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was gone. Maybe she ran off into the forest." "Is that likely')" Hal said.
"With Artur still with us'?" "But I don't know where else she would go--
Hal did not hear the rest of what Onete said, because his ear was suddenly
caught by a faint, but undeniable noise, a wheep., wheep! sound. He started at
a dead run in the direction from which the sound had come, which was either
right beside or in Liu's hutment. The image of the two dead soldiers they had
unearthed was starkly in his mind, @uddenly connecting itself With a memory of
the two he had seen fall on the screen as the Soldiers rushed Cee to capture
her. He reached the hut and burst through the flaps; but he was too late.
Cee, holding one of Liu's socks in either hand, each sock with a heavy-looking
lump in its toe, ducked under his arm and was out the flaps before he could
turn around.
He did not wait to examine what he knew would be the corpse of Liu Hu Shen,
but ran after Cee, almost catching her as she went in between the open flaps
of the Urk's tent and actually catching her, a moment later, as she stood just
inside the entrance swinging in her right hand a weighted sock that gave
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forth the same sort of noise that had attracted his attention a moment before.
He grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around both of her arms, pinning
them to her body and lifting her clear of the ground.
She fought back fiercely, in utter silence and with incredible strength for
one so young. She kicked back and up with her heels; but he had anticipated
this, spreading his legs and holding her closely against him, so that those
same heels, rock-hard after years of running unshod on all kinds of surfaces,
could not reach his rom.
She tried to swing the weighted end of the sock up to smash his face or hit
his head; but his grip was around her elbows and she did not have the freedom
of movement and strength to rotate the heavy end through the air and upward to
its point of aim. Meanwhile, continuously, she struggled to twist and turn in
his arms, to win enough freedom from his grasp so that she could twist loose
and escape.
But, fighting as best she could, she was a youngster pitting the strength of
her small body against the large and powerful adult one. Hal held her fast and
backed with her out of the hutment. "Onete! Old Man!" he shouted.
He heard the sound of two pairs of running feet, but it was Old Man who first
stepped around from behind him to face them. He twitched the weighted sock so
suddenly from Cee's grasp that her fingers failed to hold their grip on it,
and tossed it aside. Her gaze noted where it fell and returned instantly to
glarc at him. "Child, child," he said sorrowfully to her, "don't you kno" that
nothing is ever settled, nothing is ever gained, by killing?"
She stared back at him with savage, unrepentant eyes. "Take her," Hal told
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him. "Hold her." Onete had now joined them and was talking rapidly and
soothingly to Cee, who ignored the woman completely. "Old Man can hold her,"
Hal said to Onete. "You try and make her understand that we're here to rescue
her uncle and take him to someplace where he'll be safe; but her killing Liu
just now- "She killed the officer!" Onete said. "I'm afraid so. I should have
realized she might."
Onete stooped and picked up the officer's sock Cee had
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dropped, held it upside down and shook it. A short, heavy energy pack for a
power pistol dropped out of the end of it. "She must have got them from Liu's
uniform belt, " Hal said, -and thrown sock and pack together, the way she'd
send a rock from her sling. Those two dead in the forest will have been her
doing. The two we saw on the screen, who fell when they rushed in to catch
her. But never mind that now." "What are we to do with her?" Onete said,
distressed. "As I say, Old Man can hold her. It'll be up to you to make her
understand that we're here to rescue her uncle; but she's already made a
problem for us by killing Liu. If she kills anyone else, we may not be able to
cover it up and send the soldiers away believing things that'll keep them from
coming back. If they don't believe and do come back, they'll find and kill us
all, including her uncle, after all."
Onete nodded. "I'll try," she said. "Don't just try. She's got to understand
and go along with us. You've got to get through to her, somehow. She's got to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]