Power of Three (25 page)

“We did,” said Ayna. “And there are so many of them that they need the water to drink. The chief Giant has told us that there's nowhere but the Moor where they can get it. But he said that if there
was
water anywhere else, he'd use it.”

“I'm glad there isn't,” said Halla. “We need the Moor flooded for living-space.”

“Couldn't you live somewhere else?” asked Gair.

“Couldn't
you
?” retorted Halla.

“Not very easily,” said Gair, struggling not to get angry.

“Neither can we,” said Halla.

“And neither can we,” said Gerald. “Why do you need all that room?”

“Why do you?” Halla countered.

Gerald sighed angrily. Ayna said disgustedly, “This is getting nowhere!” Gair tried to swallow his mounting annoyance. Halla was no doubt angry still at the way they had captured her, but all the same, Gair was beginning to see why his people and the Dorig had always been enemies. He looked irritably at Hafny, who seemed quite content to sit gobbling biscuits and letting Halla talk, while he stared speculatively from face to face. Hafny was looking at Gerald as if Gerald's size and restrained strength both awed him and made him feel rather scornful, when he felt Gair's eyes on him. He looked at Gair and shrugged.

“Our people are very short of space,” he said quietly. “They've been hopelessly overcrowded all my life.”

“And of course the smaller kings keep pestering us for action,” Halla said. “Luckily, the Giants are acting for us. As soon as the observers reported that, we took steps to move the Lymen. The bad wells at Garholt are a real problem, but we're dealing with that now, quite kindly.”

“Kindly!” said Ayna.

Gerald looked at Halla with deep contempt. Gair could see Gerald had formed a very low opinion of her mental powers. He thought Gerald was right. Judging by the unreflecting way she spoke, he suspected she was simply repeating what other, older Dorig said. “You know what you sound like?” Gerald said to her. “You sound just like newspaper propaganda. Next thing, you'll be saying you invaded Otmound and Garholt for defense, or peace, or something.”

It was hardly to be expected that Halla would understand this. Nor did she. “Well, it would be more peaceful if there weren't any Lymen,” she said. “And flooding Otmound was defense, in a way. The Otmounders attacked the refugees from the Halls of the Kings, fifteen years ago, when all they were doing was peacefully crossing the Moor, and they killed a whole lot of them.”

“But what about Garholt?” said Ayna. “We hadn't attacked you.”

“If you wanted the words off their wells, why couldn't you have asked?” demanded Brenda. Halla looked at her as if she had formed much the same opinion of Brenda as Gerald had of her.

“How did you flood Otmound?” Gair asked, remembering Gerald particularly wanted to know this.

“With pumps,” Halla said carelessly, in the way people do when they have not much idea. “They'd been planning it for years.”

“Where did the water come from?” Gerald asked eagerly, forgetting his irritation.

Halla looked blank. Hafny, grinning a little at her ignorance, came to her rescue. “It was the water from the marsh that always has to be pumped out of our halls anyway. They piped it to the Otmound wells and pumped it out of them into the mound.”

Everyone digested this. Dorig were plainly ingenious.

“Pumped out of your halls?” Gerald said slowly, disappointed and puzzled, too.

“Hey!” said Brenda. “I thought you lot lived in water!”

“Not
in
water.
Under
water,” Hafny said. He looked round at their puzzled faces and seemed almost as puzzled himself. “We breathe air,” he said. This was plainly true. Now they came to look, everyone could see him breathing, and Halla, too. They had noses. Their chests went up and down. There was no indication that they had gills or anything fishlike about them. “And we have to pump water out of our halls and let in air to breathe,” Hafny said. “Don't you understand?”

Gair thought he understood. He had a sudden perception of the Dorig living in something very like their mounds, only under the bottom of the marsh or river. He turned to Hafny to ask if this was indeed the case, and he had a feeling Hafny was quite ready to tell him anything he wanted to know, but, at that moment, disagreement flared up worse than before. Gerald, who must have understood somewhat as Gair had done, said, “Then you don't have to live underwater at all. You could leave the Moor and live anywhere you wanted.”

