“Remind me? Why, do you suppose that I have forgotten it? For one moment? Never-a-bit. No. Flinders must come to heel. Flinders must police his area. To begin with, realizing full well that he thinks that he has cause to hate me (which he certainly does; ho ho ha), I intend to turn the tables and non-plus him a bit. That always puts savages off balance. So. I am going to issue him an amnesty — issue? Grant. I’m granting him amnesty. Then, while he is still slobbering and wondering what he should think about that, I am going to get him to de-rip his pesky little country. Like me to tell you how?”
The plan of Tan Carlo Harb was this: The Mister Flinders was to be asked to duplicate the campaign against the rips, under supervision nominally and tactfully described as assistance. For this, he would be paid a sum of money in chits redeemable, not merely at the Station’s Tocky Store, but in the store where Guildsmen traded. Flinders would be furnished transportation there and back, and he could use the chits to buy anything at all that was for sale; or he could establish credit.
“I will probably extend this privilege to everyone, eventually,” said Harb, contentedly. “After all, they keep shipping the stuff in, you know, and there are buildings and buildings oh just jammed with it. Everyone. Wild Tocks, Tame Tocks, those wonderful uncivilized people whom the rorks have been keeping as pets — yes, why not? Rorks, too. Although what they could want to buy is beyond me. I mean, they haven’t even any necks to string beads around! Anklets, maybe. Well. But Flinders gets the first crack at it, don’t you see, to entice him to be nice.
“But I’m not going to allow him a flat fee. I want him to have his heart in this, I want him to think of killing rips every single minute. So I’m giving him a bounty. So much per head or tail or pair of ears. Cash on delivery. What think you?”
Ran and Norna looked at each other. Without a word, they nodded. Harb waved his hand. “Over to you, then, cute. Take care of the details. I intend henceforth simply to sit here until my poor tired feet put out weeny tendrils. Go, my children. Go. Go. Go.”
• • •
Ran arranged the matter from his command post. Reldon, the Commercial Aide, was as red-eyed as most of them, but the redness was no longer from drinking, and his hands didn’t tremble anymore. The matter of heading a trace team, or whatever it might be called, and finishing up the war on rips in Flinders Country, was perhaps not obviously under his jurisdiction as Commercial Aide. But it fitted under it without difficulty; and besides, he had never been in South Tockland, and was eager to seize the chance to go. Ran had some idea that the man was not too eager to return to the Guild Station, anyway — to the same dreary, useless routine; to the waiting bottle and the bottles of waiting friends. Perhaps it might not be a bad idea to post him in Wild Tockland for permanent duty.
Reldon, then, headed the trace team. There were Tame and Wild Tocks on it, and a few rorksmen; these last having shown a perception of terrain and ecology which bordered on the extra-sensory. It was not deemed advisable, though, or even particulary helpful, to include rorks.
The trace team was skimmered down southwards, and Ran, beginning to feel the inevitable letdown of the anticlimax, set about finishing up the work. There was one thing which he did want to see settled. The powwow had only established a one year’s peace between men and rorks. Ran declared that at the end of the year a second powwow would be held, to discuss the possibility of extending the peace. He found no opposition to such a meeting, though his expressions of personal feeling — “Of course a perpetual peace is possible! Haven’t we just finished proving that?” — met with noncommittal reactions as often as not.
Finally, finally, the last inch of coast was pronounced cleared; the forces which had worked clear around the continent met, and closed the circle. There was a jubilation of sorts, but it lasted less time than expected. Everyone seemed suddenly to wake up and realize that they had other things, customary things, to do. Garden plots must be tended, fishing-craft repaired and nets mended, houseys to be reinforced against the damage of the rains.
Offices to be returned to.
One day the beach at Point Conclusion (as Ran named it) was crowded. The next day only a few were left. “Let’s go for a swim, shall we?” he said to Norna. She could not swim, it developed, so he offered to give her a first lesson. Naked, here in open daylight, with others — though not many others — visible. No; Norna refused. Her single undergarment, though, was not bulky enough to impede her arms and legs, and she proved an apt enough pupil.
