The World Menders cs-2

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  There were thick zrilm hedges, taller than a durrl mounted on a gril, that completely enclosed the fields and could be passed only with portable stiles. These ramshackle constructions of pegged boards had a platform at the top from which a durrl, or his assistant, could view the work in several adjoining fields. Every harvested tuber, or basket of grain, had to be laboriously carried over one or several zrilm hedges to the waiting wagons, and at night the durrl carried away the stiles. A system of gates would have greatly lessened the ors toils, but gates would have been much more difficult to guard. The zrilm, the symbol of the ors bondage, was also the symbol of his hunger. No starving ol had ever been known to force his way through a zrilm hedge; starvation was the easier death.

  Farrari saw durrlz rarely and then only at a distance, for they almost never visited an ol village. The olz, even the youngest children, went to the fields at dawn and returned at dusk. Farrari had a leisurely, tedious day, followed by a few hours of excruciating alertness at the nightfire when he prepared Liano’s food, ran errands at her bidding, restrained a feverish child while she performed a rite of health over it, looked after the narmpf, and finally, when the olz retired to their huts, he would send his daily report to field team headquarters.

  After two or three nights in a village they moved on, departing in the morning without a leave-taking because the olz were already at work, and, before they left, returning to the village stores the pathetic offering of tubers and grain that had been ceremoniously presented to Liano the night of their arrival. They would reach their next stopping place by late afternoon, Farrari would clean out the hut reserved for any visiting yilesc and prepare a sleeping place for himself in the open, and they would await the return of the olz.

  The nights lengthened and became colder. The last of the harvest was gathered, and the day came when most of the olz remained in the village. Jorrul thought that Farrari was not sufficiently experienced to undergo the strain of maintaining his ol identity continuously, so he ordered them out. They left the next morning and that night base sent a platform to pick them up.

  “You’ve done well,” Jorrul told Farrari. “You’ve learned to act like an ol. Now we’ll have to teach you to think like one.” He added softly, “Liano seems to have done well, too. Did you find out anything?”

  Farrari shook his head. They had asked him to be alert for any clue concerning the mystery of the yilescz, and since they could give him no notion of what to look for, he doubted that they seriously expected him to find it.

  “Would it be all right to ask Liano to marry me?” he asked.

  Jorrul frowned. “She wouldn’t. Not after what happened. Her husband was literally torn to pieces before her eyes. I’m certain she’d never take to the field again with a fellow agent who was anything more than that. It would impair your relationship if she even suspected that you wanted to marry her, so don’t mention it. You can help her most by keeping your work on a strictly impersonal basis.”

  “Then tell me one thing,” Farrari said angrily. “If she has no personal interest in me, why did she choose me?”

  “We’ve wondered about that,” Jorrul said. “We’re still wondering, but with things going well we’re not about to upset them by asking questions.” He changed the subject with a shrug. “I take it that you didn’t encounter any difficulties.”

  “Once my muscles got resigned to my moving like an ol, I spent most of the time feeling bored.”

  “That’s because you weren’t thinking like an ol.”

  “How can you tell how an ol thinks?” Farrari demanded.

  “We can’t,” Jorrul admitted. “The most we can do is reason from our observations. We know how an ol ought to be thinking. He has so little leisure time during the agricultural season that if he thinks at all he must envy you yours. Maybe that’s why a yilesc is never without a kewl. If she loses one she can replace him at any village, probably with the first ol she asks.”

  “After what I’d been led to expect, it was almost a letdown,” Farrari said. “I saw no beatings, no starvation, and very little illness. I rarely saw a durrl, and if there was any danger I certainly didn’t notice it.”

  “On your first field assignment we wouldn’t put you where there was much danger. In the outlying districts the durrlz are more humane, probably because they aren’t likely to be ambitious or they wouldn’t be there. Also, fall is the healthiest time of the year. The weather is mild, and the olz always eat well during the fall harvest. The sickly are already dead and the well will probably remain well until winter sets in. When you go back you won’t have it so easy. This is the year of the half crop, and that means… you’ll find out what it means.”

