The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Seventeen

In appearance, the men and women of Rukh's command seemed to Hal to be less like guerrilla fighters and more like simple refugees. The strongest impression he received as Jason led him about the confines of the camp was one of extreme poverty. Their beehive-shaped tents were patched and old. Their clothing was likewise patched and mended. Their tools, shelters and utensils, had either the marks of long wear or the unspecific, overall appearance of having been used and used again.

The weapons alone contradicted the refugee appearance, but hardly improved it. If not impoverished fugitives, they were, by all visible signs, at best an impoverished hunting party. There were apparently several dozen of them. Once among the trees, Hal revised his first estimate of their numbers upwards, for the majority of their tents were tucked back in under the greenery in such a way as not to be visible from the edge of the valley cut, above. As Jason led him along upstream to their left, they passed many men and women doing housekeeping tasks, mending, or caring for equipment or clothing.

Those he saw were all ages from late teens to their middle years. There were no children, and no really old individuals; and everyone they passed looked up at them as they went by. Some smiled, but most merely looked; not suspiciously, but with the expressions of those who reserve judgment.

They came, after about a hundred yards, to an area that was not a true opening in the trees, but one sparsely overgrown, so that patches of sunlight struck down between the trees in it, and between trees large patches of sky were visible.

Tethered each beneath a tree, at some little distance from each other, were a number of donkeys cropping the sparse grass and other ground vegetation that the sunlight had encouraged to spring up between the trees. Jason led the way to the nearest animal, patted its head, looked at its teeth and ran his hands over its back and sides.

"In good shape," he said, stepping back. "Rukh's command won't have been too hard pressed by the Militia, lately."

He looked at Hal.

"Did you ever see donkeys before?"

"Once," said Hal. "They still have them in the Parks, on Earth, to use for camping trips."

"Did you ever have anything to do with one of them on a camping trip?" Jason asked.

Hal shook his head.

"I only saw them - and of course, I read about them when I was growing up. But I understand they're a lot like horses."

Jason laughed.

"For what good that does us," he said.

"I only meant," said Hal, "that since I've had something to do with horses, I might find what I know about them useful with these."

Jason stared at him.

"When were you on Earth long enough to learn about horses?"

Hal felt suddenly uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I ended up telling Rukh more than I'd told you - and I still can't tell you. But I forgot for a moment you didn't know. But I've ridden and handled horses."

Jason shook his head slowly, wonderingly.

"You actually did?" he said. "Not variforms - but the original, full-spectrum horses?"

"Yes," said Hal.

He had let it slip his mind that many of Earth's mammals - even the variforms genetically adapted as much as possible to their destination planet - had not flourished on most of the other worlds. The reasons were still not fully understood; but the indications were that, unlike humans, even the highest orders of animals were less adaptable to different environmental conditions, and particularly to solunar and other cycles that enforced changes on their biorhythms. The larger the animals, the less successful they seemed to be perpetuating their own breed under conditions off-Earth; just as, once, many wild animals were unlikely to breed in zoos on Earth. Horses, unlike the ass family, were almost unknown on other worlds, with the exception of the Dorsai, where for some reason they had flourished.

"Do you know anything about harnesses and loading a pack donkey - I mean a pack animal?" asked Jason.

Hal nodded.

"I used to go off in the mountains by myself," said Hal, "with just a riding horse and a packhorse

Jason took a deep breath and smiled.

"Rukh'll be glad to hear this," he said. "Take a look at these donkeys, then, and tell me what you think."

Together they examined the whole string of pack beasts. To Hal's eye they were in good, if not remarkable, shape.

"But if they were my animals, back on Earth," he said, when they were done, "I'd be feeding them up on grain, or adding a protein supplement to their diet."

"No chance for that here," said Jason, when Hal mentioned this. "These have to live like the rest of the Command - off the country, any way they can."

The light had mellowed toward late afternoon as they made their inspection; and it was just about time for the second of the two meals of the day that would be served in the camp. Jason explained this as he led Hal back toward the main clearing.

"We get up and go to bed with the daylight out here," Jason said as they went. "Breakfast is as soon as it's light enough to see what you're eating; and dinner's just before twilight - that's going to vary, of course, if we move into upper latitudes where the day's going to be sixteen hours long in summer."

"It's spring here now, isn't it?" asked Hal.

"That's right. It's still muddy in the lowlands."

