Hestia

Chapter 6

"Just about clear, Mr. Merritt."

Merritt looked from the chasm to the young workman-farmer—George Andrews, from one of the smaller farms—and drew back a little from the edge.

"All right," he said, handing Andrews the checklist. "George, when everyone is clear, when you've personally cleared every name on this list with a live body, give me the signal."

"Yes, sir."

Andrews was off at a run, for they were behind schedule in the day—and took his post at the suspension bridge, shouting and cursing the men crossing it to greater speed, to clear the vast cliff that was going to lose a goodly portion of its face. It was the biggest blast they had yet touched off, waiting in that opposing face, and it would yield them rock enough to make a real foundation in the riverbed. It was the beginning.

"Hey, there," said Amos Selby's voice, when Amos was not supposed to be there. Merritt turned and saw the river-man and his son, held out his hand with a grin.

"Did you come to watch the big blast?"

"If you're going to mess up my river," said Amos, "I'm going to have a look at what you're doing. —Are we just about in time?"

"You're supposed to be late, as it happens; but they cross that bridge as if they had all day."

"Huh. Us Hestians ain't made to love heights, flying or otherwise. You wouldn't get me out on that bridge, no, sir."

"Hasn't broken yet," said Merritt.

Amos eyed the fragile rope structure with an expression of distaste. "What surprises me is the People haven't got past you yet to cut it"

"That's what those little sheds are at either end: guard posts. We've heard things skulking about here these last two weeks, but they haven't had the nerve to try anything. —How do things stand downriver? Did you bring us some more men?"

"About thirty-nine this last trip—more going to walk up. Makes a proper city you got growing back there at the station now."

"And a road between here and there. Don't forget that; besides us changing the course of your river for you."

"Couldn't fail to notice. The place is looking more civilized than New Hope already. Can't imagine what it's going to look like with a small ocean where Upriver used to be."

"We'll be doing more building on the dam than on the fortifications from here on out. You watch that cliff in a few moments. —Hey, Ed, get the Selbys some headgear. —And you two wear it, hear? No telling when something's coming down on you around this place. We're about ready to blast."

"I want to see this," said Jim. "Is it safe to stand out here?"

"Ought to be, ought to be. First time I've ever managed something like this, I'm obliged to tell you. Motherworld ways are different"

He saw Andrews' signal, and the bridge was clear. He waved back and then left the Selbys to attend to business.

It had needed a great deal of planning and argument with the haste-minded Porters to determine where to set that charge, and at last it all came down to the touch of a switch on this side of the river. Part of the cliff face bellied out and fragmented while the belated sound reached them, and the ruin settled slowly down again, waiting to be moved by wagons. Great trees—an entire earth bank from higher up—turned loose and became part of the slide, vanishing into the dust before the echoes died up and down the canyon.

When everything was at rest again, Jim Selby gave a long quiet whistle, and Merritt, who had not realized he had been holding his breath overlong, let it go and relaxed. The men knew it was right, and cheered; the experience of smaller blasts let them know what this should have done—and it had: their long work had paid off.

Merritt stepped to the safe planking and let go of the suspension cables, Jim and Amos behind him. The Miller cousins came with them, to take up stations in the farside guardpost, abandoned during the blast—three of the best shots in the high river, the Millers, and armed with the best guns: the farside guard station was the most dangerous, the most exposed, where a severed bridge cable could isolate them for a night or longer. No matter that the post had never been seriously threatened: standing three days at the farside station equalled guard service for a whole week otherside, and entitled the guards to the other four days in the main house back at the station, in real beds, in warmth. Even that bribery did not produce many volunteers.

They stopped at the doorway to the guardpost, on the shallow porch. "Sure changed the landscape, didn't it?" Dan Miller observed, leaning on his rifle and gazing out hillward. Merritt nodded. There was nothing left but yellow powder and great boulders and splintered trees, where a tall cliff had stood.

"I'm going to have a closer look," Merritt said. "I won't be long and I won't go out of sight. You can watch from here—no need us all taking chances."

"Yes, sir," said Dan Miller; but Jim made a gesture to his father, who shrugged and leaned against the shed, and Jim evidently meant to come.

"Stay to my tracks," Merritt advised him, but he was not sorry to have the company. There was a loneliness about farside that prickled the back of the neck, even by noonday, even with the noise of the blast still echoing in the senses. There was a silence here, that all men's efforts had not yet shattered.

