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Downbelow: 10/11/52; local day
The trucks moved at a lumbering pace through the clear area, forlorn, collapsed domes, the empty pens, and above all the silence of the compressors, telling a tale of abandonment. Base one. First of the camps after main base. Lock doors banged loosely, unfastened, in a slight wind. The weary column straggled now, all looking at the desolation, and Emilio looked on it with a pang in his own heart, this thing that he had helped to build. No sign of anyone staying here. He wondered how far down the road they were, and how they fared. “Hisa watch here too?” he asked of Bluetooth, who, almost alone of hisa, still remained with the column, beside him and Miliko. “We eyes see,” Bluetooth answered, which told him less than he wanted.
“Mr. Konstantin.” A man came up from the back, walked along with him, one of the Q workers. “Mr. Konstantin, we have to rest.”
“Past the camp,” he promised. “We don’t stay in the open longer than we can help, all right? Past the camp.”
The man stood still and let the column pass and his own group overtake him. Emilio gave Miliko’s shoulder a weary pat, increased his own pace to overtake the two crawlers ahead of the column; he passed one in the clearing, overtook the other as they reached the farther road, got the driver’s attention and signed him half a kilometer halt. He stopped then and let the column move until he was even with Miliko. He reckoned that some of the older workers and the children might be at the end of their strength. Even walking with the breathers was about the limit of exertion they could take over this number of hours. They kept stopping for rest and the requests grew more and more frequent. They began to straggle as it was, some of them stringing further and further behind. He drew Miliko aside, and watched the line pass. “Rest ahead,” he told each group as they passed. “Keep on till you get there.” In time the back of the column came in sight, a draggled string of walkers. The older ones, patient and doggedly determined, and a couple of staffers who walked last of all. “Anyone left?” he asked, and they shook their heads.
And suddenly a staffer was coming down the winding road from the other end of the column, jogging, staggering into other walkers, as the line erupted with questions. Emilio broke into a run with Miliko in his wake, intercepting the man.
“Com got through,” the runner gasped, and Emilio kept running, the slanted margins of the road, up the tree-curtained windings until he saw the trucks and people massed about them. He circled through the trees and worked his way through the crowd, which broke to let him, toward the lead truck, where Jim Ernst sat with the com and the generator. He scrambled up onto the bed, among the baggage and the bales and the older folk who had not walked, worked his way through to the place where Ernst sat, stood still as Ernst turned to him with one hand pressing the plug to his ear and a look in his eyes that promised nothing but pain.
“Dead,” Ernst said. “Your father… riot on the station.”
“My mother and brother?”
“No word. No word on any other casualties. Military’s sending. Mazian’s Fleet.
Wants contact with us. Do I answer?”
Shaken, he drew in a breath, aware of silence in the nearest crowd, of people staring up at him, of a handful of old Q residents on the truck itself looking at him with eyes as solemn as the hisa images.
Someone else scrambled up onto the truckbed and waded through, flung an arm about him. Miliko. He was grateful… shivered slightly with exhaustion and delayed shock. He had anticipated it. It was only confirmation. “No,” he said. “Don’t answer.” A murmur started in the crowd; he turned on it. “No word on any other casualties,” he shouted, drowning that in a hurry. “Ernst, tell them what you picked up.”
Ernst stood up, told them. He hugged Miliko against him. Miliko’s parents and sister were up there, cousins, uncles and aunts. The Dees might survive or, equally, they might die unnoted by the dispatches: there was more hope for the Dees. They were not targets like the Konstantins.
The Fleet had seized control, imposed martial law, Q—Ernst hesitated and doggedly continued, before all the uplifted faces below—Q had rioted and gotten across the line, with widespread destruction and loss of life, stationers and Q both.
One of the old Q residents was crying. Perhaps, Emilio acknowledged painfully, perhaps they too had people for whom to worry.
He looked down on row after row of solemn faces, his own staff, workers, Q, a scattering of hisa. No one moved now. No one said anything. There was only the wind in the leaves overhead and the rush of the river beyond the trees. “So they’re going to be here,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “they’re going to be back here wanting us to grow crops for them and work the mills and the wells; and Company and Union are going to fight back and forth, but it’s not Pell anymore, not in their hands, when what we grow can be taken to fill their holds. When our own Fleet comes down here and works us under guns… what when Union comes after them? What when they want more work, and more, and there’s no more say any of us has in what happens to Downbelow? Go back if you like; work for Porey until Union gets here. But I’m going on.” “Where, sir?” That was the boy—he had forgotten the name—the one Hale had bullied the day of the mutiny. His mother was by him, in the circle of his arm. It was not defiance, but a plain question.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Wherever the hisa can show us that’s safe, if there is any such place. To live there. To dig in and live. Grow our crops for ourselves.”
