“Remember what I said.”
The voice made me jump. It was Lonessa, well-wrapped in furs against the morning chill.
“I’ll remember.” Last night I’d thought she was wrong. Now it was another day, and it seemed to me she was right. Dad was dead, it had happened, and there was nothing to be gained by promoting enmity between Yam and Noss.
Instead, it was a matter for personal vengeance.
“If it’s any consolation, I’m going to miss Bruno more than most.”
I felt a flash of anger. “Not more than me. And Spring.”
“Spring… ? Oh, yes, your mother. She was … fond of him?”
“Why not, for Phu’s sake? He was a good man.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing odd about a woman being fond of a man,” she said surprisingly. “At least, it doesn’t seem odd to the two people concerned. Which reminds me.” Her voice harshened and she was once again the dragon-lady of Noss. “If you value the relationship between our villages, stay away from my daughter.”
I didn’t answer that, and she didn’t wait for an answer either. It was a command, and Lonessa was accustomed to having her commands obeyed.
“You’ll have to be very careful, Hardy. In a way, you’ll have to grow up. People will put you in your father’s place as Stance’s adviser. They’ll want to look up to you. So you’ll have to think before you speak.” Mister McNeil chuckled. “You’ll find it strange at first. You’ve been an outspoken young freezer in the past.”
The Nowhere Man made one of his rare contributions. “Watch out for Trigger.”
I’d stopped off at Mister McNeil’s place on the way home for two reasons. Firstly, I was feeling low and needed to talk. Secondly, I needed advice. How would I face the villagers of Yam with Dad’s body on the cargo platform?
And the visit had been a good idea. Mister McNeil had given me stuva laced with an Earth-type distil manufactured at Devon Station, that he called Vodka. He’d listened gravely to my news. He’d made the right noises of sympathy. And now he was giving me the benefit of unbiased advice.
“Yes… .” I said thoughtfully.
“You intend to get back at Cuff?” he said. “Don’t. Or if you must, for God’s sake don’t get caught.”
I was reminded of something. I turned to the Nowhere Man who was sitting in the shadows, as usual. “We gave you a ride to Noss yesterday. Just after Cuff went past in the motorcart, I saw you walking in the same direction.”
“Did you?” He sounded surprised.
It’s difficult when several thoughts occur at once and you don’t know which order to follow them up in, and you know you’re going to forget some of them before you can use them. I decided to stick to the main issue.
“Maybe you caught up with him later along the road near the woman’s village. He said he was adjusting the timing.”
“I saw him. Yes. He was using a wrench on the valve gear.”
“Or pretending to use a wrench on the valve gear.”
“He looked hot and busy.”
Dad had been stabbed in the back. “Did he have any kind of knife with him?”
Mister McNeil broke in. “You must allow the possibility of an accident, Hardy. Your father could have slipped down the bank and fallen on something sharp.”
“Not Dad.” In my eyes, Dad had been almost immortal. He wouldn’t have died in such a silly way. I returned to the Nowhere Man. “Was Cuff carrying a knife?”
“He’s a fisherman. He always carries a knife. I didn’t actually see it. I wasn’t looking.”
“Did you see Dad? He’d have been coming from the opposite direction, down the back trail from the Point.”
“No.”
The Nowhere Man was born in Noss. His mother was a Noss woman, he was raised in Noss but his father had come from Yam. Where would his loyalties lie? Maybe it was time to switch to one of the side issues. “What were you doing in Noss, anyway?”
He hesitated. “Just visiting. I was born there, remember?”
Mister McNeil said, “It doesn’t matter, Hardy.”
Frustrated, I burst out, “Everything that happened yesterday matters! Right now, Dad’s death is in his killer’s memory and it’ll always be there, for ever! You can’t think the way we do. Every memory’s important to us. They go on and on, and they link together to form the web of our culture. Our people hardly ever kill people, and that’s why. We don’t know who we’ll be laying the crime and the disgrace on, in the future. And memories can spread if people have more than one son. In a thousand years every single man in Noss could have that murder in his memory!”
“Hardly likely, given your birthrate. And anyway, from what I know of your culture, Cuff’s motive is very thin. Your father was provoked into a fit of temper and attacked him. Cuff would have known it was uncharacteristic, and maybe even felt ashamed for being responsible. There were bigger issues than your father losing his temper and Cuff knew that too.”
“And he knows that if Dad isn’t around and Uncle Stance goes to Noss asking for handouts, they’ll tell him to go to Rax! Which is exactly what he wants!”
There was a long and thoughtful silence. We sipped our laced stuva. Eventually Mister McNeil said, “We humans see you as gentle folk, but perhaps we’ve forgotten how a society can break down when times get hard. It’s happened to us more than once, but such times are past and forgotten. We don’t have memory genes, and our brains are divided in two parts, not three. If we want to remember we have to dig into electronic archives, and who wants to do that just for the purpose of feeling rotten about ourselves? No, if there is a food problem in the future — I mean a serious problem — there has to be a possibility we humans will help out, and to hell with our policies. Your Dad’s death may go a long way in helping me persuade the authorities to change their views. Non-interference is one thing, but standing by and watching a peaceful culture descend into barbarism is quite another.”
