The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  “Then word began coming out that the Záva were rapidly changing their way of life. In a few years, they acquired a form of writing, a well-organized government, a system of law, and are said to have constructed a lot of well-planned and spacious buildings instead of the wretched huts of stones and mud. The latest report has it that they are building a small but serviceable navy of rowing galleys of advanced design. Now, these things do not happen so quickly of their own accord.”

  “Do you suppose there’s some Earthman on Zá teaching them?” asked Althea.

  “I do not think so,” replied Bahr. “I made inquiries of Mr. Gorchakov, who showed me what careful track his office has kept of all the Earthmen on Krishna. Moreover, when the Saint-Rémy treatment was introduced, the authorities at Novorecife had great success in getting these Earthmen to come in and submit to treatment.”

  “I should think some would have refused,” said Althea.

  “Ah, but Novorecife can always cut off their longevity doses. That is how the technological blockade was as successful as it was before the Saint-Rémy treatment. Few Earthmen cared to jeopardize their extended life span for the sake of a quick profit among the Krishnans. And the only record of Earthmen on Zá in the last half-century is a missionary couple, who are known to have been eaten.”

  Althea winced. Bahr added, “There is said to be a brilliant chief named Yuruzh directing their efforts. He at least would be worth testing.”

  “Gottfried my boy, wasn’t there a fellow on Earth who treated some monkeys so they became as intelligent as men, only more so?” asked Kirwan.

  “Yes, that was J. Warren Hill, an American psychologist—unless like many of his colleagues you consider him a charlatan. And it was apes, not monkeys.”

  “But it worked, didn’t it?” said Kirwan.

  “His system? Yes and no. He had a system of hypnotherapy called Pannoëtics, developed from some heterodox schools of twentieth-century psychological thought.”

  “What did it do?” asked Althea.

  “Pannoëtics claims to clear up all the traumata not only in the nervous system but in the germplasm as well. Of course, orthodox psychology does not yet admit that an alteration to the soma can affect the germplasm, but there is still some inconclusive evidence pointing in that direction. Well, the reason the original systems of hypnotherapy did not work was, it is supposed, that the human race had been civilized so long that the ancestors of all the present-day men have been subjected to frustrations and similar traumata for hundreds of generations. So one must by one’s hypnotherapy cure not only the man but a long line of ancestors, too. Therefore, when Hill tried his system on human beings, it simply made most of them completely and hopelessly psychotic.”

  Kirwan said, “Ha! And doesn’t that prove the Roussellians right about your rotten decadent civilization?”

  Ignoring him, Bahr continued. “But, Hill thought, if the germplasm of human beings is hopelessly traumatized, that of chimpanzees would not be, as they have never been civilized. So he modified his system for application to chimpanzees, with astounding results. He gave them an intelligence rating, on the Mangioni scale, of 134—which puts them up with the geniuses among Earthmen.”

  Althea said, “I should think that would be fine; you’d have ready-made geniuses to solve all human problems.”

  “It did not work out that way. Having no civilized culture, these apes had none of the inhibitions and cultural attitudes that made civilized life possible. In personality they were still apes: excitable, irresponsible, mischievous, destructive, sexually promiscuous, and emotionally unstable.”

  “Why just apes?” growled Kirwan. “Sure, you’ve just described most human beings.”

  “It is a matter of degree, my friend. Anyway, it soon became obvious that the ape-geniuses were a menace, because they used their intelligence not to help humanity, but also to plot to enslave mankind to a race of super-apes. At that point, the World Federation forbade Hill to go on with his experiments. They did not destroy the apes already treated, as that might have been considered genocide.”

  Althea interjected, “Might Hill have come to Krishna?”

  “No. One ape, thwarted in his plot to impose an ape aristocracy on the world, used his genius secretly to manufacture a quantity of nitroglycerine. One day, Hill’s laboratory in Cuba, Hill himself, and his whole ape colony blew up with a frightful explosion. Naturally, I at once thought of a connection between Hill and the events on Zá, but in spite of all my detective work I have not been able to find any. The few tailed Krishnans who have been allowed to visit Earth either died there or returned to Krishna no more intelligent than they left it.”

