The Chronocide Mission

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  Arne’s father died when he was sixteen. The peer and all of her wardens attended his burying, and the following day she invited Arne to Midlow Court. In a lengthy, impressive ceremony, she invested him as peer’s first server. He felt far too young for such a responsibility, but the peer gave him her full confidence and promise of support, and the other peeragers—all except the prince—seemed friendly. The prince looked more beautiful than ever with her long, flowing blond hair, but throughout the ceremony she glowered at him as spitefully as she had on that fateful day when she lashed him.

  Arne returned to the village, to the one dwelling that could ever seem like home to him, and found it empty. His father was dead; his mother had moved out. It was her simple but decisive way of informing him that he was now a man, with a man’s responsibilities, and even though he was young for it, it was time for him to be wived, to chose a mate and rear his own family. As for her, she was still young enough to make a new life for herself. Within a few monts she was wiving Kellan, a woodworker whose wife had died of an illness, and though she continued to visit Arne almost daily, she soon had another child to occupy her.

  Arne buried his sorrow and loneliness in work. The responsibilities were overwhelming despite his thorough prenticeship, and his workload was staggering. He had to know where everyone was, and what everyone was doing, and why. He had to know what needed to be done today, and tomorrow, and a tenite hence, and—planning ahead—next esun, next sike, and the one after that. He had to know what to do in emergencies.

  That was only the beginning. He had to tell people what to do and when to do it, and often he had to explain how to do it and why. Then he had to see that it was done. Without his father to remind him, he had to know that planking must be sawed now and put in the kiln for next Reso’s bridge repairs, or that the growing herd of cattle would require an increase in silage capacity, or that it was time for the annual inspection of window panes at the palace, or that servers of the no-name warden, the peerager in charge of no-namers, should be reminded to send work crews to plow the village garden plots for planting.

  The villagers were slow to extend to Arne the trust in which they had held his father. Many refused to believe he deserved his high position. Some felt he had been favored because of his father; others, that the peer appointed him because he had promised to place the interests of peeragers above those of his own kind. Arne knew his career might depend on how he handled the first crisis he had to face. In the meantime, he tried to be himself and do his work as well as he could.

  The test came early. A long-standing dream of adult one-namers throughout the Ten Peerdoms became known to Arne only when it ended in catastrophe. The families that left the village in the dead of niot were headed westward to a new peerdom beyond the reach of peers and lashers—a peerdom of one-namers, a peerdom where they could manage their own affairs, educate their children, and guarantee a full measure of freedom to all.

  Weslon scouts, one-namers themselves, sometimes ranged far into the wilds beyond the Weslon frontier. On one such trek they found an easily defended, fertile valley, and over the years one-namers who could slip away without being missed made the secret journey westward, a few couples, a few families at a time with whatever they could take with them. The community seemed to be thriving. It held the promise of a place of refuge for all one-namers, and a strong one-name peerdom could have imposed a measure of control on those peers given to periodic persecutions of their one-name subjects.

  That dream of a more secure future was shattered by an exhausted messenger who awakened Arne in the dead of night and sobbed out his dreadful news. A marauding band of lashers had caught the new community by surprise and inflicted an orgy of rape, arson, murder and pillage on it. The survivors were starving.

  Arne took charge of the rescue efforts. He juggled his accounts to make food available, and he invented errands to cover the absence of those he sent westward to assist the fugitives. The new settlement’s survivors were brought back to the Ten Peerdoms and distributed among one-name villages from Weslon to Easlon. By the time they were settled in their new homes, one-namers of all ten peerdoms knew they could rely on Arne as they had on his father, but their dreams of security in the west were gone forever.

  Arne handled problem of Egarn with the same tireless efficiency. He brought Egarn, Roszt, and Kaynor to Midlow, found a secure place for Egarn to work, helped him scrounge through Midlow’s ancient ruins for materials he needed, and took complete charge of supplying him and his helpers with food, clothing, and outside support.

  He selected Egarn’s guards and assistants from one-name refugees who were drifting into the Ten Peerdoms in increasing numbers. All of them had been crafters, and between them they possessed the skills to do or make almost anything Egarn needed. Arne preferred them to the local one-namers. No one was likely to miss them, and they were happy to have a place to stay and a meaningful occupation. They didn’t understand what Egarn was doing, but they knew that he, like them, was a refugee, and that he was working for the mysterious destruction of the Peer of Lant and her armies. Assisting him gave them an opportunity to strike a blow of their own, however small and indirect, at the evil force that had wrecked their lives.

  The group was so self-contained that apart from Arne, no more than three residents of Midd Villager knew the secret workroom existed. One of them was Marof, who who had been Arjov’s personal server and now served Arne in the same way. Because he was accountable to no one but Arne, he was available for outside errands or whatever additional help was needed at the ruins. Another was Wiltzon the schooler, who visited the workroom as often as he could and helped as much as he could. He was as fascinated as any historian would have been with the opportunity to watch history while it was happening. The third was Gevis, Wiltzon’s young assistant schooler.

