Strive To Success
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I was never the same again after that. I had always been a very quiet child, but since then my silence and reserve had become almost total. It wasn’t as if I had no opinions: it was just that when I tried to put them across they came out in a sort of whisper, not exactly a whine or a whimper, but something between, which made people look at me oddly until I stopped talking.
At first, I couldn’t understand why this should be so, for all the world around me seemed quite ordinary enough. But it didn’t seem to occur to anyone else either that what went on around them was extraordinary. It was only when I began studying other peoples’ ways that I realized how strange ours were—that is, mine and those of others who had lived with us.
We did things because we always used to do them without asking ourselves whether they could be improved, or even whether we ought to do them in the first place; and if there was someone like me who happened to have a different opinion from everyone else’s, he would never try to say anything about it because none of the others wanted his advice anyway and it wasn’t as if he thought much differently from anyone else.
So, naturally, no one else ever listened to him. I was different. They knew what I’d gone through, and they saw me doing things they wouldn’t dream of doing themselves. They might laugh behind their hands about it, and sometimes make fun of me too, but they also watched with interest.
And I suppose it was that curiosity that helped them begin to question some of the customs that had always been part of our lives. The thing that really struck them was the way I took to walking along walls, and up ladders, and over fences, all kinds of impossible things which had never occurred to them that anyone might try.
I hadn’t noticed myself until a few days later, when they all began coming out into the garden at night instead of going straight home from school, or wherever they had been, as soon as they got hungry.
Some of them said that my walks reminded them of those little men in stories—they were always being chased by tigers. Others told me they had heard that I had come down out of the sky; others said the moon must have turned into water and floated away with me.
When these ideas were brought back to me, I found them hard to credit, and, besides, it was obvious to me that none of them would ever work, so I simply laughed and asked how they could possibly have known? That was the start of many a long discussion between us.
But when I began trying to explain things more clearly, they listened more carefully. After all, my explanations weren’t just theories; they had actually worked and had saved their lives when it was necessary.
It was only a couple of days before they understood how I was able to walk so lightly along a wall, or how I could get up onto a roof by leaning back against it while looking straight ahead, and so on.
There were lots of other little tricks that I showed them too. They would ask questions like “Do you have muscles in your fingers?” (No.) Or “How far can you jump?” (About twice my height; it depends on the surface and how much room there is.)
They asked about weapons—”Can you fight off a tiger with a piece of wood?” (Yes, if we can reach its head before it sees us.”) And when they talked like that, they looked at me strangely, and I felt very uncomfortable; after all, it isn’t as if I wanted to prove how good I was with a sword; I’m quite satisfied with my knife, thank you very much.
But then again I don’t know if it would be possible to learn to use such a weapon unless you grew up with them. Perhaps my knives were the first swords.
It was during these discussions that I began to realize something very interesting about myself. For years I had taken pride in my lack of interest in food; in fact, it was a great satisfaction to me to think of having nothing to do with it, because it meant I was free of the necessity of keeping my body alive. This made sense to me.
But then I started thinking about it again, and I began to wonder whether it didn’t mean that I cared about something else more than food. At first, I thought perhaps I wanted to avoid pain; but when I considered my life, and all my experiences, I realized that I could hardly remember a time when I had been hurt or ill.
In my early childhood I suffered a lot of pain, especially when I was learning to walk and talk because the adults couldn’t understand me properly; that was what made them angry and upset me, and I often cried, but that was a long time ago, and my parents have always been kind and sensible since then, so I haven’t had anything like that to worry about recently.
But I was beginning to realize that the real reason why I didn’t want to eat was not that I was afraid of hunger but because I enjoyed living, and I liked the idea of getting stronger and bigger and becoming a better fighter for myself—for my friends. As for being strong enough to defend my friends, well, that was the most important thing.
If they were hurt or frightened, I couldn’t help them without my strength. So if it came down to fighting with other people, they’d need someone who could protect them.
I wasn’t sure how to go about this; they were young children, and even if they were willing to listen to me, it seemed unlikely that they could be taught to fight, except by the simplest means, which would probably take them years to master. But still, I decided that I needed to do something for them.
The children asked me questions about everything, and they were very interested in hearing about other places on the planet: “Is there another continent like ours where you live?” (No.) “What are the rivers like where you lived?” (They’re different everywhere, though all the big ones carry ice water from the pole, so it’s colder than here.)
And they wanted to know how many stars were in the sky, whether there were more stars than points of light, and if you could see any of the planets that were further away; did the moons look like our moon? What sort of animals did we find on those continents where we lived?
Could I show them how to catch a fish, and cook it on a fire; they wanted to know whether I ever saw a tree; if so, what was it like, and if not, did it rain all the time, and what was the climate like? They wanted to know whether it was possible to swim in lakes, and how deep they were; and when I answered them as best as I could, they became excited.
