Chapter 7

The site was much changed now that the line across the canyon floor had begun to grow upward, the rock face on the far side beginning to diminish considerably, so that more blasting was going to be required a little farther from the rim this time, the rock transported down a winding trail on the far side by labor of men and oxcarts and sledges: maddeningly slow progress, this primitive chipping away at the rock, while the winter's lessened flow poured from its bed to the timber flume and cascaded back to its original channel.

"We're going to need more men on these crews in a few days," Merritt said to Porter as they watched the first of the men head out toward the suspension bridge for the day's work. "We have to lengthen shifts if we can't. We're not making progress as fast as we have to."

"I'm glad to see that bothers you."

Merrill's glance was instant and sharp; he found Porter's expression what he had thought.

"I mean it," said Porter. "Since you have other things on your mind—" He gestured down at Merrill's hand, that was bearing another bandage this morning. "She give you trouble again, eh?"

Merritt only stared at him, and that was not the reaction Porter had evidently wanted. The big man perceptibly revised his line of assault.

"What I mean to say," said Porter, "is that I hope you aren't coming to consider that creature's welfare ahead of ours."

"How should I?”

"I don't know what reasons you may have found."

"Maybe you'd better put what you're thinking in plain words so we both know what you're talking about."

"All right, it's this: we know you never liked this site. And, Mr. Merritt, it's a source of wonder to me why you keep on with this creature—sitting in that room late at night, keeping company with it, talking about communication with it. I wonder just what you have to communicate, hey? Or what the whole human race has to say to them, for that matter." He waved his hand toward the east, where the valley showed dark with forest. "That dam's going to make one big lake up there, and it's a case of her kind or ours. I don't think we have anything to communicate about, if they had the brain to do it, which they don't I hope you aren't having second thoughts about the project. That's what I mean. That's what a lot of folks are wondering."

"No, Mr. Porter, I know well enough what we have at stake. I understand there's no choice."

"So why do you keep on with her?"

"Because I'm curious. Isn't that my business, Mr. Porter?"

"And the fact that it's female has nothing to do with it, of course."

"You want to state that a little clearer too, Mr. Porter?"

"If it was male, would you kill it? Or is it misguided sentiment?"

"No, its being female has nothing to do with it, nothing. The fact is it can—she can—think and feel the same as you, the same as a human."

"No, sir, not the same as a human, and that's where you make your mistake. Like trying to turn a cat into a dog, it is: four feet, tail, all the right parts, but all the wrong signals. She'll go for your throat one day you get too friendly, and we'll be less one engineer. I call that an unjustifiable risk."

"So if we turn her loose?"

"One more killer on the loose, that's all. You know what you can do with her."

"I'm not going to get rid of her. She's safe where she is and she's hurting no one."

"We aren't safe so long as she's in that room, a room, what's more, fit for people, while I got men sleeping in barracks. I tell you as plain as I know how, I don't like it. I don't like it under the same roof as I am, screaming out in the night for no reason, snarling and spitting like a wild animal—"

"She's quieter now, if she's been disturbing your sleep."

"Is quieter any reason to believe she's safer? Female or not, there's no reckoning of that so far as I'm concerned. They're all killers, all of them. She'll draw others. I have no doubt of that. And we're vulnerable, real vulnerable, depending on that warehouse, on Celestine, on our guard-posts out here. Men have tried to fight them before and taken precautions; and still woke up with the house afire or worse."

"I'm not denying there's a danger."

Then why risk it? What good is it? Merritt—if I didn't know better, I'd suspect there was something more than curiosity on your side."

"You can keep your suspicions to yourself, Mr. Porter. The fact is, in my mind she's too close to human; and I don't have to kill her. I don't take murder as a casual option; and murder's what it would be."

"They're another species, not human. Murder isn't the word."

"It is as I see it."

"Then—" Porter gestured again to the Upriver. "That lake's going to commit a lot of murder, isn't it?"

