Rite of Passage

14

There are basically two ways of facing Trial — the turtle method and the tiger method. The turtle method means that you dig yourself a hole and stay in it for a month, looking for no trouble, looking for nothing, simply sitting. The tiger method means that you prowl, investigating, seeing what there is to see. There is no doubt that the tiger method is more dangerous. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that it is more lively. None of our instructors was ever presumptuous enough to recommend one course or the other, and there was no official stigma attached to being a turtle, but certainly there was more prestige in being a tiger. We used to talk about it sometimes. Riggy was determined to be a turtle.

“I want to come home again,” he said, “and I’ve got a better chance if I’m a turtle.” It just shows you what happens when a rash boy starts thinking.

Att wouldn’t talk about his plans, but Jimmy said that he was going to be a tiger. When I was thinking in terms of going with Jimmy, I was thinking of being a tiger. When I decided that I was going by myself, I toned my projected tigerhood down by about sixty percent. Call me a reluctant tiger.

I got up early on the morning of the first of December and went out to get myself breakfast. I found both Daddy and breakfast waiting for me. We ate a subdued meal.

When I was ready to go, Daddy said, “Goodbye, Mia. Your mother and I will be there waving when you come home.”

I kissed him and said, “Goodbye, Daddy.”

Then I took the shuttle down to Gate 5 on the Third Level. I was wearing sturdy shoes, pants, light and heavy shirt. I had my knife and my handgun, my bubble tent, my bedroll, some personal things, changes of clothes, a green, yellow and red cloth coat, food, and, most important, my pickup signal. This, a little block three inches by two, was my contact with the scoutship. Without it, without a signal from me at the proper time, I might as well be dead, and as far as the Ship was concerned I would be. Silent or dead — either way you didn’t come home.

I collected Ninc, my stalwart and stupid pony, and his gear and loaded them on a transport shuttle. Then I helped Rachel Yung do the same, and we went down together to First Level and the scoutship bay. We loaded our stuff and went outside to wait.

There were no bands playing. There were just the scoutships standing quietly over their tubes, men working in a businesslike fashion in the great rock gallery, and us. We were ignored — we might not come back, you know.

One by one the kids came, loaded their stuff aboard, and then came outside to join us in standing around. We weren’t making much noise, except for Riggy, who told a joke and then laughed at it, his voice echoing. Nobody else laughed.

We were to leave at eight. At quarter to eight, Mr. Marechal came in, wished us luck, and went on his way. His new class was to have its first meeting that afternoon and I think he was probably already memorizing names.

There were sixteen of us girls, and thirteen boys. David Farmer and Bill Nieman were missing, still recovering from the tiger hunt. They would have another chance in three months, though I didn’t envy them the wait at all. Especially after we came back and were adults, and they weren’t.

Just before eight, George Fuhonin and Mr. Pizarro arrived. George was quite bright and cheerful in spite of the early hour. I was standing near the ramp and he stopped.

“Well, the big day at last,” he said. “I’d wish you luck if I thought you needed it, Mia, but I don’t think I have to worry about you.”

I don’t know whether I appreciated his confidence or not.

Mr. Pizarro went about halfway up the ramp and then turned and waved for attention. “All right,” he called. “Everybody aboard.”

We took our seats in the bull-pen. Before I went in, I paused at the head of the ramp and took a good long look at home, possibly the last look I would ever have. After we were settled, George raised the ramps.

“Here we go,” he said over the speaker. “Ten seconds to drop.”

The air bled out of the tubes, the rim bars pulled back, and then we just… dropped. George didn’t have to do that. He would never have dared to do that with Daddy aboard. My stomach flipped a little and then settled again. George has an odd sense of humor and I think he thinks it’s fun to be a hot pilot when he can get away with it.

Att was sitting near me and he turned then as though he had finally gotten up the nerve to say something difficult.

“Mia,” he said, “I wondered — do you think you might want to go partners?”

After a moment I said, “I’m sorry, Att, but I guess not.”

“Jimmy?”

“No. I think I’ll just go by myself.”

“Oh,” he said, and after a few minutes he got up and moved off.

I guess it was my day to be popular, because Jimmy came over, too, a little later. I was busy thinking and I didn’t see him come up. He cleared his throat and I looked up.

Almost apologetically, he said, “Mia, I always thought we’d join up after we were dropped. If you want to, I will.”

I still had that final crack of his in mind, the one about being a snob, so I simply said, “No,” and he went away. That bothered me. If he cared, he would have tried to argue, and if he’d argued I might have changed my mind.

That crack of his continued to rankle. He had to bring Daddy into it, but Daddy never convinced me. People who live on planets can’t be people. They don’t have any chance to learn how to be, so they grow up to be like those characters I met the first time I was on a planet. And I heard lots of other stories at home. If both you and your father come to an inevitable conclusion based on facts, that doesn’t mean he convinced you. I’d made up my own mind. And tell me, is it being a snob not to like people who aren’t people?

The planet that we were being dropped on was called Tintera. Daddy told me that one thing at breakfast, sailing a little close to the edge of the rules. But it was hardly much of an admission on his part since he well knew that I had never heard of the place. Our last contact with the planet, and we were aware of none recently, had been almost 150 years before. We knew the colony was still extant, but that was all. The Council always discusses Trial drops before they are made, and this much time out of contact had given them something to talk about. But the planet was conveniently at hand, so in the end they went ahead. Actually, for them not to, Daddy would have had to make some objection, and speaking practically, he couldn’t object because of me.

When we reached Tintera, George began dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. George spotted a clear area and swung down to it. When we came to a stop, he lowered the ramp.

“Okay,” he said over the speaker. “First one out.”

The order in leaving the scoutship is purely personal. As long as somebody goes, they don’t care who it is. Jimmy had all his gear together before we set down. As soon as the ramp was lowered, he signaled to Mr. Pizarro that he was going, and led his horse down the ramp. It was what you would expect Jimmy to do. Mr. Pizarro checked him off, and in a minute we were airborne again.

I began to check my gear out then, making sure I had everything. I’d checked it all before and I had no way to replace anything missing, but I couldn’t help myself.

At the next landing, I said to Mr. Pizarro, “I’ll go now,” cutting out Venie, who sat down again. I grabbed Ninc’s reins. I didn’t lash my gear on, but just slung it over the saddle, and then walked down the ramp with Ninc. It had nothing to do with Jimmy. I just wanted to go. I didn’t want to wait any longer.

I waved at George to show him I was clear, and that I was going, and he waved back as he lifted the ramp. Then the scout rose impersonally away as I held Ninc tightly to keep him from doing something foolish. In just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last.

It left me there, the Compleat Young Girl, hell on wheels. I could build one-fifteenth of a log cabin, kill one-thirty-first of a tiger, kiss, do needlepoint, pass through an obstacle course, and come pretty close (in theory) to killing somebody with my bare hands. What did I have to worry about?

I lived through that first day — the first of my thirty. It was cool, so the very first thing I did was put on my colored coat. Then I slung Ninc’s saddle bags, strapped my bedroll on, and swung aboard. I didn’t push things, but just rode easily through the forest making a list of priorities in my mind, the things I had to do and the order I should do them in. My list ran like this:

The first thing was to stay alive. Find food beyond the little supply I had. Any shelter better than a bubble tent — locate, or if necessary, build.

Second — look over the territory. See what the scenery and people looked like.

Third — see some of the other kids if things should happen to go that way. I hadn’t been dropped a great distance from Jimmy, after all, and Venie or somebody wouldn’t be terribly far the other way.

The gravity of Tintera was a shade on the light side, which I didn’t mind at all. It is better, after all, to be light on your feet than to be heavy. Or worse — to have a horse with sore feet. The country under the forest top was rugged. There were times when I had to get off and walk, picking my way through the trees or around a rock formation.

I stopped fairly early in the day. Being alone and lonely, feeling a little set at odds by the change from warm, comfortable Geo Quad to this cold, gray forested world, I was ready to make a fire, eat and go to bed at a time I would have found unreasonably early at home.

I located a little hollow with a spring and set up my bubble tent there. I finished eating by the time dark fell and went into the tent, but I didn’t turn on the light. Even in the shelter I felt unaccountably cold, something like the way I had felt in the week after I got my general protection shot. I ached all over. If it weren’t the wrong time of the month, I would have thought I was having my period. If it weren’t so unlikely, I would have thought I was sick. But I wasn’t having my period and I wasn’t sick — I was just miserable.

I huddled and I cried, curled up in my bedroll. I hated this wretched planet, I was mad at Jimmy for letting me be alone like this, and I wasn’t any too happy with myself. I hadn’t expected Trial to be like this. So lonely, so strange. As I’d been riding during the afternoon, I had scared up some large animals. They were ungainly things with knobby knees and square, lumpy heads. When they noticed Ninc and me, they threw up their heads and stared at us. They had the kind of horns that sprout — antlers. After a moment, they bolted in a wobble-legged gallop that carried them crashing into the brush and then out of sight. They knew an outsider when they saw one, and I knew I didn’t belong. I didn’t get to sleep easily.

The sun was up in the morning. The morning was cold, but the day was brighter. As I moved around and as the sun rose higher, it became almost warm, the heat of the sun and the cold of the breeze balancing each other.

I wasn’t feeling much better, but I did keep busy and that took my mind off my troubles. I was recognizing a disadvantage to being a turtle that I hadn’t previously reckoned on. It gave me far too much time to appreciate the awfulness of planets in general and the specific failings of this particular place, not to mention the misery of being alone and deserted. I couldn’t stand that. I had to be a tiger to occupy my mind, if for no other reason.

So I packed up early in the morning, and I started Ninc in a great widening circle, the most efficient sort of search pattern. The country continued to be rough. If I had been following the line of the land, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but trying to go in a spiral was difficult. There were any number of times that I had to get off Ninc and lead him.

At one of these times, a small animal came bounding across my path. I’d seen other small ground animals and gliders in the trees once or twice, but never this close. I pulled my gun the instant I saw it. My first shot with the sonic pistol missed, the sighting beam slapping left, because Ninc chose that moment to toss his silly brown head. I shot again and dropped it this time. A sonic pistol is a nice short range weapon.

I led Ninc over and as I bent to pick it up, there was a loud noise of something moving in the bushes. I turned to look. The thing that stood poised there was nothing short of startling. It stood on two legs and was covered with gray-green hair. It had a square, flat animal mask for a face. I had a feeling that I had just killed its intended dinner.

