Doomstar

9

Next morning, Kettrick thought that perhaps he had heen imagining things. In the soft warm sunlight the village seemed as peaceful as it ever had. The child-sized houses steamed as last night's rain dried out of them. Children as tiny as dolls ran about the green, their little voices piping, sweetly shrill. The grownups woke late after the feast and began without haste to make ready for the trading. It would go on for several days, until all the people from the outlying villages had had time to come in. There was no hurry. There was never any hurry here.

The peoples on the other side of Gurra were of different stocks, physically larger and temperamentally more aggressive. They were developing a more complex and technologically advanced society, readily assimilating ideas brought in by the traders and adapting them to their own uses. Quite a few of them had begun to migrate, anxious to see what wonders lay beyond their own sky.

Whellan's people, on the other hand, were indolent, incurious, completely self-satisfied. They already had the best of everything and they were happy with it. Mountains and jungle protected them. They had no enemies. The soil, with a minimum of labor, provided them with ample food, clothing, and building materials. Comfort came to them naturally in the gentle air.

Some articles, such as synthetic fabrics in brilliant colors, jewelry, cosmetics, metal knives and pots, and simple medicines, they were glad to get from the traders. Other things like electric generators and farm machinery they looked at with amused disinterest and total incomprehension, so that basically their culture had not been altered by the establishment of interstellar trade.

Whether it ever would be depended entirely on them. The League of Cluster Worlds forbade missions of any sort to sell people on anything, and the I–C enforced the ban. The appurtenances of many cultures were displayed for all to see. If people wanted them and were willing to work for them, they were welcome to have them. If they did not, the things were useless to them anyway. All over the Cluster could be seen the rusting remains of water works, power stations, and what have you designed to improve the lot of local populations who could not possibly have cared less and who never bothered with the contraptions, Since those early days, technological advances had been put on a strictly do-it-yourself basis.

Whellan's people had chosen not to do it. Some day, Kettrick supposed, their more energetic neighbors would swamp them under. But that was their lookout, and in the meantime they were blithe as babies playing in the sun.

He decided that what he had thought he had seen last night at the feast was only a sort of fever dream brought on by excitement and too much wine in that hot and busy room.

Then Chai, who had slept beside him on the floor and who had come with him now to stand outside the door of the Tall House, blew a long breath out through her nose and said, "Not like this place, John-nee."

Surprised, he asked her why.

She shook her head, peering slit-eyed at the sunny green. "Smell wrong," she said, and grunted, indicating that it was not possible to explain to a human why she felt that way.

Then Kettrick remembered again the sly glances and the hushed triumphant laughter, and he remembered Whellan saying, "Stay here with us, a little while…"

He went back inside and shook Glevan and the two Hlakrans awake.

After that for four days they were busy. Kettrick took care of the trading. The others took care of Grellah, getting her ready for the next jump. All that time a singular nervousness stayed with Kettrick. Until she was ready for space, the planet-bound ship was a trap.

He did not know why he felt this way. Everything went smoothly. The trading was good. The people were as friendly as ever, and Nillaine hung at his elbow like a cheerful sprite, just as she had used to. Whellan entertained them all royally each night. But he did not repeat to Kettrick his invitation to stay a while. And Kettrick did not refer to it.

One thing became increasingly clear. Seri had not traded with the people. They came out to Grellah with their little carts and baskets stacked high with goods; fine-woven native cloth, carved things of rare wood and great delicacy, the much-prized purple-bronze skins of the big river snakes. They were rich.

Boker said shrewdly, "Maybe he didn't take his pay in goods."

"Drugs?" said Kettrick. He knew the little people still made and used their particular narcotic, in some religious rites. They were permitted to, as long as they didn't sell it. "I wouldn't put it past him. The stuff would be worth a lot now, being so scarce. Only they certainly wouldn't have given it to him for nothing, and there isn't a sign of anything new in the village. You can tell that anyhow by the way they're trading."

Boker shrugged. "Whellan did say Seri's prices were too high. Maybe he did just have his trip for nothing." He scratched his silver mane with a grease-blackened hand and added, "But I'm damned if I see why he bothered to come at all. Seri, I mean, himself, in person. Not once, but several times. The market's hardly worth it."

That was on the morning of the fourth day. At noon Boker came to tell him that the refitting job was done.

