He has no need for signs now. He knows where the stars tremble cold and unseen overhead, and where they did so fifty centuries ago and will do so five thousand years hence. No matter that the Milky Way is grey with smog, or that lamplight hides the familiar shapes of Pegasus, the Herdsman, and the Swan. He knows just where to find them; knows, as well, their real and ancient names.
And he knows the land below them, knows it as a general knows terrain that's ripe for conquest. Far across the river, where the sun has disappeared, he the dominions of the unsuspecting world. Beyond the dark horizon, men and women fight and scheme and struggle. Others toil in a field like figures in a biblical tableau, chanting as they work. He can almost hear their song.
They will be his special playthings, these farmers. They will suffer first. His man Freirs- his fat, unwitting tool -will see to that. Soon, soon…
Swift as death he moves along the block in their direction, noting, as he hurries across the avenue, a paunchy, rumpled figure with a book bag and a seersucker jacket – Freirs himself, one block farther south, plodding gamely toward their common destination, unaware that he is headed anywhere but home. One avenue west of him, nearer the water, the old man turns southward too, jauntily swinging his briefcase, already eager to play his next part.
He pauses once in his journey to cock his head and listen for the voices. Before him the sky is stained red with neon, but to the west it shimmers with the whiteness of the moon. As he passes between the buildings he can see dim lights on the river, the distant shore, and, above it, the places where the stars will soon come into view. The stage is being set; soon the fools will get what they deserve. Let them sing while they can!
'Scramble thee, scratch thee,
Gillycorn Hill.
If Mouse don't catch thee,
Mole he will.'
In the moonlight the women were planting corn. They labored side by side, the seven of them, and in the gathering darkness they looked much alike. All were young, all married; all but one had borne a child. Their long hair hung down their backs loose and unadorned, but their bodies were concealed, neck to naked ankle, beneath dresses of homespun black. From a distance only the burlap sacks they carried at their sides were visible, and their pale white faces floating like will-o'-the-wisps over the empty field.
Ahead of them walked the seven men, treading stiffly in their starched white shirts, black vests, and high black leather shoes. They moved together in silence, grave of expression, faces cleanshaven but for the fringe of beard below each chin. As in a close-order military drill they carried long wooden staffs sharpened at both ends, and with every stride the men stabbed downward, making holes an inch deep and a yard apart in the freshly turned earth.
Behind them the line of women reached deep in their bags and, stooping gracefully to drop three kernels into each hole, chanted another measure of the counting rhyme.
'Hide thee, haste thee,
Gillycorn Hill…'
Standing, they pushed loose soil over the holes with a scrape of their bare feet, then moved on.
Suddenly one of them laughed aloud – unaffected, childlike laughter that carried through the evening air. 'I'm sure glad I didn't see what I just stepped on!'
The others giggled, causing a momentary break in the chant. 'Oh, Deborah,' said the one beside her, 'there's nothin' out here but a few night crawlers, and I've been steppin' on them ever since the moon came up. I've just said nothin' about it.' She took up the chant:
'If Mole don't taste thee,
Worm he will.'
At the end of the row another woman stood and wiped her brow. 'You'd best be right,' she said. 'I don't fancy the notion of tripping over a corn snake out here. 'Twouldn't do to have that kind of scare-not in my condition.' She patted her distended stomach.
'Just listen to her!' Deborah laughed again. 'Lotte Sturtevant's afraid her baby'11 be born with a split tongue!'
'Deborah!' Her husband whirled to face her, eyes blazing angrily in the moonlight. 'Have you forgotten yourself, woman? These good people came out here to kelp us.'
He stood a little taller than the other men, wide shoulders tapering to a willow-thin waist, and despite the severity of his expression he was clearly a shade younger than the rest. His voice was stern and very deep, the voice of an Old Testament lawgiver, but it softened in one last urgent whisper: 'Please!'
Just as abruptly he turned and caught up with the others; none of them had looked back. 'My apologies, Brother Joram,' he said to the older man who walked beside him. 'She meant no harm. We both give thanks you're with us tonight.'
'No need for thanks, Sarr.' The man jabbed bis pole into the earth and withdrew it with an expert twist. 'We do what the Lord gives us to do. "They helped every one his neighbor, and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage." '
'Amen,' said the others in unison, without looking up from their work, and the younger man chimed in quickly, 'Amen.' Behind them the women continued their chant, but more softly now, for they were listening. Their voices were no louder than the chirping of the crickets.
From a distance came the muffled sound of other voices where the old men had gathered at the edge of the field, their faces illuminated by a low cottonwood fire. It was their task to tend it, and from time to time a shower of sparks signaled that they'd heaped another log upon the flames. Nearby a cluster of children stood in dutiful guard over a bag of seed bigger than themselves. The fields, they knew, were filled with thieves: birds, and mice, and hungry yellow corn worms. To lose a single kernel meant bad portent for the crops.
Farther off the windows of the little farmhouse were ablaze with light, and from the kitchen, where the older womenfolk were busy with their special preparations, there came the sound of voices raised in hymn. Between the farmhouse and the field jutted the squat shape of the low cinderblock outbuilding, its windows dark. Close behind it, like an impenetrably black wall, rose the encircling woods.
Suddenly the air contained a new voice, a low and distant rumbling from the east. At first it had been barely distinguishable from the wind in the trees; now it was growing deeper, in lazy waves of sound, like the drone of some gigantic insect.
In the fields the women fell silent. The older men kept to their steady pace, eyes pointedly averted toward the ground, but a few of the younger ones surreptitiously scanned the horizon and found at last some small red winking lights that climbed among the stars. Miles above the woods and fields a shape like a great silver crucifix was streaking across the planet heading westward.
The women stirred themselves. 'We've got corn to plant,' said the pregnant one. She peered into the darkened furrows at her feet, searching for a place to drop the seed. The others again took up the counting rhyme, but Deborah stared wistfully at the moving lights. Each Friday night the jet passed overhead, a jarring reminder of the world they'd shut out. 'Wonder where it's going,' she said, almost to herself. Her words were lost amid the chanting, the smell of moist black humus, the ancient and laborious routine. There was work to do, and her husband might be watching; she turned back to the corn seeds and the earth.
Ahead of her one of the men continued to gaze awestruck at the eastern sky. 'So many stars up there,' he remarked to his companions, 'and so little light down here! You're a hard worker, Sarr, and a good God-fearing man, but I sure do wish you'd been ready when the rest of us were. Leastways we had a moon we could see by.'
Poroth peered dolefully upward, aware that the other was right. Just above the trees the half moon reminded him of something damaged or broken, but the elders had assured him that, on the contrary, it was a most favorable omen for the crops: waxing larger day by day, it presaged an abundant growth and harvest. 'It wasn't possible to get these fields plowed by the appointed time,' he said, hurrying to keep pace with the others. He remembered the weeks of backbreaking labor, struggling with a balky tractor rented from the Go-operative. 'A month ago the ground we're walking on was covered by scrub and trees. This land hadn't been worked for seven years.'