He woke to a rhythmic sound that was the slashing of branch tips against the sides of the van. Looking out the windows on either side, he saw that they were proceeding down a forest track so narrow that bushes on either side barely allowed the van to pass. Jason and Hilary were in mid-conversation in the front seat of the van.
"… Of course it won't stop them!" Hilary was saying. "But if there's anything at all the Belial-spawn are even a little sensitive to, it's public opinion. If Rukh and her Command can take care of the Core Shaft Tap, it'll be a choice for the Others of either starving Hope, Valleyvale, and the other local cities, or shifting the ship outfitting to the core tap center on South Promise. It'll save them trouble to shift. It's a temporary spoke in their wheel, that's all; but what more can we ask?"
"We can ask to win," said Jason.
"God allowed the Belial-spawn to gain control in our cities," said Hilary. "In His time, He'll release us from them. Until then, our job is only to testify for Him by doing all we can to resist them."
Jason sighed.
"Hilary," he said. "Sometimes I forget you're just like the other old folk, when it comes to anything that looks like an act of God's will."
"You haven't lived long enough yet," Hilary said. "To you, everything seems to turn on what's happened in your own few years. Get older and look around the fourteen worlds, and you'll see that the time of Judgment's not that far off. Our race is old and sick in sin. On every world, things are falling into disorder and decay; and the coming among us of these mixed breeds who'd make everyone else into their personal cattle is only one more sign of the approach of Judgment."
"I can't take that attitude," said Jason, shaking his head. "We wouldn't be capable of hope, if hope had no meaning."
"It's got meaning," said Hilary, "in a practical sense. Forcing the spawn to change their plans to another core tap delays them; and who's to know but that very delay may be part of the battle plan of the Lord, as he girds his loins to fight this last and greatest fight?"
The noise of the branches hitting the sides and windows of the van ceased suddenly. They had emerged into an open area overgrown only by tall, straight-limbed conifers—variforms of some earthly stock—spaced about upon uneven, rocky ground that had hardly any covering beyond patches of green moss and brown, dead needles fallen from the trees. The local sun, for the first time Hal had seen it since he had arrived on Harmony, was breaking through a high-lying mass of white and black clouds, wind-torn here and there to show occasional patches of startling blue and brilliant light. The ground-level breeze blew strongly against the van; and for the first time Hal became aware that their way had been for some time uphill. With that recognition, the realization followed that the plant life and the terrain indicated a considerably higher altitude than that of Citadel.
Hal sat up on the seat.
"You alive back there?" said Hilary.
"Yes," answered Hal.
"We'll be there in a few minutes, Howard," said Jason. "Let me talk to Rukh about you, first. It'll be her decision as to whether you're allowed to join her group, or not. If she won't have you, I'll come back with you, too; and we'll stay together until Hilary can find a group that'll have us both."
"You'll be on your own, if I have to take you back," said Hilary. "I can't afford to keep you around my place for fear of attracting attention."
"We know that," said Jason.
The van went up and over a rise in the terrain, and nosed down abruptly into a valley-like depression that was like a knife-cut in the slope. Some ten or twenty meters below was the bed of the valley, with a small stream running through it; the stream itself hardly visible because of the thick cluster of small green-needled trees that grew about its moisture. The van slid down the slope of the valley wall on the air-cushion of its fans, plunged in among the trees, and came to a halt at a short distance from the near edge of the stream. From above, Hal had seen nothing of people or shelters; but suddenly they were in the midst of a small encampment.