“No we can't!” snapped Halla. Gerald's lordly tone irritated her, and she was annoyed that he had made her look foolish over the pumps. “My people will never take orders from a Giant. You Giants are nothing but great crude robbers. You descend from bears!”

“Nonsense!” Gerald said angrily.

“Like you descend from frogs,” said Brenda.

That made Halla angrier than ever. Her face went pale pink and her yellow eyes snapped. “You dare! You say that, when you stole the land from us! Then you pour filth into lakes and rivers until they're not fit to swim in, and then you expect us to leave the Moor to please you! I tell you, we have a right to live here! We were the very first people here.”

“No you weren't,” said Ceri. “We were.”

Ceri, perhaps, had simply been putting Halla right. But when Ayna joined in, Gair could see it was because she disliked Halla. “And the Giants took the land from
us
!” Ayna said heatedly. “But that hasn't stopped us trying to be friends with them.” And she looked at Brenda. From the way Brenda looked back, it was evident the two of them were closing ranks against Halla.

Halla saw it and nearly spat. “Yes, licking the foot that kicked you! Everyone was saying yesterday that that was just like Lymen. Listen,
we
were here before either of you. You came and drove us into the water. And when the Giants came and drove you into the ground, we were glad!”

“We did not drive you into the water!” Ceri said. “You were always there.”

“No we weren't,” Hafny said, seriously and quietly. “Once we lived on the land like the Giants do.”

He was clearly trying to smooth things over. But his reasonable tone irritated Gerald, as it had done all along. “Well, what do you want me to do about it— apologize?” Gerald demanded, so thunderously that Hafny flinched. “That all must have been thousands of years ago. We're all here now. And we've all got a right to live on the Moor if we want!”

At that, Brenda's resentment of Gerald flared up. “Who says?” she said in her piercing Giant voice. “
Your
people came with the Normans and pinched the Moor off us! My folks were here from the year dot—or before that. If anyone's got as much right here as the Lymen and the Dories, it's me, and not you, Gerald Masterfield!”

“No you haven't,” said Halla.

“If nine hundred years isn't long enough, what
is
!” roared Gerald.

Gair, with his ears quivering, looked round their angry faces and felt really frightened. It was not merely that the talk had not got anywhere. It was rapidly getting out of hand. He had counted on Gerald to behave in the reasonable Giant manner, but Gerald was fast getting violent. And Hafny, who was behaving reasonably, was irritating everyone with his dry assurance. Gair saw that it was stupid to expect anything else, when they were all gathered in a house shot through with the dark influence of that collar. Their age-old differences were being aggravated into personal dislike. Gair was about to suggest that they go outside to talk, when a sudden perception came to him. Ayna, Brenda and Halla were glaring, Brenda at Gerald, Ayna and Halla at one another. Each had her head tilted in identical angry haughtiness. And it did not matter that Brenda's face was wider and pinker than Ayna's, or that Halla's eyes were yellow where Ayna's were blue. They were all faces. And the hair that grew from the heads of each, though it varied from silvery to dark straw, was the same kind of hair.

“Have you noticed,” Gair said loudly, “that we're all people really?” All the faces turned to him, surprised and wondering, Gerald's, Ceri's and Hafny's as well as the girls'. “I mean,” Gair explained, “that we're all far more like one another than—well, dogs or spiders.”

“I should hope so!” said Halla. But they all turned and looked at one another thoughtfully.

“I see what you mean,” said Gerald.

“Five fingers,” said Ceri. “Giants' are thicker and Dorigs' longer, but we all have five. You mean we're all the same underneath?”

“Are you people warm-blooded?” Gerald asked Hafny.

“Of course,” said Hafny.