A murmur ran among them. Fear… was always at the back of things for those who did not know Downbelow, fear of the land, of places where man was a minority. Men who were unconcerned by hisa on-station grew afraid of them in the open land, where men were dependent and hisa were not. A lost breather, a failure… they died of such things on Downbelow. The cemetery back at main base had grown as the camp did.
“No hisa,” he said again, “ever harmed a human. And that despite things we’ve done, despite that we’re the aliens here.” He climbed down from the truck, hit the yielding ruts of the road, lifted his hands for Miliko, knowing she at least was with him. She jumped down, and questioned nothing. “We can set you up in the camp back there,” he said. “Do that much for you at least, those of you that want to take your chances with Porey. Get the compressors running for you.” “Mr. Konstantin.”
He looked up. It was one of the oldest women, from the truckbed. “Mr. Konstantin, I’m too old to work like that back there. I don’t want to stay behind.”
“Lot of us going on,” a male voice said.
“Anyone going back?” one of the Q foremen asked. “We need to send one of the trucks back with anyone?”
There was silence. Shaking of heads. Emilio stared at the lot of them, simply tired. “Bounder,” he said, looking to one of the hisa who waited by the forest edge. “Where is Bounder? I need him.”
Bounder came, out from among the trees, on the slope of the hill. “You come,” Bounder shouted down, beckoning up toward the hill and the trees. “All come now.”
“Bounder, we’re tired. And we need the things on the trucks. If we go that way we can’t take the trucks and some of us aren’t able to walk. Some are sick, Bounder.”
“We carry sick, many, many hisa. We steal good things on trucks, teach we good, Konstantin-man. We steal for you. You come.”
He looked back at the others, at dismayed and doubtful faces. Hisa surrounded them. More and more came out of the woods, even some with young, which humans rarely saw. It was trust, that such came out among them. All of the company sensed it, perhaps, for there was no protest. They helped the old and the unwell down from the trucks. Strong young hisa made slings of their hands for them; others heaved down the supplies and the equipment “And what when they get scan after us?” Miliko murmured unhappily. “We’ve got to get deep cover, fast.”
“Takes sensitive scan to tell human from hisa. Maybe they won’t find it profitable to go after us… yet.”
Bounder reached him, took his hand, wrinkled his nose at him in a hisa wink.
“You come with.”
They were not good for a long walk, however much the news had put the strength of fright into them. A little while climbing uphill and down through woods and bracken and they were all panting and some being carried who had started out walking. A little more and the hisa themselves began to slow the pace. And at length, when the number of humans they were having to carry grew more than they could manage, they called halt and themselves stretched out to sleep in the bracken.
“Find cover,” Emilio urged Bounder. “Ships will see us, not good, Bounder.”
“Sleep now,” Bounder said, curling up, and nothing would stir him or the others. Emilio sat staring at him helplessly, looked out over all the hillside while humans and hisa lay down where they had dropped their bundles, curled up in their blankets some of them, others of them too weary to spread them. He used his own for a pillow, lay down on Miliko’s, gathered her against him there under the sun that slanted down through the leaves. Bounder snuggled up to them and put an arm about him. He let himself go, slept, a weary, healthy sleep. And he waked with Bounder shaking him and Miliko squatting with her arms across her knees, with a light fog moistening the leaves, late, late day, and cloud, and threatening rainfall. “Emilio. I think you should wake up. I think it’s some very important hisa.”
He rolled onto the other arm, gathered himself to his knees, squinting in the cold mist as other humans were waking all about him. They were Old Ones who had come from among the trees, hisa with white abundantly salting their fur, three of them. He rose and bowed to them, which seemed right, in their land and in their woods.
Bounder bowed and bobbed and seemed more sober than he was wont. “No talk human talk, they,” Bounder said. “They say come with.”
“We’re coming,” he said. “Miliko, rouse them out.” She went, with quiet words spoke to the few still sleeping, and the word ran through all the number down the hill, weary, damp humans gathering up their baggage and their persons. There were even more hisa arriving. The woods seemed alive with them, every trunk in the woods likely to conceal a flitting brown body.
