'Look, Captain Davidson,' the creechie said in mat quiet little voice mat made Davidson go dizzy and sick, 'we're both gods, you and I. You're an insane one, and I'm not sure whether I'm sane or not. But we are gods. There will never be another meeting in the forest like this meeting DOW between us. We bring each other such gifts as gods bring. You gave me a gift, the killing of one's kind, murder. Now, as well as I can, I give you my people's gift, which is not killing. I mink we each find each other's gift heavy to carry. However, you must carry it alone. Your people at Eshsen tell me that if I bring you there, they have to make a judgment on you and kill you, it's their
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law to do so. So, wishing to give you life, I can't take you with the other prisoners to Eshsen; and I can't leave you to wander in the forest, for you do too much harm. So you'll be treated like one of us when we go mad. You'll be taken to Rendlep where nobody lives any more, and left there.' Davidson stared at the creechie, could not take his eyes off it. It was as if it had some hypnotic power over him. Nobody could hurt him. 'I should have broken your neck right away, that day you tried to jump me,'' he said, his voice still hoarse and thick.
'It might have been best,' Selver answered. ' 'But Lyubov prevented you. As he now prevents me from killing you.—All the killing is done now. And the cutting of trees. There aren't trees to cut on Rendlep. That's the place you call Dump Island. Your people left no trees there, so you can't make a boat and sail from it. Nothing much grows there any more, so we shall have to bring you food and wood to bum. There's nothing to kill on Rendlep. No trees, no people. There were trees and people, but now there are only the dreams of them. It seems to me a fitting place for you to live, since you must live. You might learn how to dream there, but more likely you will follow your madness through to its proper end, at last.'
' 'Kill me now and quit your damned gloating.''
'Kill you?' Selver said, and his eyes looking up at Davidson seemed to shine, very clear and terrible, in the twilight of the forest. 'I can't kill 161
you, Davidson. You're a god. You must do it yourself.'*
He turned and walked away, light and quick, vanishing among the grey trees within a few steps.
A noose slipped over Davidson's head and tightened a little on his throat. Small spears approached his back and sides. They did not try to hurt him. He could run away, make a break for it, they didn't dare kill him. The blades were polished, leaf-shaped, sharp as razors. The noose tugged gently at his neck. He followed where they led him.
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Bight
SELVER had not seen Lyubov for a long time. That dream had gone with him to Rieshwel. It had been with him when he spoke the last time to Davidson. Then it had gone, and perhaps it slept now in the grave of Lyubov's death at Eshsen, for it never came to Selver in the town of Broter where he now lived.
But when the great ship returned, and he went to Eshsen, Lyubov met him there. He was silent and tenuous, very sad, so mat the old carking grief awoke in Selver.
Lyubov stayed with him, a shadow in the mind, even when he met the yumens from.the ship. These were people of power; they were very different from all yumens he had known, except his friend, but they were much stronger men than Lyubov had been.
His yumen speech had gone rusty, and at first he mostly let them talk. When he was fairly certain
what kind of people they were, he brought
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forward the heavy box he had carried from Broter. 'Inside this there is Lyubov's work,*' he said, groping for the words. 'He knew more about us than the others do. He learned my language and the Men's Tongue; we wrote all that down. He understood somewhat how we live and dream. The others do not. Til give you the work, if you'll take it to the place he wished.'
Hie tall, white-skinned one, Lepennon, looked happy, and thanked Selver, telling him that the papers would indeed be taken where Lyubov wished, and would be highly valued. That pleased Selver. But it had been painful to him to speak his friend's name aloud, for Lyubov's face was still bitterly sad when he turned to it in his mind. He withdrew a little from the yumens, and watched them. Dongh and Gosse and others of Eshsen were there along with the five from the ship. The new
ones looked clean and polished as new iron. The old ones had let the hair grow on their faces, so that they looked a little like huge, black-furred Athsheans. They still wore clothes, but the clothes were old and not kept clean. They were not thin, except for the Old Man, who had been ill ever since the Night of Eshsen; but they all looked a little like men who are lost or mad.
This meeting was at the edge of the forest, in that zone where by tacit agreement neither the forest people nor the yumens had built dwellings or camped for these past years. Selver and his companions settled down in the shade of a big ash-tree that stood out away from the forest eaves.
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Its berries were only small green knots against the twigs as yet, its leaves were long and soft, labile, summer-green. The light beneath the great tree was soft, complex with shadows.
The yumens consulted and came and went, and at last one came over to the ash-tree. It was the hard one from the ship, the Commander. He squatted down on his heels near Selver, not asking permission but not with any evident intention of rudeness. He said, 'Can we talk a little?'
'Certainly.'
'You know that we'll be taking all the Terrans away with us. We brought a second ship with us to carry them. Your world will no longer be used as a colony.'
'This was the message I heard at Broter, when you came three days ago.'
'I wanted to be sure that you understand that this is a permanent arrangement. We're not coming back. Your world has been placed under the League Ban. What mat means in your terms is this: I can promise you that no one will come here to cut the trees or take your lands, so long as the League lasts.'
'None of you will ever come back,' Selver said, statement or question.
'Not for five generations. None. Then perhaps a few men, ten or twenty, no more than twenty, might come to talk to your people, and study your world, as some of the men here were doing.'
'The scientists, the speshes,' Selver said. He brooded. 'You decide matters all at once, your
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people,' be said, again between statement and question.
'How do you mean?' The Commander looked wary.
'Well, you say that none of you shall cut the trees of Athshe: and all of you stop. And yet you live in many places. Now if a headwoman in Karach gave an order, it would not be obeyed by the people of the next village, and surely not by all the people in the world at once. . . .'
'No, because you haven't one government over all. But we do—now—and I assure you its orders are obeyed. By all of us at once. But, as a matter of fact, it seems to me from the story we've been told by the colonists here, that when you gave an order, Selver, it was obeyed by everybody on every island here at once. How did you manage that?'*
'At that time I was a god,' Selver said, expressionless.
After the Commander had left him, the long white one came sauntering over and asked if he might sit down in the shade of the tree. He had tact, this one, and was extremely clever. Selver was uneasy with him. Like Lyubov, this one would be gentle; he would understand, and yet would himself be utterly beyond understanding. For the kindest of them was as far out of touch, as unreachable, as the crudest. That was why the presence of Lyubov in his mind remained painful to him, while the dreams in which he saw and
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touched his dead wife Thele were precious and full of peace.
'When I was here before,' Lepennon said, 'I met mis man, Raj Lyubov. I had very little chance to speak with him, but I remember what he said; and I've had time to read some of his studies of your people, since. His work, as you say. It's largely because of mat work of his that Athshe is now free of the Terran Colony. This freedom had become the direction of Lyubov's life, I think. You, being his friend, will see mat his death did not stop him from arriving at his goal, from finishing his journey.'
Selver sat still. Uneasiness turned to fear in his mind. This one spoke like a Great Dreamer.
He made no response at all. * 'Will you tell me one thing, Selver. If the question doesn't offend you. There
