Kosgro was surprised. “No. Why should I?”
“He would have killed you.” The section commander produced a tangler and showed some skill in spinning a restraining cord about Cury’s wrists, binding them firmly together.
“More than Tamlin has changed.” He did not look at us while he spoke. “We are few. We have waited too long. For some of us that is not too difficult. We made our adjustments long ago. Others, by their temperament, cannot live with what is left. Cury is ridden by the belief that if we can only make off-world contact, Dylan will come to life again. He cannot accept the fact that no one off-world has tried to contact us, which either means that we no longer have anything to offer or there is no one left who remembers we are here.”
Weygil sat back on his heels. “He is secure now. I’ll take him back to the barracks, give him a chance to cool down. By the way – is your ship operable?”
“I can see.” Kosgro swung up the ladder and vanished through the hatch. It seemed a very long wait for us. Oomark drew close on one side, Bartare on the other.
“Kilda,” the boy asked, “where are we going to live? There’s no furniture, nothing in our house any more.”
Weygil smiled at him. “Don’t you worry about that, son. We have a home for all of you. I’ve a young grandson about your age, and there’s a couple more like him in the barracks, some girls, too,” he added, for Bartare’s benefit. “Our families chose to stay, and we’re not badly off. There’re fifty of us, and we have the resources of a whole city, plus about a hundred bursting warehouses, to see us clothed, fed, and taken care of.”
“Colonies have spread planet-wide,” I observed, “from less seed.”
“Very true. Most of us realize that. We go through the motions of standing watch at the port. Some of us, like Cury, have to believe that the situation is only temporary. The rest – ” He shrugged. “We don’t cherish false hopes. We have a lot, a great deal more than many ship-crash survivors who have started out on a new world. And we’re growing – ten of our company are children, with more on the way. We’ll make out.”
With Sector Commander Weygil in charge, they probably would. But what about us – where would we fit in? Were we again doomed to be Between, neither of one world or the other?
Kosgro appeared on the ladder. As he reached the pavement the ladder was drawn up swiftly and the hatch clanged shut.
“It’s operable – but it needs a new fuel core. That’s exhausted.”
“Good enough. Now – let’s get back to the barracks. Brolster will have been on the com to the rest, and they will be impatient to meet you.”
Cury was still unconscious as they packed his limp body into the ground car. Once more we drove through those silent streets, heading back to the port and the barracks buildings flanking it on one side.
A mixed group was waiting to greet us with excitement. Bartare, Oomark, and I were swept off by the women. I had forgotten the sheer delight of soaking in a fresher, losing the grime left by long days of tramping, standing in spray that healed my scratches and bruises. To look in a mirror again was strange; to put on whole garments, lightly scented, which Weygil’s daughter offered me – that was wonderful. To know that I was no longer weighted by the fears and responsibilities that had burdened me – that was the best of all!
Our story was a wonder almost as great for our listeners (for we told it now in detail) as their history was for us. With Weygil urging, though it would never now reach Lazk Volk’s library (How had Chalox fared-was Volk’s collection still intact, to be drawn upon by whatever civilization still existed?), I began to record our story in full. Then I got Oomark to add his part, but when I approached Bar-tare, she did not even answer at first.
Though she did not keep to herself as she always had when with her contemporaries before, yet neither was she completely akin to Alys or Wensie in the barracks. She gazed a little beyond me when I asked for the second time, “Will you do it, Bartare? You know so much more than we of the world of the Folk – ”
“Why should I?” she asked flatly.
“Because it is knowledge, and all knowledge should be preserved for the future.” I gave Lazk Volk’s creed in which I had been trained as a girl.
“They think it is a story.” She made a gesture to include the inhabitants of the barracks. “A lot of them want to believe it is. In a little while that is what it will be, just a strange story. Who is going to care about your record anyway? Your Lazk Volk will never hear it. He must have been dead for a long time now.”
“Very well. I can only ask you, Bartare. I can’t make you.”
Then the mask she wore shattered. “She doesn’t come any more,” Bartare said in a whisper. “She will never come again!”
“Melusa?” But I did not need confirmation. I knew of whom she spoke.
“She – she said I couldn’t reach her, back there on the mound – and I couldn’t. So I never was her real daughter – never at all!” The words came faster and faster. “I always had her before – now I haven’t anyone!”
“You have me, truly. Bartare, you have me!” I offered what I could.
She shook her head. “You want to do that, Kilda – give me something because you are sorry for me, because you feel you should take care of me. But you can’t. You are you, and I am I, and we are too different.”
She was putting into words what I had always felt.
“No. She won’t ever be back again, Kilda. And already I’ve forgotten so much. I lie awake at night and try to remember the call words and the things I used to do to make this or that happen. But they are slipping out of my head. And pretty soon this will just be a story to me, too. When that time comes, I hope I won’t care any more. That’s the worst, Kilda, in a way – to hope that I won’t care!”
She took my hand. “Don’t ask me to record, Kilda, because if I do, then maybe someday I’ll want to read it. And I’ll remember a little bit, but never enough, never enough!”
I understood. Bartare had made her choice, since in the gray world another had been made for her. If she must put aside all that they had meant to her, she must do it now. So I never asked her again, though there was much that might have gone into record had she agreed. I thought what pleasure it would have given Lazk Volk. But, as she had baldly said, he was not able to have it now.
From that time Bartare was more and more like the other children, perhaps trying consciously to be so at first. But soon there was no apparent strain in what she did. Her one-time unseen companion was long gone.
No, it was not Oomark or Bartare who could not join fully in the life of Dylan’s tiny colony. I was the one. I was more than fifty years out of step, and I could not catch up, though I believed honestly that I tried as hard as Bartare to fit myself into the society of which I was now a member. I had thought that when I returned from the gray world, everything would be all right. Now I found that false.
Weygil kept me busy as a recorder for the official tape banks to be sealed at the port. If the colony did not survive (and there was always the shadow over us that a sudden epidemic, a raid, some natural catastrophe might wipe us out), then our records would be protected for generations to come. But this activity could not occupy all my hours.
As a lone woman I was courted and pressed hard for marriage by five of the unattached men of the company. And I knew that sooner or later I would be forced into the mold of the others of my sex on Dylan – husband, children, a narrowing of the future. And I could not yet accept that. I strove to hold off the need for a final decision for a while yet.
In the meantime, Jorth worked on his ship. Fuel cores existed in plenty in the warehouses but were meant to be fitted into warships. It meant a long and delicate task to shave one down for the refitting in the much smaller scout. He was given every aid the colony could offer, for they saw in him their last chance to establish contact off-world. As Weygil had told us, a goodly portion of the colony did accept matters as they were, had given up hope of stellar contact, and were using their energy to make the best of that around them. But there were others not so resigned.