'Doubt?'
'Uncertainty. You would be certain.'
'Nothing is ever that,' said Caradoc. 'Always there is the unknown factor which must never be ignored. No matter how certain a thing appears to be, it must never be considered an absolute event. The probability may be high but, always, it remains a probability.'
Bochner nodded, remembering a time during his early youth. A copse in which a beast was lurking, himself set and armed, the weapon lifted, aimed, the butt hard against his shoulder, the sights leveled on the spot in which the creature was sure to appear. A long, delicious moment of savored anticipation. The nearing climax of the hunt was like the climax of sex itself, though far more satisfying.
And then the shadow, which had crossed the sun. The raft, which had appeared in a cloudless sky and, as it threw a patch of darkness over the front sight, the quarry had appeared to turn, to run, to dodge the bullet which should have brought it low.
Revenge had done little to ease the hurt and after the dead man had toppled from the raft, and the vehicle itself risen to vanish into the distance, the penalty had waited at the end- the blood-price paid in money and sweat and exile from his home world.
A little thing. One he should have taken into consideration. A neglect which had altered the trend of his life.
Watching him, Caradoc said, 'Imagine a container of boiling liquid containing tiny motes of solid substance. They are in continuous, restless activity. The Brownian Movement. The tiny particles are in motion because of the irregular bombardment of the molecules of the surrounding medium. Now, imagine one of the particles to be colored for easy identification. We can tell where it is in relation to the whole. We can tell where it has been. We can even predict where next it might be, but never can we be utterly and absolutely certain.'
'Dumarest? The colored particle is Dumarest?'
'The analogy will serve.'
'And you know about where he is to be found. In the Quillian Sector.' Bochner's face became taut ugly, the skin tightening so that his cheeks looked like scraped bone. 'The place where space goes mad. Where the suns fight and fill the universe with crazed patterns of energy so that men kill at a glance and women scream at imagined terrors. Ealius and Cham and Ninik.'
'Swenna,' said Caradoc adding to the list. 'Vult and Pontia-' He paused, then said again, 'Pontia.'
'Where I was born.' Bochner's voice matched the taut ugliness of his face. 'I told you I knew the area well.'
Chapter Two
Dumarest heard the shout and looked up to see death falling from the sky. The grab of the digger was overhead, the jaws open, tons of oozing clay scooped from the cutting, blotting out the pale orange of the firmament. It should have been neatly deposited in the body of his truck. Instead, it was plummeting down to crush and bury him. No accident. The crane was well to one side, the truck closer to it than himself, but there was no time to think of that.
Even before the warning shout had died he was on the move, lunging to one side, feeling his foot slip on the loose dirt, toppling off balance as the load thundered down.
Luck was with him. A second later, or had he been less fast, he would have been crushed and buried like an insect. As it was, he felt the impact on his left shoulder, the barest touch of the debris which rasped down the sleeve of his coverall, the blow throwing him further in the direction of his fall. He hit a slope, rolling, falling, to land on the waterlogged clay at the foot of the cutting as over him showered the mass of clay, dirt and rubble.
Too much rubble. It pressed on his back, drove his face into the water as it piled on his head, his shoulders, trapping his entire body with a layer of dirt which pressed with an iron hand. A hand which could kill, which would kill within minutes unless he could find some way to breathe.
He strained, body aching, muscles tense, blood thundering in his ears as, slowly, he lifted. A fraction only; loose dirt compacted by his upward pressure, yielding a trifle to form a shallow gap beneath him so that, arms and legs rigid, back arched against the strain, head turned to rest one cheek in the water, his nose lay above the surface and he could breathe.
Breathe and wait for a rescue which need never come.
Life was cheap on Ealius. Only the skilled technicians were of value, the rest were easily replaced. Those in authority could decide that he wasn't worth the trouble and effort to save. Better to let him lie, to be covered in, buried, forgotten. But the cutting had to be kept open, the great channel formed and smoothed, the passage through the mountain maintained.
After what seemed hours, Dumarest felt and heard the grating vibration of mechanical jaws.
They were not being operated with any care for the vulnerability of a human body. The steel teeth dropped, closed, lifted with a load of clay to set it aside and return for more. Only a concern to avoid marring the sides of the channel made the operator take small bites at the mound he had dropped. The fact that any of the scoops could have sheared through a body didn't seem to have occurred to him.
Dumarest had a more personal interest. He felt a touch against one leg, kicked, felt metal beneath his foot and then the rasp of the teeth over his thigh. Luck had saved him; a few more inches and his foot would have been caught, his leg ripped from its socket as the grab lifted with resistless force. Before it could return he heaved, squandering the last of his conserved energy, fighting the crushing weight on back and shoulders as he thrust himself back to where the clay had been lifted from his legs. When next the grab returned, he was ready. As the open jaws dug into the mound he threw himself into the grab, ducking as the serrated edges closed, one hand caught between two of the steel teeth of the low jaw, the upper halting an inch from his wrist as it closed on a stone.
Then up and out to one side, the grab halting, turning, opening as it jerked to shower its load into the open body of the truck waiting below. As Dumarest fell, he heard a yell.
'It's Earl! By damn, it's Earl!'
Carl Devoy, the one who had shouted, his face taut beneath a tangle of rust-colored hair now smeared with ocher clay. He ran to the side of the truck, heaving himself up and staring over the side.
'Earl?' He sucked in his breath as Dumarest moved. 'By God, he's still alive! Give a hand here! Give a hand!'
He was small, but with a temper to match the color of his hair, and two men ran to obey. A third arrived with a bucket of water as they lowered Dumarest to the ground and, without preamble, threw the contents over the clay smeared figure.
'Earl?'
'I'm all right.' Dumarest straightened, breathing deeply, water running down his head and face to soak his coverall. As he wiped his hands on his sides, he said, 'Who was operating the digger?'
'Menser, He's still operating it.' Devoy glanced at the man seated in the cab of the machine. A transparent canopy gave weather protection, its clarity now marred with dirt. Behind it, the face and figure of the operator were blurred. 'I saw the bucket jerk and yelled but I was too late.'
'No,' said Dumarest. 'If you hadn't shouted I'd be dead now. And then?'
'After the load dropped?' Devoy shrugged. 'They figured you had to be dead and would have left you but Strick wanted the cutting to be cleared. Ten minutes later and he'd have left it for the next shift to clear up the mess.'
Ten minutes-the difference between life and death. Dumarest looked at the orange sky, at the bulk of the digger etched against it, at the dark face which peered at him from behind the canopy. As a whistle blew the face moved, became a part of the body which climbed down from the cab, a man who stood almost seven-feet tall and with shoulders to match. A black giant with massive hands and thighs like trees. A man who stepped to where Dumarest stood waiting, to halt, to part his lips in a grin before spitting on the ground.
'Mister, you were lucky.'
'No,' said Dumarest. 'You were careless.'
'Meaning the accident?'
