The woman's low voice sang and throbbed against the pipe walls. "A
long time ago there were a few ships. Old ships, crowded with people
who had no homes. Little, drifting people who made a living selling
their odd handicrafts in the spaceports, who were cursed as a menace to
navigation and distrusted as thieves. Perhaps they were thieves. They
were also cold, and hungry, and resentful.
"After a while the ships began to band together. It was easier that
way--they could share food and fuel, and talk, and exchange ideas.
Space wasn't so lonely. More and more ships drifted in. Pretty soon
there were a lot of them. A new world, almost.
"They called it Romany, after the wandering people of Earth, because
they were gypsies, too, in their own way.
"They clung to their own ways of life. They traded with the noisy,
trampling people on the planets they had been driven away from because
they had to. But they hated them, and were hated, just as gypsies
always are.
"It wasn't an easy life, but they were free in it. They could stand
anything, as long as they were free. And always, anywhere in the Solar
System, wherever some little lost tribe was being swallowed up and
needed help, ships from Romany went to help them."
Her voice dropped. Campbell thought again of the Kraylen's drum,
singing its anger in the indigo night.
"That was the creed of Romany," she whispered. "Always to help, always
to be a refuge for the little people who couldn't adjust themselves to
progress, who only wanted to die in dignity and peace. And now...."
"And now," said Marah somberly, "there is civil war."
* * * * *
Campbell drew a long, unsteady breath. The woman's voice throbbed in
him, and his throat was tight. He said "_Tredrick?_"
Marah nodded. "Tredrick. But it's more than that. If it were only
Tredrick, it wouldn't be so bad."
He ran the curve of his hook over his scarred chin, and his eyes burned
like candle flames.
"Romany is growing old, and soft. That's the real trouble. Decay.
Otherwise, Tredrick would have been kicked into space long ago. There
are old men in the Council, Campbell. They think more of comfort than
they do of--well...."
"Yeah. I know. What's Tredrick's angle?"
"I don't know. He's a strange man--you can't get a grip on him.
Sometimes I think he's working for the Coalition."
Campbell scowled. "Could be. You gypsies have a lot of wild talents and
some unique skills--I've met some of 'em. The man that controlled them
would be sitting pretty. The Coalition would like it, too."
The woman said bitterly, "And they could always exhibit us. Tours, at
so much a head. So quaint--a cross-section of a lost world!"
"Tredrick's the strong man," Marah went on. "Eran Mak is Chief
Councillor, but he does as Tredrick tells him. The idea is that if
Romany settled down and stops getting into trouble with the Planetary
Coalitions, we can have regular orbits, regular trade, and so on."
"In other words," said Campbell dryly, "stop being Romany."
"You understand. A pet freak, a tourist attraction, a fat source of
revenue." Again the savage flash of the hook. "A damned circus!"
"And Tredrick, I take it, has decided that you're endangering the
future of Romany by rebellion, and put the finger on you."
"Exactly." Marah's yellow eyes were bright and hard, meeting Campbell's.
Campbell thought about the Fitts-Sothern outside, and all the lonely
reaches of space where he could go. There were lots of Coalition ships
to rob, a few plague-spots left to spend the loot in. All he had to do
was walk out.
But there was a woman's voice, with a note in it like a singing, angry
drum. There was an old man's voice, murmuring, "Little people like you,
my son?"
It was funny, how a guy could be alone and not know he minded it,
and then suddenly walk in on perfect strangers and not be alone any
more--alone inside, that is--and know that he _had_ minded it like hell.
It had been that way with the Kraylens. It was that way now. Campbell
shrugged. "I'll stick around."
He added irritably, "Sister, will you for Pete's sake get that light
out of my eyes?"