"I'll fight for my own kind when I have to; but not when there's no need. So I'll be selective about my atrocities. Don't worry about your dam. It's going all right. And faster if you get me more men on it."

And on that, he walked off and left Porter standing. Proximity was too great a temptation, and Porter was too necessary. He put the man and his manner out of his mind, and walked down to the edge, where the crews were gathering up their gear and still waiting on those who had to walk the bridge first and inspect the ropes. They were returning finally, along with the farside guards.

He gave a casual wave to the others, but when the guards had reached the near side and caught sight of him, they pushed their way past the waiting men and came directly toward him. The rest crowded behind them to bear.

"We had a bad night," said one of the Burases, who had been the farside guards. "Mr. Merritt, we had plenty of visitors; we could see them plain. We saw them near the ropes, and fired at them—it scattered them, but I think we'd better delay work until we've scoured the area. Don't know what they could have set up for mantraps."

Merrill nodded calmly. "We'll do that, then. You did a good job, or we wouldn't have a bridge this morning. We'll have to double farside guard after this. Did you see any sign of them this morning?"

"Plenty of tracks, no bodies. But we thought we hit one or two. Could be they took the dead ones with them or they could have fallen into the canyon. We'd never recover them then."

"It's getting dangerous out there," the other man said. "Don't mind guarding, but I sure want help at it."

Merrill nodded again. "Whatever it takes. We haven't lost any lives yet and we're not going to. Volunteers, get over the other side and look around, carefully. I'll go with you."

"No, sir," said the elder Burns cousin. "No, sir. We aren't taking chances with you. Don't want our only engineer stumbling into something; we know the land. But won't anybody get much done this morning until we have ourselves a look around."

Sazhje was, as usual, perched on the tabletop. She never had understood the comfort of furniture: although she had a cot and a chair, she never used either, but dragged the bedding to the table and made her nest under it, sleeping there at night and sitting atop it at other times, under whatever logic no one had discovered.

Dinner was a time she seemed to anticipate; and each evening that Jim and Merritt came to bring her food, she would bounce down from her perch and pace excitedly back and forth just out of arm's reach. Of late, she would even venture to take the food from them, snatching and jerking back.

This evening, she reached tentatively to Jim's offering, jerked back, and then took it with a sudden move; but she seemed more at ease in their presence, as if the wariness itself had become a ritual. She sprang up to the table again and sat there eating and watching them until she was almost finished.

"Ssam-Zhim," she pronounced, as she would do sometimes conversationally, and offered them a half-eaten apple. Jim, venturing nipped fingers, took it and took a bite.

"Zhim," she said, took it back when he offered and gravely took another bite. Her smooth brow furrowed as in very deep thought, and on her way to another bite she held it out again. "Ah?"

"Sazhje's apple," said Jim.

"Sazhje ap-ph." The syllables came with difficulty, but they were understandable. She had a few words, intelligible to those who knew her small vocabulary. "Sazhje Zhim-Ssam." And what that was to mean was beyond guessing, but Sazhje came off the table and circled a little out of reach, as if she wanted to come closer, but feared to.

"Come," Merritt said. She knew that word. She ventured within reach, held out her hand to touch his, and then Jim's, then appeared greatly alarmed by her own boldness and retreated again.

"Come," Merritt said again.

Sazhje hesitated, then went to the table where she had left her last piece of fruit, picked it up and brought it to them, offering it with great seriousness. When Jim took it from her, she bent down and tugged at the chain at her ankle, looked up and held out her open hands to them.

"She wants that off so bad," said Jim. "Sam, what's it going to hurt?"

"Her," Merritt said. "No. It stays on."

She looked quite dejected when they did nothing for her request, and she went back to her table and sat down again. Jim went to her, though he was taking a chance, and patted her shoulder. She actually preened under that attention, turning her head so that her cheek touched his hand. She chattered something in her own language, if language it was, and looked melancholy.

