sound.
I crept out of the terraces and into the village.
I was close to Jesusa and TomAs, close to the building I had been shown from the mountain. I could not go straight to it. There were houses in the way and two more high stone steps that raised the level of the ground. The flattened ridge was not as flat as it had seemed. Stone walls had been built here and there to retain the soil and create the level platforms on which the houses had been built. In that way, the houses as well as the crops were terraced.
There were pathways and stairs to make movement easy, but these were patrolled. I avoided them.
Crouching beneath one of these tiers, I caught Jesusa?s scent. She was just ahead, just above, and there was a faint scent of TomAs as well.
But there were two others?armed males.
I stood up carefully and peered over the wall of the tier. From where I was, all I could see were more walls?walls of buildings. There were no people outside.
I climbed up slowly, looking everywhere. Someone came out of a doorway abruptly and walked away from me down the path. I flattened my body against a wall of large, smooth stones.
Around me, people slept with slow, even breathing. The angry male, still some distance from me, had stopped beating his mate. I did not stand away from the wall until the person from the doorway?a pregnant female?had crossed the path and taken the stairs down to a lower level.
Farther along the pathway I was confined to, I recognized the round building?a half-cylinder of smooth gray rock. Both Jesusa and TomAs were inside, though I did not think they were together. I walked toward it, all my sensory tentacles in prestrike knots and my sensory arms coiled against me. If I could do this without noise, we could get away, and it might be morning before anyone knew we were gone.
The building had heavy wooden doors.
In time, I could smash them, but only with a great deal of noise. Someone would shoot me long before I?d finished.
I uncoiled one sensory arm and probed the door. Filaments of my sensory hand could penetrate it as easily as they could penetrate flesh. A wooden door set in a wooden frame, held shut by a massive wooden crossbar that rested in a cradle of iron. Very simple. The iron cradle consisted of four flattened, upturned prongs, two fastened to the door with several metal screws and two fastened to the doorframe.
Quickly, carefully, I rotted the wood that held the prong screws on the door. Through my sensory hand, I injected a corrosive, and the wood began at once to disintegrate. I could not have destroyed the door this way, but getting rid of the small sections of wood that held the screws was no trouble. In effect, I digested them.
After a time, the heavy crossbar slid to the floor.
The two men just inside shouted in surprise, then cursed and made several quick, noisy movements. They came together to examine the door and ask each other what could have caused it to fall apart that way.
When I hit the door, they were exactly where I wanted them to be. The door knocked them down before they could raise their rifles. I stung first one, then the other, with a lashing motion of sensory arms. Both collapsed unconscious. It could only have been reflex that caused one of them to fire his gun.
The bullet glanced off one rock wall and spent itself against another.
And suddenly, everywhere, there were voices.
Jesusa was so close
. But there was no time.
I stepped out through the doorway, meaning to disappear for a while, try again later.
Outside, there was a forest of long wood-and-metal rifles. People had leaped from sleep onto their pathway, some of them naked, but all of them armed.
I jumped back behind the heavy door and slammed it as people fired into it. I grabbed the crossbar and kicked and jammed it into a prop. It wouldn?t hold long against their guns and their bodies, but it would give me a moment.
What to do? They would kill me before I could speak. They would kill me as soon as they reached me. If I went into the area where Jesusa was confined, they might kill her, too.
I reached for the two guards and forced them conscious. I dragged them to their feet, made them stand on either side of me, made them breathe in as much as they could of me.
They struggled a little at first. Then I looped my sensory arms around them and injected my ooloi substance into them. I had to quiet them before the door gave way.
?Save your lives,? I said softly. ?Don?t let your people shoot you. Make them listen!?
At that moment the door gave way.
People poured into the room, ready to shoot. I held the two guards in front of me, held them with only my strength hands visible. The less alien I seemed now, the more likely I was to live for a few more moments.
?Don?t shoot us!? the guard under my right hand shouted.
?Don?t shoot!? the other echoed. ?It isn?t hurting us.?
?It?s an alien,? someone shouted.
?Oankali!?
?Four-arms!?
?Kill it!?
