Wright came from his room with sleepless eyes. "Till they attack, probably. All night, maybe all tomorrow. To soften us up. Damn them...."
Somehow Paul was walking to the boat, carrying the baby for Dorothy. He climbed in with her, adjusted the straps. Helen waked and was fretful till she found the breast "You bore her alone—without any—"
"Alone!" Dorothy was astonished. "I had you. Doc's a fine medical man, whatever he says. Don't you remember how Mijok held out his arm for me to grab when it got tough? He said, 'I am a tree.'" Now she was holding his look with an indestructible smile until the rest came and Paul had to back out of the cramped cabin to give them room; then had to stand aside while the bright relic of twenty-first-century man spat its green flame and hot gases at the lake and leaped to soaring and slid into moonless darkness above the hills. The drums wept, raved, obscenely whispered.
Paul did not know Sears Oliphant was with him till he heard the voice: "I think, Paul—the drums defeat their purpose. They make me sore instead of scared. I think you won't need to worry about me, Paul."
"I never have." He glanced at the fat man's holstered automatic, remembered the cleanness of the rifle hanging in Sears' room. "My father used to say most men are good watchdogs, who know they're scared but stand guard in spite of it; only a few are rabbits and possums." Paul turned his back on the hills. Nothing was there to see, nothing at all. "I wish you'd known my father. He was a tall man. Nuts about animals—always brought 'em into the talk—illustration, example. Couldn't stand to see even a wasp beating against the glass; you never knew when a deer mouse would climb out of his pocket and run down his pants leg." Paul laughed. The drums fretted in 5/8, passionate, soft, cruel.
Sears watched blue fireflies over a lake so peacefully still that the sapphire reflections were as real as their cause. "A teacher, wasn't he?"
"For a while, till he settled in New Hampshire. They wouldn't let him teach nineteenth and twentieth-century history as he saw it. He saw it in terms of ethical conflict, the man versus the state, self-reliance versus the various dreary socialisms, enlightened altruism versus don't-stick-your-neck-out, and he didn't give a good god-damn whether the first atomic submersible was built in 1952 or '53. Doc would have loved him too: he knew what was meant by a government of laws. He made his students search out not only theory but the actual dismal consequences of the doctrine that the end justifies the means—Alexander, Augustus, Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler. That was regarded as 'wilfully minimizing the significance of technological advance.' He didn't minimize it; he just recognized that other matters were vastly more important, and he didn't care to see the machine built up into one more mumbo jumbo. So he sent me through college by breeding children's riding ponies and selling hatching eggs. Not a bad life, or so he said.... Jocko, will Pakriaa come back?"
"I believe so.... Ah, Chris—nice evening for the month of Charin."
Wright was a paleness in the dark; stern, weary, tall, watching the lake, talking to himself: "The month we named for ourselves—end of Year One—oh, I do call that a pardonable vanity.... Paul, I was wholly selfish in choosing you. I've given you a burden no one should have to carry."
"We're all carrying it."