So much he could see from afar, but they came close by after a while. The Tame Tocks had no seacraft of any kind. But a glance sufficed to tell, had Ran been in doubt, that these were no Tame Tocks. The boy had the bushy-browed look of a man, and the man had the seamed and sunken features of an old man, though his black hair and straight back showed he was not. Their odd clothes were old, but totally without the unmistakable and slummy look of Tame Tocks’ clouts.
When the two vessels were near enough for him to see all this with his naked eye, Ran waved and called in greeting. The eyes of the man and boy in the boat moved toward him as he did so. But it was their eyes alone which moved.
“Friendly,” said the quartermaster.
“The South Tockland navy, I suppose,” Lomar said, nettled.
That one long, lonesome craft had been bound on some private mission of its own — perhaps one of simple transportation, easy enough to understand if the interior was anything like the coast. But as the Station’s small ship stood on down the coast it passed a number of other boats, and all these were fishing craft. They were not, however, in the least more friendly. And, from cape to cape, headland to headland, and, finally, angling over land in a way which Lomar realized would be heading stright toward the tiny port town without the necessity of rounding the coast, the warning smokes of the signal fires went up ahead of them.
The wind got through him, by and by — it was the Cold Time and he went below to brood and drink and give his scant gear one last going-over.
• • •
The harbor was a good enough one for rafts, catamarans, and dugouts — a few specimens of all were seen — but it was not one in which the quartermaster cared to risk his ship.
“A boat may come out for you,” he said, with an air of finality.
“And if it doesn’t?”
The QM shrugged. “Can you swim?” he asked.
Finally a boat did come out, with, at the stern paddle, what might have been a twin brother of the steersman in the first Wild craft they’d passed — lank black hair, lantern jaw, seamed and sunken cheeks, and grim immobile face. It was not on him, however, that Lomar’s eyes rested, but on the only other man aboard. It could only have been “the squawman” of whom Tan Carlo Harb had spoken. He was white-haired, erect, and though his expression was serious, it was quite devoid of the constitutional dourness of the Wild Tock behind him. He wore what had once been Guildsman’s uniform, without any insigne, and scoured almost white with many washings.
“Gufidsman, what hail?” he called — and climbed aboard without waiting to be answered.
“Hello, Old Guns,” the QM said; then inclined his head toward Lomar. “Fellow wants to come ashore, stay awhile.”
The older man surveyed him calmly, then put out his hand. “Jacs Calzas,” he said. “Former rating of — but never mind that. ‘Old Guns’ will do. It’s done for this long.”
The Station ship — it had no name and needed none, there being no others to confuse it with — besides its semiannual circumnavigation of the continent, carried the old pensioner the purchases he was allowed to make from the Guild store up North. It also brought him, and this, its first trip since the Q had come and quickly gone, what little mail there was for him. All was quickly enough placed in the boat along with Lomar’s gear.
“Come ashore,” Old Guns urged the quartermaster, “and have a gam. I haven’t got a bad place here …”
But the QM shook his head. Old Guns and Lomar went ashore alone. They were halfway across the harbor when Ran thought of saying goodbye, but when he turned around the ship was already gone.
“They don’t care to tarry, somehow,” Old Guns said. “Though I can’t think why….” Some dry note in his voice indicated that he wasn’t to be taken altogether seriously.
Black was the predominate color, as it seemed to be throughout all of, at least coastal, South Tockland. Black were the hills out of which the harbor bowl had been scoured, black were the trees clutching grimly to the grim black rocks, black were the few huddled houses ahead of them, and black the very waters over which they rode.
“… but it damned well suits me. I live back in the hills at my clan-seat … actually, my old wife’s clan-seat … no, damn it! mine, too. It’s a thin, hard, cold life, but there’s something clean and pure about it — like a drink of well water first thing in the early morning. If it weren’t for the fevers and the feuds — But there’s plenty of time to talk, plenty of time.”
The skimpy pier of thin black poles drew closer, closer. The thin black boat skimmed along the dimpling surface. There were a number of people, mostly men and children, on the shore. The air was cold and damp and smelled of wetness, woodsmoke, and fish.
