Genus Homo Page 16

  "The lot we're expecting number about a hundred, and they ought to come out of the trees over there"—he pointed—"in an hour or two. At least, that's where we hope they'll be. Now you can see why I chose this place to meet them. In front of us, a down-slope for a hundred of your yards, then a brook, then an upward slope for three hundred yards and the forest. On our right, a patch of alders. On our left, a downward slope, not steep but long enough to slow down a charge, and laurel bushes at the bottom to make the going hard.

  "They might sneak around us, of course, but if they do we'll have to depend on the balloon's seeing them, which oughtn't to be difficult in this clear weather. They've been sniped at by our scouts until they're good and angry. I've ordered three-quarters of my company to keep out of sight on the west side of the hill, and when the Pfenmll get here they'll think they have only about fifty of us to deal with, and will probably come a-running.

  "Ah Glugg tells me that we've had one casualty. A branch cracked under one of his scouts, and the Pfenmll saw him and brought him down with javelins. But Ah Glugg got even. He made some clear footprints where he knew one of their sentries would find them. The sentry started sniffing along those tracks alone, and presently one of our gorillas dropped on him from a tree and cracked his skull before he could squeak. They hung him up by the tail for the other Pfenmll to find.

  "If we lick this lot soon, the Mm Hyah company is playing tag with another bunch north of here, and we may be able to catch them in the rear. If we can keep that up, we may be able to hold up their advance quite a little, although eventually they'll annihilate us of course."

  Wilson turned slightly green at that "of course." "But I thought we semaphored the Central Council for reinforcements, yesterday," he said.

  "So we did, but I can see that you never tried to hurry a gorilla. The Council will meet and order somebody to get out the general mobilization plan, and somebody else to inspect the arsenal and draw up a report, and so forth. Then a few days will pass, and the first gorilla will come in and say 'Sorry, sir, but the termites got into the filing cabinets and ate the general mobilization plan, and I can't find a copy anywhere.' The Council will say 'Dear, dear, how awkward! Now we shall have to draw up another plan, and we obviously can't undertake any offensive action until it is ready.'

  "Well, the months will pass, and they'll get their reports all drawn up, and the reservists called out, equipped, and drilled. They'll decide after much argument who shall be Chief of Staff, and eventually they'll be ready to drive the Pfenmll back into the ocean. Unfortunately, my dear human beings, we shan't be here to see it."

  "Don't you think the pig cavalry might help a little?" asked Wilson unhappily.

  "I doubt it. It's the wrong kind of country for cavalry, and the pigs have been domesticated only a few generations. Besides, the Pfenmll still outnumber us ten to one, whether we go afoot or pig-back. They can run faster than pigs, too."

  "Why should they want to kill us?" demanded Zbradovski. "We're not their hereditary enemies or anything —in fact, they've probably never heard of us."

  "How should I know why Pfenmll act the way they do? Because they're Pfenmll, I suppose. Your friend, Professor T'kluggl, ought to—listen!"

  The men heard a faint, rhythmic thumping, somewhere in the hills to the east. "It's they," said Mmpl. "They use drums for signaling." The thumping became a little plainer, and was answered from the north and south. "Any more questions? Be quick; I have work to do now."

  "Yes," said Wilson. "What's that thing on the farthest wagon, and what are the gorillas in the tree over our heads supposed to do?"

  "That thing is a rapid-fire arbalest, and the squad in the tree are supposed to pick off hostile officers if they get close enough. Remember my orders: keep back of the tree out of the way, and watch out for javelins." With that Mmpl strode off to direct his forces.

  The men began to feel a certain looseness of the stomach muscles, and a dryness of the throat. "I wonder just how good those rubber-band guns are?" Wilson worried.

  "Not as good as rifles," replied his companions, "but they're pretty good. They weigh about thirty pounds and kick like mules. A bunch of the apes were holding target-practice the other day, and they let me try one. I couldn't even pull the knob back to cock the thing. After they'd had a good laugh at me, one of 'em cocked it for me, but I couldn't hold it steady enough to aim properly, and the kick just about knocked me over. Those guys were doing some mean execution on targets at three hundred yards."