  XI

  It meant the spring of starvation.

  In the year of the half crop, half of the arable land lay fallow. A full harvest followed, and then came another half crop while the remainder of the land was rested. It was a crude and fiendishly cruel method of preserving the land’s productiveness. Regardless of the size of the harvest, the master race took what it wanted, kept its emergency store houses filled, and enjoyed full rations. And in the year of the half crop the starving olz died by the thousand.

  Farrari and Liano were scheduled to spend the winter in advanced training and return to the field at the beginning of spring; but the cold weather lingered, the rains were heavy and unrelenting, and Dr. Garnt glumly posted reports of death and sickness from IPR’s scattered ol agents and pronounced the weather the worst of any spring on record.

  The coordinator sent for Farrari. He and Peter Jorrul had been reviewing the doctor’s reports, and they looked as though they were about to invite Farrari to his own funeral.

  “All of this information,” Jorrul said gravely, “comes from places where our agents have been secretly fortifying the ol diet all winter. And if those natives are dying at this rate, we hate to think what’s happening elsewhere.”

  “We hate to think,” Coordinator Paul added, “but we’d like to know. We’ve got to know, and we’ve got to do everything we can to help them. I’d planned to keep you here until the weather breaks, but—”

  “I understand, sir,” Farrari said. “If it’s all right with Liano, I am ready to leave whenever you can arrange it.”

  “Batting about in an ol loin cloth in this weather won’t be pleasant,” the coordinator said. “What are you grinning about?”

  “When I started this,” Farrari said, “I had that silly notion about bringing culture to the olz.”

  They had the crushing sensation of walking in the footsteps of Death. Outwardly life seemed to continue as usual. The olz who were able gathered around the nightfire, but these were transformed olz, with blanched flesh stretched tautly over sharp bones and so weak were they that four of them struggled to lift a log onto the fire. They huddled in the shallow circle of warmth for hours without uttering a sound. Now even the women were silent.

  The olz were unable to maneuver the pathetically light bodies of the dead through the narrow doorways, so dead and dying lay together in huts foul beyond belief with the accumulated filth of winter. Farrari and Liano carried the dead to the death huts, cleaned and cared for the sick, and secretely added powdered nutrients to the watery soup compounded of the last of the village’s stock of rotting tubers. They had no hope at all that this would give the living the stamina they so desperately needed to survive until the weather improved, but in one day they could do no more. At dawn they were on their way to the next village.

  And again Death had come before them.

  Each day brought another village, another pile of dead, another cluster of pathetic, starving olz about a nightfire. Farrari lost track of time. They were both near exhaustion when they haltingly made their way across a finger of the vast clay wasteland that remote centuries of careless agriculture had devastated. When finally they neared the other side and pointed their way toward a fertile valley, the narmpf sighted zrilm hedges that promised dry leaves for it to munch and increased its flo
undering pace with an impatient snort.

  Suddenly Liano cried out. Farrari halted the narmpf with a slap of his hand and turned. An of stag,gered toward them. His taut skin had the unhealthy, pasty pallor that all of the olz had taken on during the winter months, but with an ominous difference: even at a distance Farrari could detect an ugly flush of fever. The of stumbled and fell as he approached them and lay motionless.

  Farrari ran to his side, and Liano leaped from the cart and followed him. The narmpf snorted again, this time in alarm, and shifted its feet nervously.

  The ol was dead. They carried his frail body to the cart, and Liano gently touched a puffed ridge of flesh that ran the length of his spine. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” she whispered.

  Farrari turned the narmpf aside, and they retraced the ors steps, skidding down a last, steep slope Farrari wondered awesomely how the dying ol had managed to climb it—and turning into a narrow lane lined with tall zrilm hedges. A short distance farther on they came upon the village, with its circle of low clay huts about the fire-blackened hollow where the clay cooking pot stood, and, nearby, the clumsily-dug well and a pile of water-soaked quarm logs.