We looked at each other. Ninc snorted and started backing away. I dropped the reins and hoped Ninc wouldn’t run. I took a deep breath to quiet my pounding heart, and then I walked straight at it with my pistol in hand. I yelled, “Shoo. Get out of here,” and waved my arms. I yelled again, and after an uncertain moment, the thing shook its head and plunged away.

I turned back and grabbed Ninc, feeling surprisingly good. I’d been thinking about my general misery, my feeling I’d just had a shot. It struck me that if I had a choice, I’d be better off without a gun than without immunization. I’ll bet more explorers on old Earth died from the galloping whatdoyoucallits than were killed by animals, accidents and aborigines put together.

I kept going until the light began to fade. The animal I shot turned out to be edible. It’s all a matter of luck. In the course of Survival Training I’d had occasion to eat things that were so gruey that I wonder how anybody could choke them down (the point under demonstration, of course, being that the most astounding guck will keep you alive). I’d done better than just find something that would keep me alive, so I hadn’t done badly at all. By the time I had eaten, I was thoroughly tired, and I had no trouble at all in falling asleep.

It was the next day that I found the road. I was riding along and singing. I don’t like the idea of people who don’t sing to themselves when they’re all alone. They’re too sober for me. At least hum — anybody can do that. So I was riding and singing as I came to the crest of a hill. I looked down and through the trees I saw the road.

I brought Ninc down the hill, losing sight of the road for a time in the trees and rocks, and then coming clear of the welter of brown and gray and green to find the road. It curved before and behind, following the roll of the land with no attempt made to cut the land for a straighter, more even way. It was a narrow dirt road with marks of wagons and horses and other tracks I couldn’t identify. There were droppings, too, that weren’t horse droppings.

We had come in over the ocean from the west and I knew we weren’t terribly far from it now. It seemed likely that one of the ends of this road was the ocean. I, of course, had no intention of going in that direction since I had already seen one ocean and counted that sufficient. My quota of oceans had been filled. It is an axiom that roads lead somewhere, so I oriented myself and headed eastwards — inland.

I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined bend, and pulled Ninc to a stop. Ahead of me on the road, going in the same direction that I was, were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures alive. The creatures were making a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded along.

I looked after them, my heart suddenly fluttering. For a brief moment I wanted to turn and head back the way I had come. But I knew I had to face these locals sometime if I was going to be a tiger, and after all, they were only Mudeaters. Only Mudeaters.

Ninc set into a walk as I kicked him. I got a better look at the creatures as we approached, and it seemed likely to me that they were brothers of the thing I had encountered in the woods the day before. They were quite unhuman. They were green and grotesque with squat bodies, knobby joints, long limbs and square heads. But they did walk on their hind legs and had paws that were prehensile — hands — and that was enough to give an impression of humanity. A caricature.

All the men on horseback had guns in saddle boots and looked as nervous as cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line, and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me.

He was a middle-aged man, whatever middle age was here. He was a large man and he had a hard face. It was a normal enough face, but it was hard. He pulled to a halt when we reached each other, but I didn’t. I kept riding and he had to come around and follow me.

I believe in judging people by their faces, myself. A man can’t help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe he is unless I have reason to change my mind. This one looked mean, and that was why I kept riding. He made me feel nervous.

He said, “What be you doing out here, boy? Be you out of your head? There be escaped Losels in these woods.”

I had short-cut hair and I was wearing my cloth coat against the bite in the air, but still I wondered. I wasn’t ready to dispute the point with him, though. I had no desire to linger around him. I didn’t say anything. I believe I said once that I don’t talk easily in strange company or large crowds.

“Where be you from?” he asked.

I pointed to the road behind us.

“And where be you going?”

I pointed ahead. No other way to go except crosscountry. He seemed exasperated. I have that effect sometimes.

We had caught up to the others and the animals by then, and the man said, “Maybe you’d better ride on from here with us. For protection.”

He had an odd way of twisting his sounds, almost as though he had a mouthful of mush. It was imprecise, but I could understand him well enough. He wanted me to do something I didn’t want to.

One of the other outriders came easing by then. I suppose they’d been watching us all the while. He called to the hard man.

“He be awfully small, Horst. I doubt me a Losel’d even notice him at all. We mought as well throw him back again.”

The rider looked at me. When I didn’t dissolve in obvious terror — I was frightened, but I wasn’t about to show it — he shrugged and one of the other men laughed.

The hard man said to the others, “This boy will be riding along with us to Midland for protection.” He smiled, and the impression I had of a cat, a predatory cat, was increased.

I looked down at the plodding, unhappy creatures they were driving along. One of them looked back at me with dull, expressionless golden eyes. I felt uncomfortable to look at it.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

What the man did then surprised me. He said, “I do think so,” and reached for the gun in his saddle boot.

I whipped my sonic pistol out from under my coat so fast that he was caught leaning over with the rifle half out. His jaw dropped. He recognized the pistol for what it was and he had no desire to be fried.

I said, “Ease your guns out and drop them gently to the ground.”

They did, watching me all the while with wary expressions. When all the rifles were on the ground, I said, “All right, let’s go.”

They didn’t want to move. They didn’t want to leave the rifles. I could see that. Horst didn’t say anything. He just watched me with narrowed eyes and made me anxious to be done and gone.

One of the others held up a hand and in wheedling tones said, “Look here, kid…”

“Shut up,” I said in as mean a voice as I could muster, and he did. It surprised me a little. I didn’t think I sounded that mean. Perhaps he just didn’t trust that crazy kid not to shoot him if he prodded too hard.

After twenty minutes of easy riding for us and harder walking for the creatures, I said, “If you want your rifles, you can go back and get them now.”

I dug my heels into Ninc’s sides and rode on. At the next bend I looked back and saw four of them holding the packhorses and creatures, while the last beat a dust raising retreat down the road.

I put this episode in the “file and hold for analysis” section of my mind and rode on, feeling good. I think I even giggled once. Sometimes I even convince myself that I’m hell on wheels.

15

I was nine when Daddy gave me a family heirloom, the painted wooden doll that my great-grandmother brought from Earth, the one with eleven smaller dolls inside it. The first time I opened it, I was completely amazed, and I like to watch other people when they open it for the first time. My face must have been like that as I rode along the road.

First there were fields. As I traveled along the road and the day wore on, the country leveled into a wide valley and the trees gave way to fields. In the fields, working under guard and supervision, were some of the green hairy creatures. That surprised me a little because the ones I’d seen earlier had seemed frightened and unhappy and certainly had given no sign of the ability to count to one, let alone do any work, even with somebody directing them. It relieved my mind a little, though. I’d thought they might be meat animals and they were too humanoid for that to seem acceptable.

The road widened in the valley and was cut twice by smaller crossroads. I overtook more people and was passed once by a fast-stepping pair of horses and a carriage. I met wagons and horses and people on foot. I passed what seemed to be a roadside camp set between road and field. There was a wagon there and a tent with a woman hanging laundry outside. There was a well and a great empty roofless wooden structure. As I traveled, nobody questioned me. I overtook a wagon loaded heavily, covered bales in the back, driven by the oldest man I’d ever seen. He had white hair and a seamed red face. As I trotted past on Ninc he raised a rough old hand and waved.

“Hello,” he said.

I waved back, “Hello.” He smiled.

Then, in the afternoon, I came to the town. It was just an uncertain dot at first, but at last I came to it, one final doll. I came down the brown dirt road and rode into the town of stone and brick and wood. By the time I came out on the other side, I felt thoroughly shaken. My hands weren’t happily sweaty. They were cold and sweaty and my head was spinning.

There was a sign at the edge of the town that said MIDLAND. The town looked handmade, cobbled together. Out of date. Out of time, really, as though nothing but the simplest machines had been heard of here.

I passed some boys playing tag in the dirt of the street and saw that one of the buildings was a newspaper. There was a large strip of paper in the window with the word INVASION! in great letters. A man in rough clothes was standing outside puzzling the word out.

I looked at everything as I rode through the town, but I looked most closely at the people. There were boys playing, but I saw only a couple of little girls and they were walking primly with their families.

There are a number of things that I’m not fond of, as you know. Wearing pants is one. I’d been glad to have them here because they kept my legs warm and protected, but I wouldn’t wear them except from necessity. The men and boys that I saw here were wearing pants. The women and girls weren’t. They were wearing clothes that struck my eye as odd, but flattering. However, they were as hampering as bound feet and I wouldn’t have undertaken to walk a hundred yards in them. Riding would have been a complete impossibility. I decided then that pants might be preferable to some hypothetical alternatives.

The number of kids that I saw was overwhelming. They swarmed. They played in the street by squads and bunches. And these were just boys.

The only girls I saw were a troop wearing uniforms and hobbling along under the eyes of a pack of guardians. School girls, I guessed.

More than half of the people I saw were kids — far more than half. When I saw a family together, the answer hit me. There was a father, a mother, and a whole brigade of children — eight of them. The family resemblance was unmistakable.

These people were Free Birthers! The idea struck me hard. The very first thing you learn as a child is the consequences of a Free Birth policy. We couldn’t last a generation if we bred like animals. A planet is just an oversized Ship and these people, as much as we, were the heirs of a planet destroyed by Free Birth. They ought to know better.

A planet is different enough from a Ship that we wouldn’t expect population to be restricted as tightly as ours, but some planning is necessary. There is no excuse for eight children in one family — and this just counted those present and walking. Who knows how many older and younger ones there were? It was sickening immorality.

It frightened me and filled me with revulsion. I was frantic. There were too many things going on that I couldn’t like or understand. I held Ninc to a walk to the far edge of town, but when I got there I whomped him a good one and gave him his head.

I let him run a good distance before I pulled him down to a walk again. I couldn’t help wishing that I had Jimmy there to talk to. How do you find out what’s going on in a strange land like this one? Eavesdrop? That’s a lousy method. For one thing, people can’t be depended on to talk about the things you want to hear. For another, you’re likely to get caught. Ask somebody? Who? You can’t afford to be too casual about that, you know. Make the mistake of bracing a man like that Horst and you might wind up with a sore head and an empty pocket. The best thing I could think of was to use a library, and I wasn’t any too sure that they had anything as civilized as that here. I hadn’t seen anything in Midland that looked like a library to me — only a stone building with a carved motto over the door that said, “Equal Justice under the Law,” or “Truth Our Shield and Justice Our Sword,” or something stuffy like that. Hardly a help.

