C j cherryh, p.2
C J Cherryh, page 2
He shrugged, showed empty hands, and went with them. Governor Lee was a stout, balding man of gentle manner; a man perpetually worried, seeming distracted... no figure to inspire fear. Merritt had met with him, reckoned him and catalogued him; and those calculations were in shambles. Lee stared him up and down with that same worried air while the police lined the room and guarded the door and Merritt felt very much alone in that moment. Lee had no reputation, no authority. The briefing Adam had given indicated twenty years of idleness, twenty years of starship contacts, meetings with disdain on the part of crew and abject anxiety on the part of Lee. There were, in fact, few people accessible for Lee to govern, and he relied desperately on the starship supplies and Earth’s charity. But of a sudden the man moved, when all had assured him otherwise, and that fact alone removed any certainty from the situation. Merritt folded his hands in front of him and made no protests; none seemed profitable. “Sit down, sit down,” Lee said. Merritt did so, stared at Lee across the width of the desk, met those wrinkle-shrouded eyes and tried not to break that contact. “You were running, Mr. Merritt.” Merritt said nothing. “Well,” said Lee, “I saw it in your faces the day you landed; and this afternoon-I knew I hadn’t won them, but I’d hoped I’d won you, Mr. Merritt.”
“I was going out to see the town. That’s all. Your police-“
“Please, Mr. Merritt. You were leaving. We know where the others are. A man is dead, finding that out. It’s much easier if we’re honest with each other.” “We thought-“ Thewords came out with difficulty. “We thought if we drew back we could talk with you, that you’d believe us then and move out. Governor, you admitted yourself that there’s no equipment.Nothing. What do you expect of us?” “Advice, Mr. Merritt.Professional skill. You tell us how and we do the work.”“A colony of five thousand, with no machinery and no manpower to spare. And if you make a mistake, Governor, you’ll not get anything. Take my professional advice. Get out of the valley. Better yet, get offHestia while you can.” “We’ve asked for weapons, for metal for machinery, and fuel to run it; we’ve asked for sensors like the equipment you have so we can protect ourselves in the highlands. But we don’t get these things. We can’t handle them; that’s the word we get. It would take the diversion of a starship for several years to support that kind of expedition, and five thousand human lives aren’t worth that kind of money, are they? We’ve never had a chance, and they won’t jeopardize the finances of the bureau to saveHestia . No, it all comes down to budget. It always does. You prolong your agony, Mr. Merritt. That’s all your help does.”
“Sir-“
The governor’s tired eyes focused on his, held. “You three cared enough to come.
What happened? Wasn’t the money enough to buy you out?”
“Why won’t you give up this colony? Why won’t you listen?” “Can’t another groundling understand, Mr. Merritt? This is home. It’s that simple. And someday the rains will stop again. But it’s precious little we have to hold to, with our fields underwater during both growing seasons and no water in winters and fevers in summer.”
“You don’t have to leaveHestia . The highlands hold what you need. If you’d listened to survey-“ “The highlands also have other inhabitants, Mr. Merritt.” Merritt folded his arms and stared at the floor and elsewhere.
“You don’t believe.”
Merritt shrugged, met Lee’s eyes coldly. “Men have always seen ghosts. Maybe they follow us.No, sir. I’ve heard about them. But survey turned up nothing.” “They’re real, Mr. Merritt. And there are more of them than of us. They leave their tracks around ourfarms, they kill our livestock, sometimes break fences or set fires. Sometimes they kill, when we’re careless. They’re real; and you won’t give us weapons and you won’t give us sensors. So we stay in the valley. They’ve given that over to us, and we’ll go on holding it while the human race lasts onHestia . You three were our last real hope; and since you’ve decided as you have-what do we have left?”
“I’m sorry, sir. But I don’t see there’s a choice.” “I don’t see I have one either. No.No, Mr. Merritt. For once the opportunity belongs to us. I have you here in the town, and I don’t think Adam Jones is going to do anything about it. If they won’t throw a starship off schedule to save five thousand lives, I don’t think they’ll do it for one man, do you? You’re a victim of the same kind of logic as we are, Mr. Merritt. I’m very sorry. I certainly don’t want to do you any harm, but consider my motives. Five thousand lives against the comfort of one: again the logic of numbers.” “Adam Jones will leave a marker, and then where will you be? No starship will touch here.”
“But we’ll have our engineer.”
“I can’t work alone, sir.”
“I wish they hadn’t deserted you; I wish they’d been willing to stay; I wish this weren’t necessary at all. But that marker beacon might be left whether or not we let you go, mightn’t it? And we’d have nothing. We’d die here. We’re sorry, Mr. Merritt. The move is made. There’s no going back from it.” Merritt let go a long breath, leaned back in the chair, considering Lee, the men about him. “I don’t like being pushed. Whatever your feelings, I don’t like being pushed. I recognize my choices are limited... but I still have them.” “Yes.”
“I’ll make a deal with you then, and keep it.”
“What sort of deal, Mr. Merritt?”
