The World Menders
( Cultural Survey - 2 )
Lloyd Biggle Jr.
On the world Branoff IV, in the lovely land of Scorvif, live the rascz, an industrious, artistic, superbly civilized race. Few of them are aware that their prosperous civilization is totally dependent upon the olz, a race of slaves owned by their god-emperor.
Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
The World Menders
I
The captain himself escorted Farrari to the lighter and even carried one of his space bags for him.
He was a large, moody-looking man, this Captain Vaunn, and he had revolutionized Farrari’s concept of a spacer. He went grimly about his business, said very little, and seemed as phlegmatic as a robot. In two months of chance encounters he had spoken directly to Farrari only once, and that when Farrari, to relieve the unrelenting boredom of space travel, took up a textbook, “Art in Rudimentary Societies,” and spent several hours listening to the monotonous one-note scansions of primordial song. The captain knocked timidly, asked what the racket was, and, when Farrari explained, said almost apologetically, “Oh. We thought maybe you were sick, or something. Would you mind lowering—” Red-faced, Farrari turned down the volume.
But there it was. Space undoubtedly attracted a quota of hellions and adventurers, and for them its majestic emptiness would be only an inconvenient obstacle to be surpassed on the way from one place to another, the sooner the better. One would be unlikely to encounter these types on a plodding Interplanetary Relations Bureau supply ship.
The true spacer would be a timid introvert who dedicated his life to putting light-years between himself and his fellow men and found in such magnificent isolation the ultimate place of refuge. A Captain Vaunn, who would confront another person only under severe provocation, such as hours of primordial song reverberating through his ship’s ventilating system.
He had not spoken to Farrari since then, and he did not speak now. He was present because etiquette demanded it, but plainly he would have preferred to remain in bed. He forced an embarrassed smile, his lips shaped a trite formula of benediction without uttering a sound, and he turned Farrari and his bags over to the mate and fled.
“Your last stop?” Farrari asked the mate.
“This is the last classification team. There are only survey and exploration teams beyond this.”
He met Farrari’s blank look with a polite smile, wished him a comfortable landing, and nodded to the lighter’s pilot.
Farrari climbed aboard, and the pilot fastened his safety harness, tilted his seat for him, and announced, “Clearboard let ’er go.” Girders of the hull flashed past on the screen, to be abruptly replaced by a dazzling curve of star-lit sky framing the enormous emptiness of the ship’s black silhouette.
“All set?” the pilot asked.
Farrari nodded. The lighter’s engines hummed thunderously, and they plunged downward.
It was nothing like Farrari had imagined it. He had watched twenty-nine departures, in which the lighter had been a gleaming dart on the ship’s viewing screen aimed unerringly at the dark disks of twenty-nine different planets watched enviously because the luck of the draw, or some unfathomable twitch of a computer, had given him the thirtieth and last assignment. Now that his turn had come he experienced only nausea and overwhelming disappointment.
Then the shadowy terrain dimly resolved itself into cragged, snowcapped mountain peaks softly awash with starlight, and the awesome loveliness of the view almost made Farrari forget his stomach.
The lighter braked crushingly. An opening yawned in a mountain peak, and they drifted into it and came to a hissing stop as the air lock clicked open. Farrari reeled forth with his space bags, which had abruptly acquired a staggering weight.
“Hello!” a voice rang out. “Who’s this?”
“AT/1 Cedd Farrari,” Farrari answered mechanically.
“Trainee,” the pilot said, following Farrari from the lighter. “Didn’t you get orders?”
“Probably. Not my department, you know. Graan is my name. Isa Graan. Base supply officer.” He took one of the bags and crushed Farrari’s free hand. A huge man, he towered over Farrari beaming down at him, his eyes alert and friendly under a crown of wildly bushy white hair. “Welcome home, fellow. It’s a nice base, the coordinator is a good man, and this planet is certain to be oh-ohed indefinitely.” He laughed. “You might call it a choice assignment. Not ideal, but choice. We’re not under any pressure, and we haven’t lost an agent in months. It’s a good place for a train—hello! What the devil is that?”
He was staring at Farrari’s collar insignia—the lute, scroll and palette of the Cultural Survey.
“I’m CS,” Farrari said.
“What’s CS?”
“Cultural Survey.”
“What’s Cultural Survey doing way out here? Damn it, fellow—you’re lost!”
“Why don’t you have someone on hand who knows what’s going on?” the pilot asked irritably. “We’ve been dropping CS trainees everywhere between here and the frontier.”
“You can’t expect the whole base to turn out for one trainee,” Graan said. “Got a copy of your orders, fellow?”
“In one of my bags,” Farrari said. “I certainly feel lost, but if this is Branoff IV it’s where I belong.”
“Get the coordinator out of bed and ask him,” the pilot suggested.
“Ha! How many times have you yanked your captain out of bed lately?”
“Clear it with somebody before my next load. If I don’t make my getaway time, I’m stuck here for seventeen hours.”
“I’ll check,” Graan said. He set down Farrari’s bag and ambled away.
