"A year ago,” Bregg said, “some of the people got hold of her two young ones. They were torn to pieces before they could be saved, and she saw it. I can't blame her, either."
He went on to the gate and opened it and went inside. The people drew back from him. They spat at him, too, and pelted him with food and pebbles. He spoke to them, sternly, in the tone of one speaking to unruly dogs, and he spoke words, in his own tongue. The people began to shuffle about uneasily. They stopped throwing things. He stood waiting.
The yellow-eyed girl came sidling forward and rubbed herself against his thigh, head, shoulder and flank. He reached down and stroked her, and she whimpered with pleasure and arched her back.
"Oh, for God's sake,” said Kieran, “let's get out of here."
* * * *
Later, they sat wearily on fallen blocks of cement inside a dusty, shadowy room of the old building. Only a handlamp dispelled the gloom, and the wind whispered coldly, and Bregg walked to and fro in his curious prance as he talked.
"It will be a little while before the necessary medical team can be picked up and brought here,” he said. “We shall have to wait."
"And then?” asked Kieran.
"First to—” Bregg used a word that undoubtedly named a city of the Sakae but that meant nothing to Kieran, “-and then to Altair Two. This, of course, is a council matter."
He stopped and looked bright, shrewd eyes at Kieran. “You are quite the sensation already, Mr. Kieran. The community of starworlds is already aware of the illegal resuscitation of one of the pioneer spacemen, and of course there is great interest.” He paused. “You, yourself, have done nothing unlawful. You cannot very well be sent back to sleep, and undoubtedly the council will want to hear you. I am curious as to what you will say."
"About Sako?” said Kieran. “About—them?” He made a gesture toward a window through which the wind brought the sound of stirring, of the gruntings and whufflings of the corralled people.
"Yes. About them."
"I'll tell you how I feel,” Kieran said flatly. He saw Paula and Webber lean forward in the shadows. “I'm a human man. The people out there may be savage, low as the beasts, good for nothing the way they are—but they're human. You Sakae may be intelligent, civilized, reasonable, but you're not human. When I see you ordering them around like beasts, I want to kill you. That's how I feel."
Bregg did not change his bearing, but he made a small sound that was almost a sigh.
"Yes,” he said. “I feared it would be so. A man of your times—a man from a world where humans were all-dominant—would feel that way.” He turned and looked at Paula and Webber. “It appears that your scheme, to this extent, was successful."
"No, I wouldn't say that,” said Kieran.
Paula stood up. “But you just told us how you feel—"
"And it's the truth,” said Kieran. “But there's something else.” He looked thoughtfully at her. “It was a good idea. It was bound to work—a man of my time was bound to feel just this way you wanted him to feel, and would go away from here crying your party slogans and believing them. But you overlooked something—"
He paused, looking out the window into the sky, at the faint vari-colored radiance of the cluster.
"You overlooked the fact that when you awoke me, I would no longer be a man of my own time or of any time. I was in darkness for a hundred years with the stars my brothers, and no man touching me. Maybe that chills a man's feelings, maybe something deep in his mind lives and has time to think. I've told you how I feel, yes. But I haven't told you what I think—"
He stopped again, then said, “The people out there in the corral have my form, and my instinctive loyalty is to them. But instinct isn't enough. It would have kept us in the mud of Earth forever, if it could. Reason took us out to the wider universe. Instinct tells me that those out there are my people. Reason tells me that you—” he looked at Bregg, “-who are abhorrent to me, who would make my skin creep if I touched you, you who go by reason—that you are my real people. Instinct made a hell of Earth for millennia—I say we ought to leave it behind us there in the mud and not let it make a hell of the stars. For you'll run into this same problem over and over again as you go out into the wider universe, and the old parochial human loyalties must be altered, to solve it."
He looked at Paula and said, “I'm sorry, but if anyone asks me, that is what I'll say."
"I'm sorry, too,” she said, rage and dejection ringing in her voice. “Sorry we woke you. I hope I never see you again."
Kieran shrugged. “After all, you did wake me. You're responsible for me. Here I am, facing a whole new universe, and I'll need you.” He went over and patted her shoulder.
"Damn you,” she said. But she did not move away from him.
THE END
SF/F/H FROM PAGETURNER EDITIONS
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