“You need my cooperation and I want offHestia . So in work at this project for a year, and work at it with the best of my ability, so long as you provide me help. But when that next ship comes, I’ll leave on it unless I’ve been able to find some solution to your problem.”
“Your contract specified five years.”
“One.”
“After the ship leaves, there’s really very little reason to have a bargain, is there? If we don’t allow it, there’s no way you can get near that next ship. You’ll live here, with us, as we live.If we don’t get that dam built, Mr.
Merritt, you stay. That’s the last and only threat I’ll make to you.”
“What am I supposed to use for equipment? What I have is on the shuttle.”
“Then send for it”
“It won’t be enough, even that. You understand that.” Lee made a small and inconsequential gesture. “That’s between you and your friends. Ask them. We’ll arrange the contact.”
“We have alternatives,” Don Hathaway’s voice said. “Put us through to the governor. We’ll make them clear.”
“I think they already are,” Merritt answered. Static spat. The mansion’s communications center, solar-powered, was a patchwork collection of outmoded equipment that must be dusted off once yearly to use with the starships and the shuttles. “Listen to me. We’re going to have people dead if you make a move in this direction, and I don’t want that. Besides, it’s trouble for Adam. The Colonial Bureau wouldn’t understand a firefight between a starship and her colony. These people are desperate and they’ll fight. So just set the gear and the supplies outside the ship. No argument. Please.” “Don’t be a martyr, Sam. Give me a sign if you’re not talking with a gun to your head.”
The guard officer moved, interposed his hand; Merritt held his free of the equipment, made a slight gesture and received permission. “It’s free will, Don. Believe it, sure as we met on station shuttle.”
“That’s a true sign.All right.”
“Wish you were here with me. I could use the help. But that’s asking too much, isn’t it?”
A silence.“Yes,” Hathaway said finally.
“Thought so,” Merritt said. His voice felt hollow; the heart of him did. He held a curious lack of bitterness. “IsLil there?”
“I’m here, Sam.”
“Same invitation,Lil .I could use the company.”
There was a long pause. “I can’t,” she said finally, miserably.
“I figured that too. No hard feelings.”
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
It was incredible; it sounded as if shewere crying, and that was not at all her habit.
“Goodbye,” she said.
The contact went dead.
Chapter 2
It was misting rain again, the sky over New Hope its usual unappealing gray, the waters colorless from the floating dock to the lagoon to the sky. Merritt descended the wooden steps to the floating dock and paused to turn his hood up against the chill wind that blew here in the open, drenching him. He had wondered, when they had promised him a boat upriver, just what transportationHestia could offer. There rode the answer: Celestine, broad-bottomed and rearing a tall smokestackamidship . A wheelhouse took up much of the available deck, and the rest of the space was stacked with cordwood and crates of what Merritt took to behis own gear. Often patched and now much in want of another painting, Celestine seemed easily half a century old, half as old at least asHestia .
Merritt looked back, where the governor’s police lined the shore, with townsfolk to back them. It was superfluous. The shuttle was gone from the field; Adam was gone, the long silence fallen again aboutHestia . He shrugged, turned, feeling their collective eyes on his back, and walked the heaving surface to the gangplank, a treacherous bit of board suspended between the movingdock and pitching boat. He made it with a slight stagger, caught his balance again on deck.
A gray-haired man leaned against the wheelhouse, watching him-made no move of welcome, hands in the pockets of his patched coat, unshaven jaw slowly working over a toothpick.
“Amos Selby?”Merrittasked, when the man seemed disposed to stare at him indefinitely.
TheHestian bestirred himself, drew a hand from his pocket and offered it with no show of welcome. “You’ll be Mr. Merritt, to be sure. Your gear’s all aboard.” “Where shall I stay?”
Selby gave a quirk of the mouth that might have been humor. “Well, you’ll stay where you can find sitting room, Mr. Merritt. Go where you like. We got onedeck, got no police here, just water, all around.” There was disturbance on the dock. Footsteps echoed across the wooden planks at high speed; a youth raced down the steps and across the floating landing. Amos grunted.
“My boy,” he explained. “Come on, son, hurry it up.” The youth leaped the gap and swept the cap off his blond hair, put it on again straight, and stood staring at Merritt. He was about twenty, almost delicate, and fairer than his father ever could have been. Merritt thought of the star-ships and the yearly carnival atNew Hope , and wondered. “Sam Merritt-Mr. Merritt-my boy Jim.Get to work, Jim. We got to get moving sometime today, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jim, looking contrite, and moved off to take charge of the engine. Amos shook his head and wandered off to the wheelhouse that was four steps up a wooden ladder.
The engine was slowly coaxed to life, a hissing, sluggish museum piece. Merritt walked back to see it work, and Jim looked up at him with a shy grin, but the noise was too much for talking. Jim shouted orders ashore; a pair of men cast them free and the engine began to labor, with Jim running here and there to pull in the cable. Celestine slewed out into the current and Merritt walked back to watch the spreading wake, white curl on brown, rain-pocked water, and to stare at the shore. The men became only silhouettes beside a sprawl of brown buildings. The shore dwindled, and the water spread equally on both sides, with sand and grass along the banks.