"Take over the trading," Kettrick said.

"Where are you going?"

"To ask a couple of questions." He frowned, feeling a little foolish as he went on. "I want you to stick close, all of you. We might just want to take off in a hurry."

"Huh," said Boker. "You get it too, eh?"

"Get what?"

"I don't know," said Boker, "and that's a fact. But don't trust your little friends too far, Johnny. They've got some kind of a bee in their bonnets." He leaned closer. "Glevan says it's a sign." He grinned, but his eyes were serious. "You watch, huh?"

"I'll watch." Kettrick walked away through the fair-ground cluster of carts and little matting shelters and holiday people under Grellah's rusty bulk. Her cargo hatch was open, the lift mechanism clanking and groaning as loads went in and out. It was such a normal, peaceful scene, and the idea of being afraid of these people was so ridiculous, that he almost laughed.

"Ask a couple of questions, that's all," he thought. "And then we'll go."

Chai roused up from the trade booth's shadow and followed him.

The avenue of trees glowed in the sunlight like huge fantastic torches, white flowers massed against the red leaves. The trodden way underfoot was dusty-warm, fragrant with crushed grasses. It seemed perfectly natural that he should meet Nillaine coming toward him from the village.

"Johnny!" she cried. "I was just on my way to see you." She wore a length of peacock blue silky stuff, a present from him, draped around her, and there were flowers in her strange bright hair. "Is the trading finished?"

"Not yet," he said. "I wanted time to roam a little. It's a long while since I've been here."

Her amber eyes smiled at him. "I'll roam with you." Then she saw Chai, gray and huge in the tree shadows. "Oh Johnny, send it back, please. It frightens me."

Kettrick shrugged and spoke to Chai briefly in her own tongue. She turned obediently and went back toward the ship. Nillaine's shoulders lifted in a little shudder of relief.

"Such a great, fierce, sad creature. I cannot laugh when it's around." She took his hand. "Where shall we go?"

"Where it pleases you. After I speak with your father."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Johnny. My father has gone to the Third-Bend Village." She was referring to one on the third bend of the river, north. "He will be back before sunset. Speak to him then."

"Well," said Kettrick, "in that case, I have no choice." But he was irritated, as though Whellan had done this deliberately to avoid him. Which was foolish, of course. Whellan could not possibly have known that he would come.

They walked down the avenue of trees and Nillaine held to his hand just as she had used to, and he matched his stride to her little sandaled feet.

The village was quiet in the warm noon. There were smells of cooking. A few children played. The door of the Tall House stood open and there was nothing inside but shadow. Kettrick and Nillaine crossed the green. There was a wide dusty lane beyond. It went between meandering rows of the small thatched houses, leading eventually and without haste to a tract of semijungle and then, much farther on, to another village.

The houses seemed to Kettrick to be unusually still this day, as though many of the people were gone, or were sitting inside waiting for something. He tried to explain it by saying to himself that they were all out by the ship. Only he knew this was not so. The villagers had already done their trading, and the people around Grellah now were almost all from the more distant places.

Nillaine chattered happily. About Kettrick. About Earth, about Tananaru, about what he did there and what he was going to do.

"What will you do, Johnny?"

"What I've always done. Trade."

"But suppose they find out. The I–C. Surely you can't trust everyone as you do us, surely someone will tell them you've come back."

He laughed and did not answer.

"Suppose you meet Seri," she said. "You almost did. Will he not tell?"

"Don't you worry about it," Kettrick said, and turned aside from the main track into a narrower one. Trees pressed closer on either side, making deep shadows shot with glancing copper light that moved with the movement of the branches. Very quickly the path began to climb, toward a line of hills that thrust above the jungle.

Nillaine let go of his hand and walked a while in silence, a bright blue butterfly dancing down the shadow tunnel ahead of him.

"Seri won't tell," Kettrick said. "He's my friend, you know that."

"Oh, yes."

"I won't tell on him, either."

She paused, ever so slightly. "About what?"

"About what he does here."

Nillaine stopped and turned, standing beside a crimson-flowered vine that was slowly and beautifully strangling a tree.

She said blandly, "But Johnny, he trades. Like you."

"Not like me. Or there would have been nothing left for me."

She laughed. "That's true."

"What is it, then? Narcotics? Pretty little girls who want to see faraway worlds?"

