Chapter 11

There was a wind up, in addition to the rain, a southerly wind that breathed of spring and set the rope bridge swaying. Merritt staggered on the planking and kept both hands on the ropes. Far under his feet the river was louder than usual, the enlarged flume thundering an increased flood down beyond the dam, while to the upriver the earthwork diversion dike had backed up increasingly deeper water, still water to all appearance, until it slipped violently down that chute and boiled among the rocks before it started its seaward course again.

Work was still proceeding on the far side of the dam. The crest of the dam, at last reared to respectable height and recognizable form, was aswarm with miniature dark figures: the rammed-earth and timber platform on which most of the work was done was nearly level with the dam surface. Patient oxcarts labored back and forth from the blast site to the platform where they discharged their cargoes, rock dumped and spread in endless repetition: blasting in the upper ridges, to oxcart, to the dam, like the action of ants worrying at a carcass, until the cliffs disappeared bit by bit and the dam grew.

There were no stops in the work now, not even by night. Armed crews by lanternlight, in all weather, plied the roads between the blasting area from which they took the stone, and carried the loads that daylight crews would move to more precise location. Half the human population of Hestia was encamped at Burns' Station now, in shacks, in tents, within the walls and in a wooden stockade where the sheep meadow had been: in potential population, Burns' Station was far larger than New Hope itself, if all three shifts had ever been in camp at once.

There was a trail that led past the guard station as one left the bridge. Merritt took it, moving quickly with the wind at his back, his clothing long-since drenched. His hair streamed blinding water into his eyes, his boots were over the ankle in most of the puddles, and for the rest, he was well-spattered with the omnipresent yellow clay. The rains had been a frequent thing these last weeks: not yet the full deluge that spring would throw down on them, for the icemelt of the high mountains had not yet joined it; but there was an endless seeping moisture driven on the winds, dripping from ropes and hair and making the clay and rocks of the upper slopes treacherously slick.

Andrews was standing where the road from the blast site and that from the dam met the trail from the bridge. Merritt came up behind him and stood beside him as they waited for one of the lumbering, perilously loaded oxcarts to make its way past and enter the tortuous downward road to the plateau by the dam. Joints groaned, wooden wheels scraped and bumped over the rock, and the patient animals made the first turn. A hand-sized rock came loose and bounced and rattled down the road ahead of the wagon.

"We got one stuck up there an hour ago," said Andrews, who was plastered with mud more than the average on such a day. "Finally got it free, but it snapped an axle."

Merritt looked down the perilous incline the oxcart was following. It made another turn, brakes squealing, swaying the load against the wooden slats. Inexorably the whole overloaded wagon began to slew round to the curve, oxen straining in vain to hold it.

At the very last moment it stopped, with one wheel dropped over, the shaken driver screaming at the oxen and trying to make them move.

Merritt had begun to run without realizing it, Andrews hard behind him, and every other man who had seen the accident came converging on the spot. The imprudent driver, one of the Harpers, was flailing hysterically at the animals and trying to force them to move the wagon. The beasts rolled their great eyes and heaved against the weight, but it was beyond their strength to do more than maintain the pull. The effort only eroded the rain-slick clay the more and sent a miniature mudslide cascading downslope.

"Get off!" someone advised the driver. But as he tried it, the shift of weight caused the wagon to rock back alarmingly. Men cried out and braced the reachable wheels, ignoring the danger of a crumbling edge and a dizzying drop below, helped the frightened oxen bring it back into balance again.

Merritt looked at the whole thing helplessly, ignorant of the limits of the animals; but that the oxen would tire or that the rain-soft bank would give was inevitable. To unload the cart, it would be necessary to climb atop it. It would never bear the weight.

"If we pull it from the front" he suggested. "If we could get another pair of oxen… Has somebody got a line?”

Andrews evidently thought the plan possible. He turned off upslope at a dead run while Merritt sent another man after line and cable.

"Take it easy," he called up to Harper then. "We're going to rig a way to get you off. Don't jump unless you have to. Harris, you go down to the next turn and warn the men to clear out below. If this load gets dumped…"

There was no need to finish that sentence. Poor Harper sat his place very still, while men tried as best they could to help the oxen hold, to calm them and to keep them steady.

The man came back with the rope, running; but when he came close to the already nervous team, he slowed to a careful walk.

"Here," said the man. "George has them loosing a team up there. It's going to take just another minute to get them down here."

Merritt nodded, paid out sufficient line and tossed an end to Harper. "Make a safety line of that; tie it hard, so if it goes, well still have you with us. Just make sure you don't get tangled with it. Go off this side if you have to jump. And you tell me: do you want to jump now and lose the team and wagon, or do you want to try to get it?”

