Downbelow Station (50 page)

“Lot of us going on,” a male voice said.

“Anyone going back?” one of the Q foremen asked. “We need to send one of the trucks back with anyone?”

There was silence. Shaking of heads. Emilio stared at the lot of them, simply tired. “Bounder,” he said, looking to one of the hisa who waited by the forest edge. “Where is Bounder? I need him.”

Bounder came, out from among the trees, on the slope of the hill. “You come,” Bounder shouted down, beckoning up toward the hill and the trees. “All come now.”

“Bounder, we’re tired. And we need the things on the trucks. If we go that way we can’t take the trucks and some of us aren’t able to walk. Some are sick, Bounder.”

“We carry sick, many, many hisa. We steal good things on trucks, teach we good, Konstantin-man. We steal for you. You come.”

He looked back at the others, at dismayed and doubtful faces.
 
Hisa surrounded them. More and more came out of the woods, even some with young, which humans rarely saw. It was trust, that such came out among them. All of the company sensed it, perhaps, for there was no protest. They helped the old and the unwell down from the trucks. Strong young hisa made slings of their hands for them; others heaved down the supplies and the equipment “And what when they get scan after us?” Miliko murmured unhappily. “We’ve got to get deep cover, fast.”

“Takes sensitive scan to tell human from hisa. Maybe they won’t find it profitable to go after us… yet.”

Bounder reached him, took his hand, wrinkled his nose at him in a hisa wink.

“You come with.”

They were not good for a long walk, however much the news had put the strength of fright into them. A little while climbing uphill and down through woods and bracken and they were all panting and some being carried who had started out walking. A little more and the hisa themselves began to slow the pace. And at length, when the number of humans they were having to carry grew more than they could manage, they called halt and themselves stretched out to sleep in the bracken.

“Find cover,” Emilio urged Bounder. “Ships will see us, not good, Bounder.”

“Sleep now,” Bounder said, curling up, and nothing would stir him or the others.
 
Emilio sat staring at him helplessly, looked out over all the hillside while humans and hisa lay down where they had dropped their bundles, curled up in their blankets some of them, others of them too weary to spread them. He used his own for a pillow, lay down on Miliko’s, gathered her against him there under the sun that slanted down through the leaves. Bounder snuggled up to them and put an arm about him. He let himself go, slept, a weary, healthy sleep.
 
And he waked with Bounder shaking him and Miliko squatting with her arms across her knees, with a light fog moistening the leaves, late, late day, and cloud, and threatening rainfall. “Emilio. I think you should wake up. I think it’s some very important hisa.”

He rolled onto the other arm, gathered himself to his knees, squinting in the cold mist as other humans were waking all about him. They were Old Ones who had come from among the trees, hisa with white abundantly salting their fur, three of them. He rose and bowed to them, which seemed right, in their land and in their woods.

Bounder bowed and bobbed and seemed more sober than he was wont. “No talk human talk, they,” Bounder said. “They say come with.”

“We’re coming,” he said. “Miliko, rouse them out.” She went, with quiet words spoke to the few still sleeping, and the word ran through all the number down the hill, weary, damp humans gathering up their baggage and their persons. There were even more hisa arriving. The woods seemed alive with them, every trunk in the woods likely to conceal a flitting brown body.

The Old Ones melted off through the woods. Bounder delayed until they were ready, and then started off, and Emilio took Miliko’s blanket roll on his own shoulder and followed after.

At any hint of a human limping as they went, brushing through damp leaves and dripping branches, there were hisa to help, hisa to take them by the hand and chatter sympathetically, even those who could not understand human speech; after them came others, hisa thieves, bearing the inflatable dome and the compressors and the generators and their food and whatever else they could strip from the trucks, whether or not they themselves could possibly understand the use of it, like a brown horde of scavenger insects.

Night came on them, and much of it they walked, resting when they must, stringing through the wood, but hisa guided them so that none might stray, and snuggled close about them when they stopped so that the chill was not so bad.
 
And once there was a thunder in the heavens that had nothing to do with the rain.

“Landing,” the word passed from one to the other. The hisa asked no questions.

Their keen ears might have picked it up long ago.