He took it in at one glance. It was a picture that was to stay in his mind afterwards. Brightly touched by a moment of the sunlight breaking through the ragged clouds overhead, he saw a number of collapsible shelters like beehives, the height of a grown man, their olive-colored side panels and tops further camouflaged by tree branches fastened about them. Two men were standing in the stream, apparently washing clothes. A woman approaching middle age, in a black, leather-like jacket, was just coming out of the trees to the left of the van. On a rock in the center of the clearing sat a gray-haired man with a cone rifle half-torn-down for cleaning, its parts lying on a cloth he had spread across his knees. Facing him, and turning now to face the van, was a tall, slim, dark young woman in a somber green bush jacket, its many square pockets bulging with their contents. Below the bush jacket, she wore heavy, dark brown bush pants tucked into the tops of short boots. A gunbelt and sidearm was hooked tightly about her narrow waist, the black holster holding the sidearm with its weather flap clipped firmly down.
She wore nothing on her head. Her black hair was cut short about her ears, and her deeply bronzed face was narrow and perfect below a wide brow and brilliant, dark eyes. In that single, arrested moment, the repressed poet in Hal woke, and the thought came into his mind that she was like the dark blade of a sword in the sunlight. Then his attention was jerked from her. In a series of flashing motions the disassembled parts of the cone rifle in the hands of the gray-haired man were thrown back together, ending with the hard slap of a new rod of cones into the magazine slot below the barrel. The man was almost as swift as Hal had seen Malachi in similar demonstrations. The movements of this man did not have the smooth, unitary flow of Malachi's—but he was almost as fast.
"All right," said the woman in the bush jacket. "It's Hilary."
The hands of the gray-haired man relaxed on the now-ready weapon; but the weapon itself still lay on the cloth over his knees, pointing in the general direction of Hal and the other two.
"I brought you a couple of recruits," said Hilary, as coolly as if the man on the rock was holding a stick of candy. He started to walk forward and Jason moved after him. Hal followed.
"This is Jason Rowe," said Hilary. "Maybe you know him. The other's not of the faith, but a friend. He's Howard Immanuelson, a miner from Coby."
By the time he had finished saying this he was within two meters of the woman and the man. He stopped. The woman glanced at Jason, nodded briefly, then turned her brilliant gaze on Hal.
"Immanuelson?" she said. "I'm Rukh Tamani. This is my sergeant, James Child-of-God."
Hal found it hard to look away from her, but he turned his gaze on the face of the gray-haired man. He found himself looking into a rectangular, raw-boned set of features, clothed in skin gone leathery some years since from sun and weather. Lines radiated from the corners of the eyes of James Child-of-God, deep parentheses had carved themselves about his mouth from nose to chin, and the pale blue eyes he fastened on Hal were like the muzzles of armed rifles.
"If not of the faith," he said now, in a flat tenor voice, "he hath no right here among us."
Since he had left his home, Hal had until this moment encountered no Friendly cast in the mold he knew, the mold of Obadiah. Now, he recognized one at last. But this man was Obadiah with a difference.
Chapter Sixteen
There was a moment of silence. The soft fingers of the breeze came through the trees across the stream, quartering past Rukh Tamani and James Child-of-God, and cooled Hal's left cheek as he stood, still facing them.
"He's not of that special faith that's ours," said Jason. "But he's a hunted enemy of the Belial-spawn and that makes him our ally."
Rukh looked at him.
"And you?"
"I've worked for the faith, these past eight years," Jason said. "I was one of the warriors in Charity City, even when I was going to college. Columbine and Oliver McKeutcheon both had me in their Commands at different times—"
He turned to nod at Hi
lary.
"Hilary knows about this. He knows me."
"He's right," said Hilary. "About all he says. I've known him five years or more."
"But you don't know this other," said James Child-of-God.
"He said he was a miner on Coby," said Hilary. "I've shaken hands with him and felt his calluses. He has them where a miner gets them, holding his torch; and the only place on the fourteen worlds they still use torches are in those mines."
"He could be a spy." The voice of James Child-of-God had the flat emotionlessness of someone commenting on statistics.
"He isn't." Jason turned to Rukh Tamani. "Can I talk to you privately about him?"
She looked at him.
"You can talk to us both privately," she said. "Come along, James."
She turned away. James Child-of-God got to his feet, still carrying the cone rifle, and, with Jason, followed her to the edge of the clearing. They stopped there, and stood together, talking.