The kitchen area turned out to be a somewhat larger tent under the trees on the far side of the clearing. It was filled with food supplies and some stored-power cooking units. A serving line of supports for cooking containers were set up just outside the tent. Inside, were the cook - a slim, tow-headed girl who looked barely into her middle teens - and three assistants at the other end of the age scale, a man and two women in their forties or above. The preparations for the meal were almost done, and food odors were heavy on the twilight-still air. Both Jason and Hal were put to work carrying out the large plastic cooking cans, heavily full with the various cooked foods for the meal; and setting these cans up on the supports of the serving line.

By the time this was done and they had also brought out and set up an equally large container of Harmony-style coffee, the members of the command had begun to queue for dinner, each one having brought his or her own eating tray.

They went down the line of food cans, served by the three assistants with the aid of Jason and Hal. Hal found himself with a large soup-ladle in his hand, scooping up and delivering what seemed to be a sort of stiff gray-brown porridge, of about the consistency of turkey stuffing. To his right Jason was ladling up what was either a gravy or some kind of sauce that went over what Hal had just served.

When the last of those who had gathered had gone through the line the assistants took their turn, followed by Jason and Hal with trays they had been given from the supply tent. Last of all to help herself was the cook, whose name apparently was Tallah. She took only a dab of the foods she had just made, and carried it back into her supply tent to eat.

Jason and Hal turned aside from the serving line with loaded trays, looking for a comfortable spot of earth to sit on. Most of the other eaters had carried their trays back to their tents or wherever they had come from.

"Howard, come here, please. I'd like to talk to you."

The clear voice of Rukh made him turn. She and Child-of-God were seated with their trays, some twenty yards off at the edge of the clearing. Rukh was seated on the large end of a fallen log and Child-of-God was perched on the stump of it, from which age and weather had separated the upper part. Hal went over to them, and sat down crosslegged on the ground, facing them with his tray on his knees.

"Jason showed you around, did he?" Rukh asked. "Go ahead and eat. We can all talk and eat at the same time."

Hal dug into his own ladleful of the porridge-like food he had been serving. It did taste a little like stuffing - stuffing with nuts in it. He noticed that Child-of-God's tray held only a single item, a liquid stew of mainly green vegetables; and it occurred to him that only in one of the cans at the serving line had he seen anything resembling meat - and that had been only as an occasional grace note of an ingredient.

"Yes," he answered Rukh, "we walked through the camp and had a look at the donkeys. Jason seems to think the fact that I've had something to do with horses on Earth would help me be useful with them."

Rukh's eyebrows went up.

"It will," she said. She looked, as Jason had predicted, pleased, and put her fork down. "As I promised you, I haven't said anything to anyone, including James, of what you told me. Still, James - as second-in-command - needs to know much of what I need to know about your usefulness to us. So I asked him to listen while I ask you some specific questions."

Hal nodded, eating and listening. The food tasted neither as dull nor as strange as he had been afraid it would when he was helping to serve it; and his ever-ready appetite was driving him.

"I notice you aren't carrying anything in the way of a weapon," Rukh said. "Even bearing in mind what you told me, I have to ask if you've got some objection to using weapons?"

"No objection, in principle," Hal said. "But I've got to be honest with you. I've handled a lot of weapons and practiced with them. But I've never faced the possibility of using one. I don't know what'll happen if I do."

"No one knows," said Child-of-God. Hal looked at the other man and found his eyes watching. It was not a stare that those hard blue eyes bent upon him - it was too open to be a stare. Strangely, Child-of-God looked at him with an unwavering, unyielding openness that was first cousin to the nakedness of gaze found in a very young child. "When thou hast faced another under conditions of battle, thou and all else will know. Until then, such things are secrets of God."

"What are the weapons you've practiced with?" asked Rukh.

"Cone rifle, needle rifle, slug-throwers of all kinds, all varieties of power rifles and sidearms, staffs and sticks, knives, axe, sling, spear, bow and crossbow, chain and - " Hal broke off, suddenly self-conscious at the length of the list. "As I said, though, it was just practice. In fact, I used to think it was just one kind of playing, when I was young."

Child-of-God turned his head slowly to look at Rukh. Rukh looked back at him.

"I have reason to believe Howard in this," she said to Child-of-God.

Child-of-God looked back at Hal, then his eyes jumped off to focus on Tallah, who had suddenly appeared at his elbow.