  "Wish these baboons would do their fighting without those infernal drums!" complained Wilson. "They give me the willies. Look—isn't that something moving up in the trees?"

  It was. A half-mile away, beyond the little brook, a group of greyish creatures had emerged from the forest and were picking their way down the slope. At that distance they looked rather like lions. They were carrying things, and the sun flashed on metal here and there. As the men watched, more and more came out of the woods until the whole hundred baboons were in sight.

  The gorillas had been winding up all the catapults except the queer one on the left, and were putting what looked like earthen jugs into the breeches. "Stinkbombs," Wilson explained. "T'kluggl told me they're the nearest they've been able to come to a real lethal gas. This stuff has the properties of both tear-gas and vomiting-gas, and it has the most horrible smell you ever imagined."

  "I bet the Chief could have made 'em the real stuff, if there'd been time," Zbradovski said. "Hold everything —they're going to shoot!"

  The catapults went off with four resounding thumps. The jugs soared against the sky, and smashed on the far side of the brook. Where each landed a sluggish cloud of yellow vapor arose. "About the size of a two-car garage," Zbradovski described it later. The drumming, now loud and near, changed its beat and the baboons broke into a run. The apes had started to rewind the catapults before the first missiles struck; four more jugs followed the first, then four more. When the baboons reached the stream, there was an almost continuous wall of gas from the alders on the right to the laurel beds on the left. One gap was still open, and through this three baboons leaped and galloped at their foes. There was a sharp command, and the men saw the gorillas crouching and aiming their arbalests. As the Pfenmll approached, the men saw that they were demoniac-looking beasts with bright-colored snouts, little deep-set eyes, and bushy grey manes. Each gripped a lance with one forepaw and ran on the other three legs.

  The arbalests went off with a rapid klunk-klunk-klunk, and two of the attackers tumbled head-over-heels. The third galloped back to the brook. He raced up and down, looking for an opening in the wall of gas, and finally plunged into the alders and disappeared, splashing and crashing.

  "Don't think they'll try to get at us from that side," said Wilson. "At least, not if I know alders. We could pick 'em off as fast as they could wriggle through."

  He was right; the baboon troop set off downstream. Presently a swarm of grey manes were seen bobbing through the laurel bushes.

  "Oh—oh!" cried Wilson. "They're going to use the machine-gun, or whatever it is." One ape had swung himself into the saddle at the rear of the machine. Two others tugged at the handles of the walking-beam, rocking it rhythmically up and down. The flywheel began to revolve, slowly at first, then with a shriller whirr. A yard-long clip of darts was set upright in the breech.

  "I get the idea," said Zbradovski eagerly. "Ape in the saddle lets in the clutch; inertia of the flywheel cocks and fires the thing—blam-blam-blam. When the clip's empty, the apes on the handcar dingus pump hard and speed the flywheel up again—and so it goes."

  The drumming changed again, and a wave of baboons swept up the slope with shrill barking cries. The men noticed one baboon who stayed behind, his head raised above the laurels; they guessed that he was the drummer. A gorilla shouted something about allowing for windage. The arbalests klunked; the darts streaked toward the enemy, sunlight flashing on their glass heads. One or two baboons seemed to have fallen. "Watch out fo
r javelins, you two!" Mmpl roared. The gorillas were crouching behind their wicker breastwork.

  "They surely can't throw javelins that far!" Wilson protested. A moment later the baboons rose on their hind legs, made throwing motions, and a shower of six-foot spears rained down on the gorilla position. Zbradovski yanked the journalist behind the tree just as two of the missiles struck on the other side and stuck quivering in the bark.

  When the men cautiously peered around the trunk the baboons were coming on again, but there were gaps in the front line. The arbalests had become more effective as the range lessened. An agonized shriek arose from one of the gray heaps that dotted the slope.

