"Now, now, there's a way out," Bidgrass said, sitting down again. "The
prophecies all foretell a change of heart after Grandfather Stomper
dies. They speak of joy, love, good feeling. Morgan did agree to your
coming here--he wants to hide the past as much as I do and he could see
the value of my plan. In the time of good feeling I hope he will accept
you."
"I hope so too," Cole said. "Morgan is a strange man. Why is Pia so
afraid of him?"
"I'll tell you that, lad--maybe it will help you to appreciate your
own danger. Some few of us are educated on Tristan. Twenty-three years
ago my younger brother took my niece Flada there. She ran away and
married a Tristanian named Ralph Vignoli. My brother persuaded them to
come back and live at our installation there, and Ralph swore to keep
secret the little he knew.
"The ex-wilds of New Cornwall kept wanting Ralph to come here so they
could be sure of the secret. He kept refusing and finally they sent an
emissary to kill him. My brother was killed protecting him. I stepped
in then with a compromise, persuaded Ralph to come here for the sake of
his wife and daughter. Pia was seven at the time.
"Ralph was a good man and fought well in battles, but two years later
Morgan and some others came to the house in my absence and took him
away. They took him to a clearing in Lundy Forest, where the stompers
come to lay eggs, stripped off his clothing and left him. That was
so the stompers would not take him for an egg hunter and kill him
outright, but would carry him into the forest like they do with strayed
wild stock. Morgan said the command came to him in a dream.
"I think Pia feels she is partly responsible for Ralph's death. I
think she sometimes fears Morgan will dream about her, her Tristanian
blood...."
"Poor Pia," Cole said softly. "These _years_ of grief and fear...."
"They'll be ended come Hoggy Darn again, Morwenna grant. Don't you
grieve her with your death too, lad. Stay close to the house, in the
house."
Bidgrass rose and gulped the last of his coffee standing.
"I must go, I'm late," he said, more cheerfully than Cole had ever
heard his voice. "I have a conference with General Arscoate, our
military leader, whom you'll meet soon."
He went out. Cole went out too, thoughts wrestling with feelings,
looking for Pia.
* * * * *
In the days that followed Cole took his meals with the family except
when there were guests not in Bidgrass' confidence. The doors into the
main house remained unlocked and he saw much of Pia, but she seemed
unexpectedly elusive and remote. Cole, busy with his report to Belconti
University, had little time to wonder about it.
He faked statistics wholesale and cited dozens of nonexistent New
Cornish authorities. To his real data indicating critical biomass he
added imaginary values for the parameters of climate, range, longevity,
fertility period and Ruhan indices to get an estimated figure. Then he
faked field census reports going back fifty years, and drew a curve
dipping below critical ten years before his arrival. He made the latest
field census show new biomass forty-two percent below critical and
juggled figures to make the curve extrapolate to zero in twelve more
years.
It pained him in his heart to leave out the curious inverse
reproduction data. But it was a masterpiece of deception that should
put the seal on his doctorate, and because it reported the extinction
of a planetary dominant, he knew it would make the journals and the
general news all through the sector.
The night he finished it, working late in the library, Pia brought him
milk and cookies and sat with him as he explained what he had done.
"It's right," he defended himself to her against his scholar's
conscience. "Humans on New Cornwall are a threatened species too. The
secret must be hidden forever."
"Yes," she agreed soberly. "I think if all the sector knew, the
ex-wilds would literally die of shame and rage. Being wild is not so
bad, but--that other!" She shuddered under her gray dress.
"Pia, sometimes I feel you're still avoiding me. Surely now it's all
right and genuine between us."
She smiled sadly. "I'll bring you trouble, with Morgan. Father came to
New Cornwall because of me."
"But I didn't. I've been thinking I may _stay_, partly because of you.
You've been afraid so long it's habitual."
"Strangely, Flinter, I don't feel it as fear any more. It's like bowing
with sadness, my strength to run is gone. My old dreams--Morgan coming
for me--I have them every night now."
"Morgan! Always Morgan!"
She shook her head and smiled faintly. "He has a dark, poetic power. He
is what he is, just like the stompers. I feel ... not hate, not even
fear ... a kind of _dread_."
He stroked the back of her hand and she pulled it away.
"An old song runs through my head," she went on. "A prophecy that
Grandfather Stomper cannot be killed while outworld blood pumps through
any heart on the planet. I feel like my own enemy, like ... like your
enemy. You should not have come until next _Gorbals_. Flinter, _stay
away from me_!"
He talked soothingly, to little avail. When they parted he said
heartily, "Forget those silly prophecies, Pia. I'll look out for you."
Privately, he wondered how.
* * * * *
Cole sat beside Pia and across the food-laden table from General
Arscoate, a large pink-faced man in middle life.
"It's an old and proven strategy, Mr. Cole," the general explained.
"When Hoggy Darn starts we will harass the enemy from the air in all
but one of the fourteen sizable open spaces in Lundy Forest. That one
is Emrys Upland, the largest. They will concentrate in Emrys, more each
night, until the climactic night of peak frenzy. Then we come down with
all the men and women we can muster and we kill. We may go on killing
stragglers for years after, but Grandfather Stomper will die on that
night."
"Why not kill from the air?"
"More firepower on the ground. I can only lift ninety-four flyers all
told. But I will shuttle twenty thousand fighting men into Emrys in an
hour or two on the big night."
"So quickly? How can you?" Cole laid down his fork.
"They will be waiting in the forest top all around the periphery, in
places where we are already building weapons dumps. In the first days
of harrying, we will stage in the fighters."
"Morgan will visit each group in the forest top and sing our history,"
Bidgrass said from the head of the table. "On the evening of the
climactic night, as Hoggy Darn rises, they will take a sacramental meal
of stomper egg. At no other time is it eaten on this planet."
Mrs. Vignoli looked down. "Garth!" Arscoate said.
"The lad must know, must take it with us," Bidgrass said. "Lad, the
real reason for not killing from the air is that the people _need_
to kill personally, with their feet on the ground. So our poetry has
always described that last, great fight. I must _personally_ kill
Grandfather Stomper."