Gosse stared down at Selver. 'Right. Quite right. You learned a great deal from Lyubov, didn't you?'
'Didn't he just,' said Benton. 'He was Lyu-bov's little green buddyboy. He picked up everything worth knowing and a bit more besides. Like all the vital points to sabotage, and where the guards would be posted, and how to get into the weapon stockpile. They must have been in touch right up to the moment the massacre started.*1 Gosse looked uneasy. 'Raj is dead. All that's
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irrelevant now, Benton. We've got to establish—'
'Are you trying to infer in some way that Captain Lyubov was involved in some activity that could be called treachery to the Colony, Ben-ton?' said Dongh, glaring and pressing his hands against his belly. 'There were no spies or treachers on my staff, it was absolutely hand-picked before we ever left Terra and I know the' kind of men I have to deal with.'
*Tm not inferring anything, Colonel. I'm saying straight out that it was Lyubov stirred up the creechies, and if orders hadn't been changed on us after that Fleet ship was here, it never would have happened.'
Gosse and Dongh both started to speak at once. 'You are all very ill,' Selver observed, getting up and dusting himself off, for the damp brown oak-leaves clung to his short body-fur as to silk.
'I'm sorry we've had to hold.you in the creechie-pen, it is not a good place for the mind. Please send for your men from the camps. When all are here and the large weapons have been destroyed, and the promise has been spoken by all of us, then we shall leave you alone. The gates of the compound will be opened when I leave here today. Is there more to be said?'
None of them said anything. They looked down at him. Seven big men, with tan or brown hairless skin, cloth-covered, dark-eyed, grim-faced; twelve small men, green or brownish-green, fur-covered, with the large eyes of the seminocturnal
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creature, with dreamy faces; between the two groups, Selver, the translator, frail, disfigured, holding all their destinies in his empty hands. Rain fell softly on the brown earth about them. 'Farewell then,'* Selver said, and led his people away.
'They're not so stupid,' said the headwoman of Berre as she accompanied Selver back to Endtor.' 'I thought such giants must be stupid, but they saw that you're a god, I saw it in their faces at the end of the talking. How well you talk that gobble-gubble. Ugly they are, do you think even their children are hairless?'
'That we shall never know, I hope.'
'Ugh, think of nursing a child that wasn't furry. Like trying to suckle a fish.'
'They are all insane,' said old Tubab, looking deeply distressed. 'Lyubov wasn't like that, when he used to come to Tunlar. He was ignorant, but sensible. But these ones, they argue, and sneer at the old man, and hate each other, like this,' and he contorted his grey-furred face to imitate the expressions of the Terr an s, whose words of course he had not been able to follow. 'Was that what you said to them, Selver, that they're mad?'
'I told them that they were ill. But then, they've been defeated, and hurt, and locked*in that stone cage. After that anyone might be ill and need healing.'
'Who's to heal them,' said the headwoman of Berre, 'their women are all dead. Too bad for them. Poor ugly things—great naked spiders they are, ugh!'
'They are men, men, like us, men,' Selver said, his voice shrill and edged like a knife.
' *Oh, my dear lord god, I know it, I only meant they look like spiders,' said the old woman, caressing his cheek. 'Look here, you people, Selver is worn out with this going back and forth between Endtor and Eshsen, let's sit down and rest a bit.'
' 'Not here,'' Selver said. They were still in the Cut Lands, among stumps and grassy slopes, under the bare sky. 'When we come under the trees . . .'He stumbled, and those who were not gods helped him to walk along the road.
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137 Seven
DAVIDSON found a good use for Major Mu-hamed's tape recorder. Somebody had to make a record of events on New Tahiti, a history of the crucifixion on the Terran Colony. So that when the ships came from Mother Earth they could learn how much treachery and cowardice and folly humans were capable of, and how much courage against all odds. During his free moments—not much more than moments since he had assumed command—he recorded the whole story of the Smith Camp Massacre, and brought the record up to date for New Java, and for King and Central also, as well as he could with the garbled hysterical stuff that was all he got by way of news from Central HQ.
Exactly what had happened there nobody would ever know, except the creechies, for the humans were trying to cover up their own betrayals and mistakes. The outlines were clear, though. An organised bunch of creechies, led by Selver,
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had been let into the Arsenal and the Hangars, and turned loose with dynamite, grenades, guns, and flamethrowers to totally destruct the city and slaughter the humans. It was an inside job, the fact that HQ was the first place blown up proved that. Lyubov of course had been in on it, and his little green buddies had proved just as grateful as you might expect, and cut his throat like the others. At least, Gosse and Benton claimed to have seen him dead the morning after the massacre. But could you believe any of mem, actually? You could assume that any human left alive in Central
after that night was more or less of a traitor. A traitor to his race.
The women were all dead, they claimed. That was bad enough, but what was worse, there was no reason to believe it. It was easy for the creechies to take prisoners in the woods, and nothing would be easier to catch man a terrified girl running out of a burning town. And wouldn't the little green devils like to get hold of a human girl and try experiments on her? God knows how many of the women were still alive in the creechie warrens, tied down underground in one of those stinking holes, being touched and felt and crawled over and defiled by the filthy, hairy little monkey men. It was unthinkable. But by God sometimes you have to be able to think about the unthinkable.
A hopper from King had dropped the prisoners at Central a receiver-transmitter the day after the massacre, and Muhamed had taped all his ex-
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changes with Central starting that day. Hie most incredible one was a conversation between him and Colonel Dongh. The first time he played it Davidson had torn the thing right off the reel and burned it. Now he wished he had kept it, for the records, as a perfect proof of the total incompetence of the C.O. *s at both Central and New Java. He had given in to his own hotbloodedness, destroying it. But how could he sit there and listen to the recording of the Colonel and the Major discussing total surrender to the creechies, agreeing not to try retaliation, not to defend themselves, to give up all their big weapons, to all squeeze together onto a bit of land picked out for them by the creechies, a reservation conceded to them by their generous conquerors, the little green beasts. It was incredible. Literally incredible.
Probably old Ding Dong and Moo were not actually traitors by intent. They had just gone spla, lost their nerve. It was this damned planet that did it to them. It took a very strong personality to withstand it. There was something in the air, maybe pollens from all those trees, acting as some kind of drug maybe, that made ordinary humans begin to get as stupid and out of touch with reality as the creechies were. Then, being so outnumbered, they were pushovers for the creechies to wipe out.
It was too bad Muhamed had had to be put out of the way, but he would never have agreed to accept Davidson's plans, that was clear; he'd
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been too far gone. Anyone who'd heard that incredible tape would agree. So it was better he got shot before he really knew what was going on, and now no shame would attach to his name, as it would to Dongh's and all the other officers left alive at Central.
Dongh hadn't come on the radio lately. Usually it was Juju Sereng, in Engineering. Davidsonhad used to pal around a lot with Juju and had thought of him as a friend, but now you couldn't trust anybody any more. And Juju was another asiatifonn. It was really queer how many of mem had survived the Centralville Massacre; of those he'd talked to, the only non-asio was Gosse. Here in Java the fifty-five loyal men remaining after the reorganization were