Pebbles rattled and rolled down underfoot. The sound of the river reached them distantly. Merritt gave his attention to the path that rimmed the slide area downslope, Jim's shadow close behind his on the sun-baked earth: it was a day like the season, with an icy wind and yet with sun-heat enough to warm a man overmuch on the climb.

A steep climb up hardened-mud steps put them on the security of the upper bank, where no earth had been loosened; and from that vantage it was possible to see all the scope of the canyon and the man-scarred otherside.

"Man," Jim breathed. "I've seen folk try to dam the river before, but they never went at it on this scale. You sure got things going when you decide to move."

"Question is," said Merritt, "whether even that's fast enough. Porter's been yelling about the time we've spent building roads and guard posts; but at least we haven't lost a man yet. Well, Harkness, but—"

"That wasn't on the job."

"No. But I don't intend any more accidents."

Jim looked about him, and grimaced into the sun that was in their faces from the height, back to the east and the Upriver. "You know," he said, "I never thought of it, but I guess the station is the first holding on Hestia that's covered two sides of the river at once. This has never been ours: but it is now."

"So far undisputed—but I'm afraid that won't last."

They walked the ridge westerly, where a gap in rocks and trees afforded a single glimpse of the promontory of Burns' Station, a lonely outpost against all the wilderness about them; and then they walked back again, to look over the damage to the east slope, as close to that slide as they dared come.

"Looks stable enough," Merritt said, thinking of the workmen and wagons that must pull at the edge of it, and reckoning in this too, he would have Porter at his back.

Something rattled away downslope, a rock out of place; and it would have sounded like some belated settling, but that it was followed by a frantic scrabbling. He centered on the source of it, walked higher with Jim trailing after him.

Suddenly a brown form moved among the rocks, scrambled to climb and slid back with a shifting of powder, scuttled sideways and hit worse, plummeted down in an awesome slide, dislodging dust and abrading rock.

"We got one," Jim said at his shoulder. "The blast— must have caught it."

Merritt started running along the ridge in that direction, picked out a way with his eye as he stopped. Jim caught his arm, objecting silently; he shook off the warning and started down, concentrating on his steps. A rattle of stone behind him advised him Jim was with him.

"Stay put," Merritt said. "If I slip I'll need help."

Jim stopped then; Merritt kept walking, slowly, settling rocks into place with his feet, not looking at his goal, but at the ground he had to walk, until he was almost on it.

The golden body lay with feet downhill, of one tone with the earth and the rocks, but silver down covered it: unconscious, unmoving… ribs and belly gave with breathing.

And female. Merritt approached it carefully, not least for the hazard of the slide… a woman-sized, fragile shape, long-limbed. The downy skin was torn and bloodied; the hair that thickened and closely capped the elongate skull was likewise touched with blood at the temple. Merritt bent and gingerly touched the long-fingered hand that was so nearly and so much not—human, saw the feet, long-toed, of that sort that had left prints the night the boat was set adrift. The face was humanlike: long eyes, closed, with silver lashes and faint silver brows; a short, flat nose; a thin, wide mouth—prognathic features, jaw farther forward then human, but delicate; the body was thin and wiry, the breasts hardly more than a child's, but the face gave the impression of a little more age.

Merritt considered a moment, with pebbles sifting downslope from under his braced feet and knee. He was anxious to move her, for it was no place to linger; but she was no human woman, and there was likely impressive strength in those slender limbs, like an animal's. He hesitated to take that awesomely alien thing into his arms, next his throat, but he detected no sign of consciousness, and finally with great tenderness of her injuries, he lifted her to him and rose. She was surprisingly heavy, limp muscle, like a relaxed cat. He walked the slide slowly, sweating with exertion and with caution, and finally had Jim's hand gripping his sleeve, drawing him up to solid ground. He let her down then on the ridge, at Jim's feet.

"I'd never seen one," Jim said in awe, dropping to his knees, and a flush came to his young face. "Sam, she's just about human, isn't she?"

"Just about." Merritt hesitated, then felt up and down the fragile limbs and body for broken bones. There were none that he could tell, and under the touch of his hands the being stirred, lips parted—teeth not quite human either. The canines were well-developed. Merrill drew back his hand quickly, chilled to the depth of him.

Brown eyes, almost all pupil, came open and widened, and with a spirting snarl the being came up and tried to bolt. Merrill seized her, and it was like taking rash hold of a frenzied animal: she twisted and fought so that it seemed she must dislocate something, and when he grappled for a better hold she fastened her sharp little teeth into his hand and held like death itself.

