Three Survived

Chapter 14

Much later, Rand began to understand.

These beings were organized much like ants or bees. Although they weren’t insects, they had an insect-like type of society. Leswick had guessed it first, and he had been right.

Most of the villagers were workers or soldiers. They were all of the same sex—or rather, they didn’t have any sex at all. They never produced young ones. That was why they lived in small huts, one by one.

The Mother was the only member of the tribe who ever had children. She was really and truly the tribe’s mother. Just as a queen bee lays all the eggs in the hive, the Mother here gave birth to all the villagers and ruled the tribe.

The fat, sleepy loafers outside the great house were her husbands. They were like the drones or males of a beehive. Their only job was to keep the population of the tribe growing.

No children were in sight in the village because each year’s brood was probably hatched at the same time. Very likely the last brood was already full-grown, and the new young ones weren’t due yet. All the workers looked the same since they were all produced by the Mother.

It made sense, now that Rand had had some time to think it over. But he wondered how Leswick had figured it out so quickly. And how had the little philosopher known that that stuff about their own “hive” and “Mother” would work?

Certainly the aliens were friendly now. That night they threw a feast for the three Earthmen in the plaza outside the great house of the Mother. The main course was a kind of thick blue-green jelly with a delicious spicy taste.

Afterwards the aliens gave a concert. At least, Rand thought it was a concert. A dozen of the barrel-shaped beings lined up in a row and made humming-booming noises for about half an hour. Rand was afraid it would be embarrassing if he asked what they were doing. So when it was over he made a little speech of thanks for the music, and hoped he was right.

The Earthmen slept that night in village huts, one man to a hut. Rand didn’t find it pleasant to lie down on the bare dirt floor of the hut. Stray insects kept wandering across it and him. The hut had no windows, and the air was hot and stuffy inside. But he knew he had to be polite. He and Dombey and Leswick were guests here. They had to accept the hospitality of the aliens.

In the morning, ten of the villagers escorted them into the jungle. Five marched in front of them, five in back. They carried their swords in their hands, ready for trouble.

At a steady pace they led the three wanderers farther toward the east. Toward the rescue signal beacon. Toward their Mother.

Rand was depressed and upset despite himself. At first he couldn’t understand what was bothering him. They hadn’t been harmed by the aliens, had they? They had come through the dangers in good shape. They even had gained a team of guides to take them to the beacon.

So why did he feel so miserable?

He realized why, after a while. It was because Leswick, not Tom Rand, had got them safely through the village. Leswick, for whom he felt only scorn and contempt. Leswick, the phony philosopher. Leswick had handled the situation beautifully. Rand hadn’t been able to do a thing.

I was so proud of myself, Rand thought. I got us off the Clyde F. Bohmer okay. I got us down here to Tuesday okay. I built a detector and a water purifier. I was the clever boy, I was the one the others couldn’t survive without.

But it took Dombey to get us through the jungle.

And it took Leswick to deal with the aliens.

In mid-morning, when they were far from the village, Rand said to Leswick, “Tell me something.”

“Such as?”

“How did you know the aliens were what they were? And how did you know what would make them let us go?”

The Metaphysical Synthesist smiled mildly. “How did I know? That’s a tricky word, Rand. It means different things to you and me. To you, it’s impossible to know anything unless you can feel it and measure it and calculate from it.”

“And you?”

Leswick shrugged. “I work from intuition. Hunches. I don’t need every last scrap of evidence there is, before I make up my mind. I jump to conclusions. For you, one and one always make two. For me, one and one can make three, five, seventeen—it all depends on the situation.”

“Wonderful. But what’s the good of that? One and one don’t make seventeen!”

“Not in any logical way, no,” said Leswick. “Logic isn’t the only way to think, though. When we were in the village I was collecting facts about those people. Adding up things about their way of life. And suddenly—in a flash of intuition—I saw the answer. I knew the answer.”

“And Dombey knew there would be those wolf-things parading down the path, I suppose,” Rand said sourly. “Which is why he beat the blazes out of me while you stood by grinning.”

“It was the only way to get you to accept the evidence,” Leswick said. “There wasn’t time for further discussion. So Dombey had to use his fists, or the wolves would have caught up with us. And in the village, I spoke up when I saw the answer. I couldn’t wait to talk it over with you—not with those swords already coming close.”

“I still can’t see any of this, Leswick. This guesswork.”

“I know you can’t. You still prefer logic. Well, your nice neat logic would have turned you into wolf-meat back there. Logic wouldn’t have helped you against those barbed swords, either. And logic wouldn’t have been much good in this situation, either.”

Leswick pointed ahead. The jungle path was splitting. One fork went off to the left, the other to the right.

Which fork led to the beacon?

The aliens knew. They turned off to the left, and the Earthmen followed.

Rand’s cheeks grew hot and red. Score another point for Leswick, he thought. Without the alien guides, they would have become lost here, now that the detector was no good. He wouldn’t have known which fork to take. And it was Leswick who had gained the guides for them.

“I just don’t get it,” Rand went on. “You guessed that the aliens had a society like that of bees. Okay. And it was clever of you to figure out that the Mother was like a queen bee. And to get her sympathy by claiming that the beacon was our Mother, that we were returning to the hive. But how could you tell? How did you know what angles to try?”

“You haven’t studied Metaphysical Synthesis, have you?” Leswick asked suddenly.

“I know a little about it. But—”

“You know enough about it not to like it. But not enough to understand it, obviously—or you’d know how I got my answers.”

“You got them through intuition,” Rand said. “That’s all Metaphysical Synthesis is. Hunches. Guesswork.”

“That’s part of it,” Leswick admitted. “The base.” He grinned. “But Dombey’s something of a Metaphysical Synthesist too, even if he can’t pronounce the words. Ask him what his methods of figuring things out are, some time. Ask him what kind of logic he uses.”

Suddenly Rand got tired of the discussion. He didn’t like where it was heading.

“Skip it,” he said. “You made your point.”