Old Man nodded. "But why do you say Liu made a mistake?" Hal asked. "If she had not already, she has now identified him with whatever she saw done to her parents when they died. Liu Hu Shen thought to provoke fear in the child by forcing her to watch Artur being tortured. Instead he's unleashed hatred. A terrible hatred in her, against him."
After a long moment of silence, Old Man added: "Who would have thought one so young could hate so much? But then life has made her more than half wild animal, and the actions of that man have now made her wholly so...."
CHAPTER 27
"I can't take any more of this!" said Calas in a thick voice. He got up abruptly and blundered off into the darkness. They heard the sounds of him being sick farther back from the lip of the ledge.
Hal and Old Man sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Old Man spoke, raising his voice, but not looking back over his shoulder as he spoke. "It's over for now," he said.
There was a pause, then the sound of footsteps coming back to them. Calas reappeared, a shadow in the darkness, and stepped around in front of Hal. "We've got to do something about this," he said. "We will." Hal looked into the screen. Artur sagged in his ropes, apparently unconscious. The Urk and the two soldiers had abandoned him when Liu had stepped out of his shelter and spoken to them, a few minutes earlier. As the three men on the ledge watched, they came back now, untied Artur from the tree, eased his unconscious body to the ground and re-tied it with the same ropes that had held it upright.
Cee, supple as a cat, had managed to slide downward not only herself but the ropes binding around her and the tree, until now she sat cross-legged on the ground at the foot of the tree. She looked almost comfortable. But nothing else about her expression or the target of her eyes, which was still either Liu or his shelter when he was inside it, had changed. "We'll do something," said Hal. "I just had to know whether Liu was going to try to force the answers he wants tonight, or stretch the process out a day or two. Clearly, he's going to drag it out. Time doesn't seem to be a factor or perhaps he has at least several days to find out what he wants to know. I was afraid he'd need to find out tonight whatever Artur or Cee could tell him, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Look, they're even covering Artur against the night cold."
It was true. On the screen they could see one of the soldiers throwing a blanket over the motionless form of Artur. Another soldier took a blanket over to Cee and tucked it around her shoulders so that it made a sort of small tent covering her body. Like the others, he ignored the fact she was now seated on the ground.
She paid no attention to the blanket being put around her, but when next they looked, it had left her shoulders and was a pool of darkness around her lower legs and on the ground. A soldier got up from among a group of them who were seated around the fire and passing a bottle around. He tucked the blanket into place again about her shoulders, but a few minutes later it was once more on the ground.
He started to get up once more, but the soldier next to him pulled him back into a sitting position. After that they ignored Cee. "Missy? Hadnah?" Hal said to the screen. "We're watching," the voice of Missy came back to him. "Good," said Hal. "We're going to leave our screens down here for a council of war at Amid's. If you want me, that's where I'll be. You two can keep the watch going?" "Count on us," chimed in the voice of Hadnah.
Hal got to his feet a little stiffly. His legs had adjusted to the morning sittings to watch the sunrise, but whole days seated on the ground were something else again. Old Man got to his feet lightly and easily, as if he had been seated there for minutes rather than hours. With Calas, they went to Amid's office.
He was busy dealing with a short, thick-set, and - for an Exotic - a remarkably pugnacious - Iooking man with bristly gray hair, cut short, about some matter having to do with the building on of extra dormitory space to provide larger units for couples, particularly couples with young children. The grayhaired man was named Abke-Smythe, but that was all Hal knew about him except that he had some sort of responsibility for the group's housing. Amid started to interrupt this, to talk with Hal and the others as they came in, but Hal shook his head at the older man. "We can sit and wait a few minutes," he said. "In fact one of your chairs would feel good."
He dropped into one of the larger overstuffed chairs, and both Calas and Old Man followed his example, except that Old Man, with a momentary, mischievous smile at Hal, took his position in cross-legged fashion upon the seat cushion of his chair.
Hal grinned back, momentarily, then let his mind go elsewhere. The fact was, as much as his body needed a rest from the position it had held all day, his mind now needed to switch gears from analyzing everything he had seen in the jungle below him since early morning and planning what was to be done with the night before him.
Without intending to, he fell asleep. He blinked and woke, startled to find that time had gone by and things in the office had changed. A table had been set up with three straight chairs, and in two of them Calas and Old Man were already seated, eating. At another empty chair a place had been set which was obviously waiting for him. "Take your time, " said the voice of Amid. Hal looked over to see the head of the Chantry Guild still behind his desk, fingers busily tapping on some keys inset in his desktop. "We can keep the food hot," "It's all right," said Hal. "I guess I just needed a moment to sort my mind out. I'll be right there."
He got up, went over and took the empty chair at the table. Calas passed him covered dishes, from which Hal began transferring large amounts of food to his plate. The fact was, he thought as he did this, that what he had just said was exactly the truth. The night before he had had a good night's sleep, and had not needed more now, but from long experience he recognized that his unconscious mind had wanted his consciousness out of the way while it addressed the problem he was facing now. It had worked. He had awakened with a solution clear to him.
He opened his mouth to start talking to Amid and the others, then closed it again. There was eating to be done and it would be some time into tomorrow's daylight before he would have a chance to eat again, probably. Best to finish his meal now, and have his discussion later. He went to work on the food, accordingly, in spite of his late start, ending up at almost the same second as Calas, who had continued to eat for some minutes after Old Man had finished. "Thank you," Hal said, looking over at Amid. " Now," said Amid, "what have you got to thank me for? Simply a share of our food, which we'd give to anyone who was here, let alone someone like yourself, who we count on to help us solve a situation like this." " Don't count too much on me," said Hal. "In the first place, something might happen to me, and, in the second place, there are a number of people, including you and Old Man, who could do a creditable job of solving it alone. And in fact, if Amanda was here, you'd be idiots not to use her for dealing with this, rather than me. She's had experience with this world, the soldiers, and a complete Dorsai upbringing." "No doubt," said Amid. "But I think that if she, or anyone else, was here, she'd join the rest of us in choosing you to suggest what we need to do. There's something about you that carries a banner everyone rallies to." "Including Bleys?" Hal smiled. "I'm being serious," said Amid. "You know what I mean. All right, if you've finished eating, what have you got to tell us?"
"Not a lot that I haven't told you already," answered Hal soberly. "The trick's going to be to send these soldiers home thinking they've found nothing worth worrying about, and also to get Cee and Artur back alive, if we can. That's where those darts come in. By the way-" ''if you'll look on the table over in the corner there, under that white cloth, I think you'll find what you're asking about,'' interrupted Amid. "Tannaheh ought to have been here fifteen minutes ago - ah, here he is, finally!"