She felt the power of the goddess working in her, but feebly. Dark ...
so dark ... and so tired ... how old was she? More than eight hundred
moons had waxed and waned above her head since birth. And she had run at
the head of her spearmen to the motor sounds. A motor meant the
smithymen from the sea, and you killed smithymen when you could.
She let out a short shrill chuckle in the dark. There was a rustling of
branches. One of the spearmen had turned to stare at the sound. She knew
his face was worried. "Tend to business, you fool!" she wheezed. "Or by
Bridget--" His breath went in with a hiss and she chuckled again. You
had to let them know who was the cook and who was the potatoes every now
and then. Kill the fool? Not now; not when there were smithymen with
guns waiting to be taken.
The power of the goddess worked stronger in her withered breast as her
rage grew at their impudence. Coming into _her_ woods with their
stinking metal!
There were two of them. A grin slit her face. She had not taken two
smithymen together for thirty moons. For all her wrinkles and creaks,
what a fine vessel she was for the power, to be sure! Her worthless,
slow-to-learn niece could run and jump and she had a certain air, but
she'd never be such a vessel. Her sister--the crone spat--these were
degenerate days. In the old days, the sister would have been spitted
when she refused the ordeal in her youth. The little one now, whatever
her name was, she would make a _fine_ vessel for the power when she was
gathered to the goddess. If her sister or her niece didn't hold her head
under water too long, or have a spear shoved too deep into her gut or
hit her on the head with too heavy a rock.
These were degenerate days. She had poisoned her own mother to become
the vessel of power.
The spearmen to her right and left shifted uneasily. She heard a faint
mumble of the two smithymen talking. Let them talk! Doubtless they were
cursing the goddess obscenely; doubtless that was what the smithymen all
did when their mouths were not stuffed with food.
She thought of the man called Kennedy who forged spearheads and
arrowpoints for her people--he was a strange one, touched by the
goddess, which proved her infinite power. She could touch and turn the
head of even a smithyman. He was a strange one. Well now, to get on with
it. She wished the power were working stronger in her; she was tired and
could hardly see. But by the grace of the goddess there would be two new
heads over her holy hut come dawn. She could hardly see, but the goddess
wouldn't fail her....
She quavered like a screech-owl, and the spearmen began to slip forward
through the brush. She was not allowed to eat honey lest its sweetness
clash with the power in her, but the taste of power was sweeter than the
taste of honey.
* * * * *
With frightful suddenness there was an ear-splitting shriek and a
trampling rush of feet. By sheer reflex, Orsino clamped down on the
trigger of his fifty, and his brain rocked at its thunder. Shadowy
figures were blotted out by the orange muzzle-flash. You're supposed to
fire neat, spaced bursts of eight he told himself. I wonder what old
Gilby would say if he could see his star pupil burning out a barrel and
swinging his gun like a fire hose?
The gun stopped firing; end of the belt. Twenty, fifty or a hundred
rounds? He didn't remember. He clawed for another belt and smoothly, in
the dark, loaded again and listened.
"You all right, gangster?" the jaygee said behind him, making him jump.
"Yes," he said. "Will they come back?"
"I don't know."
"You filthy swine," an agonized voice wheezed from the darkness. "Me
back is broke, you stinking lice." The voice began to sob.
They listened to it in silence for perhaps a minute. At last he said to
the jaygee: "If the rest are gone maybe we can at least--make him
comfortable."
"Too risky," the jaygee said after a long pause.
The sobbing went on. As the excitement of the attack drained from
Orsino, he felt deathly tired, cramped and thirsty. The thirst he could
do something about. He scooped water from the muddy runnel by his knee
and sucked it from his palms twice. The third time, he thought of the
thirst that the sobbing creature out in the dark must be feeling, and
his hand wouldn't go to his mouth.
"I'm going to get him," he whispered to the jaygee.
"Stay where you are! That's an order!"
He didn't answer, but began to work his cramped and aching body from
under the jeep. The jaygee, a couple of years younger and lither than
he, slid out first from his own side. Orsino sighed and relaxed as he
heard his footsteps cautiously circle the jeep.
"Finish me off!" the wounded man was sobbing. "For the love of the
goddess, finish me off, you bitches' bastards! You've broke me
back--_ah!_" That was a cry of savage delight.
There was a strangled noise from the jaygee and then only a soft, deadly
thrashing noise from the dark. Hell, Orsino thought bitterly. It was my
idea. He snaked out from under the jeep and raced through wet brush.