Harper considered it, the meanwhile tying the line about himself. "I'll sit it out so far as I can," he said.

They moved in carefully with the cable, steadied the oxen while they tied the heavier rope to the wagon tree and tried to relieve the pull on the animals somewhat by their own pulling. There was some discussion of cutting harness and rescuing Harper and the animals and letting the wagon go, but the tension on the harness was too much. If the animals came free unequally, the results could be disaster for anyone involved.

With a rattling of harness and the calls of another driver, Andrews returned with his reinforcements. Harper's team shied off alarmingly, causing a new mudslide, and steadied again under the hands of the men with them.

It needed time to move the additional oxen in and to attach the harness, but then with that awesome second weight of muscle heaving in unison with the first, the imperilled wagon began slowly to move, the dropped wheel rising to find purchase against the crumbling bank.

Something snapped, a great crack of wood; and with a rumbling slide the load spilled and the main part of the wagon tilted back, while the broken tree at first let the oxen stumble forward. The wagon was over the edge, the hysterical animals being dragged backward, Harper completely out of sight though the rope in the hands of his safety men was still taut. There on the edge the wreckage hung, downed animals struggling to rise, the wagon now empty dangling in space by part of the harness and the broken understructure.

The driver who owned the second team was first to react, trying to cut both teams free; and Merritt was on the line with Andrews and the Miller boys trying to pull Harper up.

The oxen went partially free and started to their feet, lurching forward in bovine panic, and the earthen bank that had been weakened, gave. The driver and the man nearest went over, past Harper's helpless stare. The men vanished into the mud and rock downslope while above, the freed animals lunged away from restraint and shied off, wandering loose down the winding road at their own volition.

"Take the road down," Merritt shouted at Andrews, who was behind him on Harper's safety line, "Find those men!"

Andrews was off, providing direction for the others that were after their own fashion decided on the same. Merrill and the Millers brought Harper up over the edge safely enough, though he had not come through the ruin unscathed: his right arm hung useless, his face gone ashen.

"Take care of him," Merritt told the Millers, and stumbled to his feet. He headed down the winding road toward the base of the slide, passing the confused oxen, who were still ambling along at their own pace.

There were three litters that they took back across the swaying bridge and through the forest road to the station: one alive… Harper, with his broken arm; and two dead… the driver Wylie, and a Burns cousin, Ron Ormstead, corpses coated in yellow mire and decently wrapped in workmen's coats.

The pale-shaded mud colored the would-be rescuers too, tired men with eyes bloodshot and alive in faces that looked no different from those of the corpses. It set them apart from those that lined the approach to the main house, who stood quietly, rumor running softly through the crowd about them, who it was and what had happened.

When the silence was broken, it was by the kinsmen who came pushing their way forward to take the litters from fatigue-numbed bearers, to go with them into the bath-shed: it was where they always went from work to wash the mud off themselves, when working clothes had to be stripped off and the mud washed out of them in yellow streams of liquid clay. Now there was nowhere else to clean the dead for decent burial, or to take the filth of those who had recovered the bodies.

It was a grisly job, but on Hestia there were no professionals, no medics to take charge. Male relatives and those who had been present at the accident washed the dead, wrapped them in clean sheets for burial, cleaned up Harper and set and splinted the broken arm, all without benefit of anesthetic: the only surgeon on Hestia was apprentice-taught and resident downriver.

And afterward was the matter of bathing and changing clothes, all in the same wooden building.

Some of the boys retrieved clean clothing for them from the house and their quarters, wherever they happened to be; and by the time they had bathed and changed it was almost four hours since the time of the accident, and the sun was inclining toward the horizon.

Merrill limped out with the rest of them, holding his sodden boots in one hand, walking the trail of split logs to the front door of the house.

He did not notice Tom Porter standing on the porch until he was almost on him, or he would have avoided the confrontation; he would have backed away from it if his mind could have reached for some means to do so, but he plodded on, not looking at the man, trying not to look at him.

"Merritt. What happened out there?"

"Let be," Merritt said quietly. Porter moved into his path. He stopped.

"What happened?"

"There was an accident," Merritt said with a great effort at self-control. 'There was a slide."

"I know that. But who was in charge over there?"

"Andrews and I." Merritt drew a deep breath and let it go, making up his mind to talk. "The cart was overloaded for conditions as they were. It couldn't take the first stage down. We'd have saved Harper anyway; it was trying to cut the animals free too that lost the lives. We've got four live oxen, two men dead. We're going to have to cut some timber and shore up that road: there was a considerable undercut."