There were signs along the road that said how far it was to one place and another. One of the names, Forton, was in larger letters than the rest. I hesitated for a long moment, caught between the sudden desire to become a turtle and the thought of continuing as a tiger. You know, turtles on old Earth sometimes lived for a hundred years or more — tigers nowhere near that long. But after a moment I kicked Ninc and continued along the road. What I wanted was a town large enough for me to find out answers without being obvious and a place large enough to get lost in easily if that turned out to be necessary. I’ve seen days when I was glad I knew of places to get lost in.

In the late afternoon, when the sun was beginning to sink through its last fast fifth and the cool air was starting to turn colder, one last strange thing happened. I was, by that time, in hills again, though less rugged ones with slopes that had been at least partly cleared. It was then that I saw the scoutship high in the sky. The dying sun colored it a deep red. The only thing I could think of was that something had gone wrong and they had come back to pick us up.

I reached down into my saddle bag and brought out my contact signal. The scoutship swung up in the sky in a movement that would drop the stomach out of anybody aboard. It was the sort of movement you would expect from a very bad pilot, or one who was very good, like George Fuhonin. I triggered the signal, not really feeling sorry.

The ship swung around until it was coming back on a path practically over my head. Then it went into a slip and started bucking so hard that I knew for certain that this wasn’t hot piloting at all, but simply plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn’t one of ours. It wasn’t radically different, but the lines were just varied enough that I knew it wasn’t ours.

My heart stopped turning flips and I realized that I was aching all over again. Maybe the gravity was heavier here after all. I shouldn’t have expected it to be George. I knew as well as anybody that they just didn’t come back for you until the month was up.

But this was one more question. Where did the ship come from? Certainly not from here. Even if you have the knowledge — and we wouldn’t have given it to any Mudeater — a scoutship is something that takes an advanced technology to build.

A few minutes later, still wondering, I came across a campsite almost identical to the one I’d seen earlier in the day, down to the well and the high-walled log pen. There were several people already in the process of making camp for the night and it looked so tempting that I couldn’t resist. There were a number of sites on the slope and a little road led between them. So I turned off the main road. I originally picked a spot near the log structure, but it stank horribly there and so I moved.

I set up camp and ate my dinner. Before I was done, the wagon driven by the old man who had waved hello to me swung into the camp. There was a tent about thirty feet from me with three young children and their parents. The kids stared at me and the bubble tent and one of them looked ready to talk to me, but their father came out, shot me a look sitting there drinking my soup, and hauled them away.

After dinner a joint fire was started up by the old man’s wagon and people gathered around it. I was attracted by the singing. It wasn’t good but it sounded homey. Everybody in camp was there, so I thought it was all right for me to come, too. The kids from the next camp were given places in front and their mother, poor helpless thing, was given a stump to sit on. I just stayed in the background and drew no attention to myself.

In a little while, the kids’ father decided it was time for their mother to take them back and put them to bed, but the kids didn’t want to go. The old white-haired man then proposed that he tell a story, after which the children would go with their mother. In the old man’s odd accent, as I sat there in the light of the campfire beyond the circle of people, the story seemed just right.

He said, “This story be told to me by my grandmother and it be told to her by her grandmother before her. Now I tell it to you and when you be old, you may tell it, too.”

It was about a nice little girl whose stepmother had iron teeth and unpleasant intentions. The little girl had a handkerchief, a pearl and a comb that she had inherited from her dear dead mother, and her own good heart. As it turned out, these were just enough to find her a better home with a prince, and all were happy except the stepmother, who missed her lunch.

The old man had just finished and the kids were reluctantly allowing themselves to be taken off to bed when there was a commotion on the road at the edge of camp. I turned to look, but my eyes had grown used to the light of the fire and I couldn’t see far into the darkness.

A voice there said, “I be damned if I’ll take another day like this one, Horst. We should have been here two hours ago. It be your fault, and that be truth.”

Horst said, “You signed on for good and bad. If you want to keep your teeth, you’ll quit your bitching and shut up!”

I had a good idea then what the pen was used for. I decided that it was time for me to leave the campfire, too. I got up and eased away as Horst and his men herded their animals past the fire toward the stockade. I cut back to where I had Ninc parked for the night. I threw my bedroll out of the bubble tent and knocked the tent down.

There seemed to be just one thing to do, everything considered. That was to get out of there as fast as possible.

I never got the chance.

I was just heaving the saddle up on Ninc when I felt a hand on my shoulder and I swung around.

“Well, well. Horst, look who we have here,” he called. It was the one who had made the joke about me being beneath the notice of a Losel. He was the only one there, but with that call the others would be up fast.

I brought the saddle around as hard as I could and then up, and he fell down. He got up again, though, so I dropped the saddle and reached for my gun under my coat. The saddle bounced off him and he went down again, but somebody caught me from behind and pinned my arms to my sides.

I opened my mouth to scream — I have a good scream — but a rough, smelly hand clamped down over it before I had a chance to get more than a lungful of air. I bit down hard — 5,000 lbs. per square inch, or some such figure, in a good hard bite — but he didn’t let go. I started to kick, but it did me no good. One arm around me, right hand over my mouth, Horst dragged me off, my feet trailing behind.

When we were behind the pen and out of earshot of the fire, he stopped dragging me and dropped me in a heap. “Make any noise,” he said, “and I’ll hurt you.”

That was a silly way to put it, but somehow it said more than if he’d threatened to break my arm or my head. It left him a latitude of things to do if he pleased. There was enough moonlight for him to see by and he examined his hand.

“I ought to club you anyway,” he said. “There be no blood, at least.”

The one I’d dropped the saddle on came up then, shaking his head to clear it. He’d been hurt the second time and had gone down hard. When he saw me, he brought his booted foot back to kick me. Horst gave me a shove that laid me out fiat and grabbed the other one.

“No,” he said. “You go look through the kid’s stuff and see how much of it we can use and bring it all back with the horse.”

The other one didn’t move. He just stood glaring. The last three men were putting the animals in the pen, so it was a private moment.

“Get going, Jack,” Horst said in a menacing tone and finally Jack turned away. It seemed to me somehow that Horst wasn’t objecting so much to me being kicked, but was rather establishing who it was that did the kicking around here.

But I wasn’t out of things yet. In spite of my theoretical training, I wasn’t any too sure that I could handle Horst, but I still had my pistol under my coat and Horst hadn’t relieved me of it yet.

He turned back to me, and I said, “You can’t do this. You can’t get away with it.”

It was a stupid thing to say, I admit, but I had to say something.

He said, “Look, boy. You may not know it, but you be in a lot of trouble. So don’t give me a hard time.”

He still thought I was a boy. It was no time to correct him, but it was very unflattering of him at a time when I was finally getting some notice from people to make a mistake like that.

“I’ll take you to court.”

He laughed. A genuine laugh, not a phony, curl-my-moustaches laugh, so I knew I hadn’t said the right thing.

“Boy, boy. Don’t talk about the courts. I be doing you a favor. I be taking what I can use of your gear and letting you go. You go to court and they’ll take everything from you and lock you up besides. I be leaving you your freedom.”

“Why? Why would they do that?” I asked. I slipped my hand under my coat slowly. I could feel the hard handle of the sonic pistol.

“Every time you open your mouth you shout that you be off of the Ships,” Horst said. “That be enough. They already have one of you brats in jail in Forton.”

I was about to bring my gun out when Jack came up leading Ninc. I mentally thanked him.

He said, “The kid’s got good equipment. But I can’t make out what this be for.” He held out my pickup signal.

Horst looked at it, then handed it back. “Junk,” he decided. “Throw it away.” He handed it back.

I leveled my gun at them. (Hell on wheels strikes again!) I said, “Hand that over to me carefully.”

They looked at me and Horst made a disgusted sound.

“Don’t make any noise,” I said. “Now hand it over to me.

Jack eased it into my hand and I stowed it away. Then I paused with one hand on the horn of the saddle.

“What’s the name of the kid in jail in Forton?”

“They told us about it in Midland,” Horst said. “I don’t remember the name.”

“Think!” I said.

“It’s coming to me. Hold on.”

I waited. Then suddenly my arm was hit a numbing blow from behind and the gun went flying. Jack pounced after it, and Horst said, “Good enough,” to the others behind me.

I felt like a fool.

Horst stalked over, reached in my pocket and brought out my signal, my only contact with the Ship and my only hope for pickup. He dropped it on the ground and said in a voice more cold than mine could ever be because it was natural and mine wasn’t, “The pieces be yours to keep.”

He stamped down hard and it didn’t break. It didn’t even crack. Frustrated, he stamped again, even harder, and then again and again until it finally came to pieces. My pieces.

Then he said, “Pull a gun on me twice. Twice! He slapped me so hard that my ears rang. “You stupid little punk.”

I looked up at him and said in a clear, penetrating voice, “And you big bastard.”

It was a time I would have done better to keep my mouth shut. All I can remember is a hash of pain as his fist crunched against the side of my face and then nothing more than that.

Brains are no good if you don’t use them.

16

I remember pain and sickness and motion dimly, but Hell-on-Wheels’ next clear memory came when I woke in a bed in a strange house. I had a vague feeling that time had passed, but how much I didn’t know. I had a sharp headache and a face that made me wince when I put a tentative finger to my cheek. I didn’t know where I was, why I was there, or why I ached so.

Then, as though a bubble had popped, the moment of disassociation was gone and it all came back to me. Horst and being knocked around. I was trying to push my way out of bed when the old man who had told the story came in the room.

“How be you feeling this morning, young lady?” he asked. His face was red, his hair white, and his deepset eyes a bright blue. It was a good strong face.

“Not very well,” I said. “How long has it been?”

“Two days,” he said. “The doctor says you’ll be well soon enough. I be Daniel Kutsov. And you?”

“I’m Mia Havero,” I said.

“I found you dumped by the camp where Horst Fanger left you.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him. Everyone knows of him. A very unpleasant man — as I suppose he be bound to be, herding Losels.”

“Those green things were Losels? Why are they afraid of them?”

“The ones you saw been drugged. They wouldn’t obey otherwise. Once in awhile a few be stronger than the drug and they escape to the woods. The drug cannot be so strong that they cannot work. So the strongest escape. They be some danger to most people, and a great danger to men like Horst Fanger who buy them from the ships who bring them to the coast. Every so often hunters go to kill as many as they can find.”

I was tired and my mind was foggy. My head still hurt, and when I yawned involuntarily it was painful.

Sleepily, I said, “It seems like slavery, drugging them and all.”

Mr. Kutsov said gently, “Only God can decide a question like that. Be it slavery to use my horses to work for me? I don’t know anyone who would say so. A man be a different matter, though. The question be whether a Losel be like a horse, or like a man, and in all truth I can’t answer. Now go to sleep again and in awhile I will bring you some food.”

