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 god 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 gods. 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 God, 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."