Porey was back. It would probably be Porey. For a little time they would probe the stripped base and send angry messages up to Mazian. Would have to get scan information, decide what they were going to do about it and get Mazian’s decision on it… all time consumed to their good.

Rest and walk, rest and walk, and whenever they would falter, the gentle Downers were there to touch, to urge, to cajole. It was cold when they stopped, and damp, though the rain never fell; and they were glad of morning, the first appearance of the light sifting through the trees, which the Downers greeted with trills and chattering and renewed enthusiasm.

And suddenly they were running out of trees, and the daylight broke clearer and clearer, on a hillside sloping down to a vast plain. The far distance spread before them as they came over the crest of a small rise, and the hisa were going farther, going from the trees, into that wide valley… that sanctuary, Emilio realized in sudden disturbance, that area the hisa had always asked remain theirs, free of men, a vast open range only theirs, forever.
 
“No,” Emilio protested, looking about for Bounder. He made a gesture of appeal to him, who swung along with a cheerful step nearby. “No. Bounder, we mustn’t go down into the open land. Mustn’t. Can’t, hear? The men-with-guns, they come in ships; their eyes will see.”

“Old Ones say come,” Bounder declared, never breaking stride, as if that settled it beyond argument. Already the descent began, all the hisa rolling like a brown tide from the trees, bearing humans and human baggage with them, followed by other humans and others, toward the beckoning sunlit pallor of the plain.
 
“Bounder!” Emilio stopped, with Miliko beside him. “The men-with-guns will find us here. You understand me, Bounder?”

“I understand. See we all, hisa, humans. We see they too.”

“We can’t go down there. They’ll kill us, do you hear me?”

“They say come.”

The Old Ones. Bounder turned away from him and continued downslope, turned again as he walked and beckoned him and Miliko.

He took a step and another, knowing it was mad, knowing that there was a hisa way of doing things and a human. Hisa had never lifted hands against the invaders of their world, had sat, had watched, and this was what they would do now. Humans had asked hisa for their help and hisa offered them their way. “I’ll talk to them,” he said to Miliko. “I’ll talk to their Old Ones, explain to them.
 
We can’t offend them, but they’ll listen—Bounder, Bounder, wait.” But Bounder walked on, ahead of them. The hisa kept moving, flowing down that vast grassy slope to the plain. At the center of it, where a stream seemed to flow, was something like an upthrust fist of rock and a trampled circle, a shadow, that he realized finally as a circle of living bodies gathered about that object “There must be every hisa on the river down there,” Miliko said. “It’s some sort of meeting place. Some kind of shrine.”

“Mazian won’t respect it; Union isn’t likely to either.” He foresaw massacre, disaster, hisa sitting helpless while attack came. It was the Downers, he thought, the Downers themselves whose gentle ways had made Pell what it was.
 
Time was when humans back on Earth had been terrified at the report of alien life. There had been talk of disbanding colonies even then, for fear of other discoveries… but no terror on Downbelow, never here, where hisa walked empty-handed to meet humans, and infected men with trust.
 
“We’ve got to persuade them to get out of here,” he said.

“I’m with you,” Miliko said.

“Help you?” a hisa asked, touching Miliko’s hand, for she was limping as she leaned on him. They both shook their heads and kept walking together, at the back of the flow now, for most of the others had gone ahead, caught up in the general madness, even the old, borne in the hands of the hisa.
 
They rested in their long descent, while the sun passed zenith, walked and rested and walked more, while the sun slid down the sky and shone beyond the low rounded hills. A cylinder gave out in his mask, ruined by the moisture and the forest molds, ill augury for the others. He gasped against the obstruction, fumbled after another, held his breath while he did the exchange and slipped the mask back on. They walked, slowly now, on the plain.
 
In the distance rose that indistinct fish-shaped mass, an irregular pillar, out of a sea of hisa bodies… and not alone hisa. Humans were there, who rose up from where they sat and walked out to meet them, as they came through. Ito of base two was there, with her staff and workers, and Jones of base one, with his, who offered hands to shake, who looked as bewildered as they were. “They said come here,” Ito said. “They said you would come.”