“Well, that’s enough for now, I guess,” he said, presently. She stood up as he released her, and the sudden sight of the sodden garment clinging to the form of her young body sent his feelings flying. She understood immediately, and flushed; but then her eyes turned to the shore.
“That grove of trees over there….” he murmured in her ear. Arm in arm they waded ashore, first the shore and then the woods seeming a hundred leagues away. For only an instant it seemed that the cloth resisted his fingers, clinging stubbornly to her skin. And then it came away and there was nothing between them but the beating and pounding of their hearts.
Pia Sol had half completed its long march down the sky when they emerged from the woods and walked towards the skimmer which served as command post. An insect buzzed somewhere, louder and more insistently. So great was his preoccupation that not until he had come directly abreast of the skimmer did he realize that he was hearing no insect but a signal buzz.
He leaped into the craft and pressed the cam. “Skimmer Sixteen here. What — ”
Harb’s voice, high and vicious, shrilled in his ear. “Where in the Hell have you been off to?” it demanded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for — ”
“I was out swimming,” Ran said, a sullen note in his voice.
“Swimming! Yes, I’m sure you were. And diving, too, I have no doubt. Well, listen, stud — ” Suddenly the SO’s voice broke. He resumed again, a moment later, in a dull, quiet tone. “Sorry. Sorry. Don’t mind me. Listen … You don’t know what’s been happening down South, do you? It’s my fault. All my fault. I should have known better. Oh, I should have known….”
• • •
One of the Wild Tocks had thrown himself over the edge of the Crag. Miraculously, he had lived, and although it was obvious he could not live for long, he had managed to tell enough of what had happened before he died.
Even in the warmth of latest summer blending into earliest autumn, Flinders Country looked bleak and gaunt. The grass had a pinched look about it. Ran looked from the faces which looked grimly at him, looked around the landscape. It seemed to be familiar — recognition suddenly snapped his eyes clear. He and Norna had passed this way as Flinders’ captives. Something … something just about here had arrested his attention.
“The cairn,” he said.
Jun Mallardy nodded. His eyes were bloodshot, his upper lip seemed frozen into a snarl. “Shows ye the cairn,” he said. It was not far off. The skull that had been there in Cold Time was still there now. Only no snow mantled it now; instead, there was reddish moss —
It was not moss. It was hair.
And it was not yet a skull. It was a head.
“Reldon!”
“Be’s that’s his name?” Mallardy nodded, almost indifferently. “A many names. All’s dead.”
The eyes looked right at Ran. The mouth seemed trying to say something to him. Ran’s hands gripped each other. So near, Reldon had been, so near to climbing up forever from the pit of hopelessness that had wasted his years. Neither here nor there nor up nor down is there anything that’s any better … He was trying to say something —
Dead rorks? Dead rips? Dead Flinders!
“Flinders did it,” someone said. “Flinders did it, Flinders did it, Flin — ”
A hand dug into Ran’s shoulder, shook him. Abruptly the voice ceased. He recognized it now. Edran Lomar’s voice. Jun Mallardy was speaking now. “Flinders did it, says. Yes. Asks, ‘But why?’ I gots no answer. My brother Sai gone up t
here, and Tig Owelly, and — You knowsn’t their names. We does. Be’s sure, their heads hangs up there on the Crag. ‘Why?’ May’s be the poguey old Mis ter saw’s chance to gets back for all’s feuds, olds and news. May’s be’s he just can’t stand the thought of peace….”
“Never matter, why. Flinders wants blood.”
The other growled and snarled like a rip. “And we s’ll gives him blood. He s’ll haves blood enough to swims in. And — ” he swung around, thrusting his face into Ran’s, “ — Guildsman! Be’s sure! He s’ll have blood enough to drown in!”
All the other clans were there. If shouts could raze rocks, the cry that went up then would have shattered Flinders Crag into rubble … into dust.
The massacre of the truce team, which had trustingly entered into the Camp after its Mister’s acceptance of amnesty and terms, had been a mad act. Fenced into his rocky, reeking little country, the opportunity to live at peace had let no light into his hot and festering mind. He operated on a level so low that Harb’s hopeful vision had passed right over without Flinders seeing it. Flinders was able to understand one thing only: all not of his kith and clan were his enemies: here were enemies ready to place themselves in his house and hands! Agree? He would have agreed to fish for the sun at the bottom of the sea, if such agreement would have lured them in.
