The Loafers of Refuge (11 page)

Micka slipped from the bed and crossed the room on silent feet. The rock was smooth but not more than four feet high and she scrambled up the side without trouble. The crack was more narrow than it had appeared and her head would not enter it.

She paused in indecision, knowing her small strength could not move the rock. While she waited, crouching on its top, a second flood of
love-reassurance
reached her and she knew Tier mother was close. A moment later she heard the sound of light footfalls and breathless whispers. She recognized the
voice of her Uncle Timmy even in the thin whisper, and then a dark form appeared in the tunnel on the other side of the rock and a hairy arm came creeping through the slit and seized her own. She recognized the touch of her mother and almost screamed aloud in her joy.

Tharee did not speak aloud to her daughter, but the clasp of her hand was comfort beyond belief. In the almost pitch-blackness of the entrance tunnel, relieved only by the red gleams that escaped around the rock from inside the cave, she leaned against the rock and pulled Carey’s ear to her lips with her free hand. “What shall we do, Car-ree? To move the rock will awaken him.”

Carey felt over the rock with his hands. It would easily weigh several hundred pounds, and to move it at all required great strength.

“Wait here,” he whispered to Tharee, and by touch asked Harper, Timmy and Dane to follow him. He led them out of the cave, and when they straightened up outside asked for suggestions.

They talked in low voices for a moment, then returned to Tharee with the best plan they could devise. Timmy took her place against the rock and whispered hurriedly to Micka, who squeezed his hand in acknowledgement and eased herself down to the floor of the cave. Timmy had said to hide, and there was an obvious place where the giant would not look for her. She returned to the bed and crawled quietly under it.

Jacobs did not stir. In the tunnel Carey and Sam Harper waited, their breathing loud in their own ears, until they judged Micka had had time to secrete herself. Then each man grasped the rock, braced himself and heaved mightily. It yielded before their combined strength and rolled heavily away from the door, with a grinding rumble that would have awakened a hibernating bear. Jacobs jumped off the bed, his tousled beard swinging wildly in the gloom, and met Timmy, who had sprung past his companions the instant the boulder moved, with a great blow to the head that flung the young Loafer to the wall and curled him into an unconscious heap at its base. Then both Carey and Harper were on him, big fists swinging, and he took some hard punishment before he
managed to jump away from them and come to bay, cornered, in a small alcove, his back to a wall. His reprieve was short-lived. Harper and Dane followed him in swiftly, punching at his head and stomach, and Carey came in low and tried to tackle him about the knees.

Carey got his grip on the giant’s legs, but Jacob’s shoulders were braced firmly against the rock wall and throwing him was like trying to tear up a tree by its roots. And then one of the great fists caught Harper flush in the face, bringing him to his knees, dizzy, and another sent Dane Issakson away giddy. The giant turned his attention to Carey. One huge hand seized him by the neck and plucked him from the floor like a pet kitten. Carey twisted desperately and managed to get his feet on the ground and hit out at the massive chin hidden under the white beard before a fist like a battering ram came from nowhere and caught him in the stomach. He doubled over, suddenly sick, and was only saved from a blow that would have broken his neck by Harper and Dane returning to the attack. The giant was bellowing now at the top of his lungs, a mad senseless cacophony of sound that echoed and re-echoed in the large room. Jacobs seemed to have gone completely insane, become a berserk Viking with the strength of ten men, and could not be hurt. He took a hard punch from Harper without apparent effect and felled him again with a blow to the side of the head. Dane was hit hard in the stomach and collapsed on the floor, retching.

Micka had crept to the edge of the bed and was watching the fight with eyes grown large with surprise and fright. Tharee crossed the room at a run and pulled her from under the bed, but the small girl refused to follow her mother back to the tunnel. She saw Jacobs seize Carey by his collar and belt, lift the smaller man high above his head, saw the hard muscles tense in the great shoulders as he drew back to hurl Carey against the rock wall. She saw, and broke from her mother with a wordless cry and fled across the room to the struggling pair, one small hand upraised in protest.

