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community life. Well, at worst they could ask him to leave.
He found them in the empty, between-meal refectory area. Most of them were sitting in a circle andplaying musical instruments; one of them, a tall youth with long braided hair, raised his head and said, "Members only, friend," but another, a girl with red hair hanging loose to her waist, said, "No, Alastair. It's MacAran, and he was on the exploring team, he knows a lot of the answers we need. Come in, man,make yourself welcome."
Alastair laughed. "Right you are, Fiona, and with a name like MacAran he should be an honorary
member anyway."
MacAran came in. To his faint surprise he saw, somewhere in the circle, the round, pudgy,ginger-haired little figure of Lewis MacLeod. He said, "I didn't meet any of you on the ship, I'm afraid Idon't know what you people are supposed to stand for."
Alastair said quietly, "We're neo-ruralists, of course; world-builders. Some members of the Establishment call us anti-technocrats, but we're not the destroyers. We're simply looking for anhonorable alternative for the society of Earth, and we're usually just as welcome in the colonies as theyare glad to have us away from Earth. So--tell us, MacAran. What's the story here? How soon can weget out to make our own settlement?"
MacAran said, "You know as much as I do. The climate is pretty brutal, you know; if it's like this in
summer, it's going to be a lot rougher in winter."
Fiona laughed. She said, "Most of us grew up in the Hebrides or even the Orkneys. They haveabout the worst climate on Earth. Cold doesn't scare us, MacAran. But we want to be established incommunity life, so we can set up our own ways and customs, before the winter sets in."
MacAran said slowly, "I'm not sure Captain Leicester will let anyone leave the encampment. The
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priority is still on repairing the ship, and I think he regards all of us as a single community. If we begin to
break up--"
"Come
off
it," Alastair said, "none of us are scientists. We can't spend five years working on a
starship; it's against our entire philosophy!"
"Survival--"
"--survival." MacAran understood only a little of the
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Gaelic of his forefathers, but he realized Alastair was being indecent. "Survival, to us, means setting up acolony here as fast as possible. We signed on to go to Coronis. Captain Leicester made a mistake andset us down here, but it's all the same to us. For our purposes, this is even better."
MacAran raised his eyebrows at MacLeod. He said, "I didn't know you belonged to this group."
"I didn't," MacLeod said, "I'm a fringe member, but I agree with them--and I want to stay here."
"I thought they didn't approve of scientists. "
The girl Fiona said, "Only in their place. When they use their knowledge to serve and helpmankind--not to manipulate it, or to destroy its spiritual strength. We're happy to have Dr. MacLeod--Lewis we don't use titles--as one of us, with his knowledge of zoology."
MacAran said, in amazement, "Are you intending to mutiny against Captain Leicester?"
"Mutiny? We're not his crew or his subjects, man," said a strange boy, "we just intend to live the
way we would have made for ourselves on the new world. We can't wait three years until he gives up this
wild idea of rebuilding his ship. By that time we could have a functional community."
"And if he does repair the ship, and goes on to Coronis? Will you stay here?"
"This is our world," the girl Fiona said, coming to Alastair's side. Her eyes were gentle but
implacable. "Our children will be born here."
MacAran said, in shock, "Are you trying to tell me--"
Alastair said, "We don't know, but some of our women may already be pregnant. It is our sign ofcommitment to this world, our sign of rejection of Earth and the world Captain Leicester wants to forceon us. And you can tell him so."
As MacAran left them, the musical instruments began again, and the mournful sound of a girl's voice,in the eternal melancholy of an old song of the Isles; a lament for the dead, out of a past more torn andshattered with wars and exiles than any other people of Earth:
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Snow-white seagull, say,
Tell me, pray,
Where our fair young lads are resting.
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Wave on wave they lie,
Breath nor sigh,
From their cold lips coming;
Sea-wrack their shroud,
Harp and dirge the sea's sad crooning.
The song tightened MacAran's throat, and against his will tears came to his eyes.
They lament
, hethought,
but they know life goes on
.
The Scots have been exiles for centuries, for millennia. This isjust another exile, a little further than most, but they will sing the old songs under the new starsand find new mountains and new seas…
Going out of the hall he drew up his hood--by now it would be beginning to rain. But it wasn't.
Chapter
NINE
MacAran had already seen what a couple of rainless and snowless nights could do on this planet.
The garden areas blossomed with vegetation, and flowers, mostly the small orange ones, covered the
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ground everywhere. The four moons came out in their glory from before sunset until well after sunrise,
turning the sky into a flood of lilac brilliance.
The woods were dry, and they began to worry about keeping a firewatch. Within a few miles of theencampment, Moray got the idea of rigging lightning-rods to each of the hilltops, each anchored to anenormously tall tree. It might not prevent fire in the event of a serious storm, but might lessen the dangerssomewhat.
And above them on the heights, the great bell-shaped golden flowers opened wide, their
sweet-scented pollen drifting in the upper slopes. It had not reached the valleys.
Not yet…
After a week of snowless evenings, moonlit nights and warm. days--warm by the standards of this
planet,
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which would have made Norway seem like a summer resort--MacAran went to ask Moray's assent to another trip into the foothills. He felt he should take advantage of the rare seasonable weather to collect further geological specimens, and perhaps to locate caves which might serve as emergency shelter during later exploration. Moray had taken a small room at the corner of the Recreation building for an office, and while MacAran waited outside, Heather Stuart came into the budding.