A work crew had opened the lighter’s cargo hold and rolled a conveyor into position. The pilot handed over a bundle of manifests, and one of Graan’s assistants began matching them with the crates that rolled down the conveyor. Farrari seated himself on one of his bags and waited stoically, ignoring the curious glances sent his way.
A tall, gaunt man strode into the room and stood watching. He wore a long mantle over a short, legless garment, and the vivid colors of his apparel were no less startling than his bare arms, which in spite of his slender body were incongruously muscular. Graan’s assistant grinned at him. “Are you still here, Peter? I thought you left yesterday.”
“I was due in Scory last night,” the other said disgustedly. “I had to wait for this dratted supply. Have my com relays turned up?”
“Haven’t seen them yet.”
“If they aren’t here, someone is going to have to make some.” His gaze fell on Farrari. “What do we have here? Trainee?” He strode forward and offered his hand. “I’m Peter Jorrul. Field team commander. What’s your linguistic index, fellow?”
Farrari responded with a limp handshake. “Linguistic—index?”
Jorrul waved his arms despairingly. “What are things coming to? A trainee who doesn’t even know his linguistic index!”
“He’s Cultural Survey,” the pilot said. “He wouldn’t know a linguistic index from a classification ratio.”
“Cultural Survey? Here? Does the coordinator know?”
“If he reads his mail he knows. We transported thirty CS trainees, and all of them had priority orders.”
“Sounds like one of those sick jokes that the Psych Board keeps dreaming up.”
The pilot chuckled. “No. Definitely not. Thirty CS trainees are no joke. Every permanent base in this sector got one.”
“Then Supreme has had another of its periodic attacks of imbecility. I’m almost afraid to ask, but—why?”
“Why is a question you should learn not to ask. Invariably the answer is—why not?”
“Here’s th
e manifest on your relays,” Graan’s assistant called. “They’ll be down with the next load.”
Isa Graan returned, grinning broadly. “Strunk heard something about a CS man being assigned here, so I guess it’s all right.”
“Does Strunk know why?” Jorrul demanded.
Graan shrugged. “No, and he wouldn’t even try to guess. It’s none of our business anyway—thank God! I’ll sign for him. Welcome home again, fellow. Hope you like the place—you’ll probably he here for twenty years—at least.”
“Twenty years!” Farrari exclaimed.
“IPR assignments are permanent, except for command rank officers and specialists. Didn’t they tell you? One year of leave for every ten years on station, and your travel time comes out of your year. If you make it as an agent, you’ll probably save your leave time for retirement and then never retire. A lifetime just isn’t long enough to learn a world well. But what am I talking about? You’re CS, you’re probably a specialist. Sam—look after the trainee.”
One of the workmen stepped forward and picked up Farrari’s space bags.
“He’ll find you an unused room with a bed,” Graan said. “You won’t need more than that before morning. The coordinator will assign you to quarters when you present your orders and sign in. We operate on a twenty-seven hour day. Is your watch adjustable? See me in the morning, and I’ll issue you one that is. Breakfast is at seven. Sam will show you the dining room. Breakfast is come as you like. Lunch is a package of rations whenever duty permits, dinner is dress uniform if you feel like socializing, or a tray in your quarters if you don’t. On this base you’re entitled to as much private life as you can manage provided you get your work done. See you tomorrow.”
Dazedly Farrari turned to follow Sam.
Jorrul moved to intercept him. “I want you to understand one thing, fellow. I don’t know what your status is, or what you’re doing here, and as long as you stay on base I don’t care. Take one step away from here and you’ll be my responsibility—and I’m not having any of it. You’re under permanent restriction, and, if you have a passion for sightseeing, you’re to do it on a viewing screen. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sam led him along a wide, arching, plastic-lined corridor, pointing out the dining room as they passed it, and finally turned off into a smaller corridor that appeared to be unused. He looked into several empty rooms before he found one that contained a bed and nothing else. It was a cold, windowless cavity cut into the mountain’s blue-veined granite. Sam hurried away and returned with a bellowing sleeping bag.
“There’s no heat in this section,” he said, stating the obvious with engaging apology. “But it’s just for tonight. This should keep you warm enough.”
“I’ll make out all right,” Farrari said. “Thank you.”
Sam departed with a nod and a grin, and Farrari stepped to the wall to examine a framed motto that hung there. DEMOCRACY IMPOSED FROM WITHOUT IS THE SEVEREST FORM OF TYRANNY. He shrugged and looked doubtfully at the bare room. “Home?” he exclaimed. The word echoed.
But he slept well—slept until the coordinator sent for him, and he missed breakfast.
II
He was twenty years old on the Adjusted Galactic Time Scale—a pleasant, well-mannered young man with an eminently proper upbringing, better than average intelligence, and a rich diversity of small talents. He considered it his own personal misfortune that his father was assistant custodian of the Cultural Survey Archives and his older brother a promising young officer already storming the lower reaches of CS administration. His family took it for granted that he would attend the Cultural Survey Academy; he went without protest, but only because the possible alternatives pleased him even less.
He quickly learned that in the Cultural Survey the man with many small talents possessed a marked advantage over the man with one or even several large ones. He ranked number two in his class, his family was pleased, and he began to think of the Cultural Survey as a career rather than a place to mark time while he cast about for something more important with which to occupy himself.