Hal waited. His eyes met Hilary's briefly; and Hilary gave him the ghost of a smile, which could have been intended as reassurance. Hal smiled back and looked away again.
He was conscious of his old, familiar feeling of nakedness and loneliness. It had come back upon him, as keenly as the sensation of someone thinly dressed stepping into the breath of a chill and strong wind. At the same time, the touch of the actual breeze upon him, the scent of the open air—were all acting powerfully upon his feelings. That part of him that had always lived in and by poetry had come suddenly to life again after having slept these last years in the mine; and everything that in this moment was impinging on his mind and senses was registering itself with a sharpness he had not felt since the deaths of Walter, Obadiah and Malachi. Now, all at once, it was once more with him; and he could not imagine how he had been living these past years without it…
Abruptly he woke to the fact that the conversation at the edge of the clearing had finished. Both Jason and James Child-of-God were walking back toward him. Rukh Tamani still stood alone where she had been, and she called to him, her voice carrying clearly across the distance between them.
"Come here, please."
He walked to her and stopped within arm's length.
"Jason Rowe's told us what he knows about you," she said. Her eyes were penetrating without hardness, brown with an infinity of depths to them. "He believes in you, but he could be wrong. There's nothing in what he told us that proves you aren't the spy that James is afraid you might be."
Hal nodded.
"Have you got any proof you aren't a spy, sent either by the Others or by the Militia to help them trap us?"
"No," he said.
"You understand," she said, "I can't risk my people, even to help someone who deserves help, if there's a danger. There's only one of you, but a number of us; and what we do is important."
"I know that too," he said.
They said nothing for a second.
"You don't ask our help, anyway?" she asked.
"There's no point to it, is there?" he said.
She studied him. Her face was like her eyes—unguarded, but showing no hint of what she was thinking. He found himself thinking how beautiful she was, standing here in the sunlight.
"For those of us who've taken up arms against the Others and their slaves," she said, "other proofs than paper ones can be meaningful. If that weren't so, we wouldn't be out here, fighting. But we not only don't know you or anything about you, but Jason says you refused to tell him who you really are. Is that right?"
"Yes," he said. "That's right."
Once more she watched him for a moment without speaking.
"Do you want to tell me—who you are and how you come to be here?" she said at last. "If you do, and I think what you tell me is true, we might be able to let you stay."
He hesitated. The first and most important principle of all those he had been taught, against the time when he might have to run as he had these last years, was to keep his identity secret. At the same time, something in him—and maybe it was the reawakened poetic response, was urging him strongly to stay in this place, with Rukh and these others, at any cost.
He remembered Obadiah.
"One of those who brought me up," he said, "was a man named Obadiah Testator, from Oldcontinent here on Harmony. He said once, talking about me—my people would never give you up. He was talking about people like you, not giving me up to the Others. Can I ask—would you give me up, once you'd accepted me? Can you think of any conditions under which you would?"
She gazed at him.
"You aren't really of Harmony or Association, are you?" she said.
"No," he answered. "Earth."
"I thought so. That's why you don't understand. There're those on both of our worlds here who might give you up to the Others; but we don't count them among us. God doesn't count them. Once you were accepted here, not even to save the lives of all the others would we give you up, any more than we'd give up any other member of this Command. I'm explaining this to you because you're not one of us; and it's not your fault you need said what shouldn't need to be. What use would it be—all the rest we do—if we were the kind who'd buy safety or victory at the price of even one soul?"
He nodded again, very slowly.
"This Obadiah Testator of yours," she said. "Was he a man strong in his faith?"
"Yes."
"And you knew him well?"
"Yes," said Hal; and after all these years suddenly felt his throat contract remembering Obadiah.
"Then you should understand what I'm saying."
He controlled the reflex in his throat and looked once more into her eyes. They were different than the eyes of Obadiah, but they were also the same. Nor would Obadiah have betrayed him.