“Stop! Oh, stop!” screamed Micka in the Loafer tongue, her small voice piercing like a thin flute-sound through the bass of the giant’s roaring. The muscled arms started the
movement that would make Carey Sheldon a bloody, mangled mess against the rock wall, and
the small girl reached out, seized the great arms in a vice-like grip, freezing him where he stood, arms above his head, mouth open, roaring his hate and defiance.
Carey fell from the frozen hands to the floor, twisting in mid-air to land on his hands and feet. The girl lost her control and the giant came alive again, and reached again for Carey. Micka opened her mind, letting the new senses that had suddenly appeared within her coalesce, develop, grow.
The air of the room seemed to come alive, to vibrate, to glow with a raw and terrible power, as though all the huge mountain had developed life and within this large room beat its throbbing heart!

Micka faced the giant, tiny hand still upraised, and partially channelled and guided the new forces surging within her. Jacobs was lifted off the floor, hung suspended for a moment, his roaring changing abruptly to a scream of terror, and then he flew through the air for the short distance to the rock wall. There was a sickening crunch, the sound of the huge body falling to the floor, and a sudden and deathly silence.

T
HAREE REELED AND
fell to the floor, her mind so closely in tune with Micka’s that she had caught some of the shock, like the backwash of a mighty wave. She hovered for a moment on the verge of consciousness, and then the sense of uncontrolled power receded, grew dim, and she opened her eyes in time to see Micka running across the floor to Jacobs. Tharee staggered to her feet and saw her daughter take the great bearded head into her lap and start frantically rubbing her hands across the bloody forehead. And suddenly the power was there again, but this time better restrained, channelled, in care of small hands that were gaining a measure of control. And Tharee felt the life-force that was fleeing the giant’s body pause, gather itself, hover dimly, like an impalpable presence in the cavern, and then return to the body and re-animate it. The barrel of a chest convulsed, the lips opened and gasped, and a cough shook the bearded head. Jacobs rolled away from the girl, coughing uncontrollably, his hands going to his head and brushing the blood from his eyes. The coughing eased and he sat erect, holding has head in his hands.

Timmy had not moved since that first violent blow had knocked him down, and Tharee, seeing that The-Old-Man-In-The-Mountain seemed to have all the fight knocked out of him for the moment, crossed the room to examine her nephew. There was an ugly knot on his head, and the skin had split and drenched his hair with blood, but his heartbeat was strong. She glanced back at Carey and saw that he was on his knees beside Harper, feeling for broken bones. Harper stirred under the gentle ministrations, and groaned aloud.
Carey helped him to a sitting position and half-supported him while the colonist recovered his wits.

Timmy opened his eyes and looked about for Micka. The child sat quietly in the centre of the group, serious and intent. She had not moved since Jacobs rolled away from her. To the two Loafers, and Carey, she seemed a changed person, still a child but one suddenly endowed with strength and knowledge far beyond her years. There was an aura about her, a sense of power in repose that was easily felt by anyone with a Controller’s sensitive mind.

Jacobs broke the restful impasse by staggering to his feet and lumbering towards the entrance, still holding his massive head in his hands. Harper started to get to his feet, but Timmy motioned him down. “It doesn’t matter. We can get him again when we want him.”

The giant disappeared, and they heard his heavy body brush the walls as he shuffled the length of the tunnel. He reached the outside and was gone.

“What happened?” Carey asked Tharee, glancing at Micka. “I was almost out, but I felt it when Micka … did whatever she did.”

“I do not know, Car-ree. It was something new to me, something I have never known or felt. It was a power I did not know any of us possessed, one I would never have looked for in a child. Yet I can sense this power in all of us, save that we cannot draw it forth. Micka will never need take the initiation rites. And I can feel, dimly, that there are other strengths there, besides the one that picked up The-Old-Man-In-The-Mountain and threw him against the wall.”

“Micka, can you speak-to-me-without-sound?” asked Carey, and opened his mind to reception. And clear and distinct in his mind a childish voice asked,
Why do you wish me to do this thing, friend Carey?