"Give me your tray," Tallah said, holding out her hand, "and I'll fill it for you."

"Thou wilt not," said Child-of-God. "I know thee, and thy attempts to lead me into sin."

"All I was going to do was refill it," said Tallah, "with that mess you try to live on. I don't care if you get a vitamin deficiency and die. Why should I care? We can get another second-in-command anywhere."

"Thou dost not cozen me. I know thy tricks, adding that which I should not eat to my food. I've caught thee in that trick before, Tallah."

"Well, you just die, then!" said Tallah. She was, Hal saw, very angry indeed. "Go ahead and die!"

"Hush," said Rukh to her.

"Why don't you order him to eat?" Tallah turned on her. "He'd eat some decent food if you ordered him."

"Would you, James?" Rukh asked the older man.

"I would not," said Child-of-God.

"He would if you really ordered him."

"Hush, I said," said Rukh. "If it becomes really necessary, James, I may have to order you to eat foods you consider sinful. But for now, at least, you can eat a decent amount of what you will eat. If I refill your tray will you trust me not to put anything in it you Wouldn't take yourself?"

"I trust thee, of course," said Child-of-God, harshly. "How could it be otherwise?"

"Good," said Rukh.

She stood up, took the tray from his hand and was halfway to the serving line before he started to his feet and went after her.

"But I need no waiting on - " he called after her. He caught up; and they went to the food container holding his vegetable stew together.

"These old Prophets!" said Tallah, furiously, turning to Hal. She glared at him for a moment, then broke suddenly into a grin. "You don't understand?"

"I ought to," Hal said. "I have the feeling I ought to know what this is all about, but I don't."

"There aren't many like him left, that's why," said Tallan. "Where did you grow up?"

"Not on Harmony," said Hal.

"That explains it. Association's hardly a comparable world of the Lord. James - now don't you go calling him James to his face!"

"I shouldn't?"

"None of us, except Rukh, call him James to his face. Anyway, he's one of those who still hang on to the old dietary rules most of the sects had when we were so poor everyone ate grass and weeds to stay alive - and when anything not optimum for survival was supposed to be flying directly in the face of the Lord's will. There's no human reason now for him to try to live on that antique diet - as if God wouldn't forgive him one step out of the way, after the way he's fought for the faith all his life, let alone he calls himself one of the Elect."

Hal remembered that the self-designated Elect in any of the sects on Harmony or Association were supposed to be certain of Heaven no matter what they did, simply because they had been specially chosen by God.

" - And we can't, we just can't, get the vegetables he'll eat all the time, on the move as we are. There's no way to give him a full and balanced diet from what we have. Rukh'll just have to end by ordering him to eat."

"Why hasn't she done it before?" Hal tasted his own portion of the vegetable stew that had been the only thing on Child-of-God's tray. It was strange, peppery and odd-flavored, not hard to eat but hardly satisfying.

"Because he'd still blame himself for breaking his dietary laws even if it wasn't his fault he broke them - here they come, and at least she got his tray decently filled."

Tallah went off. Rukh and Child-of-God came and sat down again.

"We've got two tasks," Rukh said to Hal. "In the coming months we'll be trying to do them while dodging the Militia and covering a couple of thousand kilometers of territory. If we get caught by the Militia, I'll expect you to fight; and if we don't, I'll expect you to work like everyone else in the Command; which means as hard as you can from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into your bedsack at night. In return for this, we'll try to feed you and keep you alive and free. This Command, like all those hunted by the slaves of the Others, doesn't have any holidays, or any time off. It spends all its time trying to survive. Do you understand what you're getting into?"

"I think so," said Hal. "In any case, if I was trying to survive out here by myself, it'd be a lot worse for me than what you describe."

"That's true enough." Rukh nodded. "Then, there's two things more. One is, I'll expect you to give instant and unquestioning obedience to any command I give you, or James gives you. Are you capable of that, and agreeable to it?"

"That was one of the first things I learned, growing up," Hal said. "How to obey when necessary."

"All right. One more point. Jason's been with a Command before, and he's also of the faith. You'll notice in the next few weeks that he'll be fitted right in with the rest of us, according to his capacities. You, on the other hand, are a stranger. You don't know our ways. Because of that, you'll find that everyone else in camp outranks you; and one result of that is going to be that almost everyone is going to end up giving you orders at one time or another. Do you think you can obey those orders as quickly and willingly as you can the ones from James and myself?"