He left then, but in spite of my aching tiredness I didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t like it, being here. The old man was a Mudeater and that made me nervous. He was nice, being kind, and how could I stand for that? I tried to see my way around the problem and I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t rest enough to see things clearly. At last I drifted off into a restless sleep.

Mr. Kutsov brought me some food later in the day, and helped me eat when my hands were too unsteady. His hands were wrinkled and bent.

Between mouthfuls, I said, “Why are you doing this for me?”

He said, “Have you ever heard the Parable of the Good Samaritan?”

“Yes,” I said. I’ve always read a lot.

“The point of the story be that at times good will come even from low and evil men. But there be books that say the story been changed. In the true version, the man by the road been the Samaritan, as bad a man as ever been, and the man that rescued him did good even to such a one. You may be of the Ships, but I don’t like to see children hurt. So I treat you as the Samaritan been treated.”

I didn’t know quite what to say. I’m not a bad person. I thought he ought to be able to see that. I didn’t understand how he could think so badly of us.

He added then, perhaps seeing my shock, “I be sorry. I don’t think as harshly of the Ships as most. Without the Ships we wouldn’t be here at all. That be something to remember in these bad times. So be sure that I won’t tell that you be a girl or from the Ships, and rest easy. My house be yours.”

The next day he suggested that for my own good I learn to speak so that I would not be noticed. That was sensible. My mind wasn’t as foggy now and I was starting to worry about things like finding a way to contact the Ship. To do it, I might very well have to pass as a native. And if I didn’t do it, I’d definitely have to pass as a native, damn it.

I didn’t fully understand Mr. Kutsov. I had the feeling that there was more in his mind than he was saying. Could he just be doing good to a despised Samaritan? No, there was more. For some reason he was interested in me.

We worked on my speech for a couple of hours that day. Some of the changes were fairly regular — like shifted vowel sounds and a sort of “b” sound for “p,” and saying “be” for “is” — but some of the others seemed without pattern or sense, though a linguist might disagree with me. Mr. Kutsov could only say, “I don’t know why. We just don’t say it that way, be all.”

After he said that once, I just gave up, but he coaxed me into trying again. He coaxed me, and that was the sort of thing that made me wonder what he had in mind. Why did he care?

After awhile, I began to catch on. I couldn’t tell you offhand what all the changes were — I think rhythm was a large part of it — but I did have a good ear. I suppose that there was a pattern after all, but it was one I only absorbed subconsciously. I got better after we’d worked for several days.

Mr. Kutsov said once, “Not like that. You sound as though you be talking around a mouthful of gruel.” Not surprising, since that was what he was feeding me, but in any case I was only repeating what I heard.

During those hours we talked. You have to have something to correct and with no textbooks at hand it had to be normal speech. As we talked, I made mistakes and he corrected them.

In the course of our talks, I got a fuller picture of the dislike of these colonists — for some reason, Mudeaters wasn’t the word that came into my mind anymore, at least, not most of the time — for Ship people.

“It been’t a simple thing,” he said. “These be bad times. Now and again, when you decide to stop, we see you people from the Ships. You be not poor or backward like us. When we be dropped here, there been no scientists or technicians amongst us. I can understand. Why should they leave the last places where they had a chance to use and develop their knowledge for a place like this where there be no equipment, no opportunity? But what be felt here be that all the men who survived the end of Earth be the equal heirs of man’s knowledge and accomplishment. But things be not that way. So when times be good, the Ships be hated and ignored. When times be bad, people from the Ships when known be treated as you have been or worse.”

I could understand what he said, but I couldn’t really understand it.

I said, “But we don’t hurt anybody. We just live like anybody else.”

“I don’t hold you to blame,” Mr. Kutsov said slowly, “but I can’t help but to feel that you have made a mistake and that it will hurt you in the end.”

After I felt better, I had the run of Mr. Kutsov’s house. It was a small place near the edge of Forton, a neat little house surrounded by trees and a small garden. Mr. Kutsov lived alone, and when it wasn’t raining he worked in his garden. When it was, he came inside to his books. He used his wagon to make a regular trip to the coast and back once every two weeks. It wasn’t a very profitable business, but he said that at his age profit was no longer very important. I don’t know whether he meant it or not.

He took my clothes away, saying they weren’t appropriate for a girl, and in their place he brought me some clothes that were more locally acceptable. They were about the right length, but they were loose under the arms as though they had been meant for somebody who was broader than I.

“There,” he said. “That be better.” But I had to take them in a little before they fit.

I had the run of the house, but I wasn’t allowed outside. In some ways this wasn’t so bad because it rained, it seemed, two days in three, and the third day it threatened to. I kept busy. Mr. Kutsov continued to tutor me until he at last decided that if I was careful I could get by in polite society. When Mr. Kutsov was outside, I prowled around the house.

Mr. Kutsov had a good library of books and I looked through them, in the process finding a number of very interesting things. History — the Losels’ natural home was on a continent to the west where they had been discovered one hundred years earlier. Since that time they had been brought over by the shipload and used for simple manual labor. There had previously been no native population of Losels on this continent. Now, in addition to those owned and used for work, there was a small but growing number of Losels running wild in the back country. Most of the opinions I read granted them no particular intelligence, citing their inability to do anything beyond the simplest sort of labor, their lack of fire and their lack of language. For my part, I remembered what Mr. Kutsov had said about the ability of the wild ones to recognize their particular enemies and that didn’t seem stupid to me at all. In fact, I was relieved that I had come off so well from my encounter with one that second day.

Geography — I oriented myself by Mr. Kutsov’s maps and I tentatively tried to copy them.

And I found a book that Mr. Kutsov had written himself. It was an old book, a novel called The White Way. It was not completely successful — it tried to do too many things other than tell a story — but it was far better than my brother Joe’s book.

When I found it, I showed it to Mr. Kutsov and he admitted that it was his.

“It took me forty years to write it, and I have spent forty-two years since then living with the political repercussions. It has been an interesting forty-two years, but I be not sure that I would do it again. Read the book if you be interested.”

There were politics in the book, and from something else Mr. Kutsov said in passing, I got the impression that the simple, physical job he held was in part a result. Politics are funny.

I found two other things. I found my clothes where Mr. Kutsov had hidden them and I found the answer to a question that I didn’t ask Mr. Kutsov in one of his newspapers. The last sentence of the story read, “After sentencing, Dentermount been sent to the Territorial Jail in Forton to serve his three-month term.”

The charge was Trespassing. I thought Incitement to Riot would have been better, and that the least they could do would be to spell his name correctly. Trust it to be Jimmy.

So when I got the chance, I put on my own clothes and my coat and snuck into town. Before I came home I found out where the jail was. On the way, I passed Horst Fanger’s place of business. It was a house, pen, shed, stable and auction block in the worst quarter of town. From what I gathered, it was the worst quarter of town because Horst Fanger and similar people lived there.

When I came back, Mr. Kutsov was very angry with me. “It been’t right,” he said, “going on the streets dressed like that. It been’t right for women.” He kept a fairly close eye on me for several days after that until I convinced him that I now knew better.

It was during the next two days, while I was being good, that I found the portrait. It showed Mr. Kutsov and a younger man and woman, and a little girl. The little girl was about my size, but much more stocky. Her hair was dark brown. It was obviously a family picture and I asked him about it.

He looked very grave and the only thing he said was, “They all be dead.” That was all. I couldn’t help but think that the picture might have something to do with his keeping me, and beyond that to his keeping me close at hand. Mr. Kutsov was a nice and intelligent old man, but there was something that was either unexplainable or irrational about the way he treated me. He expected me to stay in his house, though he should have known that I wouldn’t and couldn’t stay. When I ran off, he was unhappy, but then it was pathetic how little assurance it took before things were all right again. I think he was telling himself lies. He must have been telling himself lies. He was already preparing to make another wagon trip. His old-fashioned nature wouldn’t allow him to take me along, so quite happily he made plans for me to stay alone in the house until he got back. He told me where things were and what to do if I ran out of butter and eggs. I nodded and he was pleased.

When he went off to arrange his wagon load one afternoon, I went off to town again. To reach the jail, I had to walk across most of the town. Although it was the Territorial Capital, it was still a town and not a city, not as I understood the word. It was a raw, unpleasant day, the sort that makes me hate planets, and rain was threatening when I reached the jail. It was a solid, three-story building of great stone blocks, shaped like a fortress and protected by an iron spike fence. All the windows, from the cellar to the top floor, were double barred. I walked around the building as I had before and looked it over again. It seemed impregnable. Between the fence and the building was a run in which patrolled two large, hairy, and vicious-looking dogs. One of them followed me all the way around the building.

As I was about to start around again, the rain started. It gave me the impetus I needed, and I ran for the front door and dodged into the entrance.

I was standing there, shaking the rain off, when a man in a green uniform came stalking out of one of the offices that lined the first-floor hallway. My heart stopped for a moment, but he barely glanced at me and went right on by and up the stairs to the second floor. That gave me some confidence and so I started poking around.

I looked at the bulletin boards and the offices on one side of the hall when another man in green came into the hall and made straight for me, much like Mrs. Keithley. I didn’t wait, but walked toward him, too.

I said, as wide-eyed and innocently as I could, “Can you help me, sir?”

“Well, that depends. What sort of help do you need?”

He was a big, rather slow man with one angled cloth bar on his shirt front over one pocket, and a plate that said “Robards” pinned over the pocket on the other side. He seemed good-natured and un-Keithley-like.

“Well, Jerry had to write about the capitol, and Jimmy had to interview the town manager, and I got you.”

“Hold on there. First, what be your name?”

“Billy Davidow,” I said. I picked the last name out of a newspaper story. “And I don’t know what to write, sir, so I thought I’d ask one of you to show me around and tell me things. That be, if you would.”

“Any relation to Hobar Davidow?” he asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“That be good. Do you know who Hobar Davidow be?”

I shook my head.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t. That would be a little before you. We executed him six, no, seven years ago. Mixed in the wrong politics.” Then he said, “Well, I be sorry, son. We be pretty caught up today. Could you come back some afternoon later in the week, or maybe some evening?”

I said slowly, “I have to hand the paper in this week.” Then I waited.

After a minute he said, “All right. I’ll take you around. But I can’t spare you much time. It will have to be a quick tour.”

The offices were on the first floor, with a few more on the third. The arsenal and target range were in the basement. Most of the cells were on the second, and the very rough people were celled on the third.

“If the judge says maximum security, they go on the third, everybody else on the second unless we have an overflow. We have one boy up there now.”

My heart sank.