As Dane lifted the flitter in the air and turned it towards home Carey got out the light craft’s first-aid kit and began to doctor Harper’s numerous cuts and bruises. Micka watched, wide-eyed, then turned to her mother and said, “The-Old-Man-In-The-Mountain
is better now. I can feel that most of his pain is gone. And he is a Controller, though he does not know it yet. He had the power, and it was awakened when I seized him and threw him against the wall. I have told him to come to our village, and we will teach him the rest of what he must know. The cloud that was about his mind is gone now.”

Carey paused in his work and stared curiously at this amazing child, whom he had carried about on his shoulders only short months before. She spoke with a power and authority that could not be denied. Jacobs was indeed a cured man, his aberration gone, if this girl said so. And it was irony indeed that he had succeeded in what he had been trying to accomplish when he kidnapped Micka, the finding of that hidden spark that would awaken his dormant telepathic powers. Though it had happened in a way that not even the ill-balanced mind of the giant would have deliberately chosen!

“Of course we will teach him, since his mind is his own again,” said Timmy, placing one hand on his niece’s small shoulder. He smiled into her upturned face. “But you have problems of your own, little one. The night is almost past, and you must attend the Hairless Ones’ school tomorrow. Even a small one who has found her power early needs her rest.”

“And there is the problem of the people who are keeping their children out of school,” said Harper, joining the conversation. “Will Micka’s new powers help to kill prejudice, Carey?”

Carey smiled briefly. “I doubt it, Sam. Nothing will eliminate prejudice but time and education. Still, the law says the children must go to school, and they’ll eventually come back. I’m more concerned about working with Micka to find what opened the gates and brought her in so early, and with such wonderful new abilities.”

“I think maybe I can help a little on that school deal,” broke in Dane Issakson. “After what I’ve seen tonight I want to be darn sure the Loafers are on our side! My old man is the leader of that bunch of hold-outs, and come daylight he and I are going to have a long talk!”

Micka, suddenly and overwhelmingly tired, had curled up in her mother’s lap and laid her head on Tharee’s hairy breast. With the incredible quickness of small children she was deeply and completely asleep.

The final buzzer sounded and Marge Anders watched the children scramble for the door. Two weeks had passed since the chaos of opening day, and much had happened. Issakson had dropped his petition to have her dismissed, and Jay Issakson had reported for school two days late. Many people did not like the idea of integrating the Loafer children into the local schools, or the further moves of integrating the Loafers into the social life which they felt were bound to follow, but active opposition was scarce. No one cared to take a chance on being sent back to Earth. It looked now as if the hectic events of opening day had been all smoke, with little real fire beneath. Next year would see all the young Loafers in school, and night schools were planned for the older children and interested adults.

All four of the Loafer children were proving apt pupils and, what was perhaps even more important, were rapidly making friends of most of the Earthchildren. Only Micka continued to seem a trifle aloof, as if she had little desire to mingle with the others.

Miss Kaymar had left early and Marge was alone in the deserted schoolroom. Moving rapidly, she gathered the children’s papers together and fed them one at a time into the receiving slot of her desk, where the compact cybernetics unit added today’s scores to each child’s short class history. Carey Sheldon had asked her to visit Loafertown with him that night, and she had no intention of being late.

There was nothing romantic about this date, of course—she told herself—just some aspects of the Loafers’ home life in which Carey felt she might be interested. Besides, she was three years older than he. Still, social events were rare on a frontier planet like Refuge, and live entertainment scarce. No single girl missed a chance to be seen with an escort, and the trip would carry them through Refuge twice.

She finished her work, rode her old mare to the family farm three miles out of Refuge, ate, changed from the usual riding outfit to a powder-blue dress with a full skirt that went well with her pink complexion and helped hide the several bulges in her figure, and was ready by six-thirty. Carey was on time, and a few minutes later they were bouncing down the dirt road to Loafertown, eight miles away, in the Sheldon family buggy.

It was a very pleasant ride through a beautiful night, the stars twinkling softly in a sky unclouded by smoke or dust. She was almost sorry when Carey pulled the horse up short and jumped down to hitch him to a nearby tree. Around her, looming dimly in the faint starlight, were the huge waquil-fruits of Loafertown, and a fire burned brightly in the centre of the grove.