She came close to him, her amber eyes alight. "I'm not supposed to tell."

"Oh. And what do I have to do to make you?"

"I'm greedy." She bent her head to one side and stretched out her arms. "I want to glitter and shine, and make music when I walk."

"I will deck you," said Kettrick, "as no other woman was ever decked before. I will make every girl in every village hate you."

She laughed again. "I will love that!" She caught his hand, all mischievous child again. "Come on, then. I'll show you. But you have to promise not to tell my father."

He promised, and they went on to a place where the path forked. Here Nillaine turned aside, leading the way into a narrow gorge that presently offered no path at all but the water-worn rock that floored it. The gorge climbed steeply, and widened, and then they were clambering up a broad slope with the forest thinning on it and the top of the jungle solid as a floor below them.

The sun struck hot at their shoulders, and a wind blew. Once or twice Kettrick thought he saw movement among the trees, and twice or more he thought he heard a sound, as though more than they two were on that slope. But he could not be sure.

They came at length to a high place held privately in a cup of the hills. It was very still there, walled with forest and the higher peaks on three sides so that even the wind was cut off. The floor of the cup had been made level, and paved with many-colored stones set in a kind of mosaic that seemed to have no pattern, and yet Kettrick knew there was one. Dotted about this level floor, apparently at random, were tall slim carvings of wood set upright.

Kettrick stopped at the edge of the floor.

"Why have you brought me here?" he asked.

Nillaine turned and looked at him, standing by one of the tall pillars. "You know where you are?"

"This is the Woman Place, isn't it?"

She said, "Yes," and leaned against the pillar. The pillar had arms and hands. These held a sheaf of grain between two swelling breasts.

He moved carefully back from the colored stones. "Why, Nillaine?"

"You'll have one chance, Johnny. We could not do less."

"The chance Whellan started to give me on the first night?"

Her bright head bobbed against the pillar. The wood was polished and very dark. "Whellan's a man, and trusting. He didn't realize that you were lying."

"Lying?"

"About coming back to trade. Just now I gave you a chance to tell me the truth, but you lied again." She smiled. "We know a little of the law here, we know something of how it is done."

"Very well," said Kettric. "Suppose I did lie. How could it concern you?"

"We love you, Johnny. We want you to live." The sun shone on the polished wooden breasts above her head. The fingers of the carven hands held the sheaf of grain with infinite tenderness. "Stay here with us a while. You'll be quite safe. And after it's over, you'll be free."

Kettrick said slowly, "After what is over?" And his tongue was dry in his mouth.

Angrily she cried out, "I'm grown now, I'm a woman, not a child! Don't treat me as one, because I'm smaller than you! You know. You must know. You followed Seri. You wanted me to show you what he did here. He warned us that someone might follow, he told us that men were trying to stop what is to come. Another man we would have killed outright, but you…"

The sun was hot on Kettrick's back. He could feel the sweat run, and wondering how it could be so cold on his hot skin. He shook his head and said,

"But you're wrong, Nillaine. I only asked about Seri because I was curious. And I lied about why I came back because I was afraid you might give me away without meaning to, if the I–C should happen to come." He pointed skyward. "My business is out there, at the White Sun. The same business they arrested me for, and sent me away from the Cluster. I don't care what Seri's doing. I wouldn't care if he had the Doomstar in his pocket…"

He saw her eyes flare bright as fire in the sunlight, and he hurried on, pretending not to notice.

"I'm only interested in finishing my deal. Money, Nillaine. A million credits. And then I'm gone from the Cluster forever."

"Money," she said, and laughed. "I almost believe you. Well, then, and so you don't care if Seri has the Doomstar in his pocket. Then wait, Johnny. The White Sun will wait. Everything will wait. And afterward you can go where you will and the I–C won't stop you."

She stepped toward him, away from the pillar. "Will you stay?"

She was pleading with him. Her eyes were fond and hopeful, her hands outstretched. He smiled, a stiff and sickly counterfeit, and shook his head.

"No."

He turned to walk away from the paved floor and the pillars. He did not see, behind him, what gesture she made. Perhaps the only one needed was his own gesture of departure. In any case, he stopped, because suddenly all the slopes and the edges of the woods were alive with tiny figures among the trees.

The women of the village, with flowers in their hair, and each one holding in her right hand a little shining knife.