"You've got a friend," said Merritt.

"Think so. Now watch her turn and take my hand off."

But Sazhje did nothing of the sort. She reached up a spidery arm and patted Jim's shoulder, cluttering something unintelligible. She reached as far as his head and touched his hair, apparently curious, tugging very slightly at the curls.

"Zhim," she said, and a smile jerked slightly at her thin lips. "Zhim—Ssam."

It was the first time they had ever drawn a smile from her. Jim recklessly set her down off her table and she tolerated it, then decided apparently that it had not been a hostile move at all. She slipped a little out of reach and regarded them both with a coquettish half-smile and a turn of her head, but then inexplicably went shy again and would not be approached. She hissed at them and bared her teeth.

"She's had enough," said Merritt "Let's not press her."

Merritt folded the notes back again, left them on the desk, and started to undress for bed. It was just as he was starting to take off his boots that he heard a strange sound from down the hall: one of Sazhje's irritation screams, muted, as she had never cared to restrain herself before.

He stood up, listened, heard nothing; but the recollection of testings at the bridge troubled him. On that impulse, he quietly took his gun and opened the door, headed quietly down the lamplit hall without raising an alarm: he had no desire to add to Sazhje's unpopularity by rousing the house unnecessarily.

The door was bolted from the outside as it ought to be: they had seen to that after dinner. He slid back the bolt in utter silence and turned the handle, pushed it open on the darkness within.

Sazhje was as close to the shuttered window as she could reach, a shadow among shadows. As she turned and saw him she gave out a soft chirring and her large eyes caught the light. Twice something bumped at the shingled ledge outside, or at the window itself, and went still.

Merritt stopped; he had too much respect for Sazhje's speed to venture to that window himself. He closed the door on her, rushed for the balcony over the main hall, to shout warning; and Sazhje let out a piercing cry, enough to warn any intruders and rouse the sleeping house before Merritt could call aloud.

The alarm was given outside almost in the same moment; there was a clanging of pans and men were shouting, rushing for weapons. A heavy fist pounded on the front door and a human voice shouted; Merritt pelted downstairs and slid the bar back. Others were coming from all parts of the house half-dressed and fully armed behind him.

It was Andrews at the door, George Andrews, bearing a bloody slash across the face and out of breath, a wild figure in the light from the hearth inside and the torches that were flaring inside and about the yard.

"We got a casualty," Andrews breathed. "The People got to us, sir. Ben Porter's dead, tried to stop something as it was coming away from the house. He and I were on sentry duty. Don't know how it happened or how it got past us in the first place, but—"

"Ben's dead?" Tom Porter shouldered his way to the door and all but collared Andrews. "My cousin's dead?"

“I'm sorry," said Andrews.

"What's the situation now?" asked Burns from another quarter. "Are we clear of them now?"

"Yes, sir," said Andrews. "There was only one of them that we saw. And him only when he jumped Ben. I'm sorry, Mr. Porter. I fired at the thing—couldn't hit it. We were both standing guard, and when we heard something—it was just too late. I don't think it even aimed to fight. We were just in its way."

"Randy," Burns directed one of his older nephews, "get out there and supervise things in the yard. Andrews, come on in and let Hannah take a look at that cut."

Andrews came in and Merritt, who was holding the door, looked back toward Porter, expecting him to go out to see to his dead kinsman; but Porter showed no disposition to do so. Porter's eyes met his in that instant.

"I warned you what would happen," Porter said; and it was justified, and no moment to argue with the man, not with a kinsman dead. Merritt ventured no reply, not even to offer ill-timed sympathy.

And Tom Porter turned and walked off toward the rear of the hall.

Merritt was taken off-balance by that retreat, until he thought where else that led; and that second thought sent him after Porter, who hit the stairs at a run, gun in hand.

