“We pull the town tighter in,” the mission chief said. “We continue the program, while we have the chance.”
“Only with the town itself.”
“Militarily–” security said, “the only answer. We can’t get the hillers. Not without the town at a more secure level than it is. We can’t ferret the hillers out. Can’t.”
“There’s division of opinion on that.”
“I’m telling you the departmental consensus. I’m telling you the longrange estimate. We don’t need hardened enemies on this world. We don’t use the fist.”
“The policy stands,” the mission chief intervened, a calm voice and firm. “The town first. We can’t reach into the hiller settlement.”
“The calibans–”
“We just keep an eye on that movement. If the caliban drift in our direction accelerates, then we take alarm.”
“The drift is there,” science said. “The mounds exist, a kilometer closer than last season.”
“Killy has a breeding cycle theory that makes a great deal of sense–that this advance and retreat has something to do with a dieoff–”
“We make theories at a distance. While the ban holds on firsthand observation–”
“We do what we can with the town,” the mission chief said, “before we take any action with the calibans. We don’t move until we’re absolutely secure.”
xii
Year 89, day 203 CR
Styxside
They were born‑men and townsmen and they came up the river with a great deal of noise, a sound of hardsoled boots and breaking of branches and sometimes splashing where a stream fed into the Styx. Jin was amazed and squatted on a rock to see, because there had never in his lifetime come such a thing, people from inside the barrier come from behind their fences and down the Styx.
They saw him there, and some of them aimed their guns from fright. Jin’s heart froze in him from shock and he moved no muscle until the seniormost of them waved the guns away and stopped the rest of the column in the kind of order townsmen liked.
“You,” the man said. “Hiller?”
Jin nodded, squatting on his rock, his eyes still alert for small movements of weapons. He had his arms about his leatherclad knees, but there was brush beside him and he could bound away with one fast spring if they went on being crazy.
“You got your number, hiller?”
Jin made a pursing of his lips, his eyes very much alert. “Got no number, born‑man. I hunt. I don’t trade behind your wire.”
The man came a little closer, looking up at him on his rock. “We’re not behind the wire now. Don’t need a number. Want to trade?”
“Trade what?”
“You know calibans, hiller?”
Jin half‑lidded his eyes. “O, so, calibans. Don’t touch them, born‑man. The old browns, they don’t take much to hunters. Or strangers come walking ’long the Styx.”
“We’re here to study,” another man said, leaving the others to come closer. He was an older man with gray hair. “To learn the calibans. Not to hunt.”
“Huh.” Jin laughed hiller‑fashion, short and soft. “The old browns don’t fancy being learned. You make tapes, old born‑man, you make tapes to teach you calibans? They go away from you, long time ago. Now you want them back? They make your buildings fall, they drag you under, old born‑man, take you down with them, down in the dark under ground.”
“I’ll go up there,” a young man said; but: “No,” the old man said. “He’s all right. I want to hear him.–Hiller, what’s your name?”
“Jin. What’s yours?”
“Spencer. You mind if I come up there?”
“Sir–” the man said, with the weapons. But the old man was coming up the side of the rocky slope, and Jin considered it and let him, amused as the old born‑man squatted down hiller‑fashion facing him.
“You know a lot about them,” Spencer said.
Jin shrugged, not displeased at respect.
“You hunt them?” Spencer asked. “You wear their hides.”
“Grays,” Jin said, rubbing his leather‑clad knee. “Not the browns.”
“What’s the difference?”
It was a stupid question. Jin studied the old man, conceived an outrageous idea, because it was a pleasant old face, a comfortable face, on this slightly fat man with wrinkled skin and fine cloth clothes. Fat was prosperity, just enough. An important man who climbed up a rock and sat with a young hunter. Jin grinned, waved a dismissing hand. “You tell the rest of them go home. They make too much noise. I take you upriver.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Make the calibans mad, that noise. You want to see, I show you.”
Ah, the old man wanted the bargain. He saw it in the eyes, pale, pale blue, the palest most wonderful blue he ever saw. And the old man got down off his rock and went to the armed young leader and argued, in harder and harder words.
“You can’t do that,” the young man said.
“You turn them around,” the old one said, “and you report how it was.”
In the end they each got half, because the old man was going on and the rest were waiting here.
“Not far,” Jin said easily. He bounced down off his rock, a soft landing on softsoled boots, and straightened with a nod to the old man in the way that they should go.
“He hasn’t made a deal,” the armed man said. “Dr. Spencer, he’s no townsman; we’ve got no number on him.”
“Maybe if you had,” Spencer said, “he wouldn’t be any good out here.”
The armed man said nothing. Jin motioned to the old one. It was a lark. He was fascinated by these people he had never seen so close at hand, in their fine cloth and hard boots. He reckoned this man for someone–not just a townsman but from the buildings where no one got, not even town folk, and least of all hillers.
And never a hunter who had no number on his hand, for passing the fences and going and coming into the born‑man territory.
“Come on,” he said to the old man Spencer. “You give me a shirt, all right?” He knew that such folk must be rich. “I show you calibans.”
The old man came with him, walking splayfooted down the bank, shifting the straps of all sorts of things he carried. Flitters dived and splashed among the reeds and the old man puffed on, making noise even in walking, a helpless sort in the way no hiller child was helpless.
I could rob this man, Jin thought, just because robbery did happen, high in the hills; but it was a kind of thought that came just because he thought it was trusting of the old man to be carrying all that wealth and going off with a stranger who was stronger and quicker and knew the land, and he was wondering whether the old man knew people robbed each other, or whether inside the camp such things never happened.
He found the calibans where he knew to find them, not so very far as they had been a hand of years ago. Even ariels were more plentiful, a lacery of trails across the sandy margin. Ariels, grays, even browns had turned up hereabouts, and all the lesser sorts, the hangers‑about: it was a rich season, a fat season.
“Look,” he said and pointed, showing the old man a ripple amid the Styx, where the broad marshy water reflected back the trees and the cloudy sky.
The old man stopped and gaped, trying to make out calibans; but there was no seeing that one clearly. It was fishing, and need not come up. They kept walking around the next bank, where mounds rose up on all sides of them, and trees thrust their roots in to drink from the dark hollows. It was forest now, and only leaves rustled.