face a rainstorm,” Atta shouted once above the tumult. It
was his only reference to the fact that I had come to his
rescue just as once he had come to mine.
Conversation seemed empty and futile after the great
danger we had escaped. We were like two lonely souls
at the end of the world or at its beginning. Friendship
and honor were ours. Little else was. Such were my
thoughts, at least, as dawn finally came and the storm
died down, and perhaps they were Atta’s too.
I know his last act beneath our ledge was to take out
a piece of eiderdown from my saddlebags and swab down
Trotta’s wet and shivering skin. He did it with the same
gentle stroking motion that I have seen Fusans use at
their morning toilets.
Then he stretched himself and went outside on the
rocks before the cave. He walked down a little way on
the flat space before our shelter; and I can see him yet,
looking up at the clearing sky and the hill above us, his
high forehead raised to the morning light. His look of
appraisal at the broken clouds brought me out too, and
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A T T A
for a moment I stood at a little distance from him looking down into the valley over the treetops at his back.
After an instant thus, I heard a slight noise above and
behind me, and I turned quickly to see what it was.
The action, taken too quickly, twisted my left foot too
much to retain its hold, and as I turned it slipped backward so that I half fell, hands upon the wet ground, face downward.
It was in this position that I heard Atta’s shout: “Look
out! A rock! A rock!”
At the same moment there struck my ear the grinding
sound of a great boulder or an avalanche tearing down
the hill above me, and I scrambled desperately to get up.
I never made it. The mud was too slippery, and my
ankle had turned on its tendons. As if temporarily paralyzed I half fell upon my side, and in this position I saw dimly a monstrous boulder above me, half grinding, half
tearing, and actually bounding down the slope directly
toward me. It was nearly as big as a modem motor car
in size and a dark wet gray in color, and it seemed to
a second before it plunged down upon me.
Another second and I should have been a corpse
pinned beneath its weight in the muddy rocks. But in
that second Atta must have arrived. For even as I shut
my eyes I felt his strong arms around me. I was lifted
from the ground like a twig and thrown violently halfway to the cave. Almost simultaneously came the crash of the boulder, rock against rock, and I staggered up on
my twisted ankle to see five tons of stone fall on the
exact spot where I had been.
“Atta!” I shouted. “Atta! Are you all right?”
There was no answering sound, I shouted again.
“Atta! Atta!”
Still there was no answer and so sign of my friend.
And at the continued silence words of fear and horror
sprang to my palsied lips. I ran limping and threw myself against the insensate rock. With every ounce of
A T T A
177
strength in me I pushed and struggled against it. My
effort was in vain. I could not stir the monster.
‘
Nor was there any sign of Atta around it.
“Trotta!” I yelled. “Trotta, come here!”
I left the boulder and rushed, hobbling, for Trotta beneath her ledge. Fear made me clumsy, and I swore savagely at the faithful beast as I saddled her and took
out my largest lasso. For I had only a feeble hope, and I
knew it. But I pulled her out, whirled my lasso with
sweaty hands, caught a projecting piece of the boulder
on the top, drew the noose tight, and then passed my
end of the rope around Trotta’s broad chest.
"Pull, Trotta, pull!” I commanded her hoarsely; and,
driving her a little way down the hill, I added all my
strength to the rope as it tightened. Like a madman I
pulled and shouted at Trotta. Her knees bent and her
eyeballs stood out from her small head, but she did not
give up, nor did I. And gradually the great boulder
shivered, tottered on its base, and began to move.
Another second and it was crashing downward again almost straight at us toward the cliff above the valley.
“Look out, Trotta!” I yelled. “Aside!”
She leaped to one side as she had been taught to do in
the arena. I leaped aside with her, and the great stone
swept past us, almost skinning my knees as the rope
knocked me flat on my face and took my feet out from
under me. I was almost stunned. But the boulder went
past us, and for a second I thought both of us had escaped. I did not realize that I had doomed Trotta by knotting her securely to a boulder that was now again
on the rampage. Then I lifted my head and saw the
dreadful prospect. The boulder was not stopping: it was
gathering speed. The lasso was firmly caught on it; the
far end was securely fastened around Trotta’s chest and
neck; and the insensate mass was dragging Trotta swiftly to her death. Even while I was staring after her the great stone pulled her like a fly from her scrabbling, des
178
A T T A
perate attempts to find a stance, dragged her over the
muddy rocks and down the steep hill, and before I could
rise, crashed through the small bushes on the edge of
the cliff, disappeared from sight, and pulled the wretched
Trotta after it down into the abyss. Only a distant splash
told me that both had reached the rushing stream in the
in the valley bottom far below.
I had no time to mourn her, however, or even to curse
my stupidity as she disappeared. For Atta lay before me
on the wet rocks, and to him I half ran, half dragged
myself.
Stretched out on the stones he lay, and I knelt on
the ground and took him in my embrace. I spoke to him
and held his poor crushed arms against my breast. But
there was no answering flicker of life, and after a while
I simply sat and held his head in both my hands.
Atta was dead. He was dead. My friend Atta was dead.
How long I sat thus or what happened thereafter I
have no means of knowing. The sun came out. The clouds
went. Noon came and departed. But I had no sensation
of change or of the passage of time.
I must finally have elapsed into unconsciousness, For
when I came out of my stupor the late afternoon shadows
in the same position. All that had changed was the proportions of things. But these had changed so immeasurably that for an instant I could not take in the incredible alteration. Then I realized that the high hill before our
cave on which I still sat was only a small hummock of
field stones. Above, some short green grass led down, not
to a deep valley, but to a tiny rushing rivulet below an
overhanging bank. In the distance the trees of an orchard
topped a hill, and close at hand a few cows grazed, l
ooking at me unconcernedly.
I was sitting in my father’s own meadow on the Upper
Branch, a mile from my own sunken garden, and all that
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179
had been Atta lay upon my palm. For in my hand I held
the quiet body of a small dead ant.
Of my return to human size, all I can say is that when
I rose I found that I still had a badly twisted ankle. (It
lamed me for three months.) I found my lance and armor
beside a tiny hole in the stones—mute evidence that my
friend Atta and I had indeed been together in that last
hour of his life.
As for Trotta, I searched for her body, but I never
found it. The rushing stream must have carried it away.
Nor could I ever locate our walnut house. Fusa itself I
tried to identify many times. But there are a thousand
anthills in the Upper Branch, and I was never able to be
certain that any one of them was the one I sought. Indeed, who cared but me? And who cares now?
Nuru, Draca, Oban—all have been dead these forty
years. Only Atta himself, the incomparable Atta, still
rests beside me quietly in his glass-stoppered bottle. For
me no human being has ever taken his place.
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