"Get her!" he shouted at Jim, for the bite was like to crush bone and he could not break it; and there were several frantic moments on the ridge while he and Jim together worked to subdue the being. She fought them so long as she had a hand or a foot free, and it needed both of them using both weight and strength to restrain that twisting body short of striking her senseless.

Merrill took his belt and secured her hands, and Jim's about her ankles reduced her to stoical submission. She only lay panting for breath and staring off into the hills, while Merrill and Jim stood back and inspected their own wounds. They were all smeared equally with her blood and theirs, and for comment Jim only looked at Merritt and shook his head in wonder.

"There can't be much wrong with her, at least," Merritt said, pressing out the purpling wound in his hand. It was deep and exceedingly painful. "I'm glad she went for the hand first, and not my throat."

"I guess she's scared out of her mind," said Jim, and bent down and reached out for her shoulder. She snapped at him like a dog, but when he persisted and stroked her head as if she were an injured animal, she endured that harmless attention, though without pleasure. She began to shiver.

"What are we going to do with her?" Jim asked.

"I don't know," Merrill confessed. He knelt on the other side of her and she jerked about to look at him. Her strange eyes had gone brown now instead of black with hysteria. No white showed at all, just the iris, brown flecked with amber. They were not human eyes, but they were beautiful.

"Listen," he said to the creature, and held out his hand just outside the reach of a bite. "Listen, we're not going to hurt you, we don't want to hurt you, all right? You stay still. That's right."

He touched her shoulder as Jim had, and turned her over and picked her up, holding her tightly so she could not get at his throat. She could have made carrying her impossible; she did not. She tensed only while he rose, and then gave a little against him, still not quite relaxed, but not resisting either. He kept a tight grip on her arm, not letting her face toward him where he could help it.

"Are we taking her back to the house?" Jim asked incredulously. "Sam, they'll just kill her."

"No, they won't," he said.

It was impossible even to cross the bridge without attracting a crowd at the other end; by the time they had come as far as the courtyard of the main house, the news had preceded them, and there was a gathering of every man off duty and of all the household too.

Merritt found it impossible to force a way with all of them pressing in to see, every man of them at once curious and loathing their long-time enemies, the night-terror brought into plain daylight, restrained and helpless.

He had to set the creature down finally, amid the courtyard halfway to the house… let her rest her weight on her bound feet and balance against him. All the faces crowded in on her were too much. She turned her face against his chest and rested there, trembling.

Frank Burns arrived, the crowd breaking to let him through, and he stared in disbelief at what gift he had brought them; Hannah came out too, drying her hands on her apron as she came.

"I didn't believe it," said Burns finally. "How did you catch her?"

"She got into the blast area," said Merritt, "and I need a place right now to put her."

"Not in my house," said Hannah Burns, who was the soul of hospitality to everyone; and when Merritt gave her a look of disappointment she gave a quick sigh and a distressed shake of her head. "Sam Merritt, you expect me to take that in? Look what she's done to you. Look at you."

"We have the chance now to find out what these beings are and how they think. I need a place to put her where she can't get loose, maybe one of the storehouses—"

"There's a supply room upstairs," said Burns. "Next the closet. You know it."

"Thanks," said Merritt, and picked up his burden again, swung her sideways to take her through the curious bystanders, carried her up the steps and into the main house.

She screamed, fought, brought into that shadow. She gave a great heave that almost flung her out of his arms, and he would have dropped her, but that Jim quickly seized her feet. She continued to struggle until they had to throw her face down on one of the tables and hold her, but at last she seemed to realize it was hopeless. She lay quietly, breathing with the rapidity of hysteria, and Merritt relaxed his grip carefully, still keeping his hand on the small of her back lest she throw herself off the table and hurt herself. She did not move.

When he looked up, he saw Meg watching him from the foot of the stairs; and without conscious decision he drew his hand from the creature's warm skin. Meg crossed the room to look at the prisoner, stopped a few paces away and studied it, moving round to have view of its face, her own expression apprehensive: apprehension became alarm as the creature gave a sudden heave and almost came off the table. But for Jim's intervention, it would have fallen, and it would not rest satisfied until it had worked into a position in Jim's hands from which it could watch the both of them.

"It's female," Meg said with a frown of surprise, and stared at it uncomfortably where it half-lay against Jim. "I saw it from the window; I couldn't believe you'd bring it into the house. What do you intend with it, Sam?"

