by Andre Norton
“I have a new one, Dessie went on. “It sings—”
She put her hands down on the table on either side of her soup plate and tapped her little broken nails in time to the words she recited:
“Eesee. Osee, Icksee, Ann,
Fullson, Follson, Orson, Cann.”
Dard made an effort and pushed the rhythm out of his mind—no time now to “see” the pattern in that. Why did he always “see” words mentally arranged in the up and down patterns of lines? That was as much a part of him as his delight in color, texture, sight and sound. And for the past three years Lars had encouraged him to work upon it, setting him problems of stray lines of old poetry.
“Yes, that sings, Dessie,” Lars was agreeing now. “I heard you humming it this morning. And there is a reason why Dard must make us a pattern—” he broke off abruptly and Dard did not try to question him.
They ate silently, ladling the hot stuff into them, lifting the dishes to drink the last drops. But they lingered over the spicy mint drink, feeling its warmth sink into their starved, chilled bodies. The light given out by the fire was meager; only now and again did it reach Lars’ face, and shadows were thick in the corners of the room. Dard made no move to light the greased fagot supported by the iron loop above the table. He was too tired and listless. But Dessie rounded the table and leaned against Lars’ crooked shoulder.
“You promised—the word game,” she reminded him.
“Yes— the game—”
With a sigh Dard stooped to pick up a charred stick from the hearth. But he was sure now about the suppressed excitement in his brother’s voice. With the blackened wood for a pencil and the table top for his writing pad he waited.
“Suppose we try your verse now, Dessie,” Lars suggested.
“Repeat it slowly so Dard can work out the pattern.”
Dard’s stick moved in a series of lines up, down, up again. It made a pattern right enough and a clear one. Dessie came to look and then she laughed.
“Legs kicking, Daddy. My rhyme made a picture of legs kicking!”
Dard studied what he had just done. Dessie was right, legs kicked, one a little more exuberantly than the other. He smiled and then glanced up with a start, for Lars had struggled to his feet and was edging around the table without the aid of his crutches. He looked at the straggling lines his brows drawn together in a frown of concentration. From the breast pocket of his patched shirt he took out a scrap of peeled bark they used for paper-keeping it half-concealed in the palm of his hand so that what was noted on it remained a secret. Taking the writing stick from Dard he began to make notations, but the scratchings were all numbers not words.
Erasing with the side of his hand now and again he worked feverishly until at last he gave a quick nod as if in self-reassurance, and let his last combinations stand among the line pattern Dard had seen in Dessie’s nonsense rhyme.
“This is important—both of you—” his voice was almost a whip lash of impatient command “The pattern you see for Dessie’s lines, Dard—but—these words.” Slowly he recited, accenting heavily each word he spoke.
“Seven, nine, four and ten.
Twenty, sixty, and seven again.”
Dard studied the smudged diagram on the table top until he was sure that it was engraved on his memory for all time.
When he nodded, Lars turned and tossed the note chip into the fire. Then his eyes met his brother’s in a straight measuring look over the little girl’s bent head.
“It’s all yours, Dard, just remember—”
But the younger Nordis had only said, “I’ll do it,” when Dessie, uncomprehendingly, broke in.
“Seven, nine, four and ten,” she repeated solemnly,
“Twenty, sixty, and seven again. Why, it sings just as mine does—you’re right, Daddy!”
“Yes. Now how about bed.” Lars lurched back to his chair. “It’s dark. You’d better go, too, Dard.”
That was an order. Lars was expecting someone tonight, then. Dard raked two bricks away from the fire and wrapped them up in charred pieces of blanket. Then he opened the door to the crooked stairs which led to the room overhead. There it was dark and the cold was bitter. But moonlight made a short path from the uncurtained window—enough to show them the pile of straw and ragged bed covers huddled close to the chimney where some heat came up from the fire below. Dard made a nest with the bricks laid in to warm it and pushed Dessie back as far as he could without smothering her. Then he stood for a moment looking out across the moonlit snow.