"Yes," said Hal.

"You're going to have to, if you plan to stay with us," Rukh said, "and you may find it's not as easy as you think. There'll be times when something like your training with weapons is concerned, when you may be positive you know a good deal more than the person who's telling you what to do. In spite of how you feel then, you're still going to have to obey - or leave. Because without that kind of obedience our Command can't survive."

"I can do that," said Hal.

"Good. I promise you, in the long run you'll get credit for every real ability you can show us. But we can't take the time or the risk of accepting you as anything but the last in line, and keeping you that way, until we know better."

Rukh went back to her eating.

"Is that all?" asked Hal. His own tray was empty and he had visions of not being able to get back to the serving line in time to refill it.

"That's all," said Rukh. "After you've finished eating, help the cook people to clean up, then look up Jason. He'll have found a tent and equipment for the two of you. Once you're set up in that respect, if it's already dark, you'd probably better turn in, although you're welcome to join whoever's around the campfire. Think before you stay up too late, though. You've got a long day tomorrow, and every day."

"Right. Thanks," said Hal.

He scrambled to his feet and went back to the serving line. There he filled and emptied another trayful of food, then hesitated over taking a third until Tallan saw his uncertainty and told him it was all right to eat as much as he wanted.

"… For now, anyway," she said. "When the Command's short on rations, you'll know it, everyone'll know it. Right now we're fine. We're in rich country and it's good to see people eat."

"Rich country?" Hal asked.

She laughed.

"This is a district where there're plenty of the faithful, and they've got food and other things they can afford to share with us."

"I see."

"And when you're done, you'd better get busy with these serving cans. Take them down to the stream and wash them. Then you can go."

Hal ate, cleaned the cans and went. It was unmistakably twilight now. He cast about under the trees for Jason, hoping to find him without having to ask. Finally, he was reduced to querying a nearly-bald, but still young-looking, man, who was seated cross-legged in front of one of the tents, putting new cleats on the bottoms of a pair of boots.

The man spat staples out of his mouth, caught them in the palm of his left hand, shifted his hammer to join them, and reached up with his right hand to clasp Hal's.

"Joralmon Troy," he said. "You're Howard Immanuelson?"

"Yes," said Hal, shaking hands.

"Jason Rowe's set a tent up for the two of you back by the beasts. He's either there now, or still feeding and caring for them. You're not of the faith?"

"I'm afraid not," said Hal.

"But you're not a scorner of God?"

"From as far back as I can remember I was taught never to scorn anything."

"Then that's all right," said Joralmon. "Since God is all things, one who scorns nothing, scorns not Him."

He put boots, hammer and staples aside, just inside the front entrance of his tent.

"Time for evening prayers," he said. "Some pray separately, but there are those of us who gather, night and morning. You're always welcome if you wish to come."

He looked up at Hal, getting to his feet as he spoke. There was an openness and simple directness to his gaze that was a less intense version of what Hal had seen in Child-of-God.

"I don't know if I can, tonight," said Hal.

He went back through the twilit woods toward the area where the donkeys had been tethered. With the shadows growing long all about him the forest seemed vaster, the trees taller, reaching pillar-like up to support the dimming sky. A more chill breath of air wandered among the tree-trunks and cooled him as he went.

He found the tent off to one side of the area where the donkeys were tethered, next to a larger one that had its entrance flaps pressed together and sealed. A faint, musty odor came from the sealed tent.

"Howard!"

Jason came around the far side of the tent, smiling.

"What do you think of it?" he said.

Hal looked at the tent. Back on Earth it would have been inconceivable to house himself in such a structure without either replacing it or remaking it completely. It had been a good example of a beehive tent once, of a size to sleep four people, with their packs and possessions for a two-week trip. Now it was shrunken by virtue of the many repairs that had been made in its skin and looked as if its fabric might split from old age at any minute.

"You've done a good job," said Hal.

"It was sheer luck they had one to give us," said Jason. "I was all prepared to start building a lean-to of branches to tuck our bedsacks under - oh, by the way, they had liners for our bedsacks, too. We'll need them at this altitude."