"To learn." He took the strap about the creature's ankles, worked it free: it had cut cruelly. The creature sat very still, only drawing her feet up when he had freed them.

"Meg," he said, "is there some water hot? I'd like to clean her up. There's dirt in those scrapes."

Meg sniffed, and nodded.

The creature did not like being bathed, not in the least; and shivered and trembled all through the process of washing her injuries, shaking water all over Hannah Burns' downstairs floor, and all the dining tables. She resisted the more when Meg tried to wrap her in a sheet, indignant and frightened at once. Merritt saw the reaction and took it off her.

"Don't try," he advised Meg. "She doesn't understand what you're doing."

Meg stared at him and at the prisoner, clearly distressed for the creature's nakedness; and there had been a somewhat similar look among the men about the yard, a guilty look for their thoughts: Merritt recognized it finally. Hestians were not accustomed to such freedoms: in their cold climate, that was only natural. But this golden creature was provided by nature with a considerable body heat and a coating of down that was more apparent to the touch than to sight, save in sunlight. Quite probably it would find the room heat stifling, and the sheet more so.

"I wonder," said Jim, "what she must be thinking. She can't understand much of buildings and people."

"She's probably thinking," said Meg, "that she'd like to kill us all and she's going to be delighted to get the chance. I don't think she's afraid of punishment any more than a wild animal is. She just wants a chance at us."

Merritt ignored the warning, nodded to Jim. One on a side, they drew the creature up the stairs, holding tightly when she balked, letting her walk. He opened the storeroom and found it empty, a mere closet with a slit for a window: not even the creature's slim body could pass that.

And when it knew that they were going to force it into that dismal hole, it let out a moaning whimper and shrank back, pressed its face as far as it could against Merritt and shivered.

"Poor thing," said Jim, "she's not going to like this, not at all, but what else can we do with her?"

"Get her hands loose; I'll hold her. She may take the room apart, but we can't leave her tied up in there."

She stood still for that, so far as it went, but predictably she tried to bolt. Merritt had a strong grip on her this time, and her strength, near exhausted, was quickly spent. She quit fighting and stared at them, dark-eyed with hate or fright, or both. A tear traced its way down her cheek.

Once inside, she gave a sudden wrench and freed herself by surprise, drawing back into the niche formed by the empty shelves and the corner. Merritt stood back, not threatening her or offering to restrict her movement, and after a moment she relaxed and peered toward the window. Then her eyes darted back to him as if she expected a surprise attack.

"It's all right," he said gently.

She shivered, backed all the way to the corner and sank down in a little knot. The long-fingered hands covered her eyes, her shoulders giving once or twice as if to sobs, but there was no sound.

"You should have shot it," said Porter, in the conference that had gathered unbidden in the main hall. Merritt glared at him.

"I have leave to do what I want and ask what I want so long as it contributes to the work here," Merritt said, "and in my opinion, what we could learn from one of her kind is of value."

"And what she'll draw here is trouble," said Porter, to which no few of the others muttered agreement.

"The trouble is already here," said Merritt. "Better to understand it. She'll bother none of you where she is. Let be."

"I say we get rid of her now," said one of the Porter cousins. "Send her back like we got the dog back."

"I said no," said Merritt, "and that's the end of it."

"You don't understand," said Porter. "You don't know them. We do."

"No argument. Porter. So long as I'm doing my job and hurting none of you, I won't be argued with. I don't think I'm unreasonable."

There was an outcry at that, and Frank Bums put his considerable bulk at Merrill's side.

"Look here," Burns said, "I don't like sheltering one of them, but I don't think Sam Merrill's that much wrong. After a hundred years here, we still don't know what these creatures are; and if it's his craziness, it's not hurting any of us here so far. He's done a good job up to now and worked himself double-shifts often as not, and I don't see any reason to come to blows over this. We got too far to go to find us another engineer; and there's nothing wrong with the one we got. So you let him be while you're on my land; and think it over: you owe him better than this."

"You're right you do," said Amos Selby, from another side of the room. "I don't like the People none either, but Sam's asked blessed little of us til now. You're right he's an outsider and he don't understand much how we feel in some things, but he's not prone to try to push us into things. I figure he's due the same patience, even when he's wrong, like some of us have been when he's been right. What harm's that one little creature doing us locked away up there?"

"And what if she gets loose and kills one of us in our sleep?"

"I'll see she doesn't," said Merritt. "I'll take the responsibility for keeping her secure; no one else has to worry for that."

