As he had known they would.
• • •
And now Ran had to determine the final question. Guild Station, Wild Tocks and Tame, all had agreed. Would the rorks agree?
• • •
Dominis, Mallardy, the other Misters and their crews, had departed, taken to water for their distant homes. With them had gone the makings for guns and gunpowder sufficient — Ran hoped — to put an end to Flinders forever. The ladydoctors and their apprentices toiled betime and overtime at making charms enough for all the able-bodied males in North Tockland. The Guildsmen, mostly, shook their heads, snickered, doubted, and — inevitably — shrugged, turned to their drinks. The conventional toast, however, seemed to lack something of its usual surety.
On this trip to Last Ridge, Ran went by skimmer. “It’s a harebrained plan, cute,” the SO said, watching him pull his pack out. “Fortunately, I make up the official reports, and if these lovable old monsters of yours turn you into a human shish kebob, well, I shall cry my eyes out without letting one tear drop onto the pages. You understand. For pity’s sake, boy, be careful!”
Ran grinned. “You’re fond of the classics. Do you remember this line? ‘It is a far, far better thing I do now, than I have ever done — ’?”
The SO said, stiffly, “We are not amused.” His large, expressive face worked a bit. Then he was off. Ran waved him into a distant speck, and, when he turned around, Tun was there.
“I seem full of great quotations today,” Ran said, in greeting. “How about this one? ‘Take me to your leader’.” The rorkman surveyed him with his familiar, strange smile. He touched Ran’s arm, gently. The cast skin he had worn was gone now, unneeded in the warmer weather, and he was dressed in nothing but loincloth and leggings to protect against the whip grass. Of course he had no leader, the concept was apparently unknown in Rorkland. They walked together, slowly, and Ran talked.
Ran talked. Tun said nothing, or next to nothing. Now and then, as on their previous tour, he stopped and sat and faced the sun. From time to time he made some slight gesture. He walked like a man. But when they came to a stream or pool, he crouched on all fours, like a rork, and lapped the water. He accepted the food Ran offered with grave courtesy. Occasionally he sang a bit of a song that once must have been totally human; its very tonality now rang alien in Lomar’s ears.
When they were still a long way from Hollow Rock they could see its curiously convoluted spire; then coming closer but still not close, Ran could see the rorks and their men moving about at its base. There were quite a number of them, and he did not ask how they came to be there. It was not likely he was finding, coincidently, some regular assembly or rendezvous. Had those occasional little gestures of Tun’s conveyed some message to someone or something which for any reason did not care to come into view just yet? Had the near-naked man possession of those supranormal powers which human normality, still striving, had yet to achieve?
“Come, Ran’k,” said Tun, placing one hand on his shoulder. No introductions were made, no one seemed surprised or particularly pleased or displeased to see him. He was close enough to the rorks now to hear the gizzard stones grinding inside of them, a curious noise which, he felt ought to make him uneasy. He did not know why he felt it should, or why it didn’t.
“In the Cold Time,” he said, coming to the burden of the matter at once, “I passed through your land in peace. Now I have returned to it in peace, and this is why. I have learned that the shaking fever which attacks men and rorks alike is spread by the animals we call rips. They must be destroyed if we are all to be well again. If it is not done this year, when they are few and weak, it will have to wait more years until after they have swarmed again. My people, North and South, are willing to work with you. I have come to propose a powwow — that is, that in fifty days, we each send fifty of our number to meet at the great hill with two peaks, Tiggy’s Hill, in the far South. We will all come there in peace. And in peace, we will talk of this.”
And the rorks and the rorks’ men said, “We will come there in peace. And in peace we will talk of this.”
It was all very simple.
Tan Carlo Harb, calmly overriding the obsessed objections of the Motor Aide, Starchy Manton, had decided that they would go South in the Station’s single aerospacecraft, rather than by slow skimmer or slower boat. It was to discuss plans for the trip that Ran came to the Residence one evening, close to the appointed fiftieth day. He found him pale and very disturbed.
