Part 7 (1/2)

They would think of friends.h.i.+p, and stay their hands.”

The colored paving stones came hard beneath his feet. He was moving backward all the time toward Nillaine. He watched the women, and now he could hear the soft rustle of them treading the gra.s.s, the ripple of their draperies around their slender legs. He wanted to laugh, but he was terrified.

There must have been fifty or sixty of them, their little knives all glittering.

”The men would think of friends.h.i.+p,” he said. ”What are you thinking of, Nillaine?”

”My village. My father. My husband and children. Seri promised that the Doomstar would never s.h.i.+ne on us.”

”There are other villages, other people.”

”I don't know them. They are nothing to me.”

”Let me go, Nillaine. I can stop Seri, so that the Doomstar will never s.h.i.+ne for anyone.”

”There are more than Seri, many more. You couldn't stop them. No, Johnny. Well be safe, and afterward we'll be strong, stronger than the Westpeople. They promised us.”

”How will they make you strong?” asked Kettrick, and grasped her by the arm so quickly that she did not quite have time to get away. She sank her teeth and nails into his wrist, squealing all the while like a furious little animal. He slapped her head across the side of the head and she stopped all that. He picked her up and held her, a limp doll, across his body, and he said to the women, ”Your knives will strike her first.”

They were already faltering, their eyes and mouths wide with astonishment. He imagined that it had never occurred to them that a male would commit such an act of blasphemy in this place where they were supreme. Probably no sacrifice had ever objected before.

”Chai!” he shouted. ”Chai!”

The women made cat-cries of outrage. They screamed at him to put Nillaine down, and some of them rushed to-ward him again, waving their knives. He held Nillaine out, a kind of living buckler against the blades, and moved slowly backward, away from them.

”Chai?”

”Hroo!”

Out of the tail of his eye he saw her loping from the trees at the back of the cup. She had had to make a long swing around to keep out of sight, as he had told her to do when he had pretended to send her away. He had not really be-lieved then that anything would happen; it was a matter of just in case.

Now he backed toward her and they met beside a pillar pregnant with carved fruits.

The women stared at Chai fearfully. She looked at the women.

”Kill, John-nee?”

”Not unless you have to.” The women were gabbling now, tossing their hands wildly as they argued between themselves what to do. It was a long way to the trees, a longer way to the village. Kettrick wondered if they could ever make it, and he tightened his grip on Nillaine.

”Hit?” asked Chai.

”Hit,” he said. ”Yes. And I don't care if you break a few of their pretty little bones.”

Chai grunted. Nillaine whimpered abruptly, twisting in Kettrick's arms. He was briefly occupied inquieting her again. He heard a noise behind him, and then there was a demoniac shriek from the women and they surged forward in a body. He turned to see Chai finish uprooting the pillar.

”Big stick,” she said, and swung it whistling around her head. She bounded at the women.

She was more than twice as high as they, and the preg-nant pillar was eight or nine feet long. She swung it like a great flail. They screamed and fell, and ran, and scattered, screaming, and some of them lay on the ground and wept or moaned. Chai came back, breathing hard. The bulk of the women now stood in ragged clumps a long way off, looking at them in helpless rage. The bolder ones moved back to help the injured. Kettrick shouted at them.

”Let us alone, or I'll kill Nillaine!”

He raised her up and shook her at them so they would understand. Then he whispered to Chai, ”For G.o.d's sake let's get out of here.” They ran together for the woods, Chai with the carven fruits laid across her shoulder.

The tree shadows closed around them. Kettrick s.h.i.+fted Nillaine to a better position and went down hill with long strides. His heart was thundering and he felt sick, as though he had touched something unnatural.

They pa.s.sed through the gorge and into the jungle. Nillaine's small body lay lightly over one shoulder, her loose hair brus.h.i.+ng his neck. He had almost forgotten her. In the forefront of his mind was the image of the s.h.i.+p and the need to reach it. Apart from that he walked in the roaring blackness of nightmare, where nothing was substantial, where time and distance stretched maliciously into strange dimen-sions, and underneath it all was fear, the gut-twisting, breath-locking, sweat-running fear that came with a word, and the memory of a dream.

Doomstar.

Don't bother about it, Johnny. It's only a myth.

He went down the shadowy tunnel, walking so fast that he was almost running, and there wasn't any end to the d.a.m.ned thing, it went on forever.

Nillaine was stirring. He thought, in a distant sort of way, that he would presently have to hit her again. All his atten-tion was ahead, where he strained to see the end of the narrow track.

Chai barked. He felt a sudden buffet across his back, mingled with a stinging pain. Nillaine cried out.

”What is it?” Kettrick snarled. ”What the h.e.l.l is it?” He was startled and shaking. Nillaine had begun to sob, hanging over his shoulder. He put his free hand up across his back. It came away b.l.o.o.d.y.

Chai held up a small knife. ”Not hurt deep,” she said. ”I see.”

He understood then that Nillaine had drawn a hidden knife and tried to kill him, and that Chai had slapped it away in the bare nick of time. Kettrick stopped and searched Nillaine, and she lay all limp and unprotesting, sunk in misery. When he was sure she had no other weapon hidden in the blue silk he picked her up again and went on, a little sicker than before.

He came out at last into the main track. There he stopped and said to Chai, ”We can't go through the village, there are too many of them. See if you can find a way around.”

Chai ran on ahead. Presently she vanished. Kettrick walked more slowly now, watching ahead for any sight of someone coming from the village, watching behind lest any of the women from the place of sacrifice should try to take him in spite of his warning. He pictured himself hamstrung by a sudden blow, waiting on the ground for the little bright blades to flash down. Above him the familiar trees were as friendly as ever, showering him with fragrant petals.

Chai appeared again, beckoning. He followed her into what at first appeared to be trackless jungle,and then became in-dubitably a path, narrow and carefully concealed with vines. He did not bother to ask her how she had found it, and she could not have told him anyway. It seemed to go in the right direction, toward the landing field, bypa.s.sing the town. It was a very odd sort of trail, obviously not much used, but carefully kept clear.

They hurried along it, and now Chai carried the pillar club dragging from one hand because it caught in the creepers above and on both sides. She would have dropped it, only Kettrick said no. Apart from Nillaine's little knife, it was the only weapon they had.

When they were, as near as he could judge, about even with the village and some distance east of it, they came to a cleared s.p.a.ce not over ten feet in diameter. At one side of it was a little squat structure of heavy plastic sunk deep into the ground. Just recently it seemed to have been com-pletely covered with vines and sods of mossy turf. These had been torn away and the top of the structure opened, re-vealing a metal-lined cavity below.

Something had rested there, like a strange jewel in an improbable case.

He set Nillaine down and held her by the shoulders. ”Where?” he asked her. ”Where will they take it?”

”I don't know. Seri wouldn't tell us.” And then she cried out, ”You can't stop him! How can you stop him when no-body knows where he's going?”

She covered her face with her hands, and they went on.

Kettrick was sure now that the path led to the landing field, and it did. They emerged from an innocent, vine-cur-tains section of the jungle wall no different from any other section, and there was Grellah shoving her dark rusky bulk into the sky, perhaps half a mile away. The little booths of the trading fair seemed to have packed up and gone away from around her feet.

”Let me go now,” Nillaine whispered.

And Kettrick said, ”Not yet.”