Anvil Of Stars Part 39

"What?"

"Go to the left more," Ariel said. They narrowly missed a line of Brothers, who arched like startled serpents, adding more turpentine scent.

Martin strained his head back, teeth bared, eyes almost shut, arm muscles corded with effort. The Brother weighed at least eighty kilos. Ariel was strong, but her grip was failing, and Makes Clear slipped lower on her side. Just as they finished the trip across the chamber, they all fell and slid into the wall.

Makes Clear rustled and rose upright, then swiftly bent down, unlimbering two pairs of cords along the sides of his upper body. The cords' claws grabbed Martin's and Ariel's arms and legs, and Makes Clear hoisted them from the ground with a loud buzz of effort, tossed them, and caught them around their mid-sections.

"s.h.i.+t!" Ariel cried out. Makes Clear reversed course and undulated along the weaving track they had followed with comic exactness, again forcing his fellows to arch. Martin felt the claws pinching deep into skin and muscle and grimaced with pain.

The return trip was much faster. The traction of multiple cord claws along a Brother's underside was truly wonderful, like a living tank tread, or a supercharged caterpillar. Makes Clear lowered himself and they scrambled to their feet beside Twice Grown.

"They we did well?" Twice Grown asked, his head rearing to chest-level on Martin, smelling like stale fruit.

"Well enough," Martin said, recovering his breath and feeling his ribs.

"Better next when," Twice Grown said, weaving toward Ariel and tapping her arm with an extended cord.

"That's affection," Martin said, looking to see her reaction.

"I know," Ariel said, glaring.

Cham announced the next team, and the exercise worked its way to a rather dull conclusion. By the end, they knew much more about each other, and even the most reluctant-Rex among them-had been forced to come in contact, and cooperate with, the Brothers.

Martin sat with his back against the wall. Ariel approached him, examining his face cautiously. "May I?" she asked.

He gestured for her to sit beside him.

"Hans didn't pick Rex," she said quietly.

In the middle of the schoolroom, several men and women showed the Brothers where they had been bruised, and suggested more gentle methods of handling. The Brothers, in broken English and with smells of onion and fresh bread, lodged more courteous, but no less pointed complaints.

"My luck," Martin said. "Getting ready to jump all over me again?"

"You're a p.r.i.c.k, a real p.r.i.c.k," Ariel said. A childlike tone of pique took some of the sting out of her words. "You don't deserve my anger." She squatted, lay her back against the wall, straightened her legs one at a time, and slumped beside him.

Rosa had stayed apart from the exercises; Hans had privately instructed Cham not to include her. She seemed dreamy, unfocused; Martin saw her leave the room. "How's Rosa?" he asked.

"Like a volcano," Ariel answered. "Hans isn't helping her any. He may think he is, but she knows what he's doing."

"What do you think he's doing?"

"Typical masculine s.h.i.+t. 'What she needs is a good slicking.'"

"What do you suggest we should do?"

"About Rosa?" She lifted her shoulders, inhaled. "She has a mission. She doesn't pay attention to me now-I'm not in her circle, if you haven't noticed."

"I noticed."

"She doesn't pay attention to anybody, really, except Hans-she's like a tape-recorder with Hans."

"You said she knows what he's up to."

"She's using him as much as he's using her. He's given her official status, Martin. She's strengthening her position. If Hans thinks he's smarter than Rosa...But you're co-opted now, aren't you? You can't talk about Hans or what he's thinking."

"I didn't ask to be second."

"Right," Ariel said, nodding emphatically. "Do you disapprove of Hans?"

Martin didn't answer.

"Right," she said again, and stood. "Everything's working out with the Brothers. But there are some of us besides Rosa who are on the edge, and being with the Brothers isn't helping. You know the ones I mean. They're traveling without any compa.s.s, Martin."

"Thank you for believing I have some intelligence."

"You're welcome." She rubbed her hands on her pants and looked at him with an expression between concern and irritation. "I know you won't swallow the bait," she said. "Spit it back. Rosa isn't the most dangerous person on this s.h.i.+p."

Martin pretended to ignore her.

Rex lost it first.

Martin was laddering between the first and second homeb.a.l.l.s when he heard shouts echoing from below. He clambered down to the neck join and saw a radiance of cords streaming from a pile that had just seconds before been a braid.

Rex stood to one side with a metal baseball bat, face pale and moist. He stooped and swung the bat lightly from one hand. With the other hand he fanned a sharp odor of turpentine and burned sugar.

He turned and lifted his eyes to Martin's face. "Help me," he said, voice flat. "This slicker attacked me."

The braid had completely dissolved. The cords tried to climb the walls and fell back with sad thumps. Three cords lay writhing in the middle of the join, smearing brown fluid on the floor-the first time Martin had seen cords bleeding.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?" he asked.