"What do you think of this weather?" he asked her, the old habit from Earth asserting itself.
When in doubt talk about the weather. Well, there's plenty of weather on this planet to talk about, and it's all so bad
.
"I don't like it," Heather said seriously, "I haven't forgotten what happened on the mountain when we
had a few clear days."
You too
? MacAran thought, but he demurred. "How could the weather be responsible, Heather?"
"Airborne virus. Airborne pollen. Dust-borne chemicals. I'm a microbiologist, Rafe, you'd be surprised what can be in a few cubic inches of air or water or soil. In the debriefing session Camilla said the last thing she remembered before freaking out was smelling the flowers, and I remember that the air was full of their scent." She smiled weakly. "Of course what I remember may not be any kind of evidence and I hope to God that I don't find out by trial and error again. I've just found out for certain that I'm not pregnant, and I never want to go through that again. When I think of the way women must have had to live before the really safe contraceptives were invented, from month to month never knowing…." She shuddered. "Rafe, is Camilla sure yet? She won't talk to me about it any more."
"I don't know," MacAran said sombrely, "she won't talk to me at all."
Heather's fair mobile face registered dismay. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Rafe! I was so happy about you
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two, Ewen and I both hoped--oh, here, I think maybe Moray's ready to see you." The door had opened and the big redhead Alastair bumped into them as he came barging out; he turned and half shouted, "The answer is still no, Moray! We're pulling out--all of us, our whole Community! Now, tonight!"
Moray followed him to the door. He said, "Selfish crew, aren't you?
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You talk about community, and it turns out that you mean only your own little group--not the largercommunity of mankind on this planet. Did it ever occur to you that all of us, the whole two-hundred-oddof us, are perforce a commune? We
are
humanity, we
are
society. Where's that big sense ofresponsibility toward your fellow man, laddie?"
Alastair bent his head. He muttered, "The rest of you don't stand for what we stand for."
"We all stand for common good and survival," Moray said quietly. "The Captain will come around.
Give me a chance to talk to the others, at least."
"I was appointed to speak for them--"
"Alastair," said Moray gravely, "you're violating your own standards, you know. If you're a true
philosophical anarchist, you have to give them an opportunity to hear what I have to say."
"You're just trying to manipulate us all--"
"Are you afraid of what I'll say to them? Are you afraid they won't stick to what
you
want?"
Alastair, maneuvered into a corner, burst out, "Oh, talk to them and be damned to you, then! Much
good may it do you!"
Moray followed them out, saying to MacAran as he passed, "Whatever it is, it'll have to keep, lad. I
have to talk these young lunatics into trying to see us all as one big family--not just their little family'!'
Out in the open space, the thirty members or so of the New Hebrides community were gathered. MacAran noticed that they had put aside the ship-issued surface uniform and were wearing civilianclothing and carrying backpacks. Moray went forward and began to harangue them. From where hestood at the door of the Recreation Hall MacAran could not hear his words, but there was a lot ofshouting and argument. MacAran stood watching the small swirls and eddies of dust blow up across theplowed ground, the backlog of wind in the trees at the edge of the clearing like a sea-noise that neverquieted. It seemed to him that there was a song in the wind. He looked down at Heather beside him, andher face seemed to gleam and glow in the dark sunlight, almost a visible song.
She said hoarsely, "Music--music on the wind…"
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MacAran muttered, "In God's name what are they doing out there? Holding a dance?"
He moved away from Heather, as a group of the uniformed Security guards came across from theship. One of them faced Alastair and Moray and started to speak; MacAran, moving into range, heard "put down your packs. I have the Captain's orders to take you all into custody, for desertion in the faceof an emergency."
"Your Captain hasn't any power over us, emergency or otherwise, fuzz-face;" the big redhead yelled, and one of the girls scooped up a handful of dirt and flung it, evoking screams of riotous laughter from the others.
Moray said urgently to the Security men, "No! There is no need for this! Let me handle them!"
The officer hit by the thrown dirt unslung his gun. MacAran, gripped by a surge of all too familiarfear, muttered, "That's torn it," and ran forward just as the young men and women of the communesthrew down their rucksacks and charged, howling and screaming like demons.
One Security officer threw down his rifle and burst into wild manic laughter. He flung himself on theground and rolled there, screaming. MacAran, in split--second awareness, ran forward. He grabbed upthe thrown-down gun; wrested another away from the second man, and ran toward the ship as the third Security man, who had only a handgun, fired. In MacAran's rocking brain the shot sounded like aninfinite gallery of echoes, and with a wild high scream, one of the girls fell on the ground, rolling where shelay in agony.
MacAran, dragging the rifles, burst into the Captain's presence in the computer dome; Leicesterraised his beetling brows, demanding explanation, and MacAran watched the eyebrows crawl up likecaterpillars, take wing and flutter loose in the dome…
no
. NO! Fighting the spinning attack of unreality,he gasped, "Captain, it's happening again! What happened to us all on the slopes! For the love of God,lock up the guns and ammo before someone gets killed! One girl's already been shot--"
"What?" Leicester stared at him in frank disbelief. "Surely you're exaggerating…"
"Captain, I went through it," MacAran said, fighting desperately against the urge to fling himself
down and roll on the floor, to grab the Captain by the throat and shake