“A real bad actor. He has already killed one man.”

My heart came back to normal. That, for certain, wasn’t Jimmy and his trespassing.

Maximum security had three sets of barred doors before you got to the cells, as well as armed guards covering the block and the doors from wall stations. The halls were lit with oil lamps and the light was warm and yellow. We didn’t go beyond the first door. Sgt. Robards just pointed and told me what things were like.

“By this time next week, it will all be full in here,” he said sadly. “The Anti-Redemptionists be getting out of hand again and they be going to cool them off. Uh, don’t put that in your paper.”

“Oh, I won’t,” I said, crossing off what I was writing.

The ordinary cells on the second floor were a much simpler affair and I got a guided tour of them. I walked down the corridor between the ranks of cells right beside Sgt. Robards and looked at every prisoner. I stared right at Jimmy Dentremont’s face and he didn’t even seem to notice me. He’s a smart, lovely boy.

Sgt. Robards said, waving a hand at the cells, “These be all short-timers here. Just a week or a month or two to serve.” He jingled his keys. “I be letting them out soon enough.”

“Do they give you any trouble?” I asked.

“These? Not these. They don’t have long enough to serve. They all be on good behavior. Most of the time, anyway.”

When we finished, I thanked Sgt. Robards enthusiastically. “It sure has been swell, sir.”

He smiled. “Not at all, son,” he said. “I enjoyed it myself. If you have time, drop by again when I have the duty. My schedule be on the bulletin board.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Maybe I will.”

I ran back home through the rain and when Mr. Kutsov got home about an hour later I was dry, dressed in proper clothes and reading a book.

17

Before I scouted the jail, I had only vague notions of what I could do to get Jimmy free. I had, for instance, spent an hour or so toying with the idea of forcing the Territorial Governor at the point of a gun to release Jimmy. I spent that much time with it because the idea was fun to think about, but I dropped it because it was stupid.

I finally decided on a very simple course of action. It seemed quite possible that it might go wrong, but I didn’t have a great many days left and I had to bring this off by myself. Before I left the jail building, I looked very closely at the duty schedule, just as Sgt. Robards had recommended.

Mr. Kutsov left in the afternoon two days later, his wagon loaded.

“I be back in six days, Mia,” he said. “Now you know exactly what to do, don’t you?”

I reassured him, and I stood at the back door of the house as he drove off, dressed in pink because I knew he liked it, and waved goodbye. Then I went back into the house. I sat down and wrote a note to Mr. Kutsov. I didn’t tell him what I was going to do because I thought it might distress him, but I thanked him for all that he had done for me. I left the note in the library where he would be sure to find it. I was sorry to do it to him because I knew it would make him unhappy, but I couldn’t stay.

Then I went into the kitchen and started getting food together. I picked out things I thought we would need like matches, candles, a knife and a hatchet, and I made up a package. Finally, I changed into my own clothes.

I set out just after dark. It was raining lightly in the night and the spray on my face felt surprisingly good. I carried paper and pencil in one pocket as before for protective coverage. In the other pocket of my coat I had a single sock and several stout pieces of line, and matches.

This is the way I had it figured. The jail was a strong place — bars, guards, dogs, guns and spiked fences. These were primarily designed to keep in jail the people who were supposed to be in jail. They weren’t designed to keep people out.

In the Western-cowboy stories I used to read in the Ship, people were always breaking into jails to let somebody out. It was a common thing, an expected part of day-to-day life. But I couldn’t imagine that people here made any sort of practice of breaking into jails. It wouldn’t be expected, and that was one advantage I had. I knew whom I was up against. I knew the layout of the jail. And when I walked into the jail, nobody was going to see a desperate character intent on busting a prisoner out — they were going to see a little eager schoolboy. I think that was the biggest advantage. People do see what they expect to see.

On the other hand, all I had was me, a not-always-effective hell on wheels. If I didn’t do things exactly right, if I weren’t lucky, I would be in jail right beside Jimmy, probably on the third floor.

Just before I got to the jail, I stopped and knelt on the wet ground. I took out the sock and I filled it with sand until it was about half full.

I didn’t hesitate then. I went right into the jail. There were warm oil lights in only two of the main floor offices. I looked in the first and Sgt. Robards was there.

“Hello, Sgt. Robards,” I said, going in. “How be you tonight?”

“Hello, Billy,” he said. “It be pretty slow tonight down here. Won’t be later, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. They pick up the Anti-Redemptionists tonight. The boys just went out. You won’t be able to stay long.”

“Oh,” I said.

“How did your paper go?”

I had to backtrack for a moment. Then I said, “I finished it this afternoon. I’ll turn it in tomorrow.”

“Found out everything you want to know?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I just came by to visit tonight. You know when you showed me the target range? That been neat. I thought if you had time you might shoot for me like you said.”

He looked at the clock. Then he said, “Sure. I be local champion, you know.”

“Gee,” I said. Just like some of the fatuous boys I know.

We went downstairs, Sgt. Robards leading the way with a lamp. He was picking out the key to the target range when I pulled out my sock. I hesitated for a moment because it isn’t easy to deliberately set out to hurt somebody, but then he started to turn his head to say something. So I swung as hard as I could and the sand hit him wetly across the back of the neck. He crumpled. He was too heavy for me to catch, but I pushed him against the door and then managed to get him to the floor without dropping him on his face. I left the lamp on the floor where he had set it.

The weapons room was across the hail. I took the keys from the floor by Sgt. Robard’s hand and tried the ones on either side of the one he had picked out for the target room door. The door opened on the second try. I left it open and went back to Sgt. Robards, lying on the floor. I grabbed his collar and his coat and heaved him, then heaved him again, and eventually got his dead weight across the floor and into the weapons room. I got out my line and tied his elbows and knees. I emptied the sand out of the sock onto the floor, and then shoved the sock into his mouth. My heart was pounding and my breath was coming fast as I went back for the lamp.

Then I turned to the weapons rack. I took a hurried look over them. There was nothing modern, of course, only powder-and-lead antiques like those in the old books. I’d never fired one, but I understood that they didn’t hold still when you shot them — for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and all that — so I picked out a pair of the smallest guns they had. I tested the ammunition until I found the right kind of bullets, and then I put the guns and a number of the bullets in my pocket.

I swung the door shut and locked it again, leaving Sgt. Robards inside. I stood then for a moment in the hallway with the keys in my hand. There were ten of them, not enough to cover each individual cell, yet Sgt. Robards had clinked his keys and said that he could unlock the cells. Maybe I would have done better to stick up the Territorial Governor.

My heart pounding, I blew out the light and started upstairs. I eased up to the first floor. Nobody was there. Then I went carefully up the wooden stairs to the second floor. It was dark there, but a little light leaked up from the first floor and down from the third. There were voices on the third floor, and somebody laughed up there. I held my breath and moved quietly to Jimmy’s cell.

I whispered, “Jimmy!” and he came alert and moved lo the door of the cell.

“Am I glad to see you,” he whispered back.

I said, “I have the keys. Which one fits?”

“The key marked ‘D.’ It fits the four cells here in the corner.”

I couldn’t see well enough there and I didn’t want to light a match, so I moved back to the light and fumbled through the keys until I found the key tagged “D.” I opened the cell with as little noise as I could manage.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here in a hurry.”

He slipped out and pushed the door shut behind him. We started for the stairs. We were almost there when I heard somebody coming up. Jimmy grabbed my arm and pulled me back. We flattened out as best we could.

The policeman looked around in the dark and said, “Be you up here, Robards?” Then he saw us and started to say, “What the hell?”

I stepped out and pointed one of the pistols at him. I hadn’t loaded it. I had just stuck them in my pocket.

I said, “Easy now. I’ve got nothing to lose by shooting you. If you want to live, put up your hands.”

He put up his hands.

“All right. Walk down here.”

Jimmy opened the door for him and the policeman stepped inside the cell. While his back was turned, I hit him with the pistol. I probably hurt him worse than I did Sgt. Robards — a gun is a good deal more solid than a sack of sand — but I didn’t feel quite so bad about it because I didn’t know him. He groaned and fell and I didn’t try to break the fall at all. Instead I swung the cell door shut and locked it.

Then I heard the sound of low voices in one of the other cells and somebody said, “Shut up,” quite clearly to somebody else.

I turned and said, “Do you want to get shot?”

The voice was collected. “No. No trouble here.”

“Do you want to be let out?”

The voice was amused. “I don’t think so. Thank you just the same. I be due to be let out tomorrow and I think I’ll wait.”

Jimmy said, “Come on. Come on. Let’s go.”

On the stairs, I said, “Where’s your signal? We’ve got to have it.”

“It’s not here,” Jimmy said. “The soldiers took all my gear when I was arrested. All they have here are my clothes.”

“We’re in trouble,” I said. “My signal is broken and lost.”

“Oh, no!” Jimmy said. “I was counting on you. Well, we can try to get mine back.”

There was no real comfort in that. We collected Jimmy’s coat and clothes and headed into the night. When we were three blocks away and on a side street we stopped for a moment and kissed and hugged, and then I handed Jimmy one of the guns and half the ammunition. He loaded the gun immediately.

Then he said, “Tell me something, Mia. Would you really have shot him?”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “My gun wasn’t loaded.”

He laughed and then he asked in another tone, “What do we do now?”

“We steal horses,” I said. “And I know where, too.”

Jimmy said, “Should we?”

I said, “This man stole Ninc and everything else I have. He smashed my signal, and he beat me up.”

“He beat you up?” Jimmy said, immediately concerned.

“I’m all right now,” I said. “It only hurt for awhile.”

There was a fetid, unwashed odor hanging around the entire district and the rain did nothing to carry the smell away. Instead the wetness seemed to hold the odor in place in a damp foggy stink that surrounded and penetrated everything. There were Losel pens all along the street. When we came to Fanger’s place, we slipped by the pen and if the Losels heard us, they made no noise. I had marked the stable and we went directly to it and slipped inside. Jimmy closed the door behind us.

“Stand outside and keep watch,” I said. “These are mean, unpleasant people. I’ll pick out horses.”

Jimmy said, “Right,” and slipped outside again.

When the door had clicked shut, I struck a match. I found a lamp and lit it. Then I started along the rows. I found Ninc, good old Nincompoop, and my saddle and I saddled up. Then I picked out a fairly small black-and-white horse for Jimmy and quickly saddled it, and added saddle bags.

After that, I took a quick look around. I didn’t find my gun, but I found the bubble tent thrown in a corner — apparently they hadn’t figured out how it worked. I found my bedroll, too. The rest of my things I wrote off. I decided that I would have to get Jimmy to share his clothes with me.

