[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The trucks started up again, and they walked, at the same slow pace.Hisa began to join the column, walking along in the weeds beside the road.Some humans shied from them.Others tolerated the shy touch of an offered hand, even Q folk, following the example of old staffers, who were less perturbed by it."They're all right," he heard one of his workers call out through the ranks."Let them go where they like.""Bounder," he said, "we want a safe place.find all the humans from all the camps, take them to many safe places.""You want safe, want help; come, come."The strong hand stayed within his, small, as if they were father and child; but for all of youth and size it was the other way about.that humans went as the children now, down a known human road to a known human place, but they were not coming back, might never— he acknowledged it— might never come back."Come we place," Bounder said."You make we safe; we dream bad mans away and they go; and you come now, we go dream.No hisa dream, no human dream; together-dream.Come dream place."He did not understand the babble.There were places beyond which humans had never gone among hisa.Dreamplaces.it was already a dream, this mingled flight of humans and hisa, in the dark, in the overturning of all that had been Downbelow.They had saved the Downers; and in the long years of Union rule, when humans came who cared nothing for the hisa.there would be humans among the hisa who could warn them and protect them.There was that much left to do."They'll come someday," he said to Miliko, "and want to cut down the trees and build their factories and dam the river and all the rest of it.That's the way of it, isn't it? If we let them get away with it." He swung Bounder's hand, looked down at the small intense face on the other side.372Downbelow Station"We go warn other camps, want to bring all humans into the trees with us, go for a long, long walk.Need good water, good food.""Hisa find," Bounder grinned, the suspicion of a great joke shared by hisa and humans."Not hide good you food."They could not hold an idea for long.so some insisted.Perhaps the game would pall when humans had no more gifts to give.Perhaps they would lose their awe of humans and drift their own ways.Perhaps not.The hisa were not the same as they had been when humans came.Neither were humans, on Downbelow.373Downbelow Station4Merchanter Hammer: deep space; 1900 hrs.Vittorio poured a drink, his second since space around them had suddenly become filled with a battle-worn fleet.Things had not gone as they should.A silence had fallen over Hammer, the bitter silence of a crew who felt an enemy among them, a witness to their national humiliation.He met no eyes, offered no opinions.had only the desire to anesthetize himself with all due speed, so that he could not be blamed for any matters of policy.He did not want to give advice or opinions.He was plainly a hostage; his father had set things up that way.And it occurred to him inevitably that his father might have double-crossed them all, that he might now be worse than a useless hostage.that he might be one whose card was due to be played.My father hates me, he had tried to tell them; but they had shrugged it off as irrelevant.They did not make the decisions.The man Jessad had done that.And where was Jessad now?There was supposed to be some visitor on his way to the ship, some person of importance.Jessad himself, to report failure, and to dispose of a useless bit of human baggage?He had time to finish the second drink before the activity of the crew and eventual nudge at the hull reported a contact.There was a great deal of machinery slamming and the noise of the lift going into function, a crash as the cage synched with the rotation cylinder.Someone was coming up.He sat still with the glass before him and wished that he were a degree drunker than he was.The upward curve of the deck curtained the lift exit, beyond the bridge.He could not see what happened, only noted the absence of some of Hammer's crew from their posts.He looked up in sudden dismay as he heard them coming round the other way, from his back, into the main room through crew quarters.374Downbelow StationBlass of Hammer.Two crew.A number of military strangers and some not in uniform, behind them.Vittorio gathered himself shakily to his feet and stared at them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

listy-do-eda.opx.pl