and swallowed it, and said, "My name is Malone."

"Torgmund," he said. "That's me, Torgmund. Nobody ever gave me a name to go in front of it." He laughed, and took the bowl while I ate some biscuit. Watching me eat, he said, "Why'd you ask about Earth? You're on Anarchaos, where you've always been."

"Not always," I said.

He was surprised. "You came here from someplace else?"

"Earth."

79

"And that out there, that looked like Earth?"

"Because of the moon," I said. "I didn't know Anarchaos had a moon."

"A lot of them don't," he said. "Daysiders," he added, contemptuously. "They never see it, because they've got daylight all the time. But we on the rim, we see it." He chuckled, and gave me back the bowl. "Gives us a kind of day and night,'* he said. "You take a look out that door now, it's black as the bottom of a hole; you can't see your hand in front of your face." Then he glanced at my stump, and seemed embarrassed.

I said, "We must be farther east. A lot farther than where you found me."

"A full day," he said. "I was coming back from Ulik when

I found you. I put you in the back of the wagon and took you

home." '

I said, "A full day? What sort of day?"

He laughed again, and pointed skward, and said, "Rim sort. By the moon. Twenty-seven hours, fifteen minutes, Earth Standard. Little longer than an Earth day, isn't it?"

"Yes. You're a trapper."

"That's what I am. And you're a slave."

"Yes."

"Got away from one of those mines they have around there."

"Yes, I did."

"I never heard of one of you escaping," he said. "How'd you do it?"

Between mouthfuls of food I told him about working in the mine, and the loss of my hand, and the change of jobs, and how I'd found a way to escape and did it. He listened, bright-eyed, interested in what I had to tell him about a slave's life and enjoying the story of my escape and also, I think, pleased merely at the prospect of someone else in the cabin to talk to. Looking around, I could see that no thought had ever been given to more than one person occupying this place. His had to be a very lonely Life.

When I was done eating and telling my story, he took the bowl away and then came back and said, "How's it sitting?"

"Better," I said. I felt warm and comfortable and totally at ease. My eyelids kept closing of their own weight.

80

"Go ahead and sleep,** he said. "Well talk more tomorrow."

"It's all right," I said. "I can talk now." But even as I said it my eyes shut themselves down and I felt sleep covering me like a net.

When I awoke, the cabin was empty. I rolled over and dozed some more, but lightly, so that I heard Torgmund when he came in. I rolled over again and saw him beating snow off his coat and out of his hair. He saw me looking at him and called, "Snowl A good onel"

"So I see."

"I'll make us something to eat," he said. "You watch me; you'll want to know where I keep things."

He fried eggs this time, and made up something hot that looked like coffee and tasted like charcoal. The eggs, too, were somewhat different in taste to what I remembered from Earth.

After we ate, Torgmund sat beside me again and said, "So you're not a local product, eh?"

"No, I'm from Earth."

"Funny place for a foreigner to come,** he said.

"I wanted to study the social structure," I said. I hadn't mentioned Gar or my reasons for being here or anything that had happened before my enslavement, and I felt obscurely it was best to keep all of that to myself.

He accepted my answer at once, nodding and saying, "Student. You fellows think you're immune, nothing'll touch you. I guess you know different now."

"I guess I do," I said.

He got to his feet and pushed the chair against the wall, saying, "Time for me to get back to work.**

"Outside?"

"Naturally. Got to get your room done.'*

I frowned at him. "My room?"

He pointed at the far wall. "Right there. When I get the roof on I'll put a door through there; you'll be able to come back and forth without going outside."

I said, "You think I'll be sick so very long?"

He laughed and said, "I sure hope not. I never had a slave before. I wouldn't want one that was sick all the time."

"Slaver

81

"You," he said, pointing at me. "What's the matter with you? You addled in your wits?"

I said, "You want to keep me here?"

"You're my slave," he said. "I found you, you're mine."

"I'm not a slave."

"Don't lie to me," he said. "You already admitted it. Slave in a mine, ran away." He laughed again and said, "You won't want to run awy from here; I'll treat you right. Besides, you'd never get back to dayside on foot." He went over to the door and called back, "You take it easy now, rest up. Two or three days you should be able to get up from there, start earning your keep." He went on out.

I lay in the bed for a long while after he left, staring into the fire across the way. He had been kind to me. More than kind; he had saved my Me. And yet, and yet. I couldn't stay.