Child's face against the rutted bark of the tree, stained dark by the rain, was itself dark and carved, like old wood left too long in the rain and weather. His clothes, even the bulky, outer rain gear, lay limply upon him; so that it was unmistakable how thin he had become in these last few weeks. His forearms rested on his upper thighs, wrists and hands half-turned up, as if they had simply fallen strengthless there under the weight of Harmony's gravity. Legs, arms and body lay utterly still. Only his eyes, sunk deep in their bony hollows beneath the gray brows and above the still-impeccably shaven lower face, showed signs of life and were unchanged. They regarded Rukh and Hal calmly.
"I will stay here," he said, huskily.
"We can't afford to lose you," Rukh's voice was cold and bitter.
"Thou canst not wait for me to rest at the cost of letting the Militia catch thee—as they will within the hour if thou dost not move on," Child said. His words came in little runs and gasps, but steadily. "And it would be a sin to burden Warriors further with someone useless. It is not as if this is a sickness from which I may recover, if the Command supports me for a while. My sickness is age—that only grows more so as we wait. I could go a little further—but to what purpose? It will be honey to my heart rather to die here, with the enemies of God before me, knowing I still have strength to take more than one of them with me."
"We can't spare you." Rukh's voice was even colder and harder than before. "What if something happens to me? There's no one to take over."
"How am I to take over now, when I can neither march nor fight? Shame on thee to think so poorly, who art Captain of a Command," said Child-of-God. "We are all of us no more than spring flowers, who bloom for a day only in His sight. If a flower dies, any other may take its place. Thou hast known this all thy life, Rukh; and it is the way matters have always stood in the Commands, or with those who testify for the Faith. No one is indispensable. So why shouldst thou miss or mourn me who cannot make a better end than this? It is unseemly in thee, as one of the Elect, to do either."
Rukh stood, staring at him and saying nothing.
"Think," said Child. "The day is advanced. If I can delay those who follow us by only one hour, night will be so close that they will have no choice but to stop where they are until morning. While you, knowing they will not follow, can change your route, now; and by morning they will have gone at least half a day in the wrong direction before they wake to their mistake. So you can gain a full day on them; and with a day's lead, perhaps, the Command can escape. It is your duty not to let pass that God-given chance."
Still Rukh stood, unmoving and unspeaking; and the silence following Child's long speech went on and on; until Hal suddenly realized that of the three people there he was the only one who could break it.
"He's right," Hal said, and heard the words sound tightly in his own throat. "The Command's waiting, Rukh. I'll give him a hand to make him comfortable here, then catch up."
Rukh turned her head slowly, as if against the stiff pressure of unwilling neck muscles, and stared at him for a long moment. Then she looked back at Child.
"James…" she said, and stopped. She took one step toward him and fell suddenly on both knees beside him. Stiffly, he put his arms around her and held her to him.
"We are of God, thou and I," he said, looking down at her, "and to such as us the things of this universe can be but shadows in smoke that vanish even as the eye sees them. I will be parted from thee only a little while—thou knowest this. My work here is done, while thine continues. What should it be to thee, then, if for a short time thou lookest about and seest me not? There is a Command that thou must guard, a Core Tap that thou must destroy, and enemies of God that must be confounded by thy name. Think of this."
She shuddered in his arms, then lifted her head, kissed him once and got slowly to her feet. She looked down at him and her face smoothed out.
"Not by my name," she said, softly. "Thine."
She gazed down at him and her back straightened. Her voice broke out again, suddenly, whiplashing through the sodden woods under the low-bellied sky with low-pitched intensity.
"Thou, James. When the Core Tap is closed and I am free at last, I will raise a storm against those we fight, a whirlwind of judgment in which none of them will be able to stand. And that storm will carry thy name, James."
She wrenched herself around and strode off swiftly, almost running. The two men watched her until low-hanging branches of the trees hid her from sight. Then their gazes came back together again.
"Yes…" said Hal, without really knowing why he said the word. He looked about, at the hilly, cut-up, overgrown land surrounding them. A little distance away, a small rise that was almost a miniature bluff showed between the wet-bright, down-turned leaves.
"Up there?" he asked, pointing.
"Yes." It was more pant than spoken word, and Hal, looking back at the older man, saw how prodigally he had plundered his remaining strength to send Rukh from him.
"I'll carry you up there."
"Weapons…" said Child, with effort. "My power pistol with the short barrel, to put inside my shirt. My cone rifle… rods of cones. Power packs…"
Hal nodded. The older man was now wearing only his customary holstered power pistol with full barrel and a belt knife.
"I'll get them," said Hal.
He went off through the trees. The Command had just gotten underway once more as he rejoined it; and none of its exhaustion-numbed members bothered to ask why he untied the donkey carrying Child's tent and personal equipment, and led it toward the rear of the moving column.
Reaching the end of the line of people and beasts, he kept going. When vegetation hid him at last from sight of the rearguard, he cut off into the brush and trees once more. A short way back, he found Child sitting where he had been left, and boosted him on top of the load the animal carried.
