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By Root 1079 0

is that? For the eyes of most human beings are sharp, knowing, clever and vain, like the eyes of the Rat-dogs. The depth that lies in a monkey’s eyes by no means lies behind the eyes of all men. I found now that I moved around that populated, noisy, scuffling, dirtied city, avoiding the big Rat-dogs when I could, meeting with relief the monkeys who seemed so very much more human. But there were more and more of both species, the city was crammed, and the days were passing, so that only half the moon’s lit face showed on our earth, and then more of a dark back than her lit face, and it was dark, all dark, and I knew that soon, not much more than two weeks away, I must be ready for the Crystal’s descent. Yet all of the central square was always full of animals, as once long ago it must have been full of people meeting to talk or exchange or barter, and every inch of it was littered with fruit rinds, dung, stones, bits of stick or branch or blown leaves. I might never have cleaned the place.

The dark of the new moon held the city in a warm bad-smelling airlessness, and all the animals were massed together, watching the tiny sickle of light in the sky, and with sentinels posted on trees and walls everywhere. They were quieter than usual. It was not a good quiet. On the big square were mostly Rat-dogs, except for the monkeys who had chosen to groom them, or play the fool to amuse them. I went boldly into the square late one evening, as the sun went, thinking that perhaps in that sad hour when every creature seems to be thoughtful that these creatures would be ready to listen and to understand. I stood there like a fool and said to them in human speech: “My friends, we have only fourteen days. Two weeks is all we have. For they are coming, and they will land here, on this circle in the centre of the square. But they will not land on a place which is foul and littered, so please, for your sake as well as for my sake, for the sake of all the creatures that live on this poor sick earth, let us clean this place, let us sweep it with branches, and then bring water and wash away the stains of the filth that is here.” I kept my voice steady and I smiled, and I tried to show by gestures what we should do, but they moved about as I spoke, or turned their pointed noses down sideways so that one of their two planes of vision could include me, and the servantlike monkeys hopped closer and looked at me with their sad eyes, trying to understand—but of course they could not understand, how could they? Perhaps I was half-hoping that the meaning of my words would communicate itself to these so differently planned brains, because of the desperation of my need that it should.

The dark came up in a rush from the ocean and the forest, enveloping the plateau and the teeming city, and I went away to the edge of the escarpment and sat there, watching the stars and listening to the multifarious but subdued din from the animals behind me, who were also watching the skies, where the moon’s back was a dark circle with a hairline of light at one side.

Perhaps it was their fear of the dark; perhaps that fear stopped a normal exuberance of movement and of voice and left them banked with unexpended energy; or perhaps it was simply that the city had grown too full for their civility to continue—however it was, that night the fighting started. I knew it first by the smell—the smell of blood, which by now I did know so very well. And there were sudden scuffles much louder than usual, and cries and shrieks. These last sounded like the blood-crazed women around their fire in the forest, and in the morning, after a long dark stuffy night, I walked into the city and saw corpses lying on the central square and also here and there among the houses. Most of these dead were the monkeys, though there were one or two of Rat-dogs. And now the two races had separated off, except that a few of the monkeys had chosen to stay as servants or jesters with the big beasts who tolerated them. The city was roughly divided, and now the sentinels on the trees and the walltops watched