The People Beyond The Wall by Stephen Tall

Author:Stephen Tall [Tall, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Daw Books, Incorporated
Published: 1980-05-26T23:00:00+00:00

In that, at least, she was certainly correct.

But later I could not sponge away the sadness, the wistfulness of my wife’s smile. She knew, but she could never forget. She did not regret, but the memories would always be there. I brooded and thought. And finally I decided what we would do.

When your wife requires cheering up. when you want to make her happy again, you buy her presents, or take her to dinner and the theater, or to a game or a party, whatever she likes best. If time and your money permit, you may even take her to London or to Paris, where life is supposed to reach its peak in our civilized world.

These are simple remedies. My problem was far greater. My wife was sad because she had lost a world, and there was nothing I could buy for her that would take its place. But I did what I thought would please her most.

I announced it in the stately English of Elkan.

“In five sun-spans,” I said, “we go north. We will put the big canoe on the Yukon, and it will take us to where the northern geese and the swans go in summer, to nest and rear their young. Denny has never seen white water under the canoe. He has never seen the sun shine at midnight And Fang has never seen such hunting as he will find on the tundra and in the marshes.”

Denny’s eyes shone, but he made no outcry such as most small boys might. Somehow the silence of big country has always been in him. The dog felt the excitement in his young master, and beat his tail on the cabin floor.

But Marya said, “But what of the work you must do in the warm time so that we may have what we require when the snow comes again? This is not Elkan, where all men share.”

I laughed.

“It is necessary for you to go north too, for you are beginning to think like the women of this land who do not trust their husbands. From the banks that you still do not understand there will be money for our needs. I have placed it there. So for three, four ten-spans of days we will live and enjoy with the caribou and perhaps, if there is time, even the white bear. We will feel the wind off the ice packs, and breathe the best air left in this world. Then we will return, and take up our lives here, and have pleasure from what we cannot change.”

Marya understood.

“I will make ready the packs,” she said cheerfully. “Denny shall use for the first time the frame you have made for him. And Fang, too, shall have a small pack. Whenever we leave the canoe, each will carry his share.”

Somehow it pleased me particularly, that unconscious stating of the basic tenet by which the people of her world lived. It was the core of Elkan thinking. “Each will carry his share.”

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