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