"She's done fer now! She's goin' down!" Dace was slower even
than Auk, who tottered on legs weaker than he had known since
infancy.
A second muffled explosion, then silence except for the sibilation
of the flames. Hammerstone, who had been matching strides with
Auk, broke step to snatch up a slug gun. "This was a sleeper's," he
told Auk cheerfully. "See how shiny the receiver is? Probably never
been fired. I couldn't go back for mine 'cause I was supposed to
watch you. Mine's had about five thousand rounds through it." He
put the new slug gun to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel.
Oreb squawked, and Auk said, "Careful there! You might hit Jugs."
"Safety's on." Hammerstone lowered the gun. "You knew her
before, huh?"
Auk nodded and slowed his pace enough to allow Dace to catch
up. "Since spring, I guess it was."
"I had a girl myself once," Hammerstone told him. "She was a
housemaid, but you'd never have guessed it to look at her. Pretty as
a picture."
Auk nodded. "What happened?"
"I had to go on reserve. I went to sleep, and when I woke up I
wasn't stationed in the city any more. Maybe I should've gone
looking for Moly." He shrugged. "Only I figured by then she'd found
somebody else. Just about all of them had."
"You'll find somebody, too, if you want to," Auk assured him. He
paused to look back up the tunnel; the talus was still in view but
seemed remote, a dot of orange fire no larger than the closest light.
"You could be dead," he said. "Suppose Patera hadn't fixed you up?"
Hammerstone shook his head. "I can't ever pay him. I can't even
show how much I love him, really. We can't cry. You know about that?"
"Poor thing!" Oreb sounded shocked.
Auk told him, "You can't cry either, cully."
"Bird cry!"
"You meatheads are always talking about how good us chems
have it," Hammerstone continued. "Good means not being able to
eat, and duty seventy-four, maybe a hundred and twenty, hours at a
stretch. Good means sleeping so long the _Whorl_ changes, and you
got to learn new procedures for everything. Good means seven or
eight tinpots after every woman. You want to try it?"
"Shag, no!"
Dace caught Auk's arm. "Thanks for waitin' up."
Auk shook him off. "I can't go all that fast myself."
More cheerfully Hammerstone said, "I could carry you both, only
I'm not supposed to. Patera wouldn't like it."
Dace's grin revealed a dark gap from which two teeth were
missing. "Mama, don't put me on no boat!"
Auk chuckled.
"He means well," Hammerstone assured them. "He cares about
me. That's one reason I'd die for him."
Auk suppressed his first thought and substituted, "Don't you
think about your old knot any more? The other soldiers?"
"Sure I do. Only Patera comes first."
Auk nodded.
"You got to consider the whole setup. Our top commander ought
to be the calde. That's our general orders. Only there isn't one, and
that means all of us are stuck. Nobody's got the right to give an
order, only we do it 'cause we've got to, to keep the brigade
running. Sand's my sergeant, see?"
"Uh-huh."
"And Schist and Shale are privates in our squad. He tells me and I
tell them. Then they go sure, Corporal, whatever you say. Only
none of us feels right about it."
"Girl wait?" Oreb inquired. He had been eyeing Chenille's distant,
naked back.
"Sooner or later," Auk told him. "Snuff your jaw. This is interesting."
"Take just the other day," Hammerstone continued, "I was
watching a prisoner. A flap broke and I tried to handle it, and he got
away from me. If everything was right, I'd've lost my stripes over
that, see? Only it's not, so all I got was a chewing out from Sand and
double from the major. Why's that?" He leveled a pipe-sized finger
at Auk, who shook his head.
"I'll tell you. "Cause both of them know Sand wasn't authorized to
give anybody orders in the first place, and I could've told him
dee-dee if I'd wanted to."
"Dee-dee?" Oreb peered quizzically at Hammerstone.
"You want the straight screw? I felt pretty bad when it happened,
but it was a lot worse when I was talking to them. Not 'cause of
anything they said. I've heard all that till I could sing it. 'Cause they
didn't take my stripes. I never thought I'd say that, but that's what it
was. They could've done it, only they didn't 'cause they knew they
didn't have authority from the calde, and I kept thinking, you don't
have to tell me to wipe them off, I'll wipe them off myself. Only that
would just have made them feel worse."
"I never liked working for anybody but me," Auk told him.
"You got to have somebody outside. Or anyhow I do. You feeling
pretty good now?"
"Better'n I did."
"I been watching you, 'cause that's what Patera wants. And you
can't hardly walk. You hit your head when the talus bought it, and
we figured you were KIA. Patera sort of liked it at first. Only then,
not so much. His essential nobility of character coming out. Know
what I'm saying?"
Dace put in, "That big gal cryin an' yellin' at him."
"Yeah, that too. Look here--"
"Wait a minute," Auk told them. "Chenille. She cried?"
Dace chuckled. "I felt sorrier fer her than fer you."
"She wasn't even there when I woke up!"
"She run off. I was over talkin' ter that talus, but I seen her."
"She was around when I came to," Hammerstone told Auk. "She
had that launcher, only it was empty. There was another one, all
smashed up, where we were. Maybe she brought it, I don't know.
Anyhow, after I talked to Patera about you and a couple other
things, I showed her how to disarm the bad one's magazine and load
the SSMs in the good one."
Dice told Hammerstone, "She got her'n up the tunnel whilst the
augur was fixin' you. This big feller, he was off watch, and didn't
nobody know rightly how bad he'd got hurt. When she come back
an' seen he wasn't comin' 'round, she foundered."
Auk scratched his ear.
"You've broke your head-bone, big feller, don't let nobody tell
you no different. I seen it afore. Feller on my boat got a rap from
the boom. He laid in the cuddy couple nights 'fore we could fetch
him ashore. He'd open the point an' talk, then sheer off down
weather. We fetched him the doctor an' I guess he done all he was
able but that feller died next day. You're in luck you wasn't hit no
worse."
"What makes it good luck?" Hammerstone asked him.
"Why, stands ter reason, don't it? He don't want ter be dead, no
more'n me!"
"All you meatheads talk like that. Only look at it. No more
trouble and no more work. No more patrols through these tunnels
looking everywhere for nothing and lucky to get a shot at a god. No
more--"
"Shot god?" Oreb inquired.
"Yeah," Auk said. "What the shag are you talking about?"
"That's just what we call them," Hammerstone explained.
"They're really animals. Kind of like a dog, only ugly where a real
dog's all right, so we say it backwards."
"I've never seen any kind of shaggy animal down here."
"You haven't been down here long, either. You just think you
have. There's bats and big blindworms, out under the lake especially.
There's gods all around here, only there's five of us and me a