“Who would have thought it?” he flung the rhetorical question at Lomar. “Who could have predicted it? It’s bad, it’s bad.”
It was bad. It was Flinders. The clans hostile to him had made their arms, pikes and matchlocks, prepared their powder, and marched out upon him. Flinders and his hard core allies were obliging enough to meet them en route, and in the battle had suffered a defeat. So far, so good. But Flinders, not intending to remain defeated, had quickly decided on a strategy. His forces would scatter, thus obliging his enemies to scatter as well if they would pursue them. And he and his clan and the clans allied with them would rendezvous — a desperate measure — in the far, far south of Rorkland.
The place he picked was Tiggy’s Hill.
He was there, hiding out with his fighting men, concealed upon the crown, when the first contingent of the rork-folk arrived, casually ahead of the set date for the powwow. It would probably have meant no difference to Flinders if he knew, but he did not know and he did not care. He attacked the delegation. It was not a battle but a massacre. Almost none escaped, rorks and rorkmen. And among the fallen was Tun.
“Oh, God!” cried Ran, in agony. “What they must think of me!” Once again his plans had come tumbling down. Not only, not merely, was his personal success destroyed, not only did the future existence of mankind on Pia 2 receive a probably irrevocable setback. Tun was dead, who had — obliged by no claim known to Lomar — helped Lomar and Norna to live. Tun of the curious smile, naked Tun, Tun strong and alien. Tun dead. And with his death, dead, too, seemingly the chance at what might have been the greatest breakthrough in human history between human and nonhuman.
Lindel was in his room, it seemed that she was always in his room now, talking eagerly of his plans and of how well they were sure to be received by the Guild Directorate, singing to him, soothing him, making love to him. “Where are you going?” she cried, now. “What’s wrong? Ranny!”
She screamed at him, told him he was mad, perverse, perverted to think, even to think, of going back into Rorkland now, after what had happened. He would be able to think of something else, she begged. Something sane, safe. “Do you think you can get them to listen to you now? Are you going to be some kind of martyr? Do you want to die? What is it — a sacrifice of atonement?”
“If it has to be.”
She held onto him, he put her away, she struggled to pursue; he closed the door on her and locked it.
Last Ridge again. He set the skimmer’s controls on automatic return, prepared to climb in. A woman’s voice. Ranny. Ranny. Lindel again. Got out. Hurry up, get away.
The remembered, twice-reflected-on voice, broke into his preoccupation. It was not Lindel at all, it was Norna. He turned, calling, “Goodbye, Norna,” stepped into the skimmer. Then she had her hand on it. A Tock was with her, cleaner than average, melancholy face, long arms. Her lover, probably. “Goodbye, Norna.”
She did not remove her hand, turned to the other. “Goodbye, Dukie,” she said.
“No, girl,” he said, sadly. Pleadingly. Stroked her arms, her breasts, in free Tocky fashion. “No….”
“Norna, you can’t come.”
“Why not?”
Quickly, briefly, he told where he was bound, and why. She said, “I wents there with you once, risks and all. I’ll go again.”
“No — ”
“Won’t they likelier think you peaceful, they sees me, too?”
He had thought they might, and on that, let her come. But they had not, not at all. The s
kimmer had returned on automatic, and down into Rorkland on foot they went, Ran and Norna. He scarcely recollected how long it had taken to find the first ones, but if her presence made a difference, it made not much difference.
“Liar!”
“Liar!”
The men menaced him with their clubs. The yellow masked ones rorked at him, growling and clicking and thundering. They would listen to no explanation, they wanted no more of the sight or sound of him. “Come in peace and in peace talk?” Blood and bodies on the slope of Tiggy’s Hill. Liar! Liar! Another trick, another scheme.
They gave him and Norna until sundown. That long, no longer.