“But what about the way they can change shape?” Brenda asked. She sighed. “I can't.”

“I've been wondering about that,” said Gair. “Do you,” he asked the two Dorig, “do it by thinking? Or how?”

Halla and Hafny looked uncertainly at one another. “I—I
think
so,” Hafny said. “It's—well, it's a bit like moving your leg or your arm, really.”

“Only much harder,” said Halla. “You have to concentrate. And you feel tired if you keep it up for long.”

“Particularly if you shift to something bigger than you are,” said Hafny. “Yes, I suppose you
think
in a certain way, and it happens.”

“Like my Thoughts,” Ceri said.

“That's what I meant,” said Gair. “Ceri, I bet you could shift shape if you turned your Thoughts on yourself.”

Ceri's mouth fell open. “I'd never dare.”

“You're not even to
try
,” said Ayna. “Suppose you stuck! Gair, really!”

“People don't usually stick,” Hafny said encouragingly.

“He's not the
same
as you!” Ayna said crossly.

“But he is—in a way,” said Gerald. “That's what Gair's getting at. There are stories about people—er, Giants— doing it, too. Werewolves and suchlike. It's not very common among us, but there is that chap who breaks forks, and they say some—er—Giants can see into the future a bit. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about, Gair?”

“Yes,” Gair said thoughtfully. “I
think
we must all descend from the same stock.”

“You mean you—some of us—are mutants,” Brenda said wisely.

“Only, which of us is normal?” said Gerald. “Suppose we're the mutants, Brenda?”

Before the two Giants could indulge in more theories, Hafny firmly interrupted. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but it's the differences between us that are important. You'd better get that clear.” Somehow, they gathered from his manner that the talk was likely to get somewhere at last. Hafny did not seem unfriendly, but he was very much in earnest as he said, “Giants and Lymen and us are all different. We all want different things. We usually leave you Giants alone to quarrel among yourselves, and occasionally some good for us comes out of it. And it has now, because the Moor is going to be flooded, just when we need more room most. You see, it isn't simply that there are more of our people every year. About fifteen years ago, the places in the West called the Halls of the Kings filled up with water. Water came in where the air should have come in, and no one could pump it out. So everyone had to leave and come to the halls here. There were thousands of them—”

“Just a moment,” Gerald interrupted. “How big are these Halls of the Kings?”

“I've never been there,” Hafny said cautiously. “But I believe they were enormous.”

“And where are they?” Gerald asked eagerly.

“Under some chalk hills,” said Hafny. “That's what caused the water, they say—a fault in the chalk. I've heard that the Giants call that part the Downs.”

“Which Downs? Berkshire or Sussex?” Gerald demanded, thoroughly excited. “And would you say there was a lot of water?”

“A great deal of water,” Hafny said wryly. “People drowned. But those names mean nothing to me, I'm afraid.” Gerald, red in the face with excitement, made an annoyed noise. Hafny looked at him in a way that was both shrewd and satisfied. Gair could have sworn he had told Gerald this deliberately, hoping to arouse just the interest he had aroused. Hafny was plainly a deep one. Gair was wondering just what Hafny was playing at, when Hafny looked at him. “Now we come to the Lymen,” he said.

“We hadn't anything to do with the Otmounders attacking the fugitives,” Ayna said.

“I wasn't meaning that,” said Hafny.

“In that case,” Halla said warningly, “you'd better not say any more, Hafny.”

“Yes I shall,” said Hafny, losing his dryness and becoming simply a younger brother arguing with his elder sister. Gair was fairly sure by now that Halla was Hafny's elder sister. “I'm going to tell them because I owe it them. Try and stop me.” He turned to Ayna, Gair and Ceri. “The fact is, the bad wells in Garholt are just an excuse, I think. My father has sworn not to leave a Lyman alive on the Moor. If you want to live, you'll have to leave the Moor. If you stay, you'll be killed before you're drowned. Find your father and tell him that.”