"I just told you," Rex said, pointing the bat at Martin. "It grabbed me. I had to fight it off. "

"Who was it?" Joe Flatworm asked, dropping from a ladder field behind Martin. "Which Brother?"

"I don't know and I don't give a d.a.m.n," Rex said, lowering the bat and standing straight. "It was a big one."

Two of the three injured cords had stopped moving. Two more Brothers wriggled through cylindrical fields from the level below. They immediately set about bagging the uninjured cords.

Ten more humans and three more Brothers gathered in the dome. Paola Birdsong stooped beside the still cords. Twice Grown slid forward and gently picked up one of the two, not bothering to bag it.

"Is it dead?" she asked.

"It is dead," Twice Grown said.

"Who did it belong to?"

"A cord of Sand Piler," Twice Grown said.

"What is this, a G.o.dd.a.m.n funeral?" Rex shouted.

Martin approached Rex carefully, holding out a hand and wriggling his fingers. "Give me that," he said.

Rex dropped the bat and stepped away. "Self-defense," he said. Martin picked up the bat and handed it to Joe.

"He was part of your training team," Martin said. "Are you sure he attacked you?"

"It put its claws on me and it pinched like it was going to break my arm," Rex said, backing away from Martin, who kept edging closer.

"Was he trying to do more exercises with you?" Martin asked, working to contain his anger.

"How the f.u.c.k should I know?" Rex said. "Stop pressing me, Martin, or I'll-"

"You going to knock his brains out, you slicking baboon?" Hans pushed through the humans and sidled around Martin, then grabbed Rex's sleeves and shook him once, twice. "You-are-a-piece-of-s.h.i.+T!" Hans shouted, then dropped Rex and turned back to the middle of the room. "Twice Grown, is Stonemaker coming here?"

Twice Grown consulted his wand. "I we have requested such," he said.

"I hope this one's not badly injured."

"Two cords still, one hurt," Twice Grown said. "Will not be complete Sand Piler."

"We're very sorry," Hans said. "Martin, Joe, take Rex to his quarters. Joe, watch and make sure he doesn't leave."

"What?" Rex cried indignantly. "I said it was self-defense, d.a.m.n it!"

"Do it," Hans repeated coldly.

Rex did not fight them. Rosa watched, hanging from a field in the neck as they pa.s.sed. "What happened?" she asked.

"f.u.c.k you," Rex said. Joe grabbed Rex's shoulder with his free hand.

"You're swimming in sewage, buddy," he said firmly. "Don't stop paddling or you'll sink."

Rex wiped his eyes and forehead and shook Joe's hand off. He walked between them in silence.

The inquest was held a day later, Stonemaker, Eye on Sky, Hans, Cham, Joe, and Martin presiding. Rex stood between Cham and Joe, considerably subdued. Hans had interviewed him for an hour after the incident.

Stonemaker made the first remarks. "I we have asked the individual Sand Piler for a telling, but memory is degraded. Sand Piler does not see what happened. We we must rely on your individual for testimony."

Hans sat on a rise in the schoolroom floor and folded his arms. "Tell us, Rex."

Rex looked at the humans in the room, all but Hans. "It's a misunderstanding," he said.

"Tell us," Hans said, tone neutral, eyes downcast.

"We met in the neck join. I was going my way-"

"Carrying a bat?" Hans asked.

"The moms made it for our games. We were going to play baseball in the gym."

"We?" Hans asked.

"We were going to choose teams," Rex said.

"Who?"

"Four or five of us. We wanted to see how baseball was played. Do some normal, Earth-type games."

"You met Sand Piler in the join," Hans prompted.

"Yes. I didn't recognize it-"

"'Him,'" Martin said softly. "That's the accepted p.r.o.noun. 'Him.'"

Rex swallowed hard but was not about to argue. Martin saw the apprehension in him, and something else-a blunt kind of defiance, no admission to himself that he had done anything wrong.

"I didn't recognize him him," Rex said. "I didn't know who it...he was. He was big, though. We pa.s.sed and he reached out to grab me. It hurt. He hurt me."

"Did he give you any warning?"

"He said something, but I couldn't understand. I can't understand any of them."

"Do you understand I we?" Stonemaker asked.

"Mostly, but you speak the best English," Rex said. "It was an accident. He frightened me."

"Did you figure out later what he might have been trying to say?" Martin asked.

"Gentlemen, we have procedures here," Hans interrupted with a heavy sigh. "I'll ask my questions, and Stonemaker will ask his questions."

Martin agreed to that.

"It's a good question, though," Hans said. "What was he trying to say?"

"I don't know," Rex said.

"Something about being on your team in the exercises, the grab races?"

"Maybe," Rex said. "I just didn't hear him clearly."

"Then what?"

"He got me with those claws...Grabbed me around the chest. It hurt like h.e.l.l. I thought he was attacking me."

"And?" Hans pursued.

"I defended myself."