Kandid listened and didn't listen, the usual monotonous drone penetrated his brain, he strode on and pondered dully and at length, about why he could never think about anything, perhaps because of the endless inoculations that went on in the village when they took time off from chattering, or perhaps from something else... Perhaps it was the whole dozy, not even primitive, just vegetable way of life he had led since the long-forgotten days when the helicopter had flown into an invisible barrier at full speed, heeled over, snapped its rotors, and crashed like a stone into the swamps... Probably I was thrown out of the cabin then, he thought. Thrown out of the cabin, he thought for the thousandth time. Hit my head on something, so I never recovered ... and if I hadn't been thrown out, I'd have drowned in the swamp along with the aircraft, so it's a good thing I got thrown out... It suddenly struck him that all this was actual ratiocination and he rejoiced; it had seemed that he'd lost his ability to think clearly long ago, could only affirm one thing: day after tomorrow, day after tomorrow...
He glanced at Nava. The girl was hanging on his left arm and talking recklessly as she looked up at him:
"They all got into a huddle, and it got terrible hot, you know how hot they are, and there was no moon at all that night. Then mam started pushing me away quietly, and I crawled on all fours between all their legs, and mam never got to see me anymore..."
"Nava," said Kandid. "You're telling me that story again. You've told it to me two hundred times."
"Well, what if I have?" asked Nava, astonished. "You're a queer one. Dummy. What else can I tell you about? There's nothing else I can remember or know about. I'm not going to tell you how we dug a cellar together last week, you saw all that yourself, didn't you? Now if I'd dug the cellar with somebody else, with Hopalong, now, or Loudmouth..." She suddenly livened up. "You know. Dummy, that's interesting now. Tell me how we dug the cellar, nobody's told me about that yet, 'cos nobody saw..."
Kandid's attention was drawn away again, the yellow-green undergrowth floated by on either side, slowly waving, some creature snuffled and sighed in the water, a swarm of soft white bugs, the sort they made intoxicating liquors from, sailed by with a thin whine, the road under their feet was now soft where there was tall grass, now rough from gravel and crushed stone. Yellow, gray, green, blotches - nothing for the eye to latch onto, nothing to lodge in the memory. Now the path turned sharply to the left; Kandid walked on another few paces and halted, trembling. Nava abruptly fell silent.
By the road, with its head in the swamp, lay a large deadling. Its arms and legs were flung out and unpleasantly distorted, it was perfectly still. It was lying on crushed grass, now yellow from the heat, pale, broad, and even from a distance it was obvious that it had been terribly beaten. It was like jelly. Kandid cautiously circled it. He became alarmed. The fight had taken place fairly recently: the crushed, yellowing grass-blades were straightening up as he watched. Kandid carefully surveyed the road. There were plenty of tracks, but he could make nothing of them, while the road made another bend some little way ahead, and what lay beyond that he could not guess. Nava was still looking back at the deadling.
"Our people didn't do it," said she very quietly. "Our people don't know how. Buster always threatens but he can't do this either, just waves his arms all over the place... Nobody from New Village can either... Dummy, let's go back, eh? Maybe they're freaks. They walk here, so they say, not often, but it happens. Better go back, eh? ... What're you taking me to New Village for anyway? Haven't I seen New Village before?"
Kandid lost his temper. What the devil was all this? He'd walked this road a hundred times without meeting anybody, something worth recalling and pondering. And now, when they were leaving tomorrow - not even the day after, but tomorrow, of course it had to happen! - this one and only safe road becomes dangerous... You could only reach the City through New Village. If there was any reaching the City at all, if the City even existed, then the road to it led through New Village. He went back to the deadling. He pictured to himself Hopalong, Buster, and Barnacle, chattering ceaselessly, boasting, and threatening, as they stamped around this deadling, and then still continuing the boasts and threats, turning back from sin and going back to the village. He bent down and took the deadling by the legs. They were still hot but not enough to burn. With a flurry, he shoved the bulky body into the swamp. The quag champed, groaned, and gave way. The deadling disappeared, a ripple ran across the dark water and died.
"Nava," said Kandid, "go to the village." "How should I go to the village if you aren't going there?" said Nava calculatingly, "now if you were to go to the village too..."