“Thanks.” I couldn’t think what else to say.
We stood and went out into the sunshine, leaving the Nowhere Man brooding in his corner. The garden was in full bloom, garish colors everywhere. I found it quite hard on the eyes; there was nowhere I could find visual relaxation. Mister McNeil, on the other hand, loved it. He led me around, talking of daffodils and tulips and Earth, and I got the impression of a world that shone in space like a multicolored beacon. I asked him what Earth was like, physically.
“Oh, very similar to your world, but a little bigger, and older.” He bent to jerk out a handful of throttlers that had moved in on a flower bed. “When I say older, I mean more developed. I couldn’t afford a garden this size, on Earth.”
“Why not?”
“There isn’t room. Lots of people, lots of factories. Most of everything is under domes, and the ocean’s given over to oxygen mats.”
“It sounds frightening.”
“It’s beautiful.” He sighed, and paused at the garden’s boundary, staring at the anemone trees on the riverbank with frank distaste. “You can’t conceive it… . Listen, the Nowhere Man was right when he warned you about Trigger. You’ll have moved up in the Yam pecking order, and he’ll resent it. He may try to discredit you.”
“He doesn’t have the brains.”
“All the same… .” He moved on, and in due course we arrived at the motorcart. It was time to leave. I didn’t want to go. Dad’s body lay under its blanket, thawing out and dribbling moisture, mutely accusing. If I’d stayed with him all day, he wouldn’t have been killed. But I’d become childishly bored at the meeting and I’d gone in search of a pretty face, and so he’d died.
I’ve scanned my memories of that day many times, and I know now it was a big turning point. From the moment I was able to accept part of the blame for Dad’s death, I changed and began to see people differently. And, I think, become more tolerant of their foibles.
The fire had burned low and there was very little wood on the cargo pla
tform; the Noss men had moved it off to make room for Dad. I debated asking Mister McNeil for the loan of some cordwood; I’d noticed a small plantation of cuptrees at the back of his house. Cuptrees are the only trees suitable for burning at this time of year; they catch moisture in their big leaves during the drench and absorb it downward; the opposite of our other trees that suck moisture up with their roots. So during the rest of the year they go dormant and the wood is dry, perfect for burning.
But I didn’t feel like placing myself under any further obligations to the kindly Mister McNeil, so I picked up a distil can and began to pour the contents into the tank.
And immediately I knew something was wrong.
There was no smell.
Distil has an acrid, nose-catching stink that I find quite unpleasant. The stuff I was pouring had no smell at all. I dipped my finger in it and touched my tongue. It had no taste either.
“That’s funny.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It seems to be water. The cans have gotten mixed up. I’m going to have to drain the tank and refill it.”
I tested the next can first. It was water too. And the third and last.
“Just as well you didn’t start back yesterday evening,” Mister McNeil observed. “You’d have run out of fuel somewhere between here and Yam. And that would have been the end of you. The nights are still bitterly cold. I suppose a bunch of thirsty Noss fishermen must have had a party around your motorcart.”
“They wouldn’t have refilled the cans with water.”
“But they did, didn’t they?”
“Somebody did. I wonder why.” I left it to him to speculate. He’d seemed a bit skeptical at first when I’d insisted Dad had been murdered but this looked like proof positive. It had been a two-pronged attack. If the stabbing hadn’t come off for some reason, then switching the fuel would have ensured a fatal journey. And it would have taken care of me, too. Was I included in the murderer’s plans?
Suddenly I felt very insecure.
I drove into Yam as the afternoon shadows were stretching across the road. People looked my way as they heard the puffing of the motorcart and the crunching of metal treads on gravel, but they didn’t wave. They turned away, as though embarrassed. They stiffened up. Women called children closer.
It was an ominous homecoming.
I stopped outside Uncle Stance’s cottage and pulled on the brake. There was an uneasy fluttering in my stomach. People had drifted out from their doorways and were standing silently in the road, watching me. As I climbed down from the footplate I caught sight of Spring. Her face was wet with tears and she was looking at the blanket covering Dad, not at me.
She knew. They all knew. The news of Dad’s death had preceded me.
Uncle Stance came striding out of his cottage, followed by Trigger.
“You’re back,” he said harshly. “It’s taken you long enough.”
“I stopped off at Mister McNeil’s.”
This provoked a fit of superiority. “You what? You didn’t think the death of your father important enough to report back immediately? You irresponsible young freezer!”
People had gathered close, lots of them. This was to be the public humiliation of Hardy. There was an unfriendly muttering. Uncle Stance had his supporters.
“You seem to know all about it already,” I pointed out reasonably enough.
“By chance,” he snarled.
“How?”
“By Phu, do I have to explain to you? Go to your cottage and consider yourself confined indoors until we’ve discussed the matter in Council. Go on!”
And such is the force of habit that I almost went. Then I remembered: Dad was dead. My status, in fact my whole life, had changed. It was time to make a stand.
“No.”
“What! Are you defying me?”