The Old Ones melted off through the woods. Bounder delayed until they were ready, and then started off, and Emilio took Miliko’s blanket roll on his own shoulder and followed after.
At any hint of a human limping as they went, brushing through damp leaves and dripping branches, there were hisa to help, hisa to take them by the hand and chatter sympathetically, even those who could not understand human speech; after them came others, hisa thieves, bearing the inflatable dome and the compressors and the generators and their food and whatever else they could strip from the trucks, whether or not they themselves could possibly understand the use of it, like a brown horde of scavenger insects.
Night came on them, and much of it they walked, resting when they must, stringing through the wood, but hisa guided them so that none might stray, and snuggled close about them when they stopped so that the chill was not so bad. And once there was a thunder in the heavens that had nothing to do with the rain.
“Landing,” the word passed from one to the other. The hisa asked no questions.
Their keen ears might have picked it up long ago.
Porey was back. It would probably be Porey. For a little time they would probe the stripped base and send angry messages up to Mazian. Would have to get scan information, decide what they were going to do about it and get Mazian’s decision on it… all time consumed to their good.
Rest and walk, rest and walk, and whenever they would falter, the gentle Downers were there to touch, to urge, to cajole. It was cold when they stopped, and damp, though the rain never fell; and they were glad of morning, the first appearance of the light sifting through the trees, which the Downers greeted with trills and chattering and renewed enthusiasm.
And suddenly they were running out of trees, and the daylight broke clearer and clearer, on a hillside sloping down to a vast plain. The far distance spread before them as they came over the crest of a small rise, and the hisa were going farther, going from the trees, into that wide valley… that sanctuary, Emilio realized in sudden disturbance, that area the hisa had always asked remain theirs, free of men, a vast open range only theirs, forever. “No,” Emilio protested, looking about for Bounder. He made a gesture of appeal to him, who swung along with a cheerful step nearby. “No. Bounder, we mustn’t go down into the open land. Mustn’t. Can’t, hear? The men-with-guns, they come in ships; their eyes will see.”
“Old Ones say come,” Bounder declared, never breaking stride, as if that settled it beyond argument. Already the descent began, all the hisa rolling like a brown tide from the trees, bearing humans and human baggage with them, followed by other humans and others, toward the beckoning sunlit pallor of the plain. “Bounder!” Emilio stopped, with Miliko beside him. “The men-with-guns will find us here. You understand me, Bounder?”
“I understand. See we all, hisa, humans. We see they too.”
“We can’t go down there. They’ll kill us, do you hear me?”
“They say come.”
The Old Ones. Bounder turned away from him and continued downslope, turned again as he walked and beckoned him and Miliko.
He took a step and another, knowing it was mad, knowing that there was a hisa way of doing things and a human. Hisa had never lifted hands against the invaders of their world, had sat, had watched, and this was what they would do now. Humans had asked hisa for their help and hisa offered them their way. “I’ll talk to them,” he said to Miliko. “I’ll talk to their Old Ones, explain to them. We can’t offend them, but they’ll listen—Bounder, Bounder, wait.” But Bounder walked on, ahead of them. The hisa kept moving, flowing down that vast grassy slope to the plain. At the center of it, where a stream seemed to flow, was something like an upthrust fist of rock and a trampled circle, a shadow, that he realized finally as a circle of living bodies gathered about that object “There must be every hisa on the river down there,” Miliko said. “It’s some sort of meeting place. Some kind of shrine.”
“Mazian won’t respect it; Union isn’t likely to either.” He foresaw massacre, disaster, hisa sitting helpless while attack came. It was the Downers, he thought, the Downers themselves whose gentle ways had made Pell what it was. Time was when humans back on Earth had been terrified at the report of alien life. There had been talk of disbanding colonies even then, for fear of other discoveries… but no terror on Downbelow, never here, where hisa walked empty-handed to meet humans, and infected men with trust. “We’ve got to persuade them to get out of here,” he said.
“I’m with you,” Miliko said.
