“You want him to?" Tom glanced quickly at Ted, saw no movement.
Wayne and Joey glanced too. “Who cares,” Wayne said, caring a great deal. The Kenney kid had allowed himself to be drawn into the game, duck and be ducked, and had realized too late that Wayne had vicious ideas about its outcome. “You're the little shit that gave me that nickname, aren't you?"
No answer. Schell, reaching out: "Enough's enough, Wayne."
Joey saw his leader nod, wrestled a limply-moving mass to the lip of the dam. Ted Quantrill recognized the face of Ray Kenney as it drooled water.
Flashes of successive thought rapid-fired through Ted's mind. Purvis Little: no help there. Ray was coughing and gagging as Schell dragged him from the water. Schell, Cameron and Atkinson had deliberately set the stage with only one witness, or at least Atkinson had, and none of them doubted that they could overpower Ray and Ted together. Quantrill went to a crouch inhaling deeply, quietly, hyperventilating as he ran on silent feet. Joey saw him then, yelled an alarm in time for Wayne Atkinson to turn.
Quantrill was unsure of the murky bottom and chose to leap feet-first. He chose to plant one foot where Joey's solar plexus should be, and made his next choice in grabbing the handiest piece of Atkinson. It happened to be the sleek blond hair.
Ted's inertia carried him past them and his tactical instinct made him slide behind Atkinson as he gripped and shook the blond mop underwater. He hammered at the face with his free hand, knew from the sodden impacts that his fist caused little damage, released his grip, thrust away and surfaced.
Atkinson emerged facing Joey Cameron, dodged a roundhouse swing by his friend. "It's me, you fucker," he sputtered, and whirled to find Ted.
Their quarry made his eyes wide, began to swim backward into deeper water bearing all the stigmata of terror. Even Joey Cameron was not tall enough to stand on the bottom farther out.
A brave scenario occurred to Mr. Little's pride. “Stay put, this 'un's mine," said Atkinson, who was a fair swimmer.
Ted continued his inhale-exhale cycles; noted that Ray ivcnney was trying to sit up as Joey climbed onto the dam. Dirty water hid his legs as Ted drew them up to his chest, still simulating a poor backstroke, mimicking mortal fear of the older youth. Atkinson swam in a fast crawl, grinned, paused to enjoy the moment as he reached for Ted Quantrill's hair. The doubled blow of Quantrill's heels onto his shoulder and sternum knocked him nearly unconscious.
Wayne blanched, shook a mist of pain from his eyes. "For that," he began, then realized that Quantrill had used the double kick to start a backward somersault. Wayne kicked hard, encountered nothing, then felt himself again dragged backward by his hair. He managed to gargle Joey's name before being hauled under, inhaling more water than air as he gasped. His thighs were scissored by another's, his right hand cruelly twisted by another's, his world a light-and-shadow swirl of horror until his groping left hand found another's locked in his hair. Then Atkinson's head was free, but both arms were now pinioned by another's, and in his spinning choking confusion he tried to breathe. It was not a very smart move.
When Quantrill felt his struggling burden grow spastic, less patterned in its panic, he released it and treaded water calmly as Atkinson, sobbing, floundered toward shore. Joey Cameron thought about loyalty instead of terrain and stalked Quantrill across the pond. Here the silt was unroiled. Joey could see the stones on the bottom. He did not see the one Quantrill was holding until it crashed under his chin, and from that instant his vision improved remarkably. He saw that a fist with a rock in it beats a long advantage in reach, and he saw the futility of swinging on someone you cannot find when your eyes are swollen shut and your opponent waits to slash like a barracuda.
Throughout the fight, Quantrill coupled his terrible slashing fury with utter silence as he mastered the urge to weep in rage, and with an increasing clarity of purpose. The cries and sobs that drew younger boys back to the pond issued from older throats than his. By the time Ted Quantrill chased a galloping blood-streaming Joey Cameron to shore, he was dimly aware that he had done several things right; things that were new to him but that seemed very old and appropriate.
Item: let the other guy make all the noise. You know how he's taking it, and your silence rattles him.
Item: make the other guy fight your fight in a setting you choose.
Item: one enemy at a time, please.
Item: don't expect help from weak friends.
Item: don't expect thanks, either. Your friends may not see it the way you do.
Tom Schell qualified for a merit badge in first aid that day; would have qualified for another if they gave them for diplomacy. Tom listened to the wound-licking growls of Atkinson and Cameron, kept his own counsel, and found Ted nursing skinned knuckles at the pond. "You won't get a date with Eve Simpson for that dumb stunt," he said, invoking the name of a buxom teen-aged holovision star. "Wayne was just teaching Ray a lesson. When Little gets back he's gonna be plain pissed off.”
“Let him take it out on Wayne. I did," Quantrill smiled.
This kid is all wire and ice water, thought Schell, staring at Quantrill as if seeing him for the first time. The chill down his back only aggravated Schell. “Su-u-ure. And why'd you tell the twins about your goddam birthday? They passed it along. A word to the wise, Teddy.” Tom Schell shook his head as though superior to all that had happened, as though he had not lent tacit support to the worst of it.
Ted nodded, attended to his knuckles and the pursuit of new thoughts. He was in the process of realizing that each of them — Wayne, Joey, Tom, Ted — thought himself more sinned against than sinning. It never occurred to Ted to view the hapless Ray Kenney as a sinner; that for an individual or a nation, placing oneself in a helpless position against known danger might be an evil that generates its own punishment.
Chapter Ten
The scoutmaster felt reassured by his calls to Raleigh, and by the phrasing of media releases over the Quantrill radio. The emergency session of the UN, he was sure, would do the job. Purvis Little had never heard of I. F. Stone, whose legendary journalistic accuracy grew from a realist's premise: “All governments are liars; nothing they say should be believed."
Little's first act on returning to camp was to call his own emergency session. He blew three short blasts on his whistle, jaw the bandages on Joey Cameron's face, then glanced at lis Eagle. “Good to see you practicing first aid with Joey,” he began. "I need to talk with my patrol leaders."
“Practice hell,” Atkinson said, regarding his splinted left middle finger. Then he remembered to smile. Regardless of the facts, Little always favored the one who was smiling.
"Language," Little tutted; "settle down, now." He draped an avuncular arm over Wayne's shoulder, raised his voice over the hubbub as other scouts surrounded him. “I've got good news, boys. Despite some rumors among our—" he sought the gazes of Ted and Ray, " — young worry warts, we're not going home. I've talked with some parents, and they're confident that our country is not about to make war on China or Atlantis or Venus."
As every boy knew from holovision, the Venus probes had returned with wondrous samples from the shrouded planet. Mineral specimens suggested only a form of primitive quasilife there, and holo comics had extracted all available humor from the notion of intelligence on Venus. Dutiful laughter spread from the patrol leaders.
Little went on to warn his scouts against further worrisome talk about the outside world, and ended by announcing that he'd found a berry thicket not far from camp. Wayne Atkinson bided his time. When the patrols were out of sight searching for berries, he doubled back to find his scoutmaster. Somewhat later he brought Schell and Cameron back, and later still the rest of the troop straggled back with their booty. By then, Purvis Little understood the hostilities in his world roughly as well, and with roughly the same amount of bias, as India understood her problems after her secret session with her Chinese allies.