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“Some of you–live in there. I’ve heard so. Could I talk with one?”
Jin’s skin prickled up. He looked toward the safe side of the river, toward familiar things. “Tell you something, old born‑man. You don’t talk to them. You don’t talk about them.”
“Bad people?”
Jin shrugged, not wanting to discuss it. “Want a caliban? I can whistle one.”
“They’re dangerous, aren’t they?”
“So’s everyone. Want one?” He did not wait, but gave out a low warble, knowing what it would do.
And very quickly, because he knew a guard had been watching all this tramping about near the mound, a caliban put its head up out of the brushy entrance and a good deal more of the caliban followed.
He heard a tiny sound by him, a whirring kind of thing. He shot out a hand at the machinery the man carried. “Don’t do that. Don’t make sounds.”
It stopped at once. “They pick that up.”
“You just don’t make sounds.”
“It’s big”
Children said that, when they first saw the old browns. Jin pursed his lips again, amused. “Seen enough, old born‑man. Beyond here’s his. And no arguing that.”
“But the ones–the humans–that go inside–Is it wrong to talk about that? Do you trade with them?”
He shook his head ever so slightly. “They live, that’s all. Eat fish.” Above them on the ridge the caliban raised its crest, flicked out a tongue. That was enough. “Time to move, born‑man.”
“That’s a threat.”
“No. That’s wanting.” He heard something, knew with his ears what it was coming up in the brush, grabbed the born‑man’s sleeve to take him away.
But the Weird crouched there, all long‑haired and smeared with mud, head and shoulders above the brush.
And the born‑man refused to move.
“Come on,” Jin said urgently. “Come on.” Out of the tail of his eye, in the river, a ripple was making its way toward them. The man made his machinery work once more, briefly. “There’s another one. There’s too many, born‑man. Let’s move.”
He was relieved when the man lurched to his feet and came with him. Very quietly they hurried out of the place, but the old man turned and looked back when the splash a
“Would they attack?” the born‑man asked.
“Sometimes they do and sometimes not.”
“The man back there–”
“They’re trouble, is all. Sometimes they’re trouble.”
The old man panted a little, making better speed with all his load.
“What do you want with calibans?” Jin asked.
“Curious,” the old man said. He made good time, the two of them going along at the same pace. “That’s following us.”
Jin tracked the old man’s glance at the river, saw the ripples. “That’s so.”
“I can hurry,” the old man offered.
“Not wise. Just walk.”
He kept an eye to it–and knowing calibans, to the woods as well. He imagined small sounds…or perhaps did not imagine them. But they ceased when they had come close to the curve of the river where the rest of the born‑men waited.
They were nervous. They got up from sitting on their baggage and had their guns in their hands. Out in the river the ripples stopped, beyond the reeds, in the deep part.
“They’re there,” the old man said to the one in charge of the others. “Got some data. They’re stirred up some. Let’s be walking back.”
“Got a shirt owed me,” Jin reminded them, hands on hips, standing easy. But he reckoned not to be cheated.
“Hobbs.” The old man turned to the younger, and there was some ado while one of the men took off his shirt and passed it over. The old man gave it to Jin, who looked it over and found it sound enough. “Jin, I might like to talk with you. Might like you to come to the town and talk.”
“Ah.” Jin tucked his shirt under his arm and backed off. “You don’t put any mark on me, no, you don’t, born‑man.”
“Get you a special kind of paper so you can come and go through the gates. No number on you. I promise. You know a lot, Jin. You’d find it worth your time. Not just one shirt. Real pay, town scale.”
He stopped backing, thinking on that.
And just then a splash and a brown came up through the reeds, water sliding off its pebbly hide. It came up all the way on its legs.
Someone shot. It lurched and hissed and came–“No!” Jin yelled at them, ru
“It was a brown,”Jin said. The old man looked up at him, looking as if he of all of them halfway understood. “Go away now,” Jin said. “Go away fast.”
“I want to talk with you.”
“I’ll come to your gate, old born‑man. When I want. Go away.”
“Look,” the younger man said, “if we–”
“Let’s go,” the old man said, and there was authority in his voice. The folk with guns gathered up all that was theirs and went away down the shore. The bent place stayed in the reeds, and Jin watched until they had gone out of sight around the bend, until the bank was whole again. A sweat gathered on his body. He stared at the gray light on the Styx, trying to see ripples, hoping for them.
But brush whispered. He stood up slowly, on his rock, faced in the direction of the sound.
Two of the Weirds stood there, with the rags of garments that Weirds affected, their deathly pale skins streaked with mud about hands and knees. Their backs were to the upriver. Their shadowed eyes rested on him, and he grew very cold, reckoning he was about to die. There was nowhere to run but the born‑men’s wire. The hiller village could never hide him; and he would die of other reasons if he was shut away behind the wire and numbered.
One Weird lifted his head only slightly, a gesture he took for a summons. He might cause them trouble. He was minded to. But somewhere, not so far away and not in sight either, would be another of them, or two or three. They would move if he denied them. So he leapt down from his rock and came closer to the Weirds as they seemed to want.
They parted, opening a way for him to go, and a quiet panic settled into him, because he understood then that they intended to bring him back with them upriver. Desperately he looked leftward, toward the Styx, toward the gray sunlight mirrored among the reeds, hoping against all expectation that the brown the born‑men had shot would surface.
No. It was gone–dead, hurt, no one might know. A gentle hand took his elbow, ever so gently tugging at him, directing him where he had to go if he had any hope to live.
He went, retracing the track he and the old man had followed, and now the Weirds held him by either arm. The one on his left deftly reached and relieved him of his belt knife.
He could not understand–how they moved him, or why he did not break and run; only the death about him was instant and what was ahead was indefinite, holding some small chance. There was no reckoning with the Weirds or with the browns. There was no understanding. They might bring him back to the mounds and then as capriciously let him go.
The turns of the Styx unwound themselves until the sky‑shining sheet was dimmed in the shade of trees, until they reached the towering ridges and the tracks he and the old man had made when they had stopped.
Perhaps they would hold him here and the old brown would come out and eye him as calibans would, and lose interest as calibans would, and they would let him go.
No. They urged him up the slope of the mound, toward the dark entryway in the side of it, and he refused, bolted suddenly out of their hands and down among the brush at the right, breaking twigs and thorns on his leather clothing, shielding his face with his arms.