Hestia

Chapter 15

"They don't close in. Why don't they close in? "

"Quiet," Merritt ordered hoarsely. He braced his weight and Jim's against the trunk of a tree, listening to the wind soughing through the branches about them. It was quiet again. It always was when they stopped to listen.

Merritt put a hand to his side and pressed, feeling dizzy. How much of what soaked his clothes was rain and how much was blood he did not want to know; but it was hard to walk any more, Jim's half-supported weight an almost intolerable burden. Jim did the best he could. His pale head jerked up as Merritt tightened his grip and he moved obedient to Merrill's direction.

The small scurrying sound was with them again. Merritt knew he might catch it by surprise if he should stop suddenly now, but it was a game he did not want to win. Their pursuers were amused, perhaps. At least for now the road was free, the station at last close at hand, up that last rise. Perhaps that was what they were waiting for; perhaps the People's sense of humor would let their quarry reach the very edge of safety; or perhaps the People were content to have destroyed the dam and were done for the night. It was no use to surmise their intentions. All that could help was to keep moving until they used their advantage for what they wanted.

The gleam of lights showed through the thinning trees now: ahead of them was the main house wall, the end of their road. Merritt heaved Jim's faltering weight a degree upward.

"Jim. Do you see? Do you see the lights? We've made it."

Jim made a sound that seemed to say he understood, and redoubled his efforts. Merritt took a better grip about him and awkwardly, by half-steps and whole, they left the wood and came along the wall, into the circle of the lights, up to the very gates of the yard.

"Who's there?" a sentry hailed them; and by those words roused men from inside, a great stirring about and shouting from inside the gates.

"Merritt and Jim Selby," Merritt shouted up. "Open up, will you? Jim's hurt. He needs help."

The gates swung inward and Merritt started forward, but armed men barred the way, rifles leveled. Merritt stared at them, knees shaking with his own weight and Jim's, and hesitated to let Jim to the ground. He thought that they might fire once Selby was clear; he was ashamed to do it, but he kept Jim upright against him.

More men were gathering, from the stockade camp outside the walls as well as from the house and the barracks. Totally surrounded, Merritt at last offered to move forward, and gave Jim into the care of two of the men from the camp. There was not a word spoken, not a sound from anyone but Jim, who moaned a protest.

And as Merritt drew back from them he chanced to look at others who had come from the main house: Hannah Burns—and Meg, Meg with her arms wrapping her coat tightly about her. She returned his stare, thin-lipped and hard of face, except that tears cast back the lantern-light.

"I tried to warn you." Merritt spoke to her, out of all of them. "I tried to stop it. No one would listen—"

"Merritt." It was Porter's voice. "Who used the explosives?"

Merritt searched among the faces, found his man as Porter came out into the light not far from him.

"Where's Amos?" Porter asked him.

"Dead," said Merritt. "Dead trying to stop them. —Why wouldn't you come? Why wouldn't you listen to me? There might have been enough of us then."

"How many are loose out there?"

"Maybe several thousand."

There was a murmuring of dismay.

"And it was you," Porter said, "it was you that stirred them up, it was your tampering with the People that brought this on, and that much you can't deny, whether you knew what you were doing or not. And for my part, I think you don't care. I think you still believe you were right, after all this."

"I had no part in it, Porter. None."

"We got kin downriver I pray to heaven got to high ground. We got farms and houses and everything we own going to be wiped out thanks to you. You've finished Hestia. You've done for us once for all. But you're not going to get on any starship this year and get away from it free. No, Sam Merritt."

"I tried to help you people," Merritt cried over the rising tide of voices. He started back as men surged toward him from the front, but there was no way of escape from the circle. Porter's men had him closed in. Meg's thin voice cried a warning, and he spun half about as they seized him from behind.

A shot rang out within a hundred yards' distance, but not from the group. As the crowd broke in terror and looked in that direction, there came a shrill scream from atop the wall just over their heads.

It was Sazhje.

"

Get it

Porter shouted, and a half dozen rifles turned for that target.

Merritt shouted and heaved against those holding him as the volley was fired, broke free suddenly and hurled himself at Porter, blind with rage, blind to anything but Porter's stunned face. He hit the big man twice before Porter could do more than try to fend off the blows.

Then Porter's fist slammed to his wounded side and sent the breath out of him. He staggered badly and hurled himself in again, clumsily shouldering the man to the wall, stumbling in the mud.

Something struck the back of his skull, once and again, and still he continued to hit Porter until hands tore him away and spun him aside, on hands and knees in the mud. For a moment he could not see or get his breath—but then he saw that Porter was likewise down. And the crowd—the crowd was watching something behind him.

He rose and staggered in turning, swaying on his feet; and shook his head and wiped his eyes, blinking things into focus. A half-dozen of the People stood at close range, with perhaps fifty more at the forest rim; the nearest, the tallest—had a rifle incongruously clutched in his spidery hands.

Scurrying steps splashed across the rainsoaked ground behind him, stopped. Merritt looked back and saw Meg, and followed her frightened gaze to the crest of the wall above him.

Sazhje stood there for a moment upright in the view of all of them, then sprang to the ground, easily absorbing the shock of that fifteen-foot drop. She straightened and came toward him, her ears flicking nervously, her eyes fixed on Meg with wary insolence.

"Somebody get that thing," Porter's strangled voice shouted. "Get the Burns girl out of the way."

Meg looked back at Porter and hugged her arms tight to her in plain refusal to move. Someone started forward from the crowd, but stopped when no one else moved. There was a second start forward then, several men finding their nerve at once.

