For quite a while then there was no noise except for occasional chain clinks and footsteps from the boat and aimless humming from the man on the pier above—Rivas had plenty of time to wish for food and dry clothes, and to decide that his increasing ability to see was due to the imminence of dawn rather than a gradual improvement of his night vision. Then he heard the sudden shifting of a length of chain on the boards over his head.
«Look sharp, Brother Willie. Shepherd.»
«Right. Thanks.»
Soon Rivas heard hoofbeats . . . and then he heard them with agonizing clarity as the horse was ridden right out onto the pier. «Good morning, brother!» came a new voice, tense but trying not to show it. «Are you alone?»
«There's Brother Willie, too, on the boat, getting the baskets tied to the gunwales. Nobody else.»
«Have you seen anyone else tonight?»
«Uh . . . not since the worried lads left for the dance. They through yet?»
«Not yet. Slowing down, though. Well, here, take this thing—don't point it at me! Idiot. It's a flare pistol. If you see anybody but your regular crew, shoot it. You pull the trigger, here, let me show you—that thing. Okay?»
Rivas saw the boat dip and rise again, and guessed Brother Willie had come to the rail to look. Again a little wave surged past, and Rivas glanced worriedly at the far-gone. I hope, he thought, that Jaybush doesn't get up—and start thinking—this early.
«Shoot it at whoever?»
«No. It's aflare gun. It shoots flares. Shoot it up into the sky, okay?»
«Sure. Who is it we might see?»
«None of—well, why not. We think an impostor may have come in on one of yesterday's wagons. A guy broke out of one of the bunkhouses and apparently killed one of the constructs and kidnapped a donor. I actually saw him last night, but he had a leg band and I thought he was a trustee. So it's important to me personally that we get him back. If you're the ones who first see him . . . I won't forget, understand?»
«Sure, brother. We'll keep our eyes open.»
«Be careful. I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but it seems fairly certain that Gregorio Rivas was at the Regroup Tent a couple of days ago. They grabbed him, but he had corrupted a sister, and she freed him. She's in the sister city now, appropriately enough, undergoing remedial discipline. He hasn't been seen anywhere else since, including Ellay, so the guy here last night might be him.»
Rivas had winced and bared his teeth during the shepherd's statement, remembering Sister Windchime—her hair the color of the dry brush on the hills, her long athletic legs, her alertness and repressed compassion, and her evident doubts of the faith—and then he made himself stop remembering her.
«Uh . . . sun coming up,» put in Brother Willie. «We better be getting the Blood into the baskets and into the water, huh?»
There was a silence then that even Rivas, under the pier, could tell was awkward.
«I mean, uh, the harvest powder,» Brother Willie amended nervously.
«What did you call it a minute ago?» asked the shepherd, possibly through clenched teeth.
«I meant to say harv—»
»What? »
«Blood, brother,» admitted Brother Willie unhappily.
«Why did you call it that?»
«I don't know, I—»
»Why? »
There was a pause, and then Brother Willie said, sniffling, «I been around. I had Blood once or twice. I know it when I see it.»
«Ah.» The horse stamped and flapped its lips. «If you are the ones to spot our intruder, I'll overlook this.» The horse galloped back down the pier, and then the hoofbeats receded away into the steady whisper of the rain on the sea.
«You . . . damned . . . idiot. »
«Aw, Jesus, brother, all I—»
«Shut up! Say Jaybush if you want to swear! I've met far-gones smarter than you. Yes, get the harvest powder into the baskets and over the sides. And make sure the tarps cover every bit, hear? If sun gets in and ruins one pinch of this batch, I think you're gonna wind up manning a hose in a bleeder hut yourself.»
For a while there was just a lot of clanking and grunting from above, then a big cubical object wrapped in a tarpaulin descended jerkily into Rivas's view on the end of a rope, hit the water, and with a lot of bubbling and flapping of the tarp sank until three-quarters of its bulk was under the water. Another followed, and then another, until the side of the boat that Rivas could see was adorned from bow to stem with a full dozen bobbing black bales connected to it by taut cables. He could hear the tactless Brother Willie performing the same operation now on the far side of the boat.
Rivas wondered how the boat was rigged. Even with the strange cowling visible around the bow, it seemed to him that it should be impossible to sail with all those bundles hanging along the sides.
«You know,» Brother Willie called at one point to his older companion on the pier, «I hope old Rivas does come by here. I'll shoot that flare gun right at his head.»
«Ahh,» the older man said, and spat, «there's somebody raising hell here, I suppose—but it ain't Gregorio Rivas.»
«How do you know?»
«Man, there ain't no such person as Gregorio Rivas. That's just a booger man. 'Rivas is here, Rivas was seen there, look out for Rivas.' It's just to keep us all hopping.»
Another basket of Blood splashed down in the rain. «Nah,» said Brother Willie decisively. «Nah, man, a guy I knew seen Rivas! In Ellay.»
Rivas could tell the other man had shrugged. «I knew a guy once that swore he talked to Elvis Presley. Had one o' them old liquor bottles, was like a statue of Elvis Presley. Said his ghost lived in it. I listened over an hour, didn't hear nothin'.»
Suddenly Rivas had an idea. He hoisted his sleeping cargo down off the nail and then, holding the boy's face up clear of the water, paddled silently out from under the pier and around the wide stern—evidently it was some kind of barge—to the far side. The rain, as heavy as ever, masked any involuntary splashing he might have done, and no doubt made Willie and his companion less likely to stand around peering.
Looking around from behind the sternmost portside basket, Rivas saw for a moment against the paling sky a silhouette that must have been Willie, leaning out over the rail high above Rivas's head to lower a basket up by the bow. The men were still desultorily talking, but from down at water level under the curve of the stern Rivas couldn't hear what they were saying.
Very gingerly he lifted the far-gone, hooked the back of his shirt over one corner of the basket, and then spent a minute gradually letting the mooring cable take the boy's weight so that it wouldn't thrum or move or creak. He then held the basket with one hand and began unlacing the tarpaulin with the other, and when he'd loosened it and peeled it back, he saw that the basket was a metal cage full of boxes made of crude rippled glass, each about a foot long and six inches square at the ends. The basket was held shut by a simple sliding bolt which had been shot through the rings, turned down and wired in place. Rivas began untwisting the wire.
The rain was letting up as the sky brightened, and Rivas forced himself to work both more quietly and more quickly. At last, when the rain had diminished to a misty drizzle, and Rivas, glancing up, could see the highest soaring seagulls flash bright with sunlight, he was able to work the bolt back, swing the basket's gate down without dislodging the sleeping boy, and then gently, one at a time, lift out all the glass boxes and let them sink away into the sea.
On a sudden impulse he re-caught the last box, worked it open and looked speculatively at the three screw-top glass jars inside; and then he looked at his unconscious companion, whose occasional muttering and snarling had, during the rain, fortunately gone unnoticed. Would a hit of this stuff shut the boy up?