"Porter!” Merritt shouted at him, drawing every eye in the room and freezing everyone into a tableau of shock— everyone but Porter. Merritt charged after him up the stairs, two steps at a time; and Jim Selby came to his senses and ran after him too. Then the others moved.

Porter was at the top, headed down the hall, steps thunderous on the board flooring; he reached Sazhje's room and flung the door wide, gun lifting. Sazhje gave one piercing shriek out of the dark, and Merritt hit Porter in a waist-high rush, skidded with him several lengths farther on the floor, into the doors at the end of the hall.

The gun discharged into a wall, deafening; wood flew. One of the women screamed and so did Sazhje, everything in slow motion as Merritt grappled for the gun, trying to get it from Porter's hand. It discharged again, where, Merritt could not see. Sazhje's staccato shrieks drowned other sounds.

At last he had a purchase on Porter's arm and one hand clear. He hit the man, repeatedly, and still he clung to the gun.

Others had come upstairs, Jim Selby was into it, trying to help restrain the big man without hurting him, and together they were able to pry the gun from his fingers.

Merritt let Porter up then, stood back at safe distance from him. Porter's red face was congested with temper and madness; and for a moment Merritt braced himself for another attack.

"It's your doing," Porter shouted at him. "I warned you, Merritt, I warned you."

"She's not guilty," said Jim Selby, ignoring his father's attempt to draw him out of it, to bring him back to the others that crowded the stairs. "She had nothing to do with it."

"So long as that creature is in the house none of us are going to sleep safe. My cousin's dead. Ben's dead. I'm warning you—destroy it."

"That creature," said Jim, "is a woman, not an animal, and you keep yourself away from her, Mr. Porter. If you hurt her, so help me—"

"If you call that a woman, that's your taste, boy, not mine. Is that it? Well, you could do what you like with your pet til now, but I'm losing no more of my kin for her sake."

"Back down, Porter," said Merritt. "Get out there with your other cousin that needs you. You'll do some good there, but none here."

"No," said Jim, his young face white with anger. "If he wants trouble with me, he's got it."

Porter's eyes went from head to foot of Jim's slim unHestian figure, and back to his face again. "You save yourself til you're older, boy. —Amos, do something with this bastard kid before I have to."

With a cry of rage Jim threw himself at Porter, and landed one good blow: Porter's answering one rocked him back half over the balcony railing, wringing an outcry from others. Porter started forward again, but Merritt jerked him about and held his arm.

Porter did not resist him, although he was ready for it. There, was a dark anger in the big man's eyes, but there was calculation too; in height, at least, and youth to age, they were evenly matched.

"Go downstairs," Merritt said quietly, as if it were a request.

Porter went, men moving out of his way and following him down the stairs. Meg was among them; she delayed for a cold look at Merritt, a hurt and ashamed look, and went after Porter. Only Burns and Amos and Jim were left with him on the balcony.

"However you settle it now," said Burns, "there's someone hurt."

"Are you telling me to get rid of her?" Merritt asked.

"No, because I know you'll do what you want to do. But when we have a man dead out in the yard, I think you'd better consider again. You'd better think whether what you're doing is worth what it just cost us."

And Burns left them, head bowed, walked down the stairs. Amos took Jim by the arm and gave him a push down the hall toward their room; and when Jim delayed, gave him a second shove. Jim cast back an angry look, but he went to the room, slammed the door.

"Sam," said Amos, "I got something to say and I know just one way to say it. Is what Porter says true? You think my boy's overly fond of that female? Is that true?"

"No," Merritt said.

"Well, I don't like it. I don't want my Jim having any part of this, and I'm holding you to answer for it, Sam. I mean that. You keep him away from her."