"You'd better count again," Merritt shouted. "That's just one tribe of the People standing out there, and there's far more than what you see. They don't look like they're going to attack unless someone touches them off."

Another of the women from the house started to move, and a man reached to stop her; but Hannah Burns indignantly jerked her way free and joined her daughter. A few of the surviving Burns men did the same.

A man moved from the other side to join them: George Andrews; and another: Harper, with his arm in a sling.

"Sam," said Andrews, "if you can reason with these creatures, do it. We got too much to lose as it is."

Merritt put his hand on Sazhje's shoulder and she turned from facing the humans and looked up at him, her eyes all pupil.

"Ssam?" she questioned.

"Sazhje—say to Sazhje's people go, go home. Sam has enough trouble."

Her spidery arm went about him briefly, and dropped. Still she looked up at him. "Ssam ahhrht?"

“Go home, Sazhje. Sam's people might kill Sazhje. Go, go home now."

Her odd little face contracted in an expression of distress. She touched his hurt, frowned up at him. Ears flicked. "Sazhje people no make kill tarn. Wa come, Ssam.

Ssam people kill. Ssam come Sazhje people, go ‘igh, ‘igh.”

He caressed her silk-smooth cheek, shook his head. "No, Sazhje. Sam can't. Sam can't come. Sam's people are here, this place, Sam's place?"

"Ssam stay?"

"Yes. Go on, go on, Sazhje. Go home while you can."

She stepped back from him and started away, looked back once as she was crossing the ground between and once as she had nearly rejoined her own. Then she stopped… in a visible agony of decision, slammed her fists against her thighs and screamed something at the one of her kind who held the rifle: Otrekh, surely Otrekh. Her voice pleaded, scolded, so impassioned an oration that there was no stir from either side.

"Sam," said Andrews from close on Merrill's left. "Can you understand any of that?"

Merrill shook his head. "I can talk to her in our language, but not in hers. She said she thought the flood would come on us soon. She doesn't think we have much of a chance."

"Why did you go to them?"

"Are you only now asking that?" Merritt returned, and did not bother to answer; it was too much effort.

Otrekh cut off Sazhje's appeal with a brusque move of the rifle he held; and she hesitated, then ran anxiously back to the very edge of the human group, stopped, leaned forward and shouted.

"Otrekh say no make kill Ssam people. Ssam people ahhrht, Ssam. Ah! Sazhje people no kill. No make tam, no tam—Sazhje people ahhrht. Ssam people go 'igh, ah, ah, Ssam! Sazhje come 'morrow. Sazhje make ahhrhl Ssam people. Ssam-Zhim-Ssam people come 'morrow, 'igh, Mgh."

"Can you undersland that?" Andrews asked him. "Is that human talk she's using now?"

Merritt nodded, looked back at the others. "She says," he shouted in his strained voice, "that it wasn't her tribe that blew up the dam, that she's talked with the head man and he's willing to let humans into the uplands if there's no dam. They know we're desperate. And this time you'd better listen."

"They'll massacre us," someone shouted.

"Then stay in the lowlands and drown! No one can help you then. This is the only chance you have."

"No," someone else cried, and Merritt saw Porter snatch a rifle from a man near him—he shouted a warning to Sazhje in the same instant that others moved, struck the rifle up. It discharged helplessly into the air and several men combined to wrench it from Porter's grasp. One of them was one of the Miller boys, who came up with the rifle.

"We've had a belly full of advice that's lost us lives and lost us the dam. We haven't got any more to lose, Sam. Is that creature telling the truth?"

"To the best I know, she is," Merritt answered, "and it's the best and only thing we've got. We'll go out in the valley, we'll gather families here at the station, behind walls; and with them safe, some of us can trust ourselves to the People's word and go into the high hills. The station rock will hold, whatever comes downriver, and we'll build again where it's suitable to them and us. We aren't done yet."

"He's right," said one of the Burns men. "It's by far the best we've got. Get cleared away behind walls, the lot of you, and we'll sort this out when we've got things settled down again, by daylight."

Men began to mill backward, slowly, mistrustfully—but some of the men with Andrews still remained.

"George," said Merritt, "go on, get the rest of them out of here. And keep an eye on Porter."

"Will you be all right out here?"

Merritt nodded, waited, holding his side, until Andrews and all the rest had gone. There was Sazhje, still standing and waiting for his answer. He held out his hand to her and she came to take it.

"It's all right Sazhje, when the water comes, men's places will go. We'll need food, understand—food, food. Many Sam's people come here, stay—understand?"

"Ah," said Sazhje. "Sazhje say Otrekn."

"Otrekh won't kill the people."

"No kill, Ssam. Otrekh say no kill." Her slim strange hands pressed on his. "Ssam come Sazhje. Come Sazhje."

He shook his head sadly. "That's not going to work at all, Sazhje. No—no, Sam can't, can't stay with Sazhje."

She seemed to have expected that answer. She glanced past at something behind him and then up into his face very sadly. Her hands slipped from his and then she moved off quickly to join Otrekh and the others. Once more she looked back.

"Ssam," she said as an afterthought. "Gairh kill tam— tarn kill Gairh, Gairh people. No Gairh." And her face broke into a satisfied smile. With a swinging, cheerful step she crossed the final distance and joined her people in their retreat.

Merritt watched them go, and then feeling the misery of his injuries once more, he turned with a careful move and started for the gate, stopped again as he saw Meg standing in his path.

She waited for him and took his arm as they entered the yard. "Come on," she said gently. "Come on, Sam."