"Go away!" cried Lyte savagely whirling on him.
"Not until we take Sim with us," Chion assured her. Then, smiling at Sim. "If that is, he is with us in the fight."
Dienc shuffled forward, his eye weakly fluttering, his bird-like hands fumbling in the air. "Leave!" he shrilled angrily. "This boy is a Scientist now. He works with us."
Chion ceased smiling. "There is better work to be done. We go now to fight the people in the farthest cliffs." His eyes glittered anxiously. "Of course, you will come with us, Sim?"
"No, no!" Lyte clutched at his arm.
Sim patted her shoulder, then turned to Chion. "Why are you attacking these people?"
"There are three extra days for those who go with us to fight"
"Three extra days! Of living?"
Chion nodded firmly. "If we win, we live eleven days instead of eight. The cliffs they live in, something about the mineral in it that protects you from radiation! Think of it, Sim, three long, good days of life. Will you join us?"
Dienc interrupted. "Get along without him. Sim is my pupil!"
Chion snorted. "Go die, old man. By sunset tonight you'll be charred bone. Who are you to order us? We are young, we want to live longer."
Eleven days. The words were unbelievable to Sim. Eleven days. Now he understood why there was war. Who wouldn't fight to have his life lengthened by almost half its total. So many more days of living! Yes. Why not, indeed!
"Three extra days," called Dienc, stridently, "if you live to enjoy them. If you're not killed in battle. If. If! You have never won yet. You have always lost!"
"But this time," Chion declared sharply, "well win!"
Sim was bewildered. "But we are all of the same ancestors. Why don't we all share the best cliffs?"
Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp stone in his hand. "Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power. The cliffs there, besides, are smaller, there's room for only three hundred people in them."
Three extra days.
"I'll go with you," Sim said to Chion.
"Fine!" Chion was very glad, much too glad at the decision.
Dienc gasped.
Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. "If I fight, and win, I will be half a mile closer to the Ship. And I'll have three extra days in which to strive to reach the Ship. That seems the only thing for me to do."
Dienc nodded, sadly. "It is the only thing. I believe you. Go along now."
"Good-bye," said Sim.
The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as at a little joke on himself. "That's right - I won't see you again, will I? Good-bye, then." And they shook hands.
They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others, all children growing swiftly into fighting men. And the light in Chion's eyes was not a good thing to see.
Lyte went with him. She chose his rocks for him and carried them. She would not go back, no matter how he pleaded. The sun was just beyond the horizon and they marched across the valley.
"Please, Lyte, go back!"
"And wait for Chion to return?" she said. "He plans that when you die I will be his mate." She shook out her unbelievable blue-white curls of hair defiantly. "But I'll be with you. If you fall, I fall."
Sim's face hardened. He was tall. The world had shrunk during the night. Children packs screamed by hilarious in their food-searching and he looked at them with alien wonder: could it be only four days ago he'd been like these? Strange. There was a sense of many days in his mind, as if he'd really lived a thousand days. There was a dimension of incident and thought so thick, so multicolored, so richly diverse in his head that it was not to be believed so much could happen in so short a time.
The fighting men ran in clusters of two or three. Sim looked ahead at the rising line of small ebon cliffs. This, then, he said to himself, is my fourth day. And still I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything, not even - he heard the light tread of Lyte beside him - not even to her who bears my weapons and picks me ripe berries.