  Then the ape on the rapid-fire arbalest moved, and the machine clattered like a vast and ancient lawnmower. "Lower!" yelled Mmpl. The gorilla in the saddle made an adjustment and the thing clattered again, swinging clumsily back and forth, a stream of darts flashing from its muzzle.

  The whole front rank of attacking baboons crumpled. The clattering ceased while the arbalest crew changed clips. Most of the fallen baboons were on their feet immediately, but the charge had stalled in a babble of confused yelling. The gorilla infantry kept up a steady fire, and the machine recommenced its infernal racket.

  Again the drum-beat changed, and the baboons began picking up their wounded, slinging them over their shoulders, and moving off down the slope. Some dragged themselves along with difficulty, others limped on three legs, their tails drooping; every few steps a dart would find a vital spot and bring one down. A stink-bomb catapulted into their midst turned the retreat into a rout.

  When they were out of range the tumult diminished. One wounded baboon who had been left behind waved a paw feebly. Two of his fellows bounded up the slope toward him. The machine-gunner coolly laid his sights on the prostrate form, and when the rescuers reached him, shot them down with a short volley of darts.

  Mmpl came swaggering up to the oak, his black face split in a huge grin. "No bad, eh? My grandfather was a famous soldier and student of military—"

  He broke off, staring past the men, then yelled an order in a voice that made their ears sing. About twenty-five baboons had popped out of the bushes and were coming full tilt toward their unprotected rear. At Mmpl's shout, the nearest squad of gorillas snatched up their wicker shields and flung them down in the path of the attack. They had time for one scattered volley of darts, then dropped their arbalests and picked up their bucklers and maces.

  As the first rank of baboons reached the line of shields, they crouched. The rear rank leaped on their comrades' backs and took off in soaring leaps that carried them over the shields into the midst of the gorillas, lancepoints first. There was a scrambling, shrieking moment of close fighting, then the hopelessly outnumbered baboons were streaming back into the shelter of the bushes, carrying their wounded with them. Presently the whole troop could be seen moving swiftly down the stream out of sight.

  Mmpl returned, winding a bandage around one forearm. "If we had that pig cavalry of yours now," he remarked, "we might be able to make an effective pursuit. As it is, it's a waste of time to chase baboons on foot. Come along and take a look at them."

  Three gorillas were dead, one with a javelin through his head, one with a lance driven into his chest, and the third with his throat bitten out. There were a number of wounds, most of them not serious. One of the apes had been knocked out by a blow from a baboon's throwing stick.

  "So that's how they get that ungodly range with their javelins," Wilson exclaimed.

  Four baboons, beaten into a furry red pulp, lay within the breastwork. Others were scattered over the slope up which their main attack had come. A gorilla was systematically bashing in their heads with his mace.

  Mmpl was counting up corpses on his stubby black fingers.

  "Twenty-one to three isn't doing badly," he remarked. "I don't believe my grandfather ever did better. But don't you two human beings start promising yourselves long lives."

  15

  THE CHARGE OF THE PIG BRIGADE

  The sun was low when they swarmed over the last ridge between them and their rendezvous. Mmpl took one look through his telescope, shut it with a snap, blew the whistle, and barked orders furiously. Within five minutes the company was streaming down the hillside through the long grass; as they ran, the mass of gorillas shook itself out into a long crescent, its horns bent forward.

  At the foot of the slope the Mm Hyah company was locked in battle with three hundred baboons. The invading monkeys had hidden in a gully, ambushing the gorillas before the startled apes could use their arbalests.

  The baboon commander had had his scalp laid open by a mace. Dazed, and blinded by his own blood, his military judgment was shaken for the moment When a subordinate called his attention to Mmpl's company pounding down on his rear, his action was to pull a score of his own fighters out of the melee by then tail and send them in an uphill charge against ten times their number.

