Her bearers checked themselves, just short of handing the stretcher up to those waiting to receive it, behind the raised tailgate of the truck; and Rukh herself looked up at him. The nurse they had had among those waiting with the backup team in the courtyard had possibly already given her medications to ease and strengthen her; but the eyes looking up into his were now more widely open and her voice, though still whispering, was stronger than he had heard it in the cell block.
"Thank you, Hal," she said.
For a moment the coldness moved back from him.
"Thank the others," he said. "I had selfish motives; but the others just wanted you out."
She blinked at him. Her eyes were moist. He thought she would like to say something more; but that the effort was too great. Hastily he spoke himself.
"Lie quiet," he said. "I'm taking you clear off-planet to Mara; where the Exotics can put you back together, body and mind, as good as new."
"Body only…" she whispered. "My mind is always my own…"
Hal felt his right sleeve plucked. He turned and saw Athalia standing just behind him with a face shaped by cold anger. He allowed her to pull him back out of earshot of Rukh.
"You didn't tell us anything about taking her off-world!" Athalia whispered savagely in his ear.
"Would you have risked lives to rescue her, if I had?" he answered grimly, but with equal softness. "I told you she had a value to the whole race, above and beyond her value to all of you here on Harmony. Now that she's free, do you suppose anything less than off-planet can be safe for her, or safe for anyone who might try to hide her?"
Athalia's hand fell from his sleeve.
"You're an enemy, after all," she said, bitterly.
"Ask yourself that a year from now," said Hal. "In any case, the Exotic Embassy can help get her off Harmony, which none of you can do; and once she's known to be on another world, the pressure from the Militia, turning you all upside down to find her, will let up."
"Yes," Athalia said. But she still looked at him savagely as he turned away from her.
They had begun to lift the stretcher's far end so as to pass it to those in the truck. There was a pause as they made the decision to lower the tailgate first, after all. In the moment of that pause, a voice struck at them from the kitchen entrance of the building.
"So!" it said, hard, loud and triumphant in the silence of the lamplit courtyard, "the Whore of Abomination has friends who would try to steal her from God's justice?"
Everyone looked. Amyth Barbage, stick-thin in his close-fitting black Militia colonel's uniform, stood alone in the entrance to the kitchen. He carried a power rifle, generally pointed at all of them; and Hal's eyes, without moving, saw that - like himself - none of the rest had weapons in hand and ready for use.
Alone and apparently indifferent to that fact, Barbage walked three steps forward from the doorway. His power rifle pointed more directly toward the stretcher bearing Rukh, and those who stood closely around it.
"Carry her back inside," he said, harshly. "Now!"
The coldness returned to Hal with a rush; and from the same place that it came from in him, came other knowledge he had not known he had.
A wordless shout that erupted like an explosion in the stillness of the courtyard tore itself from him. It came from every nerve and muscle of his being, not merely from the lungs alone, the utmost in sound of which his body was capable; and it went out like a bludgeon against the thin, white-faced man, a wall of sound directed against Barbage alone. For a moment the other seemed stunned and frozen by it; and in that same moment, Hal leaped aside from the line of aim of the Militia officer's rifle, drew his own pistol and fired.
The knowledge, the actions, were all as they should have been. But Hal's body had not been trained relentlessly from birth and never allowed to fall out of the ultimate in fine-tuned conditioning. The early years with Malachi and the last couple of years of self-exercise at the Encyclopedia could not give him what the years of his lifetime would have given a body born and raised on the Dorsai. The energy bolt from his power gun struck, not Barbage at whom it was aimed, but Barbage's rifle, spinning it from that officer's hands to skitter across the rough paving of the courtyard with the last few millimeters of its barrel's muzzle-end glowing a dull red heat.
And Barbage - where Hal had been less than he should, Barbage was more. Barbage, who should have been doubly immobilized, first by the killing shout, and then by the loss of his weapon, recovered before Hal had fully regained his balance. Bare-handed, he plunged toward the truck and Rukh on her stretcher.
Hal threw up the muzzle of his pistol to fire, found too many bodies in the way, and dropped his sidearm on the pavement. He leaped forward himself to meet Barbage, just as the other reached the tailgate of the truck. Hal's hands intercepted and closed on the furious, narrow body, at waist and shoulder, and lifted it into the air. It was like lifting a man of cloth and straw.
"No!" Rukh said.
The volume of her voice was hardly more than the whisper in which she had spoken a moment earlier; but Hal heard it and it stopped him. The coldness held him in an icy fist.
"Why?" he said. Barbage was still in the air, motionless now above the paving on which his life could be dashed out.
"You cannot touch him," said Rukh. "Put him down."
A quiver like that which comes from overtensed muscles passed through Hal; but he still held Barbage in the air.
"For my sake, Hal," he heard her say through the coldness, "put him back on his feet."
Slowly, the coldness yielded. He lowered the man he held and set him upright. Barbage stood, his face frozen, staring not at him, but at Rukh.
"He must be stopped," Hal muttered. "A long time ago, James Child-of-God told me he had to be stopped."
"James was much loved by God, and by many of the rest of us," said Rukh. With great effort she raised herself slightly from the stretcher and looked Hal in the face. "But not even the saints are always right. I tell you you cannot touch this man. He is of the Elect and he hears no one but himself and the Lord. You think you can punish him for what he did to me and others, by destroying his body. But his body means nothing to him."
Hal turned to stare at the white face above the black uniform collar, that did not see him - only Rukh.
"Then what?" Hal heard himself saying: "Something has to be done."
"Then do it," said Rukh. "Something far harsher than destroying his mortal envelope. He will not hear his fellows. Leave him then to the Lord. Leave him, by himself, to the voice of God."
Hal was still staring at Barbage, waiting for the other man to speak. But to his wonderment, Barbage said nothing. Nor did he move. He simply stood, gazing at Rukh, as she sagged back on to the stretcher.
For a moment there was no movement anywhere in the courtyard. Then, slowly, the resistance people began to continue bringing Rukh fully aboard the vehicle and themselves mounting into it and the other one that waited for them. Hal stood, continuing to watch Barbage, waiting for him to make a leap for the fallen power rifle. But Barbage still stood motionless, his expression unchanged, staring into the darkness under the canvas hood of the truck into which Rukh had now disappeared.
The motor of that truck started. Then the motor of the other vehicle.
"Hal! Come on!" called the voice of Jason.
Slowly, still keeping an eye on Barbage, Hal stepped back two paces and picked up his power pistol from where it had landed when he had flung it down. Careful not to turn his back on the Militia officer, he swung himself up into the back of the truck which held Rukh. Once up, he turned, and stood above the again-raised tailgate, holding the pistol ready at his side as the truck he was in slowly pulled out of the courtyard and until the wall about it finally cut off his view of its interior.