That much Farrari knew, but as he squinted at the dim, snow-covered slopes he was humiliated to find that he had no idea where he was. The best route for a lumbering supply platform would not be the shortest, but the one that got the platform to its destination with the least possible chance of detection. To reach the city of Scory they would circle to the north and approach the lilorr, the palm-plain, by way of one of the mountain chains that separated the finger valleys. They would spend the day at a shelter and finally arrive at Scory in the deepest darkness of the second night. A platform flight on a straight line from base to Scory would arrive at dawn, and IPR could not risk startling an early-rising native with the sight of a strange object in the sky. If it left early enough to arrive in darkness, it would be aloft over the mountains before dark, and nomads sometimes hunted in the mountain valleys.
As Graan had once remarked, IPR proceeded cautiously in even its smallest endeavors.
As daylight touched the highest mountain peaks the platform dipped downward, slowed its pace, and nosed along a shallow valley. Farrari thought he could hear the tinkling murmur of a leaping mountain stream. At the end of the valley they drifted against the sheer face of a high cliff, and a cave opened soundlessly before them. The opening closed after them, and lights came on as the platform settled gently to the floor. Jorrul pulled off his visor and gestured wearily at the row of bunks along one wall.
“Better get some sleep,” he said. “And enjoy it. Going into the field this is the last place, and returning it’s the first place, where a field agent can sleep with both eyes closed.”
He tossed a package of rations to Farrari and took one for himself, but before eating he went to the imposing bank of communications equipment in the corner. He first reported their safe arrival to base, and then he began to replay the reports that had accumulated. Munching his rations, Farrani reflected that this kind of officer simply did not occur in the Cultural Survey.
There was a disturbing grimness of purpose about him, as though he expected the worst of any situation and was usually right. His body was slender, his legs almost spindly, and his arms incongruously thick and muscular. It was probably small consolation to his subordinates that he would never order them to do something he would not do himself. There would be very few things that Peter Jorrul could not do himself.
Farrari had heard that he rarely smiled and never laughed.
When Farrari finally drifted off to sleep he had acquired a new respect for command responsibilities. Jorrul was still listening to reports, and his ration package was still unopened.
The cave was dark when Farrari awoke, and Jorrul was asleep. There was nothing for him to do but sleep again, which he did after lying awake for a time pondering the strange turn of events that had plucked him away from base. The next time he awoke there was a soft light in the corner where Jorrul was again poised over the communications equipment.
He looked up when Farrari swung down from his bunk. “Hungry?”
“Not especially,” Farrari said.
“Have another ration package if you want it. But you might want to save your appetite—we’ll be at my headquarters shortly after midnight, and there’ll be a hot native meal waiting.”
Farrari must have grimaced unconsciously, because Jorrul straightened up and demanded sternly, “Don’t you like native food?”
Farrari said, “Well—”
“Have you ever had any?”
“Every week,” Farrari said. “Dallum has those lunches, you know, and—”
He broke off in amazement as a legend exploded before his disbelieving eyes. Jorrul leaned forward in his chair to pound the floor with one hand while the other grasped his stomach and his body shook in a helpless convulsion of laughter. “Native food!” he gasped. “That’s laboratory stuff. No sane native would touch any of it.”
“I know that,” Farrari admitted. “But when you said ‘native food’ that was the first thing I thought of.”
Jorrul wiped his eyes, brushing aside his laughter with a final, resounding chuckle. “The rascz have a gourmet society,” he said seriously. “That’s why you rarely see my agents at base. They can’t stand the food there.”
“And the olz—do they have a gourmet society?”
“The olz starve, and so do my agents when they’re living with them. But when they leave the field for a rest they don’t go to base, they come to my headquarters where they can eat.” He spoke to the transmitter. “Farrari’s never had native food. Break him in gently. No, not the stuffed torn, but save some for me.” He canceled out and sat back wearily, his eyes fixed on Farrari.
“How did you know the kru was dead?” he asked.
“I thought it was obvious,” Farrari said.
“How’d you know the moving picture was missing?”
“I didn’t. I still don’t. It seemed like one good reason for the tapestry to be hanging there.”
Jorrul got to his feet. “The worst thing about field work,” he announced, “is the waiting.”
After an hour Farrari agreed fervently. He returned to his bunk for the want of anything else to do and finally fell asleep again. When Jorrul shook him awake it was dark outside; when the platform cleared the last mountain and dipped down over the lilorr, it was midnight.
Uarrari, gazing up at the brilliant span of starlight, asked suddenly, “Aren’t there any moons?”
After a long pause Jorrul answered curtly, “No. No moons.”
Under the bright sky the land below seemed appallingly black, a vast emptiness broken only once by the distant, half-concealed red glow of a dying fire.
Finally the platform settled slowly and came to rest. Invisible hands assisted Farrari as he climbed out. Jorrul followed him, announcing with rare enthusiasm, “Field team headquarters. Now we can eat.”