"How high are we?" asked Hal, as he ducked his head to follow Jason into the tent. Within, under the patched fabric with its smells of food and weapon oil, Jason had the bedsacks laid out on opposite sides of the equally-patched floor, with the feet meeting underneath the highest arc-point of the tent's main support rib. Their packs and other equipment were near the heads of the sacks, but stowed prudently away from possible condensation on the tent's inner surface. Jason touched a glow-tube fastened to the main rib above the feet of the bedsacks, and a small, friendly yellow light illuminated the shadowy interior.

"A little over two thousand meters," said Jason. "We'll be going higher when we leave here."

He was obviously warm with happiness and pride over their tent; but trying not to lead Hal deliberately into praise and compliments.

"This is very good," said Hal, looking around him. "How did you do it?"

"The credit's all due the people of this Command," said Jason. "They were able to give us everything. I knew you'd be surprised."

"I am," said Hal.

"Well, now you've seen it," said Jason, "let's go sit by the main fire for a bit and meet people. We have to help the cook crew, but then we'll be getting ready to move on, tomorrow."

They extinguished the glow tube and left the tent. The campfire to which Rukh and Joralmon had also referred was in a place away from the rest of the camp, on the bank upstream beyond the far edge of the clearing. It was a large fire and it warmed an equally large dispenser of coffee, Jason explained, which served as a focal point for whoever wished to come by and mingle, after the day's work and prayers were done. When Hal and Jason arrived, there were six men and two women already sitting around drinking coffee and talking with each other; and in the next half hour that number tripled.

The two of them helped themselves to coffee and sat down by the pleasant light and heat of the fire. One by one introductions were exchanged with the others already there, and then the rest went back to the conversations they had been having when Hal and Jason arrived.

"What's in that tent just behind us, here?" Hal asked Jason.

Jason grinned.

"Makings," he said, in a lowered voice.

"Makings?" Hal waited for Jason to explain, but Jason merely continued to grin.

"I don't understand," Hal said. "What do you mean by 'makings'?"

"Makings for an experiment. A - a military weapon," said Jason, still softly. "Not refined yet."

Hal frowned, Jason's tone had been reluctant. He looked at the expression on Jason's face, which struck him as most peculiar. Then he remembered Jason's words about the lack of privacy in the latrine corner of their cell in the city Militia Headquarters.

"I can tell by the smell," he said, "it's organic matter. What kind is it, in that tent?"

"Shh," said Jason, "no need to shout it out. Bodily fluids."

"Bodily fluids? Which? Urine?"

"Shh."

Hal stared at him, but obediently lowered his voice.

"Is there some reason I shouldn't - "

"Not at all!" said Jason, still keeping his own voice down. "But no decent person goes shouting out words like that. It's the only way we can make it; but there're enough dirty jokes and songs about the process as it is."

Hal changed ground.

"What sort of weapon do you need urine for?" he asked. "All the weapons I've seen around here have been cone rifles or needle guns - except for a few power sidearms like the one Rukh carries."

Jason stared at him.

"How do you know it's a power sidearm that Rukh's carrying? She never unsnaps that holster cover unless she has to use the pistol."

Hal had to stop and think how he did know. The fact that Rukh's sidearm was a power weapon had merely been self-evident until this moment.

"By its weight," he said, after a second. "The way it drags on her weapon belt shows its weight. Among weapons, only a powered one weighs in that proportion to its size."

"Excuse me," said a voice over their heads. They looked up to see a heavy-bodied, thin-limbed man who looked to be about Child-of-God's age, standing over them in heavy jacket and bush trousers. "I'm Morelly Walden. I've been out of camp on an errand and I didn't get to meet you two, yet. Which one of you is Jason Rowe?"

"I am," said Jason as both he and Hal got to their feet and clasped hands in turn with Walden. The other man's rectangular face had few wrinkles, but the skin of it was toughened and dry.

"I knew Columbine, and he mentioned you'd been in his Command once. And you are… ?"

"Howard Immanuelson."

"Not from this world? You're from Association?"

"No, as a matter of fact I'm not from either Harmony or Association."

"Ah. Well, welcome, none the less."

Walden spoke to Jason about members of Columbine's command. Others also came from time to time and introduced themselves. Jason was kept busy talking to them, but beyond introducing themselves they did not offer to talk at any length with Hal.

He sat listening and watching the fire. The instinct in animals and small children, Walter the InTeacher had told him - the instinct, in fact, of people of any age - was to first circle any stranger and sniff him out, get used to his intrusion into their cosmos; and then, only when they were ready, to make the first move to communicate themselves. When the other members of Rukh's command began to feel comfortable with his presence, Hal assumed, they would find occasion to talk to him.