  Kirwan glanced about and said in a lowered voice, “Speaking of detective work, I found out what this cargo is. I pried open one of the cases and peeked.”

  “What is it?” said Althea.

  “Weapons.”

  Bahr spoke up. “Do you mean Terran weapons, guns and the like, such as some Earthmen have at times attempted into Krishna to smuggle?”

  “No, native stuff: swords and helmets and things. I wonder if the Dasht of Darya is about to enlarge his realm?”

  Bahr shrugged. “It does not matter to us. These petty kings and nobles are always fighting their little wars. Last year, I am told, a philosopher of Katai-Jhogorai issued a manifesto calling for one global government for Krishna, but the Krishnans paid no more attention than our own ancestors would have a few centuries ago.”

  Soon after Jerud had disappeared, another land mass appeared ahead. In the bow, Kirwan pointed it out to Althea. “That’s Zá, with Zesh in front of it.”

  As the ship neared the land, the smaller island of Zesh detached itself from the main mass. Zesh lay southwest of Zá and like it was largely surrounded by tall cliffs. Above these could be seen the greens, browns, mauves, and purples of Krishnan vegetation.

  Althea looked at Zesh, and beyond to dark Zá with its crown of forest. She wondered how it would have been if Bishop Raman had ordered her to land on Zá and plunge into forests full of tailed, man-eating Krishnans.

  A Krishnan voice murmured apologetically behind them. Althea turned to see the sailor who had been keelhauled. The fellow stood twisting his feet and hanging his head, as if about to confess eating his mother. At last he held out a folded sheet of Krishnan paper. He spoke, slowly so that Althea could understand most of it.

  “This is for you, my lady. Take it, I pray you, but read it not ere ye’ve landed on yonder isle.”

  Althea took the paper, not knowing quite how to handle the situation. She supposed that it was some sort of written apology—perhaps even a love letter. With an inarticulate mumble, the sailor turned and scampered back to his duties.

  “Read it,” said Kirwan.

  “No, he asked me not to,” said Althea, and put the paper away.

  Captain Memzadá barked commands. The ship altered course, the sails swinging to match the turn. The cliffs came nearer. Althea could now see a long stretch of beach on the south side of the island. The water in front of it seemed to be shallow far out.

  On the top of the forest-crowned plateau or mesa, a gleam caught Althea’s eye. She had a dim impression of a building with a dome or tower of some shiny material, but the structure was mostly hidden by the trees. The gleam faded.

  The Labághti hove to and put its little ship’s boat over the side. As the dinghy was not big enough to carry all three Terrans and their baggage, Bahr explained, “The captain says that we three should go ashore first, and he will by a second trip send the luggage.”

  “Oh no he don’t!” said Kirwan. “What’s to stop him from dropping us off and sailing away with our gear? Tell him to take one or two of us plus some of the baggage, and a second trip for the rest.”

  “I never thought of that,” said Bahr with a startled expression, and gave the order. The captain grunted sourly but complied.

  Bahr and Althea went ashore in the first boat. The two rowers maneuvered the little cockle
shell past several ominous-looking rocks. The combers got higher as they neared the shelving beach, tossing the boat alarmingly. Althea, sitting beside Bahr, gripped the gunwale as a near-breaker tossed them high in the air. As the next one loomed behind them, the rowers dug in and bent their oars, so that as the wave came along, the boat coasted in on its forward face with a rush. The wave broke thunderously on either side of them, somehow failing to swamp them. They struck the beach with a crunch of sand.

  Althea climbed over the bow on the wet sand. The sailors threw them their baggage, pushed off, nosed up with a mighty splash through a breaker, and rowed quickly out to the ship again.

  Althea looked around her. There was nothing in sight but the beach, the sea in front of it with the Labághti stationary against the sky, and behind the beach the multicolored forest, sloping sharply up to the plateau.

  She thrust her hands into the pockets of her wrinkled khaki trousers and felt the paper that the sailor had pressed upon her. She took it out and unfolded it.