They were a safe mile from the road and be had taken certain precautions of his own to insure that no sneaking patrol of Peacemen could enter the lane without warning. Across the fields was only Folley’s place—though that was a lurking danger. Behind loomed the mountains, which, wild as they were, promised safety of a kind. If only Lars were not crippled they could have gone into the hills long ago.
When they first reached the farm it had seemed a haven of safety after two years of hiding and being hunted. There was so much confusion after Renzi’s assassination and the following purge, with the Peacemen busily consolidating their power, that small fry among the remaining techneers and scientists had managed to stay free of the first nets. But now patrols were combing everywhere and some day, sooner or later, one would come here—especially if Folley revealed his suspicions to the right people. Folley wanted the farm, and he hated Lars and Dard because they were different. To be different nowadays was to sign your own death warrant. How much longer would they escape the notice of a roundup gang?
Dard was aroused from the blackest of forebodings to discover that he was biting savagely on the knuckles of a balled fist. With two quick steps he crossed the small room and felt along the shelf. His heart leaped as his groping fingers closed about the haft of a knife. Not much good against a stun rifle maybe. But when he held it so, he did not feel completely defenseless.
On impulse he put it inside his clothing, against skin which shrunk from the icy metal. And then he crawled into the nest of straw.
“Hmm— ?” came a sleepy murmur from Dessie.
“It’s Dardie,” he whispered reassuringly. “Go to sleep.”
It might have been hours later, or minutes, when Dard came suddenly awake. He lay rigid, listening. There was no sound in the old house, not even the creak of a board. But he pulled out into the cold and crawled to the window. Something had awakened him, and the fear he lived with put him on guard.
He strained to see all the details of the bright white and black landscape. A shadow moved between moon and snow. There was a ’copter coming down, making a silent landing just before the house. Figures leaped out of it and flitted to right and left, encircling the dwelling.
Dard ran back to scoop Dessie out of the warmth of the bed, clapping his hand over her mouth. Her eyes opened, wide with fear. as he put his lips close to her car.
“Go down to Daddy,” he ordered. “Wake him!”
“Peacemen?” She was shaking with more than cold as she started down the stairs. “Say that I think so. They came in a ’copter.” That was the one thing he had not been able to guard against surprise from above. But they had so few of the ’copters left, now that it was forbidden to manufacture any of the prepurge machines. And why should they use one to raid an insignificant farmhouse sheltering a child a cripple and a boy? Unless Lars’ work was important—so important that they dared not allow him to pass along his findings to the underground.
Dard watched the dark shapes take cover. They were probably all around the house by this time, moving in. They wanted to take the inhabitants alive. Too many cornered scientists in the past had cheated them. So they would move slowly now—slow enough to—Dard’s smile was no more than a drawn grimace.He still had one secret, one which might save the Nordis family yet.
Having watched the last of the raiders take cover Dard ran down into the kitchen. The fire was still burning and before it crouched Lars.
“They came by air. And they ha
ve the house surrounded,” Dard reported in a matter-of-fact voice. Now that the worst had at last happened he was surprisingly calm. “But they don’t have their trap completely closed as they are going to discover!”
He brushed past Lars and jerked open the cupboard doors. Dessie stood beside her father, and now Dard threw her a bag.
“Food— everything you can pack in,” he ordered. “Lars, here!”
From the pegs he pulled down all the extra clothing they had. “Get dressed to go out.”
But his brother shook his head. “You know I can’t make it, Dard.”
Dessie went on stuffing provisions into the hag “I’ll help you, Daddy,” she promised “’just as soon as I can.”
Dard paid no attention to his brother. Instead he ran to the far end of the room and raised the trap door of the cellar.
“Last summer,” he explained as he came back to gather up the clothing, “’I found a passage down there behind the wall. It leads out to the foundations of the barn. We can hide there—”
“They know we are here They’ll be looking for a move such as that,” objected Lars.
“Not after I cover our trail.”
