The population was different too. In Sazhje's village there had been children, the look of a people at home and life proceeding normally. But here the residents that came pouring out of the hillside burrows to see their visitors were males and a few, a very few young females.
This, Merrill thought, looking uneasily at the gathering circle, was very probably the base of operations from which attacks on the station had been launched: no random raids by subhuman minds, but a planned campaign directed from an organized camp… a camp known to villages and perhaps uniting several populations within it: a leader, an alien Caesar, and minds of common purpose.
And Sazhje had brought him into the center of this with her assurances of safety… no, had come with him into this; his estimation of her promises was unhappily confirmed. Brave, stubborn Sazhje. She was firmly beside him now, her fingers entwined with his, and he realized that she was frightened too. He hoped that Otrekh could protect her; he assuredly could not.
An argument erupted in the center of the camp by the trunk of the aged tree: Otrekh and Rejkh and some of the others debating with some of the resident leaders in ear-piercing shrieks and violent gestures. Merritt turned his face away and ignored it. He was exhausted from the long walking and the sleepless nights and from hunger too, for they never gave him enough; and it seemed likely that the discussion and the shouting would go on for some time. It was apparently a matter of custom with them, this sort of loud encounter… with what ultimate issue he did not at the moment wish to think. He saw a convenient place, a log that was perhaps intended for sitting, and tugged at Sazhje's hand, edged in that direction. She understood and went the few steps with him, sank down by him, holding his arm and enfolding his hand in hers, her head against his shoulder; but her ears flicked constantly intent on the debate in the center, beyond the crowd that curtained them from it. Torches were lit finally, and light shone through the massed bodies. The shouting became individual, one side and then the other, with the crowd shouting its own interruptions from time to time.
"What's Otrekh telling them, Sazhje? What's Otrekh saying?"
Sazhje either did not understand what he was asking in all the uproar or preferred not to answer. She reached to pat his knee and kept her ears pricked toward the debate.
Then her fingers tensed, her free hand came back to him, a sign of caution. One of the larger males forced his way through the crowd and came back toward them and Merritt started to his feet
He would have come willingly; he had no chance to. The strong hands closed on his sleeve and jerked him forward into the circle, spun him off-balance and into the very center by the tree.
Otrekh seized his arm and thrust him back protectively, snarling a warning at the others who started to close in. Merritt stood still, feet braced, believing for an instant that he and Otrekh were about to become the center of a fight, but the others dared nothing more than to sidle round them and make mock attacks.
Then one jumped him from behind, tried to take him away, and jerked the jacket half off him in the process, hampering his arms. There was an outburst of inhuman laughter at that, which encouraged his tormenter; the jacket came the rest of the way off, torn in the process, and Merritt staggered, nearly thrown to the ground.
Otrekh struck hands away and growled menacingly toward the most daring of the other group. Rejkh covered the other flank, baring his teeth and shrieking rage. A second sally brought Sazhje into it, her shrill voice audible over the deeper snarls of the males, and her impassioned threats and spitting growls cleared some of the less determined enemies out of her vicinity, even the bigger males either tolerant or somehow restrained from dealing with her. It left a circle of angry argument about Merritt that continued until he was nearly deaf with their shouting and their screams, and at last came down to a field of three: Otrekh and two ugly males who seemed to be in authority over the other side… no elders here; these were in their prime, and scarred and powerful.
One of them chased Sazhje into retreat behind Otrekh, and Rejkh joined her. Then the first round of debate seemed ended. The sudden silence was as unnerving as the commotion had been; and the larger of the opposition looked at Merritt and gave a grin that held nothing of kindness, rather served to show his powerful fangs to better advantage. That one gave an order to one of his subordinates, made a careless gesture and waited, breathing hard from the violence of the argument, while it was carried out.
Sazhje slipped back; Merritt felt her hand steal into the bend of his elbow, her long fingers lace with his. He was glad to have her by him.
"Ssam. Ssam, Gairh want kill tarn."
The big fellow, Gairh, was going to kill the dam. Merritt frowned in disbelief and looked to his left again as the other one arrived bearing what he had been asked to bring. There was a box of explosives neatly tucked under one spidery arm: one of the crates from the building site, one of their own; Merritt knew it by the lettering visible in the torchlight.
The bearer crouched and set it down in the midst of the gathering, and the one called Gairh said something with much vehemence and a showing of his fangs. Then he pointed at Merritt; and Merritt had a foreboding of it even before Sazhje translated.
"Gairh want Ssam kill tarn."
"No," Merritt said, with no pause to weigh the answer. "Tell him no, Sazhje. Sam's not going to kill the dam for him."
Sazhje pulled furiously at his arm to make him look at her. "Ssam. No, no, Ssam. Gairh kill Ssam. Sazhje no say no Gairh, no, no, no good Ssam people, no good. Ssam kill Ssam people, stay Sazhje people."
"No," Merritt said. "Sam's not going to kill Sam's people. You tell Gairh no."
"Sazhje no say," she protested vehemently, and Gairh seized her by the arm and spoke to her loudly and long, something to which Sazhje responded only with distressed refusals.
Gairh thrust her away and glowered at Otrekh, then delivered an order to his lieutenant, who squatted down and stripped up the already-breached lid of the box.
Some of the upper layer of the explosives were capped and fused for firing, prepared and thrown carelessly back into the box so that the whole thing was susceptible to heat or shock. Merritt saw it and stared down at it in horror.
Someone—he could not believe it was one of Gairh's folk—had prepared some of the cylinders and turned the whole box into a bomb large enough to devastate the immediate area.
Gairh was screaming at him now, frothing with rage and passion—snatched up one of the cylinders in his fist and waved it in his direction, shouting something. Then with the other bony hand he pointed aloft and one of his people caught a limb of the tree, snatched down the object that he wanted and held it up by the hair.
The face of Dan Miller stared sightlessly back at Merritt, as Lady's had that night in the yard… Miller, who often took the farside guard post because he liked the long in-house reliefs; who had become as expert with the explosives as Merritt, so that it was usually Miller who did the actual placing of the charges.
The creature shook the head and grimaced and screamed derisively; the others howled in chorused amusement. Merritt swallowed an upwelling in his throat and looked at Gairh.
The laughter suddenly died away and there was a moment of intense silence, no one moving. Gairh swelled up with a breath, looked as if he knew the intimidation had been effective.
With a wild howl Merritt hurled himself at Gairh's throat, carrying him over and hard against the mud.