  One-namers had a strongly ingrained ethic concerning the secrecy of one-name affairs. They grew up knowing that the stranger occasionally glimpsed in their midst was never to be mentioned. Those who chanced to see Roszt or Kaynor on a visit to the schooler, or one of Egarn’s helpers sent to Arne with a message, forgot about it without really noticing it. No one had ever spoken to anyone about such a thing until now. That was why the presence of a spy in the village was so alarming.

  Egarn’s revelations about the Honsun Len had troubled Arne severely. Obviously something should be done to prevent the cruel brain damage to no-namers, but he had no idea what it might be. It would take sikes to rear a generation of no-name babies with normal brains, and a tremendous program of deception to keep the project secret, and Arne feared the Ten Peerdoms’ time was running out.

  Time was running even faster in the Peerdom of Midlow. Shortly after Egarn’s arrival, the peer had been stricken. Her health grew steadily worse, and for days at a time she was incapacitated both physically and mentally. This made no difference to Egarn’s work. The peer would not have been told the Great Secret in any case, and Arne obtained more by craft than she could have bestowed on them even if she had favored Egarn’s project.

  The peer’s failing health diminished the significance of distant events in Lant and even those closer at hand in Weslon. While she lay dying, the prince hovered in the background like a storm about to happen. One-namers had long been aware of her intention to reduce them to slavery and transform Midlow into a tyranny. It was not merely their independence as free crafters that was threatened but their survival.

  Now the storm had arrived—sooner than anyone anticipated and with the peer still living. The prince was behaving as though the power of the peerage was already hers. She hadn’t merely disobeyed her mother; she had defied her, and the peer’s own power to rule trembled in the balance. If she failed to act quickly, the prince might depose her.

  Whatever the peer decided to do, the peerdom’s one-namers would lose. The prince would exact full retribution from them the moment her mother died. A revolt seemed inevitable to Arne—but so was an outside invasion, either by Lant or by
some unknown force. An invasion might make the prince an ally of her one-namers while it lasted. Temporarily they would need each other. Arne wondered which would come first. Either way, the future held nothing but conflict and bloodshed.

  Arne hadn’t yet made up his mind about Egarn’s plan— whether it would work, whether it would be a wise thing to do in any case. It was difficult to calmly review human history and make decisions about it when one’s own fragile world was about to crash in ruin, but he continued to support Egarn because he could think of no alternative.

  To the young Arne, as to the old Egarn, it seemed that there had never been a better time and place for a conspiracy to save humanity.

  10. ARNE (2)

  Once the one-namers recovered from the shock of the lasher raid, the village buzzed with anger. Word quickly reached the mills and workrooms. All work halted. Men and women gathered in the streets, and each incident of the raid was discussed wrathfully while the children raced about making the most of this impromptu holiday.

  Arne found himself an embarrassed object of admiration and sympathy. The villagers were ecstatic over the way he had faced the prince and brought the raid to an end with a few quiet words. Half the adults of the village sought him out and volunteered to dress his cut back with poultices made from cherished family recipes.

  He urged them to put their experiences in writing while the details were still vivid, to clean up any mess the lashers had made, to return to work. He knew this would be another test for him. He had stopped the raid, which was wonderful. He had asked for written descriptions of what happened, which certainly was wise. Now the village wanted to know what he intended to do about it.

  By evening, apprehension developed that he intended to do nothing, and the village council, which villagers called the Three, marched to his home on High Street to demand a hearing. These elderly crafters constituted the only local government the village had. Usually they were far more government than it needed, and on this occasion they were determined to do something if Arne did not. Their anger had been festering since morning. Arne greeted them with grave courtesy, and Ravla, the elderly woman who acted as housekeeper for both him and the schooler, brought chairs for them.

  Nonen, the miller, acted as spokesman. He was a sturdy, blunt individual who had never been known to waste a word. “The peer must be informed as soon as possible,” he blurted. “I intend to petition for a hearing. Every adult in the village is willing to sign a formal accusation against the prince’s guard. We will insist upon severe punishment.”

  “The guard certainly merits punishment,” Arne agreed. “Much property was damaged, things were stolen, several people were injured—one of them seriously—and two women were raped. But the guard was only carrying out the orders of the prince. Will you also demand that the prince be punished?”

  Nonen sputtered into his beard. “Surely those who commit outrages must be held accountable for them!”

  “Nevertheless, the prince was responsible. Her guard wouldn’t dare to enter a one-name village unless she ordered it. Are you certain you want to do this? The prince has a long memory, and she will be peer herself sooner than any of us would like to believe. If she retaliates then, there will be no one to appeal to.”

  Toboz, the portly old sawyer, tugged at his own beard. One-name males did not wear their beards long—that was for lashers and no-namers—but Toboz’s beard was exceptionally thick, and he took inordinate pride in it. He growled, “Do we have to bow down and accept this outrage? Our persons and homes will never be safe again if the guard goes unpunished.”