“Help you?” a hisa asked, touching Miliko’s hand, for she was limping as she leaned on him. They both shook their heads and kept walking together, at the back of the flow now, for most of the others had gone ahead, caught up in the general madness, even the old, borne in the hands of the hisa. They rested in their long descent, while the sun passed zenith, walked and rested and walked more, while the sun slid down the sky and shone beyond the low rounded hills. A cylinder gave out in his mask, ruined by the moisture and the forest molds, ill augury for the others. He gasped against the obstruction, fumbled after another, held his breath while he did the exchange and slipped the mask back on. They walked, slowly now, on the plain. In the distance rose that indistinct fish-shaped mass, an irregular pillar, out of a sea of hisa bodies… and not alone hisa. Humans were there, who rose up from where they sat and walked out to meet them, as they came through. Ito of base two was there, with her staff and workers, and Jones of base one, with his, who offered hands to shake, who looked as bewildered as they were. “They said come here,” Ito said. “They said you would come.”
“Station’s fallen,” he said; and the flow was going on, passing through toward the center, hisa urging at him, at him and Miliko most of all. “We’ve run out of options, Ito. Mazian’s in control… this week. I can’t speak for next.” Ito fell behind, and Jones, staying with their own people; and there were other humans, hundreds upon hundreds gathered there, who stood solemnly, as if numb. He met Deacon of the wells crew; and Macdonald of base three; Hebert and Tausch of four; but the hisa swept him on, and he held Miliko’s hand so they should not be separated in the vast throng. Now there were hisa about them, only hisa. The pillar hove up nearer and nearer, and not a pillar, but a cluster of images, like those hisa had given to the station, squat, globular forms and taller ones, bodies with multiple hisa faces, surprised mouths and wide, graven eyes looking forever skyward.
Hisa had made the like, and it was old. Awe came over him. Miliko slowed at last and simply gazed up, and he did, with hisa all about them, feeling lost and small and alien before this towering, ancient stone.
“You come,” a hisa voice bade him. It was Bounder who took his hand, who led them through to the very foot of the image.
Old Ones indeed sat there, the oldest hisa of all, those faces and shoulders were silvered, who sat surrounded by small sticks thrust into the earth, sticks carved with faces and hung with beads. Emilio hesitated, reluctant to intrude within that circle; but Bounder led them through, into the very presence of the Old Ones.
“Sit,” Bounder urged. Emilio made his bow and Miliko hers, and settled cross-legged before the four elders. Bounder spoke in the chattering hisa tongue, was answered by the frailest of the four.
And carefully then that Old One reached, leaning on one hand, to touch first Miliko and then him, as if blessing them.
“You good come here,” Bounder said, perhaps a translation. “You warm come here.” “Bounder, thank them. Thank them very many thanks. But tell them that there’s danger from the Upabove. That the eyes of Upabove look down on this place and that men-with-guns may come here and do hurt.”
Bounder spoke. Four pairs of aged eyes regarded them with no less tranquility.
One answered.
“Ship come upabove we heads here,” Bounder said. “Come, look, go away.”
“You’re in danger. Please make them understand that.” Bounder translated. The Eldest lifted a hand toward the images which towered above them and answered. “Hisa place. Night come. We sleep, dream they go, dream they go.”
A second of the elders spoke. There was a human name amid it: Bennett; and another: Lukas. “Bennett,” those nearest echoed. “Bennett. Bennett. Bennett.” The murmur passed the limits of the circle, moved like wind across the vast gathering.
“We steal food,” Bounder said with a hisa grin. “We learn steal good. We steal you, make you safe.”
“Guns,” Miliko protested. “Guns, Bounder.”
“You safe.” Bounder paused to catch something one of the Old Ones said. “Make you names: call you He-come-again; call you She-hold-out-hands. To-he-me;
Mihan-tisar. You spirit good. You safe come here. Love you. Bennett-man, he teach we dream human dreams; now you come we teach you hisa dreams. We love you, love you, To-he-me, Mihan-tisar.”
He found nothing to say, only looked up at the vast images that stared round-eyed at the heavens, stared about him at the gathering which seemed to stretch to all the horizons, and for a moment he found himself believing that it was possible, that this overawing place might daunt any enemy who came to it. A chant began from the Old Ones, spread to the nearest, and to the farther and farther ranks. Bodies began to sway, passing into the rhythm of it “Bennett…” it breathed again and again.
“He teach we dream human dreams… call you He-come-again.” Emilio shivered, reached and put his arm about Miliko, in the mind-numbing whisper which was like the brush of a hammer over bronze, the sighing of some vast instrument which filled all the twilit heavens.
The sun declined to the last. The passing of the light brought chill, and a sigh from uncounted throats, breaking off the song. Then the coming of the stars drew pointing gestures aloft, soft cries of joy.