“Station’s fallen,” he said; and the flow was going on, passing through toward the center, hisa urging at him, at him and Miliko most of all. “We’ve run out of options, Ito. Mazian’s in control… this week. I can’t speak for next.” Ito fell behind, and Jones, staying with their own people; and there were other humans, hundreds upon hundreds gathered there, who stood solemnly, as if numb.
 
He met Deacon of the wells crew; and Macdonald of base three; Hebert and Tausch of four; but the hisa swept him on, and he held Miliko’s hand so they should not be separated in the vast throng. Now there were hisa about them, only hisa. The pillar hove up nearer and nearer, and not a pillar, but a cluster of images, like those hisa had given to the station, squat, globular forms and taller ones, bodies with multiple hisa faces, surprised mouths and wide, graven eyes looking forever skyward.

Hisa had made the like, and it was old. Awe came over him. Miliko slowed at last and simply gazed up, and he did, with hisa all about them, feeling lost and small and alien before this towering, ancient stone.

“You come,” a hisa voice bade him. It was Bounder who took his hand, who led them through to the very foot of the image.

Old Ones indeed sat there, the oldest hisa of all, those faces and shoulders were silvered, who sat surrounded by small sticks thrust into the earth, sticks carved with faces and hung with beads. Emilio hesitated, reluctant to intrude within that circle; but Bounder led them through, into the very presence of the Old Ones.

“Sit,” Bounder urged. Emilio made his bow and Miliko hers, and settled cross-legged before the four elders. Bounder spoke in the chattering hisa tongue, was answered by the frailest of the four.

And carefully then that Old One reached, leaning on one hand, to touch first Miliko and then him, as if blessing them.

“You good come here,” Bounder said, perhaps a translation. “You warm come here.” “Bounder, thank them. Thank them very many thanks. But tell them that there’s danger from the Upabove. That the eyes of Upabove look down on this place and that men-with-guns may come here and do hurt.”

Bounder spoke. Four pairs of aged eyes regarded them with no less tranquility.

One answered.

“Ship come upabove we heads here,” Bounder said. “Come, look, go away.”

“You’re in danger. Please make them understand that.” Bounder translated. The Eldest lifted a hand toward the images which towered above them and answered. “Hisa place. Night come. We sleep, dream they go, dream they go.”

A second of the elders spoke. There was a human name amid it: Bennett; and another: Lukas. “Bennett,” those nearest echoed. “Bennett. Bennett. Bennett.” The murmur passed the limits of the circle, moved like wind across the vast gathering.

“We steal food,” Bounder said with a hisa grin. “We learn steal good. We steal you, make you safe.”

“Guns,” Miliko protested. “Guns, Bounder.”

“You safe.” Bounder paused to catch something one of the Old Ones said. “Make you names: call you He-come-again; call you She-hold-out-hands. To-he-me;

Mihan-tisar. You spirit good. You safe come here. Love you. Bennett-man, he teach we dream human dreams; now you come we teach you hisa dreams. We love you, love you, To-he-me, Mihan-tisar.”

He found nothing to say, only looked up at the vast images that stared round-eyed at the heavens, stared about him at the gathering which seemed to stretch to all the horizons, and for a moment he found himself believing that it was possible, that this overawing place might daunt any enemy who came to it.
 
A chant began from the Old Ones, spread to the nearest, and to the farther and farther ranks. Bodies began to sway, passing into the rhythm of it “Bennett…” it breathed again and again.

“He teach we dream human dreams… call you He-come-again.” Emilio shivered, reached and put his arm about Miliko, in the mind-numbing whisper which was like the brush of a hammer over bronze, the sighing of some vast instrument which filled all the twilit heavens.

The sun declined to the last. The passing of the light brought chill, and a sigh from uncounted throats, breaking off the song. Then the coming of the stars drew pointing gestures aloft, soft cries of joy.

“Name she She-come-first,” Bounder told them, and called for them the stars in turn, as keen hisa eyes spied them and hailed them like returning friends.
 
Walk-together; Come-in-spring; She-always-dance… The chant whispered to life again, minor key, and bodies swayed.
 
Exhaustion told on them. Miliko grew glassy-eyed; he tried to hold her, to stay awake himself, but hisa were nodding too, and Bounder patted them, made them know it was accepted to rest.