“What is in progress here?”
“Are you able to negotiate or carry messages on your side?”
There was long delay.
“Lieutenant,” she pursued, “when authorized negotiators are willing to approach us we are fully prepared to talk with you. In the meantime kindly put the Dentons off. If you are willing to talk reasonably you’ll find us amiable; if on the other hand… harm comes to any merchanter, reprisals will be made for it. And that is a promise.”
There was the requisite silence. “This is Sam Denton,” another voice said finally. “I’m instructed to tell you that this ship is going to put about and that there is a destruct aboard. Got the whole family on here, Quen. That’s truth too.”
Of a sudden there was breakup. She flashed a look at vid and telemetry, saw the flare registered, suddenly grow, become a wash there was no mistaking even on vid. Her stomach tightened and the baby moved… she put her hand on the spot and stared at the screens in a moment of nausea, while static kept coming in.
A hand descended on her shoulder, Neihart’s.
“Who fired?” she asked.
“This is Pixy II,” a voice came back, rough and thick. “I did. They were nosing zenith toward the gap; engines flared. They’d have carried out too much.”
“We cope, Pixy.”
“Going in,” another ship sent. “Going to search the area.”
There was at least the possibility of a capsule… that Union might have allowed the Denton children to shelter there, for safety. There was not much chance that a capsule could have survived that.
Like Estelle, at Mariner. Like that. They were not going to find anything.
Other blips were showing up, ghostly presences in the sunless dark of the point, defined only as blips on scan, or by the sometime flick of runnings lights or a shadow on vid, occulting stars. They were friendly — hundreds of ships moving into the search area. “We’re in it now,” Neihart murmured; “Union won’t rest.” But they all knew that, from the time the word had gone out, from the time merchanters had begun to pass to merchanters the word where to come and the name that summoned them… a dead ship, and a dead name — from a disaster they all knew. Inevitable that Union get wind of it; by now Union was surely noticing the curious absence of ships from their stations, merchanters who did not come in on schedule. They were panicking perhaps, perceiving disappearances in zones where it could not be military action, with Mazian tied up at Pell. Union had appropriated ships — they had proven that — and before this ship came, it might have given its course to others. The next step was a warship sent in here… if Union could spare one from Pell.
And the word had not sped only to Union space. It had gone to Sol — for Winifred had recalled her Earthly ties, dumped her cargo, ridding herself of mass to jump as far as possible… had undertaken that long and uncertain journey to what welcome they did not know. Tell them about Mariner. Elene had asked of them. And Russell’s and Viking and Pell. Make them understand. They did it dutifully, because they had once been Earth’s. But it was gesture only. There was no answer coming.
They did not find a capsule, only debris and wreckage.
iii
The hisa had been coming and going from the beginning, quiet migration in and out of the gathering at the foot of the images, hushed and sober movement, by ones and twos and reverently, in respect to the dreamers who gathered there by the thousands. By day and by night they had come, carrying food and water, doing small and necessary things.
There were domes for humans now, diggings made by Downer labor, and compressors thumped away with the pulse of life, rude, patched domes unlovely… but they gave shelter to the old and to the children, and to all the rest of them as brief summer yielded to fall, as skies clouded and the days full of sun and the nights of stars grew fewer.
Ships overflew them, shuttles on their runs going and coming; they were accustomed to this, and it no longer frightened them.
You must not gather even the woods, Miliko had explained to the Old Ones through interpreters. Their eyes see warm things, even through trees. Deep earth can hide hisa, oh, very deep. But they see even when Sun doesn’t shine.
Downer eyes had gotten very round at that. They had talked among themselves. Lukases, they had muttered. But they had seemed to understand.
She had talked day upon day to the Old Ones, talked until she was hoarse and she exhausted her interpreters, tried to make them understand what they faced, and when she would tire, alien hands would pat her arms and her face and round hisa eyes look at her with profound tenderness, all, sometimes, that they could do.
And humans… by night she came to them. There was Ito, and Ernst and others, who grew moodier and moodier — Ito because all the other officers had gone with Emilio; and Ernst, a small man, who had not been chosen; and one of the strongest men of all the camps, Ned Cox, who had not volunteered in the first place… and began to be ashamed. There was a kind of contagion that spread among them, shame perhaps, when they heard news from main base, that told of nothing but misery. About a hundred sat outside the domes, choosing the cold weather and the reliance on breathers as if by rejecting comfort they proved something to each other and to themselves. They had grown silent, and their eyes were, as the Downers said, bright and cold. Day and night… in this sanctuary, in the place of hisa images… they sat in front of the domes in which others lived, in which others were all too eager to take their turns — they could not all get in at once. They stayed because they must; any desertion would be noted from the sky. They had elected sanctuary, and there was nothing left to do but to sit and think of the others. Thinking. Measuring themselves.
Dreaming, the hisa called it. It was what hisa came to do.
Use sense, Miliko had told them in the first days, when they were most restless, talking wildly about action. We’re to wait.
Wait on what? Cox had asked, and that began to haunt her own dreams.
This night, hisa were coming down the slope who had been sent for… days before. This night she sat with the others and watched them come, hands in her lap, watched small, distant bodies moving in the starless dark of the plain, sat with a curious tautness in her gut, and a tightness in her throat. Hisa… to fill up the number of humans, so that those who scanned the camp would find it undiminished. She carried the gun in a waterproof pocket; dressed warmly; still shivered in the uncertainty of things. Care for the hisa: that was what she was left to do; but go, the hisa themselves had told her. You heart hurt. You eyes cold like they.
Go or lose the people she commanded. She could no longer hold them otherwise.
Are you afraid to be left? she had asked the humans who would remain, the quiet, retiring ones, the old, the children, those men and women unlike those who sat outside — families and people with loved ones and those who were, perhaps, saner. She felt guilt for them. She was supposed to protect them and she could not; could not really even lead that band outside — she simply ran ahead of their madness. Many of these who would remain were Q, refugees, who had seen too much of horror, and were too tired, and had never asked to be down here at all. She imagined they must be afraid. The hisa elders could be perversely strange, and while Pell folk were used to hisa, they were still alien to these people. No, one old woman had said. For the first time since Mariner I’m not afraid. We’re safe here. Not from the guns, maybe, but from being afraid. And other heads had nodded, and eyes stared at her with the patience of the hisa images.