“Name she She-come-first,” Bounder told them, and called for them the stars in turn, as keen hisa eyes spied them and hailed them like returning friends. Walk-together; Come-in-spring; She-always-dance… The chant whispered to life again, minor key, and bodies swayed. Exhaustion told on them. Miliko grew glassy-eyed; he tried to hold her, to stay awake himself, but hisa were nodding too, and Bounder patted them, made them know it was accepted to rest.
He slept, wakened after a time, and food and drink were set beside them. He moved the mask to eat and drink, ate and breathed in alternation. Elsewhere the few awake stirred about among the sleeping multitudes, and for all the dream-bound peace of the hour, attended normal needs. He felt his own, and slipped far away through the vast, vast crowd to the edges, where other humans slept and beyond, where hisa had made neat trenches for sanitation. He stood there a time on the edges of the camp, until others came and he regained his sense of time, staring back at the images and the starry sky and the sleeping throng.
Hisa answer. Being here, sitting here beneath the heavens, saying to the sky and their gods… see us… We have hope. He knew himself mad; and stopped being afraid for himself, even for Miliko. They waited for a dream, all of them; and if men would turn guns on the gentle dreamers of Downbelow, then there was no more hope at all. So the hisa had disarmed them at the beginning… with empty hands. He walked back, toward Miliko, toward Bounder, and the Old Ones, believing in a curious way that they were safe, in ways that had nothing to do with life and death, that this place had been here for ages, and had waited long before men had come, looking to the heavens.
He settled beside Miliko, lay and looked at the stars, and thought of his choices.
And in the morning a ship came down.
There was no panic among the tens of thousands of hisa. There was none among humans, who sat among them. Emilio rose with Miliko’s hand in his and watched the ship settle, landing probe, far across the valley, where it could find clear ground.
“I should go speak to them,” he said through Bounder to the Old Ones.
“No talk,” The Eldest answered through him. “Wait: Dream.” “I wonder,” Miliko observed placidly, “if they really want to take on all Downbelow in their situation up on station.”
Other humans had stood up. Emilio sat down with Miliko, and all across the gathering they began to settle back again, to sit, and to wait. And after a long time there was the distant hail of a loudspeaker. “There are humans here,” the metallic voice thundered across the plain. “We are from the carrier Africa. Will the one in charge please come forward and identify himself.”
“Don’t,” Miliko begged him when he shifted to get up. “They could shoot.” “They could shoot if I don’t go talk to them. Right into this crowd. They’ve got us.”
“Emilio Konstantin there? I have news for him.”
“We know your news,” he muttered, and when Miliko started to get up he held her arms. “Miliko—I’m going to ask something of you.” “No.”
“Stay here. I’m going to go; that’s what they’ll want—the base working again. I’m going to leave those that won’t fare well under Porey; most of us. I need you here, in charge of them.”
“An excuse.”
“No. And yes. To run this. To fight a war if it comes to that. To stay with the hisa and warn them and keep foreigners off this world. Who else could I trust to do that? Who else will the hisa understand as they do you and me? The other staff?” He shook his head, stared into her dark eyes. “There’s a way to fight. As the hisa do. And I’m going back, if that’s what they ask. Do you think I want to leave you? But who else is there to do it? Do it for me.” “I understand you,” she said hoarsely. He stood up. She did, and hugged and kissed him for such a long moment that he found it harder than it had been before to leave. But she let go then. He took his gun from his pocket, gave it to her. He could hear the noise of the loudspeaker again. They were being hailed, message repeated. “Staff!” he shouted out across the gathering. “Shout it across. I want some volunteers.”
The cry went out. They came, wading through from the farthest edge of the gathering, from one base command and the next, and main base. It took time. The troops who had advanced within hail on the other side waited, for surely they could see the movement, and time and force were on their side. He had his staffers turn their backs to that direction and crowd close, reckoning that they might have scopes on them. Hisa in the vicinity looked up, round-eyed and interested.
“They want bodies,” he said softly. “And the sabotage fixed. That’s all they can be here for. Strong backs. Supply list taken care of. Perhaps all that interests them is main base, because they can’t use the others. I don’t think we can ask Q to go back and take more of what we took from Porey before we walked out. It’s a question of time, of holding out, of having men enough so we can stop some move against Downbelow—or maybe just of living. You understand me. It’s my guess they want their ships provisioned and they want station supplied; and while they get that—we save something. We wait for things to sort themselves out on-station, and we save what we can. I want the biggest men from each unit, the strongest constitutions, those who can do most and take most and hold their tempers… field labor, not knowing what else. Maybe impressment. We don’t know. Need about sixty men from each base, about all they can take with them, I’ll reckon.” “You going?”