“I spent the better, which is to say, the worst part of twenty years up north at that nest of flatulent fools, and I hated every minute of it. One day a troop of Wild men came sailing up to trade. There was nothing of the Noble Savage about them, but I knew — the second I saw them — that they were for real. I’d have given my pension for the chance to go back with them, right then. And I came down the first chance I could, and I kept on coming down, every chance I could. And when I pensioned out I settled here to stay. And here’s where I’ll be buried.”
It seemed sure that they’d hit the pier, but the paddle splashed in the water, someone caught the flung rope just when it appeared certain that nobody would, and they came to rest at the foot of a rude ladder. In a low, musing voice, Old Guns said, “It hasn’t been easy….”
• • •
The Mister Mallardy had been dying slowly for years and saw only a few members of his own household. But his heir-son had had a long time to take hold, and things in Mallardy Camp were held firm and went well enough. The walls and fences were in sound repair, the roofs and boats scarcely leaked any more than was only natural, and from every tar-black homestead arose at least a single thread of smoke; and from some, several — a sure sign of at least modest prosperity when all the firestones were fed.
What the interiors of the other households might be like, Ran had as yet no idea; but the Old Guns’ house was certainly far from typical, with its mixture of the civilized and the barbaric: a Guild-issue bed lined neatly against a wall on which a rork-skin was pegged, a small case of books and on top of it two pikeheads and a whetstone, a worktable with a tiny solar motor and a number of modern tools, a dismantled something-or-other which seemed to be an archaic firearm of a sort, a roughhewn trestle table on which was set a tray of glasses…. So it went.
“My position here would be stronger, in one way, if I had a son instead of a daughter,” Old Guns observed, setting down his pack with a short sigh. “But if I had, he’d surely be involved in some feud or other, so I’m just as glad. Also, my wife is close kin to The Mister, and my son — if I had one — would be an heir of sorts and there’d be jealousy. So I’m content with just Norna. The child of my old age. Not that I ever had a child in my earlier age. Things are somewhat in a slump around here now, with the fever abroad. I wanted to take Norna up North when she was a tot and have her given general immunity. But I was told that it couldn’t be done … they count her as a Tock, too, of course, damn it. Oh, well. She feeds better than most around here — I see to it — and keeps herself and the house cleaner than most, and so far she’s stayed fairly well in health.
“Let’s pull up chairs and get warm …”
Old Guns had fitted up a sort of stove of scrap-metal, and the room was not only warmer than it would have been if only heated by a firestone, it was free of smoke, too.
“Now,” said Old Guns, having thrust several sticks of wood, furry with black moss, into the stove; “what’s your problem?”
He listened to Lomar’s story in silence broken only by mmms and hmms. Then he got up and stretched. “Shall we dine?” he asked. And then waited not for an answer, but called out, “Eats!”
Almost immediately the doorway curtain was thrust aside and two women entered with trays and cloths. He
introduced them, as they were setting the table. “My old wife, Sathy. My daughter, Norna. Take a seat, Ranny.” The two women looked very much alike, with their very white skins, straight backs, snapping black eyes and black hair fastened behind. “Old,” as a description of Sathy, was more affection than accuracy. A few gray hairs, a few fine lines near eyes and mouth, no more.
“Yes, she holds up well,” Old Guns commented, noting his guest’s glance and reading his thoughts. “I picked a good one to start off with, for one thing, and I’ve used her as a wife and a friend, not a damned slave and beast of burden. The others, you know, the Wild Tocks, they trot their wives till they’re withered and feeble. Then they prop them up in the chimney comers and make household gods and oracles out of them. They have an easy old age — ‘easy,’ as things go down here — if they live that long.
“But this one’s got quite a lot of jump and spark left in her, yet. Haven’t you, old besom?”
“Put your eats in your mouth,” the old besom said, unruffled.