"I'll tell you," he said, "if no one but you has to know."
"No one does," said Rukh. "If I'm satisfied, the rest will take my word for you."
"All right, then."
Standing there at the edge of the clearing, he told her everything, from as far back as he could remember, to this moment. When he came to the deaths of Obadiah, Walter and Malachi, his throat tightened again and for a moment he could not talk about it; then he got his voice under control and went on.
"Yes," she said, when he was done, "I see why you didn't want to talk about this. Why did your tutors think the Others would be so determined to destroy you if they knew of you?"
"Walter the InTeacher explained it according to ontogenetics—you know about that Exotic discipline?"
She nodded.
"He said that since some of the Others are of Exotic extraction, they'd understand it, too; and they'd know that according to ontogenetic calculations I could represent a problem to them and what they were after. So to protect themselves, they'd try to destroy me. But if I could survive until I was mature enough to fight back, I could not only protect myself, I might even help stop them."
"I see." Rukh's dark eyes were almost luminous in the sunlight. "If I believe you—and I do—you're also a weapon of the Lord, though in your own way."
She smiled at him.
"We'll keep you. Come along."
She led him back to the little knot of standing men that was James Child-of-God, Hilary and Jason.
"Howard Immanuelson will be one of us from now on," she said to Child-of-God; and turned to face Jason. "And you, of course, if that's what you want."
"I do," said Jason. "Thank you."
"If you know the life of a Warrior, as you say you do, you know there's little to give thanks for." She turned again to Child-of-God. "James, I've just accepted Howard among us because of some things he told me in confidence, things I can't tell you or the others. But I promise you I trust him."
Child-of-God's blue eyes, hard as sapphires, fastened on Hal.
"If it is thee who say so, Rukh," he said; and added, directly to Hal, "Howard, after Rukh, I am in command here. Thou wilt remember that, at all times."
"Yes," said Hal.
"Hila
ry," said Rukh, "will you stay to dinner?"
"Thanks, Rukh," said Hilary, "but I'm behind with the work in my shop as it is; to say nothing of the fact I've already missed my prayers twice today getting these men out to you."
"There'll be prayers before dinner."
"Twice a day, eh?" said Hilary. "Morning and evening, and that's it? The Lord'll have a heavy account for you people one day, Rukh."
"To each his own way," she said.
"And your way is this new one of letting actions be your prayers, is that it?" Hilary sighed and. looked over at Child-of-God. "How does your soul feel with only two moments of prayer a day?"
"I pray when God permits," said Child-of-God, nasally. "Six times daily or more, that being my way. But it's speaking to God that matters, not the bended knee or the joined hands—and indeed our Rukh serves the Lord."
His eyes glinted on Hilary.
"Or would you say that was not so?"
"No, I would not say it was not so; and you know I wouldn't say it was not so," said Hilary calmly. "But the time may come when prayer at regular times is completely forgotten on these two worlds of which so much was expected once—and if so, won't we prove to have followed in the way of the Belial-spawn after all?"
"Stay for dinner or not, Hilary," said Rukh. "We'd like to have you. But we live too close to the edge of our lives to argue practices in this camp."
Hilary shrugged.
"Forgive me, Rukh," he said. "I'm getting old; and it's hard when you get old to feel your race turning from God when we had such high hopes in our youth that one day all would acknowledge and live in His way. All right, all right, I won't say any more. But I can't stay to dinner. Thank you, anyway. When do you think you'll be out of my district?"
"In two days. Are there others you plan to bring to us?"
"No. I just wanted to know in case of emergency."
"Two days. We've one more district to sweep for makings. Then we move to supply and prepare ourselves." Rukh turned to Jason. "Jason, you take Howard around the camp and explain how we do things. Introduce him and yourself to the other members of the command. Then come back to the cook tent. Both of you can give those on meal duty a hand with the serving of dinner. Jason, have you ever managed donkeys?"
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