The two of them were a tangled knot of darkness rolling on the ground. A
naked back came uppermost; Orsino fell on it and clawed at its head. He
felt a huge beard, took two hand-fulls of it and pulled as hard as he
could. There was a wild screech and a flailing of arms. The jaygee broke
away and stood up, panting hoarsely. Charles heard a sharp crunch and a
snap, and the flailing sweaty figure, beneath him lay still.
"Back to the guns," the jaygee choked. He swayed, and Orsino took him by
the arm.... On the way back to the jeep, they stumbled over something
that was certainly a body.
Orsino's flesh shrank from lying down again in the mud behind his gun,
but he did, shivering. He heard the jaygee thud wearily into position.
"What did you do to him?" he asked. "Is he dead?"
"Kicked him," the jaygee choked. "His head snapped back and there was
that crack. I guess he's dead. I never heard of that broken-wing trick
before. I guess he wanted to take one more with him. They have a kind of
religion."
The jaygee sounded as though he was teetering on the edge of breakdown.
Make him mad, intuition said to Orsino. He might go howling off among
the trees unless he snaps out of it.
"It's a hell of way to run an island," he said nastily. "You beggars
were chased out of North America because you couldn't run it right and
now you can't even control a lousy little island for more than five
miles inland." He added with deliberate, superior amusement: "Of course,
they've got witches."
"Shut your mouth, gangster--_I'm warning you._" The note of hysteria was
still there. And then the jaygee said dully: "I didn't mean that. I'm
sorry. You did come out and help me after all."
"Surprised?"
"Yes. Twice. First time when you wanted to go out yourself. I suppose
you can't help being born where you were. Maybe if you came over to us
all the way, the Government would forgive and forget. But no--I suppose
not." He paused, obviously casting about for a change of subject. He
still seemed sublimely confident that they'd get back to the naval base
with him in charge of the detail. "What ship did you cross in?"
"Atom sub _Taft_," Orsino said. He could have bitten his tongue out.
"_Taft?_ That's my father's pigboat! Captain Van Dellen. How is he? I
was going down to the dock when--"
"He's dead," Orsino said flatly. "He was caught on deck during an
emergency dive."
The jaygee said nothing for a while and then uttered an unconvincing
laugh of disbelief. "You're lying," he said. "His crew'd never let that
happen. They'd let the ship be blown to hell before they took her down
without the skipper."
"Grinnel had the con. He ordered the dive and roared down the crew when
they wanted to get your father inboard. I'm sorry."
"Grinnel," the jaygee whispered. "Grinnel. Yes, I know Commander
Grinnel. He's--he's a good officer. He must have done it because he had
to. Tell me about it, please."
It was more than Orsino could bear. "Your father was murdered," he said
harshly. "I know because Grinnel put me on radar watch--and I don't know
a God-damned thing about reading a radarscope. He told me to sing out
'enemy planes' and I did because I didn't know what the hell was going
on. He used that as an excuse to crash-dive while your father was
sleeping on deck. Your good officer murdered him."
He heard the jaygee sobbing hoarsely. At last he asked Orsino in a dry,
choked voice: "Politics?"
"Politics," Orsino said.
Orsino jumped wildly as the jaygee's machine gun began to roar a long
burst of twenty, but he didn't fire himself. He knew that there was no
enemy out there in the dark, and that the bullets were aimed only at an
absent phantom.
"We've got to get to Iceland," the jaygee said at last, soberly. "It's
our only chance."
"Iceland?"
"This is one for the C.C. of the Constitutionists. The Central
Committee. It's a breach of the Freiberg Compromise. It means we call
the Sociocrats, and if they don't make full restitution--war."
"What do you mean, _we_?"
"You and I. You're the source of the story; you're the one who'd be
lie-tested."
You've got him, Orsino told himself, but don't be fool enough to count
on it. He's been light-headed from hunger and no sleep and the shock of
his father's death. You helped him in a death struggle and there's team
spirit working on him. The guy covering my back, how can I fail to trust
him, how could I dare not to trust him? But don't be fool enough to
count on it after he's slept. Meanwhile, push it for all it's worth.
"What are your plans?" he asked gravely.
"We've got to slip out of Ireland by sub or plane," the jaygee brooded.
"We can't go to the New Portsmouth or Com-Surf organizations; they're
Sociocrat, and Grinnel will have passed the word to the Sociocrats that
you're out of control."
"What does that mean?"
"Death," the jaygee said.