"If we lose another wagon, we'll be making that trip with handbarrows."

"I know it."

"Who's working out there? It looked like the whole shift came back."

"It did. We're changing early."

"The men here in camp haven't been on off-shift. They've been cutting timber. You've got no call to take that on yourself."

"Take a look at the men who came back with me. We've excavated half a hillside recovering Wylie and Ormstead, and no stops for rest. They'll go back a little early each watch; but you send the others out."

Porter shook his head. "No, Mr. Merritt, you go explain it to them. That can be your job; you bargained for it. I'm tired of your handing the dirty work to me."

Merritt glared at him, understanding all too well how Porter wanted the less popular orders all to come from Sam Merritt; and Porter knew that he knew, which made the moment all the more pleasurable to the man, brought the glint of self-satisfaction to Porter's little eyes. Merritt wanted to hit him; but he was civilized and ship-trained, and did not react to first impulses. He was tired, and could not think of anything to do or say. He only stood there as Porter came off the step and rudely brushed against him: the big man nearly put him off the walk into the mud.

Merritt drove all the force of his arm behind the blow, an instant ahead of the clear realization that he was going to regret doing it. The sight of Tom Porter skidding off into the mud to land on his side like a beached fish was not an amusing one, although it ought to have been. There was no amusement either in the eyes of the men, only discomfort to have witnessed this between the men who directed them, and at such a time. As for Porter, he picked himself up—covered with yellow mud on one side—and stood there with damaged dignity staring at Merritt, making the next move his.

There was nothing to say to the men, nothing to Porter, except that there was work that wanted doing. Merritt found the unpleasant announcement his after all. It was all that would send the witnesses on their way.

But against those adamant faces it was impossible to do anything or to say anything. If he gave an order sending a shift back to work likely they would not move, and it would be Porter who would send them on their way. With feelings high and dead awaiting burial, it was not the moment to force anyone. Better the site stay idle til the third shift's legitimate turn at least, rather than bring things to open mutiny, with Porter the offended party.

Merritt turned abruptly and took the steps to the porch, intending to quit the field as gracefully as he could under the circumstances. But there was Meg in the doorway, so that she must move or he could not pass. He paused half a step and gave her a miserable look, then came ahead and tried to edge past.

Her hand found his arm and she went inside with him, when he had expected her to make a scene and enjoy it; and that so unsettled his reckonings that he made no objection when she guided him over to the fireside, although he had intended to go upstairs and not come down til morning. He sat down on the chair by the fire, set his boots to dry while he warmed his bare feet on the hearthstones and held his hands toward the fire.

"Want a cup of tea?" she asked him, which was the due of any man coming off work at the site. He nodded.

"If it comes without questions."

"All right." She went to the worktable beside the fireplace, measured out the tea, poured hot water from the kettle that was always ready on its hook. She made it the way he had learned to like it, lacing it with a little of the herbal stimulant that was one of Hestia's homespun vices, a genteel wickedness.

"Thanks," he said, taking it from her hands. He drew the first sip of it, inhaling the scented warmth. She pulled a stool over by the hearth and sat down, silent.

"There wasn't anything I could do," he said finally. "Maybe if I'd stopped the man when I saw the wagon overloaded, if I'd insisted on shoring up that road earlier—"

"You can't see to everything at once."

"I saw that on its way to happen. The next moment it was too late."

"Sam," she said, and then shook her head as if she had changed her mind about what she was going to say. "Sam, you drink your tea and go upstairs and rest. I'll bring supper up to you."

"Sure," he said, and stared into the fire, unmoving. "Let me be, Meg. That's all I want at the moment."

"No one blames you."

"Don't they." He looked around at her after he had spoken the sarcasm and decided she had not, after all, been accusing him. "Haven't you been burned often enough where I'm concerned, without coming to offer me condolences now? I think they're misplaced. Ron Ormstead was your cousin."

"You always blame yourself worst over things you can't help, and never admit you're at fault for the things you really do wrong."

"Meg, let's not open that old quarrel."

"No, I didn't intend that. I didn't intend that at all."

"Enough's been said that we didn't mean, at one time or another." He drank half the cup and then the rest "I'm sorry, Meg. I know you mean well. It's appreciated."

She took the cup he handed her, and her eyes shimmered with tears, her hair red-dyed with firelight. There was a fragile tenor to the moment, such that he stopped with his hand not quite back to himself, and drew back more slowly.