“Not yet, you heathen.” He said a brief grace. Then he served the food. Over the chowder, broiled fish, and tataplants they talked of many things. In theory, and if one were writing a romance, the presence of Old Guns, with his superior knowledge and technical training, might have sparked some sort of renascence among the Wild Tocks. In plain and unfanciful fact, however, nothing of the sort had taken place. Old Guns had no missionary notions any more than anyone else in his time had. Even if he possessed them, the people he now lived among would not have been receptive, being just as narrow and rigid in their own way as anyone else. The small solar motor which he’d bought with his own money was able, during the rarer-than-not sunny days which South Tockland afforded, to charge itself for the few small tasks he used it for. His duties, when station armorer, had been exclusively concerned with simple maintain ance. The abrupt change in attitude indicated by his deciding to live among “the Wild people” was the only change he’d ever made; indeed, was likely the only one of which he’d been capable.
A faint tradition of artisanship and social structure did indeed survive here in the South, though the country’s limited resources and periodic feuding and petty wars arrested much of even such mutual aid as the people were capable of. The clan system depended not only on ties of blood but on the number of matchlocks each clan’s “Mister” was able to muster, and the matchlocks were made and repaired from the few scraps of metal gotten in trade for redwing; how much redwing they gathered depended on how many people they had in the first place, and how many of these could be spared from other work — gardening, fishing, and so on — and from feuding. Charcoal they made for themselves with difficulty; nitrate or saltpetre they were able to supply in one nasty way or another involving the husbandry of their own body wastes, but sulphur — the third essential ingredient for the crude black power that fired their ‘lock guns — they had to obtain from the Guild Station.
And the Guild Station did not have an unlimited supply, and its price came high.
“But you mustn’t think,” the squawman said, earnestly, “that they look upon their ‘locks just as instruments for pushing up one clan and pushing down another. When they go out to gather redweed they go out in force, full truce, and every match is lit and every eye is open for rorks. Little weed grows in these hills and so it has to be gone for into Rorkland, you see. And the toll comes high. Yes … the toll comes high. My old wife lost two cousins last year. If there’d been more ‘locks on hand to protect them, they might not have been killed. It’s a constant source of bitterness, because they know full well that they could all be supplied with arms if the Guild allowed. They are bitter, and they are proud.”
So proud that they refused to trade for the Station’s cast-off clothes, which was all the Tame Tocks wore; and made their own of skins and beaten bark.
“A few of them keep the knowledge of reading, — you know — ”
“No,” said Ran, surprised. “I didn’t.” No Tame Tock could read.
“Yes…. They can hardly afford the cost, but they do buy up bits of scrap paper when they come to trade, and they commemorate their own history, such as it is and has been. I find that touching, you know.” By reading those rude “books,” Old Guns had learned much — including details of that dreadful period, the memory of which had burned and scarred, when for long, long years not a single ship had put down on Pia 2 and the forebears of the Tocks had been alone, quite alone …
And had starved and fought and died.
“I found something curious,” Ran said, after a silence during which the two women had exchanged a smouldering glance or two. “Do you know, I think the Tame Tocks tend to, well, sort of honor me? Because I come from the old homeworld, from Old Earth.”
Promptly, “Well, you won’t find it so, here,” Old Guns said. “On the contrary — so keep your mouth shut about it — they’d hate you for it. They blame Old Earth for the ‘long lonesome’ which ruined things to begin with. Old Earth sent them, Old Earth didn’t protect them, Old Earth ignores them…. Some even say that the fever came from there. I don’t know, myself. Never been there. I’m a Coulter boy, though I’ll never see that system again and I don’t care.”
He looked around his black-walled house, at his disparate possessions, at his wife and daughter, at the rugged landscape misting in the light rain through the open and unglazed window.
“No …” And he said again, “I don’t care.”
• • •
He had, so to speak, broken bread with them, and afterwards Sathy began to speak to him, asking him about his family: if his mother and father were alive, if he had brothers and sisters, and such like questions. When, later on that afternoon, the camp began to stir and a number of visitors arrived, Sathy took herself off to her tasks. But Norna remained, and sat next to him on a bench off to one side of the room and spoke to him in a low voice and pointed out some chief personages.