Watchful, silent, they saw the two depart, defeated. The redwing was growing flush throughout the long glades, but Ran had no eyes for it. He saw it without seeing it, between the great russet leaves and his eyes was the face of Tun, blood but emphasizing his enigmatic smile.
He scarcely understood the pad, pad of running feet, or why Norna screamed, or where the rip pack had come from so suddenly. They were thin and gaunt and they whined with hunger and excitement and they seemed to come from everywhere. He did stop, for they were in front of him; he did put one arm around Norna, raised the other in impotent defense. But mostly he was numb, helpless, his mouth slack. It scarcely seemed to matter.
Then one rip squealed, the squeal cut off sharply by the thud of a club. And long and supple feet, caricatures of human hands, deadly claws raked and tore. And still he stood there, moving not. There was a pause.
“We haves come in peace,” Norna said. Her voice trembled, perhaps in her heart she still feared the rorks and their men as she did the rips. “We haves no weapons, sees….” She said the things that Ran had wanted to say, and she was suffered to say them out. And there was then another pause.
It was the same band, rorks and men, which had ordered them out, angrily refused to listen. They had followed to make sure of their leaving, grimly determined to destroy them if they failed to climb Last Ridge by sundown time. And now they realized that Lomar and Norna really had put their own lives in jeopardy, and had not … probably not … been laying another trap.
“But it was no trap,” Ran found his voice again. “It was not us. Let us make another time, and I will promise you defense. We can meet this time at Hollow Rock. Will you trust us?”
Long, long were the shadows in the redwing glades. And long, long was the silence. Then it was broken.
“We will trust. We will trust you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Whatever victory Flinders had achieved by the massacre at Tiggy’s Hill did him no good. The presence of the unknown men among the rorks, dead at the foot of the Hill, had caused strange rumors to spread throughout South Tockland. Men among rorks! It was more than unheard of — it was unbelievable — yet, it had to be believed.
There was no particular reason in logic why this should have resulted in any loss of face by Flinders. And perhaps it was not exactly face which he did lose. But the matter was strange, the matter was fearful, the Wild people shrank from it; and, since Flinders was connected with it, they shrank from Flinders. The expected rendezvous of the clans allied with him never came about. After waiting long in vain, he broke his bivouac on Tiggy’s Hill and decamped.
The union thus interrupted was not one easily put together again. The return of the sachems from the North found their people both restless and uneasy. The story brought back was not one quickly or easily assimilated, and both it and the tentative agreement based upon it had to remain for some uncertain time in the realm of talk. One thing, however, was easily understood:
Guild Station had given gun-makings and sulphur for gun-powder, and both were to be used against Flinders. There was no uncertainty about this. Given more guns, the Wild Tocks had no objection to assailing Heaven itself. Flinders’ support melted like soft snow in the spring sun; indeed, it scarcely survived the knowledge that declaring against him would bring matchlocks and powder. Soon every smithy rang with the sound of hammers; seasoned timber saved for years against such a chance was brought out to be turned into gunstocks, and charcoal and stinking nitre was fused with sulphur at the primitive powder-mills: ground, moistened, caked, carefully broken, ground again.
Flinders heard, of course. He would have had to have been deaf in ears and insight not to have. And Flinders did not wait Down from the Crag he came, raging and furious; attacked Nimmai, was driven back; feinted at Owelty, but did not press his chance; and was caught there between the two when Dominis and Mallardy and the others came grimly up against him. His losses were heavy, and he went limping off like a rork on three legs, nothing but an unexpected rain that doused matches and soaked powder saved him from being killed or captured then and there.
He was counted lucky to have regained the ragged and rocky shelter of the Crag once more, where for the moment none cared to risk following, there to brood upon his wrongs and his rights, his ruined hopes, and his ever scanty larder. The plan of attacking the Guild Station had already receded into the mists which distilled and dripped from the black rocks and the black and mossy limbs of the gaunt trees.
So much, for now, for Flinders.