On impulse, then, I took out my pad and pencil, wrote, “I’m a girl, you Mudeater!” and hung the note on a nail. I blew the light out.

We led the horses to the street and rode. I didn’t regret the note, but I was feeling sorry I hadn’t picked a better name than Mudeater. On the way, I asked Jimmy how he got caught.

He said, “There’s an army encampment north of here. They’ve got a scout from one of the other Ships there.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said.

“Well, I got caught looking the place over,” Jimmy said. “That’s where my gear is.”

“I’ve got a map,” I said. My copying hadn’t come out well so I had reluctantly added a map of Mr. Kutsov’s to my package. “We’ll go that way.”

I told Jimmy about Mr. Kutsov. “He left this afternoon. After he left, I gathered things we’ll need. All we have to do is pick them up and get going. The sooner we get away from this town, the better.”

When we got to the house, we rode to the back.

“Hold the horses,” I said. “I’ll be out in just a second.”

We both dismounted and Jimmy took Ninc’s reins from me. I went up the steps and inside.

“Hello, Mia,” Mr. Kutsov said as I stepped inside.

I shut the door. “Hello,” I said.

“I came back,” he said. “I read your note.”

“Why did you come back?”

He said sadly, “It didn’t seem right to leave you here by yourself. I be sorry. I think I underestimated you. Be that another child from the Ships outside?”

“You’re not mad?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. I been’t angry. I think I understand. I couldn’t keep you. I thought I could, but I be a foolish old man.”

For some reason, I started crying and couldn’t stop. The tears ran down my face. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You see,” he said, “you even talk as you did before.”

The front door signal, a knocker, sounded then and Mr. Kutsov got up and moved to answer the door. A green-uniformed policeman stood there in the doorway, his face yellowish in the light of the single candle in the front room.

“Daniel Kutsov?” he asked.

Instinctively, I shrank back. I swiped at my face with my sleeve.

The policeman moved one step inside the house and said in a flat voice, “I have a warrant for your arrest.”

I watched them both in fear. Mr. Kutsov seemed to have forgotten that I was there. The policeman had a hard, young face, nothing like Sgt. Robards in any way except for the uniform. Sgt. Robards was a kind man, but there was no kindness at all in this one.

“To jail again? For my book?” Mr. Kutsov shook his head. “No.”

“It be nothing to do with any book, Kutsov. This be a roundup of all dissidents, ordered by Governor Moray. It be known that you be an Anti-Redemptionist. Come along.” He reached out and grasped Mr. Kutsov by the arm.

Mr. Kutsov shook loose. “No. I won’t go to jail again. It be no crime to be against stupidity. I won’t go.”

The policeman said, “You be coming whether you like or not. You be under arrest.”

I had known that Mr. Kutsov was old, for all that my father had lived several years longer than he had, and I had suspected that his mind was no longer completely firm, but now at last his age seemed to catch up with him. He backed away and said in a voice that shook, “Get out of my house!”

The policeman took another step inside. I was fascinated and frozen. Why exactly, I cannot say, but I couldn’t speak or move. I could only watch. It is the only time in my life that this has ever happened and since then I have felt I understood the episode on the ladder with Zena Andrus a little better. But in my case, it wasn’t just fear. Events got out of control and rushed past me, something like watching a moving merry-go-round and wanting to jump on, but never quite being able to decide to go.

The policeman lifted his gun from its holster and said, “You be coming if I have to shoot.”

Mr. Kutsov hit the policeman and in retaliation the policeman clubbed Mr. Kutsov to death while I watched. The policeman hit Mr. Kutsov once and if he had fallen that would have been the end of it, but he didn’t and the policeman hit him again and again until he did fall.

I must have screamed, though I have no memory of it. Jimmy says I did and that’s what brought him. In any case, the policeman looked up from Mr. Kutsov and stared right at me. I remember his eyes. He raised the gun he’d hit Mr. Kutsov with so many times and pointed it at me.

Then there were three reports at my elbow, one on the heels of the next. The policeman stood for a moment, balanced, and then the force of life keeping him upright was gone, and he fell to the floor. He never fired his gun. In one instant my life was his to take, and in the next he was dead.

I passed him by without even looking and bent over Mr. Kutsov. As I bent down beside him, his eyes opened and he looked at me.

I was crying again. I held him and cried. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled and said faintly, but clearly, “It be all right, Natasha.” After a minute, he closed his eyes as though he were terribly tired. Then he died.

After another minute, Jimmy touched my arm. I looked up at him. His face was pale and he didn’t look at all well.

“There’s nothing we can do. Let’s leave now, Mia, while we can.”

He blew out the candle. As we mounted our horses, it continued to rain.

18

We rode north through the night rain for hours. At first we stuck to the road, but when the ground started to rise and the country to roughen we cut off the road and followed a slow route of our own into the hills and forest. It was a tiring, unpleasant journey. The rain came down steadily until we were wet inside our coats. When we left the road, there were many times when we had to dismount and lead our horses through wet, rough brush that scratched and slapped. The noise of the cold wind was shrill as it blew through the trees and tossed branches. The only satisfaction that we had was knowing that with the rain as it was, following us would be close to impossible. Considering the route we took, following us would have been difficult at the best of times.

At last we decided to stop, feeling ourselves beyond pursuit and knowing ourselves within another day’s ride of the military camp where Jimmy’s gear might be. We were both tired and bruised by our experience. Jimmy had had no practice in killing people and no stomach for it. The books I used to read made killing seem fun and bodies just a way of keeping score, but death is not like that, not to any normal person. It may seem neat to point a gun, and keen to pull a trigger, but the result is irrevocable. That policeman couldn’t get back up again to play the next game, and neither could Mr. Kutsov. They were both dead for now and always. That fact was preying on both Jimmy and me.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a spear carrier in somebody else’s story. A spear carrier is somebody who stands in the hall when Caesar passes, comes to attention and thumps his spear. A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, “I resign. I don’t want to be used.” They are there to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. We take no joy in being used and discarded. I was finding then, that wet, chilly, unhappy night, that I took no joy in seeing other people used and discarded. Mr. Kutsov was a spear carrier to the policeman, a spear carrier who asserted himself at the wrong moment, and then was eliminated. Then the policeman suddenly found himself demoted from hero to spear carrier and his story finished. I didn’t blame Jimmy at all. If I had been able to act, I would have done as he had, simply in order to stay alive. And Jimmy didn’t see the policeman as a spear carrier. Jimmy was always a more humane, open, warmer person than I, and it cost him greatly to shoot the man. I admit that the man was still a spear carrier to me, but nonetheless both deaths bothered me.

If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it.

We made our camp at last. We attended to the horses as best we could, sheltering them under the lee of some trees. Then we set up the bubble tent, pitching it on a level spot. Jimmy went after the saddle bags, bedroll and saddles while I finished with the tent. We stowed things away in all the corners and that left just enough room to stretch out the bedroll.

We were soaking wet. The rain made a steady pitter on the bubble and we could hear the rising and falling shrill of the wind outside. We left the light on until we had taken off all our clothes. Undressing was difficult because of the lack of room and a cold saddle is an unpleasant place to put your bare bottom. Jimmy was more hairy than I had ever suspected. Finally we spread our clothes out to dry, turned out the light and got into bed.

The bed was cold and so was I, and I put my arms around Jimmy. His skin was cold too, at first, but he was comfortingly solid. I needed comfort. I think he did, too.

I touched his cheek with my hand. “I’m not mad any more, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “I didn’t think you were. I’m sorry, anyway. I’ve got to take you as you are, even when you say stupid things. You can’t help what you think.”

He kissed me gently. I cooperated with the kiss.

“I’m glad you came for me,” Jimmy said. He moved his hand up the length of my back and across my shoulders. It gave me shivers. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Did you think I’d come?”

“I hoped, I guess. I’m glad you came. I’m glad it was you, Mia.”

He shifted and then put his hand on my breast. I put my hand over it.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

“Why didn’t you ever say that before?” We’d kissed and done some other things, and I’d assumed he liked me, our differences aside, but he’d never said he liked the way I looked. I pressed the hand on my breast and I kissed his cheek and his mouth. I felt safer and warmer and more secure than I had in days. Oh, he was good to hold onto.

I let his hand go free and he let it wander. “I never dared,” he said. “You’d have used it against me. Hey, you know, that’s funny. When I touch this one, I can feel your heart beat and when I touch this one, I can’t.”

“I can feel yours, too,” I said. “Thump, thump, thump, thumps thump.”

I kissed my hand and let it touch his face. Kissed his face.

“You do like the way I look?”

“Of course. You are beautiful. I like the way you look. I like your voice — it doesn’t squeak. I like the way you feel.” He moved his hand. “I like the way you smell.” His face moved in my hair.

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” I said. “I don’t think I’d like this if I didn’t like the way you smell, and I never thought about it before. What do you mean I’d have used it against you?”

He said slowly, “You’d have said something snippy. I just couldn’t take the chance.”

I never realized before that he was that vulnerable, that something I might say could hurt him. “I say things sometimes,” I said, “but never if you told me that.”

He kissed my breast, moved his tongue experimentally over the nipple, and it swelled without my willing it. I thought my heart would become too large and break with the surge it made. We moved tightly into each other’s arms and kissed deeply. I held Jimmy to me and my knees moved apart for him.

Sex in the Ship is for adults. If you are an adult, then it doesn’t matter particularly whom you do sleep with. Nobody checks. But just as anywhere, people tend to be fairly consistent, fairly discriminating about what they do, at least the people I’m likely to be friends with. I don’t think I’d want to know well the sort of person who makes notches on the end of her bed, the sort of person who takes sex wherever he can, the sort of person who takes sex lightly. I can’t do any of those things. I’m much too vulnerable. I enjoy making love, but I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have confidence and trust, liking and respect, beyond the basic fact of physical attraction. I had known Jimmy for nearly two years and been attracted to him for nearly that long, but making love with him was something that I could not have done much sooner than I did.

In a sense, Jimmy and I were intended for each other. Whether we had met or not, whether we had liked each other or not, we still would have had at least one child, and probably more. But that is a mechanical process that has nothing to do with living together and loving. It was nice that knowing each other we could love. The passion of age fourteen is not an ultimate, but age fourteen does not last forever and passions do grow.

Sex in the Ship is for adults. We were not officially adults, but we needed each other then, and I was no longer quite the stickler for rules that I once had been. We needed each other then and it was the proper time. If we didn’t make it back to the Ship, who would ever care? And if we made it back to the Ship, we would be officially adults and the question would be irrelevant.

