The three that had failed would have to be punished, to set an example. The hundred-odd others would also have to be punished-somewhat more lightly, so that the race would not become extinct-for failing to keep the three to their duty. As for the intruders-there was no punishment grave enough for them! Perhaps they should be abolished, like any other challenging organism that threatened to damage its host. Perhaps worse than that. Perhaps nothing within his powers was quite severe enough.
But what was still in his power? He forced himself to stand. Janine saw the ripple of lights flicker and freeze into a pattern as the Oldest One rose to his extended height and spoke. “The female is to be recaptured and preserved,” he said. “This is to be done at once.”
He stood there, wobbling uneasily; the effectors for his limbs were performing erratically. He allowed himself to kneel once more while he pondered his options. The exertion of going to the control room to set course-the turmoil in his mind that had led him to do it-half a million years of existence, all had taken their toll. He needed time to “rest”-time, that is, for his autonomic systems to retrace and repair what damage they could, and perhaps time no longer would be enough. “Do not wake me again till this is done,” he said, and the lights resumed their random flicker, and slowly dwindled to darkness.
Janine, circled in Wan’s arm-his body half toward the Oldest One, half sheltering her, trembling with fear-knew without being told that “preserved” meant killed. She was frightened, too.
But she was also puzzled.
The Old Ones who lay snoring through their trial and judgment had not fallen asleep by chance. Janine recognized the results of a sleep-gun. Janine knew also that none of her party had had one.
For that reason, Janine was not entirely surprised when, an hour later and back in their pen, they heard a stifled grunt from outside.
She was not surprised to see her sister run in, waving a gun and calling to them; not surprised that behind Lurvy a tattered Paul stepped over the sleeping form of Tor. She was not even surprised, or not very much surprised, to see that with them was another armed man she almost recognized. She was not sure. She had met him only when she was a child. But he looked like the person she had seen on the relayed PV broadcasts from Earth, and in jolly messages that came from him on anniversaries and holidays: Robin Broadhead.
15 Older Than the Oldest One
Not at his worst-not even when he was feeling older than the Oldest One himself and as dead as dead Payter- had Paul looked as bad as the pitiful creature waving a gun at him from the hatch of his own ship. Under the skungy, month-old beard the man’s face looked like a mummy’s. He stank.
“You’d better take a bath!” Paul snapped. “And put that silly gun away.”
The mummy slumped against the hatch of the ship. “You’re Paul Hall,” it said, squinting at him. “For God’s sake, do you have anything to eat?”
Paul stared past him. “Isn’t there plenty still left in there?” He pushed into the ship and found that, of course, there were stacks of CHONfood packets exactly as they had been left. The mummy had been into the water bags, had ripped at least three of them open; the floor of the ship was puddled and muddied. Paul offered a ration. “Keep your voice down,” he ordered. “And by the way, who are you?”
“I’m Robin Broadhead. What do you do with this?”
“Bite into it,” snapped Paul, exasperated-less because of the man himself, or even because of the way he smelled, than because he was still shaking. He had been terrified that it would be an Old One he had come across so unexpectedly. But-Robin Broadhead! What was he doing here?
But he could not put the question just then. Broadhead was almost literally starving. He turned the flat pillow of food over in his hands, frowning and shaking, and then bit into a corner of it. As soon as he found it could be chewed he wolfed it down, crumbs spilling from his mouth. He stared up at Paul while he jammed his mouth full faster than his teeth could deal with it. “Take it easy,” Paul said, alarmed. But he was too late. The unfamiliar food, after so long a deprivation, did what could have been expected of it. Broadhead choked, gagged and vomited it up. “Damn you!” Paul snarled. “They’ll smell you all the way to the spindle!”
Broadhead leaned back, gasping. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I-thought I was going to die. I pretty near did. Can you give me some water?”
Paul did, a couple of sips at a time, and then allowed the man just a corner of one of the brown and yellow packets, the blandest there was. “Slowly!” he ordered. “I’ll give you more later.” But he was beginning to realize how good it was to have another human being there after-what was it?-it must have been two months, at least, of his solitary skulking and hiding and plotting. “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he said at last, “but I’m glad to see you.”
Broadhead licked the last crumbs off his lips and managed to grin. “Why, that’s simple,” he said, eyes avidly on the rest of the food in Paul’s hands. “I came here to rescue you.”
Broadhead had been dehydrated and almost asphyxiated, but not really starved. He kept down the crumbs Paul let him have and demanded more; kept that down too, and was even able to help Paul clean up the mess he had made. Paul found him clean clothes from Wan’s sparse store in the ship-the garments were too long and too slim by far, but the waistband of the kilt did not really need to close all the way-and led him to the largest of the water troughs to get himself clean. It wasn’t daintiness. It was fear. The Old Ones did not hear any better than human beings, nor see even quite as well. But their noses were astonishingly acute. After two weeks of the narrowest of escapes, in his first terrified blundering around Heechee Heaven after Wan and Lurvy had been captured, Paul had learned to bathe three times a day.
And much more.
He took post at a juncture of three corridors, mounting guard while Broadhead got the worst of his thirty days in a Heechee ship off his skin. Rescue them! In the first place, it wasn’t true-Broadhead’s intentions were more subtle and complicated than that. In the second place, Broadhead’s plans were not the same as those Paul had been maturing for two months. He had some notion of tricking information out of the Dead Men and only the haziest notion of what to do with the information when he got it. And he expected Paul to help him carry two or three metric tons of machinery around Heechee Heaven, never mind the risk, never mind that Paul might have ideas of his own. The trouble with being rescued was that the rescuers expected to be in charge of the operation. And expected Paul to be grateful!
Well, he admitted to himself, turning slowly to keep each corridor in view-though the Old Ones were less
