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 rifies. 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 dustraising 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.