"Then that's all right," said Joralmon. "Since God is all things, one who scorns nothing, scorns not Him."
He put boots, hammer and staples aside, just inside the front entrance of his tent.
"Time for evening prayers," he said. "Some pray separately, but there are those of us who gather, night and morning. You're always welcome if you wish to come."
He looked up at Hal, getting to his feet as he spoke. There was an openness and simple directness to his gaze that was a less intense version of what Hal had seen in Child-of-God.
"I don't know if I can, tonight," said Hal.
He went back through the twilit woods toward the area where the donkeys had been tethered. With the shadows growing long all about him the forest seemed vaster, the trees taller, reaching pillar-like up to support the dimming sky. A more chill breath of air wandered among the tree-trunks and cooled him as he went.
He found the tent off to one side of the area where the donkeys were tethered, next to a larger one that had its entrance flaps pressed together and sealed. A faint, musty odor came from the sealed tent.
"Howard!"
Jason came around the far side of the tent, smiling.
"What do you think of it?" he said.
Hal looked at the tent. Back on Earth it would have been inconceivable to house himself in such a structure without either replacing it or remaking it completely. It had been a good example of a beehive tent once, of a size to sleep four people, with their packs and possessions for a two-week trip. Now it was shrunken by virtue of the many repairs that had been made in its skin and looked as if its fabric might split from old age at any minute.
"You've done a good job," said Hal.
"It was sheer luck they had one to give us," said Jason. "I was all prepared to start building a lean-to of branches to tuck our bedsacks under - oh, by the way, they had liners for our bedsacks, too. We'll need them at this altitude."
"How high are we?" asked Hal, as he ducked his head to follow Jason into the tent. Within, under the patched fabric with its smells of food and weapon oil, Jason had the bedsacks laid out on opposite sides of the equally-patched floor, with the feet meeting underneath the highest arc-point of the tent's main support rib. Their packs and other equipment were near the heads of the sacks, but stowed prudently away from possible condensation on the tent's inner surface. Jason touched a glow-tube fastened to the main rib above the feet of the bedsacks, and a small, friendly yellow light illuminated the shadowy interior.
"A little over two thousand meters," said Jason. "We'll be going higher when we leave here."
He was obviously warm with happiness and pride over their tent; but trying not to lead Hal deliberately into praise and compliments.
"This is very good," said Hal, looking around him. "How did you do it?"
"The credit's all due the people of this Command," said Jason. "They were able to give us everything. I knew you'd be surprised."
"I am," said Hal.
"Well, now you've seen it," said Jason, "let's go sit by the main fire for a bit and meet people. We have to help the cook crew, but then we'll be getting ready to move on, tomorrow."
They extinguished the glow tube and left the tent. The campfire to which Rukh and Joralmon had also referred was in a place away from the rest of the camp, on the bank upstream beyond the far edge of the clearing. It was a large fire and it warmed an equally large dispenser of coffee, Jason explained, which served as a focal point for whoever wished to come by and mingle, after the day's work and prayers were done. When Hal and Jason arrived, there were six men and two women already sitting around drinking coffee and talking with each other; and in the next half hour that number tripled.
The two of them helped themselves to coffee and sat down by the pleasant light and heat of the fire. One by one introductions were exchanged with the others already there, and then the rest went back to the conversations they had been having when Hal and Jason arrived.
"What's in that tent just behind us, here?" Hal asked Jason.
Jason grinned.
"Makings," he said, in a lowered voice.
"Makings?" Hal waited for Jason to explain, but Jason merely continued to grin.
"I don't understand," Hal said. "What do you mean by 'makings'?"
"Makings for an experiment. A - a military weapon," said Jason, still softly. "Not refined yet."
Hal frowned, Jason's tone had been reluctant. He looked at the expression on Jason's face, which struck him as most peculiar. Then he remembered Jason's words about the lack of privacy in the latrine corner of their cell in the city Militia Headquarters.
"I can tell by the smell," he said, "it's organic matter. What kind is it, in that tent?"
"Shh," said Jason, "no need to shout it out. Bodily fluids."
"Bodily fluids? Which? Urine?"
"Shh."
Hal stared at him, but obediently lowered his voice.
"Is there some reason I shouldn't - "
"Not at all!" said Jason, still keeping his own voice down. "But no decent person goes shouting out words like that. It's the only way we can make it; but there're enough dirty jokes and songs about the process as it is."
Hal changed ground.
"What sort of weapon do you need urine for?" he asked. "All the weapons I've seen around here have been cone rifles or needle guns - except for a few power sidearms like the one Rukh carries."
Jason stared at him.
"How do you know it's a power sidearm that Rukh's carrying? She never unsnaps that holster cover unless she has to use the pistol."
Hal had to stop and think how he did know. The fact that Rukh's sidearm was a power weapon had merely been self-evident until this moment.
"By its weight," he said, after a second. "The way it drags on her weapon belt shows its weight. Among weapons, only a powered one weighs in that proportion to its size."
"Excuse me," said a voice over their heads. They looked up to see a heavy-bodied, thin-limbed man who looked to be about Child-of-God's age, standing over them in heavy jacket and bush trousers. "I'm Morelly Walden. I've been out of camp on an errand and I didn't get to meet you two, yet. Which one of you is Jason Rowe?"
"I am," said Jason as both he and Hal got to their feet and clasped hands in turn with Walden. The other man's rectangular face had few wrinkles, but the skin of it was toughened and dry.
"I knew Columbine, and he mentioned you'd been in his Command once. And you are… ?"
"Howard Immanuelson."
"Not from this world? You're from Association?"
"No, as a matter of fact I'm not from either Harmony or Association."
"Ah. Well, welcome, none the less."
Walden spoke to Jason about members of Columbine's command. Others also came from time to time and introduced themselves. Jason was kept busy talking to them, but beyond introducing themselves they did not offer to talk at any length with Hal.
He sat listening and watching the fire. The instinct in animals and small children, Walter the InTeacher had told him - the instinct, in fact, of people of any age - was to first circle any stranger and sniff him out, get used to his intrusion into their cosmos; and then, only when they were ready, to make the first move to communicate themselves. When the other members of Rukh's command began to feel comfortable with his presence, Hal assumed, they would find occasion to talk to him.
Meanwhile, he was content. This morning he had been an isolated stranger, adrift in a strange world. Now, he had a place on it. There was a close feeling around the campfire, the atmosphere like that of a family, that he had not felt since his tutors' death, except for that one day in the mine after he had made torcher. A family together at the end of the day. While some of the conversations he heard were purely social, others were discussions of shared responsibilities, or shared problems being discussed by people who had been physically separated by the day's events until now. As more members of the command drifted in around the fire, more wood was added to it. The flames reached up; and their light enlarged the apparent interior area of the globe of night that enclosed them all. The firelight made a room in the darkness. They were private in the midst of the outdoors, housed by immaterial walls of warmth and familiarity and mutual concerns.