Merritt drove all the force of his arm behind the blow, an instant ahead of the clear realization that he was going to regret doing it. The sight of Tom Porter skidding off into the mud to land on his side like a beached fish was not an amusing one, although it ought to have been. There was no amusement either in the eyes of the men, only discomfort to have witnessed this between the men who directed them, and at such a time. As for Porter, he picked himself up—covered with yellow mud on one side—and stood there with damaged dignity staring at Merritt, making the next move his.
There was nothing to say to the men, nothing to Porter, except that there was work that wanted doing. Merritt found the unpleasant announcement his after all. It was all that would send the witnesses on their way.
But against those adamant faces it was impossible to do anything or to say anything. If he gave an order sending a shift back to work likely they would not move, and it would be Porter who would send them on their way. With feelings high and dead awaiting burial, it was not the moment to force anyone. Better the site stay idle til the third shift's legitimate turn at least, rather than bring things to open mutiny, with Porter the offended party.
Merritt turned abruptly and took the steps to the porch, intending to quit the field as gracefully as he could under the circumstances. But there was Meg in the doorway, so that she must move or he could not pass. He paused half a step and gave her a miserable look, then came ahead and tried to edge past.
Her hand found his arm and she went inside with him, when he had expected her to make a scene and enjoy it; and that so unsettled his reckonings that he made no objection when she guided him over to the fireside, although he had intended to go upstairs and not come down til morning. He sat down on the chair by the fire, set his boots to dry while he warmed his bare feet on the hearthstones and held his hands toward the fire.
"Want a cup of tea?" she asked him, which was the due of any man coming off work at the site. He nodded.
"If it comes without questions."
"All right." She went to the worktable beside the fireplace, measured out the tea, poured hot water from the kettle that was always ready on its hook. She made it the way he had learned to like it, lacing it with a little of the herbal stimulant that was one of Hestia's homespun vices, a genteel wickedness.
"Thanks," he said, taking it from her hands. He drew the first sip of it, inhaling the scented warmth. She pulled a stool over by the hearth and sat down, silent.
"There wasn't anything I could do," he said finally. "Maybe if I'd stopped the man when I saw the wagon overloaded, if I'd insisted on shoring up that road earlier—"
"You can't see to everything at once."
"I saw that on its way to happen. The next moment it was too late."
"Sam," she said, and then shook her head as if she had changed her mind about what she was going to say. "Sam, you drink your tea and go upstairs and rest. I'll bring supper up to you."
"Sure," he said, and stared into the fire, unmoving. "Let me be, Meg. That's all I want at the moment."
"No one blames you."
"Don't they." He looked around at her after he had spoken the sarcasm and decided she had not, after all, been accusing him. "Haven't you been burned often enough where I'm concerned, without coming to offer me condolences now? I think they're misplaced. Ron Ormstead was your cousin."
"You always blame yourself worst over things you can't help, and never admit you're at fault for the things you really do wrong."
"Meg, let's not open that old quarrel."
"No, I didn't intend that. I didn't intend that at all."
"Enough's been said that we didn't mean, at one time or another." He drank half the cup and then the rest "I'm sorry, Meg. I know you mean well. It's appreciated."
She took the cup he handed her, and her eyes shimmered with tears, her hair red-dyed with firelight. There was a fragile tenor to the moment, such that he stopped with his hand not quite back to himself, and drew back more slowly.
"The trouble is," she said, "that we always meant what we said. You told me a long time back that I was only backriver Hestian, and awfully naive. You were right, of course. You could have talked me into anything then, if you'd only been able to lie a little."
"I didn't mean it against you, Meg."
"I know. I'd have made us miserable, wouldn't I, because I'd have expected you to behave in a way you just can't."
"I don't look for ways to cause trouble. They just come."
"Because you walked into a kind of war—us and this river and all that goes with it. And you don't get concerned when we do and you get concerned when we don't. Maybe you even figure you can afford to lose; after all, your Earth goes on somewhere even if you get killed out here. But ours doesn't. It dies here, all in this one valley, for good and forever, Sam. And that doesn't seem to frighten you. You keep talking about the future, and we just want to live through this one year. Maybe someday we'll have the heart to worry over the things that worry you, if we live. But sometimes we get the impression you won't be entirely sorry if that dam doesn't get built."
"Not true." It hit him like a blow, like Porter out front, and the anger swelled up in him. "Not true, no, it's not true."
"And what about Sazhje?"
He looked at her. It was a name she had not mentioned in a very long time. "I know that dam's got to be built this year. I'm doing it. And I also know that every load of rock we put down is one more step toward wiping out another species, one that was in this valley before humans ever set foot on Hestia. Don't you think of it? Doesn't it matter to you at all? It ought to."
"It ought to; and it doesn't. That's the sore spot isn't it?"
"I can't understand that attitude in you. I can't understand it."
"We want to live. And there's no way her kind and ours can both survive. It's our lives, my friends' lives that matter."
"I can't accept that there are only those alternatives."
"Don't you?" Her eyes looked pained. "At times, Sam, I have this awful feeling that Hestians and Sazhje's kind are just about equal in your eyes, because neither of us is really yours. You're a good man; you mean well. But I wish I knew to which side first."
"I'm working—I've worked, day to dark, after. Or is that nothing?"
"Everyone appreciates that. But how much is it worth, Sam, when everyone knows you'd be off to the Upriver and Sazhje if you weren't watched? And you are watched, you know. You can't have missed that."
"No, I haven't missed it. Porter's boys are easy to spot, especially when they walk me home and back."
Meg's lips tightened. "Sam, I saw—I saw what you did to Porter out there. My dad's not here any more. Things are different. Don't you know you can't win against them? You have to have the Porters' help if you're ever going to reach that starship when it comes."
"I know the score, Meg. You're telling me no news."
"Do I have to spell it out? There are some of Porter's men who'd kill you as soon as not. They're that way. And when the dam's finished and there's no more need of you, you've got to take that ship off Hestia. You've got to. You've left yourself no choice."
Merritt gave a tight smile. "That's dam's past the stage that I mean anything essential to the effort. They have my notes. They won't let me touch them myself without someone of theirs to guard me. The foremen know their business by now. But Porter won't see me killed. It could be a long time before Hestians think they've exhausted all the projects Sam Merritt could design for them. And as you say, there's no law out here, nothing that says I have a right to leave this world. Adam Jones will carry the news of what happened to me back to Earth, some years from now. And seven years after that, Earth might send a strong protest about your methods, but there'll be no force behind it. Porter knows that. He'll keep dangling the lure of passage offworld in front of me so long as I seem to believe the lie. If I let him know I see through the farce, he'll think of other means."