Rebo looked up again with his disconcertingly intelligent gaze. He was no ham-headed medieval baron, Falkayn realized. His civilization was old, and the rough edges had been worn off its warrior class, off peasants and artisans and traders, as well as the priest-scribe-poet-artist-engineer-scientist Consecrates. Rebo Legnor's-Child might be likened to an ancient samurai, if any parallels to human history were possible. He'd grasped the principle of the wheel at once, and—
"Understand, I, and many of my breed, feel more than simply benevolent toward your kind," he said low. "When the first ship came, several years ago, a lightning flash went through the land. Many of us hoped it meant the end of . . . of certain irksome restrictions. Dealing with civilized outlanders should bring new knowledge, new powers, new ways of life, into this realm where nothing has changed for better than two millennia. I want most sincerely to help you, for my own gain as well as yours."
Besides the need for tact, Falkayn hadn't the heart to answer that the Polesotechnic League had no interest in trading with Larsum, or with any other part of Ivanhoe, There was nothing here that other worlds didn't produce better and cheaper. The first expedition had simply come in search of a place to establish an emergency repair depot, and this planet was simply the least unsalubrious one in this stellar neighborhood. The expedition had observed from orbit that Larsum possessed the most advanced culture. They landed, made contact, learned the language and a little bit of the folkways, then asked permission to erect a large building which none but visitors like themselves would be able to enter.
The request was grudgingly granted, less because of the metals offered in payment than because the Consecrates feared trouble if they refused. Even so, they demanded that the construction be well away from the capital; evidently they wanted to minimize the number of Larsans who might be contaminated by foreign ideas. Having completed the job and bestowed an arbitrary name on the planet, the expedition departed. Their data, with appropriate educator tapes, were issued to all ships that might take the Pleiades route. Everybody hoped that it would never be necessary to use the information. But luck had run out for the What Cheer.
Falkayn said only: "I do not see how you can help. What other way can that thing be moved, than on a wagon?"
"Could it not be taken apart, moved piece by piece, and put back together at your ship? I can supply a labor force."
"No." Damn! How do you explain the construction of a unitized thermonuclear generator to somebody who's never seen a waterwheel? You don't. "Except for minor attachments, it cannot be disassembled, at least not without tools which we do not carry."
"Are you certain that it weighs too much to be transported on skids?"
"Over roads like yours, yes, I think it does. If this were winter, perhaps a sledge would suffice. But we will be dead before snow falls again. Likewise, a barge would do, but no navigable streams run anywhere near, and we would not survive the time necessary to dig a canal."
Not for the first time, Falkayn cursed the depot builders, that they hadn't included a gravity sled with the other stored equipment. But then, every ship carried one or more gravity sleds. Who could have foreseen that the What Cheer's would be out of commission? Or that she couldn't at least hop over to the building herself? Or, if anybody thought of such possibilities, they must have reasoned that a wagon could be made; the xenologists had noted that wheels were unknown, and never thought to ask if that was because of a law. A portable crane had certainly been provided, to load and unload whatever was needed for spaceship repair. In fact, so well stocked was the depot that it did not include food, because any crew who could limp here at all should be able to fix their craft in a few days.
"And I daresay no other vessel belonging to your nation will arrive in time to save you," Rebo said.
"No. The . . . the distances we cover in our travels are great beyond comprehension. We were bound for a remote frontier world—country, if you prefer—to open certain negotiations about trade rights. To avoid competition, we left secretly. Nobody at our destination has any idea that we are coming, and our superiors at home do not expect us back for several months. By the time they begin to worry and start a search—and it will take weeks to visit every place where we might have landed—our food stocks will long have been exhausted. We carried minimal supplies, you see, in order to be heavily laden with valuables for—uh—"
"For bribes." Rebo made a sound that might correspond to a chuckle, "Yes. Well, then, we must think of something else. I repeat, I will do anything I can to help you. The building was erected here, rather than in some other marchland, because I insisted; and that was precisely because I hoped to see more of your voyagers." His hand went back to his ax. Falkayn had noticed before that the heads of implements were heat-shrunk to the handles. Now the reason came to him: rivets would be sacrilegious. The fingers closed with a snap and Rebo said harshly:
"I am as pious as the next person, but I cannot believe God meant the Consecrates to freeze every life in Larsum into an eternal pattern. There was an age of heroes once, before Ourato brought Uplands and Lowlands together beneath him. Such an age can come again, if the grip upon us is broken."
He seemed to realize he had said too much and added in haste, "Let us not speak of such high matters, though. The important thing is to get that workmaker to your wounded ship. If you and I can think of no lawful means, perhaps your comrades can. So take them back the word—the Marchwarden of Gilrigor cannot allow them to make a, a wagon; but he remains their well-wisher."
"Thank you," Falkayn mumbled. Abruptly the darkness of the room became stifling. "I had best start back tomorrow."
"So soon? You had a hard trip here, and a short and unhappy conversation. Aesca is so far off that a day or two of rest cannot make any difference."
Falkayn shook his head. "The sooner I return, the better. We have not much time to lose, you know."