"Jim's grown; he knows his own mind. Don't ask me to do what you can't. It's impossible to tell him—"

"Listen," Amos hissed at him. "Listen and I'll tell you something. Jim ain't my son, and I think you must have guessed that, if someone ain't told you. And maybe it's his real father's blood that makes him wild like that, that's got his head in the clouds and his imagination always messing with things he oughtn't to touch—but he's my wife's boy, rest her soul, that she got of some outsider before I married her, and I love him anyway—maybe better than I should. But I got sense enough to know him; and I know it's the wild streak in him that could take after that thing in there. It's what would appeal to him. So you do what you want to do about her, friend… I can look away from that: you're an outsider and I'm too late to tell you what's right and wrong. But I'm not having you infect my boy with your outsider ways and your outsider morals. Jim's got to live on this world after you've up and gone your way again; and don't you be putting things in his head he don't know how to live with. Don't you teach him that thing's human, or teach him your right and wrong if you got any where you come from."

Merritt only stared at him, dismayed to hear that from Amos; and even Amos looked uncomfortable.

"You're a good man," Amos said. "But there's right and wrong on this world, and I expect my boy to know it and to live by it. And if you got sense, you will too."

"Meaning?"

"Don't look guilty, even if you ain't. There's an ugly thing they're saying about you; and I don't want it to touch my boy too."

"What are people saying, Amos?"

Amos looked down, jerked his head aside. "That it's odd, your being seen less and less with Meg Burns since the time you brought this creature in—I know it ain't true, Sam, but Hestia's got a proverb about outsider morals, and that's how it is. It's hurting Meg and it's hurting you and my boy; and the sooner you get rid of that creature the better."

Merritt said nothing for a moment, did not trust himself to say anything until he had stopped shaking. Amos stood his ground, his expression pained but unyielding.

"So," Merritt said, "but of course you don't believe it."

"Let's put it this way," said Amos. "If it was true, I wouldn't care. I've held you a friend in spite of what you are, not because of. We're plain people, and that's as plain as it can be said. If it means your going against me now, all right, but you've got precious few friends left, Sam. You'd better take the advice of the few you've got. If another few things go wrong like this, they'll make it right unpleasant for you. You tell me whether keeping that creature's worth it."

"I don't intend to give in."

"And that hard-headed pride of yours is going to be the end of you someday. I never knew a man so stubborn over so little."

"I don't think it's a little matter. I'll manage this project my way, and I'm sorry for Porter and more sorry for his cousin, but it isn't the first time Sazhje's people have made it over the wall. I don't think it's my fault: I don't believe it."

"You tell me what you're planning to do, Sam—no, you let me guess. You're convinced she's human. And that's behind this."

"Meaning?"

"If it suits you to try to stand their side and ours, maybe that's the way you are. Maybe you're still able to come out to the same conclusion as we are; but most of us ain't going to understand how your mind works, and there's some that came here hating Earthmen in the first place, and you aren't doing yourself any good. What you do to yourself, I can't help. But I swear to you, Sam, if I have to take Celestine and pull my boy out of here to get him clear of what they're saying—I'll do it. People already look at Jim and know he's not mine; and know where he came from—and I won't let you finish him. He may have his dreams and his wild ideas that don't fit Hestia, but he's a riverside Hestian, for all that, and he always has to be… ain't no starship going to take him on, when he can't do more than simple addition and sign his name. Don't you take him and set him against his neighbors. Cut your own throat if you like, but you do it alone, Sam, all by yourself."

"I understand you, then."

"But you don't change your mind about that creature, eh?"

"No. Not about her."

He turned and went back to Sazhje's room, hesitated there. She was crouched in the shadows of the far corner, and covered her face against him, looking between her hands.

"It's Sam, Sazhje," he said, for he thought that she might not know him in the shadow, and she had had terror enough for one night.

"Ssam-Ssam," she said, and rose and came across the room as close to the door as she could reach. Lamplight from the hall glistened on her tear-streaked face. She stretched out her long fingers appealingly, curled them up again and extended them. "Ssam."

