"Ain't he though?" Smiling into late sky, Paul envisaged the wizened red midget riding the white monsters that Sears had tamed and insisted on naming olifants-with-an-f. A painting might grow out of that, he thought, squat coppery lump astride of massive white—it might, if the desire to paint should ever wake again and be as strong as it once was on Argo, when his mind's eye could remember Earth without distortion. Abara, popeyed and potbellied, a favorite in Pakriaa's harem, had been commissioned by her as a student and go-between at the lakeside camp; Sears had not only adopted him as an olifant trainer, but suspected him of furtively possessing a sense of humor. "Well—the giants. Lantis will always have thought of them as wild animals——"
"Sears"—Paul rolled over and pressed his face in the grass—"can we ask or even permit the giants to tangle in a pygmy war?"
"Ah ... It's tormenting Chris too, ever since Lantis sent that ultimatum." He snarled in his beard, "Thirty fat meat slaves every two months! There's politics for you. Dirtiest way she could answer Pak's challenge to personal combat, and the automatic refusal makes an excuse to come and clean up. Sounds like home.... Mijok wants to help fight—says he does."
"It's still our responsibility." Paul sat up. His eyes kept returning to the towering courage of the trees. Brave as any cathedral spire, scarcely one was free from the clutch of the purple-leaf vine. "As for moving here to the island, Pak sees it, but the idea's too new. You just don't pull up stakes, venture on the Big Water, crossing forbidden kaksma country."
Sears chewed a grass blade. "Anyway we've got to bring Dorothy and the baby here, and Ann. Dorothy won't fuss, will she, son?"
"Since there is Helen—no, she won't. I still dream sometimes, as I did during her first pregnancy. Things, shapes, trying to pull her away—or she's where I can't find her, can't push through the leaves."
"She told me. It's something else that's made you blue lately."
"No."
Sears watched him. "Yes.... Want to start back tomorrow?"
"Might as well. We've learned all we need."