• • •
In some ways the great powwow at Hollow Rock resembled the arrival of the Q Ship. The same huge pavilion was erected, similar (if not quite the same) victualing arrangements were made. There was that air of excitement and movement once again. But there, perhaps, the resemblance ceased. Q Day, by definition, came but once every five years; but it came every five years, and, however new it seemed, it was not new and had never been since the first time. The meeting here at the foot of towering Hollow Rock, unique in geological formation, was itself unique in social formation. No one knew quite what to expect.
Harb, Lomar, a number of aides (these still in a state of shock, not so much at the prospect of meeting rorks face-to-face as it were, as having to do without drink for the duration of the meeting), and a number of Tame Tocks arrived as scheduled by aerospacecraft. They saw the smoke of the Wild men’s cook fires slowly rising up through the soft air — men: they had brought no women. But, then, except for Norna neither had the Station group.
Morning of the day set for powwow found Northerners and Southerners still alone, and, as the day drew on, Ran became so nervous that he began to regret the SO’s ban on booze. There was good enough reason for the ban, most of the Station personnel being basically unstable and hence unpredictable. Such had been known to crack and run amok before; besides, Harb did not feel that a rork would appreciate a toast to “dead rorks,” whether understanding it or not.
The Wild ones had held off at first from entering the pavilion, either from suspicion or shyness. While Harb was discussing with Ran how to overcome this — “Isn’t it a patriarchal tradition, or something, boy, that if you eat a man’s victuals, it’s bad form to blow his brains out with a blunderbuss?” — and while Ran, half-listening, was scanning the landscape for signs of the rork-folk, Norna had taken matters into her own hands.
“Jun,” she said, coming up to the Mister Mallardy, who stood a bit apart from his fellows; “be’s vexed with me because I takens another for my man?”
He eyed her straightly for a moment without talking. Then he said, “May be’s if I gones into Rorkland wi’ you, you’s taken me.” She said nothing to this, and he went on, “But I wasn’t. I gots no right to be’s vexed.”
“I’m glad. Then come into the tent-house with me, and we’s eats a bite together.”
The ice, thus broken, never froze again, and Ran gave over his lookout and joined everyone in the pavilion. Gradually and guardedly there began to grow between he and Jun that rather special kind of relationship which exists only between two men who have competed for the same woman, to the loss of one of them. It was much later in the day when a sudden fall in the congregation brought all eyes to the door. It was one of the Station aides, and it was obvious that he had somehow evaded the ban on booze. In a voice which combined amazem
ent, intoxication, dismay, and befuddlement, he announced loudly and clearly, “Oh, my ass and my ankles — the place is full of rorks!”
• • •
They had been asked to bring fifty of their number, and to this they had scrupulously adhered: there were twenty-five rorks and twenty-five of their men. And “men” in this case included women. For the first time Ran — and, of course, the others — saw female foundlings. There were not many of them … a young woman, a girl of perhaps ten, carrying an even younger child on her hip, and an old, a very old crone. It was she who broke the silence as those in the pavilion streamed outside.
“Smells,” she muttered. “They smells …” The pa virion’s accommodations included a bathing unit and it had been liberally used, but every living thing has its own incessant and distinctive odor. A life in the wilds of Rorkland had sharpened her senses. The next to speak was Rango. He took a step forward, scanned the faces of the assembled rorkmen, said, uncertainly, low at first, then higher, “Butty? Butty?”
No one spoke. Helplessly, he repeated, once, “Butty.” It was no longer a question. Then one of the rorkmen who had not moved a muscle, stepped slowly forward. Rango looked at him. Then they met and embraced, Rango’s face working. But the countenance of his long-lost brother showed only the strange, archaic smile.
Lomar, feeling his eyes smart, said, without turning his head, “You see now, all of you, how human beings do live among the rorks. Could you want better proof that rorks and men can work together? Of course the rork will attack men — if they are attacked themselves. But not otherwise.
“Rorks. Will you come forward now? One by one, please, and slowly. Rorks? Come?”
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