Arnaldo, the chunky little head of the paleo-biology department of Penhairn University, had told him once that terrestrials loved Fyhon so because conditions on that planet were like those on Terra during the part of the Cenozoic when man was beginning to become man. Fyhon, he said, appealed to some deep-seated memory in humanity of what a planet ought to be.
Ericson had laughed at him. He was new to Fyhon then, with a temporary appointment as ethnographer to the South Polar Ethnographic Commission. Racial memory had seemed to him as out-moded a concept as spontaneous generation. But his temporary appointment had been extended once, and then once again, and by the end of the second period he had been wildly, hopelessly in love with Fyhon. He had hoped to get a permanent appointment, had hoped to stay on Fyhon for the rest of his life.
Ericson sighed again. After a while he raised one hand above his head and looked at it. He could see the bones and the joints of the bones and the movements of the sinews under the pale gold skin. The marks of Mnathl's hypodermic needle were faintly red. He ran his fingers down his body, surprised at the largeness and hardness of the rib cage, and the prominence of the sockets of his hips. His body felt attenuated and worn. But it was his body, no longer the property of byhror and the byhror emptiness. He held up his hand once more and looked at it against the light. He was beginning to realize that he was alive.
He drifted off into sleep. When he woke, Mnathl was holding out a steaming bowl to him. "Soup?" she said.
They stayed for some eight days in the coppice, while Ericson knotted his memories together. Byhror and the need for it were sinking back with the passage of each successive day into the status of things unalterably in the past. Mnathl set snares and hunted—she would not allow him to move a hand—and Ericson watched her almost incuriously. He felt a little more conscious every hour how good it was to be alive.
On the ninth day Mnathl poured water on the cooking fire. She nested the cooking pots together, slung them deftly over her shoulder, and contrived a belt of twisted vines for her hunting knife. "Go now," she announced.
Ericson got up obediently. "Are we going back to Penhairn?" he asked.
The corners of Mnathl's mouth twitched. "No," she said. "Way on up. On in. In Dridihad." She pointed with her thumb.
Ericson stared at her. "Dridihad?" he said. He'd heard the name before. It was ... now wait ... yes, it was the name the natives applied to the heart of the almost unknown South Polar Minor continent. "I can't go there. I've got to go back to Penhairn, now that I'm well. I've three years of byhror addiction to make up."