“The Mister Dominis … directs six ‘locks and twenty pike … yeh, the big whitebeard; brings good men to the fight, good men in his country….” Country being the district, thinly inhabited, of which he was chief; so much had the old terms shrunk. No one had been attending to the fire and in the growing chill Lomar became conscious of the warmth of the girl next to him, and various thoughts and images began to enter his mind. He dismissed them. He wasn’t yet aware of what the local attitude towards that sort of thing might be, and had no desire to find himself pegged out beneath a redwing plant to see for himself what sort of diet the rorks really had.
Her long hair brushed his ears as she turned to him again. “And at his next, the Mister Hannit, directing ten ‘lock and twenty-seven pike. But he pledged two, or was it it three, ‘locks to the Mister Dominis a pair-o’-year back, and there’s be trouble there yet, you know, Ranny.”
A voice was raised in anger. “That’s our Mister’s heir-son, Jun Mallardy,” she whispered. “He’s wanted me for his woman, but I doesn’t fancy him, you know.”
Jun was rope-thin, black-bearded. “I knows it,” he said loudly, now. “We’s all knows it. Who’s it as’d rather raid than farm ‘r fish? Flinders! Who’s it goes about with’s dirty mouth to every ear, spitting talk and spitting trouble? Flinders! Muck-Hell, yes! Flinders breaks truce, Flinders is a rork’s egg — and when I s’ll be Mister here, I s’ll tell him, same. But he doesn’t lack gut, no. Says, he be’s wrong in this? No!”
Some heads nodded, others were shaken dubiously; other voices were lifted, spoke together and drowned each other out. A sullen silence fell, abruptly. Old Guns, in a calming tone, said a few words. Jun grunted, did not appear convinced, but held his peace. “I have a guest — you see him sitting next to Norna on the bench,” said Old Guns. “His name is Ran Lomar, and the Guild Misters have sent him here from Outside to see if he can get more redweed made.”
All eyes turned toward Lomar, who arose and said, “It would help all of us …”
The great white beard of the Mister Dominis w
as thrust forward. “Never has the Guild Misters helped us. They’s leaved our dad’s dads here to eat the dirt and feed the rorks,” he rumbled. “More redweed, says? Ha! They makes medicines with weed, but does they give it here? No! And so we perishes with fever….”
A mutter of assent went around the group.
“Be’s they going to give us guns or gunmakings for more weed?” demanded someone so young as to be still beardless, but whose close likeness to the thick-browed and hooknosed face of the Mister Hannit left little doubt that he was his son; and again there was the mutter of assent.
With intended tact, Lomar began to talk of ways that production could be increased; if the gatherers would hack off the redwing stalks as soon as they pulled the plant, then their loads would be lighter —
The men laughed scornfully. “We knows that the Tame turds as licks your dirty plates up to North hasn’t the sense to do that,” young Hannitt said. “But we has. And we does. What’s else ye has to tell us, Guildsman?”
Nonplussed, he had nothing else at that moment to tell them, and while he stood there, gaping, the Wild men turned away from him. Angered at his own incapacity and at their insolent indifference, so different from the deference which the Tame Tocks accorded, he felt his rage coloring his face. While they muttered and grunted together, he thrust aside the curtain and passed through the anteroom to the outdoors.
The camp — every Wild Tock town was called a “camp” — stood on a hilltop from which, through a break in the black cascade of cliffs to the South, the ocean could be seen, the black dot of a boat passing slowly along.
The wind was wet and cold and grew colder. Three women passed along the trail below, bent beneath their loads of firewood; a boy came out of a low-roofed hut with several small and gutted fish impaled on a stick and took them into another. Most of the houses huddled together, some almost touching. Spindly, shrill children ran along the narrow lanes; and a half-grown boy, seeing Lomar looking on, numbly, spat in his direction, and wiped his mouth on his ragged sleeve. The “Wild” Tocks! Was there anything more for him here in the rugged South than in the dull North? There did not seem to be. There did not seem to be at all.
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