But brush whispered. He stood up slowly, on his rock, faced in the direction of the sound.
Two of the Weirds stood there, with the rags of garments that Weirds affected, their deathly pale skins streaked with mud about hands and knees. Their backs were to the upriver. Their shadowed eyes rested on him, and he grew very cold, reckoning he was about to die. There was nowhere to run but the born‑men’s wire. The hiller village could never hide him; and he would die of other reasons if he was shut away behind the wire and numbered.
One Weird lifted his head only slightly, a gesture he took for a summons. He might cause them trouble. He was minded to. But somewhere, not so far away and not in sight either, would be another of them, or two or three. They would move if he denied them. So he leapt down from his rock and came closer to the Weirds as they seemed to want.
They parted, opening a way for him to go, and a quiet panic settled into him, because he understood then that they intended to bring him back with them upriver. Desperately he looked leftward, toward the Styx, toward the gray sunlight mirrored among the reeds, hoping against all expectation that the brown the born‑men had shot would surface.
No. It was gone–dead, hurt, no one might know. A gentle hand took his elbow, ever so gently tugging at him, directing him where he had to go if he had any hope to live.
He went, retracing the track he and the old man had followed, and now the Weirds held him by either arm. The one on his left deftly reached and relieved him of his belt knife.
He could not understand–how they moved him, or why he did not break and run; only the death about him was instant and what was ahead was indefinite, holding some small chance. There was no reckoning with the Weirds or with the browns. There was no understanding. They might bring him back to the mounds and then as capriciously let him go.
The turns of the Styx unwound themselves until the sky‑shining sheet was dimmed in the shade of trees, until they reached the towering ridges and the tracks he and the old man had made when they had stopped.
Perhaps they would hold him here and the old brown would come out and eye him as calibans would, and lose interest as calibans would, and they would let him go.
No. They urged him up the slope of the mound, toward the dark entryway in the side of it, and he refused, bolted suddenly out of their hands and down among the brush at the right, breaking twigs and thorns on his leather clothing, shielding his face with his arms.
A hiss broke in front of him and the head of a great brown loomed up, jaws gaping. He skidded to a stop, slapped instinctively at a sharp sting on his cheek and felt a dart fall from under his fingers. The brown in front of him turned its head to regard him with one round golden eye while he felt that side of his face numb, his heart speeding. His extremities lost feeling, his knees buckled: he flung up an arm to protect his eyes as brush came up at him, and lacked the strength to move when he landed among the thorny branches. They were all about him, the human shapes, silent. Gentle hands tugged at him, turning him onto his back, so that a lacery of cloudy sky and branches swung into his vision.
He was not dying. He was numb, so that they could gather him up and carry him but he was not dead when they carried him toward the hole in the earth, and realizing this, he tried to fight, in a terror deeper than all his nightmares. But he could not move, not the least twitch of a finger, not even to close his eyes when dirt fell into his face, not to close his mouth or swallow or use his tongue, even to cry out when the dark went around him and he was alone with them, with their silence and their touches.
xiii
Year 89, day 208 CR
Main Base
“No sign of this hiller,” Spencer said.
“No, sir,” Dean said, hands behind him.
Spencer frowned, turned from his table fully facing Dean–an intense young man, his assistant, with a shock of thick black hair and a coppery skin tone and a faded blue number on his hand that meant townsman, at least intermittently. Presently Dean was doing field work, meaning he was back in the town again. “How did you hunt for him?” Spencer asked.
“Asking other hillers. Those who come to trade. Theyhaven’t seen him.”
“They know him?”
Dean took the liberty and sat down on the other stool at the slanted desk full of reports, pulled it under him. He smelled of recent soap, never of the fields. Meticulous in that. He had ambitions, Spencer reckoned. He was good–in what they let him do. “Name’s known, yes. There’s a kind of split–I don’t pick up all of it; I’ve given you notes on that. At any rate, there was this very old azi–You want his history?”
“Might be pertinent.”
“The last azi survivor. His brood went for the hills. That’s the ancestry. You hearabout that line, but you don’t see them. None of them are registered to come into the camp. There’s an order among hillers. The ones we get around here–they’ll talk easy on some things. But I didn’t get an easy feeling asking about this fellow Jin.”
“How–not easy?”
A shrug. “Like first it was no townsman’s business; like second, that maybe this particular hiller wouldn’t be dealing with a townsman.”
“How did you put it to them?”
“Just that I had come on something that had to do with this Jin. I thought it was clever. After all, his ancestor was hereabouts. And it used to be that townsmen would trade found‑things to the hills. I didn’t say anything more than that. They might get curious. But if this man’s a bush hiller, it could be a while.”
“Meaning he might be out of their settlement and out of touch.”
“Meaning that, likely. It seemed to be a good bit of gossip. I imagine it’ll go on quick feet. But no news yet.–You mind if I ask what I’m looking for?”
Spencer clamped his lips together, thinking on it, reached then and dragged a set of pictures down from the clutter on the desk, arranged them in front of Dean.
“That’s the Styx.”
“I see that,” Dean said.
Spencer frowned and livened the wallscreen, played the tapeloop that was loaded in the machine. He had seen the tape a score of times, studied it frame by frame. Now he watched Dean’s face instead, saw Dean’s face go rigid in the light of the screen, seeing the caliban and then the human come out of the mound. Dean’s whole body gave back, hands on the edge of the tabletop.
“Bother you?”
Dean looked toward him as the tape looped round again. Spencer cut the machine off. Dean straightened with a certain nonchalance. “Not particularly. Calibans. But someone got real close to do that tape.”
“Not so far upriver. Look at the orbiting survey.”
Spencer marked the place, difficult to detect under the general canopy of trees. Dean looked, looked up, without the nonchalance. “This have to do with the hiller you’re looking for, by any chance?”
“It might.”
“You take these?”
“You’re full of questions.”
“That’s where you and the soldiers went. Upriver last week. Looking for calibans.”
“Might be.”
“This hunter–this Jin–He was there? He guided you?”
“You don’t like the sound of it.”
Dean bit at his lip. “Not a good idea to go up on calibans like that. Not a good idea at all.”
“Let me show you something else.” Spencer pulled a tide of pictures down the slope of the desk. “Try those.”
Dean turned and sorted through them, frowning.
“You know what you’re looking at?”
“The world,” Dean said. “Seen from orbit.”
“Pictures of what?”
A long silence, a shuffling of pictures. “Rivers. Rivers all over the world. I don’t know their names. And the Styx.”
“And?”
A long silence. Dean did not look around.