He scrambled to his feet and went back to the serving line. There he filled and emptied another trayful of food, then hesitated over taking a third until Tallan saw his uncertainty and told him it was all right to eat as much as he wanted.
"… For now, anyway," she said. "When the Command's short on rations, you'll know it, everyone'll know it. Right now we're fine. We're in rich country and it's good to see people eat."
"Rich country?" Hal asked.
She laughed.
"This is a district where there're plenty of the faithful, and they've got food and other things they can afford to share with us."
"I see."
"And when you're done, you'd better get busy with these serving cans. Take them down to the stream and wash them. Then you can go."
Hal ate, cleaned the cans and went. It was unmistakably twilight now. He cast about under the trees for Jason, hoping to find him without having to ask. Finally, he was reduced to querying a nearly-bald, but still young-looking, man, who was seated cross-legged in front of one of the tents, putting new cleats on the bottoms of a pair of boots.
The man spat staples out of his mouth, caught them in the palm of his left hand, shifted his hammer to join them, and reached up with his right hand to clasp Hal's.
"Joralmon Troy," he said. "You're Howard Immanuelson?"
"Yes," said Hal, shaking hands.
"Jason Rowe's set a tent up for the two of you back by the beasts. He's either there now, or still feeding and caring for them. You're not of the faith?"
"I'm afraid not," said Hal.
"But you're not a scorner of God?"
"From as far back as I can remember I was taught never to scorn anything."
"Then that's all right," said Joralmon. "Since God is all things, one who scorns nothing, scorns not Him."
He put boots, hammer and staples aside, just inside the front entrance of his tent.
"Time for evening prayers," he said. "Some pray separately, but there are those of us who gather, night and morning. You're always welcome if you wish to come."
He looked up at Hal, getting to his feet as he spoke. There was an openness and simple directness to his gaze that was a less intense version of what Hal had seen in Child-of-God.
"I don't know if I can, tonight," said Hal.
He went back through the twilit woods toward the area where the donkeys had been tethered. With the shadows growing long all about him the forest seemed vaster, the trees taller, reaching pillar-like up to support the dimming sky. A more chill breath of air wandered among the tree-trunks and cooled him as he went.
He found the tent off to one side of the area where the donkeys were tethered, next to a larger one that had its entrance flaps pressed together and sealed. A faint, musty odor came from the sealed tent.
"Howard!"
Jason came around the far side of the tent, smiling.
"What do you think of it?" he said.
Hal looked at the tent. Back on Earth it would have been inconceivable to house himself in such a structure without either replacing it or remaking it completely. It had been a good example of a beehive tent once, of a size to sleep four people, with their packs and possessions for a two-week trip. Now it was shrunken by virtue of the many repairs that had been made in its skin and looked as if its fabric might split from old age at any minute.
"You've done a good job," said Hal.
"It was sheer luck they had one to give us," said Jason. "I was all prepared to start building a lean-to of branches to tuck our bedsacks under—oh, by the way, they had liners for our bedsacks, too. We'll need them at this altitude."
"How high are we?" asked Hal, as he ducked his head to follow Jason into the tent. Within, under the patched fabric with its smells of food and weapon oil, Jason had the bedsacks laid out on opposite sides of the equally-patched floor, with the feet meeting underneath the highest arc-point of the tent's main support rib. Their packs and other equipment were near the heads of the sacks, but stowed prudently away from possible condensation on the tent's inner surface. Jason touched a glow-tube fastened to the main rib above the feet of the bedsacks, and a small, friendly yellow light illuminated the shadowy interior.
"A little over two thousand meters," said Jason. "We'll be going higher when we leave here."
He was obviously warm with happiness and pride over their tent; but trying not to lead Hal deliberately into praise and compliments.
"This is very good," said Hal, looking around him. "How did you do it?"
"The credit's all due the people of this Command," said Jason. "They were able to give us everything. I knew you'd be surprised."
"I am," said Hal.
"Well, now you've seen it," said Jason, "let's go sit by the main fire for a bit and meet people. We have to help the cook crew, but then we'll be getting ready to move on, tomorrow."
They extinguished the glow tube and left the tent. The campfire to which Rukh and Joralmon had also referred was in a place away from the rest of the camp, on the bank upstream beyond the far edge of the clearing. It was a large fire and it warmed an equally large dispenser of coffee, Jason explained, which served as a focal point for whoever wished to come by and mingle, after the day's work and prayers were done. When Hal and Jason arrived, there were six men and two women already sitting around drinking coffee and talking with each other; and in the next half hour that number tripled.
The two of them helped themselves to coffee and sat down by the pleasant light and heat of the fire. One by one introductions were exchanged with the others already there, and then the rest went back to the conversations they had been having when Hal and Jason arrived.
"What's in that tent just behind us, here?" Hal asked Jason.
Jason grinned.
"Makings," he said, in a lowered voice.
"Makings?" Hal waited for Jason to explain, but Jason merely continued to grin.
"I don't understand," Hal said. "What do you mean by 'makings'?"
"Makings for an experiment. A—a military weapon," said Jason, still softly. "Not refined yet."