II
A fresh fastiga—slightly larger than a horse, long-eared, long-snouted, feathery-furred, with a loud bray and a piny smell—waited in the cruciform courtyard. A remount and pack animal were strung behind. A guardsman held the leader's bridle. He wore a breastplate of reinforced leather, a helmeting network of iron-studded straps woven into his mane, and a broad-bladed spear across his back. Beyond him, lesser folk moved across the cobblestones: servants in livery of black and yellow shorts, drably clad peasants, a maneless female in a loose tunic. Around them bulked the four squat stone buildings that sheltered the household, linked by outer walls in which were the gates. At each corner of the square, a watchtower lifted its battlements into the deep greenish sky.
"Are you certain you do not wish an escort?" Rebo asked.
"There is no danger in riding alone, is there?" Falkayn replied.
"Gr-rm . . . no, I suppose not. I keep this region well patrolled. God speed you, then."
Falkayn shook hands, a Larsan custom, too. The Marchwarden's three long fingers and oppositely placed thumb fitted awkwardly into a human grasp. For a moment more they looked at each other.
The bulky garments Falkayn wore against the chill disguised his youthful slenderness. He was towheaded and blue-eyed, with a round face and a freckled snub nose that cost him much secret anguish. A baron's son from Hermes should look lean and dashing. To be sure, he was a younger son, and one who had gotten himself expelled from the ducal militechnic academy. The reason was harmless enough, a prank which had been traced to him by merest chance; but his father decided he had better seek his fortune elsewhere. So he had gone to Earth, and Martin Schuster of the Polesotechnic League had taken him on as an apprentice, and instead of the glamor and adventure which interstellar merchants were supposed to enjoy, there had been hard work and harder study. He had given a whoop when his master told him to ride here alone and arrange for local help. It was vastly disappointing that he couldn't stay awhile.
"Thank you for everything," he said. He swung himself into the saddle with less grace than he'd hoped, under a gravity fifteen percent gr
eater than Earth's. The guard let go the bridle and he rode out the eastern gate.
A village nestled below the castle walls, cottages of dovetailed timber with sod roofs. Beyond them that highroad called the Sun's Way plunged downhill toward the distant Trammina Valley. It wasn't much of a road. The dirt surface was rough, weed-tufted, bestrewn with rocks which melting snows had carried down year after year from the upper slopes. Not far ahead, the path snaked around a tor and climbed again, steeply.
Falkayn glanced southward. The depot gleamed white on a ridge, like Heaven's gate before Lucifer. Otherwise he himself was the only sign of humankind. Coarse gray grass and thorny trees stretched over the hills, with here and there a flock of grazing beasts watched by a mounted herder. At his back, the Kasunian Mountains rose in harsh snow peaks, a wall across the world. One great moon hung ghostly above them. The ember-colored sun had just cleared the horizon toward which he rode.
Wind roared hollowly, thrusting at his face. He shivered. Ivanhoe was not terribly cold, in this springtime of the middle northern latitudes; the dense atmosphere gave considerable greenhouse effect. But the bloody light made him feel forever chilled. And the fastiga's cloven hooves beat the stones with a desolate sound.
Forgetting that he was Falkayn of Hermes, merchant prince, he pulled the radio transceiver from his pocket and thumbed the switch. Hundreds of kilometers away, an intercom buzzed. "Hullo," he said rather thinly. "Hullo, What Cheer. Anybody there?"
"Si." Engineer Romulo Pasqual's voice came from the box. "Is that you, Davy muchacho?"
Falkayn was so glad of this little company that for once he didn't resent being patronized. "Yes. How's everything?"
"As before. Kirsh is brooding. Martin has gone to the temple again. He said it would probably be no use trying to talk them out of their prohibition on the wheel that you called us about last night. I?" Falkayn could almost see the Latin shrug. "I sit here and try to figure how we can move a couple tons of generator without wheels. A sort of giant stoneboat, quizá?"
"No. I thought of that, too, and discussed the notion with Rebo, when we spent a lot of the dark period hunting for ideas. Not over a road like this."
"Are you certain? If we hitch enough peasants and animals to the thing—"
"We can't get them. Rebo himself, if he drafted all the people and critters he can spare—remember, this is the planting season in a subsistence economy, and he also has to mount guard against the barbarians—he doubts if there'd be enough power to haul such a load over some of these upgrades."
"You said that quite a few of the caballero class were disgruntled with the priests. If they contributed, too—"
"It'd take a long time to arrange that, probably too long. Besides, Rebo thinks very few would dare go as far as he will, to help us. They may not like being tied hand and foot to Consecrate policy, when there's a whole world for them to spend their energies on. But quite apart from religious reverence, they're physically dependent on the Consecrates, who supply a good many technical and administrative services . . . and who can rouse the commoners against the wardens, if it ever came to an open break between the castes."
"So. Yes, Martin seemed to think much the same. We also were threshing this matter last night. . . . However, Davy, we should have at least a few score natives and a couple of hundred fastigas at our disposal, if Rebo is willing to help within the letter of the damned law. I swear they could move a stoneboat over any route. They might have to use winches—"
"Winches are a form of wheel," Falkayn reminded him.
