"Bastards, ass-kissing Dissenters." The crowd poured out of the buildings, chanting.
"Bastards, bastards, bastards." The air around them pulsed with a rippling energy. From out of the shadows an object out of ancient history was dragged by an enthusiast mob.
"Double torsion ballista," Ian murmured. The urge of the historian was too much. He crawled out from under the protection of the building and went over and joined the shouting mob.
He walked up close to the machine. It was the real thing, and he felt a rippling thrill. The twin bundles of rope that powered it were made of human hair, while the bowstring appeared to be made of steel cable. Half a dozen young women carried up a ten-foot arrow and the crowd roared with pleasure at the sight.
The machine was cocked by hand-powered windlasses then tilted back so that it pointed halfway up to vertical.
What the hell? Ian stepped back. Why were they shoot ing an arrow straight up?
The crowd suddenly fell silent, and suddenly he heard a soft echoing chant.
"Assholes, assholes, assholes."
He looked around wondering where the distant chant ing came from, until Shelley touched his shoulder and pointed straight up.
"Look."
Ian tilted his head back and then he suddenly remem bered. They had seen another fire on the opposite side of the cylinder. Directly overhead and three hundred meters away was the other side, and a flickering fire illuminated the sky above them in a soft ruddy glow.
Ian sidled up alongside the redhead. He gulped as he came closer. The exertion and excitement had covered her body with a sheen of sweat, and her eyes were wild with excitement that had a most definite sexual aura to it.
He collected his thoughts and pointed straight up. "Dis senters?"
She nodded her head vigorously.
The graybeard took up position alongside the catapult, which was now loaded, and grabbed hold of the trigger.
"We are the truth," he intoned. "Therefore in the name of the truth and the light we are absolved of this action. It is not my hand that triggers this, it is the result of our consensus, therefore I am not responsible, for the con sensus makes me do it. But it is moral nevertheless, since we are right."
"We are right and they are wrong," the crowd roared.
"Fuck you" came a distant reply.
The elder yanked the trigger.
The catapult snapped with a thunderous crack. The arrow leaped away into the dark.
Ian was amazed. "Say, I thought I read somewhere that you were founded by believers in peace?"
"But we are followers of peace."
"That looks like a weapon of war to me."
"No, it's not, it's random luck. We don't aim it at anyone, if they get hit it's the will of a higher power. We believe in peace more than they do, and we are right, therefore our protest against them is for the higher cause of peace."
He tried to follow the logic but gave up.
"It's going to be a long night," the redhead whispered, drawing closer, and her hand lightly touched his side.
"But it looks like you people are having a war here," Ian said weakly. "How can we? I mean, aren't they going to come down and attack…?"
"No, that would be violence. They stay on their side, we stay on ours, and we trade spears. What do you think, we're savages or something?"
She drew closer, her naked breasts brushing against his arm.
He didn't dare to answer.
As he stepped out of the building into the soft diffused light of day, Ian felt a sense of guilt. Shelley sat by the ashes of the fire, notepad in hand, punching in observa tions. He ambled over to her side feeling rather sheepish.
"So, tell me, are primitive mating customs all they're cracked up to be? Shelley told us what you were up to in there."
It was Ellen! He turned around and there on the op posite side of the square stood Stasz and Ellen. Ellen's expression was definitely not one of cheerful good morn ing.
The redhead came out of the shelter, raised her arms up over her head, and stretched with a supple feline grace. Ellen's expression reddened, and on Stasz's there was genuine admiration as he kept looking from the girl and back to Ian. She smiled a vague sort of hello in their direction, then wandered off into the overgrowth. Shelley didn't even look up but simply continued with her notes.
"I'm glad to see you were in good hands and safe," Ellen snarled. "We wandered over half this god damn botanical toilet looking for you. Then we get captured by those, what did they call themselves, 'true dissenters,' and then…"
"Watch what you say," Shelley snapped.
"Are you addressing me?" Ellen purred, getting ready to strike.
"I would suggest that if you are referring to our friends up there"-Shelley pointed vaguely toward the other side-"that you do so quietly. And for God's sake, don't call them true dissenters. Our friends around here get upset rather easily."
Ellen knew she couldn't argue with her, but Ian and Stasz could see that Shelley had insulted her by pointing out something she should have realized already.
As if in response, a faint drifting call echoed down from above. "Collectivist assholes!"
"Oh, no, here we go again." Ian groaned.
" Naw, they're too exhausted," Shelley replied. "It was a hell of a night."
"To be sure," Stasz said, his voice edged with jealousy as he looked back in the direction the redhead had taken.
A couple of men were still gathered around the cata pult, which was loaded, and Ian could see this would be the last shot of the fray, since everyone had gone off to sleep. The old graybeard, however, was still up and di recting the alignment of the siege engine.
"Gates, the old graybeard, is the leader. By the way, you might like to know that you spent the night with his daughter Ileia," Shelley said softly.
Ian looked at his feet and muttered a comment about observing local customs.
"Gates filled me in on some fascinating details," Shel ley continued, ignoring his embarrassment. "I've re corded them all, Dr. Lacklin, so that you may study them later, when you feel up to it."
Stasz snickered and turned away, while Ian tried to come up with a casual reply.
"Freethinker bastards!" It was Gates and one of his followers.
"Watch this," Shelley said.
The catapult hurled its shot, which arced up and away. It followed an arching path, due to the Coriolis effect created by the turning of the cylinder. In the daylight Ian now realized that the catapult was not aimed straight at the other campsite but a good sixty degrees off.
He watched the bolt climb in a curving path-at least it appeared that way. As it reached toward the relative apogee in the center, the bolt slowed, then with ever-increasing speed it started the long sloping glide back down.
"Pretty good accuracy," Shelley said, "considering the physics of shooting an arrow inside a turning cylinder."
Ian watched with admiration as the bolt streaked in and landed near the bull's-eyelike target created by the dissenters' campfire. There was a mild scurrying and he half imagined that he could see several people look up and shake their fists.
"You missed me" came the taunting cry from the other side.
"The forms these people are going to fill out will be fascinating," Ellen whispered.
Gates and his two assistants shook their fists at the other side, and calling it quits, they went into the nearest building to catch up on their sleep.
Ian looked around the cylinder, at least able to get a good chance to observe his environment without the pressure of looking for Shelley. Its scale was truly astounding, but what amazed Ian even more was the realization that this was a small unit of early design. There were colonial cylinders of the same general design that were fifty times as big in volume. He looked up again at the lovely sweep of green overgrowth that covered nearly everything. He wondered how the unit managed to allow so much of its carbon and nitrogen to be fixed in such a profusion of plants, but then from his own rough estimate the popu lation here must only be a few percentile points of the bearing capacity. So that great percentage no longer in existence must be a fair part of the liquid and other ma terials tied up in the unit. The thought suddenly struck him with chilling force. Back on Earth one could not easily grasp the total cyclic nature of life. He once had a prof who pointed out that, statistically speaking, the next glass of water you drank would be carrying in it a molecule from Caesar's body-and from Cleopatra's urine, one of his classmates had rudely interjected.