They had never seen trees; they had no conception of water that was deeper than a puddle, and they couldn’t imagine the size of the sky. I told them stories about what we found when we traveled around the world, and about my life.
The more I spoke of these things with them, the more I realized that it was only because I had spent a long time with humans—with one human, in particular—that I knew so much about them. But now that I had stopped traveling with him, my knowledge was beginning to slip away; I could not keep track of it. There was so much to say that I could barely remember what I had said.
When I had finished telling them my story and answering their questions, I tried to explain what was wrong between me and Tochee. It was clear they already understood some of it, just by looking at us, and I didn’t want them to be afraid of us. And anyway they would understand it soon enough if they listened.
“He doesn’t feel the same way about me anymore,” I said. “I don’t know why he does.” I felt embarrassed talking about the way my feelings changed, even when I was alone.
Kip and Dik nodded gravely, as though they understood exactly what I meant, whereas Kif was looking puzzled. His brow wrinkled, and his lips opened as though he were trying to ask a question, but he didn’t speak. He had never been able to understand my thoughts easily before.
I went on, “Sometimes he seems to be very interested in me, and sometimes he doesn’t seem to care very much. When he’s in that mood, we can’t get along; but when he is in good humor, we become friends again. I’m sure I must have done something wrong. Do you know what I should do?”
They looked at each other. For a moment they were silent; then Kif said, “If we know what you did wrong, and how to prevent it in the future, then we could teach you.”
“You wouldn’t tell anyone?”
“We would try to keep it secret because we are concerned about the safety of all people.”
I was surprised by his sudden change of mind; I thought he might be angry with me. Then I remembered the strange thing that had happened after I first met him and Kip and Dik. After I’d been talking for quite a while to them, suddenly Tochee came into the clearing. He hadn’t called out to me or made a sound.
He simply appeared beside me, so that I jumped up and ran over to him. When I reached him, he was staring straight at me, his body rigid, without a hint of expression on his face; his head was cocked slightly to one side as though he were listening to something.
As I stood there, bewildered, he said quietly, “I think you’re right, Jax.” That was the first time he ever used my name. I wondered what he meant by it. He looked away from me, turned sharply to Kif and Dik, and began making noises.
It took a moment for me to realize that he was asking them how long they’d known of my relationship with Humans and whether they had heard anything from me. They said that they had not.
After that, he seemed to forget all about me, though I watched him for the rest of the night. At first, I thought he was being cold; but then I wondered if there was more behind this sudden coolness. He had spoken the name Jax to me once.
Had he chosen that name specifically for me? Or was it just an easy word? If it was a personal name, he probably chose it because he didn’t want me to be upset? I could not decide. I was confused, and hurt; but when I went back to our cave after dark, he didn’t look at me or speak to me, although we usually sat close together. He was in such bad humor, I didn’t bother him.
“That was a mistake, Jax,” Kip said to me later, as we lay down to sleep. “You must not let anyone find out what you’ve discovered about him.”
“But they won’t believe me!”
Kip nodded. “Not if he wants to stay hidden. You see, it makes things hard for us, too, when we meet people. We may know who they are, and we’ll talk to them as if we knew. But when they discover the truth—”
I nodded. I understood the difficulty, even if I had no idea what he meant by it.
“There’s always a chance someone will come across us, and find out that you really know him.”
“Then what would happen?”
“It depends—on how we behave. The most important thing is secrecy.”
“How do people react when they learn he’s not real?”
The two exchanged glances.
“A few people have told us that they were suspicious when they saw us,” Dik said. “Most of them were very curious and wanted to know how we’d managed to make him. But there’s only one man whom we suspect of having figured it out. He’s a little crazy.”
“He tried to kill us,” Kip said.
“We’re lucky,” Dik said. “When we found out, we were ready for him.” He paused, and added, “We couldn’t have been more prepared.”
I thought about this, wondering why anyone would want to kill a man because he knew Kif wasn’t real. “What did you do?”
“First he came near us in the forest,” Kip explained. “We were watching him. Then we followed him. He was alone; nobody else was around. When he got within sight of us, Kif moved forward silently, as though he were going to attack him. We were waiting in the bushes. His gun went off accidentally, and he fell over backward, dead.”
“That would work,” I agreed. “But surely you haven’t killed everyone who might be thinking of killing you.”
“No.” Kip smiled wryly. “Sometimes we’ve been lucky. Sometimes we’ve been careful enough to avoid trouble.”
In the morning Kip and Dik told me what happened to those whom they’d killed. One night they had waited till a man approached their cave, and then they shot him through the heart. They buried him in a deep hole in the ground.
In the morning the man’s companion showed up and dug him up, saying that he suspected his friend of cheating in some game they’d been playing, and was determined to get even with him. Kip and Dik went over to where the man was digging.