So we made love there in the dark with the rain falling outside, safe in each other’s arms. Neither of us knew what we were doing, except theoretically, and we were as clumsy as kittens. It was something of a botch, too, in an extremely pleasant way. At the climax there was simply a hint of something we couldn’t reach.

We lay quietly and after a few minutes Jimmy said, “How was that?”

I said, somewhat sleepily, “I think it takes practice.

Just before I fell asleep, I said, “It was comforting, though.”

The next night, we left our horses tied in the trees. We were miles from our camp of the previous night. We had arrived on the hillside in the late afternoon, then crawled through the woods to look over the army complex. Below us, in the gold light, was a town cupped in a bowl between the hills. On our side of the town was an enfenced army base, patrolled like all army bases by regular guards, and on what must have been their parade ground was sitting the scoutship.

“I got curious,” Jimmy said. “It seemed strange to me that they should have a scoutship. I snuck out there to take a look and I got careless and got caught.”

Buildings framed the parade ground on three sides. The enclosed short side was nearest to our vantage point high above. The open short side was at the far end of the parade ground nearest to the town. There were some few trees mixed among the buildings. The fence was linked iron spikes, and it completely circled the camp. It was perhaps a hundred feet from the fence to the nearest building.

Jimmy pointed through the leaves. “See the two-story building just below there? That’s their headquarters. That’s where they took me until the police came from the town. That’s where we ought to look for my gear.”

The building was red brick with a gray slate roof and it dominated the end of the parade ground. Most of the other buildings in the camp were only single story — barracks and stables and the like — and the other two-story buildings were not as large.

We timed the guard on his rounds. It took him twenty minutes to walk from one end of his post to the other in the slow, casual way of guards killing watch hours. Sometimes he reached the end of his post at the same time as the guard from the adjacent post and they stopped and talked.

I said, “We couldn’t count on more than twenty minutes if we hit the guard.”

“No,” Jimmy said. “We’ll do best if we can sneak over without being seen.”

After we had checked everything, we crawled back out of sight on our knees, and then we went back to our horses, where we ate a cold meal. Jimmy’s mistake before had been that he had entered the camp too early, when people were still about and the guards were alert. We were both tired from riding all day and we went to sleep until well after dark. I woke when Jimmy shook me.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

We took our time picking our way down the dark slope, making as little noise as possible. I was glad to be with Jimmy. We did make a team, and with Jimmy along I felt something more of an effective hell on wheels than I did by myself. It was twenty feet from the edge of the brush to the fence, the space cleared. We crouched there in the brush, able to see the fence and barely able to make out the outline of the two-story headquarters building beyond.

“Shh,” Jimmy whispered, holding my arm. “There’s the guard.”

We waited until he had passed and then we ran low to the iron fence. Jimmy gave me a boost and I grasped the spikes, the points sharp under my thumbs. He pushed me up and I got a knee on the top bar between the spikes. I paused there for a brief moment and then I jumped clear on the far side, ripping my pants on one of the spikes. I looked both ways to see if the noise of my landing had alerted anyone, and then I turned back to the fence. I put both hands through the bars and cupped them for Jimmy’s foot. He stepped into my hands and I pushed up. He got his other foot on the top bar and then sprang over. He landed on his feet with a thud that was noisier than mine and then without pausing we ran for the nearest tree, where we stopped for a moment before we ran to the shadow of the headquarters building.

There was a partial cloud rack overhead and the light varied from dim to worse as the clouds moved by. We moved to the end of the building, Jimmy preceding, and there we stopped while Jimmy put his head around. Then we went around the corner and I could see the silent and empty parade ground and one or two night lights in the buildings on its edge. I could barely see the scoutship squatting in the dirt. We checked again at the next corner and then we ghosted along the front of the building.

“There should be one man on night duty,” Jimmy said. “The office is just to the right inside the door.”

He pointed up to a window over our heads. I could see light there and shadows on the ceiling. We went up the steps, flattened in the doorway while Jimmy and I took out our pistols and then we went through the door. The hall was dark and quiet. The door to the room on our right was open and light was streaming out.

Jimmy went through the door, gun in his hand, and said, “Put your hands up.”

There was just one man behind the desk and his head had been nodding. He came awake with a start and looked at us.

“You again,” he said.

It was a chubby little man, not particularly competent looking, dressed in a green uniform with red markings and red braided epaulets on the shoulders. The room was large and contained a number of desks, one on the side of the door and two on the side opposite. There were several offices behind the desks. The lamp turned low on the officer’s desk was the only light.

“Keep your voice down,” Jimmy said. “I’ll shoot you if I have to. Now where is my gear?”

The officer said, “I don’t know,” but his voice was uncertain. He was startled and still half asleep.

Jimmy nodded to me to go around the desk. I took out my knife and the man’s eyes watched me. He tried to move his chair, but 1 pushed at the back of it so that he couldn’t rise.

“Careful there, boy,” he said, his voice rising.

I took the point of the knife and I pricked his ear. It didn’t even bring a drop of blood.

“Where is the gear?” I asked.

The man choked and cleared his throat. “Not in any one place. I don’t know where everything be.”

“Where are my saddle bags?”

He shrugged helplessly. “In the stables, I suppose.”

“What about the stuff that was in them?”

Eagerly he said, “They been fooling with that in the mess. Some of the boys.”

“Take us to the mess.”

“I can’t show you,” the officer said. “I can’t leave my post.”

I tickled his epaulet with my knife. “You’ll have to.”

“Don’t cut that!” he said in agitation.

“Show us.” I raised the knife.

“Very well,” he said helplessly. “It be on the second floor.”

I took the lamp from the desk and Jimmy prodded the officer to his feet. He led us out into the corridor and then up the stairs. We walked down another corridor on the second floor, out footsteps echoing hollowly. At last we came to a door and the pudgy little officer unlocked it and threw it open.

“There,” he said.

The lamp light showed a silent room with a great long white-cloth covered table surrounded by ranks of chairs. There was a lounge and a great fireplace.

“Show us,” Jimmy said.

The officer led the way over to the lounge. There was a dart board there and newspapers and games, and on one of the tables Jimmy’s chess board. I recognized it. I don’t know who Jimmy had been intending to play with. Some of his other things were scattered about.

“Jimmy,” I said, in a voice filled with dread. “I don’t see it.”

Jimmy took a quick look himself. “No,” he said. He turned to the officer. “We’re looking for a little block sized object about so by so. Have you seen it?”

“No,” said the officer. “I haven’t been playing with your stuff.”

I poked him with the knife. “Are you sure?”

With some asperity he said, “I be sure! I don’t remember seeing anything like that.”

“What are we going to do now?” I said to Jimmy.

“I don’t know. It must be somewhere, but I don’t know where we could look.”

I was really beginning to worry as I hadn’t before. We couldn’t run loose around this place for very long without being caught, and if we didn’t find the signal we would never get home at all.

We went back downstairs and into the office. It was then that I was suddenly struck by an idea.

“There’s the scoutship outside,” I said. “We could take that! If these people can fly it, we can.”

The chubby officer said, “No you won’t! You Ship people think you have everything, but we’ll show you. We’ve got a little ship of our own now and we be tougher people than you. You won’t take that ship.”

“No need,” Jimmy said. He picked a paperweight off one of the desks. It was his missing signal. He turned with it to the officer. “I thought you hadn’t seen this…?”

“Oh, be that what you wanted? I never noticed it.”

The officer’s back was turned to me. I took out my pistol and somewhat squeamishly hit him with it under the ear.

“Come on, Jimmy,” I said. “If you’ve got the signal, let’s go.”

We went out into the night again. We went around the corner of the building toward the back, but then Jimmy pulled me to a stop. He put his mouth to my ear.

“It’s the guard. See?” He pointed.

We crouched there in the lee of the building as the guard paced slowly down the fence toward the other end of the building. Then, all of a sudden, the night was split with a shout.

“Guards! Guards!”

It came from the front of the building. The guard on patrol here swung around at the shout, but like a good soldier he didn’t leave his post. He simply cut off our retreat.

“Come on,” Jimmy said. We slipped along the buildings parallel to the fence. The shouting continued. Jimmy stopped by a small building at the corner of the square, a building set apart. From there we could see in two directions along the fence.

Jimmy said, “Couldn’t you have hit the officer harder?”

“I don’t like to hit people.”

There was all sorts of hoorah going on. We couldn’t see it, but we could hear it.

Then I said, “Jimmy, do you know what this building is?”

“No.”

“It’s a powder house. See the danger sign? Let’s create a diversion. Let’s blow up the scoutship.”

Jimmy smiled. He reached out and touched my hair for just a second.

We found the door and Jimmy broke the lock with his pistol butt. Whatever noise we made was amply covered. We piled inside and Jimmy swung the door shut behind us. There were small windows in the front of the building and through them we could see soldiers running about on the parade ground and lamps and torches being lit. Guards ran by on their way to reinforce the fences. It began to seem a very good thing to be inside. In the light of the torches we could see the scoutship with its ramp down. Men formed in a line on the parade ground, a formation. Then they were being talked at.

Jimmy said, “They’ll probably be searching the buildings soon.”

I found a small powder keg and set a fuse about five feet long in it. The principle was simple enough. The only thing I wasn’t sure was how long the fuse would take to burn. That was a chance.

Jimmy and I talked about what we would do while the men on the far side of the parade ground were being given their orders. It was almost like playing Paper-Scissors-Rock, where you both decide what you’re going to do and then reveal at the same time. We’d make our plans, and they would make theirs, and then we’d see who won. I gave Jimmy my gun and he loaded it. We then slipped out the back door again. I trailed another fuse out the door behind us.

I said, “Start firing in forty seconds.”

Jimmy said, “Yes,” and he slipped away along the buildings.

I crouched in the dark with my back to the fence and took out a match. I shielded it carefully and scratched it on the lighter board. It didn’t light and so I struck it again. It flared into light and I touched it to the fuse end. The fuse began to sputter and I waved out the match, lifted the small powder keg and went around the side of the building.

Then down the way Jimmy opened up over the heads of the men in formation. They fell to the ground and began to fire back. I trusted Jimmy to keep his head down.

I didn’t hesitate. I plunged straight out onto the parade ground. The keg was heavy and I concentrated simply on running for the scoutship ramp. I don’t know if anybody saw me or if I was shot at. I just concentrated on running. As I got to the ramp, the powder house blew up in a great flash of light and noise. Pieces of the building flew into the air. The concussion knocked me to my knees, but I got up again immediately and dashed up the ramp.

