Torin's parents came back into the clearing a few minutes later. The
woman had three hounds leashed, all of them bleeding and one going
on three legs. In his hand, by its loose scruff, the man carried the
fourth one, dead. He flung it down at Torin's feet.
"There's your work," he said. "Two of the others will not hunt for
days. We will go hungry because my son is a fool."
Then he saw Yann's body, and started back, looking swiftly at Trehearne.
"Kurat killed him," said Trehearne. "I'll take his body back to the
ship. There will not be any trouble."
"I will help you," Torin said.
The man said nothing. He stood running his hard hands nervously up
and down on his bare belly, a man oppressed by fate. The woman turned
silently away to tie the hounds again. Trehearne took off his belt and
pried two of the jewel stones out of it. They were not of the best, but
to these people they were riches. He would have given them Yann's belt,
which was more valuable, but he was afraid it would make them trouble
when they tried to barter it. He put the two stones in the man's palm.
"Those will pay for your hounds. I'll leave word with the factor that
they were not stolen. Just don't do anything till after the ship is
gone." He lifted up Yann's body and laid it over his shoulder. "Come
on, my friend Torin. Let's go."
He walked out across the clearing, and Torin came with him, pointing
out the path. When they were out of hearing, he said to Trehearne, "I
would like it if you could forgive my parents. To me they are good and
kind, but they do not understand the Vardda."
"Perhaps they do," Trehearne said. "Better than you know."
It was morning when they reached the compound, a green morning
oppressed with heat. Trehearne was ready to drop, and even the boy was
weary. Yann had been a heavy burden, shared between them. But all the
way he had talked of the great ship. He would accept no other gift but
that, to see the ship, and he pleaded so that Trehearne had not the
heart to refuse him. After all, it was little enough reward for what
the boy had done.
"You will have to wait, though, perhaps a long while. I will have to do
much talking, about _him_."
"I will wait," said Torin, smiling. "I have waited all my life."
It was the last great day of the trading and all the Vardda were inside
the compound except one man who guarded the _Saarga_. The hatches were
closed. Only the airlock port was open and the guard sat in front of
it, yawning in the heat. He quit yawning when he saw Yann's body.
Things were a little confused for Trehearne for a while. He talked,
and then he patiently endured the tongue-lashing the skipper gave him.
It was a rough one, such as a man deserved who would go drinking with
a comrade and pass out and let his comrade be killed by natives. But
when it was over there was nothing to do but order Yann buried and go
on with the last trading. Trehearne was glad that Rohan and Perri were
too busy right now to ask questions. When it was all finished he found
Torin and went with him to the airlock port and spoke to the guard.
"He helped me out there. Maybe he saved my life. I promised him a look
around."
The guard looked doubtful. "It's against the rules. The Old Man would
have my head if he found out."
"How can he find out? He's busy. Don't worry, I'll see the boy gets
clear of the ship. You can look the other way."
The guard could not withstand Torin's hungry gaze. He was a family man,
with sons of his own. "Well--all right. Only be sure you get the kid
out again--fast!"
Trehearne saw to it. He showed Torin what he could, from the bridge
to the generator rooms, and the boy trod softly as though he were in
a holy place, touching, sighing, wondering. Trehearne was sorry he
had brought him. It was pitiful to see all that longing that could
never be fulfilled. He pressed upon Torin what few trinkets from other
star-worlds he had in his own possession and then led him out from the
ship and stood with the guard, watching the boy go slowly away across
the field, looking back, always back, until he was lost behind the
compound wall.
"Poor little beggar," said the guard. "Star-crazy, like all the rest of
them. Well, he'll get over it."
"I suppose so," said Trehearne, and was glad that he would not see
Torin again.
He found the doctor and had himself patched up, and after that he
was busy checking lading. He was dead for sleep, and it seemed an
eternity until, toward midnight, the cargo was all aboard and the
hatches locked. The _Saarga_ lifted into the star-shot sky, and the
acceleration built and built to the thrust of the humming generators.