He walked forward then, to the bow, stared out ahead at the countryside and the river, the land flat and flooded and obscured by misting water. The wind cut through the jacket. He shivered finally and threaded his way back to the wheelhouse, climbed the steps to that scant shelter, where Amos plied the wheel. The structure was open, affording view, letting the wind whip down and up and out again.
“It’s freezing,” Merritt said, teeth clenched.
“Does get a little cold,” Amos agreed.
“Do you travel this course in winter too?”
“No wayanything moves onHestia otherwise. Boat’s got to come and go.”
“How many other boats are there?”
“Five.”
“I’m told you know the river best.”
“Have to.” Amos took the toothpick out of his mouth and pocketed it, as if he had finally made up his mind to converse. “I’m supposed to take you as far as Burns’ Station and stay with you. I hear you’re supposed to saveHestia .” Merritt sank down on the worn counter that rimmed the side of the wheelhouse, where there was some scant shelter to be had. “I get the impression, Mr. Selby, that you don’t think much of the business.”
“You’re the first Earthman in a hundred years to set foot onHestia and I bear you don’t like it much. Myself, I don’t trustoffworlders much. I don’t figure we ever got much from outside.”
“I don’t figure we ever got much fromHestia , for all that was put into it.” Amos Selby nodded slightly. “True, no denying it, Mr. Merritt But younever needed nothing we could give. So here you are. I suppose we’re supposed to owe you something on that account, aren’t we?”
Merritt refused to rise to the argument. There seemed no profit in it “Well,” Amos said finally, “my advice is free for the asking if you have sense enough to want it.” He reached for the whistle and blew it sharply, indicated off to port as Merritt stood up to see. A house stood on a hill, tree-rimmed, out of the reach of the river. “James’ place there,” Amos said.“Used to be a dock there. Nicest place on the river, closest to the city. Dock washed away this fall. They haven’t got it rebuilt.”
“Do you make regular stops on this run?”
“Not this trip. You’re my only cargo. But usually, yes.Some regular, some when I’m flagged in. Everywhere a group of farms can give me a dock. If it wasn’t for usrivermen , there’d be noHestia at all.Many’s the time I’ve had to bring Celestine in close to get a family off the porch or had the deck full of sheep and pigs when someone’s field’s been washed over. We’re a stubborn breed, but there’s none of us yet learned to breathe water.” Jim brought up tea and sandwiches aboutnoon , into the wheelhouse, the walls of which were cluttered with Merritt’s tablets and the corner with a plastic book of charts. Amos slipped a loop on the wheel and kept an eye forward while he ate, pausing to correct course now and again, and now and again to stare at Merrill.
“How old are those?” he asked Merritt finally.
“They’re the original survey charts. They’re what they gave me to work with.”
“You mean the survey a hundred years back?”
“From what you’ve said and from what I see, I can tell something of the extent of the changes. It’s bad. It’s a lot worse even than was reported.” Amos washed down a bite of sandwich. “You’ll find out more than that. I don’t read much: you’ll guess that. But I know this valley and this river, and I can show you plenty, how it was and how it is. I can tell you most every sandbar and shift of current from here to Burns’ Station.”
“And beyond that?”
“No, sir.No one goes up there, and no one will take you there.”
“Not for any amount of asking, then?”
“No.No, sir. First of all you’d need to pass white water against the current and there’s no boat could do it. And then you’re into uncharted river and wild country if you made it. No, I’ll do whatever errand-running you want done from the Station toNew Hope and points between, but I value my boat and my own neck too much to run beyond the Station. I don’t know that I’ll convince you of it too early, but there’s times you’ll be safest just to take advice untried.” “Is the river open year-round between the Station andNew Hope ?”“Mostly.” Amos waved his cup toward the view. “Shell drop considerable after the fall rains quit. Thenthere’s sandbars where we’re riding now high and easy. Come spring when the ice melts in the high country, there’ll be pigs swept clear to sea. Then summers, there’s seldom any rain and it’s sticky hot. The killer floods, those are the ones in spring, the sudden risings. If a man tries to gamble and stay on his land when it’s a question of a few feet of crest between him and drowning, well, we lose some few each year that try to outguess the river.”
Merritt looked out, braving the wind. The river was very broad at that point, isolating dead trees and small hummocks of earth, fence posts and bits of field, and houses which had ceased to be habitable. Newer homes could be seen occasionally against the backdrop of rougher highlands on either side of the river, fields terraced on the hills. In the north a ragged line of mountains showed as a gray horizon, bristling with trees. “Is that the Upriver you’re so afraid of?” Merritt asked. “Yonder?Part of it. That’s Williams’ Heights there, just big forest. Myself, I don’t trust any forest, but there’s some with the nerve to bed down next to it. Trouble is, it runs on and on forever, right into the Upriver itself, and what lives in theUpriver can live there too, for all you know. I don’t like places like that at all; no one does; but there’s not so much land left now that folks can be choosy. Some even get brave enough to cut a few trees into the deep forest and clear them new land.”
