Marcel Dumezil, colonist, organizer, leader, a man of immense talents, immense potential for good in his community – he was so like old Daniel Andrax.

Daniel Andrax had never been captured. He would be over fifty now – no, nearly sixty. About the same age as the patriarch. For all Jan knew he might still be hiding in the mountains of Hallam, planning raids, killing or sending out younger men to kill, still secure in his beliefs.

Jan looked down at Marcel and saw his father and, seeing him, saw himself had the roads of his life branched differently.

***

Lucien Dubois was guarding the house that Helene and Valikili had shared. He had one of the double rifles in his hands and was settled in the shadows a dozen meters away with a clear field of fire. He was a very unhappy man. Though he liked Valikili well enough and had known Helene since her childhood, he could not say the same for Andrax. Lucien Dubois was not a subtle man; he understood himself well enough, for his motives were simple. He wanted Angi Dumezil; he had asked her repeatedly to marry him, but she always refused. It was clear that she wanted Andrax, but he would not have her. Why that was, Dubois had never understood.

Now he waited with orders to kill anyone who might try to rescue Helene. Normally that would have been Valikili, but Val, if he lived, was sorely wounded. The rescuer would be Jan Andrax, for no other member of the renegade party was better equipped for stealth.

Lucien wanted Angi and Andrax stood in his way; yet, he did not want to kill the scout. Dubois remembered too well his own actions in the forest above the first colony when aiding young Dumezil to cover the evidence of the murder he had committed. His hand still shook at the thought, at the guilt he had felt, at the uncertainty thereafter. Dubois would never forget the look on Andrax’s face as the scout examined Jason’s body, nor would he forget the thoughtful way he examined the bits of moss embedded in the wound.

For Angi and for his own peace of mind he wanted Andrax out of the way, yet he respected the scout. If Andrax came to rescue Helene it would be up to Lucien to kill him, but would he? Could he? Should he? Lucien loved God as much as the next man, but that didn’t make the patriarch infallible.

Dubois was still debating what he might do when Jan garroted him. His uncertainty disappeared with his consciousness.

Jan did not kill Dubois; he merely choked him into insensibility, then bound and gagged him. The scout had already done this with the other two hidden guards, men he had hunted with, had worked and built with. Together they had raised the walls that barred the herds and made human life viable on the inhospitable planet. Andrax wished them no harm.

Still, with this last one it had been harder to release the garrote in time to let him live. Jan remembered too well Jason D’Angelo’s death and was more than half convinced that Dubois, Chambard, and the dead Dumezil boy were equally responsible.

He left the rifle where it had fallen as he had the others. He could have taken them, but to do so would have jeopardized the survival of the colony. Besides, his express pistol was worth twenty rifles.

He had not been surprised to find Helene’s door unguarded. He had seen the same tactics used on Hallam for the same holy ends.

The guards at the patriarch’s door were more obvious but harder to circumvent. Marcel Dumezil’s apartment was in the second story of the town hall, with guards lounging on the catwalk before it. The two windows were shuttered and each was five meters from the ground. They would be impossible to enter – or so the guards thought.

Jan reached the roof from the rear of the building and looped a line around the chimney, then rappelled to the level of the window. He was in shadow and around the corner from the guards. As long as he remained silent, he would go undetected. He listened and was reassured by the patriarch’s heavy breathing.

The shutters were latched from within but the hinges were leather and yielded instantly to his knife. He slipped inside.

Had the patriarch been a normal man, Jan could have awakened him and threatened him for the key, but the patriarch was a man of God and therefore unpredictable. He might cry out, either thinking himself invincible or valuing his life too lightly.

However, such threats would be unnecessary. On the table beside the patriarch’s head was a ring of keys. In a settlement with fewer than a half-dozen locks, there was no doubt that the key he sought was on it. The task was proving too easy and Jan hesitated, then realized that he was giving his enemy credit for too much sophistication.

The patriarch slept on. Jan’s knife was near at hand. It would only take one move, that yawning mouth covered to silence any outcry, and the zealot would be dead. With effective leadership gone, the purge might be ended.

A shaft of light from one of Harmony’s three moons fell across old Marcel’s face. Even in sleep his features showed no relaxation. A mystery Jan had all but forgotten flashed in his mind – who had thrown the grenade? Who had killed Tom Dennison, the navigator Jan had never seen in life? Who had ordered Jason D’Angelo’s death; who had ordered the attack on Valikili when he kept liaison with Helene? Whose actions had prompted this situation, their flight, Helene’s imprisonment, Valikili’s wound?

The patriarch – Marcel Dumezil. Even those crimes he had neither committed nor ordered could be laid at his feet because of his influence.

Jan raised his knife, running his finger along the edge. He had sharpened it before the night’s mission and the leather hinges had not dulled it at all. The blade would do whatever he set it to – silently and efficiently. ‘

A vagrant breeze stirred the old man’s hair, sending a wisp to tickle his nose. He snorted, stirred, then subsided.

Marcel Dumezil, colonist, organizer, leader, a man of immense talents, immense potential for good in his community – what drove him to this purge?

He was so like old Daniel Andrax.

*****

This scene recurs in others of my novels, as well. The man (and once, the woman) who has a genuine grievance stands over his/her tormentor, and cannot drive the blade home. Sometimes it works out well; sometimes that forbearance leads to disaster. The issue is not morality, but a genuine incapacity to do the deed.

In the novel Cyan, in its first draft, Keir does drive the knife home – but it was all wrong, and deeply anticlimactic. It took me years to find Keir’s solution to the conundrum.

Two days passed. The river gate was crudely patched. The ten offworld rifles were charged and distributed and twenty men – ten rifle-armed, ten armed with bows – stood atop the palisade.