He nodded. There were reluctant nods in turn from Jones and other staffers. “I’ll go,” Ito said; all the other base officers had volunteered. He shook his head at her. “Not in this,” he said. “Women all stay here under Miliko’s command. All. No argument. Fan out and pass the word. About sixty volunteers from each base. Hurry about it. They won’t wait forever out there.” They dispersed, running.
“Konstantin,” the metallic voice said again. He looked that way, made out the armored figures far across the seated gathering. Reckoned that they did have a scope and saw him plainly. “We’re running out of patience.” He delayed kissing Miliko yet again, heard Bounder nearby translating a steady flow to the Old Ones. He started through the camp in the direction of the troops. Others began to walk through the seated hisa, coming to join with him. And not alone staffers and resident workers. Men from Q came, as many as the residents. He reached the edge of the gathering and found that Bounder was behind him, with a number of the biggest hisa males. “You don’t have to go,” he told them.
“Friend,” Bounder said. The men from Q said nothing, but they showed no inclination to turn back.
“Thanks,” he said.
They were within clear sight of the troops now, at the very edge of the gathering. Africa troops indeed; he could make out the lettering. “Konstantin” the officer said over the loudspeaker. “Who sabotaged the base?” “I ordered it,” he shouted back. “How was I to know we’d have Union down here?
It’s fixable. Got the parts. I take it you want us back.”
“What do you have going on here, Konstantin?”
“Holy place. Sanctuary. You’ll find it marked Restricted on the charts. I’ve got a crew together. We’re ready to go back, repair the machinery. We leave our sick with the hisa. Open up main base only until we know the attack alert is firmly off up there. Those other bases are experimental and agricultural and produce nothing useful to you. This crew is sufficient to handle main base.” “You making conditions again, Konstantin?”
“You get us back to main base and have your supply lists ready; we’ll see you get what you need, quickly and without fuss. That way both our interests are protected. Hisa workers will be cooperating with us. You’ll get everything you want.”
There was silence from the other side. No one moved for a moment.
“You get those missing machine parts, Mr. Konstantin.” He turned, made a move of his hand. One of his own staff, Haynes, went treading back, gathering up four of the men.
“If you’re missing anything, don’t look for patience, Mr. Konstantin.” He did not move. His staff had heard. It was enough. He stood facing the detail—ten of them, with rifles—and beyond them sat the landing probe, bristling with weapons, some aimed this way; with other troops standing by the open hatch. Silence persisted. Perhaps he was supposed now to ask news, to succumb to shock, learning of murder, of the death of his family. He ached to know, and would not ask. He made no move.
“Mr. Konstantin, your father is dead; your brother presumed dead; your mother remains alive in a security-sealed area under protective custody. Captain Mazian sends his regrets.”
Anger heated his face, rage at the tormenting. He had asked for self-control from those who would go with him. He stood rock-still, waiting for the return of Haynes and the others.
“Did you understand me, Mr. Konstantin?”
“My compliments,” he said, “to captain Mazian and to captain Porey.” There was silence then. They waited. Eventually Haynes and the others came back, carrying a great deal of equipment. “Bounder,” he said quietly, looking at the hisa who stood near with his fellows. “Better you walk to the base if you come. Men go on the ship, hear. Men-with-guns are there. Hisa can walk.”
“Go quick,” Bounder agreed.
“Come ahead, Mr. Konstantin.”
He walked forward, quietly, ahead of the others. The troops moved to one side, to guard their progress with lowered rifles. And softly, at first, like a breeze, a murmur, a chant rose from the multitude about the pillar. It swelled until it shook the air. Emilio glanced back, fearful of the reaction of the troops. They stood by, unmoving, rifles in hand. They could not but feel suddenly very few, for all their armor and their weapons. The chant kept up, a hysteria, an element in which they moved. Thousands of hisa bodies swayed to that song, as they had swayed beneath the night sky. He-come-again. He-come-again.
They heard it as they approached the ship, with the hold gaping open and more troops to surround them. It was a sound to shake even the Upabove, when messages passed.
… something the new owners could not enjoy hearing. He was swept along in the power of it, thinking of Miliko, of his family murdered… What he had lost he had lost, and he went empty-handed, as the hisa went, to the invaders.