reflected as she tried to
stifle her boundless impatience, was the way the situation kept turning on
little pivots of time, a few days or even a few hours in size, separated by
enormous gulfs of months or years when they did nothing except sit around and
wish for the future to catch up with them, because they dared not do anything.
If,
for example, the four men had been a couple of days later in reaching the main
station aboard their clumsy raft, her inspired plan would have been impossible
to implement for at least another year, and then they would have had to wait the compulsory year following until the
harvesting ship made its regular trip.
So
now, too, they had to wait, hating every minute's limping progress, for an
arbitrary deadline—whereupon they would have to cram into a few narrow hours
the fruit of months upon months of scheming, plotting, thinking, arguing,
examining and re-examining.
And
it might all come to nothing in the end—some petty snare might still catch a
foot and bring the enterprise to a foolish halt.
They
were assembled in the observation dome, where she had rigged a remote for the
calendar clock in the supervisor's quarters. The hands were ticking now
towards the red line she had carefully inscribed across the face first thing today.
One by one they had fallen silent; the chattering that had signaled the release
of old tension, now that the day of their revenge was here, hadn't lasted, and
now they sat and sweated, or paced up and down, or went to the head from nervousness
rather than need.
"Can't we?" Dickery suggested, and didn't have to specify what, but he closed his hand on the can
of paint beside him on his bench-seat.
"No!"
Horst rasped. " Kynance has explained over and
over —this has got to be done so watertight that nobody, not even a dozen Zygra Companies, could spring a leak in
it!"
"I
don't know how much longer I can bear to wait," Victor complained. But he
had been saying the same thing daily for half a year, and they ignored it as a
formality.
At
first, Kynance remembered, she had scarcely expected
to survive to this moment. The strain of knowing that yet one more year must
leak away had almost climaxed in murder—it had caused at least three fights
between Evan and Coberley , and one between Evan and
Horst. But that kind of thing had stopped; the pressure behind it had seeped
away as one by one they'd begun to accept the consequences of their joint
action.
She
had first begun to let herself believe in success the day she'd come upon Coberley —of all the men, Coberley !—standing
by himself at the edge of the huge steel deck of the station, staring at the
white sunlight on the pools of water pitting the nearest mudflats, at the
matted vegetation, at the drab olive-dun shapes of some unripe pelts drifting
ahead of a tireless monitor.
He'd
stood several moments longer without realizing he was being watched; then,
noticing her, he'd turned and given a scowl.
He'd said, "Damned bastards in the Zygra Company
—trying to pretend this isn't a fit world for human beings!"
After
that, it had become possible to regard her companions as colleagues, and the
tone of their discussions together had altered from desperate—a search for
escape—to proud. Even Victor, whose bitterness was too deeply ingrained in his
personality by years of privation ever to be eliminated completely had done
his best to spare the others the effects of it, and had taken to stealing away
on his own to sweat out his indefinable fear.
What a bunch of misfits! Kynance thought, and then added with a burst of
near-affection: Yet
there's something special about anyone, neurotic or normal, who'll accept the
responsibility of looking after a whole damned planet!
And
the finest integrated automatic system in the galaxy made no difference one way
or the other to that basic truth.
" Kynance !" Horst said harshly, and she started. While
she had been wrapped in thought, the clock had reached the red line.
She
stifle her boundless impatience, was the way the situation kept turning on
little pivots of time, a few days or even a few hours in size, separated by
enormous gulfs of months or years when they did nothing except sit around and
wish for the future to catch up with them, because they dared not do anything.
If,
for example, the four men had been a couple of days later in reaching the main
station aboard their clumsy raft, her inspired plan would have been impossible
to implement for at least another year, and then they would have had to wait the compulsory year following until the
harvesting ship made its regular trip.
So
now, too, they had to wait, hating every minute's limping progress, for an
arbitrary deadline—whereupon they would have to cram into a few narrow hours
the fruit of months upon months of scheming, plotting, thinking, arguing,
examining and re-examining.
And
it might all come to nothing in the end—some petty snare might still catch a
foot and bring the enterprise to a foolish halt.
They
were assembled in the observation dome, where she had rigged a remote for the
calendar clock in the supervisor's quarters. The hands were ticking now
towards the red line she had carefully inscribed across the face first thing today.
One by one they had fallen silent; the chattering that had signaled the release
of old tension, now that the day of their revenge was here, hadn't lasted, and
now they sat and sweated, or paced up and down, or went to the head from nervousness
rather than need.
"Can't we?" Dickery suggested, and didn't have to specify what, but he closed his hand on the can
of paint beside him on his bench-seat.
"No!"
Horst rasped. " Kynance has explained over and
over —this has got to be done so watertight that nobody, not even a dozen Zygra Companies, could spring a leak in
it!"
"I
don't know how much longer I can bear to wait," Victor complained. But he
had been saying the same thing daily for half a year, and they ignored it as a
formality.
At
first, Kynance remembered, she had scarcely expected
to survive to this moment. The strain of knowing that yet one more year must
leak away had almost climaxed in murder—it had caused at least three fights
between Evan and Coberley , and one between Evan and
Horst. But that kind of thing had stopped; the pressure behind it had seeped
away as one by one they'd begun to accept the consequences of their joint
action.
She
had first begun to let herself believe in success the day she'd come upon Coberley —of all the men, Coberley !—standing
by himself at the edge of the huge steel deck of the station, staring at the
white sunlight on the pools of water pitting the nearest mudflats, at the
matted vegetation, at the drab olive-dun shapes of some unripe pelts drifting
ahead of a tireless monitor.
He'd
stood several moments longer without realizing he was being watched; then,
noticing her, he'd turned and given a scowl.
He'd said, "Damned bastards in the Zygra Company
—trying to pretend this isn't a fit world for human beings!"
After
that, it had become possible to regard her companions as colleagues, and the
tone of their discussions together had altered from desperate—a search for
escape—to proud. Even Victor, whose bitterness was too deeply ingrained in his
personality by years of privation ever to be eliminated completely had done
his best to spare the others the effects of it, and had taken to stealing away
on his own to sweat out his indefinable fear.
What a bunch of misfits! Kynance thought, and then added with a burst of
near-affection: Yet
there's something special about anyone, neurotic or normal, who'll accept the
responsibility of looking after a whole damned planet!
And
the finest integrated automatic system in the galaxy made no difference one way
or the other to that basic truth.
" Kynance !" Horst said harshly, and she started. While
she had been wrapped in thought, the clock had reached the red line.
She
Similar Books