Hal frowned, Jason's tone had been reluctant. He looked at the expression on Jason's face, which struck him as most peculiar. Then he remembered Jason's words about the lack of privacy in the latrine corner of their cell in the city Militia Headquarters.
"I can tell by the smell," he said, "it's organic matter. What kind is it, in that tent?"
"Shh," said Jason, "no need to shout it out. Bodily fluids."
"Bodily fluids? Which? Urine?"
"Shh."
Hal stared at him, but obediently lowered his voice.
"Is there some reason I shouldn't—"
"Not at all!" said Jason, still keeping his own voice down. "But no decent person goes shouting out words like that. It's the only way we can make it; but there're enough dirty jokes and songs about the process as it is."
Hal changed ground.
"What sort of weapon do you need urine for?" he asked. "All the weapons I've seen around here have been cone rifles or needle guns—except for a few power sidearms like the one Rukh carries."
Jason stared at him.
"How do you know it's a power sidearm that Rukh's carrying? She never unsnaps that holster cover unless she has to use the pistol."
Hal had to stop and think how he did know. The fact that Rukh's sidearm was a power weapon had merely been self-evident until this moment.
"By its weight," he said, after a second. "The way it drags on her weapon belt shows its weight. Among weapons, only a powered one weighs in that proportion to its size."
"Excuse me," said a voice over their heads. They looked up to see a heavy-bodied, thin-limbed man who looked to be about Child-of-God's age, standing over them in heavy jacket and bush trousers. "I'm Morelly Walden. I've been out of camp on an errand and I didn't get to meet you two, yet. Which one of you is Jason Rowe?"
"I am," said Jason as both he and Hal got to their feet and clasped hands in turn with Walden. The ot
her man's rectangular face had few wrinkles, but the skin of it was toughened and dry.
"I knew Columbine, and he mentioned you'd been in his Command once. And you are… ?"
"Howard Immanuelson."
"Not from this world? You're from Association?"
"No, as a matter of fact I'm not from either Harmony or Association."
"Ah. Well, welcome, none the less."
Walden spoke to Jason about members of Columbine's command. Others also came from time to time and introduced themselves. Jason was kept busy talking to them, but beyond introducing themselves they did not offer to talk at any length with Hal.
He sat listening and watching the fire. The instinct in animals and small children, Walter the InTeacher had told him—the instinct, in fact, of people of any age—was to first circle any stranger and sniff him out, get used to his intrusion into their cosmos; and then, only when they were ready, to make the first move to communicate themselves. When the other members of Rukh's command began to feel comfortable with his presence, Hal assumed, they would find occasion to talk to him.
Meanwhile, he was content. This morning he had been an isolated stranger, adrift in a strange world. Now, he had a place on it. There was a close feeling around the campfire, the atmosphere like that of a family, that he had not felt since his tutors' death, except for that one day in the mine after he had made torcher. A family together at the end of the day. While some of the conversations he heard were purely social, others were discussions of shared responsibilities, or shared problems being discussed by people who had been physically separated by the day's events until now. As more members of the command drifted in around the fire, more wood was added to it. The flames reached up; and their light enlarged the apparent interior area of the globe of night that enclosed them all. The firelight made a room in the darkness. They were private in the midst of the outdoors, housed by immaterial walls of warmth and familiarity and mutual concerns.
Altogether, the situation and the moment once more woke that same urge to poetry in him that had first come back to life with his first sight of Rukh. But it was not the urge to make poetic images that touched him now. It was the memory of poetry in his past.
It is long, the night of our waiting,
But we have a call to stay . . .
They were the first two lines of a poem he had written when he had been ten years old and drunk with the image of the great picture Walter the InTeacher had painted for him; a picture of the centuries-long search of the Exotics for an evolved form of humankind, a better race, grown beyond its present weaknesses and faults. Like most of the poems of extreme youth, what power it possessed had been all in the first couple of lines, and from there it had gone downhill into triteness. Since then, he had learned not to go so fast to the setting down of the first words that came to mind. It took restraint and experience to do deliberately what amateur poets tended to do only unconsciously—carry the poem around in the back of the mind until it was complete and ready to be born.
He lost himself now in just that process—not forcing his mind into any mold, but under the influence of the surrounding darkness and the firelight letting the powerful creative forces of the unconscious drift uncontrolled, forming images and memories, good and bad, recent and distant.
Making mental pictures in the city of the white-red embers glowing beneath the burning logs, he watched armies march and builders build; while Sost and Walter, Malachi and Tonina, mixed and mingled in his thoughts and the ghost of Obadiah stood around the fire, talking with the living bodies with whom Hal shared its warmth.
Now that he stood back and looked at himself, something in him had healed with the three years on Coby; but much else was still either unhealed or unfinished. Somewhere, there was waiting a purpose to his life; but he had let that fact be forgotten, until he had driven into the clearing this afternoon and seen Rukh, Child-of-God, and now these others. There must be a purpose because it was unthinkable that life could be otherwise…
So he continued, sitting, dreaming and thinking, occasionally interrupting himself to reply to an introduction or some brief word from other members of the command, until he was roused by a touch on his arm. He turned and saw Jason.