V
The faint, persistent vibration could have been Farrari’s imagination, but the incessant rumble in the background was real. Jorrul ate his stuffed Porn slowly, with obvious relish, and listened to reports. Farrari ate a rich stew much more slowly—he didn’t like it—and tried to follow the conversation.
Agent 93 reported a squad of the kru’s cavalry headed up the narru, one of the finger valleys, and this fact was discussed and pondered with a seriousness that Farrari would have accorded only to a full army on the march.
Agent 176 reported a village of sick olz on the south edge of the nlorr. Jorrul sat up alertly, pushed his food aside, and wanted to know what action had been taken. When informed that the report had just been received, he hurried away to talk with base.
Enis Holt, their portly host, who had introduced himself to Farrari as 101 and added his name as an afterthought, met Farrari’s puzzlement with a smile. “The olz are in such poor health that even a mild epidemic could decimate the population,” he explained.
“The olz would be better off dead,” Farrari said firmly.
Holt’s smile broadened. “Is that the Cultural Survey point-of-view?”
“The humanitarian point-of-view.”
“No.” Holt shook his head emphatically. “The humanitarian would improve their lives, not end them. That’s also the IPR viewpoint. IPR has to consider the welfare of a civilization, too, as opposed to that of any of its components. This is the only stable civilization on the planet, and, therefore, it’s our only hope for the long-term improvement of the lives of the planet’s people. And this civilization couldn’t survive without the olz.”
“Are the rascz aware of that?” Farrari asked politely.
“No. One of our critical problems is to find a way to make them aware of it before they inadvertently extermine the olz.”
Jorrul returned, skewered another slice of the forn, and munched thoughtfully. “Next,” he said.
Holt consulted his notes. “The water level at the demc is a meter below normal. If we don’t get some rain soon, there’ll be dry wells all over the lilorr and a lot of thirsty olz. Agent 213 reports nine new durrlz assigned to the hiln
gol, which we more or less expected after last year’s production drop. And Agent 148 fell off his grit and sprained an ankle, the clod. Fortunately no one saw him. Then 124…”
Holt’s wife Rani, who had served their food, was hovering about the table watchfully. Farrari touched her arm and whispered, “What’s the noise?”
“Noise?” she repeated blankly. “Noise? Oh, you mean—” She chuckled. “I haven’t heard it for years. It’s with us all the time, you see. This is a mill. Would you like to see it?”
Farrari nodded. He followed her from the room. Jorrul, intent on the implications of 124’s report, took no notice of them. They descended one of the strange Rasczian stairways—the rascz were blessed with natural cement of an excellent quality but evidently had never thought to mold it into steps; their stairs were ramps with carefully-selected stones set at random. Farrari considered the stones more of a nuisance than an assistance.
The stairs ended at a balcony overlooking the mill’s cavernous interior. A single light flickered below, a burning chunk of wood floated in a stone trough filled with quarm oil. Across the huge room were two rows of double grinding stones, the upper circular with single protruding beam. Only three were in operation; narmpfz, ugly, placid creatures with enormous, powerful bodies, very little neck, and large, toothless mouths surrounded by superficial heads, plodded in patient circles straining against the beams. The stones turned on a central hub with an incessant, rasping racket.
They descended a longer stairway to the ground level. As Farrari was examining a pair of idle grindstones two young men wearing stripped apprentice aprons entered through a door at the end of the room. They nodded at Rani Holt and eyed Farrari curiously as they passed. They halted one of the narmpfz with a slap on its flank, set a wedge, and raised the upper stone with blows of a huge mallet. After they swept the coarse flour onto a cloth they scooped measures of grain from a large crock and scattered them between the stones. The narinpf waited patiently until another slap on its flank set it in motion again. They repeated the operation at the other stones, poured their meager accumulation of flour into a crock, and made their exit.
Rani Holt spoke into Farrari’s ear. “It would be so easy to introduce technological improvements. But, of course, we can’t.”
“Technology imposed from without…” Farrari muttered. He shouted at her, “It must require a lot of mills to feed the population.”
They turned down a final stairway that led to a narrow, subterranean chamber where long rows of crocks stood. She pressed against the rough stone wall; it swung inward, and they stepped through into a smaller storage room. The wall swung shut after them, reducing the noises of the mill to a dull vibration. On the far side she opened another concealed door and led him into a large, brilliantly-lighted underground room. In one corner a communications technician manned his instruments; in another a machinist shaped a piece of metal. A man and a woman were drinking from tall mugs in a small lounge near the entrance.
“Field team headquarters,” Rani explained. “Supply base, workshops, communications center. What was it you asked me upstairs?”
“I said it must take a lot of mills to feed the population.”
She nodded. “We could do it by oursleves, you know. We have a power mill here, and we do most of our grinding on it. We have to have the output expected of a mill of this size, and if we did all the grinding with those primitive grindstones it would require more manpower than we can spare. Because, you understand, everyone connected with this place has to be IPR. We operate continuously, but only enough stones to make it sound as if we’re furiously busy.”