Trehearne told Rohan and Perri that he was too played out to talk about
what had happened, and tumbled into his bunk. He was almost instantly
asleep--and almost as instantly awake again.
There was a screaming in the ship....
They found Torin lying beside the well that led up from the hold.
He had made it that far. His skin was already darkened with the
subcutaneous hemorrhage, his body twisted and writhing, his face almost
unrecognizable. And he screamed and would not stop.
Trehearne held him and watched him die.
It seemed to take a long, long time. It was not a clean death. It was
dissolution. Trehearne remembered his own torment and there was nothing
he could do. The others watched also with sick white faces. In the end
it was the guard who went to fetch a cloth to wrap the body in, and
there were tears on his cheeks.
Trehearne laid Torin on the sheet. His flesh was not hard any more. He
was no longer straight and well made. He was not even a dead boy. He
was a rag, a shapelessness, an obscenity. It crossed Trehearne's mind
how nearly he had come to dying that same death.
He got up. He returned to his cabin, stripped and scrubbed himself in
a kind of frenzy. He kicked his sodden garments into the corridor for
someone else to deal with. He could not touch them again. And all the
time he heard Torin's voice crying, "Surely I am strong enough to go
out and see the stars!"
They came a little later and told Trehearne that they had found where
Torin had hidden himself under the wrappings of a bale, to be carried
aboard with the cargo.
"It wasn't your fault," they told him. "There was no way you could have
seen the boy."
Trehearne was not comforted.
They buried Torin in deep space, to drift forever among the Suns of
Hercules. And Trehearne thought of a hut, of a man and a woman who were
waiting for their son to come home. He wished that Torin had listened
to the wisdom of his father.
The _Saarga_ tramped her way onward among the worlds of the Cluster.
Time and events gave Trehearne other things to think about. He
was a starman now, tested and hardened, a functioning part of his
environment. His horizons were boundless and the stars had not lost
their lustre. But somehow, even so, the first fine flush of glory was
gone.
He remembered the bitterness of the woman who had said, "You are free
and I am chained and my children after me forever." He remembered
the countless young men who hungered, the eyes of children wide with
dreams. Each time he saw the new-healed scars on his body he remembered
the boy who had dressed those wounds and found the Vardda flesh no
different from his own--a treachery too subtle for his understanding.
Over and over, when he slept, he held Torin in his arms and watched him
die.
He told himself that it was all wasted pity. Whatever had been done to
Orthis long ago was not his doing. Things were as they were and there
was no help for it. He was one of the lucky ones and he should be
content with that. Most of the time he was content. But now and again
there would come the small sharp doubts, the creeping sense of guilt.
If only Torin had not come aboard the ship to die!
He needed to talk to Edri. He needed to ease his mind, to get things
straight with himself, and he knew that Edri would understand.
He was glad when they started the long haul back to Llyrdis. He
discovered that much as he wanted to see Edri, he wanted even more to
see Shairn. He wondered if she had forgotten him by now or if she would
be waiting when he landed.
The _Saarga_ made her worldfall at last under the tawny-red glare of
Aldebaran. Trehearne watched the golden planet rush and grow toward the
ship. He cheered with the others at the first sight of home and did
not think it odd that he should strain as eagerly as they to see the
familiar towers of the city rising out of the mountain-girdled plain.
When the freighter found her dock and wallowed into it, Joris was
on hand to watch his ship come in. He had been in contact with the
_Saarga_ by ultra-wave radio and now he boarded her before the ports
were fairly open. The skipper had given him good news of the venture
and he was in jovial spirits, clapping shoulders all around, peering
at manifests, firing questions, demanding to know how Trehearne had
acquitted himself.
"A good voyage, eh?" he cried. "Too bad about Yann, but any voyage
through the Cluster is a good one if only one gets killed!"