'But you're wrong, Nillaine. I only asked about Seri because I was curious. And I lied about why I came back because I was afraid you might give me away without meaning to, if the I–C should happen to come.' He pointed skyward. 'My business is out there, at the White Sun. The same business they arrested me for, and sent me away from the Cluster. I don't care what Seri's doing. I wouldn't care if he had the Doomstar in his pocket…'
He saw her eyes flare bright as fire in the sunlight, and he hurried on, pretending not to notice.
'I'm only interested in finishing my deal. Money, Nillaine. A million credits. And then I'm gone from the Cluster forever.'
'Money,' she said, and laughed. 'I almost believe you. Well, then, and so you don't care if Seri has the Doomstar in his pocket. Then wait, Johnny. The White Sun will wait. Everything will wait. And afterward you can go where you will and the I–C won't stop you.'
She stepped toward him, away from the pillar. 'Will you stay?'
She was pleading with him. Her eyes were fond and hopeful, her hands outstretched. He smiled, a stiff and sickly counterfeit, and shook his head.
'No.'
He turned to walk away from the paved floor and the pillars. He did not see, behind him, what gesture she made. Perhaps the only one needed was his own gesture of departure. In any case, he stopped, because suddenly all the slopes and the edges of the woods were alive with tiny figures among the trees.
The women of the village, with flowers in their hair, and each one holding in her right hand a little shining knife.
10
They came scuddering like bright leaves on a'wind, up the slope, out from the trees. Kettrick retreated before them.
'This is not the sacrifice time,' he said. Each year, he knew, the women chose a victim from among the young men and hunted him to this place and did to him what they felt was necessary, so that trees should again bear fruit and fields produce their grain. But that was in the spring, and it was now late summer, though in this golden place all seasons were much the same.
Nillaine answered, 'This is not a sacrifice, not yet, though perhaps it will come to be one.' She stood again by the pillar, her small face sober and pitiless. 'This is something we could not trust to the men. They would think of friendship, and stay their hands.'
The colored paving stones came hard beneath his feet. He was moving backward all the time toward Nillaine. He watched the women, and now he could hear the soft rustle of them treading the grass, the ripple of their draperies around their slender legs. He wanted to laugh, but he was terrified. There must have been fifty or sixty of them, their little knives all glittering.
'The men would think of friendship,' he said. 'What are you thinking of, Nillaine?'
'My village. My father. My husband and children. Seri promised that the Doomstar would never shine on us.'
'There are other villages, other people.'
'I don't know them. They are nothing to me.'
'Let me go, Nillaine. I can stop Seri, so that the Doomstar will never shine for anyone.'
'There are more than Seri, many more. You couldn't stop them. No, Johnny. Well be safe, and afterward we'll be strong, stronger than the Westpeople. They promised us.'
'How will they make you strong?' asked Kettrick, and grasped her by the arm so quickly that she did not quite have time to get away. She sank her teeth and nails into his wrist, squealing all the while like a furious little animal. He slapped her head across the side of the head and she stopped all that. He picked her up and held her, a limp doll, across his body, and he said to the women,
'Your knives will strike her first.'
They were already faltering, their eyes and mouths wide with astonishment. He imagined that it had never occurred to them that a male would commit such an act of blasphemy in this place where they were supreme. Probably no sacrifice had ever objected before.
'Chai!' he shouted. 'Chai!'
The women made cat-cries of outrage. They screamed at him to put Nillaine down, and some of them rushed toward him again, waving their knives. He held Nillaine out, a kind of living buckler against the blades, and moved slowly backward, away from them.
'Chai?'
'Hroo!'
Out of the tail of his eye he saw her loping from the trees at the back of the cup. She had had to make a long swing around to keep out of sight, as he had told her to do when he had pretended to send her away. He had not really believed then that anything would happen; it was a matter of just in case. Now he backed toward her and they met beside a pillar pregnant with carved fruits.
The women stared at Chai fearfully. She looked at the women.
'Kill, John-nee?'
'Not unless you have to.' The women were gabbling now, tossing their hands wildly as they argued between themselves what to do. It was a long way to the trees, a longer way to the village. Kettrick wondered if they could ever make it, and he tightened his grip on Nillaine.
'Hit?' asked Chai.
'Hit,' he said. 'Yes. And I don't care if you break a few of their pretty little bones.'
Chai grunted. Nillaine whimpered abruptly, twisting in Kettrick's arms. He was briefly occupied in quieting her again. He heard a noise behind him, and then there was a demoniac shriek from the women and they surged forward in a body. He turned to see Chai finish uprooting the pillar.
'Big stick,' she said, and swung it whistling around her head. She bounded at the women.
She was more than twice as high as they, and the pregnant pillar was eight or nine feet long. She swung it like a great flail. They screamed and fell, and ran, and scattered, screaming, and some of them lay on the ground and wept or moaned. Chai came back, breathing hard. The bulk of the women now stood in ragged clumps a long way off, looking at them in helpless rage. The bolder ones moved back to help the injured. Kettrick shouted at them.
'Let us alone, or I'll kill Nillaine!'
He raised her up and shook her at them so they would understand. Then he whispered to Chai, 'For God's sake let's get out of here.' They ran together for the woods, Chai with the carven fruits laid across her shoulder.
The tree shadows closed around them. Kettrick shifted Nillaine to a better position and went down hill with long strides. His heart was thundering and he felt sick, as though he had touched something unnatural.
They passed through the gorge and into the jungle. Nillaine's small body lay lightly over one shoulder, her loose hair brushing his neck. He had almost forgotten her. In the forefront of his mind was the image of the ship and the need to reach it. Apart from that he walked in the roaring blackness of nightmare, where nothing was substantial, where time and distance stretched maliciously into strange dimensions, and underneath it all was fear, the gut-twisting, breath-locking, sweat-running fear that came with a word, and the memory of a dream.
Doomstar.
Don't bother about it, Johnny. It's only a myth.
He went down the shadowy tunnel, walking so fast that he was almost running, and there wasn't any end to the damned thing, it went on forever.
Nillaine was stirring. He thought, in a distant sort of way, that he would presently have to hit her again. All his attention was ahead, where he strained to see the end of the narrow track.
Chai barked. He felt a sudden buffet across his back, mingled with a stinging pain. Nillaine cried out. 'What is it?' Kettrick snarled. 'What the hell is it?' He was startled and shaking. Nillaine had begun to sob, hanging over his shoulder. He put his free hand up across his back. It came away bloody.