The donkey dug its hooves in under the double burden, and refused to be led. Hal let the older man off again, and led the animal alone to the little bluff. On top, it was ideal for a single marksman, its surface sloping backward from the edge of the almost vertical, vegetationless face that looked back in the direction the Militia would come. Hal unloaded Child's gear, set up the tent, and laid out food, water and the rest of the equipment within its dry interior. Then, with the donkey's load lightened considerably, he led it back down to where Child still waited.
This time, when the older man was lifted onto its back, the donkey made no objection; and Hal led it back up to the top of the bluff. He spread a tarp before the tent, just back from the lip of rock and earth overhanging the vertical slope, then helped Child down onto it.
"This, if necessary, I could still do myself," he said, as Hal put him on the tarp, "but what strength I have, I need."
Hal only nodded. He brought logs, rocks and tree branches to make a barricade just behind the lip, through which Child could shoot with some sort of protection against return fire.
"They'll try to circle you as soon as they realize you're alone," said Hal.
"True," Child smiled a little, "but first they will stop; and then talk it over before they come again; and when they do come, finally, still they will be cautious. By that time, I need only hold them a little while for the day to end."
Hal finished laying out the final things, the weapons, a water jug, and some dried food, beside the man who lay on the tarp, his eyes already focused upon the distance beyond the firing gap Hal had left in the barricade. Done, Hal lingered.
"Go," said Child, without looking up at him. "There's nothing more for thee to do here. Thy duty is at the Command."
Hal looked at him for a second more, then turned to go.
"Stop," Child said.
Hal turned back. The older man was looking away from the firing aperture and up at him.
"What is thy true name, Howard?" Child asked.
Hal stared at him.
"Hal Mayne."
"Look at me, Hal Mayne," Child said. "What dost thou se
e?"
"I see…" Hal ran strangely out of words.
"Thou seest," said Child, in a stronger voice, "one who has served the Lord God all his life in great joy and triumph and now goeth to that final duty which by divine favor is his alone. Thou wilt tell the Command and Rukh Tamani this, in just those words, when thou returnest to them. Thou wilt testify exactly as I say?"
"Yes," said Hal. He repeated the message Child had given him.
"Good," said Child. He lay gazing at Hal for a second longer. "Bless thee in God's name, Hal Mayne. Convey to the others that in God's name, also, I bless the Command and Rukh Tamani and all who fight or shall fight under the banner of the Lord. Now go. Care for those whose care hath been set in thy hands."
He turned to fix his eyes once more on the forest as seen through the firing slot in his barricade. Hal turned away also, but in a different direction, leaving James Child-of-God upon a small rise in a rain-saddened wood, awaiting his enemies—solitary, as he had always been; but also, as he had always been, not alone.
Chapter Twenty-nine
It took Hal the better part of an hour to catch up with the Command. Rukh had changed the direction of its march, as Child had suggested; everyone there going off in different directions to regather later at an appointed destination. It required almost twenty minutes for Hal, circling, to pick up their new trail. After that he went swiftly; but still nearly sixty minutes had gone by when at last he caught up with them. In that last half-hour, for the first time since he had left Earth, his mind dropped into certain orderly channels; standing back from the present situation as a detached and independent observer, to coldly chart and weigh its elements. James Child-of-God's last words had had the effect of making the path of Hal's own duty very clear before him; and with that his mind was set free to a hard, practical exercise of the intellect, to which all three of his tutors had trained him, but which until now he had ignored under his involvement in the life of the people around him. Now, however, under the slow abrasion of exhaustion and fever, followed by the final assault of Child's self-sacrifice, his personal emotions vanished from the equation like mist from a mirror, leaving what they all faced, clear and hard in its true dimensions.
As a result, when he at last rejoined the column of the Command, he looked at the men and women trudging along with different eyes. These people were not merely worn out—they were at the furthest stretch of all the extra strength which will and dedication could give them. It might well be that Rukh herself could never be defeated and would never surrender; but these more ordinary mortals who marched and fought under her orders had been used to the near-limits of what was physically and mentally possible to them.
He reached the head of the column and saw at a glance that Rukh had not yet faced this—and would not, could not face it. Like Child, she had an extra dimension of self-use possible to her that ordinary mortals did not have; and she had no real way to appreciate their limits or the fact that these about her now were now very close to them.
Walking at the head of the column, she turned her head to look at him as he came up.
"You did what you could for him?" she asked in a neutral voice. Her face was without expression.
"He sent a message," said Hal. "He asked me what I saw; and when I couldn't answer, he told me that what I saw was one who had served the Lord God all his life in great joy and triumph and went now to that final duty which by divine favor was his alone. He asked me to tell you all this."
Rukh nodded as she marched, still without expression.
"He also asked my true name," Hal went on, "and when I told him it was Hal Mayne, he blessed me by it in God's name. He told me as well to convey to the rest of you that in God's name also he blessed the Command and Rukh Tamani and all who fight or shall fight under the banner of the Lord."
She looked away from him at that and walked in silence for a long minute. When she spoke again, it was still with head averted, but in the same perfectly level voice.