He saw that Lars was pulling on the remnants of a coat. Dessie was almost ready to go and now she helped her father not only to dress but to crawl across the floor to the hole. Dard gave her a pine knot torch before he went to work.
The doors and all the downstairs shutters were barred. Those ought to hold just long enough—
He took a small can from the cupboard and poured its long-saved contents liberally about the room. Then he withdrew to the head of the cellar ladder before hurling a second blazing torch into the nearest patch of liquid. A billow of fire sent him hurtling down with just enough time to pull the trap door shut behind him.
As he shoved aside the rotting bins which concealed the opening to the passage, he could hear the crackling above, and smoke drifted down through the flooring cracks.
A moment later Dessie scuttled into the passage ahead as Dard hauled Lars along with him. Over their heads the house burned. These outside might well believe that their prey burned with it. At the very least the blaze would cover their escape for the precious minutes which meant the difference between life and death.
2: HIDING OUT
BEFORE THEY REACHED the outlet below the barn, Dard brought them to a halt. There was no use emerging into the arms of some snooping Peaceman. It was better to stay in hiding until they could see whether or not the enemy had been fooled by the burning house.
The passage in which the three crouched was walled with rough stone and so narrow that the shoulders of the two adults brushed both sides. It was cold, icy with a chill which crept up from the bare earth underneath through their ill-covered feet to their knees and then into their shivering bodies. How long they could stay there without succumbing to that cold Dard did not know. He bit his lip anxiously as he strained to hear the sound from above.
He was answered by an explosion, the sound and shock of which came to them down the passage from the house. And then there was a slightly hysterical chuckle from Lars.
“What happened?” began Dard, and then answered his own question, “The laboratory!”
“Yes, the laboratory,” Lars said, leaning against the wall. There was relaxation in both his pose and voice. “They’ll have a mess to comb through now.
“All the better!” snapped Dard. “Will it feed the fire?”
“Feed the fire! It might blow up the whole building. There won’t be enough pieces left for them to discover what was inside before the blast.”
“Or who might have been there!” For the first time Dard saw a ray of real hope. The Peacemen could not have known of this passage, they probably believed that the dwellers in the farmhouse had been blown up in that explosion. The escape of the Nordis family was covered—they now had a better than even chance.
But still he waited, or rather made Lars and Dessie wait in hiding while he crept on into the barn hole and climbed up the ladder he had placed there for such a use as this. Then, making a worm’s progress crawling, he crossed the rotting floor to peer out through the doorless entrance.
The outline of the farmhouse walls was gone, and tongues of blue-white flame ate up the dark to make the scene day-bright. Two men in the black and white Peace uniforms were dragging a third away from the holocaust. And there was a lot of confused shouting. Dard listened and gathered that the raiders were convinced that their prey had gone up with the house, taking with them two officers who had just beaten in the back door before the explosion. And there had been three others injured. The roundup gang was hurrying away, apprehensive of other explosions. Peacemen, who prided themselves on their lack of scientific knowledge, were apt to harbor such suspicions.
Dard got to his feet. The last man, trailing a stun rifle, was going around the fire now, keeping a careful distance from the chemically fed flames, such a distance that he plunged waist deep through snow drifts. And a few moments later Dard saw the ’copter rise, circle the farm once, and head west. He sighed with relief and went back to get the others.
“All clear,” he reported to Lars as he supported the crippled man up the ladder. “They think we went up in the explosion and they were afraid there might be another so they left fast—”
Again Lars chuckled. “They won’t be back in a hurry then.”
“Dard,” Dessie was a small shadow moving through the gloom, “if our house is gone where are we going to live now?
“My practical daughter,” Lars said. “We will find some other place… ”
Dard remembered. “The messenger you were expecting! He might see the blaze from the hills and not come at all!”