And now all his people had fled up into the Crag-girt camp, and the Crag was beleaguered. In a sense, the war on the rips had been forgotten, swallowed up into the war on Flinders. Nevertheless, what remained to do in the former fitted in well with the latter. The besiegers formed a circle and gradually closed in. No doubt the few rips found suffered death as much as proxies for Flinders as for their own sakes. But then things reached a stalemate. Those above could not come down; those below could not go up, for the single narrow path and its approaches were guarded by day and by night. True, (Ran reflected), discipline and its sustentation were not within the power of the Wild men for long. Flinders’s guard might relax … eventually. But, so … eventually … might the siege.
And then it would be all to do over again: Rips, Flinders, feuds, fever…. Was this land never to have rest? He himself was the catalyst which had brought about all the recent and present action and reaction. It was up to him to resolve it all.
The skimmer — in the careful days of poor Starchy Manton — was considered fit to take five men. Ran packed it with fifteen, selecting the lightest ones he could find. It would take about two Wild Tocks to equal one well-nourished Guildsman in weight, anyway, he reflected. When it was well dark … that was the time.
He waited for seemingly endless hours. Then the distant night burst into noise and light. A band of ‘locksmen, holding their matches glow-end down under the cover of cloaks improvised from such spare dresses as the women could hastily round up, crept close enough to the point known to hold the guards on the path — and opened fire. The distance and angle and darkness were such that it was not likely anyone could hit anyone else. Ran did not care about that. All that he wanted was noise.
And under its cover he skimmed down into the farthest, darkest corner of the Camp, and deposited his men. Twice more he made the trip. And then those within attacked. Common sense and ordinary discipline should have restrained those of Flinders’ men down below to remain at their guard posts, but neither quality was abundant among them. When the shooting and shouting began above them they abandoned their position at once, and headed to defend their homes. And at this, all those below came streaming, scrabbling, climbing, crawling up the path.
They found the gate already half open for them. The fight had begun in the darkness, but it ended in light enough. It was by the blaze of his own blazing camp that they cornered Flinders. They tied his hands and feet and threw the rope over a beam. He swung there, upside down, screaming obscene imprecations while they carefully placed a small keg beneath his head. Then they cut his throat and lowered him a foot or two.
He died as Jun had promised. He drowned in his own blood.
CHAPTER TEN
Some day, Ran thought to himself, a great road would run through Rorkland, joining the North and the South. It was fortunate, ironically enough, that the present turn of events had begun when it did — when the human race was still tired. He tried to envision what that road would be like, and to calculate how near it would pass to the Plain of Lights.
The Plain of Lights! What glory! And he and Norna — Norna had left him again, this time over Lindel. She had suggested he might care to chose, he had angrily refused. But leaving was her own idea entirely. Just as well. She had a wild sweetness to her, and a wild tartness, like some unhusbanded tree of the forest and its small, shy fruits. This what he had wanted when he came here. To get away from the past, from things pruned and cultivated, to tread the untroubled soil of the naked landscape. And he had gotten his wish and heart’s desire, gotten full and heaping measure of it.
He did not begrudge a moment of it all. But he had no intention of plunging headlong down a cliff.
“After all,” he said to Lindel, “you’re scarcely the most demure, tamed little creature that ever was.” She smiled. “You were raised here, you go your own damned way … in fact, you’re a rather wild little poppet, yourself. And a rather hot little one.” But she was civlized, too. Norna wasn’t, despite the veneer of civilization gained from her father. Norna could read — just about. She knew a song or two. Her faint glimmerings of history, science, culture, the whole galactic world, were just that. Glimmerings. No —
Ran had had enough of wildness, nature, and the children of nature — barbaric chieftains and maidens. He would do his job, as he had been doing it; do it damned well, too. And then, one way or the other, he would depart. There were other worlds to see, on which the yoke of the Guild System rested lightly, if at all. The so-called “Free Worlds,” for example.