Inside the scoutship, I didn’t hesitate but went immediately to the control room. I set the keg on the pilot’s seat, right next to the main panel. Through the dome I could see men and confusion everywhere. Nobody was firing now. Fire from the powder house had spread to one of the barracks and men were running for water.

I lit another match and touched this fuse off. Then I went down the stairs as fast as I could. Outside, I looked back at the scoutship. Great shadows and flickerings were reflected on the dull metal.

Somebody ran into me then and said, “Watch out there,” and ran on. The parade ground was a crisscrossing of men and nobody even noticed me.

I was beginning to despair, to think I’d have to go back and relight the fuse, when I felt a dull whump. These people were not going to use the scoutship again.

I slipped between the buildings, out of the parade ground, and out of the light and noise. The fences were deserted. It took me several difficult minutes to climb over. Then I climbed through the tree and brush-covered hillside slowly.

At the top, very near the place from which Jimmy and I had made our observations in the afternoon, I looked back at the army compound. The fire had spread to a second building and men like ants rushed around. I watched for a few minutes and then I went on.

Jimmy was waiting by the horses when I got there.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m all right. But I dropped the signal.”

I gasped.

“I’m just kidding,” he said.

I sat down on a rock and spread my torn pant leg. Somewhat gingerly, I touched my leg.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I cut myself going over the fence the first time.”

“That’s too bad,” Jimmy said. He took a look himself. “Its not too bad. Do you want me to kiss it and make it well?”

“Would you?”

Jimmy stood up then and looked toward the light-streaked sky. He waved at it. “You know, that’s an awful lot of trouble to make simply because you can’t bring yourself to hit somebody.”

19

The final morning on Tintera was beautiful. We and the horses were in a rock-enclosed aerie high on a mountainside near the coast. In the aerie were grass and a small rock spring, and this day, the final day, was bright with only a few piled clouds riding high in the sky and warm enough that we could put our coats aside. We had eaten breakfast and packed one final time, and now we were just sitting quietly in the sun.

Looking from the top of the rocks, you could see over miles of expanse. On one side, the mountain dropped and beyond it you could see miles of ocean, gray flecked with white, see part of the coast and shore, brown cliff and dark wet rocks and a narrow beach, see occasional birds gliding on the wind and imagine their calls. Turning your gaze inland, you could see upland meadows in the foreground and mountains much like this one beyond, making a line along the coast. Farther inland were lower hills and curving valleys, blending together, all covered with another rolling sea of trees, a sea at close range made of varying shades of gray and green, but at a distance an even olive.

Down there, under that sea, were all sorts of things — wild Losels and men hunting us. We had seen the Losels and they had seen us; they had gone their way and we had gone ours. The men hunting us we hadn’t had a glimpse of for four days, and that last time they hadn’t even seen us. Also under that sea might be some of the other kids from the Ship, but we hadn’t seen them at all.

Early in the morning we triggered the signal. It was six hours before the ship came. We passed the time quietly, keeping one eye on guard, talking. There was a tiny little animal chittering and nipping around the rocks and I tossed it some food.

We went aboard when the scout came, and put our horses away. Mr. Pizarro was there, checking us back aboard. We were the sixth and seventh.

I said to Jimmy, “I’m going upstairs and talk to George.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell Mr. Pizarro what happened to us.”

We thought they ought to know. Certainly things had been more adventurous for us than anything we thought might have been counted on during Trial. So I went upstairs to see George.

“Congratulations, Adult,” he said when he saw me. “I knew you’d make it.”

“Hello, George,” I said. “Tell me, have you had any trouble in picking up people so far?”

“No trouble,” he said, “but I have been worrying. Look.” He waved his hand at the grid he was using as a guide for his pickups. There were nowhere near twenty-nine lights. I counted them and there were twelve.

“The last light came on two hours ago,” George said. “I’m afraid a lot of people aren’t going to get picked up.”

I told him a little of what had happened to us. I stayed upstairs while we dropped down and picked up Venie Morlock, and then another double pickup. Then I went down and sat with Jimmy.

I said, “There are only six more pickups to make. Look how few of us there are.”

“Is it that bad?” Jimmy said. “I wonder what the Council will say.”

There were only ten of us aboard now. Jimmy and I and Venie were safe, but Att and Helen and Riggy were not yet aboard.

All of a sudden, George called for attention over the speaker. “All right, kids — shut up and listen. One of our people is down there. I didn’t get close enough to see who, but whoever it is is being shot at. We’re going to have to bust him out. I’ll give you two minutes to get your weapons and then I’m going to buzz down and try to get him out. I want all of you outside and laying down a covering fire.”

Some of the kids had their weapons with them. Jimmy and I hopped for the gear racks and got out our pistols. I loaded mine for the first time. There were eleven of us, including Mr. Pizarro, and four ramps to the outside. Jimmy and I and Jack Femandez-Fragoso stood by one ramp. Then George swooped down, touched light as a feather, and dropped all four ramps.

We dived down the ramp. Jack went left, Jimmy center, and I to the right. We were at the top of a wooded slope and my momentum and the slant put me right where I wanted to be — flat on my face. I rolled behind a tree and looked over to see Jimmy almost hidden by a bush.

Here, hundreds of miles from where we had been picked up, it was misting under a familiar rolled gray sky. From the other side of the ship and from below there was the sound of gunfire. Our boy was pinned down fifty yards below us among some rocks that wouldn’t have sheltered properly anything larger than the tiny animal I had been feeding earlier in the day. The boy in the rocks was Riggy Allen and he was fighting back. I saw the sighting beam of his sonic pistol slapping out. About thirty feet toward us up the slope was the body of Riggy’s horse. Riggy turned his head and looked at us.

Riggy’s attackers, the ones that weren’t separated now on the far side of our ship, were dug in behind trees and rocks, at least partly hidden from Riggy, as he was partly hidden from them. From where we were, though, they could be seen more clearly.

I took all this in in seconds, and then I raised my pistol and fired, aiming at a man firing a rifle. The distance was greater than I had counted on and the shot plowed earth ten feet short, but the man jerked back.

This was the first time I had fired the pistol. It bucked in my hand and it made a considerable noise. In a sense, there was a certain satisfaction in it, though. A sonic pistol is silent and if you missed the most you could expect was a sere and yellow leaf. This gun made enough noise and impact in your hand that you knew that you were doing something and a miss might raise dirt, or make a whine, or rip a tree — enough to make the steadiest man keep his head down.

I aimed higher and started to loft my shots in. Jimmy was doing the same thing, and the net effect was enough that the firing at Riggy stopped. Riggy got the idea, stood up and began racing up the hill. Then my gun clicked empty and Jimmy’s firing stopped, too. Jack continued to fire, but except for one burnt arm, the result was less obvious to those being shot at and as our firing stopped, those heads came back up again and took in the situation. They began firing again immediately. Riggy gave a twitch and a hop and went flat behind the body of his horse.

I reloaded as fast as I could, and then I was firing again. Jimmy started firing, too, and Riggy was up and running again. Then I started thinking clearly and held my fire until Jimmy stopped. The instant he stopped, I started again, a regular squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, not caring whether I hit a thing as long as those heads stayed down.

As I finished, Jimmy opened again and then Riggy was past us and up the ramp. He went flat in the doorway there and started firing himself. I retreated up the ramp, then Jack, then Jimmy. When Jimmy was inside, I yelled for George to lift the ramp. He was either watching or he heard me, and the ramp lifted smoothly up and locked in place.

Shots were still coming from the other sides of the ship, so I yelled at Jimmy to go left. I cut through the middle, tripping and practically breaking my neck on one of the chairs.

In the doorway, I skidded flat on my face again and looked for targets. Then I started firing. The three I was covering for used their heads and slipped aboard one at a time. As the second one came aboard, I heard Jimmy call for his ramp to be raised. My third was Venie Morlock, and as she ran aboard, I couldn’t resist tripping her. I yelled to George.

Venie glared at me and demanded, “What was that for?” as the ramp swung up.

“Just making sure you didn’t get shot,” I said, lying.

A second later, Jack yelled for the last ramp to be raised. My last view of Tintera was of a rainsoaked hillside and men doing their best to kill us, which all seems appropriate somehow.

Riggy had been completely unhurt by the barrage, but he had a great gash on his arm that was just starting to heal. So much for a turtle policy, at least on Tintera. Riggy said that he had been minding his own business in the woods one day when a Losel jumped out from behind a bush and slashed him. That may sound reasonable to you, but you don’t know Riggy. My opinion is that it was probably the other way around — the Losel was walking along in the woods one day, minding his own business, when Riggy jumped out from behind a bush and scared him. That is the sort of thing that Riggy is inclined to do.

Riggy said, “Where did you get that gun? Can I see it?”

I handed it over to him. After a minute of inspection, Riggy said, “You wouldn’t want to trade something for it, would you?”

I said, “Riggy, you may have it.” I didn’t particularly want it any more. I knew I would never use it again and it held no fascination for me.

Only seventeen of us in all came aboard. Twelve didn’t live or trigger their signals. I thought about that on the way back to the Ship. I counted the times I was in some danger of being killed? and I came up with a minimum of five times. If you say the chances of living through any single one of these encounters was nine in ten, the chances of living through five are only six in ten. Fifty-nine in a hundred, actually. If everybody’s experience was like mine, it wasn’t unreasonable that twelve of us should not come back. The trouble was that Att was among the missing twelve.

When we got to the Ship, people were there to take care of our horses. We went through decontamination quickly and then they led us into the reception room. They had decorations up for Year End on the walls and colored mobiles that twinkled overhead. There was a band and Daddy in his official capacity to welcome the new adults. Daddy shook my hand.

There were parents waiting. There was Mother and I saw Jimmy’s mother and her husband and his father and his father’s wife. When they saw Jimmy they all waved. And I saw Att’s mother.

I said to Jimmy, “I’ll see you later.”

I went to Att’s mother and I said, “I’m sorry, but Att isn’t with us.” I didn’t know how else to say it. I wished I could say it so that it didn’t hurt her, but it hurt me, too, to know that he wasn’t coming back, and it hurt me to tell her. When she hadn’t seen him with us, she must have known. She began to cry and she nodded and touched my shoulder, and then turned away.

I went over to Mother and she smiled and took my hand. “I’m pleased you came home,” she said, and then she began to cry, and turned her head.

Daddy came away from giving his congratulations and he hugged me. He put a measuring hand over my head and said, “Mia, I believe you’ve grown some.”

I nodded, because I thought I had, too. It felt very good to be home.