"The Command now lacks a Lieutenant," she said. "Temporarily, I'm going to assign that officer's duties jointly to you and Falt."
He watched her for a second as they walked together.
"You remember," he said, "that Barbage's real interest is in me. It's possible that if I were seen to be going away from the rest of you—"
"We talked about that. The Commands don't work that way."
"I hadn't finished," he said. "By tomorrow noon you'll have enough of a lead on the Militia to make some things possible. What I was going to suggest was to let Falt take over the duties of First Officer; and while you're moving forward tomorrow, and even yet today, let me start to slip the loaded donkeys, one by one, off from the line of march. The trail left by the Command will still pull the troops after it; and eventually I'll have all the donkeys away from the rest of you."
"Leaving them to be found one by one by the Militia, once they pick up our trail again?"
"No," he said patiently, "because when I take the last one off I'll head back and pick up the others, and take them off to some rendezvous point. Meanwhile the rest of you keep laying a trail forward for another day or so—then split up. Disappear into the woods individually, so that the trail vanishes into thin air. Later you can all rendezvous with the donkeys."
She pondered the idea for a moment as they moved forward side by side.
"No," she said, finally, "after all this, Barbage won't give up so easily. He'll continue to comb the area generally; and even if he doesn't find us eventually, he'll find the donkeys. No."
"He won't comb the area unless he thinks when he finds the rest of you he'll find me," Hal said. "As soon as I've got the donkeys gathered at the rendezvous, I'll let myself be seen at one of their road supply points—I'll knock out and tie up a sentry and steal a weapon or some food—and once he hears I'm alone and headed away from the area, Barbage'll follow. As I say, it's me he's really after."
She returned to her thoughts, walking with her head tilted a little down, her eyes fixed on the forest floor a half-dozen steps ahead. The silence stretched out. Finally, she sighed and looked back at him.
"What are your chances of being seen and still getting away safely?" she asked.
"Fine," he said bluntly, "if I'm on my own and don't have anyone else from the Command to worry about."
She looked forward again. There was another little silence. He watched her, knowing he had set her fear of losing the explosive materials against her duty to preserve the lives of those in the Command.
"All right," she said, finally. She looked squarely at him. "But you'd better begin right now, as you say. It's going to take time for you to get twenty-one beasts staked out away from the line of march, one by one, going off and then catching up again each time. Go get Falt and the maps from my gear, and we'll pick out a rendezvous point."
That night and into the dawn hours of the next day, Hal led laden donkeys away from the Command, taking them down the back trail to separate points before entering the woods on one side and then leading each of them far enough off so that it might bray without being overheard by Militia following the trail. By the time the Command was ready to move, he had all the donkeys staked out individually and was ready to part from the rest of its members.
"In five days," Rukh said. "Keep a watch out during the day. In five days we'll all meet you at the rendezvous."
"It'll take you at least that long to get there once you've started to move all the beasts together," Jason put in. "It's more than a one-man job. I should really come with you."
"No," said Hal. "Except when I've got the donkeys in tow I can move fastest alone—and if something comes up, I'd rather have only myself to worry about."
"I think you're right," said Falt. "Luck—"
He offered his hand. Hal shook it; and shook hands with Jason also. They were all, including Rukh, wearing trail packs with their essential gear, now that the donkeys were gone.
"You will indeed be careful, won't you, Howard?" Jason said.
Hal smiled.
"I was brought up to be careful," he said.
"All right," said Rukh. "That should take care of the goodbyes. I'll walk off a little ways with you, Howard. I've got a few more things to say to you."
They went off together, Hal balancing the full pack, heavy on his shoulders, as the power pistol Rukh had now issued him balanced heavy on his right leg and the cone rifle poised in his left hand; so that all those weights could be as easily ignored as the weight of the clothes he wore. The rain had ceased; but the skies were still like gray puddled metal and a stiff wind was blowing from the direction in which the Command was still moving, a wind that picked up the dampness from the leaves and ground, and chilled exposed faces and hands. Once out of earshot of the Command, Rukh stopped; and Hal also stopped, turning to face her.
He waited for her to speak; but, erect and stiff, she merely stared at him, with the look of a person isolated on a promontory, gazing out at someone on a ship that was drawing away from the shore on which she stood. On a sudden impulse, he put his arms around her. The stiffness suddenly went out of her. She leaned heavily against him; and he felt her trembling as her arms went fiercely around him.
"He brought me up," she said, the words half-buried in his chest. "He brought me up; and now, you…"
"I'll be all right," he said to the top of the dark forage cape on her head. But she did not seem to hear him; only continued to hold powerfully to him for a long moment more, before she breathed deeply, stirred and pulled back slightly, lifting her head.
He kissed her; and for another long moment again she held herself against him. Then she broke loose and stepped away.
"You have to go," she said.
Her voice was almost normal once more. He stood, watching her; knowing instinctively not to reach for her again, but feeling in him, like a sharp ache, her private pain.
"Be careful," she said.
The Final Encyclopedia Page 38