Meanwhile, he was content. This morning he had been an isolated stranger, adrift in a strange world. Now, he had a place on it. There was a close feeling around the campfire, the atmosphere like that of a family, that he had not felt since his tutors' death, except for that one day in the mine after he had made torcher. A family together at the end of the day. While some of the conversations he heard were purely social, others were discussions of shared responsibilities, or shared problems being discussed by people who had been physically separated by the day's events until now. As more members of the command drifted in around the fire, more wood was added to it. The flames reached up; and their light enlarged the apparent interior area of the globe of night that enclosed them all. The firelight made a room in the darkness. They were private in the midst of the outdoors, housed by immaterial walls of warmth and familiarity and mutual concerns.

Altogether, the situation and the moment once more woke that same urge to poetry in him that had first come back to life with his first sight of Rukh. But it was not the urge to make poetic images that touched him now. It was the memory of poetry in his past.

It is long, the night of our waiting,

But we have a call to stay . . .

They were the first two lines of a poem he had written when he had been ten years old and drunk with the image of the great picture Walter the InTeacher had painted for him; a picture of the centuries-long search of the Exotics for an evolved form of humankind, a better race, grown beyond its present weaknesses and faults. Like most of the poems of extreme youth, what power it possessed had been all in the first couple of lines, and from there it had gone downhill into triteness. Since then, he had learned not to go so fast to the setting down of the first words that came to mind. It took restraint and experience to do deliberately what amateur poets tended to do only unconsciously - carry the poem around in the back of the mind until it was complete and ready to be born.

He lost himself now in just that process - not forcing his mind into any mold, but under the influence of the surrounding darkness and the firelight letting the powerful creative forces of the unconscious drift uncontrolled, forming images and memories, good and bad, recent and distant.

Making mental pictures in the city of the white-red embers glowing beneath the burning logs, he watched armies march and builders build; while Sost and Walter, Malachi and Tonina, mixed and mingled in his thoughts and the ghost of Obadiah stood around the fire, talking with the living bodies with whom Hal shared its warmth.

Now that he stood back and looked at himself, something in him had healed with the three years on Coby; but much else was still either unhealed or unfinished. Somewhere, there was waiting a purpose to his life; but he had let that fact be forgotten, until he had driven into the clearing this afternoon and seen Rukh, Child-of-God, and now these others. There must be a purpose because it was unthinkable that life could be otherwise…

So he continued, sitting, dreaming and thinking, occasionally interrupting himself to reply to an introduction or some brief word from other members of the command, until he was roused by a touch on his arm. He turned and saw Jason.

"Howard," said Jason. "I'm turning in. You can keep the fire going here as long as you want, even by yourself, but dawn comes early."

Hal nodded, suddenly aware that the gathering had shrunk to only a handful of people. Two pairs of individuals, and one group of three, were deep in private conversations. Otherwise, only he and Jason were left.

"No," he said. "Thanks, but you're right. I'll fold up too."

He got to his feet, and they went off into the dark. Away from the fire, the night at first seemed pitch-black, but gradually their eyes adjusted to show the moonlit woods. Even with this, however, the area held a different appearance at night; and they might have wandered indefinitely in search of their tent, if Jason had not produced and lit a pinhole torch. The beam of the torch picked up eye-level reflectors pinned onto trees to mark out the numbered routes throughout the camp. They followed the route that led back to the clearing; and there Jason picked out what was evidently the line of reflectors that would lead them to the tethering place of the donkeys, and their tent.

The tent itself was a welcome place to step into at last; and Hal recognized, as Jason turned out the glowtube and he pulled the hood of his own bedsack into place to keep the top of his head warm, that he was ready and overready for sleep. Exhaustion was like a warm bath relaxing all his limbs; and even while thinking this, he was asleep.

He awoke suddenly, holding somebody's throat in the darkness, so that whoever it was could not cry out or breathe. A twist of his thumbs would have broken the neck he held. But swiftly - though it seemed slowly - the odors of the tent, the smell of the camping gear and clothing, brought him back to a realization of where he was. It was Jason he was holding and strangling.

He let go. He got to his feet; and, reaching out in the darkness, found and turned on the glowtube. Yellow light showed Jason lying on the floor of the tent, breathing now, but otherwise not making a sound, staring up at him with wide-open eyes.