  Mmpl waited until this detachment was almost upon him, then greeted them with such a blast of darts that only three were left on their feet. These showed no desire to continue their imitation of the Light Brigade. Thus when the baboon commander finally realized the seriousness of his position, the trap was closed. Surrounded, the baboons milled around and fell over each other trying to break out of the menacing wall of bucklers and grim black faces. A few escaped by jumping over the gorillas' heads; their chief was one of these, but a quick witted ape sent a dart after him and broke his spine. He kept on at a crawl, chattering and dragging his hind legs, until two gorillas beat his already gory head into a red pulp.

  The rest of the invaders hurled themselves fiercely against the ring, but within half an hour the last survivor was sitting on a pile of corpses at its center, gibbering defiance. Mmpl finished him with a careful shot from his arbalest-pistol.

  Wilson and Zbradovski had been left behind in the downhill charge. When they reached the battlefield, the gorillas were preparing to move on. Mmpl took the two men aside long enough to warn them again against undue optimism. "We slaughtered two-thirds of them with very little loss of our own, I know, but that was because of some unlikely accidents, like that commander's getting whanged over the head."

  There followed two weeks of quick marching and countermarching, of ambush and raid, as the combined Dlldah and Mm-Hyah forces strove to whittle down the overwhelming numbers of their foes, while conserving their own as much as possible. The gorillas knew that their only chance of survival lay in keeping the baboons in heavily wooded country, to which their tactics were ill-adapted. Wilson and Zbradovski admitted later that they must have slept some of the time, but all they could remember of the campaign was a continuous round of exhaustion, blood, and terror.

  On the third day after the battle by the stream, a pigwagon containing several wounded halted near them and a weak voice called to the two men. It was T'kluggl. He spoke with difficulty, spitting a little bloody froth now and then. The professor explained that a patrol of which he was a member had clashed with a baboon patrol in the forest several miles to the south. T'kluggl had broken his mace over the head of one baboon, and then, weaponless, had strangled two more of the enemy simultaneously, one with each pair of hands. While he was finishing this feat, another baboon had run a lance between his ribs. He seemed cheerful, and not a little elated at his unprofessional prowess on the field. "What's a punctured lung?" he demanded, coughing. "An inch more to the right and he'd have cut the aorta—then I should have really had something to worry about. I'll be back in harness before the war is over."

  Day after day and night after night the baboons' war-drums thudded among the hills, drawing the invaders' scattered forces together and maneuvering to surround the gorillas. Scouts had found a gap in the ring, and the gorilla army pushed through it during a heavy thunderstorm. But the baboons saw them; within an hour the drums were echoing through the forest, and the invaders were in full pursuit.

  The gorillas lashed their draft-pigs furiously and raced
westward. Presently they debouched on an open grassy area. Mmpl and the other officers consulted briefly and decided to risk a break straight across. They had reached a clump of trees near the middle when a force of baboons appeared out of the woods in front of them. Still other baboons broke through the trees behind them. More appeared to the north. Mmpl gave the command to turn south, and blew his whistle; fifteen seconds he blew again to stop them. The baboons were swarming south of them as well.

  The gorillas set diligently to work, digging themselves in with picks and shovels. They went at the work with such prodigious energy that by the time the baboons were within shooting range a shallow trench had been run completely around the clump of trees; this was reinforced with shields, and outside these a line of rope entanglements had been set up. To further strengthen the defenses, some of the gorillas went around with shovels sprinkling broken glass in the grass outside the ropes.

  The baboons closed in—north, east, south, and west. About a hundred of them galloped up close, and galloped off again when they received a flurry of darts. The rest sat down in the long grass out of range. It was learned later that the king of the baboons, who had given orders not to begin the attack until he arrived to direct it in person, had gotten lost in a swamp with his Imperial Guard, and did not arrive until after dark.

  The apes worked frantically all night to strengthen their defenses, reinforcing the rope entanglement with "antlers" made by trimming the branches of trees down to points. Morning showed the baboons camped all around the copse at a respectful distance.