He came too close, bending down again. The long-fingered hand slapped at his so fast it stung and the apple rolled from his fingers to the floor. But then she only stared at him, hurt, warning him with her eyes to come no farther.
"All right," he said gently. "All right."
He rose again and backed away to the door where Jim stood. She stared at them, darkeyed—furtively her hand reached for the apple and long fingers curved about it as she gathered it back to her stomach.
"Ithn," she said plaintively; it was voiced, not a whine or a snarl. "Qu'ü oi."
"Is that talking?" Jim wondered, and Merritt came forward again and knelt down in front of her, offered his hand, though at a safe distance.
"Come here," he said. "Come here."
"K' irr," the high-pitched voice echoed. Merritt turned his hand palm up, offered it more plainly. She edged back, then leaned forward nervously and set the apple on the floor within his reach—retreated again with arms clasped round herself.
"I don't want it back," he said, and rolled it toward her. She took it and polished the dust off it, kept it in both her hands, bewilderment in her large eyes.
"Hey," said Jim, also bending down to put himself on her level. "Hey there—you do understand a little, don't you?"
"Eh," she said, short and sharp. "Eh."
"You," Merritt said, and she echoed that sound too, but with a slightly different tone,
"I think she's trying to say things back," said Jim, "but I don't think she can make it."
Merritt tapped his chest several times, the age-old gesture. "Sam," he said.
"Ssam," she answered; and then if there had been any doubt of her understanding, touched herself. "Sazhje."
"Sazhje," he echoed, pointing at her. "Sazhje?"
She tapped herself affirmatively. "Sazhje." And then she spread her hands and reached out, jerked at the chain, spread her hands again. That did not need translation. Merritt shook his head sadly, but that was a human gesture and she did not appear to understand. She jerked at the chain more violently, uttering short piercing cries, and fought it with a concentration that made Merritt doubt her intelligence anew. He saw she was hurting herself and instinctively reached out his hand to stop her.
She bit him hard, not letting go; and in desperation he cuffed her on the side of the head so that she turned loose. In the look she returned him there was not a bit of civilization or penitence. His hand was bleeding anew, new bites beside the old. He wiped it on his leg and stood up, backing away; and Sazhje, still watching him with feral satisfaction, put the apple to her lips and bit.
Chapter 7
The site was much changed now that the line across the canyon floor had begun to grow upward, the rock face on the far side beginning to diminish considerably, so that more blasting was going to be required a little farther from the rim this time, the rock transported down a winding trail on the far side by labor of men and oxcarts and sledges: maddeningly slow progress, this primitive chipping away at the rock, while the winter's lessened flow poured from its bed to the timber flume and cascaded back to its original channel.
"We're going to need more men on these crews in a few days," Merritt said to Porter as they watched the first of the men head out toward the suspension bridge for the day's work. "We have to lengthen shifts if we can't. We're not making progress as fast as we have to."
"I'm glad to see that bothers you."
Merrill's glance was instant and sharp; he found Porter's expression what he had thought.
"I mean it," said Porter. "Since you have other things on your mind—" He gestured down at Merrill's hand, that was bearing another bandage this morning. "She give you trouble again, eh?"
Merritt only stared at him, and that was not the reaction Porter had evidently wanted. The big man perceptibly revised his line of assault.
"What I mean to say," said Porter, "is that I hope you aren't coming to consider that creature's welfare ahead of ours."
"How should I?”
"I don't know what reasons you may have found."
"Maybe you'd better put what you're thinking in plain words so we both know what you're talking about."
"All right, it's this: we know you never liked this site. And, Mr. Merritt, it's a source of wonder to me why you keep on with this creature—sitting in that room late at night, keeping company with it, talking about communication with it. I wonder just what you have to communicate, hey? Or what the whole human race has to say to them, for that matter." He waved his hand toward the east, where the valley showed dark with forest. "That dam's going to make one big lake up there, and it's a case of her kind or ours. I don't think we have anything to communicate about, if they had the brain to do it, which they don't I hope you aren't having second thoughts about the project. That's what I mean. That's what a lot of folks are wondering."
"No, Mr. Porter, I know well enough what we have at stake. I understand there's no choice."
"So why do you keep on with her?"
"Because I'm curious. Isn't that my business, Mr. Porter?"
"And the fact that it's female has nothing to do with it, of course."
"You want to state that a little clearer too, Mr. Porter?"
"If it was male, would you kill it? Or is it misguided sentiment?"
"No, its being female has nothing to do with it, nothing. The fact is it can—she can—think and feel the same as you, the same as a human."
"No, sir, not the same as a human, and that's where you make your mistake. Like trying to turn a cat into a dog, it is: four feet, tail, all the right parts, but all the wrong signals. She'll go for your throat one day you get too friendly, and we'll be less one engineer. I call that an unjustifiable risk."
"So if we turn her loose?"
"One more killer on the loose, that's all. You know what you can do with her."
"I'm not going to get rid of her. She's safe where she is and she's hurting no one."
"We aren't safe so long as she's in that room, a room, what's more, fit for people, while I got men sleeping in barracks. I tell you as plain as I know how, I don't like it. I don't like it under the same roof as I am, screaming out in the night for no reason, snarling and spitting like a wild animal—"
"She's quieter now, if she's been disturbing your sleep."
"Is quieter any reason to believe she's safer? Female or not, there's no reckoning of that so far as I'm concerned. They're all killers, all of them. She'll draw others. I have no doubt of that. And we're vulnerable, real vulnerable, depending on that warehouse, on Celestine, on our guard-posts out here. Men have tried to fight them before and taken precautions; and still woke up with the house afire or worse."
"I'm not denying there's a danger."
Then why risk it? What good is it? Merritt—if I didn't know better, I'd suspect there was something more than curiosity on your side."
"You can keep your suspicions to yourself, Mr. Porter. The fact is, in my mind she's too close to human; and I don't have to kill her. I don't take murder as a casual option; and murder's what it would be."
"They're another species, not human. Murder isn't the word."
"It is as I see it."
"Then—" Porter gestured again to the Upriver. "That lake's going to commit a lot of murder, isn't it?"
"I'll fight for my own kind when I have to; but not when there's no need. So I'll be selective about my atrocities. Don't worry about your dam. It's going all right. And faster if you get me more men on it."