For two days there had been no sign of the renegades, but they would return. It would be months before the melt and in all the barren desert outside the palisade there was no food. Armed parties had gone upriver, then along the shore of the lake in both directions without finding either the renegades or any trace of their presence. Of course the colonists knew that Andrax was a master of his trade; he would have covered the fugitives’ tracks and there was no reason for the band to stay near water; they had merely to come down once or twice a day to drink.

But they had to have food and in all that barren waste there was none. So the colonists thought.

In fact the seven renegades were eating well enough on the dried meat that Valikili had stored against such an eventuality, nor would they have starved in any case. Along the river grew a thin fringe of siskal and lal which would have provided a meager fare; and the small, rodentlike miliks – creatures which live on the dried seedpods left behind by the herds – were available. There were few enough of these, but Jan could have trapped or shot them. In all there was enough to eat if one remained within reach of the river and stayed on the move, never exhausting the supplies of a given piece of ground.

It was fortunate for Valikili that this was not necessary, for his arrow wound, though well treated, gave him much pain. Jan had abandoned his Scout’s leathers in favor of furs in order to better blend into the community, but he had not left the uniform in his quarters. He had buried it with a bow, quiver, three knives, a twenty-liter water container, some dried siskal fruit, and medical supplies judiciously stolen from the community infirmary.

Helene remained locked in her quarters, the window now sealed shut and a newly attached padlock and hasp securing the door. The patriarch had met with his closest advisors to decide her fate, but as yet they were content to use her as bait.

Two more days passed and the colonists began to wonder what would happen. No carnivores nosed about at that time of year, and only one of the renegades seemed to have been injured. Where could they be? Surely their hunger would have driven them to some desperate move by now?

What if they had decided to abandon Helene Dumezil? What if Valikili had died and the others had gone upstream toward the mountains? There they would find game throughout the year, though it was never plentiful. Of course they would never make it to the mountains; they would starve on the journey.

***

On the fifth night Jan slipped past the sentries and found Helene. She was unhurt, she assured him through the wall, and safe enough for the moment. The patriarch had bragged to her that she was being used as bait.

Jan considered the situation. He could destroy the padlock with two shots but that would alert the guards who manned the palisade. Could he and Helene win free with the guards alerted? It was a chance he chose not to take, so he faded back into the night.

Where there was a lock, there was a key; and in a colony where one man ruled with the voice of God, that man would have the key. Jan slipped his express pistol back into its holster and drew his knife.

He had not been surprised to find Helene’s door unguarded, for he had already spotted the three hidden sentries who waited to pounce on anyone who came to rescue her. He had seen the same tactics used on Hallam for the same holy ends.

What would they do to Valikili?

Horrified, Henri shrank back into the shadows. Something had to be done, but his wits had deserted him and he could think of no plan.

He could only think of one thing – that the madness might pass. He should have tried to help Valikili, and would have but for Marie; his first duty was to his wife. He took her trembling arm and led her away from the crowd toward the south gate. They would flee to the wilderness. They could remain away from the colony and the stored food supply only so long, but in the next few days the madness might pass.

He hoped that it would, but he did not fully believe it.

Valikili was frightened for Henry Staal and cursed him for running after the colonists. Together they might have a chance to survive; divided they were in dire straits. At least Marcel Damle had remained, and Helene was close by where he could protect her.

Valikili had accepted Monism but he had not been so foolish as to assume that the Monists accepted him. He and Nur Mohammet were racially different as well as crew members. Unlike Jan he had not been schooled in small-group dynamics, but he could smell the danger in his position.

He led Marcel and Helene to his house, but paused only long enough to pick up the bundle he had prepared against such an eventuality and his bow, quiver, and blade. The rifles and ammunition were stored in “the armory,” a locked closet in the town hall. If they could get them, they could hold them for a ransom of food, for without the ten offworld rifles and Jan’s express pistol the colonists would be unable to hunt effectively during the coming melt. Levi-Stuer was working on a muzzle-loader Andrax had designed, but so far had completed only one unreliable prototype.

Marcel had shrugged off his shock and stolen a bow and quiver from the house next to Valikili’s, while Valikili had stolen a third bow and quiver for Helene. They made their way to the armory and Valikili went to work on the door with the axe he had brought for that purpose.

The colonists had also thought of the armory and a knot of them came charging around the town hall. Valikili spun around and faced them with his axe as Marcel and Helene released their arrows. Two arrows and the crowd was upon them. Valikili laid about him with the axe, his massive arms swinging in short, vicious arcs. For a moment the colonists fell back, then an arrow from the crowd struck Valikili in the thigh and he went down. Marcel stood over him with the axe he had dropped as they closed in again.

Suddenly he heard cries of fear from the colonists and they were falling back. Marcel spun to meet the new challenge behind him and found Andrax there, firing methodically. Nur, Adrian Dumezil, Henri, and Marie were behind the scout, unarmed.

Valikili felt himself lifted and carried. Through the haze of his pain he saw Nur, Henri, and Marcel. Beyond them Jan Andrax stood, pistol upraised but not firing, and Marie and Adrian Dumezil were gathering blades and bows from the blood soaked ground. Helene was nowhere in sight.

Andrax had circled around the palisade with Nur and Adrian Dumezil at his heels, intending to enter the south gate to search for the rest of the crew. There they had met Henri and Marie and the quintet had gone in search of their missing companions. Slipping from house to house toward Valikili’s quarters, they had heard the fight at the armory and arrived just in time to see Helene being dragged back into the crowd while Marcel tried to stem what would have been a final rush. Only the superior firepower afforded by the express pistol had saved them.