  The paper was covered with native Krishnan writing, very uneven, as if the writer were barely literate. Both the dialect and the alphabet were different from standard Gazashtandu. She puzzled out a few words of the scrawl and finally handed the paper to Bahr, saying, “Can you make this out?”

  Bahr had been watching the boat returning to the Labághti. Brian Kirwan’s burly figure could just be seen perched on the rail of the ship, which rocked gently in the seaway, her sails luffing. The psychologist examined the paper.

  “I fear that I do not know much more than you,” he said, but he nevertheless brought out a pad, a pencil, and a pocket dictionary. He wiped his glasses and sat down on his barracks bag.

  The boat containing Brian Kirwan bobbed shoreward. With a final rush, it surfboarded in. Kirwan jumped out. The sailors unloaded the remaining baggage and started out again.

  “Well,” said Kirwan. “Here we are, my buckos, and I hope we don’t find we’re all alone. I wrote the Roussellians I was coming.”

  Bahr raised his head. “I think I have it, although I had to guess at some of the words. It reads like this:

  ‘To Mistress Althea: Since you have saved my life, I am obligated to help you. My sovereign, the Dasht of Darya, plans to conquer Zá and Zesh in order to enslave all the tailed ones. You had therefore best leave these islands if you do not wish to be slain in the fighting.’ ”

  Bahr refolded the paper. “The poor fellow could barely write, so his spelling—auf!” he cried, the purport of the message belatedly penetrating his mind. “That means us! We had better get off here!”

  Bahr began to wave his arms toward the Labághti, but the ship’s sails filled. She swung and plunged off toward the east.

  “Ohé!” yelled Bahr, running up and down the beach. “Come back!” he screamed in Gazashtandu.

  Althea and Kirwan shouted and waved, too, but the ship continued on her way without sign of recognition. When she was hull-down, they gave up and stood, arms hanging limply, watching the red-and-yellow striped sails slide below the horizon.

  VI

  Pensively pulling his lip, Gottfried Bahr said, “I suppose the thing to do is to explore this island until we find someone.”

  “ ’Twill not be necessary,” said Kirwan. “Here comes my gang now.”

  A curious sound had reached Althea’s ears: a thin, high piping, as if someone were blowing across the tops of small bottles. There was a rustling and a waving of branches, and there burst from the vegetation a singular procession.

  First came a short, stocky man with a nut-brown skin and the flat, slit-eyed face of the East Asiatic. A length of coarse brown cloth, resembling burlap, was wound about his body and held in place by safety pins. Sandals shod his feet, and a wreath of purple leaves rested upon his coarse, graying black hair. He helped himself along with a staff.

  After this person came others, similarly clad. A young woman carried a bowl of fruit; a young man blew into a syrinx, producing the piping sound. There were about twenty altogether, the men bearded in varying degrees.

  The wreathed man strode across the scorching sand to where the three new arrivals stood. In Portuguese he addressed them.

  “Good day, senhora and senhores. Which of you is Brian Kirwan?”

  “That’ll be me,” said Kirwan.

  “In the name of the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau, I welcome you to the Isle of Freedom. I was formerly known as Diogo Kuroki, but here my name is Zeus. You, senhor, shall be known as Orpheus. And who are these? More recruits?”

  “No,” said Kirwan, and introduced his companions.

  “Oh, scientists,” said Kuroki, as though Althea and Bahr were lower organisms. “Welcome to the ranks of the natural men, Senhor Orpheus.”

  The piper tootled. The girl with the bowl of fruit presented it to Kirwan. Another Roussellian produced another wreath and placed it on Kirwan’s head. Then everybody shook Kirwan’s hand as Kuroki introduced them: Senhor Hermes, Senhora Aspasia, Senhor Platon, Senhor Dionysos, Senhorita Nausikaa, and so on.

  Bahr finally spoke up. “Por favor, Senhor Zeus, as we—Senhorita Althea Merrick and I—may be here for some time, we should like to make some arrangement for living.”

  “Nobody is hindering you from living, senhor,” said Kuroki.

  “I mean for eating and sleeping,” said Bahr with audible irritation.