  “The prince expects us to file some kind of complaint—with the wardens if not with the peer—and she is doing everything in her power to prevent it. This morning, not long after she and her guard left, I sent two carpenter prentices to replace a plank on the bridge below the sheepfold. Lashers from the prince’s guard had already set up a watchpost on the road. They stopped the prentices and demanded to know their errand. Then one of the lashers went with them, watched them work, and escorted them back to the village when they had finished. The prince has every route between Midd Village and Midlow Court posted. She is determined that no word of the raid shall reach the court until she has given the peer own version of what happened.”

  There was a stunned silence. Then Toboz said indignantly, “Are you saying we can’t even tell the peer about it? That the prince won’t let us? Surely she can’t isolate Midd Village for long without questions being asked. The court couldn’t exist for a tenite without us. It would run out of everything, starting with food. We have cloth, shoes, harnesses, crocks, lace, flour, and I don’t know what all in our warehouse right now waiting for the next scheduled delivery. Repairs and building will stop if one-namers can’t get to the court. The prince’s watchposts won’t be there long. Anyway, we don’t need roads to send a messenge to the peer.”

  “Of course we don’t,” Arne agreed. “We can petition the peer any time we choose. The question is whether we should. She is so desperately ill that her servers may refuse to bother her with such a difficult problem. She may be helpless to deal with it in any case.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Margaya, an elderly master weaver.

  “I already have sent Marof to tell the land warden what happened. I did it while the raid was still in progress. He was to make a wide detour and approach the court this evening from the south. The prince probably won’t think to block that route. Even if she does, her guard won’t dare stop a messenger who has official business with one of the wardens. The land warden understands our problem, and the peer has given him authority to act for her during her illness. He will investigate the raid himself and make sure the prince doesn’t know how he found out about it. She will be less inclined to retaliate if she thinks the information came from another peerager.”

  “And the land warden will tell the peer?”

  “When her health permits.”

  Margaya said bluntly, “ Ifher health permits, but it isn’t going to. I hear her only thoughts are of death. You are right—she is much too sick to be told anything at all.”

  “In that case, a formal petition would accomplish nothing except to antagonize the prince. Let’s let the land warden handle this for us and hope the peer won’t be too sick to act when she is finally told. Only the peer has authority over the prince. Only she can decide what should be done. We one-namers have a problem of our own to deal with.”

  All three of them regarded him uneasily. Nonen asked, “What problem do you refer to?”

  “The prince ordered the raid because she thought the peer’s first server was harboring strangers.”

  Their uneasiness changed to alarm. This touched on matters they preferred not to know about. Like all one-namers, they had learned from childhood to look the other way and say nothing if they chanced to see strangers in their midst.

  “She wouldn’t have thought that if someone hadn’t told her,” Arne went on. “It means she has a spy in the village.”

  Now they were incredulous. Margaya exclaimed, “Surely none of our people would actually tell the prince—”

  Arne said earnestly, “As all of you know, no peerager, not even the wisest and kindest—which our peer is—can be trusted with information that concerns only one-namers. Those of us with responsibilities never speak openly of these things, not even in a private meeting such as this one. The only secrets that can remain secret are those that are unspoken. Any one-namer—in Midd Village or elsewhere in the peerdom—may glimpse something from time to time that he has no need to know. We live close together, and our lives are linked in so many ways it would be impossible to prevent that—which is why the presence of a spy in our village is far more serious than the raid. A one-namer loyal to his own kind would pretend to see nothing and forget at once. Only a traitor would remember and tell.”

  They exchanged frightened glances. To have a friend, a neighbor, or even a relative eagerly retailing their harmless gossip, their pet
ty complaints and disagreements, their every deed to an agent of the prince seemed too horrible to contemplate.

  “If this is true, we must find out who it is as quickly as possible,” Nonen said. “I suppose his guilt will become obvious in time—there will be unmistakable signs of the prince’s favor— but that might happen too late to help us. We must identify him him at once.”

  “Aya.” Margaya nodded grimly. “He won’t receive his full reward until the prince becomes peer. Then I suppose she will make him her first server.”

  Arne had long expected to lose his office the same day the peer died, but he made no comment. “The traitor is my responsibility,” he said. “Mine—and the League’s.” They shuffled their feet uneasily. “There is one thing you can do,” he went on. “Find out why the log barricades weren’t in place and a watch kept on them. It wouldn’t have kept the guard out of the village, but everyone would have had more time to prepare.”

  “The logs weren’t in place?” Nonen asked wonderingly. “Maybe there is more than one traitor.”

  “Or maybe someone was lazy. Whatever the cause, it is important to find out who was responsible and make certain it doesn’t happen again. The barricades are your very proper concern, and an inquiry about them can be made publicly.”

  Arne promised to press his own search for the traitor, and the three left immediately, pleased to have something to do. Arne thought it best not to tell them—he had decided not to tell anyone—he already had identified the prince’s spy.

  He knew it would be a young person. The loyalty of the older crafters to their own kind was deeply ingrained, and all of them had good reason to resent the privileges of pampered peeragers.

  Arne’s garden was surrounded by high walls. It was further shielded by his house, which was wider and much deeper than others on the street. The only windows the garden was exposed to were those of the lesson room on the upper story of the schooler’s house.