"Ay de mí, so they are. Well, levers and dikes, then. The Mayans raised big pyramids without wheels. The task would not be as large, to skid the generator from Gilrigor to Aesca."
"Oh, sure, it could be done. But how long would it take? Come have a look at this so-called road. We'd be many months dead before the job was finished." Falkayn gulped. "How much food have we got if we ration ourselves? A hundred days' worth?"
"Something like that. Of course, we could live without eating for another month or two, I believe."
"Still not time enough to get your stoneboat across that distance. I swear it isn't."
"Well . . . no doubt you are right. You have inspected the terrain. It was only a rather desperate idea."
"Wagon transport is bad enough," Falkayn said. "I don't think that would make more than twenty kilometers per Earth-day in this area. Faster, of course, once we reached the lowlands, but I'd still estimate a month altogether."
"So slow? Well, yes, I suppose you are right. A rider needs more than a week. But this adds to our trouble. Martin is afraid that even if we can arrange something not forbidden by their law, the priests may have time to think of some new excuse for stopping us."
Falkayn's mouth tightened. "I wouldn't be surprised." His fright broke from him in a wail: "Why do they hate us so?"
"You should know that. Martin often talked to you while you rode westward."
"Yes. B-but I was sent off just a couple days after we landed. You three fellows have been on the scene, had a chance to speak with the natives, observe them—" Falkayn got his self-pity under control barely in time to avoid blubbering.
"The reason is plain," Pasqual said. "The Consecrates are the top crust of this petrified civilization. Change could only bring them down, however much it might improve the lot of the other classes. Then, besides self-interest, there is natural conservatism. Martin tells me theocracies are always hidebound. The Consecrates are smart enough to see that we newcomers represent a threat to them. Our goods, our ideas will upset the balance of society. So they will do everything they can to discourage more outworlders from coming."
"Can't you threaten revenge? Tell 'em a battleship will come and blow 'em to hell if they let us die."
"The first expedition told them a little too much of the true situation, I fear. Still, Martin may try such a bluff today. I do not know what he intends. But he has gotten . . . well, at least not very unfriendly with some of the younger Consecrates, in the days since you left. Has he told you of his lectures to them? Do not surrender yet, muchacho."
Falkayn flushed indignantly. "I haven't," he snapped. "Don't you either."
Pasqual made matters worse by laughing. Falkayn signed off.
Anger faded before loneliness as the hours wore on. He hadn't minded the trip to Gilrigor Castle. That had been full of hope, and riding on animals purchased with gold from a wealthy Aescan, through an excitingly exotic land, was just what a merchant adventurer ought to do. But Rebo had smashed the hope, and now the countryside looked only dreary and sinister. Falkayn's mind whirled with plan after plan, each less practical than the last—recharging the accumulators by a hand-powered generator, airlifting with a balloon, making so many guns that four men could stand off a million Larsans. . . . Whenever he rejected a scheme, his father's mansion and his mother's face rose up to make his eyes sting and he clutched frantically after another idea.
There must be some way to move a big load without wheels! What had he gone to school for? Physics, chemistry, biology, math, sociotechnics . . . damn everything, here he was, child of a civilization that burned atoms and traveled between the stars, and one stupid taboo was about to kill him! But that was impossible. He was David Falkayn, with his whole life yet to live. Death didn't happen to David Falkayn.
The red sun climbed slowly up the sky. Ivanhoe had a rotation period of nearly sixty hours. He stopped at midday to eat and sleep awhile, and again shortly before sunset. The landscape had grown still more bleak: nothing was to be seen now but hills, ravines, an occasional brawling stream, wild pastures spotted with copses of scrubby fringe-leaved trees, no trace of habitation.
He woke after some hours, crawled shivering from his sleeping bag, started a campfire and opened a packet of food. The smoke stung his nostrils. Antiallergen protected him against such slight contact with proteins made deadly alien by several billion years of separate evolution. He could even drink the local water. But nothing could save him if h
e ate anything native. After swallowing his rations, he readied the fastigas for travel. Because he was still cold, he left the lead animal tethered and huddled over the fire to store a little warmth in his body.
His eyes wandered upward. Earth and Hermes lay out there—more than four hundred light-years away.
The second moon was rising, a mottled coppery disc above the eastern scarps. Even without that help, one could travel by night. For the stars swarmed and glittered, the seven giant Sisters so brilliant in their nebular hazes that they cast shadows, the lesser members of the cluster and the more distant suns of the galaxy filling the sky with their wintry hordes. A gray twilight overlay the world. Off in the west, the Kasunian snows seemed phosphorescent.
Hard to believe there could be danger in so much beauty. And in fact there seldom was. Nonetheless, when a spaceship ran on hyperdrive through a region where the interstellar medium was thicker than usual, there was a small but finite probability that one of her micro-jumps would terminate just where a bit of solid matter happened to be. If the difference in intrinsic velocities was great, it could do considerable damage. If, in addition, the lump was picked up in the space occupied by the nuclear fusion unit—well, that was what had happened to the What Cheer.
The Van Rijn Method Page 20