  “We do not run a hotel,” said Kuroki. “If you like, however, you may work for your keep.”

  “Work?” said Bahr, frowning. “I can pay a reasonable rate . . .”

  “Your money is no good to us, senhor. We are cut off from all contaminating commercial contacts here. We rely entirely upon our own efforts. What we do need is assistance in wringing a living from the soil of Zesh.”

  “What sort of assistance?” said Bahr.

  “That depends upon the need of the moment. For instance, the crop of badr that we planted last ten-night is just coming up, so I imagine that you would be put to weeding.”

  Bahr exchanged grim looks with Althea. Kirwan, his mouth full of the tunest that he had taken from the bowl, was chattering in his horrible Portuguese with a couple of the better-looking younger women, rendering them helpless with laughter.

  Kuroki raised his voice, “My children, let us return to Elysion!”

  The piper began to tweetle. Kuroki, moving his staff at arm’s-length, strode majestically back toward the forest. The others fell into line.

  Althea, seeing that she and Bahr would be ignored, picked up her bag and hurried to the head of the line.

  “Senhor Kuroki,” she said.

  The cult leader frowned. “Senhorita, it was clearly explained to you that my name is Zeus.”

  “Senhor Zeus, then. We learned something just as we left the ship that should interest you.”

  “Sim?”

  Althea told Kuroki about the note from the sailor, disclosing the impending attack upon Zá and Zesh by the Daryava. She showed him the note. Kuroki frowned in thought for some seconds, then said, “It might or might not be true. Your sailor friend may have merely wished to seem to discharge his debt to you and so invented this tale.”

  “But there were those crates of weapons . . .”

  “Oh, the island nations of the Sadabao are always buying weapons from Majbur. The city is a great manufacturing center, whereas the islands are mostly without mineral resources. Moreover, senhorita, even if the story were true, I don’t think that the Dasht of Darya would dare to land on Zesh so long as we are here, for fear of becoming embroiled with Novorecife. While I try to keep our relationships with decadent Terran civilization to a minimum, I cannot deny that Terran prestige among the Krishnans is convenient at times.” Kuroki allowed a faint smile to light his impassive face.

  “But aren’t you going to evacuate the island?”

  “Senhorita, if you knew the troubles that I have had and the bureaucratic obstacles that I have overcome in getting this colony established, you would not make such a silly sugges
tion. Live or die, here we will stay.”

  “Do you propose to fight the Daryava, then?” asked Althea.

  “Of course not. In the first place, we should only annoy them and assure our own extermination—assuming that this fanciful invasion of yours does come to pass. In the second, war is against our principles. Natural man lived in peace and friendship before he was corrupted by the evils of civilization.”

  “How about warning the Záva?”

  “No. We will remain strictly neutral, so that nobody can accuse us of taking sides.”

  Althea fell silent. Kuroki’s statement about the peacefulness of primitive man was not in accordance either with the teachings of Ecumenical Monotheism or with the scientific account of prehistory, of which she had received a smattering. But she did not think it wise to argue with the man who controlled the food supply.

  The procession wound up a steep trail from the beach to the plateau. It continued along a level, through the trees, for a half-kilometer and came out upon a large cleared area. Amid the fields, Althea saw a clump of shade trees, which had been left standing when the area was cleared. Among the bases of these trees rose a cluster of huts.

  People were visible. As Kirwan had said, they were naked, but they were not dancing. On the contrary, they were busily hoeing, raking, and otherwise tilling the soil of Zesh. As Althea came closer, she saw that they were all dark brown of skin, either naturally or from long exposure to the sun. They glanced up as the procession, the piper still tootling, marched in among the huts, but returned to their work with furtive haste.

  One structure was larger than the rest. As they passed its open door, Althea saw the backs of a number of children. This, she thought, must be the school and meeting house.

  “Here,” said Diogo Kuroki, indicating a hut. “This one is empty. You newcomers may occupy it for the nonce.”

  Althea looked at Kuroki in alarm. Such a living arrangement would complete the ruin of whatever reputation she still bore among the missionaries of Ecumenical Monotheism. She asked. “Couldn’t you put me in with one of the women?”