West Of The Sun Part 29

"Ann--reached us," Wright said, hardly audible. "She--"

"Why don't you speak up, man?"

"She came along the coast," Wright said, not much more clearly. "The baby died--a little while before she reached us."

Spearman blinked, glanced at his hands, let them drop. He noticed the tight soldiers; in the antique military manner of Earth he said, "At ease...." The spearwomen relaxed part way, eyes front. "Maybe,"

Spearman said, "maybe you came too soon."

"What do you mean?" Paul asked. "We had to come as soon as we knew you were alive.... Are your other children well, Ed? Are they here?"

"Oh...? Yes, I see.... You came too soon. I still have a little town of seven or eight thousand and some very loyal followers."

Wright struck his fist into his palm. "We are not your enemies. We never were. There was a place for you at Adelphi. There is now."

"Oh...? I can imagine it. So--Ann--"

"Ann came back to us. It took her a hundred days, she says. She was--is--skin and bone--"

Paul said, "She'll recover, Ed. Only needs rest and food. She wants John and David--naturally. They're her children too, Ed."

Spearman said almost absently, "Are they?"

"What!"

"I don't exactly believe your story, you know.... You must have been--watching--for a long time."

Behind him Paul heard Nisana's miserable whisper: "What is it? What is it?" And Wright's m.u.f.fled answer: "A sickness."

"There's no truth in that, Ed," Paul said. "Five days ago we still supposed that you and Ann were lost when the lifeboat went down in the channel."

Spearman shrugged. "Yes--I think you've come too soon. You should have worked longer in the dark. We had an epidemic here. Many died.

And another trouble--mental--well, you've kept track of that, of course: the way they've fallen away from me, gone back to the forest and the old life, when I could have given them a golden age. A prophet without honor." He coughed and straightened heavy shoulders. "My G.o.d, I can't blame the poor fools--now that I know how it was done." His voice did not rise. "Without the conspiracy and interference, I could soon have started them in building a ship that--Never mind that now. I have the designs, of course. That what you came for?"

Mijok broke in, utterly bewildered: "What are you saying?"

Spearman dismissed the giant with a stare and a voice of cold politeness: "I don't blame you either. I remember you well. I suppose you had to do whatever your G.o.d ordered, without question...."

The twin boys had appeared in the doorway, dressed like their father in bark fabric: slim, well-knit children, thin-faced like Ann, nine Earth years old. They halted uncertainly, perhaps driven by curiosity to violate an order of their father's. Paul tried to smile at them, and one responded but then blushed and looked worriedly away with a hand over his mouth; the other stared like a pygmy without expression.

Spearman did not appear to notice them, though Paul's smile must have told him of their presence. Elis broke the silence: "Mijok and the others of my people do not create G.o.ds. We live by our own light so far as it reaches, without fear of the mysteries beyond it." His voice, so seldom loud in anything but laughter, boomed and echoed back from the thatched walls. "At Adelphi, orders derive from the laws, which are made by all of us and understood by all of us."

"Yes," Spearman nodded, upper lip drawn in, as one who saw his saddest predictions verified. "Yes, he would teach you to say that."

Arek said disgustedly, "There's no conversation here. He listens to his own mind, no other's. As it was on the beach, years ago--I remember--"

Spearman said sharply, "Wright, be careful! You've brought your bullies here, but I ought to warn you, this is the country where I still rule. There are some left who love me and understand me."

Dunin muttered to Paul, "Bullies--what word is that?" Paul squeezed her wrist, a warning to be silent.

Speaking with care and difficulty, Wright said, "Ed, your boys are about nine, Earth time. Would you say that is old enough to make certain decisions? Would you be willing, Ed, to ask them whether they want to go to Adelphi and see their mother again?"

Spearman glanced back at them. He would be seeing, Paul knew, how the boy who had smiled was staring at Wright with his mouth fallen open, how the other's blank look had crumpled into a grimace foretelling tears. "Now I really understand it!" Spearman said softly. "So it was a kidnaping--a real kidnaping. I simply would not believe it when my messengers came from Spearman City--but I should have known, I should have known. You stole Ann in order to get my children too, for your--"

There was a murmuring among the guard and in the crowd of pygmy spectators who had gathered at a safe distance. Uncomprehendingly, Paul saw a few wildly pointing arms, saw one of the guards throw away her spear and run blindly down the street. Others were doing the same.