"It's all right," he told her quietly, which was the expression he always used when she was alarmed; and he came to her, because he could not shut the door on her when she had had such a fright. Her spidery arms went about him and her head against his chest. She was shivering, those tensile-steel limbs hard and gentle in their embrace, her downy skin hot and sweating as it would when she had been gravely upset. He stroked the silky cap of her hair and ran a finger behind the animal-pointed ears, the skin back there baby-soft and with a little fold, for the ears could move. They did so when she lifted her head to look up into his face, shifted back a little and then up, which was her listening gesture. "Ssam—Zhim? Zhim?"

"Jim's all right."

"Ah," she said, which was a kind of yes. She looked relieved. "Ssam ahhrht?"

"Sam's all right," he affirmed, and over that bit of conversation on her part he would have been delighted earlier; but it was a moment for thinking.

Amos had told him the truth; he had to believe that, knowing the man. And worse, he had to concede that Porter had some large amount of right on his side too. No matter that Sazhje was blameless; in some part he was to blame, trying to make something different out of her, persisting in believing that humans as well could be changed. There was a time to admit defeat: and when it threatened to break the camp apart, it was time to swallow pride and try to undo what mistake had been made.

He went back to his room and brought back tools, and spread them out on the floor in front of Sazhje. She appeared perturbed by his actions, but not panicked; and when he motioned for her to come to him, she did so.

Quietly, patiently, trying not to let something slip and hurt her, he began to work on the closing of the anklet ring. When she realized what he was doing she began to make small delighted sounds, such as only the offering of food had brought from her before. When she grew too excited and bothered his work, he reached up and caressed the side of her head. She grew still again until he had her free and the metal fell to the floor.

Sazhje took the freed ankle in her hands and rubbed it vigorously; and then she rose sinuously to her feet and spun about several times for joy. She gave a shriek of triumph, hushed by Merritt's warning. Then she came to him and reached out a long arm for his, her prognathic face broken into a fanged smile. "Ssam, Ssam, Ssam," she said. "Sazhje ahhrht."

"That's good, Sazhje, Now be still. Be still. And come."

Those were words she knew and could use herself, at least in symbol; and when he drew her toward the door she began to be very excited. When they came to the balcony and found the lower room full of people, the excitement became alarm.

"It's all right, Sazhje," he told her. He put an arm about her as he started her downstairs, Sazhje walking carefully on this unfamiliar structure.

The gathering downstairs had seen what was coming, and stood back in a hostile semicircle: Andrews, Burns, Porter, Meg, Hannah, among about twenty others.

"What are you doing?" Porter demanded as Merritt and Sazhje reached the main floor.

"I'm doing what you want. I'm turning her loose."

"That's less than what I want," said Porter.

"That's all you're going to get," Merritt answered, though others were agreeing with Porter.

"That one's going to come back someday and cut someone's throat," said Ken Porter, Ben's younger brother. "And we're asking for it if we turn her loose."

"She's never hurt anyone," said Merritt, "and won't, if she's not threatened."

"She'll be back," said Porter, and others said so too, an ugly murmur of human sound that sent Sazhje as close to Merritt as she could get, her hands tight about his arm.

Merritt read the crowd's mood, and Sazhje's; and forced a passage through them, for no one was anxious to get close to Sazhje. He went out the door and across the yard, through groups of men who stared with no friendlier eyes, and past cattle pens that erupted with bawling panic at the proximity of their old enemy, and up to the gate. There was no need to ask the guards to open, not for Sazhje.

"Sazhje's all right now," he assured her.

"Ssam," she said, and flung thin arms about him for a moment, and then was gone. A shadow flitted in the torchlight near the corner and a moment later slipped over the wall without the least appearance of effort: that, for how much protection the walls had ever been.

It was returning into the main room that he dreaded; and none of those gathered had left, save only Meg… Meg was not there. He passed under their eyes through absolute silence, as though whatever they had said in his absence was more than they wanted to say to his face. He climbed the stairs and crossed the balcony, pursued by their stares and their silence, and slammed the door to his room behind him.