With a gesture almost negligent, certainly without anger, the big man brushed Hugh's hand aside with the crop he carried. It was not a blow, it would not have swatted a fly.
Hugh gasped in agony. His hand burned like fire and his arm was numb to the armpit. "Oh, God!"
Barbara said urgently, "Don't, Hugh. He isn't hurting me."
Nor was he. With a manner of impersonal interest such as a veterinarian might take in feeling a pregnant mare or bitch, the big man felt out the shape of the child she carried, then lifted one of her breasts-while Hugh writhed in that special humiliation of a man unable to protect his woman.
The man finished his palpation, grinned at Barbara and patted her head. Hugh tried to ignore the pain in his hand and dug into his memory for a language imperfectly learned. "Vooi govoriti'yeh po-Russki, Gospodin?"
The man glanced at him, made no answer.
Barbara said, "Sprechen Sie deutsch, mein Herr?"
That got her a smile. Hugh called out, "Duke, try him in Spanish!"
"Okay. ~Habla usted Español, Señor?" No response- Hugh sighed. "We've shot our wad."
"M'sieur?" Joe said. "Est-ce que vous parlez la langue française?"
The man turned. "Tiens?"
"Parlez-vous francais, monsieur?"
"Mais oui! Vous êtes françaises?"
"Non, non! Je suis américain. Nous sommes tous amencams."
"Vraiment? Impossible!"
"C'est vrai, monsieur. Je vous en assure." Joe pointed to the empty flagpole. "Les Etats-Unis de l'Amérique."
The conversation became hard to follow as both sides stumbled along in broken French. At last they paused and Joe said, "Hugh, he asked me-ordered me-to come into his tent and talk. I've asked him to let you all loose first. He says No. 'Hell, no!' it amounts to."
"Ask him to let the women loose."
"I'll try." Joe spoke at length with the big man. "He says the enceinte femme-that's Barbara-can sit down where she is. The 'fat one'-Grace he means-is to come with us."
"Good work, Joe. Get us a deal."
"I'll try. I don't understand him very well."
The three went into the pavilion. Barbara found that she could sit down, even stretch out. But the invisible web held Hugh as clingingly as ever.
"Dad," Duke said urgently, "this is our chance, while nobody is around who understands English."
"Duke," Hugh answered wearily, "can't you see they hold trumps? It's my guess that we are alive as long as he isn't annoyed-not one minute longer."
"Aren't you even going to try to fight? Where's that crap you used to spout about how you were a free man and planned to stay free?"
Hugh rubbed his hurt hand. "Duke, I won't argue. You start anything and you'll get us killed. That's how I size it up."
"So it was just crap," Duke said scornfully. "Well, I'm not making any promises."
"All right. Drop it."
"I'm not making promises. Just tell me this, Dad. How does it feel to be shoved around? Instead of shoving?"
"I don't like it."
"Neither did I. I've never forgotten it. I hope you get your bellyful."
Barbara said, "Duke, for heaven's sake, stop talking like a fool!"
Duke looked at her. "I'll shut up. Just one thing. Where did you get that baby in you?"
Barbara did not answer. Hugh said quietly, "Duke, if we get out of this, I promise you a beating."
"Any time, old man."
They quit talking. Barbara reached out and patted Hugh's ankle. Five men gathered around the pile of household objects, looking them over. A man came up and gave them an order; they dispersed. He looked at the chattels himself, then peered into the shelter and went inside.
Hugh heard a sound of water, saw a brown wave rushing down the stream bed. Barbara raised her head. "What's that?"
"Our dam is gone. It doesn't matter."
After a long time, Joe came out of the pavilion alone. He came up to Hugh and said, "Well, here's the scoop, as nearly as I got it. Not too near, maybe; he speaks a patois and neither of us is fluent. But here it is. We're trespassers, this is private land. He figured we were escaped prisoners-the word is something else, not French, but that's the idea. I've convinced him-I think I have-that we are innocent people here through no fault of our own.
"Anyhow, he's not sore, even though we are technically criminals-trespass, and planting things where farms aren't supposed to be and building a dam and a house and things like that. I think everything is going to be all right-as long as we do as we're told. He finds us interesting-how we got here and so forth."
Joe looked at Barbara. "You remember your theory about parallel universes?"
"I guess I was right. No?"
"No. This part is as confused as can be. But one thing is certain. Barbara, Hugh-Duke-get this! This is our own world, right here."
Duke said, "Joe, that's preposterous."
"You argue with him. He knows what I mean by the United States, he knows where France is. And so forth. No question about it."
"Well..." Duke paused. "As may be. But what about this? Where's my mother? What's the idea of leaving her with that savage?"
"She's all right, she's having lunch with him. And enjoying it. Let it run easy, Duke, and we're going to be okay, I think. Soon as they finish lunch we'll be leaving."
Somewhat later Hugh helped Barbara into one of the odd flying machines, then mounted into one himself, behind the pilot. He found the seat comfortable and, in place of a safety belt, a field of that quicksand enclosed his lower body as he sat down. His pilot, a young Negro who looked remarkably like Joe, glanced back, then took off without noise or fuss and joined the re-forming rectangle in the air. Hugh saw that perhaps half the cars had passengers; they were whites, the pilots were invariably colored, ranging from as light brown as a Javanese to as sooty black as a Fiji Islander.
The car Hugh was in was halfway back in the outside starboard file. He looked around for the others and was only mildly surprised to see Grace riding behind the boss, in the front rank, center position. Joe was behind them, rather buried in cats.
Off to his right, two cars had not joined up. One hovered over the pile of household goods, gathered them up in a nonexistent cargo net, moved away. The second car was over the shelter.
The massive block lifted straight up without disturbing the shack on its roof. The small car and its giant burden took position fifty feet off the starboard side. The formation moved forward and gathered speed but Hugh felt no wind of motion. The car flanking them seemed to have no trouble keeping up. Hugh could not see the other loaded car but assumed that it was on the port side.
The last he saw of their home was a scar where the shelter had rested, a larger scar where Barbara's farm had been, and a meandering track that used to mark an irrigation ditch.
He rubbed his sore hand, reflecting that the whole thing had been a gross abuse of coincidence. It offended him the way thirteen spades in a putatively honest deal would offend him. He pondered a remark Joe had made before they loaded: "We were incredibly lucky to have encountered a scholar. French is a dead language-'une langue perdue,' he called it."
Hugh craned his neck, caught Barbara's eye. She smiled.
Chapter 11
Memtok, Chief Palace Domestic to the Lord Protector of the Noonday Region, was busy and happy-happy because he was busy, although he was not aware that he was happy and was given to complaining about how hard he had to work, because, as he put it, although he commanded eighteen hundred servants there were not three who could be trusted to empty a slop jar without supervision.
He had just completed a pleasant interview chewing out the head chef; he had suggested that the chef himself, old and tough as he was, nevertheless would make a better roast than the meat the chef had sent in to Their Charity the evening before. One of the duties that Memtok assumed personally was always to sample what his lord ate, despite risk of poison and despite the fact that Their Charity's tastes in cuisine were not his own. It was one of the innumerable ways in which Memtok gave attention to details, diligence that had brought him, still in his prime, to his present supreme eminence.