The swelling murmur was broken by thin screams. Those of the guard who remained were staring into the northeast quarter of the sky, where a break in the trees permitted a view of it, and they were transfixed--the guard and Spearman's boys and now Spearman himself, glaring at that blue patch of morning heaven with total unbelief. But then Spearman did believe it, was perhaps the first to believe it, tears starting from his gray eyes and running unregarded down the hard channels of his face. "From home! Home--oh, my G.o.d, so long a time...!"

The spot seemed small and slow in its descent, riding on a cushion of flame brighter than sunlight....

The Vestoian pygmies were all running now. Not into their houses, nor the palace, but away down the tree-sheltered streets, a mindless stampede, weapons tossed away with an agonized crying of tiny voices.

Paul's eyes found it, held it, saw the white flame change to a vast outpouring of brilliant green like the burning of copper.

"Charlesite!" Spearman cried. "They've found how to use charlesite for braking! No radioactivity."

The ship must be aiming for the open ground twenty miles away. They could hear the roaring now, almost gentle with distance.

Arek's red arm became a warmth over Paul's shoulders. She said, "I'm afraid."

3

The gap in the leaves was blank, the green flame gone. Edmund Spearman gazed at the spot where the descending ship had been, unaware of his sons, unaware that his pygmy followers had been scattered by fear as swallows are scattered by a storm; unaware, Paul guessed, of the two men who had been friends and now were strangers--but these he presently saw again. His gray eyes measured Paul and Wright, the unspeaking giants, the small shaken figures of Pakriaa and Nisana and Miniaan, as if they were rocks or tree stumps and his only problem how to step around them. Addressing Wright and Arek, whose big arm was still warm around his shoulders, Paul said carefully, "It will come down on the meadow ground about twenty miles from here. They must have seen Vestoia from the air; they probably made sure there was no settlement in the open land."

Wright whispered, "It may not even have been from Earth."

"Oh!" Mijok's black lips smiled. "It is, Doc. I forget our eyes are better at distance. You didn't see the letters? Black on silver, reaching halfway up the body of the ship. J-E-N-S-E-N."

"So?" In Wright's face was a sudden blaze of belief.

Spearman stared. He said, "Quite an imagination. Glad it was you who made it up, and not one of the men who knew the real Jensen--a name that ought not to be taken in vain."

"I have good eyes," said Mijok gently. "I made up nothing."

Spearman's eyebrows lifted, a fury of mimic politeness. He stepped around the group as if they were not rocks but dangerous animals. He pa.s.sed down the street in long strides, not looking back even for his sons. Paul stupidly watched him go, saw him reach the turning by the meat-slave stockade and break into a loping run. Stout Muson muttered, "So changed! What sickness could make such a change?"

Wright said, "It is not likely to pa.s.s. In the old days of Earth they sometimes ruled nations. Or they were put away in inst.i.tutions, usually after others had been injured. Or they were fanatics of one sort and another, ridden by the devil of one idea. My profession learned a little about them--never enough. The law met them more often and learned less." He watched Paul, perhaps needing contact with a Charin mind, since the innocence of the others gave them no frame of reference. "I dare say Ed is paranoid only on the one point, technically: all his troubles are caused by me and my--what did he say?--conspiracy. A means to help him believe that only he is right and virtuous and the universe wrong.... It is not so much a sickness, Muson, as the sum of years of mental bad habits. Vanity and dislike of one's own kind make most of the seed, and this is the fruit."

Elis said, "We can overtake him. Six of us giants--we can carry you, overtake him in a walk, if you think best."

"Yes." Wright watched the empty street and Spearman's palace that already seemed haunted and forlorn. "I believe there's no need for haste. Twenty miles...." The Vestoian pygmies were not returning; the street was a desolation of rubbish and loneliness with the dull smell of neglect. One of Spearman's boys was whimpering; the other watched the place where his father had disappeared, a tension in his small face, without forgiveness. Wright said, "Who's John and who's David?"

The crying one muttered, "I'm John."

David spoke as if the words had been shaken out: "He said she wouldn't ever come back. Where is she?"

"At our island," Paul told him. "She's all right, David, and we're going to take you to her. You want that, don't you?"