"The trouble is," she said, "that we always meant what we said. You told me a long time back that I was only backriver Hestian, and awfully naive. You were right, of course. You could have talked me into anything then, if you'd only been able to lie a little."

"I didn't mean it against you, Meg."

"I know. I'd have made us miserable, wouldn't I, because I'd have expected you to behave in a way you just can't."

"I don't look for ways to cause trouble. They just come."

"Because you walked into a kind of war—us and this river and all that goes with it. And you don't get concerned when we do and you get concerned when we don't. Maybe you even figure you can afford to lose; after all, your Earth goes on somewhere even if you get killed out here. But ours doesn't. It dies here, all in this one valley, for good and forever, Sam. And that doesn't seem to frighten you. You keep talking about the future, and we just want to live through this one year. Maybe someday we'll have the heart to worry over the things that worry you, if we live. But sometimes we get the impression you won't be entirely sorry if that dam doesn't get built."

"Not true." It hit him like a blow, like Porter out front, and the anger swelled up in him. "Not true, no, it's not true."

"And what about Sazhje?"

He looked at her. It was a name she had not mentioned in a very long time. "I know that dam's got to be built this year. I'm doing it. And I also know that every load of rock we put down is one more step toward wiping out another species, one that was in this valley before humans ever set foot on Hestia. Don't you think of it? Doesn't it matter to you at all? It ought to."

"It ought to; and it doesn't. That's the sore spot isn't it?"

"I can't understand that attitude in you. I can't understand it."

"We want to live. And there's no way her kind and ours can both survive. It's our lives, my friends' lives that matter."

"I can't accept that there are only those alternatives."

"Don't you?" Her eyes looked pained. "At times, Sam, I have this awful feeling that Hestians and Sazhje's kind are just about equal in your eyes, because neither of us is really yours. You're a good man; you mean well. But I wish I knew to which side first."

"I'm working—I've worked, day to dark, after. Or is that nothing?"

"Everyone appreciates that. But how much is it worth, Sam, when everyone knows you'd be off to the Upriver and Sazhje if you weren't watched? And you are watched, you know. You can't have missed that."

"No, I haven't missed it. Porter's boys are easy to spot, especially when they walk me home and back."

Meg's lips tightened. "Sam, I saw—I saw what you did to Porter out there. My dad's not here any more. Things are different. Don't you know you can't win against them? You have to have the Porters' help if you're ever going to reach that starship when it comes."

"I know the score, Meg. You're telling me no news."

"Do I have to spell it out? There are some of Porter's men who'd kill you as soon as not. They're that way. And when the dam's finished and there's no more need of you, you've got to take that ship off Hestia. You've got to. You've left yourself no choice."

Merritt gave a tight smile. "That's dam's past the stage that I mean anything essential to the effort. They have my notes. They won't let me touch them myself without someone of theirs to guard me. The foremen know their business by now. But Porter won't see me killed. It could be a long time before Hestians think they've exhausted all the projects Sam Merritt could design for them. And as you say, there's no law out here, nothing that says I have a right to leave this world. Adam Jones will carry the news of what happened to me back to Earth, some years from now. And seven years after that, Earth might send a strong protest about your methods, but there'll be no force behind it. Porter knows that. He'll keep dangling the lure of passage offworld in front of me so long as I seem to believe the lie. If I let him know I see through the farce, he'll think of other means."

"Tom Porter doesn't speak for all of us. But you have a way of pulling the props out from under anyone who tries to help you."

"Like you?"

"Like me, more than once."

"I'm sorry for anything I've done that's ever hurt you; but I can't say I'm sorry for anything else."

She stared at him thinking her own thoughts for a moment, at last gave a brief sigh. "And I understand that."

"The worst of what they say of me is true. Do you understand that?"

A tiny hurt came to her eyes. "Well," she said, "I'd hoped for a little better, but I suppose I really expected it."

"You tell me this: would you take the next ship out if I could make it, now that you really know me?"

Meg smiled sadly. 'Truth is, I still might. There's not a person knows me that would understand, but maybe Jim. I'm ashamed to admit it's still true."

"I wouldn't let you do it, anyway. Look at me, on Hestia. That's an example of what it is to be where you don't belong. Besides—there'll be no ships for me. None at all." He pulled on his boots and rose, paused to look back at her. "Meg," he said in leaving, "thanks for trying."

"Where are you going?"

"Out," he said, and amended: "Down to Celestine. I guess Jim and Amos will be there."

"Sam—"

"Don't worry about me. Your dam will get finished, one way or the other."

"That's not all that matters to me." He considered that a moment, nodded, then turned and left.

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