“Power mill?” Farrari repeated. “But I thought—”
“We aren’t giving it to the rascz,” she explained. “We’re just using it ourselves. It required quite a lot of adjustment to make it produce flour as coarsely ground as that of the mill. We’re very well situated here. Millers are among the most substantial citizens, and this is one of the most important mills in Scorvif. Enis is highly thought of. Even the court dignitaries stop to exchange mugs with him when they pass this way. A mill is a center for all kinds of traffic, which lets our agents come and go freely. We can send our supposed journeymen anywhere buying grain, or delivering flour, or prospecting for a new millstone. The noise of the mill is very useful when the workshop is operating. Yes, we’re very well situated.”
“How does an IPR agent get to be a substantial citizen like a miller?” Farrari asked.
She smiled. “With patience. And unlimited time. And even then it required luck. It took two generations of agents working as apprentices and journeymen before a miller died childless and we were able to purchase his mill.”
She led him to the clothing bins and picked out a worn, short-sleeved shirt, ragged trousers of coarse cloth, mud-spattered boots with wood soles and high cloth tops, and a skull cap. “We’ll start you out as an apprentice’s helper,” she said. “That door leads to the sleeping room. Sleep as long as you like, and put these on when you wake up. Someone will show you what an apprentice’s helper does, just in case visitors catch you upstairs, or outside, and you have to look busy. Can you speak Rasczian?”
“Only a little,” he admitted.
“Don’t try to speak it to a native. This country doesn’t have foreigners, and a person who can’t speak Rasczian flawlessly is unheard of. We should do something about your hair, no rase has long curly hair, but perhaps you can get by if you wear the cap. Anything else you’d like to know?”
“Yes,” Farrari said. “Why was I brought here?”
“Day before yesterday,” she said seriously, “base informed us that the kru was dead. We don’t often receive information from base. We are the ones who tell base what is happening in Scorvif. None of our agents had an inkling that the kru was in anything but the best of health, but, if base thought otherwise, we had to investigate. So we did, with considerable trouble and risk, and we learned that the kru was dead. That startled all of us. In the meantime Peter had returned to base to take care of accumulated business and pick up supplies, and he passed the word that the moving picture had been removed from the Life Temple. So we floated a platform up to the temple—this planet having no moon is sometimes very useful—and had a peek behind that precious drapery, and sure enough, the moving picture had been removed. Naturally Peter—all of us—wanted to know how base was finding out these things, and when it turned out that the Cultural Survey trainee was responsible, Peter decided to bring him here to find out what else he could do.” She smiled. “So that’s why you’re here. Better get some sleep. You’ll have an audience tomorrow—every agent who can get away is likely to want to see a Cultural Survey trainee in action.”
Farrari found himself in action as soon as he awoke, and he enjoyed none of it. He cleaned out a narnpf stall, learning to handle a heavy, wood-bladed shovel while not breathing through his nose. He helped to unload a grain wagon and then to load a flour wagon, mastering after a fashion the technique of balancing the heavy crocks on edge and maneuvering them. The young IPR agents performed such heavy manual labor stoically. Natives did it; they were natives, so they did it. Farrari’s muttered complaints first amused and then annoyed them. They sternly ordered him to mutter in silence until he’d learned to complain in Rasczian, and as punishment they left him to line up the grain crocks by himself. He managed to do it, upsetting only three of them on the process. Fortunately the seals held and there was no audience.
Rani Holt finally rescued him, leading him off to a meal of regulation IPR rations. He thanked her sincerely; she smiled and remarked that the native food took some getting used to, and those who had been eating it for years tended to forget that. Since Farrari had developed no compelling fondness for manipulating grain crocks, he ate slowly and relaxed his aching muscles. Not until he had finished did she inform him that he’d been ordered to attend a staff meeting that had already started.
He attempted to slip into the room unobserved, but conversation halted
when he appeared. Enis Holt motioned him to the table, Jorrul indicated a vacant chair, and the four strange faces regarded him with frank curiosity.
Jorrul performed introductions: Anan Borgley, 112, baker in Scorv. Ned Lindor, 89, grainery supervisor. Bion Brilett, 130, stonecutter. Karl Mdan, 193, potter. Farrari acknowledged the introductions gravely, feeling increasingly impressed and puzzled. These men, in the work dress of their occupations, could visit a miller as often as they chose without causing comment. The baker could he buying flour; the grainery supervisor selling grain; the stonecutter shaping new millstones; the potter delivering grain crocks. IPR had achieved a fiendish efficiency on this planet. Why, then, did it accomplish so little?
“We have a mystery on our hands,” Jorrul said. “The kru is dead but there has been no public announcement except for the drapery on the Life Temple and no explanation of that. And there seems to be no public reaction. We were wondering if perhaps it’s been so long since a kru died that neither the officials nor the citizens quite know what’s to be done, or how they should act.”
“The kru was considered a god,” Farrari said. “Surely there’d be a religious tradition concerning his death, and for anything that important there’d be a voluminous written record. What does Jan Prochnow have to say about it?”
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