Abruptly the Academy’s entire fifth-year class was transferred, without warning, explanation or apology, to the Interplanetary Relations Bureau, a mysterious governmental department that few of the trainees had known existed. Their AT/1 shoulder patches crinkly new, their space bags bulging with 24.9 kilos of books and training manuals covering the subject matter of the two years of advanced training now forever lost to them, they were summarily transported far beyond the jagged frontier of the Federation of Independent Worlds and deposited on planets whose existence all the available reference books denied.
The sudden transfer shattered Farrari’s inner complacency. He entered upon his new duties with numbing uncertainty, with bewilderment, with an apprehension of starkly revealed ineptitude and its accompanying throes of exquisite embarrassment. In a word, he was terrified.
He discerned immediately that the base staff had its own strict orders concerning Cultural Survey AT/1 Cedd Farrari. On the first morning he found himself the master of a centrally-located, two-room suite just off one of the main corridors. The living quarters were comfortably furnished; the large workroom was bare, but ha Graan, the base supply officer, lined its walls with shelves and teloid files, ceremoniously presented Farrari with the latest model teloid projector, and invited him to the storage rooms to pick out any other furnishings he wanted. Ganoff Strunk, the amiable, portly, bald-headed records chief, brought him an initial allotment of five hundred teloid cubes of cultural subjects that he had culled from his files and then returned to unload an astonishing collection of artifacts: carvings in stone and wood, exquisite examples of metalcraft, jewelry, embroidery, leather work, weaving, drawings and paintings on wood and cloth, ceramics—the room took on the aspect of moving day at a museum.
When finally Farrari was left alone he slowly circled the pile of art objects, touching, scrutinizing. He was awed and delighted but also confounded. Here was a new world to explore, to study, to classify. Novice that he was, he hadn’t any idea how to begin.
Someone strolled along the corridor, and Farrari frowned resentfully at the fading footsteps. Workrooms were connected with the corridors by wide, doorless arches. Though one was entitled to as much private life as he could manage, it was obvious that his work was everyone’s business.
Thoughtfully Farrari made another circuit of the room. It would take him days just to impose a semblance of order, and once he had submerged himself in the task of sorting and classifying he would have little thought for anything else. Before he became too pre occupied to care, he should at least learn to find his way about the base.
Resolutely he turned away and stepped into the corridor.
The base was weblike, and at its center its main corridors intersected in a miniature rotunda. Opening off from it were the dining room, which also served as an assembly room on the rare occasions when the full staff met, Ganoff Strunk’s records section, and the administrative offices. Around the rotunda’s circumference was a bulletin board posted with a scattering of notices. He passed them by without a glance—they could not possibly have concerned Cultural Survey AT/1 Cedd Farrari. At the end of one corridor he could see Isa Graan’s storage rooms and the hangar where the lighter had landed. He turned in the opposite direction.
He met no one, but several staff members looked up from their work and nodded as he passed. All identifying marks were given in the abstract glyphs of a native language, and the query about his linguistic index took on an ominous significance. Obviously IPR personnel were encouraged—nay, forced—to master native languages.
The corridor ended in a row of small conference rooms, each with a single window that looked out onto formidable mountain scenery.
Backtracking, Farrari took several turnings and was about to give himself up as lost when he abruptly happened onto a main corridor again. Passing through the rotunda a second time, he paused to look at the posted notices.
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Some were questions. Some were lists of native words, the strange glyphs followed by a rendition in the common alphabet and a question mark. Some were cryptic comments.
“Yilesc? See me. Prochnow.”
“Every member of a family of olz in the village coordinates 101.7/34.9 has seven fingers on each hand. Brudg.”
“This week’s luncheon menu: forn cakes, narmpf stew, jellied zrilmberries, zrilmberry tea. Dallum.”
“Where did the pink marble in the kru’s summer palace in the narru come from? Wedgor.”
At the top of a long sheet of paper: “List any comparatives you’ve encountered in of and rase languages.” The remainder of the sheet was blank.
“Wanted: tri-bladed dagger, any condition. Kantz.”
“Anyone seen a red lupf growing south of Scorv? Dallum.”
A voice said tremulously, “I was a yilesc.”
Farrari whirled and gaped at the speaker. The young woman—girl, really—was of slight build, with a small, childlike face and large black eyes that fixed gravely upon his face and saw something in a remote dimension. Her small form was clothed in a work smock and trousers, both of them much too large. Farrari wondered if she were a child and the base had no clothing that would fit her.
“That’s very interesting,” he said, looking at the notice again. Her searching eyes disturbed him. “What’s a yilesc?”
She laughed softly. “They don’t know. Not even the yilescz know. And I won’t tell them!” She continued to gaze unblinkingly at his face. “I haven’t seen you. You’re new.”
“I arrived last night,” Farrari said. “I’m from Cultural Survey.”
“You made a statue. And cut yourself.”
“How did you know that?”
She laughed again.
Farrari was frankly looking for an excuse to escape when Ganoff Strunk hurried by. “Liano!” he called. “Did you find the coordinator?”
The World Menders cs-2 Page 1