  The logs were a danger signal. Quarin was strictly rationed, the olz never had enough, and they kept their meager reserve in storage huts. The soggy logs meant that this village had not had a fire for many nights, and that meant serious trouble.

  Farrari crept under the cart for shelter from the driving rain while he lit a torch, and they went quickly from hut to hut. All of the olz had the strange swelling on their spines. More than half of them were already dead. Farrari mutte’ed, “They’re so weak from hunger that they have no resistance.”

  “We’ll need help,” Liano whispered.

  He stood guard while she talked with base. Then he violated a fundamental rule of ol existence—fires permitted only during the hours of darkness. He dragged dry quarm logs from the storage hut and started a roaring blaze around the clay pot. While the water heated they carried the dead to the death huts, splashing through thick, oily smoke that hung near the ground over, yellowing puddles. The death huts were quickly filled, and they laid the overflow to rest in a neat row beside them.

  The miracle was that so few of them were children. He mentioned this to Liano, and she said, “During the winter, the children eat first.”

  Farrari cleaned accumulated filth from the empty huts, and when the water had heated Liano transformed some of it into a nourishing broth with a sorcery no native yilesc could have achieved. They bathed the living olz, forced broth past their fever-swollen lips, and carried them to clean huts.

  When darkness came on Farrari moved the cart to the edge of the wasteland and turned on a direction signal. A short time later an IPR platform floated down. Dr. Garnt clambered over the side, muttering, “So you’ve got yourselves a situation.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Farrari asked glumly.

  When they reached the firelight he had to laugh in spite of his dark mood. The portly doctor was ineffectually disguised in an of loin cloth. “If a durrl sees you, he’ll make four olz out of you,” Farrari hissed.

  “I didn’t have time to diet,” the doctor whispered sourly.

  The platform’s pilot, one of Isa Graan’s men, helped Farrari to unload supplies. They packed in as much as the cart would hold under its false bottom and concealed the remainder behind quarm logs in a storage hut.

  Dr. Garnt returned to the platform swearing softly to himself. “Some damned virus,” he whispered to Farrari. “This world has already given us some choice specimens, but we haven’t encountered this one. Did you notice the in flammation along the spine? Nasty. Put up the tent and I’ll go to work.”

  They stretched a tent over the platform, and the doctor fussed and muttered and clanked equipment for hours until Farrari anxiously began to watch for the dawn. Finally he emerged with a flask of clear liquid.

  “It complicates things, having to give it to them orally,” he explained. “But I’d be cashiered and sent home if I started mass injections. That doesn’t apply to you, of course. Let’s have your arm.”

  He inoculated Farrari and Liano and delivered terse instructions about the antitoxin he’d concocted. Graan’s man muttered about the time and took off while the doctor was climbing aboard. “Have you checked the neighboring villages?” he called. “Better do that. We’ll start mass-producing this, just in case. I’ll be back tonight.” The platform vanished into the thinning darkness.

  Liano crept into the yilesc’s hut for some badly-needed sleep. Farrari continued to make the rounds of the huts, this time coaxing the swollen lips to accept Dr. Garnt’s medicine. A gray day pushed aside the gray dawn; the rain changed to wet snow and the wasted bodies of the dead lying outside the death huts were mercifully cloaked in white shrouds.

  A distant, sputtering bray brought Farrari scrambling from a hut. Through the snow he dimly saw, on the skyline where the dying ol must have seen them, a durrl mounted on a gril. Farrari watched uneasily until he passed from sight. The smoke from the forbidden fire still hung near the ground, and Farrari could only hope that the durrl had not seen it; but a short time later he heard the braying close at hand and the durrl rode slowly into the village.

  He halted, looking down at the fire, and Farrari instantly averted his eyes. An ol did not look directly at a durrl.

  The durrl grunted an ol word. “Sickness?”

