"I do. Stay close to Dorothy. That will leave four of you giant women
here. I wish they could all go. Tejron's sober and wise--she'll keep
them together. You're more needed on the island. Don't let Dorothy be
much alone."
The old woman mused: "This Charin love is a strange thing. It isn't
our natures for two persons to come so close. But I see something good
in it, I think...." Paul struggled to hear her over the almost
subsonic yammer of the drums. _Ah_-ah-ah-ah-ah--it seemed not to
trouble Kamon much, though she would be hearing it even more plainly.
"I will stay with her, Paul," she said, and watched the long glide as
Spearman brought the boat in.
On the drawbridge Spearman cocked his head at the drums. "That's it."
He read Paul's thought: "The rest tonight, huh? Better, I'd think."
"Yes. Get something to eat, why don't you? Kamon is going too."
Spearman nodded, unsurprised. "Not hungry.... Wonder how long they
keep it up...."
Wright came from his room with sleepless eyes. "Till they attack,
probably. All night, maybe all tomorrow. To soften us up. Damn
them...."
Somehow Paul was walking to the boat, carrying the baby for Dorothy.
He climbed in with her, adjusted the straps. Helen waked and was
fretful till she found the breast "You bore her alone--without any--"
"Alone!" Dorothy was astonished. "I had you. Doc's a fine medical man,
whatever he says. Don't you remember how Mijok held out his arm for me
to grab when it got tough? He said, 'I am a tree.'" Now she was
holding his look with an indestructible smile until the rest came and
Paul had to back out of the cramped cabin to give them room; then had
to stand aside while the bright relic of twenty-first-century man spat
its green flame and hot gases at the lake and leaped to soaring and
slid into moonless darkness above the hills. The drums wept, raved,
obscenely whispered.
Paul did not know Sears Oliphant was with him till he heard the voice:
"I think, Paul--the drums defeat their purpose. They make me sore
instead of scared. I think you won't need to worry about me, Paul."
"I never have." He glanced at the fat man's holstered automatic,
remembered the cleanness of the rifle hanging in Sears' room. "My
father used to say most men are good watchdogs, who know they're
scared but stand guard in spite of it; only a few are rabbits and
possums." Paul turned his back on the hills. Nothing was there to
see, nothing at all. "I wish you'd known my father. He was a tall man.
Nuts about animals--always brought 'em into the talk--illustration,
example. Couldn't stand to see even a wasp beating against the glass;
you never knew when a deer mouse would climb out of his pocket and run
down his pants leg." Paul laughed. The drums fretted in 5/8,
passionate, soft, cruel.
Sears watched blue fireflies over a lake so peacefully still that the
sapphire reflections were as real as their cause. "A teacher, wasn't
he?"
"For a while, till he settled in New Hampshire. They wouldn't let him
teach nineteenth and twentieth-century history as he saw it. He saw it
in terms of ethical conflict, the man versus the state, self-reliance
versus the various dreary socialisms, enlightened altruism versus
don't-stick-your-neck-out, and he didn't give a good god-damn whether
the first atomic submersible was built in 1952 or '53. Doc would have
loved him too: he knew what was meant by a government of laws. He made
his students search out not only theory but the actual dismal
consequences of the doctrine that the end justifies the
means--Alexander, Augustus, Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler. That was regarded
as 'wilfully minimizing the significance of technological advance.' He
didn't minimize it; he just recognized that other matters were vastly
more important, and he didn't care to see the machine built up into
one more mumbo jumbo. So he sent me through college by breeding
children's riding ponies and selling hatching eggs. Not a bad life, or
so he said.... Jocko, will Pakriaa come back?"
"I believe so.... Ah, Chris--nice evening for the month of Charin."
Wright was a paleness in the dark; stern, weary, tall, watching the
lake, talking to himself: "The month we named for ourselves--end of
Year One--oh, I do call that a pardonable vanity.... Paul, I was
wholly selfish in choosing you. I've given you a burden no one should
have to carry."
"We're all carrying it."
"Thank you, son." Wright moved away to stand alone at the rim of the
lake, listening to the crawling thunder of the drums. Twice, Paul
heard him speak, with an intensity beyond pain: "No one is expendable.
No one is expendable...."
Sears exclaimed, "Look!" There were five white cloud-like shapes at
the edge of the woods. "Oh, they've never done this before. Susie!
What's the matter? There now, girl, come tell the old man--"