"We can manage," said Burns; and still complaining, but more softly, the men filtered out of the room, Porter with them. Merritt gave Amos Selby and the Burnses a grateful and inclusive look.

"It's all right for now," said Burns, "but I hope you know what's going to happen if something does go wrong, or if she gets loose and hurts somebody."

"It's certain," said Meg from her mother's side, "you can't keep her shut up in that little closet—just for practical reasons, which I'm sure you can think of, Sam. You'd do a lot better just to turn her out."

Merritt frowned, unhappy that Meg did not stand with him. "No. Maybe we can't manage without some rearranging of things up there, but—"

"We're not set up to play jailers," said Burns. "We haven't the facilities at all. You see what kind of problem this is."

"It's certain she'll slip any restraint," said Meg.

"Iron… she can't get free of," Merritt said. "I don't like to do that, but if it's that or shoot her—"

"She'll tear herself to pieces against a chain," said Amos. "It'd be kinder to shoot her, Sam."

The argument was over. The creature's staccato screams suddenly hushed as Merritt snapped the leather-cushioned iron about her ankle and finished the permanent closing. Jim was holding her, arms tight about her from behind, but she was no longer fighting. When Jim let her go she sat down in the floor and jerked and clawed at the metal ring, then seized the chain in her hands and tried to pull it out of Merrill's grip, rising as she did so. The great brown eyes were brown only around the rims now, the nostrils of her flat nose flared wide; and there was a sudden shift in her look, from panic to the wildness before attack. Merritt saw it coming, jerked hard on the chain and spilled her to the floor.

It needed both of them holding her even so to carry her down the hall and into her new quarters, a dilapidated guest-room with a wider window; and her shrieks of rage filled the house and must be audible all the way out in the yard. Only when she realized that she was in a wider, lighter room she calmed a little, and they let her go.

She walked about the floor and up to the window, while Merritt secured the other end of the chain permanently with bolts—took up on it so that she could not quite reach the window to touch it. And every time she stopped and the chain would drag she gave a little shake of her foot, and at last sat down disconsolately and pulled at it.

"I'm sorry," said Merritt gently, and pocketed his tools, stood up. From the plate on the table he offered her an apple: it was said the People liked that human import and stole fruit from orchards.

He came too close, bending down again. The long-fingered hand slapped at his so fast it stung and the apple rolled from his fingers to the floor. But then she only stared at him, hurt, warning him with her eyes to come no farther.

"All right," he said gently. "All right."

He rose again and backed away to the door where Jim stood. She stared at them, darkeyed—furtively her hand reached for the apple and long fingers curved about it as she gathered it back to her stomach.

"Ithn," she said plaintively; it was voiced, not a whine or a snarl. "Qu'ü oi."

"Is that talking?" Jim wondered, and Merritt came forward again and knelt down in front of her, offered his hand, though at a safe distance.

"Come here," he said. "Come here."

"K' irr," the high-pitched voice echoed. Merritt turned his hand palm up, offered it more plainly. She edged back, then leaned forward nervously and set the apple on the floor within his reach—retreated again with arms clasped round herself.

"I don't want it back," he said, and rolled it toward her. She took it and polished the dust off it, kept it in both her hands, bewilderment in her large eyes.

"Hey," said Jim, also bending down to put himself on her level. "Hey there—you do understand a little, don't you?"

"Eh," she said, short and sharp. "Eh."

"You," Merritt said, and she echoed that sound too, but with a slightly different tone,

"I think she's trying to say things back," said Jim, "but I don't think she can make it."

Merritt tapped his chest several times, the age-old gesture. "Sam," he said.

"Ssam," she answered; and then if there had been any doubt of her understanding, touched herself. "Sazhje."

"Sazhje," he echoed, pointing at her. "Sazhje?"

She tapped herself affirmatively. "Sazhje." And then she spread her hands and reached out, jerked at the chain, spread her hands again. That did not need translation. Merritt shook his head sadly, but that was a human gesture and she did not appear to understand. She jerked at the chain more violently, uttering short piercing cries, and fought it with a concentration that made Merritt doubt her intelligence anew. He saw she was hurting herself and instinctively reached out his hand to stop her.

She bit him hard, not letting go; and in desperation he cuffed her on the side of the head so that she turned loose. In the look she returned him there was not a bit of civilization or penitence. His hand was bleeding anew, new bites beside the old. He wiped it on his leg and stood up, backing away; and Sazhje, still watching him with feral satisfaction, put the apple to her lips and bit.