  “Much sickness,” Farrari said.

  At a nudge from the durrrs knee the gril reared gracefully and started away. Suddenly the durrl saw the yilesc’s cart and narmpf. He leaped from the gril with a bellow of anger.

  Liano stepped from the hut and bowed her head respectfully. He started toward her.

  Then he saw the long row of snow-shrouded dead. He strode among them, scattering the snow and now and then kicking at a wasted body. He whirled and ran toward Liano. His sputtering rage left him momentarily speechless, and when he found his voice he screamed incoherently, but there was no mistaking the fury that throbbed in every choked syllable. Liano faced him calmly, eyes downcast.

  He leaped to the waiting gril, snatched his zrilm whip, and with all of his strength brought it whistling down on Liano.

  Farrari had started forward when the durri reached for his whip. It was in its clownstroke when he seized him from behind and jerked him backward. The dry leaves no more than brushed Liano’s robes, but they raked Farrari’s leg with excruciating pain. He hurled the durrl to the ground, secured the whip, and slowly backed away, his leg dripping blood onto the snow.

  The durri dazedly regained his feet. He said nothing; the shock of being attacked by an ol left him not only incoherent, but almost comatose. Farrari calmly tossed the zrilm onto the fire and turned to confront him. Looking a durrl in the eyes for the first time, he had the inward apprehension of having unleashed a clap of doom, but he could not resume the subservient posture that his role demanded.

  He could not think like an ol.

  A gril raced down on them with a patter of small hooves. Farrari whirled, caught the flutter of gold-embossed robes, and hastily lowered his eyes. Doom had arrived, and he felt more astonished than apprehensive.

  An aristocrat, in this remote ol village!

  The durrl was as dumbfounded as Farrari. He stared for long seconds before he remembered to avert his eyes.

  The aristocrat halted outside the circle of huts, a shout rang out, and the durri approached him haltingly. A question was flung in harsh Rasczian syllables, and the durri began a stumbling reply. They were too far away for Farrari to understand what was said, but it was obvious that the durrl’s explanation did not sound convincing, even to him, and his discomfiture increased as he fumbled for words. Farrari enjoyed the situation while he could; his own turn would inevitably follow and there was no justice for an o/—only greater or lesser punishment.

  The aristocrat snarled a reply that ended with a rasping command. The durrl turned silently, mounted his gri
l, and rode away.

  The aristocrat turned his back on Farrari and Liano, made a sweeping motion that could not be misunderstood, and rode away. Obeying his unspoken command they followed him on foot.

  He led them a short distance along the hedge-lined lane and turned, flourishing a spear. Farrari tensed himself to dodge or attack.

  The aristocrat leaned forward. “Of all the idiotic things to do—are you trying to blow the planet?”

  Liano said quietly, “Hello, Orson.”

  “What sort of indoctrination did this halfwit have?” the aristocrat demanded. “An ol assaulting a durrl! Why, that’s… that’s—”

  “Sacrilege,” Liano murmured. “Cedd, this is Orson Ojorn.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” Farrari demanded angrily. “Let him use that damned whip on her?”

  “Yes,” Ojorn snapped. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do. When you have an ol role you behave exactly like an ol—or you get recalled and buried in an office job on a nicely-controlled world where your impulsiveness isn’t likely to embarrass anyone. And that’s what’ll happen to you as soon as I report. Assaulting a durrl!” He waved his arms wildly. “You could have blown the planet and got the entire team demoted five grades. It’s a good thing Peter sent me to observe you two.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Farrari asked.

  “You’ll be recalled. Expect a contact as soon as it’s dark.”

  “We’re already expecting a contact. I meant—what’ll the durrl do?”

  “Nothing. I’ve instilled in him a lifelong respect for yilescz. If I hadn’t been here—”

  “We have work to do, Orson,” Liano said. “The ol are dying.”

  “I know. Go back to work, then. I’ll tell base to send you another kewl.”