"You need my cooperation and I want off Hestia. So in work at this project for a year, and work at it with the best of my ability, so long as you provide me help. But when that next ship comes, I'll leave on it unless I've been able to find some solution to your problem."
"Your contract specified five years."
"One."
"After the ship leaves, there's really very little reason to have a bargain, is there? If we don't allow it, there's no way you can get near that next ship. You'll live here, with us, as we live. If we don't get that dam built, Mr. Merritt, you stay. That's the last and only threat I'll make to you."
"What am I supposed to use for equipment? What I have is on the shuttle."
"Then send for it"
"It won't be enough, even that. You understand that."
Lee made a small and inconsequential gesture. "That's between you and your friends. Ask them. We'll arrange the contact."
"We have alternatives," Don Hathaway's voice said. "Put us through to the governor. We'll make them clear."
"I think they already are," Merritt answered. Static spat. The mansion's communications center, solar-powered, was a patchwork collection of outmoded equipment that must be dusted off once yearly to use with the starships and the shuttles. "Listen to me. We're going to have people dead if you make a move in this direction, and I don't want that. Besides, it's trouble for Adam. The Colonial Bureau wouldn't understand a firefight between a starship and her colony. These people are desperate and they'll fight. So just set the gear and the supplies outside the ship. No argument. Please."
"Don't be a martyr, Sam. Give me a sign if you're not talking with a gun to your head."
The guard officer moved, interposed his hand; Merritt held his free of the equipment, made a slight gesture and received permission.
"It's free will, Don. Believe it, sure as we met on station shuttle."
"That's a true sign. All right."
"Wish you were here with me. I could use the help. But that's asking too much, isn't it?"
A silence. "Yes," Hathaway said finally.
"Thought so," Merritt said. His voice felt hollow; the heart of him did. He held a curious lack of bitterness. "Is Lil there?"
"I'm here, Sam."
"Same invitation, Lil. I could use the company."
There was a long pause. "I can't," she said finally, miserably.
"I figured that too. No hard feelings."
"I'm sorry, Sam."
It was incredible; it sounded as if she were crying, and that was not at all her habit.
"Goodbye," she said.
The contact went dead.
Chapter 2
It was misting rain again, the sky over New Hope its usual unappealing gray, the waters colorless from the floating dock to the lagoon to the sky. Merritt descended the wooden steps to the floating dock and paused to turn his hood up against the chill wind that blew here in the open, drenching him.
He had wondered, when they had promised him a boat upriver, just what transportation Hestia could offer. There rode the answer: Celestine, broad-bottomed and rearing a tall smokestack amidship. A wheelhouse took up much of the available deck, and the rest of the space was stacked with cordwood and crates of what Merritt took to be his own gear. Often patched and now much in want of another painting, Celestine seemed easily half a century old, half as old at least as Hestia.
Merritt looked back, where the governor's police lined the shore, with townsfolk to back them. It was superfluous. The shuttle was gone from the field; Adam was gone, the long silence fallen again about Hestia. He shrugged, turned, feeling their collective eyes on his back, and walked the heaving surface to the gangplank, a treacherous bit of board suspended between the moving dock and pitching boat. He made it with a slight stagger, caught his balance again on deck.
A gray-haired man leaned against the wheelhouse, watching him—made no move of welcome, hands in the pockets of his patched coat, unshaven jaw slowly working over a toothpick.
"Amos Selby?" Merritt asked, when the man seemed disposed to stare at him indefinitely.
The Hestian bestirred himself, drew a hand from his pocket and offered it with no show of welcome. "You'll be Mr. Merritt, to be sure. Your gear's all aboard."
"Where shall I stay?"
Selby gave a quirk of the mouth that might have been humor. "Well, you'll stay where you can find sitting room, Mr. Merritt. Go where you like. We got one deck, got no police here, just water, all around."
There was disturbance on the dock. Footsteps echoed across the wooden planks at high speed; a youth raced down the steps and across the floating landing. Amos grunted.
"My boy," he explained. "Come on, son, hurry it up."
The youth leaped the gap and swept the cap off his blond hair, put it on again straight, and stood staring at Merritt. He was about twenty, almost delicate, and fairer than his father ever could have been. Merritt thought of the star-ships and the yearly carnival at New Hope, and wondered.
"Sam Merritt—Mr. Merritt—my boy Jim. Get to work, Jim. We got to get moving sometime today, you know."
"Yes, sir," said Jim, looking contrite, and moved off to take charge of the engine. Amos shook his head and wandered off to the wheelhouse that was four steps up a wooden ladder.
The engine was slowly coaxed to life, a hissing, sluggish museum piece. Merritt walked back to see it work, and Jim looked up at him with a shy grin, but the noise was too much for talking. Jim shouted orders ashore; a pair of men cast them free and the engine began to labor, with Jim running here and there to pull in the cable. Celestine slewed out into the current and Merritt walked back to watch the spreading wake, white curl on brown, rain-pocked water, and to stare at the shore. The men became only silhouettes beside a sprawl of brown buildings. The shore dwindled, and the water spread equally on both sides, with sand and grass along the banks.
He walked forward then, to the bow, stared out ahead at the countryside and the river, the land flat and flooded and obscured by misting water. The wind cut through the jacket. He shivered finally and threaded his way back to the wheelhouse, climbed the steps to that scant shelter, where Amos plied the wheel. The structure was open, affording view, letting the wind whip down and up and out again.
"It's freezing," Merritt said, teeth clenched.
"Does get a little cold," Amos agreed.
"Do you travel this course in winter too?"
"No way anything moves on Hestia otherwise. Boat's got to come and go."
"How many other boats are there?"
"Five."
"I'm told you know the river best."
"Have to." Amos took the toothpick out of his mouth and pocketed it, as if he had finally made up his mind to converse. "I'm supposed to take you as far as Burns' Station and stay with you. I hear you're supposed to save Hestia."
Merritt sank down on the worn counter that rimmed the side of the wheelhouse, where there was some scant shelter to be had. "I get the impression, Mr. Selby, that you don't think much of the business."
"You're the first Earthman in a hundred years to set foot on Hestia and I bear you don't like it much. Myself, I don't trust offworlders much. I don't figure we ever got much from outside."
"I don't figure we ever got much from Hestia, for all that was put into it."
Amos Selby nodded slightly. "True, no denying it, Mr. Merritt But you never needed nothing we could give. So here you are. I suppose we're supposed to owe you something on that account, aren't we?"
Merritt refused to rise to the argument. There seemed no profit in it
"Well," Amos said finally, "my advice is free for the asking if you have sense enough to want it." He reached for the whistle and blew it sharply, indicated off to port as Merritt stood up to see. A house stood on a hill, tree-rimmed, out of the reach of the river. "James' place there," Amos said. "Used to be a dock there. Nicest place on the river, closest to the city. Dock washed away this fall. They haven't got it rebuilt."