Footfall

The Herdmaster watched them being led away. He had toyed with the notion of imprisoning them together — but Chintithpit-ma would surely kill the man. Pastempeh-keph wanted more than that. Why had Dawson done what he did? Was there no strategy that would hold a human’s surrender?

To exterminate an intelligent race really would make the Traveler Fithp equal to the Predecessors. Godlike criminals. For all history the priests had taught the fithp children the words of the Squuff Thuktun. It told the tale of the Homeworld’s ruin. Many mistakes are mapped here, that you may walk around them…

Isolation would break Dawson soon enough. It would take longer with humans. No matter. There was time… and he must be studied. Let him be only a rogue, a rarity! Otherwise…

Chowpeentulk stood proud, victorious; but the victory here was Pastempeh-keph’s. Her mate had died because he rejected the dissident cause. She would talk. The dissidents were broken now. They would never again stand between Winterhome and the Traveler Fithp.

Something had changed in Tashayamp. She visited the human cell less and less frequently. She rarely talked to them. The morning after John Woodward died, she appeared in the spin hatch and looked down without curiosity, and was already backing out when Jeri called up to her.

“Tashayamp! John Woodward is dead; he died in the night. Tashayamp?”

The teacher’s mate peered down at the little group clustered around Carrie Woodward, and John’s body all alone. “I thought he sleeps. He looks like he sleeps. Wait.” Tashayamp disappeared.

Tashayamp was quite wrong. John’s face was slack; his eye were open; he wasn’t breathing. How could anyone have missed the presence of death?

Fithp soldiers descended via the lift platform. Carrie was huddled with her face between her knees. The children hung back. They didn’t know how to help. When the warriors wrapped digits around John’s shoulder and ankles, Carrie surged to her feet… and stood, rigid, while they put him on the platform and sent him up.

The warriors rose after him. Tashayamp looked down. “How did he die?”

There was venom in Carrie’s answer. “Slowly. Weeks, now, he’s been getting sicker and sicker. He couldn’t handle the gravity changes. He couldn’t sleep right. You weren’t giving him the right vitamins. We don’t have a doctor. Being penned like an animal, knowing you’re smashing our world, he couldn’t take it. Now he’s dead.”

“You come,” Tashayamp said. “All.” Tashayamp led them toward the axis via spiral ramps.

By the time they reached the funeral room they were nearly weightless. Above their heads, beyond a glass ceiling, a dark slush was in queasy churning motion. The stink of it permeated the air.

Two fithp awaited them: the Bull and the Priest.

The Russians were quiet; they appeared resigned. Jeri knew that was how they wanted to appear. But what else can we do anyway? We will not escape without outside help, and no one is going to help us.

Here were all of humanity for twenty thousand miles around, save for Wes Dawson. Alice was edgy; her eyes kept straying to the entrances, as if she expected him to appear.

Wes had disappeared over a week ago. None of the fithp would speak of him to the humans. Seeing him absent, Jeri at last believed that he was dead.

She moved to rest a hand on Carrie’s shoulder. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’ll manage.” Carrie laughed: a cracked, joyless sound. “None of us dares go crazy. They’d leave us all together, wouldn’t they? We’d all go off our heads one by one. Don’t look at me like that, Alice. I’m all right.”

Fistarteh-thuktun said something to the Herdmaster, too fast to catch. The Herdmaster nodded at Tashayamp, who said, “Query: does Fistarteh-thuktun speak last words for John Woodward? Query: does one of you speak?”

“There’s no preacher,” Melissa said. “Mom … ?”

“I don’t know …” Jeri began.

Carrie stepped forward jerkily. “I’ll do it. I’ve been to enough funerals to know the words. He was my husband.”

Jeri was close enough to catch the Herdmaster’s words to Tashayamp. “Do not translate, but remember.”

Through the glass she watched two fithp emerge on the lip of the funeral pit, carrying John Woodward like a sack of grain between them.

“ ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ saith the Lord. ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

“I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin won destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”

The fithp soldiers launched Woodward toward the center of the vortex of brown muck. He moved slowly, tumbling, stiff with rigor mortis. Carrie stopped. The look on her face was dreadful.

“Remember this good man, Lord. Remember him and bring him to Your peace. Bring him to rest in Your arms. Let him go to Jesus.”