But there was time enough for that. The Q Ship was still a long time from the day when he would stuff her astonished holds with redwing. And, meanwhile —
Meanwhile the cycle of the sun had rolled around again. It was the time of the second great powwow. Once again the rolling meadows around Hollow Rock were dotted with the figures of men and of rorks. Tan Carlo Harb spoke to them from his platform outside the pavilion.
“Why should there not be lasting peace?” he asked. “The differences between men and rorks were not greater than those between men and other men. The Wild people did not trust the Guildsmen and the Guildsmen did not trust the Wild people. And between the Wild people themselves — was not there not always war, and war?”
A murmur arose when he paused. Whether of agreement of otherwise, was hard to say. And in the pause, slowly, old Dominis arose from the rock on which he’d been sitting. His beard was no whiter, certainly, but his voice was a bit weaker.
“Peace, says. And war. I sees the small ones, now, nots the same as times was. They s’ll all grows up, says. Fever s’ll not kills ‘em. Nor feudsing. A year ago, be’s I couldn’t thinks so. Be’s that I hates a Guildsman’s much’s a rork. Now, says, I gots no hates for neither.” He sat down, rather abruptly.
A pity, Ran reflected, that the old man couldn’t have developed that line more. But then someone else arose to speak, interrupting his regretful thoughts.
It was one of the minor Misters, a chief named Tarmi. Ran scarcely knew him. He had a rather reedy voice, one had to strain to listen to him.
“ — no more fever, says. Thinks that be’s a good thing. May’s be right. I s’ll not says, be’s bad. But I says, thinks on this — if men won’t be’s dying of fever, rorks won’t be’s dying of fever, either. Ah, says? Means more men, more men, more men. Means, more rorks, too, don’ts it? More rorks, more rorks….”
He was getting to them. It took time for him to develop his thoughts, they dealt with unfamiliar conceptions. But he was getting to them.
“Now. What be’s it that men wants? Redwing, be’sn’t it? Redwing, says. Pulls it, chops it, trades it, cures it. Redwing.
So. What be’s it that rorks wants — Ah?”
The background murmur rose. He was definitely getting to them. People moved restlessly, spoke to their neighbors. The rorks, for the most part reclining, folded between their legs, made neither sound nor movement. And the rorkmen leaned upon their staves (they had brought no clubs this time — or, if they had, had left them somewhere out of sight of the powwow) and smiled their strange, impassive smiles. The smell of wood smoke came strong to Lomar’s nose, and, faintly, the smell of redwing.
“Ahhh … Rorks haves to eats, same as everythings. And, says, what’s it be’s that rorks eats? Says?”
Someone in the crowd cried out the answer. A dozen voices took it up, a score, a hundred.
“Redwing! Redwing! Redwing!”
Nodding and nodding, the Mister Tarmi waited for them to be done. “Redwing, says. Right. Now. I akses. Don’t says, Tarmi be’s talking against peace. No. I just akses. If men wants redwing and if rorks wants redwing, and if there be’s more men and more rorks, why — sees? — may’s be soon, may’s be later, comes the times when a man goes to chops a stalk of redwing, says, I wants this. And comes a rork, and says — ahhh — I wants this.”
And he sat down among tumult.
Ran raised his hands for silence and waited patiently until he got it. “There’s a Guildsman who has something to say.”
It was the Second Aide, Lindel’s father, Aquilas Arlan, so nervous, and yet, obviously so sure, that he quite forgot to titter.
“The only sensible answer to this question,” he said, “is to partition the land.” There was silence. “Divide it up,” he explained. “So that — ”
Jun Mallardy leaped forward. “Who be’s to draws the lines?” he cried.
“Why — naturally — the Guild — ”
He was drowned out by the clamor of voices. Ran looked at Harb. Harb nodded. Ran looked over towards the rorks and their men. Still none of them had moved. He caught the eye of the one called Tranakh. And Tranakh, his smile as bland (if bland it was) and curious as ever, made the slightest of movements. Gradually, gradually, the noise died down. There were still those who wanted to speak, but Ran met no one’s eye. Harb met no one’s eye. They seemed to be waiting for something. Gradually the quiet grew into absolute silence.
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