They shot him again. Then they dragged him back to his house and left him in a corner of the yard. The following day a woman arrived in her wagon to deliver wood to the household and found the man still alive.
She brought him inside and nursed him with herbs and milk she made from roots and grasses growing nearby. The man died later that night, and the woman gave birth to twins, who grew up to be good hunters and good carpenters.
They talked about other people they had met. There was the time they had walked down the road to a village, and seen a man standing on top of a mound of dirt outside one of the houses. The man waved, and the two pretended to wave back.
They climbed up onto the mound and waited to see how the man would react. After a long time the man came out carrying two bottles of wine; when he spotted the three of us up there, he ran away in fear, crying like a baby.
Kip and Dik were laughing so hard that they couldn’t shoot him right away. So they chased him into the woods, far from anywhere he could run to for help or protection. They caught him, and put an arrow into each leg—the best way, in Kip’s estimation, since it allowed the body to die in pain but without suffering for too long.
Another time they had gone to visit a wealthy man named Balthasar, who lived in a big house at the edge of a town called Tovar. Balthasar owned slaves, many of whom worked in his milling business, making flour for bread.
Balthasar loved to gamble; sometimes he lost heavily. He was also a drunkard. It wasn’t unusual for him to wake up in the middle of the night, and wander downstairs to the taverns that lined the street outside his front door.
At first, Kip and Dik kept to themselves, and let him go on drinking. They were careful not to say anything rude, and to leave when the man staggered back upstairs. But after a while, they decided that such caution was foolish, particularly since Balthasar’s wife didn’t seem to be aware of her husband’s drinking habit.
On occasion, in the evening, Dik and Kip heard Balthasar yelling, cursing, and demanding wine. The next day, when they saw the man stumbling down the stairs in his robe and nightcap, they shot him in the head before he could enter the hall. They left him in a heap of clothes near the entrance to the kitchen.
Balthasar’s wife came out screaming. She rushed back into the house and began tearing apart every room looking for him; she finally found him in the cellar, lying under a pile of empty barrels and sacks, where he was trying to hide from her.
Kip and Dik came along behind her. As they passed by the kitchen they saw a bowl filled with scraps of food: eggs and cheese and vegetables. The woman picked them up and tossed them in the air and caught them. They went back and forth several times, and then Kip and Dik came up from behind her. They shot her once through the chest, just as she threw down the last piece of egg.
One night Kip and Dik were walking together on the edge of a town where there had recently been a battle between the two sides in the civil war. Both sides wanted to kill the other, so they were all over the place.
When Kip and Dik walked by a man and his family who were waiting for a boat to take them across the river—a dangerous journey because of the many enemies scattered about—the man shouted, “You’re a damned fool! We can’t cross here!”
Kip said nothing. They moved on a little farther until they came upon a dead soldier. His sword arm was raised above his head, pointing at something off in the distance, perhaps the mouth of a tunnel into another cave, and his helmet rested beside his feet. “A damned fool,” Kip whispered. Dik nodded and they continued on.
The following morning a few men were fishing on the opposite side of the river. One of them asked Kip why he’d been staring at the corpse so hard. When Kip replied that it had been a brave man and a worthy foe, the man looked over and laughed, saying he wished his father could have known how many fish they’d caught.
The others began talking among themselves, wondering if this new enemy might prove less troublesome than the one from earlier.
“That’s the difference between you and us,” Kip told Dik. “We are always thinking about the next thing that will happen.”
Dik said, “And what is the point of that?”
Kip shook his head and said, “It makes life interesting. You’ve never tried it. Just walk down the street and watch people, and listen to their words and see their faces. Listen to everything that’s happening around you. Then try to imagine all those things, in your mind, at once. Try to think about all these things as they are happening.”
“I’m not sure I know how to do any of that.”
“Just give it a try, just once. Let me show you.”
They stood on either side of the dead man. In silence they watched his hand move slowly up and down the hilt of his sword. They watched the other fishermen pull their nets and haul out the fish. Finally one of them yelled, “Look out! A crocodile!”
“Crocodiles don’t live in rivers,” someone else said, laughing.
Someone grabbed the rope on which the raft was anchored. “Let us in or we’ll swim across!”
“Come ahead!” a voice boomed over the water.
As they reached the shore, Kip and Dik saw the men from the night before. They were sitting together, playing cards. When they saw the newcomers, one of them shouted to the others, “Here come the crocs!”
There was some laughter, but no one really believed the threat; they were already bored with seeing the same thing again. The soldiers did not bother to look at the crocodiles. They turned back toward the card game, while their friends kept shouting “Crocs!” in their voices.
The croc hunters stood and began to wade across to land. “Don’t let him bite you!” a young boy warned his mother. “He doesn’t like it when we run away from him.” His mother gave the kid a smack and he ran to join the others.
The End