“Wrongdoers are confined indoors. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?” He had a knack of recovering his temper instantly, when it suited him. He began to talk in level tones of reasonableness. It occurred to me that this was quite an honor; in the whole of my life he’d rarely addressed me directly. “Let me tell you what you’re done wrong, Hardy, since you clearly lack the intelligence o work it out for yourself. Firstly,” He touched the forefinger of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, leaving the left forefinger extended upright for all of Yam to see, “you wandered away from an important meeting which was to have been a useful learning experience for you. Secondly,” and the second forefinger went up, “as a result of abandoning your father in favor of fooling around with a flounder girl, you were not present to give assistance when he had his accident.”
“Accident?”
“Silence! If you had been there, he would not have died. Thirdly —”
“Put your freezing fingers down!” I shouted through a red haze of rage.
“Thirdly, you took it on yourself to accuse our Noss friends of killing your father, an accusation made without justification, an accusation that seriously jeopardizes our relationship with the fishermen, an accusation that will have serious consequences in view of the poor showing of our harvest… .”
The fingers were thrust before my face in emphasis, and I began to lose track of the words accompanying them. Suddenly there were four fingers.
“… dawdled on the way—”
The fingers were gone. I seemed to have flung myself on Uncle Stance. Incredibly, we were fighting. I found it difficult to land any blows, though; my arms would hardly move. It was like a frustrating dream. At last the blur of his face sharpened up and I could see him clearly. And I realized people were holding my arms.
“… will do you no good at all, Hardy,” he was saying.
“It was not an accident!” I shouted. “Why won’t you listen to me? He was stabbed in the back!”
I flung off the restraining hands and fought my way to the motorcart.
“See for yourself!” I shouted, and pulled away the loxhair blanket.
Then shock hit me like a kick in the chest.
Slick-skinned, flippers folded against its flanks, needle-sharp teeth exposed in a last snarl, the body of a grume-rider lay on the cargo deck.
My mother came to see me the second day of my incarceration.
Uncle Stance had already visited me several times, but I’d refused to speak to him, partly because I felt too miserable to discuss anything with this unsympathetic character who just wanted to rub it in, and partly because he wouldn’t believe what I told him. Or wouldn’t want to believe me, all wrapped up in politics as he was.
Spring was different. Even she supported the accident theory, though.
“Who would inflict a terrible memory like that on his descendants, Hardy? Far more likely that your dad slipped and fell, and drowned. And far better to think that, for the good of all of us.”
“But that’s not what happened! Someone must pay!”
“It won’t bring your dad back,” she said quietly.
“It won’t bring him back, no. But I’ll feel a lot safer myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just suppose the distil was switched after Dad was killed, instead of before. See what I mean?”
“Hardy, the whole distil business could have been a mistake. Your dad used cans for water here in Yam; they’re easier to carry than skins. He could have put the wrong cans on the motorcart before we started.”
“Dad would never make a mistake like that. Anyway, I saw him fill the cans from the distil tank in the yard just before we left.”
“Well, I don’t know… .” She looked at me doubtfully, plump face worried. “And with your dad’s body gone… .”
“Grume riders don’t come up the river until the grume, so they must have switched the bodies in Noss. Somebody got the animal from a cold-cellar. They wanted to make me look like a liar; maybe they didn’t want people to see the wound. How did you find out about Dad�
��s death, anyway?”
She sighed. “A Noss man happened across our hunting party late that afternoon. They came straight back here, of course.”
“They’d have been better off heading for Noss. I could have done with some support. And a bit of trust,” I added bitterly.
“People only have your word for the stab wound. The hunting team were told Bruno drowned. And we have every reason not to fall out with Noss,” she said reasonably.
I wanted to tell her more about Charm. Of all the Yam villagers, Spring would probably have been the most understanding, and Charm was my best witness regarding the wound.
But would Charm support me? I doubted it. Her loyalties lay with Noss… .
“You see, Hardy, people are very upset about the loss of Bruno. He was a popular man, and everybody knows he was the strength behind Stance. That’s why Stance is particularly unhappy. It’s not just because Bruno was his brother. He’s scared about a future without Bruno’s help. And the hunting trip wasn’t exactly a success anyway; the game don’t seem to be around. If we thought times were hard last year, they’re going to be harder still this year. So people are looking for a scapegoat. And you’re it. You mustn’t blame them too much.”
It wasn’t as simple as that, but Spring was too kind to go any deeper. The truth was, people thought I’d lied. And as humans, you can appreciate the problem we have with lies and false information. Every Yam memory except mine now carried the certain knowledge that Dad had drowned accidentally. And every child born in Yam from now on — except any male descendants of mine — would carry that same false memory. They could never all be corrected, even if the truth became common knowledge. A lie goes down in history, and history is sacred. Lying is a crime.
It wasn’t just being ostracized that hurt. It was the guilt, because Uncle Stance was right on one count: if I hadn’t left Dad on his own, he wouldn’t have been killed. So in a way I was glad to be on my own for a while; it gave me time to come to terms with myself. People confined indoors are supposed to spend the time gainfully in stardreaming, thus emerging wiser, but I had too much on my mind.
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