“And that’s why you’re going to leave him a sign that we’re still in the land of the living, Dard. As Dessie points out we haven’t a roof over us now, and the sooner we’re on our way the better.Since our late callers believe us to be dead there’s no danger in Dessie and I staying right where we are now, while you do what’s necessary to bring help. Follow the wall in the top pasture to the corner where the old woods road begins. About a quarter of a mile beyond is a big tree with a hollow in it.Put this inside.” Lars pulled a piece of rag out of his wrappings. “Then come back here. That’ll bring our man on down even if he sees an eruption going on. It tells him that we’ve escaped and are hiding out waiting to make contact. If he doesn’t come by morning— we’ll try moving up closer to the tree.”
Dard understood. His brother daren’t attempt the journey through the snow and brush at night. But tomorrow they could rig some kind of a board sled from the debris and drags Lars into the safety of the woods. In the meantime it was very necessary to leave the sign. With a word of caution to them both, Dard left the barn.
By instinct he kept to the shadows east by the trees and brush which encroached on the once fertile fields. Near the farm buildings was a maze of tracks left by the Peacemen, and he used them to hide the pattern of his own steps. Just why he took such precautions he could not tell, but the wariness which had guided every move of his life for years had now become an ingrown part of him. On the other hand, now that the raid he had feared for so long had come, and he and his were still alive and free, he felt eased of some of the almost intolerable burden.
As he tramped away from the dying fire the night was very still and cold. Once a snowy owl slipped across the sky, and deep in the forest a wolf, or one of the predatory wild dogs, howled. Dard did not find it difficult to locate Lars’ tree and made sure that the rag was safe in the black hollow of its trunk.
The cold ate into him and he hurried on his back trail. Maybe they might dare light a small fire in the cellar pit, just enough to keep them from freezing until morning. How close was the dawn, he wondered, as he stumbled and clutched at a snow-crowned wall to steady himself. Bed—sleep—warmth— He was so tired—so very tired—
Then a sound ripped through the night air. A shot! His face twisted and his hand went t
o the haft of the knife. A shot! Lars had no gun! The Peacemen—but they had gone!
Clumsily, slipping, fighting to keep his footing in the treacherous snow drifts, Dard began to run. Within a matter of minutes he came to his senses and dodged into cover, making his way to the barn in such a manner as to provide no target for any marksman lurking there. Dessie, Lars— there alone without any means of defense!
Dard was close to the building when Dessie’s scream came. And that scream tore all the caution from him. Balancing the knife in his hand, he threw himself across the churned snow of the yard for the door. And his sacking covered feet made no sound as he ran.
“Got ya’—imp of Satan!”
Dard’s arm came up, the knife was poised. And, as if for once Fortune was on his side, there was a sharp tinkle of breaking glass from the embers of the house and a following sweep of flame to light the scene within the barn.
Dessie was fighting, silently now, with all the frenzy of a small cornered animal, in the hands of Hew Folley. One of the man’s hard fists was aimed straight for her face as Dard threw the knife.
The months he had practiced with that single weapon were now rewarded. Dessie flew free as the man hurled her away. On hands and feet she scuttled into the dark. Hew turned and bent over as if to grope for the rifle which lay by his feet. Then he coughed, and coughing, went down. Dard grabbed the rifle. Only when it was in his hands did he come up to the still-coughing man. He pulled at Folley’s shoulder and rolled him over. Bitter hatred stared up at Dard from the small dark eyes of the other.
“Got— dirty— stinkman—” Folley mouthed and then coughed. Blood bubbled from his slack lips. “Thought—he—was—hiding—right—Kill—kill—” The rest was lost in a gush of blood. He tried to raise himself but the effort was beyond him. Dard watched grimly until it was over and then, fighting down a rising nausea, undertook the dirty business of retrieving his knife.
The sun did not show when he came out of the barn with Dessie after some hours which he did not want to remember. From a gray sky whirled flakes of white. Dard regarded them blankly at first and then with a dull relief. A snow storm would hide a lot. Not that anyone would ever find Lars poor twisted body, now safely walled up in the passage. But Folley’s people might be detained by a heavy storm if they started a search. The landsman had been a tyrant and the district bully—not beloved enough to arouse interest for a sizable searching party.