"Howard," said Jason. "I'm turning in. You can keep the fire going here as long as you want, even by yourself, but dawn comes early."
Hal nodded, suddenly aware that the gathering had shrunk to only a handful of people. Two pairs of individuals, and one group of three, were deep in private conversations. Otherwise, only he and Jason were left.
"No," he said. "Thanks, but you're right. I'll fold up too."
He got to his feet, and they went off into the dark. Away from the fire, the night at first seemed pitch-black, but gradually their eyes adjusted to show the moonlit woods. Even with this, however, the area held a different appearance at night; and they might have wandered indefinitely in search of their tent, if Jason had not produced and lit a pinhole torch. The beam of the torch picked up eye-level reflectors pinned onto trees to mark out the numbered routes throughout the camp. They followed the route that led back to the clearing; and there Jason picked out what was evidently the line of reflectors that would lead them to the tethering place of the donkeys, and their tent.
The tent itself was a welcome place to step into at last; and Hal recognized, as Jason turned out the glowtube and he pulled the hood of his own bedsack into place to keep the top of his head warm, that he was ready and overready for sleep. Exhaustion was like a warm bath relaxing all his limbs; and even while thinking this, he was asleep.
He awoke suddenly, holding somebody's throat in the darkness, so that whoever it was could not cry out or breathe. A twist of his thumbs would have broken the neck he held. But swiftly—though it seemed slowly—the odors of the tent, the smell of the camping gear and clothing, brought him back to a realization of where he was. It was Jason he was holding and strangling.
He let go. He got to his feet; and, reaching out in the darkness, found and turned on the glowtube. Yellow light showed Jason lying on the floor of the tent, breathing now, but otherwise not making a sound, staring up at him with wide-open eyes.
Chapter Eighteen
"Are you all right?" said Hal numbly. "What happened?"
Jason's lips worked without a sound. He lifted a hand and felt his throat. At last his voice came, huskily.
"I woke and heard you breathing," he said. "Then, suddenly, your breathing stopped. I called to you to wake you up, but you didn't answer. I crawled over to see if you were still there, and you were—but you weren't breathing at all. I tried to shake your shoulder to wake you…"
His voice ran down.
"And I woke up and grabbed your throat," said Hal.
Jason nodded, still staring up at him.
"I'm sorry," said Hal. "I don't know why I did that. I wasn't even awake. I'm sorry."
Jason got slowly to his feet. They looked at each other with their faces only a few hands-width's apart in the yellow light of the glowtube.
"You're dangerous, Howard," said Jason, in an expressionless voice.
"I know," said Hal, unhappily. "I'm sorry."
"No," said Jason, "it's good for this Command to have dangerousness like that on our side, against our enemies. But what made you attack me?"
"I don't know."
"It was because I woke you suddenly, wasn't it?"
"I suppose," said Hal. "But even then… I don't usually go around attacking anyone who wakes me suddenly."
"Were you dreaming?"
"I don't remember…" Hal made an effort to remember. "Yes."
"A bad dream?"
"In a way…" said Hal.
"A bad dream. It's not surprising," said Jason. "Many of us know what it's like to have that sort of dream. It's all right. As long as we're both awake now, let's have some coffee."
Hal shivered.
"Yes," he said. "That's a good idea."
Jason turned to a corner of the tent and came up
with a temperature-sealed plastic container that looked as if it might hold about a liter of liquid.
"I filled it after dinner—I meant to tell you it was here," he said, almost shyly. He pressed the thumb-stop to jet a stream of dark liquid, steaming in the chill air of the nighttime tent, into a couple of plastic cups. He handed one filled cup to Hal and got back into the warmth of his own bedsack, sitting up with it around him.
Hal imitated him. They looked at each other across the width of the tent.
"Would you want to tell me what the dream was?" Jason said.
"I don't know if I can," said Hal. "It wasn't very clear…"
"Yes. I know that kind, too," said Jason. He nodded. "Don't try to talk about it, then. Drink the coffee and lie down again. The thread gets broken that way, and the same nightmare doesn't come back. Tomorrow's another day. Think about tomorrow while you're falling asleep."
"All right," said Hal.
Jason finished his cup quickly and lay down again, pulling the hood of his bedsack up close around his head.
"Leave the light on or turn it off, whichever you like," he said. "It won't bother me."
"I'll put it out," said Hal.
He got up, extinguished the glowtube and crawled back into his bedsack in darkness. He had set his cup to one side of the bedsack and it was still half full. Sitting up, he drank it off, then laid back down himself. The feeling of the dream he had admitted having came back to him. There was nothing he could have told Jason about it that would have made sense out of his murderous response at being wakened, or his earlier unaccountable ceasing to breathe.
… He had been riding, armed and armored, on horseback with others. They had ridden out of some trees onto the edge of a vast plain, and halted their horses. Distant in the middle of the otherwise stark emptiness of the plain was a dark, solitary, medieval-looking structure—like a peel tower, narrowing as it reached upward to its crenelated top. There were no other buildings around it, only the tower itself—and it was far off. There was a terrible sense about the tower of waiting, that held them all silent.
"I'll go alone," he had said to the others.